A Fury Almost Not to be Recognized

"New hope for the civically exhausted--" TNR's rebtanded tagline

Coping with false allegations is never a pleasant experience, but I doubt those in Twitter's scrolling immediacy paused to reflect on the hyperbolic decibel level which surrounds American physical intimacy as it rolls back its blinds on the sexual revolution with some degree of diffidence. The catfish operatives who trolled on Buttigieg's character in mid-spring were the first to wither under a crisp recoil, as per the announcement of the Burkman/Wohl press conference.

Jacob Wohl plans to hold a press conference on his Pete Buttigieg sexual assault smear on Wednesday pic.twitter.com/BS2R38PFBr

— Will Sommer (@willsommer) May 6, 2019

Not Dale Peck, but as I read these persistent entrails of innuendo, Wohl was taking a page from Me Too as a reflective lesson. If Kavanaugh was going to burn, then why not a favored son from the midwest who has the admiration of former right winger Tom Nichols? I looked at some paragraphs of Peck's screed and with some piqued irony saw myself in his words, as some of you must have read me in my delineations of Erik von Schmetterling, the failed female medical intern with its freakish androgyny, and Jimmi Shrode, its pallid partner, but Peck is wrong too, too infer that educated people such as myself, once a supporter of gay marriage, could steer my starboard in the other direction, turn my back, and yet preoccupy myself with Mayor Pete's private life. What is that to me, aging, vulnerable, in paralysis regardless of policy nuance? The National Review, for all of my restlessness with its content, offered me a better grasp of Buttigieg's executive limitations in dealing with the lethal shooting of a black resident who allegedly pulled a knife on an officer. Dale Peck simply continues onward with the destruction of a periodical which many of us have lauded as a Beltway institution. I can say quite honestly I wouldn't want, as of this post, a byline in The New Republic. That window has passed, to echo Jeffrey Tucker when he wanted to praise Beyonce but was upbraided by someone uptight when it came to a white man writing about a black woman's music. Western civilization is so sadly broken. I can revert to my excoriating denigration on the basis of race and ethnicity, (let alone orientation) but the rest of the country has left me parked at the curb, no matter how much more dehumanization there is left to sustain in a neo-liberal candyland.

The Consequence of Bad Grooming Result in Hair Chaos

“We've got a 40-year-old allegation that is unprovable, probably,” Toomey said.

I have not weighed in on the Roy Moore candidacy, and don’t particularly care to, as I know nothing of the man in his own voice, and I am not into the MAGA fetish. I voted for Donald, but it was a vote cast on the basis of reaction against the Clintons, perhaps due to hilarity as well. I looked for ways to defend him, initially, and take responsibility for that, in my annoyance with Wapo, but as my survival has come up against a landslide of falling rocks annulling me into paralysis, I have become disaffected, not that my circumstances are the GOP’s fault. But I weary of this fake news tabloid mindset of the president, to echo Ed Rogers, and think the administration has been in place long enough now to sober up and execute, as my subversive amusement wans, and my defiance has to pit itself against diaper rash. Moore's rise in the spotlight, though he is well known in his state, is perhaps attributable to the cultural backlash I warned against when I gave my readers, incredulous or confused as they might be, personal details about the gay and lesbian predominance in groups like ADAPT and Not Dead Yet.

In point of fact, to summon up my antagonist, once again, I only saw Jimmi Shrode earlier this year, near to the onset of autumn, and he did not seem well. The cuddly ugly queen phase, when he would wear green eyeshadow and black nail polish, seems to have been discarded. He was walking with a pronounced limp, a cane, thinned out, as if he was evading belligerents such as I have been, and I wondered if he had been in an altercation, despite the fact I’ve long been out of orbit. Roy Moore’s extremism when it comes to homosexuals may seem commensurate with the dowager’s darker inclinations, but his collective condemnation is against the whole: my personal experiences have taught me that toleration is a double-edged sword.

I have read the media alarmists who feel the man’s doctrinal fidelity is an indicator of mental affect, to put it mildly.  Senator Toomey has expressed sympathy with those who allege molestation, and feels Moore should have stepped down, a position which has probably aligned him with Casey in a bipartisan gesture toward comity, but blood in the water is manifest in a myriad of casualties. I never imagined Lizza would be among them, not that I can recollect what his contributions were under Marty that earned my respect. We need to put the brakes on this misconduct hysteria, and I say that as someone irrevocably damaged. I am heartened that Lizza is saying wait a minute. If he had a prior consensual relationship, there may be a red herring in these polluted currents.

