I am a man of the right, so much so that for me the Nazis were simply brownshirted cousins of the enemy in Moscow. In American terms, my political sympathies tend to rest with such marginal figures as Fisher Ames, Timothy Dwight, Orestes Brownson, Washington Irving, Franklin Pierce, Henry Adams, ...
September 21, 2011 marked the eruption of open gaiety in the American Armed Forces. It will also stand as the day that the highly queer city of West Hollywood, CA, banned the sale of wool and fur within the enchanted bounds of that most unusual metropolis—although a wide range of other goods, ...
The Internet is one of the most obvious signs of the Brave New World in which we all dwell. What began in the 1960s as a humble linking of two computers via cable has mushroomed into a revolutionary phenomenon that has transformed the world’s economic, social, and intellectual life. But to ...
Yet another insane bill has passed through the madhouse called the California State Legislature and now awaits the undead governor’s signature. Indeed, one of the few signs of life he showed during the campaign that brought him back from beyond the grave was when he spoke of the joy with which he ...
Television—thanks to the profit motive—is intensely imitative. If any type of show is successful, a horde will suddenly appear of usually lesser and shorter-lived knockoffs. In one season, the networks may be overwhelmed by alien invaders or ghosts, in another by “relevant” comedies. All ...
Maybe it’s my age—or maybe life really is getting crazier—but even for California, it feels ever more to me that we have slipped down a rabbit hole. The latest evidence for this is the push to have the characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street get married. I don’t know what’s crazier: ...
Buildings and cars burning, mobs looting, outnumbered police incapable of restoring order—London in 2011. As I watch the news on television and the spilling of civil unrest into other cities, The Clash’s London Calling is running through my head. But I have seen this particular apocalypse ...
I thought I was inured to the unspeakable stupidity oozing out of Sacramento’s State Capitol, but I am still after half a century sometimes shocked to see what emerges from the baboons inhabiting those august and ornate halls. Our legislative building is as beautiful as any in the nation, ...
The San Fernando Valley in the 1970s was a very dull place. Hot and dusty, filled with lackluster architectural construction thrown together during the postwar housing boom, it was the last place I wanted to be. Back in those far-off days, the LA Archdiocese’s paper, The Tidings, ran a column by ...
Hard to believe though it may be, another scandal involving A-list actors is rocking Hollywood. There are all the usual hallmarks of moral decay—big-name stars (Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Tobey Maguire); illicit activity (in this case high-stakes gambling rather than sex or ...
