Straight Up | Jan Herman

Lenny Bruce once said, “Yada, yada. Yada, yada, yada, warden!” Meanwhile, ever on the lookout to probe deeply, Henninger noticed: The burden of war … has not sapped Mr. Bush physically. … The hair’s gone gray, but there is little sign of fatigue in his face or demeanor. I asked how he stays normal: “Prayer […]

When you think of all those novels, “Ragtime” most famously, but also “The Book of Daniel,” “Welcome to Hard Times,” his latest “The March,” and so on. But wait a minute! The guy’s a terrific essayist. “Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution,” an out-of-print collection of his selected essays you can pick up for a […]

Given the name of this blog, my staff of thousands dared me: Chris Mac, a k a Chris McNamara, snowboarding in midair over Lover’s Leap (a climb “Rated X”) above Lake Tahoe, California. Photo © Summit Journal, an

Now for the latest addition to the Ministry of Truth’s dictionary of Newspeak, Bullshitter-in-Chief: “We’ve never been stay the course. …” For the record, note the difference between a skeptical story of the uncourse told with a smile, “Bush Abandons Phrase ‘Stay the Course’ on Iraq.” The first, from the Washington Post, begins: President Bush […]

The military analysis by Michael Gordon, MILITARY’S BAGHDAD PLAN: LAST CHANCE TO SECURE IRAQ The analysis is not new news. It’s basically a wrap-up of what’s been happening in the neighborhoods controlled by the militias or threatened by the death squads in the genocidal civil war there. And it’s curiously bloodless, making no mention of […]

We shall not want: MIAMI (said Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Methinks

der fuss, ja? i’m qvite schure dot herr wagner vould haff lufft zuch decor. R. Mutt have thought? PS: As noted two years ago

I never read Lloyd Grove’s gossip column in New York’s Daily News. So I dunno how good, bad or indifferent it was. But he seems to be getting lots of mileage out of being dumped, including an “A Walk on the Wild Side,” the title of Nelson Algren’s classic 1956 novel (set among the pimps, […]

So much goes by so swiftly, there’s no point in trying to catch up. But KO’s recent editorials must be noted as knockouts. I’m thinking particularly of his Watch it. Read it. Relish it. The “Countdown,” Olbermann’s daily cable show on MSNBC, has I’ve been watching him a long time & he just gets better. […]

Have you watched this

Been traveling. Still am. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Here’s one you won’t find on YouTube. RealityStudio just posted it. William S. Burroughs, filmmaker Antony Balch and I made it 35 years ago in Burroughs’s London flat. It was an experiment, primitive yet precise, in a particular shape-shifting technique. Coincidentally, RealityStudio has also posted an overview of an international symposium about William S. Burroughs, […]

It’s straight out of soap opera: “Tears welled up. … He hugged her, held her face, kissed her cheek.” In fact, it’s a description of the war anguish in private, as the Washington Post headline says. Not so private that a reporter didn’t report the scene. Not so private that it didn’t make The Post’s

Words of wisdom: “The older I get the less I believe in fundamentalism of any kind.” — Sinn F&#233in, speaking yesterday at the Council on Foreign Relations. Here’s “Clinton got a blow job.” EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Vogue Italia had caught our attention, apropos

A friend writes: No feelings were hurt in this week’s kid-gloves New Yorker story by Calvin Tomkins on the Museum of Modern Art, which opens its education center next month, two years after its was supposed to be finished as part of the museum’s half-billion dollar corporate-style expansion on 53rd Street. There was no dissection […]

EILEEN FISHER, Inc., a most loyal, most fashionable, most successful advertiser: Dear Mr. Herman We read your comments regarding the placement of our ad in The New York Times Magazine on August 27, 2006 and would like to respond. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit