-William Shakespeare, Macbeth
If you think your job stinks, you're not alone. And if you’re still looking for a decent job, don’t expect to find one anytime soon, or ever. For some work is like being trapped in an elevator with obnoxious drunks Looking for a Good Job? Don’t Get Your Hopes Up
Michelle Obama's speech to the Democratic National Convention Tuesday left members of the news me and media dragons gasping for superlatives
This NYT review of Orwell’s collected diaries has interest because Orwell wrote them.
Plain spoken and truth telling Orwell rang clear like a bell. He hated authority, nationalism (that changed) and stupidity. The reviewer points out Orwell’s love of the particular: Orwell was a realist. A master of brilliantly clear prose; Animal Farm, like Swift’s A Modest Proposal, arguably a minor work of genius.
The corruption and hypocrisy of do-gooders was so cogently expressed by Orwell it is hard to believe they continue to be so hysterically present in public life – you would think they would be embarrassed. The single big answer still rules. Nuance long ago died in one of the garish cracks of pop culture.
Look at the mess of the current American election. A clueless, tendentious celebrity press and cut and paste candidates. Isaiah Berlin’s understanding of the excesses of even good motives should be required reading for “journolists”.
Sometimes realism like Orwell’s devolves to bitterness though, the poetry being discarded with the bathwater. What separated Orwell out was his lack of ideological confinement. He was independent, far seeing, and an intense observer. Often those who can focus most robustly on the present can seem clairvoyant, the present containing a future which can be grokked with the balance of objectivity.
PS: In 1939, according to British Secret Service records, “a flaming Polish patriot…expert skier and great adventuress…absolutely fearless” submitted a courageous plan to the British. She was to ski into Nazi-occupied Poland from Hungary, over the Tatra mountain range dividing the two countries. Poland had fallen to the Germans, and the woman proposed to take British propaganda into Warsaw to bolster the Polish spirit of resistance. She would then ski back out with secret information about the disposition of German SS and Wermacht units around the capital.
The woman was Krystyna Skarbek, a glamorous, resourceful and extraordinarily brave Pole, who had been a Warsaw beauty-queen candidate at 19, and then married a feckless but charming Polish aristocrat... “The Spy Who Loved” is not just the story of a uniquely brave and complicated patriot, but also a scholarly and tautly written account of secret operations in occupied Europe. Stories of espionage - Spies like her
