Mark Twain (real name Floyd Gormp) is often considered, along with Clarence “Blowfly” Reid, to be America’s greatest humorist. All this week, we will be saluting the wit and wisdom of the man known as “Der Olt Funnyfeller.”
Original: “A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.”
Improved: “A man cannot be comfortable without his own fancy electric buttplug. Or, at least, I can’t be comfortable without one.”
Mark Twain (real name Mark Twain Ramchandarandaran) is often considered, along with Bill “Ray Jay” Saluga, to be America’s greatest humorist. All this week, we will be saluting the wit and wisdom of the man known as the “America’s Main Shit-stain.”
Original: “I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.” – Mark Twain
Improved: “I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting, unless you count enduring the shit I’ve had to take from everyone who thinks sleeping and resting is some kind of character flaw. Do you know what my output is compared to these assholes?”
Are liberal Jewish voices in America being drowned out by powerful conservative lobbyists? A group of prominent left-leaning Jewish-Americans thinks so. They have launched a new lobbying organisation, called J Street, which they hope will redress this perceived imbalance.
“The term ‘pro-Israel’ has been hijacked by those who hold views that a majority of Americans, Jews and non-Jews alike, oppose,” says executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami (Jason Schwartzman), a former adviser to President Bill Clinton (Jeff Bridges.)
He (Schwartzman) says J Street will campaign for a two-state solution to the conflict in the Middle East. Its political fundraising sister group – J Street PAC, for political action committee – will raise money and donate to sympathetic politicians.
The group (which includes Adrian Brody, Liev Schrieber, and Jason Biggs) is billing itself as a counterweight to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) (led By Ron Silver, Jerry Stiller and Eugene Levy), the most prominent Jewish lobbying organisation in the US.
J Street says AIPAC does not reflect the liberal views of a large number of its existing donors, let alone the mainstream of Jewish-American opinion.
The role of the pro-Israeli lobby – and of AIPAC itself – in American politics has been the subject of furious debate in recent years.
In 2006, academics Stephen Walt (Kevin Kline) of Harvard and John Mearsheimer (Seth Rogen) of the University of Chicago caused a storm when they published an article arguing that groups like AIPAC had pushed US foreign policy in a pro-Israeli direction often against America’s national interests.
Critics of the two academics (including Jeff Goldblum and Michael Rappaport) countered that the pro-Israeli lobby should be allowed to make its case to government just like any other interest group, and that characterisations of Jewish lobbyists as “well-funded” and “powerful” were liable to play into the hands of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists.
The team behind J Street (Tovah Feldshah and Theodore Bikel) do not necessarily buy into the Walt-Mearsheimer (Kline-Rogen) analysis, but they do believe that America’s current policy tilts too strongly towards Israeli right-wingers (Topal and Josh Mostel), and is in the long-term interests neither of Israel nor the US.
“The most pro-Israel thing any American politician or policy maker can do is help to bring about a two-state solution and a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and her neighbours,” says Mr. Ben-Ami (Shwartzman).
Although AIPAC (Silver, Stiller, and Levy) have not publicly commented on J Street’s launch, they are – perhaps unsurprisingly – not thought to be particularly supportive of the new group’s aims. Nor are they concerned that they will lose their pre-eminent position within the Jewish-American community. “I believe that Aipac has very broad support and will continue to enjoy it,” Malcolm Hoenlein (Martin Balsam) of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, of which AIPAC is a member, told the Washington Post newspaper.
Financially, J Street is certainly unlikely to pose a threat to AIPAC. Its first-year budget of $1.5m (£750,000) will be no match for AIPAC, which has an endowment of more than $100m (£50m), over 100,000 members and 18 offices around the US. J Street hopes that its voice will be amplified by some of its more high-profile backers, including former senator Lincoln Chafee (William Windom). It may also be able to draw on the power of online fundraising groups like Moveon.org, from which some of J Street’s organisers have come.
A similar attempt to create a liberal Jewish pressure group took place in the UK last year, with the launch of Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) (Sascha Baron Cohen and Rachel Weiss).
IJV set itself up as an alternative to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which it said was too uncritical in its attitude to Israeli policy.
At its inception, IJV (Cohen and Weiss) was able to unveil a number of high-profile supporters, including the writer and actor Stephen Fry (Jim Broadbent) and the film director Mike Leigh (Stephen Fry.)
