As the 1960s sitcom Get Smart makes its way back into popular culture with the release of the film adaptation starring Steve Carrell, it is amusing to note that the series has also had an unlikely impact on legal discourse. In both Canadian and American legal briefs and court rulings, the idea of the ‘cone of silence’ - which never worked on [...]
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As my Sans Everything colleague A.M. Lamey has observed, there are certain strands of radical thought, even forms of Marxism, which are surprisingly sympathetic to cultural conservatism. One of the best examples of this tendency is the late historian Christopher Lasch (1932-1994). In works like The Culture of Narcissism (1979) and The True and Only [...]
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Comics were once a gutter art form, barely more respectable than pornography. Now comics are perhaps all too cherished by the establishment, showered with attention by academic studies and museum shows. More than anyone else Art Speigelman is responsible for this shift, thanks not only to his celebrated graphic novel Maus but also his many [...]
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Posted in Uncategorized on March 12, 2008 | 6 Comments »
The downfall of Eliot Spitzer reminded me of a great essay by Philip Marchand titled “The Cult of the Prosecutor” (Toronto Star, July 23 2006) which traces the decline of the lone wolf private dectective as a popular hero and the rise of shows celebrating District Attorneys, forensic labs, and by-the-books police officers. Spitzer’s rise to prominence was [...]
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Posted in Uncategorized, tagged neoliberalism on March 11, 2008 | No Comments »
F.A. Hayek.
Not unexpectedly, my comments on neoliberalism and Nafta have drawn rebukes. Both A.M. Lamey and John Haffner have concluded that I’m an enemy of market economies and free trade, when I simply wanted to make clear that I was opposed to “neoliberalism and the policies that are often described as ‘free trade’ (but which are in [...]
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Posted in Uncategorized on March 9, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Ian’s post on “the roots of the conservative international” is excellent and there is little I would disagree with. In my Guardian article, I didn’t mean to suggest that Nafta was the only (or even the primary) cause of the creation of the conservative international; and I agree that the real emotional gestalt of the international [...]
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Posted in Uncategorized on March 7, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Along with Doug Henwood, Brad DeLong is my favourite writer on economics. This is rather odd because DeLong belongs to the neoliberals, a tribe I otherwise distrust. But he writes clearly, has a strong grasp on history and good political instincts, and knows the limits of markets. His new essay “The End of the Age of Friedman” is a fine display [...]
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Posted in Uncategorized on March 6, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Sans Everything is an unusually cordial group blog. My colleagues and I agree on most issues, but not all. I believe I’m the only skeptic of our group when it comes to neoliberalism and the policies that are often described as “free trade” (but which are in fact managed trade agreements designed to bolster corporate power). For [...]
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Posted in Uncategorized on February 20, 2008 | 5 Comments »
Hollywood does the French Foreign Legion, 1939.
Mired in Iraq and Afghanistan, the American military is suffering from recruiting problems as fewer and fewer citizens are willing to put their lives on the line. A host of stopgap measures have been tried, including accepting recruits with lower education standards and giving waivers to convicted felons who sign [...]
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It is a tradition in my wife’s family to give charitable donations in lieu of gifts, so over the holidays I had occasion to spend an afternoon looking at the Web sites of different charities. As you would expect, there are a lot of impressive organizations out there, entities like Amnesty International and Medecins sans [...]
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