Whom the gods would destroy, they first make swear out affidavits. So Christopher Hitchens, the Oxonian wit gone Washingtonian witless by ratting on his erstwhile friend Sidney Blumenthal, has perhaps done us a favor by reminding the huge circle of his ex-friends–along with the many interested passers-by, staring at what Mr. Hitchens has wrought like Read More
As the herd of Republican lemmings thunders toward its chosen precipice, indignation continues to resound at the abuse of power by then-Gov. William Jefferson Clinton at the expense of Paula Corbin Jones. The recent arousal of Republican interest in the victimization of (yes) Southern Womanhood reeks of Confederate noblesse oblige, a sentiment apparently inapplicable when Read More
Enough jokes about Larry Flynt's Late-Night Bust. After launching a flutter of rumors around the world, with journalists trying to figure out whether the time announced for his press conference was Eastern or Pacific standard time, the only meat that America's second-best-known pornographer could wave before a room of reporters the night of Jan. 11 Read More
When the word "surreal" becomes a commonplace, the world has gone too weird for words. You can choke on the banalities. Democrats deplored the indecency of conducting an impeachment trial while American troops are in harm's way, and it was left to a Republican during the House debate to note that in June 1972, with Read More
Editing a book is an act of generosity. It's a mind-meld, an act of love–love for the work. The true editor enters a manuscript and asks, What is best for this book? What padding needs to be shorn, what rumination added? Is this the right word? Which flat characters need rounding? Would A talk that Read More
Fifty-six years after a Gestapo agent in a Nazi-occupied Galician-Polish-Ukrainian town put two bullets into the fertile brain of Bruno Schulz, the Theatre de Complicite brought to the Lincoln Center Festival in July a luminous production based on his quivering, surrealist short stories. "Based on" in this case does not mean that the show "dramatizes" Read More
Like police who blow a case by trotting out tainted evidence at trial, The Cincinnati Enquirer blew a fine exposé of Chiquita bananas. In the same month when CNN and Time together did as much to discredit investigative journalism as Newsweek 's Michael Isikoff, The Enquirer made national news when it ran a page 1 Read More
Kurt and Courtney rubbed many reviewers the wrong way, partly because director Nick Broomfield slyly set his documentary up to do exactly that. This slice–no, slash–through the grunge underworld masquerades as a whodunit, poking and prodding through the hypothesis that Courtney Love, before she made herself over as a Hollywood princess, lorded it over the Read More
Now that the Manhattan Theater Club has rediscovered its nerve and reinstated Corpus Christi on its fall schedule, let's pause for a moment and clarify some arguments.
For readers who have been on Mars for the past month, here's a recap. Terrence McNally's new play is said (by people who haven't seen it, though various scripts Read MoreAs we swoop down the San Diego Freeway, my stepdaughter looks up at the off-white Getty Center atop the Sepulveda Pass and says, "It's a research hospital." Exactly, thinks this New Yorker. An immense medical complex aiming to cure, or at least coax into remission, the sprawl-cum-city that has become the template for most of Read More
Nike Inc., while offending people on almost as many continents as it has shod them, has lately been skimping on P.R. My e-mail inquiry to the eponymous Mr. Vada Manager of Nike's public relations office recently got bounced back with a note saying that Mr. Manager's mailbox was full with no fewer than 1,000 messages. Read More
Two weeks ago in this space, I chastised ABC, CBS, and NBC for dereliction of journalistic duty for neglecting to shed light on disturbing conditions in factories making Nike and Reebok shoes in Vietnam–conditions made visible in an hourlong documentary in early April by ESPN that put the big three TV networks to shame. The Read More
ESPN, the cable sports network, has proved itself far more serious about reporting labor conditions than the so-called big three, those magisterial dinosaurs whose news divisions have been awfully busy lately exposing Monica, Kathleen, Linda and the Oval Orifice gang. You give them a keyhole, they'll give you a whirl, but when it comes to Read More
In the same week that S.I. Newhouse Jr. dumped Random House into Bertelsmann's maw, the news that someone in power cares a hoot about books was faintly heartening. Of course, the someone in question was Kenneth Starr, and the way the independent prosecutor cares about books is to conduct surveillance of them, specifically by subpoenaing Read More
Those who thrill in anticipation of a disgraced President leaving the White House under a cloud might cast their thoughts back 30 years to an actual, not fantasized, abdication.
The evening of March 31, 1968, Lyndon Johnson took to national television and spoke in a voice both pious and wheedling about the ways in which Read More
