April is National Poetry Month

So I'm a little ahead of the curve...

GDS 10

Emily Dickinson 50

NOT with a club the heart is broken,
Nor with a stone;

the rest

The mighty Krug-Man

Making the cover of Newsweek!

The Newsweek story here.

Media Matters for America has an interesting take on it:

Looking back on the Bush years, Krugman's track record was rather impeccable. But you'll note he didn't appear on the cover of Newsweek back then. (No "Bush is Wrong" cover lines.) And for years Krugman only occasionally appeared on the pundit talk shows. He wasn't referenced much inside The Village, either. Meaning, the Beltway press pros didn't seem to care what Krugman wrote about Bush and didn't think his writing--his opposition--needed to be examined closer. He was just a liberal critic, so who cared what he wrote about Bush.

My theory on directing

So I finally developed my own theory on directing, which is pretty primitive, but even so:

- Cast carefully - get really good actors.
- Give them some guidelines.
- Make them feel safe.
- Get out of their way.

Maybe I'll elaborate and get fancy with it. But I think this works pretty well... my STRESS AND THE CITY production was a breeze to direct mainly because I followed this theory. Also, none of the actors were evil. That helps.

oh that droll Schopenhauer

In Arthur Schopenhauer's preface to the first edition of his "The World as Will and Idea" (AKA "The World as Will and Representation") he advises the reader to do the following things:

1. Read the works of Immanual Kant first


2. Read Schopenhauer's own "On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason" first


3. Read his own "On Vision and Colors" first


4. Read the Upanishads first


5. Read the appendix of "The world as will..." first.


6. Read both the appendix and "The world as will...", twice.

If you can't be bothered to follow his advice, Schopenhauer has a few thoughts for you:

...Therefore my advice is simply to lay down the book. But I fear I shall not escape even thus.The reader who has got as far as the preface and been stopped by it, has bought the book for cash, and asks how he is to be indemnified. My last refuge is now to remind him that he knows how to make use of a book in several ways, without exactly reading it. It may fill a gap in his library as well as many another, where, neatly bound, it will certainly look well. Or he can lay it on the toilet-table or the tea-table of some learned lady friend. Or, finally, what certainly is best of all, and I specially advise it, he can review it.

Mark Twain was never more droll.

I love this article about Jon Stewart

While it isn't The New Yorker I really like New York Magazine's short pieces - they get some very good writers.

This piece by Emily Nussbaum on Jon Stewart is very nice:

Three weeks ago, when he launched an attack on CNBC and Jim Cramer, it was an astonishingly polarizing moment, and for all the praise he got from his fans, I was startled to hear several colleagues of mine hit full-out backlash mode: Stewart had become a bully, they told me, sanctimonious and overreaching. Who did he think he was?

For me, it was a conversion moment. I’d always admired Stewart, but I was bugged by that “little me” deniability, the “just a comedian” escape hatch he’d adopted early on. Now, at last, he had claimed his own authority, without becoming any less funny. When Cramer appeared before him, trying to bond as if the two were buddies from the greenroom, Stewart didn’t knuckle: “Roll 212!,” he cried, elevating video fact-checking into a thrilling moral vaudeville.

Love it.

And Comedy Central Insider likes it too.

When we two parted by George Gordon, Lord Byron

WHEN we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted,
To sever for years,

more...

Why David Sedaris earns a living as a writer...

an excerpt from his piece in this week's New Yorker...

He's at a Costco's with his brother-in-law...

This store didn't have the light bulbs Bob wanted, so we trudged on to the drug section, which proved equally disappointing. Pain relievers were in ten-gallon jars rather than packets, and so I looked around for another gift that a teen-ager might appreciate. I wanted something light and individually wrapped, and settled, finally upon a mess of condoms, which came in a box the size of a cinder block. It was a lot of protection, but not a lot of weight, and I liked that. "All right," I said to Bob. "I think these should do the trick."

