Newsweek
The Republicans’ frightening blueprint for America as seen
by comrade Jonathan Alter before heading to Cuba for some dental
work:
In brief: repeal health-care reform, so if you lose your job and
your kid gets sick, you may have to sell the house; repeal
financial reform, so Wall Street scammers and predatory lenders can
return to doing everything they did before they wrecked the
economy; maintain corporate-welfare subsidies that move jobs
overseas; reduce spending by slashing education funding; and ending
all clean-energy projects aimed at curbing our dependence on
Mideast oil. Republicans insist on extending $700 billion in tax
cuts for the wealthy and leaving the $500 billion defense budget
untouched.
(November 1, 2010)
The Nation
At our favorite lunatic haunt, editorialist JoAnn Wypijewski
demonstrates once again that silliness begets silliness while Dr.
Joycelyn Elders continues her crusade for silent
pleasures:
In an essay accompanying some of the Indiana study data [about
onanism] in The Journal of Sexual Medicine Joycelyn Elders
wrote, “We have finally included masturbation in our national
conversation and as a result stopped checking our hands for growing
hair”; you wouldn’t know it from the days and nights of talk-media
devoted to winks and nudges over the adventures of young Christine
[O’Donnell]. If there was a liberal commentator who took sex as
seriously as O’Donnell had in her passionate abnegation, only from
the other side, I missed it. No one said, Come on, masturbation is
one of the great, free joys of life; powerful, relaxing,
instructive too; as common as rain and as good for you. No one
punctured the absurdity of public squeamishness on the issue and
argued plainly, like the Spanish socialists in Extremadura with
their campaign for youth, that “pleasure is in your own hands!”
(October 25, 2010)
New York Times
Anthropological jottings from columnist Maureen Dowd,
writing in her inimitable schoolgirl argot:
We are in the era of Republican Mean Girls, grown-up versions of
those teenage tormentors who would steal your boyfriend,
spray-paint your locker and just for good measure, spread rumors
that you were pregnant.
These women-Jan, Meg, Carly, Sharron, Linda, Michele, Queen Bee
Sarah and sweet wannabe Christine-have co-opted and ratcheted up
the disgust with the status quo that originally buoyed Barack
Obama. Whether they’re mistreating the help or belittling the
president’s manhood, making snide comments about a rival’s hair or
ripping an opponent for spending money on men’s fashion show, the
Mean Girls have replaced Hope with Spite and Cool with Cold. They
are the ideal nihilistic cheerleaders for an angry electorate.
(October 17, 2010)
Angle-Reid Debate
The American Demosthenes, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid,
at the height of his powers, elucidating the mysteries of cancer;
and snip, snip, it is gone:
We need them to be forced to do mammograms. That’s why you see
breast cancer awareness month. You see the baseball players wearing
pink shoes, and you see the football players having pink, uh, uh
helmets. It’s because people dread breast cancer, and you don’t get
breast cancer, you can-correct breast cancer-you detect it if you
do mammograms. Colonoscopies, if you do colonoscopies, colon cancer
does not come because you snip off the-things they find when they
go up and-no more, and we need to have insurance companies do
this…
(October 14, 2010)
New Republic
Young Jonathan Chait takes time out from barking at dogs and
howling at the moon to pen yet another column of timeless
flumdiddle for the New Republic — not to be
confused with the Banana Republic, which is more serious:
One idea that has gained oddly wide currency, especially among
Republicans and moderate Democrats, is that the recession is an
especially bad time to raise taxes on the rich. “If the priority is
to get people back to work, is to start growing this economy again,
then you don’t want to make it more expensive for job creators,”
asserts GOP House Whip Eric Cantor. The plight of the rich is never
far from the minds of the political establishment, and the state of
the economy has given fresh urgency to the cause of sparing the
very prosperous from the horrors of Clinton-era taxation.
(October 14, 2010)
The Week
Democratic political strategist Bob Shrum after reading some
very misleading chicken entrails picked up at Democratic national
headquarters, or perhaps it was just leftover carryout:
So let me state it plainly: I now think the Democrats will hold
the Congress-yes, the House as well as the Senate-and turn back
high-profile Republican challengers in California and
elsewhere.
The GOP strategy of “no” worked to slow the recovery, stoke
fears about factions like death panels in the health-reform bill,
and persuade voters to strike out in frustration against Democrats.
Their trend peaked in August, a month Democrats probably wish they
could abolish given the dog days they suffered then, in 2009 as
well as 2010.
But with the onset of autumn, there are signs that the
Republican tide is receding.
(September 10, 2010)
The Great Books Series
The last frontier of crusading scholarship offers a splendid
opportunity for double-entendres as can be seen in the introduction
to this great book, Learning from the Loo, written by the ineffable
Professor Harvey Molotch:
Public and Toilet do not sit well together. The discord goes
beyond words. Using the facility-let’s call it that for
now-involves intensely private acts. Focusing on the public
restroom, as the contributors to this book make it their business
to do, thus opens a tense domain. But it is a route worth taking,
precisely because of the shadow under which it normally falls. By
going there, we have the potential to make discoveries with
implications for personal hygiene, psychological stress, and social
betterment. We can also learn about power and the capacity to shape
others’ life chances. Hence a group of scholars, drawn from the
diverse disciplines of sociology, anthropology, law, architecture,
archaeology, history, gender studies, and cultural studies, conjoin
to face the facts, unpleasant or otherwise, of the loo.
Even the home bathroom can unleash embarrassment, shame, or
criticism when family members detect by sight, sound, or scent what
one another are up to. Places such as restaurants or shopping
centers introduce anonymity (often welcome) but also concerns about
having to share intimate space with people whose intrusion may make
us anxious and from whom we want to keep our intimacies separate.
The person in the next stall may be the boss or a rival co-worker.
The open-to-all facility, as in a public park or train station,
invites its own range of anxieties-a person of filth or stranger
ready to attack.
(From Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of
Sharing, edited by Harvey Molotch and Laura Noren. New York
University Press, 304 pages, 64 illustrations, $18.95)
From the Archives
Timeless Tosh from Current Wisdoms Past
(December 1990)
Santa Barbara News-Press
Ruminations of a potential mass killer at large in Santa
Barbara:
First, I double dare you to print this. My whole family bets you
won’t.
Every month I get a phone call from your paper asking me to
subscribe, telling me of the greatness of your publication. I
always reply that I won’t subscribe because your paper is biased
and capitalist. That usually stops them in their tracks.
Today’s (Aug. 18) paper proved my point. My family sat around
the breakfast table and groaned and booed while I read out loud
your front-page article on the opening of Nordstrom. We all agree
that you did not put this article on the front page, or in the
paper at all, because of the enormous amount of money the mall is
pumping into your paper with their endless full page ads!
The quote saying the reception from the community is outstanding
is erroneous. Nine out of ten people that I speak with about the
mall think it is obscene, too big, too gaudy, too much, no matter
how you look at it.
I thought that the purpose of our lives here on Earth was to
become more spiritually evolved. This mall pays homage to man’s
greed and selfishness. When so many have so little…well, you know
the rest.
(August 21, 1990)
