The attack on “a disingenuous filmmaker” appears in the prepared text of Sen. John McCain’s speech last night to the Republican National Convention. Did he miscalculate by not knowing, as he claims, that the object of his scorn was in the house? Did he not realize his attack would boomerang, as I believe it did, for the TV […]
Archives for August 2004
WINNING ISN’T EVERYTHING
What does the Nincompoop in Chief really mean? It all depends on the nuance of “I don’t think you can win it,” his statement about the war on terrorism in answer to a question from the “Today” show’s Matt Lauer. Now the AP reports: In a speech to the national convention of the American Legion, Bush said, “We meet today […]
REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF
Because we’re recovering from the anemic gathering of protesters in Central Park that followed yesterday’s massive anti-Bush march, beautifully described by Robert D. McFadden as “a roaring two-mile river of demonstrators,” we leave today’s commentary to pop expert Ryan McGee’s running account of the really important stuff: last night’s MTV Video Music Awards. This not […]
THE RUMMY AND THE DUMMY
They’re two for the books. Both are in denial and cannot be believed. Either they’re born liars or they’ve learned how to lie with impunity. Or, to be charitable, they’re simply ignorant of their own policies and decisions. THE RUMMY After a week of news stories with these headlines about the Abu Ghraib interrogation-cum-torture scandal, […]
HOW TO GET RICH — NOT
Message from the Op-Ed editor of a major European newspaper: You have obviously not received the e-mail where I told you that you will not be paid, due to customs regulations within the European Union and to the U.S. Patriot Act. But we will send a nice tablecloth with our company logo. The guy has […]
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
DAVID HOCKNEY: DRAWING BY OTHER MEANS
Now that David Hockney’s controversial theory about the use of lenses and optical devices by Renaissance painters is being disputed again — this time by computer experts, as reported yesterday by the Sunday Herald in Scotland and today by The New York Times — it may be worth revisiting a lecture he gave on the […]
WISHING IT WERE NOT SO
A friend writes: Was one of Kerry’s wounds to a vital kernel of the frontal lobe? He and the feckless fuckers in his braintrust are handing the country to the insects, and those hungry critters will devour what little of value remains. Quite an achievement. Maybe another medal for the chest of a man with […]
NOW FOR SOME MORE SCIENCE-FICTION REALITY
Remember the mysterious black barge anchored in the Hudson River between the Manhattan and Jersey shores during our Code Orange New Year eight months ago? Well, the barge is back. Make that two of them. And just in time for the National Republican Convention at Madison Square Garden, which will be protected by “the largest armada of land, […]
STILL LAUGHING
How cozy it all is: Rummy Boy’s “leadership of the Pentagon has been weighed by a jury of his peers and found somewhat wanting,” The Washington Post reported today. But the conclusion of “the blue-ribbon panel” — appointed by Rummy Boy to review the role of the Pentagon in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and led […]
WEATHERING THE SHORTCUTS?
Let’s be grateful that Louis Menand did not become a brain surgeon. If he had, he probably would never have found the time to apply his scalpel to intellectual history, as he did in his spellbinding best-seller, “The Metaphyical Club,” or as he does in “The Unpolitical Animal,” his dissection of how voters think, in the current New […]
THE BUCK STOPS SOMEWHERE ELSE
But where? The Army’s investigative report of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, to be released this week, names the top U.S. commander in Iraq at the time it all happened — Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez — for leadership deficiencies and failing to deal with rising problems at the prison, according to this morning’s Washington Post. But Sanchez “will […]
BOYCOTT SCOUT
If you’ve never received an email message calling for a boycott or a petition to sign, you’re probably the only one who hasn’t. The latest that came to me said that Germany had decided “to stop all arms sales to Israel,” followed by similar bans by other European countries, and asked for a retaliatory boycott […]
WILL THE REVOLUTION BE CYBERIZED?
No pushover, book critic Jonathan Yardley takes the measure of Hunter S. Thompson this way: “Anything he writes is worth reading, even when it radiates serious signs of having been composed under the influence of something rather more hallucinating than office coffee.” The occasion is Yardley’s review in yesterday’s Washington Post of Thompson’s latest book, […]
DON’T MAKE SY HERSH LAUGH
Systemic failure, the fondly brandished euphemism for failure to take personal responsibility, came in for more bashing yesterday. This time it was the Bush administration’s former weapons inspector David Kay who did the bashing. In what Philip Shenon reports this morning as “uncharacteristically caustic remarks,” Kay pointed out that “until people and organizations are held responsible” […]
THE WRONG WAY
Anyone with a brain who has ever worked in a corporate setting can appreciate Corinne Maier’s complaints that 1) “corporations are not meritocracies,” and 2) “work is organized a little like the court of Louis XIV, very complicated and very ritualized so that people feel they are working effectively when they are not.” Maier’s critique […]
NOT JUST A BLACK THING
A friend writes: My own Golan Cipel has kept me in stitches for the last 35 years. Over breakfast he alluded to the Newsweek article on Jim McGreevey, “Gov. McGreevey’s affair to forget.” He said it should have been subtitled: “The Down Low — It’s Not Just a Black Thing Anymore.” [See the Down low […]