Jeff Jacoby
Jeff Jacoby
Home  |  Bio  |  Mobile Site  |  Follow @FacebookTwitter
Pundicity: Informed Opinion and Review
 

Latest Articles

The Wendy's beef was a nothingburger

March 17, 2024  •  The Boston Globe

I'VE NEVER had a meal at Wendy's. But the fast-food chain boasts 12 million loyalty members and had revenue of more than $2 billion in 2023, so it clearly knows something about selling hamburgers (and chicken nuggets and fries and Frosty milkshakes). To keep growing its sales, Wendy's, like any retail company, has to get the price right — high enough to make a profit, low enough to attract customers, deft enough to account for the competition, flexible enough to respond to shifts in demand.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

 

Only Haitians can fix Haiti

March 13, 2024  •  The Boston Globe


In a tweet on X Sunday morning, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador commented on the hellish collapse of Haiti into a frenzy of murder, anarchy, and gang rule.

"We can fix it," Bukele wrote. "But we'll need a UN [Security Council] resolution, the consent of the host country, and all the mission expenses to be covered," he wrote.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

 

How to 'feel better' about Ukraine (according to John Kerry)

March 12, 2024  •  Arguable

I HAVE followed John Kerry's career for 40 years, but I still cringe at things that come out of his mouth. Last Tuesday, while preparing to step down as the Biden administration's climate envoy, Kerry told journalists that people would "feel better" about Vladimir Putin's savage and bloody invasion of Ukraine if only Russia would lower its carbon-dioxide emissions.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

 

There was nothing heroic about Aaron Bushnell's self-immolation

March 10, 2024  •  The Boston Globe

The United States is in the throes of a grim suicide epidemic. More than 50,000 Americans died by their own hand last year, the highest number ever recorded and the most grievous aspect of a mental health collapse that the surgeon general calls "the defining public health crisis of our time." In the face of so much despair, only a ghoul would lavish praise on someone who violently takes his own life, let alone suggest that he was gallant or courageous for doing so.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

 

Navalny is gone, but the 'virus of freedom' is spreading

March 6, 2024  •  The Boston Globe

NATAN SHARANSKY, the legendary Soviet refusenik who survived nine years in the Gulag, has often described the three social divisions that exist in dictatorships ruled by fear.

There are "true believers" who embrace the ideology of the regime and loyally support its policies. There are "dissidents" who reject the government's claims, condemn its repression, and speak the truth despite the risk of punishment. But the largest group is composed of "doublethinkers" — people who know that their nation is ruled by criminals and liars but are scared to say so openly. Doublethinkers engage in continual self-censorship, parroting the official line in public and revealing their true beliefs only with family and trusted friends.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

home   |   biography   |   articles   |   media coverage   |   spoken   |   audio/video   |   announcements   |   mailing list   |   mobile site