(Display Name not set)December 2003 Archives

Code Purple: We interrupt the holiday to bring you another alert. Some writers use extra words, high-flown language or roundabout expressions for comic effect, i.e., "the car window shattered" vs. "the car window distributed itself over the front seat." This morning, however, William Safire writes that his "mental tintinnabulation was exacerbated by the roar of unwelcome laudatory correspondence." Come again? Presumably, he's writing tongue in cheek. But his equally unfunny lede -- "A psychopolitical challenge voters will face in the coming year is how to deal with cognitive dissonance" -- makes it hard to tell.

It's Code Orange. We're told not to worry but to keep an eye out for anything suspicious. So we interrupt our vacation to bring you this report from the land of New York City. An observant correspondent writes:

"Nobody believes me, but every single time we drive into the city along the West Side Highway beside the Hudson River, we always, always, always see a huge black barge-like object hovering in the river, just off the shipping channel, about even with 96th Street.

"It seems very odd indeed that there would always be such an object so near to the busy shipping lanes. Barges and coastal steamers are always plying the river to and from the northern cities of Albany, Troy, and points in between. We first noticed this object after September 11, 2001.

"My theory, since first spotting it, is that it might contain guided missiles which could be sent aloft in the event an aircraft is detected headed for impact in the city. And if so, I think it's a pretty good idea."

This was my reply:

"A friend of mine sees that barge-like object from her window overlooking the river and always wondered herself what it might be. I told her to get a pair of binoculars and have a closer look. She says the thing occasionally moves away and then returns, which doesn't mean it's NOT a missile launcher. But don't you think the authorities would have to be more clandestine? Although it might make sense to isolate a missile launcher in the river, it's there for anyone to see from all the apartment buildings lining Riverside Drive and further down to midtown. I would imagine it would arouse curiosity and, if so, would have made the papers by now."

My correspondent did not reply to that reply, but sent another message:

"Now we're getting somewhere. Here's a note from a friend of my sister-in-law. The fellow lives in Westport, Conn.: 'Within days of 9/11, there were two huge black unmarked barges right off the beach in Westport. I was on my bicycle at the beach and stopped to talk to a cop, and he confirmed to his best guess that they were military. He being an ex-Marine. They were there only a few weeks. It could be what was brought to the NYC harbor. I hope it means that we are being protected.' "

The gyre turns. We're getting messages within messages. And this morning my correspondent sent another message with a message within:

"Well, now it's getting silly as people let their imagination run with the barge mystery. I seem to have started a kind of barge blog:

'Ok, here's how it looks. Al Qaeda plants the barges in Connecticut. The Coast Guard, thinking it was put there by the CIA, tows them to NY. Next, Mayor Bloomberg will have them hauled to Central Park as a monument to GB for protecting us. The Al Qaeda get out of the barge and blow up the GM Building. Fortunately, it is Sunday and no one is in the building except some 5th Avenue lawyers working on a secret merger between Halliburton and the Saudi's sponsored by Cheney. Cheney gets upset and starts an inquiry. The Jews are blamed for the whole thing because they would not settle with Arafat and give up Israel.'

"That's just one example. Enough."

The mystery remains unsolved, and we're going back on vacation.

As long as we've interrupted our vacation, we might as well complete some unfinished Wal-Mart business. A few days ago it was reported that the nation's largest retailer is cooperating with a federal probe of its employment practices. That's so nice to know, especially when there's so much to investigate.

Maybe the feds will look into the fact that Wal-Mart saves on personnel costs and keeps prices low by encouraging its workers to make use of community health-care services, which are provided at public expense.

"The taxpayers are apparently taking care of a lot of Wal-Mart workers," Bill Moyers' investigative news program, NOW, reported Friday after we began our vacation. "According to the Institute for Labor and Employment at the University of California/Berkeley, in 2002, Wal-Mart workers in California relied on 50 percent more taxpayer-funded health care per employee than those at other large retail companies. Put another way, taxpayers subsidized $20.5-million-worth-of medical care for Wal-Mart in California alone."

Maybe shoppers will realize Wal-Mart pays such low wages that many of its workers can't afford the company's private (and expensive) health-care benefits plan and that it also keeps workers from qualifying for benefits (even if they can't afford them). 

Here's the complete transcript of NOW's devastating report on Wal-Mart, which shows how the giant retailer's low prices are achieved at taxpayer expense not only for health care but for tax breaks and other concessions.

Those who don't believe Wal-Mart pays its workers less than its competitors might consider this: "Unionized supermarket workers pay little or nothing for their health plans and have an average hourly wage of $10.35 per hour," NOW reports. "Wal-Mart workers earn about 25 percent less ... a reported $8.23 per hour."

One Wal-Mart clerk who earns $14,500 a year pointed out that on his salary he can't afford "the roughly $250-dollars it costs each month for Wal-Mart's family medical plan." To cover his wife and three children, he'll need public health-care assistance.

One Wal-Mart manager said that when he spoke out against the company's "inadequate health-care plan," he was fired. Another explained that Wal-Mart "counted on [employee] turnover to get rid of some of the people that ... were actually eligible to get the [company's] insurance." This went on for years, he said. Reporter Sylvia Chase concluded: "So putting it in plain language you had to get rid of some workers. You had to replace them with part-time workers. You had to keep your workers un-eligible for health insurance coverage." He agreed.

And one California official put the lie to Wall-Mart's legendarily low prices: "When you walk out of Wal-Mart and you look at your receipt, you need to add onto that receipt the cost that you're paying for increased transportation taxes for streets and roads, increased taxes to cover subsidies for their employees. Both in health care and social services. That's a hard concept to get across. Because it's not there in black and white on the receipt. But it's -- black and white in your pocket. You pay it. "

For people who like to send twee electronic Chistmas Cards, try this, and don't forget to click on each of the reindeer. For those who prefer to send old-fashioned Christmas cards, try this. Also, here's a card I call A Dog's Christmas. Let's not forget, though, Christmas is a girl's best friend.

The holiday season notwithstanding, our Maximum Leader's police-state policies remain in full view with this astonishing homeland-security tale. Here's a lighter side to that: The Lord of the Right Wing, pace, Peter Jackson. And for all the patriots out there, how about some rock art?

So, best wishes for the holiday season. We're taking time off. Not sure yet when we'll be back. Keep checking.

After all the tears shed over the death of neocon ideologue Robert L. Bartley, because he was kind and gentle in his private life, at least < B>Dan Kennedy hasn't forgotten exactly what we'd noted, too, that Bartley in his public role as the chief editorialist for the Wall Street Journal had been, in Kennedy's fair phrase, "a vicious scandalmonger."

Reuters continued its winning ways this morning with a fine news lede that speaks volumes about the mood of the nation, maybe even the decline of the West: "President Bush may have defeated Saddam Hussein, but he lost to the socialite Paris Hilton in the television ratings on Tuesday night."

