71 articles
After spending the 1980s wallowing in unremunerative pomposity, English filmmakers changed their ways, building a successful if schizophrenic commercial industry out of two kinds of formulaic blockbuster. On the upmarket end were literary adaptations, of which the BBC's Pride and Prejudice (1995)…
Lost in the media coverage of the Bush administration's internal deliberations about whether to sell Taiwan the Aegis combat system is the bipartisan support for the sale in Congress. On April 3, more than a hundred members of Congress -- 82 in the House and 20 in the Senate -- signed a letter to…
Speaking of bipartisanship, George W. Bush last week signed a toxic chemical treaty. "A Republican administration will continue and complete the work of a Democratic administration," he said. "This is the way environmental policy should work." Could have fooled us. Is that really what all those…
IT'S NOT A TARGET, insists Mitch Daniels, the White House budget chief. It's not even a goal. But if a cold, dry number can be exciting, it's the most thrilling one in President Bush's first budget. The number is 15.6 percent. It's the share of the national economy the federal government would…
BECAUSE OF AN EDITING ERROR, in John Wilson's review of Aiding and Abetting in our last issue, the date of publication for Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was given as 1969 instead of 1961.
Since it opened its doors in 1927, the ornate St. James Theater has been the premier venue for musicals on Broadway. Opening in 1943, Oklahoma! was performed 2,213 times on its boards, and seven years later Rodgers and Hammerstein presented The King and I there. Where's Charley? and The Pajama Game…
I have a small, slowly growing list of people who mustn't expect an invitation to lunch from me. Roger Clemens is on it; so, among others, are Donald Trump, Jack Valenti, Shirley MacLaine, Howell Raines, Jack Quinn, Barbara Walters, and Alan Dershowitz. Loaded with odious and silly opinions, their…
The Rights Revolution
Suburban Warriors
Close SCRAPBOOK readers should not have been surprised last week when Pat Robertson seemed to endorse coerced abortions in China. When last quoted on this page two years ago, the Christian Coalition leader was an early cheerleader for the Chinese government's Falun Gong crackdown. Never mind that…
Last February, a few days after a man from Indiana had fired several shots at the White House, I found myself driving a group of black fourth and fifth graders to the U.S. Capitol for a private tour. George W. Bush had just been inaugurated, so I asked the kids what they thought about their new…
Michael Bellesiles, a professor of history at Emory University, is the author of Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture. He recently wrote in the Atlanta Journal Constitution that after this anti-guns history of guns in America was published, right-wing wackos on the Internet…
THE CHINA STANDOFF produced some strange bedfellows. Most commentators thought it ended with a clear triumph for the Bush administration. On the left, Frank Rich and Anthony Lewis thought so, and David Broder and Warren Rudman in the center agreed. So did Paul Gigot and Charles Krauthammer on the…
LET'S LEAVE to the diplomatic hair-splitters the question of whether "very sorry" constitutes an apology. And let's agree that not everyone who favors preserving preferential trade treatment for China is a greedy capitalist, insensitive to China's appalling human rights record and its recent…
Columbus, Georgia
THE SCRAPBOOK's colleague Fred Barnes has famously noted that the most depressing four words you can read in a newspaper story are "First in a series." By this measure, American newspaper readers will soon be reaching for their Prozac. Last week, the New York Times won a Pulitzer for its…
April 1865
EVEN AMERICANS who don't care squat about abstractions such as "race relations" might well be infuriated to learn that -- under an order issued by the Clinton White House, which George W. Bush could yet rescind -- the U.S. Census is following a deep South tradition: Americans who check both "black"…
Before the next series of important decisions about China tumble onto Mr. Bush's desk, he and his aides should settle on a long-term strategy that protects American interests while encouraging China to play a constructive role as it assumes its natural place as a great power. Mr. Bush outlined a…
On April 1, a Chinese pilot, pursuant to the Chinese government policy of harassing U.S. surveillance planes, knocked an American EP-3 from the sky. The Chinese government then held the American aircrew hostage for 11 days, and extorted a letter of apology from the Bush administration.
Pride goes before a fall, as everyone knows, and some of us know keenly. Spring this year has acquired a sting that forces my thoughts back to last December.
