The Jerk virtually defines the American character of the 21st century. Ask any foreigner, and he will tell you amazing tales of badly dressed, obnoxious Americans who treat restaurant owners as their personal servants, snap their fingers, screaming Garçon! Garçon! for service, and complain about everything they eat. Too many American travelers have seen too...
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Valor
Valkyrie Produced and distributed by United Artists Directed by Bryan Singer Screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie Slumdog Millionaire Produced by Celador Films Directed by Danny Boyle Screenplay by Simon Beaufoy from Vikas Swarup’s novel Distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures In Valkyrie, screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie and director Bryan Singer tell the story of Col. Claus von...
The Garden Club: A Short Story
She knew she did it well, had done this well almost all her married life; she would spend days at it if she had to, just to make it right. Still, every time the members of the Garden Club came to Alicia’s house, her mouth dried and her belly trembled. Employed as she was now,...
Do Not Spare the Rod, or the Iron Bars
The Myth of Overpunishment is a muscular response to the activists and politicians who cry over the supposedly too-high incarceration rate of the American justice system.
Second Thoughts
These days everyone is having second thoughts—about Vietnam and the 60’s, about American history, about what it means to be a liberal and what it means to be a conservative. Rather than be left out of the rewrite, I too have been having second thoughts about what I did and did not do some 20...
Can Japan Rise Again?
We can thank Providence that the earthquake was not 150 miles closer to Tokyo, else Japan's dead might number in the millions. Prime Minister Naoto Kan calls it the worst crisis since World War II. Yet, horrendous as it is, it does not, thus far, compare with that. For the ...
Her Master’s Voice
Recent publicity to the effect that not one but even two films about Florence Foster Jenkins are in the pipeline sends us what I think is a very ambiguous alert. Florence Foster Jenkins is an arresting subject, no question—but it is unlikely that the phenomenon she represents can be done justice in today’s environment—unlikely being...
Think of the Children
It seems things don’t change much after all. Consider these recent hysterical comments. “There’s scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, age 30. “And it does lead, I think, young people to have a legitimate question: Is it OK to still have children?” Gyrating chanteuse...
The Vietnam Era Never Ended for Biden’s Party
The Democratic party only has papered over its contradictions ever since 1968. Today’s campus protests have ripped off the wrapper, and they’re forcing on Biden a choice he can’t, or won’t, make.
Richard Holbrooke, RIH
On his deathbed in Washington, Richard Holbrooke allegedly told his Pakistani surgeon, “You’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan.” Perhaps the story is true. After all, Holbrooke, though one of the greatest liars in public life, must have told the truth occasionally and his words may even have been delivered accurately by the class...
Are Republicans Born Wimps?
Republican leaders are “a bunch of wimps,” said Jerry Falwell Jr. Conservatives and Christians need to stop electing “nice guys.” “The US needs street fighters like Donald Trump at every level of government because the liberal fascists Dems are playing for keeps.” So tweeted the son and namesake of the founder of the Moral Majority,...
The Death of the Amateur
When college athletics abandons the spirit of play for the reality of pay.
The Continuing Revolution
In his critical work about the bicentenaire of the French Revolution, Le Grand Déclassement, French historian Pierre Chaunu explores the first stages of the unraveling of the glorification of France as a revolutionary nation conceived in 1789. By the time Chaunu’s book was published in 1989, however, the official celebrations had been both scaled back...
What’s Sweet and Proper
Stage play premiered June 9, 2017, the Sheen Center, New York City • Producer: Fr. Peter John Cameron, O.P., Blackfriars Repertory Theatre • Director: Peter Dobbins, Storm Theatre Company • Assistant Director: Fr. Peter John Cameron, O.P. • Choreographer: Jennifer Delac • Cast: Nicholas Carrière (Sassoon), Sarah Naughton (Death), Michael Raver (Owen) Joseph Pearce has...
The Stupid Party Rides Again
On November 4, 2008, voters decisively rejected the Republican Party, voting for Barack Obama over John McCain by a margin of 52.8 percent to 45.9. Obama won 365 electoral votes to McCain’s 173, including every state in the Northeast and industrial Midwest; every state on the Pacific Coast; Florida, the state that ensured George W....
A Brilliant, Fading Bliss
Trekking north along the closest major artery, Canada-bound travelers are treated to a small hotel with a decorative windmill, several car dealerships, and a shopping center with a McDonald’s, a Blockbuster, and a Subway—all common manifestations of the Pax Americana. Then, however, they reach a graveyard. Bisected by Front Street, the bricked-in cemetery with decorative...
Notes From the Front, Part II
Basically, the Yugoslav problem is simple: it is a war of vanities, of various ethnic and religious groups vying for supremacy. If this sounds familiar to American and other Western readers, the parallel is intentional: after all, it was Tito, the arch-communist, who first implemented the New World Order of former President George Bush, of...
