The synchronicity between the heightened vogue for vampire fiction and Wall Street greed is surely no accident. Our society has been waiting for a long time to see a little empathy from its vampire class, a little trickle-down mercy. Instead it gets one rip-off after another, more fine print, another tricky health insurance plan, another [...]
Read More...As is so often the case, The New York Times has taken the pulse of the times and responded, this time with Deal Book, a comprehensive business report. But it’s late in the day. American journalism is a dime late and a dollar short when it comes to following the money trail, and now that [...]
Read More...The business of The New York Times, like that of any media company, is language, and as newspapers go The Times is the most literate. That is why I was disquieted to read this passage in a Times editorial yesterday: “Mr. Bush’s father deftly managed the Soviet Union’s dissolution. President Bill Clinton did a poorer [...]
Read More...There are African elephants and Asian elephants, but nobody talks about The Great Invisible American Elephant whose herds roam the cultural scene. There they are, standing in hospital waiting rooms, in news rooms, in class rooms, in back rooms. And here we are, navigating around them like waiters with a tray of cocktails over our [...]
Read More...In the August 8th Times Literary Supplement there is a piquant 1936 photograph by Alfred Eisenstadt of four ballet dancers in a window at The School of American Ballet. George Balanchine, cofounder with Lincoln Kirsten of the school, had a famous penchant for tall, lithe women dancers. One can’t tell from Eisenstadt’s photo how tall [...]
Read More...The news industry is worrying itself from its 19th Century decrepitude to the ether, but it needs to redefine the concept of news itself. What we read in our newspapers and watch on television is antiquarian. In some ways magazines, with their broader perspectives, are ahead of the curve. What the news needs more than [...]
Read More...The fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis keeps ambushing us. As I scan the world wide web I see another rogue wave rolling in as homeowners ask themselves why they shouldn’t be given property tax relief in light of declining market values.
Read More...I understand the argument for a volunteer army. It’s a powerful argument. Its proof is how very good our army is. But I think ultimately it’s a deeply flawed argument, because if we are to remain a democratic republic the rich should not be sending the sons and daughters of the poor to war. And [...]
Read More...Remember the blonde with the gold circle pin who was the standard of everything you couldn’t live up to in high school? She reminds me of the handmaiden of globalist greed that masquerades as our foreign policy. We assume everybody secretly wants to be like us. But we never ask ourselves: does this mean that [...]
Read More...If you watch too much television you start dreaming about the scorned ex-lover of a victim’s fiancé and soon realize your life needs a continuity editor. Not that it matters because your advertising support is weak and your Nielsens are in the toilet. There’s no chemistry between you and the beautiful people whose misfortune is [...]
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