Under the Plane Tree

The Athenians valued Themistocles, but they never really loved him. He was pushed from power mere months after his epic victory. [Cleanup after the Leonidas Spartan 300 mess.] As Plutarch later reported, the Athenians “treated him like a plane-tree; when it was stormy, they ran under his branches for shelter, but as soon as it was fine, they plucked his leaves and lopped his branches.” (David Brooks in The NYT).

And ...

President Bush wants to keep everything that happens in his White House secret, but when it comes to his own emotions, he’s as transparent as a teenager on MySpace. (Frank Rich in The NYT).

The British Invasion, Take 2

The British have colonized Manhattan, acquiring minute rent-stabilized apartments in the West Village that they pass on to each other like hereditary titles. (A.A. Gill writing in Vanity Fair about his fellow "Brits Behaving Badly).

And ...

Most Americans think they look like gay Marines with deformed ears.

And ...

Those with the voices like broken crockery, the book-at-bedtime accent, have a lot to answer for.

And ...

We hunker together, forming bitchy old boys' and girls' clubs where we complain about and giggle over Americans like nannies talking about difficult, stupid children.

And ...

Inside, four young Englishmen from the Midlands are reminiscing over lists of Edwardian boiled sweets, like a spoof of "High Fidelity".

A Touch of the Gout

[Walter Benn] Michaels argues that nothing much has changed by substituting the idea of particular cultures for the discredited idea of race. For pragmatic as well as analytical reasons, he wants the left to forget about this kind of diversity, whether we call it racial or cultural ("diversity, like gout, is a rich people's problem"), and focus instead on poverty. (The New York Review of Books reviewing Michaels' "The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality").

Middle School: An Acquired Taste

“Middle school is like Scotch,” [JoAnn Rintel Abreu, an English and social studies teacher,] reflected in the teachers’ lounge one afternoon. “At first you try to get it down. Then you get used to it. Then it’s all you order.” (The NYT).

Six Packs on Parade: Sparta's 300 Go to War

And what guys! Decked out like gladiators in a gay fashion layout, the soldiers from the Greek city-state of Sparta look gym-ready for battle in crotch-squeezing ensembles that expose as much flesh as an R rating will allow. (RollingStone review).

Fighting Words on Fishing's Front Line

"My dad was a duck hunter," said (Thom) Watson (a sponsor of a Maine bill to limit the use of live fishing bait). "He used to say ice fishing was like a hunter sitting by a fireplace looking up the chimney waiting for a bird to fly over." (Article in The WSJ on the ice-fishing vs flyfishing wars).

The V-Word, a Salad Fork & a Carving Knife

Still, it’s important that parents and their children recognize that “vagina,” like “scrotum,” the subject of last month’s bad word kerfuffle (see the children’s book “The Higher Power of Lucky”) is not really a bad word, just a word that, like a salad fork or carving knife, needs to be used correctly, not brandished recklessly. (Article in The NYT on "Vagina Monologues" controversy at John Jay High School in Cross River, NY).

Historical Forecast: Uncertainty & Gloom

Western man in the middle of the 20th century is tense, uncertain, adrift. We look upon our epoch as a time of troubles, an age of anxiety. The grounds of our civilization, of our certitude, are breaking up under our feet, and familiar ideas and institutions vanish as we reach for them, like shadows in the falling dusk. (Arthur M Schlesinger Jr. in an appreciation in today's NYT).

Blogland Comity It Ain't

He's like the kid who gets to the ball field early, warms-up and takes batting practice, only to sit the bench because in the end, he sucks. (A blog commentator's view of another blog commentator on The Nation blog).

Some Pork With Your Peanut Butter?

After ticking off all the things New York City has done to guard against another terror attack, Bloomberg called for a risk-based dispersal of homeland security funds, accusing Congress and the White House of spreading homeland security dollars "around the country like peanut butter." (Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York at Senate hearing).

