The Wilburys twist again

It's about damn time.

Modest gains

I'm not as crazy about Modest Mouse as a lot of crits are, so I don't give a damn whether Good News For People Who Love Shiney Hooks represented a disappointing popist direction. For the curious: Johnny Marr does not add appreciably much to the proceedings. But in these days when Rolling Stone can birth three new guitar heroes with one cover story I'd like to remind listeners of the effectiveness of anonymity. My review of We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank here.

Barack Obama: "Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people."

The Washington Note has a letter sent by over a hundred Iowa caucus participants to Barack Obama, encouraging him to continue his support for a Palestinian state, as well as a secure Israel.

The letter quotes Obama as saying, "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people," which surprisingly has not been made into a bigger campaign issue. I still remember Joe "the schmuck" Lieberman going after Howard Dean in 2004 because he suggested the United States should be an unbiased arbitrator in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Light blogging today

I'm downing a Molson at Pearson and likely will not do much blogging today. I hadn't paid much attention to this airport, probably because the first time I was in Toronto I left in something of a hurry after one of the worst days of my life, and when I arrived this time around, I was too busy fighting with the Immigration guy. But it's a very nice, sleek and modern airport. Clean, too.

Back to the Molson.

La Revolución y Errol Flynn

I found this video on the CBC website while looking around for a special on Cuba I heard on the radio today. In 1959, Errol Flynn went to Cuba to experience The Revolution first hand. It appears that it was big news at the time--Flynn in Cuba, that is--because on Jan. 13, the day of this broadcast, one of the panelists immediately mentions it. I'd never heard anything about it.

During the interview, Errol Flynn says that Fidel Castro, who he considered a friend, would go on to "rank in history as one of the greats." Well, he was right about the first part. I was also amazed by how in 13 short days, the world already knew Castro was a criminal. One of the panelists asks Flynn about summary executions in Cuba. Flynn denies Castro authorized or had any knowledge of them.

Oh Errol, you can't swing out of this one on a chandelier.

This dude is shameless

Gustavo Coronado, a Homestead prison guard, said he grew so tired of an inmate's advances that he had sex with her in her bunk ''so she would leave him alone,'' according to state agents.

I've heard of the she-was-asking-for-it excuse, but she wouldn't leave me alone is a new one.

More, here.

Mon Dieu

Gauloises have become considerably more expensive since the last time I was in Toronto. They're now $8.50.

Up in smoke

You know, I wish I could post this, and rant on some only-in-Florida theme or some such nonsense, like the columnists that make a living writing about a culture of weird that doesn't actually exist. But the reality is that I just don't care enough. Sometimes you just have to sit on a park bench and smoke a joint, whether you're a judge or a loser.

Now if it comes out that this guy was a hardass on drug offenders--again, I don't care enough to try to find out--that's a whole different story.

In the meantime, a judge got caught smoking a joint... I feel bad for the guy.

Poll of Iraqis

How does the average Iraqi feel? Here are some interesting results.

51 percent of Iraqis now think that violence against U.S. forces is acceptable. That's up from only 17 percent in February of 2004.

42 percent of Iraqis say that Iraq is in civil war. The number among Sunnis is much higher, with 63 percent.

35 percent of Baghdad residents say they have moved their home to avoid violence or persecution, and 31 percent say there has been ethnic cleansing in their area.

Approval of the government, like everything else in Iraq, breaks down ethnic lines. 68 percent of Shiites and 71 percent of Kurds approve, while only 6 percent of Sunnies approve of the government.

You can find the story here, along with the full report.

A taste of the Cuban reality

There's no news to this story, but it is a good portrait of just one of the many ridiculous obstacles Cubans have to navigate everyday.

Hitchiking is a way of life in communist Cuba, where cars are scarce, a gallon of gas costs a third of a civil servant's monthly salary, and public transportation is unreliable and overcrowded. Lately things have worsened, with even acting President Raul Castro admitting in December that public transport was "practically on the point of collapse."

Last year, the government announced the purchase of 7,000 buses from China, and hundreds more Chinese buses are said to be on the way since Castro took power from his ailing brother Fidel in July.

Meanwhile, the hitchhikers are everywhere — at street corners, crosswalks, stop lights. Whole families with luggage hitch to and from the airport. On the capital's outskirts, government inspectors wave down government vehicles. Those with empty seats must take hitchhikers, a law that results in 68 million free rides a year, according to the Communist Party newspaper Granma.

