The Latest(ish)
Despite unprecedented social, political, economic, and cultural upheaval, there is, still, just a part of this country’s vision of itself that is forever Bedford Falls. That was an idea of nation as extended community, diverse, but not too diverse, a land of opportunity, certainly, but one where no one was left too far behind, or ended up too far ahead. There was Potter, but he was an outsider, the moneyed exception that proved the modest rule, the rule that was also an ideal, of an America where everyone was in the same boat. Robert Frank, the author of the entertaining, [...]
In the Land Of Mammon
August 15, 2007
Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich; published originally in The New York Sun
If the summer schedules were once a sun-ravaged, derelict playground for television’s has-beens, no-hopers, bums, and re-runs, that’s no longer inevitably the case, at least so far as cable is concerned. In recent weeks, TNT has launched Saving Grace, a show starring Holly Hunter as a self-destructive detective being bugged by an angel, while AMC is offering up Mad Men, a series set in the golden age of advertising, a time of lies, treble martinis, and fumbling attempts at sophistication, a time when cigarettes soothed your throat and no liquor company would ever have dared tell its customers to drink [...]
Dangerous Litigation
August 7, 2007
Damages; published originally in National Review Online