Want a seriously detailed examination of the great role reversal in American politics, as the Democrats shifted from the party of segregation to the party of equal rights, losing the South but gaining its soul? Then check out “Platforms and Partners: The Civil Rights Realignment Reconsidered” by Brian D. Feinstein and Eric Schickle in Studies…
Author: Alan Vanneman
Random Rants
Max Boot, feelin’ full of pith n’ vinegar. Again. Back in the day, when invading other countries first began to seem like a good idea to some people, Max Boot rushed to the very front of the queue o’ stupidity by opining that “Afghanistan and other troubled lands cry out for the sort of enlightened…
Outrageous rage? Democrats v. Schultz
The possible independent candidacy for president of Starbucks coffee high muckety-muck/billionaire Howard Schultz has Democrats fuming like a vente on a January morning in Chicago, while Republicans snicker. What’s the matter, liberals? Don’t you believe in democracy? Well, yeah, we do, but we also believe in winning. Besides the which, rage is all the rage…
I won’t subject the lamestream media to ruthless censure for its craven and banal behavior re l’affaire Covington. I’ll let Andew Sullivan do it for me.
Fuck yeah, I will. Andy, sometimes but not always my favorite gay Catholic doubledome, puts the wood to a multitude of liberals folks for 1) their kneejerk bashing of teenage white boys with southern accents on the basis of a two-minute video clip passed around the Internet, constructing grotesque ideological edifices of PC punditude on…
Shorter New York Review of Books: Some Neocons are Jewish? Go figure!
Yes, I know I should be moralizing about teenage white boys from Kentucky, but I’d rather be writing about New York Jews. Because I gotta be me! My kvetch du jour is a lengthy piece by Columbia University professor Stephen Wertheim appearing a few weeks ago in the New York Review of Books’s NYR Daily,…
A Social Call
(Another short story in the manner of Rex Stout, featuring Nero Wolfe.) “I’m afraid that would be impossible.” “I agree entirely. And it’s been my experience that when things are impossible, they don’t happen. Which means that we should just forget about this.” She laughed. “But that would be impossible as well.” “I assure you…
Sphericity
Thelonious Sphere Monk probably did not drink as much bourbon as William Faulkner. He probably did not shoot as much heroin as William Burroughs, or smoke as much marijuana as Norman Mailer, or get as many “vitamin shots” from feel-good Manhattan doctors as John F. Kennedy. But he had his share. He had his measure….
Sachal Vasandani & Ben Wendel—“Reflections”
That’s Ben on sax and Sach supplying the soulful vocal. I admit it (how can I deny it?) that I’ve been slacking off on the Monk videos for the past several weeks. Yeah, it’s Christmas, or it was, and, yeah, I’ve got another novel in the works, but neither is a remotely good excuse! Fortunately,…
The “Struggle” for the “Soul” of the Republican Party: When Vapid Met Vaporous
Unless you actually have a life, you may be aware of a “struggle” going on now for the “soul”, loosely speaking, of the Republican Party. In one corner you have Brink “Mr. Nice Guy” Lindsey, arguing in National Affairs for “Republicanism for Republicans” and in the other Tucker “Bow Tie/Blue Collar” Carlson, who moans that…
Clint Eastwood’s “Mule”: Very Largely (Yet Not Entirely) Disappointing
When I saw the ads for Clint Eastwood’s possibly final film, The Mule, I was—rather shockingly, since I haven’t seen one of his films since In the Line of Fire (1993, and excellent)—intrigued. A gritty tale of shady, sleazy drug deals gone wrong, with the twist that the hapless protagonist caught in the middle is…