That was the night the 22-year-old heiress played at working on an Arkansas farm in Fox's "The Simple Life," while our Maximum Leader retorted, "So what's the difference?" when pressed by ABC's Diane Sawyer to justify his claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction on the strength of evidence that Saddam had the intention (but not the capability) of acquiring them.

Meantime, the front page of this week's New York Observer provided excellent examples of a good lede and a lousy lede. Here's the good one:

Eight months away from the Republican National Convention, party officials already know that President George W. Bush's head will be 21 feet and six inches off the floor of Madison Square Garden.

The President's head, portrayed by a small yellow helium balloon, was greeted with great joy by television producers and technicians, who took their sitings from the skyboxes during a "media walk-through" of the convention site ...
-- Ben Smith

And here's the lousy one:

It's the Night of the Big Defeat, Election Night 1972, at McGovern campaign headquarters in the Holiday Inn in Sioux Falls, S.D., and after drinking a little too much, I decide it's necessary for me to put in a call to Alf Landon in Kansas. You might recall good old Alf, who up to then had been the Biggest Loser in Presidential history off his disastrous 1936 run against F.D.R.
-- Ron Rosenbaum

Nothing draws mail like a dismissal of pro wrestling as a form of artistic expression or a criticism of Wal-Mart. A reader writes:

Jan, Jan, Jan -- How can someone as bright as you fail to appreciate the cultural significance of professional wrestling? This head-in-the-sand attitude is what allowed Bush to be elected president. People didn't take him seriously, thought he was too damn stupid to be elected and then the next thing we know, we've got John Ashcroft and the Patriot Act and disappearing WMD's.

Vince McMahon, (President of World Wrestling Federation), says of his bouts, and I will paraphrase here because I don't have the quote in front of me, that he doesn't stage sporting events, he makes movies.

Professional wrestling is all about the story line. The characters develop over time, sort of like a novel, (but with very large characters who wear odd costumes). Professional wrestling presentations explore relationships, choices and consequences, sort of like Hamlet but louder and cruder.

Professional wrestling is most like a soap opera. The plots are no more outlandish than those found in All My Children or General Hospital. The characters no less believable.

Can you watch a wide receiver for New Orleans make a cell phone call from the end zone after a touchdown and find no comparison in professional wrestling?

Quick ... Why do you like Green Bay's Brett Favre? Isn't it because he is everyman and because he plays hurt and because he has heart? What about Mick, "Mankind," Foley? He is everyman, it's part of his name. Nobody takes more lumps or wrestles hurt more frequently than Mick Foley.

Is "The Rock" really that different from the Dolphin's middle linebacker Zack Thomas? The Rock played middle linebacker at the University of Miami back in the mid '90s until he blew out his knee. Would you contend that NBA all-star Dennis Rodman had no comparable character within the world of professional wrestling? Jesse, "the Body," Ventura was elected governor of Minnesota.

Please understand that I do not care for, nor do I habitually watch, professional wrestling. I do not care for, nor do I habitually watch football or basketball or baseball or hockey. I do believe, however, that Vince McMahon understands the appeal of "sporting events."

People watch these events who haven't a clue about the details of the play. They watch to see the spectacle, the cheerleaders and the occasional injury. McMahon simply distills the experience and gives it to the viewer without the distraction of balls or cars and calls it "sports entertainment." It is the wave of the future and it must be understood.

Do you remember the XFL? Its fundamental concept was not wrong, it was merely ahead of its time. Launched in conjunction with the NFL rather than in competition, the idea will fly. You will see the basic concepts of the XFL, (sexier cheerleaders, no fair catch, rules that encourage hard hits and big yardage gains), again.

Muhammad Ali understood the appeal of professional wrestling. He patterned himself after a pro wrestler named "Gorgeous George." So did Dusty, "The American Dream," Rhodes, Jake, "The Snake," Roberts, and every professional boxer in the last 30 years.

Why is this important? Because low art displaces high art and sponsorship follows the demographics. Does ChevronTexaco's abandonment of the radio broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera open the door for them to sponsor Smack Down? Stranger things have happened. When movies were first released, they were crude and were considered low-brow entertainment. Educated people preferred "the theatuh."

Eventually, economics prevailed and movies became more literate. More important, however, is the fact that the theater changed as well. Plays became more like the movies with which they were forced to compete for dollars. The film industry recognized the tastes and needs of the common man and presented a product to appeal to those tastes and needs.

The theater was forced to change and to become more like the movies in order to remain relevant, not to mention economically viable.

Here's a reasoned objection to criticizing of Wal-Mart, but no such luck from this reader, who writes:

Wal-Mart doesn't use union workers or pay a living wage? How many similar employers do? Does K-Mart? Target? Do regional and national grocery store chains? And hasn't McDonalds' caused a lot of family owned restaurants to close?

The real reason why you and your lefty pals hate Wal-Mart is that they are run by a conservative, politically active family and that the Waltons OCCASSIONALLY allow their conservative beliefs to influence how they run their company. So Wal-Mart sells GUNS and BULLETS and DOESN'T SELL MAXIM! THE HORROR! So people who want to legally own guns shouldn't be sold them, but parents who don't want their 11-year-old boys (or girls) to look at semi-nude women while they are in the checkout line should be forced to?

The left does not care about small town economies because you sneer at them as rubes and rednecks. That is reflected in the "entertainment" that Hollywood is putting out these days. "Sling Blade?" "The Gift?" "A Simple Plan?" "Monster's Ball?" Basically any Billy Bob Thornton movie?

The New York Times (your house organ) not long ago ran an editorial that asked that why can't small town America just DIE already, and it routinely rails against farm subsidies, as if that wouldn't hurt small town economies.

Remember the "welfare farmer" refrain that even Garry Trudeau started running in his scripts? Wondering why are we sending all that money to Iowa for ethanol when it could pay for childcare and job training for thousands of urban teen mothers, eh? Not that I am against child care and job training, I just hate the hypocrisy.

Phew!! As Elmer Fudd once said to Bugs Bunny: "Golly, Mr. Wabbit. I hope I didn't hurt ya too much when I killed ya."

The Golden Globules are with us again, ushering in the new awards season this morning with nominations for movies and television. Here are the < FONT color=#003399>Globule nominees. Is there's anything more to say except "so what?"

In his blog riley entry last Sunday on this site, "WHAT WOULD RANDY SHILTS HAVE SAID?," esteemed author and critic Tim Riley nearly gagged on the hype for "Angels in America." (So had I.) The reason for the hype, he maintained, is that Tony Kushner's play "is simply too 'politically correct' to criticize," which made it "much easier for everyone to simply jump on the bandwagon."

