Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Liza Donnelly (Cartoon)
Rachel Maddow: Conservatives Cash to Quash Opposition (Video)
Henry Rollins: Too Bad, the Birther Sideshow Was Just Getting Good (Vanity Fair)
At first, I was disappointed that the White House released President Obama's birth certificate yesterday. I had been enjoying watching and listening to that small group of America's rabid rejects being all bouncy and birthy.
ABHIJIT BANERJEE, ESTHER DUFLO: More Than 1 Billion People Are Hungry in the World (Foreign Policy)
But what if the experts are wrong?
Jim Hightower: PUNISHING THE INNOCENT, ENRICHING THE GUILTY
A recent email to me pretty well sums up the big budget hullaballoo being pushed by tea party Republicans. As the writer put it: "Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401ks, took trillions in bailout money, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?" Then he added, "Yeah, me neither."
Lenore Skenazy: When Adults are Banished (Creators Syndicate)
She is worried about what will happen when she retires - soon - and still wants to enjoy watching kids play. "I won't be able to sit on a bench at the playground," she said. "I'll have to watch from outside the fence." And she's right. In my town - New York City - as well as others across America, the playgrounds have signs: "Adults not allowed unless accompanied by a child."
Mark Shields: John Adams Would Be Disappointed (Creators Syndicate)
… one man, John Adams, an open critic of the British occupation, believing that a just legal system depended on a fair trial for the accused and able counsel defending them, risked his professional and political future as well as his personal safety by defending the British soldiers.
"Branch Rickey" By JIMMY BRESLIN: Reviewed by Chuck Leddy
As General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Branch Rickey changed Major League Baseball forever when he signed the first African-American player, Jackie Robinson.
Unveiling the Uncensored Dorian Gray
A hundred and twenty years after its original publication, Oscar Wilde's masterpiece stands fully revealed. Brooke Allen reviews.
Tanya Gold: Oh Jilly Cooper, please don't give up the sex (Guardian)
Novelist threatens to abandon the sex-near-horses genre to write a proper book.
20 Questions: Meg Wolitzer
Bestselling author Meg Woliter's 'The Uncoupling,' a humorous novel about female desire, publishes this month. Wolitzer taks with PopMatters 20 Questions about, among other things, the simple pleasures of having one's own man shirt.
Susanna Ruston: "Maxine Hong Kingston: Singing along with Whitman" (Guardian)
The Woman Warrior's author talks about changing times in China, turning to poetry 'to hasten the pace of creation' and getting arrested with Alice Walker.
David Barrett: Arguing About Amis (Standpoint Magazine)
"Writers die twice," wrote Martin Amis, "once when the body dies, and once when the talent dies."
"How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One" by Stanley Fish: A review by Simon Blackburn
In this small feast of a book Stanley Fish displays his love of the English sentence, and even without Puccini to help, his enthusiasm is seductive. His connoisseurship is broad and deep, his examples are often breathtaking, and his analyses of how the masterpieces achieve their effects are acute and compelling.
David Bruce has 41 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $41 you can buy 10,250 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," and "Maximum Cool."
wrote:
answered:
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and very windy.
University Supports Lecturer
Judy Ancel
University of Missouri-Kansas City officials say they're standing behind a labor studies professor whose lecture comments about union agitation tactics have created an Internet stir among conservative commentators.
Video clips on conservative blogger (and certified liar) Andrew Breitbart's Big Government website show professor Judy Ancel seemingly endorsing violence as a union tactic during a recent class. UMKC Provost Gail Hackett pledged support for the academic freedom of the school's professors and said videos posted on Breitbart's site rely on "selective editing" and are presented in "an inaccurate and distorted manner."
A campus review of 18 hours of unedited video continues, Hackett said in a statement released late Thursday.
Breitbart was at the center of two rigged video controversies in recent years - one that led to the firing of a U.S. Agriculture Department employee over an edited video of what appeared to be a racist remark, and another that embarrassed the community group ACORN when workers were shown counseling actors posing as a prostitute and pimp.
Ancel, director of the university's Institute for Labor Studies, called the Breitbart video "part of a broad agenda to weaken unions."
