London Bridge is Falling Down

Just when you think a substantive conversation (like lowering taxes) has finally taken the presidential candidates' debate up a notch, John McCain comes up with a pander to voters - that actually hurts voters.

At a time when America's basic transportation infrastructure (roads, bridges and tunnels) are in critical need of repair, John McCain wants to take away billions from the states to make those repairs. All so he can save you eighteen cents a gallon on gas this summer. But he's not really saving you anything: like a street hustler, he's just playing the shell game of costs. There are more expenses to operating a motor vehicle than just fuel. There's maintenance. Wear and tear on a motor vehicle costs the average voter hundreds of dollars a year. Potholes alone cause tire damage and front-end misalignment (not to mention accidents) that voters will have to pay for down the road.

Pander never had a finer (nor given the current economic situation, a more timely) political definition.

Charlton Heston - An American Life

A few words about Charlton Heston who died on April 5, 2008 at age 84 at home in Beverly Hills, with his wife of 64 years, Lydia, by his bedside. By all accounts, Mr. Heston lived a good, honorable life - and seemed to enjoy it.

Mr. Heston campaigned for John F. Kennedy, marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke out against racism in America and was a civil rights activist, as well. He lived in exciting times. But he was also a complicated man who changed some of his political views in later life (his stance on gun control and his leadership of the NRA from 1998 until 2003 never did sit well with me - but you can't have everything, right?).

Charlton Heston was one of my favorite actors and while he had many more famous roles, I will always remember him best in El Cid (his on-screen chemistry with Sophia Loren smoked, btw - but I digress). Mr. Heston was in some of the most epic moments on film: parting the Red Sea as Moses in The Ten Commandments (how often do you get to do that?); the chariot race in Ben-Hur (edge of the seat stuff); and, of course, his tour de force performance as the corrupt cop in Orson Wells' masterpiece, A Touch of Evil. In 1960, Mr. Heston won the Oscar for Best Actor for his role in Ben-Hur. He was also the recipient of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1977. Charlton Heston was also honored with the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 1972; the Kennedy Center Honors: Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997; the Martin Luther King, Jr. Award: Congress of Racial Equality in 2001 and The Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2003.

Healthcare 101

Healthcare is the single most important subject we should all be thinking about. NOW. 47 million Americans are without it. If my dear friend (see this post and this one, too) wasn't covered under his wife's plan, he would be dead by now. Do I have your attention?

You know, I never understood that between State and Federal taxes taking nearly 50% of our wages, somehow, we Americans have allowed our representatives to convince us that we don't all deserve healthcare. DO NOT be fooled by the argument that we can't allow the federal government to control our healthcare. For starters, there's Medicare (which everyone receives when they reach 65). Medicare is one of the most successfully run federal government programs of all time (and getting better with plenty of choice). For the rest of us, we can indeed have universal healthcare NOW and let the government pay for it (with the taxes we already pay). We will still have choice. We will still have our own doctors and specialists. But the bill is picked up by the federal government (at the risk of repeating myself: with the taxes we already pay.) Is that really too much to ask? So ask. No, demand. From your Representatives. From your Presidential candidate.

Once you've lost your health, well, nothing else much matters does it?

Btw, if you are a John McCain fan, here's and interesting article worth reading.

Truth in Publishing

Although they've been with us for a while, apparently we have a category of writers badly in need of a name. I shall call them the Literary Fabricators.

Recently, there was James Frey. His four-million copy best selling bogus 2003 memoir A Million Little Pieces (purportedly pitched originally as a novel by Frey to his agent and several publishers, including Nan A. Talese, who leads the imprint at Random House’s Doubleday division and who subsequently published A Million Little Pieces). Initially rejected as a novel, someone at Random House supposedly made the suggestion that Mr. Frey's work would sell better as a memoir.

Sean McDonald, the Random House editor ultimately assigned to the project, assured Nan Talese and Oprah Winfrey (the single most powerful - and important - name in publishing) that he was confident the events in A Million Little Pieces did, in fact, occur because he had personally checked them out. "I made sure that everything actually happened," he said as the book was being edited.

Of course, Oprah was subsequently embarrassed (a big no-no in that universe) for being so very much taken in by Frey's fabrication of 'his' sordid tale of drug addiction and rehabilitation. Frey endured a humiliating public spanking by Winfrey on her show (the same show that weeks before presented James Frey as the latest writer to win the coveted "Oprah Loves This Book More Than You Can Possibly Imagine" prize.

Now we have a new Fabricator: [from The New York Times]

In “Love and Consequences,” a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret B. Jones [a pseudonym for Margaret Seltzer] wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods.

Turns out it was all a lie. And what an unnecessary one, too: if the book is critically acclaimed, a fictional approach often possesses a much more powerful 'truth' to tell (Sinclair Lewis' Mainstreet and George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London come to mind).

But a publisher's nimbleness should never be underestimated:

Sarah McGrath, the editor at Riverhead who worked with Ms. Seltzer for three years on the book, said she was stunned to discover that the author had lied. “There’s a huge personal betrayal here as well as a professional one,” she said.

Riverhead Books, a unit of Penguin Group USA, is recalling all copies of the book and has canceled Ms. Seltzer’s book tour. Ms. Jones/Seltzer was about to embark on a nationwide book tour. Could Oprah have been far behind? I suppose that's the breaks: she has little left but her infamy while Frey has his millions, a penthouse in Manhattan, a house in The Hamptons and, of course, the infamy as the garnish on that particular cocktail.

We wonder why talented writers just don't do it the old fashioned way: a writer writes a great story that gets published as is. Sure, it's harder to get published today; but isn't that the reason you've got your thesaurus earmarked and the entry "perseverance" highlighted in yellow? There are many, many success story each year. And if you don't by now understand that "the Internet has changed everything" then your chances of getting noticed will be straight-jacketed from the start. The author has never had so many tools at his or her disposal.

But, the Literary Fabricator succumbs to the curse of the mendacity of the modern age (or what one well-known publishing personality revealed at 3:00 in the morning over her eighth Cosmopolitan as "my livelihood, dear.") Indeed. And who can deny the appeal of center ring in the circus?

But somehow, despite this allure, I simply can not imagine Fitzgerald, Hemingway or Faulkner (who's debut novels were This Side of Paradise, in 1920, The Torrents of Spring in 1925 and Soldier's Pay in 1926 respectively) producing anything fake. Their 'reality' was intense enough for us all.

And if immortality is the goal, well, you can't really fake that. And if money and fifteen minutes of fame is the goal, what a sad waste of talent.