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The writers’ strike has left us with this shocking realization: Larry King is the most intelligent man on television. He doesn’t need a staff of ventriloquists; he really knows every Esther Williams movie.

In today’s spam, along with the usual offers from billionaire Nigerian princes, was this advertisement:

WRITERS WANTED IN CALIFORNIE

Earn $200 an hour harvesting punchlines. Our workers’ camps have showers and Yoga instructors.

Yes, they tempt you with Paradise. But once you load the wife, the kinfolk and the pug into the truck, then drive to Californie (making a detour to push some of the kinfolk into the Grand Canyon), you’ll find the wages have gone down to $110 an hour. You struggle all day but then don’t get paid; the overseer doesn’t like your satirical commentaries on the Byzantine Empire. (Jay Leno has never heard of it.) So, rather than being beaten up by Ward Bond to the tune of “Red River Valley”, I’ll forego my career in migrant labor.

But without my scab wit, will Hollywood be forced to surrender? Not quite. The producers know the American public and the extent of our attention span. So, expect the networks to premiere such new shows as “I Love Lucy” and “Gunsmoke”. Thanks to computer technology, the shows can be updated to include profanity and nudity. (A nude Spring Byington might be hotter than you think.)

Even the gameshows can prove that they can do without writers. “Wheel of Fortune” now will allow misspellings. On “Jeopardy” the contestants will take questions from the audience.

Furthermore, the networks can buy television shows from abroad. For instance, Britain’s “Coronation Street” has 47 years of episodes, and it is in nearly intelligible English. (Someone from London can dub what they’re saying in Manchester.) Add Japanese samurai series and Mexican soap operas, and you have a full broadcasting schedule.

In fact, the networks may never again have to hire American writers. High school students in India are willing to work for extra credit. As television has repeatedly shown, you can write for any series with just two years of English, a subscription to Playboy, and a copy of “Yiddish for Dummies”.

POLICE DISCOVER MAFIA’S TEN COMMANDMENTS

The Mafia’s Ten Commandments have been found after police arrested a top Godfather in Sicily.

The list of rules emerged from documents seized after the arrest of Salvatore Lo Piccolo, 65, at a secret mob meeting in Palermo, along with his son Sandro, 32, and two other godfathers.

The 10 ‘Mafiosi’ commandments are:

1. No one can present himself directly to another of our friends. There must be a third person to do it.

2. Never look at the wives of friends.

3. Never be seen with cops.

4. Don’t go to pubs and clubs.

5. Always be available for Cosa Nostra, even if your wife’s about to give birth.

6. Appointments must be respected.

7. Wives must be treated with respect.

8. When asked for any information, the answer must be the truth.

9. Money cannot be appropriated if it belongs to others or to other families.

10. People who can’t be part of Cosa Nostra are anyone with a close relative in the police, with a two-timing relative in the family, anyone who behaves badly and doesn’t hold to moral values.

Actually, that was the old list. I was hired to write the new one. (David Chase is on strike) Here it is.

1. We will never hire MBAs. Even we have some ethical standards.

2. We are committed to the environment. Everyone we outsource is biodegradable, and they are considerably less toxic after we’ve wasted them.

3. We are a non-partisan organization but our PAC will support any candidate who promises to give us back Havana.

4. We can afford to dress well. It is time that we stopped looking like a community theater production of Guys and Dolls. You can also afford the dry cleaning if you spill fettucine on your Brooks Brothers. If you have any sartorial questions, ask yourself: What would Regis Philbin wear?

5. We believe in Affirmative Action. Not everyone can be Italian and we do need the accountants. But they have to sorta look Italian: Edward G. Robinson, Paul Muni, Lee J. Cobb, James Caan. And don’t let them get too pushy. The real reason we killed Bugsy Siegel was for saying that Columbus was Jewish.

6. We respect our wives and daughters so much that we won’t let them in the business. Just because Frankie Coppola lets his daughter be a director doesn’t mean we have to.

7. When frisking someone, keep it Platonic. That’s what distinguishes us from the Jesuits.

8. There is an etiquette to a hit. If you must gun down someone in a restaurant, do it during the main entree. It is an insult to kill someone during the antipasto; on the other hand, he obviously doesn’t deserve dessert. And it is up to you leave a tip for the waiter.

9. Bowing to pressure from PETA, we will no longer stuff a canary in the mouth of an informer. A copy of the National Enquirer is cheaper and it is even more humiliating.

10. We also have a musical code of conduct. Thefts and car chases should be done to Rossini. Killings should be done to Verdi. Seductions should be done to Puccini–but that is on your time.

