Michael Moore Feels the Love

Republicans are hugging Michael Moore. Hugging. What's going on here?

Okay, granted, we only have Moore's word for it, but it sounds kind of plausible. Moore tells Reuters that "If you were to hang out with me here it won't be five or 10 minutes before you see a Republican hug me."

And why is this happening?

The Reuters piece states that "Some in solidly Republican northern Michigan and elsewhere now believe that they made a "colossal mistake" in initially supporting the war in Iraq, Moore said, and they have let him know it in chance encounters on the streets of Traverse City, a resort town where he has relocated from New York."

Hmmmm... Michael Moore, Al Franken and Ann Coulter have all relocated from New York. Do you think they know something that I don't?

But I digress.

I think that the change in attitude towards Moore is emblematic of a change in the popular attitude towards this administration in general and in their atrocious foreign policy in particular. It seems to me that people, even supposedly conservative Republicans, have caught on to what has happened in this country over the past five years.

Take William F. Buckley Jr., the doyen of modern conservatism, saying of President Bush that: "If you had a European prime minister who experienced what we've experienced, it would be expected that he would retire or resign."

Take Charles Barkley, who is switching parties and planning to run for Governor of Alabama as a Democrat because "I was a Republican until they lost their minds."

People have finally realized that this is the worst administration is modern history. They finally get it. And I think they want to do something about it.

The midterm elections can't come soon enough for me.

Tom Moran

NY Times Endorses Ned Lamont

In today's New York Times there is an editorial entitled "A Senate Race in Connecticut."

It is a calm, rational explication of why Connecticut Democrats should, instead of supporting the incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman, vote for his upstart challenger, Ned Lamont.

Here is some of what the Times says on the subject:

"This primary would never have happened absent Iraq. It’s true that Mr. Lieberman has fallen in love with his image as the nation’s moral compass. But if pomposity were a disqualification, the Senate would never be able to call a quorum. [...]

Mr. Lieberman is not just a senator who works well with members of the other party. And there is a reason that while other Democrats supported the war, he has become the only target. In his effort to appear above the partisan fray, he has become one of the Bush administration’s most useful allies as the president tries to turn the war on terror into an excuse for radical changes in how this country operates. [...]

If Mr. Lieberman had once stood up and taken the lead in saying that there were some places a president had no right to take his country even during a time of war, neither he nor this page would be where we are today. But by suggesting that there is no principled space for that kind of opposition, he has forfeited his role as a conscience of his party, and has forfeited our support."

I've left out the specifics of the piece because you can go and read them for yourself -- the gist is clear. This country is in a great moral crisis, and in that crisis Joe Lieberman didn't just do nothing -- he sided with the people who were turning this nation into the kind of country we usually fight wars against.

I congratulate the Times on endorsing Lieberman's rival, Ned Lamont, in the Democratic primary. All I can say is -- what took you so long?

Tom Moran

Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa

Mel Gibson, it would seem, has sobered up. And found a publicist.

In what certainly appears to be a major attempt at damage control following his drunken tirade in the early hours of Friday, Mel Gibson did some serious grovelling in a statement he made about his DUI arrest and the anti-Semitic remarks he made while intoxicated.

According to the Washington Post, Gibson's grovel goes like this:

"After drinking alcohol on Thursday night, I did a number of things that were very wrong and for which I am ashamed. The arresting officer was just doing his job and I feel fortunate that I was apprehended before I caused injury to any other person. I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested, and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable. I am deeply ashamed of everything I said. Also, I take this opportunity to apologize to the deputies involved for my belligerent behavior. They have always been there for me in my community and indeed probably saved me from myself. I disgraced myself and my family with my behavior and for that I am truly sorry. I have battled with the disease of alcoholism for all of my adult life and profoundly regret my horrific relapse. I apologize for any behavior unbecoming of me in my inebriated state and have already taken necessary steps to ensure my return to health."

As apologies go, that's pretty all-encompassing. Whoever wrote it, whether it was Gibson himself or (as I tend to suspect) a publicist specializing in damage control, it covers all the bases and does as much as is realistic in distancing Gibson from his "despicable" remarks.

More importantly, it tries to put the story to bed before the weekend's over and it becomes fodder for all the celebrity news shows on Monday -- not to mention the Today Show and Good Morning America.

Will it work? Will Mel Gibson be forgiven for his drunken tirade? Will the unexpurgated first draft of his police report see the light of day -- not to mention his mug shot and the videotape of his sobriety test?

