Chopin
I do believe that Chopin just might be my favorite composer. I fixed on him when I was still a very young child, because he was the most-played composer to accompany my ballet classes. I didn’t even know his name … Continue reading →
Category Archives: People of interest
Fighting “stupidity”
The always-fascinating Richard Fernandez offers some quotes from anti-Nazi Dietrich Bonhoeffer that I want to call attention to: “Against stupidity we are defenseless,” [Bonhoeffer] wrote, because imbeciles never feel a qualm. Against the stupid “neither protests nor the use of … Continue reading →
More on the Ben Rhodes flap
On Thursday I wrote a very brief post linking to an article about Obama’s advisor Ben Rhodes and his influence on Obama’s foreign policy, particularly the Iran deal. The Rhodes article was so disturbing it’s been the talk of the … Continue reading →
Allan Bloom: on undermining the American vision
I’ve written in praise of Allan Bloom’s book The Closing of the American Mind several times before, but here I go again. It was published in 1987, which is now very close to 30 years ago. And yet its relevance … Continue reading →
Cruz as Lucifer: not that it matters…
…but since everyone’s chattering about John Boehner’s description of Ted Cruz vs. Donald Trump, I thought I’d opine. First, the quotes: When it comes to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, even a few months’ time out of Congress has done little … Continue reading →
Glenn Gould and the Goldberg Variations
Let’s go to something timeless: classical music. Although “timing” has a lot to do with it. To wit, pianist Glenn Gould and the Goldberg Variations by Johann Sebastian Bach. For a while during the mid-80s Gould was a fascination of … Continue reading →
Van Gogh on his life’s mission
From one of Van Gogh’s letters to his beloved brother Theo: What am I in the eyes of most people – a nonentity, an eccentric or an unpleasant person – somebody who has no position in society and never will … Continue reading →
RIP Prince
I can’t say I know much about Prince’s music except that he was mega-famous and a tremendous number of people loved his work. I know the song “Purple Rain” and very little else. However, the reports about his cause of … Continue reading →
Okay, let’s play identity politics: a Ted Cruz friendship that should be publicized
The hype on Ted Cruz is that nobody likes him, everybody hates him, he has no friends. The hype on Republicans is that they’re racist bigots. Here’s a story that could kill (or at least slightly injure) those two birds … Continue reading →
On Rush Limbaugh
In comment after comment around the blogosphere, I’ve noticed quite a few Rush Limbaugh’s fans saying that they’re incredibly disappointed in him for his coverage of the 2016 primary, and have abandoned him and his show. Some of them were … Continue reading →
Trump the dealmaker: hiring the best people
Donald Trump learned the real estate development business at his father’s knee, serving a long apprenticeship that taught him every aspect of the business from the ground up. He also seems to have had a natural aptitude for it and … Continue reading →
Roy Cohn and Donald Trump
The formative years. Having read countless articles about Trump, interviews with Trump, and most of a biography, I was already very familiar with the facts in the above piece and the profound influence Cohn had on Trump’s life. For years, … Continue reading →