For two years we’ve watched as highly educated liberals come up with one reason after another for Hillary Clinton’s loss in the 2016 election. Russian trolls and hackers, James Comey’s memo, hopelessness among white opioid addicts, Donald Trump’s sophisticated use of a metaphorical “dog whistle,”…
Is anyone fit to host the Oscars?
Liberal politicos—as distinct from progressive ideologues—rarely express their belief that “family planning,” as it’s euphemistically known, can alleviate or even solve the problem of poverty. We recall President Bill Clinton’s first surgeon general, the logorrheic Joycelyn Elders, remarking in her…
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On August 30, the New Orleans Times-Picayune ran an unsigned editorial criticizing an editorial the same paper ran a century before. The offending piece: “Jass and Jassism,” a denunciation of jazz music published in 1918. “Why is the jass music, and, therefore, the jass band?” New Orleans’s paper…
We live in an age of hyper-trivial faux-controversies, almost all of them generated (if we speak just a little uncharitably) by overeducated progressives and left-wing politicos. If you follow politics on Twitter, you’ll encounter so many of these moronic spats that you may be tempted to despair of…
Virginia GOP Senate nominee Corey Stewart is one of Donald Trump’s most consistent and fervent supporters. The native Minnesotan is known for his sympathy for conspiracy theories and for his flirtations with the “alt right.” Conservatives in Virginia have watched with amazement as Stewart cheers…
Sally Rooney is a young Marxist novelist from Ireland, the author of Conversations with Friends, a celebrated debut novel. She has just published a second novel, Normal People, and already it’s a bestseller. Both are being adapted for the big screen. Rooney is among the most successful millennial…
Colin Kaepernick, the former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, has signed a deal with Nike in which he will appear in some of the company’s “Just Do It” advertisements. Kaepernick of course pioneered the practice of protesting racial injustice by kneeling during the national anthem. The…
This spring, not long after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, the Department of Education released a report showing that during the 2015-2016 school year there were an astounding 240 school shootings. The figure has been repeated endlessly by gun control activists and…
In the runup to the passage of last year’s tax reform bill, readers may recall, former Treasury secretary Larry Summers predicted that 10,000 people would die every year as a direct result of the bill’s passage. He had in mind the bill’s provision repealing the individual insurance mandate…
A July 27 game between the Houston Astros and the Texas Rangers featured a few minutes of pointless delight. Chris White, a Marine veteran, made the unusual decision to remove his trousers and shirt, brandish his Stars-and-Stripes-themed underwear—silkies is the military term—and sprint across the…
Is The Scrapbook the only one who’s grown weary of the word team used where it doesn’t belong—outside the world of sports? For a year or two after Olympic teams were called Team USA or Team France, it was cute to refer to your company or office as “team” this or that. Then politicians got in on the…
In Europe and North America, museums just can’t win. It takes wealthy people and large corporations to keep them operating, but left-wing artists and intellectuals don’t like wealthy people and large companies.
Election season is upon us, and you know what that means—idiotic trickery dreamed up by campaign hacks and political consultants.
The fact-checking industry has grown tremendously in recent years, and mostly for good reason. Half-truths, outrageous rumors, and outright fabrications are common enough without the Internet. They are ubiquitous online. When fact-checking is well done (by, for instance, Glenn Kessler at the…
What do most people do when they see a naked or nearly naked person in public? Most probably experience a moment of shock, point and laugh, call the police, or all of the above. Ask Eric Stagno. After seeing him parade around naked in a Planet Fitness gym doing “yoga-like” exercises, alarmed gym…
Rob Rogers, cartoonist at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for 25 years, was recently fired. Rogers was known for drawing acerbically satirical cartoons about Donald Trump. It follows, at least in the minds of the #resistance, that he was fired because he was anti-Trump. The Scrapbook knows about this…
One of the annoyances of modern life is the way in which highly technical studies in medical journals are reported in the media as though their practical relevance were immediate. Journalists who don’t grasp the nuances of the study’s conclusions and qualifications report that white wine may cause…
The left-wing organization MoveOn subjected itself to ridicule this week by posting a message to its social media accounts: “Low wages are violence. Knowingly letting people suffer is violence. It must end.” The attached graphic had to do with the minimum wage, which the staff at MoveOn in their…
Daily Show host Trevor Noah has expressed the novel view that France’s recent victory in the World Cup is an “African victory,” since most of the players on the team are of African descent. This didn’t go over well with the French ambassador to the United States, Gérard Araud, who wrote a terse…
“‘Having a vagina doesn’t make a woman,’ she said in an interview. ‘Even if many people don’t want to see me as a woman . . .’ ” (“Aiming for Miss Universe, and Transgender Rights,” New York Times, July 14).
By historical standards, security and quality of life in 21st-century America are remarkably high. We may be on a slow decline, but the journey to the bottom is a very long one. And despite daily predictions of doom, Donald Trump has yet to turn the country into a hellscape where the few citizens…
For more than a year and a half now, hundreds of intellectuals and historians and commentators have written books and articles and delivered lectures on the origins and meaning of Donald Trump’s 2016 victory. A foreign observer could be forgiven for thinking every writer on politics and culture in…
The Scrapbook is now at the middle station of life, and for as long as we can remember, bright people have been devising clever ways to get kids to read books. “Educational” television programs that encourage reading, ad campaigns promoting book-reading, kids’ books full of flatulent humor, book…
An op-ed in the New York Times on July 14 caught our attention: “We Pick a Party, Then a Church.” The author, Michele Margolis, an assistant professor of political science at Penn, contends that the common assumption about religious and political affiliations in America—that party affiliations are…
"How will you cover 2018 without the repeat of the 2016 errors and continue on with what I have read as really strong journalism since 2017? . . .