The taint of anti-Semitism has surrounded Gibson for many years, and his drunken antics this weekend have only exacerbated them. As Rabbi Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, told the New York Times, “If it’s true what’s reported, frequently hatred, bigotry and prejudice, which is controlled, explodes at moments of stress and crisis. Liquor loosens the tongue of what’s in the mind and in the heart, and in his mind and in his heart is his conspiracy theory about Jews and hatred of Jews.”

Not to mention the fact that, according to the Times, Gibson's company is developing a four-hour mini-series on the Holocaust for ABC, "in what was widely seen as an effort to patch up his relations with parts of the Jewish community." ABC isn't commenting and the status of that project is uncertain.

How will the Hollywood community react to all this? Will it affect the release of his next film, “Apocalypto,” scheduled to be put out by, of all studios, Disney? Will Gibson be seen as an alcoholic who in a drunken stupor said things he didn't mean -- or was his outburst like the Washington definition of a gaffe: when a politician says something he really believes.

It'll be interesting to see how this story unfolds over the next few days and weeks. And it'll be even more interesting to see who comes to his defense and who doesn't.

Tom Moran

Note: There is a seeming factual error in this blog entry, and probably in the previous one. I was assuming that the anti-Semitic Gibson quotes were taken from the second draft report, and that the original report was still supressed. Based on what Harvey Levin of TMZ.com told "Good Morning America's" Kate Snow, it would seem that he was able to obtain four pages of the original, unexpurgated report. I apologize for the error.

In Vino Veritas

Mel Gibson, auteur of "The Passion of the Christ," was pulled over for speeding in Malibu in the middle of the night Friday, failed a sobriety test and was arrested.

Okay. Who cares -- right? Celebrities get liquored up and go for a spin all the time. Sometimes they get away with it. Sometimes they're unlucky and they get stopped by the cops. What's the big deal?

Well, I find this story (which I read about in the New York Daily News) interesting for a couple of reasons.

For one, his mug shot has not been released, which in most cases is standard operating procedure.

Secondly, the original police report on the arrest was suppressed by the police. A section of the revised (and toned down) report was obtained by and published on TMZ.com.

The second draft report is written by hand, and is difficult to read, but is revealing nonetheless.

Could the original report have contained too many embarrassing details about what the arresting officer (Los Angeles County Deputy James Mee) calls in the revised version a "barrage of anti-Semitic remarks" about "fucking Jews" made by the famously Catholic Mel Gibson?

"The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world," Gibson is quoted as saying in the report, among other things.

Kinda makes you wonder what he's quoted as saying in the original report, doesn't it?

This is the same Mel Gibson, for those of you with short-term memory loss, who so adamantly denied that he was an anti-Semite at the time of the release of "The Passion of the Christ."

It'll be interesting to see how this story develops, since there is not only the original report and the mug shot still to be released (if the original report hasn't been destroyed by now, that is), but also a videotape of Gibson's sobriety test, in which he might possibly make other remarks not noted on the sanitized police report.

Too bad he wasn't talking in Aramaic...

Tom Moran

Bush, Condi & The "S" Word

I love it when a writer makes a point and doesn't even know they've made it. Ann Coulter does something like this in Godless with her endless obsession with "excrement." God alone knows what the significance of it is -- I'll leave that to Coulter and the therapist she so badly needs.

But Peggy Noonan does it in her column this week. She makes a point and doesn't even realize that she's made it.

This is what I mean:

"Why does President Bush refer in public to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as "Condi"? Did Dwight Eisenhower call his Secretary of State "Johnny"? Did Jimmy Carter call his "Eddie," or Bill Clinton call his "Maddy," or Richard Nixon call his "Willie" or "Hank"? What are the implications of such informality?"

Should I tell her, or should I let her linger?

Well, Peggy, the implications of this particular informality is that George W. Bush is a sexist pig who subtly demeans and disrespects his own Secretary of State by not giving her the verbal and titular respect that her office would seem to demand.

Got that, babe?

Tom Moran

Celebrity Sighting at Union Square

Now, I know that people tend to get all gooey when they spot a celebrity, but I tend not to as a rule. I've run into some huge celebrities in my time -- legends, really -- so when I spot somebody who has a TV show or a CD out at the moment I don't consider it a big deal.

