Meanwhile, at the paper of record . . . .

ABOVE THE FOLD

No member of society has the right to teach any doctrine contrary to what society holds to be true.

-- Samuel Johnson

SCENE: The offices of a great metropolitan newspaper.

A MANAGING EDITOR, a CITY EDITOR, and a young REPORTER are discussing the top story of the day.

MANAGING EDITOR:  Okay, whadda we got?

REPORTER:  Some guy shot another guy near the Empire State Building, and then two cops shot the killer and some bystanders.

CITY EDITOR:  How many bystanders?

REPORTER:  Nine.

MANAGING EDITOR:  Whoa whoa whoa!  The cops do not shot bystanders.  Ever.

REPORTER:  Well it’s pretty clear that they did.

MANAGING EDITOR:  Well it’s pretty clear that we can’t say that.

REPORTER:  But it’s a verifiable fact.

MANAGING EDITOR:  You don’t understand.  When I say, “We cannot say that,” I mean we cannot say that.  When I say “The cops do not shoot bystanders,” I am not talking about a verifiable fact, I am talking about a sentence in the newspaper.  Subject verb object.  If “shoots” is the verb and “bystanders” is the object, then there is no way that the word “cops” can ever be the subject.  It’s journalistically incorrect.

REPORTER:  But it’s the truth!

MANAGING EDITOR:  Isn’t that what I just said?

CITY EDITOR:  Look--even if it is true--and that’s a big if--then we have to tell that truth in a way that not only reflects the facts, but grammatically reinforces the cultural values behind the facts.

REPORTER:  You mean like, the police are here to protect us, and therefore they can do no wrong?

MANAGING EDITOR:  Exactly.

CITY EDITOR:  Except that we can’t say that out loud.

MANAGING EDITOR:  We have to imply it.

CITY EDITOR:  Unless--wait--can’t we fall back on the Reagan Rule?

MANAGING EDITOR:  No--we don’t have a press release yet, so we can’t reprint it as if it’s an actual piece of reporting.

CITY EDITOR:  Crap.  So we have to use cop-speak.

MANAGING EDITOR:  I’m afraid so.

REPORTER:  Cop-speak?

CITY EDITOR:  The passive tense.  The cops don’t hurt people; people get hurt.  The cops don’t shoot bystanders; bystanders are caught in the line of fire.

REPORTER:  But that makes it the bystander’s fault.

MANAGING EDITOR:  Exactly. 

CITY EDITOR:  Because it can’t be the cops’ fault.

MANAGING EDITOR:  Ever.

CITY EDITOR:  That kind of shit only happens in Russia.

MANAGING EDITOR:  Or Mexico.

CITY EDITOR:  Or China.

MANAGING EDITOR:  Not here.

CITY EDITOR:  Not ever.

MANAGING EDITOR:  Cops never, ever shoot, or kill.  They open fire.  Unless they’re provoked, in which case they return fire, or they answer fire.

REPORTER:  Making it the shooter’s fault.

CITY EDITOR:  Correct.  And even when they kill the shooter--what’s this guy’s name?

REPORTER:  Johnson.

CITY EDITOR:  Johnson--even when they kill Johnson, we either say “Johnson was killed” or “police shoot suspect.” 

REPORTER:  Why can’t we say “Police shoot Johnson?”

MANAGING EDITOR:  Because that personalizes the act of shooting.  We need to make it as nebulous as possible so that people don’t get a picture in their head of some overweight guy in blue sticking a gun in somebody’s face and pulling the trigger.

CITY EDITOR:  So what we have to do here grammatically is, we have to make this shooting look like a one-time only event that was caused by the victims, so that future innocent bystanders are reassured that it can never happen again.

REPORTER:  And meanwhile, what, the police who fired the bullets aren’t even part of the process?

CITY EDITOR:  [a shrug]  Welcome to New York.

REPORTER:  More like “Welcome to Bloomberg’s police state.”

CITY EDITOR:  Isn’t that what I just said?

MANAGING EDITOR:  Work with us here, okay?

REPORTER:  Okay.  Okay.  Okay; so . . . how about something like, uh, “Police shoot suspect, nine others wounded?”

MANAGING EDITOR:  No no no--not wounded--hurt.  Nine others hurt.  “Wounded” implies that somebody did the wounding.  “Hurt” implies that it was an accident--they could have fallen down, they could have twisted their ankle.

