Blame Canada

C’mon, Canada. I thought you were on the side of the angels, with your sensible health-care system, your clean and polite cities, your excellent comedy chops. (I’ll even forgive you poutine.) And then I see this in your National Post. The writer, Diane Francis, begins by making the easy-to-swallow argument that all discussion of global …

You’re Not Going to Wear That, Are You?

Spent some weekend time shopping for holiday gifts, and yet again, I have been struck by the spectacular awfulness of most baby clothes. Who decided that the gender-specific appliqué is the only appropriate way to decorate a tiny outfit? Walk through the boys’ racks, and all you see are little footballs, hockey sticks, puppies, and …

All Unhappy Families Are Unhappy in Different Ways. But This One’s Mostly Just Annoying.

Yesterday’s New York Times Magazine cover story was the sort of thing that inspires a lot of eye-rolling. Elizabeth Weil’s story was ostensibly about attempting to submit a decent marriage to counseling and therapy, to see if things might improve. What readers got instead was a shapeless noodle of a story that felt like a …