Though I’m a New Yorker, I’m as pleased as any Beantown fan that the Red Sox beat the Yankees for the American League pennant. I grew up rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers, which meant I grew up hating the Yankees. I lived close enough to Ebbets Field to hear the roar of the crowd when someone hit one into […]

The following message arrived a while ago, but was overlooked due to an editorial lapse: Dear Straight Up: Thank you so much for your support! Due to the enormous influx of avid patrons, The Endangered Species Restaurant is now hiring additional staff in the following categories: Thick-Skinned Cooks (Oceolt roasting exp.) (2)Wild-Animal Poachers (6)Appetizer Cleansers […]

Speaking of The Guardian — see DEAR LIMEY ASSHOLES — Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland writes about having “the same queasy feeling” he had four years ago when he followed the 2000 presidential campaign around the U.S. of A. Only now, he figures, the clash is about more than Republicans vs. Democrats, Bush vs. Kerry, right vs. left. It’s “tradition against […]

Bulletin from heaven (scroll down): Did God’s little deputies help prevent a terrorist attack on the United States over the past three years? Attorney General John Ashcroft told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce yesterday that Providence was partly reponsible. “But the hand of Providence,” he said, “has been assisted by the dedicated men and women […]

Kurt Vonnegut’s “Requiem for a Dreamer” is making the rounds. It’s a conversation between Vonnegut and out-of-print science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, and turned out to be their last: Trout committed suicide by drinking Drano at midnight on October 15 in Cohoes, New York, after a female psychic using tarot cards predicted that the environmental […]

A reader writes: This is a non-apochryphal, verifiable story. A fine classical pianist of my acquaintance went under the knife a month or so ago. Just before the anesthetic took effect, she looked up at her surgeon and said: “If I don’t make it through this, promise me one thing.” “What is it, Sonia?” “That […]

Take a tip from David Hackworth, whose “Memo for the President-Elect” makes these recommendations: + Immediately fire SecDef Donald Rumsfeld, all of his Pentagon senior civilian assistants and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers.+ Replace Rumsfeld with retired Gen. Anthony Zinni and give this tough, smart, proven leader a free hand to […]

Harry’s Bar in Paris, famous as an American tourist hangout and for sponsoring the International Imitation Hemingway Contest, also runs a Straw Vote for president. It began in 1924, and it’s supposed to have been wrong only once — in 1976, when Carter beat Ford. If this year’s vote holds up, John Kerry will be the next president. (The tally was 54 percent for […]

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Fully expected: This endorsement from The New York Times: “John Kerry for President.” It makes the case most of all with a dead-on indictment of the Ignoramus in Chief. But here’s a pleasant surprise from a totally Republican newspaper: “Why We Cannot Endorse President Bush For Re-Election.” As stewards of the [Tampa] Tribune’s editorial voice, we […]

In the florid words of my good friend Repulski: “A great and testy old fart steps up to the plate in those worn and dusty spiked shoes before the indifferent crowd. He knocks the spikes against the bat, just to clean the bullshit of old games away, the ugly hard toil of yesteryear, remembering when he […]

Sy Hersh talks about the road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. How come nobody talks about the link between American pop culture and Guantanamo? Oops. Somebody just has. Not in so many words, but you could infer it from today’s report in The New York Times about interrogators at Guantanamo who used Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the Machine and Eminem to torture their […]

Sandy Dijsktra has been called an über agent as much for the passion she brings to her projects as for the authors she represents. Apparently her passion also extends to politics. The other day her authors — among them Amy Tan, Mike Davis, Susan Faludi, Maxine Hong Kingston, Peggy Orenstein, John Richardson, Kate White, Karen […]

Taking their title from Robert Schumann’s artsong, “Mondnacht,” Abbie Conant and William Osborne have created a short video commentary on the torture at Abu Ghraib. It is a deeply felt editorial imbued with sorrowful beauty. It uses Schumann’s music, the “radiant voice” of soprano Barbara Bonney and the pianio accompaniment of Vladimir Ashkenazy to give dignity to the torture victims. It […]

In last night’s third debate, which was supposed to be about domestic issues, I didn’t hear a single mention of oil. Not one word about those three little letters. Yet oil — supply, cost and dwindling geological reserves — is the greatest domestic crisis we are likely to face in this decade: Greater than the deficit, […]

Bob Dylan thought he’d had it. “Many didn’t feel my heart was in it any more,” he says. They were right. He was a burned-out rock star. Then he went into a bar and heard a small jazz band. Suddenly he felt inspired. “It was mostly the singer,” he says. In what’s believed to be […]

Here comes the third debate. As I was saying about the first debate, “Will voters ever get to see what those guys were scribbling so furiously?” I suspected the Ignoramus in Chief was doodling his mantra, “significant progress,” and Kerry his counter-mantra, “four more years of the same.” James Wolcott figures debaters’ notes, in future, […]