Putting them in the cart, I thought nothing of it, but a moment later, walking down the aisle with my fifty-nine-year-old brother-in-law, I started feeling patently, almost titanically gay. Maybe I was imagining things, but it seemed as if people were staring at us - people in families, mostly, led by thrifty and disapproving parents who looked at what we were buying and narrowed their eyes in judgment. You homosexuals their faces seemed to say. Is that all you ever think about?

My brother-in-law is around my height, with thick graying hair, a matching mustache, and squarish wire-rimmed glasses. I'd never imagined him as gay, much less as my boyfriend, but now I couldn't stop. "We've got to get something else in this cart," I told him.

Bob disappeared into the acreage reserved for produce and returned a minute later with a four-pound box of strawberries. This somehow made us look even gayer. "After anal sex, we like shortcake!" read the cartoon bubble now floating over our heads.

"Something else," I said. "We've got to get something else."

Bob, oblivious, looked up at the rafters and thought for a moment. "I guess I could use some olive oil."

"Forget it," I told him, my voice a bark. "Let's just pay up and go. Can we do that, please?"

119

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears

Fail blog

Failblog, along the same lines as engrish.com

spring to summertime

Joplin recording "Summertime." I never knew how cute her lead guitarist was.

Erotic vignettes by Satu

YOUR MUSIC

The wind blows you firmly against me
and keeps you here.
My tears persuade you into comforting embraces,
you do not resist.
You take me into your arms and gently,
ever so lightly, touch your lips to mine.
Feeling so secure your kiss deepens and I willingly submit.

the rest of the poem here

Just in time for Spring...

New NYCPlaywrights web site design

Lots more multimedia at NYCPlaywrights.org

More family stuff

My brother Paul just had a new baby, Daniel Harry McClernan. That's three boys now for Paul and Debbie. Congratulations!

my non-Irish roots

Well now that St. Patrick's day is safely over I can talk about my non-Irish roots. Although my father was a McClernan and my mother was a Maguire, there are also Dryers (French), Smiths, Halls (English) and even the Welsh Wolfingtons in the mix. The photo here, thanks to my cousin Lorraine who is interested in genealogy, is of my mother's father's mother, Mary (May) Winifred Wolfington. I never met her but always felt so bad for her - the infamous influenza pandemic of 1918 killed her husband Thomas Maguire and their oldest son Tom within two days of each other as can be seen in these online obituary records - which show so many of the others who also died from pneumonia or influenza in the same month. According to family lore May Wolfington was never the same after, which is no wonder. Her son Martin survived and married my grandmother Marie Smith two years later. When they were 16 and 17 respectively - which seems to be a bit of a family tradition.

Iggy Wolfington the Broadway and TV actor was her nephew.

There's noone as Irish as Barack Obama

LOL! 'Now let's see Barack do Riverdance!'

Nick Fondulis can take a punch!

Little Nicky Fondulis, my HUCK FINN, demonstrates that it's good to be king - not so good to be the messenger boy!

Nick has a recurring role as the King's messenger (I hope the messenger gig has health benefits!) in the new TV series Kings.

This show looks like it's set in a modern city - how come they don't have cell phones?

Dickinson again

MARCH is the month of expectation

Personal Jesi

During the summer I did a radio recording of my PERSONAL JESUS script. Then this past January, the play was part of my STRESS AND THE CITY show. I finally got around to processing the recording and here it is!. My friend Bob should be playing it on his radio show soon and then I'll put it on Facebook.

Two slightly different casts:

The STRESS AND THE CITY version cast:

Mellow Jesus - Bruce Barton
Angry Jesus - Nick Fondulis
Clara - Phoebe Summersquash
Betty - Lori Kee
Trixie - Ann Farthing
Zen Buddha - Mike Selkirk

The radio cast:

Mellow Jesus - Bruce Barton
Angry Jesus - Bruce Barton
Clara - Reagan Wilson
Betty - Reggie Buckingham
Trixie - Ann Farthing
Zen Buddha - Mike Selkirk

It still cracks me up to hear Bruce performing the two contrasting Jesi at the same time.