But I do want to write about the celebrity sighting I had yesterday morning, because it was a little puzzling. In fact, you could even say it was a mystery.

I'm at the Union Square subway station at around 9:00 A.M. Thursday morning. I'm on the uptown track waiting for the 4 or the 5 train. And as I'm walking towards the end of the platform (because it's easier to get a seat that way), I spot a young woman.

She looks familiar. She looks very familiar. She has a bottle of something (probably soda) in her hand and she's drinking from it -- probably through a straw but I wouldn't swear to it.

And who do you think it was?

It was Barbara Bush -- the daughter of the President of the United States.

I think she realized that I recognized her, because she gave me one of those "don't-fuck-with-me-asshole-I-have-pepper-spray-in-my-bag" kind of looks that make the women on the New York City subway system so cute and endearing.

But then I instantly started questioning my own perception.

Could it really have been Barbara Bush? After all, there wasn't a Secret Service agent in sight, and she was standing very close to the edge of the platform -- any whack job could have just pitched her in front of the incoming train and turned her into quacamole dip in about two seconds. Wouldn't they have been nearby and noticeable if she really was Bush's daughter?

Then I started wondering -- what if it had been Bush's daughter? Should I have gone up to her and said something? You know, something sweet that she could relay back to Dad the next time she stops by the White House for a family visit. Something along the lines of: "Your father is a total fucking disgrace and the worst president in the history of the country and he should resign before he gets impeached -- and take that douchebag Cheney with him."

But that's not really my style. After all, it's not her fault that her father's an asshole and a disgrace as a president -- and she shouldn't be held responsible for her family's misdeeds.

I'm still uncertain, though. What do you think -- is it possible that the woman I saw on the subway platform yesterday morning was indeed Barbara Bush? Is anybody in a position to confirm or deny this?

Tom Moran

Bloomberg's Katrina

"If it had happened in Manhattan, it would have been over in five hours," the New York Daily News quotes Queens resident Annalisa Sacca as saying about the blackout in the borough of Queens that has been going on for five days now.

Con Edison has recently acknowledged that the blackout has affected ten times as many people as they originally estimated. 100,000 people in the city's most diverse borough are without power, and Con Ed is claming that they won't have things completely up and running until Sunday -- six days after the blackout began. Anybody believe them?

From the New York Times:

"A chorus of elected officials demanded investigation and punishment of [Con Edison], and more help for the area’s sweltering, dispirited residents. They voiced particular concern for thousands of elderly residents with no electricity, no working elevators and, in some cases, no water."

Mayor Bloomberg (who probably has never gone to Queens in his life before this when he wasn't running for office) says, according to the Daily News, that blaming Con Ed is counterproductive. "Rather than point fingers at Con Ed and vilify them and all of the people that are working for them, I want all of their employees to continue to work just as hard as they can until we get everybody back up. The sad thing is, this shouldn't have happened. We don't know why, but the most important thing - make sure nobody dies or gets hurt."

So why did this happen? Anyone who lives or has lived in Queens can tell you why.

To people in "the city" (as Queens residents refer to Manhattan), Queens is a second class citizen. The one who gets the portion only after everyone else has been served. The afterthought borough. People with long memories remember blizzards when the streets of Queens were covered in several feet of snow days after all of Manhattan was ploughed. Being treated like shit is nothing new for the people who live in Queens.

If Brooklyn has Ralph Kramden as its exemplar in the popular imagination, Queens has Archie Bunker. When you go to Queens, you see American flags on nicely kept-up lawns and signs that say "Support Our Troops." But you also hear people speaking probably every language spoken on the planet -- Queens is most likely the most ethnically diverse place on earth. The people who live there take long subway rides or endure bad traffic to get to work in "the city," pay heavy property taxes and then listen to people say "New York" when they mean "Manhattan." And they'd like a little respect.

But Mayor Bloomberg, who probably couldn't find Queens on a map, isn't giving it to them. He wants an extension of the 7 line to the Javits Convention Center when there are large swatches of the North Shore of Queens that have no subway service at all. He plays nice with Con Ed when the elderly have been roasting in their fetid apartments for almost a week due to Con Edison's incompetence.

Could this be Mayor Bloomberg's Katrina?

Tom Moran

Battle of the Titans

Finally I have something worthwhile to write about. Not that George W. Bush is sexually harrassing other heads of state; not that Israel is pounding the shit out of Lebanon; not that Bill Clinton is illogically coming to the political rescue of the man who pissed all over him during the impeachment crisis; not that Ann Coulter still hasn't managed to find her way to rehab -- no, something really important.

