People say that the best cure for a hangover is a hair of the dog that bit you. The people who say that are typically alcoholics. They’re using the logic of an addict, whose reason has been fried by a short-circuit in the pleasure-centers of the brain. Such people think it’s funny when they fall down at a parish Christmas party … [Read More]

We’ve had so much grim news since Christmas past, The flourishing of Takimag is one of the few bits of tangible good news to which I can cling as winter sets in. In my capacity as the site’s designated autobiographical humor columnist—every publication has one; NR’s is Ramesh Ponnuru— I give thanks to our noble patron, Taki for his generous … [Read More]

Tough times bring out the best in us, as people like to say.  People say a lot of things.  From my personal experience, mankind responds to catastrophe very unevenly.  That can-do, community spirit that brings folks together to roll up their sleeves and solve a problem can yield a hardy band of men to raise a barn—or form an extremist political … [Read More]

I used to answer friends who told me something I’d said was tasteless (and they were right) with a quip like, “If you can’t joke about terrorism and cancer, what can you joke about?” I was mostly being an ass, but a tiny point nestled inside what I said. Laughter helps diffuse the visceral tension that comes with impending doom, and … [Read More]

In the frantic post-election scramble for a plausible narrative of How Things Went So Wrong, we see the outlines of the future battle for what’s left of the conservative movement, and the party it fitfully influences. The spin could be decisive, as spin often is. The spin that prevailed in Germany after World War I—“We were stabbed in the back”—bore no … [Read More]

I’m working on too many speculative projects—and putting off the one that I’m sure would sell the best. Since I fear I’ll never get around to writing the thing, I’ve decided to spill the idea. If one of you can bang it out before I do, you deserve to rake in the bucks. Just invite me to one of your signings. … [Read More]

I don’t know if it’s my reckless, Napoleonic march into middle age, or the decline of our infrastructure, but with each trip I feel more and more like travel is hell. This week, a “simple” overnight trip from Manchester to D.C. felt longer and took more out of me than my long-ago, grad school Amtrak jaunts from New Orleans to New … [Read More]

Professional comics have an old saw that says, “Never go on after a kid or an animal.” But this week I have no choice. America’s hog and pony show dragged on for more than a year, and we’ll be scooping up the steaming piles it left behind for decades. The cleanup won’t be over till the last Supreme Court Justice appointed … [Read More]

More tragic than the rubble of a raped and looted city, than the cancer-ridden face we knew when it was lovely, is the crumbling of a once impressive mind. In some ways it is much sadder, as it makes the observer think back and question the intellectual qualities he once thought he espied there. I haven’t read Jeff Hart in … [Read More]

On February 25, 1917, Russian soldiers serving Tsar Nicholas II in St. Petersburg faced a choice. On November 4, 2008, Americans voters will stand in the same position. They must choose between a crooked, bumbling oligarchy prone to starting futile wars—and a ravening, reckless mob. While it’s mostly made up of citizens rightly enraged, the mob is led (or will soon … [Read More]