Karma

Karma is Sanskrit for "deed." In both Hinduism and Buddhism karma includes an individual's physical and mental actions which determine the consequences of the person's present life and sequential lives through rebirth. Karma is based upon the phenomena of cause and effect which denotes both action and reaction that extend through many lifetimes.

There are three types of karma: "agent-karma" which is concerned with the present cause and effect, and will influence future lives; "prarabdha-karma" which had already been caused and is in the process of being effected; and, "sanchita-karma" which has been accumulated but has not yet been effected.

Karma is normally thought of as a term used by eastern religions such as previously mentioned. But, in Plato's description of reincarnation he too touches on the theme of karma when saying the soul tends to become impure through bodily transmigrations. However, if the soul retains its pure state and does good acts it will return to its preexistent state, but if it continues to deteriorate by bad acts through bodily transmigrations it will go to a place of eternal damnation.

Stephen Colbert goes Galt

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

The Word - Rand Illusion

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor

Rap Battle
NASA Name Contest

Wuthering Heights

An acoustic guitar cover of Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" which I really like - I think the original is just too screechy and high-pitched and Kate Bush can't seem to do the song, either live or as a music video, without seriously hamming it up.

I really think a woman with a good mezzo-soprano, accompanied by just a piano - or maybe a harp - will do the definitive version of this song one day.

But in the meantime, this is a good cover, and Kris Shred is a seriously beautiful man.

kiss my ass Oxfordians

That's right beeotches, it's me, big Avon Bill! How you like me now???

More about this portrait at the NYTimes

More about the various Shakespeare authorship conspiracies here.

I got a cultural materialist shout-out (I think)

Somebody in Spain gave my additions to the Marvin Harris Facebook page a shout-out. But I think Babelfish's translation software could use improvement:

which made illusion is to discover that Marvin Harris has its site in Facebook, one lady there to me who is called Nancy McClernan has raised in addition the video to one interviews. A taste to see in person Harris, the author who better moments have made anthropological me happen and at which I would define more as the entertained anthropologist of the history and one of the great ones of century XX, the one that obtained starting off of simple things and with simplicity to explain the causes of ideologies, traditions, customs and taboos to us based on apparent bottomless mysteries.

see the rest of the translation here.

Another poem by Dickinson

WHEN roses cease to bloom, dear,

The eternal problem...

Amusing commentary at The American Prospect:

And it's going to get worse until Obama stops sucking up to the banks and/or grows a pair. Step 1: fire Geithner and Summers.

Is there anyone left who thinks any of the bank rescue plans has any credibility? Krugman explains it well in today's NYT.

But left/right/center doesn't matter - everyone with a brain in their head thinks that receivership (temporary nationalization) for insolvent banks is the way to go.

posted by: alex

--------------

That's not enough, we need a majority.

Posted by: Cyrus

The Soul Selects Her Own Society

A poem by Emily Dickinson

Villette

Well I finally got around to reading "Villette", Charlotte Bronte's last novel. And I have to report that in spite of many plot similarities, it is no "Jane Eyre." The ending is very dissatisfying and while of course Bronte could not be expected to predict the existence of "Scooby Doo" there are events in Villette that unfortunately reminded me very much of the adventures of those crazy kids and their dog.

I thought maybe I could adapt "Villette" into a play but the main narrative interest is protagonist Lucy Snowe and her relationships with a hot blond guy and a not-so-hot but charismatic dark-haired guy. And that is pretty much the main narrative thread of interest in "Jane Eyre" too.

Also, 25% of the dialog of "Villette" is in French, which is very annoying. I know enough French to get the general gist of what the characters are saying, but still - geez lady, you could at least provide translations!

One very interesting aspect of the novel - Bronte really rips into the Catholic Church which, as a former Catholic I found amusing. And this was a subject close to Bronte's own heart - I've read a bunch of her letters and she really was Catholic-phobic herself.

