The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary
I begin with house statistics since the day before New Year’s. We’ve had five guests staying here, all Russian in varying degree, including a Viennese lady by the name of Inga who, even when the lighting is all wrong, looks like a film noir star of the 1940’s. Suffice it to say that an admirer had given the diva a riding crop for Christmas, which she kindly brandished for us of an evening while wearing, in an effortlessly choreographed sequence, three wigs she had providently packed in her luggage, a blonde, a brunette, and I think a redhead. As...
In Book III of De Officiis Cicero poses a dilemma: Suppose a father were robbing a temple or digging tunnels into the treasury; should a son give information to the government? The philosopher’s answer, according to Cicero, was: No, that would be wrong.
This piece is a slightly revised version of a piece I published some 16 years ago in a magazine I was then editing. “States Rights? You can’t be serious! What do you want to do–restore Jim Crow or bring back slavery?” Any serious discussion of the American republic always comes aground on this rock, and it does not matter which kind of liberal is expressing the obligatory shock and dismay, whether he is a leftist at the Nation, a neoliberal at the New Republic, or a National Review minicon (or should that be “moneycon”?) looking for ways to pander and slander their way if not...
Kellen Buckles wrote to TFF Facebook page: A friend gave me a copy of Rebecca West’s “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon” and I was wondering if my time will be well spent negotiating those 1,150 pages. Her prologue was full of intriguing ideas but I don’t want to be led astray. TJF: The simple answer is that it is a wonderful book, certainly the most insightful and entertaining volume on the Balkans that is available in English. Nothing else comes close. West does not know the language and makes historical mistakes, but her approach is humble and allows the various...
An extraordinary episode set Moscow’s beau monde on its ear last week–extraordinary in the sense that, if a cannibal, instead of boiling an Englishman in the nude, were to eat him together with his bowler hat, silk umbrella, and brogues by John Lobb of St. James’s Street, this might be considered outrageous cannibal behavior. “What an extraordinary way to act at table,” other, more fastidious cannibals would be heard muttering. A veteran journalist by the name of Viktor Shenderovich was interviewed on “Moscow Echo”–supposedly the last oasis of dissent yet extant in the Russian media mainstream–and made some remarks about...
Everyone these days seems to have some complaint against the Christmas holiday. You’ve heard them all by now, Muslims and Jews whining about “inclusiveness,” downtown storeowners complaining about the chainstores in the malls, and chainstores complaining about Amazon. Small wonder people are so depressed this time of year. Not only is the sun disappearing—and who knows if the global warmingists will ever let it return?—but everyone and his Buddhist brother has some ax to grind. The late Herbert W. Armstrong of the Worldwide Whacky Church of G-d Knows What used to do an annual radio broadcast denouncing Christmas. Crazy...
Book I is concerned, generally, with the morally right, and specifically with the four virtues of wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance–simple terms in English, but quite complex, both in reality and in Cicero’s treatment.
Gentle reader may remember that I was in London last week in aid of a friend charged with racism for calling a Negro cabdriver an ape. Fine arguments marshaled by the defense came to naught once the female judge had had a good look at the defendant’s shoes. These were polished to a high shine, and clean shoes are, as the defendant ought to have known at his age, a telltale sign of racist attitudes in white males. He was found guilty and fined. Lest my reader think I am being facetious, I draw his attention to this post’s...
Twenty years before Rascal (1963), one of the true masterpieces of American children’s literature–heck, of American literature, period–Sterling North gave us Midnight and Jeremiah, a beautifully illustrated (by Kurt Wiese; I’m trying to figure out the media, guessing pastel crayon and brush and ink on textured paper) novella that I suppose would be called a “chapter book” for young readers in today’s market. It’s a honey of a story, about an orphaned little boy in rural southern Indiana, circa 1903, who persuades his grandmother to let him bottle-raise a black lamb rejected by its dam. The boy is Jeremiah Kincaid,...
The long reign of Alexios III (1349-90) marks the beginning of the end of the Empire of Trebizond. Alexios, as the result of a palace coup, came to the throne as a boy of 11, and his youth and inexperience were an invitation to challenges of every sort: warlords in the provinces, his own counselors and bureaucrats, and even from within the church. The Trapezuntine elite was dominated by factions loyal either to Constantinople or to the more locally centered provincial aristocracy. The feud between the Genoese and Venetians broke out again, when the latter were once again granted...
