FROM THE MAGAZINE

February 2022

Spectator Editorial

Joe Biden in the metaverse

The Biden administration has taken up permanent residence in a metaverse of its own fantasies

By Spectator Editorial

From the Magazine

Late for the Post

Manhattan fêtes are rarely organized by people with newspaper deadlines

By Kelly Jane Torrance

From the Magazine

Politics

Can Matt Gaetz survive a real world scandal?

The Florida congressman promulgates govern-by-media tactics

By Jay Caruso

From the Magazine

Science & Tech

In the valley of the shadow of birth

Pregnancy revealed that I didn’t know anything.

By Bridget Phetasy

From the Magazine

Politics

Energy is the most important issue in the world

Gas prices are climbing, Russia is building pipelines, yet we’re focused instead on appeasing climate activists

By Ayaan Hirsi Ali

From the Magazine

Science & Tech

The tragic kingdom of Anthony Fauci

Fauci believes himself to be the spokesperson for ‘science itself’

By Stephen L. Miller

From the Magazine

Policy

Biden’s big energy bust

His policy errors have sunk his presidency

By Rupert Darwall

From the Magazine

Internet

Twitter has taken the place of the ancient curse-tablet

The mentality of the ancient curse-tablet lives on

By Peter Jones

From the Magazine

Politics

New Rome, new home

I wonder whether the moment hasn’t come to begin thinking of Washington the way the later emperors thought of Rome

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine

Politics

Does the Orange Man have the juice?

Donald Trump is not just a problem for Republicans. He’s a problem for the Republic

By Charles Lipson

From the Magazine

Internet

Blackpill: inside the incel death cult

An online in-joke becomes real-world terrorism

By Ben Sixsmith

From the Magazine

China

How China meddles in American academia

Rather than facing up to the threat China poses on American college campuses, the White House seems to want us to get along happily with our friends across the Taiwan Strait

By Peter W. Wood

From the Magazine

Europe

The other Camus

The gay past of the alt-right’s French guru

By James Kirchick

From the Magazine

Culture

The moment I fell in love with music

Music is one of the hardest things to write about

By Bill Wyman

From the Magazine

Politics

The multinational that ate Virginia

For many activists, Glenn Youngkin is the face of a GOP that can win — with or without Trump

By Daniel McCarthy

From the Magazine

Politics

San Francisco is sick

How the Golden State can grow up and fix its crisis of disorder

By Michael Shellenberger

From the Magazine

Culture

Tweed is of the essence

A tweed confers, and expresses, the manly freedom of paying no mind to one’s appearance

By Christopher Caldwell

From the Magazine

Religion

Downloading God in the App Store

Is the concept of manna from Heaven really so different than ordering from Uber Eats or Postmates?

By Daniella Greenbaum Davis

From the Magazine

Education

Harvard’s diversity disgrace

Why should Asians take one for the team?

By Kenny Xu

From the Magazine

A tale of three cities

Like New York, London feels on the verge of anarchy already, only much livelier

By Dominic Green

From the Magazine

Books + Arts

Books

Getting the jokes in Proust

A dismaying number of Proust readers don’t realize it’s supposed to be funny

By Nicola Shulman

From the Magazine

Book Review

Reality bit

True Story: What Reality TV Says about Us by Danielle Lindemann reviewed

By Christopher J. Scalia

From the Magazine

Book Review

Reading gaol

Sentence: Ten Years and a Thousand Books in Prison by Daniel Genis reviewed

By Alexander Larman

From the Magazine

Book Review

Picking a fight

Why Argument Matters by Lee Siegel reviewed

By Micah Mattix

From the Magazine

Book Review

Sex and the city

Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors reviewed

By Philip Womack

From the Magazine

Books

Poor little rich girls

Heiresses: The Lives of the Million Dollar Babies by Laura Thompson reviewed

By Anne Sebba

From the Magazine

Exhibitions

Hogarth framed

Great artists like Hogarth are getting the trigger-warning treatment

By Michael Mosbacher

From the Magazine

Film

John Wayne behind the blue line

The Seventies weren’t John Wayne’s decade, and that was fine by him

By Nicky Otis Smith

From the Magazine

Film

Serve and volley

King Richard reviewed

By Alex Perez

From the Magazine

Theater

Nanny bait

Mrs. Doubtfire reviewed

By Robert S. Erickson

From the Magazine

Music

Returning to live gigs

When Covid rampaged through the world like a Viking raid of death-cult realtors, the world was suddenly shorn of live music

By Luke Haines

From the Magazine

Music

Get with the program

Both in Pittsburgh and Miami, I was struck by the rousing enthusiasm that the symphony and soloists evoked with their temerarious playing

By Jacob Heilbrunn

From the Magazine

Podcasts

Digging it

Tunnel 29 reviewed

By Emily Ferguson

From the Magazine

Life

Place

Blowing my mind in the Electric Forest

What happened to the all-embracing, welcoming spirit emanating from the Electric Forest?

By James Jeffrey

From the Magazine

High Life

America is a nation divided

One cannot fail to be troubled by the growing cultural divisions within the country

By Taki

From the Magazine

Low Life

A hidden side of the Somme

We had the perfect guide who took us off the beaten track and knew when to keep quiet

By Jeremy Clarke

From the Magazine

London Life

Of human bondage

When did sexual deviancy — as it used to be called — become so dull?

By Cosmo Landesman

From the Magazine

American Life

Rum, Rome and rebellion

Men and women of the working class, Catholic or not, are arraigned by progressive yappers for being socially retrograde

By Bill Kauffman

From the Magazine

Prejudices

The death of literature

Literature in the West is dead for the simple reason that the West itself is virtually dead

By Chilton Williamson, Jr.

From the Magazine

Place

Place

Return to Iraq

More than two millennia of Jewish history stalks the land that now encompasses the modern state of Iraq

By David Patrikarakos

From the Magazine

Food and Drink

Food

A load of old crêpes

Eat crêpes on Candlemas, enjoy a year of happiness, says a traditional French-Canadian proverb

By Jane Stannus

From the Magazine

Food

Marmite man

On a cold day in winter, there is nothing as cozy as buttered toast with a thick smear of Marmite and a cup of tea in front of afternoon TV

By Philip Hensher

From the Magazine

Food

The millennial kitchen

Millennial chefs are phoning it in

By Mary Kate Skehan

From the Magazine

Drink

Delicious wines from the Omicron Open

Fans of The Philadelphia Story will remember the starring role played by Miss Pommery 1926

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine

And Finally

And Finally

Cold water swimming

I rather enjoy the shocked faces of passersby who catch sight of us swimmers at the Serpentine Pond in Hyde Park

By Isabel Hardman

From the Magazine

And Finally

The French have made a hash of the hashtag

The hash has grown in importance since 2007 when Twitter introduced the hashtag

By Dot Wordsworth

From the Magazine