Blue v. Red
The Providence Journal’s Bob Kerr slipped a curious few paragraphs in the midst of a 600-word piece of derision: Brown students are not enjoying their unintended celebrity. But then they haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory on the social front lately. For a while now, neighbors of the university have been complaining that student parties…
My latest FactIs column, “The Premises of the Culture of Death,” ponders a theme upon which I can’t quite land my finger. Something about things not meaning what they mean in pulsing cultural conversation that lacks substance. This, by the way, is my final FactIs column. I’m very grateful to the folks who produce the…
Right.
What can one do but marvel that Providence Journal page B.01 columnist Bob Kerr would commit this to print: It’s a day to be silly. We’re not just inaugurating a president; we’re inaugurating a whole new way of life in which the entire country becomes its own reality show. People watch us from other places,…
A previous posting highlighted how the coarsening of our public debate in America has resulted from the use of extreme language that only seeks to intimidate, not to persuade. Subsequently, there was the usual talk after the election about how the conservative winners should “moderate” their views, a code word suggesting that capitulating on key…
The latest salvo in the long-running local discussion of the relationship between social workers and socialism comes from Richard Hill of Narragansett: Schools of social work offer little to no education on how to run a business. Thus, some social workers have no concept of how to succeed without getting a check from the government.…
Questions of schadenfreude’s sinfulness aside, I have to thank Northeast Dilemma for pointing on New England Republican to an uplifting column by Katha Pollitt. I daresay that, with this paragraph, Pollitt opens wide the thickets that hide the secret path to a sunnier political perspective: Sometimes I think America is becoming another place, unrecognizable. David…
Congrats to Will Ricci, of the NFRA of RI, for being named editor of the Rhode Island HQ pages of GOPUSA. The more conservatives in this state can reach beyond its borders, the better our chances of forcing change. Will’s got some blog-like posts of news from around Rhode Island, and he’s in the process…
I share Bil Herron’s consternation at not making the cut for the latest local-media dip into the blogosphere. Unfortunately, neither Anchor Rising nor Dust in the Light nor The Ocean State Blogger has Bil’s obvious reasons to blame. No, in our case, it’s not a lack of effort; it’s just us — the price of…
On Friday, I went to Barnes & Noble in Middletown to see if the store had one or both of the magazines in which my work currently appears. I couldn’t find any copies of Newport Life, and the two copies of National Review on the rack were two-issues old. Well, I just called to ask…