Harry Stein
Washington, D.C.
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I tweet mostly about economic policy. @UWMadison & @dcpublicschools grad. Retweets ≠ endorsements. Tweets ≠ view of my employer. Personal account.
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Articles by Harry Stein
The Brief, Improbable Life of the ‘Paris Metro’
I was at my desk at New Times magazine one fall morning in 1974, when my co-worker Tom Moore breezed into the office and announced he was quitting. This came as a shock, because New Times was an up-and-coming publication, featuring high-end journalism by a mix of veterans like Jimmy Breslin and Mike Royko, plus talented newcomers, and junior editors like Tom played a major role in shaping its content. Also, I didn’t know he could quit.
How Trump Can Make Baseball Great Again
At this writing, President Trump has signed 123 executive orders, covering matters as varied as reciprocal tariffs and electoral integrity to undoing the Left’s war on shower heads. In sum, these constitute an essential attempt by his administration to return America to its greatest days. If that admirable goal is to be achieved, however, one key executive order remains to be promulgated: call it Restoring Sanity to Make Baseball Great Again.
Don’t Expect Media Apologies-Ever-for the Duke Lacrosse Case
For the legacy media, the recent admission by Crystal Mangum, the accuser in the infamous 2006 Duke lacrosse case, that she had fabricated accusations of rape against three players on the university’s team, was at best a one-day story.
Opinie | Bij het bier
Terug naar de krant „Mag ik u wat vragen?”, spreekt een ongeschoren oudere man mij (man, 64) aan als ik in de supermarkt bij het speciaalbier mijn keuze sta te maken. „Ja hoor”, zeg ik goeiig, bereid om een pilsje voor hem te kopen. Maar daar gaat hem niet om. „Kunt u mij zeggen hoe je zo’n knotje in je haar krijgt?” Ik maak mijn hipsterknot los en demonstreer het. Ook de man schudt nu zijn lange grijze manen los uit hun paardenstaart.
Friendly Persuasion
Well, it’s election time again—in our house, that special season when we get to toy with Democratic campaign callers. See, my wife and I are what you might call DINOs—Dems In Name Only. Or maybe DFTHOI—Dems For the Hell Of It. Not that we started out that way. When we first registered to vote in the halcyon days of the early 1970s, Richard Nixon was in the White House and Saturday nights meant Mary Tyler Moore. Who could imagine being anything else?
Der Lynchmord von Bechstedt
Bechstedt Am 19.
Opinion | Laughter Can Defeat the Left
By Harry Stein July 27, 2021 6:36 pm ET Jerry Seinfeld performs at Menora Stadium in Tel Aviv, Israel, Dec. 19, 2015. Photo: Dan Balilty/Associated Press ‘A transgender weightlifter and a horse walk into a bar . . .” “That’s not funny!” Welcome to the wonderful world of woke comedy. And it’s not as if they say it with the indulgent attitude your mother used to have—when she knew it was inappropriate but was kind of amused anyway. No, these people are not joking.
Coercing Charity
Next week is Giving Tuesday, the recently inaugurated holiday that marks the beginning of what is traditionally Americans’ most charitable time of year. In 2020, though, the giving season began many months ago. Much of that giving occurred through donor-advised funds. Donor-advised funds, or DAFs, essentially work like charitable savings accounts. Individuals give to a DAF and then take the charitable tax deduction right away, even if the money does not flow immediately to a charity.
Contributors
Bruce Bawer is the author of several books, including The Victims’ Revolution, While Europe Slept, and the novel The Alhambra. Theodore Dalrymple is a contributing editor of City Journal, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and the author of many books, including Out into the Beautiful World and Grief and Other Stories.
In Prospect
City Journal launched 30 years ago, when New York and other American cities were in profound crisis. Crime and disorder were endemic. New York City in 1990 suffered more than 2,200 murders—one every four hours. Welfare was a way of life for millions. Schools were an unruly, mediocre mess. Businesses and residents escaped the city in droves. The mainstream view on this ongoing urban disaster was pessimistic: decline was fated, at least until America somehow solved its deep structural inequities.
Man and Underman at RADA
Students at Britain’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art have demanded that the name of its theater be changed. At present, it is named for George Bernard Shaw, who left a portion of his royalties to RADA.
Despite Murder and Mayhem
As a member of the USA fencing team in 1972, I looked forward to marching in the Olympic Opening Ceremonies in Munich, though I had other emotions, too. I’m Jewish; the Games were being held in a country that barely more than a quarter-century earlier had been run by the Nazis. I had misgivings about the “new” Germany being let off the hook so soon after World War II—and so soon, in Olympic years, after Hitler’s display in the 1936 Berlin Games.