He's right about that and about the gushing infatuation with Kushner as "a brand name Gay Jewish intellectual," per the examples of the New Yorker magazine's less-than-stellar TV writer, Nancy Franklin, and its formidable theater critic, John Lahr, both of whom fell over themselves to see who could offer higher praise.

But Riley doesn't have much love for "Angels" either, which is where we disagree. The play "never worked for me, in ANY medium," Riley wrote, "simply because it's a) too long and b) unfocused ... even though I admired his a) humor (which is a BIG compliment) and b) pretension."

I suppose all of this is old news, except that "Angels" collected seven Golden Globule nominations this morning, and HBO continues to air re-runs (although in hourly bites instead of the original two-part broadcast of three hours each).

Riley is right again about the play's length and lack of focus, but that's true only for the first three hours. (Yes, it does sound silly: Only for the first three hours?) The second three hours were far better, largely because the sprawling plotlines and the many characters come together in a tight, ingenious weave of relationships that feels exactly right. To achieve this without the contrivances showing, which Kushner manages beautifully, is no small accomplishment.

As to Kushner's leftwing slant and "politically correct" agenda, which have been cause for much complaint rather different from Riley's objections, I think the agenda in the most basic terms is this: To be in the closet is to be a moral coward. If you're in the closet, you're bad news, pretty much no damned good to yourself or to anyone else. You're untrustworthy, unlovable and unloving, i.e. the evil Roy Cohn (played by Al Pacino) and his disillusioned but still selfish protégé Joe Pitt (played by Patrick Wilson).

To be out of the closet, or to come out of the closet, is to discover your humanity. If you're out of the closet, even if you're untrustworthy, you're not necessarily evil or unlovable, i.e. Proctor's lover Louis (played by Ben Shenkman), and you can still be saved from your moral cowardice. This may be politically correct, but it's also not a bad thing.

Is professional wrestling a legitimate vehicle for artistic expression? I don't think so. Is it the future of sports entertainment in this country? I hope not. Nonetheless, I pass along a friend's recommendation of Barry Blaustein's documentary, "Beyond the Mat," for what he calls "its excellent, objective view of the world of pro wrestling."

Why, you might reasonably ask, does my friend even care about professional wrestling? Because it is the entertainment of choice for a very large segment of the U.S. population, and we should understand what our neighbors watch and why. Besides, many people have said that the best times to go to a Wal-Mart is during the telecast of a pro wrestling match or a NASCAR event.

Which brings us to another question: Can we categorize people who shop at Wal-Mart as subversive shoppers? Wal-Mart has been shown to harm rather than help local economies in a variety of ways, like displacing local merchants and refusing to use local vendors (besides paying sub-standard wages and benefits).

So yes, you might reasonably conclude, consumers who shop at Wal-Mart undermine their local economies: Instead of shopping for the greater good, they just shop to save eight cents on a roll of toilet paper.

POSTSCRIPT: Marc Weisblott, pop-culture blogger extraordinaire, recently wrote: "I'm not anti-Wal-Mart out of any sort of principle, but I can't say I've experienced any satisfaction after shopping there. Case in point: Fruit of the Loom boxer briefs, two pair for six bucks. In fact, I picked up two such packages, but forfeited one at the register because it wasn't the discount kind. The reason why became apparent once home--they are the "two pouch" variety, featuring a fly that boasts of being "easy to use" on the basis that it's horizontal. Whose invention was that?"

Purple prose is not the only way to sterilize the language. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, demonstrated a colorless, odorless, antiseptic method earlier this week when asked if Saddam Hussein was cooperating with interrogaters. "In my interfaces with him he has been talkative," Sanchez said. Since the general is leading the fight to "triumph over tyranny" and "drain the swamp of terror," as David Brooks put it yesterday (see Purple Prose Alert #1), we'll throw in another metaphor and "cut him some slack."

From a member of the staff: "Most of us try to have a few bucks in walking-around money. Saddam had $750,000 in crawling-around money." From Ryan McGee's Wading in the Velvet Sea: "I flipped on the TV, and the first thing I see are images of the cubby hole. ... I thought, Wow, all this time they've been searching for him in Iraq, and they appear to have found him in a 1-room studio apartment over in Roxbury."

My staff of thousands finally came up with a bright idea: Issue a daily or, to make the job less demanding, sort of daily Purple Prose Alert. So here's today's, from the swiftly rising purplemeister David Brooks. He writes this morning that "Bush believes the U.S. has a unique role to play in [the] struggle to complete democracy's triumph over tyranny and so drain the swamp of terror." When the "triumph over tyranny" does "drain the swamp of terror," maybe it will also do a clean-up job on the purplemeister's prose.

POSTSCRIPT: Martin Bernheimer has issued a purple opera alert in his review today of "Benvenuto Cellini" at the Met. He writes that "the conductor James Levine tended to stress the ponderous. Meanwhile, the director Andrei Serban tended to err on the side of whimsy." The whimsy featured a constellation of "fugitives from a commedia dell'arte circus, a corps of angels and archangels plus looming figures of the inquisition. He [also] threw in a couple of nearly naked warrior-youths, flew symbolic commentators on wires, and made dancing, prancing and miming a hectic way of life."

Last Saturday Straight Up had an item, THE FUNNY PAGES, noting that an obit correction in The New York Times "read like a satire from The Onion," as did a David Brooks column. We also pointed out that "a tidbit from Reuters" about Italy's multibillionaire prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, was "too funny for The Onion."

Two days later, on Monday, Elizabeth Spiers was wondering in her New York magazine blog, The Kicker, about an oddball news story on Madonna and whether she could believe it. "I keep checking the dateline on this to make sure it still says 'Reuters' and not 'The Onion,'" she wrote. "Hold on a second...yep, still Reuters." Is it something in the air? Has something happened at Reuters that we don't know about? Does anyone care to start a Not the Onion blog?

With her new English version of "Don Quixote," Edith Grossman "might be called the Glenn Gould of translators, because she, too, articulates every note," Harold Bloom writes in London's Guardian.

"Reading her amazing mode of finding equivalents in English for Cervantes's darkening vision is an entrance into a further understanding of why this great book contains within itself all the novels that have followed in its sublime wake."

I'll agree to that. Just reading Grossman's first few pages in a bookstore the other day put me in a trance.

Boy, was I wrong. The second half of "Angels in America" wriggled out of the straightjacket Mike Nichols had made for it in the first half. Last night, miracle of miracles, even the literalism of a TV movie couldn't fuck it up. Tony Kushner's play finally came through the tube with a power that took off. Part two of this gay fantasia will stick in memory. Also loved the theme music, which sounded like the "Six Feet Under" riff. No wonder. Thomas Newman wrote them both.  

