This Week’s Links

The Trash Princess: Why Americans love to hate Paris Hilton by Kay S. Hymowitz

Well, hating Paris Hilton is fun: Americans always enjoy a good sneer at the undeserving and decadent rich. Paris Hilton is our communal dartboard; skewering her gives the American public a chance to reaffirm who we are.

The interview: Robert Pirsig by Tim Adams

The Seventies bestseller Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was the biggest-selling philosophy book ever. But for the reclusive author life was bitter-sweet. Here, he talks frankly about anxiety, depression, the death of his son and the road trip that inspired a classic.

Ideology Has Consequences: Bush rejects the politics of prudence by Jeffrey Hart

Many Republicans must feel like that legendary man at the bar on the Titanic. Watching the iceberg slide by outside a porthole, he remarked, “I asked for ice. But this is too much.” Republicans voted for a Republican and got George W. Bush, but his Republican Party is unrecognizable as the party we have known.

Best Fiction 2006 from the Christian Science Monitor

Best Nonfiction 2006 from the Christian Science Monitor

Noteworthy Children’s and Teen’s Books 2006 from the Christian Science Monitor

To truly honor Christmas, end its status as an official holiday by Mary Jane Wilkie

Returning Dec. 25 to ordinary status would let Christmas be observed for the right reasons . . . I’m not a fanatic atheist or a self-righteous secular humanist. I’m a practicing Christian. But I think Christmas should be stricken from the list of legal holidays in America.

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