Before the Storm
Lost Hollywood
New York City
"THE ELECTION IS OVER. Let the historical recriminations begin." The U.S. Supreme Court didn't say precisely that when it rendered its decision in Bush v. Gore -- but it might as well have. Within days of Gore's concession, two different teams of media and academic researchers were already poring…
THE SCRAPBOOK has felt compelled to criticize John McCain's ill-advised campaign reform schemes in recent weeks, but our fair and balanced character requires us to offer praise when it is due. So we are pleased to highlight McCain's speech on the floor of the Senate last week, during the budget…
AMERICAN HUMORISTS have never been especially adept at political satire, probably because their mass-media audience tends to be spectacularly ill-informed about politics. For satire to work, it must be precise, an immaculate and very specific recreation of reality that in initially subtle but…
Distinguished foreign policy and election law expert John Bolton, an occasional contributor to these pages, has been nominated by George W. Bush to be undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. A veteran of both the Reagan and Bush I administrations, Bolton is superbly…
Last week the Washington Post revealed (on the front page, no less) that Dan Rather, newsman, had attended a Democratic party fund-raiser in Austin, Texas, as the star attraction. "Please join us for an Evening with Dan Rather," read the invitation, which was mailed to 1,000 Democrats in the Austin…
Economists are very shy about mentioning the word depression. If they do mention it, they "hasten to add" that it is "contained," as in Japan, or that it "can't happen here," as in the United States. I have used these words myself. But history offers no such consolation. There have been two…
Conservative icon Jesse Helms of North Carolina, the senator who drives liberals nuts, is inching his way toward running for reelection in 2002. Helms, 79, was once thought certain to retire. In fact, he told some friends several years ago that was his intention. Now, after recovering from knee…
THOMAS M. DEFRANK, the Washington bureau chief of the New York Daily News, would seem to be perfectly qualified to be the chief spokesman for the Defense Department. He is a Texan who's known President Bush for years. He has 22 years of military experience, including two as an Army second…
Aiding and Abetting
Jerusalem
SOMEWHERE ON CAPITOL HILL a group of long-faced Democrats are having an unhappy meeting about the cost of giving up huge soft money donations to the Democratic party. But there is a bright spot: A voice from the back of the room pipes up, "Well, at least this means I can finally ignore those damn…
William Blake spent much of his time in Paradise. Or so, at least, his wife Catherine reported. His protean genius is on display in "William Blake," a major exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York until June 24. The show (a scaled-back version of the Blake retrospective put…
The profound national humiliation that President Bush has brought upon the United States may be forgotten temporarily when the American aircrew, held captive in China as this magazine goes to press, return home. But when we finish celebrating, it will be time to assess the damage done, and the…
Three years ago this month, America's political, foreign policy, and business establishment was rolling its eyes in anticipation of yet another ritualized congressional debate over renewal of China's most-favored-nation trade status. Once again in that debate, small-minded, irresponsible types were…
Manchester, New Hampshire
Down through the centuries, trading nations have confronted the task of reconciling their commercial interests with national security -- a task the United States faces with regard to China. And repeatedly, history has pointed to a great lesson: that private firms cannot be trusted to police their…
I doubt that anybody has made better or more valuable use of the Internet than I have. In my time, I've bought a new car online at a few hundred dollars over cost, rounded out various obsessive collections through auctions, and researched hundreds upon hundreds of articles without moving from my…
President Bush can be excused for failing to propose instant tax relief to boost the sagging economy and cratering stock market. When he met with congressional Republicans at the White House last week, Bush had an explanation. While he's anxious about the livelihood of all 270 million Americans,…
THE SOPRANOS airs the fourth, or maybe the fifth, episode of its television season this Sunday. Or is it the sixth? It's very hard to keep track. In any case, the show is still sailing along on an updraft of favorable publicity that is extraordinary even by the standards of television, where…
AS THE SCRAPBOOK goes to press, wire services are reporting that China has been detaining yet another American citizen, without charge or explanation, for more than a month. Li Shaomin, 44, a Princeton Ph.D. who currently holds a professorship at the City University of Hong Kong, walked from his…
Why do white middle-class kids from seemingly normal families kill their classmates in suburban high schools like Columbine, Santana, and Granite Hills? How can these crimes be stopped? For answers, we should look to the schools where such crimes almost never happen -- bad inner-city schools. For…
Put the guys in tweed jackets from the National Endowment for the Arts, the men in sharkskin suits from the main offices of the record business, and a bunch of cardigan-wearing textbook writers in a room together, and what do you get? The answer is a new "educational resource," the recently…
To the Hermitage
Democracy in Europe
