"They pray TO Jesus and bow to Ayn Rand," writes Allegra Smith about The Tea Party-ers who are gathered in Tampa.
I want to recommend that followers of this column might call up something call "Clusterfuck Nation" -- whether you approve of the name of the site or not. It is written by author James Howard Kunstler. (I think it's useless to call it "Cluster#$%@.) Mr. Kunstler writes that history will notice -- "even if we are too chicken to face it now, that the extraordinary turpitudes of U.S. politics today represent an unprecedented failure of American manhood."
He writes about the consequences of "Dixieland Republicanism, now a misty region-of-mind that extends way beyond the old Confederate borders." He refers to the GOP's "perfect confluence of sheer stupidity with put-on fake religiosity...They can just pawn everything off on Jesus: the good, the bad, the mystifying, the shameful."
Mr. Kunstler recommends we watch for VP nominee Paul Ryan to "haul his mom out before a
crowd of Florida retirees to prove his allegiance to Medicare and Social Security--two programs he would like to dismantle." He then adds that Ryan's mother is "the sort of multi-millionaire that a sane society would means-test out of receiving old-age support from the less fortunate taxpayers." But that's not all. He lets the Democrats have it for leaning so heavily toward gay marriage that they "have made it the public's business to the exclusion of other things." ... He asks why they didn't propose at least a Constitutional Amendment to clarify the distinction between citizens and corporations using money for political speech? ...
He notes that Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan and Jon Corzine are "still at large." He brings up Obama's Department of Justice dropping its case (served on a platter by Senator Carl Levin) wherein "Not one lawyer in the entire DOJ took a public stand against...the gross negligence of
Goldman Sachs." He calls this "the failure of nerve" and the "most pressing issue of our time," saying real masculine courage is absent from Democrats as well as Republicans.
- RECENT coverage of Le Cirque's dessert Baked Alaska has led one James Cummings to write us: "Baked Alaska? I think the dish is known up north as "Faked Alaska!"...
- LET'S DON'T forget that Todd Akin, rejected by the GOP, has now garnered $100,000 from folks who feel sorry for him and share his mindset about abortion at any cost. So I say, send your money to Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill. Oh, yes, our favorite astrologist from The Aesthete tells us the GOP convention bodes well for financial and business aspects of the proceedings. Well, we didn't think they'd put on a penny- pinching show.
- AND NOW all of you who are sick of political discussions can read a little entertainment gossip of good will and fun. So now we hear Prince Harry's naked party inVegas had some "friend" taking a video of him receiving sexual favors. The British don't seem to care. He is called "The Second" or "The Spare" and they think the world should just let 27-year-old Harry have fun. One network honcho said to me: "We were offered the film for a million dollars. But nobody who buys it can show it on TV." Want to bet? (This is yet another cautionary tale. Having a party? Request all your guests give up their cell phones. Also the bouncers, waiters, bartenders too. If they say they can't live without their phone for anhour, then they'll have to live without your party.)
Mia Farrow's brilliant son Ronan --the one who is a genius IQ and a Yale grad --has been out in Los Angeles lately visiting Nancy Sinatra. His famous mother was once married to the one and only Frank Sinatra. This has caused the anti-Woody Allen contingent to point out that such a connection gives heft to the ongoing theory that Ronan is not the son from her relationship with Woody, but from her post- divorce romantics with the late Sinatra himself.
Ali Wentworth, the outspoken, outrageous darling of cable TV and reality shows, wrote the
recent book "Ali in Wonderland." The wife of ABC correspondent George Stephanopoulos is now talking to Warner Bros. about a sitcom series based on her popular work.
David Rockefeller, the highly regarded, head of this famous American family, is recovering from a broken leg and will soon undergo hip surgery. He is only 95 and going strong. The off-Broadway hit "Old Jews Telling Jokes" opened only four months ago. It is such a hit, this
show it is already sending out royalty checks to backers. Peter Gethers (who heads Random House Films) and Daniel Okrent are the successful creators/producers/writers.