Is this Reuters report true, or an urban legend in the making? "I'm Saddam Hussein," the man with the scruffy beard said in English when U.S. troops found him in a dirt hole. "I'm the president of Iraq and I'm willing to negotiate." In English, no less.

When it comes to negotiations, how about finding his alleged Swiss bank accounts. The billions said to be there could go a long way to relieving American taxpayers of some of the Iraq reconstruction burden.

Finally someone who doesn't believe the HBO hype. Here's big bad Dale Peck on why "Angels in America" doesn't work on TV. His analysis, posted Friday on Slate, makes an excellent point about why the rabbi's speech to a congregation of mourners in last week's opening scene failed to strike the right chord (particularly a joke that worked so well in the play). Which set everything off on the wrong foot.

Peck makes many other good points, although he gets pretty long winded circling the single, most important reason without ever pinning it down. He mentions differences in narrative approaches between the film and the play; sets in the film that "come across as cluttered, unnuanced, unnecessary," locations shots that "seem shuffled in from a mismatched deck," jarring close-ups, jumpy camerawork and editing, and a poor feel for the play's language. But he basically throws up his hands: "Ultimately, though, the real problem is that Angels is and remains a play, not a movie."

< FONT color=#003399>"Buzzed by 'Angels' " said as much, but didn't bother to go into all the details. So let's be explicit: The real reason "Angels" doesn't work on TV -- or didn't in the first half and is not likely to in the second half tonight -- is that the literalism of film spells so much out that little or nothing is left to the imagination. The entire purpose of production design in a film is to define what is seen and heard with total specificity. This narrows the conditions and context of the story. Characters, period, mood, social nuances are locked into place within a texture that particularizes every event, every gesture. The symbolic content, if any, is reduced to an empirical display of the actual. "Angels" on stage not only escaped that straightjacket, but as a play laden with symbolic content thrived on its multiplicity of meanings.

Who said The New York Times has no sense of humor? Its obituary page became a scandal earlier this month, prompting an in-house warning to the staff, but an obit correction this morning (sixth paragraph down) still read like a satire from The Onion:

An obituary on Wednesday about Lewis M. Allen, a theater and film producer, misidentified a Tony Award won by his production of "Annie." It was for best musical, not best play. The obituary also included a credit erroneously. The producer of the play "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" was Robert Whitehead.

The obituary also referred incorrectly to the movie "The Connection," which Mr. Allen produced, and misstated its year. It was not a Francis Ford Coppola film and was not nominated for an Oscar. It was released in 1962, not 1974. ("The Conversation," by Mr. Coppola, was a 1974 movie that was nominated for Oscars.)

The obituary also misspelled the title of the Alfred Hitchcock movie written by Mr. Allen's wife, Jay Presson Allen. It was "Marnie," not "Marny."

Also this morning, Times op-ed columnist David Brooks seems to believe he's writing for The Onion. "I think we are all disgusted by the way George W. Bush's administration has allowed honesty and candor to seep into the genteel world of international affairs," he writes in "A Fetish of Candor." He actually believes the Maximum Leader and his cronies are "drunk on truth serum." (If Brooks keeps this up, the Times is going to have to start testing him for steroids.)

Finally, this morning's Gray Lady offered a tidbit from Reuters that's too funny for The Onion. At the European Union summit meeting on Friday, Italy's multibillionaire prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, told a joke "about being thrown from a helicopter" that "went like this, according to an aide who heard it":

Mr. Berlusconi and his wife were flying over a crowd of protesters when he said to her: "I could throw out one 10,000-euro note and make one person happy. I could throw two 5,000-euro notes and make two people happy. Or I could throw 10,000 1-euro coins and make 10,000 people happy." To which the pilot replied, "We could throw you out and make everyone happy."

It sounds like an urban legend that David Brooks might have made up, but it's not. 

With impeccable timing last night, a friend wrote: "This season ChevronTexaco will end its 63-year sponsorship of the Metropolitan Opera Saturday afternoon live radio broadcasts. It's appalling that this immensely popular and significant cultural activity will be terminated, even though it costs only $7 million, a mere bagatelle for this humongous petrochemical empire. That's about the cost of running a few commercials during a superbowl game. What does this say about cultural priorities in this country?"

This friend, Alan M. Edelson, who is an avid opera-goer and Met subscriber, wants to drum up "indignation over the termination and enthusiasm for possible replacement of this oil firm by another sponsor." The Annenberg Foundation has given $3.5 million to the Met to help keep the live broadcasts on the air next season (2004/2005). He points out, "The gift was made in the hope that it will encourage a new sponsor to take things from there. It's incredible that this live broadcast, heard around the world by an estimated 10 million people, could end."

Why was the timing impeccable? Because Anthony Tommasini makes exactly the same point this morning in The New York Times: "It's hard for opera lovers to imagine that the Met broadcasts might be jeopardized for want of a sum that would be a pittance in the world of commercial entertainment or sports. In major league baseball, $7 million would not pay the salary of a decent pitcher. The six stars of 'Friends' make $1 million each per half-hour episode. Compare this to the absolute top fee for a singer at the Met, Amercia's most prestigious opera house: $15,000 per performance. No one, no matter how big, not even Placido Domingo, makes more."

Mere bagatelle or pittance indeed. When Chevron acquired Texaco, as Tommasini points out, the deal came to $45.8 billion. And Texaco's then-chairman promised that the sponsorship would continue because the Met broadcast "has become part of our DNA." Unfortunately, a gene mutation occurred upon his departure, or as it's put in corporate parlance, "the priorities at ChevronTexaco have shifted."

Meantime, by coincidence, another friend, William Osborne, sent the first draft of an article he's preparing on the differences between arts funding in the United States and continental Europe. He writes: "In Germany, for example, any city with more than 100,000 people generally has a full-time orchestra, opera house, and theater company that are municipally and state owned. A good deal of funding for these groups is set aside for new music. Europeans also administer this arts funding locally, and not from a remote federal organization such as the National Endowment for the Arts. ... The European view is not based on elitism or a dismissal of popular culture, but with understanding that an unmitigated capitalism is not a seamless, all-encompassing paradigm, particularly when it comes to cultural expression.

"In continental Europe, classical music often out-sells pop. This is not merely a matter of history or coincidence. Europeans use their local public cultural institutions to educate their children and this creates a wide appreciation for classical music. The popularity is also based on a sense of communal pride. They support their local cultural institutions almost like they were sports teams. European society illustrates that music education leads to forms of creativity and autonomy that are often antithetic to mass media."

American proponents of private and/or corporate sponsorship of the arts "claim that alternatives to the European cultural paradigm exist," Osborne continues. "[But] in reality the large majority of U.S. cultural offerings come from Manhattan and a few other cities, even though the country has 280 million people. Even the other boroughs of New York City, such as the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island are largely desolate cultural wastelands, to say nothing of the lack of intelligent culture in almost all of our heartland cities. In contrast to Europe, the live performance arts are largely denied to a vast majority of Americans.

