Christopher Orlet
Two months into his official term as mayor of Washington, D.C. — and five months after energetically defeating Adrian Fenty for the job — Vincent Gray is offering a glimpse into his style of governing. It isn’t pretty. Last week,…
The talk turned to the urban poor. In particular, how they might be liberated from the ill effects of an unnatural meritocracy. All agreed that education was key. Higher education: more, better, costlier. As for how to the save the…
My girlfriend and I are acquainted with no fewer than two-dozen forty-something women, all of them successful, well-educated, charming ladies. They are librarians, museum curators, teachers and the like. Besides these similarities, they hold two more characteristics in common. They…
I have been without the Net for two weeks. Rest assured, this is a temporary condition; I haven’t converted to Luddism. Though I am grateful for the unprecedented amount of work I’ve been able accomplish without it. I’m not the…
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said the rich “are different from you and me.” It wasn’t just their great wads of cash, as Hemingway thought. It was rather that their wealth and influence enabled them to brush off life’s jabs and…
“In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people — the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me,” begins George Orwell in his classic essay “Shooting…
Hearing the song “Lillie Shull” the other day made me wonder whatever became of murder ballads. A century ago there was scarcely a small town murder that wasn’t memorialized in song. This was especially true of the non-literate musically inclined…
The sign on the door of John English’s store reads “No shoes, No shirt, No service. And pull up your pants!” Waiting in the checkout line, I ask the proprietor if he is still having trouble with shirtless and shoeless…
Nothing says SUMMER IN AMERICA like a county fair. This month I was privileged to attend two such fairs, and when I say privileged, I, of course, mean obligated. Our county fairs have a long and proud tradition. The predecessor…
Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism By Pascal Bruckner (Princeton University Press, 256 pages, $26.95) The problem with us rugged individualists is we are hard ones for collective guilt. Maybe our forefathers did some pretty awful things —…
