Tango: by a horse’s head

The New Neo Posted on by

You may recall my disastrous efforts to learn to tango, chronicled here. But I still enjoy the dance as spectator, and the other evening I had the good fortune to attend a thrilling tango performance.

Which made me think of one of my favorite movie scenes (for those of you unfamiliar with “Scent of a Woman,” in this clip Al Pacino is supposed to be blind, and to have managed to persuade a lovely young woman to allow him to teach her to tango):

From my previous tango experiences, I will say that either the Pacino character is the best leader on earth or else this is not this lady’s first tango. Perhaps both. Continue reading →

Caring about the John Edwards affair affair

The New Neo Posted on by

Do you? I don’t.

Care, that is.

Lest you misunderstand, I will say that I think what Edwards did was wrong and I condemn it. But, as with the infidelities of myriad other politicians, I can’t get very worked up about it.

Nor do I think—and this is where I’ll probably get into hot water with some people—that his behavior necessarily reflects on the kind of leader and statesman he would have been had he gotten elected. I think he would have been a lousy one with or without this particular item on his resume, hidden or overt. Continue reading →

Russia and Georgia: more evidence that Churchill was correct

The New Neo Posted on by

The violence in Georgia has most pundits stating that Russia is using heavy-handed tactics to keep Georgia and any other possible breakaway former territories firmly in its field of orbit and out of NATO (see this and this). In this calculation it is counting on the weakness and reluctance of the West to defend its would-be ally.

Another point of view was expressed by Russian commenter “sergey” on this blog (see dialogue beginning here), who sees Russia as intervening to protect the Ossetins. Continue reading →

Is it self-confidence or is it arrogance?

The New Neo Posted on by

Peggy Noonan writes in today’s WSJ:

Two weeks ago a journalist, a moderate liberal, spoke to me of what he called Mr. Obama’s arrogance. I said I didn’t think it was arrogance but high self-regard. He said there’s no difference. I said no, arrogance has an air about it of pushing people around, insisting on your way. Mr. Obama doesn’t seem like that. He took down a machine without raising his voice. Extremely high self-regard, though, can itself be a problem.

“What’s wrong with that?” my friend said. “You want a self-confident president.”

Yes, we all want a self-confident President rather than an arrogant one. Continue reading →

Hillary the undead?

The New Neo Posted on by

It seems that Barack Obama neglected to drive a stake into Hillary’s heart on the way to his triumphal world tour.

Does it matter? Can Hillary manage to wrest away the superdelegates so vital to Obama’s nomination? Those who consider her a combination of Machiavelli, Lucrezia Borgia, and Lady Macbeth consider it a distinct possibility.

I beg to differ. Continue reading →

Fireflies and other childish pleasures

The New Neo Posted on by

I saw some fireflies the other evening while I was taking a walk at dusk, the first time I’d seen any in many years.

Ah, fireflies! One of the wonders of my youth. On warm summer nights—which are very common in New York, heavy and humid and sultry—as dusk arrived and night fell, the magic would begin. All the neighborhood kids stayed outside as long as we could, returning home only when our parents forced us back inside to go to bed.

It’s hard to believe, because it’s so rare nowadays in surburbia, but we kids generally spent an enormous amount of time outside of the house, roaming around and doing nothing special. Organized activities were almost unheard of; we made our own fun.

Sometimes it was the sort of thing our parents didn’t know about and wouldn’t have appreciated at all had they known, like playing in the unstable structure of a half-built house where we had to be on the lookout for the owners or the workmen who would chase us away with scary threats. Sometimes it was just the languid pleasure of sitting on the curb, pointy rock in hand, rhythmically hitting a roll of caps, listening to the resultant “pow!” and watching the small spark (it smelled wonderful, too). Continue reading →

The race card timeline and accusations of racism

The New Neo Posted on by

Some people have pointed out that Obama’s remark suggesting that the McCain campaign would attack him by saying “he doesn’t look like all those other Presidents on the dollar bills” was preceded by a John McCain ad entitled “Seal” that placed Obama’s face on a dollar bill, and therefore it wasn’t Obama who dealt the race card, since he was just responding to the McCain ad.

The ad can’t be found among the ads on the McCain website, but until proven otherwise I’ll take You Tube’s word for it that it was an official offering from the McCain campaign. Here it is:

So here we do indeed have an ad putting Obama’s face on a bill, as well as on Mt. Rushmore and the Statue of Liberty. Continue reading →

A plea to the closet Republicans of Marin: come out, come out, wherever you are

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s not that I’m unsympathetic to the plight of those such as Bookworm who are Republicans (or Independents, or at the very least non-liberals) living in mega-blue areas such as Marin County, and who choose to keep their mouths firmly shut about their politics for fear of social rifts.

The temptation to “pass” for liberal is very great. I understand; I do. I even feel your pain.

But I have come to believe that the costs of keeping silent are much greater than the costs of speaking up—both for Bookworm and her fellow closet Republicans, and for our country. And yes, even for her liberal friends. Continue reading →