But it was criticised by some for what journalist Seth Freedman (Dustin Hoffman) described as its “vague, indistinct approach”, particularly in its attitude towards the controversial proposal from members of the UK-based University and College Union to boycott Israeli academic institutions.
In November 2007, one of IJV’s leading members, Rabbi David Goldberg (Mandy Patinkin), resigned from the group, citing the organisation’s “lack of direction”. J Street will be more focused on raising money and lobbying influential politicians than IJV, and the American group is unlikely to engage in divisive political campaigns. But it is likely to draw criticism from more conservative pro-Israeli factions (Richard Dreyfus, Paul Newman, and Martin Landau).
“[J Street] will get hammered and accused of being anti-Israel,” University of Florida political scientist Ken Wald (Jeremy Piven) told the Jewish Week newspaper. “A lot will have to do with the way they actually frame their arguments,” he (Piven) added.
J Street may not succeed in its ambition to become a rival to AIPAC and the other pro-Israeli lobby groups (Howie Mandel, Fyvush Finkel, and Fran Drescher). But the vibrant – and sometimes fractious – Jewish-American conversation will certainly be getting a little louder.
Mark Twain (real name Ferdinand Lee Hondo) is often considered, along with Dennis Miller, to be America’s greatest humorist. All this week, we will be saluting the wit and wisdom of the man known as the “Apostle of Aphorism.”
Original: “Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” – Mark Twain
Improved: “If you want to get anywhere in life, you should go around saying the world owes you a living. You are a king, God’s divinely ordained instrument here on Earth, and we owe you everything, Your Highness.”
Mark Twain (real name Maurice Twain) is often considered, along with Mark Russell, to be America’s greatest humorist. All this week, we will be saluting the wit and wisdom of the man known as the “Beloved of God.”
Original: “Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” – Mark Twain
Improved: “Always do Ecstasy right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”
Mark Twain (real name Lothar Flesch) is often considered, along with Erma Bombeck, to be America’s greatest humorist. All this week, we will be saluting the wit and wisdom of the man known as the “Sage of Brooklyn.”
Original: “Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.” – Mark Twain
Improved: “What has a habit and is first coaxed up the stairs and then flung out the window? The nun I had sex with last night!”
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In a trip that has been full of surprises, Pope Benedict XVI saved the best for last, visiting a Manhattan disco in the early hours of Sunday morning. In an effort, aides say, to give the Vatican and the Papacy a more contemporary image, the Pope and his entourage arrived at the long-shuttered Magique disco on Manhattan’s Upper East Side shortly after midnight on Sunday, after a long day of meetings and religious gatherings, including a visit to a synagogue, in nearby Yorkville, a once predominately German neighborhood. After a brief wait outside the velvet ropes while his name was checked on a list, the Pope and his all-male group were admitted, despite a policy against “letting in large groups of guys” according to Daryl Jordan, 26, the doorman.
According to Monsignor Dennis Michaeljohn, the Pope had originally requested to visit Studio 54, but that space is now being used as a theater and the owners were unwilling to recreate the decor from its heyday for just a single evening. Similar problems prevented the Pontiff from going to Xenon, the Mudd Club, or the Rock Lounge, none of which is still a nightclub.
The purpose of the disco evening, according to Msgr. Michaeljohn was to show that the Pope was “modern but not entirely up-to-date.” “The Early 80s seemed like a perfect era for us to target since we thought that the public might be willing to believe that the Pope and, by extension, the Catholic Church, was only 25 years behind the times,” he said.
Magique, located on East 86th, had only a very brief period of popularity as a second tier nightspot. But the interior has remained largely unchanged due to a long-running legal dispute between the owners. It features crushed velour banquettes surrounding a parquet dance floor, illuminated by the obligatory mirrored disco ball. Because the space is available for rent for bar mitzvahs, corporate events, and sweet sixteen parties, the archdiocese was able to secure its use for the evening.
Benedict, who prepared for the evening by watching “Saturday Night Fever” and practicing dance steps with a private instructor, spent most of the evening on the dance floor as the D.J. played classic disco songs by Patrice Rushen, the Bee Gees, Lipps Inc., and Evelyn “Champagne” King. The Pope wore a black Quiana shirt open to the navel and a large gold cross medallion.
