Smoke Break Over

Monday, cigarette #1

I'm back! More precisely, my laptop is back after a week at the tech support spas, and its recovery seems complete.

Things to expect in the coming week:

Who's a wittier gay playwright, Noel Coward or Mart Crowley?

More on campus conservatism: Should it feel illegal? Do we have to reject the cult of youth completely, or can we pull off spirit-of-'68-in-tweed?

How can Nicola make a Sigmund Freud/Ginger Rogers joke and still be so mistaken? How can Fassbinder be so loathsome and so right?

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: It's not about the gun. It's about the girl.

Watching the New York Times write about Ivy League abstinence activists: And you thought that the smart set had given up on the concept of "primitive" societies.

In the meantime, Elizabeth M. Whelan doesn't think the Catholic Church is very consistent, and I don't think Elizabeth Whelan is very right. Her hatchet-whack does make one point worth making, though: "pro-life" rhetoric has its perks and bugs, but it's not much help when the enemy is the cult of health and not the culture of death.