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DAILY BILLBOARD
6/22: John
Strausbaugh - The Constituency that Dare Not Speak Its Name
6/22: Lisa Kearns - But Enough About Me...
6/22: Russ Smith - No Shock at The New York Times
6/22: Daria Vaisman - Fool Disclosure
6/22: Jim Knipfel - Iron Maiden Live!
6/22: Andrey Slivka - The National Conversation
6/21: Russ Smith - The Unofficial Times
Ombudsman
6/21: John Strausbaugh - Way, Way After
6/21: Russ Smith - The Voice's Lively Imagination
6/21: Jim Knipfel - Roses Are Red/Something-Something-Something
6/21: Russ Smith - Truth with Your Stogie
6/20: Jim Knipfel - Insert Your Own Alligator-Related Pun
Here
6/20: William S. Repsher - Whatever Happened to Marching Bands
Playing Barry Manilow Medleys?
6/20: Michael Yockel - Saraghina of the Spirits
6/19: Jim Knipfel - The World of Commander McBragg
6/19: Russ Smith - Who's Engaged?
6/19: John Strausbaugh - Funky Cold Medina
6/19: Jim Knipfel - God Don't Never Change
6/18: John Strausbaugh - Sinkers
6/18: Jeff Koyen - Pigs Squared, Fruit Cubed
6/18: Russ Smith - Bush's "Bully" Pulpit
6/18: Jim Knipfel - Hell Off Wheels
6/18: Andrey Slivka - Half a Story
6/18: John Strausbaugh - News Travels Slow to the Hamptons
John
Strausbaugh
The Constituency
that Dare Not Speak Its Name
It was very interesting to see Bruno Schulz make the front page of the New York Times this week. And fascinating to see how delicately the Times dealt with his story.
As you probably know, Schulz was a Polish Jewish art teacher, artist and author (The Street of Crocodiles, The Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass). When the Nazis occupied his town of Drogobych, he became a kind of art-slave to a Gestapo officer named Landau, who bragged of keeping his own personal Jew alive on bread and soup. One night in 1942, Schulz was shot dead on the street by another Gestapo officer who had some sort of rivalry going with Landau.
Schulz is suddenly in the news because in May some fairytale-inspired murals he’d painted on the walls of Landau’s son’s nursery were removed from the Gestapo officer’s former house in Drogobych (called "Villa Landau" since the war) and sent to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Israel. Poles are complaining that Schulz is a Polish national treasure, and that removing the murals amounts to an act of vandalism. Israel, of course, claims Schulz as a Jew and Holocaust victim. Further complicating matters, Drogobych wound up in Ukraine when borders were redrawn at the end of the war. Ukrainian officials deny giving Yad Vashem permission to take the murals. Drogobych’s tiny community of Jews are also complaining that they would’ve preferred that the murals remain with them.
Ironically, the only constituency not heard from in this controversy–and totally unmentioned in the long Times piece–might have been the one Schulz himself would’ve felt closest to: connoisseurs of s&m erotica. Schulz was a sexual submissive and masochist, and his erotic s&m artworks–portraying himself as a lady’s dog, a lady’s footstool, etc.–are highly prized by fans of such things worldwide (as indeed they were by Landau). It’s a side of Schulz downplayed by the caretakers of his official legacy, who understandably prefer to have him remembered as a great author and tragic Holocaust figure rather than a groveling perv. Still, it’s a large and not exactly hidden aspect of the artist’s work, and you’d think that in such a long article the Times might have at least mentioned it in passing.
(6/22)
Lisa
Kearns
But Enough About Me...
In the wake of the horrendous Yates murders in Houston, Susan Kushner Resnick uses the opportunity to discuss...Susan Kushner Resnick. Resnick’s the author of Sleepless Days: One Woman’s Journey Through Postpartum Depression, and she wants to compare herself to Andrea Yates, who systematically drowned her five children Wednesday. But the situations are hardly similar, so she can’t, really; what Resnick does instead is take the Yates murders as an opportunity to prattle on about herself.
Writing on today’s Salon, she tells us:
"Five years ago, I suffered from a nasty case of postpartum depression after the birth of my second child. This is different from postpartum psychosis, which Yates most likely has, but only by degrees. I didn't hear voices or speak in tongues or plan to kill my baby. I didn't have a psychotic break, where a demon possessed my mind and made me do the unthinkable."
So why is Resnick playing the authority on Yates? Yates most probably does have postpartum psychosis; Resnick didn’t. And Yates no doubt suffered a psychic break; Resnick didn’t. It would be unsurprising if Yates hadn’t heard "demon" voices–it would take that much to urge one to methodically exterminate one’s five children, don’t you think?–whereas Resnick had a fleeting thought of putting her child in a hot oven, which she quickly quelled.
Resnick had the wherewithal to restrain herself because she was "blessed," because what was causing her erratic behavior was "completely curable": she took some medicine and got better. "Andrea Yates wasn’t blessed," Resnick notes. "...She killed her beloved babies. Her brain betrayed her in the most horrific way possible."
No doubt Resnick went through a very difficult ordeal after the birth of her child, something that those who’ve never experienced postpartum depression can’t imagine. But to take Yates’ condition–one that is so much more serious than what Resnick suffered that it’s got a different name; that affects, as Resnick notes herself, just "1 percent of new mothers"–as a point of comparison, as an opportunity to present herself as someone who can "relate," is just unseemly.
(6/22)
Russ
Smith
No Shock at The
New York Times
Yesterday’s announcement that Gail Collins, the featherweight New York Times op-ed columnist, will succeed Howell Raines as editorial page editor of the paper this September, was surprising only because she hadn’t been widely mentioned as a contender. But considering publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.’s dysfunctional, take-the-family-business-straight-to-the-gutter tactics, I reacted with a shrug of the shoulders. Sulzberger earns a gold star from the Times’ hardcore constituency: Collins is not only a woman, class-warfare-enthusiast and Teddy Kennedy liberal, but also an honorary black, gay and homeless person. When a paper’s identity is formed by the likes of Raines, Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, Richard Berke, Adam Clymer, Jon Pareles and Thomas Friedman, such a promotion is par for the course.
A buddy of mine, in an e-mail this morning, wasn’t nearly so cavalier. He wrote: "The choice of Collins is a not particularly funny joke. On the one hand, it does make it impossible for the Times to criticize Bush administration appointments, since her ascension is such an incredible embarrassment that it can never be lived down. On the other hand, it makes Howell Raines the de facto editor of the paper and the editorial pages. Which is really bad news."
