Joseph Bottum

This weekend, the Wall Street Journal ran an interesting story about Joshua Hochschild, an assistant professor of medieval philosophy, who was recently fired from the evangelical Wheaton College for his conversion to Catholicism. It’s well known among journalists that one of the most strictly . . . . Continue Reading »

I’m not sure we’re giving Jeffrey Hart his due. The book chapter he published in the Wall Street Journal , in which he advised conservatives to surrender to the irreversible fact of Roe v. Wade , has received a number of powerful corrections on the blog of the New Criterion , together . . . . Continue Reading »

Can I register a complaint here about the increasing use of “theocon” to describe all politically conservative religious people? Andrew Sullivan has been pushing the word for some while now: Richard John Neuhaus is officially the ” theocon-in-chief ,” which I reckon trumps . . . . Continue Reading »

As I remember, the 1960 movie version of Inherit the Wind ended with Spencer Tracy (as the Clarence Darrow figure) packing together in his briefcase the Bible and a copy of Origin of Species . From the moment H.L. Mencken made himself the star of American journalism—by covering the circus . . . . Continue Reading »

Somewhere along a career misspent in journalism, I seem to have gotten assigned the Christmas beat. I’ve written about Christmas food, Christmas music, Christmas books, Christmas poetry, Christmas church services, Christmas toys, Christmas . . . Christmas . . . Christmas . . . Most of them . . . . Continue Reading »

One Christmas topic I’ve never written about is Christmas movies—mostly because I just don’t know very much about them. Here, however, are a few films I’ve rented this week and hope to watch between Christmas and New Year’s. I may have made a mistake or two in the . . . . Continue Reading »

There was a woman screaming on Park Avenue yesterday morning, flecks of furious saliva spraying from her twisted mouth as she raged into her cell phone, "It’s not my fault." Over and over, like the high-pitched squeal of a power saw cutting brick: It’s not my fault and a run . . . . Continue Reading »

"Christmas is coming," my daughter sang in that piercing, glass-shattering treble of eight-year-old girls. "Christmas is coming, my father’s getting fat. Please put a penny in the old man’s hat." So I gave her a stern and serious lecture about honoring her parents, . . . . Continue Reading »

Ah, Christmas time, that fecund moment most welcome in the bleak of bitter winter! Ah, Advent days, so rich, so ripe, so opulent in golden light, while like a pall of poverty the hoary frost and thin-crust snow lie hard upon the cold-pressed earth! Ah, Yuletide, when for the briefest instant in the . . . . Continue Reading »

Vetting advertisements for a magazine is always a little tricky. Editors have a financial responsibility to keep the publication going, and it’s a fairly well-established practice in the trade to accept ads that don’t necessarily match the magazine’s editorial line¯I suppose . . . . Continue Reading »