Cheat Sheet

It takes a real man of letters, like literary critic James Wood, to dissect the GOP’s assault on language. The Republicans, Wood writes, frame Obama as "an elitist who works with words." Yet it is the Republicans, "[t]he campaign that claims to loathe ‘just words,’ which has proved expert at their manipulation, from reversals of policy to the outright lies of some of its attack ads (‘comprehensive sex education’) and the subtle racial innuendo of a phrase like ‘how disrespectful.’” Wood’s conclusion: John McCain has embraced the ambiguity of words, whether the lipstick is on a pig, or a pit bull.

Starbucks’ logo may be green, but its practices aren’t: An investigation by the London Sun tabloid discovered that the ubiquitous coffee chain mandates that all 10,000 of its outlets keep a faucet constantly running—wasting an amount of water each day that would quench the thirst of drought-ridden Namibia’s entire population. The policy’s stated purpose is hygienic, but experts dismissed that explanation as “nonsense.” Starbucks justifies the policy by running the taps at “very low pressure,” but it may be better to, you know, give a reason. “We don’t know what it is,” an employee said in Romania. “Nobody ever uses it.”

Writers are typically among the greatest profiteers of economic turmoil. So why aren’t today’s novelists picking over Wall Street’s bones? The Observer’s William Skidelsky wonders in a smart piece. “[T]he 21st-century Masters of the Universe have remained stubbornly absent from fiction,” Skidelsky writes, and one has to wonder why. Well, for one thing, today’s financial goings-on may be too complex for your average beach reader. Second, one must consider whether the writer is merely living up to his historic role: the world’s lousiest businessman. If you had to find one person less competent than Dick Fuld…

The Guardian has the chilling first-person story of a narcoleptic. She has slept at least 15 hours a day for the last 13 years, and these episodes are anything but sweet dreams. “I was awake, yet paralyzed and still dreaming,” the narcoleptic, now identified on The Guardian website with a psuedonym, is quoted as saying. “It was as though my body and brain had been completely severed from each other. While I was imprisoned in my mind, my body had been cast adrift.” Desperate for any kind of cure, she tried cocaine for a while. It didn’t get her high, but it did help her stay awake.

The conflict between Israel and Lebanon has entered a new and more dangerous phase, this time in the kitchen. Lebanon is planning to file an international suit claiming that by marketing original Lebanese food like tabouleh, hummus, and falafel, Israel has cost Lebanon tens of millions of dollars a year. Crazy as the suit sounds, it's apparently not without legal grounds. Fadi Abboud, president of the Lebanese Industrialists Association, has prepared a memo citing the "feta cheese precedent" of 2002, which granted Greece the sole right to produce and market the cheese under that name.

The Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute—long known for throwing the Vogue/CFDA gala that allows all of Hollywood to prance around in ball gowns—has finally put its entire collection online for browsing. While the website is a bit unwieldy, it is a fantastic resource for all things clothes. According to WWD, the project is eight years in the making, and features almost 30,000 pieces for inspection. A search for “Chanel” alone reveals fourteen pages of cocktail ensembles dating back to the 20s. Another for “brooch” is just as fruitful, especially a gorgeous silver, gold, and carnelian number that was used to fasten togas in Rome in the 2nd Century.

The Guardian's Sandrine Levêque sounded off on Britain's growing number of strip clubs today. Since 2003, a clever little government loophole lumped the regulation of strip clubs in with "regular" bars which, of course, resulted in the industry practically doubling since 2004. Leveque points out that we're not alone in our leaders making dirty with women of the night—the Conservative party of Birmingham was even handing out lap-dance vouchers to their party members!  With a society where rape is one of the least convicted crimes and victims are still being blamed for their assaults, Leveque writes, when will these strip clubs be regulated?  Hopefully soon.  Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and Minister for Women and Equality Harriet Harman just announced that local municipalities will have greater sway when it comes to regulating these clubs so a business man spending a sneaky lunch hour is monitored differently that a kid singing "Like A Prayer." 