But the war was already over.
Consider three of the Times’ editorials today, all of which could have been written by Barney Frank or Mark Green. "A New Tax-Cut Rampage" is notable for its remarkably juvenile tone. It begins: "After passing an unfair and unaffordable tax cut last month, Congress ought to have gotten tax cuts out of its system for a while. But now, with White House encouragement, Republican leaders are talking about enacting yet another round of tax bills that would use up what little is left of the federal surplus over the next 10 years, squandering any chance at all of doing more for health, education and the environment."
Granted, the very word "environment" is now holy, since Democrats believe that it’s their ticket to a complete takeover of Congress in 2002. We’ll see. But it’s laughable that the Times would characterize the tax cut as "unfair," like a little kid who’s ticked off because he got picked last for dodgeball. (Oops, sorry Nation-subscribers.) "Ill-advised" or "questionable" is a more appropriate description of legislation that the paper opposes. Also, since Democrats completely gutted Bush’s education bill, loading it up with more spending while quashing much-needed vouchers, you’d think the Times would accept that Pretty Boy Floyd heist with grace. And let’s praise senators like Phil Gramm who are pushing for capital-gains tax reductions, an immediate economic stimulus that would lead to more jobs.
In "Undermining the Tobacco Case," the Times blasts the Bush administration, which is trying to settle the suit against tobacco companies, for "putting the interests of industrial campaign backers before its duty to protect public health." First, Bill Clinton initiated this jackpot for trial lawyers back in ’99; Bush’s Justice Dept. never would’ve sought the litigation. Same goes for the unconscionable persecution of Microsoft, another suit one hopes will vanish shortly.
Finally, in endorsing Bob Franks over Bret Schundler in next Tuesday’s GOP gubernatorial primary in New Jersey, the Times sides with the corrupt politics of that state, which has attempted to derail the principled (and conservative) Schundler at every turn. (For a complete rundown of the race, go to John Fund’s op-ed piece in today’s Wall Street Journal.) It’s thought that Franks, a mushy centrist in the Lincoln Chafee mold, will stand a better chance of defeating Democratic nominee James McGreevey this November. The Times’ endorsement of McGreevey is already in the bag, so why the editors even bothered to recommend Franks is a little fishy.
My suspicion is that Schundler’s recent surge in the polls scares the daylights out of Raines and Sulzberger, who may now be thinking that an ideological candidate (not unlike Pennsylvania’s Rick Santorum) could beat the odds and best McGreevey. And you know what that means: If Jersey’s Democratic Sen. Robert Torricelli is forced to resign, a Republican will be named in his stead, tipping control of the Senate back to the GOP. (One puzzle is that it’s the Times that has rammed Torricelli the hardest; without its investigation, the rest of the media wouldn’t have followed suit. I still think it’s because Sulzberger and Raines don’t like Italians who wear flashy clothes and date celebrities like Bianca Jagger.)
Back to Collins. Her "Public Interests" column today, lampooning the tax rebate, was typical in its whipped-cream content. She writes: "Only about a month left until we get our $300 rebate checks from the federal government. Everybody’s a winner! I just want to say right here and now that I don’t intend to quit my job, although I do hope to buy my parents a new house and perhaps travel."
Who said Art Buchwald was passe?
My main question is who will inherit Collins’ op-ed slot. Ten years ago, you could have a reasonable discussion about the possibilities, figuring the Times might want to improve its pages by tapping an independent-thinking pundit like Mickey Kaus or Nat Hentoff. But those days are over: Come September, look for Sean Wilentz, Todd Gitlin or Joe Conason.
(6/22)
Yesterday’s New York Post reported that figure skater Katarina Witt is under pressure to release an extensive dossier the East German secret police, the Stasi, kept on her for almost two decades. Witt was given access to her files back in 1990 after the Berlin Wall fell, and says she was shocked by the Stasi’s extensive surveillance of her–3500 pages of information, as well as videotapes of her going to the bathroom and having sex with her boyfriend.
Now, for reasons I can only guess have something to do with the salacious thrill of seeing a celebrity get taken down a notch–we’re talking Princess Diana territory here–the German press is suing to get a look at the files. To do this, they’re calling Witt a Communist beneficiary, pointing to the cars the state gave her and her mother (even though she only saw $750,000 of the $4 million she made in 1988) and–this is the part that really irks me–accusing her of being a Stasi informant. "She already revealed some of the juiciest stuff in the files in her [1994] autobiography and, unlike here, people in Germany don’t care who you slept with and when," John Koehler told the Post. "My feeling is, if you have a clean vest, go ahead and show it."
Koehler, Reagan director of communications and author of Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police, believes in full disclosure. A former East German citizen, Koehler obtained stolen Stasi files on Reagan and presented them to him for his 81st birthday. Now he wants Witt to show the world photographs of herself on the toilet.
If we buy the idea that every situation should be dealt with in the same way–in this case, allowing unrestricted access to information–that there is a right way to deal with every situation regardless of the particulars of the case–a chillingly Kantian conception of morality–then we find ourselves acting immorally to service abstract concepts of morality. Belief in the freedom of information is one thing, but why should Witt disclose everything in order to prove, well, what? That she’s not Stasi?
And what if she was? Koehler makes the point in his book that the Stasi was an insidious organization that forced spouses, family and friends to spy on one another in the truly incredible ratio of one operative for every 6.5 people. So why is it necessary to humiliate Witt in order for her to prove her innocence, and why should Koehler need to use Witt as yet another example of the fact that Stasi had most of East Germany in its pocket?
If it does come out that Witt indeed gave some information to the police, just imagine how quickly the media would turn on her–"WITT WAS A SPY" headlines everywhere–without understanding the particular climate of East Germany in the 80s. She’d never recover from it, not to mention that every mundane activity of most of her life would be exposed to public scrutiny. Of all people, Koehler–who fled his hometown of Dresden in 1944 to escape the Nazis–should be more empathetic. But he’s so wrapped up in his crusade against the Stasi, so vigilant in his belief that The Truth Is Out There, that he’s willing to ruin someone’s life. That is far worse than a little well-intentioned obfuscation.
(6/22)
Normally, as far as entertainment goes, you’d expect Atlantic City casinos to offer up the likes of Wayne Newton, Don Rickles, Steve and Eydie, John Davidson–entertainment from a bygone era, aimed at a bygone audience. And currently, at the Tropicana Casino and Resort, you get just that.
