We’re coming up on the feast of St. Francis of Assisi (Oct. 4), and he is an easy saint to love—provided you are careful not to understand him. His story is full of romance, charm, and warmth. He was tender to wild animals—even wolves—and preached to little birds. He cared about the poor enough to join them, and organized a band of other well-meaning social workers devoted to serving them. Think of a genial, retired professor who has devoted his afternoons to saving wetlands and his weekends to Habitat for Humanity. Except that this “green” activist inspired painters such as Giotto … 
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Not very long ago I walked into my bedroom and found The Art and Science of Love at the foot of the bed. I dwell in a typical Manhattan apartment, where any book may turn up anywhere without notice. It happens. I didn’t actually recall buying this particular old paperback, but that happens too. Maybe it was a message. If so it had more to do with parapsychology than erotosophy, for a few hours later I was cruising around my neighborhood of cyberspace and found an obituary of bestselling sexologist and self-help guru Dr. Albert Ellis, author of Art and Science … 
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This account by William R. Hawkins of the debate on the Iraq war held at the recent meeting of the John Randolph Club, in Washington, D.C., is hilarious, albeit unintentionally. That he somehow managed to write a 1000-word-plus article about that event without once mentioning that Peter Brimelow, the editor of Vdare.com, and a staunch conservative of the paleo persuasion, was one of three debaters on the “out now” side, is really quite an achievement. The reason he did so, I imagine, is to buttress his thesis that labels me a “left-libertarian,” a sinister “anarchist,” who, along with co-debater Kirkpatrick Sale … 
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The Waverly Inn on Bank Street, here in the Big Apple, is the hottest ticket in town. Owned by Graydon Carter, the Vanity Fair honcho, it became the chicest place for dinner even before it opened. (Graydon opened it unofficially for friends of his). It is located on a quiet Greenwich Village street which would do justice to an Edward Hopper painting, and the interior resembles the way small inns used to look like before Planet Hollywood and other such atrocities came into being. The clientelle is mostly bold-faced names, artsy fartsy types and lotsa young people. The service is impeccable … 
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The Color of Fascism: Lawrence Dennis, Racial Passing, and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism in the United States, by Gerald Horne, New York University Press, 2007: 227 pp.   Few figures in the history of American political movements and ideologies are as mysterious as Lawrence Dennis. Seditionist, “fascist ideologue,” child preacher, ideological and racial changeling, Dennis’s career was not just variegated – it was surreal. He is mentioned, if at all, in histories of the 1930s and 40s as America’s foremost intellectual proponent of fascism, and this characterization has stuck to him like mud right up to the present day. This … 
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You may have heard of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. But you probably haven’t heard of The Man Who Killed Robert Lowell. So who did kill Robert Lowell? Well, I have a horrible suspicion that I did. Quite accidentally, you understand. It happened like this (members of the jury). In 1974, the year I turned 13, my parents—having accurately and soberly diagnosed me as a congenital unemployable—needed to confront the question of where to put me in the interval before I could be inflicted on an unsuspecting job market. I was marginally too clever for a sheltered workshop, and the … 
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President Bush’s nominee to replace Alberto Gonzales as attorney general is making waves because of who he is (the first Orthodox Jew to be nominated for the position) as well as for what is not (a known quantity on issues that matter to social conservatives, such as abortion and the relationship between Church and state).  A former federal judge, nominated by Ronald Reagan in 1987, Mukasey has presided over only one abortion-related case, in which he ruled that a Chinese man could not be granted political asylum in the United States because he feared political reprisal for having attempted to prevent … 
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Reading reviews in the national press about Norman Podhoretz’s The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism (Doubleday), I was struck by how oblivious to certain facts the reviewers of this book seem to be. Haven’t Ian Buruma of the New York Review of Books, Jay Nordlinger of National Review,  Amer Tahiri of the New York Post or any of the other establishment reviewers noticed that Podhoretz knows nothing about “fascism?” His references to this particular phenomenon show all the sophistication of an Abe Foxman tirade designed for ADL donors.  Quite conveniently for himself, Podhoretz links all unpleasant Muslims to a European political movement … 
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The formula that I have long toyed with the notion of revealing is nowadays the intellectual property of Conde Nast, yet the kind of article discussed here would not look out of place in any of number of niche publications, from Plage and Piste to the more sombre Snort! and Anorexia Today. Still more encouraging for the canny sycophant considering journalism as a career is the fact that successful editors everywhere, including those on magazines believed to be serious and newspapers known as highbrow, will always respect a quality product manufactured according to the formula, in contrast to something thrown together … 
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This exchange between Michael Scheuer —former head of the bin Laden unit and author of the brilliant Imperial Hubris —and the idiotic Bill Maher is a classic: Synopsis of the good part: Maher asks “Why are they trying to attack us?”—and then answers his own question, opining “As long as there’s an israel in the world, and I’m a big supoorter of Israel ... they’re always going to be going after us.” Scheuer: I disagree with you Maher: Which part? Israel? Yes, says Scheuer, I just don’t think it’s worth an American life or an American dollar. Not only Israel, but … 
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