You’d think multiplying the number of houses, junk food emporiums and motels is more important than multiplying jobs to hear the punditocracy tell it. You’d thinking ginning up another housing bubble is smarter than more jobs and better wages and benefits.
What’s going on here? Why is government more devoted to the care and feeding of [...]
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 job [...]
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...It is perhaps a measure of the White House’s cockeyed hubris that Russia has seized a moment in history when our armed forces are overextended to bully our ally, neighboring Georgia. Given such hubris, it was inevitable the White House would forget it’s not the only bully on the block.
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 anything [...]
Are we becoming a land of belittlers and giggly sycophants?
I listened to John McCain, the man who promised us the high road, deriding Barack Obama’s innocuous admonition to pump more air into our car tires to get more mileage. McCain’s point was that Obama is silly, and there was giggly laughter from the audience. But [...]
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 don’t know what metrics social scientists use to measure a civilization’s progress and decline. But every time I hear the increasingly inane debate about flip-flopping, every time I hear a slogan or receive a swift-boat e-mail, I think of the progress bars on our computers.
We wait more or less patiently as software downloads or [...]
Our military academies have curricula of a very high order, so why are we turning to widespread use of mercenaries? What’s the connection, you ask, between good teaching and mercenaries? History teaches us that mercenaries are used when there isn’t enough support for a war at home and when great powers become exhausted, corrupt and [...]
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 even [...]