Kevin Smith vs. Joel Siegel. A battle of the titans. Now this is serious shit.

For the uninitiated, I will start with the undisputed facts:

Joel Siegel attended a screening of Kevin Smith's new movie, "Clerks II." That is a fact. Joel Siegel walked out of said screening about forty minutes into the film. This also is a fact. As he was leaving, Siegel was heard to say, "Time to go!" and "This is the first movie I’ve walked out of in 30 fucking years!'"

These facts are not in dispute: they are agreed upon by both sides. What was in dispute was whether Siegel: a) was justified in leaving the movie before it was over, and/or: b) was disruptive and unprofessional in leaving the film in the manner he did.

Kevin Smith in his blog (My Boring Ass Life) takes great delight in pouring scorn on Joel Siegel's style of reviewing -- which is admittedly pretty easy to do. He's a short-take quote-whore TV critic of the Gene Shalit variety, and they can be pretty hard to take on an empty stomach. James Agee he's not -- to put it mildly.

Smith's argument boils down to this: Siegel's conduct was both rude and unprofessional, and showed a lack of moviegoing etiquette.

As Smith puts it:

"Cardinal rule of movie-going: shut your fucking mouth while the movie’s playing. They even ask you to do so in the pre-show run-up to every flick (”Cell phones and pagers off, no talking during the show”). This guy went beyond talking, even; he was making a spectacle of himself as he left. I’ve now spoken to three folks in attendance last night, and all have said that Siegel WANTED everyone to know how disgusted he was, and that he was leaving. If you want to share your displeasure with everyone, that’s fine, dude; just do it AFTER the movie, not during. Some folks were enjoying themselves. I don’t come down to your job and slap the taste out of your mouth for coming up with a line like “‘Shark Tale’ Is a Halibut Good Time”; so don’t fuck with my stuff WHILE IT’S STILL SCREENING. "

And what was Siegel's riposte?

Well, he hasn't exactly written one yet, and as far as I can tell his only public comment was on the Opie and Anthony radio show (a clip of which is posted on Smith's blog), where he sort of pooh-poohs the whole thing as being no big deal. I suppose in the cosmic sense, he may be right.

But it brings up a larger question: does a critic have a right to walk out on a film?

Now, although Kevin Smith claims (in the Opie and Anthony clip, in response to a direct question from Siegel) to have never walked out on a movie, I know I certainly have. "Gandhi" and "Lawrence of Arabia" are only two examples that leap to mind. And I can think of a lot of films, that, had I been forced to attend a screening, I would have been sorely tempted to vacate the premises. Years ago, when I worked at the Quad in Greenwich Village as an usher, they were showing a foreign film called "Le Bal" that several people invariably walked out on at every screening. At one showing a good-looking blonde left the theater after forty minutes, came up to me and, with a wounded look on her face, asked: "Why didn't you warn me?" It was Ellen Barkin.

Siegel claims that walking out on a film, far from being unprofessional, is the ultimate criticism of a given film. He might have a point. But Smith also has a legitimate point that, even if you decide to leave a given film forty minutes into it, you don't have to make a production number out of it and disrupt the experience for all the other people in the theater who might be enjoying what you are so offended by.

Now, while I know that this contretemps doesn't exactly rise to the level of Edmund Wilson and Vladimir Nabokov sniping at each other over the merits (or lack of such) of the latter's translation of Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin," it still has some merit, and there are legitimate claims to be made on both sides. I would like to see Joel Siegel comment on the matter further, because I think his argument needs to be made at greater length and more thoughtfully than it can be made on Opie and Anthony.

One last thing: should you go to see "Clerks II"?

Offhand, using my infallible meter of whether or not one should see a given film, I would say not.

Three reasons:

• It's a sequel to a film he made 12 years ago -- how lame (or desperate) is that?
• It stars Rosario Dawson (always a reason to avoid a given motion picture).
• He didn't have the balls to shoot the sequel in black and white.

That final reason is the deal breaker, if you ask me.

Tom Moran

[Note 7/22: Kevin Smith has put up a faux-"trailer" to "Clerks II" making use of the whole Siegel controversy. You can look at the trailer here:

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Kevin-Smith-Confronts-Joel-Siegel-On-The-Air-3019.html

It's probably on YouTube as well, along with a shitload of other "Clerks II" stuff. It's very funny -- and I sincerely doubt that "Clerks II" is equally funny. The cineastes among you will recognize the clip from one of the great silent comedies, Harold Lloyd's "The Kid Brother."

