The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary
Thomas Fleming and Chef Garret discuss different techniques of roasting a chicken. It is the simplest of dishes and, if properly done, one of the finest either for a simple everyday meal or as the centerpiece of a holiday dinner. Original Air Date: December 3, 2016 Show Run Time: 51 minutes Show Guest(s): Chef Garret Fleming Show Host(s): Dr. Thomas Fleming The Fleming Foundation · The Best Revenge, Episode 6: Roasting a Chicken The Best Revenge℗ is a Production of the Fleming Foundation. Copyright 2016. All rights are reserved and any duplication without explicit written permission is forbidden.
Friend Harry had not always known he wanted to teach classics, but he had enjoyed his Latin courses at Yale, and it seemed a reasonable decision. He was not a strong-willed person in any obvious sense of being stubborn or overbearing, but when he made up his mind, in his own quiet way, he stuck things out. He was, as the saying used to go, steady as the tortoise who won the race, and it was no surprise when it went on, unobtrusively of course, to a solid career. I never aspired to steadiness and always found it unfair that...
Even my birthdate used to be a source of confusion, especially when it came time to celebrate my birthday. My mother always claimed April 26, while my father held out for the 27th. Mothers being mothers, my party was celebrated on the 26th until I was perhaps 15, when they got hold of a birth certificate that said in black and white: April 27. Both of them immediately declared, “You see, I was right!” What was the name of your first pet? is another favorite question to inflict on failing memories. I vaguely remember a cat, when I was very...
Let’s begin with the basics. Rather than breaking down Jerks into categories of severity—rating them from one to ten—we can agree to divide them broadly into what I am calling Boors and Louts. The boor is someone who does not know how to behave. He constantly makes a fool of himself by using the wrong fork or insisting upon steak in a seafood restaurant. He will pay embarrassing compliments to women he has just met and make himself the life of every party by telling anecdotes about his not very interesting life—anecdotes in which he inevitably plays the hero. Most...
The pantheon of Stalin’s era contained, alongside the martyr Pavlik Morozov, killed by the peasants of his village for informing the secret police that his father had hidden his own grain, two other iconic images. One of these was Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Conveniently for Stalin’s propagandists seeking to plant her story in the consciousness of the common people, Zoya’s surname came from the twin Saints, Cosmas and Damian – as prominent in the Orthodox iconography as in the Catholic one – though, unlike them, this granddaughter of a Russian priest was a member of a partisan band, specializing in reconnaissance and...
Cuban exiles and other anti-communists greeted comrade Fidel Castro assuming room temperature with rum-inebriated shouts of “Viva Cuba libre!” Sorry, I can’t join the celebrations. I’m as happy as anyone that El Jefe has gone to be judged by his Maker and no longer will be tyrannizing his people. But during his 56 years in power, the United States he hated moved far more in the direction of Cuban communism than Cuba moved, even after the fall of his Soviet patrons in 1991, toward becoming a free and normal country, as the U.S. was in 1959. Some comparisons: 1. Socialized...
Another surprise. The homicidal maniac who went on a rampage at Ohio State turns out to be one Abdul Razak Ali Artan, an 18-year-old Somali Muslim. No one knows why he did it. NBC has informed us that “a senior law enforcement official said authorities are a “long way” from pinpointing a motive for the Monday morning attack, which sent 11 people to the hospital. Apparently irrelevant are the the young man’s complaints against America for the persecution of Muslims in Burma. Yes, Burma. Why didn’t he go to Burma to kill the enemies of his religion? Perhaps because that would have required...
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This is the conclusion to my piece from 1985. The points made include: 1) There is no right of or justification for “civil disobedience. Crime is crime, and treason is treason. 2) So-called “liberation theology” is only Marxist revolution with a false Christian gloss, 3) our primary moral obligations to family, community, and nation take precedence over any imagined obligations to strangers, and, finally 4) the confusion of roles–national government dictating how children are reared while individuals and cities are making foreign policy–is a sign of a profound disorder in American life. Although civil disobedients like to lump their activities...
Fidel Castro is dead, and USA’s official media are are beside themselves with grief over their fallen leader. I hate to point out the obvious, but there is virtually nothing good to say about this thug, except he was lucky enough to take over Cuba during an American power vacuum, first when an exhausted and ailing Eisenhower was losing control and, then, when he easily fought off a challenge from a feeble-minded womanizing President who could not find the will to squelch this pustulent sore 90 miles off our coastline. Pre-Castro Cuba was no paradise, but there were economic opportunities. People could get...
