This could have been a Samantha Bee segment on The Daily Show, only it wasn't funny enough, and Cheney wasn't mentioned as supervising the photo shoot at its top secret undisclosed location.

Disney: American and wholesome

Rob Reiner: Jewish and macaca-ish

Dana Milbanks's column reads like it was written by a Leiberman staffer. Milbank has the gall to accuse senators supporting Lamont of "disloyalty"--as if Lieberman hadn't rejected the decision of his own party voters in the primary. Milbank is like all the other pundits who bellow about Lamont's win as if it's the end of civilization--or at least civility. If he believes what he's saying, he's benighted. if he's just writing this for reasons I can't guess at, he's despicable.

In Measure for Measure, when Isabella threatens to unmask Claudio as a vile hypocrite, he taunts her with something like, "Say what you will, my false will o'erweigh your true." That's what the last six years have felt like. It doesn't matter what journalists, Congressional reports, whistle blowers, CIA agents, former diplomats, UN statements or any other reputable sources say. The propaganda machine in the White House (and its media minions) simply buries the truth in obfuscation, denial, and a storm of rhetorical thuggery. We're New Orleans, they're Katrina.

Have you paid no attention whatsoever to the perversions of democracy over the last six years, the destruction of our environment, the looting of the treasury, the squandering of international goodwill, the devastation we've unleashed in Iraq?

Allen parades his grandfather's "incarceration" by the Nazis to gain sympathy and make himself out to be more appealing: my family has known suffering. But it's hypocritical in the extreme for him not to say why this ancestor was imprisoned, and to get defensive about possible jJwish ancestry. I found the reporter's question completely uncontroversial because it goes to how Allen defines himself and what his roots are. If The Forward is correct, he pretty clearly is of Jewish descent, and by Jewish law is Jewish whether he likes it or not (and whether other Jews like it or not).

Asking when this part of his heritage was dumped for Christian fundamentalism is completely legitimate.

BTW, here is the article in The Forward:

http://www.forward.com/articles/alleged-slur-casts-%20spotlight-on-senator%E2%80%99s-jewis/

Yes, he gave a dazzling speech at a convention, but what has he done for us, hell, what has he done at all lately? You could say he's being a good junior Senator and learning the ways of that august body and keeping a low profile, but when he does speak out in public, he's not impressive. When Mario Cuomo gave his barn burning speech at the convention years ago, you knew where it was coming from, both in his career and in the party's tradition. Obama has a long way to go to not just prove hismelf, but to establish an identity. 2008 is way too soon, given what we've seen so far--which isn't much.

Allen shows as much sensitivity for his own background as he did for the Indian guy he mocked. But obviously the point is that he still wants his props as a good ole boy who likes his pork rinds--so vote for him, y'all!

More seriously, does anyone for a moment believe that he never knew anything about his family's past until last month, and if that's the case, why did he respond with such suppressed fury when a reporter asked about his Jewish background? In 48 hours he goes from angry to accepting? He must have gone to a drive-through shrink to get such speedy closure.

Imagine President Bush defending himself so articulately. The very best line: "This President thinks Afghanistan is one-seventh as important as Iraq!"

One has to know fractions to make Clitnon's point.

Reviewers--can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. Having had raves and pans over the course of 15 years and 17 books, I know one thing: it's all a crap shoot and sometimes has nothing to do with the quality of the book. It's all about the luck of the draw: who reads your book and when.

I've spent about a decade reviewing in print and on the radio and having gone over to the Dark Side, I discovered the obvious: reviewers are human, they make mistakes, they miss things, they can be in bad moods. Sometimes I have to start a book twice before I'm in the mood--but what if I'd been under a tighter deadline? And what if you've just reviewed something amazing, and something ordinary comes along, it may seem weaker than it really is. The reverse is also true: a so-so book can seem better if everything you've read before it is dreadful. No book reaches your desk in isolation, it's all intertextual.

Reviews are supposed to sell books, but honestly, I've had bad reviews of my books be misread or ignored by fans, and good reviews appear in places no one notices, and have seen author friends with starred Kirkus or PW reviews not profit by them one iota. Maybe it builds good buzz for you inside the publishing house, but you can't even count on that.