Slate Magazine - Spectator, The

Troubling new revelations about Arendt and Heidegger.

Ron Rosenbaum — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:37:55 EST

Will we ever be able to think of Hannah Arendt in the same way again? Two new and damning critiques, one of Arendt and one of her longtime Nazi-sycophant lover, the philosopher Martin Heidegger, were published within 10 days of each other last month. The pieces cast further doubt on the overinflated, underexamined reputations of both figures and shed new light on their intellectually toxic relationship.

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How the phrase public option undermined health care reform.

Ron Rosenbaum — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:58:50 EST

In the history of political euphemisms, has there ever been a more empty, vacuous, mystifying, or counterproductive phrase than public option? It's the bastard child of inbred wonk culture and fashionable "framing" theory. The product of people who talk mainly to one another (the wonks) and the people who invent ways for the wonks to talk down to other people (the framers).

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A sneak peek at Nabokov's Original of Laura.

Ron Rosenbaum — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:57:26 EST

It shouldn't be surprising that the forthcoming (Nov. 17) release of the long-locked-away Holy Grail of higher lit, Vladimir Nabokov's unfinished draft of The Original of Laura, is attended with an air of the clandestine.

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How we use and abuse the word genius.

Ron Rosenbaum — Wed, 9 Sep 2009 15:17:58 EST

I've been thinking about the question of genius lately. I received an invite to an early screening of Richard Linklater's new film, Me and Orson Welles, which is in one sense a meditation on genius. It re-creates a turning point in Welles' rise to genius-dom: his triumphant struggle to put his sensationally received Mercury Theater production of Julius Caesar—done in modern dress, as if set in Mussolini's Rome—on Broadway in 1937.

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Will the Pentagon thwart Obama's dream of nuclear disarmament?

Ron Rosenbaum — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 16:14:13 EST

Barack Obama dreams of Zero. A world without nuclear weapons. None. Zero. The nuclear lions will lie down with the non-nuclear lambs and hope that there are no nuclear wolves hoarding or hiding the deadly devices out there in the darkness. Meanwhile, though, the decisive question—whether this is merely a dream, merely rhetoric—will depend on how seriously the Pentagon's nuclear commanders take what is, in effect, a mandate to zero themselves out. And there are indications that more forceful direction from the White House is needed if they are to transform Obama's Zero from dream to reality.

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