Lion in Winter

William West ~ Agence France-Presse

What a match, what a victory, and what grace. And, as Jason Gay at The Wall Street Journal put it: Thank you, Roger Federer. Thank you, Rafael Nadal.

"There are no draws, but if there was going to be one, I would have been very happy to accept a draw tonight and share it with Rafa."

P.S. If you haven't read David Foster Wallace's sublime 2006 essay about Federer, and his epic matches with Nadal, treat yourself: Roger Federer as Religious Experience, courtesy of The New York Times.

How to Tell a Joke

Need a good joke today?

Sick, twisted and funny.

A Tale of Two Covers

 . . . and inaugurations. Media bias? Nah.

The New Yorker ~ Drew Friedman

The New Yorker ~ Barry Blitt

To The New Yorker's credit, they published an even-handed look at the rationale for Trumpism, titled Intellectuals for Trump. Authored by Kalefa Sanneh, it's about a conservative blogger whose nom de plume is Publius Decius Mus.

An excerpt:

Charles Kesler, a political-science professor at Claremont McKenna and editor of the Claremont Review of Books, calls Trump's election "a liberating moment for conservatism, an overdue repudiation of conservative elites and orthodoxy." The irony is that the modern conservative movement cohered, in the 1960s and 70s, as a rebellion against a Republican establishment that it considered out of touch. Now, according to a small but possibly prescient band of pro-Trump intellectuals, it is happening again. They suspect that Trump, despite his self-evident indiscipline, may prove a popular and consequential President, defying his critics - many of them conservative. They think Trumpism exists, and that it could endure as something more substantive than a political slur.

2016's Word of the Year

The American Dialect Society met last week to vote on 2016's word of the year.

Their decision? The two-word term dumpster fire, defined as "an exceedingly disastrous or chaotic situation."

According to the ADS, "The expression came to be used metaphorically, a rough equivalent of train wreck, chiefly on sports radio, before being circulated in wider use as a highly negative term for such events as the 2016 election season."

Were "safe spaces," "trigger warnings," and "fake news" runners up?

Death and Our Culture of Celebrity

It's been difficult to comport with the contrasting headlines and images in the news.

A record 762 murders and 4,368 shootings in Chicago in 2016. More than New York City and Los Angeles combined.

Audry Miller, Andrew Holmes

Contrast that with the surfeit of social media keening and Warhol-inspired idolatry for celebrities.

The 2017 Chicago and celebrity death counts have already begun. Chicago's ahead.

Chris Barker

Chris Barker

The New Yorker ~ Emily Flake

Michael Ramirez