CITY EDITOR:  Even better--how’s this?--even better, let’s spend the first paragraph painting a scene of chaos. 

MANAGING EDITOR:  I love it.

CITY EDITOR:  Chaos means it’s nobody’s fault.  Chaos means, for all we know, the bystanders who were wounded--

MANAGING EDITOR:  Hurt.

CITY EDITOR:  --hurt ran right into the path of bullets which were aimed at the suspect.

REPORTER:  So “Police Shoot Suspect, Nine Others Hurt in Chaos.”

CITY EDITOR:  Perfect.  And then at some point in the first three paragraphs you can say that people were wounded, but make sure there’s some doubt about who they were wounded by.

MANAGING EDITOR:  No--don’t mention people at all--mention the bullets.  And then admit the possibility that some of those bullets were fired by the police.

CITY EDITOR:  No--not fired by the police--don’t mention the police as people, mention them as adjectives.  Mention the bystanders as people--so it’s like, ah, “they were wounded, possibly by police bullets,” something like that.

MANAGING EDITOR:  And we have to say how fast it was happening too.  Something like “the nanosecond speed at which a shootout plays out.”

REPORTER:  Huh?

MANAGING EDITOR:  Is that not clear?

REPORTER:  No human being can act in nanoseconds.

MANAGING EDITOR:  Of course not, but the point is not to be realistic, the point is that it happens so fast you can’t do anything about it.  That’s all we’re saying--that in cases like this, the police are confronted by a series of split-second choices.

REPORTER:  [sarcastically] Split-nanosecond choices?

MANAGING EDITOR:  Don’t be ridiculous.

CITY EDITOR:  What else can’t we say?

MANAGING EDITOR:  I’m a little concerned about the phrase “bystander shooting.”  Can we even put the words “bystander” and “shooting” next to each other?

CITY EDITOR:  We shouldn’t even use the word shooting at all.

MANAGING EDITOR:  Exactly.  Call it an incident.  Call it an encounter, or an event--but do NOT call it a shooting.

REPORTER:  [increasingly more frustrated] So, what, “bystanders were injured?”

CITY EDITOR:  No, injured is too active, it implies that somebody injured them--

MANAGING EDITOR:  Meaning the cops--

CITY EDITOR:  --and we can’t even imply that, never mind actually say it in print.

REPORTER:  “After bystanders were embroiled in a shooting incident?”

MANAGING EDITOR:  Too complicated, even for us.

CITY EDITOR:  And it still mentions shooting.

REPORTER:  How about “bystanders hit by bullets?”

CITY EDITOR:  Whose bullets?

REPORTER:  The cops’ bullets.

CITY EDITOR:  Then we can’t say it.

REPORTER:  “Bystanders hit by bullets that magically appeared out of nowhere?”

MANAGING EDITOR:  Can we take this seriously please?

REPORTER:  I am taking this seriously.

CITY EDITOR:  How about “Bystanders take fire?”

MANAGING EDITOR:  No, that could mean they all pulled out guns and opened up at each other.

CITY EDITOR:  How about “bystanders take bullets?”

MANAGING EDITOR:  Yes!  Perfect! 

REPORTER:  “Perfect?”  How is it perfect?

MANAGING EDITOR:  Because it makes it all their fault!

CITY EDITOR:  It’s like they chose to get shot!

REPORTER:  [blowing up] And that’s ridiculous!  We’re giving our readers the impression that a bunch of innocent people deliberately jumped in front of a fusillade of bullets that nobody actually fired because we’re afraid to say three simple words, one right after the other: “police” “shoot” “bystanders.”  Do you know what that is?

CITY EDITOR:  It’s American journalism.

REPORTER:  It’s self-censorship!

MANAGING EDITOR:  Isn’t that what he just said?

[BLACKOUT.]

Parsing David Brooks: Wanna Bet, David?

September 18, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
No, It’s Not About Race
By DAVID BROOKS
WASHINGTON

(Original column in white; translation in red.)

You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I go running several times a week.

I'm trying to think of something that doesn't make me look like a Wall Street executive who wears pink shirts and fuchsia ties.

My favorite route, because it’s so flat, is from the Lincoln Memorial to the U.S. Capitol and back. I was there last Saturday and found myself plodding through tens of thousands of anti-government “tea party” protesters.

I saw a couple of hundred angry white anti-Obama demonstrators the other day.