I have followers who may be considered devout, but Roy is less rational conservative, more literalist. These fissures in the body politic have come and gone before with the Christian Coalition, but this controversy is inopportune, again, distracting us from functioning.

Proxy's Snare Bait

I tried TNR again last week with a very short column, arguing with one of Jeffrey's points, a germ of a rebuttal for which I have more ambitious expansion, assuming I am not someday soon cavorting with sewer rats, and wonder how many of TNR's contributors know the inner city, lived it as I have, aside from linguist McWhorter. Despite the fact that the fourth estate at times sounds like a collective cavern of domestic custodians, I am still engaged in attempted reclamation, and though I have not read a recent issue since Chris Hughes abrogated his old media ambitions, I know how The New Republic condemns the grubs beneath the stones. They tweeted their usual censure over the fact that white supremacy still exists. This was my response:

@NewRepublic @_pitfall so is black bigotry & no1 cares what it has done 2 me

— Joanne M Marinelli (@Jozannyme) February 27, 2017

Liberals say I toss the baby out with the bathwater because of "a few baby apples". Define few. I am lacerated daily by black male misogyny. Everyone is silent, everyone, though what I deal with daily is contiguous.

Our Herd Mentality, Incredulous

Some of you really heed Oprah Winfrey, don't you? The same women who find the anger of a homily disabled woman intimidating, flock to a former beauty queen, well past her heyday as she is, because she is a prominent, vivacious television personality who provides so many points of self-recognition. Being a shadow Empress, it seems to spastic, has gone to her head, if her onslaught of Weight Watchers commercials is any indicator. Howard Stern used to have fun with her super-laden domesticity, and The New Republic published a rather deft, nuanced critique of her strange genius, before the rich gay boy who got lucky took over the publication, and I wrote said deft and nuanced contributor when still an active subscriber, paid deft contributor a compliment before subordinating a clause, which I remember, "but she's a television host."

Which for me about sums it up, not denying her talent, even her occasional bouts of self-depreciation, and her vulnerability with her sycophants. But to pass herself off as almost a contemporary transcendentalist has a repulsive quality to it. She is the prototype of the African American matriarchal female who may be able to defy her age, and be wealthy enough not to die of Natalie Cole's health problems, but her affluence can only do so much with biological reality, although it can do wonders for a group dynamic which apparently sees fit to dispense with the ability to think for itself, or still views her as a trend indicator.

There is no such thing as a best body for a woman who tends to be thick. Obesity is what it wants to be in some cases, and she is as much engaging in a game of delusion with her own celebrity as she has accused some of her audience in the past of "playing games" with their health. If she fails with this investment we'll all be better of, sadly stupendous as it is.

Since I find her narcissistic evocations discouraging, I'll close the book, nostrils flayed, and never open it again unless for some reason, she provides proximate cause. 

Lacan Theory

I am basically an adherent of Slavoj Zizek without having the benefit of studying the controversial philosopher's theory. Where the former Yugoslavian and I differ is on the willingness to use violence when the paradigm is otherwise too firmly entrenched for adjudication. Granted, every example I have cherry picked on this DIA account has been flawed, inclusive of the Oregon shooter, which, unlike Cohn, I almost did not want to reflect upon in any manner, but like Zizek, I believe liberalism's egalitarianism makes things worse and leads to genocidal outcomes.

However, after watching yet another punk academic, which Zizek is, being interviewed by Smiley, of whom, as you know, I'm not the greatest fan, I have to say that Kirsch's essay in The New Republic calling Zizek anti-Semitic was nothing short of libel, testament to Marty's dwindling zealotry for the state of Israel at the expense of anything else, including a man's reputation. The days when a TNR intern made me shit myself by telling me how to get a diarist column in the stodgy old periodical are over, but I would feel like a hypocrite sending them content with Chris Hughes at the helm, and this is utterly nonsensical for a woman of my intellect, however much she frittered away that potential on the slow envelop of emotional anguish, but I am actually against homosexuals themselves-- not-- mostly not-- to the point of interring them-- but enough that I cannot swallow my conviction to send TNR work, to their standards. I mourn this, because I fell in love with TNR under Marty, my fake adversary.

Before I break down in tears, the American rogue who comes closest to deploying violence for methodical agenda is the DC sniper. John Allen was certainly driven by his own internal dynamic, but for those of us with an insurrectionist bent, his tactics were admirable, and if he had been more like the ISIS leader, developing an agenda, a counter argument to the American Way might have given us more of the South American dynamic.

