In the new issue of The Nation Gloria Emerson begins her review of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis by saying, "It has never been a habit of mine to read comic books." It's good of Emerson to admit this, but why on earth did The Nation then decide to run her review anyway? If a critic bragged, "It has never been a habit of mine to read novels" or "biographies" or "political theory," a sharp editor would say, Maybe the reader would be better served if the writer had at least some passing familiarity with what she was talking about. This decision would have spared us Emerson's monumentally ignorant second sentence, "But she is such a talented artist and her black-and-white drawings are so captivating, it seems wrong to call her memoir a comic book." Got that? Comic books are crude and inconsequential. This is not crude or inconsequential. Therefore, this is not a comic book. So how do The Nation's music critics feel about this rock and roll thing all the kids are into?

11:56 AM

Just one more thing about the Bragg affair. It was no more than 10 years ago that the Times first allowed multiple bylines on stories. Believe it or not, it was the paper's policy that a story must be seen to have been written by only one person (for extra archaic pomposity, these stories were always "special to the New York Times.") Considering how frequently Times articles now carry two or more bylines, it seems obvious that for most of its history, the Times was not crediting people who substantially contributed to articles. I can understand why Timesers are pissed at Bragg for saying "everybody does it," when most people in fact do not, but you'd think someone would at least acknowledge that a mere decade ago, Bragg would have been right.

10:54 AM

Conspiracy theory of the week: The Times is keeping Rick Bragg and Jayson Blair in the spotlight to distract people from a far more dangerous fabricator: Judith Miller.

10:35 AM

Now this is the sort of plot twist that might have made Stephen Glass' novel a better work of satire: Rick Bragg has a new book idea. "I would love to write it - it's one of the most compelling stories of the past year," he tells The New York Post. "It" is the rescue of Jessica Lynch. Yup, sounds like Bragg's kind of story.

10:20 AM

Antic Muse on the real Rick Bragg scandal: His writing blows.

5:58 PM

My qualified but largely positive review (has there been any other kind) of Eric Schlosser's Reefer Madness appears in the current issue of People (sorry, not online). Insider anecdote: I originally cited a factoid in the book that Newt Gingrich once proposed the death penalty for smuggling two ounces of pot. Kyle thought that sounded wrong and checked Schlosser's source for it -- only to find that there was none. Guess Schlosser thought that silence was better than saying, Um, I found it on the Internet (no, the Washington Post article cited does not exist).

5:51 PM

(believe it or not). Some guy named Chris Swanson writes in about one of my old Webster columns:

You don't like hearing others talking about living a healthy lifestyle? It's pretty simple: Take care of yourself now or pay the price later. I guess you'd rather spend your retirement in a hospital with a terminal illness all while taking 10 different medications. What the hell is your beef with Dr. Myron Wentz? He is one who actually cares about helping people. I say all of this because I am a personal trainer and associate of USANA Health Sciences. You are one sorry excuse for a life.

I took the bait:

Always nice to hear from a fan! Took me a while to figure out what you were talking about, though. I'm not used to getting e-mail about an article I wrote for a Web zine that folded six years ago. What'd you do, Google 'Myron Wentz' 'Cause if so, you got no excuse for calling anyone else's life sorry. I know people are intense about this USANA thing, but, seriously, cult much?

I have to say your e-mail came as a surprise -- and not just because most people, on hearing that someone doesn't like it when strangers rudely insist on lecturing them about exercise, do not then proceed to do exactly that. More to the point, I wonder if you actually read the damn thing. See, when a writer declares that his idea of exercise involves ' a pizza and watching Comedy Central,' for you to insult him is more or less redundant. Especially since this was back when the Daily Show was hosted by Craig Kilborn. In the trade, we call this self-deprecating humor. 'Sorry excuse for a life' is just stating the premise.

And my beef with Dr. Wentz? Well, just between us, you realize that this 50-year-old cell thing is a load of crap, right? And USANA -- well, those pesky libel laws prevent me from throwing around words like pyramid scheme, but at a bare minimum, it's mighty cheesy. Like Longaberger for pill pushers. Hmm. Suddenly it occurs to me that maybe your decision to fire off insulting e-mail to a total stranger wasn't just a sign that you have a lot of downtime in your personal training business. Maybe it's actually a wind-up to your sales pitch. If so, your approach needs work.

