Thursday

Daniel DePetris

Jeff Sessions is the loneliest man in Washington

There was a time not long ago when Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions were best of buds. Well, not friends in the normal meaning of the word, but about as close as two such public figures can be. Trump and Sessions shared views on immigration, criminal justice, taxes, and military spending. Sessions even loaned one of his’ senior aides (a guy named Stephen Miller) to the Trump campaign at a time when his freewheeling operation was in desperate need of staffing. When the four-term U.S. Senator from Alabama announced to a crowd of Trump supporters on February 28, 2016 that he would be endorsing the uncensored billionaire for president, you got the sense that it wasn’t a hard decision for Sessions to make.

Christopher Bray

‘Steer clear of that cave boy, James Dean, and grease ball, Elvis Presley’

Lucky bastard. Such are the words that come constantly to mind while you’re reading Clancy Sigal’s two volumes of posthumously published autobiography. Blacklisted as a (self-confessedly lousy) actor for refusing to name names in the McCarthy era, working as the agent for the likes of Peter Lorre, Rod Steiger and — sigh — Barbara Stanwyck in 1950s Hollywood and freelancing on Fleet Street in countercultural London (including reviewing films for The Spectator), Sigal was at the centre of every piece of action going. Should Black Sunset and The London Lover ever be gathered into a single volume (perhaps taking Sigal’s earlier memoir, Going Away, along for the ride), ‘Been there, done that’ would make a good catch-all title.

Ferdinand Mount

The marvellous humanity of Meg Wolitzer

It’s because it’s the land of the loner that the United States is so loved or loathed. Yet to me the most beguiling novels that have zipped across the Atlantic in the past half-century or so are mostly about groups, specifically groups on campus, usually a rather classy campus at that. Mary McCarthy’s Group were at Vassar; Donna Tartt’s The Secret History is set in an elite liberal arts college in Vermont. Even The Catcher in the Rye, though legendary as a portrait of moody adolescence, is also a brilliant picture of life at the sort of college Salinger himself went to. But no novelist I can think of has majored on the group portrait with quite such verve, wit and sympathy as Meg Wolitzer.

Damian Thompson

Social conservatism is dead

Just before Ireland voted overwhelmingly to end the country’s constitutional ban on abortion, Catholics in the fishing village of Clogherhead could be seen storming out of Sunday mass halfway through the service. Why? Their parish priest had come on too strong. He had not only ordered them how to vote but also supplied grisly details of an abortion procedure. Presumably some of them voted to repeal the eighth amendment. The ‘Yes’ campaign couldn’t have won its two-thirds majority without the support of practising Catholics. Very few of these, we can assume, were militantly pro-choice. Instead, they were reassured by promises that any future law would be limited in its impact — and determined to ignore a Catholic hierarchy contaminated by child abuse.

Dominic Green

You didn’t have to be mad to work for Tommy Nutter — but it helped

The tailor’s art is a triumph of mind over schmatte. Not just in the physical cutting and stitching, but in the faith that style makes content. This, not the question of which way you dress, is the secret compact between tailor and client. ‘Every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse and person is heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing of clothes wisely and well, so that as others dress to live, he lives to dress,’ Carlyle wrote of the dandy in Sartor Resartus. Tommy Nutter was one of Tommy Carlyle’s dandies, a ‘clothes-wearing man’ and a ‘poet of the cloth’. From 1969 to 1976, Nutter bestrode the world of tailoring like a Narcissus. Though he could barely manage a backstitch, his designs rewrote the book on male style.

Michael Morpurgo

In my illness and old age, children give me hope

By 74 it is easy to feel that you have seen it all, done it all, that nothing much surprises you any more. Striving gives way to coping. Drop a pencil and it rolls under the sofa. What you have to do is think about the best way to find it and pick it up. Problem. Do you get down on your knees and reach in under, which of course means you will have to get up again, or do you simply push the sofa away? Such problems don’t really bother you. You cope with it. You don’t reflect on growing decrepitude. It has been so slow coming, you have hardly noticed. Push the sofa away. Bend slowly, pick it up. Done. Straighten up. No one was watching. That’s good. Even an unwelcome medical diagnosis does not surprise you. You cope because you have to.

Justin Marozzi

The Empty Quarter is a great refuge for lonely hearts

Here’s a treat for desert lovers. William Atkins, author of the widely admired book The Moor, has wisely exchanged the dank, wind-lashed chill of Britain’s moorland for eight of the world’s fieriest deserts, from the Empty Quarter of Oman and Egypt’s Eastern Desert to the Taklamakan in China and an unlikely stint at Burning Man in America’s Black Rock Desert. It’s not entirely clear what prompted these particular journeys or this specific quest. We learn in the second sentence that a long-standing girlfriend has gone to live and work abroad and Atkins is not going with her; so perhaps a retreat into the desert is the wholly appropriate response in a travel writer searching for new territory to furrow.

