Archives for November 2003

Our Maximum Leader’s secret mission to Iraq, described as bold even by some of his critics, had all the trappings of a novelty act. Anyone who believes for a minute that the White House arranged it for the troops is living on another planet. The lights-out landing, Our Maximum Leader in the cockpit of Air […]

Excellent word comes from ABC News, if it holds. A report about Frederick, the Imbabazi Orphanage artist and photographer, is scheduled for Thanksgiving on “PrimeTime Thursday” (10 p.m. ET, 9 p.m. CT). His hands were amputated during the Rwanda genocide of 1994 and have since been replaced by prosthetics with help from supporters of the […]

Jeannette Walls, the gossip columnist for MSNBC.com, complained yesterday in her newsletter that there were “nine camera crews from Japan alone” covering Michael Jackson’s arrest in handcuffs. I wonder if her own editors ever read her newsletter. MSNBC.com’s entertainment section gave the Japanese a run for their money with eight stories in a row: “Jackson […]

I’ve overlooked the Stella Awards for too long. There have been so many bogus stories about them on the Web that I simply dismissed them. The Stella Awards, if you don’t know, are named after 79-year-old Stella Liebeck, who spilled coffee on herself and successfully sued McDonald’s in 1992. She won $200,000 in compensatory damages (later […]

Magic for a Monday morning: While you’re finishing your coffee, move your mouse over the screen here and here and here. Now it’s time to go to work. What a shame. EAR OPENER This morning also brings news of Ray Kurzweil‘s latest invention: the cybernetic poet, a software program he regards as an aid to […]

“Curse of Youth,” an interesting take on those newspaper tabs for tots, provides a shorthand clue to success: “If you want your newspaper to appeal to young people, you must be willing to print the word ‘fuck.’” Vulgar but true, and here’s the reason: Young people want the world as they see it: without filters. […]

One thing about the upcoming Biennale de Paris seems certain. It’s not going to score points with English speakers. Here’s what the latest biennale bulletin has to say, in so-called English translation, about the theme and context of the 2004 exhibition: The BDP is an event favorising an art dynamic with the goal to reveal […]

Late on a Friday afternoon is not the best time to bring this up. Everybody’s probably gone or about to be gone for the weekend. But if you’re still around and online you’ve got to read “The Vanishing Case for War” by Thomas Powers in the current issue of The New York Review of Books. […]

The British sure know how to welcome a guest, especially when it’s Gee Dubya Shrub on a state visit. Let’s not count the fountain water stained red in Trafalgar Square; it’s the scribblers — wise-asses, poets, professors, novelists and the cream of the theater — whose tone set the example. Dear Jorge, Look out! Behind […]

It’s a week of extraordinary commemorations. Today’s big news is the unveiling later this morning of finalists in the 9/11 Memorial Design competition. Families of 9/11 victims saw the designs last night in a preview at the Winter Garden across the street from Ground Zero, where a public exhibition of the designs begins today. Check […]

Several newspapers around the country have started bite-sized tabs for readers who are either still learning to read or have no time to digest the news in larger bites. The Dallas Morning News recently bought into the tabs-for-dummies trend with Quick, which targets what it calls “time-starved” young readers. In fact, it’s not the first Quick to […]

“Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” which opened Friday, was way overrated by the critics. (Admittedly, some were underwhelmed, like Stephen Hunter.) Not being a devotee of Patrick O’Brian’s seafaring novels, the basis for the movie, I’m in no position to judge whether they’ve been faithfully translated to the screen — and couldn’t care less — though […]

The independent 9/11 commission, which had me worried me, just lost so much of its independence you have to wonder whether American democracy has become a charade. The commission’s job — to find out what the Bush administration knew about the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks and whether they could have been prevented — has turned […]

The consensus of a recent panel on Cuba (that Bush would likely veto legislation ending the U.S. ban on travel to Cuba) has been rendered moot. The legislation had been attached to the transportation bill the maximum leader needs to approve, so as to make a veto more difficult for him. But as reported Thursday, “President […]

David Lynch is the world’s “most important filmmaker of the current era.” So say experts for London’s Guardian newspaper, who rated the world’s 40 best directors on the basis of five categories: substance, look, craft, originality and intelligence. Martin Scorsese followed so closely at No. 2 in the ranking — he scored 88 points to […]

I’ve just seen a video that chills the spine: “Ask for Death.” Assuming the edited film clips are sponsored by the Palestinian Authority, as claimed, and that the translations from the Arabic are accurate, it shows what jihadist brain-washing looks like in children: calm belief that masks a terrifying, homicidal rationale for religious suicide attacks. […]

Time for a change of subject. How about whale-spotting? Leon Freilich, bidding fair to be his generation’s Ogden Nash, noticed a news story, “A Whale Stops By, but Doesn’t Stay Long,” that related a bodacious game of hide-and-seek earlier this week off the coast of Far Rockaway. “Reporters raced to the scene,” where a whale […]