Headlines!

Just wanted to let people know, in case they forgot, that there is a Headline section over in the left sidebar. Sometimes I (and my cobloggers) don't update it for a while, but generally it gets a few new headlines per day. Lately it's been getting more, particularly because someone gave me a new widget that allows me to scan breaking news more easily than before.

I keep wanting to break a couple of pieces out into the main section, so maybe I'll just mention them: That piece about British theater is interesting because a left-leaning guy is actually annoyed that the British stage is so stultifyingly repetitive and boring in its left-wing messaging, and wonders where the "mischievous right-wing" plays might be found. He finds not a single right-wing playwright, though someone does offer up Tom Stoppard as a "small-c conservative." The reasons given for the lack of any true right-wing fare in the theater tracks pretty much with the reasons for the similar lack of right-wing movies made by Hollywood.

And one of the most satisfying tears of a truly repellent man I've ever read is over there. Roger Kimball comes not to praise Norman Mailer, but to bury him under invective so cutting that it's a delight. I knew Mailer was repellent, but I didn't know how repellent. The man had an absolute hard-on for murderers, praising them as "brave" rebels against the status quo. In fact, he often wished he could summon such "courage" and kill a man for no good reason. He very nearly got his chance when he stabbed his wife almost to death.

Here's Mailer on abortion. Which is "hell" for many women, he allows.

But I wouldn't call him a political fellow-traveler on this issue just yet:

I think when a woman goes through an abortion, even legalized abortion, she goes through hell. There’s no use hoping otherwise. For what is she doing? Sometimes she has to be saying to herself, “You’re killing the memory of a beautiful fuck.” I don’t think abortion is a great strain when the act was some miserable little screech, or some squeak oozed up through the trapdoor, a little rat which got in, a worm who slithered under the threshold. That sort of abortion costs a woman little more than discomfort. Unless there are medical consequences years later.

But if a woman has a great fuck, and then has to abort, it embitters her.

Nuance. It should be noted that Mailer was such a ridiculous egotist that when he's speaking of a "beautiful fuck," he is of course speaking of himself, and the precious "squeak" he left behind, and the woman's "hell" of having to part with the genetic fruit basket he gave her as a parting gift.

Oh, one last bit: someone tells me that Target is offering the complete Firefly series on DVD for $14.88.

posted by Ace at 03:27 PM

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