How did this poor excuse of a pulp fiction spy novel, bereft of the quirky detail, realistic complexity, genuine human interaction, and factual statement that make a true memoir interesting rise to ninth on the NYT bestseller list? The answer lies in his narrative form of analysis of US foreign affairs, and in the nature of his target audience.
Welcome ladies and gentlemen. I know what you guys have been thinking –- since it’s been so long since we’ve had a Prince Watch, that must be because the Daily Princetonian has finally achieved a journalistic integrity which puts it beyond our childish jabs.
A recent editorial in Princeton University’s most conservative publication, the Daily Princetonian, predictably dismisses all of the demands made by the Black Justice League during the recent protests against racism on campus. But what is surprising, not to mention embarrassing for the University, is the anti-intellectualism expressed by the editorial board members.
“When the word ‘diversity’ enters the conversation, I am to be made an example and a representative…. It’s as if I cannot possibly be content simply existing”
It’s mid-September, and your room is set up at last. Your chair is here, your toes are toasty in the A.M. thanks to a whimsically shagged carpet you bought at Wal-Mart, your creamy walls glow with the efflorescence of a thousand late nineteenth-century French advertisements purchased from the student poster agency.
If there is a God, and a moral order to the world, making a 100 million dollar donation to Princeton earmarked for the arts will not get you into heaven. Wandering through Princeton’s art museum the other night for the … Read More
Rabbi Eitan Webb, when I come to interview him early last Wednesday in his Nassau Street apartment, is juggling with ease five things at once. The sun rages to highlight red flourishes in his beard and the car beeps become louder as the Princeton Borough awakens, but he is preparing to have some thirty students over for Passover seder, arranging to have a Matzah Ball party with a middle weight boxing champion, balancing his son on his lap, updating the Chabad website, and fingering an official letter from President Shirley Tilghman.
“Granny began losing her memory. Last spring, she mailed me a ripped-out page of an English course catalogue for Middlebury College. I couldn’t tell if she had forgotten that I go to Princeton.”
Princeton students are special. We’ve been told this upon every rite of passage we have experienced. No one ever dares to contest that they have near-superhuman aptitudes for creativity and hard work, Renaissance men and women all, steeped in the finest principles of humanism. Yet there is one thing in which we cannot manage to surpass the national average.