It's so hard to find good technical writers..

More at engrish.com

Now I'm intrigued

I thought I was the only person in the NY Theatre scene who was good and sick of the macho manly-man angry white man "brutal" playwrights so beloved of NY theatre critics, but I'm intrigued to see that Sheila Callaghan may be on the same wavelength, if this review in the NYTimes is any indication:

"That Pretty Pretty" takes aim at the many debased ways women are represented onstage and on screen. Ms. Callaghan has said she was inspired by a 2005 article in The New York Times about plays in which men behave badly.

(That article concludes, typically, that hey, that's just how guys are and if you don't like it you're uptight and PC and can't face the reality of glorious manliness, maaaaaan. But then I've long maintained that the NYTimes is a leading promoter of evolutionary psychology.)

Along with Ms. Fonda, the main characters are Agnes (Lisa Joyce) and Valerie (Danielle Slavick), bloodthirsty ex-strippers on a killing spree who are about as demure, complex and dignified as dancers in a Mötley Crüe video. They love random sex, skimpy clothes and Jell-O wrestling.

Agnes is performed with a ferocious, almost maniacal, flirtatiousness by Ms. Joyce, who, in Adam Rapp’s “Red Light Winter,” played just the kind of underdeveloped female character that this play mocks. She worships Howard Stern and dreams of breast enlargement, while Valerie likes to be beat up.

And the critics DO love the macho manly playwrights because they are so macho and manly and brutal. I said so a few years ago in my essay The Last Manly Man Playwright - the male critics really WANT the Rapp-type manly playwrights to succeed, and here is more proof in this review of Rapp's RED LIGHT WINTER from the Times - even though his work disappoints them again and again, they keep crowing about how promising he is (emphasis mine):

Mr. Rapp's desire to evoke an aching romanticism to match the barroom balladry of Tom Waits, which plays a small role in the play, ultimately dooms his better efforts to explore the desperate quality of young love with more complex insight. The claustrophobic atmosphere of "Red Light Winter" is gradually suffused with too many stale ideas about the cruel ironies and sometimes savage realities of romantic attraction. Mr. Rapp is a playwright of obvious promise and carefully honed gifts, and it's a hopeful sign that his writing continues to mature. Now he just needs to find something truly new or truly meaningful to say.

Rapp clearly is a total conservative when it comes to gender, with his macho men and his prostitute sexbots. So much so that it actually took me years to fully grasp the underlying, deep-seated misogyny. I saw Rapp interviewed on Theatre Talk when RED LIGHT WINTER was first produced and he and host Susan Haskins agreed that in hiring a prostitute, the sad sack character in RED LIGHT WINTER was getting an ego boost. This struck me as an extremely odd thing to say - from my perspective, resorting to hiring someone for sex is the opposite of self-esteem: you are forced to pay for somebody to touch you. I've been turning this conundrum over in my head for three years now, and only recently did it finally occur to me - this attitude comes from the mindset of extreme patriarchy. The reason that it's good for a man's self-esteem to hire a prostitute is because it re-inforces his standing in the pecking order. That any man is better than any woman because any man can always buy a woman. It reinforces his self esteem as a ruler over women and the traditional order of things.

That Susan Haskins apparently got this makes me wonder about her. I actually emailed her after the interview aired and asked her why she had said what she did, but she never got back to me.

But that's the mindset of the macho manly-man playwrights and their many many promoters and admirers. They're just too PC to come about and bluntly state exactly what they think about the relative worth of men vs. women on this planet, but the subtext is in all their work (macho playwrights AND macho-loving critics) for anybody who tunes into it.

The MOTHER LODE reading

From the NYCPlaywrights Feb 09 Reading Fundraiser

Duelling Ring of Fires

Johnny Cash in 1968


"Ring Of Fire" Stan Ridgway and Wall Of Voodoo 1982 TV


Lucy Kaplansky


Joaquin Phoenix


Social Distortion


June Carter - who wrote the song along with Mel Kilgore

Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?