Sort of.
The new exhibit on display at the Trop’s Grand Exhibition Center is called Torture Through the Ages. As the press release describes it:
From the Spanish Inquisition, when thousands were tortured and killed under the most barbaric of interrogation practices, to the atrocities of the Holocaust, and the more recent persecution of prisoners, the exhibit reveals a disturbing side of human behavior.
Woo-hoo!
The release goes on to claim, "The apparent disregard for the pain and suffering of another human being is perhaps the most bewildering aspect of the exhibit."
You know, I think I might beg to differ with that. I think the most bewildering aspect of the exhibit would be something along the lines of, "Say, why in the hell is this at a casino in Atlantic City?"
Then again, as my girlfriend surmised, perhaps the last display in the exhibit is just a big window overlooking the casino floor.
Funny thing is, though, visitors to the Tropicana this month have the choice of visiting the torture exhibit–or of going to see Dame Edna perform. And when you think about it that way, what’s the difference?
(6/22)
Andrey
Slivka
The National Conversation
I came across the phrase "the national conversation" in a New York Times article this week, and was reminded what a glorious piece of political cant it is. America’s periodically having "national conversations." It held a rather grave one, I remember, during the events leading up to the Gulf War, and another of great dignity and import at the beginning of Clinton’s first term, when the President sought to allow gays into the military. (That was the magnificent "national conversation" about whether gays should be allowed into the military.) There have in recent years been–or so the tv anchors and the editorial pages have piously announced–national conversations about the death penalty, the environment, the Clinton impeachment, the use, or overuse, of federal power and the decision to intervene in the Balkans. You might be aware of other national conversations that mercifully passed me by; I don’t pay all that much attention to the media.
The phrase’s superficial loftiness obscures the fact that it’s meaningless. (Which makes it perfect for both politicians and the media.) What is a "national conversation"? How does it work? Does it mean that I’m supposed to go door to door in my Brooklyn apartment building, engaging my fellow Americans in deep and respectful political debate? Is the citizenry supposed to pour forth into the streets during a "national conversation," each man pacing philosophically back and forth with his hand on his chin, pondering questions of statecraft, and occasionally pausing to run a thought past the nearest listener?
"Pardon me, citizen."
"Yes, citizen, what is it?"
"Well, hear me out on this one. I think I have this universal healthcare thing licked."
Presumably at this point a crowd forms, as around Socrates in the agora, and the citizen in question presents his idea to his fellow democrats, who then engage him in spirited debate about the details of his proposal.
Or maybe it means that Easterners line up all along the eastern bank of the Mississippi, and Westerners on the western bank, and converse loudly back and forth–en masse as that great democrat Whitman wrote–and, eventually, arrive at some solemn resolutions concerning the commonweal. (Maybe afterward they play a quick game of national dodgeball.) Obviously, a national conversation is really just a media monologue, with the anchors and the editorial pages announcing–and this is inevitably what emerges from a national conversation–a "consensus."
There’s a smarmy sentimentality to the idea of a "national conversation." The phrase implies the existence of a robust, interactive species of local democracy–the democracy of politically engaged, pamphleteering urban artisans that characterized the Revolutionary era. But the same mass media and corporate government that announce "national conversations" have wiped out this sort of democracy in America. Read about "national conversations" in the Times and they usually involve Times reporters visiting Midwestern and Southern diners and ice cream shops, and photographing Middle Americans as they recite cliches. Maybe we shouldn’t call them "national conversations" anymore. Maybe we should call them "American retirees sitting around in coffee shops reciting trite, media-generated political sentiments while hankering for pork rinds."
(6/22)
Russ
Smith
The Unofficial
Times Ombudsman
Congratulations to Ira Stoll, whose invaluable website, Smartertimes.com, celebrated its first anniversary yesterday. Stoll has been the country's most vigilant watchdog of The New York Times, pointing out the well-staffed daily's slew of errors, blatant partisanship disguised as "news reporting" and institutional cohabitation with hypocrisy in its editorials.
On June 20, Stoll identified a significant mistake in Maureen Dowd's column on Rep. Gary Condit and missing intern Chandra Levy. Ironically, it was one of the few coherent pieces Dowd has written this past year, even with the requisite film analogy included (this time it was Rear Window). For example, Dowd wrote: "[Condit's] Colgate smile and styled hair have earned him the nickname ‘Mr. Blow-Dry' around the House. The wall behind the chair in the Modesto office, according to the L.A. Times, is a shrine to himself, with 8-by-12-inch portraits of himself posing by himself. He posed for the ‘Hunks on the Hill' calendar and for Easyriders, a fleshy motorcycle magazine."
Dowd, in comparing Condit to Bill Clinton, erred when she said that the California Democrat voted in favor of impeachment proceedings against the former president. As Stoll noted–and the Times has yet to correct–Condit actually cast a "nay" vote on every article of impeachment back in 1998.
(6/21)
John
Strausbaugh
Way, Way After
Hey, you ever hear of this gizmo called the Internet? Did you know it was a real boom for a while, then went bust? Leaving behind all these twentysomethings who were paper millionaires a couple years ago, some of whom have survived the crash quite nicely, while others are back to being normal coffeehouse slugs like everyone else in their age cohort?
I read about it the other day in The Washington Post.
Yes: the other day. June 19. The Washington Post, evidently on complete Eastern Shore summertime autopilot, ran a stunningly behind-the-curve feature-length story on the Internet boom and bust, by Libby Copeland. The headline was "After the Gold Rush"–same one New York Press used for our feature on the same topic–last February. There was literally not one iota of new information in this piece. Not one speck of news you hadn't already read in countless other venues months and months ago. Adding insult to injury, besides being completely devoid of news the piece is a stylistic nightmare. You know you're in the hands of a true professional when she opens her article with "Once upon a time..." How can any story following that cliche be anything but a total waste of ink?
(6/21)
Russ
Smith
The Voice's
Lively Imagination
People I respect insist that Republican-in-name-only Michael Bloomberg is a brilliant man who ought not be underestimated in his longshot bid to become New York's next mayor. Maybe so, but for all Bloomberg's success in business, he's politically tone-deaf, pledging to meet with charlatan Al Sharpton and already announcing (according to a June 20 New York Times article) that he'll curtail the standard practice of daily press briefings at City Hall. The latter is not necessarily a bad idea, but it's hardly a pledge that will curry favor with the local media.
