All About Me

Intersectional Cannibalism

Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand, They rave, recite, and madden round the land. —Pope We value rights because, as the terrible old proverb says, man is a wolf to man. Knowing only too well that other people can harm us, we ...

All About Me

Why Young Americans Are So Unhappy

The general method, or rather hustle, of the Confidence Man Steven Pinker is to use evidence of greater material well-being to justify the value judgment that human life has never been better. Like everyone, I am all for material ...

Es Vedra

All About Me

Better Off Collecting Stamps

When I reached maturity, or at any rate stopped growing, I was of average height. Now I am below average height, the world having grown taller than I in the meantime. In the same way, I used to be averagely egocentric or ...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

All About Me

The Rise of AOC

This last political season, a 29-year-old bartender named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a self-described “radical,” came “dancing across the water” to conquer the Democratic nomination and a congressional seat in Brooklyn, New York. ...

Theresa May

All About Me

The Merits of Nepotism and Boasting

There was once a medical student of my acquaintance who consistently scored lower marks on multiple-choice examination papers than could have been expected by chance, which I suppose implied knowledge of a kind, albeit of a mirror-image ...

All About Me

Witchcraft: The Selfie of the Soul

Like practically everyone else, I look at my phone or turn on my computer as soon as I wake to find out what has happened in the world in my temporary absence from it. You can always tell that nothing much has happened when the ...

All About Me

Lose Yourself

For a number of years I have been fighting a lonely one-man (or should I say one-person?) battle against self-esteem—not my own, of course, because I have just the right amount, but as the master key to human happiness. Of the ...

All About Me

Unfit to a T

Sitting in two airports last week, in Paris and Riga, it suddenly occurred to me that I had not seen a single person who was smartly, let alone elegantly, dressed (I do not exclude myself from this stricture; I have never been elegant ...

Asia Argento

All About Me

The Tart Is Deceitful Above All Things

Just as there’s a tremendous difference between acting ethically and feeling the need to announce to the world that you’re an ethical person, there is also a massive distinction between being raped and feeling the need to tell the ...

All About Me

Barely Scratching the Surface

For the past three months or so I have suffered from, or at least experienced, a condition called discoid eczema on the instep of the sole of my right foot. It is always satisfying for a doctor to diagnose himself: I remember once ...

All About Me

How Uncanny Was My Valley?

Within the conventions of English drag comedy, the most familiar character is what the Monty Python troupe dubbed "€œthe pepperpot"€: a frumpy, lumpy menopausal matron, portrayed by a barely disguised male actor. (Amusingly, this ...


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