David Johnston’s report on how the “Powers That Be” conned Americans into believing Iraq had weapons of mass destruction is buried so deep within the The New York Times Website today that it’s virtually invisible. You can always second-guess the way an article is played, of course, and the Times editors decided Johnston’s rated only page […]
THIS IS NOW, NOT A TIME WARP
The AP reports that we are all Jews under the skin, except for the anti-Semites. PARIS — A gang of young men attacked a woman riding a suburban train with her infant child, cutting her hair and drawing swastikas on her stomach. Other passengers watched but did nothing, police reported. Police said the gang of […]
SON OF EARLY PLASTIC
Since some critics have gone apeshit about the upcoming Brian Wilson release — see Newsweek’s Malcolm Jones on “Smile,” which he calls (unbelievably, to my ears) a “masterpiece,” or Deborah Solomon’s interview with Wilson in The New York Times Magazine — we offer our friend Bill Reed‘s more explicable Beach Boys adulation: In the 1960s, while nearly all my rock crit […]
SHOT IN THE FOOT
The New York Times keeps shooting itself in the foot. OK, sometimes it shoots itself in the head. Anyway, today’s foot shot is a photo of Republican Sen. Trent Lott misidentified in the caption as “the majority leader.” Caption errors are so common in so many newspapers that it seems churlish to single this one […]
DID MOORE MAKE A ‘STUPID WHITE MOVIE’?
Attacks on “Farenheit 9/11” from the usual suspects on the right are not surprising. But when it comes from the left it’s a story of “man bites dog.” Robert Jensen, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of “Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity” from City […]
JOHN GRAY IN BLACK AND WHITE
Two fascinating books: They’re wonderfully short and easy to read (if a bit repetitive). One is “Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern.” The other is “Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals” (with a terrific bibliography). They’re both by John Gray, professor of European thought at the London School of Economics and […]
POLITICAL JAZZ
Can you believe this? “I pray whoever is leading the country will be led by God, and I believe this current administration answers to a higher calling,” said Mr Bernsen, a well-known jazz musician living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “I don’t wear the man’s shoes, but there’s enough fruit that falls from that tree to […]
MEMORY LANE
Spoke to the painter Mary Beach the other day for the first time in a long, long time. As she said, “It’s been a thousand years.” When we knew each other back in the late ’60s in San Francisco, we collaborated on a little magazine together with the French writer Claude P�lieu and the artist […]
D.C. DISS
Speaking of old friends and old poets, Leon Freilich sent today’s commentary: In the lexicon on the Hill,For both the dull and the brainy,The newest expletiveIs, “Senator, go Cheney.”
FROM MY HIDEOUT
by Jan Herman Why does The Guardian in London have so much better daily coverage of books and authors than any American newspaper, bar none? Have a look at The spice of life (about J. P.Donleavy, who put the ginger in “The Ginger Man”) and Age of unreason (an extensive interview with J.G. Ballard, who […]
THOUGHTS AND REEFERS
Thank you for the thought: “They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don’t we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it’s worked for over 200 years, and heck, we’re not using it any more.” Thank you for the references or, as we like to […]
ONE MORE THING TO THINK ABOUT
This has been making the rounds on the Web for a long time. But it’s a parting thought for our red-white-and-blue summer: A car company can move its factories to Mexico and claim it’s a free market. A toy company can outsource to a Chinese subcontractor and claim it’s a free market. A major bank can […]
NOTES FROM ROSIE’S MEMORIAL SERVICE
By Jan Herman Went to the memorial service for Rosemary Breslin this afternoon. She was a terrific gal. Used to work with her at the Daily News. She died the other day at age 47 of a mysterious blood disease so rare that it still has no name. She called it “the headache that wouldn’t […]
ONE MORE INTERRUPTION
Our search for a hideout continues. But we couldn’t let this go: As tipped by Arts & Letters Daily, Ann Crittenden’s essay “What Do Mothers Want?” asks the question: “Why has the U.S. never had a decent system of child care? One feminist answer, ‘dumb men, stupid choices,’ is long overdue.” Far be it from us […]
HITCHENS’S CHICKENS
We interrupt our search for a hideout to bring you this: Belated advice from Christopher Hitchens, who has finally got around to acknowledging the obvious about Abu Ghraib: We may have to start using blunt words like murder and rape to describe what we see. And one linguistic reform is in any case already much […]
THAT TIME OF YEAR
A couple of people I know are heading to a rainforest in Central America, which reminds me it’s time to head somewhere. I haven’t figured where just yet. But my staff of thousands is working on it. In the meantime, there’s plenty in the archives to keep you amused or befuddled, impressed or depressed, until our […]
THE PRESIDENT OF SOUL
By Jan Herman Ray Charles, who died yesterday, was never president of the U.S. of A. No state funeral for him. He was a different kind of president — “The Genius,” as many called him. For me, he was the unforgettable President of Soul. I still remember a show he did one snowy winter night in 1963 in a dingy […]