Inky Eyes Into China’s Mind
The newspaper boxes can be found around Washington, D.C., ranging from Union Station near the Hill to Foggy Bottom in the vicinity of the State Department. Inside, the newspaper articles emphasize positive, even entrepreneurial themes: investment opportunities, technological advances, the virtues of trade and economic integration. This world view, at first glance, could be mistaken...
All That Jazz
Extraordinary writing about music doesn’t come along very often, as I have been forced to notice by my own experience—as have my own put-upon readers! But in the realm of classical music, I would suggest that Donald F. Tovey’s Essays in Musical Analysis is an imposing composition, a stunt of writing—the freight of its assertions...
The struggle for Scotland’s soul
Today a cinema in Edinburgh was the bathetic setting for the launch of the Scottish National Party’s bid for Scottish independence. The SNP desires a yes/no referendum (possibly with an increased devolution alternative) to be held in October 2014, 700 years after Bannockburn. Although the SNP is the main mover behind Yes Scotland it is nominally...
Sinclair Lewis
Late in life, Harry Sinclair Lewis of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, figured something out: he would soon be forgotten. In a mock self-obituary, Lewis foresaw that he would leave “no literary descendants. . . . Whether this is a basic criticism of [Lewis’s] pretensions to power and originality, or whether, like another contemporary. Miss Willa Cather,...
A People’s Worst Enemy
John Lukacs saw it as the great chasm dividing two centuries. George F. Kennan called it “the great seminal catastrophe of the twentieth century.” The adjective in the title of The Lost History of 1914 refers to the five ways in which the Great War might not have happened—five lost paths leading to peace. Though...
Paper War
My local newspaper is now unreadable, and I’m damn mad about it. In order to understand the earthshaking significance of this turn of events and its emotional impact on me, you have to understand the role my paper, the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, plays in my life. It is the centerpiece of a long-standing ritual, one...
Literature Among the Ruins
“Mon cher, c’est notre métier, le vrai métier de chien . . . Vous écrivez et vous écrivez . . . et personne, personne au monde ne comprendra.” Joseph Conrad’s complaint to his young collaborator, Ford Madox Hueffer, might have been put on Ford’s tombstone, when he died in 1939. You write, and you write,...
I Just Did Say That!
You Can’t Say That! The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties From Antidiscrimination Laws by David E. Bernstein Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute; 197 pp., $20.00 A Miller Brewing Company executive is fired for retelling a racy segment of a Seinfeld episode at the watercooler. An unwed teacher successfully sues the parochial school that fired her for becoming pregnant...
The Pursuit of Happiness
“This used to be a hell of a good country. I can’t understand what’s gone wrong with it.” When people of a certain age and experience begin to think about when and how America went wrong, they almost inevitably hear echoes of George Hanson’s little sermon, delivered by Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider. An ACLU...
Is Old Bob McNamara Still Teaching at Harvard?
I had the distinct feeling I had seen the book somewhere before. It was almost like the old cinematographic cliche: close-up of the Treblinka torturer’s face in a dream sequence, a faded photograph shot in sepia tones, men running through the courtyard. The title was respectable enough, The Faber Book of Contemporary American Poetry, Faber...
Nelson Mandela Idolized?
Nelson Mandela idolized? Am I the only one who didn’t do a spastic street dance over his arrival in America? Tell him to take “power” in the wrong African language? California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown said being with Mandela was like “being in the presence of God.” A worshiper along the parade route in New...
Sources of Contention
Cultural symbols are sources of contention everywhere. In Russia, a squabble over a monument rings a bell with this proud Southerner. The powerful Communist (CPRF) faction in the Duma recently raised the question of returning “Iron Feliks” Dzerzhinsky, the Soviet Unions first secret policeman, to his pedestal facing the Lubyanka, the one-time home of the...
The Politics of Morbid Fascination
Rafael Palmeiro has ED. How do I know? He told me. He told you, too. Heck, he told the whole country about 15 years ago. He went on national television (while intermittently swinging a big bat—Freudian subtlety is lost on the Madison Avenue types) to say that he was having a bit of trouble with...
The Machinery of Equality
Christians objecting to assisting with homosexual “marriage” ceremonies continue to suffer defeat in various state courts. The most recent example comes out of New York, where a Christian couple declined to host a homosexual wedding and reception at their farm. The Christians were declared guilty of unlawful discrimination. New York boasts that it “has the...
Anatomy of an Inaugural Poem
Evidence that Maya Angelou may have borrowed from another poem for the one she delivered at Bill Clinton’s inauguration was reported in this magazine last December. The White House, having seen the December Chronicles and the subsequent news stories about it, appears to have opted to distance itself from Angelou rather than to defend her....
Neocon Follies
Doug Liman has performed half a public service with his new film, Fair Game. By retelling the story of the neoconservative attack on Amb. Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, he has once more exposed how eager these ideologues are to destroy anyone who gets in their way. Unfortunately, he stops short of reaching...
Has Bloomberg Begun the Battle for 2020?
