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This NYT article, With No Jobs, Time for Tea Party, left me sputtering in disbelief & horror. Excerpt (emphasis mine):
When Tom Grimes lost his job as a financial consultant 15 months ago, he
called his congressman, a Democrat, for help getting government health care.
Then he found a new full-time occupation: Tea Party activist....
He blames the government for his unemployment. “Government is absolutely responsible, not because of what they did recently with the car companies, but what they’ve done since the 1980s,” he said. “The government has allowed free trade and never set up any rules.”
He and others do not see any contradictions in their arguments for smaller
government even as they argue that it should do more to prevent job loss or cuts
to Medicare. After a year of angry debate, emotion outweighs fact....
Mr. Grimes, for his part, is thinking of getting a part-time job with the Census Bureau.
I challenge you to read this and not retch at the last line. The highlowlights, from The Salt Lake Tribune:
House Majority Leader Kevin Garn resigns amid hot tub scandal
House Majority Leader Kevin Garn announced Saturday he was resigning from the Utah Legislature, two days after revelations of a nude hot-tubbing incident with a minor 25 years ago and a payment to keep it quiet....
Garn, of Layton, admitted the two had sat nude in a Salt Lake City hot tub. He insisted there was no sexual contact, but admitted that it was wrong. [Cheryl] Maher insists there was touching and physical contact, but declined to elaborate. In 2002, when Garn, a Republican, was running for Congress, she began contacting reporters and Garn arranged to pay her $150,000, provided she sign an agreement not to go public with the incident. She signed a nondisclosure agreement and Garn paid her the money in 2003, well after he had lost the Republican congressional primary....
With the news about to break, Garn made an emotional statement from the House floor Thursday night, with his wife by his side, apologizing to his colleagues and constituents....
His statement drew a standing ovation from his House colleagues, many of whom lined up to console Garn and his wife.
“I ache for the return of dysfunction. Dysfunction had its problems, but at least dysfunction has function in its title. We are not functioning at all.”
--NY Assemblyman Daniel J. O'Donnell, quoted in NYT
From Anytown, USA:
Anonymized to protect the clueless.
An author is invited to present a workshop about creative writing at a writing center with more than 100 members. Said author accepts, then later backs out for reasons that are not the fault of the writing center.
Author, whose book is about...CREATIVE WRITING, then emails writing center and asks that the review copy of his book be returned to him, rather than left in the library of writing center with more than 100 members.
An AP story on developments in Iran had me guffawing. Good thing I read it before I had my morning beverage, else I would have sprayed tea all over my computer.
[The Guardian Council] said Monday it found irregularities in 50 voting districts, but that this has no effect on election outcome. Council spokesman Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei was quoted on the state TV Web site as saying that its probe showed more votes were cast in these constituencies than there were registered voters.
But this "has no effect on the result of the elections," he said.
As the Brits say: Pull the other leg--it's got bells on it.
Glenda Jackson in Marat/Sade.
Today I went for a 10th(!) opinion on my right arm, to Dr M. As a welcome change, she was polite, kind & respectful. Unfortunately, she didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, nor give me any great hope for the future. She wanted me to see the partner of Dr Schmuck, who's in the same building, for "pain treatment" (e.g., physical therapy and drugs, which haven't been effective this go-round). I told her I wouldn't set foot in that office, nor have one dime of my money go into his pocket. So she referred me to someone else, whose name I've filed away.
Dr M looked at the results of Dr C's EMG nerve tests (i.e., "torture") and, just as he did, told me that the median nerve was doing better. I told her my response to him: "Sez you. If the nerve is 'better' why does my arm hurt more, and why are my fingers more numb?"
"These things take time," said Dr M, echoing Dr C & several others. She repeated that nerve tissue heals @ 1mm/day. My arm is a good 24" (610mm) from shoulder to middle fingertip. I finally did the math: I have to wait 610 days after last June's surgery, i.e., till February 1, 2010, to see whether the median nerve has regenerated. But if it
hasn't healed by then, it'll be too dead to repair. So I'll be stuck with a sore arm and perpetually numb fingers.
