Category Archives: Dwight D. Sutherland, Jr.

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Sutherland: The Intellectual Roots of Trumpism

There has been next to no explanation of where the Trump Phenomenon has come from as far as its ideological provenance goes… We have seen some commentators dismiss it as a classic anti-intellectual right-wing populist movement, akin to the George … Continue reading

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Sutherland: Living in the ‘Guilted Age’

I have been fortunate enough to hear Tom Wolfe speak in person about his writing several times over the last 40 years.  The first time was in 1970, when he gave the Carolyn Cockefair Benton Lecture at U.M.K.C. Wolfe talked about … Continue reading

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Sutherland: Fanfare for an Uncommon Man

Two months ago one of the most interesting people in Kansas City was laid to rest after a funeral “fit for a field marshall” (in the words of Alec Guiness from the 1959 classic “Tunes of Glory”)… The life of … Continue reading

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Sutherland: What’s Wrong with America?

People have been asking for my take on this year’s presidential race…  And as someone who’s been a political enthusiast for decades, I should be able to make an informed guess on what’s likely to happen in both parties, right? … Continue reading

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Sutherland: Trump, Sanders? Flip a Coin

The election prospects for this country a year out are appalling in both parties… Both the Republican and the Democratic races have been dominated, at least in terms of excitement and enthusiasm, by demagogues.  We have a Fascist (Donald Trump) … Continue reading

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Sutherland: No More Mr. Nice Guy; Steve Rose Bears Thorns

“Afterwards, you rue the fact that you’ve been so kind.” Adolph Hitler, April 27,1945. (Last recorded remarks) R. Crosby Kemper, III has done an outstanding job running the Kansas City Missouri Public Library. He’s overseen the upgrading of library facilities … Continue reading

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