Music of the Day: Grover Washington, Jr., Time Out of Mind.

Last evening my lovely bride finished a book that her sister recommended some weeks ago, the 2005 novel by Mark Helprin, Freddy and Fredericka. She laughed through much of the book, which is always a good sign, and this morning she handed me the book and said, "Read it."

As you know, I'm working my way through a couple of other books right now, the Brinkley/Reagan-thing and Bowman's book, Honor: A History, and as I noted here yesterday, my latest issue of the Claremont Review of Books arrived, etc., and so forth. Still, I took the book with me to the slaughterhouse, hoping to read a bit between eviscerations. What I didn't know was that I'd damn near die laughing in the first 80 pages. . . .

So even though I've not yet read 100 pages, I'm going to recommend it; Helprin's style is eminently readable, the characters are great, the plays on words are amazingly droll, and the plot (just now making itself evident) is intriguing. Enough for now; I've gotta' get back to the book!

AJ

Music of the Day: Alvin Youngblood Hart, Start With the Soul

We've had so many summer visitors this year (and technically it's only just now summer) that all schedules and plans have gone straight to hell. All, or most, of the visits have been good, with only an occasional unpleasantness, quickly forgotten or forgiven upon departure of the offending individual. Grudges do no good, forgiveness is the better thing, and if we can't keep those things in mind, wine salves the small wounds.

But all of this foot traffic in and out of the ranch means that reading schedules and commitments and plans for regular writing have been mostly abrogated in favor of company, travel, delectations and comestibles, tennis, shopping, and sight-seeing. In addition, staying in touch with things in the world has been nigh on impossible, hence the lack of any serious ramblings here in this space (if a blog qualifies as "space"). I haven't watched the news in a long time and yesterday I felt the need to switch on the TeeVee, briefly, to catch a smattering of some news broadcast. Mistake. . . .

I only caught about ten seconds of the loud man on Fox, the O'Reilly fellow, who was listening raptly to some attractive young woman as she talked about the "body language" of some politico during a Q&A session on some other TeeVee program; the attractive young woman was giving her assessment of the veracity of the speaker based upon. . .you guessed it. . .the speaker's body language--hand gestures, head movements, cheek-twitches, eye-tics, puckered sphincter (just kidding!) and such.

I thought this kind of mumbo-jumbo went out at the close of the 1970s, but apparently not; the loud O'Reilly fellow was, I think, feigning interest in all of the theories and suppositions based upon gesticulations and spasms, but nonetheless there he was, entertaining this stuff on his show, which he always declaims is number one in the cable news business. Number one. Body language. Fox News.

What's next, I asked myself--phrenology? I can just imagine Brit Hume listening to some expert in the "science" of phrenology talking about the bumps on Obama's head and what they mean--his strengths and vulnerabilities, his predilections, his soft spots (literally), his growth areas, and so forth. Maybe Chris Wallace will have someone on his Sunday morning show tossing chicken bones into the air and analyzing the arrangements brought about by gravity and giving us insights into Fred Thompson's future as a viable presidential candidate.

As noted in the previous entry, I held some hope that Fox might be the last place in TeeVee Land to provide some measure of believable news, but it is now clear that Fox too has given itself over to the Dark Side. This kind of insane, and inane, gabble I expected on MSNBC and ABC and CBS and, especially, the Today Show, but now the whiz-bangs at Fox have crossed the line--whereas I want news, they apparently insist on "entertaining" and presenting superstition as if it were fact. The closer we get to next year's election, the less of this stuff we need, but there seems to be no stopping the downhill slide towards November '08.

Hope was redeemed today with the arrival of this month's Claremont Review of Books, and in another week or so I can expect to receive my next issue of Commentary, and then shortly thereafter, my copy of Policy Review should arrive, so I'll be okay for a while--at least until I turn on the TeeVee again and see someone slaughtering a goat and reading its entrails to begin a discussion on House seats up for grabs.

AJ

Music of the Day: John Scofield, Hand Jive

My morning routine took me to Fox News, briefly, today--just to see if life might be normal or if the jihadist mad dogs had struck again here at home. Apparently, life is normal. Even Fox News has succumbed to the All Paris, All The Time theory of "news" broadcasting--sure enough, when I flipped on the tube and adjusted the rabbit ears to get the snow out of the picture, there she was (I think it was her--the helicopter was obviously at great altitude, so it was a long shot that was somewhat out of focus) being escorted to or from some jail in LA for some reason or other. Ack! More Paris news! Why oh why oh why. . . .

I hit the "mute" key on the gasoline-powered remote and waited for the next story; I guess the producers at Fox felt that Paris provided a natural segue for their next story, a lawsuit filed by two girls against the people who do the Girls Gone Wild videos. Apparently the two aggrieved girls are attempting to make the case that they only agreed to flash their boobies and/or butts if the film footage wasn't "released." Of course the whole point of Girls Gone Wild is to release the footage in the form of videos for sale; this bit of seemingly obvious information appears to have eluded these two girls who, the story goes, are now suing because of. . . .

I really should not have pulled the plug so violently from the wall because the whole damned socket and plate came out with the plug; the sparks resulted in a small fire in the living room, which I had to put out with water from the dog's dish and now Max the Wonder Dog isn't happy with me.

