Category: Fleming

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

14 May, 2016

How Conservatives Lost the Bathroom War

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WARNING:  This piece includes revolting arguments, albeit expressed delicately, but revolting nonetheless. If you have ever wondered why American “Conservatives” lose virtually ever battle in which they engage, all you have to do is to listen to them attacking the presidential decree banning toilet discrimination.  I listened for a few minutes to an NPR left-right debate on the subject.  The leftist was E.J. Dionne—the broken record of the Washington Post.  I was sautéing morels and shallots for a pasta course, when I heard him announced.  It occurred to me immediately that I should have put on an old Gunsmoke radio...

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Fleming

6 May, 2016

Ransom Notes, Cinco de Mayo Plus One: GOP Deserters

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Why are so many Republicans shying away from Trump and promising to boycott the convention? Whatever the answer is, we know it has nothing to do with principles, because they don’t have any.  What they do have are paymasters. In picking a side, e.g., the global war machine to which Maddog John McCain bends the knee, or the Megachurch pseudo-Christian pastors bloated on greed and ignorance that Ted Cruz adores, or the transnational business interests that force the Republican Party to stiff the American people by bringing in cheap labor and shipping jobs off to Chinese slave-masters.  Even the hint...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

4 May, 2016

Donald Trump’s Paper Moon

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“All’s Over then.  Does truth sound bitter as one at first believes?” Yes, it must sound very bitter indeed to the leaders of the TedCruzJohnKasicMarcoRubioCarlyFiorinaJebBush Party—which is neither very old nor very grand.  They played the game according to its well-established and well-known rules, which can be boiled down to “Lie, Cheat, and Steal,” and they went down in a defeat untouched by honor or dignity.  What a pill it must have been for the Bible-thumping Cruz to take, listening to the vulgarian Trump verbally pat little Teddy on the head, predicting big things for the kid when he grows...

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Fleming / From Under The Rubble / On the House

2 May, 2016

Racism–and the Rose by Any Other Name OTH

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This a revision of three old pieces on the same subject: Thucydides observed, in his famous depiction of the civil war on Corfu, that political partisans change the meanings of words.   Dictionaries have become instruments of ideological oppression.  The movement began long before the end of the millennium. “We very clearly had made a mistake,” said the marketing director of Merriam-Webster, explaining her company’s decision to pull an on-line thesaurus that included “faggot” and “fruit” as synonymns for “homosexual.” While many homophiles freely use expressions like “faggot” and “fruity,” and “butch,” they reserve the right to dictate polite usage...

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Autodidact / Fleming / On the House / Poetry

30 Apr, 2016

Mr. Autodidact’s Poem(s) of the Week

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First is a sonnet by Tennyson, not one of his best, perhaps, but indicating his distaste for professional critics and men of letters: Poets and Their Bibliographies Old poets foster’d under friendlier skies, Old Virgil who would write ten lines, they say, At dawn, and lavish all the golden day To make them wealthier in the readers’ eyes; And you, old popular Horace, you the wise Adviser of the nine-years-ponder’d lay, And you, that wear a wreath of sweeter bay, Catullus, whose dead songster never dies; If, glancing downward on the kindly sphere That once had roll’d you round and round...

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Autodidact / Fleming / Reading Lists

30 Apr, 2016

Mr. Autodidact’s Reading List: English Literature (Update 2 May)

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Absolutely Essential Classics of English and American Literature for Readers from 12 to…. These works have been chosen partly for their literary excellence but even more because they were, until recently, taken for granted, as part of our common Anglo-American heritage.  This first version, which will be expanded from time to time, is only a sketch, and the omission of some beloved classic may be due to an oversight or a decision to include the work in a subsequent list.  If the list is somewhat boring and predictable, it is because I have left off many of my favorite writers,...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

21 Apr, 2016

The Face on the Barroom Coin

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The Good News [from Matthew 22]: And they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying…Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?  But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?  Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny. And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?  They say unto him, Caesar’s. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.  When they had heard...

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Feature / Fleming

19 Apr, 2016

Live Until You Die (on the house)

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This is an improved version of an essay first published in 1999 “I grow old learning many things,” said Solon, a poet well-known for his wisdom and for his longevity: He lived to be almost 80.  Although, as my old teacher Douglas Young pointed out, Solon’s statement might be interpreted to mean “too much education makes one prematurely old,” the point is clear enough and as true today as it was 2400 years ago when the Athenian poet-statesman lived long enough to see his beloved city acquiesce in the rule of a tyrant: A wise man never ceases to learn new...