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Mr. Fish

Throwing Up for Peace

The sad fact is that all traditional modes of dissent, whether they’re protest marches or boycotts or sit-ins, must ultimately fail because they are generally powerless to prevent their own inception. What does that mean?

Posted on Apr 2, 2012 READ MORE  |  16 COMMENTS        



Why Is the Measure of Love Loss?

“When my mother was angry with me, which was often,” writes Jeanette Winterson in her new memoir “Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?,” “she said, ‘The devil led us to the wrong crib.’ ”

Posted on Mar 29, 2012 READ MORE  |  8 COMMENTS



This Gay Man Represented the President

James C. Hormel’s transformation from a confused and closeted gay kid to the nation’s first openly gay ambassador is chronicled in his memoir “Fit to Serve.”

Posted on Feb 17, 2012 READ MORE  |  4 COMMENTS



Mr. Fish

God Is Dead

It said DOG on his food bowl, and because he showed no signs that he’d ever learn how to read or write, she decided that he must be dyslexic. So she called him GOD. 

Posted on Jan 11, 2012 READ MORE  |  27 COMMENTS        



The Egg and I

Not only does the story testify to the power of humor to sustain a real-life parable celebrating the ingenuity of a man hoping to escape the mundane, but it is also proof that the scenic, circuitous route through life may be preferable to the more direct.

Posted on Nov 18, 2011 READ MORE  |  17 COMMENTS        



A Dud From ‘Darth’

As I mentioned to friends when I started reading Dick Cheney’s memoir, I was doing it so others would not have to. And, as a precaution, I did it alone in case my head exploded. It did not. This book is a bomb, but not the exploding kind.

Posted on Sep 8, 2011 READ MORE  |  38 COMMENTS


Moammar and Dick

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Posted on Aug 31, 2011 READ MORE



Gage Skidmore (CC-BY-SA)

Cheney, Rumsfeld and the Dark Art of Propaganda

“When one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it,” wrote Joseph Goebbels, Germany’s Reich minister of propaganda, in 1941. Former Vice President Dick Cheney seems to have taken the famous Nazi’s advice in his new book, “In My Time.”

Posted on Aug 30, 2011 READ MORE  |  34 COMMENTS



A Conversation With Albert Speer

Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, in his memoir “Witness to an Extreme Century,” interviews Albert Speer about his 15 years as a prominent Nazi and “Hitler’s architect.”

Posted on Aug 3, 2011 READ MORE  |  17 COMMENTS



Flickr / cliff1066 (CC-BY)

Controversy Over Rosa Parks Account of a ‘Near-Rape’

Rosa Parks, “mother of the civil rights movement,” was discovered recently to have written a first-person account of a young black housekeeper being sexually accosted by a white man, but whether she was describing something that happened to her or was writing a work of fiction is uncertain. (An earlier version of this Truthdig item was based on an AP report that changed afterward when new information surfaced.)

Posted on Jul 29, 2011 READ MORE



Mr. Fish

1987

The mustache that I was looking for on a full-grown woman was the mustache that an 11-year-old boy discovers on himself, with his face four inches away from the bathroom mirror, that all of a sudden makes his whole existence seem just on the brink of becoming worthwhile.

Posted on Jul 7, 2011 READ MORE  |  18 COMMENTS        



Mr. Fish

The Shortest Distance Between Two Opposing Points of View Is a Punch Line

This was in 1979 when I was 12, and we were all doing it for Zeeker, who hadn’t been the same since he saw the Easter Bunny drop dead at Pennebaker’s Drugstore three months earlier.

Posted on May 2, 2011 READ MORE  |  3 COMMENTS        


‘Daily Show’: Story Time With Donald Rumsfeld

What’s former defense secretary and amateur poet Donald Rumsfeld to do now that the Bush II years are over and done but to hit the road on a book tour and keep insisting his choices made the world safer?

Posted on Feb 24, 2011 READ MORE  |  22 COMMENTS


Scott Brown
AP / Lauren Victoria Burke

Sen. Scott Brown Tells All

Is it just us, or does the publication of a revealing memoir, including details of childhood molestation and abuse, by a first-term senator herald yet another sea change in the game of political publicity? Of course, Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts isn’t just any new arrival ...