Did former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg just take a page out of the playbook of Sen. Ed Muskie from half a century ago? In his first off-year election in 1970, President Richard Nixon ran a tough attack campaign to hold the 52 House seats the GOP had added in ’66 and ’68, and to...
Collegiate Anti-Semitism Did Not Start Yesterday
As I look at the Johnny-Come-Lately critics of our anti-Semitic universities, I am reminded of the French Communist Party during and after the fall of France. Why should we now celebrate those who contributed to this poisoning of our culture?
Our Constitution and Theirs
We here at Chronicles are Constitutional Fundamentalists. We swear allegiance to the Constitution of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, and not the Constitution of Warren, Brennan, and Souter. We do not believe that the Constitution is a “living document” that must be altered by successive Supreme Court justices to keep pace with the times. The Constitution...
Suicide of the GOP—or Rebirth?
“If his poll numbers hold, Trump will be there six months from now when the Sweet 16 is cut to the Final Four, and he will likely be in the finals.” My prediction, in July of 2015, looks pretty good right now. Herewith, a second prediction. Republican wailing over his prospective nomination aside, Donald Trump...
It Can’t Happen Here!
Friday, thousands in Moscow, giving Nazi salutes and carrying placards declaring,
Lamentations of a Recovering Marxist
“Progress needs the brakeman, but the brakeman should not spend all his time putting on the brakes.” —Elbert Hubbard The case for pessimism has been easy to make since Lincoln, and mandatory since Franklin Roosevelt. Today, not much is left of the Old Republic. As early as the 1930’s, Frank Chodorov could describe Washington, D.C.,...
Dealing With a Nuclear Iran
Iran’s agreement to “suspend” her nuclear program in exchange for economic benefits from the European Union has dampened that crisis for the moment. The Bush administration’s vocal skepticism about the agreement, however, suggests that the crisis has not been defused. Moreover, Iran emphasizes that her nuclear activities have only been suspended, not abolished. That is...
Thomas Fleming and Mother Teresa: Undoubted Motives in the Morality of Everyday Life
“Name one.” —Anonymous Too bad that, since 1966, they are no longer adding titles to the Index of Prohibited Books. My more than ten years as diocesan censor librorum—was it this past distinction that gained me the happy task of writing this review?—would lead me to grant Thomas Fleming’s The Morality of Everyday Life: Rediscovering...
Bad Moon Rising for Biden—and Us
“April is the cruelest month,” wrote T. S. Eliot in the opening line of what is regarded as his greatest poem, “The Waste Land.” For President Joe Biden, the cruelest month is surely August of 2021, which is now mercifully ending. When has a president had a worse month? On the last Sunday in August,...
Crowned With Thorns and Glory
[Jefferson Davis: Unconquerable Heart, by Felicity Allen (Columbia: University of Missouri Press) 808 pp., $34.95] “As the tug bore him away from the ship, he stood with bared head between the files of undersized German and other foreign soldiers on either side of him, and as we looked, as we thought, our last upon his...
Perceptibles
Howard Thurman: For the Inward Journey; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; San Diego. During his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Jesse Jackson was widely praised for using the language of black evangelism. Wiser observers recognized that Jackson had actually degraded his inherited religious vocabulary by cutting it loose from its spiritual roots and putting it...
SpongeBob and a Transgendered Sock Puppet
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...
Shouldering On
Atlas Shrugged: Part I Produced by The Strike Productions Directed by Paul Johansson Screenplay by John Aglialoro and Brian Patrick O’Toole from Ayn Rand’s novel Distributed by Rocky Mountain Pictures Now we know: When it comes to celebrating the virtues of unbridled capitalism, it does not pay to skimp. The ten million dollars producer...
Sensationalizing if Youth Violence
“Children killing children.” The very phrase is chilling. But what can the law do about a six-year-old who shoots and kills his first-grade classmate? According to our Anglo-American legal heritage of common law, not much. Children under the age of seven are presumed not to be able to know the difference between right and wrong,...
Southern Gastronomical Unity
Why don’t y’all try to guess—go ahead—which American region, in its unofficial anthem, celebrates food. Answer? The South. Permit me, Suh: Dar’s buckwheat cakes and Injun batter, Makes you fat or a little fatter, Look away! Look, away! Look away! Dixieland. You see? We have been in the eating business a long time down here,...
“Pity Poor Bradford”
Bolling Hall has squatted on its plot since the 14th century, hunched against the wind and rain of the West Riding—a North Country architectural essay in dark yellow sandstone looking warily down a steep hillside onto Bradford’s Vale. Old though the building is, the estate’s foundations go deeper than Domesday, when Conqueror companion-in-arms Ilbert de...
Greatest Achievement
The Jury is the greatest achievement of the Anglo-Saxon legal system. No matter how much pressure from kings and lords, or in our ease politicians and the media, “twelve good men and true” can do the right thing, so to speak. And that is exactly what they did in the case of Rodney King, although...