Tom Seaver Leaves Behind an Amazing Legacy.
The telegram, dispatched by a friend back in New York, was slipped beneath the door of my Paris apartment early in the morning of June 16, 1977, and reading it, my heart sank. Comme une pierre! “Seaver to Reds for Zachry, Flynn, Henderson, and Norman.” Bleary-eyed, I staggered down the steps to my local café to breathe in the stale Gauloise fumes and to try and forget. Paris was still Paris then; the Mets would always be the Mets. Not that I was surprised. It was inevitable.
My Pig Beats Your Cow
Texans are nuts. I mean it’s ridiculous enough that the people of Texas consider themselves to be Southerners when all the time they’re … well … they’re simply Texans. But when those lumbering goat ropers have the audacity to start blowing off about something as important as barbecue (or, as they’re prone to casually and irreverently spell the word, “barbeque” or “Bar-B-Q”), my patience goes haywire.
Radical Activists Imperil Kansas's Foster-Care System
Kansas agreed to settle a federal lawsuit against its child-welfare system earlier this month, consenting to grant substantial oversight authority over its restructuring to a prominent advocate, Judith Meltzer. “This ends the awful placement and instability that continues to exist,” an attorney for the plaintiffs told the Kansas City Star. “The state wanted . . .
Remembering Charles Evers | City Journal
When Charles Evers died last week at 97, the New York Times obituary was suitably respectful. Running nearly 1,400 words, it rightly counted Evers, along with Representative John Lewis and Martin Luther King lieutenant C. T.
Without liberty, Hong Kong-and the world-will be poorer
Beijing has now acted to impose a new security law on Hong Kong, turning its back on the “one country, two systems” agreement to which it had committed when the former British colony returned to Chinese control in 1997. Hong Kong will be subject to the same sort of draconian infringements on liberty as mainland China, following a year of street protests demanding just the opposite.
Beware the #Liz Militia
The #Karen meme has taken on new frenzy in recent weeks, with virtue enforcers roving the streets, real and virtual, intent on catching and publicly humiliating supposed race offenders. A concept that developed in part out of grievance with overbearing busybodies and social policing has devolved into an obsession with shaming, a contest whose winners are measured in likes, follows, and retweets.
Being an Expert Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry
Being an Expert Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry
Being an Expert Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry
We should all be deeply troubled by what appears to be plummeting confidence in experts. This is an alarming trend that can only have devastating consequences, and it must stop. I say this as an expert. In what? Ethics, that’s what, which gives me moral standing to pass judgment on matters large and small. You want credentials? I have been on TV many times, identified by words beneath my name as an ethical expert—including twice on Oprah.
The Lonely Guy Apartment
A Lonely Guy’s best friend is his apartment. Granted, there is no way for him to put his arm around it, chuck it under the chin and take it to a Mets game. But it is very often all he has to come home to. Under no circumstances should he have an apartment that he feels is out to get him. One that’s a little superior. An Oscar Wilde of an apartment. No apartment will ever throw its arms around you and say, “It’s gonna be all right, babe.” But it should at least be on your team.
Magnesium L-Threonate Regenerates Brain Structures
A patented, bioavailable form of magnesium, developed by scientists at MIT, increases synaptic plasticity and reduces brain aging by 9 years. Scientifically reviewed by: Dr. Kathy Wilson, Ph.D., Psychology, NHD, in May 2022. Written by: Harry Stein.
Will the Challenge of New Adversaries Galvanize Europe?
In 1989, as the Soviet empire was imploding, Alexander Arbatov, a diplomatic advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev, addressed a brilliant remark to Westerners: “We are going to do something terrible to you. You will no longer have an enemy.” The disappearance of Communism indeed plunged Europe and the United States into a disorienting euphoria; for the “free world,” it was a symbolic catastrophe.
The Best a Man Can Get
Well, for once my hard work has paid off—it seems that Gillette’s gotten the message. If your reaction is Huh, you’ve obviously been sitting out the culture wars—and more power to you. It definitely makes life easier.
Black Sox Forever
October marks the centennial of what remains by far the greatest scandal in American sports history. When eight members of the Chicago White Sox—known forever after as the Black Sox—threw the 1919 World Series, the betrayal reverberated far beyond the burgeoning sports industry. Occurring as it did in a moment of dizzying social change in America, it jolted the nation’s idea of itself. Indeed, in retrospect, the affair stands as one of those signal events that define an era.
When the Chicago White Sox Threw the 1919 World Series.
