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Feet Of Clay [Dec 13, 2004] Fellow Dennis Miller panelist Virginia Postrel writes in to say that I missed the the "totally weird moment" backstage when she introduced herself to Charles Barkley and "he handed me his Diet Coke can to dispose of. I guess he thought I was a waitress." You have shattered my world, Virginia! Hey, how about Donald Rumsfeld. What an asshole, huh? And Bernard Kerik? Woke up this morning and got himself a gun... Screw it. I had a little didactic explosion after Election Day, but that self-guided therapy session is over. Nothing more until after New Year's, and even then, who knows? I'm still looking for someone to redesign this website.The last guy I hired had to drop out because he suffered a personal tragedy, but I don't think it's because I hired him. Drop me a note if you're interested in working for free. That is all. Have a safe, happy, and secular holiday season. Neal
Destroy All Idolators! [Dec 9, 2004] Apparently, my quasi-atheistic appearance on Dennis Miller, the highest-rated show on CNBC at 9 PM and midnight Eastern, didn't halt our country's leper pilgrimage to the valley of ignorance. The Bush Administration has filed a brief in support of two Kentucky counties that are suing to end a ban on framed copies of the Ten Commandments in courthouses. I think, if you care, that civil libertarians overplay their hand by seeking such bans. But should the Justice Department really be talking about religion's "defining role" in our nation's history? That's just a circumspect way of talking about fundamentalist Christian takeover of government. Try to find the difference between that point of view and the one expressed by the Rev. Jerry Falwell in his most recent online column. And I quote: "Our Founders were men who explicitly embraced Judeo-Christian principles in the founding of this nation. Even those who were Deists openly recognized the need for the citizenry to fall to their collective knees and beseech God’s favor. They understood the need to recognize God in our Constitution, in our courts and in our schools." Rev. Falwell, I fall to my knees for nothing unless I've specifically paid someone for the privilege. The only commandment these people care about is Number One: "I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not have strange Gods before me." Well, to paraphrase E.B. White, "I say it's theocratic fascism, and I say to hell with it." A new Eleventh Commandment is also floating about these days: Thou Shalt Not Allow Books That Contain Homosexual Characters In Public Libraries. The main proponent of that point of view, state representative Gerald Allen of Alabama, will be meeting with President Bush on Monday. This will be his fifth meeting with the President. Apparently, they will talk about the attempts of evil gay liberal librarians to re-engineer "society's fabric in the minds of our children." Now, who would try to do something like that?
On The Left... [Dec 8, 2004] This is meant to pre-empt any criticism of my appearance tonight on the Dennis Miller, CNBC, 9 and midnight Eastern. Yes, when my segment ends, I do stand up, and it does look like I stick my hand down my pants, thrust my crotch toward the camera, and move my hand in a rhythmic clockwise motion for at least 30 seconds. But let the debate end here. I had a testicular itch. I was not pleasuring myself. It usually takes me at least a half-hour to come down from the high of appearing on television to get an actual erection. Also, call me guilty. I did have Scotch in that little coffee cup. Rampant alcoholism promotes clarity of mind. My actual experience on the show has been somewhat blacked out by the fact that I got to meet Charles Barkley backstage. All three regular readers of this space know of my unnatural affection for the basketball stylings of the Phoenix Suns. Sir Charles is the greatest Sun of all time. I know he's a bit of a loudmouth and has a somewhat checkered history of public behavior, but he's still one of my heroes. He winked at me twice during our superficial two-minute conversation about the NBA. Golly! He talked to everyone at the show just like they were real people! Then I was on TV, arguing with Dennis Miller and action-movie character actor Robert Davi that Christians are not, in fact, subject to discrimination in this country. They took the counter-position with wit and grace, but I held fast to my principles. There's nothing wrong with a star of Die Hard whose main public goal is to protect little children from Internet sexual predators arguing that "Judeo-Christian values" are "under assault." That's his opinion. But I've been watching Fox News with a fresh eye recently, and there's a lot of stuff flying around about how America needs to be "reclaimed" from the forces that are trying to "de-Christianize" it. Using seemingly innocent metaphors like calling a Christmas tree a Christmas tree instead of a "holiday tree" is a classic mainstreaming gambit by the sketchier elements of the religious right. The Center For Reclaiming America For Christ includes a downloadable "Christmas media kit" on the same page that denounces Planned Parenthood Canada's new "lewd teen sex commercial" and numerous attacks on people who acknowledge that human beings actually have sex sometimes. The culture wars originate from such places. They don't bubble up unbidden from the hearts and minds of good people everywhere. If anything, these people get too much credit in public discource. They're about as discriminated against as a high-end prostitute at a political convention. Take, for instance, the rising hoo-ha over the case of Steven J. Williams, a conservative Christian public-school teacher in Cupertino, California, who is being prevented from inserting his "values" into discussion of colonial history. On the one hand, it's wrong for the school's principal to ask Williams to submit class materials for review in case they contain "inappropriate religious content." That's not really for a principal to decide. On the other hand, there's a growing movement in this country to teach a Christian version of American history that distorts the meaning of the Constitution and twists the words of the founding fathers to fit a crypto-theocratic agenda. Far from being an aggrieved class, the people who claim "anti-Christian" discrimination in this country are using the aberrant cases of actual discrimination to form a media and policy wedge that will never be budged. Dominionism is real, my friends. Also tonight on Dennis Miller: I make a joke about baseball players snorting cocaine! No one can stop this steam train of fact-based humorous opinion! Rah!
