Homage to Wendy Wasserstein

Wendy Wasserstein died this morning at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center from lymphoma. She was 55 years old.

I remember years ago attending the last performance of her Pulitzer Prize-winning play "The Heidi Chronicles" on Broadway. I was dating a woman involved in the production and got to attend the party afterwards. Wasserstein's friends joked that she had won every possible award for the play except one, and it was time she got it -- and then brought out a breathtaking and exact replica of the Heisman Trophy. It's one of the moments that made that evening memorable for me (the other was being serenaded by Alma Cuervo with a drunken rendition of "Old Man River").

For those of us now in our mid-40s, Wasserstein's "Uncommon Women and Others," which most of us saw in its PBS incarnation, instead of in the theater, is her defining play, simply because it spoke to us, whether we were male or female, about what life was and what it could offer. It might have been to us what Clifford Odets's "Awake and Sing!" was to Alfred Kazin's generation. Suddenly we realized that our own lives were -- or at least could be -- the stuff of theater. I ran into more than one woman in college who said that Wasserstein's play had a huge impact on her life (one of them, now a respected archivist in Washington, admitted to being obsessed with the character of Rita in that play and I regret now that I didn't go up to Wasserstein on the night "Heidi Chronicles" closed and tell her that. I suspect she might have gotten a kick out of it).

Wendy Wasserstein may have lost her battle with lymphoma this morning, but I have a feeling that her best work is going to be around for a while.

Tom Moran

Just a Thought

What do these cases have in common?

1) James Frey is discovered to have fabricated large parts of his so-called "memoir," A Million Little Pieces, and is forced to undergo a public humiliation reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution on Oprah Winfrey's TV show.

2) Martin Luther King is discovered to have plagiarized large sections of his doctoral dissertation, and his birthday is a national holiday.

Discuss.

Tom Moran

Congratulations, Richard!

I want to use this space today to congratulate my old screenwriting teacher, Richard Glatzer.

Richard, with whom I studied at The New School, won both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival for his film "Quinceanera," which he wrote and directed with Wash Westmoreland. It's the first time that a film has won both awards in the same year at Sundance.

As they say across the pond, well done!

Tom Moran

Note: This makes two people I've known personally who have won awards at Sundance. The first was Eric Mendelsohn, who won Best Director in 1999 for "Judy Berlin."

John Kerry on Samuel Alito

“In 1984, for example, Judge Alito wrote a Justice Department memorandum concluding that the use of deadly force against a fleeing unarmed suspect did not violate the fourth amendment. The victim was a 15-year-old African American. He was 5 foot 4. He weighed 100 to 110 pounds. This unarmed eighth grader was attempting to jump a fence with a stolen purse containing $10 when he was shot in the back of the head in order to prevent escape. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals found the shooting unconstitutional because deadly force can only be used when there is ‘probable cause that the suspect poses a threat to the safety of the officers or a danger to the community if left at large.’ That is what we teach law enforcement officials.

“But Judge Alito disagreed. Judge Alito said: No, he believed the shooting was reasonable because ‘the State is justified in using whatever force is necessary to enforce its laws’--even deadly force. That is his conclusion. That is the standard that is going to go to the Supreme Court if ratified. It is OK to shoot a 15-year-old, 110 pounds, a 5-foot-4-inch kid who is trying to get over a fence with a purse, shoot him in the back of the head.

“Otherwise, Judge Alito believed that any suspect could evade arrest by making the State choose between killing them or letting them escape. That is the conclusion. Think about that. Judge Alito believed that the State could use whatever force was necessary to enforce its laws regardless of whether the suspect was armed or dangerous. Does the Chair believe that? Do the other Senators believe that? I don't think so. Do mainstream Americans believe that?"

I see I didn't waste my vote in 2004. What about you?

Tom Moran

Karl Rove Meet Tammy Duckworth

A few days ago, presidential advisor Karl Rove (President of the Future Prison Bitches of America) gave a little talk at the Winter Meeting of the Republican National Committee.

This is part of what he said:

"America is at war - and so our national security is at the forefront of the minds of Americans. President Bush has established a remarkable record. He is winning the war against terrorism, promoting liberty in regions of the world that have never known it, and protecting America against attacks.

The United States faces a ruthless enemy - and we need a commander-in-chief and a Congress who understand the nature of the threat and the gravity of this moment.

President Bush and the Republican Party do. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for many Democrats. This past year, we have seen three successful elections in Iraq. The Iraqi Security Forces are increasing in size and capability. Iraq's economy is growing. And the terrorists in Iraq are now increasingly divided and turning on each other. In the words of the Commander of the Multinational Corps in Iraq: "2005 has been a historic year in Iraq, and it marks the rebirth of an ancient nation."

