London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

Taki

Stat Belgium, stat Europa

Victor Davis Hanson has suggested in his “Letter to the Europeans” that we Americans believe the European Union is a “flawed concept”. But is it possible to make such a pronouncement when there exist such varying definitions as to what precisely is the “concept” behind the E.U.? The original concept (at least the version released for public consumption) was European unity as a peaceful alliance of friendly nations which would cooperate in various endeavors such as the creation of a common market. . . . [Read more]
July 3, 2008 9:45 pm | Link | 2 Comments »

Internet disorder and its possibilities

[Posted by Andrew Cusack on June 26, 2008 at “The Sniper’s Tower”, Taki’s Magazine]

The shady powers that control the world wide web have announced that everything you now know about the internet is about to change. Top level domains, or TLDs, are things such as .com, .org., .us and so on. Some are descriptive — .com, commercial; .edu, education — and others are geographical — .ca, Canada; .de, Germany — while still more are both — .com.au, commercial & Australian; .ac.uk, academic & British.

Now that you have gotten used to them all, ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) have decided to open the floodgates and are planning to allow almost anything to be a TLD. Veteran ICANN-watchers will not be terribly surprised by this, as the consortium has tended towards greater laxity and disorder. First they introduced “.info”, extending TLDs to four letters straight, then they introduced the horrendously unhandsome “.museum” (would not “.mus” have been more sensible?). The do-gooders over at ICANN have now simply thrown up their hands and said “Feck it all, sort yourselves out”.

Libertarians will, no doubt, rejoice, but I think there was a certain harmony and order to the current (soon to be previous) set-up. The stalwart .com, the stately .co.uk, the exotic .co.za, the “we weren’t quick enough to get a .com address” .net, the slightly suspicious .cn — all these will stay, but they will be diminished by the addition of God knows what. Perhaps .sex, or .drugs, or .rocknroll. Maybe we will see the heralds of progress change their URLs: weeklystandard.neo and thenation.lib? How about johnmccain.war and obama.tax? National Review might try to recall its olden days with nationalreview.wfb.

And what about we conservatives? There is at least some comfort for Knickerbocker reactionaries like me in that we may one day have email addresses that end in @yahoo.nn (for New Netherland), and I know of at least a dozen Europeans who would love to have to have @yahoo.sri addresses (that’s Sacrum Romanum Imperium, not Sri Lanka). I just hope the good people of Newfoundland grab .nfl before the football people do.

July 3, 2008 9:44 pm | Link | 1 Comment »

Taki on the Sun

In this week’s Spectator, the ‘poor little Greek boy’ Taki informs us of a feud between the Dorothy Parker Society and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society. Apparently the DPS invited the FSFS to a big to-do at the Algonquin and the FSFS didn’t even respond. “I get all this info from my favourite Big Bagel paper, the Sun, or the Sharon, as I call it, because of the line it follows where Israel is concerned.” I love the Sun, and I’m very glad Taki has discovered our favorite New York daily. He continues:

Middle East politics aside, the Sun is the best read in town where culture is concerned. Gary Shapiro on literary matters, Jay Nordlinger on classical music, the only one missing is Dorothy Parker herself. Mind you, her society did not take no for an answer. In a jiffy it invited the Robert Benchley Society for drinks at the Algonquin, leaving the Fitz types to contemplate onanism in their quads.

Benchley, like Parker, was a founding member of the Algonquin round table, and was known to have spilled more booze than F. Scott ever downed. Unlike the latter, he could hold it. Emerging once from the Waldorf Astoria, he commanded a doorman to get him a taxi. ‘How dare you, Sir,’ came the answer. ‘I am a United States admiral.’ ‘Well, in that case,’ said the well-oiled Benchley, ‘get me a battleship.’

Moving along…

Over on this side [Taki writes from New York this week], there is still a search for cultivation and refinement, at least where some serious magazines are concerned. Take, for example, the stroke of genius of the Atlantic Monthly, which commissioned the brilliant gadfly and pop French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy to repeat Alexis de Tocqueville’s journey through America 170 years after the French aristocrat’s travels. BHL, as the Frenchman is referred to by his countrymen, is a hell of a fellow. He has a beautiful actress wife, matinée idol looks and brains to match.

I have not read his book, which is coming out sometime next year, but press reports have it that he was delighted by what he discovered. His accounts apparently have no condescending references to the kitsch or to materialism, which so many of us Europeans refer to every time we write about or mention America. That’s because he went to places like Cooperstown, New York, where the baseball hall of fame museum is located, or to Pennsylvania, among the Amish. (Not much materialism among that lot, that’s for sure.) And a poignant moment, when he is accosted by a Michigan policeman and told to stop loitering and to keep moving — BHL is relieving himself in a field — and he informs the cop that he’s a Frenchman and that he’s following Tocqueville’s footsteps, which results in a pleasant conversation.

Yes, Americans are nice people who want to be nice and do not understand why the Europeans hate them so. Our own Paul Johnson explained it all some weeks ago when he said that, if he were younger, he’d move to the land of plenty. Sure, manners are not an American strong point, nor is its taste for music and movies. But the natives are friendly, vulgar and nice, which is a lot more than I can say for some of us from the old continent.

I seem to have misplaced or thrown out (shudder!) the Speccie with Paul Johnson’s salient words urging and young people with talent in Britain to move to America, but if I do find it, I shall post his words of hope.

April 22, 2005 10:00 am | Link | No Comments »

Home | About | Contact | Paginated Index | Twitter | Facebook | RSS/Atom Feed
andrewcusack.com | © Andrew Cusack 2004-present (Unless otherwise stated)