One more reason not to see "Clerks II": He didn't shoot it in Jersey.]

The Sentence of the Week Award

I've decided to institute my own award.

So much of the blogosphere is polluted with mushy thought and lousy writing that I thought it was time to lavish some praise on people who write for blogs and who also write well. Now, writing "well" is a pretty subjective thing, but I'll try to define it somewhat.

I'm talking about people who write with a certain amount of style and wit. Who use language well -- even if it's not in a formal, academic way.

With that in mind, I'm handing out the first Sentence of the Week Award to Audacia Ray of WakingVixen.com. Ms. Ray wins this week for the following lapidary gem:

"And then there’s bi porn, which technically is gay porn, because if guys do it (even if they also do women) that shit is gay gay gay."

Congratulations, Audacia, for writing the very first ever Sentence of the Week.

Tom Moran

Softball: or, Pimping for Giuliani

Did you catch Chris Matthews of "Hardball" on "The Tonight Show"?

Jay Leno asked him a question about the 2008 presidential election, and Matthews spilled the beans on who he wants to be the next President of the United States.

Rudy Giuliani.

Rudy fucking Giuliani.

Explains a lot about Chris Matthews, doesn't it? Apparently he's been pimping for Giuliani on "Hardball" as well -- and, according to Media Matters for America, shutting up people who attempt to bring up Giuliani's many shortcomings.

Now, I know a lot of people admire Rudy Giuliani. All almost all of those people have pretty much one thing in common.

Can you guess what that thing is?

They didn't have to live in New York City while Rudy Giuliani was mayor.

If anyone wants an idea of what kind of president Rudy Giuliani would make, all they have to do is read a book by one of his predecessors as mayor of New York -- Ed Koch. The book is called Giuliani: Nasty Man. It's a book that everyone interested in politics should read, even if it is out of print. It's an indelible portrait of the man that Kirkus Reviews describes as "an authoritarian publicity hound who cant [sic] admit when hes [sic] made a mistake."

Is it arguable that Giuliani "cleaned up" New York during his tenure as mayor? It's arguable. But as one of the Amazon.com reviewers of Koch's book points out, Hitler "cleaned up" Germany too -- and there's a definite fascist streak to Giuliani that was evident both pre- and post-9/11. Just remember how Giuliani tried to use the terrorist attacks as an excuse to postpone the election to pick his successor and stay in office by whatever means necessary.

Do we really want this guy to be president?

Ann Coulter also has very nice things to say about Rudy Giuliani in her new book, Godless. It makes you wonder (or at least it should) when Ann Coulter and Chris Matthews agree on something. John Podhoretz in his latest screed (on Hillary Clinton, entitled Can She Be Stopped?) also considers Giuliani the last best hope for the G.O.P. in 2008.

Of course, we don't have to worry about Giuliani getting the Republican nomination -- that's about as likely as my being elected Pope.

Why is that?

Well, the facts are these:

• Rudy Giuliani (at least nominally) a Catholic.
• Rudy Giuliani is pro-choice on abortion.
• Rudy Giuliani is pro-gay rights.
• Rudy Giuliani is on his third marriage -- and his first marriage was to his cousin.

Now, does that sound like someone who can win over hard-line right-wing Evangelical Protestant Republican primary voters in Iowa and New Hampshire? If it does, give me some of what you're smoking, because I'd like to try it. Either he sticks to his guns and loses the far right voters that decide the nomination, or he reverses himself to get the nomination and is accused with justice by the other primary candidates of being a flip-flopper.

Either way, he loses. And he deserves to lose. We've already had one authoritarian nut-bag with delusions of grandeur and a fascist streak in the White House -- two in a row would be a disaster.

Tom Moran

GOP Tsunami Warning: July Edition

It's four months before the midterm elections, and things are not looking good for the Republicans.

According to an AP-Ipsos poll in a piece written by Donna Cassata of the AP, "Americans by an almost 3-to-1 margin hold the GOP-controlled Congress in low regard and profess a desire to see Democrats wrest control after a dozen years of Republican rule."

Makes you feel kinda warm and fuzzy all over, doesn't it?