Dominic Green

Forgive Dinesh D’Souza — he knows exactly what he’s done

When I heard that President Trump had pardoned Dinesh D’Souza, I sought the opinion of an alumnus of the Dartmouth Review who has yet to do a stretch in the big house.‘His nickname at Dartmouth was ‘Distort D’Newsa’,’ my source whispered, and then hung up before National Review could trace the call.In 2014, D’Souza pleaded guilty to federal charges that in 2012, he had routed $20,000 through two associates, as funds for his friend Wendy Long’s run for the New York Senate. Long lost the race to the incumbent Democrat, Kirsten Gillibrand. D’Souza denied the charges at first, but then pleaded guilty. The prosecutors added a second charge, making false statements to the government.

Dominic Green

Forgive Dinesh D’Souza — he knows exactly what he’s done

When I heard that President Trump had pardoned Dinesh D’Souza, I sought the opinion of an alumnus of the Dartmouth Review who has yet to do a stretch in the big house.‘His nickname at Dartmouth was ‘Distort D’Newsa’,’ my source whispered, and then hung up before National Review could trace the call.In 2014, D’Souza pleaded guilty to federal charges that in 2012, he had routed $20,000 through two associates, as funds for his friend Wendy Long’s run for the New York Senate. Long lost the race to the incumbent Democrat, Kirsten Gillibrand. D’Souza denied the charges at first, but then pleaded guilty. The prosecutors added a second charge, making false statements to the government.

Cockburn

Who is the mysterious sociologist following Richard Spencer around?

There’s no question that America’s most famous white nationalist, Richard Spencer  — the man who coined the term “alt-right” — is a subject worthy of academic study, be that by a sociologist or anyone else. But should an academic sign a non-disclosure agreement with Spencer’s organisation as a condition of access? Sources tell Cockburn that Serena Tarr, a sociology professor at Kirkwood Community College in Iowa, has been seen with him at a number of events in the past year, including a 2017 National Policy Institute Conference, CPAC in Maryland in February, and Spencer’s speech at Michigan State about a week or so after that. She can be seen in this video posted to Twitter during his visit to Michigan: https://twitter.

Kelly Jane Torrance

Why are we rolling out the red carpet for one of North Korea’s most brutal men?

Kim Yong-chol arrived in New York from Pyongyang via a flight from Beijing on Wednesday afternoon. He then made his way to a hotel in midtown Manhattan and, later that evening, to an apartment near the United Nations headquarters, where the North Korean pol had dinner with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The two are apparently laying the groundwork for the off-again, on-again summit between their bosses, Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump, that may or may not take place in Singapore on June 12. https://twitter.com/SecPompeo/status/1002012928407728128 The ease with which Kim—no relation to his boss—made his way to and through New York City stands in stark contrast to his last big diplomatic photo-op.

Wednesday

Joanna Williams

Morgan Freeman and the troubling direction of #MeToo

The film awards season is over and Cannes has been handed back to wealthy holiday-makers, yet the #MeToo movement shows no signs of slowing down. Morgan Freeman is the most recent addition to the ignominious list of film producers, directors and actors who have had accusations of sexual harassment made against them since #MeToo took off in October last year.Allegations against the 80 year-old Freeman, star of The Shawshank Redemption, emerged last week on the day before Harvey Weinstein handed himself into police in New York on charges of rape. The charges against Weinstein are serious; he should stand trial and, if found guilty, face a lengthy prison sentence.

Byron York

Rudy Giuliani is turning the Mueller probe on its head

Donald Trump got bad reviews in the press — no surprise — when he announced that Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and federal prosecutor, would join his legal team in the Trump-Russia special counsel investigation. The 74-year-old Giuliani is not as sharp as he was, some said, and isn’t really a practising lawyer any more. How can you effectively defend the President by slipping out of fatcat dinners at New York steakhouses for quick hits on Fox News?That was then. Now, it appears hiring Giuliani was a key part of a new and effective Trump strategy. Just a few months ago, Trump was cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller, mostly refraining from attacking him directly, and hoping the investigation would somehow go away.

