The newly-discovered Gospel of Judas is exciting for all kinds of reasons. First off, it shows how flimsy doctrine is. If Judas is a good guy, then all the teaching is out the window, and the official interpreters have to…
I’m developing sudden sympathy for Rumsfeld. When Richard Holbrooke comes out for his resignation, as he did on Hardball tonight, it means the conventional wisdom has completely come around to that position. Rummy must go. Holbrooke is the biggest wind-sniffer…
When I went into my Muriel Spark phase a few months back, I soon learned that she had had a relationship with The New Yorker. But none of the books that promote the New Yorker mythology even mentions her. You…
Women like baths and men like showers. Why? One theory is that a man feels vulnerable in the bathtub, sitting down, weighed down with water. Someone could come in and shoot him. Whereas in a shower, it’s fast and a…
I’m in a state of grief, gratitude and excitement over Muriel Spark’s death. This reflects the fact that I only really discovered her for myself six months back. Yes, I had read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie some time…
Watching the latest episode of the Sopranos (Wow, great!), I was reminded of the art lesson I quote from Muriel Spark in a recent entry— Fiction is lies. And in order to do this you have got to have a…
This morning on Meet the Press, Tim Russert had a table of religious experts and at the end said they just had enough time for each of them to give a twenty second message for people on Easter. Well, then…
This morning I was working when I thought, I wonder if Muriel Spark has died, and I went online and put in her name, and yes, she had died in Italy, the news was announced a few hours ago. It’s…
I fell for Lindsey Graham during the Impeachment hearings back in ’98 when he was still a Congressman. I used to talk to him after the hearings. The things I love about him are: he’s independent-minded, incredibly gifted politically, and…