My quandary: Should I have surgery that might fail & leave me worse off, or wait another painful year & maybe miss the chance to fix the nerve?
Last week I left a message for Dr C, asking for a referral to a neurosurgeon "who isn't arrogant & condescending" like Dr B. His office manager called back with contact info for Dr X. After I got home from seeing Dr M, I Googled Dr X. And--what's this?--he's not a neurosurgeon, he's a neurologist and...PSYCHIATRIST.
Official diagnosis: I'm
psychologically distoibed!
Official reaction: Nothing makes me crazier than being told--always by a MALE doctor--that I should see a shrink.
Darling Husband agrees that if he were the one seeking help, he'd have been treated with a lot less condescension, and offered surgery rather than palliatives and psychotherapy. I feel a Third Wave of feminism raging within me.
So yesterday I went to see neurosurgeon "Dr B" (actually Dr L, but he was B in The Circle Game and so he shall remain), for the first time since November.
Within 30 seconds, the truth was revealed to me in a blinding flash: Most surgeons are arrogant boors.
I told Dr B that I'd been passed along from one crony to another in his medical center, with no resolution.
"Why do you think that is?" he shot back.
"Because they don't have any answers, so they send me along to the next guy?"
"Why do you think that is?" he said again.
"Um...because they can't figure it out?"
"Did you ever think that maybe it's because your case is very complicated, and there are no easy answers?"
He had the same patronizing tone as Dr Schmuck. What the hell is it with these guys?
"So you're saying that nothing can be done?"
"No, I'm not saying that. Surgery can be done, but I'm not waving any magic lollipops. So if you're in horrible pain afterwards, don't say I made you any promises. And don't call me begging for more pain medicine, because I won't prescribe any."
(Note: Back in November, Dr B insisted that I take Elavil, "whether you want to or not!" I lasted all of a day on it.)
Let us draw a discreet veil over the rest of Dr B's speechifying, which brought me to tears yet again.
In summary:
- My fingers are unlikely to regain feeling without surgery.
- The pain in my arm is unlikely to go away without surgery.
- Odds are 50-50: surgery may make my arm feel a lot better, or a lot worse.
- I don't want to give my money to doctors who are mean to me.
- I don't want mean doctors poking around inside my body.
- I shouldn't have to see my shrink after every doctor appointment.
- I hope that Dr M (I see her next week) is nicer and has some bright ideas.
Meanwhile, Darling Husband and I are running away from home for the day. The aptly named Fairplay is on our itinerary.
The glasses I was wearing on May 1, 2006.
Today marks the 3rd anniversary of the day Gomez the thoroughbred failed to kill me. We had only been in the ring for 10 minutes when I nudged him to go from a walk to a trot. Instead he went ballistic, and the next thing I knew I was in a helicopter in excruciating pain, with my eyes bloodied shut. Later I was told that he'd thrown me into the steel-pipe perimeter fence.
My injuries:
- Broken right humerus and split humeral head
- 2 broken left floater ribs
- Broken nose
- Broken palate
- Broken right palatinate bone
- Broken right maxillary sinus
- Broken right brow bone
- Smashed-up front teeth, 3 top & 1 bottom
- Nerve trauma to head
- Severe concussion
In the ER at Swedish Hospital I got stitches in my forehead and upper lip (my teeth had gone through it), then spent a week in the multi-trauma unit. (Best memory: a card on my meal tray with "Happy Cinco de Mayo from your Swedish volunteers!") While there, I was given the choice of having a titanium plate put in my arm, or wearing a brace for 6-8 weeks. I chose the brace. Why have needless surgery?
The next month I had 3 root canals on my top front teeth, 2 of which died and turned a lovely shade of gray.
By August my arm hadn't healed, and my thumb and first two fingers were floppy. So I had a 6"
steel plate installed, inspiring the late, lamented Miss Snark to run a Get Humerus Poetry Contest (see
Well and Truly Screwed). My hand still didn't work after that, so in November my arm was sliced open again to release the median nerve.
