Wasps

Wednesday

Nicholas Lynch

Have Americans lost their sense of humor?

Humor has become serious business. A nation of anxious primates trapped in a silicon casino of likes, retweets and dopamine-soaked drudgery, America is suffering from what the comedian Norm Macdonald called a “crisis of clapter.” Terrified of saying the wrong thing, needing punchlines to be spoon-fed – what was once the funniest place on Earth has become a tight-lipped, tongue-twisted society where jokes are rewarded with polite applause instead of genuine laughter. It’s the old stink of a well-mannered aristocracy, and very un-American indeed. From his beginning, the ugly American – wild-eyed and rabble-rousing – rankled the Old World.

humor

Monday

Casey Chalk

Ford Madox Ford and the decline of the American WASP

“I don’t know how many times in nearly forty years I have come back to this novel,” Graham Greene said of Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, published shortly after the outbreak of the First World War. The fiction of both English authors — both converts to Catholicism — share a deep cynicism towards modernity and a depiction of the English establishment as decadent and in decline. The Good Soldier, whose original title The Saddest Story was canned by the publisher because it would render the book “unsaleable” during World War I, tells the tale of two married couples, one British (British Army Captain Edward Ashburnham and his wife Leonora) and the other American (John and Florence Dowell). Both pairs are, on the face of it, young, prosperous, and happy.

Tuesday

Casey Chalk

How Catholics became the new WASPs

Close to a century ago, in 1928, Alfred E. Smith, the governor of New York, became the first Catholic nominee of a major political party. A predominantly Protestant America was suspicious of Smith, who, among other things, opposed Prohibition. New York lawyer and Episcopalian Charles C. Marshall published a letter questioning Smith’s fitness for office. Among other criticisms, Marshall quoted papal encyclicals that denied the legitimacy of religious freedom as popularly understood by most Americans. “What the hell is an encyclical?” Smith is reported to have responded. Concerns about the irreconcilability of American republican government and Catholicism were nothing new.

Wednesday

Michael Warren Davis

The folly of William Floyd Weld

If William Floyd Weld wins his primary challenge against President Trump, it will be the greatest political miracle since Jesus Christ intervened to advise Emperor Constantine before the Battle of Milvian Bridge. Weld has no fan base, no name recognition, no political machine. His brand of let-them-eat-cake libertarianism has zero traction in either major party. His complaint to CNN that ‘the President does not exhibit curiosity about history’ probably won’t resonate with the party’s base, given how quickly they took to demanding Trump imprison his opponent once he was elected.

william weld bill weld