I reviewed many genres including memoir in my decade writing for the Detroit Free Press, where I also had a mystery column. I worked hard to fight reviewer bias towards the big trade presses, and often reviewed paperback originals which most reviewers ignored. I was always on the lookout for books from smaller presses, so I'm sorry to see Salon only review memoirs published by Bloomsbury, St. Martin's, Grand Central (owned by Hachette), and FSG. People who really know creative nonfiction will tell you that the best writing has been coming out of small and university presses for years. In the interest of full disclosure, I sought the University of Wisconsin Press because of its sterling reputation in that genre: http://www.levraphael.com/sgrevu_mg.html

What makes her an expert on terror? Her area in the State Department was apparently economics and development. Who says she knows anything about the issues she's been spouting off on, and why is she suddenly ubiquitous? How did she get crowned a voice of the GOP? Does being Dick Cheney's daughter automatically confer talking head status? Then bring on his sisters and his cousins and his aunts!

I've now visited Debbie Stabenow's office in person to register my disgust for the party and the president, written to her and Carl Levin, to the DNC, the DCCC, the DSCC, the White House, the Equality Caucus and more to say "Enough!" As a lifelong Democrat who donated more time and money this last campaign than ever before, I'm not voting for Democrats until I see presidential and congressional action. Dump DOMA, pass ENDA, overturn DADT. Full civil rights for the GLBT community. No scraps, no pleas to be patient, no more promises.

And articles like this one only make me angrier. As they say in Yiddish: "Don't piss down my back and tell me it's rain."


United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay said: "Just like apartheid laws that criminalized sexual relations between different races, laws against homosexuality are increasingly becoming recognized as anachronistic and inconsistent both with international law and with traditional values of dignity, inclusion, and respect for all." 


GLR, put stock in whatever you like. It in no way negates the power of what the U.N. High Commissioner for Civil Rights said in comparing laws restricting civil rights for gays to apartheid.

"and it's Katja bar the door."

Yes, he was human, vulnerable, shame-ridden. Does he or will he realize the utter hypocrisy of his voting to impeach Clinton? Will he say so if he does? Does he realize while he's been putting his own needs above the needs of his family and his state that he actively worked against his constituents' interests by rejecting federal stimulus money, and that he undermined security and good governance by disappearing for almost a week? I grant he was human, but I wonder how long it'll last. The GOP is the normative party: rules matter more than people. Will he see that people often matter more than rules, and that extends outside himself? Will he realize how arbitrary and difficult he's been even before this affair? Or will he become even more rigid as a reaction formation against his own impulses. Given the kinds of people attracted to the GOP, my bet is the latter.

Hélas! I did love "Dangerous Liaisons," but Michelle Pfeiffer could not pronounce "Monsieur," and it drove me nuts having grown up with a French-speaking parent and taken French in school depuis huit ans. Pfeiffer kept saying something like "mush-errr." Each time she said it, it knocked me out of the film.

I won't bother seeing this one, which sounds woefully miscast. As was The Age of Innocence, where she was a disaster. Ellen Olenska in Wharton's novel is bosomy, exotic, dark, and very European. She smolders. Pfeiffer just looked like a Victorian Valentine and made the movie as off-balance as Wynona Ryder did, given that Archer's wife is a Diana figure in the book: blond, tall, dynamic.

Essential reading for anyone disturbed by this report is Chalmers Johnson's magisterial and terrifying trilogy analyzing our current political state: Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis.

His core argument: the U.S. is no longer a Republic but a militarized empire with vast network of colonies. The military budget brutally distorts our economy and militarization perverts our politics. No President will ever relinquish powers accrued by previous presidents, and will likely seek to further their invidious reach. Despite positive signs (which I'd call fleas jumping on a corpse) The Republic is dead, without hope of rescusitation.

Did they have to put "dreck" in his name? Is this some kind of scriptwriter's juju to ward off bad reviews?

Watched the show. Big problem: the lead is not hung. Not remotely. Not in jeans, not in dress slacks, not in sweat pants, not in jockey shorts. Spoils what little fun there might be in a dim-witted show that's poorly written, bland, and cursed with lame voiceover. Critics will rave because they'll consider it "daring." It might have been. In the 80s.

Dear Something Stinks:

The show is set in SE Michigan so I was hoping to like it and hoping it does well (though those aren't the same thing).

I gave it 45 minutes, fully prepared to enjoy it.

As for bigger TVs, I have a 54-inch screen and if the actor had truly been hung (or even outfitted to look it), that would have been obvious.

Capisce?