Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Saturday

Alex Massie

Saturday Morning Country: Patsy Cline

From our UK edition

Dolly Parton is a lady and Emmylou Harris is a dame, but Patsy Cline was a broad. A rootin' tootin' bar-room broad as fond of cussin' as she was of a beer and a good time. You gotta have her in this series sooner, rather than later. Unusually for a singer, she'd hang out with the songwriters - including Harlan Howard, Willie Nelson and Roger Miller - at Tootsies Orchid Lounge in Nashville; equally unusually she'd thank them for writing the songs that made her famous. Nelson, of course, wrote Crazy, the song that became Cline's signature. Her style evolved from cowboy hats and country dresses to cashmere and pearls. Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray, for instamce, was a song for surburban betrayal, not down-home country disappointment.

Friday

Alex Massie

Mencken’s Thought for the Day

From our UK edition

Writing the diary column* for this week's edition of the magazine, I can't believe I failed to quote from HL Mencken. The insufferable nonsense provoked by what passes for a healthcare "debate" (on both sides of the Atlantic) would have entertained the Sage of Baltimore no end. As Peter Suderman reminds one, Mencken viewed these absurdities with an appropriately jaundiced eye: “I enjoy democracy immensely," he wrote. "It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing. Does it exalt dunderheads, cowards, trimmers, frauds, cads? Then the pain of seeing them go up is balanced and obliterated by the joy of seeing them come down.” Quite so. Quite so.

Alex Massie

The Most Heart-Warming Article You’ll Read Today

From our UK edition

I'd never heard of xeroderma pigmentosum until Bronx Banter alerted me to Rick Reilly's latest ESPN column. I generally consider Reilly an intolerable jackass but this column is very good. Just the thing to leave you feeling a little warmer on a wet Friday afternoon. Even Red Sox fans should tip their hats to the Yankees and, most particularly of course, the kids themselves: The team facing Yankees ace AJ Burnett a few weeks back at Yankee Stadium has to go down as the oddest in baseball history. For one thing, it plays only at night. The players have no choice. Even one minute of sunshine can kill them. They're from Camp Sundown, in Craryville, N.Y., and they live life on the other side of the sun. All of them have the rare disease known as XP -- xeroderma pigmentosum.

Alex Massie

Osbourne’s Positioning

From our UK edition

I like it when Fraser gets, you know, all kind and helpful: Mr Osborne’s positioning is perfect. He has chosen the right trajectory, and is expressing the Tory mission in the right language. All he needs now are the policies. Yes indeed. Once upon a time we had policies first and then wondered about how to present them in a persuasive fashion. That's not the way the game is played these days. Is it?

Thursday

Alex Massie

Freeing the Lockerbie Bomber?

From our UK edition

Back when I worked at Scotland on Sunday I was never the Lockerbie Guy. Nor was I even the Lockerbie Guy's Assistant. For years every paper needed a Lockerbie specialist, not least because having one ensured that the rest of us didn't have to follow the tortuously complicated story any more closely than the readers. Which is to say, I don't know the extent of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi's involvement, though clearly even if he was involved he wasn't the fellow who ordered or thought of the mission. Still, the speculation that he might be released on compassionate grounds - he has been diagnosed with incurable prostate cancer - has provoked a furious reaction from some of the usual suspects.

Alex Massie

George W Bush: Terrorist Appeaser?

From our UK edition

Well, according to Dick Cheney, George W Bush was just as almost as bad as your average America-hating euro-weenie or member of the Democratic Congressional caucus. Barton Gellman - whose sourcing is pretty good - reports that: Cheney's disappointment with the former president surfaced recently in one of the informal conversations he is holding to discuss the book with authors, diplomats, policy experts and past colleagues. By habit, he listens more than he talks, but Cheney broke form when asked about his regrets. "In the second term, he felt Bush was moving away from him," said a participant in the recent gathering, describing Cheney's reply. "He said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took. Bush was more malleable to that.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

The Other Glorious Twelfth

From our UK edition

Ian Elliot, Grouse Keeper views a grouse moor, at Horseupcleugh estate in the Lammermuir Hills in the Borders. The Glorious Twelfth is the official starting date for the red grouse shooting season in Scotland and parts of northern England. Photo: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images. I don't really understand the mad dash to get grouse to London restaurants this evening since, obviously, the birds are better eating once they've been hung for a few days. But the good news, for once, is that grouse numbers may be increasing.