There was a time when rhetoric was an art and not an accusation. Even if a politician had nothing to say, he said it with style. And the public was eager to listen; people then appreciated a great showman. Among those mellifluous charmers was Illinois’ Everett McKinley Dirksen. The wily yet irresistible Senator earned the nickname “The Wizard of Ooze.” If he had been a pickpocket, once you had discovered your wallet missing, you might have run after him to offer him your watch. Today’s politicians, particularly Republicans, don’t have that kind of charm.

My friend Hal Gordon has written about Senator Dirksen, limning a portrait of a man who was both statesman and huckster. As Hal recounts, Dirksen could mock the very political subterfuges of which he himself was a master. ”

A man was filling out an application for life insurance, and one of the questions was, “How did you father die?”

The man paused. His father had been hanged as a horse thief, and there was no way he was going to record that shameful fact on an insurance form. So he thought quickly, and then penned this ingenious answer: “My father was cut off in his 43rd year, when the platform gave way beneath him while participating in a public function.”

Senator Dirksen has been dead for nearly 40 years and so apparently are his type of politics and his love of language. However, that particular story lives on, albeit in an expanded and mutated form. Another friend sent me this internet story allegedly about a great-uncle of Hillary Clinton.

Judy Wallman, a professional genealogical researcher, discovered that Hillary Clinton’s great-great uncle, Remus Rodham, was hanged for horse stealing and train robbery in Montana in 1889….Judy e-mailed Hillary Clinton for comments. Hillary’s staff of professional image adjusters sent back the following biographical sketch:

“Remus Rodham was a famous cowboy in the Montana Territory. His business empire grew to include acquisition of valuable equestrian assets…In 1889, Remus passed away during an important civic function held in his honor when the platform which he was standing collapsed.”

This is certainly one form of recycling: turn an anecdote into a lie. Senator Dirksen has been plagiarized, and perhaps so has Hal. Of course, I am indignant that the Republican flacks are not plagiarizing me.

I have written about Catherine de Medici. Why not accuse Hillary of planning the massacre of Sunday schools?

NY Eatery Offers $25,000 Dessert
Associated Press

A New York eating is offering a $25,000 dessert bulging with top-grade cocoa, edible gold and shavings of a luxury truffle.

The Frrrozen Haute Chocolate was declared the most expensive dessert in the world by Guinness World Records.

The dessert is a frozen, slushy mix of cocoas from 14 countries, milk, and 5 grams of 24 carat gold topped with whipped cream and shavings from a La Madeleine au truffle.

It is served in a goblet with a band of gold decorated with 1 carat of diamonds and served with a solid gold spoon diners can take home.

There will be a $12,750 charge for sharing.

You can order it for take-out; the Halliburton Board of Directors did.

As a proud dessert glutton, I am appalled by this waste. If you forced me to spend $25,000 on a dessert, this would be my recipe.

I would start by going to Florence, Italy (first class if you insist). Skipping the mere Renaissance masterpieces, I would go to Gucci where I would buy the most elegant briefcase, a palace in leather. Then I would go Vivoli’s gelateria, my Mecca of ice cream. (It is my hope to be buried there, packed in chestnut gelato and displayed in a glass casket.) I would fill the Gucci briefcase with ice cream and then use it as a feedbag.

Yes, I would look like the world’s richest pig but I probably would be.

Eugene

p.s. What’s worse: this could be a series on Reality TV.

If Mel Gibson knew history, he would have loved Edward I. The King did what Mel fantasizes: expelling the Jews from the realm.

From 1290 to 1656, Jews were forbidden to live in England. By the end of the Elizabethan period however, London had a small community of “Dutch” merchants and artisans with Spanish or Portuguese surnames but who never attended Calvinist or Catholic Churches.

Of course, the Crown knew. Francis Walsingham and his network of spies knew when a single Jesuit was smuggled ashore. This distinct and idiosyncratic community would hardly have escaped his attention. But the Queen, Lord Burleigh and Walsingham were contending with far greater threats than illegal aliens, refugees from the same Spanish terror that loomed against England. The 300 year-old law would no longer be enforced.

Still the formality would be preserved for another 70 years. In effect, it was “Don’t Ask, Don’t Kvell.” The government wouldn’t inquire as to why a merchant wouldn’t work on Saturday or why he shunned pork. In return, the “Dutchmen with the Hispanic names” would be discreet. Private homes served as synagogues. When members of this community died, they were buried in Jewish cemeteries in the Netherlands.

