Christopher Hitchens,"
Talking Politics,"
Weekly Standard, 7 July, reviews William Safire's
Safire's Political Dictionary. While you're hitching, see also: Hitchens,"
Farewell to a Provincial Redneck,"
Slate, 7 July, on the death of Jesse Helms. Tributes to his memory on the Right have been embarrassing. He was a notorious racist and anti-gay bigot. His lesbian grand-daughter, Jennifer Knox, is now an elected Republican district judge in North Carolina. As the Senator would have put it:"How do you like
them apples, Jesse?"
The new Common-Place is up! It announces that Hannah Carlson's"Vulgar Things: James Fenimore Cooper's ‘Clairvoyant Handkerchief'," , January, 2007, has won the Uncommon Voice Prize for 2008. Woody Holton tells the backstory to his writing Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution. There's much, much more ...
Robert Fulford,"Islam's Original Feminist," National Post, 5 July, recalls 19th century Egypt's Qasim Amin, the author of The Liberation of Women (1899).
Lee Drutman reviews Mark Bauerlein's The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future, or Don't Trust Anyone Under 30 for the LA Times, 5 July.
Carlin Romano,"Dishonorary Degrees," CHE, 11 July, wonders about the symbolic act of revoking a symbolic act. Hat tip.