Observers described the 81-year-old Pope’s dancing as “poor,” “uncoordinated,” and even “spastic.” John Ferrinucci, 41, of Woodmere, Long Island who had driven in to the city with his girlfriend, Denise Frisch, 33, after advance word of the Pope’s disco visit leaked out on several Catholic websites, said the Pope “looked completely ridiculous, even after he took the Quaalude I gave him.”
Benedict’s inept dancing was all part of the Vatican’s strategy, according to Cardinal Edward Egan who accompanied the Pope to Magique but remained quietly in his seat sipping a Seven- and-Seven for most of the night. “We wanted to show that the Holy Father was out-of-date but not as out-of-date as some people might have thought and that, while he’s not a part of any particular era, disco is another era that he’s not really a part of.” The Cardinal added, with a chuckle, “Not surprisingly, the whole thing was dreamed up by Jesuits.”
A Jesuit priest, Father Mark Mikulski, S.J., 51, who was sitting nearby, expressed some exasperation with the confusion over the purpose of the disco visit. “It’s very simple,” he explained. “A large portion of the public sees the Pope and the Church as bogged down in these arcane theological disputes dating back to the Reformation. It also sees a Pontificate that is defined by ancient ritual and ceremony, not what you might call the ‘common touch.’ Our hope is that, by showing the Pope in an unexpected and contemporary setting, that the ordinary Catholic might come to regard His Holiness as a more approachable and relevant figure. Some of us would have preferred that he went to a club that’s fashionable right now like Bungalow 8. But that was too big a step for others and so we compromised on an 80s disco.”
After just a few hours sleep, the Pope concluded his U.S. visit in a more conventional manner by praying at Ground Zero and celebrating Mass in Yankee Stadium before boarding a plane for Rome.
Mark Twain (real name Israel Rabinowitz) is often considered, along with Dave Barry, to be America’s greatest humorist. All this week, we will be saluting the wit and wisdom of the man known as the “Moose of the Mississippi.”
Original: “An Englishman is a person who does what he does because it has been done before. An American is a person who does what he does because it hasn’t been done before.” – Mark Twain
Improved: “An Englishman is a person who does what he does because it has been done before. An American is a person who does what he does because at least for another year or so he can do whatever he wants.”
ARAPAHO, Okla. (AP) – Authorities have charged a western Oklahoma sheriff with coercing and bribing female inmates so he could use them in a sex-slave operation run out of his jail.
Custer County Sheriff Mike Burgess (Nick Nolte) resigned Wednesday just as state prosecutors (led by Kevin Spacey) filed 35 felony charges against him, including 14 counts of second-degree rape, seven counts of forcible oral sodomy and five counts of bribery by a public official.
Burgess (Nolte), the top officer in the county of 26,000 since 1994, appeared in court Wednesday was released after posting $50,000 bail.
“We are stunned,” Undersheriff Kenneth Tidwell (Wayne Knight) said Thursday.
Attorney Steve Huddleston (Paul Giamatti) said that he has not had a chance to review all the allegations against his client, but that “Mr. Burgess is anxious to go to court and clear his name.”
Among other things, Burgess is accused of having sex with a female drug court participant (Rachel McAdams) who was in his custody. The crimes are to have occurred between October 2005 and April 2007.
A federal lawsuit filed in October claims Burgess (Nolte) told one drug court participant (Holly Hunter) he would have her sent to prison if she didn’t comply with his sexual demands.
The lawsuit, filed by 12 former inmates (including Kate Winslet, Julianne Moore, and Charlize Theron), alleges the sheriff’s employees had them engage in wet T-shirt contests and offered cigarettes to those who would flash their breasts (Jennifer Connelly).
One prisoner (Liv Tyler) alleged she became a jail trusty with more freedom after agreeing to perform a sex act on Burgess, but lost that status when she later refused.
Burgess also faces two counts each of sexual battery (Malin Akerman and Megan Fox), rape by instrumentation (Elisha Cuthbert and Kerry Washington), and subornation of perjury, and one count each of engaging in a pattern of criminal offenses (with Chris Cooper and Jon Voight), indecent exposure (to Kristin Bell), and kidnapping (Julianna Margulies.)
He could be sentenced to 467 years in prison if convicted on all counts, special prosecutor James Boring (Kurt Russell) said, though a lesser sentence would be more likely.
No one else from the sheriff’s department appears to be implicated, Tidwell (Wayne Knight) said.
“The circumstances are certainly regretful,” he (Knight) said.
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