America, meet your European allies in the effort to contain Iran: Emmanuel Macron of France, Theresa May of Britain, and Angela Merkel of Germany. Think of them as the Three M’s. Or perhaps the Three Wise Monkeys. Or even, as the Wise Monkeys are sometimes known, and would probably prefer to be called, the Three … Read more
‘Honour,’ the French poet Nicholas Boileau wrote in 1666, ‘is like a rocky island without a landing place; once we leave it, we can’t get back.’ Especially, Donald Trump might add, when the outlook is Stormy. But Trump’s concept of honour is perhaps closer to that of Stormy Daniels’ fellow artist and near-namesake, the Elizabethan … Read more
If you were to revisit the house you grew up in, would you take a look at your old bedroom? The answer is yes, of course you would—unless, that is, you are Ronit, Rachel Weisz’s character in Sebastian Lelio’s Disobedience. If you are Ronit, you will instead ponder your late father the rabbi’s rich collection … Read more
Readers of Spectator’s USA’s mothership, the venerable yet sprightly London Spectator, will know that one of the secrets of the Spectator’s endurance and popularity is the promiscuity—ideological, of course—of its columnists. Turn the page from Matthew Parris to Rod Liddle, and you undergo a whiplash of the most bracing kind. Parris is an ex-Conservative MP … Read more
You have to give it to Donald Trump. Not for pushing North Korea towards negotiations, or for holding China to account over dumping low-grade steel onto the American market, or even for healing the diplomatic breach between France and the United States—but for missing the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on Saturday night. People accuse … Read more
It is now fifty years since the événements of May 1968, when young Parisians lobbed onobble stones at the police, occupied the Sorbonne, and launched the Boomers’ long march through the institutions. That makes it fifty years since Jean-Luc Godard lost the plot—never a good idea if you are a film-maker. Godard has made plenty … Read more
There are two ways of looking at the multi-million dollar suit that the Democratic National Committee filed last week in a New York court. One is that any attempt to establish facts in a public court about Russian meddling in the 2016 election is more than welcome. The other is that the case may fail … Read more
Is Jon Hamm’s name really Jon Hamm? Or is it a stage name, meant to telegraph his acting style? When an actor is called Slim Pickens, you know he’ll never play the Dane. Hamm is the name at the top of the bill in Beirut, and preserved pork is what he delivers, thinly sliced in the … Read more
They called Ted Kennedy the Lion of the Senate. He spent most of his time stuffed, satiated and asleep, and the rest of it on the prowl for young flesh. He also had a hand in numerous pieces of legislation. But the only thing he will be remembered for is leaving Mary Jo Kopechne to … Read more
‘The whole of the Balkans,’ Otto von Bismarck said, ‘is not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier.’ He was right, until he was wrong. Times changed, and so did the map. In 1914, with Bismarck gone and no one to restrain the Kaiser, terrorism in the Balkans sparked a world war. How much
Mark Zuckerberg came to Washington this week. Just an ordinary, common-sense guy, with matching hoodies in his roll-on, and a company that was worth well over half a trillion dollars before it emerged that it had shared its subscribers’ personal information, instead of sticking to its real business of selling that information to advertisers. The … Read more
The Syrian civil war is in its endgame, and the ‘political solution’ that the leaders of the Western democracy talk about is in sight. That is one meaning of the appalling images from the chemical weapons attack on Eastern Ghouta. In 2011, Western intelligence agencies unanimously declared that Bashar al-Assad was finished, and that it
Some people will believe anything, so other people will say anything, especially if they’re desperate. The headline news in Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s chat with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg is bin Salman’s statements that both Israelis and Palestinians “have the right to their own land”; that Saudi Arabia has “a lot of interests” … Read more
Harvard and MIT will sell anything to anybody, regardless of the national interest
Easter weekend must be interesting for the interfaith First Family
Americans breathed a sigh of disappointment last week when the promised super-heavyweight bout between Joe Biden and Donald Trump stalled after the weigh-in trash talk. “They asked me, would I like to debate this gentleman, and I said no,” Biden said as he stripped to his trunks. “I said, ‘If we were in high school, … Read more
Yesterday, Donald Trump went to New Hampshire, the ‘Granite State’ or, as he calls it, a ‘drug-infested den’. He has launched an initiative against prescription opioid addiction, and would like to execute drug dealers. He has not specified whether he would prefer to do this in the manner of Dirty Harry, or by a legal … Read more
Remember Nudge? It was a 2008 book by Chicago economist Richard Thaler and Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein, full of bright technocratic ideas for using ‘choice architecture’ to ‘nudge’ the plebs to make the ‘right’ decisions. The Guardian’s reviewer called it ‘never intimidating, always amusing, and elucidating: a jolly economic romp with serious lessons within’. On … Read more
It was only Seven Days in Entebbe, but it felt like an eternity. The rescue in July 1976 by Israeli commandos of 102 Jewish and Israeli hostages from Palestinian and German terrorists at Entebbe airport in Uganda was a scriptwriter’s dream: a three-act drama of crisis, complication and resolution, in which the good guys won—good … Read more
‘And this is good old Boston/, The home of the bean and the cod,’ John Collins Bossidy quipped in 1910, ‘Where the Lowells talk to the Cabots/, And the Cabots talk only to God.’ Also home, in 1968, to Mel Lyman, a folk musician turned LSD guru who believed he was God, and to Van
