Look, if a bunch of old, white, single, unmarried, highly educated men in Rome, by which in this context I am referring to the Vatican, and actually, come to think of it, to myself -- except for the Rome part, since I live in Philadelphia, and otherwise because I’m impoverished and because I don’t get out much, let alone to Rome -- can deal with Charles Darwin and evolution, why can’t Georgia educators do the same?

Here at TRR, and by proxy, at The Rittenhouse Review, we’re just going to pretend the “Wing Bowl” never happened.

However, if you insist on reading local coverage of this bizarre event, go here, if you dare: “A Little Woman Shall Lead Them,” by Dawn Fallik (Philadelphia Inquirer)

“Thong and Dance,” by (the incomparable) Tanya Barrientos (Philadelphia Inquirer)

“Wingador Ousted by Alien Muncher,” by Jim Nolan, Philadelphia Daily News

Some thirty years ago my family moved from New Jersey to a dairy farm in upstate New York. It was, in retrospect, a disaster from the get go. And yet, there are memories.

Within a month, I think, if even that, we were greeted by a once-in-a-lifetime snowstorm that dropped six feet of that crap, snow, I mean, not chicken kaka, on the farm, snow that forged its way into drifts of something psychotic like twelve feet. And it was, at the same time, bitterly and viciously cold.

Then there were the painters. They were assigned an appropriate nickname that I will not publish. Suffice it to say they were among the stupidest people ever born.

We had English springer spaniels, Lady and Duchess, I think they were called, and of course, Tessa, the whippet. And a bunch of cats, but, in the long run, who remembers cats' names? It's just not the same.

I remember when the chickens arrived. They were transported to us in burlap bags in a journey that many didn't survive.

I was eight years old then, and I saw all those dead chickens, and it really hit hard. I still remember one particular chicken, because it was at that moment on the verge of death. I swear she was looking at me as I patted her feathers, telling her how sorry I was. "Stop that," I was told, and sent out of the barn. I was saying good-bye to a chicken. How will I ever say good-bye to Mildred?

We sold eggs for 50 cents a dozen. (Adjusting for inflation, at most $1.33 a dozen today. [Assumes a compound annual rate of inflation of three percent.])

I drank milk that came straight from the cow. A few times; not all the time.

A bull was named after me.

After a cow was slaughtered and cut up, my mother one day made us sandwiches. They were delicious. It wasn't until we finished that she told us the meat in the sandwiches was tongue. And as much as I liked that meal, I still, some thirty years later, have not yet eaten tongue again.

There were horses too, at least for a while. Two, I think. One of my sisters was going through that stage. I don't remember their names. Horses are like cats in that respect, I guess, at least for me.

A neighboring family was hired to help out. I remember Joy cleaning up after the cows in the barn, doing some of the nastiest of all possible work, and seemingly thinking nothing of it. I was amazed.

We caught tadpoles and frogs in the stream at the foot of "the back mountain."

My sister L. fell through the ice of that same stream while we were skating on it. I thought she was going to drown, to die. I really did. My brother P., I think, or maybe it was my brother J., pulled her up and out of the water. I've never been so scared in my life.

Boy Scouts from Scarsdale, N.Y., a troop led by my uncle and including my cousin, camped near the stream and planted trees back there. [Ed.: Obscure fact: I have three cousins, C., G., and T., who were Eagle scouts.]

Once, in the middle of the night, my mother awoke and saw a bat sitting upon her. How she endured that episode without experiencing a heart attack remains to me a great mystery.

We climbed "the front mountain" regularly and rolled down its mostly treeless surface.

We, or at least I, never climbed "the back mountain." Too many trees, too much forest. Too scary.

There's a picture, somewhere, of my sister C., then a toddler, wearing a pretty white dress, with a flower in her hands, standing in her playpen set up in the side yard. It's beautiful. She's beautiful.

[Post-publication addendum (February 5): I’ve been reminded that the primary, initial, and most important lifesaving endeavor related to my sister L. was at the hands of my brother P., though the save eventually was a collective effort on the part of P., my brother J., and even me. Hey, it was a long time ago, and when you are faced with the near death of your closest sister, or are called upon to remember the event, things get hazy, confused, and downright scary.]

An editorial about mad cow disease in today's Philadelphia Inquirer caught my eye if only for this one sentence:

[W]ith little public fanfare, the Food and Drug Administration last week announced smart, new rules: Cattle blood and blood products are now banned from cattle feed; chicken waste cannot be fed to cattle; cattle brains cannot be used in human dietary supplements.

These are new rules? We've been eating beef that has been fed "chicken waste"? How long has this been going on? Was this common knowledge? Why didn't anyone tell us?

"Little public fanfare"? No kidding. If I were running an agency tasked with ensuring public health and these were new rules governing the nation's food supply, I'd do my damnedest to slip them in under cover of darkness.

Readers may be surprised to learn that I once lived on a dairy farm in upstate New York. I was too young then to be pulled into most chores, but I watched and saw a lot, and our cows never ate chicken waste. (Did they?)

As best I can recall, the cows ate grass, hay, silage, and molasses. Not chicken crap. (Right?) (By the way, if you've never seen a cow eat molasses out of a pail you are holding in your eight-year-old hands, you've missed a small, but rather amusing, part of life.)

Denying the cows poultry kaka apparently was an oversight of inefficiency on my father's part, since we were also raising chickens. The chickens' waste could have been transferred from one barn to the other, thus reducing the costs associated with feeding the cows, but it wasn't. (Was it?)

Either that, or, more likely, my father, in not feeding the cows chicken droppings, of which, I assure you, there was an ample supply, was just using common sense. Or maybe, way back in 1970-1971, my father was a pioneering organic farmer and I never knew it. Until I hear more from the family, that's the story I'm going with.

But getting back to the editorial . . . With unintentional, I think, humor, the Inquirer continues:

For those who have not followed the outbreak of mad cow, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the new rules may make little sense.

What? You mean as in, "That makes no sense! I want to eat beef raised on chicken waste! The FDA is out of control! Washington regulators are ruining farming!"?

I've really got to start researching my food.

[Post-publication addendum: I have been informed, by the best and most appropriate and reliable source, that our cows were not fed chicken waste, nor poop of any kind, and only the feed that I previously mentioned. So it really was organic farming, intentional or otherwise, some thirty years ago.]

Here at TRR, and by proxy, at The Rittenhouse Review, we’re just going to pretend the “Wing Bowl” never happened.

However, if you insist on reading local coverage of this bizarre event, go here, if you dare:

“A Little Woman Shall Lead Them,” by Dawn Fallik (Philadelphia Inquirer)

“Thong and Dance,” by (the incomparable) Tanya Barrientos (Philadelphia Inquirer)

“Wingador Ousted by Alien Muncher,” by Jim Nolan, Philadelphia Daily News

[Note: This post originally was published at TRR: The Lighter Side of Rittenhouse.]

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As my readers know, I am probably leaving Philadelphia within the next three weeks. But before moving I would like, just once, to do something I never before in my life have done: karaoke.

And I know exactly with whom I want to perform this undoubtedly humiliating -- for me -- experience: with my oldest friend in the world. Maybe not my “oldest” friend, but my most longstanding friend, the woman who has been been my friend, without fail, without failure, and without failing (you heard it here first), for twenty-three years.

And she can sing.

And so I hope, if we do this, she will cover for me.

The thing is, as I noted above, I’ve never “done” karaoke, anywhere, let alone with such an accomplished vocalist. And since I don’t get out much, I don’t even know where “quality” karaoke is done in Philadelphia.

So, while time is short, and I cannot and will not promise you an invitation to this bizarre event, if you have any ideas as to where the most wonderful friend in the world and I might make a fool of, well, me, please send me your suggestions.

Do you want to know something I don’t like? I don’t like it when after I’ve expressed my preference for a Democratic presidential candidate during the primary season and I bend over backward, both on this blog and off, to be fair to my favored candidate’s opponents, that politically minded friends who have reached other conclusions are eager to trash my candidate, in front of my face and almost baiting me, based on nothing more than rumors and innuendo.

I’m not the enemy here, by any means, nor is Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). I thought we all had one goal in mind: defeating President George W. Bush.

If I’m wrong about that, let me know. Because while “your” candidate does not, by any means, stir in me enthusiasm or excitement or passion or whatever your word of the day is, I think he is a fine man and ample presidential material. I would be more than happy, ecstatic even, to throw my heart, my soul, and my body into his -- “your” candidate’s -- campaign, because I’m looking beyond South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Missouri. I’m looking toward November.

But without backing up your own heartfelt zeal and your certain conviction that no one other than your candidate can “inspire” voters in that fateful month, you are acting in a fashion that is at best misguided and at worst no better than the self-appointed punditocracy’s doling out of imaginary delegates by virtue of the candidates’ appearance, dress, and demeanor. I’m sorry, I thought we were better than this.

For a brief moment or two I actually thought my landlord’s agent, she with the office so far removed from me that I need not, even in this weather, put on a coat to reach it -- as the office, where much make-up is applied throughout the day, is but 300 feet, tops, down the hall -- was unaware that she, or that her employer and their attorneys on her behalf and command, was actually suing me, dragging me into court for what can only be described as a false, faulty, hasty, premature, and frivolous complaint.

But late on Friday afternoon, as is her wont, her inclination, and her penchant, I learned I was wrong. Said agent, she of the sometimes big hair and the thick local accent, is well informed, believe it or not. She knows we’re going to court on February 12. In fact, in Friday afternoon’s scrawled, almost incoherent, note to me, which she slipped under my front door without knocking, she all but bragged about it:

[J]ust to let you know you have a hearing [illegible, unintelligible] next week for the unpaid rent for January, plus late fees[,] and attorney[s’] fees[.] If you don’t show up for the hearing you will get [sic] an automatic judgement [sic] against you. Once you have paid all [of] the balance due I can[’]t [illegible, unintelligible] and all judgements [sic].

(By the way, this, at least from what I assume she was trying to convey, is a lie. The complaint asserts far more than this, alleging faults on my behalf that said agent knew, or should have known, and by any reasonable-man standard would have known, were false no later than January 7, 2004.)

Now, I don’t know whether Miss Thing went to college, let alone graduated therefrom, and I will leave it to you, the reader, to make your own determination based on the simple yet ruined and completely bawlderized, the utterly abominable, sentences quoted above, but I have heard a rumor she holds a certificate in dog grooming, which, in her case, is the equivalent of a Ph.D. in cosmetology or personal hygiene.

You know, I’m actually looking forward to all of this.

Hey, you think I’m being mean? Hell, sometimes being a bitch is all a faggot has to hold on to.

Have you ever downloaded a “free” package or piece of software only to find that it’s not free at all? Or at least that the “free” part is basically worthless, or at best, everything for which you paid?

I have.

It’s called SpyHunter. Free! Free! Free!

Download it. Install it. Run it. And you will learn whether certain well known “spyware” programs or “worms” have been installed surreptitiously on your PC.

I did just that and found there were four such annoyances on my computer.

Now, getting rid of them is another story. Your “free” download won’t help you with that. It’s just a scan. Fortunately, through my own efforts and, for one last little cretin, a little extra searching, I was able to remove them all by myself.

Maybe there should be a new word for “free” downloads like SpyHunter’s: teaseware.

Oh, wait, I now see by way of the godsend known as Google that the word already exists, but also that it has yet to receive the circulation it deserves.

Let’s all put it in motion, shall we?

I’ll bet almost every blogger has had this experience at least once. Something’s on your mind. You want to blog about it, and you want to offer readers something more than a link. You want to put in your two cents or, in the case of some bloggers, like me I suppose, your six or seven cents (and then there’s that guy in San Diego who puts his cents in using handfuls of dimes). But you’re not sure what to write. It’s gone through your head a couple of dozen times. Maybe there’s even a draft on your hard drive. Yet the moment dissipates. The link looks stale. Another time, maybe.

And then it happens. Every thoughtful blogger’s nightmare. Someone writes that very same post. And does it so well there’s just nothing to add. (Okay, maybe not a nightmare, really, but you know what I mean.)

It happened to me yesterday. Not in the blogosphere, but in Philadelphia magazine, which is kind of a shame, because it’s a great article but it’s not on line.

In “X-treme Annoyance” (Philadelphia, February 2004, pp. 42-43), Noel Weyrich says everything I was thinking -- and more -- about the inexplicable controversy surrounding skateboarding in Philadelphia’s John F. Kennedy Plaza, at Benjamin Franklin Parkway and 16th Street, also known as “LOVE Park” in recognition of the Robert Indiana sculpture that resides there.

You see, a few years ago skateboarders took over the park, which from what I understand and concede had fallen into rather consistent disuse, though that is irrelevant now, and trashed the place. And the neighboring sidewalks. And the public-space plazas abutting nearby office buildings. And, in the process, they managed to scare the bejeebus out of nearly anyone who dared to try to assert his or her right to engage in such outrageous behavior as, say, to walk through the park or on the neighboring sidewalks and plazas, or to sit in the park or on the few available benches on the neighboring sidewalks and plazas.

The city, finally recognizing the damage to the park and the sidewalks and the plazas, and the general deteriorating quality of life the area, finally said enough, and rightly banned skateboarding in JFK Plaza. An uproar of sorts ensued, with the local major dailies experiencing repeated attacks of righteous apoplexy and a stray politician or two, pandering for the “youth” vote, whatever that is, standing up for principle, whatever that might be.

For now, all I can offer from the Weyrich essay are a few excerpts, enough to generate some disagreeable e-mail but not so much that I invite a ruckus over copyright infringement. (Oh, and a few remarks of my own. What did you expect?) So here goes:

Skateboarding -- “street skating,” more precisely -- is a sport the way graffiti is an art. Half the thrills come from messing with something that doesn’t belong to you.

Center City building owners have fought back, blighting their plazas by bolting ugly little-L-shaped steel clips on walls and benches to deter the skaters from “grinding” (a skateboarding term) their axels along the edges. But the steel-clip defense holds other risks. In an incident that went unreported in the papers last spring, skateboarders frustrated by new clips at one office plaza pried them up and pitched them through a nearby shop window. [...]

Among recent college graduates surveyed last year by the Center City District, the top four criteria for choosing a place to live were cost, walkability, safety, and proximity to work. The thrill of vandalism didn’t come up.

Street rats

I’m with Weyrich. Shoo these obnoxious vandals, these “street rats” (his words, and mine) away once and for all. Frankly, as starved for revenue as this city is, I think we’ll manage just fine without the pittance of sales tax these detestable urchins might occasionally cough up when buying chewing tobacco and bubble gum, both of which, I might add, they also use to deface the park and the sidewalks and the plazas.

We’re supposed to share LOVE Park with these guys? The same knuckleheads who can’t share Walnut Street, or Chestnut Street, or Market Street, preferring instead to terrorize genuine shoppers on those thoroughfares, to say nothing of the tourists they send scattering on the Parkway? Build the park you say they need so badly, build it somewhere else, but let the city’s real taxpayers have JFK Plaza.

(I’m willing to bet, though, that if the city builds the skateboarding park currently under discussion it will rarely, if ever, be used. Not because, as the editorialists would have you think, because JFK Plaza is in the heart of the city, but because, as Weyrich says, vandalism -- and terrorism -- is the name of the game.)

Justifiably taking to task the city’s two major dailies, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, both of which have been harping on this issue -- in enthusiastic support of the skateboarders -- with an intensity and frequency better reserved for such issues as the wage tax, corruption, development of the waterfronts, and, what else, oh, how about why the hell there are so many damn parking lots and parking garages blighting Center City, Weyrich observes:

[N]one of the people who actually use LOVE Park are clamoring for the return of the skaters. Only ivory-tower suburbanites (the majority of both editorial boards) and pandering city politicians are seriously pushing this idea. At a low point of a mayoral campaign filled with low points, Sam Katz actually mounted a skateboard at a press conference, falling on his ample ass. [Local notes: The Inquirer and the Daily News share offices in a building that is literally, one could say, an “ivory tower.” Katz, a Republican, unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Mayor John F. Street in the November mayoral election.]

Wiffle ball anyone?

Weyrich, mindful of the need for as many recreation opportunities as possible in Philadelphia, cleverly has proposed a new Wiffle ball league. The league’s proposed stomping grounds, its suggested playing field? Out front at 400 North Broad Street, the home of both the Inquirer and the Daily News.

“We’ll have a great time for about five minutes,” Weyrich writes. “But when the security guards race to shoo us away, I am fully confident that the editorial boards of both papers will rally to our defense.”

According to Weyrich, the first meeting of the North Broad Wiffle Ball League will be held on Thursday, February 5, with the first pitch tossed at noon.

Damn! Can’t make it. Jury duty calls.

Most everyone missed it, but this week we had another of the countless truly surreal moments in American journalism, this one stemming from coverage of the federal prosecution of Martha Stewart.

In The Wall Street Journal, of all places, we read:

“Toads come out of her mouth -- the jury won’t like her,” contends Heidi Fleiss, the “Hollywood Madam” who was convicted in 1995 on federal charges of money-laundering and tax evasion in Los Angeles in connection with the high-priced call-girl ring she once ran. Ms. Fleiss, now a 38-year-old owner of a lingerie store called “Hollywood Madam,” spent 21 months in prison -- and believes she would have been acquitted had her lawyers allowed her to testify.

Ms. Fleiss says her lawyers told her to keep mum, a decision she regrets because jurors were left with only the portraits of her painted by prosecutors and their witnesses, including actor Charlie Sheen, who paid her large sums for sex with women Ms. Fleiss procured. “They made me look like the Anti-Christ,” she says now. Ms. Fleiss believes her own testimony would have put her in a more sympathetic light because “jurors would have gotten where I was coming from and maybe even liked me.”

Actually, in context with the rest of the article, “Putting Martha On the Stand,” by Laurie P. Cohen (WSJ, January 29), it does fit, in its own bizarre way, as the subject under discussion is whether celebrity defendants should, must even, take the stand.

Still, this -- seeking commentary from Fleiss -- has to be the most humiliating moment Stewart has had to face in Karen Seymour’s rampant, flawed, poorly conceived, and run amok prosecution.

“Toads come out of her mouth”? And what about you, Heidi? Where are your warts?

There’s something about Howard Dean, and his wife, that makes some people crazy. I have no idea what it is, because I don’t see it. Dean and his wife seem to me to be perfectly normal adults, though with above-average sets of accomplishments and more ambition than most people. Good for them.

So why is it that so many in the media are all too happy, all too eager, to paint Dean as a man possessed? Could it be . . . projection?

Case in point: Michael Smerconish, a local talk radio personality and columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News. Smerconish, as befits his profession, is more blunt than most Dean critics. He apparently thinks Howard Dean is crazy, or unbalanced, or of unsound mind, and he wants you to think that to. (“When Dr. Dean Met Dr. Freud”)

Smerconish this week raised the subject of Dean’s mental health, not in relation to the post-Iowa caucus rally, but because of what, best I can tell, was a brief period of generalized anxiety many years ago. The talk-radio personality writes:

In a[n] . . interview with People, Dean confirmed having anxiety attacks later in Vermont. He explained that he “was just anxious, and I didn’t know why.”

Dean said that, through counseling, he traced his anxiety attacks to his brother Charlie, whose remains were recently discovered in central Laos.

His counseling? I don’t recall that coming up in the debates. Never in all the negative campaigning. And Diane Sawyer didn’t raise it in her recent interview with the Deans.

When asked by People if the counseling was hard, he said, “No, it actually was great. It was really helpful. I mean, I like that kind of stuff. I had done a lot of it -- I learned a lot about it in medical school. I had done some during my psychiatry rotations, so it was actually a terrific experience. It wasn’t easy. You’ve got to work and you’ve got to uncover things that matter to you. And of course we talked a lot about my father an all that other stuff.”

Sounds to me like Dean was lying on somebody’s couch. Which makes him no different from many Americans. Except, of course, that he’s running for president. (Dean said that he wasn’t medicated.) […]

A “little anxiety” from a man who would be commander-in-chief? […]

Maybe, in light of his losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, this is an irrelevancy. But to the extent that the campaign of Dr. Dean is resuscitated over the next few weeks, here’s what he should be asked:

When have you required professional counseling? What events in your life gave rise to such a need? Exactly what type of professional help did you require?

Is this what it’s come to? You know, beginning nearly four years ago and continuing right up to the present day, it was and is considered impolite, unseemly, inappropriate, and yes, impolitic, to ask questions about the health of the heart of our post-operative vice president, Dick Cheney.

But now, suddenly, it’s supposed to be fair and proper to submit to a presidential aspirant, during primary season, a request for a full detailing of his mental health. One would think we all outgrew this a long time ago, but the likes of Smerconish would drag us all back to 1972.

I, for one, am pleased to learn Dean sought appropriate and professional treatment for his extraordinarily common -- almost mundane -- problem, unlike a certain president we all know who, if he’s been sticking to his pledge against drinking, has likely been gnawing his knuckles for more than 15 years.

The heavy lifting of Ann Coulter (did I just say that?) and her screeching against Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) has been done by others:

By John Emerson at Seeing the Forest and by Diana at Letter From Gotham (Sound bite [so hard to pick just one]: “Girl, check your temperature. You have a fever. He didn’t say that. He sat in Congress, looked Senator Fulbright in the eye, and blamed the powerful men sitting in those chambers for those war crimes. At age 28. You wouldn’t have the guts to speak truth to power at age 88.”).

Uh-oh, she’s sending me fightin’ words. She, M.E.C., I mean.

In an e-mail sent this evening, M.E.C. slipped a bit and told me she makes her pancakes on “a griddle,” and not on a pan.

Damn, this could be tough.

Hello, Martha? I’m calling in my chits. You know the number.

Apparently the aforementioned M.E.C. has built herself, without my realizing it, a little reputation as a pancake-maker.

Well, good for you, M.E.C.

Congratulations and all of that.

As I am currently absorbed in a reading of the magnificent Don Quixote, I herewith challenge you, M.E.C., to a duel.

Name the time, the place, and the pans.

Our judge? Our newest niece.