That the US doesn't have its own Shining Path is attributable to the Civil War, and making guerrillas like Jesse James into celebrities.  

Eliminating MAWD

Eliminating the Medical Assistance for Workers with Disabilities (MAWD) program
in January 2015 is projected to generate $7.2 million in savings. Current MAWD recipients with income under 133 percent FPL would be transferred to the new Private Coverage Option; MAWD recipients over 133 percent FPL would be encouraged to apply for coverage and subsidies through the federal Marketplace at HealthCare.gov. MAWD recipients with other Minimal Essential Coverage—such as Medicare—will not qualify for Premium Tax Credits and Cost-Sharing Subsidies through the Marketplace..

The root of all corruption begins with civil service implementation of state and federal monies. Mark Felt taught us that, the man  whom Pat Buchanan characterized as a bagman for Hoover no less, our favorite poseur for being secretly gay and black. Hilarious, these Cold War conspiratorial overtones. My rage is deeper and smarter than I may have made succinct when it comes to centers like Liberty, their umbilical cords tied to the uterus of spend down to the lowest common denominator. Service providers like Liberty, without the federal mandate perhaps, bid on a very limited allocation of the state budget to decentralize nursing care. When Liberty wins said bid they are flush, when they lose said bid they get sued except for those like myself whom they drive to a near breakdown. Linda knew how this mysterious process worked. She was a good task master at ngo sleight of hand: excess revenue, or budget shortfall, and in concrete terms it simply doesn't work. Paul Krugman is absolutely correct that the country is a complex matrix of socialized medicine with a complex matrix of market entrepreneurship, but the prodigiously read militant economist rarely looks at the details of our rationed welfare state. The applications for Paratransit services that blossom into contracts with rehabilitation hospitals to curtail usage for those with power chairs purchased by Medicare, or elderly people with canes. The hospital gets the contract. People with mobility issues get restrictions because the tax burden would otherwise be astronomical. What does this to the freedom of people with chronic conditions who want to make their own choices?

I rarely utter Widener University's name, but this is where my ambitions were nurtured and ultimately dashed to bits. Neither Jerry McGuire nor Michael C Clark nor David Ward would know that de-institutionalization would mean I was supposed to provide an income of 15,000 dollars a year to stupid people who could not afford college or dream of a white collar career, training constantly my whole life after brutal surgeries to  be independent, falling on the sword of my life long stress incontinence, badgered to death because I am not tidy enough for nominal Christians, persecuted because I did not deliver upon obtaining degree, due to what? Poor choices, strenuous travel, emotional investment in authority figures, hoping journalism would be a late life rescue when the field has its own miasma of cannibalistic silliness cluttered around events coverage. Disability centers have no real world rationale to exist. All they do is pick up the slack for people who could never dare Silicon Valley and win, like Chris Hughes.

What Dana and Marty cannot say I will: the battle with Hughes over the demise of TNR at its best is a battle between metrosexual counter culture and old world masculine assertiveness. The very fact that Hughes struck out at Marty's staff by citing Voltaire, and Dana struck back with choice descriptions of Hughes as a dilettante and a fraud evinces the rift. Homosexuality lends itself to deceptive subversion in as much as secular liberalism suppresses the truth for a mirage of utopian well being.

I want to be left alone, do my damn laundry and cleaning when I please, and in short order I will no longer be able to make these decisions for myself, and this feeds my post-50 year old bitterness, after a life of hell being butchered into an image of ambulatory correction. The beat goes on.

Dog Earred

I am just bookmarking Dana's column in hopes that I can retrieve it from archive later should I need to cancel or take a break from my subscription. I disagree with Milbank's polemical slant most of the time, but I am only marginally versed in these Silicon Valley intramural conglomerate politics. Dana is evidently well versed, and if he was this passionate more often I might reassess his expertise. I could never really dream of being in the TNR family, and frittered a bit of that capital in the heyday of the Street administration, but if their interns replied to me personally, then I'm good enough for a few clips before dying, and want to stay abreast.

The Web did not quite purchase me justice, but even I've had an impact (finally). But we're losing something. Not paper and ink really, more the accretion of dedicating ourselves to the best, which is why Blood of the Vine feels like a tutorial for a bygone world.

