Few Americans today know of Peleliu, a speck of an island in the southwest Pacific. A part of the Palau group of the Caroline Islands, Peleliu is only six miles long and two miles wide. It lies 550 miles due east of the Philippines in splendid isolation. Covered with dense green vegetation and surrounded by...
Category: Columns
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Self-Evident Lies
Jon Stewart: “You write that marriage is the bedrock of our society. Why would you not want more couples to buy into the stability of marriage?” Mike Huckabee: “Marriage still means one man one woman life relationship. I think people have a right to live any way they want to, but even anatomically ....
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Rendering Unto Lincoln
“Now he belongs to the ages,” Edwin Stanton is supposed to have said, when he learned of President Lincoln’s death. In a trivial sense at least, Stanton was obviously correct. We have Lincoln’s face on the five-dollar bill—a bill that used to be worth more than a Happy Meal, before Lincoln’s disciples degraded the currency—and...
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The North Worth Saving
“Defeat in detail” is a military concept that denotes the rout of an enemy by dividing and destroying segments of his forces one by one, instead of engaging his entire strength. A brilliant example was Stonewall Jackson’s 1862 Shenandoah Valley campaign, when his force of 17,000 beat three mutually unsupported Union commands almost four times...
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Hot Rod Lincoln
He knew that he was destined for greatness. The son of uneducated manual laborers, immigrants to Illinois, he was never much of a student, but he would become a successful lawyer. From a young age, though, his sights were set on political power. Through his political connections, he got himself elected to the Illinois House...
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Treasure Mountain
In the elation and excitement produced by Héctor’s interview with the curandera, he and Jesús “Eddie” could barely resist the impulse to start at once for Ladron Peak. A late-winter storm of unusual force for central New Mexico restored them to their senses, blanketing the peak and the mountains to the southwest and east in...
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Shattering Lincoln’s Dream
I just got a copy of a thoughtful new book, Vindicating Lincoln: Defending the Politics of Our Greatest President, by Thomas L. Krannawitter. The book mentions me a couple of times, in polite disagreement. Krannawitter, now of Hillsdale College, is a disciple of Claremont McKenna College’s Harry V. Jaffa, as I once was. The Jaffa...
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To Spurn a Stranger Cur
By the time you read this it might be very old news, and if it is, treat it as a background briefing. But if the son-of-a-bitch I’m writing about is still out on bail and moving his ill-gotten assets around Israel and the environs, pay attention. What you read can one day save your savings....
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The Prism’s Prison
Sometimes it seems that I have become the master of a single plaintive note, sung by the disembodied voice of the patron saint of grasshoppers, Marie Antoinette, from somewhere beyond the tomb. And it is true that often, when I reread whatever I have written, I am reminded of Russian dictionaries of fenya, or for...
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I Gave Them a Sword
Frost/Nixon Produced by Imagine Entertainment and Studio Canal Directed by Ron Howard Screenplay by Peter Morgan Distributed by Universal Pictures On August 9, 1974, the day Richard Nixon officially resigned from the presidency, I discovered just how rabid political hatred could become short of taking up arms. I was in my faculty cubicle after...
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Uncle Sam’s Harem
These days bipolarism appears to be the “in” childhood malady touted by leftist psychologists, who previously promoted ADHD to explain away the disturbed behavior exhibited by postmodern children and adolescents. The list of problems is long: antisocial behavior, poor performance in school, sexual promiscuity; depression and suicide, drug abuse and alcoholism; violence and random acts...
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The Clintons Are Back
Hillary Clinton’s appointment as the third woman U.S. secretary of state is likely to deepen the crisis of the once-venerable institution at Washington’s Foggy Bottom, to which her two female predecessors have contributed in different ways. Madeleine Albright will be remembered for her hubris, coupled with studied callousness. (“If we have to use force, it...