"Guess we'll just have to adjust"

Marcello's post helped me get a few things straight: Arcade Fire's Neon Bible is a thrilling record, alternately ridiculous and terrifying. Just because this style of melodrama isn't usually to my taste doesn't mean I can't acknowledge this collective's achievement. It's the songs' dynamics -- in which weird, disorienting orchestral and vocal swoops substitute for instrumental solos -- that consistently enthrall: how Regine Cassagne's refrain of "In my head" cuts into Win Butler's frantic reverie in "The Well and the Lighthouse," as a taunt and an echo; the clouds of white noise, cumulonimbi of strings, and the compelling overwroughtness of Butler's voice create a tension that more than obviates a malaise that, to their credit, seems felt not received, even if they think lines like "eating in the ghetto on a hundred-dollar plate" are meaningful. Depending on my mood, the quiet numbers spook me like the fast ones don't. "Ocean of Noise" seethes like one of the clenched-jawed ballads on The Velvet Underground's third album. Juxtaposed against "working for the church while your family dies," Biblical tropes like "don't wanna live in my father's house" adduce honest anger if not sadness at the way things have gotta be. In this sense, Arcade Fire are realists, not the romantics their critics (and fans) accuse them of being.

Again, the arrangements are Gothic-scale, but not the emotions. Neon Bible collects the most lucid teenaged spiral notebook self-hatred ever written (your body's a cage, swelling and mutating beyond your ability to control it, meanwhile the world to which your parents and teachers belong is controlled by warmongers and authoritarians like them). But the images of flight, coupled with the brisk tempos of songs like "(Antichrist Television Blues)" and "No Cars Go," don't signify escape so much as thought: we have to solve our own problems, and quickly, for time's running out. The emo bands to which Arcade Fire are stupidly compared don't aim for the still point in the vortex. Hell, most of us don't. Arcade Fire don't imagine a place where no cars go: they know a place, and they'll show you if you clear your head of bullshit, as Neon Bible records song by song ("Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles"-- Ralph Waldo Emerson). Don't think this will solve the problems. At first I thought ending the record with "My Body is a Cage" is a mistake; coming at the heels of the strength-in-numbers affirmations of "No Cars Go," we're back to the black mirror and hortatory cathedral organs. But that's life, isn't it? Which is why the greatest lyric Butler will ever write (on Funeral's "Wake Up") is "I guess we'll just have to adjust." The second greatest? "I'm gonna work it out" ("Ocean of Noise"). Psychoanalytic cliches work if we actually use them.

Venezuela banking on 12.5-cent coin for economic turnaround

Nothing provides me more amusement than the absurdities of totalitarian autocrats. Take Hugo Chavez, for example, the man who changed the direction in which the horse on the coat of arms was facing, now plans a financial makeover based on a 12.5-cent coin and renaming their currency, from bolivar to strong bolivar.

I could see the press conference right now:

Somewhat-ballsy foreign reporter: "President Chavez, a considerable number of economists have said that the bolivar is on a downward slope due to inflation, how does your government plan to counter that growing inflation?"
Hugo Chavez: "Are you insinuating that the bolivar is weak? Because it says right in the name that it is not. It is the strong Bolivar, like the Venezuelan people and our libertador. But just to cover my ass in the future, in case it becomes impossible to deny that the strong bolivar is, in fact, weak, it's doubtlessly due to American imperialist intervention in Venezuela."

Oh Canada

I may have sworn off all things Canadian after they sent me to Immigration upon arriving at Pearson. They claimed it was an absolutely random procedure, but I railed back, convinced it had to do with my Spanish name, and I might have even told the Canadian customs guy, "why the hell would I want to immigrate into Canada?!"

But that's all in the past now, I love this country too much to stay mad at it for long.

Toronto is really wonderful city. I thought I'd seen most of what it had to offer, but as it turns out, I'm not even close. So far, I taught my brother a thing or two on the slopes, had some amazing--and cheap--Thai food, and made a repeat visit to the CN Tower, which hasn't gotten any less sublime. And, best of all, they show "Arrested Development" reruns here. Today --I'm reminded by a gaggle of hot Irish women singing "Danny Boy" on the Buffalo PBS channel--is St. Patrick's Day, and there will be plenty merriment tonight.

I'll leave you with a picture of lil' brother Diaz, having fun on the glass floor of CN Tower, and perhaps of negligently more general interest, "In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz" by Yeats in honor of St. Patrick's Day.

