Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Thursday

Alex Massie

The Brideshead Fantasy: Union Division

It mystifies me why so many Americans - even those blessedly untouched by any tedious Yankee Brideshead fetish - still seem to view the Oxford Union as a barometer of all that is sweet and holy upon this sceptered isle. I would suggest that, with all due respect to those friends of mine who have been Presidents or office-bearers in that splendid society, this is the most desperate tommyrot. If the Oxford Union were ever a meter by which one could measure the thinking of the great and the good (sic) then those days died in August 1914.

Alex Massie

Romney gets “down” with his peeps…

Just because I've not been posting much this month doesn't mean I've forgotten how ghastly Mitt Romney is. The gruesome Mitt was at it again recently as this report makes only too clear: As he posed for a picture with a group of young people, the typically old-fashioned Romney was relaxed enough to quote from a popular hit single from a few years back. “Who let the dogs out?” he called out, as he stood there beaming in his shirt and tie. “Who! Who!

Tuesday

Wednesday

Alex Massie

The Iowans Have It (Alas)

No more than 10% of Iowans registered as either Republicans or Democrats are likely to turn out for Thursday's caucuses. So The American Spectator's Philip Klein is quite right to call foul: DES MOINES -- Every four years, politicians and the media swarm this small Midwestern state and shower its voters with attention and compliments, but very few people have the courage to admit the simple truth: Iowans are largely apathetic about politics, and they don't deserve the disproportionate influence they have in choosing the leader of the free world. If Iowans are to retain their privileged position* at the front end of the Presidential primary and caucus process, would it be too much to actually ask them to, like, vote?

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Presidential Candidates Through the Lens of Wodehouse

In my sourer moments I find myself persuaded that Bertie Wooster's verdict on aunts also applies to politicians: "It is no use telling me that there are bad aunts and good aunts. At the core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof." Never is this more the case than during a Presidential campaign. The sheer ghastliness of the front-runners is something to behold. Or not, as the case may be. Try as I might, for instance, I find it hard to warm to Hillary Clinton even as I acknowledge that some of the hysteria surrounding her is absurdly overblown. And yet, there's something to it too.

Alex Massie

Happy New Year

I shall be seeing the New Year in at 30,000 feet en route to Edinburgh (pictured below) from Washington. I trust Aer Lingus will put on a decent spread... Meanwhile, I trust readers will resist the temptation to wrap themselves in melancholy and recrimination this evening and hope that 2008 brings y'all every joy and good fortune you could (reasonably) wish for. Thanks for reading this blog and here's to seeing you in the New Year...

Alex Massie

Americana: A Partial List

Some things I will miss about America: Appalachia: music, people, landscapeThe WireAmerican libertarianism: not an entirely lost causeThanksgiving: America's best, most civilised, holidayAmtrak sleeping cars and trans-America travel in general (except by air)The classic American diner - especially in small towns where the waitress will always call you "Hon".Skipping work for afternoon baseball (even in RFK!)BBQCommercials for "not available in stores" products such as "Miracle Putty" or "Magic Bag" or anything else that will change your life forever.The American West: idea and landscape alikeConfirmation hearings (theory)Proper country music: Cash, Jennings, Haggard et al. Also Graham Parsons and Emmylou Harris. College football Saturdays in the fall (Go Blue!)Cheap consumer durables.

Monday

Alex Massie

Wodehouse Primary 2.0

I have already mentioned my suspicion that few PG Wodehouse fans are likely to endorse Hillary Clinton. It is unhealthy for a Presidential candidate to remind one of Honoria Glossop or Florence Craye so. Miss Glossop, you will remember, always wanted to mold a chap, "I think" she said "I shall be able to make something of you, Bertie. It is true yours has been a wasted life up to the present, but you are still young, and there is a lot of good in you...It simply wants bringing out." And it seems that Mrs Clinton is of similar mind. As she said in a speech in Austin in 1993: "Let us be willing to remold society by redefining what it means to be a human being." A Gawd-help-us moment if ever there was one.

Alex Massie

Merry Christmas Mitt…

Of course, one is supposed to despair at this sort of negative campaigning even when, as in this case, it is directed against a candidate one loathes. But, really, I take my hat off to whomever came up with the idea to send South Carolina Republicans fake Christmas cards purporting to be from Mitt Romney. The text, taken from the first Book of Nephi (part of the Mormon bible) reads: "And it came to pass that I looked and beheld the great city of Jerusalem and also other cities. And I beheld the city of Nazareth, and in the city of Nazareth I beheld a virgin and she was exceedingly fair and white".

Alex Massie

Her mother’s daughter, right enough

The Clintons: a ghastliness that keeps on giving. Here's Toby Harnden reporting from Iowa Speaking of Chelsea Clinton, it seems there’s no way she’s going to talk to journalists. "I'm sorry, I don't talk to the press and that applies to you, unfortunately," Chelsea said tartly when asked a question about her father Bill as "first man" by reporter Sydney Rieckhoff in Vinton. Perhaps catching herself on, she added: "Even though I think you're cute." As the AP reports, Sydney, a "kid reporter" for Scholastic News, is nine years old. Does she really think that if she cuts one nine-year-old some slack every news organisation is going to hire its own nine-year-old? (Actually, we might...

