R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.

Bathroom bills bring gender wars out front

As I find myself happily on the far side of middle age, I had assumed that I was now exempt from at least some of the cultural battles roaring through American society. How wrong I was. Recently I found myself, despite my utter insouciance to gender politics, of a sudden, hauled onto the battlefield. This notwithstanding that I am a full-bodied adult male, somewhat advanced in years. Let me explain.

February 28, 2017

Obama compares himself to Abraham Lincoln

Did you know this? "Not since Lincoln has there been a president as fundamentally shaped -- in his life, convictions and outlook on the world -- by reading and writing as Barack Obama." Frankly, I did not know President Obama was so wedded to books and the printed word as to be compared to Abraham Lincoln, author of the Gettysburg Address, magisterial Second Inaugural, and devotee of Shakespeare.

February 21, 2017

Alt-right loses another battle

The alt-right has apparently lost another battle. The alt-right is the racially preoccupied group that champions the cause of white nationalism. This time it was Yale University that beat them back.

February 14, 2017

Lady Gaga Super Bowl halftime show had no political statement

For me the football season begins in mid-December (when everyone becomes serious) and it ends at the Super Bowl (when everyone becomes deathly serious). This year it ended with the longest Super Bowl in history.

February 7, 2017

Bannon among the so-called media sophisticates

Last week President Trump's recently appointed chief White House strategist caused a stir among the press corps. He telephoned The New York Times, and in what the Times reported as "blunt but calm tones" proclaimed, "The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while ." Yes, he said the media should be "embarrassed and humiliated." The journalists reacted with what The New York Times called "alarm and defiance."

January 31, 2017

Inauguration protests turned violent

Last Friday, as a guest of the Trump family, I and my wife Jeanne braved inclement weather to attend Donald Trump's Inauguration. By now you know it was a typical Trumpian ceremony. It was peaceful, elegant, momentous and frightening. At least the protesters were frightened. What they were frightened about is a bit unclear, but many of them were, for a certitude, alarmed.

January 24, 2017

Glamour of protesting inauguration short-lived

This is supposedly the week of multitudinous demonstrations in Washington. The hordes are getting more media attention than the hundreds of thousands of Trump supporters who are also coming into town. Whether the multitudinous demonstrations will be as multitudinous as anticipated by the media I cannot say. Certainly they are getting plenty of publicity already, though their actual numbers as of Tuesday night were disappointing.

January 17, 2017

Donald Trump’s Whiggery

It has come to my attention that there are still conservatives out there who do not believe President-elect Donald Trump is a conventional conservative or even a conservative of any stripe whatsoever. Of course, I suspected him of being pretty much a conservative in 2013 when he spoke at our Robert L. Bartley Dinner, and I have been assiduously spreading the word ever since.

January 10, 2017

Obama’s coming obscurity

President Obama will leave office after eight years of strutting even while sitting down, of preening even while standing up, of swanking while playing 18 holes. Yet he remains the first president in American history to cast no shadow. Jimmy Carter cast a pale and minuscule shadow. Lyndon Johnson cast an obscene shadow. Mr. Obama leaves absolutely no shadow, even in the moonlight.

January 3, 2017

Donald Trump brought ‘Merry Christmas’ back

I noticed portents that this Christmas season would be different around Thanksgiving time. I noticed it when people unbidden would wish me "Happy Thanksgiving." There seemed to be a note of exultancy in their greeting. Not everyone would say "Happy Thanksgiving," but enough did that it got me to wondering. Was this Thanksgiving different, and if so would Christmas this year be any different?

December 27, 2016

Clarence Thomas left out of Smithsonian must be remedied

Recently, a voice of the conservative media did what it is supposed to do, to wit: tell the rest of the story.

December 20, 2016

The mad search for pro-Trump columnists

Over the weekend some pathetic wretch -- obviously a casualty of the Nov. 8 election -- writing under the pen name Paul Farhi, filed a column in The Washington Post lamenting that after an extensive search of the newspapers of this great country he could hardly find any pro-Trump columnists.

December 13, 2016

How Bob Dylan copped a Nobel Prize

When I heard that Bob Dylan had received the Nobel Prize for literature, I was mildly surprised. He writes music, popular music. As did George Gershwin and Irving Berlin, both of whom almost certainly wrote better music.

December 6, 2016

Hillary Clinton and political life after death

What is it like in the Clinton household now that the last prototypical liberal presidential candidate has lost her run for the White House? Hillary the Inevitable? I attempted to correct that media-wide delusion months ago, as I did in 2008, which would have been years ago. Where is my Pulitzer?

November 29, 2016

Steve Bannon in sync with politics of present

History is not standing still. It did not stop with the Clinton era, which is now finally over. At least history did not stop for America. America is moving along and at a rapid pace. For the Clintonistas and their millennial acolytes, however, I guess America did stop.

November 22, 2016

An inscrutable interview with the BBC

Friday the BBC enlisted me to defend my support of Donald Trump for president. Though the ensuing television broadcast was in English, I found it incomprehensible. I was speaking in my native tongue to two apparently intelligent English-speaking women, yet their responses to my clear if amused rejoinders amounted to gibberish.

November 15, 2016

Failure to convict Bill Clinton unleased Hillary Clinton

Well, it is over. The most poisonous, slanderous, hate-filled American election of all time is now history, and the pity is that there is no historian living in this great republic who is capable of doing it justice.

November 8, 2016

Hillary Clinton creepy by association

Is it just me or are there others out there in my audience who find it odd that Hillary Clinton, the inevitable presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, would continue to have at the highest level of her staff a woman married to a man who has repeatedly embarrassed himself, his wife and the Democratic Party?

November 1, 2016

Sexual revolution is dead

As I have been saying, the sexual revolution of the 1960s is now over. We can thank Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton's gang of angry women (whom Donald either knew or did not know years ago) for that. I think it is a contribution to the moral life of the republic, but I might be wrong.

October 25, 2016

Media hounds Donald Trump, lest Hillary Clinton run free

I am in jolly old London for a Spectator debate over America's presidential candidates, Donald Trump and What's Her Name. London is resplendent as ever, and my wife is patrolling my behavior lest I hazard our bank account by popping into Anderson & Sheppard to order another suit and seek psychiatric refreshment at this point in the election cycle.

October 18, 2016