If you haven’t already done so, add this regulation to your rules for living: Never take sex advice from a man who licks doorknobs. The reasoning”as if a reason needed to be given”is that a man who doesn’t understand the telos of a doorknob isn’t likely to understand the telos of sex. Unfortunately, many people seem to disagree with me, which is why Dan Savage has become one of the most influential sex-advice columnists in America… . Continue Reading»
Whatever its other accomplishments, Henry Kissinger’s new book, On China, ought to cause serious reconsideration of that now-familiar refrain, “China-is-the-lead-country-of-the-future.” Kissinger’s analysis of Chinese history has been criticized, as has his reticence about evils like the massacres at Tiananmen Square. But his conclusion”that China’s future depends on the resolution of the conflict between those of its leaders who want to maintain totalitarian political control at all costs and those who want to complete the country’s remarkable economic development with a genuine opening toward democratic governance”strikes me as a fair summary of the situation… . Continue Reading»
Let me begin this column with a disclaimer: I am not a big fan of Sarah Palin. The reason I know this is because any time I write anything either mildly or constructively critical of the woman, I get scores of emails excoriating me as a “Palin-hater from the get-go”, from people who are completely aware that I not only predicted her invite to the McCain ticket, but applauded it, too. But the reason I must make the disclaimer is to head-off those who truly do hate Palin and try to disguise their hate in concerns over how she dresses. These are the people who dismiss any defense of her as mindless wingnuttery… . Continue Reading»
Those of a certain age will remember Love Story, the best-selling weeper novel of the late sixties written by Erich Segal, a classics professor at Yale who spent a sabbatical at Harvard, the setting for the novel. The book was later adapted for a hit movie starring Ali McGraw as the Radcliffe College tragic heroine and Ryan O’ Neill as her lover at Harvard. … Continue Reading»
We’re wrapping up our spring fund raising campaign. If you responded to my letter to subscribers appealing for support, please accept my heartfelt thanks. If you did not”or if, God forbid, you’re not a subscriber and did not receive my letter”please consider making an electronic donation today. It’s easy. There’s a nifty “click to donate” button just to the right. We need your support… . Continue Reading»
One would have thought that no Republican would be able to drive pundits toward the edge of sanity as deftly as George W. Bush used to, but Sarah Palin has surpassed him. She is as hated by the Left as viscerally as Bill and Hillary were by the Right. She’s the latest in a string of conservative targets: Reagan, Bush, now Palin”all cast successively as rightwing bumpkins du jour… . Continue Reading»
In one of my columns last January, I mentioned that there had been no practicing pagans in my family since the death of my great uncle Aloysius Bentley (1895-1987), who liked to welcome in the New Year by sacrificing a goat or a pair of woodcocks to Janus and Dionysus on the small marble altar he kept in his garden (carved for him by a sculptor who specialized in funerary monuments)… . Continue Reading»
It was 1985 and I was chatting with the pastor of Lutheran congregation located on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The congregation he served had a long and once distinguished history but neighborhood change, Lutherans dying off with no replacements, and other factors had brought about a long, sad decline in the fortunes of both neighborhood and church. I was there to interview on becoming his successor. I had four children to that point, all towheaded. He called them “street bait.” That dampened things a bit… . Continue Reading»
Linguistic battles are difficult when the words are obviously different (gender vs. sex, pro-life vs. anti-abortion, etc.). They are much harder when the word stays the same, but the meaning changes. The same-sex marriage movement reveals that “marriage” has already undergone a meaning shift. Recognizing”and addressing”the character of that shift has to be a major part of how we defend marriage today… . Continue Reading»
There is one excellent reason, as Dorothy Sayers might say, why the veriest amateur may feel entitled to have an opinion about influence. For if we are not all professional influencers, we have all, at some time or another, been influenced. I have certainly been more influenced than influential. But over the years I have also become something of a student of influence, seeking to learn what I can about how to become more effective at being effectual. … Continue Reading»
