One of the projects I dream of but never shall produce( Read more... )

The narrow defeat of the Obama administration in the Hobby Lobby case has sent its supporters into ecstases of rage and hate that have to be seen to be believed, and that in some cases can only be described as murderous. I am glad I don't live in the USA. But this fury, that bewilders many conservatives and independents, does not bewilder me. The ( Read more... )

I think the expression "Professor Alan Gribben" is genuinely revolting. It ought to be suppressed. And any piece of writing unfortunate enough to contain it should be revised to something less ugly and offensive, such as, say, "Miserable Narrowminded Moron".

It was once possible to believe that Ann Coulter was, if not either couth or convincing, at least convinced; that what she said, she believed. I even once had an argument with someone on the issue. Well, as far as I am concerned that was disproved to the hilt by her behaviour in the last election, where that supposed maenad of the movement right ( Read more... )

I never did like the land of banks and... banks; tell me whether I have no reason. Everyone knows that Roman Polanski's conviction for child sex in 1978 was a scandal, arranged by a publicity-hungry, corrupt judge who connived with the prosecution in defiance of all law. Not that Polanski was an angel, but even prosecution lawyers have since ( Read more... )

Not so long ago, I got into trouble with several of my more conservative friends by making a no-holds-barred attack on Jonah Goldberg's view of recent European history. One of my main points was that Goldberg rewrote history for purely partisan reasons ( Read more... )

The loud American complaints about Chinese cheating in the Olympics would sound better if the US athletics establshment had not been a sink of doped iniquity for decades, leading to horrors such as the "flo-jo" so-called world record, which is still on the books, and finally to the disgrace and humiliation of Marion Jones and her contemporaries. ( Read more... )

Most of us know that ever since the bloke with the beard took over Cuba, homosexuality - associated with the island's supposed pre-revolutionary past as a haven of Yanqui degeneracy - has been suppressed, persecuted and punished by (what passes in Cuba for) law. Well, no more. Raul Castro seems to have noticed that his putative allies in the ( Read more... )

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I wrote this essay some years ago. I still think it is interesting, and besides it has something to do with my remarks (to follow) about JK Rowling.

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