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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]