"Most Americans do not even consider that alternatives could be created. With only one percent of the U.S. military budget, or $3.8 billion, we could have 127 opera houses lavishly funded at $30 million apiece. (That much funding would put them on par with the best opera houses in the world. In reality, the U.S. does not have any year-round opera houses. Even the Met only has a seven-month season.) The same sum could support 254 world-class spoken theaters at $15 million each. It could subsidize 190 full-time, year-round, world-class symphony orchestras at $20 million each. Or it could give 76,000 composers, painters and sculptors a yearly salary of $50,000 each. Remember, that's only one percent of the military budget. Imagine what five percent would do. These examples awaken us to the Orwellian realities of our country and how different it could be."

Why haven't Americans considered alternatives? Because "the problem is seldom the topic of serious political discussion." And that's because "the cultural system has become isomorphic." Iso-who? Osborne defines cultural isomorphism as "a social order where artistic expression is strongly shaped by conditions such as a totalizing economic system, a powerful religion, hyper-nationalism, or a dominating state of affairs such as long-term war."

"Cultural isomorphism was especially notable in the 20th century's systemic forms of social and economic organization," he explains. "We saw, for example, culturally isomorphic art in the 'Gleichschaltung' of the Third Reich, in the Social Realism of the East Block, in the commercialization of culture in America, and in the 'Cultural Revolution' of Maoist China. Like the political divisions of the 20th century, these aesthetic orthodoxies reduced human expression to systemic concepts that tended toward the formulaic and reductionist, and were often developed by modernist artists in the role of aesthetic prophets who served a more or less transcendentally justified patriarchal function within their societies. These aesthetic systems tended to be culturally isomorphic with the political and economic structures in which they existed, and frequently allowed the artist-prophet or his image to be appropriated by totalitarian social structures."

What does all this signify? Many things, of course. But one of them is that "given America's wealth, talent, and educational resources, the U.S. could be the Athens of the modern world, but is fast losing that chance" and opting instead to be its Rome.

A regular reader from Texas writes: "My Dad retired from Chevron in 1990. At the time of his retirement, he was quite high on the Chevron management food chain. I asked him about your article regarding Chevron-Texaco's failure to fund the Met broadcasts next year. Dad observes as follows:

"1. Chevron-Texaco is not the same company he worked for. There have been a couple of turnovers in the upper management and, although some of the men running things worked under him at one time, it was not under circumstances that would enable him to judge their priorities regarding corporate support of the arts.

"2. The whole area of corporate sponsorships is non-core and very minor. It simply doesn't receive much attention from upper management. If you will take a look at Chevron-Texaco's 2002 Corporate Responsibility Report, you will get a feel for the scope of the community involvement projects funded by the company. Some of the stuff simply gets lost in the shuffle.

"3. Chevron was always sensitive about its image. There is no reason to believe that sensitivity vanished with the purchase of Texaco. Perhaps one could contact the Vice Chairman whose portfolio includes corporate sponsorships and persuade him or her to reinstate the funding. As you observed, the total amount is really quite small and its reinstatement would probably cost less than rounding errors in the annual report."

Aren't you just a little bit bothered that it takes a German court to give the Attorney General of the United States lessons on due process and basic fairness in a criminal trial? Quite a reversal in the historical scheme of things as Americans have known it. To say it's ironic doesn't quite cover it. I am referring to this: "German Judge Frees Qaeda Suspect; Cites U.S. Secrecy."

The death yesterday of Robert L. Bartley might soften the edges of his portrait for some. But it's not likely to bring much private sympathy from the Journal's reporting staff, which tended to regard him as crazily biased.

Bartley was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom last week (see Imperial Accessories) for being a far-right ideologue who imbued the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal with a take-no-prisoners faith in supply-side economics as well as brutal treatment of the Clinton administration.

When Clinton White House lawyer Vince Foster committed suicide in 1993, the note found in his briefcase did not mention Bartley by name, but it might as well have. It said "the WSJ editors lie without consequence."

Bartley, who could be "aloof and downright disdainful of his intellectual nemeses," had hounded Foster without mercy on the Journal's editorial page for supposed Whitewater transgressions. His response to Foster's death was to dig his heels in deeper.

"For my part," Bartley wrote (see this portrait), "I can testify that getting tagged with blame for the Foster suicide powerfully focused my own attention on Whitewater." Which turned out to be a mistake. (It also spawned a cottage industry of Whitewater conspiracy theories.)

"Bartley's rants now litter the dustbin of history," former Clinton aide and political consultant Paul Begala recently pointed out (scroll down). "He was wrong about the Clinton economic program, wrong about the Clinton foreign policy, wrong about Whitewater, and pretty much every issue he ever addressed.

"But Mr. Bush says Bartley 'helped shape the times in which we live.' Well, that he did. He replaced Ronald Reagan's sunny optimism with paranoia, cruelty, and bitterness. And for our president to honor this thug disgraces the Medal of Freedom. Shame on George Bush."

Shame on him? Don't waste your breath, Paul.

Let us now praise the presidential genius of our Maximum Leader. Here's a commander in chief who also plays chief doofus (see < FONT color=#003399>Hu's on first) of his own administration. This has been evident since he took over the White House. But this morning's front-page story nicely illustrates the point: "President Bush found himself in the awkward position on Wednesday of calling the leaders of France, Germany and Russia to ask them to forgive Iraq's debts, just a day after the Pentagon excluded those countries and others from $18 billion in American-financed Iraqi reconstruction projects."

Chalk it up to the fact that the right hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. 

It should come as no surprise that Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi would say in her acceptance speech that 9/11 has been exploited by the U.S. government as an excuse to violate international law and human rights.

So let's have a look instead at J.M.Coetzee's Nobel Lecture. The self-effacing Nobel Prize laureate in literature doesn't give interviews. He regards himself as a private person, not a public man. He's a literary man. So literary apparently, that his lecture takes the form of a tale about Robinson Crusoe upon his return to England 26 years after he was shipwrecked on a deserted island.

He finds no joy in society, having grown used to solitude. ... He does not read, he has lost the taste for it; but the writing of his adventures has put him in the habit of writing, it is a pleasant enough recreation.

The plague and other nasty developments are uppermost in his mind. When Crusoe strolls along Bristol's harbor wall, he wonders "what species of man can it be who will dash so busily hither and thither across the kingdom, from one spectacle of death to another (clubbings, beheadings), sending in report after report?"

Crusoe imagines himself a business man, prosperous at first but then ruined by a natural disaster: The Thames overflows and floods his warehouse. He must flee his creditors, ending up in disguise in Beggars Lane under a false name. At the same time, the contagion of the Black Death is inescapable. "Some London-folk continue to go about their business, thinking they are healthy and will be passed over. But secretly they have the plague in their blood: when the infection reaches their heart they fall dead upon the spot. ..."

