I highly recommend you set aside the time to read the entire piece, but here are a few of my favorite tidbits:
On Congress:
Surely both parties should be rooting for Congress to dig in its heels and assert its constitutional authority vis-à-vis the White House. The U.S. was meant to have a vigorous tripartite government, which has been weakened by the post-Nixon slide toward an ad hoc imperial presidency. The legislative branch shouldn't roll over and play dead like a cutesy pound puppy.
On the other hand, I agree with you that Congress has come across lately like a clumsy, flea-bitten bunch of "bozos." Its poll ratings are lower than stinking swamp mud. I have a soft spot for the nimble Nancy Pelosi, a master of the ladylike stiletto thrust, but Harry Reid is a cadaverous horse's ass of mammoth proportions. How in the world did that whiny, sniveling incompetent end up as Senate majority leader? Give him the hook!
On Katie Couric:
And let me take this opportunity to say that of all the innumerable print and broadcast journalists who have interviewed me in the U.S. and abroad since I arrived on the scene nearly 20 years ago, Katie Couric was definitively the stupidest. As a guest on NBC's "Today" show during my 1992 book tour, I was astounded by Couric's small, humorless, agenda-ridden mind, still registered in that pinched, tinny monotone that makes me rush across the room to change stations whenever her banal mini-editorials blare out at 5 p.m. on the CBS radio network. And of course I would never spoil my dinner by tuning into Couric's TV evening news show. That sallow, wizened, drum-tight, cosmetic mummification look is not an appetite enhancer outside of Manhattan or L.A. There's many a moose in Alaska with greater charm and pizazz.
On the fairness doctrine:
If there's anything that demonstrates the straying of the Democratic Party leadership from basic liberal principles, it's this blasted Fairness Doctrine -- which should be fiercely opposed by all defenders of free speech. Except when national security is at risk, government should never be involved in the surveillance of speech or in measuring the ideological content of books, movies or radio and TV programs.
On the case for Anthropogenic Global Warming:
I have been highly skeptical about the claims for global warming because of their overreliance on speculative computer modeling and because of the woeful patchiness of records for world temperatures before the 20th century.
On College:
The American system of higher education has become an insane assembly line -- bankrupting families to process hapless students through an incoherent, haphazard and mediocre liberal arts curriculum.
and in a later response:
Why is egregious theoretical verbosity being force-fed to cyber-savvy, text-messaging young people who barely read as it is and who still haven't found their own writing voices? The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind -- yes, the big wind of elite school flatulence, which may be the true cause of global warming.
Really, the whole thing is great, and she covers additional topics of delight such as Toni Braxton's virtuosic if campy melodrama, Kate Winslett and Madonna's figures, the morality tale embedded within Titanic,and the greatness of Frank Zappa.
And although I of course disagree greatly with her assertions about the New Testament and Jesus, she also manages to explain her atheist rejection of Jesus as messianic savior with an acceptable degree of deference for a non-believer.
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