Tag Archives: Alice through the Looking Glass

Following Barr Down the Rabbit Hole

By Robin Bates | Published: April 10, 2019

Thursday I haven’t quoted the Alice books for a while, even though in the past I have turned to them many times to capture America’s fractured politics. We are now so far down the rabbit hole, however, or so deep into the looking glass, that Lewis Carroll is must reading. On a general level, we […]

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The Dreamlike Pleasures of Rowing

By Robin Bates | Published: July 31, 2018

In “Alice through the Looking Glass,” boating is a metaphor for life slipping by–unnoticed by Alice but seen as deeply tragic by Carroll.

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Is Trump Running a Red Queen Race?

By Robin Bates | Published: August 2, 2016

Turning to Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass,” political scientist Jonathan Bernstein says that Donald Trump is in a “Red Queen Race,” forced to be ever more outrageous just to keep the spotlight on himself.

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Media Is Like White Queen: Scream First

By Robin Bates | Published: January 29, 2015

Lewis Carroll’s White Queen, whose hysteria precedes rather than follows traumatic events, anticipates our modern media.

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Rightwing Rewrites Reality

By Robin Bates | Published: July 7, 2011

Today’s Republican right are practitioners of the Humpty Dumpty approach to communication: “I said it very loud and clear. I went and shouted in his ear.” Like Lewis Carroll’s Humpty, they also believe that they can make reality, as Humpty makes words, mean whatever they want it to mean.

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Tweedledum, Tweedledee, and Medi(s)care

By Robin Bates | Published: May 31, 2011

I, however, find all the posturing over Medicare depressing. When the Democrats respond with their own scare tactics, they just become Tweedledee to the Republicans’ Tweedledum.

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Believing 6 Impossibilities before Breakfast

By Robin Bates | Published: May 25, 2011

Slate Magazine recently had a Jacob Weisberg column that invoked Alice through the Looking Glass in talking about the current Republican Party. Lewis Carroll’s Alice books seem indeed to be works for our times.

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