Ross Douthat

It looks like an unfortunate trifecta for this weekend's Academy Awards: A mediocre year for the movies, a distinctly lousy (and little-seen) set of nominees, and a seemingly predictable night of winners to look forward to. True, almost every Oscar night includes at least one upset, so at least there's that possibility to liven things up - but in many of the big categories, the favorite is also the person or film that I'd like to see win. I'll allow that Slumdog… More »

Michael Steele sounds clownish, and merits some mockery, but he isn't entirely wrong: Symbolism matters in politics, and there are almost certainly some votes to be gained for the GOP simply by easing the party's optics and rhetoric in a more youth-oriented, multicultural, self-aware direction. (As Mike Huckabee has demonstrated, just being less crabby and more self-deprecating can make a difference in how the media covers you.) But the basic dynamic that Daniel… More »

Will Wilkinson was taken with this Mark Thompson post, and so was I - albeit for somewhat different reasons. The undercurrent in my frets about a future in which libertarians are absorbed into contemporary American liberalism, as you can probably tell, is my sense that there are real affinities between my own probably half-baked vision for conservative renewal and what the liberaltarians say they're up to; I see them as sparring partners on many issues, obviously,… More »

I bet if the Great Emancipator were a superhero (or a '70s-vintage serial killer), Spielberg wouldn't be having so much trouble getting funding ... More »

I hope to come back to my conversation with Ta-Nehisi about marriage and all the rest of it soon, but for now I'll just throw out a quick take on the back-and-forth about shame that the discussion has spawned. Here's Adam Serwer:Conservatives regularly overestimate the beneficial effects of shame. Shame provokes response in the form of impulse, not long term planning. A person who is ashamed isn't going to think, "I'd better get a degree" or "I'd better get married… More »

I meant to say this late last week, but forgot: Good for Damon Linker, and may his willingness to backtrack be an example to all of us who occasionally wander a bit too far out on intellectual limbs in the course of the day's blogging. More »

On the one hand, Richard Florida's cover story in the latest issue of our magazine, on how the crash will incentivize the reurbanization of America, and benefit mega-cities over exurbs and small towns; on the other hand, David Brooks' column today, on Americans' persistent attachment to the suburbs and the Sunbelt. These two realities aren't always mutually exclusive, as partisans of the Northern Virginian suburbs will be happy to inform you, but the tensions… More »

Apropos of my exchange with Peter Suderman about the comic-bookification of the movies, Peter Bart has a piece (not online) in the latest Vanity Fair that's worth quoting:Hollywood's seasoned corporate moguls, such as Brad Grey, at Paramount, and Alan Horn, at Warner Bros., acknowledge that the movie business is splitting into two distinct sectors, which have little if anything to do with each other. The principal focus of the major studios is to manufacture… More »

... Will Wilkinson will consider giving a damn about the fate of the Republican Party.(Hey, it couldn't hurt to ask.) More »

David Frum, pulling no punches:Have you heard about the marsh mouse? The little swamp critter that got $30 million of stimulus bill spending thanks to Nancy Pelosi? Of course you have! The mouse was highlighted on Drudge and chortled over by Glenn Beck. One Republican congressman actually dandled a toy mouse in debate. The story's not false exactly. The stimulus money really does contain money for wetlands restoration. One of the wetlands that might benefit really… More »

No, wait, I take it back; maybe I don't wish Will Wilkinson's quixotic project well, for reasons suggested by Reihan's vision of a liberaltarian future:... I'm on the political right, but I think liberaltarianism is a healthy, constructive development. If social democracy comes roaring back, as I think is very likely, a renewed liberaltarian liberalism could become the new center or even the new right -- this was roughly the case in Cold War Europe.I think this is… More »

It's possible you've also already been following the debate prompted by Damon Linker's attack on Andrew Bacevich's vision of conservatism; if not, go here and here and here; here for Linker's response to his critics; and here and here for more. I would just throw in two points. First, I think that Linker's determined quest to defend his vision of liberalism against all enemies, and to rout theocratic authoritarianism from the field once and for all, is reaching a… More »

You've probably been following this conversation, but here's Will Wilkinson's response to Jonah Goldberg and John Hood on the question of what happens to the Wilkinson/Brink Lindsey theory of "liberaltarianism" in the age of Obama:I'll let Brink speak for himself, but I'm not that interested in short-term partisan politics. I'm interested in a much longer-term project. I want to help create the possibility of a popular political identity that takes the value of… More »

A couple of days ago, Yglesias dinged Greg Mankiw for suggesting elegant right-of-center alternatives to the stimulus package that are untethered from political reality. Mankiw responded with a defense of impractical ideas, and yesterday Yglesias responded in turn:I think it's great for well-informed people to write about abstract policy ideals. At the same time, if you're going to comment on public affairs, it seems worthwhile to comment on what's actually… More »

From the decline-and-fall annals, it seems like these two items belong together - perhaps with this essay to link them up. More »

In the course of a discussion of Big Love, Ta-Nehisi had a moving post about his own family's complications, which I linked to in a post of my own, via a remark that HBO's portrait of suburban polygamists "captures the kinds of familial confusions that post-Sexual Revolution Americans already experience as a matter of course." Now he writes, in response: I would obviously differ with Ross over the "familial confusions" and "post-Sexual Revolution"… More »

As if on cue, here's the poster. (And now that I've seen his badass tattoo, all my doubts about Travolta filling Robert Shaw's shoes have been put to rest ...) More »

This strikes me as a rather odd argument from Michael Kinsley. He notes that as of 2004, the typical American couple aged 65-74 had accumulated a net worth of $691,000. He further notes that many of these couples will die well before they've spent their way through their nest egg, "passing hundreds of thousands of dollars on to the next generation in their wills." Then he points out that at least some of the money these well-heeled retirees pass on to the heirs… More »

In my last post, I noted that "an industry that can remake The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is an industry that can remake anything." This was ambiguously phrased, as Jonah Goldberg's outraged pro-Pelham response makes clear, so let me rephrase it: An industry that remakes an unimprovable, not-all-that-famous, era-specific film for absolutely no good reason will remake anything. Remaking Pelham is the equivalent of Richard Linklater's equally pointless Bad News Bears… More »

It's a rare day when I can recruit Peter Suderman to my superhero-movie skepticism, so I have to pounce on this:I am worried, to an extent, about the way Hollywood is trending towards recycling its properties. Yes, Tinseltown has been peddling recycled goods for a while now, but increasingly, it seems as if most major projects are sequels, adaptations, or reboots. But I'm genuinely starting to wonder if we aren't headed toward a Hollywood that looks a lot more like… More »