When I’m disoriented by the pressure of immense events, my tendency is to defer to someone whose moral authority is beyond question. These people are in pitifully short supply. But certainly Nelson Mandela qualifies–a man in his 80s with no more deals to make except his final peace with God, a man who spent the […]
Hal Crowther
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The way we were
In an apocalyptic merger, The Independent purchases and swallows the Spectator, its 20-year rival and nemesis. Some readers praise it as the final victory of progressive ideas on the alternative newsstand, others curse it as the death knell of creative competition and intellectual diversity in what was once the outlaw press. In point of fact, […]
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A Year of Fear and Sorrow
R.W.B. Lewis, who died in June, was one of the founding scholars of the academic discipline known as American studies. Lewis, a biographer and literary critic, claimed “the phenomenon of being an American” as his special field of inquiry. His seminal book The American Adam (1955) offers the myth of “the authentic American as a […]
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Death and the Madman
If you want to think about insanity–or its close cousin, unreality–New York City’s a logical place to begin. On my last previous visit, my taxi from the airport was driven by a man with no English, possibly from Asia Minor or the Middle East, whose name according to his hack license was Butt Haran. I’m […]
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Little Mr. America
“The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls…” –Paul Simon, “The Sound of Silence” New York–Next to a parking lot on East 56th Street, not 100 yards from the Fifth Avenue Christmas consumers trimmed in mink and leather and $15,000 wristwatches, there’s an incredibly elaborate fortress of cardboard shipping […]
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Hal Crowther: Why I’m not a Libertarian
Some friends in Durham sent me an invitation to a Libertarian Party fundraiser, an opportunity to meet the party’s candidate for governor of North Carolina. It’s natural that Libertarians would mark me as a fellow traveler. The basic libertarian philosophy is irresistible to me, the same philosophical catnip that made me a Goldwater conservative back […]
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The High Society
Everyone in Washington knows that Al Gore and George W. Bush used illegal drugs when they were younger men–only how much and how much younger remain unclear, tabloid mysteries that might still throw a little color into a drab election year. When Gore stopped smoking marijuana and whether Bush once eluded prosecution for cocaine would […]
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Speechless
It’s not inconceivable that Milos Forman will film the life of John Rocker, with Courtney Love as his girlfriend and Mariah Carey singing The Star-Spangled Banner on the soundtrack as Big John lopes in from the bullpen to take his final revenge on the New York Mets. That’s the way Hollywood paid homage to another […]
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Unwired: A millennial manifesto
Some people got up and made coffee on Jan. 1, 2000–some of them in bunkers and bomb shelters–and were disappointed to note that Jesus had not returned to judge us and the world had not stopped in its tracks because millions of computers were created with the actual, flexible intelligence of a high-tech tool like, […]