Yet we now hear a loud chorus of Democrats who want us to cut- and-run in Iraq - with one radical position being an immediate stand down of U.S. troops in Iraq and withdrawal by the end of April.

It is important to understand the consequences of pulling out of Iraq before our work is done and victory is won. Abandoning our Iraqi friends would signal the world that America cannot be trusted to keep its word. We would undermine the morale of our military by betraying the cause for which they have sacrificed. The tyrants in the Middle East would laugh at our failed resolve, and tighten their repressive grip. We would hand Iraq over to enemies who have pledged to attack us again and again as they did on 9/11. And the global terrorist movement would be emboldened and more dangerous than ever. To retreat before victory has been won would be a reckless act - and this President will not allow it.

This is an issue worthy of a public debate."

In other words, the Republicans are going to try and win the midterm elections by running the same play they ran in 2002 and 2004 -- scare the American people shitless so they'll think that their only hope of staying alive and not being incinerated by a terrorist nuclear attack is voting for every GOP candidate they can find.

What's the old saying? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Do they really think they can get away with this shit a third time?

Well, Karl Rove, meet Tammy Duckworth.

Tammy Duckworth is running for Congress in the Illinois Sixth District.

Tammy Duckworth is an Iraq war veteran. This, from her website, is her story:

"On November 12, 2004, Tammy was co-piloting a Black Hawk helicopter north of Baghdad when a rocket-propelled grenade struck the cockpit of her aircraft and exploded. Focused on the safety of her crew, Tammy was determined to land the helicopter not realizing she had been severely injured and that the other pilot had assumed the controls. It wasn't until the helicopter landed that she passed out. Ten days later, when she woke up at Walter Reed Memorial Hospital in Maryland, she learned that the explosion would cost her both legs and had shattered her right arm. "

Tammy Duckworth is running for Congress as a Democrat -- as are almost all of the Iraq war veterans running for office this year.

Yes, Mr. Rove. You're right -- it is worthy of a public debate. And a public debate is just what you're going to get.

Tom Moran

Oh, Those Wacky Catholics!

This story sounds like I made it up, I know. But I found it on the web. It originates with The Times of London (published, in case you didn't know, by Rupert Murdoch).

It has to be the best headline (and lead paragraph) of the year, hands down.

Because of that, I'm going to to quote it extensively:

Priest who saved porn stars' souls held over rape of nuns

Richard Owen
January 25, 2006

A PRIEST whose devotion to saving the souls of prostitutes and porn stars has earned him celebrity status in Italy has been arrested on charges of sexual violence and group rape.

Father Fedele Bisceglia, 69, was arrested after a nun alleged that she and other women had been raped at their Franciscan hostel at Cosenza in Calabria, southern Italy. Antonio Gaudio, 39, Father Bisceglia's assistant, was also charged with sexual harassment. Both men denied the charges.

Father Bisceglia, a striking, white-bearded figure with piercing blue eyes, is a national figure in Italy because of his missionary work for the poor as well as his colourful, extroverted television appearances.

He is probably best known for having converted Luana Borgia, a porn actor, to Christianity 10 years ago, persuading her to enter a convent on a retreat to reflect on her life and "purify herself spiritually". Father Bisceglia even accompanied Ms Borgia to the Bologna Erotic Fair, where she announced her conversion and set up a stall collecting money for an ambulance for one of his missions in Africa.

Ms Borgia, who was 30 at the time, said she had known Father Bisceglia "for some time" and they had become friends after she agreed to help him with fundraising for charity.

[...]

Father Bisceglia said he was innocent of the charges, which were "completely invented".

He said the nun was unbalanced. "The woman is mad. I am being persecuted like Jesus Christ," he said.

However, local police alleged that telephone taps appeared to confirm the nun's story. Pornographic videos had been found at the priest's home, police said, some allegedly filmed at the Cosenza hostel.

Police said the nun had been subjected to a psychiatric examination and found to be "in full possession of her mental faculties". Allegations by three other women against the priest and his assistant were also being investigated.

You just can't make this stuff up.

It'll be interesting to see how the Vatican handles this -- but given how they've previously dealt with the pedophiles in their midst, it wouldn't surprise me if the guy got a promotion.

Tom Moran

Going To The Chapel

Michael Schiavo got married yesterday.

That might not sound like a big deal, until you remember that Michael Schiavo is the widower of Terry Schiavo, whose death last March was the culmination of a huge legal battle over whether she should be kept on life support when she was in a persistent vegitative state, or whether she should be allowed to die with dignity.

