12:47pm
One lesson I've learned in the past five years is that when American conservatives write about the big wide world on the other side of the Atlantic, there's a strong chance they'll spout nonsense. (Unless their name happens to be Robert Kagan.) Life is too short to read Jonah Goldberg, as far as I'm concerned, but Alex Massie does us all a service by shredding his Corner post about race, America and backward Europe. As Alex puts in that dry manner of his:
Or, to put it another way, a black or Asian British PM now, would be akin to the United States electing a black President in the 1840s. As best I can recall, that didn't happen.
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11:30am
A glimpse of the future in a shop window in Eton High Street.
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11:20am
In the TLS, Clive James reviews a magisterial study of how Schoenberg, Fritz Lang, Stokowksi and other exiles sought a new voice in the New World:
Otto Preminger, hearing a group of his fellow émigrés speaking Hungarian, said, “Don’t you people know you’re in Hollywood? Speak German.”
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10:59am
Good to see Harry's Place back online after that strange spat with academic Jenna Delich. Index On Censorship helped the HP team spread the word.
The other big dispute at the moment seems to be whether Gordon Brown is bonkers - as Guido Fawkes suggests - or whether it's Guido himself who's losing it.
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7:01pm
Let's hope the speech goes well. In the meantime, anyone who's tempted to think the Democrat is a shoo-in this autumn should read John Judis's New Republic essay. Chastening stuff:
This summer, for instance, he spent money advertising and opening up field offices in Georgia. He has even appointed a coordinator for gay Georgians. That's fine, but Obama doesn't have a prayer of carrying Georgia in the presidential election. That's the kind of calculation you make if you think you're Johnson in 1964 and not Kennedy in 1960.
Judis even thinks it was a mistake not to make Hillary vice-president. (!) Above all, he says, Obama needs to focus on economic issues. And he's still extremely worried about the racial angle.
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