James Bowman's RSS

Entry from March 3, 2010

james@jamesbowman.net (James Bowman) — Wed, 3 Mar 2010

At last my conjecture has been proved right. Beginning with what must surely go down in history as the oddest presidential election campaign to date in 2004 — it was arguably surpassed in 2008 by the contest between the war hero and the pop cultural celebrity — I and others noticed with dismay how during President Bush’s second term he rarely if ever answered even the most scurrilous allegations against him and his administration. During the Presidential debates with John Kerry, the Senator would make the most appalling charges about the administration’s bad faith, corruption or incompetence in dealing with the insurgency in Iraq or the hunt for Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora and all the President could say in reply was "It" — by which he meant fighting terrorism and creating a stable government in Iraq — "is hard." True enough, perhaps, but it’s not much of an answer to such serious charges.

At the time, I remember thinking that Mr

Entry from February 28, 2010

james@jamesbowman.net (James Bowman) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010

In today’s Washington Post, Dana Milbank cites the recent kerfuffle in the British press about a book purporting to reveal the tendency of Prime Minister Gordon Brown to "bully" his subordinates as a Milbankian way of suggesting that the problem with Barack Obama is that he’s not bully enough.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is accused, in a new book by British journalist Andrew Rawnsley, of shouting obscenities at his advisers, grabbing one by the collar, punching the seatback in his car, abusing switchboard operators and even forcing a secretary from her chair when she wasn’t typing fast enough. Workers at 10 Downing Street have called a bullying hotline seeking help. Here in America, however, we can only watch this behavior with envy. Our president is not a bully; in fact, he is the victim

Entry from February 24, 2010

james@jamesbowman.net (James Bowman) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010

Wouldn’t you just know it? Now that homosexuals have gone all respectable on us by wanting to get married to each other, we’re likely to see a return of sentimental, middle-brow drama as well, only featuring gay instead of straight couples in troubled marriages and having crises of middle-class conscience and so forth. Perhaps even the recent Onion headline — "Gay Teen Worries He Might be Christian" — will come true. According to Patrick Healy, writing in the New York Times, this new gay theatre is shockingly reactionary.

These productions about gay life make little or no mention of H.I.V. or AIDS and keep direct activism at arm’s length, with militant crusading portrayed with ambivalence more than ardor. The politics of these shows — there are seven of them opening in New York in the next several weeks —

Crazy Heart

james@jamesbowman.net (James Bowman) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010

In real life, recovery from addiction is a great and inspiring thing; in the movies not so much

The End of History

james@jamesbowman.net (James Bowman) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010

Intimidated by the difficulties of the art of the past, as of the past itself, a lonely nation turns to celebrity gossip — From The American Spectator of February, 2010

Unhappy is the Land

james@jamesbowman.net (James Bowman) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010

Of heroes and historicists: which do you think we need more? — From The New Criterion of February, 2010

Entry from February 22, 2010

james@jamesbowman.net (James Bowman) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010

Walter Russell Mead’s piece in The American Interest titled "How Al Gore Wrecked Planet Earth" should be required reading for all the global warmist crowd — though of course they won’t read it. Or, if they do, they won’t take its lessons to heart. The very self-righteousness of which Mr Mead so eloquently complains will prevent it.

A year ago they were the last, best hope of the world, a shining band of brothers (and sisters) who were saving the planet and taming the excesses of self- destructive capitalist greed. The Force was with them and the world lay at their feet. They were going to be greeted as liberators by a grateful world desperate to be saved. Now they are just another piece of roadkill on the heartless historical highway — an unforgiving place for people who seek to change the

Entry from February 18, 2010

james@jamesbowman.net (James Bowman) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010

In today’s Times of London you may find the following headline: "How to get the Lady Gaga look: At this year’s Brits, Lady Gaga was an impossible act to follow. But what would it be like to imitate her style?" That has been the standard come-on for the media when they are selling their access to the celebrity culture — which they have created just so as to be able to control that access. But surely the whole point of Lady Gaga is that she is inimitable? This adjective has been applied to performers in the past, but in her case it is literally true: her fame is her uniqueness, and without that she would not be famous or, therefore, someone that anyone would think of imitating. This paradox underlines the extent to which Lady Gaga is her fame in a way that few if any performers have ever been before. Even her debut hit album is called, simply,

Entry from February 16, 2010

james@jamesbowman.net (James Bowman) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010

"Homophobia is literally and figuratively killing our youngsters — especially young, straight boys whose lives, relationships and aspirations are cut short as they strive to be seen as ’real men’." So writes John Amaechi in today’s Times of London.

In school, for a boy, being clever and interested in academia is gay; being kind and thoughtful is gay; being respectful to a parent, authority figure or woman is gay. For a man, being sexually considerate — that is, not sleeping with every female that moves — is gay. Having non-sexual friendships with women is gay. Being nurturing and considerate is gay. Talking your way out of a fight is gay. Choosing not to drink until you puke is gay. Having a friend who is gay is gay. To be a "real man" you must be the opposite of anything even remotely

Entry from February 12, 2010

james@jamesbowman.net (James Bowman) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010

Here’s an interesting example of what it means to be cut off from history — a subject I have recently written about here and here. Mr Damon Linker, writing in The New Republic online, has taken up the cudgels, as is his wont, on behalf of gay marriage and against Rod Dreher, his "old sparring-partner" on that subject. The two were now sparring, it seems, over a New York Times article last month which reported on a study by Colleen Hoff of San Francisco State University that "reveals just how common open relationships are among gay men and lesbians