The light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.
But a raving autumn shears
Blossom from the summer's wreath;
The older is condemned to death,
Pardoned, drags out lonely years
Conspiring among the ignorant.
I know not what the younger dreams —
Some vague Utopia — and she seems,
When withered old and skeleton-gaunt,
An image of such politics.
Many a time I think to seek
One or the other out and speak
Of that old Georgian mansion,
mix pictures of the mind, recall
That table and the talk of youth,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.

Dear shadows, now you know it all,
All the folly of a fight
With a common wrong or right.
The innocent and the beautiful.
Have no enemy but time;
Arise and bid me strike a match
And strike another till time catch;
Should the conflagration climb,
Run till all the sages know.
We the great gazebo built,
They convicted us of guilt;
Bid me strike a match and blow.

Plains, trains, and automobiles

I know there's nothing original about this, but I have a serious travel fetish. So, sitting at the provincial Fort Lauderdale airport bar waiting for my flight to Toronto to board and listening to Steely Dan, I figured I would rhapsodize about this for a while. (Actually, it's going to be shorter than that, 'cause I need to do a good deal of work on the plane and I have to find an outlet to charge my laptop.)

Anyway, an Albanian friend of mine is convinced that I have gypsy--yes, gypsy--in my blood. A conclusion derived purely from my "gypsy eyes"--whatever that means. But hey, I'm guessing an Albanian could pick out a gypsy from a mile away.

My family has, in three short generations, taken on two major migrations--one across a continent. While, they'll tell you that they were for political reasons, I'd like to think it has something to do with a genetic wanderlust.

Shit. This is getting way more self-absorbed than I intended, so let's sum up. Travel, good; Fort Lauderdale airport, bad.


So let's move on to actual substantive stuff. Ricardo Alarcon says Castro--not Raul--is seeking reelection in 2008. I'm not even going to discuss the ridiculousness of calling what happens in Cuba an election, I just want to tell Ricky--a sedulous AGI reader, I'm sure--that I'll give him whatever odds he wants on that bet. I'll even give him a one-to-one exchange rate on dollars to pesos. C'mon, Ricky, what do you have to lose.

Updated to add: Fort Lauderdale airport has very slow WiFi and four power outlets in the whole airport. Grrr.

Dylan Hears a Who!

There's no way to convey what this is about, but it comes by way of Rocketboom--itself rather ineffable--and you should definitely check it out. And if you do not trust my judgment, then so be it; your loss.

Yet another reason to loathe Garrison Keillor

Fine, I've never been a fan of his. As a Reader's Digest addict as a boy (when every article seemed to be of the "Can Cocaine Conquer America?" kind) I had to endure his gross homilies about growing up poor but surrounded by lovable eccentrics who made sure he'd grow up to become an NPR star one day. I sounded like a crank when I expressed reservations about Robert Altman's swan song, but mostly because I questioned the ornery fucker's choice of collaborators: you'd think Altman would've been hip to Keillor's jive years ago.

But now Keillor writes this. And Salon published it. To wit:

Under the old monogamous system, we didn't have the problem of apportioning Thanksgiving and Christmas among your mother and stepdad, your dad and his third wife, your mother-in-law and her boyfriend Hal, and your father-in-law and his boyfriend Chuck. Today, serial monogamy has stretched the extended family to the breaking point. A child can now grow up with eight or nine or 10 grandparents -- Gampa, Gammy, Goopa, Gumby, Papa, Poopsy, Goofy, Gaga and Chuck -- and need a program to keep track of the actors.

And now gay marriage will produce a whole new string of hyphenated relatives. In addition to the ex-stepson and ex-in-laws and your wife's first husband's second wife, there now will be Bruce and Kevin's in-laws and Bruce's ex, Mark, and Mark's current partner, and I suppose we'll get used to it.

The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men -- sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control. Parents are supposed to stand in back and not wear chartreuse pants and black polka-dot shirts. That's for the kids. It's their show

What a fuckwit! Dan Savage takes him down mercilessly: .

What an asshole. Asshole, asshole, asshole. What Keillor wrote today on Salon is every bit as offensive as Ann Coulter’s “faggot” joke about John Edwards and relies on the same set of cultural prejudices.
-------------------

Most of the gay male parents I know adopted children that men and women in “opposite-sex marriages” weren’t interested in—children with HIV, older children, mixed-race children, children with developmental disabilities, children abused, neglected and abandoned by their heterosexual parents. Every year I go to Michigan for Gay Family Week in Saugatuck and I’m staggered by the love, patience, and compassion demonstrated by these men. These couples deserve our gratitude and support. What they don’t deserve is a rich, old hypocrite insinuating that they’re more interested in their fussy hairdos and over-decorated apartments than they are in raising their kids.

