Author: Thomas Fleming

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Fleming / From Under The Rubble

14 Sep, 2016

Hooray for Hollywood!

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According to a virtual reality rag called The Hollywood Reporter, both Stephen Spielberg and Harvey Weinstein are planning separately to base one of their schlock movies on “the true story of the kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara.” Their true story is “about a 6-year-old Italian boy who in 1858 was taken from his Jewish parents by police and raised [sic!] Catholic.”  The villain in the piece is Pope Pius IX, who will be played—if Weinstein has his way—by Robert de Niro!   “Are you looking at me?  Are you looking at me?”  It’s too bad the Christophobic Christopher Hitchens has left...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

14 Sep, 2016

Trump:  The Lesser Evil, Episode II

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Reading the leftist responses to Hillary’s condemnation of us “deplorables,”  I was struck by the uniformity of tone.  They run the gamut from self-righteous astonishment to self-righteous indignation.  Occasionally, they tip their hand:  People who use “politically correct” as an insult, they say, are bigots, and so is anyone who thinks there might be something amiss with affirmative action, open immigration, same sex marriage, and men in women’s clothing hanging out in the girl’s locker room. There is a curious contradiction in the American “liberal” mind.  On the one hand, they are “all about” (an expression worth a few pages...

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Feature / Fleming

13 Sep, 2016

Jerks I: Land of the Free, Home of the Jerk, Part B

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Though they are one of America’s distinctive creations, Jerks have been observed throughout history.  Meet one from 17th century France, described by one of the most acute observers of human folly, Jean de la Bruyère: Gnathon lives for no one but himself, and the rest of the world are to him as if they did not exist. He is not satisfied with occupying the best seat at table, but he must take the seats of two other guests, and forgets that the dinner was not provided for him alone, but for the company as well; he lays hold of every...

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Fleming / On the House

12 Sep, 2016

…Who Help Themselves

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This piece appeared in the first number of revamped Chronicles, in  May 1985.  Some readers found it alarming at the time.   It now seems quite moderate, though many law-and-order neoconservatives would still deplore the call for self-help.   We take too much for granted in America. Whenever we have a problem, we assume that somebody else is paid to solve it, somebody from the government. All the ancient burdens of the human flesh—poverty and envy, greed and arrogance—have been turned over to one or another bureaucratic agency.  We sleep better at night knowing that somewhere someone is busy making life...

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Feature / Fleming

12 Sep, 2016

Properties of Blood I.7: Dueling For Honor, Part A

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Defining the Duel The word duel is often used loosely to mean a fight between two men or even any competitive conflict between men or beasts.  The historian Victor Kiernan has written an entire book on European dueling without ever, apparently, figuring out what a duel actually was.  Let us begin by setting aside such metaphorical usages as “dueling egos,” “dueling banjos,” and “dueling roosters,” and restrict ourselves to violent encounters between two human antagonists, who may or may not ne accompanied by allies who may simply insure fair play or even take part in the action. If we are...

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Fleming / From Under The Rubble / On the House

10 Sep, 2016

Trump: The Lesser Evil

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  Hillary Clinton’s take on a large percentage of the American people is drawing fire: “You could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right, The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it,” and added, “some of those folks—they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.” The other half of Trump supporters are simply stupid and depressed, and people in Hillaryland should pity them. Let’s do some quick and very rough math.  In round numbers, the country has about 280 million people, about three fourths of whom—or 210 million—are old enough to vote. ...

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Diary of a Jerk-Hunter

7 Sep, 2016

Jerks 1: Land of the Free, Home of the Jerk, Part A: Taxonomy

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“We want the world and we want it now.”  [Jim “the Jerk” Morrison, the prize ass of American pop music.] Let’s get  something straight.  I’m a jerk.  I’m obnoxious… And I don’t care because I’m FILTHY RICH.  I’m the guy you see driving down the street in a Ferrari with the top down, and you think to yourself, “What an ass!”  And you know what?  You’re right.  But so what?  Do you really think I value your opinion.  I’m a rich jerk, so I couldn’t care less. The “Rich Jerk,” whoever he is, is operating the familiar scam popularized by...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

7 Sep, 2016

Bullying and Baloney

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Bullying is the latest great social craze in the American media. They always have some social pathology with which they terrorize the suckers who watch the news or read websites.  Back in the 1980’s and 90’s they beat the drum for teenage pregnancy and father-daughter incest.  They had to drop the former, after a few dissidents were cruel enough to point out that the term “father” turned out to include the mother’s second husband, live-in boyfriend, and any stranger in the night she happened to entertain. The increase in teenage pregnancies was real enough, but, since the cause was the sexual...

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Feature / Fleming

6 Sep, 2016

Properties of Blood I.6: In Defense of Honor, Part D

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On a more basic level, shame can be an intense feeling of embarrassment and inferiority.  Romance languages express this feeling by using derivatives from the Latin verecundia:  vergogna (Italian), verguenza (Spanish), vergogne (French).  This sense of shame is an expansive category as Julio Caro Baroja points out in his historical account of Spanish honor. “Verecundia shows itself not only as chastity and modesty, as the blush which lewd speech or actions bring to the face, but also as respect for parents and elders, which prevents one from doing certain things in their presence, and as humility, reserve, and respect for...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

5 Sep, 2016

The Chickens Come Home To Roost

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These are not really  trick questions: Question 1) What is dumber than a dumb jock? A sports fan—or sports writer—who lionizes postmodern athaletes [sic!] who are paid to slough off every quality that turns hominid apes into human beings.  Note: I am not talking about genuine athletes, who still exist–though there are not many “Olympians” among them–but sports stars, who are as insubstantial in human terms as any other media celebrity.  Televised football games are aimed at the husbands of soap opera fans, and our sports heroes are cut from the same cardboard and tinsel as Ryan Seacrest and Angelina Jolie. This past...