An Ignorant Time

Evelyn Waugh is one of my favorite writers. Brideshead Revisited and his Men At Arms WWII trilogy are brilliant novels, and as a writer, my personal favorite is Scoop, a grand satirical novel about journalists.  

So it pains me when otherwise intelligent people tell me that they've not read Waugh and/or never heard of him.

Perhaps even worst, Time magazine called Waugh one of the most-read female writers.

Stefan Kanfer at the City Journal offers his response to this outrage.

Last week, newspaper city rooms were alive with the sound of schadenfreude, and Twitterers tweeted about the latest display of ignorance in Time. To watchers of newspapers and newsmagazines, the incident came as no surprise. During the still-young millennium, ad dollars have fled from traditional periodicals to television and the Internet. Result: Shrinking readership, diminished staffs, and outsourced research. In Time’s case, the publication relied on a data-compiling site, the Open Syllabus Project, for a list of the most-read female writers in college classes. Number 97 was Evelyn Waugh. The trouble is, Waugh was a male.

As a former Time reader, for one, and as a former Time writer and editor, for two, I can testify that my colleagues and I were quite familiar with the great comic novelist. We knew no writer sharper or funnier than Evelyn Waugh when he satirized upper-class excess in Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, and Black Mischief. The demolition job on the press in Scoop, a dazzling take on Italy’s 1936 war on Abyssinia as seen by a group of mendacious British newsmen, has never been equaled. I wouldn’t hire a writer who hadn’t read Scoop; it remains the manual on the malpractice of journalism across the pond and in the colonies.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.city-journal.org/2016/eon0229sk.html 

Philly Cops On TIME's Cover" What It's Like To Be A Cop In America

Karl Vick at TIME offers a piece on what Philly cops say about policing today.

The Philadelphia cops on the cover of this week’s TIME know as much as anyone about the topic looming in the type above them in their unmarked squad car: “What It’s Like To Be A Cop in America: One Year After Ferguson.”

The answer, in a word, would be: Harder.

“Absolutely,” says Sean Devlin, 35, the officer in the passenger seat, who has been patrolling in the 19th District of Philadelphia’s west side for the five and a half years he has been a cop. “I do know some officers who are turned off and just doing radio calls only. But it’s not in my nature. It’s my confidence in my ability and my partner, I can’t just fold up shop and sit back and let the community to be held hostage by the small percentage that’s the criminal element.”

His partner agrees. Mischel Matos, 38, who’s behind the wheel in photographer Natalie Keyssar’s cover image, says that a year ago, police did not face the scrutiny that accompanies every call for service—and not just the usual watchfulness cast in the direction of the uniform. People are recording every move you make, or at least every arrest.

“The difference comes up every time we encounter an investigation,” says Matos. “There’s always somebody through the window with a phone recording, expecting us to do something wrong.”  

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://time.com/3996100/cops-policing-america-ferguson/