Author: matt

Andy’s back, Andy’s back, Andy’s back! After a long time in a Raines-enforced “time out” (during which he had to write “I will not blog against The New York Times” over and over again), Andrew Sullivan is back writing for The Times op-ed page.
Let it never be said that Bill Keller doesn’t mend fences.

Another week, another Frank Rich column (nearly) juxtaposed with a conflicting ad. As reported here last week, The New York Times ad sales department should read Frank Rich’s omnibus Arts & Leisure column before it places its ads. This week’s Rich column, The Rush of the New Rat Pack goes a long way to put forth the thesis that with the Gropinator in the Governor’s mansion in California and Bill Bennett playing the slots in Vegas, the staid old G.O.P. has absorbed some of the Rat Pack’s ring-a-ding-ding mojo. Not a terrible idea, but when Rich searches for contemporary examples of Rat Pack revival, he comes up a bit short: Ashton Kutcher and P. Diddy calling each other “Dino” and “Frank” between reach-arounds? Dubious at best. That weird “Sinatra: His Voice, His Way” thing at Radio City Music Hall? A bit manufactured. Maybe if Swingers had just come out and people were still smoking cigars and drinking Martinis on the cover of Esquire Rich might be able to fill his three-times-a-trend quotient for the week. (Why Rich didn’t mention the Japanese commercial director who urged Bill Murray to be more like the “Lat-a pack-a” in Lost in Translation is beyond me.)
But just as I concluded that Rich’s case was too weak and licked my finger to change from page 19 to 20, there it was on the very next page: an ad featuring Frank, Sammy, and Dino for Live and Swingin’ “The swingin’est 2-disc collection ever!” Ring-a-ding-ding, indeed.

My favorite professor from college has been profiled in the Times.
Class With the ‘Ph.D. Diva’ by Felicia R. Lee
No joke, during Professor Rose‘s class, I could literally feel my brain growing: the connections she drew between concepts and her amazing energy and accessibility made NYU’s Africana Studies Department the place to be. According to The Times, she’s currently heading up the American Studies Department at U.C. Santa Cruz, so that must be the place to be now.
Tricia Rose’s new book is called Longing to Tell: Black Women’s Stories of Sexuality and Intimacy

Georgie and Juni and Bob and Takashi

It’s so hard to say I’m sorry for “stumbling into a use of words that in the past people have taken as code for anti-Semitic feelings” but the “Jewish executives [who] worship money above all else” have finally prevailed upon Gregg Easterbrook to retract his ridiculous comments on Kill Bill: Volume 1.
Writer Takes Jews to Task for ‘Kill Bill’ by Bernard Weinraub
Now, will Gregg Easterbrook apologize for his other offenses?
Earlier apologies from low culture

There is still something gawky and virginal about [Quentin] Tarantino. There’s almost no sex in his movies. He says that’s because he can’t deal with becoming yet another sleazy Hollywood director talking a girl into taking her top off…
From The Movie Lover by Larissa MacFarquhar in this week’s New Yorker (article, sadly, not online).
You mean like “Q.T.,” the character Tarantino played in Spike Lee’s Girl 6 in 1996?

The New York Times‘ John Markoff tells Online Journalism Review that “it’s not clear yet whether blogging is anything more than CB radio.”
If his quip sounds familiar, that’s because professional friend-loser Toby Young said the same thing about the Internet (in general) in Vanity Fair way back in 1995.
[OJR link via Romenesko]