In this month’s GQ magazine is a long essay we knew we shouldn’t read, but we couldn’t help ourselves: “Jimmy Carter for Higher Office in ’18,” by Michael Paterniti.
We were saddened this week to learn of the death of Donald Hall, one of the great formalist poets to arise in the second half of the 20th century. Hall wrote scores of works. He was a talented playwright, a superb memoirist, and an omnicompetent anthologist.
“And thanks to my groomer and stylist, Marvin ‘Marv the Barb’ Church, the world’s best barber, and Ms. Carolyn Brown, who squires me in a marvelous manner. I’m grateful to the remarkable group of artists and activists who sat for interviews for this book, including Harry Belafonte (thanks for the…
Sexism, however we define it, is still a problem. And we reckon it always will be, in a fallen world. Still, a great variety of metrics show that women in America are now doing better than men in an impressive range of areas, from educational achievement to career success. But we’ve tended to…
Readers of the Wall Street Journal’s Review section may remember an explosive essay that ran in its pages in 2011: “Darkness Too Visible,” by the paper’s children’s books columnist, Meghan Cox Gurdon. In that essay, Gurdon surveyed an array of popular books published in what’s called the YA…
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…
In March The Scrapbook introduced readers to the Boxer Prize—a very special literary award given to famous authors, typically celebrity or politician authors, whose fictional heroes bear a striking resemblance to their creators. We call it the Boxer Prize in recognition of former California senator…
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When we saw the headline in the New York Times—“Howard Schultz to Step Down as Starbucks Executive Chairman”—we mistakenly assumed Schultz’s decision to retire had something to do with the recent ruckus over racism. In mid-April, remember, a Starbucks franchise in Philadelphia was accused of racial…
"I was assigned female at birth, but as I got older I felt less and less feminine. I am not someone who always knew I was transgender. I knew it only when the body I loved—my androgynous child’s body—turned into something unmistakably female. I got breasts. And suddenly . . . ” (“When Neither Male…
It’s difficult to quantify how upset progressive America was in the wake of Donald Trump’s winning the presidential election, but one reliable measure of that anguish is $7.3 million. That’s how much money 161,000 Americans donated to the Green party presidential candidate after she promised to…
The Scrapbook has complained at least once in recent days about center-left news media using the terms “the right” and “conservatives” in highly tendentious ways.
"After Years of Belt-Tightening, Weary England Is Feeling the Pinch,” announced a front-page, above-the-fold headline in the New York Times on May 28. It’s a lengthy article—more than 3,000 words—replete with stories about declining public services and attendant growth in social ills.
Like Paul Newman’s chain gang in Cool Hand Luke, Starbucks is suffering from a failure to communicate. First, of course, was the Philadelphia branch manager who had two African-American men arrested on the grounds they were loitering (they weren’t). Then, in a burst of enthusiasm and contrition,…
Liberals and progressives sometimes complain that Republicans win more elections, and they do. But cheer up, lefties—you’ve got a lock on the nation’s elite colleges. The thought occurred to us when we read through Homogeneous: The Political Affiliations of Elite Liberal Arts College Faculty, a new…
Hillary Clinton seems to have made her choice of post-political career: incessant unfunny whining. Consider her address to Yale University’s graduating class of 2018.
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A recent New York Times piece took aim at Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (and occasional TWS contributor). A lot of Beltway policymakers are upset at Dubowitz, mainly for his scathing criticisms of the Iran nuclear deal over the last several years but also for the…
Hollywood is notorious for taking certain ideas to unpleasant extremes: CGI in Star Wars movies, saccharine romantic comedy tropes, the Fast and Furious franchise. But in our current #MeToo moment, activists intent on remaking the world in a more female-friendly image have gone beyond outing…
It wasn’t with shock but with relief that The Scrapbook greeted the news that a Washington tradition is coming to an end: “After nearly 15 years, The Hill is bidding a beautiful bye-bye to its annual 50 Most Beautiful list.”
Journalists in the mainstream media often sound as though they have no idea why anybody would entertain skepticism about the news media. The term “media bias” is, to them, a ruse. Complaints about “fake news” are evidence of stupidity or delusion.