By the end of the lecture, however, Coetzee has turned his grim tale, a sort of parable of our time, into a reflexive allegory of authorship. Crusoe recalls how difficult it was to master the art of writing and how he eventually did, even to the point of glibness. But now "that old ease of composition has, alas, deserted him. ... [H]is hand feels as clumsy and the pen as foreign an instrument as ever before."

Crusoe wonders whether "the other one" -- presumably Daniel Defoe, author of "Robinson Crusoe" and "A Journal of the Plague Year" -- still finds writing easy. The tales "of ducks and machines of death and London under the plague" -- with which the lecture itself begins -- "flow prettily enough."

Perhaps he misjudges him, that dapper little man with the quick step and the mole upon his chin. Perhaps at this very moment he sits alone in a hired room somewhere in this wide kingdom dipping the pen and dipping it again, full of doubts and hesitations and second thoughts.

Crusoe wonders whether he'll ever meet this other man but "fears there will be no meeting, not in this life" and imagines the both of them as "deckhands toiling in the rigging" of two passing ships "close enough to hail." But in rough seas and stormy weather, with "their eyes lashed by the spray, their hands burned by the cordage, they pass each other by, too busy even to wave."

It's an oddly wistful conclusion to a jagged, difficult story. Until then it seemed the opposite of sentimental. The most interesting thing perhaps is that the lecture is all the interviews he never gives, a sort of self-examination of a writer in conflict with himself and with the world. The strangest thing is that he has such nostalgia.

Need a good laugh? Try this. Condi Rice and the Maximum Leader of the Banana Republic of America take a page from Abbott and Costello.

You may recall that before being elected, Der Gropenfuhrer apologized to all the women he offended with behavior that earned him his nickname. To prove his sincerity, he maintained that he would look into the complaints.

But now Der Grope has changed his mind. He says: Nein! CNN reports that the "independent investigation of pre-election allegations that he groped and sexually harassed women," which he promised, "isn't necessary because 'the people have spoken.' ... [His] vow to investigate the charges 'was meant much more for me, that I wanted to look into it myself.' ... [T]he bottom line is, right now, I'm focusing on [state fiscal problems], and there is no investigation."

When the people have spoken, Der Grope brazens it out. Apparently he is satisfied that the Culifornia lemmings who voted for him couldn't care less about the so-called investigation. So why should he? And please wipe that cynical smile off your face.

A rightwing friend of mine worries that I'm suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome. Here's why he thinks so:  BDS, according to the well-named Charles Krauthammer, is "the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency -- nay -- the very existence of George W. Bush." I thanked my friend for the reference and pointed out that Robert Baer's "Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude" provides a straightforward, easily understood explanation of the symptoms -- which in fact signal realistic fears rather than paranoia. Or to paraphrase Lou Costello: "I know there's no such thing as Dracula. You know there's no such thing as Dracula. But does Dracula know it?" And let's not forget: BDS is a reaction not limited to the Maximum Leader. His triumvirate of cronies -- Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft -- cause the same syndrome.

From the blast of all the trumpets, you'd think the new millenium had re-arrived Sunday night. Everyone from big fry like Frank Rich and John Leonard to small fry like Dan Oldenwald hailed the coming of Tony Kushner's "Angels in America" on HBO.

"Much of what will attract viewers," Oldenwald wrote, "will surely be the bigness of the event -- the all-star director Mike Nichols, the explosive special effects, the power of Kushner's words, the first ever on-screen pairing of Oscar winners Pacino and Streep. Yet viewers are in store for so much more."

In Salon, Laura Miller called Nichols' TV adaptation "not a great film, exactly, but a film that makes the greatness of Kushner's play readily available."

I beg to differ. It's not a great film any way you slice it. Nor does it do anything for Kushner's play except diminish it. Viewers got so much less.

The common complaint that big films come off poorly on the tube applies doubly in this case to big plays. It's hard to imagine how Nichols spent $60 million when the production looks like a routine TV drama, despite the special effects. Actually, in contrast to the play, which largely dispensed with realistic scenery and left most of the design to the imagination, Sunday night's "big event" often looked so set-bound and old-fashioned in the way it was shot that routine TV dramas have more edge.

So what was good about "Angels"? The performances by Justin Kirk as Prior Walter and Jeffrey Wright as Belize. I also liked Mary-Louise Parker as Harper, and Streep did well in all her roles (Morman mom, Ethel Rosenberg and the hat trick of an old graybeard rabbi).

Unfortunately, Emma Thompson was no more than ordinary and Al Pacino was only OK as Roy Cohn. I guess we should thank somebody, Nichols maybe, that he does Cohn without chewing the scenery. Or maybe we shouldn't. My trouble is, I'll never forget Ron Liebman's portrayal, a more bitter, sardonic characterization that was also damned funny. Pacino plays Cohn head-on. The oblique humor of the role, its grandiosity, isn't allowed in. Ironically, the usual over-the-top Pacino style might have worked better than taking Cohn square.

Once in a blue moon a play comes along that restores my belief in the vitality of the theater. I'm not talking about Tony Kushner's "Angels in America," which made its TV debut last night on HBO, but about the production of Doug Wright's "I Am My Own Wife," which just opened on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre.

This one-man piece stars Jefferson Mays in multiple roles, chief among them a singular Berliner whose transvestitism is only one aspect of her unique identity, though it's been the most widely mentioned. Mays gives a virtuoso performance the likes of which comes along once in many blue moons. It is a spectacular achievement, but to describe it that way is to give a misleading impression.

Mays illuminates his impersonations with subtlety, not fireworks. He re-creates Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who was a real-life figure, with a controlled, riveting intensity. His fusion of intelligence, feelings, irony and humor radiates heat and light, but purposely kept at room temperature. This allows Charlotte's bizarre survival story from the Nazi and Communist eras to unfold as part of daily experience rather than as blinding revelation, like a cold thermonuclear reaction that still eludes science and is all the more astonishing.

Mays does not do it alone. He has brilliant collaborators in Wright, best known for "Quills," who wrote the script or rather constructed it from hours of tape-recorded interviews with Charlotte herself; in director Moises Kaufman, celebrated for "The Laramie Project" and "Gross Indecencies"; and in outstanding scenic, lighting and costume designers. Their presence was invisible but tangible.

"Wife" had an acclaimed life before coming to Broadway. First developed in regional theaters, it was staged in a successful About Face Theatre workshop production at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, a < FONT color=#003399>mixed notice from Variety notwithstanding. Further developed and clarified, "Wife" then ran Off-Broadway from May to August earlier this year at Playwrights Horizons, where it racked up more raves and many awards. The Broadway production now at the Lyceum is essentially a transfer. Here's a review and here's another. Faber & Faber is to publish the text of the play in January.

