We live in an age in which respectful, good-faith, reasoned debate is the exception rather than the rule. So I’m happy to see a return—of sorts—of Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish. Here he is, in stellar form, on postmodernism, critical theory, and the origins of wokeness. Zowie.
Speaking of brilliance, Agnes Callard has some thoughts on academic writing. “In the humanities,” she writes, “no one counts whether anyone reads our papers. Only whether they are published, and where.”
Matthew Walther tries Budweiser Zero: “The teetotaling hall monitors are undermining the moral foundations of our country and letting the terrorists win.”
“We laud Beethoven for breaking out of one box,” writes Emily Bootle on the myths surrounding the great composer, “and yet with 250 years of hindsight we would like nothing better than to put him in another.” True story: Long before I’d memorized every note of my copy of Irwin the Disco Duck Vol. 3: Big Hits Dance Party, I’d so internalized Toscanini’s 1952 recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony that, to this day, I could easily pick it out of a lineup.