"When the audience of more than 300 began to clap and howl, Madeleine K. Albright entered the Georgetown University auditorium. She waved. She winked. The clapping grew louder, especially from young women in the room. They smiled giddily, checked to make sure their phones were on silent and opened…
Readers may remember Fearless Girl, the 50-inch-tall bronze statue of an intrepid young girl, placed in front of the famous Charging Bull sculpture in Lower Manhattan. The girl, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio recently announced, will be moved to a new location nearby—in front of the New York…
Most Americans can name only one local politician from Washington, D.C., and that happens to be the city’s “mayor for life” Marion Barry, famously busted in 1990 for smoking crack in an FBI sting operation (“bitch set me up!”). In March, the city unveiled a bronze statue to Barry on Pennsylvania…
Barnard College in New York City isn't a religious school—unless you count the usual genuflections at the altars of diversity, feminism, environmentalism, and the like. Nonetheless, The Scrapbook is proud to bestow upon Barnard—with all due fanfare—the first-ever Weekly Standard St. Augustine Award…
Princeton economics professor emeritus and Nobel laureate Angus Deaton has been running around making an extraordinary claim: “Being really poor in America is in some ways worse than being really poor in India or Africa," he recently told the National Association for Business Economics. Asked about…
Who doesn’t like a story with a happy ending? In The Weekly Standard last week, in "Berkeley Goes Offline," Andrew Ferguson told the sad tale of disability-rights activists who had filed a complaint against the University of California, Berkeley, claiming that the thousands of hours of classroom…
Barnard College in New York City isn’t a religious school—unless you count the usual genuflections at the altars of diversity, feminism, environmentalism, and the like. Nonetheless, The Scrapbook is proud to bestow upon Barnard—with all due fanfare—the first-ever Weekly Standard St. Augustine Award…
Who doesn’t like a story with a happy ending? In The Weekly Standard last week, in "Berkeley Goes Offline," Andrew Ferguson told the sad tale of disability-rights activists who had filed a complaint against the University of California, Berkeley, claiming that the thousands of hours of classroom…
Newspapers aren’t just throwing Trumpoplectic fits, they're monetizing them. The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times have all rolled out clothing lines tweaking the new president. The most comic is found at the Post website, which features a T-shirt in rock-concert black…
Princeton economics professor emeritus and Nobel laureate Angus Deaton has been running around making an extraordinary claim: “Being really poor in America is in some ways worse than being really poor in India or Africa," he recently told the National Association for Business Economics. Asked about…
As noted recently in these pages (“Nullifying Calhoun," Feb. 27), Yale University has decided to remove the name of alumnus John C. Calhoun from the "residential college"—Ivy-speak for "dormitory"—it has graced since the dorm was built in the 1930s. Calhoun, class of 1804, senator, vice president,…
The ironists among us—or maybe wiseacres would be a better term—have always taken macabre note of the premature deaths of health and fitness gurus. One such was Jim Fixx, author of The Complete Book of Running (1977), who suffered a fatal coronary at the appallingly young age of 52—while jogging,…
"Could Joe Biden have been the next Abraham Lincoln? That thought came to mind recently . . . "
Once it was thought to be a measure of an actor's skill that he or she might play roles at odds with his or her actual circumstances, race, or even gender (Shakespeare's women, after all, were once played by male youths). But the trend—disguised as a moral imperative—has been to demand that…
It’s tough to be a globalist these days. President Trump and his chief strategist denounce you. Alt-right websites ridicule you. The Brexit vote leaves your European plans in limbo.
Non-Californians need not apply. That’s the message the University of California system sent last week, when it proposed to limit out-of-state residents to just 20 percent of student slots at its flagship schools. At UC campuses with higher rates of out-of-state students—at Berkeley, for example,…
Villanova University in Radnor Township, Pennsylvania, is a Roman Catholic institution. Not that there's anything wrong with that! But for some residents of Radnor, Villanova is kind of overdoing this whole Catholic thing.
Say this about the Trump presidency: It befuddles Democrats, who are racing to adjust their political positions to appease their angry constituents' anti-Trump mood. Their latest contortion on immigration is leaving some in the party of resistance sounding like Rush Limbaugh.
What's the sound a bottle of soda makes when opened? If you're the government in Berkeley or Philadelphia, it's not ssfzzzt but cha-ching. These two towns—bedrocks of meddlesome nanny-state liberalism—now collect steep taxes on soft drinks and other sweetened beverages. The Philly soda-tariff took…
SeaWorld is drowning—in red ink. "As they reported continued declines in revenue and attendance," the Orlando Sentinel writes, "SeaWorld Entertainment executives vowed to push for improved financial performance through a combination of new attractions, cost cuts and pricing strategies."
What’s the sound a bottle of soda makes when opened? If you're the government in Berkeley or Philadelphia, it's not ssfzzzt but cha-ching. These two towns—bedrocks of meddlesome nanny-state liberalism—now collect steep taxes on soft drinks and other sweetened beverages. The Philly soda-tariff took…
Villanova University in Radnor Township, Pennsylvania, is a Roman Catholic institution. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! But for some residents of Radnor, Villanova is kind of overdoing this whole Catholic thing.
The craft beer market continues to surge, and this being America, that means a burgeoning market for litigation. Among the lawsuits that have been brewing is a case filed last month accusing Walmart of peddling as “craft" beer the product of an industrial-scale brewer. Now comes another…
Say this about the Trump presidency: It befuddles Democrats, who are racing to adjust their political positions to appease their angry constituents’ anti-Trump mood. Their latest contortion on immigration is leaving some in the party of resistance sounding like Rush Limbaugh.
Who knew that in the age of America First, the greatest threat to Hispanic communities in the United States wasn't marauding bands of ICE agents wielding mass deportation orders or the construction of a border wall? No, the scourge is Art.
Is there nothing so louche that Trump supporters won't indulge in it? According to the Washington Post, apparently not. So low have we been brought, the Post suggests, that in Donald Trump's capital there is a fad for that odious cinnamon-flavored sugar gargle that masquerades as whiskey,…
Last week, the Washington Post unveiled a new slogan displayed just below the paper’s masthead: "Democracy dies in darkness." As Count Floyd might say, "Scary stuff, huh, kids?"
