AFF's Doublethink

What conservatism can offer disability activism.

Easy to access, and satisfyingly potent, “sinful” products and pastimes represent a point of civilization that mankind has been pursuing for thousands of years. Abuseable substances and activities should be encouraged as a test of character for the next generation. If people are not forced recognize individual responsibility, civilization will crumble under the weight of all the helpless sheep expecting to be looked after.

The word “onanism” has its genesis in Genesis itself, from the story of Onan, a man killed by God for “spill[ing his seed] on the ground” rather than impregnating his widowed sister-in-law according to the laws of his tribe. Originally interpreted as a warning against the practice of coitus interruptus, the story’s cautions were [...]

Most people or things that are said to have been enormously famous or influential in their day but now forgotten, turn out either to net a Jesus- or Elvis-worthy tally of Google hits, or never to have been particularly famous or influential to begin with. If any book truly defies the strictures of that much-abused formula, it is surely David Riesman’s Lonely Crowd.

At about the same time that news of the Rod Blagojevich scandal broke in Illinois, a similar “scandal” of sorts was playing out in the rarified world of classical music. The case concerned Gilbert Kaplan, a successful American businessmen who translated an obsession with Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 (“Resurrection”) into an unlikely second career as a Mahler scholar and amateur conductor. What does his ascent tell us about the future of classical music?

Of all the ways in which the mainstream media and liberal elite demonstrated a failure to understand the phenomenon of Alaska governor Sarah Palin, their reaction to the news of her teenage daughter Bristol’s pregnancy stands out.

The women who have penned some of the most sought-out advice columns are experts in a kind of social history. Not only have they memorized (and written) tomes on etiquette, social mores, and cultural behavior, they are able to sort out the logic behind the traditional method, what about it is important to retain even in modern society, and how best to apply it.

20 years after he left the Oval Office and nearly five years since hey died, two things seem clear: Ronald Reagan’s achievements were greater than seemed possible at the time of his scandal-filled presidency, and those achievements have been willfully misinterpreted by a Republican Party that often seems blind to the changes that have swept America since the Reagan years.

The fact that John Updike, who died January 27 at age 76, spent so much of his time reviewing books rather than writing more novels says something about how important he considered literary discussion and debate. We’re likely to see less of both with the announcement that the Washington Post is ceasing publication of its Sunday stand-alone book review section.

The recessionary release of Finnish writer/director Aki Kaurismäki’s Proletariat Trilogy through the Criterion Collection’s Eclipse Series—”a selection of lost, forgotten, or overshadowed classics in simple, affordable editions”—is a case of prescient timing.  Worth viewing in any economic climate, this blue-collar suite carries particular resonance in our current era of toppling markets and tightening belts.

Danny Boyle has become famous for setting misery to an upbeat tempo. In his latest, Slumdog Millionaire, he sets torture, murder and a corrupt game show to a soundtrack that mixes Bollywood beats and Western pop music.

Barack Obama is thinking of the words of Abraham Lincoln. The President-Elect recently told ABC that “Every time you read that Second Inaugural, you start getting intimidated.” (Lincoln’s First Inaugural is much less intimidating. It’s the one where our first President from Illinois declared, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the [...]

My animus against folks is of about a decade-and-a-half’s standing–roughly coinciding with the present extent of my adult life. I cannot recall a single occasion of my minority on which the f-word was used by anyone actually in my presence–whether my parents, my grandparents, my teachers, my principal, my schoolmates, my bus drivers, the school janitor, or, indeed, the homeless dude at the convenience store up the road. Yet today, there’s no escaping it.

An ambitious, talky play-turned-movie, Doubt is a fine film that will leave you with plenty of hesitations and uncertainties of your own.

Milk’s boldness and sheer exuberance make it remarkable both as a potent “message film” and as a striking shift from Van Sant’s previous work. Its Hollywood flourishes and heady drama, even as they skirt sentimentality, secure for Harvey Milk an indelible place in the epic story of the American civil rights movement.

There’s no doubt that Mad Men is well crafted: the writing is sharp, the ensemble cast well-chosen and skilled. Unfortunately—and this might have something to do with its struggle to gain market share—the show is also dull, poorly paced, and manifestly lacking a clear narrative. Identifying its failures points to a trend in television post-Sopranos, and the not unalloyed good impact David Chase’s mobster epic has had on the hourly serial format.

Whoever was in charge of deciding what to call each generation of feminism knew what she was doing when she settled on the metaphor of waves: Do what you will, they just keep coming. Well, the next wave has arrived.

The Georgians are building themselves up as a new city on a hill, a beacon of economic liberty in a region that’s rarely known it. They have high hopes to become an example to the world of the power of free markets, a breathtaking example of Friedmanite thinking in the post-communist sphere.

Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky suggests that the content of experience—the house you live in, the money you make, the misfortunes that happen to befall you—is far less relevant to happiness than the lens through which experience is viewed. It’s a moral as appealing as it is tough to prove on film.

In the wake of Russia’s incursion into Georgian territory, President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin have often evinced a deep concern for the peoples of the Caucasus as a justification for their actions. A look at Russian attitudes towards the region throughout history shows they haven’t always been so caring.

Philip Roth sells the movie rights to his 2001 novella The Dying Animal, and Ben Kingsley hits the skins with Penelope Cruz.

On a trip to the infamous Islamic Republic of Iran last month, the author found herself in the midst of a real clash of cultures, being beaten by a crowd of women in chadors and thrown in jail.

Recent challenges to a shaky consensus on nutrition and disease suggest that we need to exercise more skepticism when science and public policy meet.

Maybe it’s fucking that’s in the air, and we just call it “love” because, under ideal circumstances, fucking ends up identified with love, the way coal may become a diamond if conditions are just so. One Catholic guy’s plea for modesty in an age of increasingly meaningless vulgarity.

HBO’s new Iraq war series Generation Kill preserves much of the serrated dialogue that made the original book memorable, but it never really trains its sights on the men behind the M-16s.

High Noon is routinely listed as one of the top American movies of all time. And it is almost universally acclaimed as one of the top three Westerns, if not the best Western ever made. With its transcendent themes of courage and honor, it appeals to people of vastly different political colors for different reasons.

What Sebastian Faulks’ new Bond novel gets wrong.

The films of Jean Luc Godard at the American Film Institute.

Using the internet to advocate for a borderless world.

Does the ultimate chick show have anything for a man?

How the tale of a girl who bears a shockingly located set of fangs upends the revenge-film formula.