It's unfortunate that the candidate's upcoming blitz of television ads will most likely knock off Herman Badillo (another Democratic defector) in the Republican primary this September; Badillo is the class of the field and is the only man who might realistically defeat the expected Democratic nominee, the demagogue Mark Green. Obviously, Green would be the prohibitive favorite at the start of the November race, but he's choked repeatedly in his lifelong quest for meaningful office; in addition, the allure of Badillo becoming the city's first Hispanic mayor would have tremendous appeal to minority voters. (Freddie Ferrer is not nearly as qualified as Badillo, and is something of a clumsy operator, as evidenced by his being snookered by Sharpton into thinking he'd get an endorsement from the hunger-striker. Besides, Ferrer has no chance of winning the Democratic nomination.)
That said, even Bloomberg's naive campaign doesn't deserve the distortions passed off as facts by Village Voice "Press Clips" columnist Cynthia Cotts. In this week's issue she writes: "Consider one of Bloomberg's key selling points: He says he will govern in the tradition of Republican icon Rudy Giuliani. Everyone knows that Giuliani's great success was making the city a safer place, but he did so by depriving blacks and Latinos of their civil liberties–and the next mayor will be under pressure to restore the city to a gorgeous mosaic... Like Giuliani, [Bloomberg] promises to be ‘tough on crime,' but we all know those are code words for protecting rich people at the expense of the poor."
A study of Cotts' work for the Voice reveals that facts are not her long suit, but this outright lie is irresponsible even by her low standards. The claim that Giuliani deprived blacks and Latinos of their civil liberties is absurd. Yes, the current mayor bungled the public relations end of several high-profile NYPD controversies–the death of Amadou Diallo being the most glaring example–but to state that Giuliani has unilaterally suspended the basic rights of blacks and Latinos is a fiction that probably wouldn't even pass muster with Rep. Charlie Rangel. As for the notion that only the "rich" have benefited from the dramatic drop in crime under Giuliani's tenure, perhaps Cotts hasn't lived in New York since 1993. Ask the vast majority of residents of various neighborhoods in Brooklyn, the Lower East Side, Harlem and Astoria, just for starters, if they're rich and they'd laugh in your face. Yet the quality of life has improved citywide.
Cotts wants a return to failed Mayor David Dinkins' "gorgeous mosaic," a disastrous four-year period where, for once, out-of-towners' warped vision of New York as a wasteland of drugs, violence and thuggish panhandlers was actually close to the truth. Even Democratic hacks like Green will refuse to join Cotts on a time-machine back to the early 90s.
(6/21)
Jim
Knipfel
Roses Are Red/Something-Something-Something
Let the bells ring out and the banners fly! America has a new poet laureate! To celebrate, let's all go down to the coffee shop and read aloud from the collected works of...Billy Collins!
When I first saw the headline "Collins Named U.S. Poet Laureate," hell, I thought they meant either Jackie or Phil at first. Realizing that they weren't exactly American, I knew I shouldn't get my hopes up. Then I figured maybe it was Bootsy. Now that would give us some reason to care about what the poet laureate was up to.
But no, it was Billy. Billy Collins, American. He's even a local–teaching English up at Lehman College. And, according to the AP story, he's also incredibly popular. Well, you know–for a poet. For some reason, whenever I hear of a "popular poet," I immediately think of Candy's McPhisto.
Now, I have nothing against poetry. Or even some poets. But let's think about this. I've always been under the impression (though I'm sure the people at the Library of Congress would take issue with me) that the job was created in the first place in a vain attempt to prove to the rest of the world (especially those damned snooty Europeans!) that there was, in fact, much as the foreigners may scoff, such a thing as capital-C American Culture.
For a while there, I think we were doing okay, too. I think we were able to pull it off. "U.S. Poet Laureate" was a position first held in 1937 by Joseph Auslander. In later years it's been held by such luminaries as Robert Frost, Robert Penn Warren, Robert Lowell, Karl Shapiro, Howard Nemerov, Conrad Aiken and William Carlos Williams–all very respectable poets. Their work's profound but not too highfalutin, so regular folks could read some of it on one of those "Poetry in Motion" subway posters and not be all "Huh?"
In recent years, however, I think the job has lost some of its sheen. (Quick–recite a few lines by Mona Van Duyn or Robert Hass.) It's become less a matter of honoring the one poet who most richly captured the prevailing American spirit in verse than just another side project for some already-tenured English professor who happened to know somebody.
Here are a few lines from a poem Collins wrote about trying to drown out a barking dog by playing Beethoven really loud.
...but I can still
hear him muffled under the music
barking, barking, barking...
and now I see him sitting
in the orchestra
his head raised confidently
as
if Beethoven had included a part for barking dog.
As the AP story put it, "There's no problem interpreting Collins' poetry." I guess not–and I have no problem with that. The fact that his poetry is "simple" probably helps explain why he's so popular. Maybe by being "simple," he's a more accurate representative of what passes for capital-C American Culture these days. Maybe it would be foolish to try to put some (as Terry Southern called them) Quality Lit types in there. Still, we probably won't be fooling any Europeans this time around.
(6/21)
Russ
Smith
Truth with Your Stogie
Granted, the upscale bimonthly Cigar Aficionado has a limited agenda. And it's not surprising that in its current issue publisher Marvin R. Shanken and executive editor Gordon Mott rail against the increasingly draconian antismoking laws that have been passed in New York City. But, teeing off on the growing movement to ban smoking even in public, the duo make an important point, the well-being of their niche publication notwithstanding.
They write: "What most people fail to realize is that it isn't just smokers' rights that are being threatened. The targets include everything from what you can say, to what you can do, to what you can eat. (Think of animal-rights extremists if you want a glimpse of the future.) If any behavior or subject can be deemed offensive by even a small minority, they raise a clamor and often get their wish to have it abolished or prohibited. We live in the Land of the Free. But zealots are destroying those freedoms. What we've said before bears repeating: defend your rights now, or one day you'll discover that you don't have any left to defend."
(6/21)
Jim
Knipfel
Insert Your Own
Alligator-Related Pun Here
From the inevitable "It's no croc" gag to multiple variations on the "gator-aid" theme, local reporters have had a field day with the recent sightings of a 2-foot-long baby alligator loose in the Central Park Meer. The Post today even devoted the second half of an otherwise-interesting story (according to a local environmental official, the alligator really would be more at home in the sewer system) to a collection of stupid names for the beast, as suggested by their readers.