Michael Schiavo all through the ordeal of his wife's illness and death comported himself with admirable dignity, and given the crap that was flung at him from the idiots on the radical right, he held up under the onslaught a hell of a lot better than I would have. And after his wife's death, the results of the autopsy fully vindicated him and made those on the right who were looking to exploit the case for partisan political reasons look like the callous insensitive jerks that they were.

Schiavo married his long-time girlfriend and mother of his two children, Jodi Centonze, in a small, private ceremony in Safety Harbor, Florida.

I wish Michael Schiavo all the best with his new marriage, with many years of health and happiness. He deserves it.

Tom Moran

Do You Know What Day It Is?

It's five years to the day since George W. Bush was first inaugurated President.

And it's one year to the day since he was inaugurated for a second term.

And, far more importantly, it is three years until we inaugurate a new President.

That is, provided that Bush doesn't get impeached and removed from office before then, which I devoutly hope is the case.

We progressives need to think about that -- every day.

We need to find a candidate who can beat whoever the Republicans decide to throw at us in 2008.

Because there has never been a better time for the GOP to be beaten than right now. They are corrupt and discredited. The people who claimed they would bring "honor and integrity" to the White House have shamed it more than the last five presidents combined. And the Republicans in Congress are the most corrupt bunch that I've seen in my lifetime. They need to be thrown out of office, and this country needs to put a Democratic majority in Congress and a Democrat in the White House.

I'll write more about this in the coming days and weeks. But for right now it's enough to point out that the clock is ticking. And for a number of good men and women in Iraq, fighting a war that they didn't have to fight and that they can't win, it might be sudden death pretty soon.

Tom Moran

Justice, Fairness and Cheerleading

The case involving the Carolina Panther cheerleaders who were allegedly involved in a Sapphic incident in a bar leading to a brawl (about which I wrote last November) has now, in the case of one of them, finally been adjudicated.

Here's what I wrote about the case back in November:

http://celticprogressive.blogspot.com/2005/11/two-cheerleaders-walk-into-bar.html

The Associated Press is reporting that:

"A former Carolina Panthers cheerleader received six months probation for her role in a bathroom brawl sparked by accusations that she was having sex with another cheerleader.

Angela Keathley, 26, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to disorderly conduct and obstructing a police officer during the Nov. 6 fight, which broke out when women in line to use the bathroom made the allegations about Keathley and fellow cheerleader Victoria Renee Thomas.

Thomas, 20, denied the sex allegation. She has pleaded not guilty to giving a false name to a police officer, battery and unlawful display of a license.

The Panthers fired the pair for violating a signed code that bans conduct embarrassing to the Panthers."

Now that the legal part of her case is over, I think Ms. Keathley should get her job back -- don't you? After all, if one of the players had been sentenced to probation after a minor scuffle in a bar, you can bet your ass that he'd still be on the team. It's only the rankest hypocrisy that gives a woman greater punishment than a man for the same offense.

If you agree, I suggest you contact the team and tell them so:

Their address is:
Carolina Panthers
800 South Mint Street
Charlotte, NC 28202

Telephone:
Switchboard: 704-358-7000

E-Mail:
feedback@panthers.nfl.com

Tell them you think the girl should get her job back.

Tom Moran

Remember Me?

Al-Jazeera has broadcast a new tape by a person claiming to be Osama bin Laden. Its authenticity has not yet been proven.

You remember Osama, don't you? The guy that George Bush once said he "Wanted: Dead or Alive" and then pretended didn't exist when he couldn't get his hands on him?

This is part of what the tape says:

"Your president is misinterpreting public opinion polls which show that the vast majority of you support the withdrawal of your forces from Iraq. He (Bush) disagreed with this desire and said the withdrawal of troops will give the wrong message to the enemy and that it is better to fight them on their ground than on our ground. Reality shows that the war against the U.S. and its allies is not just restricted to Iraq as he claims, but Iraq has become a gravitational point and a recruiting ground for qualified (mujahideen)."

The trouble with this part of the message at least is that just about all of this is true.

The majority of Americans do want out of Iraq, and Bush is steadfastly denying the reality of the fiasco staring him in the face. The reality is that Bush's phony "coalition" is disintegrating (one of the big untold stories of the past year is how Tony Blair has been quietly bugging his troops out of Iraq without the American media reporting it) and the war in Iraq has become a quagmire that we can't win. A conflict that was supposed to obliterate terrorism has instead caused it to metastisize -- and as a result, more than 2,200 American servicemen and women are dead.

