…I’d like to show you another ad featuring children. Yesterday I criticized this one about man-made global warming. It features a child actress, and is designed to appeal to children especially, and to frighten them into pressuring their parents to … Continue reading →
In a recent Charles Krauthammer piece, he compares Obama’s dithering on Afghanistan to the wavering of Shakespeare’s Hamlet: …[Obama in his role as] commander in chief, young Hamlet, frets, demurs, agonizes. His domestic advisers, led by Rahm Emanuel, tell him … Continue reading →
I read Orwell’s masterful dystopic political vision 1984 when I was about twelve years old, old enough to get what it was aiming at but young enough to be especially frightened by some of its most memorable images, which have … Continue reading →
Studying the Polanski brouhaha, and most especially reading the columns and comments of his defenders and champions, puts me in mind of certain Romantic heroes and artists of old. I refer to the poet whose exploits—sexual and otherwise—were famous in … Continue reading →
Watch this; it’s spooky-scary. Obama’s fixed smile is described thusly (the nearly-fixed head position, which in my opinon is even more revealing, is not specifically mentioned): Ladies and gentlemen, your President is a robot. Or a wax sculpture. Maybe a … Continue reading →
[NOTE: Today, when framing a comment, I came across this previous post of mine. I think it’s so important—and so relevant to another heated discussion we had recently on this blog, that I decided to repost it.] I first read … Continue reading →
Perhaps many of you have heard of writer Raymond Aron before, but I hadn’t until I picked up a collection of essays by Roger Kimball published in 2002 and entitled Lives of the Mind. Aron was the author of a … Continue reading →
There was a discussion in the comments section here a while back about just what type of tyrant Obama might end up being. Commenter “huxley” wrote: Stalin and Hitler were aware of how people approved of them, but no more … Continue reading →
One of the greatest things about the internet is the opportunity if affords us to revisit things we thought lost forever. A line from a poem runs through our heads, and we can’t place it. Before Google, it could drive … Continue reading →
I live in an area of the country lilacs love. This time of year when I take my walks, it seems that every few yards I pass tall lilac bushes loaded with blossoms. Their fragrance hits me before I even … Continue reading →
It’s always possible, of course, that this time it will be the terrible pandemic that is feared. But I wonder. When I did a search of this blog for “influenza,” for example, I came up with this post from the … Continue reading →
When writer John Updike died last January I wrote this tribute to him, as well as this discussion of his brave and well-articulated stance on the Vietnam War, a position that estranged him from many of his friends and the … Continue reading →