Another sonnet.

I love me some Meryl Streep

"I think we are just getting closer and closer as an evolving species to being able to accept this," she said. "But look around the world. ... Women are living as we were in this country in the 19th century in many, many, many parts of the world. They're bartered, they are property, they don't have the rights we have -- it's very difficult for us to understand all those things. But we do have a sense that for us, that's in the past."

Still, she said, "those vestigial things are in every negotiation I have with people in my business," she said. "Three of the nominated films this year have 26 men and one woman [in featured roles] -- 'Slumdog [Millionaire]' and 'Milk,' and 'Frost/Nixon.' You know, we accept it. It's not unusual. But we would go nuts if three of the nominated films had 26 women and one man. It would be a very, very unusual thing.

"We're still not telling everybody's story in our country and that's where we are," she said.

more...

This guy's in love with you

This song is sort of cheezy-60s but I really love the big booming orchestra and the piano glissando - and check out the video - who knew Herb Alpert was so cute back in the day?

Running a playwrights group

So I've been running NYCPlaywrights for over eight years now. Which means I have attended almost every meeting since it began. That's alot of meetings, and that's alot of plays. And most of those plays suck.

Now some might argue that of course they do, NYCPlaywrights has no real standards when it comes to writer membership, other then evidence of sufficient sanity and the ability to pay $60. Except that I've been to see plays by other organizations by writers with stellar reputations and most of those plays suck too. The main difference is better marketing, better PR and a bigger war chest.

Much of what passes for artistic excellence is in fact just a bunch of hype. And I would submit that the career of Harold Pinter is a case in point.

The Pulitzer Prize going to Anna in the Tropics is another example. I wouldn't say it sucked in the I-want-to-rip-my-own-head-off-rather-than-sit-here-another-minute way that all too many plays do, but it was just lame. With that standard convention, the helpless suffering of women being mistaken for profundity.

Conversely, as Robert Graves once observed, probably thinking about all the hype that transforms mediocre garbage into box office gold, "A remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good in spite of all the people who say he is very good."

Of those who are involved in writing for the stage, any given person will fall into one of three general categories:

Those who can write for the stage

Those who can write, but not for the stage

Those who can't write for shit.

And that includes the loftiest masters of Broadway right down to the lowliest little nobodies meeting in Bumfuck Idaho.

Since I am forced to listen to so much crap at the Friday meetings, eventually I rebel and write a parody of whatever it is that is currently annoying me. There is one writer in the group who was on an Alzheimer's tear. Her mother had Alzheimers and so she was always bringing in plays about Alzeheimers. I mean, I sympathize with her plight but not enough to enjoy week after relentless week of plays on the topic.

Lately another member of the group has been writing a saga about a dominatrix. The writer is pretty good at writing an amusing scene - although some are rather violent for my taste - but she just doesn't have a cohesive enough grasp on reality to keep her narrative within the bounds of logic and integrity. So I decided to write my own version of the dominatrix play called Mother Lode. Although the other writer definitely has something over me when it comes to writing about the subject of dominatrixes - she claims to have actually worked at a dungeon in Manhattan. The best I can do is that an old highschool classmate of mine did occasional work as a dom about ten years ago. Then she became a librarian.

But the best part of the dominatrix saga is that in spite of all the kinky weirdness and offensive violence, the author refuses to use naughty words like "fuck" - her characters would say freaking instead of fucking. So my characters do too.

MOTHER LODE will be performed at this Saturday's NYCPlaywrights February Reading Fundraiser.

Haunted

Sonnets from the Portuguese XXX

I see thine image through my tears to-night...

from the blog of an independent film director

This guy knows lots of the same people I know in "legitimate theatre" - he shares this bit recently on his blog:

I was looking over cash flow charts and thinking today about how [his film] has been able to eke out a tiny bit of money on each movie we make. Not enough to pay the actors.