Oliver Cromwell ended this farce in 1656, granting the Jews the right to live, work and worship in England. Yet even the dour Puritan participated in diplomatic choreography. Since the Edict was still in effect, Cromwell could not acknowledge Jews were already in England. Instead he acted upon the petition of Jews in the Netherlands to revoke the medieval prohibition.

Fortunately, the Restoration did not restore the Edict. A few royalist advisers urged it but Charles II refused. As a crypto-Catholic, he tried to encourage tolerance. And the Merry Monarch might have hoped to get ecumenical with a 17th century Rachel Weitz or Nigella Lawson.

I recently offended a number of liberals by bringing up an unfortunate fact of evolution. We were not always the kindly if patronizing, ineffectual, open-minded to the point of chaotic, “secular humanists” that you know and love. No, in the beginning, liberals were grim, ruthless bigots. In the 17th century, Fox News actually would have been right: these liberals really did have a war against Christmas. At that time, however, these manic repressives were known as the Puritans.

Yes, just as Creationists deny the family resemblance to Neanderthals, liberals seem loathe to admit their descent from the Puritans. The Puritans are the antithesis of modern liberal values. They were miserable, dogmatic misanthropes, regarding all but themselves as the appetizers of Satan. To them, pleasure was synonymous with sin. When they were in power, under Cromwell, they suppressed cards, dance, theater, even the celebration of Christmas. Any hint of color was suspiciously Catholic. (The Puritans did permit beer, cider and ale, but those beverages were more sanitary than 17th century water.).

However, their misanthropism had an egalitarian character; they hated everyone equally. The monarchy was not beyond their censure; indeed, they deeply resented that their taxes should subsidize the royal pleasures. They would have restricted Elizabeth I to one good dress (plain black silk) and two or three frocks. Indeed, these dour curmudgeons were the first to realize that Parliament offered them a weekday pulpit to denounce the vices and faults of England. Their numbers in Parliament grew over time, reflecting the middle class alienation from the monarchy. They were a handful of cantankerous pennypinchers in the reign of Elizabeth. They were the vociferous minority that attacked the incompetence of James I. They were the militant core of the majority that resisted the intimidation of Charles I. And they were the vanguard of the triumphant army that established the surpremacy of Parliament over the monarchy.

Once in power, the Puritans succeeded in making England miserable, but England was neither sanctified nor grateful for the experience. Indeed, after a decade of Cromwell, Puritanism had lost its Calvinist charisma for the middle class. England longed for pageantry and syphilis; and Charles II would offer both. If, however, the Puritans now receded from political domination, they had left one legacy that the Restoration could never undo. Parliament was the supreme institution of the land; and the monarch served at its sufferance.

As for the Puritans, power–however shortlived–had proved both corrupting and enlightening. They had liked dominance, and in hope of regaining it, they realized that politics was more useful than dogma. They did not immediately or completely forsake their cherished prejudices; they still hated Catholics and distrusted the Stuarts. However, they shed their repressive theocratic personality, and reinvented Calvinism into a self-improvement, assertiveness training. They became the champions of a rising–secular–middle class struggling against the hereditary rule of upper-class twits. The new and improved faction needed a more appealing name than Puritan. In hindsight, Whig wasn’t a great choice but it did escape that dour Calvinist stigma.

New name, new image. True, over the next two hundred years, there was an occasional lapse from those lurking, recessive genes: William Gladstone was creepy enough to be a Puritan. Nonetheless, the modern liberal would gladly claim his Whig descent from John Locke, Robert Walpole, William Pitt and their American kinsmen (Franklin, Jefferson and the rest). But one cannot claim that the modern liberal sprang forth fully developed from the mind of John Locke. Whether we like it or not, the family tree includes Oliver Cromwell.

To justify the cost of my cable television bill, I have to see 47 films a week. It is not that difficult. I sleep and eat on the couch; and the chamberpot fits under it. (Any olfactory indiscretions can be blamed on the pug.)

Here are my reviews of three films that I saw this weekend.

If you don’t have enough contemptible people in your life, “The Squid and the Whale” will make up for that deficit. To paraphrase Tolstoy, “Every unhappy family has its own story but I wouldn’t want it to be this nauseating.” The redeeming feature of the Berkmans of New York is that someday that they will die. Of course, in life and literature there are vicious, self-destructive families; they were a staple of Greek tragedies. However, Agamemnon and Clytemnestra are much more likable than Bernie and Joan Berkman. He is a pompous, pretentious bully; she is a self-absorbed, irrresponsible, aspiring psychotic. They are atrocious but without being interesting: petty monsters. You can imagine how endearing their children are. I suppose that the acting was good. Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney have never seemed so repulsive–although they will never pass for Berkmans. And here is an interesting footnote: one of their horrid brats is played by Owen Kline, the child of Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates. In his role, the 14 year-old Owen is a thesaurus of obscenity–using language that I have never heard his parents say. (Of course, “Gremlins” did not really offer Ms. Cates the right venue to discuss oral sex.)