The AP piece goes on to say that:

"Further complicating the GOP outlook to turn things around is a solid percentage of liberals, moderates and even conservatives who say they'll vote Democratic. The party out of power also holds the edge among persuadable voters, a prospect that doesn't bode well for the Republicans."

Nevertheless, the election is still four months away, and the Republicans could still do a lot to try and turn things around -- in fact, they've already started. Have you seen all the news stories about the terrorist plots that have been foiled? Plots that you haven't heard about before even though they date back months and sometimes years? Do you think it's a coincidence that we're only finding out about these now?

The G.O.P. is still trotting out the old playbook -- "If you don't vote for us you're all going to die in a mushroom cloud in the next five minutes. Did you hear us! DIE! In a FIREBALL! DUCK AND COVER! DUCK AND COVER!!!!!!!"

It would seem -- at least at the moment -- that Americans are beginning to see through the Republican bullshit and understand the reality of where this country is right now.

But is it enough?

Let's look at the reality. According to the AP piece, "To seize control of Congress, the Democrats must displace 15 Republicans from House seats and six Republicans from the Senate."

Given the way that Congressional districts have been rigged (or, to use the politician's expression, Gerrymandered) to favor incumbents, this is a very hard mountain to climb.

And yet sometimes there is a feeling in the country that the tide is moving in a certain way. I know that I'm heading into Peggy Noonan territory here, but there's a feeling that people know what's happened to this country. We're a little slow on the uptake sometimes, so it can take us a while to pay attention (especially when the powers that be are doing everything in their power to distract us from what's important), but I think that the fog has lifted and people in this country are facing the reality of the situation -- possibly for the first time.

What exactly is that reality?

Well, I've said it in this blog any number of times. The Republicans have complete control of the power structure of this country. They have the White House, both Houses of Congress, and for all intents and purposes the Supreme Court. And they've blown it.

They inherited eight years of peace and prosperity and they've thrown it away. They took a budget surplus and tossed it in the trash and took out the old credit card and started borrowing with it. They got us into a war we didn't need to fight that has cost us thousand of American lives. And although they will never admit it, their negligence was a direct factor in the attack of September 11th.

They took a country that was pledged to the rule of law and they've done things that only totalitarian nations usually do. We've invaded a sovereign nation that no intention of attacking us in an aggressive war totally without justification. They've kidnapped people and sent them to other nations to be tortured. They've imprisoned people for years without trial or any formal charges being filed against them. They have turned us into a nation that tortures people.

We have become the kind of nation we usually fight against.

The Republicans have fucked up this country beyond recognition. It's time to throw the bums out.

But there's one thing you can count on -- and that is that Republicans don't give up power easily. They will do whatever they have to -- fair or unfair, legal or illegal -- to maintain their hold on the levers of power in this country. So while the numbers are looking good for the Democrats to do what Democrats have been relegated to doing over the past quarter-century -- that is, cleaning up after the messes that Republicans have made -- it is way too early to start celebrating.

So do whatever you can do to help out. Give your money or your time to candidates such as:

Nick Lampson in Texas: http://www.lampson.com/

Ned Lamont in Connecticut: http://www.nedlamont.com/

Tammy Duckworth in Illinois: http://www.duckworthforcongress.com/

These are the kind of people we need to elect to public office in order to make our country something we can be proud of again. So do what you can, and don't let the Republicans steal another election.

Because they're going to try. You can count on it.

Tom Moran

Ashlee Simpson and F. Scott Fitzgerald

There have been reports in the press lately (most notably in the New York Post) that Ashlee Simpson has turned down an offer to pose in the nude for Playboy magazine. It's been said that the magazine was offering her a great deal of money -- $4 million, according to most reports (although one report I heard claimed it was $4.5 million).

But Ms. Simpson has turned up her surgically altered nose at the offer, telling the Post, "I can make $4 million somewhere else. My body is for me and for whoever my love interest is at that moment, and that's the only person who gets to see it."

Now, far be it for me to dispute Ms. Simpson's right to turn down any offer she pleases. She can do what she wants. But I was forcibly reminded of another person who was once offered a great deal of easy money and who turned it down.

In 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald was about to publish his novel "The Great Gatsby," when an offer came in from a magazine called College Humor. Since Fitzgerald was at the time best known for his college novel "This Side of Paradise," the magazine wanted to serialize his latest book. And they offered him the sum of $10,000 for the serialization rights -- a tremendous amount of money in those days when inflation and income taxes were both negligible.