October marks the centennial of what remains by far the greatest scandal in American sports history. When eight members of the Chicago White Sox—known forever after as the Black Sox—threw the 1919 World Series, the betrayal reverberated far beyond the burgeoning sports industry. Occurring as it did in a moment of dizzying social change in America, it jolted the nation’s idea of itself. Indeed, in retrospect, the affair stands as one of those signal events that define an era.
Mau-Mauing Myself
Not long after Tom Wolfe’s death, I ran across the only thing I ever wrote about him, in a box in the basement labeled “Unpublished.” Written in 1986 for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, it was on the subject of white liberals and race—specifically, why the idealism of so many of my generation had curdled into cynicism and indifference.
Taking Stock of Albany’s 2019 Destructive Legislative Session
New York’s just-ended legislative session represents the triumph of the Left. The lawmakers dealt heavy blows to property rights and the rule of law, hammered the state’s long-term economic stability, and gave reason to fear for the continued viability of Upstate. New York City got a major tax hike, the state’s trial lawyers picked up a few juicy plums, violent criminals enjoyed a break, and aspiring charter school children caught a thumb in the eye.
The ‘L’ Word: Love as Taboo
“I can see no trace of the passions which make for deeper joy," wrote Stendhal about Americans in his 1822 essay "Love." "It is as if the sources of sensibility have dried up among these people.
Eugene Lyons’s chronicle of the 1930s Left remains startlingly relevant today.
It may be that the best book that will ever be written about today’s progressive mind-set was published in 1941. That in The Red Decade author Eugene Lyons was, in fact, describing the Communist-dominated American Left of the Depression-wracked 1930s and 1940s makes his observations even more meaningful, for it is sobering to be confronted with how little has been gained by hard experience. The celebration of feelings over reason? The certainty of moral virtue?
#PanamaPapers: ¿qué hay de oscuro detrás de una sociedad offshore?
Políticos, empresarios, deportistas y famosos afrontan desde el domingo la sombra de presuntos casos de evasión de impuestos a través de empresas en paraísos fiscales. El epicentro del entramado estaba en la firma legal Mossack Fonseca, con sede en Panamá. La investigación, conocida como Los papeles de Panamá, destapa un entramado de empresas de papel pero ¿era legal?
Herbie Hancock and the Electric-Piano Possibility
Some two and a half centuries ago, an Italian named Bartolommeo Cristofori invented the pianoforte, little expecting it to become the most commonly played instrument in Western Civilization and a ubiquitous hunk of furniture—as symbolic of art under the gun in America’s suburbs as it was of a well-educated woman’s skills in the England of Jane Austen.
Why the Battle for the Court Will Be Nasty
Nothing rattles the American Left so completely as the specter of a conservative, Bush-appointed Supreme Court. And no wonder. Over the last half-century, sympathetic judges have given the Left “progressive” policy outcomes that the voting booth wouldn’t deliver. It is this liberal judicial legacy—everything from affirmative action to partial-birth abortion—that the Left fears a Bush-influenced bench will sweep away.
The Future of Conservative Books
Photograph by Harvey Wang Roger Kimball, publisher of right-leaning Encounter Books, which had one of its best years in 2007 In 2003, something unthinkable happened in the tradition-bound—and unapologetically liberal—world of book publishing: two of the largest and best-known conglomerates, Penguin and Random House, set up imprints, Sentinel and Crown Forum, dedicated to producing conservative books. Two years later, Simon and Schuster added its own right-leaning imprint, Threshold.
Many Republican candidates have room to grow in the polls, which could result in another surprising Election Night.
The consensus view regarding the likely outcome for the midterms is that Democrats regain control of the House, and Republicans add seats in the Senate. That strikes me as largely correct, though I leave allowance for late-breaking developments—like the debate over birthright citizenship—to shape the precise contours of the results. But an under-explored trend bears looking into: the consistent underperformance of Republican candidates in middle- and working-class America over the last month.
The Star-Ledger’s backing of Bob Menendez illuminates the New Jersey’s long economic slide.
New Jersey’s largest newspaper, the Star-Ledger, is facing intense criticism for its reelection endorsement of New Jersey senator Bob Menendez, who was “severely admonished” by a bipartisan Senate ethics panel for accepting gifts from a donor and advocating for the donor’s personal interests. Menendez’s actions “reflected discredit upon the Senate,” the committee wrote.
Red Sox legend Curt Schilling proves too deplorable for Boston's World Series festivities.| City Journal
All but unremarked upon in the wake of the Boston Red Sox’s demolition of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the recent World Series was a move by Boston’s ownership that, even in this moment when everything is political, should prompt outrage on all sides: the exclusion of 2004 World Series hero Curt Schilling from the on-field celebration commemorating that landmark event, for the sin of being an outspoken conservative.
