“In [Sinead] O’Connor, this shtick is touted as a pure product of her brooding Irish soul. In Nirvana, it is praised as a distillation of Seattle despair. In fact, it is a cliché of expressionist theater, passed down through performance art (via Yoko Ono) to punk” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, p. 318).
It Is? Things are Better Than I Thought
“The only expanding, local Saudi industry is that of Islamic extremism. In 1966, the vice president of the Islamic University of Medina complained that Copernican theory was being taught at Riyadh University” (Serge Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, pp. 247).
Just Plain Screaming
“It’s ironic how some of those [lefty] elders, after years of hating heavy metal, learn to love it the moment a metal group becomes ‘intelligent,’ meaning politically correct. Among hardcore bands, the same advance in ‘intelligence’ is achieved whenever a group switches from just plain screaming to screaming about current events” (Martha Bayles, Hole in …
Hitchens Liked the Cheese
Christopher Hitchens was kind enough to provide me with my first appearance in Vanity Fair — no, not Bunyan’s, but a lot like it. He wrote an article for them that reviewed his book promo work over the last few months, and you can read that article here. I don’t know why he’s flogging the …
Christian Street Festival
For those of you who are within driving distance of Moscow, go ahead and mark your calendars for September 9. South Main will be closed off, and a good time will be had by many if not all. Make particular note of the one dollar hamburgers.
A Grasping Faith
“East Timor was an Islamic jihad against Christian infidels, identical in form and purpose to other tragedies caused by Islam’s insatiable appetite for other people’s lands, property, bodies, and souls” (Serge Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, pp. 215).
Street Crud is not the Same as Street Cred
“It’s worth noting that, for all their reputation as street rebels, the Sex Pistols rarely ventured beyond the ‘playpens’ of the art colleges” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, p. 309).
Dr. Frankenstani
“The assumption all along has been that the Islamic genie released by Dr. Brzezinski’s ‘excellent idea’ could be controlled through its eventual reduction to yet another humanistic project in self-celebration, through it adherent’s immersion in the consumerist culture, and through their children’s multicultural indoctrination by state education. How well it has worked we can see …
Rock Journalism
“Much of [Zappa’s] satire was well aimed, as when he famously defined rock journalism as ‘people who can’t write interviewing people who can’t talk for people who can’t read’” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, p. 292).
American Zionism and the Creed
David Gelernter really celebrates the Puritans “To understand America and Americanism, you must understand those Puritans. They are a difficult proposition, an intellectual handful. They were religious fanatics. But their intolerance gave birth to toleration; their quest for religious freedom yielded freedom in general; and their devotion to the Bible and the biblical idea of …