It's good to see a serious appraisal of Gore Vidal's views about the current state of the Banana Republic under our Maximum Leader and his cronies. Edward S. Morgan, author of the highly praised biography, "Benjamin Franklin," and Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale, gives the lie to attacks like Ron Rosenbaum's that have smeared Vidal as a nut case.

In a tour d'horizon of eight of Vidal's books -- including historical portraits ("Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson"), historical novels ( "Burr," "Lincoln") and polemical essays ("Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta," "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated") -- Morgan makes the case both for Vidal's sanity and the vitality of his arguments.

He concedes that Vidal delivers his views "with the certitude we too easily associate with the paranoid; and they are so relentlessly one-sided and accusatory, so far outside of what he calls RO, the 'received opinion' of insiders, that he may seem not only anti-government but anti-American."

Make no mistake, though, it is a charge that Vidal "rightly rejects," and most important, Morgan points out, "he advances none of [his views] without evidence." Can we say the same for our Maximum Leader?

Earlier this week, our Maximum Leader phoned Robert L. Bartley, editor emeritus of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, to congratulate him on winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom. We hadn't meant to overlook such an august honor for a far-right ideologue, but on the day the award was announced we were tied up with the fury of the cosmos and Studs Terkel.

Not to worry: The Washington Times more than picked up the slack, as did the Boston Globe. Even Pravda chatters had some interesting things to say.

In keeping with the spirit of the giver and the receiver of the award, may we make a belated suggestion? How about presenting Bartley with a spiked helmet to accompany the medal? He could wear both for formal occasions. The 1860 model would do nicely. Its imperial motto, "With God For King And Fatherland," is stamped in brass.

Seems the U.S. State Department is bringing the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra to Washington, where it's booked at the Kennedy Center for a free concert Tuesday evening with D.C.'s own National Symphony Orchestra, featuring Yo-Yo Ma. ... Didn't know Iraq had a big band, did you? Must make our Maximum Leader proud. Strange he hasn't talked it up. Or maybe you thought it was called the Occupied Iraq Symphony Orchestra, given that the Iraqis lack sovereignty. ...

What puzzles me, however, is where did they get all the visas? You may recall the visa wars the Bush administration has been waging, making it difficult or impossible for foreign artists from "enemy" nations to enter the United States. Did the State Department decide to give the Iraqis all the visas they've been withholding from the Cuban musicians or the others they've turned down? ...

Now that Tom Cruise is playing Nathan Algren in "The Last Samurai," maybe he will start a Hollywood trend of naming all film heroes and heroines for American novelists. ... For starters, how about Joe Updike and Fani Morrison, to star in a movie titled "The Human Saint," based on a novel by Phyllis Roth with a screenplay by Paul Bellow, Ashley Tan and Tommy Kushner, to be directed by Mark Nichols? ...

Speaking of the real Kushner, Tony by name, has he been sanctified yet? Except for Andrew Sullivan's rank demurral, the tsunami of publicity in the run-up to Sunday's HBO version of "< FONT color=#003399>Angels in America" would make you think so. I love the play as much as anyone. Well, maybe not as much as Frank Rich -- nobody could -- but does Kushner really want to be seen wearing a halo? ...

We will rue the day: "People the law forgot." Read it and cringe. ... And let's not forget to color Tina Brown purple: Her lede this morning -- "It's odd how fast grandeur becomes gloomy when the miasma of misfortune sets in" -- sets some kind of record for awful.

From a quipper: "Nathan Algren? Didn't he write 'AWOL on the Wild Side,' 'The Man With the Golden Tool,' 'The Napalm Wilderness,' 'The Last Carousal,' 'Notes From a Sex Diary' and 'Chicago: City on the Wane'"?  --Leon Freilich

Have a look at this eye-popping stuff from the Hubble Telescope. It may take a short while to load, but it's worth the wait. The combination of the moving images and the music by Australian Web designer Richard Pree evinces a feeling of otherworldliness rivaling anything by Stanley Kubrick.

Some people say the images resemble abstract paintings. A friend of mine says they look like what they are: photos from space. If pressed, she says some make her think of the iceberg paintings by the 19th-century, German Romantic artist Caspar-David Friedrich -- perhaps this one -- while others call to mind the starry sky images of the American painter Charles Burchfield. Maybe she means his "Moon Through Young Sunflowers"? (Scroll down and click on image.) To me the Hubble photos are -- in purple prose -- an eery peek at the epics of the gods.

Leave it to Studs Terkel to put things in perspective. "Colin Powell, we know, is the African-American butler to the new Bertie Wooster," he tells Salon in an interview about his latest book, "Hope Dies Last: Keeping Faith in Difficult Times." Here's the full quotation and the context:

You notice I dedicate the book to a couple whom you may not know, Clifford and Virginia Durr. They were a white couple living in Montgomery, Ala. She was the sister-in-law of [Supreme Court Justice] Hugo Black. And he was a member of the FCC [Federal Communications Commission], who wrote the "Blue Book" on the rights of listeners -- air belongs to the public! -- for as much variety of programming as possible.

Contrast him today to the FCC kid who's the son of Colin Powell, right? And Colin Powell, we know, is the African-American butler to the new Bertie Wooster. Bertie was a little milder than W., not quite so mean-spirited. He had a British butler, and Bush has one too. His name is Tony Blair. But his American butler is very elegant, and Powell's son [Michael] is the footman at the head of the FCC. He lays out the red carpet for them. So now we have an FCC that says, "The hell with regulation! Clear Channel, you can own 10,000 stations if you want!"

Although "Hope Dies Last" has been described as a summation of his long career, Terkel sounds at 91 like someone just starting out. "I thought, why not a book about all those who have had hope, and have taken their beatings and paid their dues -- but as a result of what they've done, something has happened," he says. The book is about "the prophetic minority ... people who we call activists. Who are imbued with a sort of hope and craziness, you know -- who some way or another hope our society, or the world, will be a more decent place to live in. They imbue all the rest of us with hope."

A man of his time as perhaps no other, Terkel cites Feb. 15, 2003, as a special day. "I celebrate that day," he says, "because 10 million people all over the world came out against the preemptive strike [against Iraq]. And then there was silence, because for three days it looked like W. was the liberator of Iraq. Then, well, we know what happened."

He adds: "If ever there were a time for these people, who I've admired for years, this is it. There was Tom Paine, there were the abolitionists. In the '60s there were the African-Americans who fought for civil rights, the kids against the war. Who were a minority, remember; the jocks beat the shit out of them at first and then joined them later. That's what I mean by a prophetic minority."