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Detroit City
Home folks think I’m big in Detroit City From the letters that I write they think I’m fine But by day I make the cars By night I make the bars If only they could read between the lines . . . For decades, Detroit has been America’s whipping boy. It’s not as if...
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Curandera
Because Héctor had experience as an historical researcher looking up books on the subject of Pancho Villa at the public library, it was agreed that he should be the one responsible for ascertaining the location of the treasure, and that the job of Jesús “Eddie” would be to outfit the expedition to Ladron Peak when...
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Down Goes the Mammoth
So, the great nation builder is leaving the White House, his vision of a peaceful Middle East just a pipe dream, something poor old W used to know something about. I say poor old W because he was, after all, taken in by his very own Vice President, a treacherous and cowardly man, a character...
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Thin End of the Wedge
A shopkeeper in the Vucciria market in Palermo offers me a taste of local peccorino cheese on the tip of something that looks like a machete. It is a classic Proustian moment. The inner mouse accepts, nibbles at the wedge with a thoughtful face, and goes for three quarters of a kilo. Is there a...
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Yes We Can!
The word transformational surfaced often in the 2008 election season, and for once, the cliché might have had some validity. America assuredly is entering an era of transformation, even of revolutionary change, but on nothing like the lines that many expect. The political right stands to benefit enormously, provided its adherents understand the dramatically altered...
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Wantum and Quantum
W. Produced by Emperor Motion Pictures Directed by Oliver Stone Screenplay by Stanley Weiser Distributed by Lionsgate Quantum of Solace Produced and distributed by Columbia Pictures Directed by Marc Forster Screenplay by Paul Haggis and Neal Purvis It’s too bad W., Oliver Stone’s satiric biopic of his Yale classmate and our 43rd President, didn’t...
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What Really Happened on Hotrocks
Little did I know that when I entered junior high I would be confronting red-diaper babies. These kids were intellectually sophisticated and well educated. They told me many things that were contrary to my instincts. Having little knowledge of the subjects they addressed so adroitly, I was at a loss to respond. One of them...
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Merry Christmas, Pinhead
Twelve long months ago, America was in the throes of Holiday Shopping Season ’07. It was a simpler time. The Dow was safely over 10,000, and we were all wondering whether it would be Hillary or Giuliani in the White House come January ’09. I push my cart carrying 250 pounds of chicken feed up...
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Christmas Nightmares
Like many children growing up in the 1950’s, he looked forward to Halloween even more than to Christmas. It was, admittedly, a difficult choice, because at Halloween, all he got was candy or a disappointing piece of fruit, while Christmas was a bigger bonanza even than his birthday. Nonetheless, after the anticipations of Christmas Eve...
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A New Grand Strategy
Strategy is the art of winning wars, and grand strategy is the philosophy of maintaining an acceptable peace. America is good at the former and often confused on the latter. Making the world safe for democracy (Wilson 1917) or fighting freedom’s fight ordained by history (Bush 2002) may be dismissed as tasteless yet harmless rhetoric...
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Losing Our Minds
Most years, writing a column that is due on October 15 for an issue cover-dated December, which will go to press six days before a general election but appear in subscribers’ mailboxes and on newsstands about two weeks after, would be a recipe for frustration. This year, it strikes me as an opportunity. I have...
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Media Bias Revisited
Complaints about “media bias” usually boil down to uninteresting charges that the news media tilt their reportage in favor of one party—usually, but not always, the Democrats. So say the Republicans, with some justice, but put this way the indictment is somewhat superficial. Conservatives more keenly accuse those media of being “liberal”—that is, principled enough...
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The Monkey Chronicles
I want to make something very, very clear. This column’s review of the autobiography of Cheeta, Tarzan’s chimpanzee, has absolutely nothing to do with the man who just got elected to the White House last month. Cheeta’s 336-page opus was published in Britain two months ago by Fourth Estate and has become a runaway best-seller. ...