"What could be more appropriate for this guy than ÔRudy'? He's sly, snaps at people who get too close and plays by his own rules..." wrote Jeff Strong, one of scores who responded to The Post's name-the-gator poll.
Tom Wyble of Wharton, N.J., said the gator would be a fitting namesake for the Rev. Al Sharpton, who's in prison, refusing to eat solid foods, to protest the Navy's bombing in Vieques.
"Alli Sharpteeth sounds good to me," Wyble said. "Just hope the gator stays on a hunger strike."
A bunch of really bored guys in Jersey, it seems, were responsible for most of the submissions--from "Meerly Looking" to "Termigator" to a whole slew of bad Ally McBeal puns.
Oh! How it went on!
In the meantime, the most fundamental of facts--facts that we citizens need to know--remain unreported! How big is this gator going to grow? Will it gobble up children and pets? Is it an albino alligator? Is it radioactive? Was it forced above-ground by the exploding C.H.U.D. population under the streets?
I'm not saying that there's no room for levity in the news--after all, that's why Channel 7 keeps Bill Beutel around--I'm just saying that if this thing is going to destroy us all, somehow, we, as New Yorkers, deserve more than the old "funny name" diversion.
(6/20)
William
S. Repsher
Whatever Happened
to Marching Bands Playing Barry Manilow Medleys?
Somewhere in our recent history, the halftime show at major sporting events has become the halftime spectacle. Usually it focuses on pop stars of the day offering impromptu medleys of their current chart-toppers. As the audiences at these sporting events tend to be the sort of beer-commercial-quoting males whose musical tastes lean to easily chantable choruses of any genre, the producers of these shows can pretty much have a hit with any popular act.
So, God bless the irascible fans of the Philadelphia 76ers for throwing a monkey wrench into the star machinery during last week's NBA finals with the Los Angeles Lakers. When top r&b girl group Destiny's Child hit the boards at halftime of Game 4, the fans, in true Philly fashion, did their best to boo them off the floor. Why? Some far-reaching pundits will claim a kneejerk reaction to the commercialization of the sport, but come on: Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant and Allen Iverson have put out hiphop albums and done plenty of endorsements. Besides, Philly sports fans are notoriously cantankerous, with a long history of booing their own players and fighting among themselves in the stands.
The real reason was that group members Michelle Williams and BeyoncŽ Knowles were sporting sexily ripped L.A. Lakers tops. The reaction was so awful that for Game 5, which featured the innocuous Sugar Ray, Sixers owner Pat Croce announced the group personally in a way that suggested lead singer Mark McGrath might have a tattoo of Sixers legend Julius "Dr. J" Erving on his ass.
Still, it's been a strange year for these sort of spectacles. Aerosmith members have been involved in two: first, their whorish halftime medley at the Super Bowl with NSYNC and Britney Spears; even worse, though, was Steven Tyler's atrocious rendition of the Star Spangled Banner at the Indianapolis 500, which found him unable to reach the high notes and scat singing while the crowd bayed as if they were anticipating Death Race 2000 with Tyler as the first kill. It didn't help that he changed the lyrics from "home of the brave" to "home of the Indianapolis 500" on Memorial Day Weekend.
Imagine if Aerosmith had been approached by NFL officials in 1975 to do the Super Bowl halftime show with Leo Sayer and the Sylvers. Don't take this as a yearning for a more simple time; life sucked in 1975 no more or less than it does now. But I couldn't help feel a twinge of nostalgia the other night when the Sixers fans did their thing on Destiny's Child, even though I knew it was over something as childish as a sports team logo on a shirt. I doubt the average sports fan laying down an outrageous sum of money for a ticket is going to feel morally outraged by a nice display of tits-and-ass in his face at the half. Even if he is, he can still find solace in the truly touching lyrics of Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll, Pt. 2" blaring from the stadium's p.a. system.
(6/20)
Michael
Yockel
Saraghina of the
Spirits
In a telling 1975 black-and-white photograph, film director Federico Fellini, peering out from below his glasses, which he holds at forehead level in his left hand as he sits behind a desk, stares at a Rubenesque woman seated across from him, her back to the camera. Wearing only a black bra, her dress draped across her lap and her ample, beautiful ass perched on the edge of a chair, she has gathered her hair atop her head, pinning it there with both hands--her arms splayed in the same position a prisoner assumes when captured. Quite clearly, Fellini intently studies...her face. Translated from French, the photo's caption reads "Federico Fellini in Paris in 1975 choosing actors for his film Casanova."
Fellini constantly searched for distinctive faces and bodies, creating sumptuous onscreen tableaux with memorable extras and supporting cast members. These people seldom spoke. Think of I Vitelloni, Nights of Cabiria, Roma, Satyricon and, especially, 1963's 8 1/2. That last film features one of Fellini's most remarkable faces--and bodies--in the character of Saraghina, indelibly portrayed by actress Eddra Gale. With her deranged mop of raven hair, Wilma Flintstone attire, Brunhilde body and exaggerated, silent-film expressions, Gale's Saraghina--a benevolent whore--dances the "rumba" on a beach to the delight of six little boys in one of the film's detailed flashback scenes. Despite--or because of--her grotesque appearance, she exudes an untamed sensuality. (Whether by accident or design, Saraghina serves as the prototype for Divine's characters in John Waters' early films.) Gale shows up later in 8 1/2's wiggy "harem" sequence and the gang's-all-here finale.
The story goes that Fellini discovered a blonde Gale--a Chicago-born opera student--on a street in Milan while she was en route to a music lesson, eventually persuading her, after considerable inveigling, to take a screen test. She went on to become a member of the director's entourage, although she failed to appear in any other of his pictures, even though he promised her as much. The 8 1/2 role helped launch her successful career as a concert singer in Italy, and she popped up in a handful of movies, including Gidget Goes to Rome, Hotel Paradiso, The Graduate, I Love You, Alice B. Toklas, The Maltese Bippy, The Strawberry Statement, Revenge of the Cheerleaders and, finally, 1980's Somewhere in Time. (Not forgetting her brief role in a 8 1/2-homage scene in the 1965 Woody Allen-scripted What's New, Pussycat?)
Still, it's as Saraghina that cineastes remember Gale, who died, age 80, on May 13 in Deming, NM, from complications related to a stroke. "I prayed my family in America wouldn't see me," she once recalled, "but they did. My mother didn't speak to me for two years."
