by Matthew Friedman | Jan 27, 2022 | Commentary, Jewish Life
I spent much of the day rereading Art Spiegelman’s brilliant graphic novel Maus. It felt like the right thing to do after the Mcminn County, TN schoolboard voted unanimously to remove it from the eighth-grade curriculum. “There is some rough, objectionable language in...
by Matthew Friedman | Jan 23, 2022 | Commentary, Jewish Life
President Biden was absolutely clear in his comments following the hostage-taking incident at the Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, TX last weekend. “We will stand against anti-Semitism and against the rise of extremism in this country,” he said. “That is who we...
by Matthew Friedman | Jan 7, 2022 | Commentary, Politics
On 2 January 2016, a band of armed anti-government extremists occupied the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon. Ammon Bundy, the Stetson-wearing leader of a right-wing militia with the anodyne name Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, had been addressing an...
by Matthew Friedman | Nov 22, 2021 | Commentary, Politics
There’s a scene about halfway through the 1972 film musical Cabaret that never fails to give me chills. The film’s hero Brian Roberts (Michael York) and his lover Max von Heune (Helmut Griem) are enjoying a glass of lager at a biergarten in the German countryside in...
by Matthew Friedman | Nov 17, 2021 | Commentary, Politics
Writing in the Washington Post this week, Olivier Knox left no doubt that the left wing of the Democratic Party will be held responsible for the party’s loss of Congress in the 2022 midterm election and even – whispered in sotto voce – the return of the Great Satan...
by Matthew Friedman | Oct 3, 2021 | Commentary, Politics
A white man wearing a Stars and Stripes bandana threw a Molotov cocktail into the Travis County Democratic Party headquarters in Austin, TX on Wednesday, and then casually walked away. The bomb did not ignite, and damage was minor. You might not have heard about the...