I had to laugh when I saw that the Hollywood writers have voted to go on strike. With the dreck they’re churning out these days, it’s the audience that ought to go on strike—although, from what I can tell, that’s precisely what they are doing, what with attendance way down from historic highs and the old moviehouses closing down left and … [Read More]

As everyone who has read Goethe or Schiller knows, Schadenfreude is the tendency to maliciously enjoy others’ misfortunes. Although I hate to say so myself, my one virtue is that I do not indulge in this brilliantly named past-time, which so many of my fellow scribes seem to practice. Hence I will not dwell on John (four pizzas) Podhoretz’s resignation from … [Read More]

There is hope:  [Read More]

From David Weigel’s account of the GOP presidential beauty contest now taking place in front of the Family Research Council: ”[Duncan Hunter’s] first big applause line is ‘we are crushing al Qaeda in Anbar province!’ His second applause line is… more interesting. Swerving to the Middle East, Hunter praises Israel. ‘That little country, that little postage stamp called Israel, they have … [Read More]

From the Jersusalem Post: “Israel once came close to securing the release of convicted Pentagon spy Jonathan Pollard, but the American security services pulled the plug on the move at the last moment, President Shimon Peres said on Wednesday. During a tour of Safed, the president said that before the last-minute change, it seemed that the US had finally agreed to … [Read More]

On the occasion of John Podhoretz being appointed editor of Commentary magazine, which his father, Norman, edited for a quarter century or so, leftie writer Eric Alterman summed it up best: “Neocons excel at two things: helping to start dishonest, counterproductive, ruinous Middle East wars and getting their children cushy jobs, no matter how far the fruit has fallen from the … [Read More]

On the twentieth anniversary of “Black Monday,” when approximately $1 trillion of “value” in a grievously over-valued stock market went up in smoke, the headlines (via Drudge) evoke an ominous déjà vu: “‘The fear is back,’’ said Thomas Roth, head of U.S. government bond trading in New York at Dresdner Kleinwort, one of the 21 primary securities dealers that trade directly … [Read More]

The 50th anniversary of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is being celebrated by her partisans, and they are many – myself among them. Rand’s novel of what happens when “the men of the mind” go on strike is the second most widely-read text in the US, just below the Bible. To the dismay of her more enthusiastic admirers, this popularity doesn’t indicate … [Read More]

OK sports fans. This is it. Everyone one of you can now be president.  All you have to do is kick a bearded Palestinian towelhead out of Lincoln Center and you’re in. Rudy Giuliani brags that he’s a more decisive leader than anyone else running for the top job because he kicked Yassir Arafat out of a United Nations- sponsored concert. … [Read More]

If you’ve ever been around when some sewage tank backed up and the cascade of merde flowed in rivers, it’s as good a time as any to be glad it was Hercules, not you, who got the task of cleaning up the Augean stables.  Trouble is, granting the malodorous sludge in which, ah, the “culture” has forced us all to swim … [Read More]