SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL WRITES IN THE GUARDIAN, September 4, 2025, “Trump Wants to Rewrite American History. Maybe He Should Learn It First.” Blumenthal observes, “Of all the presidents, Donald Trump—the man … Continue reading →| Simanaitis Says
“AT AROUND 20 FEET TALL,” PBS SENIOR ARTS Correspondent Jeffery Brown recounts, “they’re hard to miss, brightly colored and intricately designed…. fantastic animals that have their roots in Oaxaca …| Simanaitis Says
AN ENLIGHTENED ENGLISH TEACHER ENCOURAGED US to master the first lines of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales—in Middle English: “Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote/ The droghte of March hath perc…| Simanaitis Says
JIA LYNN YANG WRITES OF DEMOCRATS in The New York Times, August 15, 2025: “Will the battle over Texas’ gerrymandering lead to a new era for the party?” An interesting … Continue reading →| Simanaitis Says
GEEZ, HOW IS SAM SPADE LINKED with Parnell Thomas?? Spade was the classic sleuth of The Maltese Falcon, The Kandy Tooth Caper, and numerous other adventures, 1946–1951, recounted these days on Siri…| Simanaitis Says
ART CRITIC DONALD KUSPIT IDENTIFIES THE APPEAL of Mitchell Johnson by noting this artist’s fusion of abstraction and realism. My introduction to Johnson’s oil paintings came from their occasi…| Simanaitis Says
I’VE HARPED ON THE QUEENS FELON MOB all too often at this website (I’d much rather write about my usual topics). Nevertheless, I was gratified that I’m not the only one making this observation. The…| Simanaitis Says
YESTERDAY IN PART 1 WE SAVORED CBS RADIO WORKSHOP and enjoyed entertaining CBS corporate suits through the R&T slalom. Today, lamentably enough, we recount CBS actions that seemingly replace fr…| Simanaitis Says
I’VE KNOWN COLUMBIA BROADCASTING SYSTEM, now a division of Paramount Global, at its best, its lamentable, and—first hand—its middling. Let’s briefly recount the best and middling of these and then …| Simanaitis Says
I BELIEVE ANDY BOROWITZ IS the preeminent political satirist of our time. As I noted in “The Best of Lines,” he has “an amazing way of condensing his satirical news stories into four or five concis…| Simanaitis Says
LET’S APPLAUD THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION! Never has its activism been more critical. Zach Montague and Pat Grossmith’s article “Judge Blocks Trump’s Citizenship Order in Class-Action Challe…| Simanaitis Says
THE 1934 FLICK THE GAY DIVORCEE DESERVES an award among car enthusiasts: Not only does it feature three of the era’s classic automobiles, but one of them was actually owned by one of the movie’s st…| Simanaitis Says
PATRICIA MARX HAS IDENTIFIED “TRUMP’S TO-UNDO LIST” coming in The New Yorker, June 23, 2025. If you’re not already a subscriber, I encourage you to buy a copy as an excellent example of a wonderful…| Simanaitis Says
HERE ARE TIDBITS ABOUT TODAY JUNE 14, assembled from a variety of sources including Britannica and the Britannica Book of the Year. Quoted comments are Britannica’s; the rest are my comments or ide…| Simanaitis Says
YESTERDAY, WE EXAMINED UNCLE DON’S ADDLEPATED WEAVES about robotic Bidens. Today we continue with his bizarre behavior as exhibited at this year’s recent West Point graduation ceremony and during o…| Simanaitis Says
TO A RELATIVELY SELECT FEW, I am myself an uncle, sorta. So it is with personal sensitivity, in Parts 1 and 2 today and tomorrow, that I address the concept of addlepated avuncular behavior. Full d…| Simanaitis Says
THE UTTER IDIOCY OF DOGE has added yet another tooth on its chainsaw. It’s described by Drs. Iago Hale and Michael Kantar in “Why Did Elon Musk Go After Bunkers Full of Seeds?,” The New…| Simanaitis Says
ONE MIGHT THINK THE ARROGANCE OF EGO WOULD HAVE LED ME TO ASSOCIATE Trump and Beethoven. But no, prodigious musicality seals the deal: It’s Mozart and Trump—separated at birth by 190 years! A…| Simanaitis Says
THERE IS IRONY GALORE IN THE NEW U.S. Environmental “Deregulation” Agency having originally been established by Richard Nixon on December 2, 1970, “to protect human health and the environment” (thi…| Simanaitis Says
WHAT A MARVELOUS OPPORTUNITY FOR SATIRE: The dust is far from settled about what The New York Times, March 25, 2025, is calling “an extraordinary leak of internal national security deliberations, d…| Simanaitis Says
NOTES WIKIPEDIA, “AT THE TEHRAN CONFERENCE WINSTON CHURCHILL made his famous remark that in wartime ‘truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” By c…| Simanaitis Says
I DON’T THINK OF MYSELF AS an ornithophile, but swans, Cygnus olor, seem to get pretty good coverage at SimanaitisSays. Tidbits here have related them to cars, opera props, Ogden Nash poetry, and a…| Simanaitis Says
IN COZY ENGLISH WHO-DONE-ITS, watercress sandwiches at teatime seem to coincide with reveal of the rascal. Now according to Korin Miller writing in Food & Wine, September 12, 2024, “The C…| Simanaitis Says
WHAT WITH A VERY BUSY NEWS WEEK, victim-extraodinaire Donald Trump has been displaced by Joe and Kamala. Poor him. To counter this Trumpian ennui, today’s SimanaitisSays recounts several past Trump…| Simanaitis Says