Tuesday, April 27, 2010
The real Boston Tea Party -- and other tidbits
Here are some articles that caught my attention during the waning days of my vacation last week:
-- Jill Lepore shows how protesters, whether on the left or right, have almost always mangled the meaning of the original Boston Tea Party.
-- Nobel prize winner and Harvard professor Amartya Sen explains how Adam Smith's brilliant insights into the free-market system have been turned into purist dogma, allowing hucksters like Lloyd Blankfein to spout nonsense about doing "God's work" and how regulating his industry will "hurt America."
-- Speaking of Goldman Sachs, Frank Rich tore into the firm over the weekend. Fun read. No pity for Goldman if the SEC's fraud charge doesn't stick. The firm wouldn't be around today if it weren't for the trillions of taxpayer dollars pumped into the financial system over the past two years. That's the real fraud.
-- Robert Campbell is disappointed with our banal Greenway. I've ranted about the same thing in the past. But Campbell, obviously, says it better.
-- Tom Wolfe on Mark Twain. He seems to think Twain's move to Hartford was some sort of betrayal. But most great writers weren't/aren't what they seemed. The miracle is how they got in the heads of others, sort of like method acting, and then brilliantly conveyed it to others. So the folksy Twain, who never tried to hide his societal ambitions, longed to hobnob with the Eastern elite. What of it? We probably wouldn't have 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court' if he hadn't. We also wouldn't have 'Innocents Abroad' if he hadn't hobnobbed with Quakers for what surely must have been the longest year of his life.
-- New Hampshire's Charlie Bass is walking a fine line between following his moderate instincts and pandering to the reality of today's Republican Party.
-- Howie on the latest attempt to get around Proposition 2 1/2. They'll be back. Pols have to feed the beast. See post immediately below.
Here are some articles that caught my attention during the waning days of my vacation last week:
-- Jill Lepore shows how protesters, whether on the left or right, have almost always mangled the meaning of the original Boston Tea Party.
-- Nobel prize winner and Harvard professor Amartya Sen explains how Adam Smith's brilliant insights into the free-market system have been turned into purist dogma, allowing hucksters like Lloyd Blankfein to spout nonsense about doing "God's work" and how regulating his industry will "hurt America."
-- Speaking of Goldman Sachs, Frank Rich tore into the firm over the weekend. Fun read. No pity for Goldman if the SEC's fraud charge doesn't stick. The firm wouldn't be around today if it weren't for the trillions of taxpayer dollars pumped into the financial system over the past two years. That's the real fraud.
-- Robert Campbell is disappointed with our banal Greenway. I've ranted about the same thing in the past. But Campbell, obviously, says it better.
-- Tom Wolfe on Mark Twain. He seems to think Twain's move to Hartford was some sort of betrayal. But most great writers weren't/aren't what they seemed. The miracle is how they got in the heads of others, sort of like method acting, and then brilliantly conveyed it to others. So the folksy Twain, who never tried to hide his societal ambitions, longed to hobnob with the Eastern elite. What of it? We probably wouldn't have 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court' if he hadn't. We also wouldn't have 'Innocents Abroad' if he hadn't hobnobbed with Quakers for what surely must have been the longest year of his life.
-- New Hampshire's Charlie Bass is walking a fine line between following his moderate instincts and pandering to the reality of today's Republican Party.
-- Howie on the latest attempt to get around Proposition 2 1/2. They'll be back. Pols have to feed the beast. See post immediately below.