Okay, so there’s been this exchange of correspondence, via e-mail, between my cousin L.M. and my sister C. and me that, to anyone privy to it, and that likely does not include you, I regret to say, proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am, in C.’s own words (and she’s just friggin’ incredibly funny herself, and gee whiz, just finish one of those books or something, would you?), “the funniest person in the world.”

So take that, Dennis . . . Dennis . . . Dennis, what? . . . Dennis something . . . Whatever . . . P.J. . . . Christopher . . . Taki . . . Megan . . . I don’t know, I don’t care. Nobody knows, nobody cares.

Aw, man, they say she likes pancakes.

The girl’s just going straight for my heart isn’t she?

I say that because Uncle Jim makes, among very little else, a really mean pancake.

Just ask Debbie. (Actually, I think I’m the only one who calls her Debbie. I don’t know why. Why I call her that or why I’m the only one, I mean.)

On Monday I told you my newest, my impending, my incipient niece would be greeted, solely on my side of the family, by nine uncles, seven aunts, and 14 cousins.

At the time I was uncertain of the comparable gifts the other side of her new family would offer.

Today, thanks to M.E.C., I have the relevant data: five uncles, five aunts, and 14 cousins.

So, if you’re doing the math at home, that means my newest, my impending, my incipient niece will soon arrive to 14 uncles, 12 aunts, and 28 cousins. (Plus Mildred.)

That’s 54 people. Fifty-four (54). (And one bulldog.)

And then there are grandparents, a species in a class -- a world -- of their very own. And great aunts and great uncles, and really great great aunts and uncles, and second cousins or first cousins once removed, or whatever the hell those people are called, and of them there is a multitude.

Good Lord, fix the girl, fix the girls, a drink.

Reader Maureen B. writes:

My father-in-law used to own an electronics shop in Westport, Conn.

One day Jack Paar walked in. [Ed.: Paar was living in Greenwich, Conn., at the time of his death.] My father-in-law told Mr. Paar he was testing a tape recorder and would he mind helping him out on the test?

Jack Paar smiled and said, “I know what you're trying to do,” but he took the microphone and said, “You’re listening to Jack Paar coming to you from The Radio Shop.”

I think he still has that tape.

I’d love to hear it.

You know what? They’re not “stewardesses.”

The women and men who feed you peanuts, they’re on the friggin’ front line.

I lost a good friend on September 11, 2001, and I lived in New York then. And lately every reminder of that horrible day is not less but more painful than before. The words of Betty Ong, a flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11, reported by ABC News, are horrific in their intensity and in their mock banality.

You know, when you think about it, there’s really nothing heroic about Ong’s work on that fateful day.

She was just doing her job.

And so the next time you hear stupidity from The Wall Street Journal and its loyal lackeys on the right-wing side of the blogosphere about “overpaid” flight attendants and the “demands” of their union, think again.

Think about Betty Ong.

She’s dead now.

I can't wait until my landlord starts showing my apartment.

The nasty, trashy woman who serves as their agent today sent me notice that she has initiated a municipal court proceeding against me. I am all of one month behind with my rent.

Fine. Good luck and all that. I'm leaving. In fact, I can't wait to get out of here.

And when she, or one of her minions, starts showing the apartment and waxing rhapsodic about the apartment's six-foot -- and unbelievably leaky -- windows, I'll be ready to counter with this:

You know, you really should call Peco and get the history of utility bills for this apartment. That's your right as both a prospective tenant and a ratepayer. Pay particular attention to June, July, August, and September, when massive air-conditioning is often a must, and to November, December, January, February, and March, when similar efforts are required to keep the hovel warm.

And for every other purported amenity, benefit, or feature, I have appropriate responses.

I love it when small-minded, big-haired people try to engage me in a war of words.

Who the hell do they think they're dealing with? I do this -- the war of words -- for a living. You're going to lose.

[Post-publication addendum: Oh, and if you, the small-minded, big-haired one, think I'm going to clean this place to make it "showable," think again.]

[Post-publication addendum: Hey, and guess what, the building has yet to fix the water damage in my bathroom resulting from the burst pipe about which I warned them more than 24 hours before said bursting, a catastrophe that mysteriously was greeted in its most heinous form not by me (and I’m surprised because I’m prone to experiencing such nonsense), but my across-the-hall neighbor. “Luxury Living in Center City.” I guess it all depends upon what you mean by “luxury” and “living.”]

Jack Paar: 1919-2004.

If you “get” Jack Paar, you “get” Rittenhouse, though this site is but a pale imitation of the work of the master.

“I kid you not.”

Aw gee whiz, I can’t believe I’m back on the subject already, but today there’s still more evidence in the media of “stripper chic,” this time in the Philadelphia Daily News.

In a fawning and inexplicably respectful piece (actually, the reporter does work in a few subtle and delightful slams), “The Guys at Delilah’s Go Hog-Wild,” complete with a photograph (not on line) of the establishment’s “head chef,” Kevin Simon, looking a tad uncomfortable, I think, flanked -- and I mean that -- by two “dancers,” Gypsy (Wait, isn’t that an ethnic slur? “Romany” might be preferred here.) and Vivian, PDN reporter April Adamson offers readers Simon’s recipe for Delilah’s Whole Roast Suckling Pig, a gastronomic delight, I’m sure, that will be served at “the gentlemen’s club,” Adamson’s words, not mine, on Super Bowl Sunday.

Although I’m not a cook, and I don’t play one on TV, I was surprised to see that the recipe for Delilah’s Whole Roast Suckling Pig includes, among other things, “10 cloves garlic, minced.”

Ten cloves of garlic? Now, I could be wrong, but isn’t a “clove” of garlic one of those little pieces? You know, just a part of, what is it called, a head or a bulb or what, of garlic?

Ten cloves to spice up an entire “Whole Roast Suckling Pig”? Even for Delilah’s that seems kind of skimpy to me. And what’s with the mincing? Seems a little unmanly.

Oops, did I say “skimpy”? There I go, lapsing unwittingly into the lingo of “stripper chic.”

Was George Washington the first president of the United States?

Some think not.

I am, as my more perceptive readers are aware, currently reading one of the greatest novels of all time, Don Quixote, in the recent and incomparable translation of Philadelphia native Edith Grossman, a book that was the generous donation to me of a favorite blogger’s wife.

I read Don Quixote, in a different translation, 20 years ago, in a book given to me by my beloved older sister J.

Reading the novel again is like reading it for the first time.

It’s better than I remember. And it’s much funnier than I remember. It is truly a masterpiece of literature. And Grossman’s translation, with her unrivaled intelligence and perceptive recognition of, well, just about everything, and her judicious use of informative footnotes, will rank forever among the greatest accomplishments of translation.

While reading Don Quixote I have been reminded of phrases, at least two, that through this great novel, have entered our vernacular.

First, “quixotic,” and second, “tilting at wildmills.” I’m inclined, whether genetically or environmentally, toward both, both the “quixotic” and the “tilting.”

And so, when the 2004 presidential campaign began, I, a quixotic man of tilting principle, or such as I like to think of myself, began by backing Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio).

I know -- I knew -- it was a long shot. But Kucinich too, I knew, was and is a man of principle. “They don’t get it,” my friends told me of the voters, the voters I knew would benefit more from no one in the White House but the very same Dennis Kucinich.

I’m never 100 percent satisfied with any candidate I support. Kucinich’s backtracking on the abortion issue alone was, to me, extraordinarily disappointing. Kucinich could have, I think, used his iconoclastic and unorthodox opinion to his advantage. He chose not to do so. A mistake, a big one, even, I think, but such is for him, and not me, to decide.

But tonight I am switching allegiances. And despite his otherwise unaccpetable views on abortion, I am shifting, changing, my support, my backing, from Kucinich to Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.).

We need to win in November, and I think Kerry is the man to do just that.

More to come.

Yep, lately I’ve been taking my licks, big time, but just a few moments ago I received from an older brother, via e-mail, probably the most touching, heartfelt, and loving message that I ever have received in my life.

I’m speechless. I truly am. And you, my readers, of all people, know that is saying an awful lot.

I hate my life right now, but were it not for this elder brother I have no idea where this mess that is my life would be headed.

God bless you.

I live in the heart, the center, if you will, of one of the country’s largest cities, Philadelphia. It’s usually noisy here. But sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes, when it’s very cloudy and snowing, and my neighbors aren’t playing, at full blast, their intolerable dance music, and my ridiculously expensive heating units aren’t cycling, it’s strangely and peacefully, almost mysteriously, quiet. And I like it that way.

I have two dreams, both centering on vacations. No surprise that, since I haven’t had a vacation in three years. And even that last vacation, along with the preceding vacation one year earlier, combined “business” with “pleasure.” I haven’t had a vacation vacation in nearly five years.

So to what do I look forward? Two things, two things that, to me, sound like heaven.

First, a transatlantic cruise. I know, there normally are no stops on such cruises. And that is more than fine with me. I want to sit on a comfortable chair on a wooden deck with a stack of books, a notebook and pen, a bottle of white wine, and a couple of packs of cigarettes, and see nothing but ocean for days on end. I don’t even have to talk with anyone. The silence is, would be, the vacation in and of itself.

Queen Mary 2

Second, a few weeks on a porch. A porch with a rocking chair and the aforementioned stack of books, notebook, pen, bottle of wine, and cigarettes. A porch that looks out on to nothing whatsoever, as if beautiful rolling hills unmarred by housing developments, strip malls, and even the errant trailer could ever properly be described as “nothing whatsoever.”

You see, I’m a man of simple tastes and few demands. All I want, really, is for the whole world to just be quiet, if only for a moment. Imagine what that would that be like. Imagine what that would sound like.

Yeah, sure, this is really cute and all that, but exactly how many times am I supposed to look at such a photograph and say, “Awwwww”?

A hundred, a thousand, a million?

I just received my latest electric bill from the local utility, Peco Energy Inc., a subsidiary of Exelon Corp., and a company formerly known by the less high-falutin’ name, Philadelphia Electric Co.

$375.70.

To (barely) heat and (barely) light 720 square feet for one month.

And this is after Peco’s adjustments based on my ongoing and persistent unemployment without benefits. An astounding $410.93 of billing for the same month has been deferred. I know it’s been cold here, but really, $786.63 of cold? What the hell?

Just kill me now.

I’m not a lawyer. I don’t even play one on TV. I thought about becoming one, but while I was in college my “pre-law” colleagues were, collectively, if not individually, the most insufferable group of people on campus, and the thought of spending three years with that crowd sent me in another direction.

Okay, now that I’ve slammed lawyers writ large, I’d like to ask the very same group, good sports and self-effacing types that they are, to help me with something.

How is it fair to Martha Stewart that Judge Miriam Cedarbaum ruled defense attorneys may not raise questions regarding the government’s failure to bring “insider trading” charges against Stewart, but the prosecution, beginning with its very opening statement, may suggest, at least it seems to me, that Stewart engaged in exactly that?

According to the Associated Press, lead prosecutor Karen Seymour in court today used the phrase “a secret tip” and added, “She was told a secret that no other investor had.”

There’s something I’m not getting here and I would like to know what it is. If you can explain it to me, please do so. (And let me know if I can publish your response, with or without your name and affiliation, or merely quote from it off the record, or not at all, thus using the material only “on background.”) Thanks.

Page Six of the New York Post today reports, under the heading, “Sightings”:

Denise Rich celebrating her birthday by pole-dancing with 16 girlfriends, including Star Jones, at the Penthouse Executive Club...

“Stripper chic,” taken to a new low.

From Andrew Sullivan, someone we’ve long known cannot be trusted with simple mathematics let alone the complexities of microeconomics (And please, will someone finally steer this ignoramus away from Catholicism and theology? Just because the average newspaper editor knows nothing of either doesn’t mean there’s no one else out there who doesn’t know a great deal about both.), today we read, under the heading “Krugman Blames Tax Cuts,” the following: “That’s the entire reason for the deficit. Yeah, right. But how can he ignore the obvious place of exploding domestic discretionary spending under Bush? Well, we have long learned about the fragility of his intellectual honesty.”

Pot, kettle, black. Teakettle, doily, lavender.

“His”?

Really, Andy, “his”?

Do you mean “his” as in New York Times columnist and Princeton University economics professor Paul Krugman? Or do you mean “the fragility of his intellectual honesty” in reference to President George W. Bush?

Unbelievably, and unbearably, it goes on.

Sullivan: “The lesson for Republican presidents: you will never get credit for spending, so don’t do it. Cut taxes; reduce spending. It’s the only governing philosophy that conservatives ever have a chance of winning with. But they never learn, do they?” [Ed.: Tortured syntax in original.]

“They”?

Really, Andy, “they”?

Do you mean “they” as in “liberals” or “the left” or “the fifth column” or “the traitors”? Or do you mean “they never learn,” referring to Republicans, who for the past 25 years, and who by virtue of the idiots in the punditocracy, of which you were plainly in the vanguard, earned an entirely unwarranted reputation for fiscal restraint? I mean, where the hell were you?

Andrew Sullivan, in a January 26 post, “Sex Slaves Epidemic?”, is all too happy to imply, to conclude, based on no commentary added to two random posts on the web, that sexual slavery is not and should not be a concern to anyone, this against the 8,500-word, meticulously researched, and impeccably documented article by Peter Landesman (“The Girls Next Door,” January 25) in the New York Times Magazine, the very same newspaper in which pages Sullivan, on Minnesota Public Radio, on Sunday, January 25, bragged about his recent appearance, though merely as a book reviewer, a fact that was left unmentioned by the Princess of Provincetown.

Schizophrenia, anyone?

What the hell is any reasonable person, straight or gay, to make of the following drool from the slimy lips of Andrew Sullivan:

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I go to Lucianne.com when I want to feel like I belong. I go to Andrew Sullivan when I want the painful truth. Thank you. Never stop.”

Never stop what? Seeking a herpes sore from the same infected channel that brought us the unbearable discharge known as Jonathan Goldberg, flatulent friend of Andy?

Overshadowed in the federal government’s latest, and most misguided, Wall Street prosecution, that against Martha Stewart, chairman and chief executive officer of Martha Stewart Omnimedia Ltd., has been her co-defendant, her stockbroker/financial planner at Merrill Lynch & Co., Peter Bacanovic.

Bacanovic in the past has been mentioned in passing at Rittenhouse, mostly, I concede, with superfluous, and, as is my wont, entirely superficial, reference to his extraordinary good looks.

By such references I did not intend to imply in any way whatsoever that Bacanovic is one kind or another of a “lightweight.” In fact, and if anything, the more I have learned of his background, education, and professional accomplishments, the more impressed I have become with Stewart’s unfairly charged, possibly railroaded, co-defendant.

For the latest reliable and altogether entirely fair profile of Bacanovic, see “The Stewart Trial’s Other Star,” by Landon Thomas Jr. (New York Times, January 25.)

Within just the last three months I have been blessed, by proxy of course, by the arrival of two nieces: an almost unbearably beautiful baby brought by the stork in the customary manner and another who will soon arrive in America under less traditional circumstances. As I’ve already welcomed the former, allow me today to greet the latter.

Hi. It’s me. Uncle Jim. I know, you don’t know me yet. But you will soon. And just so you know, at least for the short term, I’m not really comfortable around babies. Ask anyone. There are pictures proving it. I rarely even hold them, even if invited to do so. My hands shake a lot, and so I break things, and I drop things a lot, and I don’t want to break or drop a little girl like you. And then there’s that whole head thing. I understand you’ve grown beyond most of that, but I might still be reluctant to hold you in my arms. I’ll explain it all to you later. It doesn’t matter; just keep in mind, I’m known for giving really great gifts, at least when I can. And nobody wraps a gift like I do.

Anyway, you’re beautiful. Breathtaking. You truly are. But I’ve known that for a long time, ever since the agency in South Asia started providing photographs of your incomparable face and tiny little body.

They tell me you’re healthy, too. That’s great news, and also a relief, because I know that many of your friends in the orphanage are afflicted with conjunctivitis, scabies or lice or both, cleft palates, clubfeet, and other, more serious, afflictions.

Don’t worry, that’s over now. The orphanage and all that, I mean. And I think you’re going to like it here. I really do.

Your parents are warm, loving, kind, thoughtful, and generous to a fault. I haven’t visited their home -- your new home -- recently, so I haven’t seen your nursery, but knowing your parents as I do, I can only imagine. Prepare to be dazzled, even in your own little way.

Know that you will be well provided for, now and always. In fact, due to the delay in your adoption, your parents already have started the hand-me-down process, giving away clothes you can no longer fit, a process that, as I understand it, still leaves you with more clothes than the two of them, and possibly the two of them plus me, combined, and that -- the “plus me” part -- is saying a lot.

Your grandmother, my mother I mean, who I suspect has been knitting for you furiously since she first learned this day might come, will drown you in more affection in a day than you heretofore have known your entire life. (At one point, when things looked iffy, I swear I thought Grandma was going to hop on a plane to Asia to get you herself, paperwork and bureaucracy be damned. Trust me, she would have pulled it off too.) And if Grandma won’t let you out of her hands, just start crying. But really hard, I mean, because she doesn’t give up easily.

Your extended family? Well, based on numbers alone, I could go on and on. And here I’m speaking merely, if that’s the right word, of my side of the family, because the other side, for which I do not at the moment have exact figures, is almost as large.

Brace yourself, little girl, for on my side of the family only, you suddenly have nine uncles, seven aunts, and 14 cousins. Many of them have the same names or middle names or what have you -- my siblings have a propensity for naming their offspring after each other -- but don’t worry, you’ll sort it out eventually. I did. Multiply these numbers by 1.7 to take the other side of the family into account and you’ll get a basic grasp of what you’re in for. Not ready for that kind of math? I’ll teach you. For now, just know you will not want for companionship.

What will your life be like here, little girl?

I can’t answer that question. It’s all up to you; not now of course, but eventually, and sooner than any of us can imagine, sooner than any of us would wish.

Maybe, without the adoption, and after having spent your childhood and adolescence in remote and bleak orphanages, you could have gone to college and then to medical school. Somehow, though, I doubt it. But now the world is your oyster, if you will forgive the trite metaphor, and, trust me, you don’t have to be a doctor if you don’t want to. (Personally, I’m not really wild about doctors.) You can be anything and everything you want. So much opportunity. So many challenges. So much to learn and see and do.

Best of all, you’re in good hands. The best of all possible hands.

Still, I worry. The world, or at least this country, has changed much since I was growing up, and yet you will encounter some people who will want to make your life difficult.

Why? Because your skin is darker than theirs. And because you are adopted. But mostly, I fear, because of who your parents are.

Don’t listen to those who would mock you or your family. Be proud of yourself. Be proud of your wonderful parents. Be proud of your precious family. Be the best girl and woman you can be. I know you can do it. I know that just by looking at you, even now. And I know that because, even in small part, you are now one of us.

Welcome to America. Welcome to the family. Welcome home.

I suspect most Rittenhouse readers are too young or too removed from New York to remember “The Bess Mess,” the gripping 1980s contretemps involving former Miss America Bess Myerson; her assistant, Sukhreet Gabel; her boyfriend, Andy Capasso; her boyfriend’s wife, Nancy Capasso; her friend, former New York Mayor Ed Koch; and the judge overseeing the Capassos’ divorce, Hortense Gabel.

That’s a shame. Really, it is.

There’s a terrific book about all of this, When She Was Bad: The Story of Bess, Hortense, Sukhreet & Nancy, by Shana Alexander -- you know, of “Point/Counterpoint” fame, “Shana, you ignorant slut,” and all that, except she’s a fantastic writer and James J. Kilpatrick was nothing more than a predictable irritant -- and while the book is out of print, and while I used to have a copy I cannot now locate, and one I promised to lend to a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, it is worth finding, by you and by me, and not only because I once referred to the book, at TRR, as “the best beach read ever.”

Anyway, in the book Alexander several times makes mention of Myerson’s legendary, well, let’s call it, thriftiness.

While shopping in New York, whether at a fashionable boutique or at a knock-off shop on Canal Street, Myerson had the propensity, while she and her face were still well known in that city, having heard the quoted price, to respond, “Yes, but how much for Bess Myerson?”

I don’t know what took over me, but tonight I decided to try the same strategy. After trying to buy juice at the corner bodega (my choice was out of stock), I opted to treat myself to a bag of Gummi Bears.

“A dollar fifty-nine,” the cashier said.

Now, they know me there. They know me there very well. So I thought, what the heck, I’ll ask.

“Yes, but how much for Jim Capozzola?”

The cashier smiled and said, “A dollar fifty-eight.”

Do you know what? I pulled a dollar bill from one pocket and then reached into another and counted out my available change, and that spare change, remarkably, totaled exactly fifty-eight cents.

And so I procured my bag of Gummi Bears for not one cent more than a dollar fifty-eight.

Take that, Bess!

Listen, readers, far and near, do you know HTML?

As best I can tell, I cannot, using Blogger software, easily create a command by which a reader may readily print just one post from The Rittenhouse Review.

Does anyone know enough about HTML to write such code?

If so, let me know, because you would be doing my readers, me, and my career, such as it is at the moment (shambles, anyone?), a very big favor.

I cannot pay you, at least not today, though I might on Tuesday, if only with a hamburger. (And if you don’t get that, you’re just too damned young, and, may I say, just head for Google, and I wish you well?)

I wish I were Sam Waterston.

Why?

Because if I were Sam Waterston I’d be making a lot of money starring on “Law & Order,” a show from which, based on the series’s past treatment of major characters, he would have been given the ol’ heave-ho a long time ago (along with Jerry Orbach, of whom I grew tired years ago).

But if I were Sam Waterston, I’d also be picking up more than a little cash on the side doing advertisements for so wide a range of vendors as to include The Nation and TD Waterhouse.

Nice work(s) if you can get it.

Okay, here’s another dopey AOL poll, this one on “national security” concerns.

The questions: “Who would do a better job on national security?” and “How important is national security to you as a voting issue?”

Go ahead, creepit.

“Creepit,” “creeping,” those are my new words for the “freeping” of online polls published by the ignorant and the right wing, which, believe it or not, are sometimes, though in the case of CNN by no means always, two different things.

