Author Archives: Dwight D. Sutherland, Jr.
Dwight: The Coddling of the American Mind or…
How Good Intentions & Bad Ideas Are setting Up a Generation for Failure Of all the non-fiction books I’ve read on politics and social policy this one is at the same time both one of the most satisfying and yet … Continue reading
Hearne: Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Social Justice Yard Sign
They ubiquitous, they’re banal, they’re annoying… Perhaps you’ve seen ’em. If you live in the burbs – Brookside, Prairie Village, Mission Hills, Leawood, Platte City or Parkville -I think you know what I’m talking about. Those ubiquitous, post George Floyd, post riots, post … Continue reading
Sutherland: Useful Idiots – KC Edition – Mainstream Coalition Meets BLM
Mission Hills’ blow-dried Elmer Gantry, The Right Reverend Robert Meneilly, I first met Russell “Rusty” Leffel 40 plus years ago… A fellow Kansas City lawyer, he had graduated from KU Law four years before me. We were both active in … Continue reading
Sutherland: ‘The Necessary Murder’ — Nelson-Atkins vs KC Cops
“So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.” George Orwell The English poet W.H. Auden went to Spain in 1937 at the outbreak of the civil … Continue reading
Sutherland: Why Not to Rename J.C. Nichols Fountain (Especially Without a Public Vote)
Flashback, anyone? Three years back KCC scribe Dwight Sutherland saddled up to put former Star staffer Steve Kraske in his place for suggesting Kansas City take Country Club Plaza developer J.C. Nichols name off the iconic fountain just east of the … Continue reading
Sutherland: The Definitive Craig Glazer Sendoff
I’ve spent some time thinking about the “was Craig Glazer really ‘Harley’” mystery… And I’ve come down finally on the “no” side of that argument after talking with several people who knew Craig well. First of all, the evidence for the … Continue reading
Sutherland: The Worst Feeling In The World
In June of 1967, I was a fourteen year old, living with my parents in Overland Park… We were watching the Kansas City Athletics baseball team on television one Friday evening when someone called from the Leawood Police Department. My dad … Continue reading
Sutherland: KC Mayor Funk’s Wife Gloria Unleashes
G-L-O-R-I-A… Hearne asked me to review Gloria Squitiro‘s new book “May Cause Drowsiness and Blurred Vision.” It’s the first volume of the memoirs by the wife of Mark Funkhauser (hereinafter “Funk”), the Mayor of Kansas City, Missouri from 2007 to … Continue reading
Sutherland: The Best of Times, Worst of Times: A Tale of Two Hollywoods
Time flies when you’re having fun… Reading the novels of Anthony Trollope, an English writer of the 19th century, one is struck by how different society is nowadays from his era. It’s actually not that remote in time from our … Continue reading
Michael Lynch: Life Imitating Art
(Now it can be told…Michael Lynch – who died two weeks ago – is a Kansas City native and friend of Dwight Sutherland. He wrote this story two years ago but it was never published owing to a dispute over … Continue reading
Sutherland: Dear Star Editorial Board, Anybody Home?
October 19, 2018 Colleen Nelson Editorial Page Editor, K.C. Star 1601 McGee Kansas City, MO 64108 Re: Star Editorial Board Dear Ms. Nelson: I have been a reader of the Star for over 50 years. With my lifelong interest in … Continue reading
Sutherland: The Best Gift Ever
When I was 12 years old I stayed home sick from school one time… My mother brought me (along with hot soup and cold medicine) plenty of reading material. I still have the books, which followed me through many a … Continue reading
Sutherland: ‘The Phantom Thread’ – Masterpiece in a Minor Key
After a limited run in Kansas City, what Daniel Day-Lewis has said will be his final film has now been released on DVD… It’s his second collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson as director and with music by Johnny Greenwood, of … Continue reading
Sutherland: Death Star II – The Newspaper of Record’s New Editorial Board
One of the best expositions of the way political journalism can be misdirected towards base ends is George Orwell’s essay, “Politics and The English Language.” It contains the following gems: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful . … Continue reading
Sutherland: I’d Die for You and Other Lost Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The publication of this collection of eighteen “lost” short stories represents a mile marker-if not a capstone-in the field of Fitzgerald scholarship. As I’ve said in a prior column, finding and publishing an undiscovered work by a literary great can … Continue reading
Sutherland: The Hypocrisy of Steve Kraske & The Kansas City Star
The progressive mindset has long since taken an adversarial posture to society… In fact, the surest way to establish one’s street cred with other members of the liberal/left is to attack the very legitimacy of our country’s traditions and institutions. … Continue reading
Sutherland: Thought Police @ The Door (Or At least The Downtown Marriott)
Occasionally you’ll read something so powerful and timely it helps you understand things you only partially grasped before… I previously mentioned an essay by a retired Boston University professor,Angelo Codevilla. In the Fall 2016 issue of the Claremont Review of … Continue reading
Sutherland: Pembroke, The Hilltop, Cool Guys, Class Acts & Ruling Class Heroes (Part Deux)
Every school has what the alums regard as a Golden Age… A period when students, faculty, and administration were working in unison to produce a good education for its graduates, with lasting memories and friendships as happy by-products of that … Continue reading
Sutherland: How Wrong Can You Get, Harley?
I have never claimed to be omniscient in political matters… Although politics is my spectator sport, which I follow the way many people do football, basketball, or baseball. There are just too many wild cards, too many variables that can … Continue reading
Sutherland: (Democratic) Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
One of the all-time classic Twilight Zone episodes starred William Shatner, as a salesman who had suffered a nervous breakdown on a commercial airline flight… After six months’ confinement in a sanatorium, his wife arranges to have him released and … Continue reading