Groundhog Day: A Classic

Jonah Goldberg in a 2006 review.

A Deflated Choice

The announcement has been made. The Washington, D.C. football team (formerly known as the Redskins) will be known as the Commanders.

Heavy sigh.

I'd love to have a video of the meetings that produced that gem. At a time when Washington, D.C. is viewed as power-hungry and out of touch with the American people, "Commanders" sets the wrong tone. It is the sort of name only comic-book lovers will embrace.

They should have been bold. Imagine these:

• The Washington Bureaucrats
• The Washington Weasels

Either one would have produced memorable mascots.

Miscellaneous and Fast

 

• Jonathan Turley: The New York Times sues to get Hunter Biden information.
• Clinton Williamson on "The Palliative Society."
• Heather Mac Donald: Judging Merit by Identity.
• David Corn on the banning of "Maus."

First Paragraph

When he was nine years old, my godson developed a brief but freakishly intense obsession with Elvis Presley. He took to singing "Jailhouse Rock" at the top of his voice, with all the low crooning and pelvis-jiggling of the King himself. He didn't know this style had become a joke, so he offered it with all the heart-catching sincerity of a preteen who believes he is being cool. In the brief pauses before he started singing it all over again, he demanded to know everything ("Everything! Everything!") about Elvis, and so I jabbered out the rough outline of that inspiring, sad, stupid story. 

- From Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention - and How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari

The Invasion of the Brain-Snatchers

 The Winsor School is no longer going to call girls "girls" because that would be whatever.

It's a Lot Less Crowded a Place Than 'OK'

Nicholas Bate on being brilliant.

On My List

 

From Bryn Mawr to Hillsdale

At Common Sense with Bari Weiss: Jane Kitchen makes a big move. An excerpt:

I went to office hours—in person—the other day for one of my new classes, a required course about classic literature and I got into an interesting debate with a professor. Upon sharing an idea that directly refuted his interpretation of a line from Genesis, which I had never read before, he said, “That’s a great point. Why didn’t you share that in class?” “I didn’t want to be argumentative,” I told him. “Be argumentative,” he said emphatically.

Miscellaneous and Fast

• Washington Examiner: What has happened to BLM?
• The trailer for "Ted K": a film about a dangerous loon.
• Boastful cricket makes film trailer.
• The Atlantic: Race-Based Rationing in Health Care.
• The Hollywood Reporter: Sean Penn on feminized men.

First Paragraph

"What am I doing here? I am flat on my back in a National Health Service hospital hoping, praying, that the rigors and fevers which have racked me for three months will turn out to be malaria - although, after many blood tests, they have not found a single parasite. I have been on quinine tablets for thirteen hours - and my temperature does seem to be sliding down. I feel my ears. They are cold. I feel the tip of my nose. It is cold. I feel my forehead. It is cool. I feel inside my groin. Not too bad. The excitement is enough to send my temperature soaring."

From "Assunta: A Story" in What Am I Doing Here by Bruce Chatwin