None of my favorite liberal bloggers have yet weighed in on Bush’s speech this past week. Which is a shame, because I like hearing what the other side thinks under unusual circumstances (speeches like this don’t happen every day). Clearly the new policy toward Arafat and the Palestinians is unlike any the U.S. has adopted… Continue reading

Living with It Dept. Perusing an obscure French philosopher on the subject of art, I came across something that probably should have been written by Stephen King, or Barbara Kingsolver—but never was: “Several writers have noted the feeling of discomfort experienced by the writer who carried within himself a work not yet written and which,… Continue reading

The Atlantic is re-running (via Arts & Letters) their in-depth piece on wine critic Robert Parker. In four parts, it details how Parker has become the most influential critic in the world—by talking about wine. Parker has a widely read newsletter (with over 40,000 subscribers) and he has raised the ire of French vineyard owners… Continue reading

What if there was no Deep Throat? Here’s Mickey Kaus today on an interesting aspect of the Washington Post under Ben Bradlee at the time of the Watergate scandal: …something the Post’s editor Ben Bradlee instinctively understood — you keep the story going, with hit after little hit, which gets people talking, which panics sources… Continue reading

M.J. Rose reports today that iUniverse is contracting. Layoffs announced as the print-on-demand outfit drops its corporate services. Now iUniverse publishes only individual authors. This is not surprising as more and more small publishers get into POD and as the technology for adopting it, even for small businesses, is not that expensive. Businesses are opting… Continue reading