The American Spectator

Her talk, which is free and open to the public, is titled, “My Life and Work as a Feminist Porn Activist, Ecosexual, and Radical Sex Educator.” Sprinkle will share some of her life’s work, do mini-performances and have a discussion with the audience.

Sprinkle, a “prostitute/porn star turned sexologist/performance artist,” has devoted the past 35 years to researching and exploring sexuality, from the sacred to the profane. She has documented and shared her findings through explicit films, photography and sexuality workshops. For the past decade, she has toured her one-woman theater shows as well.
(April 13, 2010)

New York Times
By Jove, he has done it. Times columnist Frank Rich extends his unprecedented string of consecutive appearances in this intellectually rigorous section of AmSpec to four months running! Not even Maureen Dowd has managed such a feat. Yet still Frank has failed to thank us for sending a suitably inscribed copy of The Nebraska Constitution: A Reference Guide. Maybe the security detail at the Times snatched it as a potential terrorist manual for Tea Partiers:

How our current spike in neo-Confederate rebellion will end is unknown. It’s unnerving that Tea Party leaders and conservatives in the Oklahoma Legislature now aim to create a new volunteer militia that, as The Associated Press described it, would use as yet mysterious means to “help defend against what they believe are improper federal infringements on state sovereignty.” This is the same ideology that animated Timothy McVeigh, whose strike against the tyrannical federal government will reach its 15th anniversary on Monday in the same city where the Oklahoma Legislature meets.

What is known is that the nearly all-white G.O.P. is so traumatized by race it has now morphed into a bizarre paragon of both liberal and conservative racial political correctness. For irrefutable proof, look no further than the peculiar case of its chairman, Steele, whose reckless spending and incompetence would cost him his job at any other professional organization, let alone a political operation during an election year. Steele has job security only because he is the sole black man in a white party hierarchy. That hierarchy is as fearful of crossing him as it is of calling out the extreme Obama haters in its ranks.

At least we can take solace in the news that there’s no documentary evidence proving that Tea Party demonstrators hurled racist epithets at John Lewis. They were, it seems, only whistling “Dixie.”
(April 18, 2010)

New York Review of Books

Michael discovers he’s developed a crush on Elizabeth:

To the Editors:

In a footnote to my recent piece for the Review [“The Money Fighting Health Care Reform,” NYR, April 8], I wrote that Elizabeth Drew was “one of the first” political journalists to draw public attention to the problem of money in politics. Upon reflection, I think this wording underplays her contribution. With the book of hers I mentioned, Politics and Money: The New Road to Corruption (1983), based on a series she’d written for The New Yorker, she was really the first to explore the problem of how money was corrupting politics. Library Journal observed that Drew had done for the campaign finance reform movement what Rachel Carson had done for the environmental movement.

I am happy to correct the record.
Michael Tomasky
Silver Spring, Maryland
(April 29, 2010)

From the Archives
Timeless Tosh from Current Wisdoms Past
(June 1990)

Movies USA

Mr. Alec Baldwin, star of The Hunt for Red October, reveals the workings of his marvelous mind; and, surely, you all remember the hordes of right-wing assassins:

Baldwin is more than passionate about his politics. He has stumped for the Democrats at colleges; he journeyed to the Democratic Convention with Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden; and recently he joined a group called the Creative Coalition, formed by actor Ron Silver in New York. Still, he feels guilty.

He sighs, “I talk about these things because I’m committed and when I’m done I feel kind of disgusted with myself. Sitting in a coffee shop and talking about it is not committed. I think once or twice a month I lie in bed at night and think how I’d like to find a militant organization — like some Black Panther or IRA equivalent — that revolved around some important cause and go out and blow up some chemical plant. Really put my ass on the line. One of the most significant differences I see between the right wing and the left wing is that in this country, the right wing’s fanatical assassins — they have better aim.” Baldwin gestures ruefully. “I must be really babbling.”
(March 1990)