Jacko was the King of Celebrity Eugenics. The late Michael Jackson was a strange individual, but his various obsessions, such as weight loss, whitening his skin, and expensively designing his children, were hardly unique to him. They are shared by more than few of his legion of female fans. To become a superstar, you have to embody some of the inner … [Read More]

How Multiculturalism Killed the Counter Culture When I was eleven in 1970, Alvin Toffler published a book entitled Future Shock, which prophesied ever faster cultural change. In the wake of the tumultuous 1960s, this sounded like a sure bet. Hence, Future Shock became a huge bestseller. Yet, looking back, 1970 seems to be right about when the rate of transformation started … [Read More]

With Larry David back in the news this week for starring in (perhaps unsurprisingly) the latest Woody Allen movie, Whatever Works, it’s worth reviewing David’s misunderstood accomplishments. David, of course, was the co-creator of Seinfeld. Jason Alexander initially modeled his performance as George Costanza on Woody Allen, but then switched to playing David. And he’s the star of HBO’s Curb Your … [Read More]

Following up on Jared Taylor’s article, the Ricci reverse discrimination lawsuit now before the Supreme Court is not one of those “hard cases” about which law students are warned. There is nothing anomalous about the discrimination against the New Haven firemen who had their top scores in the 2003 civil service exam thrown out by the city because no blacks scored … [Read More]

Baseball’s two highest paid players, Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, have been revealed to be performance-enhancing drug cheaters over the last year, making golf seem like the last haven of non-mutant competitors. Yet, is it? Normally, Tiger Woods is the most private of superstars. Early in his career, Michael Jordan taught him how to politely answer press questions without saying anything. … [Read More]

Uncovering the roots of the disastrous home mortgage bubble that popped last year will keep economic historians busy for decades. Yet, one factor has so far been largely overlooked: the bipartisan social engineering crusade to drive up the rate of homeownership by handing out more mortgages to minorities. More than a negligible amount of the blame for the mortgage meltdown can … [Read More]

Diversity is Strength!—and a Massive Housing Crisis Uncovering the roots of the disastrous home mortgage bubble that popped last year will keep economic historians busy for decades. Yet, one factor has so far been largely overlooked: the bipartisan social engineering crusade to drive up the rate of homeownership by handing out more mortgages to minorities. More than a negligible amount of … [Read More]

As I mentioned a couple of months ago, there was an attempt going around D.C. to kill my American Conservative article "Obama's Identity Crisis" before I'd even finished it. Now, the would-be censor, some guy named Alexander Konetzki, recounts in the Washington Monthly his heroic effort to silence my questioning of the Presidential candidate's media image: "Ever since Barack Obama burst … [Read More]

While hardly above criticism, former President Jimmy Carter’s bestseller Palestine Peace Not Apartheid offers Americans some useful insights into what it is like for Palestinians to live within the racial security state that Israel maintains in the West Bank. It’s equally important for us, of course, to understand why the Israelis feel driven to undertake such harsh measures against the Palestinians. … [Read More]

Jimmy Carter’s book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid has been controversial not just for its puzzling lack of punctuation (Isn’t the title missing a colon and a comma?) but for its provocative title. When I heard it was being furiously denounced for anti-Semitism by all the usual suspects, I hoped that meant that the 82-year-old Carter had reached that highly entertaining stage … [Read More]