Tag Archives: William Barr

Robert Mueller as Jane Bennet?!

By Robin Bates | Published: May 30, 2019

Friday In The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade explains to femme fatale Bridget O’Shaughnessy why he’s arresting her for the murder of Miles Archer, even though he’s madly in love with her. “When a man’s partner is killed,” he says, “he’s supposed to do something about it.” That’s essentially what Robert Mueller was telling Congress in […]

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Using Jane Austen to Dissect AG Barr

By Robin Bates | Published: May 1, 2019

Thursday The drama surrounding the Mueller Report continues to become more postmodern with every passing day. Or rather, the Trump administration has been trying to render it so. To highlight how Attorney General William Barr is throwing up smokescreens, I turn to my favorite passage from Sense and Sensibility. First, however, let’s note that the […]

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Barr’s Spin, a Restoration Comedy

By Robin Bates | Published: April 19, 2019

Friday I’ll write more extensively about the release of the Barr-redacted Mueller Report next week but a quick note here. When the Attorney General attempted to spin the report prior to its release, thereby functioning as the president’s press agent rather than the country’s chief law enforcement officer, I thought of Dr. Quack in William […]

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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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Kafka Explains Barr’s Mueller Report

By Robin Bates | Published: March 26, 2019

Wednesday In Monday’s essay I suggested Kafka could help Americans negotiate the apparent bad news they are getting from Attorney General William Barr’s summation of the Mueller Report. While (according to Barr) the report did not exonerate the Trump campaign for covering up its relations with Russia when it interfered in the 2016 election, it […]

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Which Narrative Fits Mueller’s Report?

By Robin Bates | Published: March 24, 2019

Monday Two weeks ago I had an interesting interchange with reader Josh Grumet about which narrative would emerge once Robert Mueller submitted his report. While I said that liberals and NeverTrumpers were rooting for a Sherlock Holmes  ending, I feared we would end up with a Samuel Beckett non-conclusion. Josh, meanwhile, compared Trump supporters to […]

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