Italy
A Lebanese Whine, an Italian Wine
The games have started, and unfortunately, so has the coverage. What am I going to do with these announcers? For a moment, I’ll be xenophobic or what have you and say it: what am I going to do with these American announcers? Some of them might be British, but believe me, they are American. No one on ESPN does play by play anymore. It would have been nice if there was less chatter and more “Dos Santos passes to Rafa who gives the ball to Blob, I mean Blanco.” READ MORE >>
The Austere Beauty of Italy
A word about the defending champions. Not since Germany's victory in the desperate 1990 edition of the tournament has any victor been so little celebrated. Doubtless this owes something to the fashion in which Italy prevailed and to the sense that those players who remain in the squad aren't the men they once were, while the newcomers aren't the men they're replacing either. So Italy arrive in South Africa overlooked and unfancied and available at 16/1 with some bookmakers. That's a value bet worth a modest investment. READ MORE >>
Soccer and Human Trafficking
There’s a lot of happy talk about how this World Cup will aid the cause of Africa soccer. I hope that’s the case. In the meantime, I highly recommend Spiegel’s excellent piece on how the European soccer economy has sunk its tentacles into the continent. A sample of the piece's ugly findings: READ MORE >>
Forgive Not
Are Liberals Too Mean To Birthers?
Jonah Goldberg sees a pernicious double standard between the treatment of kooks who think Barack Obama is not a citizen and kook who think 9/11 was an inside job. "Birtherism" is dangerous and paranoid and "Trutherism" is quirky and no big deal, according to liberals," he writes. READ MORE >>
Greek Tragedy
From Italy
Vincere IFC Films Mid-August Lunch Zeitgeist Films Here, remarkably and remarkable, is a new film by Marco Bellocchio, a survivor of the Italian post-World War II directing galaxy. His first two films, Fist in His Pocket (1965) and China Is Near (1967), announced the arrival of a talented troublemaker. His subject was the bourgeois family in relation to a changing society--“the connection between the family and the wider political READ MORE >>
Saint and Sinner
Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone By Stanislao Pugliese (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 426 pp., $35) READ MORE >>
