Bookworm on Mar 02 2007 | Filed under: Culture, Hollywood, Political correctness
I don’t know what Tina Fey’s politics are, and I don’t want to know. The NBC show 30 Rock, which she writes and in which she stars is one of the best social satires around, which includes repeated deft and funny political asides. The show skewers both parties with such a light touch [...]
Bookworm on Mar 02 2007 | Filed under: Culture
Miramax is releasing a new motion picture called “Becoming Jane Austen,” which purports to tell of Jane’s abortive romance with a wild Irish lawyer. There is no doubt that, when she was young, Austen met Tom Lefroy, a young Anglo-Irish lawyer, thought he was nice, and had fun dancing with him. That’s it. [...]
Bookworm on Feb 13 2007 | Filed under: Culture
I won’t blog here about my thoughts about Love, American Style, because I already wrote about it here, at American Thinker. Check it out, and then be sure to come back and let me know what you think!
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Bookworm on Feb 06 2007 | Filed under: Culture, Education, Feminism, Sex
My son asked me how Valentine’s Day began. I explained that, a long time ago, there was a man named Valentine who was known for his kindness to young couples who wished to get married (and he may have given doweries to poor girls so they could marry). He was also a Christian [...]
Bookworm on Feb 01 2007 | Filed under: Culture
I wonder where she’ll go from here? It’s a tough (impossible?) act to follow.
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the last of seven installments of the boy wizard’s adventures, will be published July 21, authorJ.K. Rowling said Thursday.
Rowling announced the publication date on her Web site.
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Bookworm on Sep 02 2006 | Filed under: Bush Derangement Syndrome, Culture
In a peculiar way, I’m becoming very fond of David Denby, one of The New Yorker’s resident movie reviewers. It’s clear that he aspires to be another Frank Rich — Rich, of course, being the former New York Times‘ theater critic who made the leap to ultra liberal political op-ed columnist.
In the short time [...]
Bookworm on Aug 16 2006 | Filed under: Culture, Media matters
I’ve become very fond of David Denby’s movie reviews in the New Yorker, largely because he can’t resist letting his politics leak out all over the place. I’ve blogged before about his slobbering praise for Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, and his compulsion to use Garrison Keilor’s Prairie Home Companion as a forum for [...]
Bookworm on Aug 15 2006 | Filed under: Culture
My mother and I put our heads together tonight and began bemoaning the absence of charm in our modern world. The subject came up when, a propos something in our conversation, I quoted a line from “Singing in the Rain.” We fell silent a moment as we thought of that most wonderful movie, [...]
Bookworm on Aug 08 2006 | Filed under: Culture
Although we didn’t ask for it, TiVo decided to record Airport, the 1970 airport disaster movie that started a whole genre of movies about burning buildings and sinking ships, and goodness knows what. I’d never seen it before, although I’ve seen seen Airplane several times. As you know, Airplane, which was released in [...]
Bookworm on Aug 01 2006 | Filed under: Culture, Feminism, Hollywood
I don’t ordinarily read Time Magazine, since I decided years ago, even before my political transformation, that it held little interest for me. (Although I distinctly remember, in 1982, a “hip” young man I worked with castigating it as a conservative mag fit only for parents.) The only reason I even read it [...]
Bookworm on Jul 30 2006 | Filed under: Culture, Literature
Since I have a sometimes embarrassing fondness for romance novels (Mr. Bookworm teases me a lot), I’ve written about romance novels before (once about British chick-lit, which I think is demeaning to women; and once about the conservative morals underpinning American romances). I was therefore intrigued when AP did a little story about the [...]
Bookworm on Jul 28 2006 | Filed under: Culture, Hollywood
When two people leave me messages saying I must, absolutely must, read a movie review, I take that seriously. I therefore headed over to the Washington Post and read the review for Ant Bully. I can now tell you that you must, absolutely must, read the Ant Bully review. Even if, after the first couple [...]
Bookworm on Jul 17 2006 | Filed under: Culture, Europe
I can’t decide if this is the beginning of the end for any hope of normal society in Holland, or if it is an appropriate event in a free society, which allows issues to be aired and decided upon by the voters:
A Dutch court refused Monday to ban a political party whose main goal is [...]