Then there are conservatives who assume that liberalism = support of gay rights (as I once told my students: "This country's leaders are still wary of fags, kikes, and niggers"). What makes Keillor's opinions doubly offensive is the folksy drawl in which he'd probably deliver it aloud, which is probably his idea of humility. If you supported John Kerry and (now) John Edwards' positions on gay marriage and adoption Keillor's remarks encapsulate why "mainstream" Demos remain as deluded as the GOP.

Yes, that old the-unicorn-is-my-designated-driver story again

Why not a leprechaun? Wouldn't be able to reach the pedals?

BILLINGS, Mont. - A man told police not to blame him for crashing his truck into a light post — it was that unicorn behind the wheel. Prosecutor Ingrid Rosenquist said Phillip C. Holliday Jr. initially denied driving the truck involved in the March 7 crash in Billings. He told officers at the scene that a unicorn was driving, she said.

More, here.

Poll: 58 percent want Iraq withdrawal by 2008 or sooner

The biggest challenge facing the Democratic party today is not the Republican party, but rather being swooned by the overwhelming popular support for withdrawing the troops, which is providing them with quick and easy political capital. It doesn't seem like we're handling that challenge with much responsibility right now.

But with numbers like these,

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Nearly six in 10 Americans want to see U.S. troops leave Iraq either immediately or within a year, and more would rather have Congress running U.S. policy in the conflict than President Bush, according to a CNN poll out Tuesday.

Though support for Bush's decision to dispatch additional troops to Iraq grew to 37 percent -- up from 32 percent in a mid-January poll -- a slim majority of 52 percent say Congress should block funding for the new deployment.

The CNN poll was conducted Friday through Sunday by Opinion Research Corp. Pollsters interviewed 1,027 adults for the survey, which had a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

I'm sold; juice me Hodgman

Dumb fuck

This guy has discretion over the lives of soldiers in Iraq?

Marine Gen. Peter Pace likened homosexuality to adultery, which he said was also immoral, the newspaper reported on its Web site.

"I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way," Pace told the newspaper in a wide-ranging interview.

You know, if homosexuality was anything like adultery, there would be a lot more homosexuals in the Republican party.

Oh, to live in Gotham...

Those lucky devotees of Film Forum's excellent programming have a real treat: Max Ophuls' magnificent The Earrings of Madame De.... Although still unavailable on DVD (Criterion is supposed to give it the deluxe treatment this summer; if the inferior Ophuls product Lola Montes can get it...), I've protected my New Yorker Home Video copy purchased in the mid-nineties as zealously as I used to my copy of The Conformist (until I left it under a movie theater seat during an Adaptation screening, after Andy had borrowed it). The reliable Dave Kehr published an enlightening essay in today's New York Times. "Proustian" is a disgracefully abused adjective, but surely it applies to The Earrings of Madamde De..., in which Ophuls' irony and bemusement fuse in the film's last third into something approaching despair.

In other news an American remake of Eric Rohmer's Chloe in the Afternoon is scheduled for release....starring Chris Rock.

Three from Europe (sorta)

When your big Broadway musical leans towards ROCK, and it's about GERMAN, STRAIGHT, CHRISTIAN TEENAGERS, it's safe to say you've misunderstood your audience in every significant way. Or so I thought initially, but never fear, Duncan Sheik's "Spring Awakening" has enough songs about boys masturbating to keep it from crashing like that jukebox show about John Denver. Based on Frank Wedekind's 1891 drama about the goings-on at an affluent Christian school, the book matches purposefully (I hope) sophomoric lyrics and sub-"Rent" guitar riffs to a fin-de-siecle tale. The results are either amusing or embarrassing, depending on your particular mood. Songs dive from the oppressively emotional ("The Word of your Body") to gleeful cussing that is meant to jolt the musical form, (in big numbers like "The Bitch of Living" and "Totally Fucked"). If this supposed to capture adolescent see-sawing, kudos. For better or worse, this is the youngest-feeling musical Broadway has seen in a decade. (And that one about the Spelling Bee doesn't count.)


