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[Richard Crossley's] previous bird guide, for ID'ing Eastern birds, is the most imaginative, original attempt to re-envision the birding guide and set his approach apart from that of Sibley, Kaufman, Peterson, Nat'l Geo, and the other bibles in the field.

James Wolcott

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James Wolcott
Age: 71
Born: 1952
Born: December 10
Journalist
Novelist
New York City
New York
Originals
Richard
Original
Imaginative
Apart
Previous
Field
Eastern
Bird
Guide
Peterson
Fields
Birds
Kaufman
Approach
Guides
Bibles
Attempt
Envision

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It isn't that NPR is matriarchal but that it has dedicated itself to not being patriarchal in its outlook and presentation, stipulating from the outset that its headline voices would not resound across the fruited plains from big male bags of air sent from Mount Olympus.
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I think ambition is a desire for recognition. People want to be special. I think ambition can take in a whole package of things, power or sexual excitement.
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Used to be, conservatives revered the Average American, that Norman Rockwell oil painting of diner food, humble faith, honest toil, and Capraesque virtue.
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'Hairspray' was a movie turned Broadway musical turned Hollywood remake, and that is the 'Lion King' circle of life as we know it in Times Square, the creative loop that swings for the stars and sometimes crashes into the upper deck.
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A typical 'Larry King Live' is a pastiche whose absurdism defies parody. Wearing his trademark suspenders and purple shirts, he looks as if he's strapped to the chair with vertical seat belts, unable to eject.
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The unhappy irony is that, while 'Glee' is hitting the heights, school arts funding is being slashed across the country due to the steep recession and declining tax revenues.
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A lost election can have the jolt of a drop through the gallows door, leading to a dark night of the soul in which the future presses down like a cloud that will never lift.
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As we divest ourselves of once familiar physical objects - digitize and dematerialize - we approach a 'Star Trek' future in which everything can be accessed from the fourth dimension with a few clicks or terse audibles.
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In the voyeurism of Reality TV, the viewer's passivity is kept intact, pampered and massaged and force-fed Chicken McNuggets of carefully edited snippets that permit him or her to sit in easy judgment and feel superior at watching familiar strangers make fools of themselves. Reality TV looks in only one direction: down.
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Everyone is entitled to his own nostalgia.
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At 'The Village Voice,' there were all these fevers inside the offices, that would break out into full-scale rumbles between writers.
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With Barack Obama as president and the super-happening Michelle Obama as First Lady, you would think a new tone, a new tune, a kicky new jazzitude, would have entered Washington discourse, but it remains a landlocked island unto itself, held captive by its tribal fevers.
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Mitt Romney - he had a Rock Hudson thing going, shoeblack hair and a well-hung resume, but even for a shameless, position-shifting phony he seemed a trifle insincere.
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On August 28, 2010, Fox News messiah Glenn Beck hosted a 'Restoring Honor' revival meeting featuring sexy guest star Sarah Palin, much as Bob Hope would roll out Raquel Welch in white go-go boots on his U.S.O. tours to give our fighting men a morale lift in their khakis.
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What a turnaround in sentiment 'Glee' exemplifies. It was only a few years ago that pursuing the dream of a Broadway career or cabaret stardom relegated some poor yearning dope to a lavender ghetto of losers, self-deluders, and social rejects.
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It's one thing to fight for what you believe in, another thing to fight for what others believe in.
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Like 'Twin Peaks,' '24,' 'Mad Men,' and 'The Sopranos' before it, 'Downton Abbey' enriches the iconography and collective lore of pop culture. It replenishes the stream.
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Historically, Hollywood comedy has arrived in skinny envelopes. From fence post Buster Keaton to herky-jerky Jerry Lewis to wiry nerve-bundle Woody Allen to hung-loose Richard Pryor to whippy contortionist Jim Carrey, its comics and clowns have tended to be sliced thin and bendable.
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Popular culture no longer craves archangels and new dawns. Pop culture traffics in vampires and deads of night.
James Wolcott
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People want somebody to be a daredevil, even if they're not going to be a daredevil themselves.
James Wolcott