The Tigris And Euphrates Of Talk-Show Appearances, Babe [Dec 6, 2004] So tomorrow night I'm taping Dennis Miller. It will air on CNBC at 9 and midnight Eastern. In reality, I'm probably just going to have time to blurt out something like, "Maybe George Bush should appoint Jerry Falwell to head the Department Of Health And Human Services," har de har, and that will be the end of my television career. But if I had the chance, I would talk about this: Alabama State Representative Gerald Allen, a mentally ill bigot, wants to ban novels with gay characters or written by gay authors from public libraries. "I guess we dig a big hole and dump them in and bury them," he says. This would include the banning of all three of my books, which is probably deserved in general, but not for the specific reasons Mr. Allen, who disturbingly shares a last name with my wife, commands. Does this mean my next two books, "Faggy McQueereton Fucks Jesus In The Ear" and "The Bisexual Marriage Of Muff Munch and Clay" won't be available in Alabama? Their loss. Meanwhile, our taxpayer-sponsored wholesale slaughter of the innocents continues unabated. Bombs away!And smile for the camera!
Hey, Babe [Dec 3, 2004] "Listen, I would call the French scum bags, but that, of course, would be a disservice to bags filled with scum. I say we invade Iraq, then invade Chirac."--Dennis Miller. I can only HOPE that Dennis Miller says something equally hilarious when I tape his CNBC talk show. The program will air next Wednesday at 9 PM and midnight. I'm going to be on the "Varsity Panel." That means I'll get to talk for about 20 seconds, which is probably too much. Also on the panel with me are author Virginia Postrel, who is smarter tham me, though that's not saying a lot, and someone else who's also probably smarter than me. Maybe I'll get to say this: "This is the time of year that everyone gets all excited about celebrating the fact that a woman conceived a baby 2,000 years ago without actually having sex. In fact, more people believe that absolutely than ever before. Nice to know that science has finally trumped superstition in our time. Well, if you get to believe in a virgin birth, then I get to believe that a giant celestial elephant blew the earth out of his ass at the dawn of time, and that someday he'll descend from the sky with a troupe of tap-dancing monkeys. Hey, babe. It's my religion. You make fun of it, and I'll kill you." Comedy is so funny. CNBC, next Wednesday, 9 PM and midnight.
Happy World AIDS Day! [Dec 1, 2004] Today marks the publication of a spectacular world-literature collection that Nadine Gordimer put together to raise money for AIDS treatment and education in southern Africa. Writers contributing include Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Updike, Chinua Achebe, Salman Rushdie, Gunter Grass, Christa Wolf, Susan Sontag, and Arthur Miller. Now THAT'S an anthology, though I'm disappointed that Gordimer couldn't get new stories from Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Hardy, and Cervantes. Ms. Gordimer's intentions for and reasoning behind this book are unimpeachable, and so is the participation of all involved, though I'm sure Larry Kramer is saying, to some of the American writers, "where the hell were you people in 1983?" Here's hoping they raise a million dollars or more. Still, one has to marvel at the continuingly insane self-regard in which the American publishing world holds itself. Here's Frances Coady, from Picador, quoted in the New York Times as regards the book: "Perhaps now more than ever we should appreciate the power of fiction, the will to fight injustice and suffering." There you go again, Walter. Fiction is not about fighting "injustice and suffering." That's the job of activism. Fiction is about telling stories. The writers involved committed a political act by donating their stories to the book for free. Writing is not a political act; that's left to the distribution of writing, and, depending on the circumstance, the reading of that writing. If fiction were so damn powerful in the way that Ms. Coady means, then war and poverty should have ended the day Chaucer scripted his first pilgrim. The real fighters of injustice are the people who buy Gordimer's book. So buy it here, righteous people. In other news, I have an ostensible humor piece on a literary topic in the current issue of the rejuvenated Ruminator magazine. An excerpt can be found within this link, but if you want to read the rest, you'll have to subscribe, which you should do anyway.
I LOVE our Leader [Nov 23, 2004] Our LEADER will protect us. Our leader loves us. And we love our leader. One of us. One of us. One of us! Now continue reading below for my favorite novels of the year.