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In Praise of Having Not
A splendid Traviata at Palermo’s Teatro Massimo the other night—with its colorful gambling scene at the close of the Second Act, when a jealous Alfredo wins an armful of banknotes only to throw them in Violetta’s face—made me think of nothing. Nothing as an end in itself, nothing as the animating spirit of all sublunar...
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Blubbering
Body of Lies Produced by De Line Pictures and Scott Free Productions Directed by Ridley Scott Screenplay by William Monahan Distributed by Warner Brothers Director Ridley Scott and his scenarist William Monahan adapted Body of Lies from David Ignatius’ novel of the same title. The narrative is yet another sorry tale of our military presence...
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Whither the Republic?
This month, we shall have an answer to an all-important question: Which arm of our bipartisan party state will occupy the White House for the next four years? This is an issue second in importance only to such urgent American questions as “When will Britney Spears be allowed to see her kids?” “How much weight...
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Unstable Multipolarity
It is professionally vexing and personally alarming for a world-affairs analyst in today’s America that neither rationality nor consistency can be taken for granted among the foreign-policy community in Washington, D.C. That much has become obvious from the crisis in relations between the United States and Russia over Georgia. This crisis heralds a particularly dangerous...
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The Audacity of Dopes
No one expected the vote to be so close. After Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech in St. Paul, the Republicans were certain they had found a rock star to compete with Barack Obama. They could ride the crest of Palinmania all the way to the Oval Office. All they had to do was keep the hockey...
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The Hobbyist
The joyous return to Rancho Juárez was dampened, but in no way spoiled, by a certified letter awaiting Mr. and Mrs. Héctor Villa on their arrival. Mailed from the Belen Municipal Court, it threatened their daughter with juvenile detention if she did not return within ten days’ time to complete her court-ordered work with Darfur...
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Before the Cacophony
Can anyone today imagine a clarinettist as a superstar the size of, say, Mick Jagger? Or God forbid, the ghastly Madonna? Well, 60 years or so ago, the biggest star in Hollywood, as well as the biggest stud, was Artie Shaw, whose combination of good looks, extraordinary musical talent, and great intelligence made him the...
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A Sicilian Visit
In Dürrenmatt’s The Visit, an aging billionairess returns to the provincial town where she was born and announces to the townsfolk that she will leave them all her money, on one condition. They must kill the man, himself now aging, who deceived her years ago. The townsfolk noisily reject the lady’s proposition as immoral, but...
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Those Dying Generations
Elegy Produced by Lakeshore Entertainment Directed by Isabel Coixet Screenplay by Nicholas Meyer from a novel by Philip Roth Distributed by Samuel Goldwyn Films Burn After Reading Produced by Relativity Media and Studio Canal Directed and written by Joel and Ethan Coen Distributed by Focus Features Elegy, Spanish director Isabel Coixet’s adaptation of Philip Roth’s...
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A Rough Sea Petrified
Vicky Cristina Barcelona Produced and distributed by The Weinstein Company Written and directed by Woody Allen Warning: In the review that follows, I have given away any number of plot points of the film. In Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Woody Allen has traveled farther from his beloved Manhattan than ever before but not an inch...
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The Audacity of Hate
Barack Obama has a problem, and if it were not for this one problem, he would easily be elected president. As it is, because of this problem, the impossible John McCain actually has a chance. The problem is white people. Yes, it is true that the majority of Obama supporters are white people, but most...
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Caucasian Trap
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s order to attack South Ossetia’s capital, Tskhinvali, was a breathtakingly audacious challenge to Russia, to which she was bound to respond forcefully. That response was promptly exploited by the American mainstream media machine and the foreign-policy community in Washington to paint Russia as a rogue power that is not only dangerous...
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Diversity Is Our Strength
As the summer slid into August, gasoline prices fell a bit, back to about $3.79 per gallon here in the Midwest, and even that modest reprieve seemed to dispel some of the summertime blues. Traffic on the interstates around Lake Michigan was not quite up to normal August levels (on Sunday afternoon of the second...
