The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Arab Savages’ and Other Things No One Can Write About in 21st-Century England

No matter how savage any Arabs may be: A Melanie Phillips blogpost on the [U.K.] Spectator website which referred to the “moral depravity” of Arab “savages” is being investigated by the Press Complaints Commission. The online comment piece, headlined “Armchair barbarism”, focused on media coverage of the murder of five members of a Jewish family […]

Revolving Doors: Freire Exits Examiner, Joins NMS; Klein Exits Spectator, Joins Examiner; Hot Air Is Hiring (Not Me)

One of the things that has always amazed me about D.C. is how frequently young people change jobs here. You go to a cocktail reception and run into a think-tank guy you met at a reception six weeks ago: “Hey, how are things at [name of think tank]?” And he says, “Oh, I’m at [name […]

James Wolcott: ‘Those Sort of People’

When you turn over a rock, you expect to find creepy-crawly things, but still sometimes … “I don’t think Felker had any way of knowing what was going to happen. Christgau, Goldstein … it was those sort of people who really formed the core of politicizing the Voice and really pushing its cultural coverage to […]

Predictably, Japan Disaster to Be Scene of Next ‘Battle of the Network News Stars’

So predictable, you can set your watch by it: A catastrophe or crisis makes headlines, and TV news operations compete to see who can get their celebrity on-air talent to the scene first: Cooper, Amanpour among TV journalists to Japan U.S. broadcast and cable networks, some of which were short-staffed Friday morning in Japan, are […]

I Don’t Hate Trains

“What, exactly, do Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians have against trains? Seriously, what?” — David Weigel, Slate Few things — not even the threat of a coffee shortage — bother me quite so much as what I call the Existential Theory of Liberalism: Everything that exists must be subsidized by the federal government; ergo, to argue […]

Sorry, Charlie

The Trainwreck Called Charlie has taken up entirely too much of my attention lately, but at least I got an American Spectator column out of it: Celebrity psychiatrist Dr. Drew Pinsky described Sheen’s condition as a “psychiatric emergency,” most probably the manic phase of bipolar disorder (also known as manic depression) and requiring hospitalization: “He’s in […]

Ohio Unions, Ohio Thugs, Ohio Police

From the Columbus Dispatch: The volatility surrounding the collective-bargaining debate spilled into the night Wednesday when police were called to a German Village restaurant after a group verbally accosted a gathering of Senate Republicans. After the vote on Senate Bill 5, seven Republican senators, including President Tom Niehaus, R-New Richmond, grabbed dinner at the Easy […]

‘Floating Out There in the Journalistic Ether’

Jack Shafer of Slate attempts to make sense of New York Times columnist Frank Rich’s departure for New York magazine: Let me see if I’ve got this straight: Frank Rich is leaving a weekly column at the nation’s most important daily newspaper for a monthly column at the second best weekly in the country. If […]

« go back — keep looking »