Alex Massie

Burmese Days

From our UK edition

It may be counted a sign of progress - small, for sure, but real nonetheless - that the Guardian and Telegraph editorials this morning largely resist kneejerk calls for tightening sanctions on Burma in the wake of the absurd sentence given to Aung San Suu Kyi (though the Guardian spoils this by calling for action against companies that do business in Burma). The Times and the Independent, alas, demand more and better sanctions even though they must, surely, know that such sanctions, even were they to be agreed upon, would be unlikely to be applied. I'm not as convinced as Thomas Bell is that trade can open up Burma to the world and that economic liberalisation must lead to political liberalisation but I hope he's right.

Monday

Alex Massie

Stephen Hawking Has Not Yet Been Murdered by the NHS

From our UK edition

There are, I think, two essential truths in international health policy. No-one sees fit to copy the National Health Service and no-one sees fit to copy the American system. Still, for all that we need NHS reform (hardly a surprise since just about every health system is under strain and needs tweaking), the picture of the NHS given by some of the people opposed to Obama's health plans is, well, not hugely accurate. Take, for instance, this Investors Business Daily editorial which claims that: People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

Alex Massie

Do Football Managers Make a Difference?

From our UK edition

Left Back in the Changing Room and More than Mind Games have already commented on Simon Kuper's* article in the FT that argues that football managers have no real impact on their teams' fortunes. But that doesn't mean I can't have a say too! Kuper writes: The obsession with football managers is misguided. Hardly any of them make any difference to results. The institution of manager is something of a con-trick. Ferguson and Ancelotti are best understood as marketing tools. The fact is that players’ salaries alone almost entirely determine football results. Stefan Szymanski, economics professor at Cass Business School, studied the spending of 40 English clubs between 1978 and 1997, and found that their spending on salaries explained 92 per cent of their variation in league position.

Alex Massie

A Georgian Folly

From our UK edition

I must say I was surprised by Fraser's praise for Mikheil Saakashvili on Friday and his support for the stance taken by David Cameron and Liam Fox on matters Russian and Georgian. Surprised, because I'd thought Cameron's dash to Tbilisi last year one of the more reckless moments of his leadership that demonstrated that, like John McCain, his judgement in foreign affairs was too often too open to accusations of rashness.  Apart from anything else, as Carl Thomson ably demonstrates, Saakashvili is a poor poster boy for liberalism, even by the standards of the Caucasus. If Georgia is, in Fraser's description, "a light of democratic freedom" it's a light that shines pretty feebly.

Alex Massie

Painting Scotland

From our UK edition

Perthshire Moorland, by Aberfeldy. By Claudia Massie. There is, of course, plenty to do and see in Edinburgh in August. But amidst the many joys of festival Edinburgh, may I suggest that readers might care to have a gander at my sister's latest exhibition of paintings? Of course I may. And will. She's exhibiting at the Flaubert Gallery in Stockbridge until August 19th. Most of the new work, I think, is from Sutherland and highland Perthshire. I especially like the painting here which, though it's Perthshire, actually makes me think of the Canadian north-country that features prominently and memorably in John Buchan's Sick Heart River. Anyway, check it out.

Sunday

Alex Massie

A Very English Cricketing Fiasco

From our UK edition

Selkirk vs Langholm at Philiphaugh, 8/9/08 Actually, it wasn't a completely disastrous cricketing weekend. Selkirk did successfully chase 206 to defeat Langholm in the Border League. Not called upon to bowl or bat, your correspondent's contribution was limited to taking a simple (but vital!) catch. Elsewhere, of course, doom and gloom and despair reign supreme. England's batting this morning as Broad and Swann gave it some humpty actually irritated me. Too late, far too late. But a reminder that there was nothing to excuse the abject feebleness of this English performance. This has been a strange series contested by two pretty average sides. The quality of the cricket scarcely compares to the thrills of 2005.