(6/20)
Jim
Knipfel
The World of Commander
McBragg
Mount Holyoke history professor Joseph Ellis must be feeling kind of stupid.
Ellis, the author of several books about Revolutionary-era America, including an acclaimed biography of Jefferson and the recent Pulitzer Prize-winning Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, was just caught in a big fat fib about his own wartime experience.
Seems that over the years, the professor claimed to have been a platoon leader for the 101st Airborne Division, that he fought in Saigon and had served under Gen. Westmoreland. In a seemingly contradictory move, the professor also claimed to have been heavily involved in antiwar activities. Army records show that, while Ellis was, in fact, commissioned as a second lieutenant in the mid-60s, he never left the States, spending those murky years at Yale.
Now, it'll be interesting to see what happens here. Remember, we're dealing with simple human frailty. As the old saying goes, nobody brings anything small into a bar (or, for that matter, a resume). As Ellis himself explained, "Even in the best of lives, mistakes are made."
Yet it was mistakes like this--lies about his childhood during World War II--that led Jerzy Kosinski to put the plastic bag over his head. Well, okay, it was less that than the revelation that his grad students were actually writing his books for him. But still.
I doubt the consequences for Prof. Ellis will be quite that extreme--after all, isn't this what the writing of history is all about?
(6/19)
While awaiting the results of today's special House election in rural Virginia to fill the vacancy left by the late Democrat Norman Sisisky, here's a trio of items to mull over. If you're wondering whether Florida 2000 will propel a black candidate, Louise Lucas, over Republican Randy Forbes in this race, I'm betting it will.
1. Lawrence J. Korb, assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan, has a compelling op-ed piece in today's Washington Post, arguing that President Bush ought to stop the nonsensical discrimination against homosexuals in the military. He's right. Yes, it would anger the religious right, but if Bush is committed to a visionary strategy for the country's defense in the 21st century, he'd be stupid to continue Bill Clinton's anachronistic "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. Not only is it insulting to gay men and women who volunteer to serve in the armed forces, it's an unnecessary distraction.
As Korb convincingly writes: "[T]he risks attributable to lifting the gay ban are minimal. For example, the CIA, FBI, Secret Service and National Security Agency have not experienced problems since they began allowing known homosexuals to serve. Twenty-three foreign armed forces, including the crack Israeli and British militaries, have lifted their bans on gays without trouble."
Politically, there's little downside for Bush: it's not as if his conservative base is going to start a "John Kerry for President in 2004" campaign in the aftermath of such a decision. More importantly, in last fall's election, gays gave Bush 25 percent of their vote; lifting the military ban will only increase that number in 2004.
2. Also in the Post today, paleolib pundit E.J. Dionne congratulates Tom Daschle for saying he "didn't foresee a need to investigate" Bush political strategist Karl Rove for possible ethics violations. Rove attended an Intel meeting in March before he'd divested himself of stock in the company. Dionne chuckles: "The double standard is clear. Anything allegedly bad that happened under Clinton was worth investigating over and over and over. But anything allegedly bad that happens under Bush should certainly not be investigated. Investigating the Clinton administration was an obligation to justice. Not investigating the Bush administration is an obligation to civility."
Frankly, I wish the Democrats would interrogate Rove--he could use a humility-smack in the face--and any other administration official they choose to. And with Rep. Henry Waxman, the worst kind of California Democrat, demanding details of Rove's interaction with Intel, maybe that'll happen. But Dionne misses the point: The problem with the slew of investigations during Clinton's tenure wasn't that they weren't warranted, but that shrill and often inept GOP congressmen led the attacks. Dan Burton and Bob Barr bungled those hearings so badly that Clinton, the cat with 29 lives, was able to skate. I'm certain Waxman would behave in a similarly counterproductive manner.
3. Republicans have to cheer the growing number of potential challengers to President Bush in 2004. Every public statement that senators like Joe Lieberman, John Kerry, John Edwards, Tom Daschle and Joe Biden make--and that's just the latest count--will immediately be scrutinized by the Permanent Campaign-obsessed media for political implications. The frenzy of these men to be associated with anything John McCain says is a sideshow that distracts the Democrats from setting a forceful agenda in the Senate. On the other hand, the White House must be glad that Evan Bayh has already dropped out of the race. Bayh's a moderate Democrat, but as long as he was considering a presidential run he had to consider the activist voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, and thus veered left. Now that he's shed that burden, I suspect he'll vote with John Breaux more often than with Teddy Kennedy.
Biden was hotdogging for potential 2004 donors in Boston last Friday. According to The Boston Globe's Joan Vennochi, in her column today, Biden told a group at the Union Club, "I don't want [Bush] to give a news conference. I don't want him making a mistake... We have a problem internationally, not when they doubt our power. It's when they doubt our wisdom." Clever guy. At least Bush, while not Mr. Charisma on the stump, doesn't steal his speeches.
Vennochi continued: "Don't misunderstand Biden. He doesn't think Bush is dimwitted, just detached. ÔThe guy's not dumb. He's not stupid. What he is, is new and uncomfortable. He's not incompetent. He's just been disengaged.'"
Biden, conversely, is engaged. In the politics of the 70s: that's why he holds the outdated ABM treaty as sacrosanct; believes that FDR's Social Security entitlement program, enacted more than 60 years ago, is still state-of-the-art legislation; and thinks that teachers' unions ought to have more say over public schools than parents do.
(6/19)
John
Strausbaugh
Funky Cold Medina
Americans on both sides of the death penalty issue act like we lead the world in capital punishment, but it's not so. Indeed, one is ashamed to read in the June 16-22 issue of The Economist, that on a per-capita basis we lag far behind the real pace-setters in court-ordered mayhem--Singapore, Saudi Arabia, China and Egypt all beat us.
The Saudis are way up there because they adhere to strict Islamic laws. Beheadings, whippings and hands chopped off abound. Four Brits living in Saudi Arabia and thus subject to its laws were recently sentenced to floggings for trafficking in alcohol, which is of course forbidden in a strict Islamic country, you stupid stupid limeys. "Nowhere else," the Economist notes, "are the quisas, or retaliatory punishments allowed under Islam, applied with such punctilio: last August, an Egyptian worker's eye was surgically removed at the insistence of a man who lost the use of his own eye after the Egyptian had thrown acid in his face."