Fitzgerald turned the offer down. He wanted his novel to be taken seriously as literature, and he didn't think that being published piecemeal in College Humor would help him be accepted as something more than the author of "This Side of Paradise." Besides, he felt that his new novel would far outsell his previous ones, so he didn't think he needed the money. So he passed up the $10,000 from College Humor.

But "The Great Gatsby," although it got good reviews, didn't sell nearly as well as his previous books (which Fitzgerald attributed to the book's brevity -- he would ruefully warn the Canadian novelist Morley Callaghan never to publish a novel that was less than 60,000 words long), and the expected windfall of royalties never arrived.

In his later years (not that there were that many of them -- he died of a heart attack at 44), Fitzgerald, dealing with huge bills and tremendous debt and having to toil away at crappy short stories and worthless screenplays to make a living and provide for his family, would bitterly regret that he had turned down an easy $10,000 from College Humor.

So what's the "takeaway" from this, as they say in the mainstream media? Will Ashlee Simpson similarly regret turning down an easy $4 million to pose in the buff once her 15 minutes of fame are over? I'm not sure, but I'm reminded of what I was once told by a member of an old French aristocratic family (whose family was so old and so aristocratic they're the only family of its kind mentioned by name in both Tolstoy's "War and Peace" and Proust):

"Whenever anyone offers you money," he told me, "take it."

Tom Moran

Friday Grab Bag

This is an innovation for this blog: a series of random thoughts on news items that I may not feel like developing into full-blown pieces.

Big Brother 7: Has it occurred to anyone else that the reason they're bringing back contestants from previous seasons of "Big Brother" is that they couldn't find enough idiots, losers and sociopaths to do another season? I'm a little disappointed, because "Big Brother" is the only reality show I watch, and it's been going downhill since "Big Brother 3." [Full disclosure: I sent in an audition tape for "Big Brother 4" and didn't get a callback.]

Ann Coulter revealed as plagiarist: Is anyone really surprised at this? The company that syndicates her column says it's going to look into the allegations, but does anyone think that she will pay a real price for this? Will she face anything like the opprorium that, for example, Kaavya Viswanathan faced for her plagiarism? From the look of her most recent column, though, Coulter appears to be losing it. It was a total mess -- a rambling, chaotic rant totally devoid of all rationality and logic. In other words, vintage Ann Coulter.

Tom DeLay has to run for Congress in Texas: This one kills me. As the Houston Chronicle puts it (I'm paraphrasing), Tom DeLay has been playing fast and loose with the rules for years, and now it's finally come up and bit him in the ass. Couldn't have happened to a bigger asshole. If the Democrat Nick Lampson takes that seat in November it'll be just what DeLay and the Republicans deserve.

Ken Lay dead of a "heart attack": It's funny how different people react to the same event. When I heard of Ken Lay's death (from a "heart attack") I immediately assumed it was a suicide. The Post immediately assumed that he faked his own death. There has reportedly been an autopsy that proves it was a heart attack. I'll believe it when they put a stake through his heart -- or, better yet, when all the investors and employees of Enron who lost everything they had due to his greed and corruption line up and each jab a stake into his chest, like the passengers in the Calais Coach in Sidney Lumet's film "Murder on the Orient Express."

Hilary Swank's Vanity Fair interview: Am I alone in thinking that it was kind of tacky for Swank (an actress I usually admire) to discuss her husband's substance abuse problem in a magazine interview? After all, it's his problem -- he should be the one to choose to discuss it or not. And dissembling with loved ones about your addiction is part of the disease -- if Swank is that upset with Chad Lowe for hiding his problem from her than she clearly needs to do some homework on the subject of addiction. I would suggest Al-Anon.

Lieberman threatens to run as Independent in Connecticut: Ned Lamont for Congress. That's all I can say. When Ann Coulter endorses you, you're clearly not a Democrat anymore. Lieberman should run against Lamont in the primary and if he loses that primary he should take it like a man and get a real job -- presumably providing the voice of Elmer Fudd in Warner Bros. cartoons.

