A long-lived creature from Mars, who had paid the earth visits over several centuries, would be very much struck by modern man’s thirst for, or indifference to, ugliness. He, she, or it would have noticed that, precisely at a time when humanity had more disposable income than at any other time in its history, it had insisted not only upon spreading a hideous mess over the surface of the earth and thereby destroying much of its beauty, but on espousing personal ugliness in various forms. He, she, or it would have remarked upon the curious paradox that, while people devoted a lot of ...
Remember Charles Rothenberg? Hopefully not, as it’s a most unpleasant memory. In the early 1980s, Rothenberg was locked in a bitter custody dispute with his wife, Marie, over their 6-year-old son ...
No one, I imagine, would include a speech by Donald Trump in an anthology of succinctness or political eloquence. Whether he is too lazy to organize his thoughts, or simply incapable of doing so, I ...
Whenever I hear the word equity, my heart sinks, though I won’t go as far as to say that I reach for my Browning. My irritation on hearing the word is recent, however: I don’t ...
Recently, I read a splendid book, titled Homo cretinus, by the French science journalist and writer Olivier Postel-Vinay, on the subject of human stupidity, a subject as ...
From time to time I receive, unsolicited, messages from insurance companies about “how to keep myself safe,” to use an odious modern locution. Mostly they are about the ...
We have had an outbreak of golden orioles at my house in France. There are, of course, far worse outbreaks to have, but it is a little frustrating that these beautiful birds (the ...
While reading a new study by Lukas Althoff and Hugo Reichardt, Jim Crow and Black Economic Progress After Slavery, about how it is better for African Americans today to be ...
What you deem to have been recent depends very much on your age. What is recent to an old man is prehistory to the young. To me, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe seems ...
In life, we are always dancing on the edge of a volcano. The dance may last longer than it did in times gone by, what with the great increase of life expectancy; nevertheless what ...
I hate the Holocaust. There, I’ve said it. Somebody had to. Funny thing is, nobody likes the Holocaust. Except maybe the folks at the ADL and Wiesenthal Center who’ve made ...
My memory is good in almost exact proportion to the uselessness of the information I call upon it to memorize. Why this should be, I do not know; perhaps it is an unconscious ...
I have never really understood why people like pug dogs. They seem to me ugly, they run to fat, and because of their pushed-in snouts and widely spaced eyes, they are ...
It is a trope of many intellectuals that to stack shelves in a supermarket, or to work at a supermarket checkout, is the worst fate that can befall a human being. Such a job is ...
1991–1994: the heyday of “Holocaust revisionism” in America, with four major national TV shows (60 Minutes, 48 Hours, Montel Williams, Phil Donahue) giving ...
January is a time for new starts: So how about starting a new life in a new country? Before Christmas, I wrote about how Charles de Gaulle’s grandson Pierre was applying for ...
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