Alan Jacobs

A continual negotiation was going on between thought, speech and writing, thought having as a rule the worst of it. Speech was humble and creeping, but wanted too many fine shades and could never come to a satisfactory end. Writing was lordly and regardless. Thought went on in the twilight, and wished the other two might come to terms for ever. But maybe they did not and never will, and perhaps, they never do.

— Edward Thomas, "How I Began" (1913)

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“700”] the Galloway Hoard[/caption]

Another item of note is a gold pin shaped like a bird. [Says Dr. Martin Goldberg,] “It is an incredibly striking object. Gold items like that are unusual, often single finds…This is one of the real curiosities, as far as I can tell it’s unique. Nothing gives away where it came from.”

As you can tell from my title, I am planning to provide an exhaustive inventory of dumb things that sports pundits and commentators say. I will begin with an enormously widespread, and perfectly idiotic, tic. When a player fails to do something that the commentator thinks the player should have done, the commentator says, “He’s got to make that play.” Obviously not! And then the player does something the commentator thinks the player should not have dome, the commentator says, “He just can’t do that.” (Can’t miss that shot, can’t get picked off in that situation, can’t lose the man he’s supposed to be guarding.) But obviously he can! Save words, commentators, and just imitate our President: say “Bad!” Your “can’t” and “must” add nothing to that verdict. 

Stunning. 

Darryl Hart says I have accused my fellow evangelicals of “hypocrisy” in voting for Trump. Well, no. I noted a major shift, from the 1990s to now, in the standards that most evangelical leaders use to evaluate the role of character in Presidential candidates: then it mattered a lot, and now it doesn’t matter at all. I think I document that pretty thoroughly.

Now, I do believe that people like William Bennett and James Dobson ought to explain what led them to change their minds so dramatically — a 180-degree reversal ought to be accounted for. But many of the people who voted for Trump in the past election didn’t vote in the 1990s, and if they did vote then may well have voted for Bill Clinton. So the question of changing standards doesn’t apply to them. My essay is concerned with one simple question: If character no longer counts, what does? And having explored that, I tried to make a defense of the value of bringing specifically Christian ideas into the general political conversation (a move that Rusty Reno thinks imprudent).

To Darryl’s claim that I “completely ignore” Hillary Clinton’s moral failings: I did indeed, because my essay is about how Christians who supported Trump evaluated his character. Those are not people who were ever going to vote for Hillary, any more than I would have.

The upcoming Eric Ravilious exhibition at the Towner Art Gallery will apparently include his wonderful calendars.

Saul Steinberg, “The South” (1955). Chris Ware on Steinberg here.

What we have here, in other words, is a piece of pornography written in order to stimulate the political libidos of paranoiacs who find their Twitter feeds insufficiently lascivious. Mr. Schenkkan, on the other hand, has described “Building the Wall” as “not a crazy or extreme fantasy,” which tells you everything you need to know about his point of view. It is, of course, possible to spin exciting drama out of raging paranoia, but that requires a certain amount of subtlety, not to mention intelligence, and

— Terry Teachout. The play under review seems to be a textbook example of what I have called elsewhere using fantasy to build a world in which your political enemies can be just as evil as you want them to be.

[caption width=“470” id=“attachment_30080” align=“aligncenter”] Japanese movie poster, from Voices of East Anglia[/caption]

Modern society, as a whole, tends toward a sort of institutional optimism, espousing Hegelian notions of history as progress and encouraging us to believe happiness is at least potentially available for all, if only we would pull together in a reasonable manner. Hence the kind of truth pessimists tell us will always be a subversive truth. All the quotations I chose from Cioran, almost at random, could be understood as rebuttals of the pieties we were brought up on: that knowledge is a vital acquisition, that we must work to help and save each other, that it is positive to be industrious and healthy, that freedom is supremely important, and so on.

Such a radical deconstruction may be alarming, yet when carried out with panache, zest, and sparkle, it nevertheless creates a moment’s exhilaration, and with it, crucially, a feeling of liberty. Reading Leopardi or Cioran or Beckett, one is being freed from the social obligation to be happy.

— Tim Parks