The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

Blog Posts

Botched Rollout

By HSG on Mon, 04/13/2015 - 10:42pm | Politics

For married-with-children New York suburbanites in the 1970s and 80s, nothing spelled success like a Mercedes S-Class Sedan in the driveway.  After the big promotion, hot shot investment bankers, law firm partners, and ad agency execs headed over to Mercedes-Benz of Greenwich.  There they handed Hans a fat check and the keys to the family's now superfluous Gran Torino before cruising back to Scarsdale or Darien in 450 SEL splendor.

Topics: 
Politics

Maybe Divestment is the answer

By HSG on Mon, 03/30/2015 - 7:24pm | Politics

Princeton University president emeritus William G. Bowen argues in Sunday's Washington Post against those calling for colleges and universities to divest their holdings in fossil fuel companies.  I have done the same here and here.  But after reading Bowen's unconvincing justification for continued investment in the corporations responsible for our planet's ever-worsening climate crisis, I am seriously reconsidering my position.

Topics: 
Politics

Hillary Clinton's no Henry IV

By HSG on Thu, 03/19/2015 - 12:28pm | Politics

In a mean-spirited op-ed that's apparently part of an on-going twenty-year jihad against the Clintons, Maureen Dowd likens Hillary Clinton to an "annoyed queen".  While I have been first very critical, then somewhat less critical, of Hillary's response to reve

Topics: 
Politics

HillarEmail2

By HSG on Tue, 03/17/2015 - 4:05pm |

I'm struggling with various somewhat contradictory reactions to Hillary Clinton's spoken announcement last Tuesday and the nine-page document she released subsequently that explains her use of private email address when she was Secretary of State.  On balance though, my sense is that Clinton has provided a re

HilarEmail

By HSG on Sat, 03/07/2015 - 9:23am |

That the cover-up is worse than the crime is a Washington truism I've never fully believed. In 2013, Republicans chastised former IRS director Lois Lerner for subjecting groups with the words "tea party" in their name to additional scrutiny when they sought tax-exempt status. Subsequently, conservatives alleged Lerner was covering up her "crime" because emails that could have shed light on the IRS practice had been deleted.

Don't sell. Buy!

By HSG on Sun, 10/12/2014 - 1:45pm | Politics

On Sunday September 21, over 300,000 people rallied in Manhattan at the People's Climate March.

Topics: 
Politics

Playoff Baseball on Yom Kippur

By HSG on Sat, 10/04/2014 - 4:18pm | Sports

As a newspaper columnist, celebrated Jewish filmmaker Aviva Kempner is a very good baseball documentarian.  In the Washington Post's 2014 Yom Kippur edition, Kempner blasts the lords of baseball for scheduling games on the holiest of Jewish holidays thus forcing those “who have to follow [their] conscience” to miss playoff games “[t]hanks to the insensitivity of Major League Baseball”.

Topics: 
Sports

The Case of Steven Salaita

By HSG on Fri, 09/19/2014 - 7:24pm | Politics

Generally, I am skeptical of claims of anti-semitism in the academy. I think that people for a variety of reasons confuse legitimate criticism of Israel with anti-semitism. Accordingly, I was inclined to side with former University of Illinois Professor Steven Salaita and CUNY-Brooklyn Professor Corey Robin who claim that Salaita was wrongly terminated from the University of Illinois because he tweeted critically of Israel.

Topics: 
Politics

Tiger Woods should have been disqualified from the 2013 Masters

By HSG on Sat, 04/13/2013 - 4:42pm | Sports

This is a no-brainer.  What's hard to fathom is that people are even debating whether the Masters should have disqualified Tiger Woods for an illegal drop or for signing an incorrect scorecard.  On the 15th hole Friday,  Tiger hit a beautiful approach shot that unfortunately (for him) bounced off the flagstick and directly into a nearby pond.  Here's what happened next , according to Woods (per the New York Times):

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Sports

Vertigo is not the greatest film of all time (but La Regle du jeu just might be)

By HSG on Sun, 12/09/2012 - 1:58pm | Arts & Entertainment

Every ten years the British magazine Sight and Sound polls various cineastes to learn what they consider to be the greatest movie of all time. In 2012, Alfred Hithcock's Vertigo unseated Orson Welles' Citizen Kane which had been selected first in each poll conducted since 1962.

Topics: 
Arts & Entertainment

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