So there is a new Fowler, or rather a Burchfield. It joins the list of beloved reference works corrupted or destroyed to placate our ignorance and our political sensibilities. Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable had many of its supposedly dated items excised to make room for television trivia. The Encyclopedia Britannica traded the wit...
In 1994, two employees filed a lawsuit against the oil company Texaco, claiming that they had been denied promotion because of their race. Such suits are common now, and this one garnered little media attention until, in late 1996, the New York Times broke the news of the Texaco tapes. Richard Lundwall, a Texaco manager,...
Imagine this scenario: at the end of a boxing match between two fighters— one white, the other, a visiting African black—the black boxer, clearly winning the fight, is disqualified on dubious technical grounds. Instead of protesting he walks peacefully over to a neutral corner, where he is suddenly set upon by the white corner crew,...
Last August I wrote an article in these pages, “Radio Days,” in which I described WABC talk radio as the only conservative voice to be heard in New York City and the tri-state area. That voice is now gone; although WABC remains on the air, the station has lost its teeth. On April 17, the...
In England, it used to be possible to drift into a doctorate-level education simply by listening to the radio. A child could begin with adventure serials and comedies, graduate to radio theater versions of classic plays and novels or documentaries about historical figures, and end up listening to an Oxford don talking about the Oxford...
“The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of women’s rights,” wrote Queen Victoria in 1870 to Sir Theodore Martin. “Woman would become the most hateful, heartless and disgusting of human beings, were she allowed to unsex herself.” Pausing only to add “fanatical” and “idiotic” to Her...
Generation X, to which I belong, is a pious generation. You can easily become alienated from it unless you adopt the correct attitudes. Without the sociopolitical skills that today masquerade as good manners, it is quite possible to talk one’s way into trouble. The last time I felt threatened by educated middle-class people was in...