Okay, readers, especially the fringistas among you, you have said your piece about the New York Times and my recent comments about the newspaper.

And I have responded with an addendum to yesterday’s post.

Enjoy. Or not.

Rest assured, all is well in South Asia. My newest, my impending, my incipient niece is healthy and happy, and soon will be on her way home.

Can you see what's happening? Do you see what they're doing? Can you discern the strategy of deception the Bush administration plans to ride into four more years of havoc and destruction at home and abroad?

The outlines are becoming more clear. What is shaping up before our eyes is the following: President George W. Bush, of all people, will take the "high road," standing as the man of principle, the lonely warrior, the protector of all that is good and true, the divinely chosen one leading the heathen east and west (coasts) to the promised land.

I know, the thought is, in and of itself, nauseating. Remember this, though: People buy this stuff. They buy it by the proverbial crockful.

Meanwhile, another role has been assigned to Vice President Dick Cheney, one for which he is uniquely suited.

When assessing Vice President Cheney's public statements about the war and about terrorism, don't think for a moment that he's become delusional or that he's a loose cannon, running around spouting discredited theories, unbelievable fables, and easily refutable "facts" about Saddam Hussein, weapons of mass destruction, and links between Iraq and Al-Qaeda.

Yes, he's doing that, but no, Cheney is very much on script with all of this. He's the administration's public liar, the point man of prevarication, trotted out now and again to repeat untruths that fire up the ignorant and the conspiracy-minded alike, keeping the stupid and the crazy in line and behind their natural candidate: President Bush.

Meanwhile, how convenient will it be for the Bush administration to have replaced David Kay with Charles Duelfer as the CIA's chief weapons inspector in Iraq? The appointment was made despite the fact Duelfer publicly has raised personal doubts about the likelihood that any evidence of WMDs will be found in Iraq.

Is this the Bush administration being open-minded, tolerant of dissent? I don't think so.

Fast forward, what, four, six months? Duelfer hands in his report demonstrating -- proving, even -- that Saddam Hussein's regime didn't have the capacity to produce, let alone deliver, let alone deliver to the U.S. (or London), biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons, and what will we hear from the White House, the Pentagon, and their parrots in the media?

I'll tell you: "Well, we all know Duelfer went into this job operating under the assumption that WMDs (and WMD programs and WMD program-related activities, whatever they are) couldn't be found. He wasn't credible from the start, why should we believe him now? The appointment was a terrible mistake by CIA Director George Tenet and White House sources now say they regret they didn't block the appointment. We've also learned Duelfer's wife once . . . "

Mark my words.

Finally, why has National Security Adviser Condoleezza "Mushroom Cloud" Rice suddenly been muzzled? She used to be everywhere, all the time -- sometimes it seemed she was demonstrating what the Catholic Church, in reference to certain saints, calls "bilocation" -- all the while telling lies, feeding misperceptions, fueling misconceptions, and, most important, covering her ass. Now, she's disappeared.

Not that I miss her or anything.

Atrios today takes Andrew Sullivan to the woodshed for a good old-fashioned, and well deserved, spanking.

If I might borrow a phrase from Sullivan, here are the “money quotes”:

[Sullivan]’s already shifting the goal post, requiring that I also demonstrate that I ever praise [President] Bush and also wants recent examples.

The thing is, of course, is that no matter what I write in “defense” of the challenge, debate team gold star winner Andy will declare victory. You see, it all depends on how we define “the left” and what it means to criticize them.

Wait, you mean Sullivan’s the type of person to smugly claim victory in a debate, brooking no discussion all the while? Oh, yeah, there was that June 2002 debate at the New School when he was paired with the lamentable Norah Vincent against Richard Goldstein of the Village Voice and Carmen Vasquez of the New York gay community center. Sullivan (and possibly even Vincent) rode a testosterone high for weeks after that one.

[Post-publication addendum: As for “Atrios Punts,” the brief post Sullivan added to his site this afternoon, it is the most supremely ignorant, dishonest, and lazy collection of sentences ever uttered in the blogosphere. Sullivan wants “three specific instances in which Atrios has criticized the left.” Atrios already gave him 11, but Sullivan, who obviously hasn’t read Eschaton except while on a desperate search for what makes for a truly interesting blog, can’t be bothered. Looks like the blogosphere has a new Village Idiot.]

[Post-publication addendum: Out of bounds, or par for the course? Consider what you’re dealing with.]

I finally broke down and decided to take a look at the tape of Howard Dean’s post-Iowa caucus campaign rally, something I told myself I wouldn’t do. In fact, I looked at and listened to a few different versions, some longer than others.

For what it’s worth, and that’s precious little, count me among those who think this is all much ado about nothing. Viewed in the context of the day’s events, the rigors of the months leading up to that moment, and the rampant energy and excitement of his supporters, Dean’s scream, while unorthodox, does not fall into the category of character flaw or whatever it is the punditocracy is trying to slime on him.

Meanwhile, the pig pile continues, with Weird Michelle Malkin, in today’s Philadelphia Daily News, referring to the incident as “Howard Dean going ape-wild.”

The far more interesting video clip on the web right now is at The Smoking Gun. It shows President George W. Bush at a 1992 wedding reception -- six years after he allegedly stopped drinking -- in what appears to be an inebriated state and throwing back what looks like a glass of whiskey. Not to be missed.

How can anyone think, let alone say, the New York Times is anything other than the greatest newspaper in the world?

Two knock-your-socks off articles in just today’s edition:

One to make your blood boil: “The Girls Next Door,” by Peter Landesman.

And one to make your heart melt: “In Death Watch for Stranger, Becoming a Friend to the End,” by N.R. Kleinfield.

[Post-publication addendum (January 26): Oh, for crying out loud. Some readers are congenitally incapable of accepting a definitive statement about anything, unable to read without histrionics even a single sentence as being simply the viewpoint of someone other than themselves, and warped by the notion that their nit-picking reveals some sort of divinely inspired intelligence. How sad. So for these, and for these alone, allow me to qualify the first sentence of this post. I rephrase as follows: “How can anyone think, let alone say, the New York Times is anything other than the greatest newspaper in the world? For no other newspaper in the world provides such a wealth, and such depth, of coverage on so wide a range of issues; no other newspaper deploys such great resources toward that end; no newspaper, while being, like all newspapers and, like all institutions, managed and staffed by multitudes of fallible human beings, so consistently achieves greatness and near-greatness, despite what, in context, can be considered but a handful of mistakes; no newspaper publishes so much first-class, top-notch, award-worthy prose about issues both pressing and otherwise; and no newspaper so consistently provokes the reader to think in a new way about an issue, topic, or subject about which he previously had given no thought whatsoever.” Now, is that okay?]

Tough Jersey girls have been a topic at TRR in the past. And while I have nothing against tough Jersey girls per se, in no small part because all of my sisters could, for at least part of their lives, have been labeled as such, I find the entire phenomenon humorous, especially when I read something like the following, pulled from Saturday’s Philadelphia Daily News [Ed.: Second item.]:

A disgruntled South Jersey McDonald’s customer was arrested after throwing a fit -- and two milkshakes -- because her order took too long.

Michelle Molina, 29, was charged with simple assault and criminal mischief Thursday after the incident, police said.

The incident began when Molina and a man ordered five Happy Meals and three Value Meals at the drive-thru window of Store No. 18581 in Pleasantville, N.J.

The two had received part of their order and manager Ron Gaskill was bringing the rest when they pulled away, parked and walked inside to get the rest of the food. […]

Molina and the man then berated Gaskill with obscenities before Molina threw a soda, a chocolate shake and then a second chocolate shake at him.

The first shake hit him in the chest; the other drinks sprayed the kitchen, spoiling some food.

God love the wayward Jersey girl. After all, she’s just being herself.

[Note: This post originally was published at TRR: The Lighter Side of Rittenhouse.]

I want to take a moment to thank everyone who responded to my latest appeal for donations to The Rittenhouse Review.

I can’t say I pulled in 80 thousand dollars or anything approaching that amount, but your gifts have been very helpful. In times like this, every dollar truly counts. The debt of my gratitude knows no bounds.

You know, blogging isn’t, or at least doesn’t have to be, an expensive endeavor. Yet I have learned, and not for the first time, that the demands of day-to-day life, of real life, are costly. I’ve become more attuned lately to the cost of everything, a term that right now means the basic essentials: rent, utilities, and food. (Overdue appointments with doctors, my optometrist, and Mildred’s veterinarian long since have fallen by the wayside.) And those utilities, which include electricity and telephone service, are essential for keeping the blog going. So, know that your contributions are going not to my amusement or social life, for I have nothing of either, but to sustaining The Rittenhouse Review and TRR as we know them.

And much as I appreciate your financial generosity, your compliments and expressions of support and encouragement mean more to me. One of the best things about running a blog is that I have an immediate public outlet for some of my writing, an audience for the many thoughts running through my head each day. And the audience, mixed as it is among “general” readers (a group that includes concerned citizens, activists, journalists, lawmakers, educators, students, and even the occasional family member) and bloggers, is quick to let me know when I’m misguided, misinformed, or misspeaking. More important, during the nearly two years I have been producing my blogs I have learned what readers (in both categories) like and what they don’t, and, more specifically, what they like and don’t like to read from me. This will be of extraordinary value to me going forward.

That said, sadly I must inform you that it is now apparent that I cannot stay in Philadelphia. The job search has been nothing less than frustratingly futile. I cannot afford my apartment and, without a job, I cannot find another one. Support from the usual sources has been almost nonexistent. And so, within a matter of weeks, I will be leaving this city I love so much. I’m not happy about this, of course, but I am grateful I have the one option that has been offered me. I know many others in America are far less fortunate, and there but for the grace of God . . . well, you know the rest.

Misfortune, in the shape of a second lost job in as many years, aside, this is my own fault. I did this. I caused this. For too long I have been living on the edge, financially speaking. And while my lifestyle over the past several years has been a model of modesty -- I can count on one hand, with two fingers left over, the number of fine restaurants in which I have dined here, and I can’t remember the last time I bought clothes -- I could have done better. I could have selected a cheaper apartment. I would have stopped smoking. I should have tried to save some money. But, as they say, “Coulda, woulda, shoulda.”

There’s no going back. There’s only going forward, scary as the prospects might be. And it’s better to leave of one’s own free will, that is, before one is asked to do so, in my case by my landlord, whose nasty agent is champing at the bit to hand me another eviction notice. And yet the expenses continue to mount, and the cupboards grow increasingly bare. Never in my life have I felt so alone.

But today I decided I was done with the whining and the complaining. I remind myself that things are never as bad as they seem. I’ve been in dire straits before, but eventually, and that “eventually” can be a long time coming, things work out in the end. The quixotic adventure that has been and is my life -- one that has included far too much tilting at windmills -- will continue. Only it will continue elsewhere.

I cannot help but add an extra note of thanks here a couple of my fellow Philadelphia bloggers. First, Atrios of Eschaton. Yes, to most he is a man of mystery. To me, I feel fortunate in saying, he is a friend, as is his wife, the even more mysterious Mrs. Atrios. They are among the best friends a man could have. Two more kind and generous people I never have met in my life. When you read Atrios know that the voice you’re hearing is that of a man of principle, a compassionate soul, and a paragon of decency and humanity.

Equally kind and generous is Susan Madrak of Suburban Guerrilla, a woman who not only has helped me in the material sense, and that despite the extraordinary challenges she herself now faces, but also spiritually and emotionally. Although she is an accomplished talker, Susie is also the consummate listener. Susie knows enough to let me rant and whine, but she also knows when to say, “Enough!”, and to steer our conversations to more constructive ends.

By such as these, among a very small handful of other supportive friends, I have been blessed.

Regardless of where I end up, know that The Rittenhouse Review and TRR will continue. The local flavor, however, will no longer be part of the blogs. I would prefer that my domicile not be public knowledge. And, as you might expect, just prior to, during, and after the move, I will be blogging on a limited basis, if at all. Please bear with me during that period and remember to check back periodically.

So, to conclude, thanks, once again, to everyone -- the regular reader, the occasional visitor, and the accidental tourist -- for your continued support, material, moral, and spiritual, of The Rittenhouse Review.

Mary Beth Williams and Dwight Meredith of Wampum today posted the finalists for the 2003 Koufax awards.

The Rittenhouse Review, which was nominated for three awards, has been named a finalist in the Best Writing category.

Please take a few moments to visit Wampum and cast your votes in all 15 categories.

What a shame. Really.

I see my next-door neighbor, the one who refers to me as “that uptight straight guy next door,” has placed on his front door a promotional poster for the “Blue Ball,” the next spot on the gay party circuit for 2004, the main event of which will be held next weekend at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Have fun, my fabulous non-friend.

Much as I dislike this incredibly insecure and unbearably steroidal guy, and based on his bizarre assessment of me I assume the feeling is, for other reasons, mutual, I feel sorry for him.

I fell into the same alluring trap a decade ago, and I am still dealing with the consequences of my stupidity. And I am far from alone in that. This nonsense, fun as it seems at the time, is destructive, wasteful, and dangerous. If you haven’t already been caught up in the cult -- and there truly is no other word for it -- get out of it, and get off of it, while you still can.

I know, I’m being uncharacteristically vague here. Please allow me this, for I believe those to whom this message is truly directed will know of what I speak.

Just a few hours ago I led you to believe that the appearance at “Opinion Journal,” the “sister site” of the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal (or what my friend J.C. would likely describe, as he once did in an entirely unrelated Dow Jones & Co. context, “the little brother site, the one with the dirty fingernails and runny nose”), of an essay by Meghan Cox Gurdon on the subject of Martha Stewart, chairman and chief executive officer of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Ltd., would result in a not-to-be-missed take from The Rittenhouse Review.

I regret that such a post from Rittenhouse is not in the offing.

It’s not like I don’t have the time. This is, after all, merely a Friday night. What the hell else might I be doing?

Instead, the fault lies solely with Cox Gurdon. Her piece is an incoherent mess. Uncreative, unoriginal, and uninteresting, it’s just not worth my time.

Sorry.

And I mean that.

Now what am I going to do for the rest of the night?

I apologize for readers’ inability to see the various photographs posted at The Rittenhouse Review.

Between a healthy traffic flow and more than the usual number of graphics, I’ve exceeded the bandwidth available under the otherwise ample subscription I have with the photo-hosting service. (There was a time when I would have ponied up funds to enhance the subscription. Sadly, with my landlord and its nasty agent, my building manager, breathing down my neck, those days are over.)

If you would like to see the photos, including that of my impending, my incipient niece, keep in mind that traffic drops on weekends. So stop by on Saturday or Sunday.

Maybe this is what Andrew Sullivan means when he blathers about “explosive bandwidth costs.” Oh, wait, Andy doesn’t post photographs. Never mind.

By way of World O’ Crap I just learned that Meghan Cox Gurdon, the World’s Worst Mother (TM), has a piece in today’s “Opinion Journal,” a service of the wackos at The Wall Street Journal editorial page, about . . . Martha Stewart.

Oh, man, does this have my name written all over it or what?

I wish I had noticed the piece earlier today, but it’s Friday night and my overwhelming social calendar, which includes a dinner party that will be attended by Tina Brown, distracts me.

Like hell! (And on so many levels, like hell.) I can’t wait to get started. Stay tuned. I will not let you down. Time to put on The Mamas and The Papas CDs and enter the zone . . .

Meanwhile, occupy yourself with “‘Mummy? Are we pretentious or just banal?’,” from TBogg, a post that includes, at its very start, what is probably the most hilarious paragraph in the history of blogging.

Rush Limbaugh is facing the music, and, as one would expect, it’s not pretty. But it could be, and probably should be, even uglier.

Get this, Limbaugh’s attorney have proposed a plea agreement that would have the radio nut enter a court-sponsored drug intervention program rather than face charges in court or plead guilty to any charges whatsoever.

Prosecutors in Palm Beach County, Fla., are offering Limbaugh a deal to plead guilty to the third-degree felony of “doctor shopping,” three years of probation, participation in a drug treatment program, and random drug testing.

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Limbaugh already put himself through rehab?

Does he need it again already?

What the hell is going on down there?

Meanwhile, William J. Janklow, former Republican congressman from South Dakota, inveterate speeder, and now, convicted criminal, was sentenced to 100 days in jail for a second-degree manslaughter conviction stemming from running a stop sign and killing Randy Scott, a 55-year-old motorcyclist at the intersection.

According to the Associated Press, Janklow is expected to serve 30 days, after which he will be on probation for three years. “South Dakota does not require minimum sentences,” the A.P. reports, “so [Judge] Rodney Steele was free to impose anything from no jail time and no fines to more than 11 years behind bars and $11,400 in fines.” The victim’s daughter “said she was satisfied with the sentence.”

The sentence seems a little light, but sentences often do, particularly those related to drunk driving, rape, sexual assault, and, come to think of it, most manslaughter convictions. But what do I know?

I only address this issue because a reader raised the subject in an e-mail to me yesterday.

By all means -- by any means, actually -- if a post at The Rittenhouse Review leads you, a Rittenhouse reader, to write a letter to your congressman or congresswoman, about any issue whatsoever, please know that you are free not only to include a link to the Rittenhouse post, but that, if you are writing to your own congressman or congresswoman, the lawmaker who represents the district in which you already have established your domicile, and in which you already have registered to vote in the next election, primary or general, you may assume to have secured my express permission, copyright considerations aside, to quote from the pertinent post at will and in full.

This is just too precious. The inimitable -- and I mean that -- Andrew Sullivan hits the blog with praises for the fringistas who comprise the Log Cabin Republicans for opting not to endorse Sullivan’s beloved President George W. Bush “after his pandering to the far right in his State of the Union,” the same “pandering,” you may recall, that Sullivan went out of his way to emphasize did not include backing the federal marriage amendment.

“Good for LCR,” wrote the Princess of Provincetown. “Their new leader, Patrick Guerrerio,” he continued, “is one of the most decent and skilled political leaders I know. He will take some flak for this, but it matters. The president must know that dressing up discrimination in ‘tolerant’ language is still discrimination.”

Does that mean the Log Cabin Republicans have ditched Rich Tafel, easily the most socially encumbered man with the worst table manners I have met in my life? (Invitation to dinner with Tafel? All I can say is, bring an umbrella.)

Regardless, despite his own eagerness to jump the gun, Sullivan later is all too happy to report that the New York Times, the newspaper that fired him a while back -- and may I just say, “Get over it, pal!”? -- and the very same paper he decided was worthy enough to warrant his blog post without an independent confirmation, “got it wrong.”

According to Sullivan, the right-wing gay Republicans haven’t yet decided whether or nor to endorse the President’s reelection campaign.

Oh, so that’s, what? Really wise of them? Rather sudden change of heart, wouldn’t you say, old chap?

What are we supposed to think? For a chance to try to slime a former employer Andy casts aside a brief moment of principle?

And where are we now with all of this?

I know, I know! While the fringistas are led, in Andy’s own words, by one of the “most . . . skilled political leaders” he knows, the group still cannot come up with the gumption, the intelligence, the rationality, to say to President Bush: “The hell with you, man!”

How brave. How daring. How admirable.

How pathetic.

[Post-publication addendum (January 23): Wait, I just figured it out. For a couple of years friends, former colleagues, and correspondents have suggested that Sullivan’s bizarre political postures resulted from his unfulfilled desire to win an appointment in the Bush administration, preferably, I was told, as a speechwriter. Well, as you know, no such luck, background checks being what they are. But just lately I’ve been thinking, what would Andy want more? Something better than being a speechwriter for a monkey with sub-species intelligence? I know, I know! An op-ed columnist for the New York Times! Why didn’t I think of this before? No wonder he’s so angry that Howell Raines sent his beary ass packing.]

Never before have I separately reposted an addendum to an existing post, but in this case I’m willing to, I want to, make an exception.

I posted these remarks on January 20 as an addendum to a well received post, “Working in America Today,” from the previous day.

Several readers were so taken aback by the comments, posted in the addendum, of Carly Fiorina, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president of Hewlett Packard Co., that they urged wider recognition. I am all too happy to honor their requests. Enjoy. Enrage.

By the way, could there be a worse spokesperson defending offshoring than Hewlett Packard Co.’s Carly Fiorina?

Earlier this month Fiorina, defending the practice and appealing to the Bush administration for support, said: “There is no job that is America’s God-given right anymore. We have to compete for jobs.”

That’s true, at least theoretically. Even Fiorina’s job isn’t a God-given right, it’s one that comes courtesy of HP’s board of directors -- a board she conveniently happens to chair -- and shareholders. (You know HP, don’t you? Really “high-tech” operation. Nearly 40 percent of profits come from producing those sleek and futuristic gadgets known as toner cartridges.)

Fiorina has been running the show at HP for nearly five years now. During that time the company’s stock has underperformed both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite. Actually, an investor would have done better with a passbook savings account.

I wonder if there’s anyone in China or India looking for a cushy CEO slot. Hey, the new chief wouldn’t even have to move.

This week we find intrepid Washington Post political columnist Tina Brown doing what she does best: eating. Or eating and talking, and then talking about eating and talking.

In today’s column, “Not Putting Their Money Where His Mouth Is,” Brown manages to squeeze in comments about not one, not two, but three dinner parties, including a Tuesday-night confab at which was watched the State of the Union address.

There Brown learned from the smarty-pants baby lamb and duck confit set -- her natural milieu -- that the President’s challenger in November will be Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). She writes:

Since media predictions hardly came true in Iowa, I take refuge in the electronically recorded verdicts Tuesday night at an Atlantic magazine State of the Union TV dinner for a motley cross-section of New York movers and shakers. Clark, they voted, could learn to dance fast enough to beat Bush -- but Kerry would get the nomination.

Ever wonder what wise chatter occurs at the gatherings that so captivate Tina Brown, at the unending stream of edifying dinner parties she just can’t miss? What kind of chatter Brown can proclaim is so vastly superior to anything mere mortals might hear or read on their own?

