The critic, raconteur, and religious iconoclast Christopher Hitchens once parried claims about the alleged meaninglessness of nonreligious life by writing: “A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called ‘meaningless’ except if […]
Must every screen endeavor be an eight-episode limited series? The question has become a cliché, but let the record nevertheless show that Apple‘s newest production would have been a perfectly forgettable Tuesday afternoon matinée not so long ago. Or, better still, a CBS special for the home-on-Saturday-night crowd. Instead, Prime Target limps along for the […]
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is upset with how the city handled its wildfires, and she wants to speak to whoever is in charge of running it. Bass told Fox LA that she was not made aware of the warnings about the wind and the risks of fires, that she doesn’t know why no one […]
President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency may be hogging all the headlines, but it is the steps Trump has taken to restore the Constitution’s original understanding of the separation of powers that will etch his administration in history books for generations. This week, Trump signed a new executive order titled “Ensuring Accountability for All […]
Rod Blagojevich, a corrupt former governor of Illinois, calls himself a “Trumpocrat.” The label is truly apt because nobody has better articulated the heart of Trumpism than Blago, who famously said, “I’ve got this thing, and it’s f***ing golden. And I’m just not giving it up for f***in’ nothing. I’m not going to do it.” […]
I believe that Mark Zuckerberg‘s enthusiasm for MMA is genuine, that his new style is entirely artificial, and that he’s more religious than he puts out in public. However, I’m basing this on my interpretation of a PR-consultant-crafted image. You can’t know billionaires. We can judge their companies, influence, money, and the myths that orbit […]
When the English writer and humorist P.G. “Plum” Wodehouse died 50 years ago this month, most would be forgiven for believing that his death took place at some grand English country house, not unlike Blandings Castle, or some salubrious Mayfair gentleman’s flat of a kind that Bertie Wooster inhabited. It therefore comes as a surprise, […]
At the end of his life, Robert Frost was living in a cabin on the 150-acre Homer Noble Farm near the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Middlebury, Vermont. The director of the conference, Theodore Morrison, lived in the main house on the farm with his wife, Kay, who would walk a short way uphill to […]
Was President Donald Trump a Russian asset all along? Does Russian President Vladimir Putin, as anti-Trumpers allege, have some kind of kompromat on him? Does Trump simply prefer dictators to Democrats? Or has he borne a grudge against Volodymyr Zelensky since attempting to coerce the Ukrainian president into investigating then-presidential candidate Joe Biden in 2019? […]
When news broke last week of Elon Musk’s 13th child, from the fourth mother, congratulatory remarks included acclaim for the baby’s “incredible genetics.” Two days later, media mogul Andrew Tate reminded followers, “If all your children come from one woman, you are not a conqueror.” The comments probably do not coincide beyond timing, mainly because […]
Hamas made a sickening spectacle of Thursday's handover of the remains of two toddlers, their mother and another hostage — weaponizing even this into...
This has been a dizzying and disorienting week in international diplomacy. One with wild implications for Ukraine, the future of America’s standing in the...
