Weblog
The Maoist explains herself: egg, face at the White House by Roger Kimball | from Pajamas Media
Damage control time! –She didn’t mean it. –She was only quoting a Republican operative. –Fox News is mean to Democrats. –Glenn Beck is an extremist. –The President is trying to clean up a big mess left by George Bush. –Can’t we just change the subject? When Glenn Beck aired a video of White House Communications Director Anita Dunn praising Chairman Mao–of of [...] by Roger Kimball | from Pajamas Media
Jeremiah Wright. William Ayers. Van Jones. Where does the rogues’ gallery of Barack Obama’s radical friends end? These people are not liberals. They are not “progressives.” They are radicals who hate America and in many cases have advocated or even perpetrated violence in an effort to destroy it. Thanks to Glenn Beck, the American public [...] by James Bowman
Every now and then a headline gives you a glimpse inside the mind of the media to compare with the classic of 1997, to a New York Times story, subsequently repeated with variations, by Fox Butterfield: "Crime Rates are Falling, but Prisons Keep on Filling." This gave rise to what the great James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal continues to call the Fox Butterfield fallacy — a form of obtuseness caused by liberal assumptions about the world. In this case it is the assumption that falling crime rates and rising rates of incarceration could have nothing to do with one another. Another such moment happened yesterday in — where else? — The New York Times with this gem, to an article by Elisabeth Rosenthal, "The Road to Copenhagen: Biggest Obstacle to Global Climate Deal May Be How to Pay for It." by James Panero
As the editor of Arts & Letters Daily, the web's finest online compendium, Denis Dutton has driven more traffic to The New Criterion that any other source. So I hope I can reciprocate by sending a few readers to Denis's provocative (and accurate) editorial on the diminishing returns of conceptual artists like Damien Hirst. Denis's op-ed appears in today's New York Times and comes out of his studies in art and human evolution, the subject of his book The Art Instinct (which John Derbyshire wroteabout for us, Roger wrote about for the TLS, and I covered for City Journal). Denis writes:
Future generations, no longer engaged by our art "concepts" and unable to divine any special skill or emotional expression in the work, may lose interest in it as a medium for financial speculation and relegate it to the realm of historical curiosity. The full article is available here.
E-mail to friend
Annals of democracy, dept. of the First Lady by Roger Kimball | from Pajamas Media
I have been trying to discover just how many people our duly elected representatives employ on their staffs — how many people they employ, and how much they spend to employ them. It is data that is not easy to come by, but I am poking around and will reveal my findings in due course. But [...] by James Bowman
Some years ago, Michael Gove wrote,a propos of the emerging debate over the Iraq war, that
Crunch Time for Health Care: Now It’s Up to Us by Roger Kimball | from Pajamas Media
It’s coming to crunch time for the centerpiece of Obama’s legislative agenda for his first year: nationalizing health care. Will he get away with it? Really, it’s up to us. America is still, even now, a sort of democracy, and our rulers in Washington still serve at our pleasure, notwithstanding the decades-long reign of the [...] UPDATED: the Economist as Grown Up by Roger Kimball | from Pajamas Media
See the bottom of this story for a shocking update!! In 2001, Joseph Stiglitz won a Nobel Prize for economics. Don’t let that prejudice you, though. Despite the hilarious burlesque with this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, some people who win Nobel Prizes actually deserve public acclamation. Did Stiglitz? I really don’t know. I have my doubts. Stiglitz [...] by Roger Kimball | from Pajamas Media
Over at The Corner, a fellow calling himself David Kahane (a pen name of a Hollywood writer) posts this splendid exercise in hypothetical prestidigitation. Watch in amazement as obvious counter-factuals turn out to boast the blunt currency of quotidian reality. You scale the heights of subjunctive fantasy only to find yourself delivered to the stern [...] by James Bowman
When I type the word "aspirational" I notice that my word processing program underlines it in red, signifying that it does not recognize the word. I hardly recognize it myself, but lately have felt the need of it more and more. WordPerfect, like the rest of us, had better get used to it. Formerly "aspirational" could hardly have been said to have been a needful word, but now it is. In the same way, the Nobel Peace Prize used not to be an aspirational award, but now it is, as its award to President Obama shows. I am not among those who think that this makes a mockery of the Prize. I think it was a mockery a long time ago — as the awards to Jimmy Carter and Al Gore abundantly confirm — and probably from the beginning. But at least on this occasion it has the perhaps unintended consequence of recognizing something important about the new President and his style of politics — namely the extent to which they, too, are aspirational. Just look at the two main stories in the domestic news on the same day that the Nobel was announced in Norway. |
About ArmaVirumque ( AHR-mah wih-ROOM-kweh) In the Aeneid, the Roman poet Virgil sang of "arms and a man" (Arma virumque cano). Month in and month out, The New Criterion expounds with great clarity and wit on the art, culture, and political controversies of our times. With postings of reviews, essays, links, recs, and news, Armavirumque seeks to continue this mission in accordance with the timetable of the digital age.
Shortcut
To contact The New Criterion by email, write to: Contact
 The New Criterion is now optimized for Mobile Devices 
New from The New Criterion: "Free speech in
EventsOctober 21, 2009 OPEN EVENT: A Swallow Anthology Reading November 02, 2009 FRIENDS EVENT: An evening with John Derbyshire November 24, 2009 OPEN EVENT: Laura Jacobs reading More events > |