5:24 PM

In that case, I'll be sure to visit one of their top 100 hospitals next time I need surgery. My high school buddy Delon writes in about our alma mater: "Checking Newsweek's web listing of the 100 Best High
Schools in the America, I was mildly curious to see if Stuyvesant ranked #1, or perhaps 2 or 3 if there are elite academies hidden somewhere else. Turns out it's not even on the list. Shocked, I investigate further, and quickly discover the reason: 'Schools that chose more than half of their students by grades or test scores were not considered because the index is designed to identify schools that challenge average students and does not work well with schools that have few or no average students.'"

4:43 PM

Back in college, a bunch of us used to delight in writing letters to the Oberlin Review weighing in on some campus scandal that didn't actually exist (the word "Mangina" will ring a bell to some). We figured if enough people wrote letters with different opinions, the issue would magically become real. If only we could have accomplished something like this. Scroll to April 24th entry, then keep going. The thread gets more and more giddy as the snowball builds into a dangerous avalanche.

4:19 PM

"It has been a singular honor to be entrusted with the responsibility to lead the EPA in its effort to leave America's air cleaner, its water purer, and its land better protected than it was when this Administration took office." -- Christie Whitman's resignation letter.

"Christie Todd has been a dedicated and tireless fighter for new and innovative policies for cleaner air, purer water, and better protected land." --George Bush's reply.

4:52 PM

So busted.

3:15 PM

Whose Language Is It Anyway? asks Stephen S. Pickering in The New York Times. "George Orwell wrote an essay in 1946 on politics and language contending that the clarity of one's writing mirrored clarity of thought; that if a person could not state his position clearly in print, his views were probably similarly muddled. It is not a bad caution for managing this largely unmanageable language: Grammar is important, clarity is more so. Maybe that's the lesson for those PSAT students."

Which is ironic, since I'm not the least bit sure what his point is.

2:27 PM

The London Times answers the burning question: What if The Ethicist was dull-witted and kind of a dick. Randy Cohen -- the real Ethicist -- goes head-to-head with his British counterpart, Philip Howard, and wipes the mat with him.

11:52 AM

(scroll to previous post to catch up): While we await input from more Radosh.netters, readers of The Washington Post weigh in with the following claims:
1. Keegan "is conflating the rules for relative and personal pronouns."
2. There is a grammar error in the sentence, but not the one Keegan found.
3. In an interview with the Post, Keegan speaks bad grammar hisself.

4:34 PM

Clare Boyle, sophomore at James Hubert Blake HS ("And student of the wonderful Kevin Keegan") has a little remedial education for Francis and Rose:

I personally think Kevin Keegan is correct. Here is another example sentence to show the ambiguity that occurs when a pronoun is incorrectly used to replace an adjective:

Frank's textbook helps him study for tests.

If this sentence appeared in isolation on the PSAT, students could be confused by the word "his," since is does not directly refer to anything. In this instance, Frank could have lent his textbook to Bob, and Bob uses it to study for tests. We are unclear about to whom "his" is referring. It could be, "Frank's textbook helps him (referring to Bob) study for tests." Keegan is right in saying that a pronoun cannot modify an adjective (which possessive nouns are) because it is unclear what subject the pronoun is modifying. This is a rule that I learned in Catholic school in 6th grade, and I was one of those students who chose "A" on the PSAT and got marked wrong for actually knowing the correct answer. I'm just happy Mr. Keegan gave me my rightfully deserved point back on my score.

Pretty persuasive. Lucky for me, writing for a living requires no actual understanding of grammar. I'm still open to being swayed by whatever new arguments come down the pike. And whether this Keegan guy is ultimately right or wrong, anyone who challenges the Standardized Testing Gods is A-OK in my book.

Update: Rose ain't having this shit. And, unlike me, she ain't pulling her punches just because her challenger is a teenager. (And, also unlike me, Rose has a good grasp of the elements of grammar). Her reply to Clare:

I'm confused here: why does she keep saying "his" when it doesn't appear in the sentence? And aren't these people just being willful? In isolation, the sentence "Frank's textbook helps him study for tests," clearly refers to Frank. If there are two sentences, "Bob borrowed a book from Frank. Frank's textbook helps him study for tests," then "him" refers to Bob. That's what pronouns and possessive adjectives do, for God's sake -- they refer to different things at different times!

Here is another bizarre sentence: "Keegan is right in saying that a pronoun cannot modify an adjective (which possessive nouns are) because it is unclear what subject the pronoun is modifying." What the fuck is she talking about? There are no pronouns "modifying adjectives" in either her example sentence or the original one. The possessive adjectival form of the pronoun is *referring* to a proper noun's adjectival form.