Fortunately, a New York Times reporter, Anthony Ramirez, was at the same Atlantic party as Brown, and fortunately for us, he took a few notes. Let’s listen in:

Georgette Mosbacher, a prominent Republican fund-raiser, leapt to President Bush’s defense.

Social Security, education and other domestic issues weren’t addressed by Bill Clinton and the Democrats when they were in office, she said, despite the simultaneous advantages of low interest rates, low inflation and a budget surplus.

Indignant, Lauren Hutton cited the quadrupling of the national debt and Mr. Clinton’s attempts to reduce it. “But I guess you can’t read or something,” said Ms. Hutton, glaring at Ms. Mosbacher. “Because I can, and I’m a model!”

Like a Christian surrounded by lions, Ms. Mosbacher seemed to radiate defiance. “You don’t have to personally insult me to make a point,” Ms. Mosbacher said. “I didn’t insult you.”

Ms. Hutton, taken aback, replied, “How did I personally insult you by saying I’m a model?”

Ms. Mosbacher, accepting some sort of Warner Brothers cartoon logic, said, “That’s an insult to you!”

Then Ms. Mosbacher gathered her purse and a copy of The Atlantic Monthly, as if about to leave. But she stayed awhile longer, before leaving, untheatrically.

Typically Tina. Leaving out the really good parts.

Why is there no Richard Mellon Scaife for liberals?

Or is there?

And if there is, do you have his or her name and address?

[Post-publication addendum: Reader A.E., in an interesting, and to me awakening, suggestion, offers George Soros. I wonder if Soros funds blogs. Or whether he would if asked. And didn’t Michael Steinhardt and Roger Hertog invest a bunch of money in a political magazine a couple of years ago? Oh, right, the New Republic. Never mind.]

This is a rather random post, but speaking of vulgarity -- and we were -- please know that if you visit my apartment you are welcome to smoke, provided no other guests, if any are present, object.

You may not, however, smoke in either the bathroom or the kitchen.

I repeated this household edict not long ago, and the recipient of my admonition, who at the time was smoking in the bathroom, was strangely mystified.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because it’s vulgar,” I responded.

“Vulgar? How is that vulgar?” he asked, while opening the bathroom door and, of all things, and as if at a service station, dropping his cigarette into the flushing toilet.

Need I say more?

Here’s a photograph I came across today, one I hadn’t seen in quite a while. It’s easily my favorite picture of President George W. Bush.

I think “recovery,” as the word is used here, was supposed to have something to do with our anemic economy -- oh, wait, no, the U.S. economy is getting stronger -- but when I look at this all I can think of is the President’s drinking and drug problems.

I missed the whole Howard Dean “meltdown” thing, probably because I don’t watch television. Instead, I rely on newspapers (off and on the web) and radio (off and on the web, including the much-reviled, but in my mind invaluable, BBC World Service).

I suppose I could troll around and find a site that has the video clip and all that, but I won’t.

Why? Because I think it’s all silly. And I’m skeptical that what I would find would be a “meltdown” under any definition of the term. On this point I’ll accept the assessment of Susan Madrak of Suburban Guerrilla: “To me, he just looks like a wired, tired man trying to have a little fun and shake off his defeat by rousing the troops.”

It’s just the latest of the media’s effort to steer their collective coverage away from the hard stuff, like issues, issues they have proved time and again to be incapable of understanding, in order to focus on such fun Alpha-girl trivialities as the candidates’ appearances, personalities, “character,” and relationships, as if the presidential aspirants were running for Prom King or Prom Queen.

Besides, why are we just hearing all about this today, Wednesday? The Iowa caucus was on Monday night, as was the purported meltdown. Granted, many newspapers couldn’t run with the pack in time for Tuesday’s editions, but radio stations could have reported about it yesterday. And while I can’t claim to have listened to anything more than a fraction of the available radio outlets here and abroad, I heard nothing.

You know, what the hell is the point of having, or trying to have, diverse media voices if they’re all just going to parrot each other anyway?

(By the way, if you have any interest at all in reading the stupidest of all the opinion pieces about this matter, check in with someone named Rick Horowitz.)

Last evening as I approached my building at the start of rush hour I noticed traffic was moving unusually slowly, if at all, circumstances that, as you might expect, led quickly to much honking of automobile horns, rolling down of windows, and groundhogging from drivers on my street. As I walked closer to home, I saw a number of vans sporting the logos of the local television stations. Still nearer, I noticed at least five police cars.

Something’s going down, I thought. I walked a bit farther and soon decided it must be some sort of ruckus at Planned Parenthood’s building, an assumption based in part on seeing several PP “escorts” in front of the facility. Not being particularly interested in street-level theological or ideological disputes, I headed inside.

Boy, was I wrong. It was a shooting. And not a robbery or a dispute over drugs or a prostitute (which does occur around here, though I hasten to add this really is a nice neighborhood), it was road rage.

The Philadelphia Daily News today reports (“Road-rage Incident Sparks Shooting,” by Simone Weichselbaum):

It all began when two drivers cut each other off while driving on North Broad Street shortly before 4:30 p.m., police said.

Now, that’s disturbing, purely from a road-rage perspective, because North Broad isn’t all that close to here.

Continuing:

They flipped each other the finger, then continued driving erratically toward Center City. Finally, one of the drivers, Tarik Bembery, 23, pulled over on Locust Street near 12th to drop off his girlfriend, a passenger in his Pontiac station wagon.

“Flipped each other the finger.” You’ve just gotta love the Daily News. I wonder what the New York Times style guide advises for this. “Exchanged vulgar gestures”?

More:

At that point, police said the other driver, Sebastino Garro, 24, pulled his Cadillac El Dorado over a half a block down Locust and walked toward Bembery waving a collapsible baton.

Seeing the threat, Bembery pulled out a .50 caliber Desert Eagle, a powerful handgun, and fired three shots -- one striking Garro’s leg, police said.

Garro was hospitalized and a pedestrian was wounded slightly.

God, I love this city. I really do.

(Hey, look at this. You may remember that I mentioned having found it strange that Philadelphians, like the Brits, call the sidewalk “the pavement.” If you didn’t believe me, here it is in the first sentence of the PDN article to which I’ve linked: “A road rage showdown exploded on Locust Street in Center City yesterday afternoon, as blood and bullets splattered the pavement, leaving two men wounded.” Weird, isn’t it?)

Last evening as I approached my building at the start of rush hour I noticed traffic was moving unusually slowly, if at all, circumstances that, as you might expect, led quickly to much honking of automobile horns, rolling down of windows, and groundhogging from drivers on my street. As I walked closer to home, I saw a number of vans sporting the logos of the local television stations. Still nearer, I noticed at least five police cars.

Something’s going down, I thought. I walked a bit farther and soon decided it must be some sort of ruckus at Planned Parenthood’s building, an assumption based in part on seeing several PP “escorts” in front of the facility. Not being particularly interested in street-level theological or ideological disputes, I headed inside.

Boy, was I wrong. It was a shooting. And not a robbery or a dispute over drugs or a prostitute (which does occur around here, though I hasten to add this really is a nice neighborhood), it was road rage.

The Philadelphia Daily News today reports (“Road-rage Incident Sparks Shooting,” by Simone Weichselbaum):

It all began when two drivers cut each other off while driving on North Broad Street shortly before 4:30 p.m., police said.

Now, that’s disturbing, purely from a road-rage perspective, because North Broad isn’t all that close to here.

Continuing:

They flipped each other the finger, then continued driving erratically toward Center City. Finally, one of the drivers, Tarik Bembery, 23, pulled over on Locust Street near 12th to drop off his girlfriend, a passenger in his Pontiac station wagon.

“Flipped each other the finger.” You’ve just gotta love the Daily News. I wonder what the New York Times style guide advises for this. “Exchanged vulgar gestures”?

More:

At that point, police said the other driver, Sebastino Garro, 24, pulled his Cadillac El Dorado over a half a block down Locust and walked toward Bembery waving a collapsible baton.

Seeing the threat, Bembery pulled out a .50 caliber Desert Eagle, a powerful handgun, and fired three shots -- one striking Garro’s leg, police said.

Garro was hospitalized and a pedestrian was wounded slightly.

God, I love this city. I really do.

(Hey, look at this. You may remember that I mentioned having found it strange that Philadelphians, like the Brits, call the sidewalk “the pavement.” If you didn’t believe me, here it is in the first sentence of the PDN article to which I’ve linked: “A road rage showdown exploded on Locust Street in Center City yesterday afternoon, as blood and bullets splattered the pavement, leaving two men wounded.” Weird, isn’t it?)

[Note: This post originally was published at TRR: The Lighter Side of Rittenhouse.]

Last evening as I approached my building at the start of rush hour I noticed traffic was moving unusually slowly, if at all, circumstances that, as you might expect, led quickly to much honking of automobile horns, rolling down of windows, and groundhogging from drivers on my street. As I walked closer to home, I saw a number of vans sporting the logos of the local television stations. Still nearer, I noticed at least five police cars.

Something’s going down, I thought. I walked a bit farther and soon decided it must be some sort of ruckus at Planned Parenthood’s building, an assumption based in part on seeing several PP “escorts” in front of the facility. Not being particularly interested in street-level theological or ideological disputes, I headed inside.

Boy, was I wrong. It was a shooting. And not a robbery or a dispute over drugs or a prostitute (which does occur around here, though I hasten to add this really is a nice neighborhood), it was road rage.

The Philadelphia Daily News today reports (“Road-rage Incident Sparks Shooting,” by Simone Weichselbaum):

It all began when two drivers cut each other off while driving on North Broad Street shortly before 4:30 p.m., police said.

Now, that’s disturbing, purely from a road-rage perspective, because North Broad isn’t all that close to here.

Continuing:

They flipped each other the finger, then continued driving erratically toward Center City. Finally, one of the drivers, Tarik Bembery, 23, pulled over on Locust Street near 12th to drop off his girlfriend, a passenger in his Pontiac station wagon.

“Flipped each other the finger.” You’ve just gotta love the Daily News. I wonder what the New York Times style guide advises for this. “Exchanged vulgar gestures”?

More:

At that point, police said the other driver, Sebastino Garro, 24, pulled his Cadillac El Dorado over a half a block down Locust and walked toward Bembery waving a collapsible baton.

Seeing the threat, Bembery pulled out a .50 caliber Desert Eagle, a powerful handgun, and fired three shots -- one striking Garro’s leg, police said.

Garro was hospitalized and a pedestrian was wounded slightly.

God, I love this city. I really do.

(Hey, look at this. You may remember that I mentioned having found it strange that Philadelphians, like the Brits, call the sidewalk “the pavement.” If you didn’t believe me, here it is in the first sentence of the PDN article to which I’ve linked: “A road rage showdown exploded on Locust Street in Center City yesterday afternoon, as blood and bullets splattered the pavement, leaving two men wounded.” Weird, isn’t it?)

Nice work if you can get it and he can do it.

Young -- oh so young -- Matthew Yglesias of Matthew Yglesias and a writing fellow at the American Prospect does a nice job at the latter of Nit Picklering Associated Press reporter Nedra Pickler.

It’s all good, but I like the last sentence best (I usually am hesitant to blog the last sentence of anyone’s work, but in this case, I can’t help myself.): “One of Pickler’s colleagues in the AP’s Washington bureau tells the Prospect that Pickler is on the road reporting and thus unavailable for comment -- but didn’t mention that in 2003, journalists carry cell phones when they travel.”

The kid’s going places. Yglesias, I mean. Not Pickler.

Still, the nagging question I have about Pickler is who’s supervising her? Who reviews her copy? Anyone?

The federal case of alleged securities fraud and obstruction against media mogul Martha Stewart and her former stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, began yesterday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

By all accounts it was an uneventful day, at least from a “story” standpoint. Jury selection, already underway, occupied the first day of proceedings in the courtroom of Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum.

Making the best of what, from their perspective at least, was clearly an unfavorable situation, New York Times reporters Leslie Eaton and Constance L. Hays in today’s article (“With Smiles and Kisses, Stewart Trial Commences”) focused primarily on irrelevant color commentary, to wit:

When Ms. Stewart arrived at the courthouse at 9:20 a.m., in a hired black Lincoln, Centre Street was lined with a dozen white television trucks sprouting giant antennas, satellite dishes, or both. Ms. Stewart’s blonde hair shielded her face as she exited the car, but she pushed it back as she climbed the steps, wearing a wrap-around coat, brown trousers and high-heeled brown boots.

Mr. Bacanovic arrived five minutes later, emerging from a black GMC Denali sport utility vehicle wearing a blue tie, charcoal suit and navy overcoat. After entering the courtroom, he stopped at Ms. Stewart’s chair and was kissed on both cheeks by her.

Also taking space in the Times this morning is the reporters reporting on their fellow reporters, including this inane tidbit: “The jury selection process left about two dozen restless reporters to rattle around in the big marble-and-wood-paneled courtroom, along with some court officers and members of the jury pool (the number of prospective jurors and the number of reporters dwindled as the day wore on).”

The reporters also note, however, that both Stewart and Bacanovic yesterday were arraigned for the second time “because the government revised its indictment earlier this month.” As expected, both pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Given the day’s challenges, and lack of hard news, it’s no surprise The Wall Street Journal’s coverage was only slightly better, though Kara Scannell reported (Stewart Trial Opens Quietly Amid Clamor.” [Subscription required.]), stating the -- I think -- obvious:

“Behind the scenes, meanwhile, prosecutors turned over witness statements and other material to Ms. Stewart’s lawyers. The documents, which always are handed over before testimony begins, will give them a look at what they can expect the government’s witnesses to say, including the key witness, Douglas Faneuil, who was Mr. Bacanovic’s assistant at Merrill Lynch & Co. That could help them shape their defense.

And Scannell, reporting about what surely was a difficult, even humiliating, moment for both Stewart and Bacanovic, writes: “Following the arraignment, nearly three-dozen potential jurors filed into the courtroom and Judge Cedarbaum introduced them to Ms. Stewart and Mr. Bacanovic, along with their lawyers and the prosecutors, who at the judge’s request each stood and turned to face the potential jurors.”

Expectations of a plea bargain, to the extent there still are any, continue to dissipate. “People close to the case say there are no plea-bargain negotiations under way,” Scannell reports. “Before her indictment in June, Ms. Stewart was negotiating a plea to making false statements to federal officials. Prosecutors insisted on prison time. Ms. Stewart balked, and the talks fell apart.”

Jail time. For what so far appears to be a flimsy, to say nothing of overreaching, case. I told you the lead prosecutor, Karen Seymour was delusional. I hope the jury agrees.

Jerry Nachman, broadcast and print journalist: 1946-2004.

Had I ever met Nachman I doubt we would have agreed about much of anything. Still, far more than most of his peers he was a genuine journalist -- and better, of the “old-school” variety -- having worked his way up through the ranks at the Pittsburgh Press, NBC, CBS, WCBS-TV (New York), the New York Post, and MSNBC, according to the obituary published in today’s New York Times.

Fifty-seven years old. That’s really not so old, you know.

Madeleine -- Or “Mad,” and she means it! -- Begun Kane, founder, proprietor, producer, editor, and writer of Mad Kane’s Notables and Dubya’s Dayly Diary, just keeps trying new things and continues to excel at all of them.

Regular readers of Rittenhouse already know that my friend Mad is, among much else, an oboist, an attorney, a singer, a songwriter, a comic, a humorist, and a blogger. (What else? Well, she can talk your ears off. And, like me, she’s an insomniac.)

Today, after what I am certain was a sleepless night (and morning), Mad Kane emerges -- for the first time, as best I can gather -- as a creator of crossword puzzles. Or at least a crossword puzzle.

The theme? The State of Disunion.

Many, many years ago there was a handsome young man who worked, quite briefly, for a company in Washington, D.C., the main products of which were marketed toward the city’s trade associations, lobbyists, political consultants, pollsters, and law firms.

One of our top prospects at the time was the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.

The salespeople used to refer to this particularly obstinate and difficult potential customer as, “Oh, my aching gums!”

I thought of this today because my gums are aching. They have been since yesterday.

I’m not sure why. I’m not experiencing a new bout of xerostomia, also known as “dry mouth,” a side effect of one of my medications, and, by the way, a condition that is much more painful -- and damaging to one’s mouth -- than it sounds.

So the hypochondriac in me, which is but one, and a very minor one at that, of my many personalities, is all but convinced I’m developing oral cancer. And he’s ready to blame it on my smoking.

God, I hope he’s wrong. Not necessarily about the smoking, but about the cancer. (Regardless, I will quit smoking this year.)

Several weeks ago some friends gave me, as a Christmas present, a carton of cigarettes. Very much appreciated in these cash-strapped times, I assure you. But having ready access to that carton proved, among other things, that when one has an ample supply of tobacco at home, and thus has no need to buy a pack of cigarettes a day, the money one carries about in one’s wallet lasts much, much longer. (And in case you were wondering, yes, in the event I develop emphysema, lung cancer, or some other disorder, these friends will be on the list of named defendants.)

Of course, I also need to get to the dentist. It’s been an embarrassing -- humiliating, really -- three years for me. In that I am not so different from Caroline Payne, the subject of an extraordinary feature article in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine -- “A Poor Cousin of the Middle Class,” by David K. Shipler -- about whom I wrote yesterday and for whom I offered last evening’s prayers.

[Note: This post originally was published at TRR: The Lighter Side of Rittenhouse.]

When checking my referral log just before midnight on Tuesday (January 20) I noticed that no fewer than three different weblogs beat the otherwise insurmountable Atrios in terms of traffic generated to The Rittenhouse Review.

Nice work! But who beat the master of short-form blogging?

Well, first, Tom of TBogg. No surprise. The guy’s some kind of friggin’ G.D. genius, and, while I don’t know this, I’ll bet he’s all really hot and everything.

And next comes Roger Ailes. No, not that irredeemably smarmy guy. The other Ailes. The one who isn’t, I suspect, because of the existence of the blogger of the same name, surreptitiously drawing a paycheck for his “opposition research” from the Republican National Committee through a niece’s sister’s mother’s sister-in-law, or a cousin’s son’s wife’s son’s brother-in-law, or something. Anyway, it’s the other Roger Ailes. The one we all love.

And in third place there is the incomparable, the indispensable, Cursor. How I functioned, how I lived, before there was Cursor, is a question I cannot yet answer.

[Post-publication addendum: Wait. This is sort of a joke. I mean, I really don’t think I have to call Atrios and tell him that, but maybe I should, just to make sure, in case his thinking matches some of my e-mail, though I truly doubt it.]

I’m in a crappy mood tonight.

If I weren’t I doubt I would post this, in part, but only in part, because I stand a good chance of being raked over the coals for what I’m about to say, but I am, at least tonight, in such a mood, so read on, particularly if you are a blogger.

I implore you, please do not send me e-mail asking me to link to your blog if you haven’t already linked to The Rittenhouse Review. More specifically, do not send me an e-mail that reads something -- anything -- like the following:

Hi!!! I, like, just started a brand new weblog. You know, like, a blog. It’s sort of like a personal diary, but, like, sometimes it’s about, like, politics and stuff. I just started, like, last week. It’s, like, really great!!! You should, like, take a look!!! And if you, like, link to my blog, I’ll, like, set up, like, a link back to yours. Like, thanks!!!

Wrong approach.

Listen, if you haven’t figured out the underlying message here, I’m not sure you should be blogging at all.

And if you’re an established blogger, don’t even try to tell me you don’t have this thought almost every single day.

There have been days recently when I have felt truly cursed. Today is one of them.

For whatever reason I decided this afternoon to wash my bed pillows. When the wash was complete, I opened the machine only to find the covers had been shredded.

Not that big a deal, I know, especially if this were merely an isolated incident -- not to say that I’ve been having laundry tragedies on a regular basis -- but as part of what’s starting to look like a pattern, I can’t help but feel just a bit targeted, shall we say.

They’re really nice pillows, too. They’re old, quite old -- Maybe even 10 or 12 years old? -- but they’re top-quality down pillows that cost quite a bit of money, even way back then.

A friend suggested I simply sew up the damaged seams.

Huh? I thought she knew me better than that.

Tomorrow I will see what the manager at the dry cleaning shop says. If it’s too expensive, I’ll check with mom. I’m not throwing these away. I can’t afford to live like that anymore.

[Note: This post originally was published at TRR: The Lighter Side of Rittenhouse.]

Michael Wolff, media critic for New York magazine is generally quite good. Among other things, he doesn’t share the conflicts of interest that define the present career of his better known colleague Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post. But in his latest piece for New York, “Right Timesman,” about David Brooks, the newest regular columnist for the op-ed page of the New York Times, Wolff, while getting much, well, right, makes so many missteps the article reads as one poorly conceived and executed.

It starts near the very beginning, even with the sub-head: “Brooks is the hothouse flower of the [New York] Times’ op-ed page -- its token conservative.”

True enough were it not for the presence on that very same page of right-wing columnist, Clinton-basher, Bush-backer, and Sharon-apologist William Safire. Wolff himself concedes this, but writes in off-key notes: “[T]he Times’ conservative of record, William Safire . . . is, at 74, looking toward a sooner-rather-than-later retirement and needs to be replaced, if not replicated.”

Let us all hope he is simply replaced. For by the grace of God, there can be no replication of Safire. One has been more than enough, especially during the last 10 or 12 years, a period during which one might have thought at least one Times editor or publisher would have insisted upon offering the factually challenged columnist some kind of attractive retirement package.

Wolff continues:

Safire -- pro-Israel, and more classically libertarian than classically right-wing, and witty, too -- became a Washington insider, a raconteur, a player, a de rigueur dinner guest, and a conduit into high Republican circles (and, in some sense, the dean of the page).

“Witty”? “Dean of the page”? The latter by age alone, I suppose, but otherwise in both cases, in what parallel universe?

“Pro-Israel,” yes, but also, as Safire repeatedly tells us, a friend of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, to whom the columnist habitually refers in print as “Arik,” violating a least a handful of the paper’s own rules of style, a friendship that has clouded Safire’s judgment and perspective.

