Mandating French in Quebec

Furious controversy and public demonstrations have raged this week over Bill 96, one of the toughest pieces of legislation so far drafted in the efforts of francophones to make theirs the official language of Quebec. A May 16 article by Elizabeth Zogalis on the website Global News describes how many anglophones in Montreal and other parts of the province fear the ramifications of such a hardball approach to promoting the use of French in the workplace and public institutions.

It may give readers a sense of the slant of Global News to note that you have go considerably further down, toward the end of the article, to find a differing view of Bill 96.

Depp v. Heard

Johnny Depp’s lawsuit over the alleged libel his ex-wife Amber Heard committed in a Washington Post op-ed piece continues this week, as does her countersuit, with Heard on the stand taking questions under cross-examination from Depp’s lawyer about their heated quarrels. One of the most harrowing parts of a trial filled with disquieting testimony was Heard’s claim that Depp committed sexual assault with a bottle. Jurors saw a photo of the bottle, which was intact despite Heard’s claim that she feared it was broken while inside her body.

The gruesome testimony, along with Depp’s claims to have lost the tip of his middle finger when Heard threw a vodka bottle at him and to have hidden from her while she went on a rampage looking for him, is the subject of a May 17 article in the New York Post by Elizabeth Rosner and Snejana Farberov.

California Judge Nixes Gender Quotas

Just when you may have thought there was no hope for California, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Maureen Duffy-Lewis last week made a sensible decision striking down gender quotas that had forced corporations in the state to have a certain number of women on their boards. As Evan Symon details in a May 16 article for California Globe, the judge’s ruling finds that SB 826, which has been law in the Golden State for three years, violates the right to equal treatment and is therefore unconstitutional.

Israel Defends Itself

As terrorist attacks continue to endanger the civilians, military, and infrastructure of Israel, prime minister Naftali Bennett has pledged a massive response making use of helicopters and missiles, the Jerusalem Post reported on May 17. According to the Post’s article, calls for a tough response have grown in the aftermath of the killing of Noam Raz, a veteran counterterrorist operative, during an Israeli Defense Force operation in the city of Jenin last week, and another incident where IDF soldiers fatally shot a Palestinian man at a checkpoint when he ran at them with a knife, among other incidents. The article details how IDF soldiers have arrested numerous terror suspects in recent days. But clearly such actions have not gone nearly far enough to quell public fears of a sharp uptick in attacks and the need for the military to use its considerable resources to maintain order.

Censorship in China

Censorship in communist China extends further than some may realize. The repressive regime in Beijing seeks to extirpate not only speech and writing that contravene its dogmas, but even symbols that might give viewers the wrong idea.

An article by Zachary Evans in National Review Online on May 2 details how China’s censors demanded that Sony cut the Statue of Liberty from the climax of Spider-Man: No Way Home. Evans notes that the monument is on view throughout the 20-minute climax. In the view of Chinese censors, it is unacceptable for viewers to take in, even subliminally, this image of freedom.

The Times Gets It Wrong, Again

Jesse Wegman of the New York Times Editorial Board believes that the Supreme Court, as currently constituted, is out of touch. The title of his May 3 opinion piece in the Times says it bluntly: “This Supreme Court Is Out of Step With Most Americans.”

Wegman complains at some length that the court has become increasingly politicized over the years to the point where it resembles Congress more than a body undertaking the review of laws and policies in an impartial manner and assessing their constitutionality. Hence it is ironic that Wegman’s objections to the pending ruling on Roe v. Wade are political rather than legal in nature. He sounds like a political partisan, indeed like an activist, when he lashes out at the court for its stance on Roe v. Wade.

The Passing of Kathy Boudin

The California Globe’s Evan Symon reported on May 2 that Kathy Boudin, the member of the Weather Underground who attained notoriety for her role in the deadly Brinks Robbery of October 1981, has died at age 78. Boudin is the mother of San Francisco’s progressive district attorney, Chesa Boudin, who faces possible recall in an election scheduled for June 7 as a consequence of the disastrous policy of “decarceration” he has foisted on the city, which has driven crime way up and eroded the quality of life in what many long considered to be one of the most desirable places in the world to live.

