TOO MANY WRONGS TO MAKE HIM RIGHT

The Nincompoop in Chief has been wrong on so much so often -- the war in Iraq and the disastrous post-war situation, finding weapons of mass destruction, finding Osama bin Laden, democratizing Afghanistan, retaining European allies, U.S. foreign policy in general, preventing the spread of nuclear weapons via Pakistan, containing North Korea's nuclear ambitions and now Iran's, the U.S. economy, lost jobs, tax cuts for the rich, privatizing Social Security, the rising cost of Medicare, the high price of drugs, stem-cell research, separation of church and state, abortion, global warming, environmental conservation, corporate corruption -- that if you attack him on everything he's been wrong about, you appear unfocused and you sound diffuse. But if you narrow your attack to only one or two of his mistakes, you give him a pass on all the others. So how do you demonstrate that the ninny has been a disaster on all counts, without giving him a pass on anything, and yet seem clear, on point and forceful? Is it not weird -- to believe the polls --that the ninny's failures are working in his favor? Any sentient human being would expect the opposite. Is the American electorate sentient? Will it surprise us? Are the pollsters wrong? Beats the shit out of me.

September 29, 2004 10:26 AM |

Categories:

Me Elsewhere

'WILD SIDE' STILL ROCKS 

Nelson Algren was one of the great American authors of the 20th century, it is no exaggeration to say, and among the most neglected. Consider his underrated classic, "A Walk on the Wild Side." The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Avenue (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

BUSTER KEATON REVISITED 
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. "This book is merely a fan's notes," Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you're David Thomson, who set the standard with Rosebud, his penetrating rumination on the life and career of Orson Welles, which was nothing if not a distillation of every obsessive thought he ever had about the myth and the man and all his movies.
LAUREN BACALL, STILL SALTY AT 80 
When Lauren Bacall writes that her singing voice ranges "somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space," she's being candid and funny. It's not every stage star with two Tony Awards for best actress in a musical whose vocal talent offers so little promise. (OK, Harvey Fierstein excepted.) Still less would one admit it.
THE STARS ACCORDING TO BOGDANOVICH 
Peter Bogdanovich's superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews -- a sequel to Who the Devil Made It, his interviews of top film directors -- begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us just how intimate the author's connection to Hollywood's greatest has been. But contrary to what we've come to expect from dime-a-dozen celebrities and celebrity interviews not worth two cents, the tale avoids bromidic egotism and journalistic platitudes.
HERMAN WOUK'S LATEST 
It's hard to say which comes off worse in Herman Wouk's latest novel, his first in a decade: the U.S. Congress or the American press. "A Hole in Texas" offers the choice between two emblematic stereotypes: a red-faced opportunist who heads the House Armed Services Committee and a mustachioed investigative reporter for the Washington Post.
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This page contains a single entry by published on September 29, 2004 10:26 AM.

DOUBLE-TWISTING BACK FLIPS was the previous entry in this blog.

TURNING CULTURE INTO KITSCH is the next entry in this blog.

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