Alex Massie

We have a winner!

It's a big ask, but someone has to write the worst article on the presidential election. Daniel Pipes steps up to demonstrate why the Republican party deserves to lose next year. This is how his faux-concerned piece on Barack Obama for Front Page begins: "If I were a Muslim I would let you know," Barack Obama has said, and I believe him. In fact, he is a practicing Christian, a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ. He is not now a Muslim. But was he ever a Muslim or seen by others as a Muslim? More precisely, might Muslims consider him a murtadd (apostate), that is, a Muslim who converted to another religion and, therefore, someone whose blood may be shed?

Alex Massie

The Glamour of the Skies…

For the love of god... When will these clowns learn that the only way to ensure total security is to prevent people from getting on the plane in the first place? If you don't want to lose your spare lithium batteries for your camera, notebook or cell phone, you might want to pack carefully for your next flight. New rules from the Transportation and Security Administration that take effect on January 1 ban travelers from carrying loose lithium batteries in checked baggage. Passengers are allowed to pack two spare batteries in their carry-on bag, as long as they're in clear plastic baggies. Fortunately, you don't have to worry about the batteries that are already installed in the devices you're bringing.

Sunday

Alex Massie

New blog alert!

Hurrah! In addition to her blogging at Hit & Run the estimable Kerry Howley now has a blog of her own too. Which reminds me that I've been meaning to suggest you also scurry over to Will Wilkinson's longer-established place too. Lots of good stuff on immigration an guest workers at both blogs with, I imagine, even more goodies to come...

Alex Massie

Caledonia calling…

All good things come to an end. As some readers know, I'm leaving Washington DC this week (tomorrow in fact!) to return to Caledonia, stern and wild. Bittersweet reflections on some times in America will doubtless follow in due course, but in general blogging will be light for the next few days as I adjust to life back in the old country and try, more or less, to get organised. In the meantime - and as a break from gruesome packing - here's a classic Tennents Lager ad from way back when which gets to the guts of the matter. While one sometimes thinks it would be nice to quit Scotland for good, in the end that's not as easy to do as it sounds.

Friday

Alex Massie

Taxi drivers prepare to flood America. Or, further evidence for Huckabee’s buffoonery.

Via Andrew, here's Huckabee on Benazir Bhutto's murder: "We ought to have an immediate, very clear monitoring of our borders and particularly to make sure if there's any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into the country. We just need to be very, very thorough in looking at every aspect of our own security internally because, again, we live in a very, very dangerous time," Huckabee said during a news conference Thursday night in West Des Moines. Over Christmas lunch a friend warned me not to be quite so dismissive of Huckabee. He's not just a hick I was told. And perhaps he isn't: this answer cannily ties security (whatever that is) to immigration after all, shoring up Huckabee's weakness on that front.

Alex Massie

John Edwards: nativist brute

John Edwards on trade: After growing up in Carolina mill towns, John Edwards understands the devastating impact trade can have on workers and communities. That's why he favours protectionist policies that would reduce trade and throw workers out onto the street. Trade kills, you know.  Also: why does Edwards hate poor people in poor countries so much that he wants to keep them impoverished? In many respects Edwards is just as much a nativist as anyone on the American right (Duncan Hunter for instance). It would be nice if people remembered this let alone, heaven forbid, mentioned it more frequently.

Alex Massie

That was the year that was 2007

Most Depressing Political Argument of the Year: Whether the United States should be in the business of torturing people or not. Opera: Washington National Opera's superb production of Janacek's Jenufa was the operatic highlight of the year for me. Terrificly dark and pitiless and gloomy: just the sort of emotionally knackering experience you want from a night out. Book of the Year: Well, the 144th edition of Wisden did not disappoint: 1664 pages of cricketing goodness and an annual treat to be cherished. Among other books published this year: John Robb's Brave New War was a disturbing highlight.

Alex Massie

End of year trivia

The King Williams College annual quiz is perhaps the daddy of all such end-of-year brain-wreckers. The 2007 edition is here. Good luck! UPDATE: After a first (and Google-free!) run through the questions I am reasonably confident about the answers to about 25 of the 180 questions and have an idea about a couple of dozen of the others. As I say, it's not for the faint of heart.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Hugh Massingberd: Hall of Fame Journalist

Sad news. Hugh Massingberd, the man who did more to bring obituaries to life than anyone else, is dead. He qualifies as one of the great journalists of our age. My poor, old (not so old actually) and now dead Uncle David was one of his contributors and I recall answering the phone, aged 12 or so, during one of David's rather extended stays at my parents' house, to hear Mr Massingberd asking, politely, how the obituary of this or that not-yet-dead restaurateur*, wine merchant or horse trainer was progressing. "Fitfully" was the answer one learned to give, David being  incommunicado... And now the begetter is gone too. Sic transit gloria mundi and all that. Just 60 too. Young.