by Richard Kostelanetz  I remember the Austrian-born film director Billy Wilder introducing his American-educated collaborator, I. A. L. Diamond, as his “translator” especially skilled at “telling me which preposition to use.” The truth is that the wrong preposition in English can be revealing, ...Read More...

by Richard Kostelanetz  Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them. –Frederick Douglass When some press reported within an hour of the JFK assassination that the killer was Lee Harvey Oswald, ...Read More...

by Richard Kostelanetz Recalling what I wrote twenty years ago, probably for the monthly LIBERTY As I write, two days after the airplane attack, downtown Manhattan, where I live, is devoid of auto traffic, as auxiliary police have closed all the roads south of Houston Street. Even though radio ...Read More...

by Richard Kostelanetz Piecing together bits drawn from various sources, I gather that some white supremacist group got a permit to stage a demonstration. Once this was granted, the remnant of Black Lives Matter decided, along with allied gangs, to mobilize a counter demonstration. This setup ...Read More...

by Richard Kostelanetz It would create a two-tier system where the privileged class could get different, reputably better doctors who would accept higher payments. Where "higher payments" made illegal, because, say, "un-American," as indeed a two-tier system would be, the result would be a ...Read More...

by Richard Kostelanetz Doubly pained I am to see Hillary Clinton’s supporters flailing around to uncover one or another discreditable reason for her losing the last presidential election, because most of them are patently fictitious. For instance, while some Russians might have made devious moves ...Read More...

by Richard Kostelanetz   Local radio told me today that the Washington Post, increasingly more dubious in its anti-Trump hysteria, reports that Obama last summer told Trump to tell Putin to stop interfering in the forthcoming election. The glib conclusion is that Trump must have acknowledged, ...Read More...

by Richard Kostelanetz Antifa in Berlin Horrifying it is to hear protestors in America identify Trump as “fascist,” since in 1932 Germany the mob in the streets were Nazis, who having failed in the free election, wanted to overthrow the legitimate government. To placate these mobs, duly elected ...Read More...

by Richard Kostelanetz So hysterically anti-Trump has not only the NPR network but my local station become that, after a few minutes, I turn away. Whatever “news” can be interpreted to indicate Trump’s incompetence or failure is featured, no matter how dubious the “explanation.” I’m waiting for ...Read More...

by Richard Kostelanetz One of the unfortunate truths to emerge in the wake of the recent presidential election is that “intellectuals” who take pride in understanding people and cultures not their own can’t understand how any American voted for Donald Trump. Not a clue. The truth is that their smug ...Read More...

by Richard Kostelanetz Does anyone really believe that Putin, et al, preferred Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton? They’d done biz with her while Trump seemed not only unfamiliar but unpredictable, as indeed he’s been. They’d learned that her judgments could be purchased. I’d sooner accept ...Read More...

by Richard Kostelanetz James Hodgkinson Since the allegiances of the man who attempted to shoot Rep. Steve Scalese are known, why don’t anti-gun fanatics advocate disarming all supporters in America of Bernie Sanders. No one doubts who the shooter was, where he’d been, or what he did. If ...Read More...

by Richard Kostelanetz Name an undergraduate alumnus who headed a university equal to Brown for a decade? Another who currently hosts a nationally syndicated talk show? Another who heads a major federal entity? A major early influence on feminist literary criticism not only for her writings ...Read More...

by Richard Kostelanetz Especially in the north of Israel the traveler can visually identify the border by land that is cultivated for agriculture. On the other side of the border, whether in Syria or Jordan, land with the same qualities is barren, simply because the people residing there can’t ...Read More...

by Richard Kostelanetz Having received from the National Endowment for the Arts the whopping sum of ten (yes, ten) individual grants between 1976 and 1991, I feel a certain obligation to give back, as we say. If we accept the principle that cultural funding should make happen what would not otherwise ...Read More...