I think the confusion (which seems entirely made up to me) is because the word "her" is both the objective case of the pronoun "she" as well as the possessive adjectival form, whereas the word "him" is the objective case of the pronoun "he" but the possessive adjectival form is "his".

Saying that someone "could be confused" by a sentence that contains a pronoun seems like precisely the kind of sophomoric sophistry I would expect from a bright high school sophomore. She should do well in politics.

And I'm pissed off at having to use the word "adjectival" so damned many times. A pox on these people!

While I would not stoop to calling anyone a nascent politician, and, as I have said, am stoopid about rules, I do have a gut affinity for Rose's argument that a good reader can trust her ear as to whether something is correct, and need not go seeking confusion where there is none -- it's how I manage to make a living at the word game without knowing exactly what I'm doing. Is the problem here that standardized tests reward excessive fealty to rules and punish common sense? Or is Rose just plain right, and Mr. Keegan wrong? Answer the question, Clare.

Or perhaps Mr. K can weigh in himself. Feel free to curse, sir. Rose can handle it.

10:32 AM

David Brooks was right. (Well, half right. I don't think this guy was a liberal). Yesterday I got a call from a reader at The Week. It happens less than you'd think, so I usually return them (the calls, not the readers; I have to be careful now with all the high school grammar whizzes reading my blog). Turns out the gentleman from Kansas had a question about my neocon briefing. His question was this: "Let me ask you something. Are you Jewish?"

Apparently I shirked my duty when I attempted to explain neoconservatism without adequately exposing that this is a "Jewish movement."

As Gina used to say, back when she was new to the Tribe, Oy my vey!

10:08 AM

Emily's roundup of Matrix Reloaded reviews. I have to count myself among the disappointed. But it's an uneven movie. The first 25 minutes are strictly dullsville. Then there's an hour and a half of slick, fun, sometimes fake-y action sequences that, as everyone has pointed out, ultimately fall flat because there's not much of a plot behind them. (Or rather, the plot is highly inorganic. The characters are assigned arbitrary goals, and artificial obstacles are thrown in their way. Ho hum.) But here's the weird part: the last 20 minutes -- after the action stops -- are great. Suddenly, just as Reloaded ends, the Matrix trilogy gets interesting again. Good thing there's a third chapter in the wings.

5:49 PM

A few months ago I was almost quoted in a Time magazine story about pirating music, but then there was some sort of war or something and story never ran. Last week it occurred to me, hey, I work for national newsmagazine myself. For those of you who don't subscribe to The Week, here's the Editor's Letter I wrote:

I don't think of myself as a thief. I would never shoplift so much as a pencil. But I am one of the 60 million Americans who download pirated music from the Internet. I've rationalized this a dozen ways. It's not about the money, I've always said. I would happily pay a reasonable amount for the convenience of digital downloads. But the recording industry hasn't grasped that. Instead it tries to make downloading more difficult, suing kids or building anti-piracy measures into music that make it impossible to play when and where I want to. Lectures about stealing from artists ring hollow from an industry that has done artists more financial harm than pirates ever will. A musician friend of mine encourages piracy, saying performers can't be worse off than they are now. "Dismantling the industry-as-it-is can ONLY be a good thing," he says. "Music will never go away, and we're always going to need musicians to make it." He gives his latest album away free on his web site.

Last week, I was forced to put my money where my mouth is when Apple introduced an experimental online music store?the first that doesn't treat customers like criminals. It sells songs inexpensively and lest buyers do whatever they want with them. If you're determined to pirate thousands of copies, you can. Apple is gambling that most people are inherently honest. For my first legal download, I chose a song symbolic of the music industry: Bob Dylan's "Everything is Broken." Is it just my imagination, or does it sound better when you listen with a clean conscience.

N.b., I know "symbolic" is the wrong word in that last graf. It was changed after I signed off on the piece. I originally had "in honor of."

And my more specific thoughts about the Apple Music Store: Great concept, great execution, crappy inventory. If they can bulk it up substantially, this will be legal downloading's killer app. Otherwise, it's back to Gnutella. The only other problem, really, is that the 30-second samples are too short to help you decide if you like a song you've never heard, and they're often of non-representative sections of the song itself, which is dumb. Surely, Apple could rig it so that you're allowed to listen to any song all the way through at least once in streaming version, after which you'd be limited to the 30-second reminder.

5:14 PM

The Rise of the Neocons. Yes, it sounds like a horror movie, but it's really just my latest briefing for The Week. Everything you need to know about neoconservatives. Except how to stop them.

