Archives for October 2004

A reader writes: This is a non-apochryphal, verifiable story. A fine classical pianist of my acquaintance went under the knife a month or so ago. Just before the anesthetic took effect, she looked up at her surgeon and said: “If I don’t make it through this, promise me one thing.” “What is it, Sonia?” “That […]

Take a tip from David Hackworth, whose “Memo for the President-Elect” makes these recommendations: + Immediately fire SecDef Donald Rumsfeld, all of his Pentagon senior civilian assistants and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers.+ Replace Rumsfeld with retired Gen. Anthony Zinni and give this tough, smart, proven leader a free hand to […]

Harry’s Bar in Paris, famous as an American tourist hangout and for sponsoring the International Imitation Hemingway Contest, also runs a Straw Vote for president. It began in 1924, and it’s supposed to have been wrong only once — in 1976, when Carter beat Ford. If this year’s vote holds up, John Kerry will be the next president. (The tally was 54 percent for […]

Low Culture wants you. The Web site, which covers politics and entertainment, has 10 available positions. It is seeking a Publisher, a Pastry Chef, a Writer (Housekeeping and Cleaning), a Token Hot Girl, an Animal Handler, a Joke Explainer, a List Compiler, a Resident Homosexual, an Agent Provocateur (French), and a Dance Operative. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Fully expected: This endorsement from The New York Times: “John Kerry for President.” It makes the case most of all with a dead-on indictment of the Ignoramus in Chief. But here’s a pleasant surprise from a totally Republican newspaper: “Why We Cannot Endorse President Bush For Re-Election.” As stewards of the [Tampa] Tribune’s editorial voice, we […]

In the florid words of my good friend Repulski: “A great and testy old fart steps up to the plate in those worn and dusty spiked shoes before the indifferent crowd. He knocks the spikes against the bat, just to clean the bullshit of old games away, the ugly hard toil of yesteryear, remembering when he […]

Sy Hersh talks about the road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. How come nobody talks about the link between American pop culture and Guantanamo? Oops. Somebody just has. Not in so many words, but you could infer it from today’s report in The New York Times about interrogators at Guantanamo who used Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the Machine and Eminem to torture their […]

Sandy Dijsktra has been called an über agent as much for the passion she brings to her projects as for the authors she represents. Apparently her passion also extends to politics. The other day her authors — among them Amy Tan, Mike Davis, Susan Faludi, Maxine Hong Kingston, Peggy Orenstein, John Richardson, Kate White, Karen […]

Taking their title from Robert Schumann’s artsong, “Mondnacht,” Abbie Conant and William Osborne have created a short video commentary on the torture at Abu Ghraib. It is a deeply felt editorial imbued with sorrowful beauty. It uses Schumann’s music, the “radiant voice” of soprano Barbara Bonney and the pianio accompaniment of Vladimir Ashkenazy to give dignity to the torture victims. It […]

In last night’s third debate, which was supposed to be about domestic issues, I didn’t hear a single mention of oil. Not one word about those three little letters. Yet oil — supply, cost and dwindling geological reserves — is the greatest domestic crisis we are likely to face in this decade: Greater than the deficit, […]

Bob Dylan thought he’d had it. “Many didn’t feel my heart was in it any more,” he says. They were right. He was a burned-out rock star. Then he went into a bar and heard a small jazz band. Suddenly he felt inspired. “It was mostly the singer,” he says. In what’s believed to be […]

Here comes the third debate. As I was saying about the first debate, “Will voters ever get to see what those guys were scribbling so furiously?” I suspected the Ignoramus in Chief was doodling his mantra, “significant progress,” and Kerry his counter-mantra, “four more years of the same.” James Wolcott figures debaters’ notes, in future, […]

A stiff maverick is a hard man to please,” Leon Freilich messages, adding a lovely and appropriate rhyme inspired by yesterday’s item about a Jersey City madam empowered by technology (as predicted, though not mentioned, by this year’s winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics). CALLING ALL GIRLS Belle de nuit,What’s your fee?Belle de jour,More than a […]

A message from Repulski with less than an hour to go: “Can’t face this silly debate. After a disastrous news day like this, if Kerry can’t exploit it the man isn’t qualified to walk poodles on the Upper East Side.” EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Will the wonders of technology never cease? Two mavericks in economics — Edward C. Prescott, 63, and Finn E. Kydland, 60 — were just awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize for demonstrating that “innovative technology” and some other stuff “play a much greater role in causing booms and recession than fluctuations in demand.” In other words, […]

How many gaffes and factual errors will be heard in tomorrow night’s third presidential debate? It’s anyone’s guess. But our hothead Ignoramus in Chief is sure to make the most of his chance to display more of them. Which reminds me: Steven Lubet, a constitutional law professor at Northwestern University, picked up on the ninny’s […]

“American authorities have shut down 20 independent media centres by seizing their British-based webservers,” the London Guardian reports this morning. An “American-owned web hosting company” was forced “to hand over two servers” used by “an international media network which covers social justice issues and provides a ‘news-wire,’ to which its users contribute. The websites affected […]