Posted on Feb 16, 2011 READ MORE  |  10 COMMENTS


Rumsfeld’s Book

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Posted on Feb 10, 2011 READ MORE  |  3 COMMENTS


10 (Fake) Plagiarized Lines From Bush’s Book

After it emerged that entire sections of George W. Bush’s new memoir, “Decision Points,” were plagiarized from books by former aides, The Borowitz Report asked our followers on Twitter to come up with the best plagiarized first line for the book.

Posted on Nov 21, 2010 READ MORE  |  6 COMMENTS



White House

La Vie en Denial

I read “Decision Points” and it turns out that George W. Bush is the Edith Piaf of fiscal policy: He regrets nothing.

Posted on Nov 17, 2010 READ MORE  |  25 COMMENTS


Author Signing

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Posted on Nov 10, 2010 READ MORE  |  3 COMMENTS        



AP / LM Otero

The Life and Times of Bush the Clueless

The Harvard MBA is the degree that George W. Bush and his last treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, had in common, and their shared ignorance as they presided over the collapse of the U.S. economy is on full display in the former president’s newly published memoir.

Posted on Nov 10, 2010 READ MORE  |  81 COMMENTS



Flickr / Grace (CC-BY)

Jimmy Carter Blames Lack of Health Care on Ted Kennedy

It’s not polite to speak ill of the dead, but Jimmy Carter is still harboring a grudge from his health care showdown with Ted Kennedy. Asked about his use of the words “irresponsible and abusive” to describe the Senate lion, the former president said Kennedy opposed his health care proposal out of spite.

Posted on Sep 16, 2010 READ MORE  |  14 COMMENTS



White House / Paul Morse

Tony Blair Stands by Bush, Iraq War

The former British prime minister’s fall from boy wonder to lapdog caricature has a lot to do with George W. Bush and their shared Iraq adventure. In his new autobiography, normally the place for reflection and re-evaluation, Blair defends both his relationship with the American president and the mess in Mesopotamia.

Posted on Sep 1, 2010 READ MORE  |  14 COMMENTS



facebook.com/georgewbush

George W. Bush Makes Facebook Friends

The Decider has become The Poker. George W. Bush is officially on Facebook, where he’s now updating fans on his latest post-presidential blunders. We can’t wait to see how he fallows Farmville, makes up words in Scrabble and posts inappropriate comments on Angela Merkel’s wall.

Posted on Jun 2, 2010 READ MORE  |  4 COMMENTS


book cover

Peter Stothard on Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens reveals a life in contradictions in “Hitch-22,” a brilliant memoir that is at turns comic, self-deflating and sexually frank.

Posted on May 27, 2010 READ MORE  |  187 COMMENTS



When Oil and Hurricane Mix

What happens when you mix a massive oil spill with a hurricane? When Obama finally decides to negotiate with the Taliban, what will he ask for? And how did Jane Austen become such a big celebrity? Answers to these and other vexing questions after the jump.

Posted on May 27, 2010 READ MORE



White House / Krisanna Johnson

Hotel Calls Bush ‘Poisoning’ a Stunt

Laura Bush’s new memoir reportedly features a scene at a German hotel fit for a Poirot mystery: The president and his entourage suddenly taken ill as the Secret Service frantically searches for poison. The hotel in question says Mrs. Bush is probably just trying to sell books.

Posted on Apr 29, 2010 READ MORE  |  7 COMMENTS


Decision Points
gawker.com

Get Ready for George W. Bush’s Memoir

Actually, it may not be possible to fully get ready for this sort of thing, but George W. Bush is gearing up to release his memoir, “Decision Points,” which apparently needs no subtitle to complicate matters. We’re talkin’ ’bout the Decider, people! And now, let the jokes begin.

Posted on Apr 26, 2010 READ MORE  |  21 COMMENTS


bookcover

D.J. Waldie on the Cult of Baseball

“The Opposite Field,” a memoir by Jesse Katz, is a moving meditation about baseball, politics, and the unease of negotiating a new kind of American place.

