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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 — […]

Our Maximum Leader’s secret mission to Iraq, described as bold even by some of his critics, had all the trappings of a novelty act. Anyone who believes for a minute that the White House arranged it for the troops is living on another planet. The lights-out landing, Our Maximum Leader in the cockpit of Air […]

Excellent word comes from ABC News, if it holds. A report about Frederick, the Imbabazi Orphanage artist and photographer, is scheduled for Thanksgiving on “PrimeTime Thursday” (10 p.m. ET, 9 p.m. CT). His hands were amputated during the Rwanda genocide of 1994 and have since been replaced by prosthetics with help from supporters of the […]

Jeannette Walls, the gossip columnist for MSNBC.com, complained yesterday in her newsletter that there were “nine camera crews from Japan alone” covering Michael Jackson’s arrest in handcuffs. I wonder if her own editors ever read her newsletter. MSNBC.com’s entertainment section gave the Japanese a run for their money with eight stories in a row: “Jackson […]

I’ve overlooked the Stella Awards for too long. There have been so many bogus stories about them on the Web that I simply dismissed them. The Stella Awards, if you don’t know, are named after 79-year-old Stella Liebeck, who spilled coffee on herself and successfully sued McDonald’s in 1992. She won $200,000 in compensatory damages (later […]

Magic for a Monday morning: While you’re finishing your coffee, move your mouse over the screen here and here and here. Now it’s time to go to work. What a shame. EAR OPENER This morning also brings news of Ray Kurzweil‘s latest invention: the cybernetic poet, a software program he regards as an aid to […]

“Curse of Youth,” an interesting take on those newspaper tabs for tots, provides a shorthand clue to success: “If you want your newspaper to appeal to young people, you must be willing to print the word ‘fuck.’” Vulgar but true, and here’s the reason: Young people want the world as they see it: without filters. […]

One thing about the upcoming Biennale de Paris seems certain. It’s not going to score points with English speakers. Here’s what the latest biennale bulletin has to say, in so-called English translation, about the theme and context of the 2004 exhibition: The BDP is an event favorising an art dynamic with the goal to reveal […]