Is this my first Shoot Me of the year? If so, it’s mighty late in coming. Though this one’s joyous, even funny: I am head over heels with Adam Gopnik, with his piece on Dan Brown— and think no one need ever bother to write again. To wit—in every sense of the word—

The clichés line up outside the dust jacket and are whisked in pairs to a table down front …

Couldn’t you just die? Of course The New Yorker always did have the funniest writers around.  It’s just that Gopnik’s talent seems somehow … unnecessary. Do we really need such wit and seriousness and, above all, profligacy?

I hardly think so. Read the rest of this entry »

Where to begin. Where oh where to fucking begin. Numero uno, I thought I already covered this, and wherever I have failed—and the possiblity exists, the reality exists, that and my public is the size of a pea—The New Yorker has nicely picked up the slack.

Surely these are not overly-complex ideas, people! Barack Obama ich bin ein politician. Yes, I understand, you liberals got yourselves all worked up by the fact that he reads books. Christ, he writes them, and by all accounts, not only very well but all by his talented self. I understand you got all your introjected hopes up—you know, the ones you’ve been saving since childhood, or at least adolescence: that the wise and kindly uber-parent would come along who would at last understand, er, I mean, whom you could vote for. Read the rest of this entry »