There are only two weeks left to tell the world what you want to do before you die. So say a pair of editors preparing a book of last wishes to be published (they say) early next year by Little, Brown & Company. I haven’t checked with Little, Brown. The editors, Mike and Chris, have […]
Archives for April 2004
GOOGLING JEW, CHRISTIAN, MUSLIM
They’ve even noticed the controversy in India. Until the other day if you typed the word “Jew” into Google, the first search result turned out to be a link to an anti-Semitic Web site. A group called removejewwatch wants the site removed from the Google search engine and is asking at least 50,000 people to […]
THE USUAL TAP DANCE
Tom Shales had the best commentary and roundup I’ve read of yesterday’s sad little press gathering in the East Room of the White House, where our Fearless Maximum Leader was seen on television doing his usual, stumbling tap dance. Shales began: “When I say something, I mean it,” George W. Bush said decisively near the end of last […]
TO THE MAX: MISSION NOT ACCOMPLISHED
Whatever else there is to say, the guy is simply out of his league. He wasn’t elected to the presidency in the first place. He didn’t deserve it in the second place. He’s proved himself incompetent in the third place. “I don’t plan on losing my job,” he said tonight, during his news conference (only […]
SWORN TESTIMONY
Here we go. Watch this morning’s hearings live on the Web as the 9/11 commission takes more sworn testimony in public. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
ACROSS THE RUBICON
Did anybody see Chalmers Johnson Sunday night on C-Span2 Book TV? It was a rerun of an interview done in March at the Los Angeles Public Library by Warren Olney (of L.A. radio station KCRW), and it was mesmerizing. All Olney had to do was listen. Johnson recently published “The Sorrows of Empire.” His thesis in […]
AIRPLANE READING
Blogging as self-promotion: A book review of mine appeared Sunday in the Chicago Sun-Times: 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 […]
BLOGGER STARDUST
A friend asked (this is true): “How’s the blogging life?” My reply: “Underpaid and overrated.” The overraters tend to be johnnys-come-lately who believe they’ve had a revelation when, in fact, all they’ve done is plugged in. The underpayers are everyone else — in other words, the readers. The truth is that, like much else on […]
STONE GETS TOUGH ON FIDEL
Oliver Stone’s “Looking for Fidel,” to premiere Wednesday on HBO, is called the follow-up in tough mode to “Commandante,” his previous softball portrait of the Cuban leader. This time, instead of tossing bouqets at Castro in a loving (some said fawning) approach to El Commandante, Stone reportedly confronts him about his vicious crackdown on political […]
SAMMY’S WHITE DREAMS
By JAN HERMAN 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 […]
THE CONDI CONTEXT, PART 2
There are plenty of editorials to choose from this morning to describe Condoleezza Rice’s testimony at yesterday’s 9/11 hearing. (Here’s the complete transcript.) We made our snap judgment about the Condi context yesterday while the hearing was still in progress: “She may well be remembered as Condoleezza (“Cover Your Ass”) Rice.” Today’s New York Times […]
WHERE’S THE ‘TUDE?
John Powers writes in L.A. Weekly: “Air America has a long way to go.” Too true. “Most of the left listened to the shows with dawning, er, yawning horror,” he says. (Remember this? < FONT color=#003399>“Hate to say it, but what a bore”?) Powers figures the audience is willing to cut the network some slack […]
THREE DOTS
Has anybody anybody said it better? … Meantime, Oriana Fallaci is at it again. … Check out today’s Cubarte Newsletter. … It reports on everything from a recent opera production of Mozart’s “Cossi Fan Tutti” at Havana’s Grand Theatre to Oliver Stone’s film, “Looking for Fidel,” based on his 30-hour interview with Fidel Castro, to be aired April 14 by […]
SHARPENED DRAMA
Finally. The 9/11 Commission‘s Jamie Gorelick, Tim Roemer and Bob Kerrey sharpened the drama. By confronting Condoleezza (“CYA”) Rice with questions she preferred to filibuster, they woke everyone up. Their directness, and Richard Ben-Veniste’s earlier questioning about a classified memo of Aug. 6, 2001, titled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States,” were the real “take away” […]
THE CONDI CONTEXT
Pass the No-Doze. Two hours into Condoleezza Rice’s 9/11 hearing testimony is anybody still awake? A typical Condi sound-bite: “We were looking in the context of the plan that gave a better regional context …” Zzzzzzz. To “the sleaze factor” and (thanks to columnist Nicholas von Hoffman’s apt coinage) “the swine factor” in describing the W Ltd. gang, let’s add (thanks to the […]
FIBBING NOT ALLOWED
Blast of trumpets. Drum roll, please. Let the hearing begin. Watch it live on C-Span2 on the Web. Fibbing not allowed. And Dr. Rice, please uncross all your fingers and toes. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
FROM THE PLAZA OF THE REVOLUTION
Courtesy of my man in Havana, the latest issue of CubaNow (a digital magazine of Cuban arts and culture) just eluded U.S. customs and made it into my emailbox. It features stacks of current and archived articles like these, picked at random: Gabriel Garcia Marquez on “bad literature teachers”; Cuba’s most eminent musicologist, Maria Teresa Linares, on “the close […]