Bookworm on Jul 10 2006 | Filed under: Anti-war, Bush Derangement Syndrome, Culture, Media matters
One of today’s most emailed NPR stories discusses a book by Robert Jensen, a professor of media ethics and journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. In his book, Jensen purports to explain why all white people are in fact racists. I haven’t listened to the story, nor have I read the book [...]
Bookworm on Jun 05 2006 | Filed under: Culture, Judges, Judicial activism, Media matters
The New York Times has come up with an editorial that contains a perfect bootstrapping argument, one that works off the premise it is supposed to prove. It's an almost impressive piece of dishonest rhetoric, whether or not one agrees with the sentiment expressed.
The context for this amazing piece of rhetorical sleight-of-hand is the Times' [...]
Bookworm on Jun 05 2006 | Filed under: Culture, Silly Stuff
NPR's Fresh Air recently did a replay of a 1996 interview with Tiny Tim (born Herbert B. Khaury), who died only a few months after the interview. It's quite amazing. Tiny Tim was a complete nut, but also a true musical savant, with an encylopedic knowledge of old American music, and a wonderful, although somewhat [...]
Bookworm on May 15 2006 | Filed under: Crime and punishment, Culture, Democrats, Media matters
The West Wing, the now defunct NBC show, is the ne plus ultra illustration of how Democrats think the world should be run. Indeed, you can amuse yourself with a list of top Left Wing scenes culled from all of the show's episodes. Last night, though, I was struck by a plot line [...]
Bookworm on May 08 2006 | Filed under: Culture, Education
I'm intransigently hostile to a great deal of modern pop music, because I consider it ugly, crude, vulgar, violent and hypersexualized. (I feel like saying here, "But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?) I don't even like Radio Disney because, although it presents the slighter cleaner end of [...]
Bookworm on May 03 2006 | Filed under: Culture
Frederica Mathewes-Green writes a screamingly, hair-pullingly funny article about her failed effort to book a flight for herself and her family. We've all been there: the extremely nice Indian phone operator who never quite understands your American English; the fact that, when dealing with a big company, every employee has different ideas about [...]
Bookworm on Apr 26 2006 | Filed under: Culture
My son belongs to a music group that functions in a large urban area, but has suburban satellites. My son trains with one of those satellites. In the days leading up to performances, all of the satellite groups descend on the urban center for final rehearsals. I got to audit one of [...]
Bookworm on Apr 08 2006 | Filed under: Abortion, America, Culture, Religion
Some time ago, when I was still blogging at Blogger, I wrote a post asking what an American theocracy would look like. I asked this question because it occurred to me that, while liberals were frantically throwing around statements about Bush's "ultra conservatism" and "scary fundamentalism," none were articulating what they thought would happen if [...]
Bookworm on Apr 07 2006 | Filed under: Crime and punishment, Culture
Working away today, I caught an NPR story about social and behavioral scientists who are beginning to study altruisim and freeloading (which can be flipsides of each other). The results of the studies indicate that the healthiest groups (at least in economic models) are those that, not only do not reward freeloading, but actively [...]
Bookworm on Apr 06 2006 | Filed under: Culture, Men
I did something I rarely do: I made an impulse purchase of a just-released movie on DVD. I simply couldn't resist buying The Chronicles of Narnia : The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. I then watched it again with the kids, and found it just as good as I remembered from viewing it [...]
Bookworm on Apr 04 2006 | Filed under: Culture
Faith is a tremendous virtue — when it comes to religion. It has dubious value in the political field, as Thomas Sowell so neatly explains:
What is more frightening than any particular policy or ideology is the widespread habit of disregarding facts. Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey put it this way: "Demagoguery beats data."
People who [...]
Bookworm on Apr 03 2006 | Filed under: Culture, Mormons
I seem to be on a binge of books that make me wonder. Today's book is Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith. This is a book I mentioned before in connection with my reflections on whether a religion can abandon founding tenets and still be considered true [...]
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