R. Emmett Tyrrell

Washington -- We at The American Spectator call it “Kultursmog,” and it is the only kind of smog of which our friends on the left approve. Actually, they not only approve of Kultursmog, but they contribute to it. Kultursmog is that aspect of American culture that is utterly politicized, and it is politicized by the politics of the left. Its leading centers of pollution are Hollywood,…

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's place at the head of the mob intent on correcting the wrongs of past generations has been endangered. She has been waving the bloody shirt about past generations' complicity in racism, and now her role at the head of the mob is in question. It has been discovered that her father was mayor of Baltimore in the 1940s and 1950s, and now the woke brethren want her to…

I spent late Saturday afternoon in what has become, for me, a rite of spring. I watched the Kentucky Derby. I am no afficionado of horse racing and will not betray my ignorance of the sport's desiderata in this column. At most, I watch three horse races a year. After the Kentucky Derby, I watch the remainder of the races hoping to round off the Triple Crown. The Derby is a spectacle, from the…

Washington — According to the Washington Times — also known as the Good Times — last week, the Biden administration made plans “to offer grants for U.S. history classes that teach critical race theory and the ‘1619 Project,’” which is a confection of The New York Times. Both critical race theory and “The 1619 Project” are based on the fundamental insight that slavery is,…

Washington -- I could not reach my colleague Wlady Pleszczynski for most of the day on Saturday. He was mysteriously missing. On Saturdays, we talk for at least an hour on the telephone about the past week's events, but not this Saturday. His telephone rang and rang, all for naught. The same was true for two more of my weekend confidants. I had important news to convey to them, but no one was…

More than 40 organizations have signed a pledge to reject money from Big Tech organizations like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple and others. In a separate statement, MRC Founder and President Brent Bozell stated, "We are sending this pledge to all conservative organizations and leaders and urging them to sign it. We must act together to end Silicon Valley’s corrupt grip over…

Washington -- Major League Baseball is following Black Lives Matter and taking a stand on the state of Georgia's recent election legislation. MLB, under the direction of someone by the name of Rob Manfred, is pulling the 2021 All-Star Game out of suburban Atlanta along with the MLB draft. The New York Times, in a front-page editorial (camouflaged as news), said the move by MLB was a "rebuke of…

Washington -- I was right. I have been right for over 50 years. Through those at times lonely years, I have been patronized by affluent magazines and newspapers for setting up The American Spectator as an organ of opinion that eschewed making a profit. I would cover our expenses in other ways. I did not ignore making a profit, but I had studied the plight of intellectual reviews and…

Washington -- Years ago, I had a great coach in high school who was given to Solomonic apothegms. One of his favorites was, "Forget your grandparents." By that, he meant forget the arguments that issued from your grandparents' grudges with other grandparents. The high school he coached at was highly diverse, sufficiently diverse to have frequent warfare among the differing ethnic groups. My…

Washington -- We are all supposed to be against conspiracies. Yet what about a conspiracy to silence free speech? What about a conspiracy to shut down people who utter thoughts we disagree with? What about silencing communists? What about silencing Nazis? What about a conspiracy to silence Democrats or Republicans? What about silencing those who spout Trumpism? There are a lot of positions…

Washington -- Saturday was a good day for the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. The First Amendment has been validated once again, this time by the United States Senate. Simply by speaking his mind, Citizen Donald Trump committed no crime on Jan. 6. That was when he addressed a large crowd telling them they should march "peacefully" and "patriotically." He told them they should "…

What did you do Sunday evening? I watched the gaudiest pageant ever performed on television, interspersed with a football game. The football game was serious, dare I say, dignified, adult entertainment. Yet what came with it was typical American excess. Lights flashing, deafening noise, hundreds of people marching, and I believe there were cartoon figures parading around the field. I worried…

If there was one dominant theme to President Joe Biden's inaugural address, it was unity. All Americans -- left, right and middle-of-the-road -- are to come together in unity, Joe said. On his theme of unity, Joe was emphatic, and the media cheered him on. Yet shortly thereafter, his perfumed rhetoric evaporated in the wintry air, and reality intruded. It began with Joe's executive orders.

It is a reflection of the vulgarity and even the criminality now stalking our society that social media, as it is called, cannot extricate itself from this awful question of censorship. Facebook, Twitter and all the other social media platforms that are passing judgment on what Americans say today are in the pickle that they are in because the First Amendment freedoms are extended to…