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Reprise in Vegas
The long drive from Belen to Rancho Juárez seemed to Héctor an endless agony. He found the place in the greatest confusion, AveMaría vacillating between grim determination and hysterics as she packed a suitcase, Jesús “Eddie” tramping back and forth in the sitting room, shaking his fist and vowing to track down Contracepción’s fiendish paramour...
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Putin and the Polish Gesture
In 2002, Vladimir Putin told a French reporter who asked about “innocent civilians” killed in Chechnya that—since the journalist evidently sympathized with Muslims—he would arrange to have him circumcised, adding: “I will recommend that they conduct the operation in such a way so that afterwards nothing else will grow.” People of the pompous persuasion were...
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The Psychopathic Press
According to medical consensus, a psychopath is a person who feels no connection with other people, and who cannot therefore know the slightest remorse, any shame or guilt, no matter how horrendous the sufferings he inflicts. And that brings me, neatly, to the New York Times, the nation’s newspaper of record, and an exemplar of...
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Fastest Jewish Gun in the West
Frank Gallop’s 1966 spoof recording, “The Ballad of Irving,” left most people laughing heartily. (“He came from the old Bar Mitzvah spread, / With a 10-gallon yarmulke on his head. / He always followed his mother’s wishes. / Even on the range he used two sets of dishes.”) What nearly no one knew then and...
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Classifying Italy
The neighbor’s house sported a prato inglese that required ostentatious watering at the crack of dawn, and by the reassuring suppleness of the English lawn beneath our feet we all knew that our host was a gentleman, not some television mogul from Cinecittà out of Rome whom, of a morning, one would be embarrassed to...
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Return to McSorrento
In the 1970’s, when I lived in America, McDonald’s, apart from being a fast-food chain, was a powerful symbol of everything that was wrong with that country. Neither I nor anybody I knew ever referred to the leviathan as a source of nourishment; invariably, its name was placed in a quarantine of ironic quotation marks,...
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Forerunners
Brideshead Revisited Produced by BBC Films and Ecosse Films Directed by Julian Jarrold Screenplay by Andrew Davies and Jeremy Brock from the Evelyn Waugh novel Distributed by Miramax Films The Dark Knight Produced and distributed by Warner Brothers Pictures Directed by Christopher Nolan Screenplay by Christopher and Jonathan Nolan Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited is not...
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Walking Distance
This is an age in which news of a tragedy garners a response such as this: “Well, our thoughts are with you.” Happy thoughts full of Pelagian grace. It is therefore with some reservation that I now examine Rocky Twyman’s direct and public prayer to the Almighty, a supplication he no doubt offers with full...
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Chinese Monkeys on Our Backs
An eminent British statesman once confessed to Horace Walpole that he had learned all he knew of the Wars of the Roses from reading Shakespeare’s histories. I do not recall who the statesman was, and I am only guessing that Walpole is the source of the anecdote. As is the case of most of what...
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Words and Power
Most American presidents, unless they leave office in disgrace, are honored by having airports, schools, libraries, streets, and even whole cities named after them. The city of San Francisco has saluted President George W. Bush in a singular way—by naming a sewage-treatment plant after him. Of course, this reminds us that the city on the...
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Chronicle of an Announced Arrest
The media frenzy surrounding the arrest of the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic on July 21 was based entirely on the doctrine of nonequivalence inaugurated in 1992: Serb crimes are bad and justly exaggerated; Muslim crimes are understandable. This doctrine was spectacularly reiterated a month before Karadzic’s capture, when the Muslim wartime commander of...
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Lighting Candles
I cannot remember when I first met Mary Ann Aiello. I know, of course, that it had to have been sometime after I moved to Rockford in the last week of 1995, and I suspect that it may have been another three or four years later. But there was something about Mary Ann that made...