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Other People’s Holocausts
Elie Wiesel got mad at me once. In 1996, I was attending Harvard Divinity School and taking a seminar with Wiesel at Boston University on “Literature of Prison.” The room was packed with fawning, silent, ‘participants’ who took down Wiesel’s pronouncements like they were revelation. We were reading books written from or about prison life:…
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Arts and Crafts after Katrina
If there is a God, and a moral order to the world, making a 100 million dollar donation to Princeton earmarked for the arts will not get you into heaven. Wandering through Princeton’s art museum the other night for the third time in seven years, I got to thinking again about art and its non-importance…
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Judging Desire
A few years ago, I attended a lecture on disability fetishism. Disability fetishists include people who are sexually attracted to people who are missing digits, joints and limbs. There are websites and chat rooms in which “devotees” exchange pictures, information, and advice. Some are turned on by the idea of cutting off their own limbs…
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The End of Neo-Conservativism?
Francis Fukuyama, the most thoughtful of the neo-conservatives, announced in the Sunday NYTimes Magazine that he is no longer a neo-con. This turn of events is no opportunistic team-switching on his part, but an inevitable result of the neo-conservatives’ Middle East agenda.
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Death and Diet, Morals and Morsels, Sin and Sirloin
Thanksgiving is always a good time to accent one’s moral superiority at the dinner table. I’m in a grumpy, stressed out state of mind, so here’s my beef…
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Earthquakes, Hurricanes, and the End of History
Some say the modern age began with an earthquake. Why did it happen? Up until then, the going explanation had something to do with divine punishment – you suffer because of your sins.
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Irrational Cupid, Rational Man
I like to ask long-term couples where and how they met—always a good remedy to a boring conversation. My best friend met his wife through friends. After the second date, they knew they were going to get married.
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Jargon of Inauthenticity
Academia is awash with fifty dollar words that few can buy. Those terms, spoken in a certain style, presented in papers, at conferences, 4:30 lectures, were once music to my ears. Now all I hear is the caustic evasion of responsibility. Theoretical jargon has become the equivalent of fancy clothes, specialized watches, and fashionable parties…
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The Ethics of Friendster
It is a cowardly New World in many ways: distance killing enables us to blow people to falafel with the push of a button; comradely criticism is muted by the whine of cultural sensitivity; salesmen flood our inboxes rather than knock on our doors. The realm of dating and friendship, too, has become more efficient,…
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Can I Read Marxist Theory in Starbucks and Not Go to Hell?
I am perhaps the only card-carrying socialist who will admit that he loves Starbucks. My leftist friends, even the ones who aren’t nearly as active as I am, find this sort of behavior revolting. I’m already on probation for being a Zionist, saying that the left doesn’t know all the answers to war and peace,…