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July 2, 2009

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The Proposal
(Reviewed June 26, 2009)
An often-funny but too-bland and predictable romantic comedy that can’t find a way to live up to its potential Full Review

The Hangover
(Reviewed June 12, 2009)
A guy-comedy which dares to take the frat-boy romance with extremes of inebriation into disturbing new territory Full Review

Drag Me to Hell
(Reviewed June 9, 2009)
A disappointing parody of a horror flick which offers only a glance at in the direction of real-world satire before getting down to the routine business of dragging someone to hell Full Review

Revanche
(Reviewed June 5, 2009)
A well-made and emotionally satisfying study in elemental human passions that is splendidly down-to-earth — in more ways than one Full Review

Teach English with a Degree in Elementary Education.

Diary
ENTRY from July 2, 2009

I can’t resist the urge to gloat just a little.

As I pointed out in my book Honor, A History (have I mentioned this before?), it was the American unfamiliarity with the honor culture of the Middle East which led to the fuss about Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction — something that the left continues to this day to see as the fons et origo of their undying hatred of our 43^rd president. Did Bush not lie? And did people not die? If so, it seemed to me an odd sort of "lie," since it was given as the reason for an action which, if it was a lie, the President himself must have known was bound to expose it as such. Much more likely, I thought, was a mistake on the part not only of our intelligence services but those of every other country in the West — a mistake born of the failure of "post-honor society" to understand a primitive honor culture in which "Saddam was far more likely to keep hidden the fact that he didn’t have WMDs than that he did" — even if it cost him his life. (Honor, A History, page 30).

Now, thanks to a freedom of information request by the National Security Archive, we have the transcripts of a series of interviews that the FBI conducted with Saddam Hussein in 2004 in which the former dictator confirms that this was indeed the case. As Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post sums up these interviews and "casual conversations" in this morning’s paper, Full Entry

My new book Media Madness, is now published and available for order from Encounter Books. Less a polemic than an attempt to understand the origins of the mass media’s folie de grandeur, the book is a warning even to those who are deserting the big networks, newsweeklies and large-circulation dailies not to carry with them into the more attractive world of niche media the undisciplined habits of thought that the old media culture has given rise to. To order this book, click here.

Also available, now in paperback, is Honor, A History, which was first published in 2006. A study of Western cultural artifacts, from the epics of Homer to the movies and TV shows of today, it is focused on explaining why Western ideas of honor developed so differently from those elsewhere — and especially from the savage honor cultures of the Islamic world. The book then goes on to trace the collapse and ultimate rejection of the old Western honor culture from World War I until the present day and to suggest the conditions that would have to prevail for its revival.