Posted on Oct 30, 2009 READ MORE  |  4 COMMENTS


Maher

‘Are You There Russia? It’s Me, Dipshit’: Maher Rips on Palin’s Memoir

Bill Maher couldn’t contain his glee on Friday night’s episode of “Real Time” while rattling off some alternative titles for Sarah Palin’s upcoming memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life,” had it been ghostwritten by several famous writers—even some long-dead ones.

Posted on Oct 5, 2009 READ MORE  |  5 COMMENTS


Ridge
dhs.gov

Ridge: Bushies Manipulated Terror Threat System

One sinister li’l tidbit from former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge’s upcoming tell-all won’t do much to change the Bush administration’s reputation for string-pulling on as many governmental fronts as possible: According to teasers released by his publisher, Ridge was pushed by Bush & Co. to raise the terrorist threat level on the eve of W.’s second electoral victory in 2004.

Posted on Aug 20, 2009 READ MORE  |  24 COMMENTS


Madoff pleads guilty
AP / Louis Lanzano

The Other Bernie Madoff Affair

Bernard Madoff’s connection with the New York-based Jewish charity Hadassah has become fraught above and beyond the economic level since the organization’s CFO, Sheryl Weinstein, claimed that she and the fallen financier had an affair, which she details in her upcoming memoir, “Madoff’s Other Secret: Love, Money, Bernie, and Me.”

Posted on Aug 14, 2009 READ MORE  |  13 COMMENTS


Stinky Hand

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Posted on Aug 14, 2009 READ MORE  |  2 COMMENTS        


Cheney
AP / Ron Edmonds

Cheney Memoir in the Works

Former Vice President Dick Cheney maintained an elusive stance, to say the least, during his years in the White House, but since leaving office he’s made himself more visible and vocal on the public stage. For his next act, he’s working on a memoir—but somehow the term tell-all doesn’t quite seem to fit the bill in this particular case.

Posted on Aug 14, 2009 READ MORE  |  11 COMMENTS


bookcover

Jane Ciabattari on the Delights of the Rural Life

Is the pastoral arcadia of the country life far from derivatives and emissions and the other excreta of our modern cities all that it’s cracked up to be? Two new memoirs give readers who don’t want to stir from their armchairs to take up farming an insider’s look.

Posted on Jul 9, 2009 READ MORE  |  36 COMMENTS


Dick Cheney
AP photo / Manuel Balce Ceneta

Cheney’s Satanic Verses

Dick Cheney, former vice president, defense secretary and White House chief of staff, has signed a reported $2 million deal with Simon & Schuster to publish his memoirs as a public official in four administrations. Bets are it’ll be a thriller marked with torture, stolen elections, war and, hopefully, no sex.

Posted on Jun 24, 2009 READ MORE  |  10 COMMENTS



Megan Hustad on Class in America

Two memoirs—Eve Pell’s “We Used to Own the Bronx” and Christopher Buckley’s “Losing Mum and Pup”—demonstrate, each in its own way, that all that glitters is not gold and that the price exacted by extreme social anxiety is very high indeed. A feast of the higher gossip and raw meat for social anthropologists.

Posted on Jun 12, 2009 READ MORE  |  18 COMMENTS



Chesa Boudin on Growing Up Radical

What’s it like when your father is an Iranian Marxist and your mother is a Jewish-American renegade and both are devoted organizers for the Socialist Workers Party?

Posted on Apr 17, 2009 READ MORE  |  11 COMMENTS


book cover

Norman Birnbaum on Susan Sontag

The publication of Sontag’s early diaries provides a revelatory look at the self-inventions of the late writer.

Posted on Mar 6, 2009 READ MORE  |  3 COMMENTS


Laura Bush
White House / Shealah Craighead

It’s ‘Laura’—‘Mrs. Bush’ if You’re Nasty

Americans have always preferred Laura Bush to her husband, and now Scribner, an imprint of a division of a subsidiary of Sumner Redstone’s National Amusements, is hoping to capitalize on that appeal with an “intimate” new memoir set for 2010 release. There’s no telling how much the better Bush is getting paid, but “millions” is a safe bet. Update after the jump.