I did not intend to see “Gone With the Wind” again. The first five times might have seemed enough. But by accident, I switched to Turner Classic Movies just as the film began. Of course, I promised myself that I would just watch the first few minutes of the film–only until Clark Gable appeared; then I set a limit of half a hour, then maybe I’d stop after the burning of Atlanta, then after the first seven hours….The film is ridiculous but irresistible. Its purported history is outrageous: Abraham Lincoln should be ashamed of himself, ruining the lives of those kindly slaveowners and their adoring darkies. The never-ending melodrama of Scarlett O’Hara is absurd; fiddle-dee-dee, the man-eating monstress is laughably obvious.
And yet, Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, with an almost flawless supporting cast of Olivia DaHavilland, Thomas Mitchell, Ona Munson, keep you mesmerized. (Yes, I am omitting Leslie Howard; I’m saving him for the footnotes.) This is far from the greatest film ever made, but it really is the best example of the glamour and charisma of Hollywood’s golden age. We just don’t make Clark Gables anymore.

Footnote No. 1: The role of Ashley Wilkes is a thankless role; a badly written part, Ashley is little more than an aesthetic cipher. Leslie Howard had certainly distinguished himself portraying men of ideas rather than action: “The Petrified Forest“, “Of Human Bondage” and especially “Pygmalion.” But Mr. Howard really had nothing to do in the film but languidly sigh. Worse, at 49 he clearly was too old to be Ashley. And if I may be so tactlessly ethnic, Mr. Howard’s aquiline nose and dark, world-weary eyes are not found among Southern aristocrats. His Ashley would have had to join the Ku Klux Kohens, wearing a long tallith instead a sheet. The young Tony Curtis, alias Bernard Schwartz, said, “When I went to Hollywood, I wanted to be the Jewish Leslie Howard; then I discovered Leslie Howard beat me to it.”

Footnote No. 2: While watching Vivien Leigh as Scarlett and Butterfly McQueen as her idiot servant Prissy, I kept thinking of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

If I speak of “Narrow Margin” you are likely to think of a mediocre thriller with Gene Hackman and Anne Archer about a cop transporting a witness on a train filled with mafia killers. That film was a padded remake of a taut, excellent, but low-budget movie made some 30 years earlier. The original has been described as “one of the best B-movies ever made”, and I would testify to that before any grand jury. It starred Charles McGraw, a gruff-voiced, hard-bitten actor who most of us would recognize as a second-string villain. For example, in “Spartacus” he was the brutal gladiator instructor who Kirk Douglas drown in a cauldron of boiling stew. Here, however he is the hero, an honest cop with a dangerous and distasteful assignment of protecting an odious character. He doesn’t know whom to trust, and he has to wonder if the assignment is worth the risk. Most of us might be tempted to take the proferred bribe and let the Mafia have the pleasure. The story is gripping and brilliantly filmed; you really sense the constricted space of a train. (Claustrophobes be warned.) Yet, this film’s budget entire cost less than the catering bill for “Gone With the Wind“. Check Turner Classic Movies for the next broadcast of “Narrow Margin.”

And tonight I plan to tape “Night of the Hunter.” After all, I have only seen it once.

I marvel at the popularity of rap music with suburban youth. This generation is not the first to make a fashion of self-loathing. In the sixth century Byzantine youth adopted the clothes and hairstyles of the Huns. Of course, their admiration for barbarian chic did not extend to living in tents and eating horse meat.

I have been reading some of the rap artists of an earlier generation. What a pity that there were not Grammys in 1918. I would have nominated Siegfried “Sephardic Slim” Sassoon, Robert “Klassics Kewl” Graves and Wilfred “Bonz” Owen. They were gangstas from the hoods of Oxford and Cambridge who expressed a certain resentment about being annihilated. Mind you, I wouldn’t dare to compare a week on the Somme with the horrors of a lifetime in suburbia, but let’s consider the two rap genres.

Here’s Bonz Owen:

What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.

Here’s Eminem:

Starin’ at my jeans, watchin’
my genitals bulgin’ (Ooh!)
That’s my motherf***in’
balls, you’d better let go of ’em.

