The New Republic

Reading a play by a great novelist is sort of like listening to Marilyn Manson plow through the Great American Songbook: You thrill at the prospect of colossal failure while also secretly hoping to be surprised. READ MORE >>

“I asked Roger, ‘Why’d you agree to let me do the book?’” Zev Chafets told me yesterday. We were speeding up Central Park West in a News Corp.–provided town car. “And he said, ‘Because you have a kind face.’ I laughed.” The 60-something Chafets, whose goateed face actually is somewhat kind, laughed again now, and continued. “He said, ‘I also checked you out.’ And what he checked out, obviously, was that I am not a guy who has a hard-on for people like Roger Ailes.” READ MORE >>

He's not a bleeding heart, but... Ailes suffered from hemophilia and almost died after he bit his tongue as a pre-schooler. His father rushed him to a hospital sixty miles away. Chafets writes: "Bob Ailes’s coworkers from Packard came to the clinic to donate blood. 'Always remember,' Bob Ailes told his son, 'you’ve got blue collar in your veins.'" (page 9) READ MORE >>

Anatole Deibler, France’s official executioner from 1899 to 1939, once remarked, “To kill in the name of one’s country is a glorious feat, one rewarded by medals. But to kill in the name of the law, that is a gruesome, horrible function, rewarded with scorn, contempt, and loathing.” Deibler not only knew his craft—he took part in 395 executions and trained his favorite nephew to follow in his footsteps—he also knew that modern society needed and even wanted torturers and executioners, but that it did not like to talk about them. READ MORE >>

In the 1980s, in the faculty-filled suburbs west of Boston, the historian Howard Zinn was something of a folk hero. The Boston Globe, where Zinn published a column, ran stories of his battles with the dictatorial John Silber, the president of Boston University, who cracked down on unions, censored student protests, and denied pay raises to enemies such as Zinn. READ MORE >>

There was big news yesterday out of the financial-crisis book industry: Former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has inked a deal with the Crown imprint of Random House. READ MORE >>

Touré has been frustrating me lately. READ MORE >>

Two follies have long haunted American policy on Iran. Some critics and foes of the Islamic regime in Tehran have preferred “no negotiation with the regime” as the proper American policy. They have argued that even talking to the regime confers upon it a legitimacy that it does not possess and does not deserve to possess. The regime, this camp claims, is on the verge of collapse, and negotiating with it would only prolong its moribund life. READ MORE >>

Are you as stressed out as I am? I only ask because, frankly, you look a little stressed. It must be the job. Or maybe the marriage. I mean, there’s so much to be stressed out about. Just look at the newspaper. Look at your bank account. Is your blood pressure rising yet? Well, you need yoga. No, wait, you need a drink. You need to relax. Because, with the way things are going, this stress is going to kill you. READ MORE >>

In her 1883 memoir of the great American feminist intellectual Margaret Fuller, Julia Ward Howe acknowledged that she was already a late-comer to the haunting story. READ MORE >>