Posted on Jan 5, 2009 READ MORE  |  13 COMMENTS


Rosenblats
AP photo / J. Pat Carter

Yet Another Faux Memoir Exposed

The fluidity of memory aside, this is getting a little strange: Following in the footsteps of James Frey, Misha Defonseca and Margaret Seltzer, yet another “memoirist,” Herman Rosenblat, has admitted that his supposedly true story, “Angel at the Fence,” is a bit lacking in the truth department.

Posted on Dec 30, 2008 READ MORE  |  24 COMMENTS


What Nixon Admitted (and Cheney Won’t)

To understand the philosophy of government that Dick Cheney brought to Washington over the past seven years, it is most instructive to see “Frost/Nixon,” with Frank Langella’s remarkable reanimation of Tricky Dick for a generation that never knew him.

Posted on Dec 24, 2008 READ MORE  |  13 COMMENTS


Palin
Flickr/sskennel

Palin Poised to Make Millions on Publishing Deal

Huh! So Sarah Palin’s White House bid didn’t pan out, but the story of her two-month sprint to Election Day with John McCain will likely translate into big bucks from an eager publishing house. But what should Palin’s tome be called?

Posted on Nov 17, 2008 READ MORE  |  24 COMMENTS


Audacity of Hope
barackobama.net

Obama’s Book Sales Riding the Tsunami

Nothing like winning a presidential election to send your book sales through the roof, as Barack Obama and his presumably gleeful publishers are discovering.

Posted on Nov 10, 2008 READ MORE  |  10 COMMENTS



Flickr / M@rcopako

The Literary Mr. Phelps

If you want to read a personal account of Michael Phelps’ training philosophy, you’ll have to wait until December, when the Olympic swimming champion’s “Built to Succeed” hits store shelves. As much as we value the written word around here, is it really necessary for every celebrity to pen a memoir? There are trees at stake, after all.

Posted on Aug 22, 2008 READ MORE  |  5 COMMENTS


book cover

Kasia Anderson on Barbara Walters

“Audition” details the life story, both in front of the camera and behind the scenes, of a pioneering journalist-entertainer who reported the news while making it in ways both admirable and troubling.

Posted on Aug 1, 2008 READ MORE  |  11 COMMENTS


Bush reading
z.about.com

By George W. Bush

If authoring a war against innocent civilians abroad and civil liberties at home wasn’t enough, George W. Bush is toying with the idea of writing a book upon leaving the Oval Office in January.

Posted on Jun 16, 2008 READ MORE  |  23 COMMENTS


Sh—Happened

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Posted on Jun 12, 2008 READ MORE  |  1 COMMENT


McClellan
defectiveyeti.com

McClellan to Testify Before House Judiciary Committee

Scott McClellan is making an important stop on Capitol Hill as he continues his book tour to tout that obscure memoir he wrote about being Bush’s press secretary. According to The Huffington Post, McClellan has agreed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee about the Valerie Plame identity leak case and possibly other entries in the list of Bush’s Greatest Hits during McClellan’s time as presidential spokesman.

Posted on Jun 9, 2008 READ MORE  |  15 COMMENTS


Less than Literate

Mr. Bush said he was “surprised” that Mr. McClellan had written a book to criticize him because, he explained, “if you’re trying to communicate some criticism to me, a book is pretty much the last place you’d put it.”

Posted on Jun 8, 2008 READ MORE  |  16 COMMENTS


MCClellan

Stewart to McClellan: ‘You Talked About Fight Club’

Scott McClellan, the man voted least likely to spend his summer vacation at Bush’s Crawford ranch, paid a visit to “The Daily Show” on Monday night to revel in his newfound infamy among certain White House denizens—oh, and to promote some book he wrote called, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.” Heard of it?

Posted on Jun 3, 2008 READ MORE  |  9 COMMENTS


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