...join in with the hagiographers. Suicide is, among other things, an act of stupendous selfishness. It is also a failure of imagination, something not hard to believe of a writer as bad as Wallace.

Yes, BAD.

Considering his distaste for irony, I find it ironic that so many are proclaiming that Wallace was some kind of genius. Anyone who was old enough to remember watching Borg, McEnroe and Connors, and then write glowing praise of a plodding cannon-wall like Roger Federer wasn't even particularly bright, let alone brilliant.

Oh yes, the writing. Infinite Jest is one of the worst novels ever to be proclaimed great. Like too many others in the modern era, it is filled with ridiculous tropes and outright flim-flammery, like those infuriating footnotes, that cry out "Oh look how NICE I'm writing, Mommy!"

I think the reason Wallace offed himself is because, at middle age, he had enough insight to realize that he was a fraud, a genuinely hollow man that T.S. Eliot - a real writer - would have recognized instantly. I can't really blame Wallace for being so horrified by this revelation that he decided to end the life he finally recognized as being so empty.

No, wait, yes I can blame him. The bastard had everything that most writers dream of: An excellent career in academia AND a robust career as a writer of both fiction and non-fiction. He was married. He had lots of money and, because of his tenured position at Pomona, complete economic security. But then I suppose it is still hard to live with the knowledge that you're a fraud, especially when you are so celebrated. What a literal embarassment of riches.

As often as not, it's the last line that makes or breaks a Berkeley Breathed strip. "Alex. He's a penguin" is one of those lines. Long may Berk reign.

And she wanted nothing so much as for her children to have a better life than she did. In point of fact she HATED slaughtering and dressing chickens and hogs, churning butter, milking cows and so forth. As soon as she found an escape route - my Great-Grandfather, a tradesman who earned very good money - she took and never looked back. Moreover, she worked hard her whole life to see to it that she and her family never wanted for anything (straight through the Great Depression and WWII), and took full advantage of the prosperity of the 1950s. This led to a very comfortable and secure retirement for both of them in the 70s and 80s, until they both passed away in the early 90s.

My Great-Grandmother would have laughed out loud at Paglia's hagiography of rural life, largely in disgust. Paglia has, in this essay, reproduced the same ignorant romanticizing of the rural class that infected early Communists. Talk about irony!

...then they deserve what they get. The pity of it is that the rest of us will get it too.

Then, in 1995, I went and saw "Heat." And then I knew.

Al Pacino blew DeNiro right off the screen. It was the humanity he portrayed. DeNiro could only act as DeNiro has always acted, like an angry iciclel. Pacino acted like a genuine human being.

Sorry, but an NC-17 rating is the kiss of death. Most theatre chains refuse to exhibit films with that rating, most media outlets refuse to advertise them, and Blockbuster and Netflix refuse to stock them. How that isn't de facto censorship is beyond me.

The word is "deranged", or perhaps "fanatic." I wonder if, now that she knows the potential results, Palin will continue having sex with her husband. If she does, will she go on pumping out genetically defective children all the way into her fifties and, God forbid, beyond? And once Her family is half healthy and half freak, what then? This is not what I want representing my country to the rest of the world. I do not want a religious fanatic a heartbeat away from the presidency. And last but not least, I know of a question that Palin MUST be asked during the Vice Presidential Debates: "Governor Palin, what are your views of the Christian Reconstructionist movement, and other movements that would like to transform the United States into a Christian theocracy?" Let's see how she answers that.

But now I do. This guy actually thinks that Jim Webb and other traitors to this country are "building blocks" to the future?! Man, what the hell is he smoking and how do I get me some??

Kos is the problem, not the solution. Though he is right that genuine grassroots organizing is the way to go, we can't afford to waste that energy on assholes like Jim Webb. We must build our own politicians the way the Swedes did in 1921. The way the Danes did a bit later. We must confince the people that "rugged individualism" is code for "you will die homeless if you're not lucky and NO, you won't die rich."

Only by spreading that message will we end the cycle of violent economic suppression that we've had in this country lo these 28 years.

...in 1947, when Milton Berle got big ratings just for putting on a fucking dress. It's been downhill ever since (with a few notable exceptions).