Perhaps we could popularize Owen by translating him into contemporary verse.

Kaiser despiser
try to outrun the Hun machine gun.
Britannia rules is jive just for fools.
I ain’t your bitchin’ her
Lord Kitchener.
Not Eton you sh*t
Pimp Minister Asquith.
Verdun We’re done.
Ergo Somme, heirs left none.

Wilfred Owen stopped rapping on November 4, 1918, one week before the Armistice.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 — In adamantly refusing to declare waterboarding illegal, Michael B. Mukasey, the nominee for attorney general, is steering clear of a potential legal quagmire for the Bush administration: criminal prosecution or lawsuits against Central Intelligence Agency officers who used the harsh interrogation practice and those who authorized it, legal experts said Wednesday.

The biggest problem for Mr. Mukasey remains his refusal to take a clear legal position on the interrogation technique.

Addressing the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Mukasey explained, “I am personally opposed to waterboarding because I look terrible in a bathing suit. However, Sandre Dee, Annette Funicello and Deborah Walley looked great. And James Darren and Frankie Avalon weren’t bad in their pre-toupee days. I would not condemn surfing per se, but would judge each of the beach movies on its individual merits.

Beach Party is problematic. It is painful to see Dorothy Malone in such a dumb role; otherwise the film is okay. Regarding Muscle Beach Party, Bikini Beach and Beach Blanket Bingo , individually each is within the limits of the Geneva Convention. But a double feature could be torture. How to Stuff a Wild Bikini and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini are crimes against humanity. And Harvey Lembeck is definitely a terrorist.”

SCANDALOUS $10 MILLION BAT MITZVAH

ABC NEWS
The headliners read like a who’s who of music: Aerosmith, 50 Cent and Don Henley of the Eagles. No, it wasn’t the Grammys, it was 13-year-old Elizabeth Brooks’ birthday party — a $10 million mega bat mitzvah. Aerosmith alone was paid a $1 million to perform — flown in on her father’s company jet.

Her father is David Brooks, who was then the CEO of DHB Industries, the leading body armor provider to U.S. soliders in Iraq. And he had his company pick up the tab for the party two years ago, according to investigators.

Most of us will never earn ten million dollars in a lifetime. Evidently, neither did David Brooks. He was just indicted for fraud, tax evasion and insider trading. Perhaps billing the company for his wife’s facelift was not really a legitimate business expense. And would you be surprised to learn that his company’s products are defective? The body armor that isn’t. When tested, DHB’s Swiss Cheesecloth was found to have “critical life-threatening flaws.” Policemen in New York and U.S marines in Iraq have discovered that their bullet-proof vests couldn’t stop a dust bunny. So David Brooks might be an accessory to murder. He may have killed so many Americans that he qualifies as an Al Quada All-Star.

Of course, a man who’d squander ten million dollars on a Bat Mitzvah is capable of any crime. The very idea seems so Anti-Semitic that Mel Gibson must be jealous. That ten million dollar orgy of excess is blasphemy, an affront to God and his first two commandments: “Thou Shall Have No Other God Before Me” and “Thou Shall Not Worship Idols”. Brooks was worshipping himself–a self-made Golden Calf–rather than the tenets and values of Judaism.

If you believe in Judaism, you believe in justice. Unlike those gorgeous, sexually omnivorous idols of Olympus and Asgard, our staid, stiff God pioneered morality along with a constricting dietary code. Thou shall not steal, and certainly not to subsidize a teenage bacchanalia. A poor bedouin people, then a scattered and persecuted tribe, through the ages all we Jews truly possessed were our faith and values. At the whim of Crusader or Cossack our material acquisitions were gone, but our teachings endured. They defined us and gave us a strength that has defied history.

Now, we find ourselves in a land of tolerance and opportunity; the ghetto has given way to the suburb. We no longer are restricted by the majority’s Church or prey to the bigotry of a Tsar. In fact, we are free to make asses of ourselves. Philip Roth was never at a loss for satire. The bar mitzvah has long since become a parody of its original purpose: a genuine rite of passage. Today, the ceremony is just an excuse for extravagance. Modern American Judaism seems largely defined by its sense of humor and a high cholesterol diet. But our heritage still imbues us with an empathy to the oppressed and an indignation with injustice. Although we did not copyright the Golden Rule, we apply it when we vote.

But those values mean nothing to David Brooks. Nature should not merely abhor a vacuum; it should despise him.

Tomorrow I may come up with satirical ways to spend ten million dollars on a bar mitzvah. But today I am just too angry.