The World Outside

Maybe you remember that tender age when you were just barely old enough to begin to take trips by yourself. The literary journal Rosebud has just published its long-awaited 69th issue, and on page 140 of this issue, you will find my short story “The World Outside,” which is an account of a boy’s trip by train from Chicago through a swath of rural Michigan and back. It evokes midcentury America and draws its inspiration largely from Theodore Roethke’s poem “Night Journey.” In Roethke’s poem, the narrator describes riding in a Pullman car through an alternately bright and misty part of the upper Midwest and conveys the depth of his love for a land that holds out such natural beauty to the observer.

I hope that “The World Outside” will evoke more wonder and terror on the reader’s part for what it prompts the reader to imagine than for what it actually shows. As readers of W.W. Jacobs’s classic story “The Monkey’s Paw” will affirm, this approach can be powerful indeed.

Succession at Fox News

Whether or not you are a fan of Fox News, it is reasonable to wonder, as Ken Lacorte does in an April 12 article on National Review Online, what will happen to Fox News after the reign of owner Rupert Murdoch, 91, comes to an end.

Lacorte finds cause for optimism in the person of the young and dynamic Lachlan Murdoch, who is executive chairman and CEO of Fox Corporation. The presumptive heir to the News Corporation empire recently gave a speech at the Centre for the Australian Way of Life that harshly criticized woke culture’s attacks on figures and symbols of America’s past and what he termed “the destructive rewriting of its history.”

Descent Into Hell

Can Mayor Eric Adams reverse the decline of New York City?

The headline of columnist Michael Goodwin’s piece in the New York Post on April 12 is “After latest bloodbath, time is running out for Hochul and Adams to save NYC.” The incident that shocked millions occurred on the morning of April 12 when a crazed lone wolf assailant set off smoke bombs and shot passengers on a Manhattan-bound N train in Brooklyn, wounding at least 29.

Goodwin thinks that Adams, who ran on a tough law-and-order platform, has moved away from the promises he made while campaigning and has turned into something of an appeaser of the wing of the Democratic Party associated with militants like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. If Adams continues to play this role, and to avoid being the kind of leader people sick of crime thought they were voting for, the rapid decline is likely to accelerate still further.

Israel’s Third Way

Ever since February 24, the blue and yellow flags of Ukraine have been ubiquitous in the news and on social media. People around the world are eager to show their support as Ukraine suffers ever-intensifying battering from Russian forces, including a recent missile attack on a train depot that killed at least 50 civilians. As Patrick Kingsley notes in an April 10 article in the New York Times, Israel has made serious efforts including setting up a field hospital in Ukraine, sending humanitarian aid, and joining diplomatic efforts at the U.N. to sanction Russia.

At the same time, Kingsley notes, Israel’s prime minister, Naftali Bennett, has largely refrained from demonizing Russia or blaming Russia for the crisis. The balancing act that Bennett has undertaken has drawn fierce criticism and charges of a conflict of interest.

Golden State Buffoonery

Now that ethnic studies courses are a requirement in California’s public schools, parents want to know what effect such courses are having on those subjected to them.

An April 12 article by Katy Grimes on the website California Globe recounts how Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 101 into law last fall after having vetoed an earlier version, Bill 331, on the grounds of a lack of balance in the viewpoints and perspectives it would impose in California classrooms.

Schumer Hearts Dunst; Dune Triumphs

People might assume that a politician who can get elected mayor of one of the nation’s largest cities, and win reelection four years later, is on the way to bigger things. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti won election in 2013 and then again in 2017. As Thomas Buckley details in a March 13 article in California Globe, Garcetti emerged during the 2020 presidential race as a vocal backer of Joe Biden, and expected something pretty important in return for his personal and political loyalty to the winning candidate. But the new administration passed over Garcetti for the role of Secretary of Transportation, a decision Buckley suggests may have had something to do with the severity of L.A.’s homeless problem.