Is there nothing so louche that Trump supporters won’t indulge in it? According to the Washington Post, apparently not. So low have we been brought, the Post suggests, that in Donald Trump's capital there is a fad for that odious cinnamon-flavored sugar gargle that masquerades as whiskey,…
A leading case in constitutional law it ain’t. But we now have a ruling: The Snuggie—"The Blanket That Has Sleeves!"—is indeed a blanket, the sleeves notwithstanding. So says Judge Mark A. Barnett of the United States Court of International Trade. And rightly so, as far as The Scrapbook can tell.
Who knew that in the age of America First, the greatest threat to Hispanic communities in the United States wasn’t marauding bands of ICE agents wielding mass deportation orders or the construction of a border wall? No, the scourge is Art.
Up to now, The Scrapbook has looked skeptically at rankings of presidents by historians. They tend to be biased, trendy, superficial, and based on no little myth. The only thing worse than getting historians—liberals, for the most part—to do the ordering would be to ask sociologists. Yet we…
Berets—it's been some time since they were just for baguette-toting Frenchmen and elite members of the Army's Special Forces. In the summer of 2001, the Army changed longstanding policy and began to put berets on every head. The logic was simple—everyone should be made to feel special, not just…
Washington Post “media columnist" Margaret Sullivan has lately discovered that when political types respond to media inquiries, they "answer" only those questions they choose to answer and smother the rest with verbiage. Being rather new to the capital city, she seems to believe this is a uniquely…
Up to now, The Scrapbook has looked skeptically at rankings of presidents by historians. They tend to be biased, trendy, superficial, and based on no little myth. The only thing worse than getting historians—liberals, for the most part—to do the ordering would be to ask sociologists. Yet we…
Let's celebrate a small victory for economic freedom, which, as the great Milton Friedman was wont to point out, is essential to political freedom. It is now legal in Arizona to get paid to give a horse a massage without having, first, acquired a license to practice veterinary medicine.
After masked marauders invaded the campus breaking and burning things, rioting to shut down a speech by alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, a question for the University of California, Berkeley, was whether the miscreants were students or (in the immortal words of The Graduate's Berkeley…
The Scrapbook is always flattered when the conventional wisdom catches up with our own prejudices. Case in point: There seems to be a gathering consensus that the White House Correspondents' Association dinner—that annual televised schmoozefest where journalists and politicians mix in ways that…
We regret to inform you that Katie Couric has a new documentary.
After masked marauders invaded the campus breaking and burning things, rioting to shut down a speech by alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, a question for the University of California, Berkeley, was whether the miscreants were students or (in the immortal words of The Graduate’s Berkeley…
Let’s celebrate a small victory for economic freedom, which, as the great Milton Friedman was wont to point out, is essential to political freedom. It is now legal in Arizona to get paid to give a horse a massage without having, first, acquired a license to practice veterinary medicine.
The Scrapbook is always flattered when the conventional wisdom catches up with our own prejudices. Case in point: There seems to be a gathering consensus that the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner—that annual televised schmoozefest where journalists and politicians mix in ways that…
Those looking to study Korean in its native land suffer from no dearth of options: Seoul is chock-full of fine universities offering to teach the notoriously difficult tongue to foreigners. But for those seeking an experience a little more, well, what's the word—Stalinist?—there is Tongil Tours.…
The Ahabs at the Washington Post continue their obsessive pursuit of the Great Orange Whale. And if that means harpooning the inoffensive spouse of their prey, so be it. Witness an extended Post article last week, "The AWOL first lady," which takes Melania Trump to task for being "barely visible."…
The Wall Street Journal last week ran a piece on an interior design trend not for the faint of heart—maximalism: "The Lush New Décor Look That's Vanquishing Minimalism."
Those looking to study Korean in its native land suffer from no dearth of options: Seoul is chock-full of fine universities offering to teach the notoriously difficult tongue to foreigners. But for those seeking an experience a little more, well, what’s the word—Stalinist?—there is Tongil Tours.…
The Ahabs at the Washington Post continue their obsessive pursuit of the Great Orange Whale. And if that means harpooning the inoffensive spouse of their prey, so be it. Witness an extended Post article last week, “The AWOL first lady," which takes Melania Trump to task for being "barely visible."…
Should you find yourself strolling along Colorado’s Boulder Creek, be careful where you step. It seems that no small number of homeless have taken up residence there, and not only are they are in the habit of leaving trash hither and yon, so too waste of a more personal nature. "The…
The work of THE WEEKLY STANDARD was briefly interrupted when a handful of Greenpeace stuntivists mounted a crane on a neighboring construction site, unfurled a banner, and then dangled in the air for several hours. Our office window had a perfect view of the pranksters as their banner folded in on…
Oh, no! Only 150 seconds to go. The lugubrious blowhards at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists couldn't let all of the exciting anti-Trump activities of the president's first week go by without getting in on the act. As they like to do whenever they've been out of the news for too long, the…
The work of THE WEEKLY STANDARD was briefly interrupted last week when a handful of Greenpeace stuntivists mounted a crane on a neighboring construction site, unfurled a banner, and then dangled in the air for several hours. Our office window had a perfect view of the pranksters as their banner…
Kim Jong-un’s nicotine habit may yet be his undoing. That was the lesson from the defection, announced this week, of senior North Korean diplomat Thae Yong-ho.