Nonetheless, one can’t help but appreciate the rest of Wolff’s assessment of the Times op-ed page, now and in the past:

Brooks . . . is also part of a larger change. The age of opinion, of partisanship and polarization . . . has meant that the op-ed, formerly the reward for long service and smart careerism at the Times (or someTimes [sic] for bad careerism -- a place on the op-ed has been a consolation prize for high-flying but out-of-favor Timesmen), and a place of measured, orotund, authoritative appraisals of world affairs, has had to transform into a sharper, juicier enterprise.

Hmm . . . I wonder which columnists Wolff has in mind?

“A place of measured, orotund, authoritative appraisals of world affairs”? I know, I know! The unreadable, utterly predictable, and reliably boring Flora Lewis. (I’m showing my age here.)

“A consolation prize for high-flying but out-of-favor Timesmen”? I know, I know! The unreadable, utterly predictable, and reliably boring Nicholas Kristof. (I’m not showing my age there.)

Wolff continues expounding:

Everybody has a shtick: Paul Krugman as Bush-basher, Safire as house conservative, Tom Friedman as the mayor of the Middle East, Maureen Dowd as crazy lady, Bob Herbert as spokesman for the dispossessed. Everybody needs a slot. Everybody needs a label (indeed, Nicholas Kristof, the other columnist on the page, seems orphaned and, often, irrelevant, without a hard slant).

Not bad, though I would tweak it a little, as follows:

Paul Krugman as the President’s most perspicacious critic, Safire as the house nattering nabob of necromancy, Tom Friedman as the self-styled mayor of the Middle East, Maureen Dowd as crazy lady, Bob Herbert as the eloquent spokesman for people who work for people who have the Times delivered to their door and, if it’s not clean enough, have to go out and buy a fresh copy, but don’t read the Times themselves.

The kicker, though, at least for me, came from this line from Wolff: “As a writer and conservative, [Brooks] seems like a better-behaved P.J. O’Rourke.” Except not as funny, I guess, though O’Rourke is funny like Christopher Buckley is funny, which is to say, not at all.

Speaking of political cartoons -- and we were -- be sure to check out “Fighting Words” by No Mind, a recent discovery you can find here, as well as blogger Bruce Garrett’s cartoons, which you can find here.

Since AOL doesn’t have the readily identifiable ideological agenda of certain CNN anchors, “Torture AOL,” a phrase I have adapted from Atrios’s similar efforts directed at the aforementioned CNN anchors, isn’t exactly right, but still, you might want to have some fun with this since the poll appears to have been posted just minutes ago. [It’s 5:45 p.m. Eastern time.]

The poll asks, “How do you rate Bush on Iraq?”, “How do you rate Bush on the war on terror?”, “How do you rate Bush on the economy?”, and “How do you rate Bush overall?”

Peggy Noonan, December 17, 2003 (“‘It Is As It Was’”):

I’m glad the Holy Father chose to see it; I’m glad he has spoken; I’m glad his judgment was, “It is as it was.” If this ends the controversy, or quells it, and I believe it should, that would be a beautiful gift to everyone this holiday season.

Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, private secretary to Pope John Paul II, January 19, 2004 (“Pope Never Commented on Gibson’s ‘Passion’ Film”):

“The Holy Father told no one of his opinion of this film.”

Maybe it was just Peggy reading minds again.

[Post-publication addendum (January 22): Today Noonan tries to explain away her gullibility. “Curiouser,” Noonan says. But see also, because you will thank me: TBogg’s “Men. They Lie.” and WOC’s “Peggy Drew Noonan and The Case of the Mysterious Papal Quote.” This is what I really like about blogging. There are dozens and dozens of bloggers whose expertise, eloquence, and humor put to shame that of their counterparts in the so-called mainstream media. If we look, in this instance, merely at what passes for humor, can anyone honestly say that the likes of James Lileks, P.J. O’Rourke, Christopher Buckley, and even Dave Barry can hold a handle to this pair? Lord, before I die, please let me share an evening of dinner and drinks with TBogg and WOC.]

This isn't even a case of burying the lead, it's a case of ignoring it altogether.

How is it possible for not one, but two Philadelphia Inquirer reporters to write a 2,700-word article summarizing the first three years of the Bush administration, focusing, as the headline reveals, on "Promises Kept and Promises Stalled" (by Ron Hutcheson and William Douglas), and not once mention the President's promise that his 2003 tax cuts would produce 1.4 million new jobs, in addition to the 4.1 million jobs our ongoing prosperity was supposed to deliver? To not, in fact, mention jobs at all?

Okay, now that the Iowa caucus is over and conventional wisdom has been revealed as the palimpsest it always was, can we ask two things of the (possibly slightly) humbled media?

First, enough with the sports metaphors. Sure, it’s a race, and politics remains, to a large degree, a man’s world. As such, the propensity to compare standings and who’s up and who’s down and who’s surging and who’s not -- all of which point to another guy-thing metaphor that I will leave alone -- is inevitable. But enough already. There are reasons why candidates are up or down and surging or not. That is your story.

Even today the lead article in the Washington Post is far beyond replete with such language. In “Kerry Scores Comeback Iowa Victory,” by John F. Harris, we read: “[r]iding a late surge of support,” “scored a commanding come-from-behind victory,” “Kerry’s sprint of campaigning” (compounded by Sen. John F. Kerry’s own remarks, “Last night, the New England Patriots won. Tonight this New Englander won, and you’ve sent me on the way to the Super Bowl,” and “I have only just begun to fight.”), “[a] dramatic home stretch,” “reshuffled the political deck,” “Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) did not mount a stand here,” and “the energy of his final sprint.”

Second, keep in mind, we all know what the candidates look like. Guess what? We have television sets too.

On this subject the latest of the nauseatingly lengthy string of offenders is, appropriately, the emetic Peggy Noonan, who last week thought it necessary to inform readers that “[s]omeone said of Mr. Gephardt recently that he always looks like he has a fever” and “Mr. Kerry continues to look like a sad tree.” Thanks, Peggy, now go cash your check before I start giving you the same treatment.

Presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) late yesterday won the coveted endorsement of the Manchester Union Leader in a brief editorial written by publisher Joseph W. McQuaid.

Oh, wait, the endorsement of the wildly misnamed Union Leader isn't coveted, at least not by any reasonable Democrat. New Hampshire voters recognize the paper, at least its editorial pages, for what they are: a cranky attempt at replicating the crankiness of The Wall Street Journal.

It's sort of like winning the backing of National Review.

Or the New Republic.

Martha Stewart heads to federal court in Manhattan today to face trial on charges of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and securities fraud.

Let the media frenzy begun. Or continue.

Today's coverage in the New York Times features an article in the business section that focuses primarily on Stewart's public relations and jury selection strategies. "Martha Stewart, Near Trial, Arranges Her Image," by Constance L. Hays and Leslie Eaton, is generally fair and even-handed, though is "Chinese steamed chicken" really a "delicacy"?

And not surprisingly, Hays and Eaton put forward that ridiculous old chestnut about Stewart terrorizing American women: "Many Americans revere her as an arbiter of taste; others admire the business acumen that built a billion-dollar company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. But many women resent her for setting unrealistic standards for housekeeping, crafts and dining."

One would think that two women working in publishing, albeit at a newspaper rather than a magazine, would know better; specifically, that Stewart, through her publications and television programs, is selling a fantasy, just as are the editors and publishers of every single lifestyle magazine in the country. (Architectural Digest, anyone?)

Still, this is a nice passage: "Prosecutors have said that they would have brought the same case against anyone: famous, infamous or unknown. But that argument is 'absolutely ridiculous,' said Joel M. Cohen, a former federal prosecutor now at the law firm of Greenberg Traurig. Prosecutors, he said, think the case is in the public interest because of its 'broad general deterrent value.'" (See also "Prosecutorial Abuse: The Thin -- and Dangerous -- 'Case' Against Martha Stewart," The Rittenhouse Review, January 14.)

In contrast, the New York Post yesterday published a slimy little piece in the gossip section snarking at Stewart's program honoring Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a piece that has been picked up by other newspapers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer.

[Post-publication addendum (January 20): Julie Hilden, columnist for FindLaw, agrees with Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft that U.S. District Court Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum’s decision to bar the media from coverage of jury selection “was in error.” Futher, Hilden argues Judge Cedarbaum’s decision to offer an end-of-the-day transcript of proceedings “is not enough.”]

Several articles published over the past few days by coincidence center around a theme: working in America. Or, rather, not working in America. [Note: Addendum added January 20.]

Working (Poor) in America

In Sunday’s New York Times Magazine there is a terrific essay, “A Poor Cousin of the Middle Class,” by David K. Shipler, offering the compelling story of Caroline Payne’s struggle to overcome the inexorable rut and relenting challenges that define the lives of the working poor. It’s a profound and moving look at a life shaped by dead-end jobs, debt, bad teeth, picking up cans, and relying on the kindness of family and friends.

I tried to keep the excerpts down to a minimum, but there’s just too much in Shipler’s piece to hold back much more. (When you’re done here, go read the article in its entirety.)

Futility has nagged at Caroline for a long time. Four years ago, at the dawn of the new millennium, she sat at her kitchen table in Claremont, N.H., and added up her life. It was the height of the economic boom. The nation wallowed in luxury, burst with microchips, consumed with abandon, swaggered globally. Everything grew larger: homes, vehicles, stock portfolios, life expectancy. Never before in the sweep of human history had so many people been so utterly comfortable.

Caroline was not one of them. She had achieved two of her three goals. She had earned a college diploma (a two-year associate’s degree), and she had gone from a homeless shelter into her own house (owned mostly by a bank). The third objective, “a good paying job,” as she put it, still eluded her. Back in the mid-70’s, she earned $6 an hour in a Vermont factory that made plastic cigarette lighters and cases for Gillette razors. A quarter century later, she earned $6.80 an hour stocking shelves and working cash registers at a vast Wal-Mart superstore.

“And that’s sad,” she declared. “I’m only making 80 cents more than I did more than 20 years ago.” Or less, taking into account the rise in the cost of living. […]

Again and again, she applied to manage one sales department or another at Wal-Mart, and again and again she was passed over in favor of men -- or, she observed wryly, women who were younger and slimmer. [...]

Trying to get ahead, she always made herself available to change hours and fill in, even during evenings when she had to leave her 14-year-old [retarded and epileptic] daughter, Amber, home alone. Without a car, Caroline had a 20-minute walk each way, trekking back and forth at odd times of night in all kinds of weather. One cold February day, walking gingerly along icy streets, worried about her temperamental back, she trudged from her house to her job at her normal time of 10 a.m., only to be told to come for a shift beginning at 1 p.m. instead. So she made her way home and then returned to the store: three trips consuming one hour before earning her first dime of the day.

The people who received promotions tended to have something that Caroline did not. They had teeth. Caroline’s teeth had succumbed to poverty, to the years when she could not afford a dentist. […]

Probably no employer would ever admit to passing her over because she was missing that radiant, tooth-filled smile that Americans have been taught to prize as highly as their right to vote. . . . Where showing teeth was an unwritten part of the job description, she did not excel. She was turned down for a teller’s position with the Claremont Savings Bank, which then hired her for back-room filing and eventually fired her from that. Wal-Mart considered her for customer-service manager and then promoted someone else, someone with teeth.

Caroline’s is the face of the working poor, marked by a poverty-generated handicap more obvious than most deficiencies but no different, really, from the less visible deficits that reflect and reinforce destitution. If she were not poor, she would not have lost her teeth, and if she had not lost her teeth, perhaps she would not have remained poor. […]

[S]he moved with her children into a small apartment and bounced between welfare and dead-end jobs, supplementing her income by scavenging for cans. “We’d go and watch a ballgame at school, and I’d take bags and stuff them in my pocketbook,” she recalled. “After the ballgame I’d be going around poring through the garbage cans picking out 5-cent cans.” Her first daughter would ride her bike as far ahead of her mother as possible to avoid any hint of association. “I figured that a few cents buys some milk, buys some bread, things that you need, you know what I’m saying? It all helps. But it embarrassed her. She hated it as she got older.” […]

Anyone who walked all the way around the outside of the Wal-Mart superstore on Route 103 would walk a mile, Caroline said. The place was immense. But it didn’t seem to have room for Caroline to progress. She bounced from one department to another, from one shift to another, while her pay stayed within a narrow range, beginning at $6.15 an hour, going to $6.80, sometimes up to $7.50 if she worked at night. So unpredictable were her hours that she couldn’t work a second job to help her cash flow. She kept applying for higher positions and kept hearing that she needed a bit more experience. […]

Unwittingly, [after leaving Wal-Mart] Caroline . . . stepped into the vortex that drags numbers of low-wage single mothers down into the great chasm between decent work and decent parenting, a place where a child’s safety has to be balanced against survival in the labor market.

After a month at the wallpaper plant, the temp agency offered Caroline a job back at the Tampax factory for $10 an hour, the most she had ever earned. She took it, but there was a problem: Procter & Gamble had organized the factory on rotating shifts. One week she left the house at 5:30 a.m. and got home at 2:30 p.m., the next week she was gone from 1:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., and the third from 9:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. Putting aside the question of sleep, stamina[,] and the basic requirements of an orderly life, the swing shifts raised havoc with Caroline’s arrangements for Amber. Unable to find care, she very reluctantly left the girl home alone during her evening and nighttime shifts.

While Caroline was running machines that put packages of tampons into boxes, she was worrying about Amber, and with good cause. At 14, Amber could barely read and write, could not easily tell time from clocks with hands, and was unable to understand that she had enough money if she gave a storekeeper $10 to buy something for $4. . . . She also had epilepsy, and the risk of a seizure prompted doctors to advise that she not be left alone for long. The logistical maze of arranging care for Amber around constantly shifting hours of work had Caroline tangled in anxiety.

Amber happened to tell her teacher how scary it was being home alone after dark. The teacher was alarmed and threatened to report Caroline for neglect. [...]

Faced with the threat of being reported to the state’s child protection agency, Caroline stopped going to work, started working the phones trying to find care for Amber and came up empty-handed. […]

Perhaps the most curious and troubling facet of this confounding puzzle was everybody’s failure to pursue the most obvious solution: if the factory had just let Caroline work day shifts, her problem would have disappeared. She asked a supervisor and got brushed off, but nobody else -- not the school principal, not the doctor, not the myriad agencies she contacted -- nobody in the profession of helping thought to pick up the phone and appeal to the factory manager or the foreman or anybody else in authority at her workplace.

Indeed, this solemn regard for the employer as untouchable and beyond the realm of persuasion unless in violation of the law permeates the culture of American antipoverty efforts, with only a few exceptions. The most socially minded physicians and psychologists who treat malnourished children, for example, will advocate vigorously with government agencies to provide food stamps, health insurance, housing[,] and the like. But when they are asked if they ever urge the parents’ employers to raise wages enough to pay for nutritious food, the doctors express surprise at the notion. First, it has never occurred to them, and second, it seems hopeless. Wages and hours are set by the marketplace, and you cannot expect magnanimity from the marketplace. It is the final arbiter from which there is no appeal. […]

She sent Amber to live temporarily with her daughter-in-law in Muncie, Ind., where the schools were reputedly better. By September, Amber was in higher-level special-ed classes in Muncie; on the phone, she sounded ecstatic, so Caroline decided to follow.

To leave, however, she had to sell her precious house, for she could not comfortably rent it out from a distance. . . . In the end, she made nothing, not a penny, she said sadly. “I gave it away.”

She had maintained and improved the house sensibly for the long term, but she spent more on it than it was worth in the end. She still owed $34,000 on the first mortgage, and the second mortgage of $19,000 carried a prepayment penalty, which forced her to pay just over $20,000 to get out of it. The federal grants of $17,000 required prorated reimbursement of $16,000 because she hadn’t lived in the house long enough. After adding the agent’s fee, taxes[,] and other closing costs, she ended up short $300, which the agent kindly absorbed. Five and a half years of mortgage and interest payments had yielded nothing, and one of her dreams was gone.

As the New Hampshire winter arrived after Thanksgiving, Caroline left with pockets nearly empty. To escape from $10,000 to $12,000 in credit-card debt, she had declared bankruptcy earlier that year, much to her shame. She could not even afford to rent a truck without a $700 loan from her older daughter. A couple of friends donated their vacation time to drive the truck and Caroline to Indiana, by way of a slashing blizzard in upstate New York. She was on the move again, as she had been since childhood, but she was happy to see a little of the country.

On the move and getting nowhere.

Why so many Americans are hell-bent on making sure people like Caroline Payne can’t earn a decent, living wage is beyond me.

Not Working in America, I

James K. Galbraith’s essay, “The No Jobs President” [Subscription or day press required.] published today at Salon.com is nothing if not scary, very scary, whether you’re working in America or not.

The method is clear to any who choose to study closely: It is a method of subterfuge and deception. It is the systematic and relentless pursuit of partly hidden agendas, sold to the public with slogans. […]

So it is today on the economy. What does Bush want? He wants a growth rate high enough to get him through the election. That’s obvious. After that, he doesn’t care. His clientele -- the military contractors, oil companies, pharmaceutical firms[,] and big media that control this government -- make their money on patents, contracts[,] and the exercise of monopoly power. . . . These people have no interest in full employment. They like unemployment, weak labor, low wages[,] and a government that bullies on their behalf. And after the election, if Bush wins, that is what they will get for four more years.

Bush has levers to keep the economy warm through the 2004 vote. Child credits kicked in during the third quarter of 2003. Households spent them at once, hence the 8 percent annualized growth rate that mesmerized the country for a moment. Tax refunds are due in the next few months; that should give spending another kick. The cost of war was the first big push that the economy got last year. Now much military equipment needs replacing; spending on that may be felt soon. […]

And after the election, the stagnation his backers want will not be hard to achieve. Our economy still faces major barriers to sustained growth. Capacity utilization in industry is low: a barrier to sustained growth of investment. Household debt burdens are high: a barrier to accelerating consumer spending, which will be aggravated when the housing bubble eventually pops. […]

In short, the most likely outlook is for strong growth in the first half of the year, and stagnation thereafter. Businesses know this. So they will ramp up production to meet demand, but remain resolutely reluctant to hire new workers for the long term. […]

On “immigration reform,” Galbraith is particularly scathing:

The new class of migrants would have to leave when their permits are up, unless renewed. They would have to leave if fired from their jobs. In a word, employers would judge who stays in the country and who is kicked out. Forget labor rights. Forget unions. […]

There is worse still. Bush made clear that this program is not just for workers presently in the country, as the press has mostly been reporting. It is not just for those who may soon arrive. No, it is far broader than that. Here’s the president’s speech: “If an American employer is offering a job that American citizens are not willing to take, we ought to welcome into our country a person who will fill that job.”

This program will permit any employer to admit any worker. From any country. At any time. The only requirement is that it be for a job Americans are not willing to take. But it is easy to create such jobs: Cut wages. Terminate the unions. Lengthen the hours. Speed up the lines. Chicken farmers have known this for years. […]

And for those who take up the program, register as temporary workers, and then see their permits expire? Bush is at pains to say that he expects this group to go home. But who will make them? Will the government organize a mass campaign of roundups and deportations? Or will the workers just quietly disappear back into the sub-underground of the truly illegal?

Galbraith mentions and provides a link to an excellent study by Lee Price and Yulia Fungard of the Economic Policy Institute, “Understanding the Severity of the Current Job Slump.” Talk about scary. Their report makes Galbraith sound like a Pollyanna.

Not Working in America, II

Finally there is the ongoing phenomenon of not working in America because the jobs have been sent overseas, a topic suddenly in the news again.

In today’s Wall Street Journal William M. Bulkeley reports on developments at IBM (“IBM Documents Give Rare Look at Plans on ‘Offshoring’” [Subscription required.]):

In a rare look at the numbers and verbal nuances a big U.S. company chews over when moving jobs abroad, internal documents from International Business Machines Corp. show that it expects to save $168 million annually starting in 2006 by shifting several thousand high-paying programming jobs overseas.

Among other things, the documents indicate that for internal IBM accounting purposes, a programmer in China with three to five years experience would cost about $12.50 an hour, including salary and benefits. A person familiar with IBM’s internal billing rates says that’s less than one-fourth of the $56-an-hour cost of a comparable U.S. employee, which also includes salary and benefits. […]

The documents describe work done by IBM’s Application Management Services division, part of Big Blue’s giant global-services operation, which comprises more than half of the company’s 315,000 employees. The affected workers don’t deal directly with customers; they write code and perform other programming tasks for applications software used inside IBM.

The plan would move jobs from U.S. locations including Southbury, Conn.; Poughkeepsie, N.Y.; Raleigh, N.C.; Dallas; and Boulder, Colo. IBM plans to transfer the programming work to its own operations in Bangalore, India; Shanghai and the northeastern city of Dalian in China; and Sumare, Brazil. It isn’t clear how many jobs will be added in each location.

Some of the foreign programmers will come to the U.S. for several weeks of on-the-job training by the people whose jobs they will take over. That’s an aspect of offshoring that many high-tech workers regard as particularly humiliating.

That last sentence is interesting: “high-tech workers” consider this humiliating, the Journal reports. You know, because all those manufacturing-sector workers who have been training their Third World replacements for the last several decades found the whole process to be a real boost to their self-esteem, to say nothing of their prosperity.

I suppose this is why the subject of “offshoring” is the talk of the town, with the bright lights of the media having forgotten the hemorrhaging that devastated so many communities and families in the Midwest and Northeast. (See Caroline Payne, supra.) You see, when your friends’ jobs are shipped overseas, that’s news.

[Post-publication addendum (January 20): Offshore This, Carly: By the way, could there be a worse spokesperson defending offshoring than Hewlett Packard Co.’s Carly Fiorina? Earlier this month Fiorina, defending the practice and appealing to the Bush administration for support, said: “There is no job that is America’s God-given right anymore. We have to compete for jobs.” That’s true, at least theoretically. Even Fiorina’s job isn’t a God-given right, it’s one that comes courtesy of HP’s board of directors -- a board she conveniently happens to chair -- and shareholders. (You know HP, don’t you? Really “high-tech” operation. Nearly 40 percent of profits come from producing those sleek and futuristic gadgets known as toner cartridges.) Fiorina has been running the show at HP for nearly five years now. During that time the company’s stock has underperformed both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite. Actually, an investor would have done better with a passbook savings account. I wonder if there’s anyone in China or India looking for a cushy CEO slot. Hey, the new chief wouldn’t even have to move.]

