Harriet Miers, despite her grandmotherly smile, might suffer from misanthropy. Or she might hate crowds. Regardless, she clearly holds Congress and perhaps the body politic in contempt. But remember that Bobby Fischer held the world in contempt, and they made an uplifting film about fathers and sons inspired by his hijinks. Leave Dirty Harriet alone. […]

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In For Reasons of State, published circa 1970, Noam Chomsky demonstrates remarkable cynicism towards American military interventions which no semi-literate voter would dispute. But he also demonstrates remarkable naivete towards the Khmer Rouge, whom he refers to as “an indigenous farming collective” stymied by American napalm. Anyone who saw The Killing Fields knows that this benevolent […]

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My landlord in Bushwick devised a foolproof scheme for squeezing extra cash out of his tenants. He installed a beverage machine in the lobby of our building that offered Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, Rootbeer and–oh yes–Beck’s Lite. One of these cans sold out at least three times a week. Can you guess which? And sometimes I’d wake up in the lobby. Can […]

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Once in the Chelsea Fish Market I wandered lonely as a cloud. I approached a booth, grabbed an eel and bit its frozen head clean off. A man leapt from behind the counter and shouted, “This is unacceptable!” He failed to grasp that in Manhattan, you have to accept everything, including American Express and drunk […]

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Legislators from both parties tell us to “support the troops,” but why don’t they ever tell us to “support the civilian contractors,” who outnumber the “troops” 2-to-1 in Iraq and fight the armed resistance just as frequently? Does “contractor” not scan as well in a metered line?

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Words are peals of thunder. Record grooves dig the grave of the author. We are moths now beating our heads against the long electric night. On the opposite end of the TV age.
My nightmares always run with traces of the waking world. They lay out those moments that only […]

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