They were carrying “Don’t Tread on Me” flags, “End the Fed” placards and signs condemning big government, Barack Obama, socialist health care and various elite institutions.

They were also carrying signs that said NEXT TIME WE'RE COMING WITH OUR GUNS, but I didn’t see a single one of them. Swear to God.

Then, as I got to where the Smithsonian museums start, I came across another rally, the Black Family Reunion Celebration. Several thousand people had gathered to celebrate African-American culture. I noticed that the mostly white tea party protesters were mingling in with the mostly black family reunion celebrants. The tea party people were buying lunch from the family reunion food stands.

This is because tea party whites all think Blacks are good for only one thing: serving them food.

They had joined the audience of a rap concert.

They wanted to be able to tell their children they actually heard rap once so they could say “I heard a rap concert once and it sucked!” just like I can now say “I saw white people at a rap concert once!”

Because sociology is more important than fitness, I stopped to watch the interaction.

I get paid a lot of money to make false generalizations about specific incidents.

These two groups were from opposite ends of the political and cultural spectrum. They’d both been energized by eloquent speakers. Yet I couldn’t discern any tension between them. It was just different groups of people milling about like at any park or sports arena.

Wow! People in public can be civil with each other!

And yet we live in a nation in which some people see every conflict through the prism of race.

Wow! People in public can be so uncivil with each other!

So over the past few days, many people, from Jimmy Carter on down, have argued that the hostility to President Obama is driven by racism.

Jimmy Carter is an asshole.

Some have argued that tea party slogans like “I Want My Country Back” are code words for white supremacy.

This is called the Straw Man Argument.

Others say incivility on Capitol Hill is magnified by Obama’s dark skin.

This is called the Maureen Dowd Argument.

Well, I don’t have a machine for peering into the souls of Obama’s critics, so I can’t measure how much racism is in there.

Oh snap, Maureen!

But my impression is that race is largely beside the point.

Because I’m white and privileged, racism is always beside the point.

There are other, equally important strains in American history that are far more germane to the current conflicts.

See, I wanted to type “stains” and "German" there, but you would have totally gotten the wrong idea.

For example, for generations schoolchildren studied the long debate between Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians.

I am now going to compress 300 years of American history into a false analogy that will make my argument sound intelligent.

Hamiltonians stood for urbanism, industrialism and federal power. Jeffersonians were suspicious of urban elites and financial concentration and believed in small-town virtues and limited government.

It’s all about the rich versus the poor.

Jefferson advocated “a wise and frugal government” that will keep people from hurting each other, but will otherwise leave them free and “shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”

The government has no right to take money from the rich and give it to the needy.

Jefferson’s philosophy inspired Andrew Jackson, who led a movement of plain people against the cosmopolitan elites.

Andrew Jackson was hot two years ago, and I like to keep up with the times.

Jackson dismantled the Second Bank of the United States because he feared the fusion of federal and financial power.

Did I mention that this was all about money?

This populist tendency continued through the centuries.

Heh. I just said that a President of the United States was actually an anti-governmental populist. How many of you noticed that?

Sometimes it took right-wing forms, sometimes left-wing ones.

This is where I pretend to be “balanced.”

Sometimes it was agrarian. Sometimes it was more union-oriented.

And we all know what unions are code for, right? (Cough) Gangsters. (Cough)

Often it was extreme, conspiratorial and rude.

That would be the left-wing populism.

The populist tendency has always used the same sort of rhetoric: for the ordinary people and against the fat cats and the educated class; for the small towns and against the financial centers.

You think it’s about the have-nots versus the haves, right?

And it has always had the same morality, which the historian Michael Kazin has called producerism.

Wrong! It’s about the rich having their money stolen by the government.

The idea is that free labor is the essence of Americanism. Hard-working ordinary people, who create wealth in material ways, are the moral backbone of the country.

Like all shills for corporate America, I believe that lazy, good-for-nothing unemployed people are an immoral cancer in our society.

In this free, capitalist nation, people should be held responsible for their own output.

It’s not about race; it’s about wage slavery.

Money should not be redistributed to those who do not work, and it should not be sucked off by condescending, manipulative elites.

East-Coast liberals love to give handouts to the unemployed, and throw money at problems in order to solve them.

Barack Obama leads a government of the highly educated.

This makes him a condescending, manipulative elite.

His movement includes urban politicians, academics, Hollywood donors and information-age professionals.