Wallace Slams Fox News

There is no love lost between Chris Wallace, the longtime host of Fox News Sunday, and his former employer. After nearly twenty years at Fox News, Wallace has moved to CNN, where he will host the new CNN+ streaming platform. An article in the New York Times on March 27 written by Michael N. Grynbaum quotes Wallace saying that working at Fox News became “unsustainable” as Wallace, a political centrist, increasingly heard views that he felt crossed the line from conservative opinion that he respected even if he did not always agree with it, into irresponsible stances on the supposed theft of the 2020 election and the hidden sources of the January 6 unrest in Washington. Wallace’s new gig at CNN+ will be an interview show whose acknowledged influences include such legends as Charlie Rose and Larry King.

Amy Schumer Loves Kirsten Dunst

Comedian Amy Schumer has issued a statement attempting to clarify that she meant no real disrespect to Kirsten Dunst, who was at the center of the second-most notorious incident at the 94thOscars Ceremony on Sunday, March 27.

The incident provoked by Amy Schumer did not turn physical, but one can see how it easily might have. Schumer approached a couple of chairs on the floor of the event where Dunst sat with Jesse Plemons, her fiancé and co-star in the somber 2021 western film The Power of the Dog. She proceeded to call Dunst a “seat filler,” implying Dunst is a has-been B-list or C-list talent whom the organizers of the event brought on in a half-hearted and futile attempt to lend some prestige to the event and bump up its attendance numbers.

A March 29 New York Post article by Leah Bitsky recounts Schumer’s weak attempt to explain away the incident by saying that the event was choreographed and affirming that she loves Kirsten Dunst.

A Dream Deferred

In further Oscars news, Quebec’s most famous living filmmaker, Denis Villeneuve, has a good deal to feel proud of at this time. His visually impressive, mega-budget opus Dune won awards in no fewer than six categories, including those for visual effects, cinematography, production design, editing, sound, and score.

Some directors would no doubt be awestruck at winning the most coveted award in just one of these categories, let alone six. But a March 28 article by Brendan Kelly in the Montreal Gazette notes that Dune did not win in the category of best picture. And not only did Villeneuve not win the award for best director, but he did not even receive a nomination in this category, something that could surely be a letdown at this point in his career, when you might think that Villeneuve is at the very top of his game.

The Israeli Path to Peace

There may be hope. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and Israel’s prime minister, Naftali Bennett, have been speaking on a regular basis since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24. On March 8, Zelensky personally thanked Bennett for intervening in the conflict and trying to help bring Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table. And if Bennett is not quite Talleyrand, he does appear to have brought diplomatic skills of a very high order to the table.

An article in the Jerusalem Post on March 8 describes Bennett as an intermediary who has been “passing messages” between Russia and Ukraine without explicitly identifying himself with one side or the other.

The Jerusalem Post story presents Bennett as someone highly knowledgeable about the current state of the conflict and the chances for reconciliation as Russia grows more amenable to the demilitarization of certain parts of Ukraine rather than the entire country, and Ukraine backs down a bit from its insistence on immediate unconditional entry into NATO, a development that would only further stoke Russia’s fear and alarm about the encroachment of hostile powers around its borders.

An Artist’s Plight

A February 19 article by Ken Kurson in Fine Art Globe, “Cuban Curator Anamely Ramos Gonzalez Stranded in Miami,” details how staff at Miami International Airport, seemingly at the behest of the Cuban regime, barred Ms. Ramos from getting on an American Airlines flight bound for Cuba. Kurson’s piece cites a Miami Herald article stating that typically, when Cuban authorities deny someone entry to the island nation, it happens on the ground in Cuba, and not at a U.S. airport.

When asked whether she fears that the attention given her case might put her in danger, Ramos said that, on the contrary, she feels safer in the spotlight.

A Terrorist’s Death Sentence Reimposed

On March 4, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in a 6-3 ruling to reinstate the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving member of the pair of brothers who set off two bombs at the Boston Marathon in 2013, killing three people and injuring hundreds, and then went on a rampage in the course of which they murdered a young MIT police officer and caused still more chaos, injuries, and destruction in the Boston area.

An article in National Review published shortly after the ruling details the reasoning put to use by Justice Clarence Thomas, who spoke for the majority when stating that the defendant had received a fair trial before an impartial jury as required under the Sixth Amendment.

Defending Academic Freedom, in the New York Times?