TWO WEEKS AGO, Alvin Bernstein, a close friend, died. Al had been sick and had been recently diagnosed with cancer. Even so, his friends all expected him to wage a battle with the disease and, given his will, win it. But an infection took him suddenly, and many of us were left with the miserable…
Seattle
Shortly before he died last year at age 72, Ford administration Treasury secretary William E. Simon designed a major program devoted to the cause of private charity, one of his lifelong concerns. Administered through the 34-year-old foundation that bears his name, Simon's final project made its…
One of the many virtues of the campaign finance reform debate was that it prompted a national reevaluation of the film career of Yul Brynner. Robert Byrd got this going when he rose on the floor of the Senate to discuss the vulgarity of political ads on TV. The extremely senior senator from West…
Failed Crusade
On the afternoon of March 26, the Senate debated a measure styled "Joint Resolution 4," sponsored by Fritz Hollings of South Carolina. The resolution proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution authorizing Congress and the states to "set reasonable limits" on contributions to, and expenditures…
WITH THURSDAY'S DEFEAT of a killer amendment on "non-severability," the McCain-Feingold reform of federal campaign finance has gained, for the first time, an air of inevitability. Still to come are final Senate passage (expected Monday, April 2), House action, a possible conference committee, and a…
In her enormously popular first novel, The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan took up the relations of immigrant Chinese mothers and their assimilated daughters, shifting her story back and forth from pre-World War II China to modern-day San Francisco, alternating the voices of the mothers with the voices of…
ON SATURDAY, MARCH 17, the New York Times broke the story: President Bush's legal advisers had "told the American Bar Association that they want to end the group's nearly half-century role as a semiofficial screening panel for judicial nominees." The story had the earmarks of one leaked by sources…
THE RECENT DRAMA surrounding FBI agent Robert Hanssen comes at a time when we are reminded of another famous American spy case. April 1 marks the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Whittaker Chambers, one of the true heroes of the 20th century's long twilight struggle against tyranny -- and…
Documents released through the Freedom of Information Act make clear that the fiber-optic system Chinese technicians have been putting in place to upgrade Iraq's air defense system, and about which the Bush administration has complained, in fact comprises American-made technology sold to China by…
On March 8, the Reverend Jesse Jackson held a press conference in Chicago. All the country's major newspapers sent reporters, and all three cable news networks covered the event live. Jackson had promised to explain the byzantine finances of his nonprofit empire -- in particular, the omission from…
GEORGE W. BUSH and his team have been expressing unflagging concern about the state of the American economy almost from the day the re-re-recounting was stopped in Florida. "We may be on the front edge of a recession here," Dick Cheney said in December. "A warning light is flashing on the dashboard…
GEORGE W. BUSH
In 1998, there were more divorces than marriages in 35 of Oklahoma's 77 counties. When he became governor, Frank Keating vowed to reverse this tide. The governor's team has come up with what David Blankenhorn of the National Fatherhood Initiative says is the most comprehensive strategy for…
Goldilocks is dead, and George W. Bush should admit it. The president has been selling his tax cut plan by saying that it's not too big and not too small -- it's just right, like Goldilocks's chair. This strategy of disciplined constancy worked well for Bush in Texas, and has so far in Washington.…
While California frets over rolling blackouts and Washington sounds the alarm about a new energy crisis, the electrical generating industry has quietly passed a milestone. In 1999, nuclear energy -- the forgotten player in the arena -- became the nation's cheapest source of electricity.
Senior editor David Brooks's bestseller, Bobos in Paradise, is now out in paperback, from Touchstone, a bargain at $ 14. We realize that it's inconceivable SCRAPBOOK readers haven't already purchased at least one hardcover copy, but the paperback makes a nice gift for a friend who mysteriously…
Afghan holy men aren't the only ones swinging the wrecking ball these days. Just last Sunday in my suburban Catholic church I came across evidence that cultural vandals are laying waste to Western icons, too. The cantor announced a page number from the hymnal, the organist pulled out the stops, and…
Elko, Nevada
Poor Lois. Even her name seems old and unhip, hardly the right sound for a woman once hailed as a daring filmmaker. The critics' darling for a time around World War I, Lois Weber -- "Lois the Wizard," "the Wonder Girl" -- met her end without any fanfare. It was 1939 when America's first woman…
When a global terrorist asks Homer Simpson to choose a target, either France or Italy, and Homer chooses France, the terrorist quips, "Funny. Nobody ever picks Italy." Indeed, it is just as rare to find THE SCRAPBOOK taking sides with the French. But that's where we find ourselves after a recent…
HOW MUCH MONEY could government save taxpayers by using the latest technology? Some public officials don't want you to know the answer. Janet Caldow directs IBM's Institute for Electronic Government in Washington, D.C., which helps educate public-sector managers about new technology. The institute…