Of course not.

Since his films are not animations, it would be impossible for him to make his films without the actors. And yet he can't manage to pay them. This is what is known as "exploitation."

I couldn't find any of this director's casting calls mentioned in the blog Nudity Required, No Pay although if you've seen his films, that is clearly the plight of many of the female actors he uses for his various space westerns. He's partial towards beautiful robot-women getting naked. But since he knows a whole bunch of actors who don't mind being exploited, I guess he doesn't need to put up casting calls.

My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable

Well the end of the Bush administration didn't make everything better. Almost, but it did bring the end of Get Your War On, David Rees's cartoons inspired by the evil of the Bush Administration.

But now he can spend more time doing the actually funnier (although much less politically relevant) My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable.

My kewl new screenplay

THE CASSANDRA DIRECTIVE

by N. G. McClernan

EXT DESERT PLANET

This is an angry planet. OK maybe not an angry planet, but at least a somewhat disgruntled planet. But it has a lot of rocks and shit and that's kewl.

We see PUP, a retarded slob of a foot soldier who would be great comic relief except that he is also evil. A very good actor, maybe even a Shakespearean-quality actor should be wasted on cast in this role. He is dressed like a cowboy.

FROM HIS POV
We see a small silver spaceship land in the distance.

PUP
Whuuus that?

We hear LT. MANLY

MANLY
You're an idiot, Pup.

We see Manly and Pup from a middle distance. Manly is attractive, in a gruff manly damaged way, but not so attractive that he causes homoerotic panic in the target audience. He is dressed like a cross between a cowboy and a pirate.

ON the screen, her back to us, walks CASSANDRA, a beautiful woman, very thin except for her gigantic breasts. She is naked, but at first glance it looks like she's wearing a shiny black skin-tight jump suit because she has black shiny latext spray-painted over her body.

FROM HER POV
We see Manly smirking and Pup drooling. But then, he drools alot. His face breaks into a stupid lustful grin. Manly crosses his arms, wary.

MANLY

Can I help you Miss?

Cassandra speaks in a monotone and is completely incapable, as are all robots and aliens, of using contractions. The English language is beyond the capabilities of even the most sophisticated robots and aliens.

CASSANDRA

We will have sex. In the future.

MANLY

Come again?

PUP

Huhhuhhuh! She sayed yer gonna have sex!

MANLY

Pup, you're an idiot.

CASSANDRA

You do not believe me. That is the standard response from you huma - error 432 - from you boys.

MANLY

Why would I want to have sex with you?

PUP

Yew kin have sex wid me!

MANLY

Pup, you're an idiot. She's a robot. Cordoba class. Fully automatic with fine Corinthian leather, manufactured in the Terran city known as Newark.

PUP

No she ain't. She's a pretty lady!

MANLY

She can't use contractions.

PUP

She cain't use whuuut?

MANLY

Contractions! Didn't you hear her? Instead of "you don't believe me" she said "you do not believe me."

PUP

But that's the same thing. I don get it.

MANLY

You idiot. Don't is a contraction. She can't say it. Watch.

to Cassandra

Say "don't"

CASSANDRA

Do not.

MANLY

I said "don't." Say "don't"

CASSANDRA

Next you will say "Pup, you are an idiot."

PUP

She ain't gonna say it now. Yew jus told her 'dont say dont' - Ah hurd yuh.

MANLY

Pup, you're an idiot.

Manly and Pup look at each other in amazement.

PUP

How - how did she knew you wuz gonna say that?

MANLY

Why are you such an idiot?

to Cassandra

What could make you think I would fuck a hunk of junk like you?

CASSANDRA

I remind you of your dead wife.

MANLY

I don't have a dead wife.

CASSANDRA

You will tell me you have a dead wife. At some point in the future.

MANLY

I don't believe you.

Cassandra looks at Pup

CASSANDRA

And you will be killed by a nest of vipers. Mutant vipers.

