Message from the Op-Ed editor of a major European newspaper: You have obviously not received the e-mail where I told you that you will not be paid, due to customs regulations within the European Union and to the U.S. Patriot Act. But we will send a nice tablecloth with our company logo. The guy has […]
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
MAKE ‘EM PAYHere’s a tip for the TV networksThat’s hardly controversial:Charge the same for politcal conventionsAs for any infomercial.— Leon Freilich
DAVID HOCKNEY: DRAWING BY OTHER MEANS
Now that David Hockney’s controversial theory about the use of lenses and optical devices by Renaissance painters is being disputed again — this time by computer experts, as reported yesterday by the Sunday Herald in Scotland and today by The New York Times — it may be worth revisiting a lecture he gave on the […]
WISHING IT WERE NOT SO
A friend writes: Was one of Kerry’s wounds to a vital kernel of the frontal lobe? He and the feckless fuckers in his braintrust are handing the country to the insects, and those hungry critters will devour what little of value remains. Quite an achievement. Maybe another medal for the chest of a man with […]
NOW FOR SOME MORE SCIENCE-FICTION REALITY
By Jan Herman Remember the mysterious black barge anchored in the Hudson River between the Manhattan and Jersey shores during our Code Orange New Year eight months ago? Well, the barge is back. Make that two of them. And just in time for the National Republican Convention at Madison Square Garden, which will be protected by “the largest armada of land, air […]
STILL LAUGHING
How cozy it all is: Rummy Boy’s “leadership of the Pentagon has been weighed by a jury of his peers and found somewhat wanting,” The Washington Post reported today. But the conclusion of “the blue-ribbon panel” — appointed by Rummy Boy to review the role of the Pentagon in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and led […]
WEATHERING THE SHORTCUTS?
Let’s be grateful that Louis Menand did not become a brain surgeon. If he had, he probably would never have found the time to apply his scalpel to intellectual history, as he did in his spellbinding best-seller, “The Metaphyical Club,” or as he does in “The Unpolitical Animal,” his dissection of how voters think, in the current New […]
THE BUCK STOPS SOMEWHERE ELSE
But where? The Army’s investigative report of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, to be released this week, names the top U.S. commander in Iraq at the time it all happened — Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez — for leadership deficiencies and failing to deal with rising problems at the prison, according to this morning’s Washington Post. But Sanchez “will […]
BOYCOTT SCOUT
If you’ve never received an email message calling for a boycott or a petition to sign, you’re probably the only one who hasn’t. The latest that came to me said that Germany had decided “to stop all arms sales to Israel,” followed by similar bans by other European countries, and asked for a retaliatory boycott […]
WILL THE REVOLUTION BE CYBERIZED?
No pushover, book critic Jonathan Yardley takes the measure of Hunter S. Thompson this way: “Anything he writes is worth reading, even when it radiates serious signs of having been composed under the influence of something rather more hallucinating than office coffee.” The occasion is Yardley’s review in yesterday’s Washington Post of Thompson’s latest book, […]
DON’T MAKE SY HERSH LAUGH
Systemic failure, the fondly brandished euphemism for failure to take personal responsibility, came in for more bashing yesterday. This time it was the Bush administration’s former weapons inspector David Kay who did the bashing. In what Philip Shenon reports this morning as “uncharacteristically caustic remarks,” Kay pointed out that “until people and organizations are held responsible” […]
THE WRONG WAY
Anyone with a brain who has ever worked in a corporate setting can appreciate Corinne Maier’s complaints that 1) “corporations are not meritocracies,” and 2) “work is organized a little like the court of Louis XIV, very complicated and very ritualized so that people feel they are working effectively when they are not.” Maier’s critique […]
NOT JUST A BLACK THING
A friend writes: My own Golan Cipel has kept me in stitches for the last 35 years. Over breakfast he alluded to the Newsweek article on Jim McGreevey, “Gov. McGreevey’s affair to forget.” He said it should have been subtitled: “The Down Low — It’s Not Just a Black Thing Anymore.” [See the Down low […]
AL QAEDA’S COMPUTER TALES
The news that Al Qaeda had cased buildings in New York, Washington and elsewhere — which was revealed on computer discs taken from an Al Qaeda communications operative who was recently arrested in Pakistan — brings to mind Alan Cullison’s lucky accident in northern Afghanistan almost three years ago. Perhaps you remember Cullison? He’s the […]
CATCHING UP ON REALITY
When we were gone a couple of weeks ago, America heard about the Nincompoop in Chief’s big blooper: “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” But it’s even weirder seeing him say it. He […]
GOOSING PORTER GOSS
In case you haven’t seen the nincompoop’s nominee to head the CIA telling Michael Moore “I am not qualified,” have a look. Porter Goss says: “I don’t have the language skills. … We’re looking for Arabists today. I don’t have the cultural background probably. And I certainly don’t have the technical skills. … So the […]
DENY AND LIE — AND CHANGE THE SUBJECT
The oldest trick in the book: Deny and lie — and when the news is bad, change the subject. That’s the Nincompoop in Chief’s m.o. So sayeth the experts, above all Paul Krugman. “I had a bad feeling about Bush, from an economic standpoint, as far back as the 2000 presidential campaign,” he says. “I […]