Noemie Emery is a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard.
The term "role model" was coined in the first half of the twentieth century by the Columbia University sociologist Robert K. Merton, who also pioneered the techniques used in focus groups. "Hero," by contrast, is an ancient term of poetry and war.
continue readingThe greatest confrontation between glamour and grit that ever occurred on American soil took place at four in the afternoon on November 1, 1938, at Pimlico racetrack, on a day when almost everything in the country seemed to stop for two minutes, while a radio audience of 40 million, among them President Franklin D. Roosevelt, listened in.
continue readingThe greatest confrontation between glamour and grit that ever occurred on American soil took place at four in the afternoon on November 1, 1938, at Pimlico racetrack, on a day when almost everything in the country seemed to stop for two minutes, while a radio audience of 40 million, among them President Franklin D. Roosevelt, listened in.
continue readingI was twelve or thirteen when literature first taught me about the necessity, and the inadequacy, of confronting genocide with honesty. But it wasn’t Elie Wiesel or Primo Levi who did it. It wasn’t memoirs of the gulag. Pol Pot wasn’t involved, nor Ataturk, nor the genocidaires of Cambodia.
continue readingThrift is the bleakest of all the virtues, especially in an era of consumerism, credit cards, and shopaholics. It is the perpetual spoilsport, refusing to rise to the bait of advertising, or the need to party, or to relieve the tedium, or simply to keep up with the Joneses. It makes parental authority grate even more when, instead of being allowed to spend our allowance or a birthday check on candy or a new baseball glove, we are told to sequester it in that hated instrument of personal fiscal restraint, the savings account. Then when we grow up, governmental authority does the same thing, forcing us to invest whatever money we have left after the tax bill in a dismal array of IRA's, SEP's, and 401(k)s.
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