mormon romance

Posted on March 20, 2003 by acb

Of course, it’s poossible the reason they don’t have sex scenes is that no one wants to write about the passionate couple getting stuck in their underwear.

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TV listings

Posted on March 20, 2003 by acb

from a parallel planet.

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there is a god

Posted on March 20, 2003 by acb

and I am sorry ever to have doubted this. Andy Bull, whom I knew at the Independent, and who later progressed to deputy editor of the Sunday Express has been busted for child pornography.

Expect the court to be crammed with former colleagues from every paper he worked on, and spontaneous cheering when the verdict comes down.

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how dare anyone

Posted on March 19, 2003 by acb

say that Mr Bush is not being multilateral?

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the view from Israel

Posted on March 19, 2003 by acb

or — suck on that, Ms Short:

“Blair’s motivations are no less cynical than Bush’s. While European unity has been torn over the Iraqi campaign, there is strong consensus on the continent for the need to stop the vicious cycle of violence between Israelis and Palestinians and to bring an end to the Israeli occupation and settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, which are seen as the root of trouble. France and Germany, who have led the opposition to Bush in Europe, have remained largely silent on the Palestinian-Israeli issue, since they don’t have to prove their peace credentials. But the leaders of Britain and Spain, America’s allies in the old world, are going up against the overwhelmingly antiwar public opinion in their countries and are trying to make up some of their losses by embracing the Palestinians, a pet issue for European liberals. In other words, Blair and Aznar have called for ending the Israeli occupation, in order to legitimize, or at least make more politically palatable, their own occupation of Baghdad, Mossul and Basra.”

Aluf Benn, writing in Salon.

He’s right. you know.

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A social trend

Posted on March 18, 2003 by acb

This winter London is full of men called Ian who think they’re editing the New Yorker. In December, Ian Katz launched the Guardian’s page of little essays, Short Cuts. “Write as if you were doing something for Talk of the Town”, he said. So I did.

Yesterday, I was rung up by Ian Irvine, from the Independent on Sunday. He wants me, esentially, to write Guardian pieces for him: long essays and profiles, and, of course, short pieces for a new section of elegant essays “We’re aiming to be just like the New Yorker.“, he said. Unfortunately, because the Independent is broke, they don’t distribute the new magazine outside London, so he is sending copies specially to North Essex. I was, and remain, flattered. I assured him I would send him everything I write in that style which the New York New Yorker fails to publish.

Looking for links for this entry, I discovered some wonderful news: Posy Simmonds’ Literary Life cartoons are archived online. Here’s one about the war. And then there is one for New York Publishers.

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I love these guys

Posted on March 17, 2003 by acb

Columbia Univesity Press have just sent me the cover of the American edition, and it’s lovely. Much better than the horrid English one.

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a regrettable accident

Posted on March 17, 2003 by acb

Now suppose it had been an Iraqi bulldozer.

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spineless American journalism

Posted on March 16, 2003 by acb

Sometimes I wonder, in numbed astonishment, how anyone is supposed to believe the stuff that comes out of the Bush White House. It had never occurred to me that there was a practical answer to this questioon. Here is part of it. The White House press machine rewrites and approves even supposedly off-the-record briefings from people who work there; and, when a journalists baulks at this, accuses him of unethical conduct: here is a Washington Post reporter getting himself into trouble.

Recently, I was working on a profile of the now-departed chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, R. Glenn Hubbard. I dutifully went through the White House press office to talk to an administration economist about Hubbard’s tenure, and a press office aide helpfully got me in touch with just the person I wanted. The catch was this: The interview would be off the record. Any quotes I wanted to put into the newspaper would have to be e-mailed to the press office. If approved, the quotation could be attributed to a White House official. (This has become fairly standard practice.)

(via Scott Rosenberg)

Does even Microsoft try that amount of control?

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night thoughts

Posted on March 16, 2003 by acb

It may not be very grown up of me, or anything, but almost every night for the last six months, I have lain awake for a while at about 3 or 4 am worrying about the war and what will go wrong. These may well be displacements from other worries, that I can do something about and prefer to ignore. But I thought I would write down all the things that frighten me, now, so I can come back in a year’s time and see whether I was right. That’s certainly a trick I have found helpful agianst hypochondria. By keeping copious notes as death approaches me on tube trains, in Romanian hotel rooms, and so on, I have been able to establish that I have suffered around 412 fatal heart attacks in the last fifteen years without ever actually dying, and this knowledge helps me bear the next one with a little more fortitude. On the other hand, my predictions about politics, God, the Internet, and even, so far, the war, have proved gratifyingly correct.

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