May 1, 2005

Point: red state politics, blue state tastes

I was born in Manhattan and raised in Hollywood. Those two facts, plus my Catholic religion, my severely—mixed—but—primarily—Francophone ethnicity, my parents' theatrical background, my father's love of books and history, and ...

April 19, 2005

Oil for the lamps of China

Living in a Los Angeles suburb as I do, Chinese culture is inescapable. Here in the San Gabriel Valley, formerly lily—white towns like Monterey Park and Temple City have become Sinicized; wags have dubbed such former WASP strongholds as San Mar...

March 30, 2005

Return of the swastika (3)

[Part 3 of a three part series. Part one here. Part twoаhere.] John Lukacs' book, The Hitler of History,аpoints out the tremendous parallels between the fates ——— after their defeats ——— of the ideologies bequeathe...

March 29, 2005

Return of the swastika (2)

[Second of a three part series; part one can be found here.]The transfer of Hitler's loyalty from the House of Habsburg to the House of Hohenzollern became concrete in August of 1914, when Hitler left the Empire to join the German army. But his exper...

March 28, 2005

Return of the Swastika (1)

[The first in a three part series] The recent contretemps over Prince Harry's wearing of a swastika on a (wildly inaccurate) Afrika Korps uniform at a masquerade party made headlines around the globe. All sorts of folk were up in arms: some call...

February 28, 2005

Vibrant multiculturalism

Type the phrase 'vibrant, multicultural' into the Google search engine, click 'Search,' and you will turn up no less than 7,120 hits.  Most of these deal with various provinces, cities, counties and other local governments throughout the English...

February 10, 2005

Age of (gutless) wonder

We live in age of wonder. A satellite can tell us about tides and storms on Titan; one of my best friends has a robot dog that is exhibiting jealousy toward his robot vacuum cleaner (to be fair, poor Speedy, as the techno—canine is called, did ...