We’ve posted 1033 items since this There’s too much at stake to flat-out quit. Not that we kid ourselves about the megamighty impact we’ve made. But until we get through a few offline projects, which will take the rest of the winter, blogging will have less urgency for us. In other words, it won’t be […]
Archives for January 2006
MEMORIAL FOR MARY, AU REVOIR
Mary Beach — the painter, translator and writer (and an old friend and literary collaborator) — died last Thursday. She was 86. Her son, Jeffrey Beach, tells me she died of cancer. It had been diagnosed several months ago. She is also survived by a daughter, Pamela, and a granddaughter, Elizabeth, both of Cherry Valley, […]
FIRST-RATE MIND OR FIRST-RATE MEDIA HOG?
The chat began with a question posed by Felix Rohatyn, a former U.S. Ambassador to France: What would Alexis de Tocqueville say if he came back and saw America today? Bernard-Henri Lévy’s reply, given his own admiration for America, was not surprising: Tocqueville “would feel comfortable” except — and it was the big exception — […]
RANDOM LUNCH
It was all off the record. So I can’t tell you what The truth is — and I hate to say this — nothing she said broke any news, nothing you wouldn’t already know from reading the press, so there’s nothing to tell even if her remarks had been on the record, except that it […]
WSJ EDITOR HANGS MORE THAN HIS HAT
interviewed Bernard-Henri Lévy, right, about his new book, Given the fact that Lévy is Jewish, and mindful of the historically anti-Semitic caricature of hook-nosed Jews, we’d say Varadarajan’s insinuating description — the only actual physical detail offered about the author, by the way, amid a ton of color on his French accent, inherited money and […]
FOLLOWING THE ‘RAT LINES’
While a new translation of Eli Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir, being played out in a federal court in San Francisco, where a former U.S. Army intelligence officer has testified that the man who became Pope Paul VI “helped hide and launder property that had been stolen” from Nazi victims in Yugoslavia during World War II. Ustashe […]
ASSISTANCE RENDERED
Did the producers of NBC’s cop show headline-making decision about assisted suicide? We don’t think so. But tonight’s episode, Yeah, yeah, we know. The court’s 6-to-3 ruling was focused on physician-assisted, not girlfriend-assisted, suicide. Just the same, before the ruling, we told our NAJP* colleague Carter Harris, left, who wrote the episode, that we’d promote […]
TO OUR PIPSQUEAK LEADERS
Martin Luther King Jr.’s you can listen to excerpts here, you realize again not just how much America lost when he was assassinated, but how much it needs him now. Substitute the word “Iraq” for “Vietnam”: “Globalizing King’s Legacy,” ought to be required reading for the pipsqueak leaders of our time, when “spitballs pass for […]
D’ARCY DROPS THE OTHER SHOE
according to the New York Post. The suit claims “he was slandered for his report on a Nazi-looted painting once displayed at the museum,” the Post’s David Hafetz writes. Last July more than a dozen items posted since last March. — Tireless Staff of Thousands Postscript: Better headline: “D’Arcy Sorta Drops The Other Shoe?” He […]
BAD BARGAINS
We’re running out of ways to say it ourselves. So we quote (again) from the editorial page of an institution that represents the established order but hasn’t let that get in the way of expressing the truth about the “The Imperial Presidency at Work.” Which reminds us of our post of more than a year […]
JE M’AMUSE
By way of introduction: I typed and retyped roughly 50 words in columns from the beginning of several texts. I then proceded to read across the columns and typed them again, trusting the words only. They showed me writers who were fed up with Reality. This was the way I saw it long ago: “A […]
WONKETTE WHO?
his review of “Dog Days,” the new novel by Ana Marie Cox: Ana Marie Cox made her name writing a political blog, Wonkette.com. I’ve never seen it. As far as I can tell, no one has. Admitting reading political blogs is like admitting watching daytime TV. Christopher Buckley writes in
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE LINKS
How about this tasty morsel? We’re dumbfounded.
REASON WITHOUT THE RHYME
rhyme and reason made good sense to us. That’s why we posted it. This morning’s New York Times offers an endorsement with its lead editorial, Though it lacks Leon Freilich’s meter, the editorial gives more than enough reason to reject Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court —
COME FLY WITH US
Edward Allen has. He’s four years old. James Moore, who’s considerably older, has been Clayton Patterson, a Lower East Side activist friend of ours with a long history of arrests, tells us “being targeted is scary. I’m not sure people understand this.” That’s experience talking, and of course they don’t. On Nov. 2, 2004,
WORDS PROTEST
Since the judge was sought to distance himself from conservative political opinions he once held (LA Times) and — Leon Freilich *Der Gropenfuhrer either wasn’t listening or didn’t believe Alito when he professsed that no one is “above the law.” For two decades Der Grope has been riding around on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle “even though […]
A HARD-BOILED OPERA
Our old friend Mugs McGuiness did us another one of his many favors. When he heard about our ‘puter meltdown he sent over a box of used books, figuring that would cheer us up. Which it did. The man has fine taste in litrichur. We picked out of the box a slim Penguin paperback with […]