Plummet

"I had stopped petitioning the heavens for miracles four days before."-- Sheri Booker

Even in 2009, during my brief electronic correspondence, or conservation, with Daniel Schneider, his offer of a byline in Cosmoetica would have been a downgrade. I had already appeared in nearly a hundred literary journals. Even with my CV, I've lost count of my bylines, for everything, articles, poetry. In this sense, my long nine month stint at Examiner hurt me too. After getting in legacy media, chasing tail aggregating for peanuts kept me fluid, but hurt me professionally. Perhaps constancy reflected a certain uneasiness. Getting buried in endless repetition of stringer scoops is nothing, and it is the same with Dan's writing. Good for a student, but at some point, exposure is meaningless if all we do is skim. Penetrating the value market will not help me much unless I can build something sustainable from any future bylines, and get work I can handle.

The flap over Erdely's lax dependence on her primary source, which seems to involve more than a hint of buyer's remorse (collegiate age girls may want to rethink promiscuity?) and the much more disturbing crisis with Hughes and TNR, suggest that the lightning speed of reactivism is a continuing problem, and that we're fast losing nuances in contemplation, which at the very least, The New Republic offered as a glossy, whether or not you were a supporter. I appreciated the fascinating insights into a composer like Stravinsky even if I never invested in learning classical music, and I suspect the insulation needed for that is difficult to accrue through surfing a synopsis-- it points to my level of indifference over the death of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, which is as cold as you like. Not that cops aren't a favorite target of beat reporters for a reason. Police do criminal things, sometimes rape hoes as well, but protesters develop tunnel vision, and I've turned myself blue in the face attempting to expose what I have acquired, empirically, through so called disability activism. My antagonism toward individuals like Jimmi Shrode and Erik and Josie, and the catastrophic knife in my back from Linda and our disability center, is as much about their hypocrisy as it is the ossified sterility of the paradigm. Jimmi is all about transitioning the helpless, decentralizing them. Accepting my emotional injury because he used his personal relationship with Erik to take advantage in an federalized system which demands impartiality, this he cannot do, and thus I'm persona non grata.

It will happen among these progressives of conscience with their sit ins. Darren Wilson did not set out to murder Brown. He was doing his job on patrol, and the NYPD did not intend to kill Garner in public. They were subduing a man placed under arrest. To use Erik's phrase, "shit happens," like the climate change which we're all on the doomsday machine to repair. We may not be able to repair it, and if we traded off civil liberties for the sake of security after 9/11, what about our food sources in a hundred years if global warming becomes a calamity? Take a step back. We are not all equal in value, and never will be.

The Black Dahlia

Steve Hodel first began to suspect George Hodel while going through his belongings after his death at age 91 in 1999.--in the intrigue of forever.

Let me return to more back tracing in my regret over always being late to the party. What almost led me to EMS this week was vaginal irritation, and I have to be more cautious from now on when I'm too weak to transfer. I thought I was gone, flashes of the nigger bitches finding me in a posture sardonic enough to open LA Law, but even I am stronger than I realize, and yes, I was happy with the personnel at AccessLife. Linda wasn't wrong about that. She has her side of the argument, even with her off side enthusiasm for detailed fucking assertions for former subordinates. She wanted to support me, tried to reflect my concerns back to me, told me to be patient, and did not know what to do with my daily interactions. I might have arguably harangued her, but Liberty had told me repeatedly, since 97, that they would rehire me, and I was running out of options.  Nazi's, just like good Jewish leftists, have the same apologetic rationalizations. And AccessLife went out of business, primarily because the craft of journalism is a peripatetic trade.

I came rather late in my allegiance to the writing of The New Republic, subscribing in 1997, right on the edge of Stephen's fatal blow to both the magazine and Marty's reputation. I am not sure what would be the point of writing on spec for Hughes now, but don't look at me to tell you independently what's been lost. Ryan Lizza knows better than I. Fealty to tradition, confidence in your skill, conviction that Mosaic Law is more than a Charlton Heston movie. 

When I was still *in* the family, I sent Linda a TNR critique of IDEA, and these days, the contributor had the merit of challenge on their side. Liberals cannot truly legislate equality, and I have already detailed the statutory absurdity of my existence within the welfare state. Marty's conservative Zionism appealed to the truncheon of my own experience, accepting that I find the Israeli state a failure, which he certainly doesn't. His faith is the experiment of Israel.

Jay Sterling Sliver can go fuck himself. That is my faith, but I am too sleepy to take the law professor's planks and make a Pogo stick so convenient for farcical penetration.

