Becalmed Among The Great Unwashed

You know, I don’t think I’m going to finish reading Susan Jacoby’s The Age of American Unreason. I imagine Jacoby feels better for having written it, vented her bile, and talked to the press about it. But I don’t feel better for having read the first eighty pages, so I’m gonna vent my bile right here.As I expected, The Age of American Unreason is an extended and not very skillful game of “Ain’t

Becalmed Among The Great Unwashed

You know, I don’t think I’m going to finish reading Susan Jacoby’s The Age of American Unreason. I imagine Jacoby feels better for having written it, vented her bile, and talked to the press about it. But I don’t feel better for having read the first eighty pages, so I’m gonna vent my bile right here.As I expected, The Age of American Unreason is an extended and not very skillful game of “Ain’t

History's A Punk

Something else I wanted to say about the Times article on Susan Jacoby. She told the reporter that she first decided to write The Age of American Unreason on September 11, 2001, in a New York City bar:As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in

History's A Punk

Something else I wanted to say about the Times article on Susan Jacoby. She told the reporter that she first decided to write The Age of American Unreason on September 11, 2001, in a New York City bar:As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in

A Mad As Hell Tea Party

What, another book on the dumbing down of America? Why does no editor ever seem to dismiss a hopeful author of one of these with “It’s been done”? Because, you know, it has been done, and done, and done to death, in an endless session of “Ain’t It Awful?”Even more symptomatic, the author of this admits that it’s been done, but that didn’t stop her from doing it again, because things are like

A Mad As Hell Tea Party

What, another book on the dumbing down of America? Why does no editor ever seem to dismiss a hopeful author of one of these with “It’s been done”? Because, you know, it has been done, and done, and done to death, in an endless session of “Ain’t It Awful?”Even more symptomatic, the author of this admits that it’s been done, but that didn’t stop her from doing it again, because things are like