Movies to see and not see: Based on my infallible meter of how to choose movies to see, I make the following recommendations (keep in mind I have seen none of the films in question):

• Superman Returns: Don't See (Based on a comic book, Sequel)
• Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest: Don't See (Sequel, Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer).
• The Devil Wears Prada: See (Based on a Novel, Stars Meryl Streep).
• A Prairie Home Companion: See (Directed by Robert Altman, Stars Meryl Streep)
• The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift: Don't See (Sequel)
• Click: Don't See (Stars Adam Sandler)

And if you're in New York next weekend, make sure to head down to Houston Street to see Billy Wilder's 1951 classic "Ace in the Hole" at the Film Forum on Friday and Saturday. Like Elia Kazan's "A Face in the Crowd," it holds a mirror up to the American media that's decades ahead of its time.

Tom Moran

Sciolism 101

I haven't written about the "controversy" (somehow I feel the need for quotations marks there) concerning Ann Coulter's new book Godless because I wanted to read the book before commenting on it.

Well, now I've read it.

The most interesting thing about Coulter's book is that it inspired a feeling in me that I haven't had before while reading her books: tedium. I was actively bored while plowing through this one, and found myself mentally counting the pages until it was over. I can pretty much guarantee you that out of all the thousands of Coulter's knuckle-dragging acolytes who have purchased this book, only a tiny fraction will make it to the end.

It's typical Coulter: snide invective laced with what some people who should know better believe to be wit. But it's all been done before and the gag is starting to get old. Will Coulter ever tire of making obnoxious cracks about the Kennedys in general and Chappaquiddick in particular? Apparently not -- because whenever she runs out of things to say, she just launches into another envy-laced diatribe about the Kennedys.

Coulter has been complaining of late that no one is discussing the thesis of her book: that liberalism is in effect a atheistical state religion. They're not discussing it for a very good reason: her thesis is so stupid that only one of her brain-dead followers could possibly take it seriously. And in effect her "thesis" is only a pretext for her usual attacks on liberals, which are really getting old. The fact is that Coulter has nothing new to say here -- she's just repackaging the same old snotty insults. Old wine in new skins, as the saying goes.

Coulter ends the book with a discussion of Darwin and why evolution is just a liberal conspiracy to deny the existence of God. I will leave a systematic refutation of her arguments to others who are more knowledgable than I am in science (unlike Coulter, when I don't know something about a given discipline I keep my mouth shut about it). I will make a few comments, however:

1) If you look at the last three chapters of Coulter's book, you will notice one glaring absence: nowhere in her attack on Darwin's theory of evolution does Coulter quote Darwin directly. She only quotes his critics, and the only times when she quotes Darwin's words it's in the form of quoting someone else who is quoting Darwin. Is it possible that she hasn't even bothered to read The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man? Based on her previous track record, I'm inclined to believe that she has not. Now imagine if I were to write a book attacking Christianity without bothering to read the Bible. How seriously would or should my arguments be taken?

2) At one point she attacks Wall Street Journal science writer Sharon Begley, calling her an "ignoramus." Well, the fact is that I know Sharon Begley from the days when we both worked at Newsweek in the 1990s, and I can tell you from personal experience that Sharon Begley has forgotten more about science than Ann Coulter will ever know.

Coulter's book is basically sciolism, or the art of pretending that you know more about a given subject than you really do. I was constantly reminded while reading her final chapters that Coulter is a lawyer, and her book is a good example of how a lawyer can distort the facts in order to make the weaker case seem stronger. It's what the Greeks called sophistry: persuasion by emotion rather than reason -- and it's exactly what she accuses John Edwards (a far more succesful lawyer than Coulter ever was) of doing in her book.

But the only interesting aspect of the book is how it illustrates the near-schizophrenic conflict in Coulter's nature. On the one hand, she is desperate for attention and will do anything to be noticed (hence the skirts that cry out for a speculum). On the other hand, she's just as desperate to be taken seriously as a serious intellectual (hence the mention on the book jacket that she is considered one of America's most prominent "public intellectuals" while neglecting to point out that it only counted the number of times she'd been on television).

These two desires cancel each other out in a way that is self-defeating. The more Coulter goes into her fire-bombing "let's frag Murtha" mode, the less seriously anyone takes her but the more attention she gets. And the more she tries to be the serious intellectual she wants to be the less seriously people take her because all they see is a middle-aged spinster with a big mouth who dresses like a teenaged slut. And the most ironic thing of all, of course, is Coulter presuming to be a Defender of the Faith, because if there's a worse Christian out there than Ann Coulter I can't think of one. Charles Manson is a better Christian than Ann Coulter.

So don't bother to read Godless, unless you want to be annoyed and bored, in about equal measure.

Tom Moran