Tuesday

Dominic Green

Roseanne isn’t abhorrent — she’s just mad

‘I’m bipolar and have ADHD and multiple personality disorder,’ Roseanne Barr once said. ‘But they’re now all in remission due to the powerful drugs I smoke.’ In the same interview, Barr described herself as ‘on the autism spectrum’, and said, ‘I talk directly to God within my own mind and need no intercessor.’ Clinically speaking, Barr is as mad as a bag of badgers. Professionally speaking, disinhibition is no handicap in a comedian, and frequently mistaken for honesty. Socially speaking, she is the kind of person compelled to share her madness. She is the kind of person who was born for Twitter, and consequently should wear a pair of thumbless gloves whenever she is online.

Roger Kimball

Disney is considerably more repulsive than Roseanne

Oh my God!  Someone said something you don’t like!  Cancel his (or her) show!  Pronounce anathema upon him (or her).  Topple the statues, chisel off the names, enact the machinery of  damnatio memoriae! Apparently that’s what’s happening as I write to Roseanne Barr, the actress who had the dual temerity to 1) revive her eponymous television show in an intermittently pro-Trump modality and 2) emit a tabasco tweet about the horrible Valerie Jarrett, President Obama’s chief counsellor. Are you ready? Are you sitting down?  Are the children in another room? Here’s the tweet: “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.” Uh oh.  Was the tweet in bad taste? Indubitably. Was it racist? Yep.

Jacob Heilbrunn

Donald Trump and the art of the conspiracy theory

ABC television star Roseanne Barr is in full retreat. Today, she tweeted, “I apologize to Valerie Jarrett and to all Americans. I am truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics and her looks. I should have known better. Forgive me-my joke was in bad taste.” https://twitter.com/therealroseanne/status/1001471669641216005 A mere matter of taste? On Tuesday, she had tweeted, "Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj." Jarrett was a top former aide to president Obama. America is awash in a sea of vilification, much of it being disseminated from the White House, where Donald Trump offers what amount to daily lessons in the objurgatory arts.

David Boyle

Sympathy for the devil: Doesn’t Harvey Weinstein deserve pity, too?

As I watched Harvey Weinstein hand himself into the police last week, the scalp the #MeToo movement most desperately craved, it was hard not to feel a scintilla of sympathy – certainly until it’s proved he’s a rapist and not just a determined sex pest. Is it wrong to suspect virtually all men, if they thought they had the slightest chance of success, would have tried it on with the some of the women who’ve accused Weinstein? Hollywood starlets get paid according to how desirable they are. Angelina Jolie, in her prime, which is when she says Weinstein harassed her, was enormously desirable – desirable to the tune of more than $20m a movie. Gwyneth Paltrow, who says she was made to feel uncomfortable by the movie mogul, was also hugely desirable.

Monday

Julie Mcdowall

Did Ronald Reagan almost spark a nuclear war?

In 1983, Soviet spies skulked in our midnight streets to check the lights were out.The Kremlin, convinced the West was planning nuclear war, launched Project RYAN, whereby agents watched for signs of impending attack. One was that lights would burn all night in government buildings, as fiendish mandarins drew up the war plans. It didn’t occur to them that lights might indicate nothing more than cleaners on a late shift. Soviet paranoia was such that they saw menace everywhere, and agents, eager to please Moscow, reinforced this fear. ‘The more alarming the reports, the more the agents were congratulated for their diligence.’ RYAN became self-fulfilling.

Mark Cocker

The sacred chickens that ruled the roost in ancient Rome

Even the most cursory glance at the classical period reveals the central place that birds played in the religious and political lives of the two key Mediterranean civilisations. Their gods, for example, were often represented in avian form, so that the Athenian currency bore an owl image, which was intended as a portrait of the city’s patron, Athene. ‘Owls to Athens’ was a proverbial expression, much like ‘coals to Newcastle’. From North Africa to the shores of the Black Sea there are still Greek temples dedicated to Zeus that are topped by weathering stone eagles as symbols of their supreme deity, while the imperial legions of Rome fought under an eagle standard for much the same symbolic reasons.

Anthony Haden-Guest

How I became Peter Fallow

It was Clay Felker, the editor of New York magazine, who introduced me to Tom Wolfe. This was at the beginning of the Seventies, the magazine that Felker and Milton Glaser had conjured from the supplement to the defunct New York Herald Tribune was throwing off energy like a cyclotron and Wolfe was one of its marquee names. We hit it off.  He was at once as mannerly and as Out There as one of his white suits. I vividly recall walking with him through a party, I’m pretty sure at Harper’s Magazine, certainly at a time when the bruises left by Radical Chic, his skewering of a party given by the conductor Leonard Bernstein for the Black Panthers, were still throbbing.