On March 7 the New York Times published a guest essay by Emma Camp, a senior at the University of Virginia, entitled “I Came to College Eager to Debate. I Found Self-Censorship Instead.”

Some students are so terrified of social repercussions—and of getting a lower grade for speaking out in class—that they choose to clam up no matter how wrong they may find the viewpoint of a professor or a fellow student to be.

Justice for Halyna

Matt Hutchins, the widower of Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins has moved ahead with a wrongful death lawsuit against Alec Baldwin and others involved with the film.

During the widely covered news conference on Tuesday, attorneys for Matt Hutchins made a number of points. The Los Angeles Times quotes attorney Brian Panish stating, “There are many people culpable, but Mr. Baldwin was the person holding the weapon.”

Ditching the Vaccine Passport

Amid mounting public frustration and Covid-19 weariness, not to mention the trucker protests that have convulsed Ottawa and made headlines around the world, Quebec’s health minister, Christian Dubé, announced on Tuesday that the province will soon do away with the vaccine passports that have been necessary to shop and dine in public and have made life during the pandemic even more trying and difficult for millions of people. The Montreal Gazette quoted the health minister saying that he has taken this step because it makes sense to do so now, given the Covid-19 numbers and the state of public health in the province, and not simply in response to political pressures.

Sorry, Rose

For fans of film star Rose McGowan and sympathizers with #MeToo, it must be highly frustrating to learn that a federal judge has thrown out McGowan’s lawsuit alleging that Harvey Weinstein engaged in a pattern of behavior that crossed the line into racketeering in his efforts to keep her quiet about his unwanted sexual advances.

According to an Associated Press story by Andrew Dalton on February 14, federal judge Otis D. Wright II tossed out the suit on a technicality, noting that McGowan had failed to meet filing deadlines even though the court had extended the deadlines in an effort to accommodate her.

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Do progressives really wear masks and socially distance when they have any choice in the matter? Evan Symon carries on his excellent coverage of the California political scene with a February 14 piece in the California Globe on the flouting of Covid-19 rules and protocols by members of the very political elite that has been so self-righteous about enforcing such rules.

The article details how, at Super Bowl LVI which took place at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Sunday, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti was one of a number of public officials and celebrities captured on video as they freely ignored mask and social distancing protocols. Charlize Theron and Sean Penn also make notable appearances in the video, which has received more than 1.4 million views.

Houthi rebels, Soros funding, Holocaust portrayals and Quebec heavy handedness

Many observers of Israel’s continuing efforts to strengthen ties with the region reacted with dismay to the news that Houthi rebels in Yemen had fired a missile in an apparent attempt to disrupt Israeli president Israel Herzog’s official visit to the United Arab Emirates.

According to a January 30 Politico report, the UAE intercepted the missile fired by the rebels and it does not appear to have claimed any lives or to have disrupted President Herzog’s meeting with the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.

The same cannot be said of an attack by the rebels on a fuel station two weeks previously that killed three people and injured six people.

Practice What You Preach

A report by Kenneth P. Vogel and Shane Goldmacher that appeared in the New York Times on January 29 is entitled “Democrats Decried Dark Money. Then They Won With It in 2020.”

The article does an excellent job of laying bare the hypocrisy on display here. It mentions the left’s professed aversion to the role of corporations in politics in the Citizens United case. It acknowledges the increasing role, in the dark money sinkhole, of megadonors such as George Soros. But the article could perhaps have gone even a bit further and frankly acknowledged that the party that casts itself as the party of voting rights and economic populism, favoring the increased participation of the disadvantaged members of our society, has increasingly turned into the vehicle and tool of the most powerful and superrich elites.

Intellectual Freedom in Tennessee

On January 27, the website Book and Film Globe ran a piece by editor Neal Pollack entitled “The Maus That Roared: Tennessee school board bans Art Spiegelman’s book just in time for Holocaust Remembrance Day.” Maus, an account of the Holocaust making use of animals as its characters, is widely considered a powerful and revolutionary work of literature, one that brings home all the horror of the Holocaust in a wrenching manner, but the school board evidently felt that the profanity and depictions of violence in the graphic novel, including the murder of children, make Maus unsuitable for school libraries and curricula.