3:16 PM

You can read more than anyone would want to about the Jayson Blair Affair over at Romenesko, so I won't say much. But it's odd that the debate over the race angle comes down to either "it wasn't about race" or "this proves how bad affirmative action is." It seems clear to me that this is a problem of lousy management filtered through a affirmative action. That is, the diversity program itself need not have been a problem -- there are reasons to give preference to minority journalists in hiring, and to work with them longer than you might otherwise at the beginning. The media already suffers from being overwhelmingly white. Having a few young reporters who take longer to learn the ropes won't hurt it much more, and when they eventually become good reporters, they'll improve it more than those white reporters would have. The problem is that Howell Raines didn't follow a "diversity program," he followed his own whims. He made a personal decision -- whether because Blair was black or a charming suck-up or (probably) both -- to cover-up his flaws, promote him too rapidly, and so on. There's nothing inherent in the idea of promoting diversity that says you have to do that. Maybe the Times never wrote down its policy, just expected that an enlightened white person could make calls on the fly (Farai Chideya explains why this never works in the one piece that Romenesko hasn't linked to. Poorly written, but interesting once you figure out what she's trying to say at the end). The solution is not to scrap affirmative action programs, but rather to make sure they're just that, programs. Hold Howell Raines responsible for inept management -- if he's not fired, or severely punished, the Times can't recover -- but don't blame the worthwhile ideal of diversity just because that's what Raines thought he was acting on.

All this calls to mind (I mean my mind, of course) my 1995 New York Press column about the Times correction page. Now with extra hindsight!

Update: I'm not alone. The Antic Muse has a very similar (if more elegantly expressed) take on the situation. Also worth a look: Neal Pollack on why "black people must not be allowed to practice journalism in America anymore."

9:44 AM

Like a hole in the head. "I'm making a conscious decision to take this whole Judaism thing seriously. I think the Jews need me right now." -- Geraldo Rivera. (Thanks to Jake.)

3:01 PM

TiVo alert. Delete some of those Simpsons (and She Spies) episodes to make room for something serious for a change. On Sunday at 8 a.m., C-SPAN2 (hey...where are you going?) is broadcasting the talk by Arundhati Roy that Anthony recently organized. Roy is an engaging speaker, worth checking out even if you disagree with her views. Here she discusses War Talk, a collection of essays, with Howard Zinn.

1:38 PM

Hang on: genius? Rose points out this story of a grammar error on the PSAT...with the minor detail that the error is not actually an error.

Students were asked if anything was grammatically wrong with the following sentence: "Toni Morrison's genius enables her to create novels that arise from and express the injustices African Americans have endured."

The correct choice on the multiple choice exam was originally listed as "no error" ... Maryland high school journalism teacher Kevin Keegan... informed ETS that the sentence was incorrect because the pronoun in the sentence -- "her" -- was used improperly. Keegan said the pronoun refers to an adjective instead of a noun, as it should.

Francis begs to differ: A pronoun can never replace an adjective, but it's not replacing "Toni Morrison's", it's replacing "Toni Morrison". I personally feel the phrase "Toni Morrison's genius" is grammatically equivalent to "the genius of Toni Morrison" (which, although it's a prepositional phrase, couldn't lead anyone to conclude that Toni Morrison was a preposition herself; she's just not that versatile). Even though "Morrison's" looks like one word, it's two discrete units: proper noun + possessive signifier. I mean, if you can't have crossover between possessive words and pronouns, how the heck do we even have words like "my"?

Grammar mavens are invited to submit alternate points of view.

My opinion, the whole problem could have been avoided with a simple rewording: "Toni Morrison has been coasting on a couple of good novels because white liberals are afraid to admit how mediocre she is."

6:19 PM

Defining "Low Price!" Down.

5:36 PM

Gersh live! Everyone's favorite N.Y.C. columnist reveals his artistic side in Neo-Shtick Theater, with pal Lawrence Goodman at HERE Arts Center on June 13 & 14.

Gersh will also be reading at HERE as part of the "Beyond Words" series on May 19. Such a talented boy.

5:29 PM

But even he won't see her movies.

