Posted 11/25/2003 10:30:05 AM by Edward Driscoll
RTWT: Roger Kimball, managing editor of New Criterion brilliantly deconstructs--and deflates--political correctness.

Posted 11/25/2003 09:44:36 AM by Edward Driscoll
COMING SOON TO A THEATER NEAR YOU: The WWII Italian(!) production of Ayn Rand's We The Living is scheduled to be re-released to theaters (presumably before being released on DVD), beginning in December. Here's an interview with the man behind its restoration. UPDATE (12/01/03): Here's the second part of the interview.

Posted 11/25/2003 09:25:22 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE GREAT REJUVENATION: Hidden in David Brooks' latest column in the New York Times are the landmines he planted in these key passages:

As we settle down to the Thanksgiving table in a few days, we might remind ourselves that whatever other problems grip our country, lack of vitality is not one of them. In fact, we may look back on the period beginning in the middle of the 1980's as the Great Rejuvenation. American life has improved in almost every measurable way, and far from regressing toward the mean, the U.S. has become a more exceptional nation. * ** The U.S. economy has enjoyed two long booms in the past two decades, interrupted by two shallow recessions, and perhaps now we're at the start of a third boom. More nations have become democratic in the past two decades than at any other time in history.

Wonder how paragraphs like those are sitting with the average reader of the Times who feels, based on the information he's been spoonfed by the Times, that (a) George H.W. Bush was right when he called Reaganomics "voodoo economics" (and then later lost his bid for reelection when he steered away from its central tenant) and (b) that the "worst economy of 50 years" recession was actually, as Brooks accurately labels it, shallow and minor.

Posted 11/25/2003 09:11:45 AM by Edward Driscoll
JOHN PODHORETZ ON 2004:

There's quite a ways to go before Election Day 2004. But the race may already be over, and, to their grief, the Democrats know it.

He gives three reasons ("one minor, one middling and one major") why. The Democrats' debate last night probably didn't advance their cause. UPDATE: Michael Barone would seem to agree with Podhoretz.

Posted 11/25/2003 01:48:48 AM by Edward Driscoll
MONA CHAREN IDENTIFIES "the new counterculture". I think she feels it's growing--which would be a good thing.

Posted 11/24/2003 02:05:19 AM by Edward Driscoll
VERMOUTH IS OPTIONAL: Stephen Green, the one, the only VodkaPundit, is blogging up a storm this morning.

Posted 11/24/2003 02:01:26 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE RETURN OF THE PRIMITIVE: Tom DeWeese of MichNews.com looks at the far fringes of environmentalism. It's not pretty.

Posted 11/23/2003 06:21:56 PM by Edward Driscoll
I'M GOING TO GO OUT ON A LIMB HERE, but those orange uniforms the Dolphins are debuting tonight against the Redskins are really, really ugly. With the white pants and helmets, on my TV, they look vaguely like the old New England Patriots' duds--which weren't necessarily the height of NFL fashion, either.

Posted 11/23/2003 03:02:14 PM by Edward Driscoll
NOTE TO SELF: Stick to the drive-through at Burger King.

Posted 11/23/2003 01:53:53 PM by Edward Driscoll
WALTER DURANTY UPDATE: The New York Times' protypical Soviet dupe gets to keep his Pulitzer Prize. The Times and, as InstaPundit noted, Roobert Fisk, dodge a bullet. UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan despairs:

Arthur Sulzberger Jr describes the work of Walter Duranty as 'slovenly.' That simply misses the point. Duranty wasn't slovenly; he was an active and knowing apologist of mass murder, tyranny, and brutality. If the Times had won a Pulitzer for someone denying the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, there would not even be a question of the Pulitzer standing. But what Duranty did was no different. It was a wilful attempt to disguise mass murder in order to promote Communist ideology. It wasn't slovenly; it was extremely diligent and entirely malign. The NYT doesn't see this. They still fail to see that tolerating mass murder on the left is no different than the same on the right.

Not all that surprising, actually.

Posted 11/23/2003 02:22:08 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE FINAL CUT: Composer, arranger and conductor Michael Kamen died this past week at 55. He contributed some wonderful orchestral flourishes to Pink Floyd's later records, as well as scoring the Lethal Weapon movies.

Posted 11/23/2003 12:56:14 AM by Edward Driscoll
BET YOU CAN'T EAT JUST ONE: Or...maybe you can. The Roger Clinton, Frito-Lay Funyuns connection is explored at Flak magazine.