Biden's America | The Spectator

We’re all thought criminals now

I’m disappointed that Bari Weiss has resigned from the New York Times and not just because she was one of the few voices of reason on the paper. A while ago, I flew to New York at Bari’s request to be interviewed by her for a forthcoming profile of a group of maverick writers and intellectuals in what was billed as a follow-up to her famous piece on the ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ — a kind of Junior College branch. Among those to be featured were the African American essayist Coleman Hughes; the Australian editor-in-chief of Quillette, Claire Lehmann; and the Swedish columnist Paulina Neuding. We spent an enjoyable afternoon together at the Times building on Eighth Avenue, having our photographs taken and being wined and dined by Weiss in the boardroom.

Roger Kimball

The weaponization of whining

Bill Buckley used to observe that liberals always say they are in favor of entertaining opinions opposed to their own but are then surprised to discover that there are opinions opposed to their own. Bill died early in 2008 when the species homo liberalis was already under siege, his little squeaks for tolerance, at least in principle, drowned out by an inbred horde of professional victims, drunk on the cloying nectar of their own quivering sense of virtue. These days students arrive for their bright college years with plump mental bottoms swaddled in moist moral nappies, their mouths puckering for the grateful nipple of energizing pabulum about the horrors of racism and prejudice, their tiny minds soothed by reassuring nostrums caressing their unshakeable sense of election.

Bill McMorris

Yard envy

It is never easy to live next door to a retired Department of Agriculture employee. Quarantine has made it intolerable. I had always reassured the missus that our yard would look just like Mr Ray’s if I too spent all day at home. Coronavirus has exposed me as a liar. For four years I enjoyed my coffee and cigarette on the porch, digesting the New York Post’s reports of the calamities that had befallen the Mets in the previous 24 hours. Without baseball I spend my mornings staring out into the yard, reckoning with the fact that I am the New York Mets of landscaping. My wife has worked from home since 2011 and must have known all along. There’s a reason her office overlooks the front yard.

Fr Terry Tastard

Trekking towards the future

The Voortrekker Monument sits on a hill on the outskirts of Pretoria, South Africa’s administrative capital. During apartheid (‘apartness’) this brooding tower symbolized the Afrikaners’ belief in their manifest destiny and journey to self-empowerment. The place, whose name means ‘Great Trekker’, was popular with school groups, politicians and the armed services. Today it is well maintained but feels forlorn. It is an embarrassing reminder of the past. To get there is a short drive along the highway from Sandton, the northern suburban city which has largely replaced Johannesburg’s decaying central business district.

William Cook

A ticket to Rye

Earlier this year, before we went into lockdown, my wife and I set off on our final, farewell trip to Rye. I may go again, one day, but I know she never will. This quaint, archaic seaside town where we’d spent so many happy holidays had become a painful place for her. She was glad to say goodbye. I wanted to make a weekend of it, like we always used to, but she didn’t want to stick around. Her dad had died and her mom was in a nursing home. We’d come to clear out their house before the new owners moved in. It was her parents who had introduced me to Rye, 24 years ago. They’d just retired and needed a new adventure. The National Trust needed some new tenants for Lamb House, a grand old house in Rye where Henry James used to live.

Jane Stannus

Cardinal virtues

Once upon a time, in the days when you could round a corner in Rome without accidentally tripping over the snoozing spirit of Vatican II and setting it off into a shrieking fit, popes weren’t inaugurated: they were crowned. A magnificent procession accompanied the new pontiff as he was carried into St Peter’s Basilica on the throne-like sedia gestatoria to receive the papal tiara, a triple crown symbolizing the threefold mission of St Peter’s successors: to teach, govern and sanctify. A sobering dose of reality was built into the ceremony. Three times a master of ceremonies would halt the procession in its tracks. Stepping before the pope, he would ignite a bundle of highly flammable flax, issuing a solemn warning as it crumbled into ashes: Sic transit gloria mundi.

Bill Kauffman

How to restore civility in politics

Batavia, New York When I toiled in the world’s greatest deliberative body back in those carefree days before 9/11 and COVID-19 had given the state an excuse to try to make Every Man a Caitiff, an old US Senate hand told me a story about the crone who ran a little newsstand perhaps a punted football’s distance from the Russell Senate Office Building. It seems that the aged proprietress had been the paramour of James Eastland, the law-and-order worshipping, segregation-championing Democratic senator from Mississippi who never met a civil liberties violation he didn’t like. Eastland, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was well regarded within the Senate, however, and considered a fair dealer by his colleagues. One of them was Sen.

Christopher Buckley

Are we living in the golden age of political satire?

Stamford, Connecticut My first novel was published 34 years ago under the title The White House Mess, a wordplay on its Navy-run dining rooms. I’d spent two years as vice president George H.W. Bush’s speechwriter and had read a number of White House memoirs, all of which had two themes: 1) it wasn’t my fault, and 2) it would have been much worse if I hadn’t been there. The novel was a satirical — in today’s terminology, a ‘fake’ — White House memoir by a clueless but loyal chief of staff of a future administration that would be sworn in on January 20, 1989.

Madeleine Kearns

Babies on demand: the nasty side of surrogacy

For the cover of its June ‘Pride’ issue, People magazine chose the image of a newborn baby being cuddled by his father. Apparently, Wyatt Morgan Cooper’s birth marks the latest celebratory milestone for LGBTQ+ liberation: the right to biological children. His father, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, told People how grateful he was for ‘all the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people who struggled for generations and have died never thinking this was a possibility’. As for raising Wyatt, Cooper is not taking paternity leave and is hiring a nanny recommended by his friend Andy Cohen, another gay dad. His ex- partner will also be on hand to help since, Cooper explained, ‘it’s good to have two parents, if you can’.

Mark Palmer

Happy hours

A family of peacocks is sunning itself in our villa garden. They all look extraordinarily happy and composed, especially the baby one for whom (like us, come to think of it) this is a whole new experience. But then, the 150 hens wandering in and out of their coops painted like beach huts don’t look exactly overburdened themselves. Nor do the sheep, pigs and cows in their 220 acres of lush Tuscan terrain near the Merse river.

Life