It's a hell of a thing when a scumbag terrorist, whose head should by rights be adorning a spike in the middle of Ground Zero so that the families of the victims could use it as a piñata, tells the truth about what's going on while the President of the United States continues to lie through his teeth about it.

But at least he's reminded Bush that he still exists. Maybe now Bush will do something to ensure that this murdering piece of filth is finally brought to justice -- in a bodybag.

And if you believe that, perhaps you should check out the bridge spanning Manhattan and Brooklyn that I'm currently auctioning off on eBay...

Tom Moran

Which One Do You Believe?

"It seems fitting on Martin Luther King Day that I come and look at the Emancipation Proclamation in its original form. Abraham Lincoln recognized that all men are created equal. Martin Luther King lived on that admonition to call our country to a higher calling, and today we celebrate the life of an American who called Americans to account when we didn't live up to our ideals."

-- George W. Bush
...

"George Bush doesn't care about black people."

-- Kanye West

Tom Moran

God and New Orleans

A little while back I criticized Pat Robertson for saying that God had given Ariel Sharon a stroke for giving up land "belonging" to the state of Israel.

Well, fair is fair. If someone else says something just as stupid, I guess I have to call him on it, too. Even if he is a Democrat -- and black (although while Nagin is genuinely black, he's about as much a Democrat as Michael Bloomberg is a Republican -- Nagin switched parties in order to run for mayor).

According to UPI, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin "says the hurricanes that devastated the city last year are a sign that 'God is mad at America,' and at blacks in particular. "

"As we think about rebuilding New Orleans, surely God is mad at America," the piece quotes Nagin as saying. "He's sending hurricane after hurricane after hurricane. But surely he's upset at black America also. We're not taking care of ourselves. We're not taking care of our women. And we're not taking care of our children."

Let's see. If someone runs a red light and gets into a car accident and is killed, do you think they died because God was peeved -- or could it have a little something to do with the fact that they ran the damn red light?

New Orleans is right smack in the path of hurricanes during the season in which hurricanes are known to happen. It's like living in San Francisco -- you live on a fault line, you get earthquakes. You live there, you take your chances. God has nothing to do with it.

Can we just get over this, people? God was not out to get New Orleans, or its African-American citizens. He did not send hurricanes to send a message or to provide retribution for Mardi Gras or to punish the city in any way, shape or form. People have a hard time accepting the fact that sometimes things just happen. Bad things happen to good people and bad people alike, and there's no particular reason for it, except that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time (or, in the case of Katrina, they happened to be the wrong skin color or live in the wrong neighborhood).

Mayor Nagin said later by way of explanation of his idiotic comments that he believes he might have a case of "post-Katrina stress disorder."

Personally, I think that's an understatement.

Tom Moran

The Un-Borkable Mr. Alito

Thank God for Senator Kennedy.

He fought the good fight -- as he almost always does -- trying to oppose Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court. But I think this one is going to get through. The Republicans are not going to put up any more Robert Borks, and wannabe Supreme Court justices have had almost twenty years to understand that if they want to become one of The Supremes they have to be very circumspect about their opinions if they want to make it past the Judiciary Committee (that is, if they don't want to lie through their teeth, the way Clarence Thomas did).

Thus we get men like Samuel Alito, who has a phenomenal memory for Supreme Court cases but can't seem to remember anything at all about his membership in an organization that was designed specifically to keep women and blacks out of Princeton.

There's a fascinating piece by Jerome Karabel on HuntingtonPost.com that discusses Alito's membership in CAP (Concerned Alumni of Princeton).

After discussing the extent of CAP's bigotry in trying to keep the percentage of women and blacks admitted to Princeton down to the bare minimum, Karabel, the author of The Chosen (about the history of admissions to Yale, Princeton and Harvard), talks about why Alito would want to underline his participation in such a bigoted group to the Reagan Administration in order to get a job (and why he would want to downplay it today):

"Why, then, in late 1989 -- 13 years after CAP was founded -- would the mild-mannered Samuel Alito tout his membership in such an organization as he sought the job of Deputy Assistant Attorney General? When asked during the Senate hearings about why he had joined CAP, Alito -- whose memory of Supreme Court Cases seems quite remarkable -- said that he had difficulty recalling. When pressed, however, he claimed that "The issue that had rankled me about Princeton for some time was the issue of ROTC." But this strains credulity, for as the Daily Princeton pointed out, ROTC had returned to Princeton campus by the time CAP was founded in 1972, and the issue of ROTC did not even make a list of CAP's eight "basic principles and priorities" publicly enunciated in 1976. In all likelihood, Alito -- who was by all accounts a marginal and inactive member of CAP -- highlighted his membership in the organization for the most prosaic of reasons: he thought that it would signal to the movement conservatives who controlled appointments in the Justice Department that he shared their values and was a member of their network. Alito was not wrong, and in late 1985 -- shortly after Prospect published what turned out to be its last issue -- he received the promotion that helped place him on the path to the Supreme Court."

