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Evelyn Waugh: Great Novelist, Less-Than-Great Human Being

From the December 26, 2016, issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

3:20 PM, Dec 22, 2016

By Algis Valiunas

Novelist, travel writer, essayist, and biographer Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), the 50th anniversary of whose death rolled around this year, celebrated by those survivors who had the misfortune of knowing him at all well, was as wretched and ornery a human being as anyone could be who was not actually moved to suicide or murder. He also happened to be funny as hell when the mood struck him, or when he was writing his classic comic novels. Read more

A Yankee's Face on an American Government

Trump hits and brings Steinbrenner home (to the White House).

2:40 PM, Dec 22, 2016

By Chris Deaton

Before the days of Schick and Barbasol, a lithograph from the printmaker Currier and Ives depicted President Lincoln’s ZZ Top of a cabinet and the chinstrap in chief holding the Emancipation Proclamation. Over his shoulder was graybeard Gideon Welles, secretary of the navy, and to his left were Attorney General Edward Bates and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, whose chest-length ducktail traced the v in his vest.

One-hundred and fifty years later, the new president wouldn't even let a pushbroom mustache in the room.

Read more

Photo credit: AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici

Jerry Saltz and the Art of Vacuous Art Criticism

Critique maudit.

1:30 PM, Dec 22, 2016

By Micah Mattix

The photos of the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey in Ankara shocked many people. Jerry Saltz, the senior art critic for New York magazine, was mesmerized by their artistry. Read more

Photo credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Newscom

Reid Says Smearing Mitt Romney Was 'Necessary'

"There were no brazen lies."

1:00 PM, Dec 22, 2016

By Chris Deaton

Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid defended the unsubstantiated charges he made about Mitt Romney’s tax liability as "necessary" during an interview on Nevada public radio Wednesday. Read more

Photo credit: Lowdown/Wikimedia Commons

Virgin Mary the Target of Christmas Shaming in WaPo Column

12:36 PM, Dec 22, 2016

By Charlotte Allen

It’s Christmastime at the Washington Post—and Christmastime at the Washington Post means it's time for another article bashing Christianity, the religion that invented Christmas. Read more

La La Land is a Triumph

From the December 26, 2016, issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

11:15 AM, Dec 22, 2016

By JOHN PODHORETZ

La La Land should have been a disaster. Every American movie musical it resembles has been. The plot of La La Land recalls Martin Scorsese's tiresome New York, New York, released in 1977; both feature a principled and snobbish jazz musician who falls in love with an overeager novice performer. Its highly stylized use of Los Angeles recalls Francis Ford Coppola's stylization of Las Vegas in the simultaneously overproduced and undercooked One from the Heart from 1981. Its use of non-singers and non-dancers as singing and dancing leads recalls Woody Allen's 1996 Everyone Says I Love You, which proved to be a cringe-inducing embarrassment for almost everyone concerned. Read more

Rahm Emanuel's Personal Email Domain: 'Rahmemail.com'

He learned from the best.

10:30 AM, Dec 22, 2016

By Ethan Epstein

Stop if you've heard this one before: A prominent Democrat has been found to have used a private email account to conduct public business. This time it was Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, who agreed to release 2,700 pages of heretofore unreleased emails on Wednesday. The Chicago Tribune notes that Emmanuel's behavior "allowed him to hide some of his correspondence from the public since he took office." Read more

White House: 'Water Levels Are Gradually Immersing Cities'

9:52 AM, Dec 22, 2016

By Jeryl Bier

As Barack Obama's tenure as president comes to a close, his administration is not backing off the apocalyptic climate-change rhetoric. The same week that the president used executive action to ban new offshore oil and gas drilling in federally controlled areas of the Arctic and and Atlantic oceans, the White House posted a short essay on its Medium page by Paul Nicklen, a Canadian biologist, conservationist and photographer. Nicklen writes that, in his experience,"telling people the ice is melting doesn't work." Read more

Photo credit: Gryffindor

Prufrock: The Last Bookbinder, the Makings of a Stradivarius, and When Churchill Spent Christmas at the White House

9:30 AM, Dec 22, 2016

By Micah Mattix

The best in books and arts from around the web, including: The world when Jesus was born, drugs and warfare, the letters of Patrick Leigh Fermor, and more. Read more

Photo credit: Kit

Obama Admin Witch Hunt Snares For-Profit College Accreditor

A threat to 320,000 students' success—that Trump can't undo.