Shameless Hussy Does a White Paper

"If I seem cavalier about it and in fact I am cavalier about it, it is because this is not my life."-- Donna Leon, with allowances for lack of exact transcription.

Meanwhile, back in the land of grandiose effacement over an old woman's grandiose self-importance, every time a journalist like James Foley dies chasing after a scoop in ancient lands with statistically marginal individuals, the media conglomerates, NYT, Wapo, LAT, CNN, ESPN, let out a yelp of pain. The holy sanctum has been violated: gathering information civilized people need to know at their leisure in a coffee cafe.

Let's take a step back. Foley was a photographer, and his images of the Syrian conflict no more or less redundant than a native's use of his or her cell phone, not that I have data on how many Syrians own a Samsung as opposed to a functioning Apple OS. Reports, making allowances for lack of certainty, indicated Foley was tortured in his captivity. Perhaps this caused him to reevaluate the value of foreign correspondence imagery for the sake of a scoop, since it seems being driven for a news story has its own shades of the pathological, or maybe he rethought the Spanish Inquisition, but how much do people outside of the millennial hot zone that is forever the Middle East feel driven to put themselves in danger by bating Semitic beasts?

Do Foley's images have empirical value? No, with the exception of his beheading. Those images, in and of themselves, will remain as a genealogy marker. As hard as we try to divorce ourselves from primate origin, we're still rather large apes who evolved back into nakedness, even without modern barbers. Knowledge generation is a tricky business, but the Fourth Estate holding itself aloft as a modern temple whose abstract conceptualization is inviolate doesn't take into account the fact that revenue needs to be generated. Most of what the public reads has no monetary value that we can use in turn to generate money, including humanitarian crises. ISIS was bought and paid for according to Western free market and entrepreneurial values. Accommodating the beast will invariably create paths for its transformation. Radical egalitarians like Foley need more patience, not the rush of trotting about hot zones. I am not done with my Pistorius sentiments. Dyer triggered an exasperated trial run. Initially, I wasn't going to bother, but not I'm hunting for sources and more retail packaging.

Personal Loyalties

He handed us fiction after fiction and we printed them all as fact. Just because... we found him "entertaining." --Peter Sarsgaard as Charles Lane

A television commercial when a freshly resigned case manager still had access to cable through a defunct company. One question Americans might ask is how we enforce anti-trust laws when Comcast is the sole provider of pay for view, despite diverse distributors like Netflix and Amazon and Verizon. Verizon is a now redundant spin off of AT&T, but it is a communications utility. Netflix I never fully comprehended but suppose it started as a rental agent. Amazon is a retailer, and now all these corporate models have there own cable box.

In 1997 I was still in job divorce mode which seemed, as a rupture, to take forever to heal, and there was the commercial for The New Republic. I called, subscribed to the print edition, knowing nothing, certainly not that Marty Peretz was insane. I discovered that later on my own in my dialogues with TNR, particularly with Michelle Cottle, but in 97 I read a contributor's article about lice and typhus and old world Jewish quarrels, and fell in love with the writing. I wanted to write like that, doubted I ever could, and understand why David Plotz and Lane want to kill Stephen Glass. I'm a million miles removed from Airforce One's onflight magazine and part of me wants to kill Stephen Glass. TNR has been much changed and diminished in these 17 years. One of their interns was nice to me when I pitched, and I've recounted this, and still get horny over the fact that The New Republic was nice to me and I did nothing with that capital out of fear and intimidation. I emailed them shit on spec later but I myself knew it was shit on spec; that door had closed because I feared to assert myself to get at the former corrupt bastard who ran this city, John Street. I met Street without wearing a brassiere without ever intending to do that. There was a gathering in the parking lot and I had a sudden craving for a burger and threw on shit clothes and rolled down and there was Black Mafia himself and I died. Being ever the politician, he grasped my shoulder and asked how I was doing. No idea I hated him and his excuse for a brother.

Shattered Glass doesn't work as a film because it is too close to reality of events which have damaged us all, and yet, Stephen's breach of ethics, his fabrications, his plagiarism, and the exposure of other notorious cookers of truth who followed, point to a distinctly modern problem as old as the hills. We don't like being drawn in for fools by more temperate psychopaths, remain fascinated by such villains, and don't look too closely at demarcations, such as the fact that bias builds its own slant. I have read John B Judis in TNR's pages, and can't say I always get his policy critiques, but I do not consider him to be virulently anti-Zionist. Jewish liberalism is not always sacrosanct, and has its own unpleasant equivocations which cause undo harm. Philip Roth exposes it however diffident or enthusiastic one might be about the author. I've certainly experienced it, and wrestled hard with my conscience afterwards, despite the roots of poison which have led me to eschew certain other vectors of radical equality.

