Monthly Archives: November 2016
November 24, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Chief CNN International correspondent and anchor Christiane Amanpour received the Committee to Protect Journalists’ Burton Benjamin Memorial Award for extraordinary and sustained achievement in the cause of press freedom at the 2016 International Press Freedom Awards ceremony in New York on November 22, 2016. Amanpour is an insufferably condescending purveyor of the conventional wisdom in the name of truth, justice and the American way. In her acceptance speech (video below,
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November 24, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Jon Chenette is the interim president of Vassar College. He is a little late getting in on the freakout act in the wake of Donald Trump’s election as president. He takes the occasion of Thanksgiving to make up for his tardiness. He treats the operative shibboleths and cliches as so much stuffing for this particular turkey. I thought that readers who have followed this series so far might find President
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November 24, 2016 — Scott Johnson
We pause to give thanks for Sarah Josepha Hale, the 74-year-old magazine editor who wrote a letter to Abraham Lincoln on September 28, 1863, urging him to have the “day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival.” She explained, “You may have observed that, for some years past, there has been an increasing interest felt in our land to have the Thanksgiving held on the same
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November 23, 2016 — John Hinderaker
Those Democrats sure know how to have a good time. While the rest of us are looking forward to family reunions and delicious turkey dinners, the Democratic Party is coaching its faithful on how to win political arguments. This is from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, a “Guide to Thanksgiving With Your Republican Relatives.” Click to enlarge: It isn’t worth the trouble to fact-check this whole mass of talking points,
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November 23, 2016 — John Hinderaker
I don’t pay a lot of attention to spices, but my wife, being a terrific cook, does. So she pointed out that following the election, a Wisconsin-based spice company called Penzeys has announced that it only wants customers from one side of the aisle: “The open embrace of racism by the Republican Party in this election is now unleashing a wave of ugliness unseen in this country for decades,” Bill
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November 23, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
I am away for Thanksgiving and hadn’t intended to blog. But I want to comment briefly on Donald Trump’s decision to select Nikki Haley for the U.N. ambassador post. I think it’s an excellent choice. Haley should be able to stand up to bullying by our adversaries. After all, she stood up well to Trump during the campaign. Haley is, I believe, in tune with Trump’s nationalism but will uphold
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November 23, 2016 — Steven Hayward
A couple days ago I wandered into the Berkeley Bowl Market, which is where upscale hippiedom of Berkeley shops for its fair-trade kale and such. Oh, my! The experience does not disappoint. The people watching was even better than the Whole Foods in Boulder, which was the size of a Home Depot. One of these days I’ll take a hidden video camera for some candid shots. Maybe I’ll wear a
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November 23, 2016 — Scott Johnson
The rise of Keith Ellison to his seat representing Minnesota’s Fifth District has been a national story since day one. Minneapolis’s Star Tribune has chosen to serve as Ellison’s handmaiden over the past 10 years. As Ellison’s humble servant, the Star Tribune has forsaken journalism and left the history of Ellison’s long involvement with the Nation of Islam right where Ellison wants it, on the cutting room floor. That is
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November 23, 2016 — Scott Johnson
We conclude our preview of the Fall issue of the Claremont Review of Books today with the essay by Algis Valiunas on Edward Gibbons’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Algis is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a contributing editor to The New Atlantis. Algis is also a learned essayist whose work regularly appears in the CRB. His essay on Gibbon
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November 22, 2016 — John Hinderaker
Today Donald Trump held an on-the-record meeting with the New York Times. Despite the meeting being of record, no transcript has been released. Instead, we know about what transpired through tweets by various Times reporters–which, shockingly, are spun in an anti-Trump direction. The Associated Press headlines: “Trump again disavows alt-right, white supremacists.” No doubt much else was discussed, but this is what millions of newspaper readers will see: an association
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November 22, 2016 — Steven Hayward
The Trump Era is going to be great for watching the Civil War on the LeftTM (and hence this investment advice: buy long popcorn futures). Today’s exhibit is the reaction to Mark Lilla’s New York Times article from last weekend, “The End of Identity Liberalism,” in which Lilla, a professor of the humanities at Columbia University and a self-identified liberal, actually says some sensible things: But how should this diversity shape
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November 22, 2016 — Steven Hayward
The liberal freakout over the election is likely to turn into at least a four-year Broadway show (apparently Broadway is the only safe space for liberalism right now, to read the paranoid rantings of the mononoids of the left). Here’s the latest communication from The Nation, with my comments in brackets: Dear Friend of The Nation, A country in which a presidential candidate with a lead of almost 2 million votes
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November 22, 2016 — Steven Hayward
Before the election I was saying that one interesting thing to watch, especially if Trump lost as most of the polls forecast, is whether we’d see a return to split-ticket voting of the kind we used to see in the 1970s and 1980s. Several Republican Senate candidates distanced themselves from Trump with mixed results (like Toomey in PA and Ayotte in NH), while some House candidates in swingier districts campaigned
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November 22, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
Of course not. But that’s the theory of a liberal Washington Post writer called Catherine Rampell. She writes: I. . .wouldn’t be surprised if Pence attended Friday’s performance specifically hoping, or at least expecting, to stoke boos and a brouhaha that would ultimately rouse the Republican base — and distract from much more embarrassing Trump-related news. What embarrassing Trump-related news? The Trump University settlement, foreign diplomats booking stays at Trump’s
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November 22, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Weekly Standard online editor Michael Warren invited me to draw on my experience writing about Keith Ellison over the past 10 years to speak up about him for Standard readers now that he has emerged as a leading contender to chair the national Democratic Party. Using a few links, I condense much of what I have to say in “The trouble with Keith Ellison.” Here is a chunk of it:
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November 22, 2016 — Scott Johnson
We continue with our preview of the new (Fall) issue of the Claremont Review of Books. If you are a subscriber, it should arrive in the mail just in time to aid your Christmas shopping. If you aren’t a subscriber, you can subscribe for $19.95 by clicking on Subscription Services and get immediate online access thrown in for free. In Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the
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November 21, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
Conservatives critics have written favorably about the musical “Hamilton.” Alexander Hamilton is, after all, a hero to some conservatives. And conservatives are inclined to be pleased any time large audiences are exposed to American history in a manner that doesn’t abuse or demean men like Hamilton. In the case of “Hamilton,” conservative critics found the history presented to be serious and reasonably accurate. Even so, I couldn’t help suspecting that,
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