PUP

Ah don' buhleeve that! Dey ain't no vipers, mutant or no nuther kind on this here disgruntled planet!

CASSANDRA

There will be when it becomes narratively convenient.

PUP

Whuuuu?

CASSANDRA

Now my master - error 786 - professor will come to this place and tell you that I am dangerous.

MANLY

I don't believe you.

In a moment, THE PROFESSOR appears.

PROFESSOR

Stay away from her! She's dangerous!

To be continued...

Clip about blogging

You've got to hide your love away

Where is my hot pink outfit with matching hat?

Actual footage of Annie Oakley

The next NYCPlaywrights fundraiser

coming up February 28

One of the best songs ever

Whatever happened to Lene Lovitch?

FIRE

Bruce is super sexy in this video...

Great run!

Well we just had our last performance of STRESS AND THE CITY and the actors and tech people I worked with really restored my faith in theatre people - a faith that was badly shaken by nasty experiences a year ago. It's really nice to be appreciated and to work with people who are consummate professionals.

And unfortunately it was a short run with only six performances and I feel like it deserved a much longer run, but between Equity rules and the actors' own busy schedules, 6 was all we could get and it wasn't enough to get a reviewer to come out.

And as always after a show, I feel a little depressed. The only way to handle that depression is to plan the next show, which I've already begun. Or rather showS - at this point I am planning to do both JANE EYRE and HUCK FINN this summer. More on this later...

Could this be another sonnet?

Right here?

The Cramps-What's Inside A Girl?

RIP Lux Interior

Ellen DeGeneres ~ I Love Jesus But I Drink A Little (HQ)

Obama Justice Department Re-Hires Attorney Fired By Goodling Because Of Lesbian Rumor

Just in case you've forgotten, already, how INCREDIBLY EVIL THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION WAS!!!

In October 2006, Leslie Hagen, who was working as the liaison between the Justice Department and the U.S. attorneys’ committee on Native American issues, was informed that despite her “outstanding” job performance reviews, her contract would not be renewed. In April 2008, NPR reported that the Justice Department was investigating whether Hagen was fired after a rumor reached former Justice Department official Monica Goodling that she was a lesbian.

When the DoJ Inspector General report on Goodling was released in July 2008, it concluded that Goodling was motivated by Hagen’s perceived sexual orientation and “that Goodling’s actions violated Department policy and federal law, and constituted misconduct.”

Last night, however, NPR reported the good news that Obama Justice Department has re-hired Hagen for old position:

Last year, the Justice Department posted Hagen’s old job again. The department conducted a national search. Applications came in from around the country. After several rounds of interviews, Hagen eventually won the job.

The paperwork makes it official as of Monday, Feb. 2. Hagen now has her old position back, but this time it’s a little different. Her contract no longer comes up for renewal every year. Now, the job is permanent.

NPR’s Ari Shapiro notes that “it is not a perfectly happy ending for Hagen” because “nobody official from the department ever apologized to her for what happened” and she still owes thousands of dollars in attorney fees that the Bush Justice Department refused to pay.

Hagen’s rehiring is only the latest move in an effort by President Obama and new Attorney General Eric Holder to provide a “a clean break with the past policies of the Bush administration.” Not only does Holder say that the Department is “no place for political favoritism,” but he is also expected to embark on “a broad doctrinal shift in policies” from the Bush administration.

NYTimes - still operating with unexamined sexist attitudes

It's nice that I'm not the only one who notices that a "liberal" bastion like the NYTimes is incredibly sexist. The same goes for The New Yorker:

...I am not reading Novels for Women. I am reading Nonfiction by Men.

I started with AMERICAN SUCKER, New Yorker film critic David Denby’s rueful accounting of how his marriage and then his finances fell apart.

I moved on to BEAUTIFUL BOY, west coast journalist David Scheff’s rueful accounting of how his marriage fell apart and his kid is a meth addict. This, it emerges, is very hard for Scheff, and his new wife and new children. Presumably, it’s hard for the drug-addicted son, too.