Days of Wrath
Some years ago, shortly after the first stories about sexual abuse by priests began to surface in Boston, I met a man, a cradle Catholic, who told me that a priest had sexually propositioned him as a teenager. A parent now, he was full of conflict over the incident, which had soured him on the church even as his parents remained devout.
Gender Is a Construct-Except When It’s Not
A foundational tenet of academic feminism holds that alleged differences between males and females are socially constructed. This credo usually maximizes the opportunities for charging sexism, yet it will be discarded in an instant if acknowledging the innate biological and psychological differences between men and women yields an additional trove of feminist complaint. The current issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine shows how the game is played.
New York chronicle (May 2018) by Jay Nordlinger
As a Dutch friend confirmed to me, Michel van der Aa would almost certainly be first on a class roll: you would not start with V but with A, and Van der Aa has two of them. He is a Dutch composer, born in 1970. He was trained as a recording engineer before studying composition. He has had a big 2017–18 in the United States. An opera called Blank Out was staged at the Park Avenue Armory here in New York.
Exhibition note (May 2018) by Franklin Einspruch
“Fra Angelico: Heaven on Earth,” at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, is being billed as a reunion. The master painted four reliquaries for Santa Maria Novella in Florence during the second quarter of the Quattrocento. Heroic research executed in conjunction with this exhibition establishes with great conviction that Giorgio Vasari referred to these works in particular in his writings. Napoleonic haranguing of Italian Christendom obliged a de-acquisition in the early 1800s.
On the unraveling of Greek civil society
It was one of those natural confusions, the sort that occur when the taxi driver doesn’t speak much of your language and you speak less of his. When I got into his cab at Venizelos Airport, I had asked for the Hotel Herodion, a tourist hotel at the southern foot of the Acropolis. My intention was to observe the intermingling effect of sunlight and smog on the Parthenon from either or both of the Herodion’s rooftop jacuzzis.
Ragtime pixies
rom the moment Fred and Ginger first took the screen, to dance the Carioca, they fizzed and sparkled, joshed and romanced each other. Fabulous, sometimes transcendently so, they are nonetheless not quite sui generis—they fit in the category of the romantic dancing leads.
Getting away from it all
\Hudson, New York viaI look’d now upon the world as a thing remote, which I had nothing to do with, no expectation from, and indeed no desires about: In a word, I had nothing indeed to do with it, nor was ever like to have; so I thought it look’d as we may perhaps look upon it hereafter, viz. as a place I had lived in, but was come out of it; and well might I say, as Father...
Tintern Abbey by Anthony Daniels - The New Criterion
t is two hundred and seventeen years since Wordsworth visited Tintern Abbey for the second time, five years after his first visit, and then composed his celebrated Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey; there have been some changes at the Abbey since. The vegetation that in Wordsworth’s time grew in and on the ancient walls has been cleared away, for it would eventually have ruined the ruins. But that, as you might have guessed, is not the greatest change.
The pleasures of Greece
irst and foremost, Honey, Olives, Octopus presents itself as a well-informed, sustained paean to the joys not only of the Greek table but also of the landscape of the country from Thasos to Thessaloniki to Serifos to Crete. Bakken investigates and describes some of the foodstuffs this variegated country yields, from honey, olives, and octopus to chickpeas, bread, and red mullet. And let’s not forget wine, ouzo, and tsipouro,all washed down in heroic quantities.
It’s a sign!
ypographers, printers, and designers like to imagine themselves experts in their fields, and anyone who writes about typography may be assailed for slights and inaccuracies—real or imagined. Ask us which side of the Helvetica ja! vs. bah! divide we occupy, and you’ll hear a discourse as impassioned as any author’s thoughts on the demise of “whom” or the validity of the serial comma.
Glamour’s false charm
ne of the best descriptions of glamour isn’t a description of glamour at all.
The master off duty
Reading a literary biography or a collection of some great writer’s correspondence, one tends to slog impatiently through the early pages—the childhood stuff—out of a sense of duty, often more than a bit numbed by the obligatory details about parents, siblings, schooling, and such, and itching to get to the good bits; later, much later, as the subject, now (most likely) jaded, world-weary, and in artistic decline, approaches the final curtain, one follows the post-climactic personal and...
Lepidoptery & gush
wo things bother me about Letters to Véra, Vladimir Nabokov’s letters to his wife, Véra Slonim. One is lepidoptery, the other is gush. They strike me as self- or wife-indulgent, these missives headed and peppered with declarations of adoration, yearning in separation, brimming with anticipation, glorying in fulfillment, amounting often to verbal slobber. A fifty-two-year loving marriage may well stand out laudably among literati, but need it be swooningly verbalized in letter after letter?
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