When I went to see "Casino Royale" that Thanksgiving weekend, I discovered that violence made me nauseous and panicked. So did sirens, helicopters, ambulances, squealing tires, TV sports, news reports, combat photos...
I started getting therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder.
In August 2007 I had to have more surgery on one of the top teeth, plus root canal on the bottom front tooth, which also turned gray. In October I had surgery to fix the dent in the side of my nose and remove bone spurs from my sinus. (The dent caved back in.)
In January 2, 2008, I had a bonus lipoma (fatty tumor) the size of a half-baseball, which had been discovered in the ER, removed from deep under my right shoulder blade. My middle finger and inner sides of the index and ring fingers had gone numb and the base of my thumb had atrophied, then the steel plate in my arm started giving me trouble. So on Friday, June 13, my arm was sliced open yet again to remove the steel plate, plus carpal tunnel release was done in hopes of returning feeling to my digits.
My fingers stayed numb as ever, but my arm started feeling better immediately. Then in late September it suddenly got much worse. The doctor who did the 2nd & 3rd arm surgeries gave up on me. Thus began
The Circle Game of trying to find someone who could actually fix the arm, instead of just giving me drugs to mask the pain.
In March, while in Charlottesville for the VaBook Festival, I went to see my former osteopath, the wonderful Mark Dean of
Osteopathic Pain Management. He suggested that I might have a traumatic
neuroma (why didn't the
neurologist and
neurosurgeon I'd been seeing in Denver think of that?). When I returned home, my D.O. here sent me to another D.O., "Dr Schmuck," for diagnostic ultrasound.
No neuroma, announced Dr Schmuck, but the lipoma is growing back in the same place, under the scapula by the infraspinatus muscle. No need to have it removed, though, nor for any surgery on the arm.
Oh joy! But...now what?
I soon found out. Last week my fingers abruptly got more numb after I'd been swimming for just 5 minutes. The area around the original break in my arm also turned dark, like a bruise--a symptom that no doctor had been able to figure out. I made an appointment to see Dr Schmuck the next day.
I felt like crap when I showed up: I hadn't slept well because of my hurting arm, my dog had awakened me twice in the night and I was spaced out from a new pain med I'd taken (never again!). Schmuck questioned the necessity of having the first lipoma out, even though my surgeon called it a "big-ass tumor" and you could see the lump through my shirt from across the street. Then without even touching my arm (an osteopath is supposed to do physical examination & manipulation), Schmuck crisply told me that my problem is "brachial plexopathy" and that the only solution is to see his buddy Dr T, 45 minutes from my home, for an injection of corticosteroid and anesthetic.
"What's that going to do to me?" I asked.
Whereupon Schmuck berated me for "choosing to see the glass half-empty instead of half-full," and for having a bad attitude, and for being a "cantankerous New Yorker."
"You fell off a horse," he scoffed. "I have patients with head injuries who can't add two and two, or who are missing limbs."
Which made me feel SO much better. Who am I to complain about pain and dysfunction after 3 years, 8 surgeries, PTSD and depression? I shouldn't have been wasting Schmuck's precious time with my little problems.
Just kidding! Actually, my tart reply was, "I didn't
fall off a horse, I was
thrown with great force. And I know what it's like to have a head injury."
Whereupon he berated me some more, and as he walked me out said that I had to have hope.
In tears, I snapped, "If I didn't have hope all this time I would've just taken a bottle of Percocet and killed myself!"
That elicited shocked expressions from some of the patients in the waiting room, but nothing from the charming and empathic Dr Schmuck. I vowed never to darken his door again.
But...now what?
Time to make another appointment with "Dr B" the neurosurgeon. And for backup, one with Dr M, arm specialist to Denver's sports stars.
"The one regret I have is we ended up losing money."
--Ronald G. Insana, back at CNBC as an "analyst" after failing as a hedge fund manager. Quoted in the NYT:
Back on TV, and Back in the Black.
From the CNN Political Ticker:
Porn industry seeks federal bailout
Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis said Wednesday they will request that Congress allocate $5 billion for a bailout of the adult entertainment industry....
