Weblog
by Roger Kimball | from Pajamas Media
There as been a lot of virtual ink deployed in commenting on President Obama’s Iraq-War-U.S.-Economy speech. My unofficial Tomatometer reports that viewers and pundits alike have judged about 43 percent fresh. Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post thought that the President “Brought Gravitas to Speech.” But most of the commentary I saw gave it a [...] The Speech: Why Didn’t They Call Rewrite? by Roger Kimball | from Pajamas Media
Presidential speeches are tricky things. It is in the nature of things — the nature, that is, of contemporary politics — that they consist largely of more or less empty rhetorical boilerplate punctuated here and there by bursts of forthrightness that, in the usual course of things, have been carefully calibrated by a team of [...] Do You Think He Knows What He’s Doing? by James Bowman
Once again, as he did with the Ground Zero Mosque (or non-Ground Zero non-Mosque, as its apologists are all now careful to put it), President Obama continues to show what a political tin ear he has. Glenn Beck comes to town with hundreds of thousands of supporters in the name of "Restoring Honor" and the President goes into full "clinging to their guns and religion" mode. Who can be against "Restoring Honor"? you might ask. He is, apparently. Or rather, in conversation with Brian Williams, he once again chooses to play the intellectual, rather than an American leader, by telling his sycophantic interlocutor that the Beckites who had descended on Washington didn’t really care about honor or religion or patriotism as, simpletons that they are, they thought they did. No, their real concern was with what he has been spending his time on these last 19 months: health care, the regulation of financial markets and the fact that, as he (incredibly) put it, "we've slipped in terms of the number of college graduates." Things the U.S. government could do without by Roger Kimball | from Pajamas Media
Don’t worry: I do not propose to give you a complete list. Otherwise we’d be here all day. But really, if government spending is a problem (and it is), why not shut down some agencies that spend money needlessly? A friend suggested we start with the two National Endowments, the one for the Arts (so-called) [...] by James Bowman
In the U.K. Independent, Guy Adams asks himself how it can be that Jennifer Aniston keeps making flopperoo movies like The Switch even while being one of the most highly paid actresses in Hollywood? And he answers himself with reference to a study by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film of San Diego State University which "reveals that behind the scenes, Hollywood remains very firmly a man’s town." According to the CSWTF, he says, women accounted for a mere 27% of individuals working in powerful behind-the- scenes roles in film during the 2009-10 season. And that measly figure represented an increase of 2 percentage points over last season. Though Kathryn Bigelow’s historic Oscar triumph was meant to herald the arrival of a new era, women account for just 16 percent of film directors and 39 percent of producers. Just three percent of directors of photography have two X chromosomes.
If radicalism has had any positive value in the last century, it was to scandalize an otherwise complacent centre-left consensus on civil rights, one reason why I’ll always prefer the hardheaded wisdom of “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” to the treacly pastiche of “I Have a Dream.” Richard Just -- which rather sounds like the pen name someone in his position would adopt -- has authored an indignant essay in The New Republic against Barack Obama’s nonsensical views on gay marriage, which have objectively placed the Democratic president to the right of “Laura Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and, according to a new CNN poll, 52 percent of the American people.” The relevant portion is this: Jonathan Franzen, paperback writer
So over-hyped is Jonathan Franzen's new novel that the British press, which devours its own enfants terribles and indulges an unseemly envy for their American counterparts, has repeatedly remarked on the over-hype. One editorial enticement peeping above the fold of yesterday's Guardian instructs that Freedom is bad for Barack Obama, whose advanced copy arrived just in time for the First Family's Martha's Vineyard holiday. So now it seems that Franzen has gone from being a mere literary liability to a political one. Not having read Freedom, I’ve had to rely on the pornographically positive stateside reviews such as Sam Tenenhaus’ in the New York Times which labels it “a masterpiece of American fiction.” I’ll have to take Sam's word for it, but I must confess to a slight twinge of skepticism because he also thinks that Franzen’s previous attempt to explain the Way We Live Now, The Corrections, a book I have read, was “a masterpiece of American fiction.” Among the first-order merits bestowed on the present volume is the author’s hawk-eyed observatory powers despite his touted disdain for being a SIM card’s throw away from an Internet connection when he writes. Franzen knows, for instance, that college freshman are these days called “first years” and that suburban hausfraus’ all-purpose put-down is “weird.” Very nice, but what does he think of Snooki's new gorilla juicehead? Still More on the Mosque Masterminds by James Bowman
One of the principal memes of the left in the renewed culture war currently being fought on the op ed pages of America over the Ground Zero mosque as well as gay marriage and other matters has to do with the stupidity of the right. This must be why, as Maureen Dowd believes, "the country is having some weird mass nervous breakdown" on account of "disinformation" from the right. Something like two thirds of the American people are too stupid to recognize self-evident absurdity when they see it — since, according to the increasingly shrill "progressive" consensus, the only arguments at their disposal in opposing the mosque are absurd ones. And if eighteen per cent of the American people are now supposed to think that Barack Obama is a Muslim, it stands to reason that that figure should be a significantly higher 31 per cent among the stupid party. I don’t believe it, myself, either about the President or about Republicans, but the media is so obsessed with what is clearly an outlying poll number because it backs up their core belief that Republicans are stupid, the highly gratifying corollary of which is that they themselves are smart for being able to tell them so. Creepy statist item of the day, British edition by Roger Kimball | from Pajamas Media
An American friend who lives in London sent me copy of an email he received about bicycling in the city. The communication was innocuous enough, just an announcement that they had updated their website, along with some information about the upcoming “Mayor of London’s Sky Ride.” What attracted my friend’s attention, and mine, was the [...] Reports of the death of classical music are greatly exaggerated by James Panero
After logging some of my 2009-10 season tickets in the calendar this morning--October 3, Vienna Philharmonic; October 19, Les Contes D’Hoffmanm; October 24, Mariinsky; December 7, Don Carlo; March 21, NNK Orchestra; April 14, St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra; April 19, Capriccio--I turned to the rumpus my friend Heather Mac Donald has kicked up in musicland. It started with Heather’s feature article, Classical Music’s New Golden Age, in the summer City Journal. Reports of the death of classical music, Heather says, are greatly exaggerated. Heather’s piece reminded me of Jay Nordlinger’s contribution to our year-long 2003-4 series (later a book) about America’s institutions called Lengthened Shadows. In “Tending the Gardens of Music,” Jay lays out a similar argument to Heather--an upbeat note in our cautionary series. |
About ArmaVirumque ( AHR-mah wih-ROOM-kweh) In the Aeneid, the Roman poet Virgil sang of "arms and a man" (Arma virumque cano). Month in and month out, The New Criterion expounds with great clarity and wit on the art, culture, and political controversies of our times. With postings of reviews, essays, links, recs, and news, Armavirumque seeks to continue this mission in accordance with the timetable of the digital age.
Shortcut
To contact The New Criterion by email, write to: Contact
 The New Criterion is now optimized for Mobile Devices 
|