What's wrong with this picture? Roy Disney's resignation from the board of the Walt Disney Company was big news yesterday. Today, Sharon Waxman, in a follow-up in The New York Times, reports: "Roy Disney's parting words to the company his uncle built were harsh, but few resonated more painfully than the charge that the Walt Disney Company has 'lost its focus, its creative energy and its heritage.' " Her lede ends: "A significant number of Hollywood executives would agree."

She's probably right. But she never really substantiates that assertion. How many is significant? A handful? Ten? Three dozen? Waxman doesn't say. She also fails to quote a single one of the "significant number" to support her point, unless you count publicity-hungry Harvey Weinstein, co-chairman of Miramax, who's had troubles with Disney. Waxman does say she spoke to an unnamed studio executive who "once kept a list of departing Disney executives, but stopped when the roster topped 100."

And how about this assertion? "Many in the [film] industry questioned the notion of basing movies, like 'Pirates of the Caribbean,' on theme park rides." Sounds like a dumb Disney idea to me, too. But who are the many she cites? Just one: Tim Doyle, co-founder of "a leading movie fan Web site." Maybe Doyle makes movies on the side.

This is reporting? From the Times, no less? It's under-reporting. Waxman, newly hired from The Washington Post, has been pretty weak before. I don't know how she got away with it at the Post. Maybe it's because Hollywood is not a Post priority?

The time was 1991. The place was the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, Calif.  Der Gropenfuhrer helicoptered in from the set of the first "Terminator" sequel. The Unindicted Co-Conspirator was star struck. It was a meeting of minds. "I'm a Republican because of Richard Nixon," Der Grope proclaimed.

Is he "a Nixon Republican at heart?" Sandy Quinn, the library's assistant director, recently asked. And answered: "It sure looks that way from Yorba Linda."

How could we have missed it? The historic meeting "has now been immortalized in items available exclusively in the Library's Museum Store," the library's Web site notes. They include the Arnold and RN Coffee Mug, the Arnold and RN Keychain, the Arnold and RN Refrigerator Magnet and the Arnold and RN T-Shirt. Step right up: The items are also available online.

"Beginning with the Elvis-Nixon t-shirt, Americans have looked to the Nixon Library for holiday gift ideas with a unique political and historical slant," said John H. Taylor, Nixon Foundation executive director.

Well, isn't that what a presidential library is for?

Meantime, Quinn says the library will "proudly welcome back our old friend" whenever he can take a break from saving California. She calls him "a great friend of the Nixon legacy."

Ouch.

It yesterday's news, I know, but worth a reminder: Donald Rumsfeld won < EM>"Foot in Mouth" honors from Britain's Plain English Campaign for most baffling comment by a public figure, defeating Der Grope for the booby prize.

In case you don't recall, here's Rumsfeld's winning remark: "Reports that say something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

Got it? And here's what Der Grope said, for second place: "I think that gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman."

No movies for me over the big L-tryptophanic weekend. I spent it luxuriating in the novels of Eric Ambler, the daddy of all thriller writers. Never a huge fan of genre fiction, I'd read some of the mystery and spy classics by the usual suspects -- Hammett, Chandler, le Carré, Forsythe, Leonard and a few others -- but I'd never read anything by Ambler. A terrible admission, but there it is.

My friend Mugs McGuiness, the best-read bookman I know, politely hid his embarrassment at my ignorance and gave me a primer. "The guy wrote 18 novels, all worth reading because of his wit and craftmanship and sense of wherever the real action was," Mugs said. "But after 'Judgment on Deltchev' (1951), they lack urgency. He had been labeled a thriller writer extraordinaire, even though he was a great and prescient writer. Compare 'Journey Into Fear' (1940) with what Americans were doing then, with their pathetic schoolboy Marxism and self-pitying family histories à la Farrell. The gulf of sophistication and technique is vast."

Mugs continued:

Ambler was born in London in 1909. He was an autodidact in a family of vaudeville performers. A man of the left, he became disillusioned with all political ideas and, finally, humanity. I saw him once on the old "Today" show being interviewed by Hugh Downs. Hugh, in the incomparable Hugh manner, asked what he had learned from his vast experience. Ambler replied that, "alas, men must fight, and when all is said and done, the species is scum." "Thank you very much, Mr. Eric Ambler. And now back to Betsy." And that was that.

I don't know of any one else like him -- Conrad was able to dream up the world of Russian anarchists wonderfully in "Under Western Eyes," but he was a hugely sophisticated and travelled man in his 50's, and Conrad is more generic than specific. Ambler had been to Paris. He had brilliance, insight into cornered men, maps, The London Times, and the weeklies, those and an almost supernatural feel for the zeitgeist. His first novel, "The Dark Frontier" (1935 ) predicts the atomic bomb and what it would mean. He does it on the side, a kid writing advertising copy. He has no true ancestors.

Conrad and Buchan are king-and-country boys. Ambler is the huge step into the modern world. "Cause for Alarm" (1939) and "Background to Danger" (1937) and "Epitaph for a Spy" (1938) lead up to the virtuoso "Journey Into Fear" (1940). "A Coffin For Demetrios" (1939) is even better. After you've read the guy there's no doubt this is the last word on the Balkans -- the bizarre Byzantintine intrigue and complexity of the place, the smell, the decaying ancient buildings. Ambler was never there until after he'd written the novels. He intuited the whole fucking scene from newspapers and magazines. Imagination, they used it call it. I mean, Melville didn't have to be a whale to write "Moby Dick."

For years on dust-jackets they used a haunting photo of Ambler, in the fog and darkness, dressed in an overcoat, cigarette in his hand, looking at the camera with keen sceptical attention from a world saved from night only by the dim streetlight above him. He edited and introduced a fascinating collection of spy stories, "To Catch A Spy" (1965), all chosen for their lack of Bondian cheap thrills and romance, but all notable for a palpable sense of dread.

During the war (WWII) Ambler became attached to the British film unit, with Carol Reed and a mess of other dandies, and fell in love with the movies. He became a first-rate screenwriter with 16 produced screenplays and some Academy Award nominations under his belt before he packed that in and settled on the coast, looking at the Pacific and searching for something pacific. A book of essays called "The Ability To Kill" and a collection of short stories fill in the menu before his last book, an autobiography "Here Lies Eric Ambler" (1981). Quite a guy.

I said Mugs concealed his embarrassment at my ignorance, but he did take offense at my use of the word "genre." Mugs, who is usually a gentleman, couldn't help snickering. OK, he nearly laughed in my face: "Is Dostoevsky a mystery guy because he wrote 'Crime and Punishment'? Is Chuck D a master of the supernatural because he wrote the best ghost story? Isn't Ross MacDonald a very good California novelist? Is Chandler just a mystery guy? Ambler truly invented the modern novel of intrigue and suspense. Le Carré is a humble descendent, as I'm sure he'd admit."