Long, long ago, in the sweltering twilight of an August night roaring with cicadas and the vacuum hum of a lazy small town in retreat from the heat and the falling darkness, the yards and sidewalks abandoned for living rooms and television sets (the wobbling blue screens of which we could see through the dark, … Read more
Dumb and Dumber A very smart friend of mine…and I mean VERY smart…once said to me when I asked her how she’d accomplished so much at her very young age, “I always try to be the dumbest person in the room.” Now that was damn near impossible for her, I thought. But, she continued, “That’s … Read more
Sorta busy this wet morning, but I couldn’t help myself from weighing in on the Strib redesign, over at MNSpeak, so rather than fritter away more time, I’ll do the really gauche thing, and quote myself: Everyone can agree that newspapers are losing readership, but the basic problem is believing that management can think (or … Read more
I have two options when, as now, the Muse deserts me (and this has so often been the case of late, and over, say, the last dozen years). Well, actually, I suppose I do have more than two options. I could recognize, for instance, that anyone who uses the phrase “the Muse deserts me,” or … Read more
Roman Hruska: until now, the patron saint of government mediocrity You know you may be in trouble when you are a “Conservative” President and the the house organ of the American Fascist Party, the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Page, takes you to task for the nomination of Harriet Miers. Actually, in one of the few … Read more
There are surfaces you can’t get a look under. You see just a flat line, for instance, or a face, or the horizon, but that doesn’t mean there’s not something beneath or beyond them. It never means that. There’s something behind or under everything, depths and layers and distance, and it’s a rare thing that’s … Read more
I try to avoid these sorts of political ramblings, but sometimes it just becomes unbearable–the sin of silence, we call it, during Yom Kippur. It is marginally related to media criticism, so spot me one here. The tone has become noticeably conciliatory over at Power Line these days. True, the local detachment of the 42nd … Read more
1) This, Vesithia LaRue said, is not living. Decidedly. Not. Living. Ms. LaRue was in the bar of a Chinese restaurant, where she was sitting straight as a pin at a corner table and bathed in an almost infernal red light. Though she was a non-smoker, she had the mannerisms and dramatic demeanor of someone … Read more
Gerrymandering. Wasn’t he the guy who played “The Beaver”? Here is the first line from Tom Delay’s statement on his indictment: “This morning, in an act of blatant political partisanship, a rogue district attorney in Travis County, Texas, named Ronnie Earle charged me with one count of criminal conspiracy.” Imagine, someone with prosecutorial power using … Read more
What’s a guy gotta do to get arrested in this country? The news today, if you are paying attention to anything other than Bush’s attempt to convince us he cares about poor people on the Gulf Coast, is that Private Lynndie England is going to prison for three years for her part in the Abu … Read more