Cheney Boy’s 78-year-old reported by the Associated Press, “His voice was a bit raspy, but strong, and he had what appeared to be a line of scarring on his upper right eyelid and scrapes on his neck.” This is what he said: “I regret that I couldn’t have been here earlier so you could see […]
DEEP FOCUS, ES CLARO?
Before the week is out I want to clarify an issue of burning interest to film hogs, critics, scholars and other lower forms of life. There seems to be a sudden interest in “deep focus” and its original Hollywood practitioners. It’s a simple cinematic technique, and yet its history and meaning are somewhat misunderstood even […]
CHENEY BOY’S NURSERY RHYME
From his Mother Goose: This is the rat, That ate the malt That lay in the house that Jack built. Postscript: And now for the topper:
DA CHENEY FUNNIES
The stuff coming out of the White House is too funny to stop. Coupla hunnerd proof at least. Can’t help it. Here’s more: he loves the smell of gunpowder.
PREYTORIAN GUARD RIDES AGAIN
I dunno who Don Krupp is, but I say give him an op-ed column. His letter to the editor in this morning’s New York Times works for me: To the Editor: Re “No End to Questions in Cheney Hunting Accident” (front page, Feb. 14): The debacle of Vice President Dick Cheney’s misfire while quail hunting […]
TRICKLE, TRICKLE
“minor heart attack” he suffered or from any other injuries he sustained as a result of being accidentally shot, can Cheney Boy be charged with negligent homicide? If so, will he be? And if that were possible, would it be too much to ask Cheney Boy’s victim to give his life for the good of […]
DA BIG BLOW
Before the record blizzard of ’06 disappears into the murk of history, I want to let everyone know that I’m alive and well. One friend out West, hearing about “da big blow,” messaged me: “I hope you’re comfortably dug in for the duration. Thass lotsa white stuff. Coraggio!”
FORWARD NAILS LAUDER
Ron Lauder is liable to be bent out of shape by a story in The Forward today. It nails the billionaire business mogul-cum-philanthropist’s deceptive, contradictory, and hypocritical stance on the restitution of Nazi-looted art as 1) a prominent collector who may or may not own some of it, 2) a former treasurer of the World […]
IT’S ALL IN THE LINKS
Here’s what a friend calls hems and haws, what Sam Harris calls threats to press freedom on both coasts, what David Ehrenstein calls fait divers à la Cronenberg, continuation, what Filmstrip International calls The Battle for America (also a video). Postscript: Uh, dint mean to forget popcult maven Ryan McGee’s PPS: Regarding the first link […]
ONE MORE VENTRILOQUIST DUMMY
So Cheney Boy’s ventriloquist dummy (the Alberto Gonzales). That’s been clear from the time Gonzales was appointed attorney general. But it was never clearer, right down to the crooked grin, than it was in And as long as I’m posting today — when the regime has just released a The cost of the Iraq war […]
PICTURE THIS
Muslim rioters offended by the 12 cartoons of Mohammed first published in Denmark — I’m quoting that from a friend’s e-mail message, though I don’t know where the information originated. But I think it’s reliable or I wouldn’t be posting it. The message came with an attached image, left, which shows a miniature of Mohammed […]
WHAT MAKES BIN LADEN TICK?
He hates the Jews. That’s what makes him tick. Everything he does is motivated by one thing — anti-Semitism.* Ditto for his inner circle. So said Peter Bergen, author of Council on Foreign Relations in New York earlier this week. This may not be surprising to you, but Bergen’s insistence on this point — it […]
T00T, T00T, T00TSIE …
We’ve posted 1033 items since this There’s too much at stake to flat-out quit. Not that we kid ourselves about the megamighty impact we’ve made. But until we get through a few offline projects, which will take the rest of the winter, blogging will have less urgency for us. In other words, it won’t be […]
MEMORIAL FOR MARY, AU REVOIR
Mary Beach — the painter, translator and writer (and an old friend and literary collaborator) — died last Thursday. She was 86. Her son, Jeffrey Beach, tells me she died of cancer. It had been diagnosed several months ago. She is also survived by a daughter, Pamela, and a granddaughter, Elizabeth, both of Cherry Valley, […]
FIRST-RATE MIND OR FIRST-RATE MEDIA HOG?
The chat began with a question posed by Felix Rohatyn, a former U.S. Ambassador to France: What would Alexis de Tocqueville say if he came back and saw America today? Bernard-Henri Lévy’s reply, given his own admiration for America, was not surprising: Tocqueville “would feel comfortable” except — and it was the big exception — […]
RANDOM LUNCH
It was all off the record. So I can’t tell you what The truth is — and I hate to say this — nothing she said broke any news, nothing you wouldn’t already know from reading the press, so there’s nothing to tell even if her remarks had been on the record, except that it […]
WSJ EDITOR HANGS MORE THAN HIS HAT
interviewed Bernard-Henri Lévy, right, about his new book, Given the fact that Lévy is Jewish, and mindful of the historically anti-Semitic caricature of hook-nosed Jews, we’d say Varadarajan’s insinuating description — the only actual physical detail offered about the author, by the way, amid a ton of color on his French accent, inherited money and […]

![Mary Beach with her husband, the writer Claude Pélieu (right) and the poet Ray Bremser, Cooperstown, N.Y., in the mid-'80s [Photo: Allen Ginsberg]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/bremserpelieubeach3-e1358030882269.jpg)
![Bernard-Henri Lévy [Photo: Itzik Edri]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Bernard-Henri_Lévy-tau140.jpg)