“We do not torture,” the I pledge allegiance to the flog Of the United States of Cheney And to the tortures for which he stands, One nation, with me as trainee.

How do you say “Burn, Baby, Burn” in French? And which would you believe, Doug Ireland’s “France Has an Underclass, but Its Roots Are Still Shallow”? Did we really have to ask? Ireland messages: U.S. press coverage of the youth rebellion in France’s ghettos hasn’t done a very good job of portraying the reasons for […]

Eight years ago, the all-male Vienna Philharmonic agreed to open its doors to women for the first time since it was founded, in 1842. Has it lived up to that agreement? In a word, no. These guys are still playing with themselves. Despite official promises and pronouncements, and the brief hiring of a female harpist […]

A gag is making the email rounds: 1. Go to the Aaaahhhh, on Aug. 11, 2003 in our first Straight Up post, to be precise — and pointed out that the Web wit who thought up the gag and commandeered the Google site was a guy by the name of blogging pharmacist with a taste […]

Prince Charles and his now-legal paramour, Camilla, are being trailed on Humbert Wolfe in his famous ditty: THE BRITISH JOURNALIST [Actual title: “Over the Fire”] You cannot hope to bribe or twist, thank God! the British journalist. But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there’s no occasion to. In the intervening decades, things have […]

Most news stories live for a day and die the next.

Hooray! At long last She doesn’t quite achieve the altitude of the zingers in Clive James’s weekly columns in the Observer a quarter century ago, but then what other television critic has? Here’s a sampling of his stingers — all but one of them ledes — on subjects high and low from a collection of […]

We called him the Alito the Hun. “[I]t’s hard to imagine a more reactionary judge,” Brother Doug writes. He begins his dissection with a couple of choice cuts: Theocratic pit bull Gary Bauer, the dwarf former presidential candidate of the Christer hard right, crowed that the appointment of Alito was “a grand slam,” and crackpot […]

Dan Neil’s column in this past Sunday’s Los Angeles Times Magazine talks about the many “moments of ironic fallout” included on That moment is a long, long way from the real thing, which is not for casual viewing. There was no irony when, on “Doctor Atomic,” which has been getting see and hear it.) Conant […]

From a conscript in the Army of the Tireless: “Who Owns the Past?” edited by Kate Fitz Gibbon in collaboration with former Metropolitan Museum counsel and power lawyer Ashton Hawkins. The book, subtitled “Cultural Policy, Cultural Property, and the Law,” is to be launched tonight at the MoMA has fought the Bondi family’s efforts to […]

Somebody feeling provoked, polarized or just plain pole-axed might get the wrong idea and mis-read the headline on this MSNBC.com cover illustration:

Politely put, “it sometimes seems” they are like this. — Tireless Staff of Thousands

From a conscript in the Army of the Tireless, this photo “found while browsing” and caption for same: Upon hearing of the ravages caused by hurricane Katrina, President George W. Bush went into immediate action. He sends this reference, too: Articulate, writes: “Blimey” and

rightwingnuts. It was their failed questionnaire. It was, get this, the White Houses’s own

Doug Ireland, “This” refers to his exclusive publication of Pasolini’s major poem Norman MacAfee, who also selected and translated Pasolini, above, whose mutilated body was found in a vacant lot 20 miles outside of Rome on Nov. 2, 1975, was “a giant polymath of postwar Italian culture” who “frequently celebrated homosexuality in his writings and […]

Managed to reboot without India’s help. … As interview about it is), and the remark has gone unnoticed in this That remark serves as a stunning commentary on the bizarre thinking of top policy-makers and the strangely personalized way policy was, and doubtless still is, made at the top of the U.S. war regime. Was […]