Entry from February 3, 2010

james@jamesbowman.net (James Bowman) — Wed, 3 Feb 2010

In today’s Washington Post, Kathleen Parker has the columnist’s bright idea of putting together the near-coincidence of the death of J.D. Salinger and the publication by Andrew Young of The Politician, a tell-all book about the former presidential candidate, John Edwards, and especially his affair with and child by a woman calling herself Rielle Hunter, for which Mr Young was once the fall guy. With such a high concept the column almost writes itself: a man obsessive about his privacy is juxtaposed with a man whose picture future generations will find when they look in the dictionary under "Too Much Information." He seems not to care, so long as the price is right. As Miss Parker notices, the symbolism of the one’s death’s coinciding with the other’s commercial triumph must also call to mind ideas of what Florence King calls

Creation

james@jamesbowman.net (James Bowman) — Wed, 3 Feb 2010

Charles Darwin re-imagined by today’s progressive-minded atheists as the patron saint of their cause

It’s Only Common Sense

james@jamesbowman.net (James Bowman) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010

The latest thinking on why those with nothing but common sense to rely on should defer to their intellectual betters — From The New Criterion of January, 2010

Entry from January 27, 2010

james@jamesbowman.net (James Bowman) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010

This story from yesterday’s Daily Telegraph illustrates a point I made a few years ago in my book Honor, A History about how hard it is for those of us who are the creatures of a post-honor society to understand honor cultures in general and non-Western honor cultures in particular. A 16-year-old girl was raped in Bangladesh. She got pregnant as a result. She was then sentenced to receive 101 lashes for getting pregnant while her father received a stiff fine and was threatened with ostracism by the village elders — who proceeded to pardon the rapist. Shades of poor Mukhtar Mai, the Pakistani woman who was sentenced by another lot of village elders to be gang-raped and whom I wrote of in my book. Her case was later a cause cél bre when the Pakistani government decided that it made the country look

Entry from January 26, 2010

james@jamesbowman.net (James Bowman) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010

When Bob Herbert of the New York Times’s junior varsity of op-ed page lefties is writing about "Obama’s Credibility Gap," you’d think it would be well past time for the President to sit up and take notice. "Mr. Obama is in danger of being perceived as someone whose rhetoric, however skillful, cannot always be trusted. He is creating a credibility gap for himself, and if it widens much more he won’t be able to close it." "In danger"? "Being perceived"? To some of us the "gap" has been a credibility chasm for a long time, but it has taken the political earthquake of the Massachusetts senatorial election, apparently, for Mr Herbert and others to notice it. The question remains as to whether it has even now come to the attention of the President himself and his inner circle.

In yesterday’s "Best of the Web Today," The Wall Street

Entry from January 22, 2010

james@jamesbowman.net (James Bowman) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010

In my last post I mentioned that The New York Times sometimes seems to be trying to pretend to its readers that the Western honor culture is not only dead but that it never existed in the first place — by, for example, claiming that "a pile of rubble is a pile of rubble," whether it is in Haiti or at Ground Zero in Manhattan. That the one pile of rubble was caused by a natural disaster and the other by a foreign attack on the United States is apparently an irrelevant distinction to at least some of the crypto-pacifist progressives at the Times. There are, thank God, still many Americans outside 620 Eighth Avenue whose sense of the national honor is intact enough to know that an attack on their country requires a response in kind, but what is increasingly the official culture as represented by the media prefers to pretend that they don’t exist, or else that they are "wing-nuts"

Entry from January 19, 2010

james@jamesbowman.net (James Bowman) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010

It hasn’t taken long for the shock of the appalling spectacle of the Haitian earthquake to wear off — at least enough for the appropriate liberal and progressive lessons to be drawn from it. That must be why we find in today’s New York Times this story by Marc Lacey, reporting from Port-au-Prince, about New York firefighters in Haiti headed: "For 9/11 Team, Haiti Brings It All Back" The story begins as follows: "A pile of rubble is a pile of rubble, whether it is Lower Manhattan or central Port-au-Prince. As a New York rescue team combed the wreckage of last week’s earthquake in search of long-shot survivors on Monday, some said one particular past disaster — the collapsed World Trade Center towers — was not far back in their minds." Doubtless some did say it too, but that doesn’t mean that "a pile of rubble is a pile of rubble."

But for

The Young Victoria

james@jamesbowman.net (James Bowman) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010

A respectful period romance which, however, doesn’t give us as much of the period as it does of the romance

Brace Yourself

james@jamesbowman.net (James Bowman) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010

To be titillated by the darkest of human emotions is to be vain of one’s intellect — From The American Spectator of December, 2009-January, 2010

Entry from January 15, 2010

james@jamesbowman.net (James Bowman) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010

There sounds to my ear a note of relief and even triumph in Ruth Marcus’s announcement in today’s Washington Post that "the tables-turned, she-cheated-on-him political sex scandal we’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived." We’ve all been waiting for? Well, I suppose that those of us who are either voyeurs or feminists — or both — will have been waiting for it. Particularly the latter. Ten years ago the preposterous Hollywood film The Contender positively salivated over its anticipation of the embroilment of a female politician, played by Joan Allen, in a sex scandal. Now, after Bill Clinton and John Edwards and Elliot Spitzer and David Vitter and Larry Craig and Mark Sanford — but who can remember them all? — we may all be supposed to be as eager as Ms Marcus