I will now (a) use "movement" to describe the Democrats, like it's a religious cult, and (b) list four types of people who don’t live in Kansas.

In his first few months, he has fused federal power with Wall Street, the auto industry, the health care industries and the energy sector.

I will now pretend that Obama has socialized the country out of nowhere, instead of as a corrective response to the last 8 years of Bush/Cheney.

Given all of this, it was guaranteed that he would spark a populist backlash, regardless of his skin color.

None of the people demonizing Obama will admit that it was Bush who got us into this mess in the first place.

And it was guaranteed that this backlash would be ill mannered, conspiratorial and over the top — since these movements always are, whether they were led by Huey Long, Father Coughlin or anybody else.

When my people are ill-mannered, conspiratorial, and over-the-top, it’s just politics as usual, so deal with it.

What we’re seeing is the latest iteration of that populist tendency and the militant progressive reaction to it.

I am now going to call a bunch of right-wing reactionaries “progressive”, and you are going to buy it.

We now have a populist news media that exaggerates the importance of the Van Jones and Acorn stories to prove the elites are decadent and un-American, and we have a progressive news media that exaggerates stories like the Joe Wilson shout and the opposition to the Obama schools speech to show that small-town folks are dumb wackos.

This is me laughing my ass off, because I am now using the word "populist" to describe Fox News and the word “progressive” to mean Socialist, Commie-symp liberals.

“One could argue that this country is on the verge of a crisis of legitimacy,” the economic blogger Arnold Kling writes. “The progressive elite is starting to dismiss rural white America as illegitimate, and vice versa.”

It’s actually the Left’s fault for starting this mud fight. So of course we have to stoop to their level. And by the way, I have just used the word “progressive” three times to mean three completely different things.

It’s not race.

It’s not just about race.

It’s another type of conflict, equally deep and old.

It’s about welfare queens.

Parsing Maureen Dowd: Oh, Girl

September 13, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Boy, Oh, Boy
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON

(original column in white; translation in red)

The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind.

The woman knew it was a racist remark even if the black guy didn’t.

Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.

Memo to fact-checkers: don’t. This is an opinion column.

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

Everything anybody says from South Carolina is racial.

The outburst was unexpected from a milquetoast Republican backbencher from South Carolina who had attracted little media attention.

This guy is a loser.

Now it has made him an overnight right-wing hero, inspiring “You lie!” bumper stickers and T-shirts.

This guy is now a loser with a following of other losers.

The congressman, we learned, belonged to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, led a 2000 campaign to keep the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol and denounced as a “smear” the true claim of a black woman that she was the daughter of Strom Thurmond, the ’48 segregationist candidate for president.

He’s also a fucking bigot.

Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.

And even worse, he’s ignorant and rude.

I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer — the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids — had much to do with race.

This is me trying to be balanced and objective.

I tended to agree with some Obama advisers that Democratic presidents typically have provoked a frothing response from paranoids — from Father Coughlin against F.D.R. to Joe McCarthy against Truman to the John Birchers against J.F.K. and the vast right-wing conspiracy against Bill Clinton.

The Republican party has been a pack of demagogues for the last 60 years.

But Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president — no Democrat ever shouted “liar” at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq — convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.

Did I mention he’s a fucking bigot?

“A lot of these outbursts have to do with delegitimizing him as a president,” said Congressman Jim Clyburn, a senior member of the South Carolina delegation. Clyburn, the man who called out Bill Clinton on his racially tinged attacks on Obama in the primary, pushed Pelosi to pursue a formal resolution chastising Wilson.

I will now use one of his own colleagues to nail this guy to the wall.

“In South Carolina politics, I learned that the olive branch works very seldom,” he said. “You have to come at these things from a position of strength. My father used to say, ‘Son, always remember that silence gives consent.’”

I have no idea what I’m talking about.

Barry Obama of the post-’60s Hawaiian ’hood did not live through the major racial struggles in American history.

Heh. I just called the President “Barry”.

Maybe he had a problem relating to his white basketball coach or catching a cab in New York, but he never got beaten up for being black.

‘Cause I know what it’s like to get beaten up for being black.

Now he’s at the center of a period of racial turbulence sparked by his ascension.

It’s all about race.

Even if he and the coterie of white male advisers around him don’t choose to openly acknowledge it, this president is the ultimate civil rights figure — a black man whose legitimacy is constantly challenged by a loco fringe.

