Daily Blague

At the Metropolitan Museum yesterday, I had lunch with, to quote him, "un autre carnetier new-yorkais." That shouldn't be too hard to figure out, but it's all that you'll get out of me on the identification front. We caught up over salads in the Petrie Court Café, and then we went up to the roof for the glorious views.

I took the photo above a few weeks ago to note a design change at the Museum: big, billowing banners announcing the special exhibitions have been replaced by neat canvases that nicely fit the architectural frames built into Richard Holman Hunt's façade. I also call your attention to the rude blocks of stone atop the cornice. They were supposed to be carved down into statuary, but the Met has no current plans to realize this design. The important thing, I suppose, is that it has spruced up the entire Fifth Avenue front by giving it a good wash.

Having had a martini and a glass of chardonnay at lunch, I was pretty useless for the rest of the day, and spent it reading The New York Review of Books. Michael Massing takes up the "Israel Lobby" furore, faults scholars John J Mearsheimer and Stephen M Walt for making a few mistakes and misleading statements in their tumult-causing paper, and then sets out to make their case even more strongly than they do. His most important finding is that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) does not represent any widely held views of American Jews; it is, rather, the captive of some rich tradesmen who lean to the right. Garry Wills appears to be too dumbfounded by the witless ludicrosity of Harvey Mansfield's anti-feminist sentimentality in Manliness to produce the clean and crisp dismissal that one expects from him. Jeff Madrick thinks that Kevin Phillips's focus in American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century is too limited and pessimistic: we're facing a lot of dangers, but Americans have righted their boat before and may do so again.

The test of an industrialized nation is whether it can maintain a balance between community and private interests. To what extent is America doomed to decline as a result of the policies imposed by the Bush administration and its allies that favor the rich and powerful? This is the unspoken issue that hovers over Phillips's book. For all its dramatic and useful emphasis on oil, evangelism, and debt, it remains too narrow in its approach to fully engage the large threats we face.

Because I was too busy chatting and snapping pictures, I didn't bother to learn the name of the artist, as it were, responsible for the two reptiles - alligators, I suppose, but I'm no authority - stuck with dozens of cheap household knives, one of which can be seen below.