Should you find yourself strolling along Colorado’s Boulder Creek, be careful where you step. It seems that no small number of homeless have taken up residence there, and not only are they are in the habit of leaving trash hither and yon, so too waste of a more personal nature. "The…
Oh, no! Only 150 seconds to go. The lugubrious blowhards at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists couldn’t let all of the exciting anti-Trump activities of the president's first week go by without getting in on the act. As they like to do whenever they've been out of the news for too long, the…
Don’t miss the new episode of "Conversations with Bill Kristol," the video series in which The Weekly Standard's editor at large talks philosophy, politics, and culture with big thinkers. A case in point is the most recent program, which features that most worthy of worthies, Scrapbook colleague…
If you hadn’t noticed, the election of Donald Trump has led to some, well, tension in social settings. Weeks after the vote, families gathered for Thanksgiving and the college kids were just too, too appalled by their parents' deplorable Trumpism to even talk about it. Come Christmas the snowflakes…
Even with a packed schedule of farewell speeches and his final presidential press conference, Barack Obama managed to find time for exit interviews in his last few White House weeks: There was the 60 Minutes sit-down, the Lester Holt love-fest, an NPR snoozer, David Axelrod’s "Axe Files" podcast,…
Kids at Barack Obama Elementary have known only one president. Many fear the next.
Whether Barack Obama returns to the craft of short stories or makes with the memoirs, chances are he will be doing much of his writing not in Chicago, but in Washington, where he and his family have chosen to reside.
Cory Booker's toothless testimony last week at the confirmation hearing for Jeff Sessions failed to derail the nomination of the next attorney general. But The Scrapbook suspects that was never the New Jersey Democrat's intent when he announced he would defy an unwritten rule of Senate decorum and…
In the middle of a 3,500-word Newsweek profile of Betsy DeVos—the philanthropist and education reform crusader Donald Trump has nominated for education secretary—The Scrapbook spotted this trenchant observation:
The Scrapbook finds itself so very, very disappointed in the media for their coverage of the recent salacious assertions about the president-elect.
The Scrapbook finds itself so very, very disappointed in the media for their coverage of the recent salacious assertions about the president-elect.
Readers may recall the evening, in 1973, when Marlon Brando declined to accept, in person, his Oscar for The Godfather and sent instead a winsome half-Native-American woman (stage name: Sacheen Littlefeather), who proceeded to deliver a Brando-certified speech about the film industry’s…
In the middle of a 3,500-word Newsweek profile of Betsy DeVos—the philanthropist and education reform crusader Donald Trump has nominated for education secretary—The Scrapbook spotted this trenchant observation:
Cory Booker’s toothless testimony last week at the confirmation hearing for Jeff Sessions failed to derail the nomination of the next attorney general. But The Scrapbook suspects that was never the New Jersey Democrat's intent when he announced he would defy an unwritten rule of Senate decorum and…
The Nation is publishing its gala hagiographic Obama send-off issue—"The Obama Years: 2008-2016"—and does so perhaps more in sadness than in celebration. The articles are full of complaint and recriminations—but not, for the most part, aimed at the Dear Leader.
Secretary of State John Kerry recently gave a speech highly critical of the Israeli government. Supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were outraged; critics, on the other hand, were gratified. And then, just about everyone picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and turned their…
Great Britain has a new tool for combating the very real threat of terrorism—an app.
The Nation is publishing its gala hagiographic Obama send-off issue—"The Obama Years: 2008-2016"—and does so perhaps more in sadness than in celebration. The articles are full of complaint and recriminations—but not, for the most part, aimed at the Dear Leader.
For those who will miss the fawning tone and tenor of presidential news coverage to which we have grown accustomed in the age of Obama, there’s always Chinese media and its coverage of the Communist party and its leaders.
As you may have noticed from the date on the cover of this issue, all of us at The Weekly Standard will be taking a week off (though the digital galley slaves at weeklystandard.com—visit early and often!—are going to power through the holiday season). The Scrapbook is self-indulgently ecumenical…
As Orwell memorably put it, sometimes the "restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." In that spirit, The Scrapbook will reiterate to our liberal friends: Donald Trump is going to be president of the United States. We don't have high hopes that they're listening to us,…
As readers know, The Scrapbook is a longtime connoisseur of the Law of Unintended Consequences. And this election year has furnished more than a few examples.
As you may have noticed from the date on the cover of this issue, all of us at The Weekly Standard will be taking a week off (though the digital galley slaves at weeklystandard.com—visit early and often!—are going to power through the holiday season). The Scrapbook is self-indulgently ecumenical…
As readers know, The Scrapbook is a longtime connoisseur of the Law of Unintended Consequences. And this election year has furnished more than a few examples.
