From "Goodbye Terry Gross, we never knew ye—on liberal media denial" by Joe Bageant, in the Online Journal: As Helen Caldicott recently put it: “What’s to become of us? Ask any experienced mental health practitioner what happens to a person who constructs and tries to maintain a life based on denial of fundamental reality. It can be done for a while, in spite of occasional outbursts of behavioral oddities (remember Dr. Strangelove’s disobedient arm that was always popping up in an embarrassing Nazi salute). But how long can such a … [Read more...]

CLICK THE FALSIE: Did you know Sylvie Simmons has a whole page of interviews posted, and claims metal men are more respectful of women then "garden-variety" rockers? Wasn't that the joke in BILL AND TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE...? KPFA has a pretty ROBUST podcast page Is this really Sylvie Simmons ? … [Read more...]

REVIEWS OF THE MONTH From Ed Condran in Giantmag.com (Beckensale issue, page 98): PLEDGE THIS! (2005) It's the female ANIMAL HOUSE starring Paris Hilton. I'm the professor of sexology and I'm obsessed with paris. She did very well considering that she's not an actor and not of this planet. I think many lives before this one she was a spider. A very wealthy spider. THE ARISTOCRATS (2005) I never in a million years thought THE ARISTOCRATS would make it like it has. I did the joke as a personal poem to Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette because I … [Read more...]

YET URGED W. TO "STAY TOUGH" ON NSA WIRETAPPING... David Weigel on the Patriot Act (Reason): ...no senator who voted against the PATRIOT Act in 2001 or subsequently voted to amend it has ever lost a race; five congressmen who voted to reject or amend the act have lost their seats, but those losses had more to do with redistricting and a gay marriage vote than with their positions on the PATRIOT act... … [Read more...]

When Tierney and Brooks replaced Safire, I made some crack about how that would be bad for the wordmeister's ego. Now it's not so funny: in today's column, Brooks misrepresents a half-century of cultural politics so lamely you'd think you were reading a Murdoch rag: But by the late 1960's, cultural politics replaced New Deal politics, and liberal Democrats did their best to repel Northern white ethnic voters... Huh? Reagan brought down "New Deal" politics, and the "cultural politics" was all about an immoral war, the politics surrounding the … [Read more...]

As a longtime ER fanatic, I come to praise its latest themes: Maura Tierney is getting BETTER, and their abortion episode last week, replete with "fundamentalists" (which they slyly equated with Catholicism), pushed a lot of over-familiar buttons in ingenious ways. John Leguizamo's so good he plays reckless cowboy bigus dickus for genwine comedy. That music, though, at the end of "If Not Now, When?" last week was symptomatic of the reigning confusion between singer-songwriter and mental illness. I predict Antony will commit himself onstage. And … [Read more...]

Ken Auletta on Judy Miller? Did you gulp hard after you bumped into "(A disclosure: My wife, a literary agent, represents both Keller and Miller.)" So did every other self-respecting journalist. Seth Mnookin's piece in Vanity Fair was superior. PREDICTION OF THE YEAR: Scooter Libby Gets Pardoned BEFORE his trial. … [Read more...]