Saturday

Alex Massie

Saturday Morning Country: Merle Haggard

From our UK edition

One of my favourite blog features is Norm's Friday blogger profiles. This week he profiles Willie George Haggard and, frankly, its a doozy. It reminds me that I've been a little slack in posting Saturday Morning Country lately. My bad. And I can't quite believe we've got this far in the series without featuring Merle Haggard himself. Time to rectify that. So here, below the fold, is Merle singing his great song Mama Tried. Course she did; she's your mama. But would you listen? Well, that's the point of the song isn't it? Note too the extraordinary set which seems to have come from a Saturday morning kids' programme and makes the song seem even more of a cautionary tale...

Friday

Alex Massie

Deal of the Century: Buy a Truck, Get a Free AK-47

From our UK edition

God bless America. Last year Mark Muller ran a summer promotion giving away a free hand gun with every car his Butler, Missouri dealership sold. This year he's upping the ante and offering an AK-47 with every truck sold. Better than "cash for clunkers" for sure. Below the fold, Mr Muller defends his offer on CNN. Great stuff.   [Hat tip, Peter S, via Twitter.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Mitt Romney & the GOP’s Nationalist Rump

From our UK edition

The great thing about Mitt Romney is that he's so darn subtle. Hence the title for his new campaign* book: No Apology: The Case for American Greatness. Gee, I wonder what that means? Romney must be considered the front-runner for the 2012 Republican nomination if only because other would-be candidates have either ruled themselves out (Huntsman), shot themselves in the foot (Palin, Stanford Sanford. [Thanks commenters]) or remain incapable of setting the heather alight even when armed with a can of gasoline (Pawlenty).

Alex Massie

Hackette of the Week

From our UK edition

Let's hear it for Liz Jones - "funny, outrageous and downright rude" according to her employers at the Daily Mail - for this piece that, really, you'd think must actually have been written by Glenda Slagg. But, no, apparently it's not a parody... I have long derided so-called 'spas', but the modern hairdressing salon is the female high-maintenance equivalent of being sent to Guantanamo Bay - torture. The horrid black nylon gowns are just as bad as orange jumpsuits. Despite the trendy piped music, sleek interiors and 'massage' chairs (have you tried one? It is like sitting on a sack full of ferrets) the modern salon is still stuck firmly in the past.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Are You Smarter than the US Congress? Almost Certainly.

From our UK edition

As any fool knows, the principle benefit of the United States Congress is to make other legislatures seem positively benificent by comparison with the gallery of clowns on Capitol Hill. Compared with these people, even Westminster seems as though it must be populated by latterday Solons. Verily, we live in a Periclean age compared to our poor cousins across the Atlantic. Consider this piece of jaw-dropping idiocy: It’s hard to believe, but true: under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute.

Alex Massie

Suicide is Painless, It Brings on Many Changes…

From our UK edition

No-one could mistake back-bench Conservative MPs for advocates for limited government. So it's scarcely surprising that Nadine Dorries and Edward Leigh are up in arms over proposals to "clarify" the law (in England and Wales) on assisted suicide. You might think it's your body and your life but that doesn't mean you have the right to decide your own fate. No way. Not if these energetic busybodies have anything to do with it. On her blog, Dorries raises the preposterous prospect of state-sponsored death squads marauding through Britain's nursing homes and hospitals, pulling out plugs and smothering pensioners with their pillows. She doesn't put it quite as colourfully as that, but that's the spectre she's raising. To put it mildly, this seems unlikely.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Peter King Watch

From our UK edition

Apparently there's a stooshie over Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama. Whatever. As might be expected, America's worst Congressman, Peter King of New York, is busy offering his opinion: Robinson's views are well out of the American foreign-policy mainstream. Rep. Peter King (R-LI) says, "She is definitely from the school of moral equivalency which somehow invariably comes down on the side against vibrant democracies such as Israel and the United States." Fairness demands that we absolve Mr King of all charges of moral equivalency. After all he's been a keen supporter of terrorism and torture for years.