As Orwell memorably put it, sometimes the “restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." In that spirit, The Scrapbook will reiterate to our liberal friends: Donald Trump is going to be president of the United States. We don't have high hopes that they're listening to us,…
To be honest, The Scrapbook is nowhere near as exercised as it might be about the removal, by a gaggle of undergraduates, of William Shakespeare's portrait from its prominent position on the wall of an English department staircase at the University of Pennsylvania. The department had already…
Last week saw a delightfully breathless editorial in the Washington Post, followed by an even more preposterous companion piece at Politico, claiming that legislation changing how the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and other U.S. government-sponsored broadcasters are organized…
Congressional Republicans agree with Democrats that Russia's hacking of Democratic emails merits investigation. But however troubling Moscow's election-season mischief-making might have been, there's no reason to assume the results of the presidential vote itself were in any way unfair. The real…
To be honest, The Scrapbook is nowhere near as exercised as it might be about the removal, by a gaggle of undergraduates, of William Shakespeare’s portrait from its prominent position on the wall of an English department staircase at the University of Pennsylvania. The department had already…
Last week saw a delightfully breathless editorial in the Washington Post, followed by an even more preposterous companion piece at Politico, claiming that legislation changing how the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and other U.S. government-sponsored broadcasters are organized…
Congressional Republicans agree with Democrats that Russia’s hacking of Democratic emails merits investigation. But however troubling Moscow's election-season mischief-making might have been, there's no reason to assume the results of the presidential vote itself were in any way unfair. The real…
Don't mistake The Scrapbook's recent silence on the subject of the mainstream media's meretricious "fact-checking" enterprise for a sign that things have improved on that front. They haven't. The "fact checks" are as biased and misleading as ever, it's just that The Scrapbook got tired of spitting…
Ever on the lookout for irony, The Scrapbook's attention was drawn the other day to two stories—conven-iently situated next to one another—on the front page of the Washington Post Metro section. The first, entitled "D.C. readies for horde of inaugural protesters" (December 4), explained that…
Don’t mistake The Scrapbook's recent silence on the subject of the mainstream media's meretricious "fact-checking" enterprise for a sign that things have improved on that front. They haven't. The "fact checks" are as biased and misleading as ever, it's just that The Scrapbook got tired of spitting…
Speaking of media credibility, The Scrapbook itself has screwed up, for which we are very sorry. But we are grateful to Theresa M. Towner, professor of literary studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, for her gracious letter of reproval. She noted that “Knock, Knock, Knocking," an item in our…
Ever on the lookout for irony, The Scrapbook’s attention was drawn the other day to two stories—conven-iently situated next to one another—on the front page of the Washington Post Metro section. The first, entitled "D.C. readies for horde of inaugural protesters" (December 4), explained that…
It was not a great year for McDonald's in 2004. The company was still recovering from a sales slump and management crisis when a comedian/political activist named Morgan Spurlock released a documentary (Super Size Me) in which he filmed himself consuming three McDonald's meals a day for one month,…
The Scrapbook has slowly begun to grow accustomed to the idea that Donald Trump—Donald Trump!—is going to be sworn in next month as president of the United States. What we continue to be shocked by is how out of touch the entire Democratic party appears to be. Had we understood just how clueless…
Chip and Joanna Gaines are at the height of their popularity. They host the well-liked remodeling show Fixer Upper on HGTV, have a bestselling book, and recently appeared on the cover of People. They are also devout Christians from Waco, Texas, so it was probably just a matter of time before the…
Chip and Joanna Gaines are at the height of their popularity. They host the well-liked remodeling show Fixer Upper on HGTV, have a bestselling book, and recently appeared on the cover of People. They are also devout Christians from Waco, Texas, so it was probably just a matter of time before the…
It was not a great year for McDonald’s in 2004. The company was still recovering from a sales slump and management crisis when a comedian/political activist named Morgan Spurlock released a documentary (Super Size Me) in which he filmed himself consuming three McDonald's meals a day for one month,…
A crime report in the Philadelphia Inquirer last week caught The Scrapbook’s eye:
The Scrapbook has slowly begun to grow accustomed to the idea that Donald Trump—Donald Trump!—is going to be sworn in next month as president of the United States. What we continue to be shocked by is how out of touch the entire Democratic party appears to be. Had we understood just how clueless…
The Scrapbook has been experiencing déjà vu recently. Our memories of the vast left-wing paranoia during the Bush years had become hazy, but this week they all came flooding back. The left was already displaying unusual difficulty in coming to terms with Donald Trump's election victory, but then…
Last week was the anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, which the Washington Post observed by inviting the ubiquitous novelist Joyce Carol Oates to review a memoir by the granddaughter of Abraham Zapruder, the man whose 8mm movie of Kennedy's shooting by Lee Harvey Oswald may well be the…
In the annals of academic condescension, there can be few equivalents in modern times to the letter, signed by 110 (and counting) college presidents, addressed to President-elect Donald Trump. “In light of your pledge to be 'President for all Americans,' " it declares, "we urge you to condemn and…
The Scrapbook has long suspected that the first rash of antipathy toward Sarah Palin—the immediate, vituperative, sputtering hatred that was manifested within hours of her announcement as John McCain's vice presidential pick—was triggered not by her politics but by her family. Palin has a gaggle of…
The Scrapbook has been experiencing déjà vu recently. Our memories of the vast left-wing paranoia during the Bush years had become hazy, but this week they all came flooding back. The left was already displaying unusual difficulty in coming to terms with Donald Trump's election victory, but then…
Baby boomers had reason to feel slightly more decrepit than usual last week when it was learned that Robert Vaughn, the veteran character actor who played the debonair secret agent Napoleon Solo on the popular television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964-68), had died at the age of 83.