Honestly, I thought Fox News was, now and then, a haven of reason in a world of Journalists Gone Wild, but I guess I was wrong; but as I think about it for a few more seconds, I remember the nightly lineup at Fox, including the bombastic, rude, (and loud!) O'Reilly, the odd (synonyms: strange, abnormal, unusual, out of the ordinary, peculiar, anomalous, weird, funny) couple of Hannity and Colmes (the latter gent being only slightly less scary in appearance than the Congressman from the Planet Whackazoid, Dennis Kucinich), and Greta What's Her Name, who I think is still doing stories about the missing girl in Aruba and/or whichever celebrity is in legal trouble this week. No damned wonder the default setting on the TeeVee is the Military Channel.

Clearly it's time to change the morning routine and hit the books again before heading off to the slaughterhouse for the day's carnage. Not that I've been slacking in the reading department; I've finished re-reading Richard Mitchell's 1979 book Less Than Words Can Say, I'm now re-reading his 1981 book The Graves of Academe (both of which are available on the Underground Grammarian website--see list to the right of this blog), and I'm reading Douglas Brinkley's new book, The Reagan Diaries. I've also re-read P.J. O'Rourke's 1996 half-comic piece entitled The American Spectator's Enemies List, and I'm still (slowly) making my way through James Bowman's book Honor: A History. Add to that the occasional chapter in Paul Nitze's 1989 book From Hiroshima to Glasnost: At the Center of Decision--A Memoir, which dovetails nicely, now and then, with President Reagan's diaries. And, once in a while, just for giggles, I pick up a copy of Newsweek. . . .

AJ

Music of the Day: Flying Monkey Orchestra, Back in the Pool

Someone (we're not sure who) last year signed us up for a subscription to Newsweek, that scurrilous left-wing fluff-rag that shows up, damnit, weekly. Mostly it goes, un-read, into the magazine rack next to the sofa, but every now and then, just for fun (or to jack up my bile-level) I pick up an issue and peruse it, which I did this morning.

The lead article this week was entitled The New War on Hillary by two people by the name of Darman and Hosenball and it was four pages of nothingness about the Senator from New York and ostensible presidential candidate, complete with six flattering photos and one not-so-flattering photo of her included. When I read the headline I almost passed this morning's Starbucks' through my nose laughing, but then I thought to myself, "Okay, perhaps there's a new war against Hillary--let's see who is involved and what they're saying. Maybe I'll enlist. . . ."

At the least I thought I'd get a good laugh out of the piece--after more than seven years of ceaseless, unending, unremitting, predictable, mendacious, grotesque Bush-bashing from every quarter of the mainstream media, the idea of a "new war on Hillary" seemed pretty humorous, and far-fetched, on its face, but what the hell, I thought, it's early in the day, the sky is blue, the breeze is cool, Max the Wonder Dog is still asleep and not needing to go out for walkies, so maybe I'll invest six or seven minutes in this screed.

Result: No evidence, from what I could tell, to justify the headline, no big revelation about a "new war" against the Mrs., just some recapitulation of old stuff from R. Emmett Tyrrell and something about Dan Burton being a "little-heard-from member of the minority party." Oh yeah, some guy named David Bossie, who worked for Burton, is mentioned twice, with one of those being this block-buster sentence: "In recent months, he [Bosie] has returned to investigating the Clintons, this time for a tough documentary scheduled for release in theaters this fall."

That's it: A one-man war, although the article alludes to other "active research teams, " all un-named. Talk about anti-climax; I finished my second cup of coffee without incident--no laughing, no immediate urge to fling Newsweek into the dumpster.

I made the mistake, however, of further perusing this week's issue of one of America's most popular "adult comic books," as my old running mate Dr. GDA, Jr., calls this rag, and this is what I found in the "My Turn" column. Some geezer named Denker in Staten Island has AN ENTIRE PAGE devoted to his maunderings and fulminations about being a nudist. Now this had laugh potential. And I was not disappointed. The "editors" at Newsweek gave this nut-job a full page to babble about such weighty notions as these: "All people should join me in taking off their clothes." He then lists six (count 'em) reasons why being nekkid is a good idea, starting with the most obvious and important reason, which is: "We could all zip through airport security." Yep, that's it, I want to sit, naked, on a freezing plane for five hours while flying to see dear old Mom for my next visit. Be careful with that seatbelt! And in case of a crash-landing, I'm gonna' die for sure because there is no way in hell I'm putting my head between my legs to get in that FAA-approved crash-survival-position. Call me crazy. . . .

Moving right along to nudity-virtue number three, Denker tells us that "nudists don't know how rich anyone is because everyone is dressed [sic] the same." This is followed by virtue number four, which is, "nudists listen to each other, because at a clothing-optional beach everyone makes eye contact." Damn those clothes for reducing beach eye-contact! Finally we're told that "nudists tend to be very kind people who take up many worthy causes."

At that point I have a disconcerting image of geezer-nudists along the side of the road to town, bending over to pick up litter for collection in those blue plastic bags they heft--a scary thought and one liable to cause countless auto accidents.

It's good to learn, too, that Denker's high blood pressure is alleviated by stumbling around in the altogether at the beach, but what's good for him may not be so good for me. For instance, going back to the War on Hillary for just a second, the thought of seeing Hillary Clinton nude in an airport security line is both funny and sufficiently off-putting that I had to fling the Newsweek into the dumpster. I never even made it to George Will's column at the back of this rag--and I don't think that's a design flaw on the part of the editors.

AJ

Yesterday, on a CBS Sunday news show, Senator Joe Lieberman said, "I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq." "And to me, that would include a strike into. . .over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers."

There's more, so here's the link, straight from the horse's mouth at CBS: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/06/10/ftn/printable2908476.shtml

AJ