This is the South’s worst nightmare.

For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both.

Look out, white women – it’s Nat Turner, President of the United States!

The state that fired the first shot of the Civil War has now given us this: Senator Jim DeMint exhorted conservatives to “break” the president by upending his health care plan.

Wait – that’s not hot-button enough. Let me think of another example.

Rusty DePass, a G.O.P. activist, said that a gorilla that escaped from a zoo was “just one of Michelle’s ancestors.”

Mu-u-u-u-uch better.

Lovelorn Mark Sanford tried to refuse the president’s stimulus money.

I have no idea what I’m talking about.

And now Joe Wilson.

His real first name is Addison, by the way. But he calls himself Joe because he wants to be thought of as just folks.

“A good many people in South Carolina really reject the notion that we’re part of the union,” said Don Fowler, the former Democratic Party chief who teaches politics at the University of South Carolina.

In South Carolina, “just folks” means “plantation owners who are still fighting the Civil War.”

He observed that when slavery was destroyed by outside forces and segregation was undone by civil rights leaders and Congress, it bred xenophobia.

They really really hate blacks down there.

“We have a lot of people who really think that the world’s against us,” Fowler said, “so when things don’t happen the way we like them to, we blame outsiders.”

You know those Southerners – if they’re not blaming it on the blacks, they’re blaming it on the Jews.

He said a state legislator not long ago tried to pass a bill to nullify any federal legislation with which South Carolinians didn’t agree. Shades of John C. Calhoun!

What did I tell you? Still fighting the Civil War.

It may be President Obama’s very air of elegance and erudition that raises hackles in some.

Obama has more manners and brains than the entire middle of the country.

“My father used to say to me, ‘Boy, don’t get above your raising,’ ” Fowler said. “Some people are prejudiced anyway, and then they look at his education and mannerisms and get more angry at him.”

And they really really REALLY hate uppity blacks down there.

Clyburn had a warning for Obama advisers who want to forgive Wilson, ignore the ignorant outbursts and move on: “They’re going to have to develop ways in this White House to deal with things and not let them fester out there. Otherwise, they’ll see numbers moving in the wrong direction.”

I know, I know – it’s a lame ending, but I couldn’t think of a way to tie everything together. I mean it’s not like I’m a writer or anything. I just come up with an idea for a column and then I type till I get to 250 words. Besides, nobody’s going to quote the close. They’re going to quote the part where I say it’s all about race. I suppose I should have said that at the end in some clever way, maybe by saying “To some people in this country, it’s not just numbers that are moving in the wrong direction.” But if I did that, I’d be admitting that the Republicans have a valid political beef against Obama, instead of an invalid racial one. I mean, if I thought about it for a while, I might come up with something clever. But I have to stop now - I have a Marc Jacobs Fashion Week show to get to.

More evidence that no one is editing the New York Times

From the 7/24/09 article The Tucker That Time Forgot:

Surviving Tuckers are worth amounts approaching, and in some cases, exceeding $1 million.


Now the way I was taught punctuation, the subordinate clause between two sets of commas was always thought of as an island –- a completely separate phrase which could be lifted out of the sentence without leaving any damage behind. But when you remove the subordinate clause from the sentence above, you’re left with this:

Surviving Tuckers are worth amounts approaching exceeding $1 million.

Which means the correct punctuation should be this:

Surviving Tuckers are worth amounts approaching, and in some cases exceeding, $1 million.

And what's even more annoying? Somebody got PAID to write that. Don't get me started. Especially since I just saw In The Loop, and have all these new curses I want to try out.

Like a sex column written by chastity converts

If you've been following the New York Times Proof blog, as I have, then you've probably been wondering why, in a series of articles about "alcohol and American life," the ex-drinkers, non-drinkers, and anti-drinkers outweigh the actual drinkers four to one. On a historical level this may be the Times' crafty way of reminding us all that whenever we have a Great Depression, the great Moralocracy declares that the Eleventh Commandment is "Thou shalt not introduce spiritous liquors into thy sinful, stupid, drug-addicted body." On a cultural level, the Times may be reflecting the actual Manhattan percentage of non-, anti- and ex-drinkers versus those who still line up three-deep at Professor Thom's to watch a Celtics game. But on a purely marketing level, the Times is guilty of false advertising when it claims that the contributors will "consider the charms, powers and dangers of drink," and then prints little else besides a lot of finger-wagging about the dangers.

