I know Ilse Steinhardt (2 November 1914—3 December 2010) only through her good friends Anita Herzfeld and Grant Goodman, who for some reason always included me in their dinner parties and birthday celebrations for Ilse. I was told that Ilse liked me, even though for many years she called me Jim instead of Paul. Once,…
We’re all familiar with Sarah Palin’s mantra that leaders in Washington need to “man-up.” I wonder what the swaggering gun-toting ex-governor of Alaska thinks of all the press and television coverage that GOP Weeper of the House John Boehner has been getting by precisely ignoring her dick-tum, and daring to open up the floodgates of…
Oprah Winfrey says she has never read A Tale of Two Cities or Great Expectations, so she decided to select them for the Oprah Book Club, and viewers have until the end of January before she begins discussing the two novels by Charles Dickens on her television show. The selection of these two novels seems…
Cypher celebrity Paris Hilton says in the new issue of Time that “every decade has an iconic blonde like Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana, and right now I’m that icon.” Let’s hope that, unlike Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana, who both died young, dumb-belle Hilton does not perish too soon, and that she lives to…
At the grocery store yesterday, in the aisle where I was examining the red, green and golden delicious apples, I was approached by an attractive woman, perhaps in her late 30s or early 40s, who said excitedly, “I just want you to know, I had you in English years ago. You were such a…
I’ve always admired Hillary Clinton, but there’s no denying that, once the Republicans saw the handwriting on the wall and the glass ceiling breaking, our Hillary gave birth to their Sarah Palin, who then spawned such shrews as Sharron Angle, Carly Fiorina, Linda McMahon, Christine O’Donnell and Meg Whitman. I don’t want to sound misogynistic,…
Okay, I voted and lost in every single category, but I’m still devoted. All my “R” friends and colleagues in Kansas will now accuse me of “grade inflation” for giving an “A” to all the “D” candidates. But, hey, it cheers me up that Sharron Angle, Carly Fiorina, Linda McMahon, Christine O’Donnell and Meg Whitman…
According to Oxford University English professor Kathryn Sutherland, who examined 1,100 handwritten pages of unpublished work by Jane Austen, the much-celebrated novelist actually relied heavily on editor William Gifford to correct her grammar, spelling and punctuation. I don’t mean to go into a coma about commas, but this news gives me pause. Back in the…
In her new television campaign commercial, Republican senate nominee Christine O’Donnell claims that she’s me. So the cat’s out of the bag. Voters in Delaware now have proof that this ex-witch is really a 66-year-old Asian-American male who believes in evolution and masturbation because even chimps in zoos do it. What’s worse, Christine O’Donnel’s remaining…
That Bishop Eddie L. Long’s exclusive group of handpicked teenage boys within his New Birth Missionary Baptist Church is called the LongFellows Youth Academy should have been warning enough as to what the famously homophobic bishop was really up to. Four of these eponymous LongFellows have now revealed that the bishop not only provided housing…