Readers who regularly partake of our abundant offerings at weeklystandard.com will have to forgive us for shamelessly ripping off what follows from our colleague Jonathan V. Last’s online update last week of the latest p.c. doings at the Lego Group, which we thought was too piquant not to share…
Baby boomers had reason to feel slightly more decrepit than usual last week when it was learned that Robert Vaughn, the veteran character actor who played the debonair secret agent Napoleon Solo on the popular television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964-68), had died at the age of 83.
Tucked among the anguished headlines in last week's editions of the Washington Post was this poignant update: "In election's wake, D.C. statehood becomes a dream deferred." The quotation from Langston Hughes was no accident, of course: "Dream deferred" makes it clear that the Post regards statehood…
After all of the dark speculation in the media over whether Donald Trump and his supporters would gracefully accept losing to Hillary Clinton, the reaction of her supporters to the sudden reversal of fortune inflicted by voters has been something to behold. To summarize: The world is literally…
After all of the dark speculation in the media over whether Donald Trump and his supporters would gracefully accept losing to Hillary Clinton, the reaction of her supporters to the sudden reversal of fortune inflicted by voters has been something to behold. To summarize: The world is literally…
One more unforeseen consequence of Donald Trump’s election victory: College students who have been spending too much time binge drinking or binge watching now have a handy excuse for not turning in that required paper on time or for being unprepared for that exam. They can blame it on the election.…
Tucked among the anguished headlines in last week’s editions of the Washington Post was this poignant update: "In election's wake, D.C. statehood becomes a dream deferred." The quotation from Langston Hughes was no accident, of course: "Dream deferred" makes it clear that the Post regards statehood…
"This could blow up in her face! Hillary Clinton may have lit the fuse for her victory celebration a little too soon—by planning an Election Night explosion of fireworks over the Hudson River, The Post has learned.
It's not clear which was more laughable, the cluelessness on display or the hapless effort to hide the cluelessness on display. The Scrapbook is referring to the embarrassing story that went up on the snarky Mediaite website (sort of a cross between the Huffington Post and Gawker) during game seven…
A Washington Post writer observed last week that while the presidential election campaign "has been a late-night host's dream come true," that does not necessarily mean it has been everyone else's dream come true. The late-night TV hosts—Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee, John Oliver, Trevor Noah,…
"These are banner times for -penises onscreen. In the last 18 months or so, I’ve seen casually naked men in . . ." ("Last Taboo: Why American pop culture just can't deal with black male sexuality," Wesley Morris, New York Times Magazine, October 30).
Throughout the 2016 campaign, it seemed to be the consensus view in the media that Donald Trump is a uniquely dishonest creature, obliging the selfsame media to take extraordinary steps, such as explicitly calling him a liar in news stories. The Scrapbook has no problem with calling liars liars,…
"To discuss issues of political and artistic import, forums will run in the gallery’s open-floor space. Artists, historians, philosophers, activists and community members will speak on pressing social issues facing the United States: violence in the media; lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender…
It's not clear which was more laughable, the cluelessness on display or the hapless effort to hide the cluelessness on display. The Scrapbook is referring to the embarrassing story that went up on the snarky Mediaite website (sort of a cross between the Huffington Post and Gawker) during game seven…
When Obamacare was first passed, Vice President Joe Biden famously said it was a "big f—ing deal." Now, though, there's a surprising level of bipartisan agreement that it's a big honking disaster. There had been many warning signs, but last week it became official: Obamacare premiums are going up…
Bob Dylan, as everyone knows, was awarded this year's Nobel Prize for Literature. Everyone, that is, with the possible exception of . . . Bob Dylan. Several days after the award was announced, the committee that makes the decision still had not been able to contact Dylan. So either he didn't know…
The press has a weakness for perennial stories, but while some are benign—presidential pardon for Thanksgiving turkey, overdue medal for wartime hero—others are not so benign and deeply irritating as well. One instructive example is when a well-known media property changes hands: There is always…
Bob Dylan, as everyone knows, was awarded this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature. Everyone, that is, with the possible exception of . . . Bob Dylan. Several days after the award was announced, the committee that makes the decision still had not been able to contact Dylan. So either he didn't know…
When Obamacare was first passed, Vice President Joe Biden famously said it was a “big f—ing deal." Now, though, there's a surprising level of bipartisan agreement that it's a big honking disaster. There had been many warning signs, but last week it became official: Obamacare premiums are going up…
The press has a weakness for perennial stories, but while some are benign—presidential pardon for Thanksgiving turkey, overdue medal for wartime hero—others are not so benign and deeply irritating as well. One instructive example is when a well-known media property changes hands: There is always…
One last story from the trove of Democratic insider emails released by WikiLeaks. This one comes courtesy of our friends at the Washington Free Beacon, whose headline we just ripped off: "Emails: Liberal Think Tank Freaked Out at SNL's Criticism of Donors."
Hillary Clinton’s " 'choice of a white suit for Wednesday's -debate harkened back to the not-so-distant past, when suffragists wore white to promote their struggle to gain the right to vote,' Booth Moore, a senior fashion editor for The Hollywood Reporter and Pret-a-Reporter, told ABC News . . .…
Elsewhere in this issue, our colleague Mark Hemingway surveys the revelations contained in the WikiLeaks release of hacked emails from Clintonista John Podesta. Without giving too much away (see "Scandal? What Scandal?"), it will not surprise you to learn that the emails confirm two obvious points:…
Liberal pundit Jonathan Chait has a new book coming out in a few months titled Audacity: How Barack Obama Defied His Critics and Transformed America. The Scrapbook doesn’t necessarily intend to plug the book, but if he's reading this, you're welcome. Anyway, galleys are now being sent out to…
One last story from the trove of Democratic insider emails released by WikiLeaks. This one comes courtesy of our friends at the Washington Free Beacon, whose headline we just ripped off: “Emails: Liberal Think Tank Freaked Out at SNL's Criticism of Donors."