Pole Lacquer [Nov 22, 2004] My novel Never Mind The Pollacks has recently been published in Germany. It's the only foreign edition of the book thus far, and there are no others in sight. For your amusement, I link to an English translation of a German-language review here. The review contains what I believe to be the most accurate summation of the book to date: "Neal pole lacquer does not know it also, and therefore he sends in Never Mind The Pollacks its old ego by the turbulent history skirt. It bends itself it so grotesque by right that sometimes the reality shows up." Indeed. And now I present to you, for no reason other than I'm arrogant enough to think that people care about my opinion, my top five books of 2004. When I say top five, I mean the five best fiction books I've read that were published this year. I might even say the five best fiction books by Jews that were published this year, but I can't because I don't think that Neil Gaiman is Jewish. No, wait. He is Jewish. So my top five books are all by Jewish authors. Who would have believed? A brief description of each follows. 1. Wake Up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames. An absolutely hilarious updating of P.G. Wodehouse, starring an extremely neurotic writer and his imaginary valet, who unwittingly disrupt a peaceful artists' colony in upstate New York. 2. My Old Man by Amy Sohn. A rabbinical school dropout has an affair with an aging film director who bears a startling resemblance to Jim Jarmusch. Tender, funny, and honest, rare qualities in a vast sea of books about the sex lives of New Yorkers. 3. I, Fatty by Jerry Stahl. In an amazing act of literary ventriloquism, Stahl tells the tragic story of Fatty Arbuckle, the first Hollywood star to have his life ruined by scandal. As always in a Stahl book, there are lots of drugs and any number of sexual dysfunctions caused by bad upbringing. 4. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. An important book in an age when books aren't important. Someone should really give this Roth fellow the recognition he deserves. 5. Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman. The Marvel comics universe re-imagined in Elizabethan England. Unfolds like a familiar dream, with really cool battle scenes. It bends itself it so grotesque by right that sometimes the reality shows up.
If George W. Bush Ran The NBA... [Nov 21, 2004] Ron Artest would win the Most Valuable Player Award. Intelligence would show that the drink the fan threw on Artest contained a teaspoonful of anthrax. All NBA fans would be reclassfied as enemy combatants. The owners would push through a midnight rule change that makes it impossible to suspend any player who "shares the goals" of the NBA. And the government would scale back financial aid for hundreds of thousands of low-income college students, thereby creating more interest in the NBA as a career option. Wah-wah. Internet humor is funny. Tom DeLay. This long and kind of boring article from Mother Jones tells you all you need to know, except that DeLay is a key member of the Council For National Policy, which is kind of like a Dominonist retreat organization that plots the end of the world about three times a year. Every single thing that's going on right now involving DeLay is part of the Christian Reconstructionist plan to bring the United States to heel by replacing the Constitution with a legal system that literally interprets the Old Testament as law. Party! Meanwhile, Howard Ahmanson, the very wealthy man who makes Dominionism possible, is a major financier of electronic voting machine companies. Note that the article I just linked was published a year and a half ago. In New Zealand. You know. If our journalists had just...oh, never mind. Press criticism, at this point, had might as well be croquet for all the good it's doing us. We now live in a world where, very soon, journalists for major American newspapers will begin going to jail in large numbers for refusing to reveal their sources. This story from Iraq bodes ill for the future. My dear fellows. If you're attempting to bring democracy to the savages, don't you think it's a little uncouth to detain their journalists? A leisurely scroll to the bottom of this link reveals that the Iraqi government, which isn't influenced at all by the American government, has warned the news media in Iraq that it must "be precise and objective in handling news and information...otherwise we regret we will be forced to take all the legal measures to guarantee higher national interests." Ominous rumblings indeed from the cradle of civilization. It's a war, so of course governments are going to attempt to manipulate the press, whether the press supports its goals or not. But threatening the press is very bad, and so is detaining journalists. Those kinds of things happen here, and here, and also here. Nothing like that is happening here, and by here I mean the United States. But, in a world where the word "purge" is being used ironically to describe the removal of political opponents, it might. It really really might. When will the "stalkerazzi" stop tormenting Hilary Duff?
Today's Outrage [Nov 19, 2004] An 81-year-old Haitian minister, who happens to be a relative of the novelist Edwidge Danticat, has died while in the custody of the U.S. Department Of Homeland Security. It's a horrible story that's probably only coming to light because of the connection to Danticat. Perhaps it will open some eyes, as it did mine, to the hypocritical and unjust way our government treats Haitian immigrants. This old man escaping political persecution is about as much a threat to our "national security" as my cat. The "War On Terror" diminishes us all daily. Condolences to Ms. Danticat and her family. Maybe this incident will lead to some sort of policy change, but with a lover of torture nominated to head the Justice Department, I fear we can only expect more of the same. Here endeth the lesson. And here's hoping that my beloved Phoenix Suns, whose point guards hail from Canada and Brazil, goad Kobe into two technicals and an ejection tonight. It's a very strange feeling to root for a team that other teams actually fear. Go Purple!
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