Latest Parries
February 2012
2001: A Space Odyssey: Exemplary, Luminous
After they finished watching the Bond movies, I figured the next series John Gruber and Dan Benjamin would discuss on The Talk Show would be Stanley Kubrick’s oeuvre. But Gruber refused — too personal for podcasting, he said. Disappointed, I rewatched 2001 and wrote up my own thoughts.
January 2012
A Scheme of a Number of Friends
Instead of acknowledging the wisdom of leading from behind, the Right jumped on the Obama administration’s handling of Libya as yet another example of at best incompetence. They lost me there.
October 2011
The Mouse and the Cantilever
Steve Jobs we lost at the age of 56; when Frank Lloyd Wright reached that age it was still only 1923, the time of merely his second comeback with Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel.
March 2010
Friendship is for Weenies
It’s amazing, given the adulation he enjoyed elsewhere, that the Israeli public knew from the start not to trust this US President.
Before the Setup
Nobody from usesthis.com has asked me what my setup us, nor is likely to anytime soon. So I’m just going to mouth off here about it. But first, some background.
February 2010
Walter Russell Mead steps gingerly into the Wieseltier/Sullivan imbroglio
On the Leon Wieseltier/Andrew Sullivan spat, Walter Russell Mead seems to want to have his strudel and eat it too.
October 2009
My Hope: Obama’s Change
Defeat in the Olympics bid may focus the mind in the Oval Office where it should be: Afghanistan.
July 2009
At Modi’in Mall
There’s nothing else around here except empty desolate pretty hills. The Israel Trail passes by a bit to the west. It’s a hot July Wednesday morning. Things are reasonably busy. The shops are mostly franchises, almost all homegrown — Super-Pharm, Aroma, Tzomet Sfarim, Cup O’ Joe’s, LaMetayel, Mega, Fox, Castro, H&O.
Israel, the Bad So Far
I’m surprised at the general appearance of Tel Aviv folks. Yes, it’s hot, but people appear dressed as if they’re in, I don’t know, Be’er Sheva. And the people in Be’er Sheva, last time I was there, looked to me like they’re dressed for Gaza.
March 2009
Namaste, Dharma Workmen
What do the Lost characters mostly want these days? It’s not to get off the island. Increasingly, the island is just where they live and love. If anything, they’ve found home — or, rather, their home found them.
A President of the United States must be ebullient. If during an election neither candidate displays ebullience, he or she who demonstrates characteristics closest to it wins. I’ve wanted McCain to win, mainly because I view things from a Middle Eastern perspective, and believe that McCain will confront the bad guys more steadily, craftily and with a will to win than will Obama, whom I suspect will instead seek to elide the conflict and thereby ineluctably worsen it.
But to my mind McCain has performed disastrously at the three presidential debates, and even with our new wide-bandwith internet age, these are still the main event. He has seemed ill-at-ease, frustrated and rude, winning an ebullience quotient of approximately zero. These debates are not negotiations; there is no treaty to sign at the end. All they are about is how the candidate makes you feel while he speaks. McCain made me wince.
Why could we not see at the debates a McCain like we saw at the Al Smith dinner? How much more charming, dignified, grown-up, amusing he was here, and what’s frustrating is that reporters say this is more representative of how the man actually is. Even via the low-res YouTube video of the speech, the hilarity among the good and the great was infectious, the stately room electric with the presence of the greatest among them.
Stature plus hilarity = ebullience. How about the Republican campaign stop producing ads and instead spend its coffers running this speech in its entirety everywhere?
Previously
History Tonight, McCain vs. Obama