Martin Amis got majorly whipped over in the U.K. for his last novel, "Yellow Dog," which was bizarre and off-putting but not as jaw-droppingly bad as the Brits pretended it was. "House of Meetings", more conventional in tone, more "important" in subject matter, is reassuring. His story about gulag love, human degradation, and the current state of the wounded Russian giant echoes Solzhenytzin, (feel free to comment on that spelling, I'm too lazy to Google at this particular juncture), but Amis' distinctly British approach makes it all seem fresh.

Finally, and in case you haven't, (why haven't you?), go rent Borat, damn it. It's just as funny the second time around, and the DVD's plentiful deleted scenes will tickle you all a-new; although they reveal how bad the movie could have been. After all, (and this is where I throw my dissent), what makes the movie great was a fortuitous combination of character and social critique. The deleted scenes (Borat goofing off at a supermarket, getting turned on at a massage parlor) are funny but have nothing to reveal, hinting at an original scattershot approach that got whittled down to the satire we've come to love. This is why, much as I love this movie, I'm going to balk out of thinking Sasha Baron Cohen is some sort of universal comedy genius. Tried re-renting "Da Ali G Movie" recently? I didn't think so.

(Added Borat note: When I saw this at the theater, a group of frat guys on the front rows stood up during the trailer scene and cheered, having recognized fellow drunken idiocy. When the idiocy went too far, one of them stood up, turned to the rest of us and yelled: "We're not all like that!" If this movie shamed one jock out of jackassery, it's already done its duty.)

Ne-Yo's debut was good enough to juice my anticipation for his next one. His namby-pamby voice often detracted from his (slightly overrated) lyrics and his (quite underrated) melodies and hooks. Really, I wished In My Own Words matched the effortlessness of "When You're Mad" and "Sexy Love," the latter of which is the best R&B ballad of the last several years, even in a period replete with them (Beyoncé's "Irreplaceable" and Ciara's "Promise" and "Like a Boy" are just three).

Rich's thoughts on Ne-Yo's "Because of You" have made me reconsider the voice/music dichotomy:

But then, like "I Want Your Sex" or the moany breakdown of Jade's "Don't Walk Away," * you might not want to listen to it with your mom, after all, for backing up the sonic discord is a lyrical one. Ne-Yo has the voice of a goody-two shoes, sweetly competent and never aggressive, which means he can get away with a lot.

"Because of You" is about what Borat calls vagine, according to Rich. I'm embarrassed I had nothing memorable to say the first time I wrote about it; Ne-Yo even wrote a song for the first album called "Mirror" about benign sexual narcissism. I should known that Ne-Yo is Example #657 of perversion-through-banality.

* I really need to hear Jade again.

Florida Man Beats Out Heart Disease As Nation's No. 1 Killer

Goddamn, I love The Onion:

ATLANTA—The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Monday that in the first two months of 2007, 47-year-old Wayne Ray Thomas of Jupiter, FL has surpassed heart disease as America's No.1 killer.

"We're in the midst of a major national health crisis," CDCP Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said. "Every 22 minutes, Wayne Ray Thomas takes another life. If trends continue, by 2027 this silent killer could affect one in every 15 Americans."

According to health and law enforcement officials, there are several warning signs of the onset of Wayne Ray Thomas, including intense anxiety, shortness of breath, sweating, and a sudden loss of power to the victim's house.

Physical symptoms of a full-scale attack include involuntary constriction of the airway and sharp, stabbing pains in the left arm, right arm, throat, and back. In the advanced stages, afflicted persons suffer external bleeding, loss of motor function, organ failure, and intracranial hemorrhaging.

So far, those stricken by Wayne Ray Thomas have exhibited a 100 percent mortality rate.

The unbearable lightness of being

The Washington Post has this neat feature up on their website called On Being, which is surprisingly addictive. That, or I am just desperately reaching for entertainment that'll keep me from reading some boring law review article on domestic violence. Anyway, it's a series of well-produced video clips that range from some dude's quotidian pet peeves to a nun on her nun-hood. Check it out, if you have some free time, or need a quick mental break.

Oh, Annie

I've figured it out. Anne Coulter is posesed by Andy Kauffman. Look at their initials... AC... AK... Close, no?
After all, no human being's really that hateful. She's Tony Clifton.