We lost. “We” meaning the Philadelphia Eagles. A whole bunch of people who know a whole lot more about all this than I do will explain it in tomorrow’s papers.

All I can say is that “we,” meaning the Philadelphia Eagles, didn’t play as well as did the Carolina Panthers. So congratulations to them. But I’ll be rooting for New England.

By the way, did anyone else think the commentators on Fox were just insufferable?

Meanwhile, it’s strangely quiet in Philadelphia tonight.

You know, you would think that for a coffee mug or a tote bag -- Oh, wait, andrewsullivan.com doesn’t hand out such gratuities during his extended-Provincetown-vacation-and-one-would-presume-tax-basis-induced-hiatus-on-Cape-Cod -- one would get, for one’s trouble, to say nothing for one’s purely capitalistically hard-earned pounds dollars, at least something, say, perhaps, dependable and reliable access to the web site where such drool is spittled on a regular basis.

Sorry, no. We are, after all, talking about Andrew Sullivan, the purported pugilist and Princess of Provincetown, who on January 17 wrote:

PROFUSE APOLOGIES: I’m immensely sorry this site experienced [a] complete meltdown over the last day or so. I’m not a techie, but essentially our server exploded and our server company didn’t have a back-up [sic] available[,] and needed to order a spare part, which took a day. 2004 [sic] has been jinxed. We’ve had sluggish, slow service for two weeks, then this. And the flu. We haven’t even had [sic] any reliable stats since before Christmas. It’s frustrating for you and infuriating for me. We’re working hard to make sure this won’t ever happen again. But there were no dirty tricks and no hacking -[-] just horrible luck and miserable service. I’m sorry again. Stay tuned for what should be a memorable week -[-] from Iowa nail-biting to another array of big spending special interest projects from the [P]resident on Tuesday.

Yeah, you know, “guns blazing” and all that Sullivanesque marriluacho crap.

Okay, so my gut, like yours, says, “What a friggin’ jerk.”

Oh, and don’t miss Sullivan’s continuing, and continuinly despicable, attempts to smear the good name and good reputation of the good Joshua Marshall. Pathetic. Truly pathetic. Sullivan v. Marshall? Sorry, Sullivan, no contest.

I’m not a big fan of bloggers’ posts of the “what I’m listening to” genre, but lately I all too often have been playing Interpretations: The Carpenters, A 25th Anniversary Celebration, much to the consternation I suspect, and hope, of the girls upstairs.

It’s a collection that takes me back -- way back -- to, of all things, weddings in the 1970s.

We all go through that phase of our lives characterized by, among other things but seemingly by little else, wedding after wedding, that certain summer or two or three or more during which we spend more time at Crate & Barrel, Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, and Tiffany than we do at the beach, in the mountains, or cleaning our apartments.

My Carpenters/Wedding Reception memories predate those years. In the ’70s I was, after all, as young as eight and no older than 17 years old. Not exactly one’s peak gift-giving years. Still, I remember the music, and the music I remember, with painful frequency, comes from The Carpenters, more specifically, “Close to You” and “We’ve Only Just Begun.”

Gee whiz, you know, by like, what, 1975 you were ready to kill any DJ, MC, wedding planner, bride, or groom who played either one of those otherwise respectable songs. I even remember one wedding, I think I was all of 12 at the time, at which I was completely prepared to commit hari kari on any and everyone at this otherwise tasteful and entertaining reception on the waterfront in The Bronx.

I’m glad all of that’s over. Now I can just listen to the CD in peace. Except, of course, for those painful memories.

Today's the day. The day the Philadelphia Eagles may, and I hope and pray will, after having beaten some ragtag group of nobodies from one of those cracker states, one of the Carolinas, I think, win the National Football Conference championship for the first time in more than 20 years.

Local coverage from today and yesterday:

"Birds May Need Man Who'll be Missing," by Bob Brookover
"He’s Always an Adventure," by Bob Brookover
"Kalu Avoiding Distractions This Year," by Bob Brookover
"We Have an Announcement: Go, Birds!," by Mensah M. Dean
"Eagles Have Some Extra Fans," by Larry Eichel
"Ailing Davis Returns to Practice Field," by Frank Fitzpatrick and Bob Brookover
"In Brief Span, the Panthers Have Gone From Contentious to Contenders" by Frank Fitzpatrick
"Make History or Be History," by Bob Ford
"His Dream: Finish Championship Run," by Ashley McGreachy Fox
"At City Hall, Fans Were Psyched," by Dan Geringer
"Happy to be Here, Panthers Still Want More," by Mike Kern
"Birds Making a Living Guarding the Red Zone," by Bill Lyon
"Eagles Prepare to Try Again," by Bill Lyon
"Ahem . . . About Those Uniforms," by Jim Nolan
"Can't Call this 'Wall of Fate' Fickle," by Jim Nolan
"Holding Up Under Stress," by Dana Pennett O'Neill
"Parties Won't Ignore the Game," by Ronnie Polaneczky
"It's on Them," by Phil Sheridan
"Big-game Threat," by Stephen A. Smith
"Survivor in AFC Will Win Super Bowl," by Stephen A. Smith

Fellow Philly blogger Adam Bonin will, I assume, be watching from his fabulous season-ticket seats at Lincoln Financial Field. Don't you just hate him? Just for this, I mean. Forget the thriving law career and the incredibly (and deservedly) successful novelist wife. And Lucy. Don't forget Lucy. (And Wendell. Mildred said make sure to mention Wendell. He's a little guy.)

Me? Look for me either at a local tavern or, more likely, listening at home on the radio. (No TV here at Rittenhouse.)

By the way, if you telephone me between 6:00 and 9:00 p.m. this evening, forget about getting an answer.

Oh, and I think the Colts are playing the Patriots. Maybe today. Soon anyway. Who cares, except to the extent the outcome affects the Eagles? Wait, one of my brothers-in-law cares, which is basically the same as saying, well, nobody.

Most readers are familiar with, to say nothing of having grown fond of, my English bulldog Mildred (officially, Chadwin VII’s Mildred Pierce).

Mildred is “fixed.”

Daddy likes it that way.

Mildred is also a virgin.

Daddy likes it that way.

And so does Mildred. Although she is the most gentle and loving dog I ever have known, when the boys get too curious “back there,” watch out! She’s having none of that.

Daddy likes it that way.

I like this because it’s saving me some $50,000 a year that I might otherwise be paying to a protective and sheltering convent school in Switzerland or Croatia or something.

Virtuous as she is, sometimes even Mildred will tip her hand, her affections most recently aimed at Mei Sheng, the new panda cub at the San Diego Zoo.

Mei Sheng

Mildred, who in the past I have described as “part dog, part cat, part rabbit, part monkey, part pig, part seal, part hippo, part bear (especially polar bear), part tick, and part human,” is quite smitten with Mei Sheng. (Yes, “smitten.” Mildred has a tendency to slip into 19th-century vernacular.)

And Mildred likes the little guys. There is, or at least there was, a Jack Russell terrier (Ugh. Totally unacceptable to Daddy.) at a framing shop on 17th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., that she was once hell-bent on . . . I don’t know what and I don’t want to know what.

Why her affections are, at this moment anyway, directed toward a panda rather than a more suitable suitor I do not know.

But then, why she keeps hopping on my PC looking for pictures of Mei Sheng, this despite her lack of opposable thumbs (and a credit card, if you catch my drift), making a simple keyboard a major challenge, also remains a mystery.

It looks like Conrad Black -- oh, excuse me, “Lord Black,” whatever that’s supposed to mean to anyone other than, well, “Lord Black,” or those still aroused by the fictions of the British empire -- suck up, publisher of pabulum, and friend of Tina Brown, is selling assets in an effort to stay afloat.

The New York Times today reports (“British Media Baron Near Deal to Sell Major Stake in Hollinger,” by Andrew Ross Sorkin and Geraldine Fabrikant):

Conrad M. Black, the British media baron, is near a deal to sell his controlling interest in Hollinger International to David and Frederick Barclay, brothers who own London’s Sunday Business and The Scotsman, for more than $200 million and outstanding debts, according to executives briefed on the discussions.

The deal for control of Hollinger, publisher of [t]he Daily Telegraph of London, [t]he Chicago Sun-Times[,] and [t]he Jerusalem Post, could be announced as early as Sunday, the executives said. Still, they cautioned that the talks were continuing and the deal could collapse.

A reprieve for “Lord Black”? Maybe. Sorkin and Fabrikant report:

According to the executives, the deal with the Barclay brothers, who also own the Ritz Hotel, is a complex transaction in which they would take control of another [“]Lord Black[”] company called Ravelston, which in turn owns a 78 percent stake in Hollinger Inc. But any deal by Mr. Black to sell his stake may run afoul of agreements made Friday between Hollinger and the S.E.C. intended to prevent Lord Black from doing so.

Of course, there’s always the lingering fact that “Lord Black” has been, well, fired, among much else:

Hollinger International’s executive committee announced Saturday that Lord Black “has been removed as non-executive chairman of the company, effective immediately.”

In addition, the special committee created to investigate accusations of unauthorized payments to Lord Black filed a lawsuit on Saturday against him and the company's former president, F. David Radler.

The suit charges that Lord Black and his top aides systematically diverted company funds. The complaint, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, asserts that Lord Black and the others directed more than $224 million in payments for themselves that were far in excess of any services they performed, among other accusations. The lawsuit goes into extensive detail describing how, it says, Lord Black misled the company.

What does it take, really, for guys like this to admit they’re failures, that they’ve been disgraced, that their mogul-building strategies were nothing less than contemptible and all too often criminal, before we will hear no more from or about them, particularly from such bottom-feeders as Washington Post Style-section columnist Tina Brown?

Damn those Iowans, making everything really complicated and difficult for the mainstream media, making them actually have to earn their keep. You know, not allowing the oh-so-clued-in mavens of Washington, New York, and -- bizarrely -- Atlanta, to narrow the race to a really convenient and easy two-man contest, a narrowing that not only makes their lives easier but makes the publisher's office really happy, what with reduced costs and all, dontcha know.

Adam Nagourney of the New York Times today writes ("As Iowa Caucuses Near, Crystal Ball Gets Cloudy"):

What until last week had seemed like a two-way contest for first between Howard Dean and Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri has turned into what Democrats described as a four-way free-for-all with two days remaining before Monday's caucuses. In campaign headquarters across this unseasonably warm capital, senior advisers struggled to figure out who was up and who was down, prompting a dizzying volley of attacks.[?]

A poll of likely caucusgoers [sic] to be published by [t]he Des Moines Register on Sunday underlined the sense of of [sic] uncertainty about Monday's vote, with victory in reach of any of them. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts had 26 percent, followed by Senator John Edwards with 23 percent and Dr. Dean with 20 percent. [Margin of error: +/- 4 points.] [...]

Polls in Iowa are famously imprecise [Ed.: Hence the "margin of error" of a mere four points.], given the difficulty of determining who actually attends caucuses and what they might do in the course of what is supposed to be two hours of deliberation. The only other candidate running in Iowa is Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio.

Oh, hey, wow, cool. My favored candidate actually garners a mention in the Times. Gee, I don't know, maybe it's time to pay at least a little bit of attention to Kucinich's campaign? (Good God, the town to which I may soon move probably has but two other Kucinich supporters. New York primary: March 2. I wonder, is there a 30-day residency requirement? Pennsylvania? Please, April 27. Appropriately irrelevant. Or at least that's how it looks right now.)

By the way, blogger John of Waremouse has headed off to Iowa. Or, at least, he's trying to get there. John's a Dean man, but I won't hold that against him. I won't hold anything against anyone who's supporting anyone who's in the race to defeat President George W. Bush.

I mean that. Get off your duff. Pick a candidate, any candidate. Make your voice heard. Stop the insanity, the lunacy, the ignorance, the stupidity, the recklessness. Give that unelectable, miserable failure his one-way ticket to the inexplicably constant clearing of brush back in East Jesus, Texas.

In addition to catching up on my reading of books, I guess I’m catching up with the cartoons as well.

There’s a new page at Get Your War On (January 14). Check out the fourth strip. Great Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) punch line.

And the latest Sutton Impact from Ward Sutton is terrific: a comparison between President George W. Bush and former President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Just try to tell me she -- she being the Mrs. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther (Coretta Scott) King Jr. -- isn’t at this very moment thinking, “The President is pissing on my husband’s grave.”

[Post-publication addendum (January 18): More pissing.]

Today’s blogging quote of the day, an intermittent and irregular nod from The Rittenhouse Review, goes to TBogg for the following:

Today we join America’s Worst Mom, Meghan Cox Gurdon, and find that her children (Parsifal, Minerva, Ebonette, and Mothra) did not get the Talking Ann Coulter dolls that they asked for at Christmas, and have taken to playing with butter knives which, being thin, inflexible, and dull, have many Coulter-like qualities.

Sheer genius. (To say nothing of almost impeccable grammar, diction, and punctuation.)

And when Tom summarizes Cox Gurdon’s drug-induced doodlings and adds the send-off, “Really. That’s what’s in her column. What? You don’t believe me?”, well, trust me, you just gotta believe.

A combination of jobless-induced free time, light blogging, truly crappy weather, and a desire to quell my anxiety over what appears now to be an inevitable move to a lovely little village in the middle of nowhere, I’ve been able to catch up on some reading.

And so I recommend to you, “without any reservation whatsoever” (a line from my stock letter of recommendation, one that has enabled many underqualified -- and some more than qualified -- applicants to enter the nation’s top business, law, and graduate schools), the following worthy books, all of which I wish I had still more free time about which to expound at length:

Had Enough? by James Carville

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes in the new translation by Edith Grossman [I’m just getting into this one, but so far so great. The translation is terrific.]

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow

Big Lies by Joe Conason

The Lies of George W. Bush by David Corn

The Two Americas by Stanley B. Greenberg

The Middle Mind by Curtis White

And, what the heck, a few repeat plugs:

The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon

The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisenberger

The Meaning of Everything by Simon Winchester

The Nation’s ad campaign uses the tag line, “Nobody owns The Nation. That’s why so many somebodies read it.” True enough, I suppose, but, ahem, somebody owns it and plenty of nobodies, including me, read it as well. I continue to read and subscribe to the magazine, despite the fact that my persistent jobless condition, one shared by all too many at the moment, has caused me to scale back, dramatically, the number of magazines and journals to which I subscribe, canceling some and not renewing others. Regardless, one magazine I’ve made certain keeps coming is The Nation.

Sure, much of the magazine’s content, along with many additional features, is available at the web site. Not all of it, though. For example, “Mad Cow, Mad Policy,” the lead editorial in the January 26 issue, is not on line. That’s a shame, of sorts, because, while brief, it’s an excellent, even scathing, piece. Still, as it’s only available in print, I’m glad The Nation was spared my newfound thriftiness.

A few excerpts:

When Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and the agribusiness insiders-turned-“regulators” who run [President] George W. Bush’s Agriculture Department finally acknowledged that a case of mad cow disease had been found on a Washington State factory farm, the first order of business was to protect the agribusiness interests that have resisted basic food-safety measures for years. Veneman repeated the tired “nothing to fear” spin that British government aides peddled more than a decade ago, when they were downplaying the significance of the discovery there of bovine spongiform encephalopathy. . . . By studying Britain’s experience, the USDA and the Food and Drug Administration might well have been able to prevent the spread of mad cow disease in the United States. Instead, they created what food-safety activist John Stauber describes as “a testing system that was designed not to find the disease.”[…]

Stauber, co-author of the 1997 book Mad Cow USA, and other critics argue that the disease is more widespread in American herds than the USDA will admit. . . . Like other Bush Administration aides who are charged with protecting public health and safety, Veneman casts her lot with the industries she is supposed to regulate. It was never any secret that her primary “qualification” for the Agriculture Secretary’s job was her closeness to the potent agribusiness interest she served as a lobbyist and advocate of free trade and genetic modification of food.

[T]he danger to the livelihoods of American farmers, and to the lives of American consumers, is now real enough that Veneman cannot be allowed to continue to peddle untruths. Congress must force the USDA to require the testing of all cattle before slaughter and to ban the feeding of slaughterhouse waste to animals that are eaten by human beings. . . . Finally, Congress should provide emergency relief to working farmers and ranchers, who face ruin because of the shameful failure of Ann Veneman and the USDA to maintain the safety -- and, with it, the integrity -- of the U[.]S[.] food supply.

As one who loves beef and who, in fact, ate quite a bit of it last night thanks to the generosity of friends, I would really like to see this issue treated with the urgency it deserves. If the critics are even partly correct, we’re sitting on a ticking time bomb, a potential public-health crisis of the highest order. Even in this Age of Unseriousness, it’s time to get serious about beef.

Odd, isn’t it, that the same crowd of fringistas who some 15 years ago were ready and willing to quarantine or brand some or all gay men in this country aren’t willing to do anything even approaching the same with the nation’s cattle?

[Post-publication addendum (January 18): Of course there are missteps. The February 2 issue is a tad light, noteworthy for little more than “The Myth of the New Anti-Semitism,” by Brian Klug, and including, as it does, the horrific and morally repulsive piece, “We’re Not Sorry, Charlie,” by Jennifer Baumgardner. ([Subscription required.)]

Has Andrew Sullivan’s web site been hijacked?

That’s the way it looks from here at 4:32 p.m. Eastern time.

Instead of the usual and predictable nonsense, the unwitting traveler is greeted with the following:

RESEARCH-BASED, SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT SERVICES
and WHOLE SCHOOL REFORM SERVICES
from The Global Institute for Maximizing Potential, Inc.

Maybe it’s an ad. Or another pledge drive. Or something.

Strange, huh?

Well, no stranger than usual, but still strange.

I’ve long been skeptical of the federal government’s purported case of securities fraud against media mogul Martha Stewart, going so far, as I typically am inclined to do, as to call Karen Seymour, the assistant U.S. attorney in charge of the matter, “possibly delusional,” which, to the extent one accepts such a characterization, calls into question not only her judgment but that of her superiors in the U.S. Attoney’s Office, Southern District of New York, and beyond.

Fortunately, where I am intemperate others are temperate, and where I am inexpert others are expert.

Such expertise and temperance (aside from a gratuitous swipe at “liberals”) we find in today’s edition of The Wall Street Journal, in the form of an op-ed piece by two faculty members from Stanford University Law School. (“Flunking the Martha Test,” by David Mills and Robert Weisberg, The Wall Street Journal, January 16, 2004. [Subscription required.])

In it, the authors begin with the painfully and frighteningly obvious -- “Fraud in big business is a U.S. Attorney’s favorite medium of prosecutorial creativity.” -- to which they add the not-quite-so-obvious but crucial observation, “[F]raud requires more than merely lying. The fraudster also has to aim to deprive some other person of something of material value -- and perhaps to succeed at doing so and to achieve some gain.”

Mills and Weisberg convincingly argue that the “case” against Stewart represents nothing more -- as if that were the correct phrase -- than prosecutorial abuse. The two presented the Stewart case, without mentioning her name or specific, revealing details, to Stanford Law students as a hypothetical, asking the lawyers-to-be, including, one would surmise, at least a few future federal prosecutors, whether her actions constituted fraud. They write:

Our apparently simple exam question required students to apply legal doctrines -- as well as moral intuition -- to determine if the CEO could possibly be charged with fraud or any other crime, assuming that she did not make the claim of innocence under oath or in the context of an official proceeding. The question posed a few modestly subtle challenges -- issues that would garner extra points for thoughtful students. One was to think carefully about losses and victims. The most obvious potential victims were the shareholders of our CEO’s company, given their interest in maintaining the value of their stock. But the sharp student would notice problems here: How did the CEO’s claim of innocence threaten that value? Wouldn’t the stock value suffer more if she confessed guilt and resigned? And how did the CEO financially gain from the statement -- other than in the trivially obvious sense that she avoids the financial loss she would suffer if she confessed guilt?

But there was another challenge in the question: Even if the prosecutor could somehow finesse the victim/loss issue -- perhaps on the theory that the government need only show that the false claim of innocence might in some unpredictable way, at some time, injure the shareholders -- there remained the question of moral judgment. [Emphasis in original.] It seems bizarre to charge a person with fraud when all she does is publicly proclaim her innocence under a system of justice which requires the state to prove guilt, and which allows defendants to maintain their innocence. After all, a proclamation of innocence, even containing a false assertion, is the natural way for a person charged to put the state to its proof. [Emphasis added.]

Most of our students concluded -- rightly we thought -- that no fraud had occurred in this situation. [Emphasis added.]

Alas, justice, or at least Karen Seymour, must have her day. Mills and Weisberg write:

Well, the trial of Martha Stewart for obstruction of justice and securities fraud is now in train. The core theory of the government’s case is precisely the theory suggested in our exam question. A claim of innocence by a wealthy CEO in an unrelated matter has now become securities fraud, at least when that claim is accompanied by a story the government does not believe.

At a time when we worry about the integrity of our securities markets, it may be hard to work up much sympathy for a self-promoting billionaire whose conduct may not meet the highest test of honesty. But if federal prosecutors have effectively made up their own law in charging Ms. Stewart on this securities fraud theory, then we all need to worry. Once the criminal law is detached from our common understanding of criminal acts, and once prosecutors are essentially allowed to create crimes, the balance of power has shifted toward unelected officials acting in secret under little effective constraint. [Emphasis added.]

I can hardly imagine I will ever be at the center of a high-profile “fraud” case like this, nor, I suspect, can most Rittenhouse readers. But prosecutorial abuse, whether it is aimed at wealthy businesspeople or poor and petty (or vicious) street criminals -- to say nothing of sitting U.S. presidents, their friends, and current and former colleagues -- should be of concern to everyone. As Mills and Weisberg conclude:

Americans who tend to be wary of prosecutorial power and potential abuse are rightly most exercised when the targets of government abuse are the poor and defenseless. Ms. Stewart is neither. But public concern over the dangers of prosecutorial abuse should not depend on the identity of the accused. The criminal law should be reserved for those acts that we have collectively, by legislation, decided to criminalize -- and no others.