8:26 AM, Dec 22, 2016

By Alice B. Lloyd

The largest accrediting agency of for-profit educational institutions—some of which, like ITT and Corinthian Colleges have shut down, displacing thousands of students—now faces its own undoing by a vengeful administration. The Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools had its federal recognition officially revoked on December 12, after a five-month tug-of-war with the Department of Education. Read more

Trump Taps Conway for 'Counselor to the President'

7:30 AM, Dec 22, 2016

By Michael Warren

Donald Trump has selected his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, to be counselor to the president. Conway, who joined the Trump campaign in August after previously working for a super PAC supporting Texas senator Ted Cruz, will "continue her role as a close advisor to the president and will work with senior leadership to effectively message and execute the Administration's legislative priorities and actions," according to a Trump transition press release on Thursday. Read more

Desperately Seeking 'Apprentice' Outtakes

6:56 AM, Dec 22, 2016

By Charlotte Allen

No story illustrates so succinctly the mainstream media’s dive deep into the tank for Hillary Clinton than the year-long Easter Egg hunt for supposed outtakes from The Apprentice that would sink the presidential candidacy of its 11-year host, Donald Trump. Read more

Public domain

Getting Gay-Married in Prison

6:33 AM, Dec 22, 2016

By Jonathan V. Last

Have you ever heard of Marc Goodwin and Mikhail Gallatinov? I suspect not. Because these gentlemen are both currently serving life sentences for murder at Full Sutton Prison, in Britain. Last year they became the first men to marry one another inside the British penal system. Read more

Art credit: Gary Locke

How Trump Can Repeal and Replace DACA

6:00 AM, Dec 22, 2016

By Ike Brannon and Logan Albright

The issue of illegal immigration was a central plank in the campaign of President-elect Donald Trump and played no small role in getting him elected to the White House. His populist, “America First" position spoke to the economic anxieties of many Americans, and it could be argued that he has a mandate to make immigration enforcement a key priority in the first year of his presidency. Read more

Out-of-Favor Business Targeted by the Justice Department

Operation Choke Point is thinly disguised social engineering.

5:00 AM, Dec 22, 2016

By Kevin Cochrane

In 2012 the Justice Department came up with what at the time seemed like a good idea. Operation Chokepoint's stated goal was "…to attack internet, telemarketing, mail, and other mass market fraud against consumers by choking fraudsters' access to the banking system." But like most genies, once it was out of the bottle it began running amok. Read more

Photo credit: Handout/Reuters/Newscom

Black Church Arson Suspect in Mississippi Was a Member, Not a Racist Trump Supporter

Will there be any self-reflection by politicos who seized on the wrong assumption?

4:00 AM, Dec 22, 2016

By ERIC FELTEN

One night at the beginning of November an African-American church in Greenville, Mississippi, was spray-painted with the slogan “Vote Trump" and then torched. There was no hesitation to pronounce the arson a hate crime perpetrated by vicious Trump-inspired racists. "I see this as an attack on the black church and the black community," Mayor Errick Simmons said the day after the fire, calling it a "direct assault on people's right to freely worship." Read more

NASA Photo

Schumer Builds Bridge to Trump

"We're not going to oppose something simply because it has the name Trump on it."

5:00 PM, Dec 21, 2016

By Chris Deaton

Perhaps unsurprisingly, incoming Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer is among the Democrats willing to work with President-elect Trump to pass some of his more “populist" ideas into law. But the tough liberal campaigner issued a blanket statement about cooperating with the new administration. Read more

Art Credig: Gary Locke

Political Football and Football Politics

From the December 26, 2016, issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

4:41 PM, Dec 21, 2016

By Geoffrey Norman

The election may be over, but the arguments and recriminations are still going strong. Which brings up an interesting point. You frequently hear people say, “Now is not the time for recriminations," and you think, "Well, sure. Okay. Let's wait a while. There's plenty of time." But you never hear anyone announce, "Okay, now is the time. Recriminate all you want." Read more

The Weekly Substandard: Rogue One Redux

Podcasts are built on hope!

3:31 PM, Dec 21, 2016

By TWS PODCAST

On this week’s mega-episode, the Substandard reviews Rogue One: A Star Wars Story—and then some. Jonathan V. Last can't stop thinking about it! Victorino Matus explains the importance of Dunkirk (but from which side?). And Sonny compares David Foster Wallace to Leo Tolstoy. Plus year-end recommendations! Read more

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