May 2011
7 posts
8 tags
As a program of aggrandizement of a nation we do not like, we may deny to it the terms like ‘manifest destiny’, ‘the protection of vital interests’, ‘national honour’ or a term coined on the footing of ‘the white man’s burden’, and may give it the name of ‘aggressive aggrandizement’ pure and simple.
- Radhabinod Pal, voicing...
9 tags
Eight Great Commercials With Writers As Pitchmen →
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At first I wanted to skip Jonathan Franzen’s recent commencement address because the NYT is sort of selling it as an attack against technology (“Technology Provides an Alternative to Love”), which sounds like exactly the crotchety side of Franzen that I am not interested in. It turns out, though, that I was totally wrong: it’s totally great, Franzen at his best. You should...
3 tags
Rick Perlstein on Hubert Humphrey, “America’s forgotten liberal”.
2 tags
A (short!) excerpt from a 1959 speech by Walter Lippmann on the “essential service” that is journalism.
5 tags
A 1943 Life magazine article, breathly describing the Russians as “one hell of a people” who “look like Americans, dress like Americans, and think like Americans”.