McCain, a Political Cat That's Off Balance

Mr. McCain is stuck on the bridge of a sinking policy with W. and Dick Cheney, who showed again this week that there is no bottom to his lunacy. The senator supported a war that didn’t need to be fought and is a cheerleader for a surge that won’t work. It has left Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, once the most spontaneous of campaigners, off balance. He’s like a cat without its whiskers. (Maureen Dowd in The NYT).

Expecting Freddy in the Garden State

Because of spending controls, the half penny and fewer uses of one-shots, the structural deficit has been reduced – for the moment. But like Freddy Krueger, it’ll be back. (Gov. John Corzine of New Jersey in Budget Address).

New Orleans, Rushmore & Chicken on a Spit

Their arms were folded. It was like talking to Mt. Rushmore. (Dan Baum in his online New Yorker journal, about the New Orleans aftermath of Katrina).

E-mail and phone trees spread the word Monday morning that the City Council was going to be publicly questioning Warren Riley, the police chief, and Eddie Jordan, the district attorney, later that day. “They’re going to turn like chicken on a spit!” a friend who called to alert me to the show exulted. (Baum).

Mr. President, Welcome to Third Grade

Watching the administration try to get its story straight about Iran’s role in Iraq last week was like watching third graders try to sidestep blame for misbehaving while the substitute teacher was on a bathroom break. (Frank Rich in The NYT. Times Select access required).

A Times Psychology Lesson on Suburban Teens

Sophomoric by definition, this youth is plugged into his id but not his conscience, and the stabilizing fluid of common sense is still slipping and sliding through his system like unset Jell-O. (NYT editorial-page blurb on suburban (or subintelligent) teens who run into fences for kicks).

From the Land of Oz

Those striped socks, curling back like a pair of deflating noisemakers. ... (Article in The NYT on Meinhardt Raabe, 91, the Munchkin coroner who confirmed the death of the Wicked Witch in "The Wizard of Oz." Times Select signup required.)

The Literary Amazement of Amis

[Martin] Amis's observing eye is constantly abulge with amazement at the wickedness and folly of his fellow human beings. He looks upon the world with incredulous surprise, like a man stumbling befuddled out of a dim restaurant into the acid sunlight and traffic roar of a summer afternoon in a strange city. (John Banville writing in The New York Review of Books about Amis and his new "House of Meetings.")

Tortured Similes: Getting Under New Yorker's Skin

The show’s villains usually inflict the more gruesome tortures: their victims are hung on hooks, like carcasses in a butcher shop; poked with smoking-hot scalpels; or abraded with sanding machines. (Jane Mayer in The New Yorker
on “24,” torture and the man behind it all).

His students were particularly impressed by a scene in which Bauer barges into a room where a stubborn suspect is being held, shoots him in one leg, and threatens to shoot the other if he doesn’t talk. In less than ten seconds, the suspect reveals that his associates plan to assassinate the Secretary of Defense. [Retired Law Professor Gary] Solis told me, “I tried to impress on them that this technique would open the wrong doors, but it was like trying to stomp out an anthill.”

“It’s been very heady,” [“24” writer Howard] Gordon said of Washington’s enthusiasm for the show. Roger Director, [“24” executive producer Joel] Surnow’s friend, joked that the conservative writers at “24” have become “like a Hollywood television annex to the White House. It’s like an auxiliary wing.”

Turning Heads & Phrases on the Runway

Anybody who attempts to deny that today’s cadaverous lovelies have become absurdly attenuated — they move gingerly down the runway like starving egrets — must simply not have been around when models looked more human. (The New York Observer on Fashion Week.

And …

The day’s second jolt of creativity arrived like a sledgehammer from hell. It was the celeb sighting to end all celeb sightings. Indeed, the range and breadth of front-row notables turned the Marc Jacobs show into a veritable waxworks: Rod Stewart, Lil’ Kim, Lenny Kravitz, Lee Radziwill. Other than Dr. Phil and Weird Al Yankovic, it’s hard to think of a contemporary icon who was not present. (Observer)

Getting Gussied Up for Some Important Dates

In the master bathroom, a white sheepskin rug had been slung over the edge of the sunken tub, looking rather like an albino sloth making its way to a watering hole. (Rebecca Mead writing in The New Yorker about dressing up homes for sale).