Suicide by Edouard Manet

Antifreeze and Gatorade

I occasionally visit The Comic’s Comic to keep up with the thimbleful of contemporary comedians I don’t find unfunny or politically indigestible or both. Right after Boxing Day, the editors announced the suicide of Joe ...

New Man Lives

When the Germans smuggled arguably the world’s most evil man into Russia 100 years ago, they did not imagine the harm they were springing on the human race. Once Lenin had prevailed, he decided to forge a new ...

So What If Jesus Was Jewish?

Last time I looked at a map, the Middle East was not part of Europe. Neither is it a part of the West—it’s not even close. Still, there are untold millions who seem convinced that protecting Israel is essential to ...

None of the Above

ORLANDO, Fla.—One of the funniest writers in the sports department where I started my career—a quick-witted guy who should have known better—got promoted to editorial writer. This meant he was responsible for the ...

Supreme and Exalted Master President Robert Mueller

According to Robert Mueller, a president can be guilty of obstruction of justice simply by exercising the powers of the president -- if he does so with "an intent to obtain an improper advantage for himself or someone else, ...

A Fail-Safe Investment

"€œAre you ready for life changes?"€ the advertisement that came through the Internet asked me. In general, the answer is "€œNo, I am not ready."€ I don"€™t like change, and though I know it is coming whether I ...

J. Frank Dobie

Goddammit, Don, Too Soon. Too Soon.

PHOENIX—The last time I saw Don Graham, we were talking about all the Canadian students at the University of Texas who come down to Austin and “don’t know who Dobie is—I have to tell ’em who Dobie is.” He was ...

Bill Kristol

Kristol’s At It Again

"€œMitt in Talks for 3rd Party Bid"€ ran the Boston Herald's headline this Sunday. "€œJesus Christ,"€ I thought to myself, "€œwhat's Bill Kristol up to now?"€ That's what I like about Bill: He's ...

Rational Treasure

In Steven Pinker’s latest book, Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters, the best-selling cognitive scientist comes out, perhaps unsurprisingly, in favor of rationality. Since the 1990s, Pinker has ...

Forming a More Perfect Union

In the middle of August 1982, I was unemployed and looking for a job in New York City. A friend from MBA school called to say he could get me an interview at his Wall Street firm, J.P. Morgan. But Wall Street work was not ...

America’s Delusional Self-Destructiveness

Progressives and their neocon brethren have been predictably outraged this week, because at the press conference after the Helsinki summit on Monday, our president appeared to give the detested Vladimir Putin the benefit of ...

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Tyler Kent and the Roosevelt Whistle-blow Job

Remember that time Democrats hated a whistle-blower so much they turned him over to a foreign government to be imprisoned on an island? Think Gilligan’s Island but without the laugh track. There was a millionaire, ...

Liam Neeson’s Unpardonable Sin

As we inch closer to this year’s Academy Awards telecast, which promises to be a real barn burner, what with no hosts and no jokes (because jokes contain hurty words), let’s recall, if only for a brief, painful moment, ...

John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever

The Golden Age of White Male Antisocial Media

Ever since Canadian English professor Marshall McLuhan coined the term “the medium is the message” in 1964, it’s been fun (if not particularly taxing) for intellectuals to speculate about how new communication ...

Brooklyn Diverse? Fuggedaboudit

When people say "€œdiversity is our strength"€ they must be talking about car insurance pamphlets because that's about the only place I see different races chilling out. They may be Photoshopped together from ...

Pity the Poor Politicians

The contempt in which we hold most of our politicians, while largely justified, is also dangerous. Politics seems increasingly to be the means by which people who would not otherwise succeed in business or any other sphere ...

How Long Will the Vandals Run Amok?

The left's war on America's past crossed several new frontiers last week. Portland's statue of George Washington, the Father of his Country and the first president of the United States, the greatest man of his age, was ...

Rhodes House, Oxford

Masochistic America

Released last Saturday, this year’s list of American Rhodes Scholars is a remarkable document. For, judging by the moral values evidenced in it, we’d hardly know that these rather accomplished young people are ...

Trolling for War with Russia

Some 50 State Department officials have signed a memo calling on President Obama to launch air and missile strikes on the Damascus regime of Bashar Assad. A “judicious use of stand-off and air weapons,” they ...

Just How Naive Is Robert Mueller?

NEW YORK—I’ve been reading this indictment of the thirteen people who supposedly disrupted the 2016 election. Are you kidding me? These are intelligence agents. I mean, some of them may be contractors employed by ...

The American Nosedive

Reading the Declaration of Independence 235 years after it was written, it’s kidney-punchingly obvious that the United States government has become precisely the sort of bloodsucking tyrant against which the Founding ...

Beyond Translation

The key to a successful career in any modern bureaucracy, it seems to me, is the mastery of and willingness to use a certain kind of language that is opaque and almost meaningless to an outsider. The mastery requires ...

Wellesley College

The Week That Perished

The Week’s Most Blah, Nah, and Erin-go-Bragh Headlines OSCAR AIN’T GOLD; HE’S YELLA Americans might remember Judge Lance Ito from the O.J. Simpson criminal trial, but few recall that the judge in the O.J. civil trial ...

The Week That Perished

The Week’s Most Kinetic, Phyletic, and Peripatetic Headlines L.A.’S DIVERSITY POTHOLE FILLERS Only in Los Angeles would it come as a shock to journalists that a guy named “Jihad Muhammad” met a violent end. It’s ...


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