https://pjmedia.com/andrewklavan/feedPJ Media is a leading news site covering culture, politics, faith, homeland security, and more. Our reporters and columnists provide original, in-depth analysis from a variety of perspectives.en-usSun, 12 Apr 2026 02:01:33 -0400<![CDATA[One of my theories about the classic gangster television series The Sopranos is that creator David Chase recognized an important truth about the structure of TV storytelling. In normal stories, a protagonist is placed in a situation that uniquely challenges his character so that in traveling through the arc of the story he is transformed in comic or tragic ways. But in a TV series, the hero&#8217;s character is never really transformed — because otherwise the series would end — and he is doomed to repeat the same actions over and over without surcease. In short, he is in Hell, like the sinners in Dante&#8217;s Inferno who must repeat the same actions forever. Or like Tony Soprano.]]>Mon, 27 Aug 2018 18:40:06 -0400<![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]>https://pjmedia.com/andrew-klavan/2018/08/27/why-are-we-in-media-hell-n181105<![CDATA[The satanic corruption in the Catholic Church is an absolute disaster for Western Civilization: evil bringing scandal to an essential priesthood at a time when our survival depends on rediscovering God. I&#8217;ve addressed this elsewhere.]]>Fri, 17 Aug 2018 08:00:46 -0400<![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]>https://pjmedia.com/andrew-klavan/2018/08/17/its-a-gay-scandal-too-n181103<![CDATA[For years, I have been pointing out that the movies are undergoing a phenomenon that occurs to all moribund art forms: they are separating into content appreciated by intellectuals and content that people like. Art forms go through life cycles, are born, thrive and die just like everything that comes from the hand of mortal man. Sometimes, an art form will have a second flowering, other times it is replaced by a new technology that renders it somehow obsolete. But in any case, at its peak, an art form&#8217;s best work and its most popular work are often one and the same. Michelangelo, Shakespeare and Charles Dickens thrived with both the public and the critics when their art forms were in the flush of health. Willem de Kooning, Beckett and James Joyce were admired by the elite but not the people.]]>Sat, 11 Aug 2018 15:24:26 -0400<![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]>https://pjmedia.com/andrew-klavan/2018/08/11/some-tips-for-the-academy-awards-n181101<![CDATA[Jim Acosta has the sadz. The untalented little man who rudely shouts unimportant questions at important people while in the employ of the ninth most trusted name in news out of ten, got heckled at a Trump rally in Tampa, Florida. Sad panda. The hecklers chanted &#8220;CNN sucks,&#8221; which, okay, is true, but they were none too polite about it.]]>Thu, 02 Aug 2018 18:10:09 -0400<![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]>https://pjmedia.com/andrew-klavan/2018/08/02/hey-media-you-started-it-n181099<![CDATA[As a lifelong freelancer, I have been in several high-level negotiations in my life — high-level for me, at least, with my career and my family&#8217;s future on the line. Sometimes I have been protected by agents who did the talking for me, but the final decisions have always been mine. And here is what I&#8217;ve learned.]]>Fri, 27 Jul 2018 04:00:53 -0400<![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]>https://pjmedia.com/andrew-klavan/2018/07/27/trump-negotiates-the-press-lies-n181097<![CDATA[When my son was little, he once wandered by as I was watching a shouting match on Fox News. He paused and asked, &#8220;How come no one on television ever says anything true?&#8221;]]>Thu, 19 Jul 2018 11:04:25 -0400<![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]>https://pjmedia.com/andrew-klavan/2018/07/19/trump-mistaken-democrats-nuts-n181095<![CDATA[Imagine a world in which leftists, by some magic, were unable to accuse their political opponents of racism. Racism, sexism, all of the various make-believe phobias — these charges were suddenly somehow off-limits during political discussion. Instead, at all the leftist venues — The New York Times, the TV network news departments, CNN and the rest — the commentators had to accept that their political opponents were people of good will with the best interests of the country at heart. They had to ask themselves — and even possibly ask actual conservatives — what it was about border security that seemed important to them, why social spending might be destructive, why Islam might be incompatible with western thought, why teachers&#8217; unions were impeding the rise of the poor and so on.]]>Mon, 02 Jul 2018 13:46:26 -0400<![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]>https://pjmedia.com/andrew-klavan/2018/07/02/the-toxic-race-mongering-of-the-left-n181091<![CDATA[The left doesn&#8217;t like the rule of law much. If they legally lose an election, they take to the streets as if some injustice had been done to them. If we enforce our border laws, they become hysterical and try to intimidate and bully public officials. If they can&#8217;t get a law passed by constitutional means, they are perfectly happy to use regulation to exert extra-legal control over the citizenry.]]>Wed, 27 Jun 2018 17:06:25 -0400<![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]>https://pjmedia.com/andrew-klavan/2018/06/27/leftist-justices-dont-like-the-law-n181089<![CDATA[While re-reading Aristotle’s Politics, I stumbled on this peculiarly relevant passage about whether a city-state should build a “beautiful” wall to keep out invaders. It is translated from the Greek by Spencer Klavan (@spencerklavan).]]