One can only hope the jury and judge will end the trial by showing Seymour the contempt she so richly deserves.

[Post-publication addendum: TalkLeft has a few comments about the jury selection process in the Stewart case.]

Uta Hagen, actress and perennial crossword puzzle answer: 1919-2004.

The New York Times has published an excellent obituary of Hagen by Mel Gussow.

I know, Rittenhouse never before has had or offered or highlighted a “Blog of the Day,” and I doubt there will be a “Blog of the Day” every day going forward.

Today, however, is different.

The Blog of the Day for today, Wednesday, January 14, 2004, is Margaret’s Blog, written, edited, and produced by Margaret Cho.

Why? Because she’s smart and funny and entertaining and the target of a disgusting hate campaign.

Show your support with a visit over there.

[Post-publication addendum (January 16): Cho has her say. And then some. (Strong language.)]

I herewith present a not-so-hypothetical hypothetical.

Late Friday, January 9, I heard drips of water hitting my bathroom ceiling.

“That can’t be good,” I thought.

Saturday morning, January 10, I reported the drips, along with the accompanying water damage in my bathroom, to the doorman.

“Oh, okay,” he said, adding, “I know you don’t want your stuff damaged and everything, but, I don’t know, there’s no one here now, so I’ll write it up, but I don’t know what they’ll do.”

I admit, dripping water above one’s bathroom isn’t exactly a life-or-death situation, but when prevailing temperatures are scarily below freezing, one would think that word of dripping pipes and water damage would lead any reasonable lessor to investigate the situation.

Alas, at my building at least, no.

It is now Wednesday. Midday Wednesday. And still, four days later, the building has yet to send anyone over to investigate the situation.

For all I know, the ceiling could collapse at any moment.

Not that anyone cares. Surely the building manager doesn’t, as she has yet to return two phone calls I have placed about this matter.

[This post was published earlier today at TRR: The Lighter Side of Rittenhouse.]

As much as I respect Bob Somerby and Josh Marshall, I do tire of the way they all too happily collect accolades for the work of those laboring within the genre, and attend, and sometimes get paid for, appearing at conclaves at which they are characterized as “bloggers.”

Neither Somerby nor Marshall, it should be noted, has at his site anything resembling a respectable blogroll, a failing they share with Andrew Sullivan of all people, and Marshall in the past has gone out of his way to pronounce, with a more than a touch of attitude, that he doesn’t read other blogs.

Gosh, gee whiz, sorry to bother you guys.

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

“Eagles Keep Winning Despite a Key Statistic,” by Bob Brookover
“Eagles Notes: McNabb Snags SI Cover,” by Bob Brookover
“City Warns Birds Fans About Fires,” by Larry Eichler
“Sunday’s Game is Sold Out,” by Larry Eichler
“Sunday’s Game to Give Economy a Bit of a Lift,” by Larry Eichler
“Carolina Rookie Chirping About the Birds’ Chances,” by Frank Fitzpatrick
“He’s Panthers’ Quiet Reserve,” by Frank Fitzpatrick
“Pinkston Seeing Career Break Into Career,” by Ashley McGeacy Fox
“Eagles Should Feel Free to Enjoy This Game,” by Phil Sheridan

PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS

“The Last Do-over?” by Les Bowen
“Eagles Have Passed This Way Before,” by Paul Domowitch
“The Third Degree,” by Rich Hofmann
“Sixers Rooting for Eagles,” by Phil Jasner
“Some of the Best Things in Life are Three,” by Barbara Laker
“Trainer Keep Injured Birds on Track,” by Dana Pennett O’Neil
“Kasay Must Wonder if There’s More Trouble Afoot,” by John Smallwood
“The Third One Worked,” by Paul Vigna

I don’t know whether kids today still say, in Art Linkletter’s immortal words, “the darndest things,” but I know my nieces and nephews do.

Here are just a few from my nephew C. (6, today! Happy Birthday!):

“God, please take all the bad people, open up their heads, take all the bad stuff out, and put good stuff into their brains and close up their heads. Amen.”

“Mom, when I grow up I’m going to cut down a million trees and make the Little Town of Burger King.”

“Mom, Mom, Mom, look at me! Watch and learn.”

“Mom, Mom, look! Cookie [a family cat] did a somersault. . . . Besides, what is a somersault?”

“Mom, this is the boringest Mother’s Day of my life.”

“Mom, we need a bigger house. With not so much wood, and more plastic.”

“You’ve just got to pause and sniff the flowers.”

“Mom, what if giant butter attacked the world?”

“Mom, what if all the cars going in that direction were coming toward us in our direction?”

To Mom and Dad: “I’m just sick and tired.” Mom and Dad: “Why?” To Mom and Dad: “Because I have to listen to the two of you talking to me at the same time.”

[Note: This post originally was published at TRR: The Lighter Side of Rittenhouse.]

Do you like getting free stuff in the mail? Stuff like greeting cards, return address labels, calendars, mugs, piggy banks, key chains, and the like?

If so, write out a couple of checks to the Humane Society of the United States and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Both are worthy charities and both long have been at the top of the list of recipients of my once well known largesse. And both will keep you well supplied with trinkets and doodads for the rest of the year. Think of your donations as the gifts that keep on giving -- to you.

Although I wasn’t able to make my annual year-end donation to either group, I continue to receive little gift packages, or gratuities, from both organizations. Just yesterday I received five greeting cards from the Humane Society.

Last fall I noticed for the first time that a donor can elect not to receive such merchandise, thereby enabling the Humane Society and the ASPCA to put more of one’s donation to work helping animals and promoting the safe and sane treatment thereof.

I was tempted at the time, but to be honest, I kind of like getting free stuff.

By the way, the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals will hold its annual Mardi Paw fundraiser at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia on February 21. Tickets are $60 in advance and $75 at the door. You should go. Pets, unfortunately and inexplicably, are not allowed. Mildred and I will be there in spirit.

[Note: This post originally was published at TRR: The Lighter Side of Rittenhouse.]

Thank God for people -- for journalists -- like Michelangelo Signorile.

It’s a shame, I think, that after God created Signorile he broke the mold, or the cast, or whatever He was working with at the time. We as a nation would be better served if there were more Signoriles toiling in what passes for the “mainstream media.”

In the latest issue of the New York Press, Signorile, with ample justification, rakes gay conservatives Matt Drudge and Andrew Sullivan over the coals for their happy and greedy alignment and affiliation with the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s sinkhole of lunacy, better known -- though thankfully barely known, at least outside the offices of the Republican National Committee, the Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute -- as the Washington Times. (“The Washington (End Of) Times: Drudge and Sullivan give genocidal Moonie a pass,” New York Press, January 13.)

Signorile writes:

Can you imagine the owners of the New York Times -- or the Los Angeles Times or Cleveland’s Plain-Dealer -- pining out loud for the mass extinction of an entire group of people? Let’s say they envisioned the incineration of all gays, claiming it was God’s plan and had their words posted on the web.

At the very least, sensation-stalker Matt Drudge would link to the comments immediately, rightly whipping it into a major story. His zeal for fomenting scandals involving liberals would certainly overpower his obsessive fear that people might think he’s gay just for defending gays. (As if the rest of the world still doesn’t know he’s gay, even after David Brock’s “[expletive deleted] buddies” revelations and Jeanette Walls’[s] interviews with his former boyfriends.) Drudge’s openly gay compatriot, Andrew Sullivan, would no doubt take up the cause as well, attacking those nasty homophobe publishers on the left, railing on his web site about what hypocrites liberals are.

But if the paper in question is an influential conservative daily -- one that pumps up both of these right-wing gasbags regularly, and one that publishes Sullivan’s work -- then the rantings and ravings of its demagogic owner don’t seem to matter.

Sounds like Signorile has the same questions for Sullivan that I have expressed at Rittenhouse. How it is that Sullivan can enter a gay bar without having the crap beaten out of him is beyond my comprehension.

More temperately, as befits his persona, Signorile continues:

It’s sleazy enough that a conservative would work for Moon and ignore his dark and dangerous agenda. But how on earth could a gay writer take a check from a man who can’t wait to see him thrown into an oven? Andrew Sullivan has reveled in his own idiotic claim that after 9/11 certain liberals, because they didn’t agree with [President] George W. Bush’s policies, represented a “fifth column” supporting Osama bin Laden. Meanwhile, here he is, on the payroll of a guy who would like to see the mass extinction of his own people. Sullivan likes to think of himself as a gay rights activist -- that’s actually how New York magazine described him recently -- but he only seems to activate when the targets are liberals. [Former President] Bill Clinton gets the Sullivan hatchet treatment for signing the Defense of Marriage Act, while the grossly homophobic Unification Church’s leader gets a weekly column from him in return for a few bucks to keep Sullivan’s increasingly lackluster and predictable web page afloat.

Ouch. I’m glad Signorile likes me. Or at least I think he does.

Oh, and by the way, Signorile deserves a medal for having the guts (Can you believe it takes guts these days to state the obvious?) to have included in his column these four words: “the lazy Judy Woodruff.”

Sir, you are too kind.

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

“Eagles Keep Winning Despite a Key Statistic,” by Bob Brookover
“Eagles Notes: McNabb Snags SI Cover,” by Bob Brookover
“City Warns Birds Fans About Fires,” by Larry Eichler
“Sunday’s Game is Sold Out,” by Larry Eichler
“Sunday’s Game to Give Economy a Bit of a Lift,” by Larry Eichler
“Carolina Rookie Chriping About the Birds’ Chances,” by Frank Fitzpatrick
“He’s Panthers’ Quiet Reserve,” by Frank Fitzpatrick
“Pinkston Seeing Career Break Into Career,” by Ashley McGeacy Fox
“Eagles Should Feel Free to Enjoy This Game,” by Phil Sheridan

PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS

“The Last Do-over?” by Les Bowen
“Eagles Have Passed This Way Before,” by Paul Domowitch
“The Third Degree,” by Rich Hofmann
“Sixers Rooting for Eagles,” by Phil Jasner
“Some of the Best Things in Life are Three,” by Barbara Laker
“Trainer Keep Injured Birds on Track,” by Dana Pennett O’Neil
“Kasay Must Wonder if There’s More Trouble Afoot,” by John Smallwood
“The Third One Worked,” by Paul Vigna

I just voted. No, not for any race in Philadelphia or in Pennsylvania, but at Media Whores Online.

I voted in the site's contest for "Media Whore of the Year."

It was a tough decision given the contenders: David Brooks, Susan Estrich, Ted Koppel, Charles Krauthammer, Howard Kurtz, Frank Luntz, Zell Miller, Kathleen Parker, Tim Russert, and George Will.

Normally I consider the ballot box to be sacred. You probably surmised that, knowing me as a man who typically keeps his opinions to himself. [Cue laugh track.]

Regardless, I'm willing to tell you that tempted as I was to cast my ballot for Howie Kurtz, in the end I voted, as a majority of MWO readers have so far, for NBC's Tim Russert.

And I feel pretty darn good about it.

Yet the strange thing about this entire exercise is that I suspect Russert would be entirely too pleased to receive the award.

Since starting this blog almost two years ago I've found it interesting, to say nothing of amusing, to learn which topics hit, affect, or touch readers to the degree they will take the time to send me an e-mail about what I have written.

You might be surprised to learn that the post that by far has generated the most e-mail from readers was that which included a passing mention of my search for an online source for purchasing Marimekko sheets. Sure, it sounds strange, but I think it speaks well of Rittenhouse readers. They want to help, simple as that.

As for other hot topics, the few times I've mentioned Noam Chomsky, generally not entirely favorably, I have been inundated with e-mail from his supporters, a reaction that a few other bloggers have told me they have experienced as well.

More recently, a brief reminiscence about my mother's Christmas-season butter cookies generated a modest flood of mail from readers asking for the recipe, which I subsequently provided.

And then there was, or is, the issue of rent control, or rent stabilization, or both, in New York, where I lived before moving to Philadelphia.

As if I hadn't known already, I learned New York's bizarre and Byzantine regulation of rents is a very touchy subject, among New Yorkers of course, both those benefiting from the World War II-era program and those who pay (or in my case, paid) exorbitant rents because of New York's absurd housing laws, but also among readers of varying ideologies around the country.

I know, I'm a liberal Democrat, even a "leftist" some say, meaning that as a "socialist" or "quasi-socialist," whatever that might mean, even if it were true, I am presumed to support tough, even draconian, rent controls, not only in New York but everywhere.

Hardly. Regular and longtime readers of Rittenhouse know this is not the case, as does nearly everyone with whom I worked or socialized while I was living in New York. (Lots of unresolved arguments still hanging back in Gotham.)

I am, believe it not, a capitalist. And I am strongly, vehemently, unabashedly, and unequivocally opposed to any form of rent control, anywhere.

In fact, while living in New York I once became engaged in a heated argument with Daniel "Danny" O'Donnell, brother of television personality Rosie O'Donnell, when he was running in a Democratic primary election for City Council or something like that.

I happened to run into O'Donnell at West End Avenue and West 70th Street when I was living, quite unhappily geographically speaking, on the dreary, dowdy, and dumpy Upper West Side. (Hey, it wasn't my choice; the ex insisted. But I did manage to score us a 30th-floor apartment with views of Midtown, Central Park, the East Side, Uptown, and the GWB, all 425 square feet of it [Two grown men, two English bulldogs.], for the oh-so-reasonable rate of $2,400, and later $2,550, a month. After the breakup I moved to Chelsea, where I paid first $2,900 a month, and then $3,100 a month, on my own, for a substantially larger apartment.)

When I saw O'Donnell doing his meet-and-greet I thought, what the heck, I'll ask him. And I did, cheerfully posing the question, "What is your position on rent control and rent stabilization?" O'Donnell enthusiastically and vociferously responded with words to this effect: I'm for it. It's essential. I think the program should be expanded. Everyone benefits.

Uh, Danny? I know you probably assumed you had me, and my vote, within your grasp, but no. Wrong answer.

And so there we were, me and Danny O'Donnell, at West End Avenue and West 70th Street, arguing about an archaic social welfare program and eventually yelling at each other at the top of our lungs, O'Donnell, in my opinion, failing to score even a single point against my arguments. (So there.)

Anyway, all of that, above, is a roundabout way of linking to "Unstable and Out of Control," by Marian L. Sachs, on the op-ed page of today's New York Times.

Yes, I know, and yes, I see, she owns rental properties in New York. Big deal. Her arguments are sound and worth reading, and I agree with her wholeheartedly.

[Note to Rittenhouse staff: Prepare for the deluge.]

Is it that time of year already?

Apparently it is, at least judging from my friend Mad Kane’s calendar.

It’s time for the noted oboist, attorney, singer, songwriter, comic, humorist, blogger, and (fellow) insomniac’s second-annual “Dubya Quote Quiz.”

And thus I command the hordes: Go!

It’s a new year -- at least it was last I checked, each day being much like another around here -- and that means it’s time for Philadelphia to read another book under the auspices of the city’s “One Book, One Philadelphia” program.

This year’s selection, according to today’s Philadelphia Inquirer (“Phila. Picks ‘Color of Water’ to Read,” by Daniel Rubin), is The Color of Water, a two-year bestseller (1996-1997) written by James McBride, 46, a writer and jazz saxophonist living in Solebury, Pa.

The novel, described by Rubin as “a black man’s tribute to his Polish-Jewish mother,” is set partly in Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood and nearby Wilmington, Del.

Although I have some misgivings about citywide reading programs, the advantages seem to far outweigh the disadvantages. I missed out on last year’s selection, The Price of a Child, by Lorene Cary. That was unfortunate because Cary’s enthusiasm for the program -- she spoke to an amazing variety of groups in a wide range of settings -- and the incredible response of local readers made me wish I had participated in some way. I at least could have read the book.

According to the Inquirer McBride plans to speak and perform at some of the more than 100 “One Book, One Philadelphia” events scheduled during the next eight weeks. Sounds like fun.

It’s a new year -- at least it was last I checked, each day being much like another around here -- and that means it’s time for Philadelphia to read another book under the auspices of the city’s “One Book, One Philadelphia” program.

This year’s selection, according to today’s Philadelphia Inquirer (“Phila. Picks ‘Color of Water’ to Read,” by Daniel Rubin), is The Color of Water, a two-year bestseller (1996-1997) written by James McBride, 46, a writer and jazz saxophonist living in Solebury, Pa.

The novel, described by Rubin as “a black man’s tribute to his Polish-Jewish mother,” is set partly in Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood and nearby Wilmington, Del.

Although I have some misgivings about citywide reading programs, the advantages seem to far outweigh the disadvantages. I missed out on last year’s selection, The Price of a Child, by Lorene Cary. That was unfortunate because Cary’s enthusiasm for the program -- she spoke to an amazing variety of groups in a wide range of settings -- and the incredible response of local readers made me wish I had participated in some way. I at least could have read the book.

According to the Inquirer McBride plans to speak and perform at some of the more than 100 “One Book, One Philadelphia” events scheduled during the next eight weeks. Sounds like fun.

It’s not exactly a blog, but please welcome Martha Stewart and Martha Talks to the Rittenhouse blogroll.

Philadelphia Eagles 20
Green Bay 17

Donovan McNabb, Duce Staley, David Akers, Brian Dawkins, Andy Reid and so many others!

Sure, that was a strange ending, but who cares? It was a great game, and I’m glad it’s noisy in Philadelphia tonight.

A good kind of noisy.

Post-publication addendum (January 12): Coverage of the Eagles in today’s daily newspapers.

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

“Birds Get a Win on the Wild Side,” by Bob Brookover
“Eagles Turn Back Packers in OT,” by Bob Brookover
“An Early Stand That Mattered Late,” by Larry Eichel
“Panthers Ready for Visit to the Linc,” by Frank Fitzpatrick
“The Start of Something Big?” by Bob Ford
“Akers’ Answer was Blowing in the Wind,” by Ashley McGeachey Fox
“Quiet Skepticism Finally Grows Into Fans’ Joyful Noise,” by Patrick Kerkstra and Matthew P. Blanchard
“Eagles Once Again Find Way to Keep Dream Alive,” by Bill Lyon
“Eagles Blitz Aids Dawkins’[s] Big Interception,” by Ron Reid
“Circumstances of Defeat Leave Packers Devastated,” by Jim Salisbury
“‘Ya gotta believe,’ he said, Especially on 4th and Long,” by Phil Sheridan
“Sherman Inexcusably Folds at Crunch Time,” by Stephen A. Smith

PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS

“Eagles’ Brown Bounces Back,” by Les Bowen
“Perfectly Eagle,” by Les Bowen
“In Our Mind There’s Nothing in Carolina,” by Will Bunch
“Adding to the List of Sports' Miracle Plays,” by Bill Conlin
“Johnson's Only Concern is the Final Score,” by Paul Domowitch
“Like the Other Greats, McNabb Kept Firing Away,” by Sam Donnellon
“Play That Might Live Forever,” by Paul Hagen
“Hard to Figure, So Just Enjoy,” by Rich Hoffman
“A Yard Short, Packers Wouldn’t Take Big Gamble,” by Mike Kern
“Fans Never Gave Up Hope,” by Jim Nolan
“Dawkins Waits and Gets His Chance,” by Dana Pennett O’Neil
“Akers Atones Nicely for Rare Miss,” by Dana Pennett O’Neil
“Hip-flexor Injury Keeps Vincent on Sidelines,” by Dana Pennett O’Neil
“Unlocking the Keys,” by PDN staff
“Panthers Not a Team to be Taken Lightly,” by John Smallwood

Several bloggers (TBogg; Sadly, No; World O’Crap; Needles on the Beach), with good reason, have had much fun at the expense of Megan Cox Gurdon, one of National Review’s lame stable of columnists, their mirth arising in part, though, I assure you, in de minimus part (there’s much else with which to work), because Gurdon has named her son Paris, a fate such bloggers would have you believe has resigned and consigned this child to the unspeakably horrible fate that goes by the name of “homosexuality.”

This is ignorant and offensive, all the more disheartening since much of such smirking has come from bloggers I normally respect and admire.

Perhaps it’s a “geographic” or an “ethnocentric” thing. Perhaps these bloggers are unaware that “Paris,” or more often, “Parris,” while not a common Christian name, is far from unheard of, at least in the southeastern United States, running, for immediate purposes, from Maryland south to Georgia. (See, for example, former Maryland Gov. Parris Glendenning [D].)

As for the suggestion that the young man’s name, together with his parentally mandated, or at least familiarly conventional, I assume, use of the term “Mummy,” amusing and regrettable as it is, forever renders the boy to the social and cultural damnation of homosexuality, well, for that, even I have no words whatsoever.

I received the following message from Philadelphia Daily News columnist Ronnie Polaneczky yesterday, January 6, this her second missive in response to my piece, “Go Wild!”:

me, again

I can indeed be thin-skinned about some things (I’m only human...), but I’m sure not being thin-skinned about your references to my column. Instead, I’m [expletive deleted] that you put words in my mouth. Don’t do that, please. You can certainly take issue with whatever I actually WRITE, which is not only fine to do but in keeping with the lively spirit that characterizes your fun site, which I usually think is terrific. But to pretend to paraphrase something I never even wrote is misleading and just plain wrong.

Thanks for hearing me out on this.

Ronnie P.

I would have thought an experienced journalist like Polaneczky would have known that having raised the issue of libel, as she did in her January 5 e-mail to me, published at The Rittenhouse Review and TRR: The Lighter Side of Rittenhouse on the same date, that any direct contact between us should and would be immediately suspended, hereinafter to be conducted between her attorney(s) and mine.

Such is standard procedure in this business. (Just ask Los Angeles Times “editor” Mary Arno.)

