The New Criterion
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The MediaDecember 2012 The cycle repeats by James Bowman On austerity, ignoring reality, and the 2012 election. Approximately twenty-four hours after Barack Obama was reelected to the presidency and 5,500 miles away from his campaign headquarters in Chicago, the Greek parliament narrowly (153 to 128) approved a new set of “austerity” measures, including raising the retirement age from sixty-five to sixty-seven, in order to qualify for yet another European—which is to say, German—bailout, this one worth about $40 billion. According to The New York Times, the Prime Minister of the moment, the Amherst- and Harvard-educated Antonis Samaras, promised that these would be “the last” of the budget cuts, and that future “adjustments” would come from rooting out what his American counterparts used to call “waste, fraud, and abuse.” Pull the other one, Antonis! The Times reporters Rachel Donadio and Liz Alderman dryly noted that he is “the third prime minister to promise the ‘last cuts&rsq ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 31 December 2012, on page 64 Copyright © 2013 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-cycle-repeats-7510
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by James Bowman The fallout from Britain's phone-hacking scandal has now led to government regulation of the media and an ominous future for free speech in the West. by James Bowman Bob Woodward backtracks on his criticism of the White House and the Obama administration jokes with the compliant media. by James Bowman On streaking, the Super Bowl, the Grammys, and women in combat. by James Bowman On the fiscal cliff and Herb Stein's tautology, “If something can’t go on forever, it won’t.”
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