Contrarianism -- post(post)-punk edition

Received opinion I'm delighted to refute:

*Matos and Thomas are wrong: the Jesus & Mary Chain's worst songs are their early "classics." "Just Like Honey" is really pretty, I guess (Lost in Translation, thank you), but "You Trip Me Up" does not make me miss the Ramones (whom I'm not fond of anyway). Their mid-period college radio heyday holds up the best: "Happy When It Rains, "April Skies" (both of which are the same song really), "Sidewalking," the glorious "Head On," and their narcoleptic Hope Sandoval collaboration "Sometimes Always." Still, to claim that JAMC were a major band is simply laughable. The best thing anyone's ever said about them is Rob Sheffield's remark that Depeche Mode are JAMC with synths instead of guitars: they signify on that level of histrionics.

*Eighties Wire -- the edition employing gauche synthesizers, sequencers, and reducing Robert Gotobed to a tinny drum machine -- fascinates me in a way that the dangerous, seedy seventies Wire (like the mostly dismal 154) doesn't. I can't understand why "Kidney Bingos" makes me tear up -- especially in the fade-out, where Graham Lewis' near-incomprehensible basso harmonizes with Colin Newman's cuddly vocal. When critics write about the perversion in accessibility, I'd cite this as a prime example.

Gettin' by with a little help...

Win Butler’s greatest genius lies in having a bunch of friends.

It’s not hard to imagine how insufferable Butler would be if it were just his earnest mug alone plastered all over indie mags and blogs. Just picture Conor Oberst or Sufjan Stevens and you’re already there. By contrast, sharing the spotlight with brothers, wives and drinking buddies goes a long way towards preventing people from accusing you of being self-absorbed or navel-gazing. As if by magic, you’re suddenly “communal.” I admit it’s an effective trick and not one to be undersold. Eric Weisbard once memorably mythologized Nirvana by claiming that Cobain “made his I’s resonate like we’s.” Butler takes a shortcut to achieving the same thing by simply inviting all the “we’s” up on stage.

On the one hand, the Arcade Fire by its very existence acts out the close-knit camaraderie that Oberst frequently evokes but rarely allows to actually penetrate his solipsistic mewlings. On the other, Butler and friends appear to live out the fellowship of believers (no matter how strong/nonexistent each member’s individual faith) that Sufjan seems so clearly to want but only occasionally and obliquely brings to life.

The Devil Made Him Do It

Norman Mailer loves shit.



He loves it in all its oleaginous glory, in its clumpy turdiness, smeared between buttocks or alone in the woods. He's hopelessly devoted to shit; it's the kind of fascination that fuels posters on alt.sex.scat.

In "The Castle in the Forest" you'll find all sorts of rapturous takes on doo-doo. What you won't find is anything illuminating Adolf Hitler's psychology, or global politics, or good ol' evil. Mailer's devilish narrator has nothing to say except that there are no easy answers. He actually sets up a scene in which hundreds of bees are gassed up and die while little Adie watches, only to knock it down by saying, (and here I paraphrase, but I promise I'm being accurate to the spirit of the thing): "This moment looks like it could be significant to our boy's psyche. But it really isn't. It's just bees being gassed. It would be cheezy to create such an obvious analogy. This moment is not important."

Well, if it's not important, can I have my money back?

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., RIP

So falls another totem of wit and elegance. Although I haven't read his FDR tome, on the evidence of The Age of Jackson and his cheerful role as Courtier of Camelot I don't care for Schlesinger's kind of power worship. The wistfulness pervading the obits suggests that his sycophancy is, like honor and loyalty, a virtue this generation of leaders lacks:

How to convey the way public intellectuals such as Galbraith and Schlesinger loomed over American politics and ideas for the quarter-century following World War II?

The easiest way would be to point to their latter-day equivalents. But there simply is no one these days who does what they did. They were dominant figures in their intellectual disciplines, but their books were bestsellers. They emblazoned the covers of Time magazine (twice for Galbraith, once for Schlesinger). They steered the Democrats and rallied the fight against the Republicans, and when their side won, they occupied coveted positions in the government. They moved happily among celebrities such as Lauren Bacall and Angie Dickinson; they sat for Playboy interviews. They were especially close to the family -- the Kennedys -- that epitomized the merger of celebrity and politics. And, of course, they were on Richard Nixon's enemies list.

According to reporter John F. Harris, Schlesinger was important because he was (a) a star; and (b) a party hack; (c) a martyr. Note the defensiveness of his lede: "There was a time -- it's been decades now -- when politicians or pundits would call people `liberal intellectuals' and not mean it as an insult."