>Fri, 22 Jun 2018 06:30:55 -0400<![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]>https://pjmedia.com/andrew-klavan/2018/06/22/aristotle-build-the-wall-n181087<![CDATA[Despite misleading headlines, the inspector general&#8217;s report on the FBI&#8217;s investigation into Hillary Clinton&#8217;s emails shows a powerful law enforcement agency hobbled by bias and dishonesty. The press has seized on the IG&#8217;s statement that he &#8220;did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative decisions we reviewed.&#8221; But that is simply Inspector Generalese for, &#8220;No one confessed or left a paper trail.&#8221;]]>Fri, 15 Jun 2018 10:50:48 -0400<![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]>https://pjmedia.com/andrew-klavan/2018/06/15/justice-leadership-is-not-coming-clean-n181086<![CDATA[Two recent celebrity suicides have highlighted the fact that the suicide rate has skyrocketed since the turn of the century, up a startling 25 percent between 1999 and 2016. The typical media reaction to this is to sentimentalize the deaths of the celebrities while making grand pronouncements about What&#8217;s Wrong with Society. The God people declare we have turned away from God, the family people decry the breakdown of the family, the government people wail about the lack of programs to help the mentally distressed and so on. And it&#8217;s possible that some or all of them have a point.]]>Sun, 10 Jun 2018 10:57:17 -0400<![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]>https://pjmedia.com/andrew-klavan/2018/06/10/a-modest-observation-about-suicide-n181084<![CDATA[A farce is a comedy marked by buffoonery and crude, ludicrously impossible events. So is the Democratic party.]]>Sun, 03 Jun 2018 23:29:53 -0400<![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]>https://pjmedia.com/andrew-klavan/2018/06/03/the-democrats-descend-into-farce-n181082<![CDATA[In general, I&#8217;m a free speech purist. I think you should be able to say any damn thing you please. But that doesn&#8217;t mean you should be able to say it anywhere and anytime. I think police should be allowed to remove hecklers who prevent an audience from hearing the speaker they came to hear, or haul away a diner who stands up in a restaurant and starts spewing curses at the Martians in his fillings. I deplore companies that fire or punish employees for expressing their ideas on their own time, even though it&#8217;s legal to do so. But I don&#8217;t think those companies have to tolerate such speech in the workplace or when it might reasonably appear to be an expression of the company&#8217;s point of view.]]>Fri, 25 May 2018 11:22:55 -0400<![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]>https://pjmedia.com/andrew-klavan/2018/05/25/trump-moves-the-narrative-football-n181080<![CDATA[American journalists hate Donald Trump so much they have become exactly what he says they are: the purveyors of fake news.]]>Fri, 18 May 2018 05:00:48 -0400<![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]>https://pjmedia.com/andrew-klavan/2018/05/18/journalists-hatred-for-trump-is-destroying-them-n181077<![CDATA[Your culture is my underpants.]]>Fri, 04 May 2018 10:28:26 -0400<![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]>https://pjmedia.com/andrew-klavan/2018/05/04/your-culture-is-my-underpants-n181075<![CDATA[This week, Donald Trump ended the Korean War. Kanye West gave us a lesson in political realism and courage. &#8220;America&#8217;s Dad&#8221; was convicted of being a serial rapist. And the United Kingdom celebrated the birth of a royal child while decreeing the death of a commoner&#8217;s child, causing me to say a little prayer of thanks to the farmers of Lexington-Concord.]]>Sat, 28 Apr 2018 09:21:13 -0400<![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]><![CDATA[2018]]><![CDATA[Culture]]><![CDATA[Television]]>https://pjmedia.com/andrew-klavan/2018/04/28/the-little-tragedy-of-hank-azaria-n181073<![CDATA[This is a country of 325-million people. If two guys getting tossed out of a coffee shop is news, then things in Donald Trump&#8217;s America must be going pretty damned well.]]>Fri, 20 Apr 2018 11:04:19 -0400<![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]>https://pjmedia.com/andrew-klavan/2018/04/20/black-coffee-starbucks-story-trash-n181071<![CDATA[If you&#8217;re too ungrateful to thank God for living in America, at least you can thank Him for the fact that you&#8217;re not living in the imaginations of our journalists and commentators. Good golly! The catastrophes going on in those dank and fetid places would be just terrible if they were actually happening in real life.]]>Sat, 14 Apr 2018 04:15:50 -0400<![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]>https://pjmedia.com/andrew-klavan/2018/04/14/thank-god-dont-live-mind-journalist-n181069<![CDATA[If anyone should hold a grudge against Kevin Williamson, it&#8217;s me. He was relatively obscure the first time I met him. We were on a bus going to join an NRO cruise. But I realized within about a minute that I was talking to a brilliant and, more importantly, cultured man. So when he said I should read David Foster Wallace&#8217;s Infinite Jest, I believed him and I did.]]>Sun, 08 Apr 2018 08:20:58 -0400<![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]>https://pjmedia.com/andrew-klavan/2018/04/08/kevin-williamson-atlantic-no-excuse-n181067<![CDATA[This column has, on occasion, been disparaging toward American journalism, but only because it is now populated by the biggest bunch of knuckleheads ever to be assembled outside of Knucklehead City on the planet Knucklehead. Remember the sitcom news anchor Ted Baxter with the big voice and the slick haircut and minuscule IQ? Well, if you added the emotional stability of a three-year-old having a temper tantrum, you would have your typical American journalist and commentator, not just on cable but at the networks and newspapers too. I could lasso a gorilla, give him a lobotomy, and teach him to do the job better than these clowns in fifteen minutes.]]>Thu, 05 Apr 2018 09:03:52 -0400<![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]>https://pjmedia.com/andrew-klavan/2018/04/05/american-journalists-hysterical-knuckleheads-n181065