John Wayne behind the blue line
The Seventies weren’t John Wayne’s decade, and that was fine by him
Culture
Monday
Serve and volley
King Richard reviewed
Nanny bait
Mrs. Doubtfire reviewed
Returning to live gigs
When Covid rampaged through the world like a Viking raid of death-cult realtors, the world was suddenly shorn of live music
Get with the program
Both in Pittsburgh and Miami, I was struck by the rousing enthusiasm that the symphony and soloists evoked with their temerarious playing
Monday
What’s driving America’s sex recession?
And what does Christianity have to do with it?
Kandinsky’s colors
Kandinsky is getting spun up the Guggenheim’s spiral
Wynton’s works
Wynton Marsalis has not allowed tradition to become self-serving traditionalism
How did Walt Disney learn from Ancien Régime decoration?
Inspiring Walt Disney makes the case that Disney’s studio functioned in a similar way to an eighteenth-century decorative art manufactory
Truth in Duluth
Girl from the North Country is a delight as pure as birdsong
Jake Gyllenhaal is guilty
He carries his latest film and keeps it from going off the rails
Richard Lester at ninety
He lent ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ the spirit of untamed frivolity
Tuesday
How elites hijacked the conversation on race
Instead of serious solutions to real problems, we get the Washington Football Team
Saturday
Adieu, Teddy Roosevelt
It’s open season on the past
Wednesday
I’m dreaming of a ‘problematic’ Christmas
Ignore the woke outrage over carols and movies: the entire point of the season is to feel unsettled
Monday
Cicero on rejecting the 1619 Project
He understood we should treat our elders with charity, not cast them as bigots
Friday
Assisted suicide is the new trans rights
DIY suicide devices show just how far the misguided quest for individual autonomy will go
Monday
More woke gymnastics at the Tenement Museum
Every pro-wokeness tale needs a villain, and recently that meant a Spectator writer
Friday
I could have been Kyle Rittenhouse
His tragedy shows we need men — and can’t them fall to one political faction or another
Thursday
A brush with Joan Mitchell
Joan Mitchell was a female star of the Abstract Expressionist boys’ club
Prints of Wales and elsewhere
Amid the turbulence of modernism, British artists made art for themselves
Broadway’s back(side)
Six and Chicken & Biscuits reviewed
A dream of a dress
It’s easy to see why Dior still rules the red carpet
Roy Hargrove doubles up
For anyone looking for a stocking stuffer for the aficionado — or merely the lover — of good music, here it is
Sounds of Christmas past
I tend to associate Christmas music with the records I received as gifts when I was a kid
Can the University of Austin spark a new Enlightenment?
Challenging rigid wokeness by building a university
Monday
#FreeBritney is redemption for toxic celebrity fan culture
Hopefully Britney’s case inspires reform in the system
Thursday
Travis Scott, satanist?
The TikTok theories are wrong, but the rapper who played on in Houston did indulge in demonic themes
Saturday
The rush to cancel old Halloween costumes
Suddenly an un-PC photo from a party in the 1980s is a weapon
