Jay Nordlinger: Impromtus
BevK October 20th, 2006
http://article.nationalre…GY5OTdlYTc4Nzk=
If you haven’t discovered the ongoing National Review Online column written by Jay Nordlinger, Impromptus, you’re missing a treat. He always has interesting things to say about politics, the arts, culture, language, and especially about those being held as political prisoners in China and Cuba.
He’s a music critic in addition to being managing editor of National Review. So, we get links to his music reviews in addition to all kinds of interesting tid-bits about people and places.
Examples:
Sandy Koufax was talking the other day. He said his arm still felt “pretty good.” He added, “Hell, I pitched shutouts on two days’ rest. Just think what I’d be able to do after 40 years!”
I didn’t know that this gifted and principled man was so funny, too.
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Let’s have a little language. I was reading a speech by Prof. Harvey Mansfield, titled “A New Feminism.” And he speaks these sentences: “Men . . . have a more abstract sense of importance than women that is also more egoistic. Women may be vain, but men are conceited.”
Now, Mansfield is a careful user of words — so that sent me scurrying (as scurry I can) to discover the distinction, precisely, between “vain” and “conceited.”
For “vain,” I find “excessively proud of one’s appearance or accomplishments; conceited.” For “conceited,” I find “holding or characterized by an unduly high opinion of oneself; vain.” So, they are presented as synonyms. But I nevertheless sniff a distinction, and suspect that Mansfield knows what he’s talking about.
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To JFK Airport, I’m driven by a man from Bangladesh (natch). He was in the towers on 9/11—and he tells me the story of his escape (very dramatic). It reminds me of 9/11, of the WTC, of that day—I have rather forgotten about it, I hate to tell you. (And I have not seen that Pa.-plane movie.) I’ve forgotten about the courage required, and demonstrated.
This fellow, after 9/11, went home to Bangladesh. But he discovered that he had ceased to feel Bangladeshi and had come to feel American, much to his surprise—so he returned to the U.S. Which I applaud: for we need his like. (Then again, so does Bangladesh, and just about every other country.)
Incidentally, the driver describes the person who led him and a clutch of others to safety on 9/11 as “this white man.” I find this sort of interesting—innocent and frank.
