Few jazz pianists are “accompanists” as gifted in knowledge, technique, and taste as Norman Simmons, able to back vocalists with consummate skill in chording, passing notes, and background lines, but also wise in the use of space. “A pianist is a piano player—that’s different from accompanying,” Simmons said recently, as he approached his 85th birthday. ...
“Every nation has the government it deserves.” Joseph de Maistre’s hard saying can give small comfort to Americans. Oh, it is true, we have a paper Constitution that promises a republican form of government, but all three branches of that government have for several generations conspired to evacuate the republican content from the system, leaving...
Before Republican senators vote down the strategic arms reduction treaty negotiated by the Obama administration, they should think long and hard about the consequences. In substance, New START has none of the historic significance of Richard Nixon’s SALT I or ABM treaty, or Jimmy Carter’s SALT II, or Ronald Reagan’s INF treaty removing all...
The new New Left has the potential to spark a civil war among progressives, especially as causes like Black Lives Matter and anti-police policies entwine with "anti-colonial" and anti-Israel ideology.
The birth of modern Croatia was closely tied to the paternalistic image of one man: Franjo Tudjman. A self-described nationalist and anticommunist, Tudjman ruled over Croatia for ten years until his death in December 1999. In January 2000, presidential and parliamentary elections brought to power a motley crew of reformed communists, liberals, and globalists. The...
At this point it is clear that Rep. Ron Paul is not going to be the presidential nominee of the Republican Party. Yet it seems likely that he will outlast all his rivals but for Romney, and that he will have a substantial bloc of delegates at the convention. Paul has the money, and the...
Western ideologues are animated by a fantasy about Ukraine’s prospects in the war. Trump is dealing in reality.
Joyce Carol Oates: Last Days; E. P. Dutton; New York. Joseph Campos-De Metro: The Slugger Heart & Other Stories; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; San Diego. At 47, Joyce Carol Oates has to her credit more than 40 books, including 16 rather fat novels and nearly as many collections of not-so-short stories. Ms. Oates is also, however, one of this country’s...
Mark Winchell, literary scholar, biographer, essayist, and occasional contributor to Chronicles, passed from this realm in May after a brave two-year battle with cancer. With four books out in just the last two years and at barely 60 years of age, Mark was just coming into the prime of his productive career. His official title,...
As Americans continue their flight to the South from the regions that they’ve already ruined, I continue to monitor the low-intensity conflict between Yankee settlers and Southern natives. This public service is needed, I think, because we just don’t know much about what’s going on. Foundations and government agencies tended to see Southern migration to...
I haven't investigated, but I'm sure of it. A pollster in ancient Babylonia was sampling the citizenry on a proposal to raise money by taxing the vineyards and flesh pots of the obscenely rich. I don't know a word of ancient Babylonian, but can we doubt the response went something ...
Cultural debate over sex roles has reached such a fever pitch that even the sexual preference of the children’s cartoon character SpongeBob Squarepants has become a topic of great concern. Conservative religious broadcaster Dr. James Dobson expressed alarm that a new educational campaign to tout “tolerance” and “diversity” was employing the images of SpongeBob, Big...
The socio-political divide in Oregon is so dramatic that the red rural areas are continually trying to break-off from the rest of the state.
In the post-Kavanaugh age, Americans are clamoring for a return to due process and the presumption of innocence.
Where then shall Hope and Fear their Objects find? Must dull Suspence corrupt the stagnant Mind? —Samuel Johnson, “The Vanity of Human Wishes” At the time of writing in late August, the coming U.S. election is hard to call, so that dull Suspence must indeed prevail for a few more weeks. One need not let...
Bill Clinton and Richard Cobden, a 19th-century English anti-Corn Law crusader, have more in common than consonants in their surnames. As economic internationalists, both trumpeted commerce as the panacea for attaining world peace and prosperity. In their own ways, both bear responsibility for the new international economic order which rests on the twin foundations of...
Republicans need to be wary about becoming complacent about their chances in November or adopting the Democrats' framework on rhetoric and violence lest they make a strength out of Biden’s mediocrity.
Many years ago, on a train trip from New York City to Philadelphia, a friend (a city girl, actually) remarked to me, as we passed through the Jersey industrial swamps, that she would happily cancel the Industrial Revolution, supposing only that modern dental technique could be rescued for the benefit of a restored pastoral society....
Early one evening in the mid-1980’s, jazz pianist Walter Bishop, Jr., who in 1951-52 had performed and recorded with star bebop alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, was having a bad first set at Bradley’s, New York City’s premier jazz piano bar. Bishop’s sense of time was off, he was missing notes, and he even seemed disoriented...
Conservatives are fond of saying that the United States is a republic, not a democracy, and in their appeals to the national conscience, they invoke the sacred language of republican tradition, citing scriptures from Aristotle and Cicero, from Edmund Burke and George Washington: the ride of law, a virtuous citizenry, and ordered liberty. Like most...