Talk:Jay Nordlinger

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[edit] Freedom?

Jay Nordlinger does not have any real interest in democracy or human freedom. I've yet to see him write a single column that castigates brutal, freedom-hating, right-wing US-supported regimes with as much zeal as he has (rightly) castigated that of the brutal, freedom-hating dictator Fidel Castro.

Unless Nordlinger is willing to denounce tyranny in general, and not just tyranny that damages the interests of the class that he identifies with, he should not pretend that he cares about freedom and human rights. To him, freedom means freedom for the rich and privileged to do whatever they like to the poor and powerless. But that's not what the word actually means. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.108.77.97 (talk • contribs) 00:30, 26 October 2005.

Do you have any examples of regimes he won't write about? The only one that I can think of would be Pakistan. From what I remember reading I think he cares about democracy/freedom about everywhere. Notyouravgjoe 22:46, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Questions re Music Criticism

User 69.251.245.50 (talk · contribs) added the following to the article (the first edit from that IP address). I've moved it here for discussion. 22:35, 12 October 2006 (UTC) 05:51, 9 October 2006

Does Nordlinger have any musical training? His music reviews rarely contain very much, if any, analysis of the music itself, other than vacuous platitudes and background noise? See this writeup, for example: http://www.nysun.com/article/36789

"Sometimes his playing was simply flabby, or too aggressive."

Which sections were flabby, which aggressive?

"And he had trouble with his passagework, which could be clumsy or sluggish."

What passagework?

"May I offer a side note? Fou Ts'ong is a head-nodder. That is, he nods his head perpetually as he plays. I must say, I've seldom heard a really good pianist who does this. Perhaps the most prominent head-nodder today is Evgeny Kissin. Kiddies, I admonish you: If you get into the habit of headnodding, stop — before it's too late."

Why does Nordlinger not explain why head-nodding is detrimental to playing piano? Should Fou Ts'ong, indeed all pianists, stop head-nodding because Jay Nordlinger thinks it is unseemly? What does this have to do with music? Why is anyone paying this man to be a music critic?

As best I can tell, most of his music criticism involves mere spatterings of adjectives. I rarely see him offer any useful commentary.

As for his political work on National Review, I am only familiar with his Impromptus columns on National Review Online, in which he cites a series long paragraphs from news articles or reader emails and merely appends a sentence fragment or two to each. I cannot determine why anybody pays him for anything. 70.35.38.136 07:47, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

None of his Impromptus columns that I have read bear any resemblance to this description.

For a Nordlinger column that NRO included in their "best of our first 10 years" list, see here.

Cheers, CWC(talk) 22:35, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

See, for example, here. His other work may be meatier (then again, maybe not) but there just isn't any there there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.172.47.206 (talk • contribs)

Well, most of the bullet points in that article have several sentences from Mr Nordlinger, so I still don't agree with you. Which is irrelevant, because what you or I think is WP:Original Research. If anyone finds a citable WP:Reliable Source making that kind of criticism, then we could certainly add it to the article. Cheers, CWC(talk) 10:55, 24 January 2007 (UTC)