Everybody, including the blatherati, is touting the latest trend in the lit market: graphic novels. May we recommend a neglected category? Let’s hear it for graphic muckraking. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Did someone say truth is the best defense and ridicule the best offense? If not, consider it said. Here’s one example of ridicule that tells the truth, and here’s another. Some may prefer this or this. We like these oneliners, forwarded to us by Abbie Conant, who got them from Irene Stuber, co-host of Abigail’s […]

She made it up. That’s what police now say about the 23-year-old woman who told them a gang of young men who “appeared to be of Muslim North African origin,” attacked her on a suburban train near Paris because they thought she was a Jew. She said they drew swastikas on her, cut her hair […]

Before being found dead, slumped forward in the passenger seat of a Volga sedan with his forehead on the dashboard and “a copeck-sized bullethole in the back of his head,” he had made his reputation as a journalist much admired for his reports on the Russian mafia and business corruption, among other pervasive social conditions […]

Does the United Kingdom have its own Michael Moore? We nominate Robin Cook, Britain’s former foreign secretary and erstwhile leader of the House of Commons. Does the United States have another Michael Moore? We nominate Robert Greenwald, the noted filmmaker who’s targeting the Fox News Channel. Any seconds?  EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Here to entertain you: Click on this link. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

David Johnston’s report on how the “Powers That Be” conned Americans into believing Iraq had weapons of mass destruction is buried so deep within the The New York Times Website today that it’s virtually invisible. You can always second-guess the way an article is played, of course, and the Times editors decided Johnston’s rated only page […]

The AP reports that we are all Jews under the skin, except for the anti-Semites. PARIS — A gang of young men attacked a woman riding a suburban train with her infant child, cutting her hair and drawing swastikas on her stomach. Other passengers watched but did nothing, police reported. Police said the gang of […]

Since some critics have gone apeshit about the upcoming Brian Wilson release — see Newsweek’s Malcolm Jones on “Smile,” which he calls (unbelievably, to my ears) a “masterpiece,” or Deborah Solomon’s interview with Wilson in The New York Times Magazine — we offer our friend Bill Reed‘s more explicable Beach Boys adulation: In the 1960s, while nearly all my rock crit […]

The New York Times keeps shooting itself in the foot. OK, sometimes it shoots itself in the head. Anyway, today’s foot shot is a photo of Republican Sen. Trent Lott misidentified in the caption as “the majority leader.” Caption errors are so common in so many newspapers that it seems churlish to single this one […]

Attacks on “Farenheit 9/11” from the usual suspects on the right are not surprising. But when it comes from the left it’s a story of “man bites dog.” Robert Jensen, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of “Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity” from City […]

Two fascinating books: They’re wonderfully short and easy to read (if a bit repetitive). One is “Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern.” The other is “Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals” (with a terrific bibliography). They’re both by John Gray, professor of European thought at the London School of Economics and […]

Can you believe this? “I pray whoever is leading the country will be led by God, and I believe this current administration answers to a higher calling,” said Mr Bernsen, a well-known jazz musician living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “I don’t wear the man’s shoes, but there’s enough fruit that falls from that tree to […]

Spoke to the painter Mary Beach the other day for the first time in a long, long time. As she said, “It’s been a thousand years.” When we knew each other back in the late ’60s in San Francisco, we collaborated on a little magazine together with the French writer Claude P�lieu and the artist […]

Speaking of old friends and old poets, Leon Freilich sent today’s commentary: In the lexicon on the Hill,For both the dull and the brainy,The newest expletiveIs, “Senator, go Cheney.” EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Why does The Guardian in London have so much better daily coverage of books and authors than any American newspaper, bar none? Have a look at The spice of life (about J. P.Donleavy, who put the ginger in “The Ginger Man”) and Age of unreason (an extensive interview with J.G. Ballard, who may be the […]

Thank you for the thought: “They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don’t we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it’s worked for over 200 years, and heck, we’re not using it any more.” Thank you for the references or, as we like to […]