"People are too depressed to be sexually active," Flynt said in the statement. "This is very unhealthy as a nation. Americans can do without cars and such but they cannot do without sex."
"With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind. It's time for congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America. The only way they can do this is by supporting the adult industry and doing it quickly."
Here's my slogan to help out the adult industry in these troubled times
:
Porn is Patriotic!Wouldn't it be funny if it caught on? Though honestly, there's nothing sexier than having enough to eat and a roof over one's head.
Over lunch, I read the Quote of the Day to the Boy Wonder. He said, "I have something better. You gotta hear this one!"
He whipped out THE GREAT CRASH: 1929, by John Kenneth Galbraith, which the Ex sent him for Christmas. (BW is starting college on Jan. 20 as an economics major.)
From Galbraith's new introduction, written in 1997:
Always when markets are in trouble, the phrases are the same: "The economic situation is fundamentally sound" or simply "The fundamentals are good." All who hear these words should know that something is wrong.
Last night, BW, Darling Husband and I had dinner with Chris Matthews. (OK, we ate off trays while watching "Hardball," on DVR.) Yesterday's show listed the
best and worst political moments of 2008. Guess what was #1 in "Biggest general election moments"?
Give up?
"The fundamentals of our economy are strong."
--John McCain
BONUS QUOTES:"We all didn’t quite see what was happening.”
--Margaret Hedberg, director of the International Debutante Ball, per the NY Times.
She brushed off the $14,000 cost of a table — “Watches cost more.”
--Marie Antoinette. Oops! I mean Margaret Hedberg.
If not, don't blame me if you spray your drink all over your keyboard. From a piece in today's NYT: Trump Sees Act of God in Recession:
By Mr. Trump’s account, sales [of condos in the Trump International Hotel and Tower] were going great until “the real estate market in Chicago suffered a severe downturn” and the bankers made it worse by “creating the current financial crisis.” Those assertions are made in what The New York Times’s Floyd Norris calls a fascinating lawsuit filed by Mr. Trump, the real estate developer, television personality and best-selling author, in an effort to avoid paying $40 million that he personally guaranteed on a construction loan that Deutsche Bank says is due and payable.
Rather than have to pay the $40 million, Mr. Trump thinks the bank should pay him $3 billion for undermining the project and damaging his reputation....
Mr. Trump is vigilant in protecting his reputation... after Mr. Norris interviewed him and two associates, his general counsel sent Mr. Norris a note saying “it was a pleasure” talking to him, and adding: “Please be assured that if your article is not factually correct, we will have no choice but to sue you and The New York Times.”
Read the whole thing; it only gets better. The penultimate graf--and Deutsche Bank's legal filing--has a quote from Trump's 2007 bestseller,
Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life:
“I figured it was the bank’s problem, not mine. What the hell did I care? I actually told one bank, ‘I told you you shouldn’t have loaned me that money. I told you the goddamn deal was no good.’ ”
Sometimes I regret reading the paper over breakfast, when I come across stories such as To Buy Children’s Gifts, Mothers Do Without. Cue the icky-sticky strings:
Come Christmas, McKenna Hunt, a gregarious little girl from Safety Harbor, Fla., will receive the play kitchen and the Elmo doll she wants. But her mother, Kristen Hunt, will go without the designer jeans she covets this season....
“I want her to be able to look back,” Ms. Hunt declared, “and say, ‘Even though they were tough times, my mom was still able to give me stuff.’ ”
Martyr mom Kristen Hunt with the all-important stuff she bought her daughter for Xmas. (Instead of buying a play kitchen, why not save the money and just--gasp!--spend time with the kid in the real kitchen and--double gasp!--teach her to cook?) Photo for NYT by Charity Beck.
On the other hand, there's
On the Block: Anarchy and Nostalgia, about Christie's auction of punk memorabilia on Monday. Cue The Ramones!
“I lived through it, and now I can afford it,” said [Scott Wittman, Tony- and Grammy-winning composer and lyricist for “Hairspray”], who like many of the buyers viewed the sale as not just music history but also New York City history.
