NEW ANTONOMASIA POLICY

From here on in we will no longer refer to the current president of the United States as Dear Leader, King George, Georgie Boy, King Georgie Boy, W., Gee Dubya, or by any other antonomasia (lovely, obscure word stolen from William Buckley's letter) except for one: the Liar-in-Chief.

tonto and lone ranger.gif It's time for our change of policy when Paul Krugman can call him an outright liar on this morning's New York Times op-ed page ("Oh, I'm sorry -- was that a rude thing to say?"), and when Frank Rich can diss him with refreshing impudence by channeling Tonto (via Lenny Bruce) on Sunday's op-ed page: "'We will stay the course [in Iraq],' he insistently tells us from his Texas ranch. What do you mean we, white man?"*

*Footnote: The Lone Ranger, in mask, and Tonto are sitting around the camp fire when the Lone Ranger remarks to Tonto that a thousand Indian warriors are bearing down on them and asks him, "What should we do?" to which Tonto replies, "What do you mean we, white man?"

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

Postscript: G.I. Joe in Iraq is Bushed. And you may want to note that "the current president of the United States," as you call the pretender to the plutocratic-evangelistic throne, is, current-wise, AC/DC: Acting Counterfactually as a Disciple of Christ.

-- A Tireless Reader

August 15, 2005 10:29 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.
SAMMY'S WHITE DREAMS 
Four decades ago Lenny Bruce sentenced Sammy Davis Jr. to "30 years in Biloxi," stripping him of "his Jewish star" and "his religious statue of Elizabeth Taylor." Now we have two new biographies of Davis that spring him from ridicule, if not from doubts about his legacy, and restore a measure of dignity to a black entertainer whose huge fame and success never overcame his devout wish -- indeed his lifelong effort -- to be white.
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