Facebook has long been a window for parents, teachers, and employers to peer into their juniors' lives, but this is getting creepy: The Jewish Journal reports that the Israeli Army recently visited the Facebook profile of a teenage girl who had claimed a draft exemption on religious grounds. The Army found photographs of the girl partying on Shabbat; a further inspection revealed she wasn’t dressing (in the Journal’s deadpan description) “in a style acceptable to the religious community.” The consequence? Conscription. No word on whether she has changed her status.

Thomas Pynchon’s writing was full of blogosphere-style intrigue before there was even a blogosphere. So it was fitting, last week, when rumors began circulating of a new Pynchon novel—“a kind of noir detective story set in the 1960s, with lots of psychedelia as background,” according to critic Steven Moore. The novel, which is slated to publish in August 2009, should come as some as some relief to Pynchon’s fans, who he usually tortures by taking off a decade or two between books. (His last novel, Against the Day, is only two years old.) Perhaps the septuagenarian author is beginning to feel the anxiety of old age?

Leslie Howard, who played Scarlett O’Hara’s hunky crush in Gone With the Wind, may have had a secret. According to Spanish author Jose Rey-Ximena, Howard was acting as a British secret agent when his plane was shot down by the German Luftwaffe in 1943. Rey-Ximena claims that Howard was dispatched to Spain, on orders from Winston Churchill, to convince Gen. Franco not to join the Axis Powers. When his plane was shot down, The Guardian reports, “[a] rumor later circulated that the Germans thought Churchill himself was on board. Howard's manager, who also died in the crash, was said to resemble the British war leader.”

As the Dow flirts with a 500-point drop, the Treasury Department's latest move may cause Americans to hit the panic button a few more times. Hank Paulson has chosen a 35-year-old former vice president at Goldman Sachs, Neel Kashkari, to manage the $700 billion bailout. Kashkari is currently assistant secretary for international economics and development and an adviser to Paulson on housing issues—qualifications that may leave something to be desired, given the Bush administration's response to the subprime mortgage crisis. “I'm not saying Kashkari is another Michael Brown,” writes blogger-watchdog Josh Marshall, but he wants a full c.v., stet.

Conventional wisdom holds that the financial mess will be the cause, and not a symptom, of American economic decline, but what if the opposite is true? Zachary Karabell makes the case in a worrisome column in The Wall Street Journal. In recent years, as capital shifted to freer markets overseas, American investors were forced to pursue risky and absurd investments. Karabell recommends, unsurprisingly, deregulation (it's the Journal here). "Once, when the U.S. was the engine of global growth, when the world needed Wall Street for funding, capital could be taxed and controlled by the fiat of the U.S. government. No longer,' he writes. "The U.S. may have the will; it does not have the power."

The Paramount-DreamWorks divorce has ended with an unexpected whimper, Nikki Finke reports. Of the two studios’ 200 joint projects, DreamWorks will inherit 15 to 20, “with Paramount having an option to co-finance and co-distribute pic by pic.” A similar number of projects to Paramount, with DreamWorks holding the option. The rest of the bounty is Paramount’s. Why was that so easy? Finke credits the work of lawyer Skip Brittenham, and Paramount’s decision to wave goodbye to Steven Spielberg, et al, rather than waiting until their contracts expired at year’s end.

A long-awaited New York profile of The Times’ Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. is perhaps most interesting for its analysis of his heirs apparent. Many consider Sulzberger's nephew, David Perpich, a Harvard MBA who works at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, to be "the brightest of the young family lights." But Sulzberger has long made apparent his desire to hand over the reins to his 28-year-old son, Arthur Gregg, a reporter at The Oregonian in Portland. Joe Hagan points to other family power players like Dan Cohen, Sulzberg's closest confidant, and Carolyn Greenspon, the first fifth-generation Sulzberger to sit on the board of trustees, as potentials. Unlike the Bancrofts, the Sulzbergers lack any obvious bad apples. Still, many believe The Times’ best hope is Michael Bloomberg riding to the rescue.