Judy Ancel
Mocks Trump
Obama
President Barack Obama is mixing mixed comedy with some early campaigning at the White House Correspondents' Association annual dinner, focusing mainly on Donald Trump.
With Trump in attendance, Obama said the billionaire businessman has shown the acumen of a future president, from firing Gary Busey on a recent episode of "Celebrity Apprentice" to focusing so much time on conspiracy theories about Obama's birthplace.
After a week when Obama released his long-form Hawaii birth certificate, he said Trump could now focus on the serious issues: "Did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?"
Trump chuckled.
Obama
Honored At NY Film Festival
Julie Taymor
Despite the troubles with Broadway's "Spider-Man," for director Julie Taymor, "Failure is Impossible."
That's the name of the award she received Friday at the George Eastman House Film Festival in Rochester, N.Y.
She wasn't as lucky with "Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark," a $65 million musical with aerial stunts dogged by accidents that injured five cast members. The producers have ousted Taymor. Previews for an altered show are scheduled to start on May 12.
The 58-year-old Taymor told the Rochester audience that "anyone who gets anything done in this world forgets about failure ... and sticks to their heart and vision."
Julie Taymor
Baby News
Carey - Cannon
Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon celebrated their fourth anniversary with another milestone - becoming parents to a baby girl and boy.
Carey's representative, Cindi Berger, confirmed the births to The Associated Press. The singing superstar gave birth Saturday at 12:07 p.m. EDT at an undisclosed hospital in Los Angeles. Berger says the baby girl was born first, weighing 5 pounds, 3 ounces, and was 18 inches long; her brother was next, at 5 pounds 6 ounces, and was 19 inches.
Berger says the couple has not named the children yet. Cannon drove Carey to the hospital in their Rolls-Royce Phantom. Berger said the 41-year-old Carey, who had gone through false labor, was calm, thinking that it was another false alarm.
Carey - Cannon
Hospital News
Jerry Brown
California Governor Jerry Brown had surgery to remove a cancerous growth from his nose, his office said on Saturday.
The growth was removed under local anesthetic on Friday, after tests revealed the presence of basal cell carcinoma, Brown's office said in a statement.
All the cancerous cells were removed, but some reconstructive surgery to Brown's nose was required due to the procedure, it said.
His office said he would not attend the state Democratic Convention in Sacramento over the weekend, and would skip public events until the stitches were removed.
Jerry Brown
White House, Newspaper Clash Over Protest Video
San Francisco
The White House says a San Francisco Chronicle reporter broke the rules when she put down her pen and picked up a video camera to film a protest. The newspaper says the Obama administration needs to join the 21st century.
The conflict hit the newspaper's front page Friday with a story about coverage of the protest during President Barack Obama's speech last week at a private fundraiser.
Reporter Carla Marinucci had White House permission to cover the fundraiser as a so-called "pool" reporter, meaning she could attend as long as she shared her notes with the White House to distribute to other reporters.
Marinucci was covering the event when about a half-dozen protesters who paid a combined $76,000 to attend the breakfast broke into a song chastising Obama for the government's treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence analyst suspected of illegally passing government secrets to the WikiLeaks website.
"We paid our dues, where's our change?" the protesters sang.
San Francisco
Chronicle video of protest
Wants To End Theft Case
Lindsay Lohan
Lindsay Lohan wants to enter a no contest plea to end a criminal case filed over a $2,500 necklace reported stolen, a source close to the actress said Saturday.
The source, who is familiar with Lohan's criminal case but was not authorized to comment publicly, said the actress wants to put the case behind her so she can focus on her career.
No court date has been set for Lohan to enter the plea. She is scheduled to return to a Los Angeles court for a pretrial hearing May 11, but the actress is hoping to resolve the case before then, the source said.
By pleading no contest, Lohan would not be admitting guilt, and it was not immediately clear if she would face any additional penalties. The actress already has been sentenced to four months in jail for a probation violation related to the theft case. She is free on bail.
Lindsay Lohan
Royals Play Hard Ball
Australia
Press freedom advocates on Saturday slammed the axing of a satirical Australian programme about the royal wedding on official request as a troubling example for authoritarian regimes.
