Clik here to view.
Even if Obama did it (which he didn’t), at least he did it discreetly.
In a belated comment on this post, David Brewster links to a photograph he took that neatly brings the conversation back to the subject of this blog: This image also debunks one of those vicious smears...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Precisely the disappointment we were prepared to feel.
All the noise from the right about Obama being a not-so-crypto-socialist or communist or Marxist has had its desired effect: Obama now seems willing to drop the public option from his health care...
View Article“Certain lives are not worth living. Certain people, we should not spend the...
Consider this a bookend to Ari’s post, as those are the words of Hitler according to this protester: According to her and those like her, Hitler didn’t actively conspire to murder millions of people in...
View ArticleThe Monolexical Man on the Street.
A conservative woman, Pamela Pilger, yells “Heil Hitler!” at Samuel Blum, an Israeli immigrant, as he’s being interviewed by a local television crew. She’s unthinkingly and ignorantly odious. Even...
View ArticleThis Day in Actual Communist and Real Nazi History
On this day in 1940, an actual Communist leader, Leon Trotsky, was stabbed in the head with an ice pick by Ramón Mercader, who was himself not only an actual Communist, but an agent of Stalin, who...
View ArticleWhere does the new plagiarism come from?
By which I mean: what specific sites/forums/IRC chat rooms do students use to find people willing to produce “original” works of scholarship? When I search for such services online, all I find is an...
View ArticleNext week, George Nash will bemoan the fact that we’ve never had a white...
I ignore those who insist that there’s something untoward about discussing the life’s work of a man at his own funeral—they can begin with his 1970 Health Security Act and work their way forward to the...
View ArticleYet again, Jack Cashill proves why the country needs more actual literary...
Jack Cashill, who received a Ph.D. in American Studies in 1982 then promptly forget everything he learned earning it, has returned with more evidence that my assessment of him (“an idiot of...
View ArticleThe content of a eulogy is a function of the life being eulogized.
After I linked to his post about Ted Kennedy’s funeral, Patrick asked what I’d think were the grandchild of a hypothetical conservative to say this at the funeral: Dear God, for what my grandpa called...
View Article“Critics are skeptical . . .”
Only they aren’t: they’re critical. The word “skeptical” functions as a subject complement in this clause. The particular complement here is a predicate adjective: the adjective “skeptical” describes...
View ArticleHistorical novels, underrated or no, are only ever incidentally historical.
In the comments to Eric’s post about underrated historical novels, I pointed out that there is a problem with talking about the “historical novel” as a self-evident genre. I did not, however, go into...
View ArticleDr. Seuss on the Current State of the Blogosphere.
(By request, the parody of this beloved book that originally appeared in the historical novel thread.) What do I know about tweeting bloggers? Well . . . When tweeting bloggers fight, it’s called a...
View ArticleThank you, Joe Wilson, for demonstrating that conservatives want life to...
South Carolina today, South Carolina tomorrow: Let the “I Am Joe Wilson” Era commence.
View ArticleLanguage is revealing that Dan Riehl is a racist.
(Up to the dating: The stupid, it along the lines of burns!) Via someone named “davenoon,” I learn that someone named Dan Riehl recently encountered some black people who “were technically thugs.” What...
View ArticleHe may have said, “[w]e need segregated buses,” but that doesn’t mean he’s a...
For purely academic reasons, I’ve never understood the argument that we should ignore Rush Limbaugh because he’s simply an entertainer who says outrageous things that millions of people are merely...
View ArticleBe nice, now. The English language is not Ed Morrissey’s strong suit, and he...
It seems Mr. Ed Morrissey caught President Obama fibbing again. See, Michelle Obama said this: I will never forget the time eight years ago when Sasha was four months that she would not stop crying....
View ArticleConservatives are outraged over an actual outrage? Color me impressed.
It may have taken awhile, but thanks to Patrick Courrielche’s exposé at, of all places, Big Hollywood, conservatives are positively fuming over the Bush Administration‘s decision to funnel $2.2 billion...
View ArticleNOTE TO SELF:
Should you ever be interviewed by The History Channel in your office, it would be best not to have the Wikipedia entry for the topic about which they are interviewing you clearly visible on your...
View ArticleThe increasingly forgettable work of Malcolm Gladwell
G.D. pointed out the latest Gladwell article to me, and now that I’ve read it, I’m at a loss for words: rarely in the history of long-form journalism has the pitch been more obvious or the product more...
View ArticleThe cost of freedom.
On this day in 1989, once everyone stopped patting themselves on the back for bringing down the Berlin Wall, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney lamented what East German freedom would do to defense...
View Article