As to the debate, so-called, the best comment came from Vivek Ramaswamy when he blasted the NBC moderators for perpetrating the Russia Hoax for three years. He should have stormed off the stage. If he had, that would be the only thing anybody remembered.
The smell of burned cheese and cheap frying oil overhanging a street, such as Palermo’s savagely pedestrianized Via Maqueda, signals the presence of the mass tourist. The tourist is both predator and prey, the collective criminal and the collective victim of his crime. He is here on Sicily to pursue happiness, but instead has it rudely imposed on him by people whose idea of a transient’s happiness is their own enrichment.
In this first episode of the final era in our Westerns series (1990-present) we will look at Dances with Wolves. Does Dances represent a breakthrough in Western film or just the complete breakdown of the American mind? Homework for next meeting: Last of the Mohicans.
If I were a Jewish American or an Arab American, I would naturally be inclined to a one-sided view of the current conflict, but I would, nonetheless, insist on putting the interest and justice of the American people and their government first. Unfortunately, I see very little evidence that either Jewish-Americans and Arab-Americans have even a sense of dual loyalty.
America used to be a country with a bland national uniformity of culture and attitude that was belied whenever you entered the bizarre world of isolated small towns. In its own way, Superior is as strange a place as Charleston or New Orleans (the way it used to be) or the celebrated villages in the valley of the Miskatonic River
Hallowmas, which is today, marks the start of the pomegranate season, a fruit that evokes the myth of the goddess and her chthonic descent into winter. With persimmon and prickly pear, pomegranate forms a trio of late autumn fruit which, at least on this side of the Messina Strait, is largely overlooked by cultivators. A forager’s dream, they just grow, often by the roadside. They are the partridge, woodcock, and grouse of the fructiferous world.
We are going to launch the New Year by taking nominations for the New Index of classic books to ban. To be eligible the book and writer must be either included in some Great Books series or, at least, be a staple of the postmodern curriculum, e.g., The Diary of Ann Frank or The Handmaid’s Tale or The Awakening.
Zionism is much in the news these days, as are its many antipodes, and for reasons that are, lamentably, all too clear, the whole subject is a journalistic minefield. Rather than treading lightly, however, I seek forgiveness of the gentle reader in advance should an inadvertent explosion disturb his otherwise placid Wednesday afternoon.
In this land of bogus holidays, I hereby assume the authority to declare this day the OFFICIAL BAN A BOOK DAY!
