Posts by David Benjamin
The Devil and Miss Josie
by David Benjamin MADISON, Wis.—John Milton loved the Devil. In literary history, Milton was the most pious and passionate of Christian poets, a devout believer and a pillar of the Church. But he was simultaneously a complicated intellectual with boundless curiosity and a devotion to artistic rigor. For Milton, it would have been illegitimate to…
Read MoreEat, drink and buy Jawbreakers
by David Benjamin “A penny saved is still just a fucking penny.” —Dan Lok MADISON, Wis.—One of the drawbacks of vegetating in front of the TV after a hard day at the keyboard is the intrusion—and merciless repetition—of ads that seem conceived to rankle my nerves and make me talk back to the screen. For…
Read MoreWho’s in charge here?
by David Benjamin “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” — Frederick Douglass MADISON, Wis.—To fill my class schedule in my last college semester, I signed up, reluctantly, for a course entitled “Leadership Lore.” My professor, whose specialty was classics, steered his students toward ancient conquerors like Cyrus the…
Read MoreA fan’s notes
by David Benjamin “Man may penetrate the outer reaches of the universe, he may solve the very secret of eternity itself but for me, the ultimate human experience is to witness the flawless execution of the hit-and-run.” — Branch Rickey MADISON, Wis.—The saturation coverage of the recent World Cup featured fans from all over the…
Read MoreHow to sell your soul
by David Benjamin “MEPHISTO: Hence sin and havoc and ruin—all you call evil, in sum—for me’s the element in which I swim.” — Goethe, Faust MADISON, Wis.—The sudden death of Senator Lindsey Graham this month set off a cliché storm in the punditocracy, with numerous references to Graham’s “Faustian bargain” for the royal favor of…
Read MoreDear Leader joins a traffic stop
by David Benjamin “We CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP! Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands.” — Donald Trump The presidential helicopter rests in the village common, one of its wheels in a sandbox from which several terrified children had…
Read MoreThe Donald J. Trump Electric Kool-Aid Tangerine-Flake American-Flag-Blue World Cup
by David Benjamin “Overturn this!” — The Belgian soccer team MADISON, Wis.—The rumor isn’t true that Gianni Infantino has sent the World Cup trophy back to the shop to super-glue a gold bas-relief of Donald Trump’s scowl over the part of the globe where the Pacific Ocean used to be. Right now, this re-design is…
Read MoreRoad rage on the Information Superhighway
by David Benjamin “Men have become the tools of their tools.” — Henry David Thoreau MADISON, Wis.—One of the banks where Hotlips and I store our money communicates with its depositors only by app. I should note that I didn’t choose to patronize this bank—called CCF. I was shunted to it when a previous bank—HSBC—experienced…
Read More“I don’t know. I’ve never kippled.”
by David Benjamin “Sometimes, the most brilliant and intelligent minds do not shine in standardized tests because they do not have standardized minds.” ―Diane Ravitch MADISON, Wis.—When I was in fifth grade, a kid named Terry had the desk next to mine. We weren’t friends. We barely spoke to each other. So, I was a…
Read More“That’s mighty white of you.”
by David Benjamin MADISON, Wis.—When I dropped in, the other day, on Wilhelm “Clorox” Bienfang, America’s foremost idea man, he was wearing a red baseball cap emblazoned with four cryptic letters: MEOW. Of course, I figured his latest brainstorm had something to do with cats. Way wrong! After Bienfang revealed that the acronym on his…
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