Next, I picked up NIGHT OF THE GUN, New York Times writer David Carr’s rueful and, post-James Frey, investigatory accounting of how he and his girlfriend were addicts and he wound up raising their twin girls, only he was still doing crack, which he would occasionally purchase while his daughters slept, bundled up in the dead of winter in the backseat. Then he got married and landed a series of great jobs. Then he got arrested for drunk driving again and still sounds like kind of a mess (albeit a mess with a job at the Times).

After Gun, I decided I’d enough of reading about well-connected white guys of a certain age detailing their screw-ups in endless, sheepish detail (and even with the sheepishness, there’s a certain wolfish gleam to the writing, a whiff of boastful braggadocio, of Look at what a big, huge mess I made of everything, like a cadre of oversized Dennis the Menaces posing in front of broken cookie jars).

But then, dammit, I got pulled back in by Dwight Garner’s approving review of David Lozell Martin’s LOSING EVERYTHING, a novelist’s rueful accounting of how his marriage broke up and he went crazy and lost all his money and ended up broke and homeless and diabetic and with horrific gastrointestinal problems, too.

A few questions about the dirty-white-boy books (and yes, as far as I can tell, the genre of the male midlife drugs-sex-and-losing-everything confessional is populated entirely by white guys.)

Are journalists more likely to have their lives implode, or just more likely to have their accounts of said implosions published?

Why is the Times so fascinated by these stories (two of the four that I read had their first lives in the pages of the Sunday Times Magazine)?

What would happen if a woman wrote the same kind of confessional memoir about busting up a marriage, shucking her kids and spouse like old clothes, diving into drugs or porn and/or ending up homeless? My guess is that the critical reaction (curated, as it is, mostly by middle-aged white guys) would not be nearly as approving.

But why guess?

Here’s what the New York Times had to say about Katha Pollitt, who confessed to much milder sins (Google-stalking an ex) in her collection of essays, LEARNING TO DRIVE. “She has decided to wave her dirty laundry (among which she found unidentified striped panties) and confesses to “Webstalking” her longtime, live-in, womanizing former boyfriend. (Take that, you rat!),” tut-tuts the paper. “It’s hard to tell if she’s coming into her own, trying to sell more books or has lost it entirely.”

Here’s the Times on Elizabeth Hayt’s I’M NO SAINT, A Nasty Little Memoir of Love and Leaving. “Managing to combine psychobabble and designer name-dropping, Hayt charmlessly recounts her coke habit, eating problems, abortion, Botox injections, struggles with motherhood, aversion to 12-step programs and hollow promiscuity…. a graphic account of one woman's capacity for greed, vanity and loveless physical intimacy.”

So, just to be clear, if you’re a lady and you ‘fess up to an unhealthy online interest in an ex, you may have “lost it entirely.”

If you’re a dude and you write about, say, smoking pot with your prepubescent son, scoring coke with your daughters asleep in your car, or spewing uncontrollable diabetes-related diarrhea all over your son’s back seat, well then you, sir, have written “a bruising survival story,” or a “brave, heartfelt, often funny, often frustrating book.”

If you’re a chick who sleeps around and lives to tell (and sell) the tale, you’re greedy, vain and charmless. If you’re a guy who spends nights on end looking at Internet porn and days investing in drug companies that overcharge cancer patients for their cures, then you’re “formidably smart.”

More at A Moment of Jen by way of Katha Pollitt's blog

STRESS AND THE CITY production photos

More on Facebook

John and Paul joke about their trip to Rishikesh

This is a great clip.

John Lennon handles crowd control

DID RINGO VOTE???

Very unusual semi-formal interview with Beatles (sans Paul)

Westfield Massachusetts

Wikipedia entry.

They like their sonnets there.

Hardball - Dick Armey goes all Cavemen on Joan Walsh

YOU GIVE IT A REST DICK ARMEY!

What an INCREDIBLE TOOL!