Why on earth is Oliver Broudy unnerved by Lévy's unbuttoned shirt, and why does he feel he needs to mention that lack of buttoning and his reaction to it?

Who cares? It's inane and distracting.

Molly Ivins is a voice in the wilderness because she speaks about courage and conviction to a party that has lost its way and hopes that the Presidency and control of Congress will fall into its lap if Democrats just sit tight and don't make waves. Does anyone really believe Hillary Clinton wanted to go to war in Iraq or thinks the answer is, as she often says, sending more troops? Look at how passionless she is discussing these issues, and you know her heart isn't in it. But her strategists are whispering in her ear, counseling caution, and she listens, just as Kerry famously and disastrously listened to his counselors--and did the wrong thing. I used to think Clinton would one day be a grand old woman of the Senate, a female Robert Byrd, but look at how she has consistently held back and temporized, while Byrd has told the truth about abuse of power. Clinton does not deserve such status, nor does she deserve to be President.

Maybe Molly will run.

It's clear that we really do need protection against gay marriage and even gay people themslves. Homosexuality is obviously so toxic and contagious that even mentioning it turns normally inane media schnooks like Imus and Chris Matthews into complete idiots.

On an ordinary day, they're irascible, under-informed, andsupercilious, but in this recent exchange they do what Churchill said about an opponent: each word they speak "subtracts from the sum total of human knowledge." Of course, Imus, Mr. Big Hat and Big Mouth, brought it up first. Hmmmmm......

Nobody expected more, but it's always enlightening to see how Matthews and Imus reach new lows. They're sniggering little homophobes who have to prove their manhood. Imus wears the big hat and growls, Mathews tries to talk tough, and together they reassure each other about their--ugh--manhood.

Bush is a brush clearer, not a rancher. And his estate down there is not a ranch, not remotely.

But letting that go, what on earth would make anyone assert to Bush that he'd love the movie?

Was that deliberately provocative, or just dumb?

Well, I thought the rightwing predictions about the movie were a kind of voodoo--they hoped that talking the movie down would actually depress its audience. They didn't want a boycott, but they still couldn't stop talking about it, predicting its failure, especially those who hadn't and wouldn't see it.

But I knew it was going to do well when it opened in Lansing, Michigan, which is much more conservative than Ann Arbor, and I couldn't get to see it at the first show on a Sunday afternoon the weekend. The lines were too long. The last time I'd seen lines like that? Star Wars.

I saw it the following Wednesday at 1 PM and there were upwards of 50 people there, which was very unusual for a midweek matinee.

When the original writers of the show left, WW lost its sparkle. The dialogue was no longer so tight and sharp and funny. The shows themselves seemed overblown and the series lost its edge. It no longer was about making the minutiae of government exciting, it suddenly turned each episode into melodrama. Rob Lowe's exit was almost as heavy a loss--he anchored the show with his good guy handsomeness and his perfect timing.

What's all this fuss about domestic spying?

Why would the White House care who maids and butlers are talking to? That's ridiculous.

What?

What kind of domestic?

Oh.

Never mind!

This makes no sense whatsoever. Byrd has been excoriating the administration for its power grabs. He's been talking and writing for years about the shift between Congress and the Presidency and the lack of balance there. So now he's for a judge who believes in the so-called unitary executive? He's breaking faith with his own positions and beliefs. If Byrd has given up, then the time of the Republic is truly over and we have well and fully become the Empire Chalmers Johnson and others have warned against. Alito = Rubicon.

Oprah ask, "Why didn't you write a novel."

He did. And couldn't sell it. Hence its re-branding by his publisher as a memoir.

And this liar reveals the truth inadvertently when he answers the above question, "I don't think it's a novel."

Oprah didn't call it a novel, she asked why he didn't write one. He did, he knows it, and has to keep defending himself.

The sick thing about this spectacle is that he'll sell more books and he'll probably write a screenplay or have one written about him. Oprah will play herself.

I've had two and they were bad enough with novocaine, and one was agony afterwards and needed several follow-ups. Hearing that he claimed to have had two without novocaine was enough to make me know the book was bullshit. I think he stole the idea from "Marathon Man" where Olivier tortures Dustin Hoffman that way.

No memoir can be 100% accurate because memory is not TIVO. Remembering and then putting words to people and events changes them. Just think of any major event in your family history and see how different members will tell the story differently, sometimes wildly so.

But that's not the point. We expect some basic level of accuracy to fact and Frey has been grossly off-base. Okay, he says he was in jail 87 days. If it were two months, 87 days is close enough and approximates the truth. But he was in one night! And so on and so forth.

At the same time, the amount of newsprint this story has gotten is amazing, when we have an administration that lies continually, habitually, needlessly, pathologically. Yet we don't hold our government to as high a standard as the one we're holding Frey to.

Shameful.