I realize I'm about nine years too late to this argument by now, but I finally got around to reading Samuel P. Huntington's Clash of Civilizations during the course of my paper on him for my "Ideas in American Foreign Policy" course, which has been one of many things keeping me preoccupied lately. Anyone who's interested can find the final draft after the break — it's a little book-reportish at points, and my conclusion was a little muddled since I'm still not sure what I ultimately think of Huntington's arguments, but maybe some will find it interesting.   more »

For Broadway and the heyday of musical comedy -- America's unique contribution to theater. When the stars of stage were household names; when there was magic in the theater addresses and you knew not only the lyrics but the dialogue by heart; when you devoured the bios of the producers and directors, the composers and lyricists on the front of Playbill and combed the back of the program to find the name or photo of your favorite dancer in the chorus. When the opening reviews were eagerly awaited not just by readers of the NYT, but across the country in the weekly news magazines and the Sunday papers.

That brief frisson that comes as the lights dim and the orchestra launches into the overture hit me for a moment when I read that Jerry Orbach had died. For me, Jerry Orbach was the epitome of that Broadway -- the great male counterpart of the female legends who made musicals come alive, who let you suspend disbelief and be transported to an imaginary world for a couple of hours. Not the glamorous leading baritones of Rogers and Hammerstein, with their moving melodies, who were the romantic foils for the sassy or brassy leading ladies or the blossoming ingenues. No, Orbach was the "journeyman" Broadway star who created some of Broadway's most memorable characters by his attitude, his natural jazzy rhythms of speech and saunter, by the seamless shift of voice and movement from actor to song-and-dance man and back again. By the contagious joy he infused each of his roles and the players around him.

The Glittering Eye offers an appreciation of Jerry Orbach's special contribution -- both the artist and the colleague -- and notes his passing is an end of an era.

Enough of the gloom and doom already. Being of a juvenile bent, I can only take it for so long, at which point I require something altogether stupid and goofy. This works for me. I particularly recommend a visit to The Gallery of Regrettable Food, which is contained in the Institute of Official Cheer. I may be a latecomer to Lileks, but I nearly made myself a mischief (any Brits out there will catch my drift) looking through this.   more »

I'm surprised that neither of these are getting big play.

1. Tonight's vote in the Knesset on Sharon's pullout plan. Haaretz thinks he's going to win. It seems that Sharon has given the speech of his lifetime, a deeply emotional appeal from a longtime backer of the settler movement. ThisisRumorControl explains Israeli politics for the uninitiated.

2. Musharraf's diplomatic initiative on Kashmir. Al Jazeera says it was "welcomed" in Kashmir, but the boys over at Acorn think it's a nonstarter.

What are you folks watching?

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[UPDATE 10-26-04 3:00PM] by nadezhda

JC has a comment that points us to Eminem's just-released GOTV video of his new anti-Bush song. Salon's got some remarks here.

[UPDATE 2 10-27-04 11:30PM] by nadezhda

"Mosh" is now No. 1 video on MTV.

There are political seasons when certain phrases seem to latch themselves to the brain, repeating themselves over and over, like a song's refrain. This year there have been two for me. "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" (even though the remark was occasioned by a Depression-era inaugural, not the war that began on the day that still lives in infamy). And "We have met the enemy and he is us."

I came to Walt Kelly and Pogo late in Kelly's career, when even his strongest admirers would admit he was well past his most creative years, and when the characters had been running for decades and the strips assumed a knowledge of their past adventures not evident from the later tales. Like devoted fans before me, I was captivated by the humor of a funny sketch between a couple of foolish characters, or some over-the-top word play, or Kelly's unique manner of penciling in words in the background or margins of frames: familiar signs, topical quotes, brand-names, mangled literary allusions or sayings. Although I had the impression Kelly began more as a journalist/writer than cartoonist, I knew little about him, and never had the benefit of the long history of Pogo before I became an occasional reader.

Imagine then my pleasure, when Henry at Crooked Timber found a lengthy review/appreciation of a major part of the opus of Walt Kelley that's currently available in a series of eleven volumes of Pogo (1948-60). The essay is by John Crowley in the Boston Review. Of topical interest this political season, Crowley doesn't neglect Kelly as social and political satirist. He gives a flavor of how the McCarthy era, in particular, played out in the characters and storylines of Pogo.
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James Chace, former editor of Foreign Affairs and New York Review of Books, and author of the biography Acheson: The Secretary of State Who Created the American World, died at the age of 72 in Paris, where he was at work on a book on Lafayette.   more »

At least according to what seems to be the meaning of this, as best we can determine it.

May his soul rest in eternal peace, but here's saying that if you look up the words "inscrutable," "abstract" and "opaque" in the dictionary, you will find them defined. If you look up "whatinthehellshetalkinabout," you will see Derrida's picture. I tried a couple of times. Honest. But for me at least, this guy's work (or at least those parts of it I managed to take a swing at) was the very Everest of affectedly abstruse prose. And that's not even to mention his politics, which, well . . . whatever. May he bunk in heaven with Bill Strunk, and have G.K. Chesterton as his freshman mentor.