Yet Billy Ray deserves credit for nibbling around the edges of the edifice we call the fourth estate, and Sarsgaard reached in deep to pull out an inspirational scene on the nature of integrity, despite the fact we have to find ways to entertain the audience, and do it daily. Everyone is in the brand game.

Colon Viscosity

Save any free email addresses you inadvertently receive from current or former faculty @ Harvard. You could imitate Pynchon's illustrious  homage to Joyce in Gravity's Rainbow and suck the excrement straight from Wood's colon, using the hose portion directly affixed from the scope. I take this link to James Wood on faculty to be the James Wood I've so often read on TNR. In another life, Wood may not have found me the perfect good wife, but we might have gone snit to snit over an anomalous crab salad in the faculty cafeteria. I am actually deploying my stalking skills on another Personaged Instructor, who shall remain unnamed because I am going to WHINE as politely and literately as possible about writing a post on my pet light bulb for him; but I can't read every thing, and this is me screaming about reading everything and raging at the ridicule of taking down a supervisor I looked up to because of a homoerotic panic that was fake and triggered by other underlying anxieties, not that it doesn't mean she did not deserve a comeuppance. More will follow, perhaps in accelerated fashion, because I will be a centurion before the Congress of the United States yields to the spastic dowager. Where were we again? The unnamed academic, yes, not that I have not named a few. Sheldon would not be entirely startled to discover he is the digitized father-rabbi I never had. He is a good man, and that is spastic's seal of approval. Where was I?

Research, yes, sick to my puss. I have no desire to set foot in Paley ever again but I have to schedule a contact. Alma mater electronic utilization. Lie down an hour. I have too much to do, oddly enough, though spastic can't stop the train. My savings may evaporate entirely by spring.

Measured Proletarian Treads

My efforts were more vain than insouciant this morning, trying to coax the old charger prong to stay still, connecting to the now ten year old diode, and I struggled for 45 minutes, gave up, pleased that the old kindle ceased crashing, for which I blame my foster child. She gnaws; she is not Joey, and poor aunt is sick from her battle with the little stray; in one of my compartments, Marie is blamed for my dead cats perched on my shoulder. Trust me. You do not have to ridicule me for my love and anxious stress and three thousand fucking dollars blown on a tonka fluffy grey baby boy. I sufficiently ridicule and beat myself, and hope my fucking pedestrian suburban family respects my wishes when the time comes and buries his ashes with me. I struggle not to condemn his little brother to an early euthanasia in the washing my hands of any further feline responsibility, and I repress being furious with my tea cup jaguar for the damage of her canines. Occasionally, she purrs on my chest, and is gradually becoming more attached, but my grief bleeds and it will not clot any time soon. Speaking of which, little Vincento caught a mouse from beneath the radiator, growling as his brother used to, so I knew, and don't care that when he kills it, if it is murdered in view, I will have to dispose of the rodent. kimmy seems excited and wants to share the catch. I could not do food shopping today, pondering the money I spent on this Joyce group and why I spent it, understanding my father's approbation, but wondering if I am indeed insane, rolling home with a gimp, woman about my age, who enrolled from Camden; I did not realize there were any whites left in that city, reminding myself that I cannot sit next to Lance next month when we meet again. I can hear better if I sit across from him. I told the woman my corner wondering if that was wise even as I spoke, but I was off my game last Saturday, disengaged, almost a month to fill myself in, Google Books is helping. A light turned on for a TNR column in their voice, similar to Leon's, had my rhythm but had to leave the chair, and hope I can find it again, not quite sharing his pessimism about writers and content in the digital age other than as it pertains to my declining future; if by some miracle of a Jewish wonk leaf curdle they ever take a piece from me, it won't change squat, or launch me like it did Jeffrey Toobin. The independent press might kiss my ass for a short while like they did when I earned my big local byline in 05. I am drowning, and it makes no difference, does it?

"In periods of difficulty and at special times of the year, the Greeks nominated a scapegoat – a cripple or beggar – who was stoned and then cast out of the community to suffer in the wilderness on its behalf."
Jenny Diski, Tragedy's decline and fall, New Statesman