Just today, Reuters reports, in the city of Medina, the Saudis beheaded an Egyptian visiting laborer convicted of murdering a Pakistani one. (Nice to know the Saudis are still doing well and importing all their grunt labor. The CIA's World Factbook 2000 gives the nation's total population as 22 million, but adds that this includes some five million of what the Germans would call "guest workers.") Islamic law allows execution for murder, rape and drug trafficking. (The last suggests that those Brits were actually getting off with a light sentence.) This Egyptian worker had beaten the other man to death and then set him on fire; Reuters doesn't say whether the strict quisas were invoked and the Egyptian's corpse burned as well.
(6/19)
Jim
Knipfel
God Don't Never
Change
I surely didn't hear anything about this on last night's CBS Evening News, but according to today's London Times, the world is currently being overrun by a plague of (literally) biblical proportions. It's not AIDS, or foot-and-mouth, or anthrax. In fact, it's not even a disease.
Not since the Egyptians incurred the wrath of God have so many locusts had their day. A billion-strong army is on the move, stretching far beyond the more normal swarming grounds of Africa and the Middle East and threatening central Eurasia's arable land in a pincer movement from each end of the Caspian Sea.
What's more, they're also chomping their way across Utah (though I guess that makes sense, heathens that them Mormons are). Locusts there have already eaten an estimated $25 million worth of crops.
Wrapped up as we've been of late in storms and floods and electrical troubles, I guess nobody here had the time to bother telling us about the plague of locusts. In Russia, the locust army is "advancing north by several miles a day and will start spreading ten times faster if not contained within a week." In China, to avoid the use of pesticides, thousands of government-trained ducks are being sent into battle with the swarm. Each duck, we're told, can eat up to a pound of locusts a day. My money's on the bugs.
This is all very troublesome.
What's even more troublesome, I think, is the fact that, after 6000 years, the Lord God Almighty couldn't go to the effort of coming up with some new kind of plague.
(6/19)
The June 16-22 Economist includes an article hedded "Easy.com easy.gone." It could be the motto for news from online publishing in the last two weeks. First there was Automatic Media shutting down Suck and Feed. Then last week Dave Kansas resigned from TheStreet.com. From the start, the young editor-in-chief had been the steady hand on the tiller at that market- and ego-tossed ship. When last interviewed in New York Press in February, he was still talking a brave new future for the battered online financial magazine. But that was five months ago and might as well have been in a different universe.
Over the weekend, Salon reported that, as expected, NASDAQ has threatened to stop listing it since its stock price continues to lag under 50 cents a share. (It was at 26 cents this morning.) Salon is appealing the decision and may ask its shareholders to approve "a reverse stock split" to bring the price up, which is the equivalent of trying to bail out a leaky ship with teaspoons.
(6/18)
Jeff
Koyen
Pigs Squared, Fruit Cubed
Director Stuart Gordon did a serviceable job adapting H.P. Lovecraft to film with the horror classics Re-Animator and From Beyond, but what did he do to follow them up? Half a dozen forgettable flicks until, in 1997, Space Truckers. Which is also rather forgettable, except that it can now be considered a genuine example of accurate futurism.
In the movie, Dennis Hopper plays John Canyon, an interstellar trucker who comes up against The (Space)Man and finds himself in a universe of trouble. When we first meet Canyon, he's hauling a load of square pigs. Square pigs: easier to breed, more convenient to ship.
Now, according to CNN, farmers in the southern Japanese town of Zentsuji are offering their fellow countrymen...square watermelons.
"Farmers insert the melons into square, tempered glass cases while the fruit is still growing on the vine. The square boxes are the exact dimensions of Japanese refrigerators, allowing full-grown watermelons to fit conveniently and precisely onto refrigerator shelves."
Sounds a bit like what they do to veal. Or what they did to those pigs in Space Truckers. Bred for convenience? Sounds more like some southern Japanese farmers trying to play God. Like a certain Dr. Herbert West in Re-Animatorƒ
Let's hope the experiments in Gordon's earlier movies don't prove equally prescient, else we'll find our universities cluttered with mad scientists raising the dead, with predictably disastrous results.
(6/18)
Russ
Smith
Bush's "Bully"
Pulpit
Now that the "Toxic Texan" has returned from Europe, after successfully placating starved-for-attention heads of state, one more fact is clear, much to the chagrin of the left wing: George W. Bush is as shrewd a politician abroad as he is at home. He was helped enormously by the toothless demonstrations in Sweden and Spain--anti-American slogans and propaganda aren't appreciated by a majority of citizens in the U.S.--and by a fickle overseas media that started out calling the President a boob and just five days later decided he was a conciliator.
Bush was over-the-top in his description of Russia's Vladimir Putin, a grandiose summation that one hopes was merely a sop to the creepy president who believes in censorship and oversees over a corruption-ridden government. I winced when Bush said, "I looked the man in the eye... I was able to get a sense of his soul." Though Bush had his normal quota of gaffes, like calling Africa a "nation" and mangling some Spanish, the remark about Putin was the more unsettling.
But there's no disputing the results of his trip: ABM is dead; Kyoto is dead; and missile defense will proceed as scheduled, now that the testy Europeans have had their egos soothed.
In today's Washington Post, pundits Robert Kagan and Charles Krauthammer duked it out about the results of Bush's first European foray. Kagan, who's been a constant critic of the President--hysterically writing a few months ago that Bush had shamed the United States with his conduct during the spy-plane standoff with China--now appears to be a fan.
He wrote: "Champagne corks were popping in Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius, and rightly so. Bush all but endorsed the Baltic membership in the next round of enlargement. This from a president whose Cabinet contains not a single passionate devotee of NATO enlargement. All in all, it was a good week's work--heavy lifting, as State Department types like to say. Strange as it may seem given this president's limited experience and, until now, limited interest in Europe, Bush actually has offered both Europeans and Americans a vision of a different political and strategic future. And it's not a future where the United States goes it alone."
Kagan's as gullible as the editorialists in France, Germany and Britain. Of course Bush wasn't intentionally going to antagonize the wobbly allies in Europe, tempting though that might have been. And it's preferable to have the assent of foreign leaders while forging a bold post-Cold War global policy. But while Bush asserted, "I'm not a unilateralist," it's clear that the U.S. will be setting the agenda.
Krauthammer, whose "Bush Doctrine" article in The Weekly Standard several weeks ago was the most important foreign-policy essay in the past year, got it exactly right in today's Post.
