Features

For better or worse, Hollywood loves to warble the plaintive song of lefty idealism. The unimpeachably affecting underdog dynamics make grade-A grist for the movie mill as it works around the clock to narratively confirm our most ardent hopes about ourselves. You can hardly blame the conservatives for their dudgeon about American movies, however ineptly […]

Each fall at least one prime-time television show premieres to the much-hyped anticipation of critics and viewers that it will stand apart from the rest of the lineup and fit into–or, better yet, raise the standards for–that elusive category called “quality television.” This season, the burden of those expectations was reserved for ABC’s new drama […]

Although it is frequently attacked as an elitist institution with no regard for the public will, the Supreme Court is hardly immune to cultural and political trends. Justices are, after all, appointed by presidents with particular ideological agendas, shaped partly by polls. Once they ascend to the bench, a few appointees may surprise and disappoint […]

When Hillary Clinton went on the Today show in early 1998 to defend her husband against the malefactions of a “vast right-wing conspiracy,” she was pitied and disparaged in roughly equal measure. Rightly so: Her husband, it turned out, was dallying with an intern less than half his age. And while the president has garnered […]

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me … –Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road With apologies to Walt Whitman, whose “barbaric yawp” anticipated Internet chat groups and the World Wide Web by well over a century, the information superhighway may turn out to be nothing like […]

Work Discussed: Vietnam: The Necessary War. A Reinterpretation of America’s Most Disastrous Military Conflict, by Michael Lind. The Free Press, 314 pages, $25.00. American dominion over the world is the value on behalf of which Michael Lind justifies and upholds the Vietnam War, which he sees as a lost battle in the Western […]

Tales of the cataclysm have long been a cinematic staple, and since the movie industry is perpetually on the lookout for ways to turn a profit from the zeitgeist, this seems an especially apt moment for such films. Two have been brought out this season: End of Days, the latest Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, and the […]

It is not without significance that the title of the hit TV show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire contains no question mark. It’s not so much a challenge as a chipper invitation, as in, “Who wants candy.” Not only does the show correctly assume that everybody wants to be a millionaire–what’s not to want?–but, […]

Antidrug crusaders probably made their biggest mass-media splash with their famous television advertisement comparing a cooked egg to a brain fried by drugs, ending with a deadpan voice asking, “Any questions?” Now, a campaign sponsored in part by White House “Drug Czar” Barry R. McCaffrey’s Office of National Drug Control Policy emphasizes that parental supervision […]

For liberals, it’s the lost crusade. For conservatives, it’s the emblematic case of overweening big government. Perhaps more clearly than in any other issue, federal action to achieve universal health coverage brings out ideological and partisan differences in America. In the early 1990s, health care became a defining conflict for the nation, and so it […]