It’s one of the worst books I’ve ever read. When I was a kid I liked Pere Goriot and Eugenie Grandet, and I managed to get thru Lost Illusions. I thought I was toughened up to Balzac’s eccentricities. But Girl is a disaster. It could have been a one-page “Ribald Tale,” or whatever Playboy used to call that feature it ran in the old days. Instead it’s a bloated novella that gets dumber as it goes on. It’s the kind of “classic” that makes you think nobody back then could do anything right.

Tapes Reveal Nixon’s View of Abortion

That’s the New York Times headline for the article about the latest batch of released tapes from the Nixon White House. The tact is all on the part of the Times, not Nixon.

Nixon:

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white.”

Beautiful. He said stuff about Jews too:

“It may be they have a death wish. You know that’s been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries.”

That’s in the article’s next-to-last paragraph. Context: Billy Graham had been saying that the Jews were chapping his butt about what the NYT calls “efforts to promote evangelical Christianity.”

In other revelations, a National Security Council brief discussed Israel’s secret nuclear program, and Nixon aides said Reagan was really happy about Nixon’s firing of the fellow who was looking into Watergate. Good old Reagan.

UPDATE: The headline The New Republic used: “Nixon: Abort Interracial Babies.”

UPDATE 2: I’m listening to the tape (available here) while I type changes into my Alan Moore column. A lot of murk and buzzing, but phrases surface here and there: “a black and a white” and “Stick it to the goddamn Left.” Horribly, it’s such a pleasure to hear his voice again. I guess that’s the power of nostalgia.

UPDATE 3: It turns out there are good Jews and bad Jews. The bad kind put out pornography and are known as the “Synagogue of Satan” (also the name of a biker gang — it gives Hebrew lessons in the afternoon, after regular school). The good kind are “God’s Timepiece” (also the title of a book that attempts to reconcile young Christians to the existence of earth’s fossil record).

I missed all that, but it’s what Billy Graham had to say when he and the President were talking. He was responding to this thought voiced by Nixon:

… this anti-Semitism is [???] strongly than we think, you know. It’s unfortunate, but this has happened to the Jews, it happened in Spain, it happened in Germany, it’s happening—now it’s going to happen in America if these people don’t start behaving.

Start behaving, you people. (Via Atrios at A Tiny Revolution.)

If everything goes right and Ahmadinejad bites it, the following quote will break out across the American Internets:

Is not a Patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help?

That’s what Dr. Johnson wrote to Lord Chesterfield after finishing work on his dictionary of the English language. Chesterfield just hadn’t been there for him, okay?

As you know, Obama is being careful about what he has to say on Iran, and some conservatives want him to be more splashy. When and if the bad guys lose, Obama will have less reason to be cautious and will say some nice things. At that point the propaganda mills of the right will churn forth columns, blog posts, and TV spiels wrapped around the above quote.

One of the awful things about pithy Europeans of long ago is that their remarks keep getting served up as justifications rather than entertainments. Because an old quote sounds good, and because it has a famous name attached, a certain class of mind will consider the quote to be in itself an argument. In high school I had a teacher who thought that “Lies, damn lies, and statistics” was actually a reasonable counter to the citing of any figure. Thirty years later I thought of a comeback: “Cliches, cliches, and banalities.” That wouldn’t have done me any good, but neither did “So what? So the guy said that,” which is what I said at the time. Of course, that is a reasonable response.

In any case … Hey, Doc Lawton, this goes out to you.

(I apologize for writing “entertainments,” plural, but I’m too lazy to think of something else.)

According to my email from Mrs. Helen Anderson of the United Kingdom. It reads:

The Sum Of £500,000 Pounds has been won by your EMAIL Address in our UK Online Promo. Do get back to this office with your claims requirement such as

1.Name
2.Address
3.Nationality
4.Age
5.Sex
6.Occupation
7.Phone/Fax
8.Present Country

Sincerely
Mrs. Helen Anderson

I like that it says “Do get back.” That’s the British touch.

His latest movie, Whatever Works, stars Larry David (b. 1947) and Evan Rachel Wood (b. 1987). Slate says the romance between their characters is “weirdly” asexual. No, Slate, not “weirdly.” It is thankfully asexual. Thank God that age and nature have finally placed some limit to Woody Allen’s monstrous vanity.

I was going to write about Woody Allen for my Fandom Confessions contribution (the roundtable’s last entry is here). But I couldn’t. I hate him so much that my engine flooded. It’s complicated and has to do with my own life choices and so on, but he is one of the few celebrities I personally hate. It’s not the Soon-Yi business — that came well after I turned against him. More like the Soon-Yi business grew from the same traits that show up in his movies. Skill he’s got, he knows how to put together a smart-looking film, but he is so shallow and self-absorbed that he has nothing to say. Yet he keeps talking, and people think he’s serious because he takes himself seriously. People think he’s funny because he uses that damn hesitation stammer and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. People think … well, people don’t think. The movie’s playing at a theater with a little screen, so they figure it must be art. The movie ends before they get bored, so they figure it must be good.

In reviewing J. M. DeMatteis’s long-lost Jewish vampire story (h/t Miriam), Kristy Valenti mentions “the stereotype about what is bad in some of Allen’s films — a successful neurotic with an attractive mate who is inexorably drawn to a fresh young woman who makes him feel sexy.” Her phrasing implies that nothing else is bad about Woody Allen movies. As you may have noticed, I disagree. He has no imagination, no understanding of people, no feel for how they talk and behave. He keeps doing the same tricks over and over, and he trots out his cultural enthusiasms like a kid during freshman orientation week. Wow, Satchell Paige, “The Potatohead Blues,” Dostoevsky, Fred Astaire! And what was your SAT score?

His geezer-chick leanings disgust me not because I’m against matchups of that kind — like most geezers, I find much to recommend them — but because his geezers are so condescending toward their girls and because Allen doesn’t realize the matchups are unlikely. Sure, a young, beautiful girl wants to spend her time with a whiney fart whose neck is falling down, especially if the fart is not a millionaire or a brand-name film director. Allen thinks his stand-ins are entitled, and he thinks the girls are prizes to be awarded. The bigger the age difference, the more shocking the implied vanity. Now we have reached a difference of 40 years, and at least the old guy will keep his hands off the girl. But she still has to listen to him.