The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

What Daria’s Grandfather Knew

Daria DiGiovanni commented on an earlier post: My maternal grandfather, who arrived with his widowed mother from Italy at the age of eight, was a staunch McCarthy supporter and anti-communist. He graduated from Temple Pharmacy School in 1919 and went on to open his own corner pharmacy in their neighborhood. My mom used to share […]

Never Forget: Joe McCarthy Was Right!

Senator Joseph McCarthy, a courageous and patriotic American. “Senator Cruz’s substantive point was absolutely correct: in the mid-1990s, the Harvard Law School faculty included numerous self-described proponents of ‘critical legal studies’ — a school of thought explicitly derived from Marxism – and they far outnumbered Republicans.” — Catherine Frazier, spokeswoman for Sen. Ted Cruz Democrats […]

Tony Sheridan, R.I.P.

The Beatles had their first recording sessions as his backup band during their formative Hamburg phase. He has died at age 72: In the spring of 1961, the German producer and composer Bert Kaempfert offered recording contracts to both Mr. Sheridan and the Beatles, with the intention of using the Beatles as Mr. Sheridan’s backup band, but with […]

Bolshevik Subversive Conor Friedersdorf: Innocent ‘Liberal’ Dupe or Red Agent?

“The Communists (we must give them credit for many things) are intelligent, are well disciplined, and take their orders direct from Moscow and are proud of it. . . . “Not only is Soviet Russia trying to wipe out all forms of religion, but it is successful in doing it.” — Rep. Hamilton Fish (R-New […]

Notes on Hip: Hanson as Sontag

Susan Sontag circa 1965 In 1964, Susan Sontag published a 6,000-word essay in Partisan Review called “Notes on ‘Camp,’” which described a hitherto little-noted phenomenon: A sensibility emerging from the gay subculture and just then beginning to diffuse itself through the world of art and theater. Sontag was a prodigy: She graduated high school at 15, […]

The Winners Write the History Books

“People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.” — Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) “In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think . . . but is altogether positive that he has arrived […]

The Sexual Avant-Garde

From the Wall Street Journal: Writing to James Jones in 1965, [novelist William Styron] describes a weekend visit to the Vineyard by Jackie Kennedy: “We swam around quite a bit on the ocean beach and I rubbed a good deal of Sea n’ Ski foam on the widow’s thighs. . . . I hate to […]

The Stalinist at Montclair State

Smitty blogged about this Monday, but amid the election excitement, I worry that it may have been overlooked. During an Oct. 25 debate at Montclair State University, Professor Grover Furr denied the systematic mass murders committed under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin: “What you said is a bulls–t. It’s wrong. It’s a lie. . . . […]

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