Category Archives: Journalism
Niall Ferguson on “Soviet America”
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 28th June 2024Niall Ferguson is one the most distinguished historians of the current century. King Charles III recently knighted him. We’re All Soviets Now is an article by him in which he notes the similarities between the late Soviet Union and current America. You can peruse his article and make your own judgment about the validity of…
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Lubbock – A Tale of Two Cities
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 7th May 2024There’s an article in The American Mind a publication of the Claremont Institute that in its first half describes life in the city of Lubbock where I have lived for the last 40 years. It describes a series of municipal characteristics that have escaped my notice over those four decades. They include leaving personal items…
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When Race Trumps Merit – Book Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 15th May 2023Heather Mac Donald’s latest book is subtitled: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives. It is such a tale of horrors that a number of alternate subtitles come to mind. Animal Farm Redux, How I Came to Love Big Brother, A Litany of Lunacy, 40 Years Before the Mast, Gone…
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Pronoun Dysphoria
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 27th April 2023Pronoun madness has progressed to the point where even innocuous ones like us and we have been reshaped beyond analysis. Consider the following sentence from a New York Times article about bird flu published on April 23, 2023. The second sentence of the fourth paragraph reads as follows: “The Book of Matthew may assert that…
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Headline of the Moment
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 30th December 2022Workers, Internal Memos Reveal Why Southwest Melted Down During Cold Snap The above headline conveys the message, but things do not melt down during a cold snap, they freeze. Writing headlines is the journalistic equivalent of a time out. If somehow a person has obtained a job in a news organization and can’t do anything,…
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Colin Powell’s Death From COVID
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 19th October 2021The reporting of Colin Powell’s death exemplifies why the public is so confused about the COVID outbreak. Here’s a representative excerpt concerning the General’s demise: His passing represents a breakthrough death—when fully vaccinated patients die from COVID-19. Roughly 7,100 such deaths have been reported in the US, with 85% occurring in patients 65 and older. That the infection…
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Two Headlines – Two Examples of Noise
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 4th June 2021Below are two headlines reporting on the same data – the latest jobs report. Take your pick as to which is the more believable. I suppose they could both be wrong, but they seem to be seeing the same data through different lenses. They are examples of both noise and bias. I’ll have more to…
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To Err is Human, to Kvetch Divine
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 29th November 2020Earlier this month Commentary published its 75th anniversary issue. It contains a long dialogue (Editing Commentary – A Conversation) between John Podhoretz the magazine’s current editor and his father Norman a previous editor. The conversation, nine pages of it, is a largely congratulatory depiction of how heavily edited is the copy published. John describes an…
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The Guardian Discovers that Syntax Can be Difficult
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 2nd July 2020We’ve decided to keep Guardian journalism free for all readers… This declaration is from the online Guardian. Is the paper giving up on journalism? They seem to be saying so. They’re keeping the Guardian journalism free – ie, free of journalism, as in germ free. This confession confirms a suspicion that I’ve wondered about ever…
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The Sky is Falling – But Slowly
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 29th January 2020It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future. Yogi Berra The great Yogi’s admonition not withstanding, people seem confident of their ability to foretell the future. The futurist du jour is a teenage girl who foretells the imminent end of the world. Perhaps she’s right. Nevertheless, despite thousands of years of doom’s just around…
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