Posts by David Benjamin
Hubba, hubba!
by David Benjamin “Whenas in silks my Julia goes,/ Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows/ That liquefaction of her clothes.” —Robert Herrick MADISON, Wis.—Is it chivalry, I wonder, or sly salacity? How, without making the wrongimpression does a 21st-century guy compliment a woman on how she looks, particularly if she’s a total (but fetching) stranger?…
Read MoreWhite trash elegy
by David Benjamin “How much of our lives, good and bad, should we credit to our personal decisions, and how much is just the inheritance of our culture, our families, and our parents who have failed their children? How much is Mom’s life her own fault? Where does blame stop and sympathy begin?” —J.D. Vance,…
Read MoreThe “creative type”
by David Benjamin “Every good joke contains an element of the riddle—it may be childishly simple, or subtle and challenging—which the listener must solve. By doing so, he is lifted out of his passive role and compelled to co-operate, to repeat to some extent the process of inventing the joke, to re-create it in his……
Read More“Good afternoon, good evening and good night”
by David Benjamin “An entire human life recorded on an intricate network of hidden cameras, and broadcast live and unedited, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to an audience around the globe. Coming to you now from Seahaven Island, enclosed in the largest studio ever constructed, and along with the Great Wall of…
Read MoreThe disembodiment of little Bobby Shaftoe
by David Benjamin “Some eighth graders … had set up fake TikTok accounts impersonating teachers… “… In the days that followed, some 20 educators—about one quarter of the [Great Valley Middle] School’s faculty—discovered they were victims of fake teacher accounts rife with pedophilia innuendo, racist memes, homophobia and made-up sexual hookups among teachers. Hundreds of…
Read MoreThe query trap
The querying of an agent or publisher is essentially the process of presenting a fake persona to a coldblooded and impatient personnel manager who is concealed behind a false front of cordial empathy. (The cover of The Voice of the Dog is the work of photographer Max Kleinen.) by David Benjamin “Outside of a dog,……
Read MoreThe light from the tomb in the Temple of Doom
by David Benjamin “What can I add that has not already been said? A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did…
Read MoreTake 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.…
Read MoreSuffer 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…
Read MoreSympathy 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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