Mr. Nugent Crashes the Blogroll

Thanks to the good folks over at Crooked Timber, I've discovered the latest addition to my blogroll, The Phil Nugent Experience. (He tackles the question of relation to Ted in his latest post; there is none.)

Nugent writes remarkably long and smart posts (given how often they appear) about a variety of subjects. For instance, an insightful and funny post about the death of Jerry Falwell:

He spent his last several years doing for the left what someone like Ramsey Clark has done for the right: serving as an all-purpose lightning rod, a face that the ACLU or the NAACP or the Humane Society or Toys for Tots could always stick on its literature to make people go, "Whoa, he's still alive!? Gimme a second, I'll grab my checkbook." He even made the rehabilitation of Larry Flynt possible; the makers of the 1996 movie The People vs. Larry Flynt were canny enough to understand that, whatever the actual Flynt's trespasses, he could be presented as a hero to right-thinking people so long as he was defined as the alternative to Falwell.

And a refreshingly thoughtful piece in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, in which he describes the heartbreaking death of a friend when a burglar used her own gun against her. He goes on to write:

Stories like this one have a lot to do with my failure to share the indignation of John Derbyshire and others who have famously complained that it says something dire about our society that more people didn't try to "fight back" when the Virginia Tech psycho started killing people. I know that Derbyshire and his allies on this one must also be basing their opinions on memories of personal stories that had a strong impact on their notions about what the world is like. I just worry that in their case, to an embarrassing degree, the personal stories in question were experienced while parked in front of HBO at one in the morning and starred Chuck Norris.

And finally (for now), a terrific piece inspired by Mother's Day which -- Scott at Crooked Timber is right -- has to be read in its entirety.