John Brown's Notes and Essays

Image from a Tweet by Bruni, which states: " Regan came to live with me a few days ago, so I did what any good new dog owner would do. Took her wine shopping."  see also Bruni : "How can I expect her [ Barrett ] to grant me the dignity that I, an agnostic gay man with no children but one really awesome dog , deserve if I don’t grant her the dignity that she, a mother of seven who ascribes to a conservative strain of Catholicism, has equal (but no greater) claim to? If I want her to understand me, I must be willing to understand her."

No matter how many crazy things happen, the fundamentals are the same: The president is a greedy racist and misogynist who does not understand his job.    SEPTEMBER 28, 2020, The Atlantic ; see also Quinta Jurecic Contributing writer at  The Atlantic  and managing editor of  Lawfare  [jb: Readers interested in Russia/USSR: note its mention in this article] DREW ANGERER / GETTY / THE ATLANTIC  Donald Trump has built his public persona around the  central importance  of grabbing attention—whether his actions provoke delight or fury. And yet he is, and has long been, boring.   Four years into his presidency, Trump isn’t boring in the way a dull, empty afternoon is boring. Trump is boring in the way that the seventh season of a reality-television show is boring: A lot is happening, but there’s nothing to say about it. The president is a man without depths to plumb. What you see is what you get, and what you get is the same mix of venality,...

Dan Alexander Forbes Staff Policy Senior editor at Forbes, covering Donald Trump's business. Forbes , Sep 28, 2020; see also ( 1 )  ( 2 ) Trump image from article “Is Donald Trump really a billionaire?” everyone seemed to be asking Sunday night, after the New York Times dropped a bombshell report about the president’s taxes, which detailed big losses in some years and limited income in others. The answer: Yes, he is indeed .  In fact, Trump is a multibillionaire, worth $2.5 billion, by our count . His portfolio, which includes commercial buildings, golf properties and branding businesses, is worth an estimated $3.66 billion before debt. The president has a fair amount of leverage—adding up to a roughly $1.13 billion—but not enough to drag his net worth below a billion dollars. To understand how Donald Trump could be so rich—yet look so poor—it’s essential to comprehend the difference between what we’ll call (a) taxable income and (b) operating income. Taxable income is the...

"Mr. Trump was not terribly discriminating in his choice of endorsements. He slapped his name on everything from steaks and vodka to a board game and cologne. For the benefit of 'consumers interested in experiencing the Trump lifestyle at an affordable price,' as a news release put it, he signed a licensing deal with the  Serta mattress company  that eventually netted him more than $15 million. Another $15 million would pour in from Trump neckties, shirts and underwear by clothiers like Phillips-Van Heusen." A licensing deal with the Serta mattress company would eventually bring him more than $15 million. From The New York Times , Sept 26, 2020

W hat was once Paris’s fortified guardian is now its treasure-filled heart.  THE LOUVRE By James Gardner Atlantic Monthly, 394 pages, $30   image from   Book Review by Edward Rothstein, The Wall Street Journal , Sept. 25, 2020 6:20 pm ET; original article contains an additional illustration,"The Pavillon de l’Horloge as seen through I.M. Pei’s pyramidal entrance to the Louvre." Great museums have many functions: They can encyclopedically survey the world, provide compelling accounts of history, celebrate varied forms of beauty and project political power. They can also have an almost mythic presence. If myths recount a society’s origins in the natural world, a great museum can do something similar, demonstrating how the world is given shape and order. It is a place where people gather, time and again, united in something akin to ritual, searching for illumination, perhaps even seeking a sense of belonging. Museums are temples of a people or a nation.  But I hadn’t re...

Image from article: Presidential Campaign Medal with portrait of Abraham Lincoln, 1860. Artist Unknown.   HERITAGE IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES For David S. Reynolds, Lincoln’s greatness came from a deep affinity for his country’s wild side. Gordon S. Wood,  The Wall Street Journal ,  Updated Sept. 25, 2020 6:22 pm ET Some 16,000 books have been written about Abraham Lincoln—more than any other historical figure except Jesus. But there has never been one like this one by David S. Reynolds. The author, a literary scholar and historian at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, has written a marvelous cultural biography that captures Lincoln in all his historical fullness. Mr. Reynolds is a distinguished cultural historian of antebellum America. Among his many books are cultural biographies of Walt Whitman and John Brown and an earlier work, “Beneath the American Renaissance,” which prepared the way for his unusual approach to biography—stunningly revealed in this ...