The title of Gayle Pemberton’s essay “Do He Have Your Number, Mr. Jeffrey?” comes from an offscreen line in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. The speaker was a babysitter, but the character’s infantile drawl — the old stereotype of black people as dawdling, servile simpletons — makes her sound as if she could use a babysitter […]
Charles Taylor
Charles Taylor is a columnist for The (Newark) Star-Ledger. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times, Newsday, The New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Dirty Harry Goes P.C.
Among film critics, there seems to be a longing for a filmmaker who can assume the mantle of American master. And for many of them, Clint Eastwood is just the man. Choosing Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo Jima as the best movie of 2006, The New York Times‘ A.O. Scott wrote that with the death of […]