A podcast about books, art & life — not necessarily in that order
Off to L.A. this weekend, dear readers! I’ll be busy with an online project for work, so there may be no “What It Is” on Monday. Like you care. Anyway, since you’re just here for another installment of my idiosyncratic links, just click “more”!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: Nov. 6, 2009”
Guess who’s about to finish his last regular issue of his magazine for the year? (The year-end one is a big directory.) No sad trombone for me!
Want some links? Just click “more”!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: Oct. 30, 2009”
Last night, I had dinner with pals in Brooklyn and walked in the door at 1:15 a.m. (at least 40 minutes of my lateness was due to a two-car collision in the Lincoln Tunnel and two separate construction zones near the Meadowlands that turned magically turned three lanes of Rt. 3 into one). This morning, I drive down to suburban Philadelphia to deliver a flatscreen TV to the winner of a raffle at my annual conference. Because my publisher doesn’t want it to get damaged in shipping.
So while you read these links, I’ll be cruising along the highway, checking out the foliage, trying to stay awake, and wondering how this ever became part of my job description.
Oh, just click “more”!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: Oct. 23, 2009”
Here’s a 35-minute video of Charlie Rose’s interview with Robert Caro last April, at the end of which Mr. Caro mentions that the final volume of his LBJ biography won’t be published for another three years.
That should give you enough time to read The Power Broker
Seriously: If you want to develop an understanding of how political power works in America, you really need to read Mr. Caro’s work.
You don’t wanna know. Now the conference is over, but I’m still pounding out pages for the October issue. On top of that, I’ve either got poison ivy, shingles, or . . . neck-AIDS!
But you just want some fun links to check out, huh? Well, just click “more”!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: Oct. 2, 2009”
Okay, I’m getting to this late; our conference really wiped me out this week. But it was a raging success, so I’m happy. But exhausted.. If you’re looking for some weird and fun links, just click “more”!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: Sept. 25, 2009”
What I’m reading: Moby Dick
What I’m listening to: The Lexicon of Love
What I’m watching: Inglourious Basterds at a 1:30 p.m. matinee on opening day. I enjoyed the heck out of it, but it really wasn’t about the Basterds and the baseball-bat-to-the-head marketing of it. I don’t really get the spelling thing, but “Variations on Interrogations” probably wasn’t commercial enough. And, yeah, Christoph Waltz’s performance is fantastic.
What I’m drinking: Cascade Mountain Gin & Q Tonic.
What Rufus is up to: Meeting his cousins in New England! (pictures to come)
Where I’m going: Up to Wappingers Falls next weekend for my friends’ 10th anniversary bash. Rufus will have to deal with another longish car ride (as in, over an hour).
What I’m happy about: Having dinner with an old pal from grad school, getting to see my cousins in CT, and seeing an old college friend, all in the span of 65 (or so) hours.
What I’m sad about: That the position at which I lie on my loveseat in order to rub Rufus’ belly and still read from my laptop is wreaking havoc on my neck/shoulders.
What I’m worried about: That realism isn’t realism.
What I’m pondering: What it means that the only book I’m interested in from either of these previews (1, 2) of next season’s releases is R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis
Remember, kids: when you’re trying to slime an ideology you don’t agree with, it’s a Shock Doctrine, but when it’s your side, then it’s a “potent combination of a serious crisis and a clear progressive democratic mandate for change.”
Three weeks ago, I wrote about CIA Director Leon Panetta’s “I’m not here to talk about the past” op-ed piece, in which the agency was just following orders for the previous 8 years. Mr. Panetta was writing because of an uproar over a secret “jihadist” assassination program that had been devised during a previous regime. He canceled the program the day after he found out about it, and reported it to Congress, noting that it had never been put into operation and had not been used to assassinate members of Al Qaeda.
It always felt like a piece of the story was missing, and now we might have that missing piece. According to the NYTimes, the program also employed an outside contractor, Blackwater USA, for “planning, training and surveillance.” And, well . . .
It is unclear whether the C.I.A. had planned to use the contractors to actually capture or kill Qaeda operatives, or just to help with training and surveillance in the program. American spy agencies have in recent years outsourced some highly controversial work, including the interrogation of prisoners. But government officials said that bringing outsiders into a program with lethal authority raised deep concerns about accountability in covert operations.
Now, the main point of my day job is that organizations should stick to their core competencies. You know: “If there’s a function that you can’t do well in-house, then you should look to outsource it.” Still, I can see where a privatized hit team getting captured on foreign soil might create some problems. Fortunately,
Blackwater’s work on the program actually ended years before Mr. Panetta took over the agency, after senior C.I.A. officials themselves questioned the wisdom of using outsiders in a targeted killing program.
So, good for Mr. Panetta for ending the program the day he found out about it, but I’m afraid this (or programs like it) is going to be like Pete Rose’s slow-motion confession about gambling on baseball: the admissions will keep getting a little worse and a little worse.