Punishing the Skeptics

It is one thing to believe in the wisdom of getting fully vaccinated against Covid-19. It is another matter to enact punitive measures against those who, for one reason or another, have not received vaccinations. The province of Quebec, as BBC News reported on January 11, has deemed the latter course of action to be necessary. Quebec’s premier, François Legault, has announced that Quebec will slap as-yet unspecified fines on the roughly 12.8% of the province’s population who are still unvaccinated.

The tough new measure, as stated above, makes Quebec an outlier among Canada’s provinces. On the one hand, you have to admire Quebec for going its own way and not receiving dictates from Ottawa about how to handle urgent public health matters. It is well for the province to asset its independence from a confederation that continually threatens to subsume its distinct cultural and linguistic identity.

The Future of the Union

The Economist’s January 1 issue features a bold lead editorial, entitled “Walking away,” about the perceived fragility of democracy in America one year out from the trauma of the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. It sounds a dire note about the growing polarization in the country and the tendency of members of either major political party to view the other side with suspicion and fear.

Eric Adams Becomes Mayor

Many people concerned about the crime surge in New York City have welcomed new mayor Eric Adams, a former cop who did not mince words during the electoral race about the problems facing the city and the tough measures needed to turn things around. This past weekend, a robber at a Burger King in East Harlem fatally shot a 19-year-old cashier who had recently expressed concerns to management about her safety because of the lateness of her shift and the number of homeless people who gathered on the sidewalk outside, according to a January 9 report in the New York Post. This horrible incident comes on the heels of other high-profile crimes including the murder of a Columbia University graduate student from Italy and the assault and robbery of a young Thai model on a 14thStreet subway platform.

One would like to think that the city really will take a new direction under Mayor Adams, who repudiates the weak, permissive stance of failed mayor Bill de Blasio. Many of us still believe in Adams, even though he has defended one of his recent top-level appointments in a curious manner. An article by Sam Raskin appearing in the New York Post on January 9 details how Mayor Adams defended the choice of his brother, former New York cop Bernard Adams, to serve as deputy NYPD commissioner.

The Radioactive Road Not Taken in Vietnam

All too often the problems of the present become magnified and we lose perspective and imagine that we today face crises unequalled in history. An article by Erik Villard in the February 2022 issue of Vietnam magazine, entitled “Did the U.S. consider using nukes?”, looks into that question and says that, yes, no fewer than three U.S. presidents gave consideration to the use of tactical nuclear weapons to prevent North Vietnamese forces from overrunning key objectives.

Villard’s article emphasizes the consideration given to political fallout, but it goes without saying that any sensible president would do everything in his power to prevent the use of nuclear weapons and to signal to the world that their use would be unacceptable and unconscionable. Public opinion is an important but far from the sole issue here. The use of nukes in Vietnam would have upped the ante in conflicts worldwide to a point where the annihilation of hundreds of thousands of lives and the spread of radiation and devastation of the natural environment would come not to seem extraordinary at all.

How the Mayans Lived

Our understanding of the civilization and way of life of the Mayans takes another step forward with the publication of a short but intriguing article, “New Neighbors,” by Marley Brown in the January/February issue of Archaeology magazine.

The article is a reminder of the splendor and sophistication, as well as the frequent aggression and conquest, characterizing one of the most fascinating and idiosyncratic ancient civilizations.

Gotham in Decline

Those of us who grew up in New York City in the 1980s have troubling memories of a grimy, graffiti-ridden urban landscape where danger was a part of everyday life and you could not walk the streets without anticipating the possibility of becoming a victim of harassment or worse.

The election of Rudolph Giuliani in the 1993 mayoral race drew howls of outrage from the left, but under Giuliani, and his police commissioner William Bratton, the city at last began to make steps to becoming slightly more civilized and habitable. The tough approach continued under Michael Bloomberg, but it came to an abrupt end under Bill de Blasio, who rejected tough policing as unfair to minorities in New York. De Blasio did not seem to understand or care that while crime and disorder affected almost everyone, those who benefited most from a decline in the homicide rate were precisely the city’s racial minorities.

Now, at the end of De Blasio’s awful tenure, incidents happen every day that cannot fail to summon memories of the 1980s.