3:26 PM

In my opinion, Music Club had its first bust. The category was songs you disagree with. Most people tried to bring songs they liked, but that expressed opinions or sentiments to which they objected. Several folks, as you'll see, "disagreed" with a narrator's emotional reaction to a specific situation, which strikes me as petty. Here's the mix:

1 Bob Dylan - Neighborhood Bully (I chose this rockin' apologia for Israeli militarism)
2 - Steve Earle - N.Y.C. (disses our fair city)
3 - Johnny Cash - Understand Your Man (mean to his woman)
4 - Dusty Springfield - You Don't Have to Say You Love Me (you know those songs where the singer is a strong woman? This isn't one of them)
5 - Alanis Morrisette - Ironic (too busy on "You Can't Do That on Television" to pay attention in English class)
6 - Adam Brodsky - Cubicle Girl (shallow)
7 - Bloodhound Gang - Three Point One Four (Not sure what Jenn "disagrees" with, other than the song's attitude, which I think everyone agreed is actually pretty funny. She'd be on stronger ground if she'd argued that in fact it's easy to find rhymes for vagina.)
8 - Graham Parker - You Can't Be Too Strong (pro-life)
9 - Bob Marley - Redemption Song (I never thought about it, but Anthony's absolutely right: this is a song that advocates abandoning political struggle in favor of spiritual struggle because bad things that happen on earth -- atomic energy, killing our prophets -- are all part of the plan spelled out in the Book of Revelation.)

I'm afraid our next theme is fairly uninspired too: Songs in your vinyl collection. Although there was a funny moment when Eve said, "I was born in 1980. I don't have a vinyl collection." (She later confessed to owning a Wham LP, so there's one slot taken.)

7:50 PM

Paul Tullis, the Lost FoE, has a new web site featuring a collection of his fine writing, including screenplays and articles from the late, lamented Might.

9:06 AM

Babe 3: Pigs and the Kitty.

2:26 PM

Too busy to blog much for the next few days. Here's something to pass the time. Geek Wars!

1:34 PM

Whew. Salam Pax is alive and blogging.

12:55 PM

Sometimes I wish Bush would just go ahead and erect that giant statue of an extended middle finger he clearly wants to replace the topple one of Saddam. Until then, there's this: U.S. Hires Christian Extremists to Produce Arabic News.

8:38 PM

Andy Dick says: "I was teased by everyone, especially by the people who think they're funny. Even gym teachers... Still, every night before I lay my tiny head on my sweet little pillow, I thank my lucky stars that my name ain't Andy Cunt." (From the May issue of Jane).

9:15 PM

That's what you get for going to see Rent.

7:20 PM

Cinema critique of the day: "This movie blew me apart and put me back together only after I'd got put back I felt like I had thirteen dicks and they'd all gotten blown by a surfer chick with 26 heads (2 mouths on each cock)."

8:15 PM

A few weeks ago I almost linked to paparazzi pix of Catherine Zeta-Jones, 9-months pregnant, topless, and smoking a cigarette. They disappeared before I could. Now Daze has them (censored), with some explanation.

Update. Scroll to May 2. Daze caved in and removed the pictures. If anyone downloaded them, let me know, since Gina's bummed that she never got a chance to see them.

Update 2. Reader Jeff Jones was kind enough to send me a copy of the key photo. I won't post it, since that would be wrong -- and also, I'm too cheap to pay for the fancy-pants photo blog technology. But since at least 25 people so far have found this site searching for this picture, I suppose that it would be good karma to e-mail it to anyone who asks nicely and is willing to avow that they're over 18.

8:08 PM

What will be the reaction to Christina Aguilera's new bustin' loose look? While some people will feel downright betrayed, others, curiously, have been waiting for this day for some time.

6:13 PM

I'm waiting till I really have time to weigh in properly on the Apple Music Store, but so far, I'm impressed. The catalog is too thin, and there are a few quirks I don't like (though they've already adjusted some of them even since yesterday), but basically, it's pretty solid. The only thing that could be better is free legal MP3s. Like, for instance, the new Wilco EP. They're giving it away to anyone who owns Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (and who doesn't?).

4:22 PM

Heather Havrilesky on The Office, the best television comedy -- the only really great one -- since The Newsroom.

3:55 PM

Translating Bushspeak. He says: he's eliminating the gag rule for his new AIDS package. He means: he's expanding it.

10:42 AM

String Theory at the Had To Be Made Film Festival. Jake's feature film, String Theory, is now "playing" at Had To Be Made, a terrific decentralized film festival in which entries are available for rental on DVD at indie video stores around the nation. Just drop into the store -- In New York City, the St. Marks' Kims and TLA on 8th St. (find other locations on the site) -- then rent any or all the DVDs from the HTMB display (each volume comes with a feature and two shorts). Finally, and most important, go back to the Web site and cast your vote. Neat, huh?

String Theory is a religio-philosophical thriller about drugs (for them), corruption (against it), physics, sex, and the Meaning of Life. Will you like it? Watch the trailer and find out (Quicktime).

10:21 AM