Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Death of a Gadfly Playwright

Hugh Leonard has died. His Telegraph obituary reeks of boozy afternoons in Dublin’s finest hostelries: Indeed, Leonard relished quarrels. “An Irish literary movement,” he used to say, “is when two playwrights are on speaking terms”… Leonard resented what he saw as his exclusion from the Irish arts world, and poured vitriol on lesser performers. The

Alex Massie

The Limits of Presidential Power

Writing in the FT yesterday Martin Wolf observed: It is extraordinary that a popular new president, confronting a once-in-80-years’ economic crisis, has let Congress shape the outcome. Commenter IanC agrees with Wolf, as does Porkbelly who writes: Obama could easily have used his electoral mandate to impose his will upon the House Democrats when the

Alex Massie

Turning Mexico into a narco-state proves we’re winning!

An update on this morning’s post on the Drug War. From the Wall Street Journal’s story on the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy’s report calling for a fresh approach: The report comes as drug violence is engulfing Mexico, which has become the key transit point for cocaine traffic to the U.S. Decapitation of

Alex Massie

Notes from a Parallel Universe

Courtesy of Joe Klein: Karl Rove: House Republicans had the wisdom to continue to talk to the Obama White House. This made them look gracious, even as the president edged toward a “my way or the highway” attitude. Pete Wehner: Right now President Obama and his team look at times amateurish and somewhat overmatched by

Alex Massie

Nicolas and Carla

This account of how Nicolas Sarkozy wooed Carla Bruni is both amusing and gruesome. For instance: “My reputation is no worse than yours,” he told her. “I know you well without ever meeting you. I understand everything about you … You make love because no one makes love to you. I know everything about you

Alex Massie

Drug War: Epic Fail

Lots happening on the Drug War front. First, the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, headed by former Presidents of Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, issues a report confirming that the tide of opinion in South America is turning against the Drug Warriors. In some respects the report simply states the obvious: It is imperative

Alex Massie

Government by the Phone Book

I confess I find this entertaining and reassuring in equal measure. A new Rasmussen Report in the United States finds that: Forty-four percent (44%) [of] voters also think a group of people selected at random from the phone book would do a better job addressing the nation’s problems than the current Congress, but 37% disagree.

GOP Deathwish

Arlen Specter, the senior Senator from Pennsylvania, is no-one’s idea of a rock-ribbed Republican. But even though he voted for the recent stimulus package, he is a Republican. It’s a measure of how the GOP currently cares more about ideological purity than actual victory that conservatives are, once again, very excited by the prospect that

Alex Massie

The PR Problem

Reacting to the Israeli election result, Patrick Hennessy plays out a scenario in which Britain adopted the Israeli electoral system. He suggests it would all end badly and that the Tories should remain resolutely opposed to modifying our election system. That’s fine. But the Israeli situation no more demonstrates the failures of PR than our

Alex Massie

Yay Canada!

Poor Canada; forever ignored and when it’s not ignored forever patronised. Except when the Quebeckers become fractious, Canadian politics and life barely merits a mention in either the British or American press. We even tend to overlook the Canucks when the stories of the Great Wars of the twentieth century are told. How soon Vimy

Alex Massie

Gordon’s Apology?

Photo: Peter Nicholls/WPA Pool/Getty Images This item from Martin Bright (Welcome, Comrade!) risks leaving one speechless: Now word reaches The Bright Stuff that the man who has never knowingly apologised for anything is preparing his very own “mea culpa”. I am told that Whitehall officials have been ordered to make a compilation DVD of Obama’s

Hope We Better Believe In?

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during afternoon trading February 10, 2009 in New York City. MarkMarkets were down nearly 400 points after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner detailed the administrations plans to battle the financial crisis. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) Last year you couldn’t open a newspaper without seeing

Alex Massie

The Libertarian Tail

This is the funniest line I’ve read today: Fifty per cent of the libertarians would agree to surgery giving them a prosthetic tail if they were paid enough to do so. Come on, you know you’d say yes too if the price were right…

Alex Massie

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three: Take Two

Did you know that Tony Scott is filming a remake of Pelham One Two Three? If you think that sounds as though it must be a bad idea wait until you learn that the Robert Shaw part will be played by, yes, John Travolta. Seriously. Obviously. As Ross Douthat says, this is an entirely pointless

Alex Massie

The Perils of Weighing In

Newsweek, facing declining sales and losing money and advertisers, has decided to move away from it’s wrestling match with TIME and try and be a gutsier, more opinionated, less-soporific enterprise. This is pretty daring stuff, really. This is part of it: “There’s a phrase in the culture, ‘we need to take note of,’ ‘we need

Alex Massie

Obama’s Idea of Bipartisanship

Noam Scheiber addresses complaints that Obama is too conciliatory, too keen on the idea of bipartisanhip for bipartisanship’s sake: But complaints like this miss what’s been accomplished these last few weeks: Obama has completely defined the stimulus narrative on his own terms. To the average voter, Obama has been earnest and conciliatory while the Republicans

Alex Massie

David Cameron’s Peculiar Unionism

David Cameron’s op-ed in Scotland on Sunday this week was interesting. Not because of anything that Cameron said but because it appeared at all. It’s another small indication that the country is preparing itself for a new Conservative government. To put it another way, I don’t think SoS would have been very interested in an