Again, as I wrote on January 5:

I’ll leave it to readers to decide for themselves whether I accurately captured the spirit of Polaneczky’s article, “Revive the Vibe of Mayhem at Parade,” which may be read in its entirety online.

As for me, I suggest she is the one who needs to “re-read the column.”

For edification, I would advise readers to review Polaneczy’s article, particularly the last 14 paragraphs, in which the columnist approvingly quotes nearly 250 words from an e-mail or letter from PDN reader Mike Purkis.

Purkis lamented the “crack down” by Philadelphia police on Mummers Parade attendees who, in flagrant violation of the city’s open container laws, apparently thought little of consuming “beer” from “kegs of beer.”

Those are his words, not mine, and they are words happily, almost enthusiastically, by my reading, quoted by Polaneczky, who subsequently included this, from Mike, in reference to the parade: “It’s stupid. It’s no fun,” and to which she added, of her own accord, “Tell it, Mike!”

Polaneczky continued:

I think Mike’s onto something. Maybe, just as Las Vegas is embracing its original[] Sin City vibe in a racy ad campaign whose [sic] saucy slogan -[-] “What happens here, stays here” -[-] is aimed at re-energizing tourism, we ought to figure out how to revive the vibe of mayhem that used to flow like beer along the Mummers parade route. I know -[-] it was usually the beer that caused the mayhem. Still, the possibility of mayhem breaking out at any moment can do wonders for a parade. Like make people want to attend it. [Empasis added.]

All of this within the PDN’s six-day P.R. campaign to get more Philadelphians to attend the parade.

I stand by what I wrote. Other than that, I still -- and can -- have nothing to say to her.

I want to take a moment to thank everyone who within the past several days sent a donation to The Rittenhouse Review.

Your thoughtfulness and generosity are greatly appreciated, as are the many kind words of support and encouragement I have received from donors and other readers.

This is a difficult time, made all the more challenging by the recent harangue I received from an obviously very touchy Philadelphia Daily News columnist.

Donors who haven’t yet received a thank-you note by e-mail: please watch your postal mailbox.

Thanks to everyone -- the regular reader, the occasional visitor, and the accidental tourist -- for your support of The Rittenhouse Review.

The invaluable web resource known as Media Whores Online is back following a seasonal hiatus.

Praise God, for sites like Media Whores Online are among the few things that keep me sane these days, providing sufficient evidence that, truth be told, I am not living in some bizarre parallel universe where the obvious, the offensive, and the offensively obvious are overlooked by the supposedly well educated zombies defining the national discourse, such as it is.

Better yet, “The Horse” is asking readers to vote for the much-coveted title of “Media Whore of the Year.”

As you would expect, competition is stiff (in alphabetical order): David Brooks, Susan Estrich, Ted Koppel, Charles Krauthammer, Howard Kurtz, Frank Luntz, Zell Miller, Kathleen Parker, Tim Russert, and George Will.

I’m not sure yet who I will vote for.

Kurtz -- a walking, talking, way-too-much talking, mass of conflicted interests -- is just too easy. He abides in a different über-slut category of his very own. He deserves a special lifetime achievement award just for his relentless and shameless pimping of fellow slatterns Mickey Kaus and Andrew Sullivan.

I feel the same about Russert. What a disgrace to the once great name of “Meet the Press.” There are real journalists rolling over in their graves every Sunday morning because of this butt-licking hack.

Estrich would be an interesting choice since she’s relatively new to whoring, her recent propensity for walking the streets so plainly driven by the black hole into which her career otherwise was headed.

Parker? Tempting, but that fag hag, odious as she is -- and I love fag hags -- is but an amateur, out of her league even among this disreputable crew.

Brooks. Well, yes, but I assign more blame to the New York Times editors for his higher profile of late.

I’m pleased to see Koppel on the list. Why the man still has a job is beyond me.

Krauthammer: Despicable, as I’ve said many times before. He’s a disgrace even to his former profession, a gaggle of pseudo-scientific know-nothings with little to show for more than a hundred years of check note-taking.

As for Luntz, I’m still amazed his comments about Americans and the Holocaust, which, best I can tell, he has yet to attribute to polling rather than to his own “expertise,” have received so little attention.

Will? Once a lapdog -- particularly if Nancy Reagan’s lapdog -- always a lapdog. And a morality-for-you adulterous and divorced lapdog as well.

As for Miller, he’s barely a member of the human race as far as I’m concerned. That should be a disqualifying factor, but alas, it is not.

I learned this morning there’s at least one little town in America where Taco Bell is taken very seriously: Green Bay, Wis.

Ahead of this weekend’s match between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Green Bay Packers, William Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News writes about the village by the lake (“Bring it on, Cheeseheads!”):

So why do 70,000 cheese-headed folks -- 70 percent of the town (don’t call it a city - pul-leeez) -- show up at Lambeau Field on any given Sunday? Why has pro football succeeded here and failed in places with a few more folks, like, say, Los Angeles?

It’s not because the people are made of hearty midwestern stock. It’s because THERE’S ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE TO DO THERE!!!

Well, actually, there’s one other thing to do in Green Bay -- drink. Under the heading of “Entertainment,” the Green Bay Press-Gazette’s Web site doesn’t have “Nightlife” but there’s a massive section for “Taverns” -- as if there’s a difference between the Buck Stop Inn and the creatively named Watering Hole Tavern.

You’re certainly better off drinking than eating. The “Restaurant” section lists all nine of Green Bay’s Taco Bells under the heading “ethnic.”

Ethnic. That’s so cute, isn’t it?

This reminds me of a trip to Minneapolis more than 10 years ago during which everyone I met expressed great concern for my well being because I had my first dinner in that city at a Caribbean restaurant: “Oooo, are you alright? I hear the food there is so spicy.”

And do you know what? It really wasn’t. Spicy? Yes. “So spicy”? No. Topic-of-conversation spicy? Definitely not.

Philadelphia Daily News columnist and thin-skinned mayhem-seeker Ronnie Polaneczky writes, in response to “Go Wild!” (TRR: The Lighter Side of Rittenhouse, December 30):

wow - that’s a stretch

You wrote that I want “Mayhem and beer.” [Ed: Quotation marks added by Polaneczky. That exact phrase was not employed by me.

Did I say mayhem AND BEER? Where did I write that?

You wrote that I want “Free-flowing beer for everyone.”

I do? Where did I write that?

And that I don’t care about “No public restrooms along Broad Street?”

Wha...? What are you talking about?

You wrote that “Polaneczky wants everybody to get all rowdy and stuff. And head for the nearest alley when nature calls, as it inevitably does under such conditions: over and over and over again.”

I want people to pee in the alleys? Where did I write that?

I haven’t figured out if your references to my column are libelous or not, but they sure are stupid and inaccurate. Re-read the column. [Emphasis added.]

And, no, I don’t live near Broad Street. But I live right off the Parkway, and my front yard becomes a zoo every July 4th and for every single parade/festival/fireworks event on the Parkway that is ever scheduled. So what. We just deal with it. And the ones who don’t want to deal with it eventually move to the burbs, as is their right. Everyone has their preferences.

Ronnie P.

I’ll leave it to readers to decide for themselves whether I accurately captured the spirit of Polaneczky’s article, “Revive the Vibe of Mayhem at Parade,” which may be read in its entirety online.

As for me, I suggest she is the one who needs to “re-read the column.”

[Post-publication addendum: Seeking counsel.]

Readers, be advised there will be light posting ahead.

This week I am working on a freelance editing assignment.

I’m editing a book. An entire book.

Okay, not editing editing, but performing a necessary editorial function for the entire book.

It’s pretty cool. And when I’m done I will know more about the late 20th century literature of a certain European country than I would have thought possible.

Meanwhile, I’m pleased today’s calendar finally reads January 5. That means all of the holiday stuff is over, including potential employers’ vacation time and long weekends. Maybe, just maybe, the job market will begin to improve soon. At the very least, perhaps people will again take my phone calls or even read my resumé.

Alas, bills take no holidays. Rent is due today, my potential housemate situation fell through, and time is running out.

I’m trying not to think what The Rittenhouse Review and TRR: The Lighter Side of Rittenhouse will become if and when written not from Philadelphia but instead from a posh, but far too quiet, resort town in New York. Frankly, I would rather not know. I hate to ask, but if you have thought about hitting the tip box but yet have not, please consider doing so today.

In a series of events reminiscent of National Review Online’s dumping of Ann Coulter, a blog called Chapin Nation has rid itself of comical “objectivist” Amber Pawlik.

Fittingly, given the comparison with NRO and Coulter, it’s not clear whether Chapin Nation took action as a result of Pawlik having expressed views that might be considered anti-Semitic, since the issue is not mentioned there [Ed.: No permalinks over there.], or whether MensNewsDaily, which long has featured Pawlik’s dribblings, has followed or will follow, uh, suit.

The latest installment in the ongoing demonstration of the sanctity of marriage has been filed -- literally, and on both sides of the equation -- by pop star Britney Spears.

TV station KRNV (Reno, Nev.) reports, in a piece headlined at the station’s website, “Britney Spears Seeks Annulment After Quickie Las Vegas Wedding”:

Pop star Britney Spears married a childhood friend at a Las Vegas wedding chapel, but quickly arranged to have it annulled. . . .

The two arranged an annulment Saturday afternoon, just hours after the wedding, in the presence of several people, including a Las Vegas lawyer. Spears and Jason Allen Alexander, both 22, journeyed by limousine to the Little White Wedding Chapel on the Strip after a stop at the Ghostbar inside the Palms Casino Hotel.

In addition to “quickie,” Spears’s marriage has been described by various media outlets as “madcap,” “the gag that went too far,” and “a joke.”

Ah, the sanctity of marriage. It must be defended and protected from the likes of me.

This is too precious.

The American Family Association has at its web site a poll soliciting public opinion on the controversial issue of “gay marriage.”

The AFA promises, or at least the organization says -- and that’s as good as a promise, I think -- it will share the results of the poll with Congress.

So, go ahead: Torture the AFA!

Please welcome the sites listed below to the Rittenhouse blogroll. Visit them early and often.

Avocado 8

Bitching Post

I Am Eating My Husband’s Soul

Kicking Ass

Letter From Gotham

När Jag Ändå Har Ordet [Now That I Have the Floor] (In Swedish.)

Sadly, No

Talent Show

Big Taco Bell fan here. A regular border runner, as they say. When I get a hankering, when I get to a jonezin’, for Taco Bell, nothing else will do. (The same holds for McDonald’s, but that’s a tale for another day.)

I know it’s crap. I know it’s not “authentic.” But it fills a need, a void, a bizarre craving.

I just have one question: What’s with the “sour cream”?

There simply is no foodstuff in the world with less taste than Taco Bell’s sour cream.

The only word I can think of to describe the taste is “white.” Taco Bell’s sour cream tastes like white. Or whiteness. It tastes like white whiteness. I’m not having it again.

[Note: This post originally was published at TRR: The Lighter Side of Rittenhouse]

This is just a slice of my life. Or maybe it falls under the category of “random vent.” Either way, I’m miserable.

The girls upstairs, the ones on steroids, the ones who apparently think “upstairs” means “VIP lounge,” are having themselves a fabulous Saturday afternoon, their night-club prepping regimen having begun before noon today.

The music is blaring through open windows -- If you play junky music and no one else can hear it, does it mean you’re merely B-list? -- which comes as no surprise since one of them is, get this, a DJ in London! . . . London . . . A DJ . . . In London . . . London, England . . . Uh, Madonna lives there? . . . Elton John? . . . Pet Shop Boys? . . . Hellooo? Ringing any bells?

Not impressed? I wasn’t either, not when the information was first force-fed to me nor on the half-dozen occasions on which I was reminded of my neighbor's thoroughly uninteresting employment.

Please, it's London. English people live there. Give me Australia any day. They have better teeth. And much nicer bathing suits. Plus that whole criminal element, penal colony thing . . . well, you know what that’s about.

[Post-publication addendum: John of Waremouse, writing from my old stomping grounds, shares my pain. Don’t worry, John, I’ve been blasting “Creeque Alley: The History of The Mamas and The Papas,” a two-CD set, all afternoon. And singing along. Paybacks are hell.]

Happy new year, Philadelphia! I’m just so pleased to learn my still-new hometown welcomed 2004 in such despicable style.

The Philadelphia Daily News today reports, in “Plenty Greeted 2004 With Shots,” by Simone Weichselbaum, that New Year’s Eve brought a barrage of gunfire in the City of Brotherly Love:

[I]n Philadelphia, hundreds of bullets rained down from above during the first few minutes of 2004. […]

As 2004 rolled in, police said they received more than 350 calls reporting gunshots and 21 people were arrested for using guns as celebratory objects. [Ed.: Emphasis added.]

Twenty-one people just having a little Second Amendment fun? Hardly. It’s merely the inevitable result of lax handgun laws.

Random gunfire is the last thing Philadelphia needs. As Weichselbaum reports, “By the second day of the new year, the homicide rate was already on the go, with four reported killings.”

Four people dead. By January 2. Four people. That’s a family, a home, a household. God help us.

I know, I know, “Guns Don’t Kill People, People Kill People.” Hell, I’ve read that crap on hundreds of primer-laden, spittle-covered pickups. I’m not impressed.

Yeah, guns don’t kill people. Stupid people with stupid guns kill people.

Or maim them for life.

Sorry, Joe. We done you wrong, buddy.

In a previous post here I linked to an item, “100 Things About Me,” that I published in October 2002 at my second blog, TRR: The Lighter Side of Rittenhouse.

A reader who traveled to TRR to peruse the list writes:

Huh? What’s the deal with number 24? “I believe credit-card interest should be deductible again.” When was it ever? What’s up with that? How can we get in on it?

Ah, youth.

The reader is obviously not in a position to recall that Congress and former President Ronald W. Reagan (R) eliminated the deductibility of credit-card interest through the Tax Reform Act of 1986.

I never understood the logic behind this measure, other than the drive to reduce the massive deficits caused by the Reagan administration’s insane fiscal and economic policies. There was at the time, however, much resentful grumbling among middle-aged and older Americans about the purportedly irresponsible spending habits of Baby Boomers and “yuppies” (yes, from the Reagan White House), the same bitter thinking that appears to underlie the current tax code’s mistreatment of single people.

Anyway, as it happens, 1986 was the year I entered the workforce. I soon accumulated what, at the time, seemed to be an unbearably onerous debt load of $1,000. Ha. There’s been no looking back since.

I once asked esteemed economists and fellow bloggers Max Sawicky and Brad DeLong about this matter but, I’m embarrassed to say, I can no longer remember their answers.

We’ll have to ask them. Regardless of what they say -- in other words, even if we are dismayed by their responses -- their word must be respected, for despite their occupation they are gentlemen.

Perhaps they can explain why this tax benefit -- which, if restored, would represent real and genuine and meaningful tax relief to millions of middle- and working-class Americans -- was stolen from us and why nobody in the past 17 years even has thought about restoring it.

Okay, I know I’m strange and have obscure interests, particularly in the area of languages and linguistics, but really, is there a genuine market for a title such as Talk Now! Sami?

Sami?

Do you know what that is?

Sami is spoken by, well, the Sami, also known as the Lapps.

In Lapland.

There are an estimated 48,000 to 75,000 Sami living in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, and among that close-knit group are spoken nine different variations of the language.

How the publisher, EuroTalk, intends to recoup its investment in this project is beyond me.

The other day a friend was reading personal ads out loud, all, I assure you, for his edification and not mine as I am what once was known in polite circles as “a confirmed bachelor,” a characterization that, even updated for modern days (see no. 70), still holds true.

As no doubt many a pop-culture scholar already has propounded at length, personal ads can offer incredible insights into the tenor of our times. And whether classified as non-fiction or fiction, they’re often clever, sweet, and poignant, but sometimes cloying and even sad.

At other times they’re just mean, like the one my friend read to me, starting his elocution without having scanned the advertisement to the end.

The ad began with the usual “I’m this, I’m that . . . I like this and that,” and ended with: “No unemployeds [sic], please.”

Gosh, that hurts. Rejected by the voice behind a personal ad I wasn’t even reading, a person of whose existence I never would have known otherwise, someone who barely captured my attention with his vain attempts at smart witticisms, and a man blissfully unaware of the most basic nuances of the English language.

You see? I can throw out all of those insults, and it still hurts. A little, anyway.

Maybe I should answer the ad. I can pretend I’m the chairman and chief executive of my own company, and, upon learning of his profession, or mere employment (assuming I could do that, as this is Philadelphia), abruptly call an end to the evening, expressing contempt for my valuable time having been wasted by such a peon.

No. I’m too nice a guy to do something like that.

Philadelphia Weekly, assuming such an organ speaks with a single editorial voice, declared in its latest issue, “blogs are out.”

Actually, the PW didn’t say exactly that. The PW said, in a year-end “in” and “out” list and in a construction exceeded in its inanity only by its awkwardness: “Blogs = OUT!”

According to the little piece, which carries no byline other than “Hip-o-Meter,” which I hope and pray is not a real person’s real name:

The Big Blog Explosion of 2003 started out promising, but we’re officially sick of reading the same damn thing over and over again on 17 different blogs. There’s just not enough interesting [expletive deleted] out there to go around, okay? And we certainly don’t need bloggers’ sorry [sic] analyses of world events [Ed.: I think that’s a reference to Den Beste.] or a list of their CD collections. We predict diaries -- that is, personal, handwritten, for-my-eyes-only diaries -- will make a comeback in `04.

Well, PW, aside from the fact that the “Big Blog Explosion” occurred in 2002 and not 2003, I urge you to keep in mind that no less a great and glorious journalistic, uh, enterprise as USA Today seems to think blogs are hot, hot, hot. The atavists of Arlington took pains just three days ago to introduce readers to such dynamic and creative practitioners of the craft as Glenn Reynolds, Mickey Kaus, and Andrew Sullivan to prove it! (Hmm . . . where have I heard those names before? Oh, I know, in every friggin’ newspaper article about blogging I’ve read in the past two years, nearly every one of which has missed the whole point of the endeavor.)

Furthermore, I can think of a few people reading this particular post who will hold you to that prediction a year from now. Okay, maybe not a few, but at least one. Either way, great blogging occurs -- if I must say so myself -- just a few blocks, or maybe more, East and West and North and South of your very own cubicles every day.

“[P]ersonal, handwritten . . . diaries”? I’m betting whichever editorial assistant cranked out this list was an English major; an English major who really, really adores Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and Anaïs Nin. (Speaking of Anaïs, has the New York Review of Books finally finished publishing excerpts from her diaries? Because, I mean, everyone except that gang lost whatever interest they had in that lame genre years ago.)

Oh, and by the way, PW, year-end “in” and “out” lists? Don’t you think they’re just a little bit unoriginal, derivative, formulaic, trite, hackneyed, pedestrian, shopworn, clichéd, and useless? In other words, OUT?!

The last time I was led by my fellow bloggers to read the uninformed and unworldly drool of one Amber Pawlik I found her attributing lesbianism to wanton heterosexual promiscuity -- and doing so without providing any scholarly support whatsoever -- in a purported cause-and-effect relationship that would be a shocking, to say nothing of risible, revelation to virtually every single lesbian I’ve ever known in my life.

Hopping around the blogosphere today I happened to hit World O’ Crap, where I learned Pawlik, an “objectivist,” though one who is happy to set aside her rigid “philosophical” constructs in order to secure a degree from the (heavily) taxpayer-supported and state-subsidized Pennsylvania State University, has not missed the ridicule to which she has been subjected by her intellectual superiors, including TBogg, Pandagon, Roger Ailes, Sadly No, and the aforementioned World O’Crap.

Pawlik, steeped in the wisdom dispensed for the ages through such ponderous tomes as Atlas Shrugged, and one would suppose, a rigorous scholar of several thousand years of Jewish history, recently doodled a few notes for a site called MensNewsDaily in which she drew the rather startling, but to her no doubt obvious, connection between “objectivism” and Judaism. (See “My New Nickname,” December 29.)

Pawlik writes:

Besides “Rebam,” which is a nickname my uncle gave to me when I was a young girl, a new nickname for me seems to float around various blogs that like to diss [sic] yours truly: “Ayn Randian Princess.” [Ed.: Atrocious sentence structure in original.] Frankly, I like it! But notice something. You could easily change “Ayn Randian” to “Jewish American” and you have exactly the reason why these people, and so many others, hate me. Indeed, Objectivism and American Judaism have a lot in common. Keep in mind I’m not critiquing [sic] this; o’ [sic] contraire[,] I like it. Some common themes [sic] includes [sic] rational self-interest, materialism, [and] capitalism. All things yours truly likes. So, it is fitting that young Objectivist female me, who writes on [sic] dating, sex, femininity, masculinity, etc., gets called an “Ayn Randian Princess,” which were I Jewish, and I am not, would turn into, well, you know.

It’s not clear what Pawlik is trying to pull here, except to shield herself from rampant criticism by cowering behind the entirely unjustified, unwarranted, and irrelevant charge of anti-Semitism.

This canard is absurd on its face. It is all the more offensive when Pawlik’s own remarks, quoted above unaltered except for a few editorial hints, carry more than a whiff of anti-Semitism. At the very least, the comments would spark a guarded reaction by any reasonably informed person.

Pawlik may think the incoherent, discordant, and muddled collection of Maoisms that constitutes “objectivism” represent deep philosophical thought. Those who know better object -- yes, object -- to her blithe, facile, and ignorant -- yes, ignorant -- equation of selfishness, materialism, and greed with so great and noble a religious tradition as Judaism, and by extension, with its adherents.

Over to you, Max.

The prevailing sentiment around Philadelphia is that the 103rd Mummers Parade, held on Broad Street yesterday, was a resounding success, or at least an improvement over the festivities of the past several years.

Alas, Ronnie, there was no mayhem, and yet spectators managed to enjoy themselves nonetheless, aided more than anything, I suspect, by the weather: sunny, low 50s, and light breezes.

Both the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News offer plenty of parade coverage today. A good place to start, especially to catch a few good photos set up as a slide show, is “Bullish on Broad St.,” by Michael Currie Schaffer in the Inquirer.