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said it "deplored" the BBC and Associated Press Television News (APTN) for "censoring satirical coverage" of the nuptials by Australian comedy group The Chaser.
Notorious for breaching security at an APEC summit in an Osama bin Laden costume, The Chaser had planned to broadcast irreverent commentary over the BBC's live feed, but were forced to cancel after the royals reportedly objected.
Clarence House, the private office of Prince William's father Charles, was widely cited as being behind last-minute changes to broadcasting conditions forbidding the use of footage in any comedy or satire.
The revisions led the BBC to threaten to block Australia's public broadcaster ABC -- host to The Chaser -- from any wedding coverage if it did not comply.
RSF noted comments from The Chaser that a "large proportion of the cost of the wedding is being paid for by the (British) public" and that the value of parody and satire in a democracy were recognised under Australian law.
Australia
Teacher Charged With Firing At TV Crew
Las Vegas
A North Las Vegas teacher faces attempted murder and other charges after police say he fired shots at a television crew for the Spike TV reality show "Repo Games."
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that 40-year-old Carlos Enrique Barron has been suspended with pay from his job as a special education teacher at Smith Middle School while the investigation continues.
The Review-Journal reports a crew from the show was looking for a vehicle belonging to one of Barron's neighbors Tuesday night.
A police report says Barron got upset that the crew's security van was parked in front of his home on Vigilante Court. It says Barron confronted the crew with a gun, slapped one of the crew's security officers and fired at least three shots. No one was hurt.
Las Vegas
Denies Brown Bullying Claims
Emma Watson
Emma Watson, the British actress who plays Hermione Granger in the "Harry Potter" series, on Friday denied reports that she was bullied out of Brown University - an assertion backed up by fellow students who said that, if anything, she was shielded from being singled out.
A New York Daily News article posted online April 21 claimed that when Watson responded correctly to questions in class, her classmates would shout, "Three points for Gryffindor!" - a reference to the "Harry Potter" films, in which students' dormitory houses are awarded points for questions they answer correctly. Watson's character lives in Gryffindor.
"This '10 points to Gryffindor' incident never even happened," wrote Watson, who has denied that rumor before. "Accusing Brown students of something as serious as bullying and this causing me to leave seems beyond unfair."
The rumor that a student had once exclaimed "10 points for Gryffindor" after Watson answered a question correctly became widespread on campus in spring 2010, the semester during which it was alleged to have happened, according to several current and recent Brown students interviewed by The Associated Press.
But, they said, it was viewed as part of Brown folklore, and students were, if anything, protective of Watson.
Emma Watson
Deadline Looms
`Two and a Half Men'
There are 2 1/2 weeks left for Warner Bros. Television and CBS to decide the fate of "Two and a Half Men."
With CBS unveiling its fall schedule for advertisers in New York on May 18, deadline pressure is on the network, Warner and "Men" executive producer Chuck Lorre to develop a post-Charlie Sheen version of the sitcom or kill what's been a highly lucrative property for all.
Whether the show is returning, who's in the cast and whether a revamped format would be ready for a fall debut or be delayed until midseason will be resolved before the "upfront" sales presentation to Madison Avenue, according to an executive close to the situation.
The executive spoke on condition of anonymity Friday because Warner and CBS would not authorize public comment on the show's status.
`Two and a Half Men'
Finale Tickets Sell For $11K
DWTS
A trip to next month's "Dancing With the Stars" finale is worth more than $10,000.
The winning bidder paid $11,000 for tickets to attend the season finale of the hit ABC show during a live auction Friday at the 18th annual Race to Erase MS fundraising gala at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles.
"Dancing With the Stars" professional dancers Cheryl Burke, Kym Johnson, Louis Van Amstel and Anna Trebunskaya presented the prize during the gala's live auction, which also featured tickets to "American Idol" and a chartered trip on a private yacht (selling price: $35,000).
Race to Erase MS founder Nancy Davis says the fundraiser's auctions have raised more than $10 million for research toward finding a cure for multiple sclerosis.
DWTS
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