The American Conservative Culture

Culture Put Out More Flags The American flag is as alive as the country it represents.  Photo by Sandrine Marty / Hans Lucas / AFP via Getty Images American Icon: The US Flag in Art National Gallery of Art, June 6–December 6 In 1954, Jasper Johns had a dream of himself painting an American flag. When he woke up, the artist executed his first work

Culture Culture We Happy Few, We Band Of Wokesters Why do the Brits imitate the worst in American culture? Assuming the ridiculous gushing over a Cambridge conman was not a national Monty Python sketch arranged for tourists, the Jason Arday affair reminded me of one of the most peculiar things about Br

Culture Culture Vice Presidential Elegy J.D. Vance toplines the benefits of faith—but maintains his essential enigma. (Photo by Jonathan Ernst / POOL / AFP via Getty Images) Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, by JD Vance, HarperCollins, 304 pages. In 1990, the CNN founder Ted

Culture Culture The Age of the Ego Graffitists and modern architects alike are screaming into the void of mass culture. Photo by Romain Doucelin/NurPhoto via Getty Images Once more on my way from the center of Paris to the airport, I marvelled at the sheer hideousness of almost everyth

Culture Culture The Age of Cohn A new biography of the notorious lawyer sheds light on the Trump era. American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn’s Dark Journey From Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump, by Kai Bird with Susan Goldmark. Scribner. 528 pages “Leave Donald alone,” Roy Cohn warned a federal prosecutor. “He’s

Culture The Cowboy Diplomacy of Dory Funk Jr. Funk was one of a kind—a wrestling champion who built bridges between America and postwar Japan. Photo by WWE/WWE via Getty Images Dory Funk Jr.—pro wrestling champion, trainer, and international icon—died earlier this month at 85. Although less famous here, perhaps, than some of his colleagues, Funk’s li

Culture The Little Joys of Leaving a Movie Theater As the credits roll, the ticket-buyers reenter the world. Photo by Stéphane Ouzounoff / Hans Lucas / AFP via Getty Images Last weekend, while I was watching the 1961 version of West Side Story on the big screen at an old theater in my hometown of Columbus, it started to rain outside. The storm cau

Culture The WNBA Is Cashing In on Politics Sophie Cunningham’s culture-war controversy is helping to make the WNBA must-watch TV. (Soobum Im/Getty Images) It’s been a big few weeks for the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). Sophie Cunningham, a tall, pretty blonde bench player for the Indiana Fever, has been at the center of what has be

Culture Culture The World Cup of Ink What does the prevalence of tattoos mean in the era of mass culture? TakiMag Photo by James Fearn/Getty Images My interest in professional sport these days ranges from minimal to nil, but even I could not altogether avoid or evade the hysteria

Culture Blight At the Museum Left-wing curators make exhibits of their own stupidity. You just can’t trust archaeologists anymore. Earlier this year, some claimed to have found the bones of Ivar the Boneless. It can’t have been him, then, can it? Dead Viking warlords aren’t the only ones having their remains dug up and rearranged into new and misleading forms. On

Culture Lookin’ Out Your Backdoor There’s nothing wrong with caring about your backyard. Say the powers-that-be determine to site something truly noxious—a radioactive waste dump, a halfway house for child molesters, a data center—in your neighborhood. (These almost inevitably will be government projects or enabled by corporate welfare and subsidies to developers.) Y

Culture Misunderstanding the Odyssey Nolan’s Odyssey is neither Homer’s material nor a modern morality play. No character study of Odysseus comes closer to perfection than Tennyson’s:  And tho’  We are not now that strength which in old days  Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;  One equal temper of heroic hearts, M

Culture Taki’s Hellas of Heroes The latest woke fad is but a brief moment in the span of Hellenic history. TakiMag I write this from the ancient land of Homeric heroes, Hellas, better known to the rest of you as Greece. Hellas has given us democracy, philosophy, tragedy, comedy, oligarchy, oratory, and ostracism. We also invented the Olympic Games, in which ama

Culture Perfection’s Prison Too much disorder makes life a hell—but what of too much order? My computer’s wallpaper shot, the picture that comes up whenever I turn the computer, changes regularly, at whose or what’s instigation I know not, but certainly not at mine. I suppose that it—or is it they?—must have some inkling of my taste, for never does anything visually

Culture The Inner Depths We Hide From Strangers In a crowded movie theater, the man next to you may have interviewed the stars on the screen. As an inhabitant of one of the cities caught up in the nationwide heatwave earlier this month—Columbus, Ohio—I can confirm that the weather was stifling. The heatwave has dropped out of the news—that will happen when a Democ

Culture Au Revoir to the Good Life in Paris The City of Light is not what it once was—nor are the Americans visiting it. TakiMag Bereft of air conditioning, Americans in Paris last week cursed the locals for their antediluvian ways. Parisians did not exactly take it with a wry Gallic smile. Stomach-churning entitlement and sheer effrontery, they answered I w

Culture The 84 Club  RIP George Rowlett. For two superstitious reasons, I believe that I shall die at the age of 84.  The first is that 84 is the mean age of my parents at death. Such a mean is only a rough guide to one’s longevity, of course; if it were more exact, the life expectancy of populations could not change, but history demonstrates that it does cha

Culture Gordon Wood, the Bard of the American Revolution The eminent historian died last week. The preeminent historian of the American Founding, Gordon Wood, died last week as the result of a traffic accident. Wood, a long-time professor at Brown University, had a profound and prolific effect upon the historiography of the American Revolution and the Founding in an

Culture The Little Auteurist  From an early age, I’ve interpreted movies as mysterious manifestations of one person’s consciousness. Dear readers of TAC: Does anyone else remember the VHS cassette tape of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial that was accented with a horizontal green strip across its top? That I can distinctly recall it confirms both my aged stat

Culture Among the Moguls VMFA’s finest display on one of the most elite empires.  (Photo by Pallava Bagla/Getty Images) “India’s Great Mughals: Art, Power, and Opulence,” currently showing at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, is a great and rare exhibition that will be hard to replicate in the near future for various sociological reasons.