In the past two months, we've seen a sixty-year-old AA member confess that she hasn't seen anyone "visibly drunk at a New York Party" in the last ten years, an ode to buybacks and bar fights, an inspiring "I stopped drinking and it changed my life" testimonial, a none-too-subtle "We drink to find God (but He's really serving coffee at AA meetings)" post, and the token "I drink; I throw up; no problem" post from (who else) the hip chick who's gotten trashed in Edinburgh.

As someone who has never been to Edinburgh (but has had enough Scotch in him to qualify for a green card), I call shenanigans. Having a blog about drinking where nobody actually drinks is like reading a sex column written by chastity converts, a comparison which I actually sent to the Times as a comment on one of the articles. You won't find it anywhere, though; it never got past their moderator. Which just adds insult to injury, as far as I'm concerned. Since obviously I can't challenge any of these poseurs posters to a game of quarters in retaliation, I have only one recourse. I'll just have to start posting about my own alcoholic escapades under the snarky graphic above.

And anybody who wants to join in the fun, first round's on me.

Here's a picture I never thought I'd see in the New York Times

Miss Grey Lady, she so stodgy

Rules for a new drinking game: a shot of tequila for every bizarre circumlocution the New York Times uses to avoid saying the word "fucking" in this article.

Reporters are nothing but parrots

Here's the money quote from New York Times Managing Editor Jill Abramson, who explains why the unfounded insinuation about an 8-year-old possible affair just HAD to be in that Times McCain story last week:

If the editors had summarily decided to edit out the issue of romance, because of possible qualms over "sexual innuendo" or some of the others issues cited in the reader questions, our story would not have been a complete and accurate reflection of what our sources told our reporters.

TRANSLATION: We repeat whatever we're told. We don't question it, we don't confirm it, we don't edit it. We just repeat it. Because that's what a good stenographer reporter does.

Ben Brantley Reviews Au Revoir Parapluie

What he wrote:

Inspired by the myth of the wife-losing Orpheus, “Au Revoir Parapluie” conjures a tragicomic universe that thwarts, mocks and dissolves human pretensions, ambitions and illusions of permanence. The title, which translates as “Farewell, Umbrella,” is a nod to the futility of seeking shelter from life’s storms.

What it means in English:

Inspired by my total inability to comprehend intellectually why I was having so much fun, my review of “Au Revoir Parapluie” will contain CriticBuzz© like "tragicomic universe," "dissolves human pretensions," and "illusions of permanence." After which I will suck all the poetry out of the title and tell you its literal meaning, followed by the kind of symbolic explanation which got even me all A's in English.

The Godless New York Times

This is what the online New York Times front page looked like at 7:14 AM:

Take a closer look.



Clo-ser.



"Sacred?" WTF?

In a related story, Pope Bud Selig told reporters that the rumored excommunication of Bonds is just a rumor, since Holy Baseball has yet to recognize the existence of steroids in much the same way that the Roman Catholic Church only recognized that the earth revolved around the sun in 1888.

Weekend Update

Honey I Shrunk the Grey Lady. You know how your grandmother seems to get about an inch shorter with every passing year? Well, the New York Times is doing it all at once: less than a month after increasing its price, the Times reduces its size, resulting in “somewhat fewer words per page.” In a related story, as of Monday the New York Times website will only open in a minimized window.

Finally, a third movie in a trilogy that’s worth seeing. I caught the 10 AM Saturday morning show of Bourne Ultimatum at the AMC Lincoln Square and it was so good I didn’t even mind the fact that Julia Stiles was in it. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more crowded theatre for a 10 AM show. (That includes the opening Saturday 9:30 AM Harry Potter show in the same theatre.)

Take that, stupid Roman mystery novel. I spent most of the last two weeks rewriting the second chapter of Three Dead Slaves, until finally on Friday night I took all the printouts of all the various drafts and tore them up into tiny confetti-like pieces. Then I started writing Chapter 3 as if it was Chapter 2, which went like a dream. The new Chapter 3 still needs a little work, Chapter 4 is pretty much done, and if I can finish a draft of Chapter 5 this week, then Book One will pretty much be complete.

Plays too smart for Broadway. I’m slowly working on getting my MySpace page up and running; when I do, I’m going to investigate ways of linking to scripts and such. Look for a link on the blog (and vice versa).