Culture

Comedy in the age of tolerance

Featured image The brilliant Michael Ramirez manages to smuggle several jokes into his editorial cartoon today (posted here on his Substack site. You’ve the title. You’ve got the bodyguards. You’ve got comedian Dave Chappelle barely visible in the background. You’ve got the comedian’s putative conformity to the tyranny of the times. (Chappelle actually took his life in his hands with his performance at the Hollywood Bowl.) And you’ve got the drawing. Comedy »

The Met Gala: Not All Bad?

Featured image The Metropolitan Museum’s annual Gala, superintended by Vogue’s Anna Wintour, is taking place tonight. The event’s theme is “Gilded Glamour,” and as usual celebrities major and minor are being photographed on the red carpet in more or less ridiculous outfits. The Gala is being widely abused in conservative media as out of touch, in view of the fact that Americans are suffering due to Bidenflation and other liberal maladies. It »

A salute to Michael Ramirez

Featured image Michael Ramirez is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist whose work we greatly admire. Most recently, he picked up another internationally recognized award for his work the 83rd annual Overseas Press Club Awards gala this past Friday in New York. The video below should be cued up to play at 49:11, with images of his work honored by the OPC award and his remarks accepting the award. For a conservative to »

HE who gets slapped

Featured image Taking the occasion of last night’s Academy Awards ceremony I would like to recall that HE Who Gets Slapped (1924) is one of the great Hollywood films of the silent era. Starring Lon Chaney as HE, it was the first movie to be produced by the newly formed MGM. The trailer below replays last night’s big event in a form that might even illuminate it. Even if it doesn’t, it’s »

“Do you find it risible?”

Featured image Steve has put up one of the very funny and philosophically acute scenes from Monty Python’s Life of Brian in the adjacent post. The funniest scene of the many funny scenes in the film takes on tyranny and laughter (and a few other issues related to human nature, as in the scene Steve highlights). “Anybody else feel like a little giggle?” I have taken the liberty of embedding it below. »

When you wish upon a CRT resolution

Featured image Justin Danhof is executive vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research and a shareholder gadfly. Earlier this week he spoke in favor of his Disney shareholder proposal seeking “to protect Disney from a myriad of legal and reputational risks stemming from its race-based employee training programs.” The center has posted background here. It has also posted the text of Danhof’s statement here. FOX News covers it here. »

Remembering Andrew Breitbart [With Comment by John]

Featured image Andrew Breitbart died 10 years ago today at the unreasonably young age of 43. The site named after him has posted the tribute below. The 59 speakers begin with Justice Clarence Thomas. Justice Thomas’s moving remarks come straight from the heart. Andrew was something like the proverbial force of nature and a genius a few times over. He seemed to have time for everyone. It is unbelievable how many of »

Munich, Netflix style

Featured image Netflix is streaming the movie made of Robert Harris’s Munich. The film is titled Munich: The Edge of War. Played by Jeremy Irons, Neville Chamberlain is the hero of the piece. The Free Beacon has commissioned Andrew Roberts to cast a historian’s eye on the proceedings. The heading of Roberts’s review deems it The Edge of Nonsense. Roberts is not entirely negative, but the minus outweighs the pluses: “The movie »

Not funny: P.J. O’Rourke dies at 74

Featured image John O’Hara famously observed on the death of George Gershwin that he “died on July 11, 1937, but I don’t have to believe it if I don’t want to.” I feel like that hearing the news that P.J. O’Rourke died yesterday at home in New Hampshire at the age of 74. He was a gifted humorist and prolific author in the American grain. His death represents an irreplaceable loss in »

Sunday morning coming down

Featured image Yesterday I started in on A Terry Teachout Reader over lunch. The Reader begins with his 1995 New York Times review of Dawn Powell’s Diaries cum tribute to Powell’s novels in just under 1,500 words. It is a marvel of concision and appreciation. It ends with his moving 1996 Commentary essay “Mourning Nancy LaMott” (retitled “My Friend Nancy”). “I loved her with all my heart,” he confesses in the introduction. »

Terry Teachout dies at 65

Featured image Terry Teachout died yesterday at the age of 65. When he was awarded one of the Bradley Prizes in 2014, I was ecstatic. I deemed him the great Terry Teachout. I cited his work for the Wall Street Journal (drama critic) and Commentary (critic-at-large) as well as his own site, About Last Night. The Journal pays tribute to him here and Commentary here. I’m sorry if either of these tributes »

How Sidney Poitier learned to read

Featured image Sidney Poitier died at the age of 94 last week. I knew he was an immigrant from the Bahamas and loved many of the movies he starred in, but I didn’t know much of the life story that John Podhoretz briefly related in the New York Post column “Sidney Poitier’s life was a testament to the greatest of American stories.” John didn’t get around to the deeply touching story about »

A note on Peter Bogdanovich

Featured image The death of the director Peter Bogdanovich caught me by surprise and saddened me yesterday. The New York Times obituary by Margalit Fox captures something of the vagaries of his life and career. In my memory he will always be the boy wonder who arrived seemingly out of nowhere with the brilliant black and white throwbacks The Last Picture Show (with the unforgettable performances of Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman) »

Bring on the dancing nurses

Featured image I only know from Twitter that the Biden White House cleared the decks for dancing nurses to perform a merry song on the premises. I understand the performance was recorded for the “Spirit of the Season” PBS special earlier this week. It might be the sorriest use to which the East Room has ever been put. The full-length portrait of George Washington looking on only adds insult to injury. The »

Elon Musk does the Babylon Bee

Featured image You may have heard that Elon Musk sat down with Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon, EIC Kyle Mann, and Creative Director Ethan Nicolle for an in-depth interview on wokeness, Elizabeth Warren, taxing the rich, the Metaverse, which superhero Elon would be, and how the left is killing comedy. The interview has made news on those subjects and more. The conversation occasionally flags, especially in the second half, but Musk himself »

Mr. Socialist confesses…

Featured image This is a personal note about Garrison Keillor. I began listening to Keillor on Minnesota Public Radio while I was in law school. Garrison occupied the station’s three-hour morning slot five days a week with A Prairie Home Morning Show. I thought the show was so entertaining and funny that he would become a star. I learned a lot about American popular music listening to the show. The first time »

Superman will no longer fight for “the American way”

Featured image John wrote here about how the Superman character will come out as bisexual in the latest DC Comics series. But there’s more to the new Superman. According to this report, Superman will no longer be said to fight for “truth, justice, and the American way.” The motto will be changed to “truth, justice, and a better tomorrow.” DC Comics defends the change on the theory that Superman does, indeed, fight »