Hillary Clinton’s " 'choice of a white suit for Wednesday's -debate harkened back to the not-so-distant past, when suffragists wore white to promote their struggle to gain the right to vote,' Booth Moore, a senior fashion editor for The Hollywood Reporter and Pret-a-Reporter, told ABC News . . .…
Elsewhere in this issue, our colleague Mark Hemingway surveys the revelations contained in the WikiLeaks release of hacked emails from Clintonista John Podesta. Without giving too much away (see “Scandal? What Scandal?" on page 28), it will not surprise you to learn that the emails confirm two…
The saga of Jaber al-Bakr, the 22-year-old Syrian migrant and terror suspect who hanged himself in a Leipzig jail cell last week, is more or less over. But his story does illustrate the complexities, the dangers and dilemmas, of immigration policy here and in Europe. Bakr, who was from Damascus,…
Wesley College has been practicing Queen of Hearts justice: “Sentence first—verdict afterwards."Such is the finding of the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, which announced this week that the Dover, Delaware, school has been rather jumping the gun when it comes to punishing those…
This past week we got a master class in how to deploy opposition research in a presidential campaign. During the second debate, a question from CNN's Anderson Cooper led Donald Trump to assert that he "did not kiss women without consent or grope women without consent." At that point, the floodgates…
The saga of Jaber al-Bakr, the 22-year-old Syrian migrant and terror suspect who hanged himself in a Leipzig jail cell last week, is more or less over. But his story does illustrate the complexities, the dangers and dilemmas, of immigration policy here and in Europe. Bakr, who was from Damascus,…
This past week we got a master class in how to deploy opposition research in a presidential campaign. During the second debate, a question from CNN’s Anderson Cooper led Donald Trump to assert that he "did not kiss women without consent or grope women without consent." At that point, the floodgates…
"Things taste better when you make them yourself, and they taste doubly better when you’ve hunted the animal yourself. Whether you're fishing for the salmon, or going hunting for a boar, that's a big part of it. You feel more connected to what you're doing, to what you're eating, you cook it…
Wesley College has been practicing Queen of Hearts justice: “Sentence first—verdict afterwards."Such is the finding of the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, which announced this week that the Dover, Delaware, school has been rather jumping the gun when it comes to punishing those…
Obamacare's days are really and truly numbered. Problems with the law are reaching critical mass. So the Obama administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to prop up the system—and by "extraordinary," we mean illegal.
Scrapbook friend Mike Murphy, the political consultant extraordinaire whose travails at the end of the Jeb Bush campaign were memorably chronicled in these pages by Matt Labash ("Debriefing Mike Murphy," March 28 / April 4, 2016), has of late been hosting a wildly popular podcast called Radio Free…
Readers of THE WEEKLY STANDARD have been treated over the years to countless examples of malpractice from so-called media fact checkers. Some of those fact checkers are worse than others. It's an open secret, and one the media don't want to acknowledge, that PolitiFact in particular is horribly…
The award for the week's most depressing opening sentence in a news story goes to this gem by T. Rees Shapiro of the Washington Post:
Readers of THE WEEKLY STANDARD have been treated over the years to countless examples of malpractice from so-called media fact checkers. Some of those fact checkers are worse than others. It's an open secret, and one the media don't want to acknowledge, that PolitiFact in particular is horribly…
Obamacare’s days are really and truly numbered. Problems with the law are reaching critical mass. So the Obama administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to prop up the system—and by "extraordinary," we mean illegal.
The award for the week’s most depressing opening sentence in a news story goes to this gem by T. Rees Shapiro of the Washington Post:
Scrapbook friend Mike Murphy, the political consultant extraordinaire whose travails at the end of the Jeb Bush campaign were memorably chronicled in these pages by Matt Labash (“Debriefing Mike Murphy," March 28 / April 4, 2016), has of late been hosting a wildly popular podcast called Radio Free…
An old friend of The Scrapbook's posted on Facebook the other day an oblique commentary on this year's campaign: "I used to like the word 'tremendous' and not know the word 'bigly.' Those were happy days."
Last week in Miami baseball laid one of its youngest stars to rest. Jose Fernandez was a 24-year-old righthanded starter for the Miami Marlins with less than four complete major league seasons to his record. From 2013-2016, he compiled 38 wins and an earned run average of 2.58, while striking out…
This summer, The Scrapbook was visiting family at a Fourth of July celebration in downtown Denver. We were settling in and getting ready to watch the fireworks when we were accosted by petitioners. The fact that there is seemingly no time or place in this country where politics is considered an…
An old friend of The Scrapbook’s posted on Facebook the other day an oblique commentary on this year's campaign: "I used to like the word 'tremendous' and not know the word 'bigly.' Those were happy days."
Last week in Miami baseball laid one of its youngest stars to rest. Jose Fernandez was a 24-year-old righthanded starter for the Miami Marlins with less than four complete major league seasons to his record. From 2013-2016, he compiled 38 wins and an earned run average of 2.58, while striking out…
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