Take the money and dribble

by David Benjamin   “We don’t go steady, ’cause it wouldn’t be right ”To leave your best girl home on a Saturday night.”    —The Beach Boys, “I Get Around”   MADISON, Wis.—Notwithstanding the moral clarity articulated in “I Get Around,” the Beach Boys are among the less appreciated ethical philosophers of the past millennium.…

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Suffer the children …

by David Benjamin   “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s ass …”   Exodus, 20:17   And so it came to pass that the Republicans of Louisiana decreed that all classrooms in each school of every parish shall array the graven precepts handed to Moses by the Lord and shlepped down from the mount to…

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Sympathy for the Devil

by David Benjamin   “So shall the world go on,/ To good malignant, to bad men benign,/ Under her own weight groaning.”  ― John Milton, Paradise Lost   MADISON, Wis.—Walt Disney has said that a movie’s only as good as its villain. He illustrated this precept with the Evil Queen in Snow White and Cruella……

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The original Chucky

by David Benjamin   “Death’s gruesome face taunts:/ soulless eyes, crimson grimace. I really hate clowns.”  ― Katherine Applegate   MADISON, Wis.—Apparently, like its protagonist, the “Chucky” horror-film and TV franchise will never expire. I’ve just noticed promos for a new season of episodes featuring the further exploits of a homicidal boy doll who bears…

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John Ford’s mortal sin

by David Benjamin   “The river was dyed with the blood of the slaughtered for two hundred yards. The approximate loss was upward of five hundred killed, but few of the officers escaping. My loss was about twenty killed. It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that Negro soldiers cannot…

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Michelangelo strokes his brush

by David Benjamin   “I feel naked without a Hi-Liter in my pocket.”  — David Benjamin   MADISON, Wis.—What would you underline? In ninth grade, when I started buying books—instead of depending solely on the public library—I fell almost instinctively into the habit of underlining paragraphs, sentences, passages, even single words that tickled my fancy.……

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