Category US

Rorty misquoted (again)

Writing in the New Republic, Chris Lehmann points out that a certain passage in Richard Rorty’s 1998 book, Achieving Our Country, appeared to prophesy the conditions of Donald Trump’s shocking ascension to the presidency. Lehmann then summarizes Rorty’s argument –…

Age is a cunning beast

Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign made a big deal of Joe Biden’s advanced age, claiming he was too senile to be president. The Kremlin’s propagandists in the media, both traditional and social, rushed to ridicule Biden as well, along the lines…

The most generous SOB of them all

About ten days ago, Language Hat wrote about the 1928 novel The Cynics by Anatoly Mariengof (alternatively transliterated as Marienhof): Given its low profile, I probably wouldn’t have read it if Joseph Brodsky hadn’t called it one of the most…

Russia’s true leader

Oleg Kashin in the New York Times today (“Aleksei Navalny Is Russia’s True Leader“): Now, after getting rid of all his opponents, real and imaginary, Mr. Putin finds himself alone. Like the queen in a Russian fairy tale, who every…

“Kipling was a great writer”

This past Wednesday, AP reported from Moscow on Putin’s 2021 state of the nation address: In an apparent reference to the U.S. allies, he compared them to Tabaqui, a cowardly golden jackal kowtowing to Shere Khan, the tiger in Rudyard…

John Kerry as the weak link?

In September 2016, Marwan Bishara wrote a series of five pieces on the unusual personal relationship between the then Secretary of the State John Kerry and the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. This a link to the fifth, and last,…

Added in translation II

It’s good to know that Edward Luttwak put things straight when the Italian new agency Adnkronos asked his view on President Biden’s “killer” interview: Biden spoke the truth: Putin is a murderer [assassino]… In Berlin, where Navalny was hospitalized, they…

They had better think again

Adam Kirsch writes in the New Criterion: If millions of people think Rupi Kaur is a poet, comparing her to Wallace Stevens won’t convince them otherwise. I believe I understand correctly what Kirsch is saying here but I wish he…

The tortoises of 1921

Tortoises, consisting of six long, unrhymed poems by D. H. Lawrence, was printed in 1921 in New York City (by Thomas Seltzer). In Baby Tortoise, Lawrence writes: Voiceless little bird,Resting your head half out of your wimpleIn the slow dignity…

Added in translation?

President Biden stated the obvious in an ABC interview, as Bloomberg reports: After ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos asked Biden if he believes Putin is “a killer,” Biden murmured agreement and said “I do,” without elaborating. By itself, killer…