If you are old enough to have witnessed the not-so-distant arc of Bob Dole’s political career in real time, you will have some context for the apparent re-invention of Tim Pawlenty. You will also know the precise manner in which the Evangelical Christian right has debased the Republican primary to the current level at which it yields every four years a depressing spectacle of hypocrisy, hateful demagoguery, and anti-intellectualism.
Monthly Archives: June 2011
The Problem with Identity Politics
It wasn’t long ago that one would hear it said the world will be a different place when women are in charge. But then came the masculine regimes of Indira Gandhi — from whom a politician as dirty and ruthless as Richard Nixon recoiled — and Margaret Thatcher. From then forward, the essentialist claim that female leadership is distinct from its male counterpart could be put forward only with laboured qualifications and irony.
Ulysses, Bloomsday, and the Best of All Literary Parties
IN AN AGE which commends novels by citing their “accessibility,” one praises James Joyce’s Ulysses before a good many deafened ears. This singular 1922 work demands much from the reader, but the reward of one’s efforts is enormous. The highest tribute I can pay is this: I derive pleasure beyond what I can describe from the time I’ve lived among the fictional citizens of Dublin on June 16, 1904. I feel a bit sorry for anyone who doesn’t, or can’t, understand why I say this.
Indian Affairs Gets a Gender Reassignment
I now have unchallengeable objective proof that I’ve lived too long in Ottawa, and it’s this: I caught myself today wondering how the bureaucrats are going to say the new acronym AANDC, the stand-in for Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. For over a century, the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (known also as the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs) was Diane or Diand, or even at times Diana. Now I imagine it will be Andy or Andick, both of which lead me unavoidably to the conclusion that gender reassignment has taken place and The Man now really is that.
The Kindness of Sinister Bitterness
The English language contains abundant terms both for approbation and contempt, most disclosing a bias of which its speakers are unaware. If, for example, you say that someone is “adroit” or “dextrous,” you invoke the moral privilege of the majority — a privilege grounded in the numerically dominant status of the right-handed. From the same source, the language derives “sinister,” the Latin word for left.
When the Bookish Finish Last
There is a famous anecdote concerning two nineteenth-century British Prime Ministers and bitter rivals, Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone. The former may be credited with first articulating “Progressive Conservatism” — by way of his 1844 novel Coningsby, or The New Generation — and the latter with both establishing and dominating the British Liberal Party, having ended his affiliation to the High Tories. According to the standard account, Gladstone asserted (doubtless with approval) “I predict, Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease.” Disraeli’s response was characteristically immediate, biting, and witty: “That all depends, sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.”
Journalism, Essays, Broadcasting, Books 