When will it stop? I’m asking. When? These are supposedly educated people. (If all the supposeds in the world were actuals, the world would be a far, far better place than it has ever been before: all the cows would come home to hear the fat lady sing.) When will the people who would lead […]
Rescue Me
. When I was in the second grade, I ran away from home. I told one or two of my classmates at school of my intention, and at the end of the day, when the school bus from P.S. 18 dropped us off about a mile further west along Hillside Avenue, in Queens Village, in […]
I, Governor
. Americans love personality. In the centuries since each individual in his distinction from every other unlike him was raised above competing notions of identity, no culture has exalted the individual personality more than that of the American. It is the altar of existential and political personhood. Be any wild and unaccountable thing, but above […]
Jazz Is: 33 – Occupy Love
. One of my occasional exceptions to the has-to-be-an-interesting-video rule. The last time I heard this, a couple of months ago, I was sitting in a storefront window on Ninth Avenue in Manhattan with a cup of coffee, thinking about love. There’s Wall Street and politics, and there’s real life, before, during, and after. A Billie Holiday original. Don’t bother. […]
The Hope of Occupy Wall Street
. I don’t mean by that title the hope of those who have organized the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. In some respects that isn’t clear, in others all too clear. The people behind the effort – Anonymous “hacktivists” and other left-libertarians and anarchists – are people with whom I share no allegiance. I was disdainful of “occupation” […]