And this guy -- in spite of all the last-minute heroics of Senator Kennedy and the Democrats on the Judiciary Committe to block him -- is probably going to end up on the Supreme Court.

Maybe, when Alito gets onto the court, they should force him to sit between Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

That'll show him!

Tom Moran

James Frey, Pontius Pilate, Oprah and the Truth

One of the reasons that Pontius Pilate is one of my favorite characters in the Bible (besides the obvious) is that he asks one of the few questions worth asking: "What is truth?" (John 18:38).

That questions seems particularly apposite today when considering the controversy of James Frey and his book, A Million Little Pieces. The website The Smoking Gun has revealed that Frey may have invented or embellished certain aspects of his bestselling book, which, as the author himself has admitted, was originally pitched to publishers as a novel.

The author went on Larry King to defend himself and his book and Oprah Winfrey, who had chosen Frey's book for her hugely influential book club (which caused its sales to skyrocket) called King's show herself to defend Frey.

This is what she said:

"And I feel about A Million Little Pieces that although some of the facts have been questioned -- and people have a right to question, because we live in a country that lets you do that, that the underlying message of redemption in James Frey's memoir still resonates with me. And I know that it resonates with millions of other people who have read this book and will continue to read this book."

In other words, the end justifies the means.

If people are helped by Frey's book, Oprah seems to be saying, it doesn't matter whether or not the book is true. This makes A Million Little Pieces sound like the literary equivalent of a placebo -- as long as the patient thinks it works, why mess with a good thing?

My feelings about the matter are a little more complex. First of all, memoirs are literary documents that are comprised of a mixture of fact, memory and, yes, invention. No memoir is 100% factual -- not even when you have a memory as tenacious as Jack Kerouac's (who published his memoirs as fiction). There's a story about Lucy Grealy, who wrote the memoir Autobiography of a Face, being stopped by a fan who asked her with amazement how she could remember all the dialogue from her childhood years that she reproduced so accurately in her book. "Easy," Grealy is said to have replied, "I made it up."

Memoirs, as Picasso once said of art in general, are lies that tell the truth. Anyone who doesn't know this is incurably naive. Frey's mistake was not in embellishing the facts to make a better story, but in embellishing parts of his story that could be checked against documents in the public record, like police reports.

Nevertheless, A Million Little Pieces will either stand or fall on its worth as a work of literature -- not on whether every word in it is factually accurate, and not on whether people are inspired to stop drinking and/or doing drugs because of it.

And by the way, I made up that Lucy Grealy quote.

Or did I?

Tom Moran

Note: 1/22/06: Okay, I know you're dying to find out whether I made up that quote. Well, I quoted it from memory so I was hedging a bit. But here's the Ann Patchett quote I got it from:

"I'm amazed by how you remember everything about your childhood so clearly," a woman said to Lucy one night when we were giving a reading together in New York.

"I didn't remember it," she said pointedly. "It's art. I made it up." She didn't mean it had never happened. She meant that capturing the past is a process much more complicated than accurate transcription.

How To Tell That Ann Coulter is Middle Aged

What a difference a few years can make...

"Let's say I go out every night, I meet a guy and have sex with him. Good for me. I'm not married."

-- Ann Coulter on Rivera Live, June 7, 2000

...

"'Give me liberty or give me the right to have unprotected sex with men I don't want to have a child with' just isn't that attractive a principle in the light of day."

-- Ann Coulter in her column, January 11, 2006

Tom Moran

When Will God Smite Pat Robertson?

You have to wonder why, if Pat Robertson has such a direct line to God, he doesn't play the market more often. I mean, if I had the ear of the Almighty to that extent, I'd be putting down bets on the Super Bowl like a madman.

But not our Pat. He knows that God smote down Ariel Sharon, giving him a stroke for giving up land that, according to God and Pat Robertson, belongs to Israel.

"He was dividing God's land, and I would say, 'Woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the [European Union], the United Nations or the United States of America," he told viewers of The 700 Club. "God says, 'This land belongs to me, and you'd better leave it alone."

I wonder what else God tells Pat. Aren't you curious? Does he tell him to drink green tea (a Robertson specialty)? Wear sweaters when it's cold out? Make an ass of himself on television talking about things he knows absolutely nothing about?

I think it's time that God smote Pat Robertson. But then I don't have a direct line to God, so what I think doesn't matter.

Tom Moran