Tag Archives: rhetoric

So Playfully Valorized Seriousness

Posted on May 6, 2020 by JMN

[Wayne Koestenbaum] valorizes the intellectual seriousness of Sontag, and of the poet and translator Richard Howard, but also confesses his attraction to idleness and lassitude. Books are fine and good, but have you tried sex, or doughnuts? So this review … Continue reading →

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The Naked and the Fungible

Posted on April 27, 2020 by JMN

In 2008, an IBM study that sought to identify “workers who are “virtually indistinguishable from others’ in terms of the value of their contributions to the workplace” was reported. (www.workitdaily.com). It’s pointed to when you Google “fungible.” In 2020, Kara … Continue reading →

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Blurred Slur

Posted on April 23, 2020 by JMN

Language is awash in slurs: racist, ethnist, nationalist, sexist, ageist, classist, occupationist, sexual orientationist, “ism-ist,” and so on and so forth. The human race is a slurring race. I’m far from wishing to resurrect offensive words from their just entombment. … Continue reading →

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Move Fast and Fix Things

Posted on April 19, 2020 by JMN

In late January Kara Swisher paid tribute to Clay Christensen, who died that month at age 67. Christensen was a Harvard professor of management whose seminal book “The Innovator’s Dilemma” appeared in 1997. His ideas on “disruptive” technologies influenced the … Continue reading →

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“Forebode”? Verboten!

Posted on April 14, 2020 by JMN

But some religious authorities, too, have acted with anti-adaptive zeal. In my own Catholicism, the diocese of Raleigh, N.C., didn’t just cancel Masses and close churches; it forebode [my bolding] its priests to attempt experiments like drive-through confessions that might … Continue reading →

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Plaited Thorns

Posted on April 13, 2020 by JMN

Before reading the article I scanned this painting as a king and courtier munching a corona-bat monster that has been spitted and roasted. The courtier picks his teeth and licks his fingers while the king gnaws a bone ruminatively and … Continue reading →

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Neck-Broken

Posted on April 6, 2020 by JMN

A photo of Henry Adams helped draw me into a review by George F. Will of an anthology of conservative thinkers (“American Conservatism: Reclaiming an Intellectual Tradition,” Edited by Andrew J. Bacevich). In “The Education of Henry Adams (1907),” Adams … Continue reading →

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Sauerkraut Ice Cream

Posted on April 6, 2020 by JMN

George Will reviews “American Conservatism: Reclaiming an Intellectual Tradition,” Edited by Andrew J. Bacevich. Being susceptible to typography-based graphics I was drawn in by the illustration. Will’s opening statement added enticement. When assembling an anthology of writings representative of a … Continue reading →

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If There’s a Heaven, It’s Parody

Posted on April 5, 2020 by JMN

Your neologismic servant, a spastic parodic — or is it “parodian” —, speaks his title. For one crowning moment, the Gray Lady really was “fake news.” An October surprise, so to speak. In September 1978, a strike by pressmen had … Continue reading →

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Stop Shooting for a Moment?

Posted on April 5, 2020 by JMN

It’s a stretch, but the evolving Covid-19 moment seems a good time to pause injury and death from shooting where possible. In Mexico it would abet the diverting of already shaky personnel assets from cartel warfare to virus containment, potentially … Continue reading →

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