Straight Up | Jan Herman

It’s so secret, We Can’t Tell You. That’s the catchy headline on today’s New York Times editorial about “relentless efforts” to continue the aaaeulc‘s legacy of clandestine eavesdropping. If an Islamic charity is “subjected to warrantless surveillance” by the National Security Agency and is “declared a sponsor of terrorism,” what happens when it challenges those […]

Algren was the author of more than a dozen books. I’m betting that his two most famous novels — The Man With the Golden Arm and A Walk on the Wild Side, one a tragedy and the other a comedy — will last longer than any of the novels by Mailer, Vidal, Updike, Cheever, Kerouac, […]

Robert Parry said it for me. The bottom line is this: When the American Right is offended, the “corrections” come fast and are sweeping, even in highly dubious situations. Sometimes heads roll. But when the American Left feels aggrieved, the “corrections” are slow and grudging, often very narrow in scope and still misleading. Nobody is […]

“Symphony Space has given us a wonderful present for Sebastian’s 325th birthday,” says Mike Lawrence, whose terrific documentary, BACH & friends, will have its New York premiere at Symphony Space’s Peter Jay Sharp Theatre on May 16. The Sunday evening premiere, beginning at 7:30 p.m., will be followed by a screening of complete performances of […]

This appeared two weeks ago: (Click to read) This appeared a decade ago: (Click to read) Which pretty much says it all. Postscript: March 22 — Well, well … no it doesn’t. The Vienna Philharmonic has permanently appointed its first woman concertmaster. Will wonders never cease?

When I saw The Hurt Locker back in August, I thought, “Finally a grunt’s-eye view of the war in Iraq. And not so gung-ho either.” Leave it to my staff of thousands to straighten me out. Bill Osborne wrote in an e-mail message, “I thought it was a subtle form of American war propaganda that […]

Click logo for mugshots and flowcharts: There is abundant evidence that war crimes were committed by the Bush Administration. … The question is very simple: Will any officials of the Bush Administration who are responsible for the “war on terror” be indicted and held accountable for those crimes? — War Criminals Watch If the Obama […]

Perversity Think Tank A Seminar on the Concept of Perversity by Supervert 32C Inc. Click photo to watch video:

Bach on the organ? Of course. On the piano? Certainly. On the cello? Naturally. On the violin? Sure. But Bach on the banjo? The ukelele? The mandolin? How about the glass harp? Or the clarinet, the guitar, and the double bass. And let’s not forget a cappella. You hear them all — brilliantly filmed and […]

Good question. It’s the title of a new book, just published in South Africa by Dye Hard Press. Although Sinclair Beiles was a prolific poet, novelist, and playwright, “there is very little information available” about him and even less about his work, co-editor Gary Cummiskey writes in the introduction. Beiles is best known for his […]

Michael Kinsley gets it. He takes note of “Where Did the Vampire Squid Come From?”, which pointed out that Matt Taibbi’s description of Goldman Sachs — “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money” — bore a striking resemblance to an old […]

Martin Luther King Jr. was bold and beautiful for a reason. He seems a figure from a distant past. Is it because he died so prematurely, killed by an assassin’s bullet, at 39? Or does he recede into history because someone of his towering stature is unimaginable in a aaaeulc led by blustering moral pipsqueaks? […]

This full-page ad in The New York Times, which ran today on page 29, marks the 40th anniversary of the WAR IS OVER! campaign launched by John Lennon and Yoko Ono on Dec. 15, 1969. Click the image or this link to watch a campaign video. And have a look at this slide show. Billboards […]

A thought for the New Year … Question: “Do you still believe that the people have the power?” Answer: “I’ll always believe that. I think that they don’t know that. I don’t think that they believe that. And I understand why they don’t believe that, because it’s getting harder and harder and harder to penetrate […]

This came over the transom. My sentiments precisely. Reminds me of Philip Larkin.

… or listen here to words of gratitude.

So many immortals are buried at the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris — Balzac, Molière, Oscar Wilde, Proust, Max Ernst, for starters — that the witty artist Arman must rank among them as a mere mortal. But his stylish, minimalist headstone has the best epitaph of all of them. (“Alone at last!”) I saw it […]