June 25, 2018

The world needs more of it, not less.

The nation-state reconsidered.

Lionel Shriver does not want to write books in which people only say the right thing. She is pushing back against prudence.

How the social justice mob decides who goes down, and who doesn't.

The June 12 meeting in Singapore between Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim ­Jong‑un has generated a bewildering array of responses from observers around the world. These responses do not fall along predictable ideological lines. Back and forth across the ideological span, we find…

“He found the way and I jumped on it.”

President Donald Trump was elected in 2016 in part on a pledge to “drain the swamp,” to eliminate the corruption that many Americans have come to believe dominates our politics. Here, Hillary Clinton served as a perfect foil, a stand-in for all the politicians who have gone to Washington to do good…

One of the pleasant surprises of this movie season has been Chappaquiddick, an account of the famous episode from 1969 in which Mary Jo Kopechne was left to drown in a car driven into a pond, and abandoned, by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. It’s not a perfect film by any means; but Kennedy is treated not…

Last week, France’s youthful and dapper president Emmanuel Macron swaggered into a battle of wits with the inexperienced and much-mocked lugnuts who run Italy’s new populist government. Macron was humiliated. That very same Italian populist government, meanwhile, threw down a gauntlet before half a…

In February, then-secretary of state Rex Tillerson was informed by a North Korean envoy that Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un wanted to meet with President Trump. Tillerson favored accepting the invitation quickly. Trump didn’t.

Congress could in theory have a greater say on tariffs. Don’t hold your breath.

Allegations of fraud, theft, bigamy, and violence surround Imran Awan.

Second thoughts about the sexual revolution.

From crumbling infrastructure to broken meritocracy, Steven Brill sees problems everywhere.

James Bowman on the decisions that led to today’s heightened partisanship.

Christopher Atamian on how Takashi Murakami unites kitsch, mockery, and tradition.

It’s World Cup time again. Alan Jacobs on the logic of the world’s most popular sport.

How the YouTube powerhouse Postmodern Jukebox arose from one pianist’s knack for covering recent songs in vintage styles.

All-woman crew boosts bling in latest ‘Ocean’s’ caper—reviewed by John Podhoretz.

While much of America learned this week that Washington, D.C., has a professional hockey team, The Scrapbook was reminded that San Diego still has a Major League Baseball team. At the Braves-Padres game at Petco Park, caught on video that quickly became social-media famous, Braves outfielder Ender…

There was gnashing of teeth last week when it emerged that the Trump administration had seized the emails and phone records of New York Times national security reporter Ali Watkins in an investigation of former Senate Intelligence Committee aide James A. Wolfe. Wolfe had been leaking like a busted…

Far be it from The Scrapbook to judge the philanthropic impulses of the extremely wealthy, but the recent announcement of a $20 million gift to the City University of New York struck us as a bit rich. The money, which will fund the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, was the gift of Craig Newmark,…

We’ve read some dumb and substandard political pieces in our day—we may even have generated some—but a June 10 piece in the Washington Post is a strong contender for Dumbest Op-Ed Ever Written. The article, by Suzanna Danuta Walters—according to her byline a “professor of sociology and director of…

Things have gotten bad in California. So bad, in fact, as the New York Times recently reported, that some not insignificant number of San Franciscans are actually thinking of . . . voting Republican. The streets are filthy, crime is on the uptick, and government services are in decline. Add to that…

Any assessment of Anthony Bourdain’s life, his suicide notwithstanding, is likely to be tinged with jealousy. We suppose someone had to get paid to be a world traveler and bon vivant, but did Bourdain have to be so good at it? At a minimum, few people have a constitution that can alternately…

Christine Rosen remembers the '80s.