Germany’s Man of the Hour

The Economist of December 11-17 features a profile of Germany’s new chancellor, Olaf Scholz. The article, “Enter the Quiet Man,” presents Scholz as a moderate pragmatist with a strong work ethic. According to the article, some of Scholz’s fellow Social Democrats find him a bit too moderate, far from the politician who would be needed to spearhead a reenergized European left.

Or at least that was the case until the Covid pandemic came along, the article tells us.

On North Korea

Another article in The Economist, Sunflower state ,” presents the findings of researchers from the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, an organization based in Seoul. With neither the freedom to choose between a vocation and spending time with family, nor the competitive salaries that they might be earning in western countries, men in North Korea may come to feel something the class-tinged resentment that finally turns one of the protagonists of Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite homicidal. But overthrowing a totalitarian regime by force from the inside is arguably an even more doomed proposition than acting out a revenge fantasy against a callous and snooty upper-class family.

On Joan Didion

The website Book and Film Globe, edited by Neal Pollack, features my thoughts on the passing of Joan Didion, the pioneering and prolific essayist, memoirist, critic, and novelist who showed us all how porous the borders between fiction and nonfiction narrative really are. To read Didion is to see that there is no reason an account of a trip to El Salvador, a Doors rehearsal, a Bay Area courtroom during a trial of Black Panthers accused of murder, or a stint in New York City during a tender and impressionable time of life cannot have all the passion, drive, and power of riveting fiction. Since Didion’s passing on Thursday, December 23, tributes have come pouring in from critics, journalists, editors, and publishers all over the world, and I tried in my Book and Film Globe piece to convey at least some sense of why readers are so passionate about the late celebrity.

Alec Baldwin Blames Everyone But Himself

The shocking news that Alec Baldwin shot dead the cinematographer on the set of a film on October 21 has clearly been hard for Baldwin to digest. There can be no doubt as to the unintentional nature of the fatal shooting and the sincerity of Baldwin’s wish that this terrible unexpected event had never happened. In his relatively few photo-ops and interviews since the death of Halyna Hutchins, Baldwin appears genuinely distraught and remorseful, as would anyone who is not psychotic. But that does not mean that Baldwin’s conduct, and his legal maneuverings, in the time since that awful incident have set a standard of exemplary conduct. Baldwin seems determined not to own the consequences of the lack of safety and industry-wide protocol for which he bore ultimate responsibility.

Real Intolerance

The Economist’s November 6 issue contains an incisive article, “Spilling over,” on a wave of horrific violence in Bangladesh driven largely by sectarian hatred. It details how the alleged discovery of a copy of the Koran wedged under the feet of a Hindu idol sparked a series of vicious attacks on Hindus and other religious minorities in the 90% Muslim country. The article describes how a crowd of 10,000 Muslims gathered outside the mosque in Dhaka chanting “Hang the culprits” and how rioters inspired by sectarian fervor and a desire to avenge the alleged desecration attacked Hindus and seized their property, leaving at least three dead, including a 62-year-old man, Dilip Das, who had set out to worship in the Hindu temple in Cumilla in eastern Bangladesh.

According to the article, Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, did not condemn the violence unequivocally but rather blamed it on the treatment that Muslims have received in India. The article notes that Muslims living in that nation are not entirely without legitimate grievances, given that the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi recently implemented a streamlined path to citizenship for refugees, excluding those who happen to be Muslim, and that the ruling party has labeled Muslims from the border regions of India “infiltrators.” Violence against Muslims in India, the article notes, quickly followed the wave of anti-Hindu attacks.

Ed Shames, RIP

Colonel Ed Shames, one of the last surviving members of the famed Band of Brothers who fought heroically in the Second World War, died on December 3 at the age of 99. Shames was born in Norfolk, Virginia, and lived a good part of his life in the Hampton Roads area, save for military training and preparations that took him to a number of places in the U.S. and abroad, including Petersburg, Virginia, Toccoa, Georgia, and England during the run-up to D-Day. According to his Legacy.com obituary, Shames was the first member of the 101st to enter the Dachau concentration camp, and he entered and took cognac from Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest headquarters, later using the cognac in a toast at the bar mitzvah of his eldest son.