The Western and the superhero movie—the two most American genres in cinema—come from the same literary tradition: the great American mythos. In that tradition, America is history told as legend. This is not to say that the nation’s history is fabricated, but that it is attuned to the rhythms and themes of storytelling: the taciturnContinueContinue reading “New sheriffs of the old west”
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A Long Way From Cable Street
Professor Robert Wistrich is the world’s foremost scholar on the ideological pathology of anti-Semitism. A former leftist, he has drifted to the Right in recent decades and in doing so has noted the growing clamour by some on the Left to reboot long-standing reactionary prejudices against Jews as “criticism” of the state of Israel andContinueContinue reading “A Long Way From Cable Street”
Liz Lochhead’s selective boycott
The poet Liz Lochhead, known to a generation of Scottish schoolchildren as “the one that’s not Carol Ann Duffy”, has joined calls for a boycott of Batsheva Dance Company. Batsheva is an Israeli troupe which – unless Lochhead gets her way – will be performing at the Playhouse on Thursday as part of the Edinburgh Festival, Scotland’sContinueContinue reading “Liz Lochhead’s selective boycott”
Unkind to mankind on screen
“There is a greater good, and for that you must be sacrificed,” explains the Director (played by Sigourney Weaver), the figurehead of a mysterious organization with the cheery corporate goal of staving off the end times. We are in the dying moments of The Cabin in the Woods, a campy horror movie written by JossContinueContinue reading “Unkind to mankind on screen”
Dayan’s lesson
Moshe Dayan, Ariel Sharon once said, “would wake up with a hundred ideas. Of them 95 were dangerous; three more were bad; the remaining two, however, were brilliant.” The historian Mordechai Bar-On, who has published a new book on his former boss Moshe Dayan: Israel’s Controversial Hero (Yale, £18.99), would argue that the late IsraeliContinueContinue reading “Dayan’s lesson”
A love letter with laughs
Screwball, the most American subgenre of comedy, is satirical but gentle-satirical. It pulls its punches. Not about its leads, whom it skewers mercilessly, but about bigger social questions. There is no political consciousness to be found in a screwball comedy, or at least not one with the edge of a critique. Even the Depression-era ribbingContinueContinue reading “A love letter with laughs”
Reign of ignorance
America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered In the Obamacrats) By David Gelernter Encounter, 185 pages Why is the American academy so monolithically left-wing? David Gelernter, himself a tenured professor of computer science at Yale, attempts an answer in his new book America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered In theContinueContinue reading “Reign of ignorance”
Tzipi Livni resigns, Newsweek list-compilers hardest hit
The announcement brought a hush to the faculty lounges. In the newsroom of Haaretz, tambourines fell silent; the morning rendition of Od Yavo Shalom Aleinu cut off mid-chorus. Over at the New Israel Fund, filing of petitions to demand the Supreme Court demolish yet another home in Judea and Samaria was put on hold. ThereContinueContinue reading “Tzipi Livni resigns, Newsweek list-compilers hardest hit”
Attacking Ann Romney
And so it begins. With Rick Santorum out of the race Mitt Romney is the presumptive Republican nominee. The Democrat smear machine has begun in earnest. Most seasoned observers predicted class warfare rhetoric would play a critical role in the Obama campaign’s case against Romney. What no one predicted was how quickly Democrats would targetContinueContinue reading “Attacking Ann Romney”
Santorum’s exit
So I’ve been pretty mean about Rick Santorum. I’ve made fun of his interview tantrums and his weird obsession with the possibility that, somewhere, right now, in Vermont, two guys called Bruce and Bernard could be picking out matching his’n’his dressing gowns at Bed, Bath and Beyond. I mocked his condomnation (trademark pending) of birthContinueContinue reading “Santorum’s exit”
Stephen Daisley 