After explaining that it wasn't in Bush's interest to humiliate his hosts, he wrote: "Journalists can talk like that because the truth is clarifying. Governments cannot talk like that because the truth is scary. The trick to unilateralism--doing what you think is right, regardless of what others think--is to pretend you are not acting unilaterally at all. Thus if you really want to junk the ABM Treaty, and the Europeans and Russians and Chinese start screaming bloody murder, the trick is to send Colin Powell to smooth and soothe and schmooze every foreign leader in sight, have Condoleezza Rice talk about how much we value allied input, have President Bush in Europe stress how missile defense will help the security of everybody. And then go ahead and junk the ABM Treaty regardless. Make nice, then carry on... Be nice, but be undeterred. The best unilateralism is velvet-glove unilateralism."
Now that Bush has at least temporarily mollified his European critics, he needs to turn his attention to squashing the Kennedy-McCain-Edwards Patient's Bill of Rights that's being debated in Congress this week. This obscene legislation, which will only further our country's reputation as The United States of Litigation, ought to be vetoed if passed. Obviously, it'd be better if the Breaux-Frist version of the bill (supported by James Jeffords, by the way) wins out in the end, but if not, it's time for Bush to follow his principles and worry about the political fallout later.
(6/18)
Well, he gave it a good shot there, but James Daly ain't no Tawana Brawley, that's for sure. Or even Richard Jewell. He's more like a Susan Smith.
The 52-year-old, Purple Heart-winning Queens resident is in the hot seat after spinning out a very public cock-and-bull story about how some heartless urban tough knocked him to the ground and stole his wheelchair. When the story first broke, New Yorkers from across the city--kindhearted, giving souls that they are--determined to help Daly out. The New York Ambulette Association even provided him with a new wheelchair.
Then, as these things happen, it turns out his story wasn't exactly 100-percent true. Daly will now appear in court on Thursday, charged with filing a false police report. Thing is, he probably would've gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for that damned surveillance camera!
Funny (well, funnier) thing about this story, though, is that despite the apparently solid (and embarrassing) evidence against him, Daly still maintains his innocence, in a "Wait--wait--no, here's how it really happened--no, really" sort of way.
"In time," he tells the New York Post, "I'll let all you guys know just what happened to me. For now, that's all I can say." Until that happens, however, Daly will remain a pathetic, crippled villain, who preyed on the sympathies of too many people.
There's another way of looking at this story, however--and another villain to take into account.
Though it was never made crystal clear, it's looking like the real story went something like this: Daly gave his wheelchair to a friend (though it's uncertain whether that friend was a heartless urban tough). That was a very kind gesture on his part. Unfortunately, now wheelchairless, Daly needed someone else to give him a new one. It's a Second Law of Thermodynamics sort of thing. So what's he do? He has a friend drop him off somewhere, whereupon Daly lies down on the sidewalk and cries for help. Presto! Before long, he has a new wheelchair. Everybody's happy. Everybody's done a good deed somewhere along the line. Everybody's satisfied with themselves, knowing full well they're going to heaven. Nobody was hurt.
Then that damned surveillance camera gets into the act.
There is a place for surveillance cameras. Banks, I can understand, and convenience stores, sure. Casinos, maybe. But once they started appearing in parks, on street corners, everywhere you look, that's when things started to get creepy. There was a report some time ago that stated that the average New Yorker, just going about his or her business, will be filmed by a ridiculous number of surveillance cameras every single day (I forget the exact number, but it was a doozy).
After those cameras revealed Daly's mischief, everybody feels bad. Everybody's angry. Everybody's been gypped. And nobody's going to heaven anymore. Helping to stop crime is one thing--but when you reach the point where these cameras are stopping a man from helping people feel better about themselves? Why, that's downright criminal.
(6/18)
Refer to the front page of The New York Times today for the latest installment in the newspaper's ongoing series of stories seemingly calculated to disseminate the idea that American society remains riven by racial hatred. (Don't misunderstand me--I'm no big booster of the glory of American society. It's just that "racism" is by now a relatively minor entrant in the grand pageant of our pathologies.) "Amid a Sea of Faces," the story's headline reads, "Islands of Segregation," but all you come away from the piece with is a renewed and banal understanding that there are all sorts of neighborhoods in New York City and its metropolitan area. Some people, for various reasons--most of them innocuous--live in some neighborhoods, while other people live in others.
"The New York region has grown more polyglot than ever," the story's first paragraph reads, "from its West Indian cricket leagues and live-poultry dealers to its sari boutiques. But some analyses of the 2000 census show it is also more segregated than many other places--a kind of archipelago, its enclaves like islands, each with its own distinct racial or ethnic topography."
So what's the news? If the New York City region is "more polyglot than ever," what's the big problem? How are the constituents of this new polyglotism supposed to live, if not near people who are more like them than not? Should the South Asian immigrants who, the Times tells us, cluster in Edison, NJ, be dispersed by government fiat throughout Iowa, Idaho and Wisconsin, one per municipality, in the interests of integration? How many South Asians should be allowed to live in one place before the situation becomes pathological? The white enclave of Breezy Point, Queens, the paper reports, contains 2800 homes, a tiny number in a city of New York's size. A bunch of Irishmen sitting around together drinking beer in a bar looking over Jamaica Bay--that doesn't seem so horrible.
Breezy Point, Queens, and Canarsie, Brooklyn--another neighborhood the paper uses as an example--aren't isolated paranoid communities. Their racial makeups seem to have evolved organically, in the way that those of most New York City neighborhoods do--and if they didn't, the Times offers insufficient evidence to demonstrate so. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with enclave neighborhoods. Chinatown's a segregated neighborhood; so was Little Italy back in the day. Harlem is a segregated neighborhood. And so on. As long as citizens are allowed to pass freely from one neighborhood to another, such "segregation" is actually a good thing, tending to enrich quality of life. Walk for 20 minutes in most of New York City: you'll have passed through a couple of de facto "segregated" neighborhoods and be the happier for it.
(6/18)
John
Strausbaugh
News Travels Slow
to the Hamptons
It must have been a very slow news weekend at the New York Post's "Page Six," where today's lead item reports on "a group of struggling writers" who are protesting that the well-off Rick Moody got a Guggenheim grant. New York Press commented on the same story in December 2000. And even then, what was loony about the protest was that Moody, a Guggenheim recipient for the year 2000, had already received and surely spent the grant money by the time the protest had gotten under way. There's a whole new slate of recipients for 2001.
In New York City, even in June, you wouldn't think "Page Six" would need to reach back more than six months for gossip.
(6/18)
