Carl Scott

It was a year ago that I unleashed my first Carl’s Rock Songbook entry upon the world.  It’s time to look back and see what’s unfolded so far. Maybe another day I’ll link all of these, but for now I’d call your attention to the SEARCH FIRST THINGS box over on the upper . . . . Continue Reading »

It goes without saying that Fred Siegel should be reading my Rock Songbook, which underlines the middle-class mediocrity of most rock, even as it defends, with respect to music, the low, the high, and even the middle-brow version of the high. He could go to my last post , about the tensions between . . . . Continue Reading »

. . . is mostly a blistering attack on elitist intellectuals , including Ortega y Gasset and his Revolt of the Masses . You do not want to miss this one, and I’m not sure how long Commentary will let you read it for free. A lot of the essay reminds us just how bad so many intellectuals were, . . . . Continue Reading »

It’s been a Berry-filled week, in the aftermath of his Jefferson Lecture last Monday, which I’ve yet to read in full. For one, there was an affectionate puff piece in the NYT , a fine introduction to the man, and of course on Tuesday I drove over the hill for my bi-monthly fill of . . . . Continue Reading »

My Rock Songbook has slowed down of late, and there’s a reason. At Washington and Lee University, where I currently teach, we do this cool thing of having a month-long intensive class. The prof is supposed to pack this with a semester’s worth of material, and my class is an American . . . . Continue Reading »

Thomas Hibbs has an appetizing preview of Whit Stillman’s new film Damsels in Distress over at NRO. Lots on the importance of dancing, the reason why with suicide, “prevention is ten-tenths of the cure,” and Hibbs’ interesting observation that Stillman’s college scene . . . . Continue Reading »

In the hearts of civil rights and MSM leaders. Over a certain usable aspect of the boy’s killing. Yeah, Shelby Steele is taking no prisoners in his latest: In fact Trayvon’s sad fate clearly sent a quiver of perverse happiness all across America’s civil rights establishment, and . . . . Continue Reading »

Well obviously someone should be , and Ben Shapiro thinks it’s Williams.  NBC’s handling of the Trayvon Martin story was horrifying, and could have led to riots. And neither did the other MSM outlets, nor, alas, our president, try to get the necessary “let’s wait for . . . . Continue Reading »

Emily Esfahani Smith, a gal with a middle name to remember, has a nice review of the high points of Allan Bloom’s take-down of rock/pop music in his Closing of the American Mind , which has a 25th anniversary this year. Worth pondering if you haven’t read Bloom’s masterpiece, or . . . . Continue Reading »

The key Obama quote: “I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint — that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed . . . . Continue Reading »