Forums: Gottfried Van Swieten

In a recent syndicated column, National Review editor Richard Lowry informs us that “liberals” are guilty of identifying healthcare reform with a “victory as transcendent as that of the civil rights movement.” Lowry considers this movement to be a “rare and marvelous thing.” He extols the “genius of Martin Luther King,” who spent his life teaching us to love each other. Lowry ends his encomium by contrasting the healthcare bill with the Christ-like purity of the civil rights protestors, who were concerned with “freedom and securing the most basic rights — to vote and to gain equal access to public...

Picking Apart Washington’s Scumby Paul Gottfried on January 12, 2010 As everyone and his cousin know, the neocons are my least favorite “Washington insiders” and they divide generally into two categories, the ill-mannered, touchy Jews and their groveling or adulatory Christian assistants. David Frum, the Kagan boys, Norman and John Podhoretz, and Michael Ledeen are the house-owners; while Bill Bennett, Fred Barnes, Michael Novak, Cal Thomas, Linda Chavez, and Rich Lowry all live in the servants’ quarters. Although I’ve suffered more at the hands of the Podhoretz-types than from the machinations of their servants, I’ve always felt a grudging admiration...

By Michael Ventre MSNBC contributor updated 2:25 p.m. CT, Tues., Sept. 9, 2008 At a Friars Club roast of Hugh Hefner three weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, comedian Gilbert Gottfried not only pushed the envelope, he set it on fire. He was at the podium, about to launch into the abundantly filthy “Aristocrats” joke that inspired an entire documentary film, when he mentioned that he had tried to get a direct flight “but they said they have to stop at the Empire State Building first.”

The voice of the AFLAC duck has been named the Unsexiest Man in the World. Comedian Gilbert Gottfried tops the list compiled by the Boston Phoenix's Web site. The list is a mix of entertainers, sports stars, even terrorists. Osama bin Laden is number eight on the list. Of Gottfried, the Phoenix says "The parrot-voiced, pickled-face comic is to sexy what Kryptonite is to Superman."

Adorno: A Political Biography, Lorenz Jäger, trans. by Stewart Spencer, Yale University Press, 235 pages Lorenz Jäger’s biography of Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) is a useful study of an unpleasant but influential figure. From the 1920s until his death, Adorno was the prime mover behind the aggregation of cultural and social iconoclasts known as the Frankfurt School. Together with his more down-to-earth co-organizer Max Horkheimer, who contributed family wealth to their enterprise, Adorno took his socially radical think tank, the Institute for Social Research, in 1934 from its interwar home in Frankfurt to New York and later Los Angeles. In 1949,...

My Dogs Watch FoxNewsby Paul Gottfried This morning, when I turned on FoxNews for our three dogs, who seem to like the staccato sounds on Rupert Murdoch Central, I caught sight of the well-publicized visage of David Frum. Apparently Frum was being asked to comment on the Christian faith of George W. Bush, a spiritual disposition that had just received high grades from an Evangelical Republican who was particularly struck by the Prez's remarks about everyone having the potential for democracy. Frum, who was in agreement with the Evangelical, spoke about how effusively Bush's faith had come out in his...

Straussians vs. Paleoconservatives by Paul Gottfried Having received a note from an inquiring graduate student, Mitchell Young, who is "banging out a Master’s thesis" at San Diego State, and cannot comprehend why I have insisted that Straussians and paleos are irreconcilably divided, I wish to offer the following friendly clarification. At the very least my explanation may be help to relieve the "cognitive dissonance" that Mitch has complained about, and which has been produced by my apparent inability to distinguish the disciples of Leo Strauss and neoconservatives. A German-Jewish classicist who fled to the US in 1938, Strauss (1899-1973) drew...