Politics

Looking Deeper into Joan Felt

The press has encamped itself outside the Santa Rosa, Calif., home where Mark Felt lives with his daughter Joan, waiting for the next move from Family Deep Throat. Joan Felt, who has said she'd like to "pay some bills" from their notoriety, is described in today's Washington Post as a Sonoma State University Spanish lecturer and former Fulbright scholar. Reporters have yet to discover her association with a spiritual group called Adidam, brought to light by members of an online discussion group ... (read more)

2005/06/03

May Divorce Be With You

This weblog now has a second marriage to debate: the four-year union of the writers Carl Bernstein and Nora Ephron. I love the movie Heartburn, which Ephron wrote as fictionalized revenge after she and Bernstein crashed and burned. They had two sons, the second born prematurely after Carl was caught convening a rump parliament with the future Baroness Jay of Paddington, a member of Britain's House of Lords. In novel and film, Ephron lampooned Bernstein so hilariously that I'd be amazed if he ... (read more)

2005/06/03

Thomas Sowell's Fuzzy Math

On Memorial Day I read the local daily from cover to cover, one of my favorite lazy holiday traditions. I was pleased to find Thomas Sowell writing the same kind of piece he always writes -- an unhappy, factually thin screed on how one of these days, mark my words, as God is my witness, blacks will wise up and become more like Thomas Sowell. If the share of the black vote that goes to the Democrats ever falls to 70 percent, it may be virtually impossible for the Democrats to win the White House ... (read more)

2005/06/01

Deep Throat Old News to Student

Now that Mark Felt has owned up to being Nixon nemesis Deep Throat, I hope the media tracks down Chase Culeman-Beckman. As recounted in Slate, Culeman-Beckman made news six years ago by claiming that he learned Deep Throat's identity 10 years earlier at summer camp. The 19-year-old college student broke one of the biggest news stories of the 20th century in a paper for his school, which Slate quotes: I was in the "Herons" group along with about fifteen other 8, 9, and 10 year olds ... One ... (read more)

2005/05/31

He'd Rather Fight Than Switch

This morning's Guardian has an amazing transcript of a joint interview with the writers Christopher and Peter Hitchens, brothers who hadn't spoken in four years. I love this exchange between an audience member and Christopher Hitchens: Female audience member: Excuse me. I'm not usually awkward at all but I'm sitting here and we're asked not to smoke. And I don't like being in a room where smoking is going on. Christopher Hitchens (smoking heavily): Well, you don't have to stay, do you darling. ... (read more)

2005/05/31

Jacksonville blogger Joe Dougherty made Howard Kurtz's column this week with his reaction to the Senate filibuster deal: ... starting today, I will now do everything in my power to see that John McCain's chances at the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 are non-existent. In fact, I'd like to help out if there's anyway we can get another Republican to run against him for his Senate seat. This man is not a Republican or a conservative. He is a curse on the party and the movement and he ... (read more)

2005/05/27

David Asman is Damn Right

Media Matters and a few liberal bloggers are spreading a gotcha moment for Fox News anchor David Asman, who accidentally revealed his we-ness while interviewing Sen. Trent Lott about the filibuster deal: So, Senator, if we should have done it and if we had the votes to do it in the Senate -- if you guys in the Republican Party did -- then why did you need a compromise? It's funny to see the guy talking like a Republican homer, but anyone who knows Asman's biography doesn't need to be told where ... (read more)

2005/05/26

I've Been Owned

I live in a neighborhood governed by a community association, which means I pay several hundred dollars a year for the privilege of being ordered by strangers to drag my trash cans into the garage. Like any government, the association has found it much easier to expand its authority than to occasionally unclench, review the rules, and get rid of the more nettlesome ones. In some ways, it's kind of entertaining, like having a busybody in-law who can't repress the desire to micromanage your life. ... (read more)

2005/05/16

My Friend the Warblogger

Michael Bolduc, one of my college pals from the University of North Texas, grew up to become a warblogger. This was, of course, a source of distress for mother and I. You do everything you can to raise them properly, but ultimately all you can do is love them, cherish every day together, and hope they make the right decisions. When Mike ventures into political subjects on his weblog, I'm pretty sure that we'll pick opposite sides whence comes the War of the Bloggers, then meet in a trench where ... (read more)

2005/05/14

Take a Bite of the Apple

Michael Moore is swimming in money after Fahrenheit 9/11, according to a Slate analysis that describes how the filmmaker and Disney rode the controversy over the movie all the way to the bank: Under normal circumstances, documentaries rarely, if ever, make profits (especially if distributors charge the usual 33 percent fee). So, when Miramax made the deal for Fahrenheit 9/11, it allowed Moore a generous profit participation -- which turned out to be 27 percent of the film's net receipts. ... (read more)

2005/05/06

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