“I look at it as revisiting my youth,” he added. “I ran into John Varvatos,” the designer whose pricey boutique now occupies the former CBGB space on the Bowery, “and I said, ‘I used to throw up in that corner.’ It brings a tear to my eye.”
The infamous men's john at CBGB, courtesy of urinal.net. (The women's was just as terrifying. I made it a point to go at home, a few blocks away, before I went to the club. And to drink as little as possible once there.)
Today's Lunch Deluxe email newsletter from Publishers Marketplace was a study in contrasts, with these headlines:
Medina "Suspended" in UK
Director's Jesus Book a Dutch Bestseller
The Bookseller reports on THE JEWEL OF MEDINA, the novel about Muhammed's wife Aisha, whose UK publisher was firebombed over the weekend (see
Quote for the Day--Make that Every Day). Ballantine dropped the book in the US, after a (Jewish!) advance reader warned that the book could foment trouble, then passed along word about it to a Muslim website, which was followed by--surprise!--incendiary attacks, rhetorical and actual.
The UK publication of The Jewel of Medina is in "suspended animation" according to Gibson Square's external sales team Compass, following this weekend's attempted attack on publisher Martin Rynja's house. Alan Jessop, m.d. of Compass, this morning (Tuesday 30th September) spoke to Rynja who said he would be taking some time out to decide whether to continue with plans to publish the controversial historial novel. Jessop said: "He is in good spirits, but has put publication in suspended animation while he reflects and takes advice on what the best foot forward is."
Then we have JESUS OF NAZARETH, co-written by Dutch director Paul Verhoeven, currently in its 4th printing in Holland "after a big promotional campaign." Per the
Hollywood Reporter, "Verhoeven suggests that Jesus was the son of Mary and a Roman soldier who raped her."
WOW!!! Now
that's incendiary! How interesting that there have been no reports so far of any arson, or even outrage. Maybe Sherry Jones should have had JEWEL OF MEDINA published in Holland first.
Yesterday's post Values v. Reality prompted unpleasant comments from a reader, which led to the following email exchange with the editorial page editor of the Roanoke Times. I like the part about being polite.
RT: It is better form when reprinting commentary from another source to excerpt it with a link to the full piece.
Me: I am quite aware of good form, fair use and copyright, and usually do run just excerpts with links (e.g., my two blog posts today). However, since I had permission from Janis Jaquith--who I assume holds the copyright to her essay--to post her piece in full, I did so. If my assumption is incorrect, please let me know and I will revise the offending post.
RT: It's not a big deal to me one way or the other. We have no objection to people reprinting commentary with appropriate credit, which you gave. A reader wrote us, however, offended on our behalf by what you had done, so I thought I'd just drop you a polite note. Again, it's not a big thing to me either way.
I cracked up when I was reading a story on the Washington Post site and saw the below headline under the heading "People who read this also read..."
Wis. court: Cops illegally taped nursing home sex
Naturally, I clicked on the link (wouldn't you?), then exclaimed, "EWW!" at the lede:
Police who videotaped a man having sex with his comatose wife in her nursing home room violated his constitutional rights, an appeals court ruled Thursday.
EWWW!!, EWWW!!!
EWWWWWW!!!! were my responses to the next few grafs:
David W. Johnson, 59, had an expectation to privacy when he visited his wife, a stroke victim, at Divine Savior Nursing Home in Portage, the District 4 Court of Appeals ruled. Therefore, police violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches when they installed a hidden video camera in the room, the court said.
"We are satisfied that Johnson's expectation of privacy while visiting his wife in her nursing home room is one that society would recognize as reasonable," the unanimous three-judge panel wrote.
The ruling means prosecutors cannot introduce the videotapes as evidence in their case against Johnson, who is charged with felony sexual assault for having intercourse with his wife without her consent at least three times in 2005.
I don't like to think of what Mr. Johnson would do at his wife's wake.
"WHAT?!" I yelped when I read yesterday's GalleyCat item, Publishers Weekly Reviewers Now To Be Paid Even Less. ($25!).
So it's not like PW reviewers will starve now because the rate they're being paid is being slashed by 50%. But it still sorta sucks.
