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April 19, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Listening to Tom Petty’s Buried Treasure channel on Sirius XM yesterday I heard a Motown song I hadn’t heard since I was a teenager — “You Beat Me To the Punch,” a hit single for Mary Wells and a deep track on The Temptations Sing Smokey. The song was written by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles’ Ronnie White. I take it from Nelson George’s Where Did Our Love Go? that
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April 17, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Columbia University is a hotbed of anti-Semitism right now, and has seen more than its share of ugly incidents since October 7. Right now Columbia president Minouche Shafik is testifying before the same House committee where Harvard’s Claudine Gay self-immolated last fall. I’ve watched a few minutes of the proceedings, and it is clear that Shafik is much better prepared than was Gay to give halfway sensible answers to the
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April 17, 2024 — Steven Hayward
In yesterday’s item about the suspension of longtime NPR business editor Uri Berliner for telling the truth about NPR’s deep ideological bias, I meant to conclude by saying that the obvious next step would be his dismissal from NPR. And today the other shoe dropped: Berliner has “resigned” from NPR, but make no mistake, it was quite clear that NPR’s new Stasi management would no longer tolerate his presence. And
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April 14, 2024 — Steven Hayward
• Bill Maher has gone off the reservation once again, debunking lefty talking points about the greatness of our neighbors and Scandinavia while ignoring facts: • The late John Von Kannon, one of the founders of The American Spectator back in the 1960s, persuaded me many years ago that professional wrestling was a conservative sport, because it is a melodramatic morality play, with clear good guys and bad guys. (This
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April 13, 2024 — Steven Hayward
• For the many of you wondering and sending me notes, this week’s 3WHH podcast will post up tomorrow. Complicated schedules have prevented us from finding time this week to record the episode. • This is a sign of civic health: • The Associated Press continues its beclowning process: • You might well think that even with its diminished cognitive capacity, the New York Times would be able to draw
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April 9, 2024 — Steven Hayward
One of the classic articles from 30 years ago that still gets recalled fondly was Glenn Garvin’s “How Do I Hate NPR? Let Me Count the Ways,” which I think first appeared in the late Washington DC City Paper. Even back then I referred to NPR’s two main shows, “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” as “Morning Sedition” and “All Things Distorted.” The very voice tones of Susan Stamberg and
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March 31, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
“When Front Page Magazine applied to join Google’s AdSense advertising program we were turned down,” notes Daniel Greenfield of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. “Since Google, like other Big Tech monopolies, has censored and deplatformed us in the past, we weren’t too shocked. But this time, Google told us why we had been banned.” The ban was due to this writer’s “Remember the San Bernardino Fourteen,” from December 3, 2021.
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March 31, 2024 — Steven Hayward
I’m currently working on a long paper I’m presenting at an academic conference on the legacy of the late historian John Patrick Diggins (d. 2009) in New York later this week (poster below, in case any New York area readers might like to drop in), and I can’t resist posting a couple of provocative thoughts from my jumble of notes. Like this from Diggins: Louis Hartz was the first to
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March 27, 2024 — John Hinderaker
In the New York Times, an Israeli lawyer named Amit Soussana describes how she was kidnapped by up to ten Gazans, dragged into Gaza, and was tortured and subject to sexual abuse while held as a captive. It is now-familiar, but horrifying story: The kidnappers attempted to restrain her by beating her and wrapping her in a white fabric, the video shows. Unable to subdue her, the attackers tried and
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March 24, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Few things so clearly reveal the innermost ugliness and presumptuousness of our ruling class clustered in and around Washington DC (where eight of the ten highest-income counties in the nation now cluster) than the recent Wall Street Journal news account of a “scandal” in DC-area little league baseball. It seems politically powerful people, especially elite lawyers, rigged the local little league process for creating a level playing field among teams
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March 24, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Robert “Beto” O’Rourke—remember him?—appeared on Bill Maher’s comedy show Friday night, and accused Big Retail—”the Walmarts, the Amazons, the Krogers of the world” of price gouging. But it is O’Rourke’s explanation that earns him an entire feature display in the Museum of Leftist Stupidity: “They were jacking prices in the middle of inflation and blaming it on the economy.” Imagine! Raising prices during inflation! Who ever heard of such a
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March 23, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
“My guest is Christine Blasey Ford,” said NPR’s Terry Gross on her March 19 “Fresh Air” show. “She testified at Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing that he sexually assaulted her.” Blasey Ford has a new book, One Way Back, and in the lengthy interview the author explains: I did retraumatize myself, having to go back through everything and relive it. And I tried to write a book a couple of years
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March 16, 2024 — Steven Hayward
There are days when I’m tempted to join the Elizabeth Warren/Bernie Sanders/Joe Biden crusade to impose confiscatory taxes on billionaires. Not for economic or fiscal grounds, or even less for making billionaires “pay their fair share” (“fair share” in liberal speak just means “more”). To the contrary, I’m starting to think we should take the fortunes from many billionaires to stop them from doing more harm than the government does
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March 12, 2024 — John Hinderaker
This long piece in the London Times describes the efforts of some British Muslims to prohibit blasphemy, either through legal action or through mob violence: Britain faces an alarming rise in intimidation and threats of violence against those perceived to have insulted Islam, a new report will warn. Protests condemning acts of apparent blasphemy have become more frequent and radicalised, according to independent research commissioned by the government’s counterextremism chief.
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March 2, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Don’t believe the headlines that Mitch McConnell is really stepping down. He’s going to replicate himself as an AI robot. Just keep in mind the lifespan of turtles, and you’ll know I’m right. And the crash of Google’s Gemini AI is a distraction—it’s just another CIA-Taylor Swift psy-op. Want: Headlines of the week: And finally. . . Tulsi Gabbard:
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February 27, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Social media alerts me to the fact that today would be Sir Roger Scruton’s 80th birthday. Sadly, Sir Roger passed away from cancer in 2020. I got to know Sir Roger fairly well in his last decade, and had several splendid exhilarating dinners with him and his lovely wife Sophie over very expensive bottles of fine Bordeaux (among his 50-plus superb books was, after all, I Drink, Therefore I Am—highly
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February 27, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Okay, this is officially the funniest thing on the internet right now: “Tucker Carlson” explaining the real story of Lord of the Rings. (There are a bunch more of these on YouTube, like this one. YMMV.) As promised, Here’s an AI Tucker Carlson narrating The Lord of the Rings@MiddleearthMixr @TuckerCarlson pic.twitter.com/eiXtR0m2qz — Dr. Maverick Alexander (@MaverickDarby) February 25, 2024
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