The American Spectator

(May 5, 2012)

NYR Blog

The deconstruction of Mitt Romney’s laugh by the famously agelastic Garry Wills writing for the New York Review of Books’ blog in the age of Twitter:

Everyone has noticed by now the nonlaugh laugh of Mitt Romney, a kind of half-stifled barking. But what does it mean? It is blurted out as abruptly as it is broken off. Is it a kind of punctuation, part comma, part full stop, part interrogatory mark? What, if anything, is it trying to convey? Why does it seem more like coughing or burping than laughter?

Does it mean: “I know you are saying something critical about me, and I don’t know how to answer it, so I’ll just pretend that you did not mean it seriously”?

(May 22, 2012)

The Nation

Over at the Nation, the comrades doff their derbies, as yet another of their revered revolutions fizzles:

Celebrated every April 22 for the past forty-two years, Earth Day is showing its (middle) age. Instead of rallying public pressure for far-reaching reforms, Earth Day is becoming, at least in the United States, a bland, tired ritual that polluters and politicians have learned to ignore or coopt. This year, for example, Monsanto has plastered ads at bus and subway stops in Washington, including at the entrance to the Agriculture Department, boasting about how the giant manufacturer of pesticides and genetically modified seeds has helped America’s farmers become better environmental stewards—despite Monsanto’s record of suing organic farmers for patent infringement after winds blew its seeds onto the farmers’ fields.

Frustrated by such cynicism, some environmentalists have called for abolishing Earth Day. But that would be throwing the baby out with….

(May 7, 2012)

Wall Street Journal