It more than "sorta" sucks. There was a time, 15-20 years ago, when a significant chunk of my income came from PW reviews, which I cranked out at the rate of 2-4 per week, at $45 per. During the
sturm und drang over
Tasini v. NY Times, I followed the advice of the
American Society of Journalists and Authors, of which I was a member, and refused to sign PW's retroactive rights contract. It demanded that I hand over, gratis, the copyright for the hundreds of reviews, interviews and articles I'd written over more than a decade. Whereupon PW informed me that my services were no longer needed--not even for the biannual announcement listings, which I'd been doing for 10+ years.
So I caved and signed the
vershtunkeneh contract. And my services were still no longer needed. Whereupon I found greener reviewing pastures, which not only paid 6-10 times more but gave me a byline.
"However, you will be credited as a contributor in issues where your reviews appear," reassures reviews director Louisa Ermelino in the email she sent contributors announcing the change. Also, she writes that "all of us here are also experiencing change but we expect that we will continue to be the gold standard in book reviewing."
Raise your hand if you think Ermelino and other PW staffers' salaries have been cut by half.
"The idea that the story is true is more important than being able to prove that it's true."
--Ben Mezrich, author of BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE, in an article in today's
Boston Globe,
House of Cards.
Mezrich's bestseller (basis of the new movie, "21") is marketed as "nonfiction." Yet many of the characters and events in the book were invented outright.
"I don't even know if you want to call the things in there exaggerations, because they're so exaggerated they're basically untrue," said John Chang, an MIT graduate and one of the inspirations for the character Micky Rosa, who in the book is the team's founder and leader.
The book is vaulting back to prominence at a time of big scandals elsewhere in publishing, and low public trust in the media. Recent high-profile revelations of exaggeration and outright fabrication in memoirs have rekindled a long-running debate about how much massaging of the facts is acceptable in a nonfiction book. While memoirists are being publicly humiliated and dropped by their publishers for fabricating incidents in their own lives, the Mezrich empire is prospering, and the actor Kevin Spacey, a star in "21," is developing two more of Mezrich's books into movies. Yet some observers say "Bringing Down the House" - and other books like it - are precisely the kind of storytelling that most threatens the important line between what is real and what is not....
Both Mezrich and the book's publisher, Simon and Schuster's Free Press, see nothing to apologize for. The book, they point out, was published with a disclaimer (in fine print, on the copyright page) warning that the names, locations, and other details had been changed, and that some events and individuals are composites, created from other events and individuals. Nearly all the details and facts in the book were culled from his research, Mezrich says, and where they were compressed or creatively rearranged, the fundamental truth of the story he tells is undiminished.
"Every word on the page isn't supposed to be fact-checkable," Mezrich said. Most readers and writers, he said, have no problem with that.
It is of course impossible to say precisely what readers expect when they read Mezrich's book. Yet Mezrich freely admits that only one of the book's main characters, "Kevin Lewis," is based on a single actual person, an MIT graduate whose real name is Jeff Ma. And Ma's character does things that Ma himself said he never heard of until he read the book. Whatever readers expect from a work of nonfiction, it is unlikely to be this.
Interesting that Meyrich turned real Asians into invented Latins and Anglos.
In 2004 the Globe Magazine published an article by Mezrich that they termed "imaginatively enhanced nonfiction." There's a word for that: FICTION; or better yet: TRUTHINESS.
What the hell is going on here?
By: Ben Zimmer,
on 9/20/2007
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Today’s an exciting day for OUP, as we launch the sixth edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. If this were a birth announcement, we’d have to give the vitals: Oxford University Press joyfully announces the arrival of twin volumes, weighing a total of 13.6 pounds (6.2 kilograms), with 3,800 pages, 6 million words of text, more than half a million definitions, and 84,000 illustrative quotations. Welcome to the world, Shorter volumes 1 and 2! (Oh, and your diminutive friend too, the Shorter on CD-ROM.) (more…)
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How many times have we seen the same sort of stuff? I starts to lose its effectiveness, that's for sure.