Author Archives: Aaron Goode

The times are a changin’, and plus ca change. Somewhere in between those two expressions lies the truth about the culture wars. As everyone now knows, these “wars” of self-victimization and counter self-victimization are being revived, and if you think the new victims — Christians and campus conservatives — are interested merely in a placid »

Yale and its critics — those of the “Connecticut Center for a New Economy ideology” that Yale is the tubby oligarch with an oversized money bag in a Gilded Age political cartoon — sometimes seem to exist only to prove the phenomenon of deja vu. After last fall’s strike, and now the recent debate over »

It is easy to find examples of people who wound up on the wrong side of history: Strom Thurmond was so far on the wrong side of history that he ended up bringing down others — not that Trent Lott didn’t deserve it — with him. It’s not so easy to avoid getting there. The »

It’s too bad you can’t impeach a first lady. Connecticut First Lady Patty Rowland’s rhyming poem-diatribe against overzealous Hartford Courant reporters when the Rowland “cabin-gate” scandal first broke demonsrated just the kind of arrogance and contempt that got her husband in trouble in the first place. But in one sense Mrs. Rowland was right: the »

If one of the darker chapters of contemporary American history is the ubiquity of government make-believe, perhaps the most insidious kind of make-believe is the persistent refusal to acknowledge that people are going to get abortions, engage in underage drinking, buy banned weapons, and cross the border even when it’s against the law. Occasionally the »

It was announced recently that sometime early next year the troops will be coming home from Iraq. Of course, 85,000 others will be taking their place, but that doesn’t mean this is any less significant a moment in the ongoing public trial of the president’s Iraq policy. Americans have learned about the frustration and futility »

The untold story behind the California recall is that Californians have been tricked into thinking they have a terrible governor. The lackluster news media, juggling sensational reports about Schwarzengroping and Bustamante’s casino-money malfeasance, were simply too busy to review whether the vilification of Gray Davis had any basis in fact. Too busy and too confused, »

In addition to authoring important books on Islam, Western perceptions of the Middle East, exile, Conrad, and many other topics, Edward Said, who died last week, was a lifelong advocate for the Palestinian cause. Said held many controversial opinions about the Middle East, but toward the end of his life he embraced perhaps the most »

Whatever you think about the current labor stoppage, there is no denying it has made for good news copy. Thanks to the likes of John Wilhelm and Jesse Jackson — old hands at guerrilla theater — the media can always count on Yale for a good show. In just two weeks the strike has produced »

It’s good to check from time to time how much a human life is worth these days. According to the recent Lockerbie bombing settlement, it’s about $10 million. Many of the families of victims of the 1987 attack on Pan Am Flight 103–most of them American–thought they would never see a penny in compensation, especially »

Mullah Krekar, the founder of a militant Islamic organization based in northern Iraq, supposedly wore a knowing smile as he watched television coverage of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell telling the U.N. Security Council that the organization was providing a haven to members of al-Qaida while aligning itself with Saddam Hussein’s regime. By the »

Just when the recent Trent Lott brouhaha has mercifully died down, another controversy involving Lott is already brewing. In the upcoming months we will see that Lott’s banishment from Senate leadership hardly spells the banishment of his legacy of racial insensitivity. Another chapter in Lott’s dismal performance in the politics of race will be written »