Fitzgerald

Susan Cheever

There are certainly moments when it is embarrassing not to drink. A friend will start to pour me a glass of wine and then apologize profusely. At a party someone will notice my club soda and decide to make an issue of it. Why can’t I just have a little white wine? But there were many more embarrassing moments when I did drink, and that’s what watching other people get drunk helps me remember. For me, the psychology is often in reverse. I learn from seeing what I don’t want and avoiding it, rather than from seeing what I do want and aspiring to it.

Athens

Greek police officers used their shields as they were attacked with flour, yogurt, eggs and tomatoes during a rally outside the police headquarters in central Athens.

Photo: Yiorgos Karahalis/Reuters

To Read

Caroline Kennedy

Kennedy, Caroline and Ellen Alderman

The Right to Privacy - 1st Edition/1st Printing

Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: As New in As New dust jacket; Signed by All Authors
Edition: First Edition; First Printing
Size: 8vo
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995, New York, NY, U.S.A
ISBN: 0679419861
[Book #14588]

A handsome copy of this unread As New First Edition/First Print in alike dustjacket. This copy is SIGNED by the author and president's daugher Caroline Kennedy and author Ellen Alderman directly on the half-title page;

Kennedy and Alderman, both attorneys, examine one of our basic - and most contested - legal and constitutional rights: the right to privacy. The conclusion that emerges from their careful exploration is that we are witnessing a "general erosion of privacy." At once shocking and instructive, up-to-date and rich in historical perspective, The Right to Privacy is an invaluable guide to one of the most charged issues of our time

Price: $210.00

New York

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Caroline Kennedy campaigning for Barack Obama in Hartford, Conn., in February.

Caroline, yes.

''Bush, Bush, listen well: Two shoes on your head."

BAGHDAD — Hitting someone with a shoe is a strong insult in Iraq. It means the person is as low as the dirt underneath the sole of a shoe. An American military patrol in Najaf on Monday was pelted by shoes thrown by supporters of Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric. In Tikrit, journalists demonstrated in support of the Iraqi reporter who threw his shoes at President Bush during a news conference yesterday. And across Iraq, everyone seemed to have an opinion of the flying footwear incident.

Photo: Mohammed Zaatari/Associated Press
Chinese U.N. peacekeepers performed martial arts techniques during a medal ceremony at their base in the southern village of Henniyeh, Lebanon.

Athens

Photo: John Kolesidis/Reuters
The damage from days of protests was still visible outside the campus of Athens' Polytechnic. "Things are a scale or two lower today," said Panayotis Stathis, the national police spokesman.

Report Blames Rumsfeld for Detainee Abuses

By SCOTT SHANE and MARK MAZZETTI
NYTimes (excerpts):

WASHINGTON — A report released Thursday by leaders of the Senate Armed Services committee said that top Bush administration officials, including Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, bear major responsibility for the abuses committed by American troops in interrogations at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other military detention centers.

The report was issued jointly by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the Democratic chairman of the panel, and Senator John McCain of Arizona, the top Republican. The report represents the most thorough review by Congress to date of the origins of the abuse of prisoners in American military custody, and it explicitly rejects the Bush administration’s contention that tough interrogation methods have helped keep the country and its troops safe.

The report also rejected previous claims by Mr. Rumsfeld and others that Defense Department policies played no role in the the harsh treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 and in other incidents of abuse.

The abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the report says, “was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own” but grew out of interrogation policies approved by Mr. Rumsfeld and other top officials “conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees.”

By the time of the abuses at Abu Ghraib, Mr. Rumsfeld had formally withdrawn approval for use of the harshest techniques, which he authorized in December 2002 and then ruled out a month later. But the report said that those methods, including the use of stress positions and forced nudity, continued to spread through the military detention system. It added that their use “damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.”

Wanda Sykes

The sad thing is like over 80 million dollars was spent on Prop 8, and the California food banks - their shelves are bare. So instead of spending your money on hate why don't you buy a couple cans of pork and beans? Buy some food.

Little Ashes

Javier Beltrán as Federico García Lorca and Robert Pattinson as Salvador Dalí.
Release date: Spring 2009

Madrid 1922. A city wavering on the edge of change as traditional values are challenged by the dangerous new influences of jazz, Freud and the avant-garde. Salvador Dalí arrives at university at the age of 18, determined to become a great artist. His bizarre blend of shyness and rampant exhibitionism attracts the attention of two of the university’s social elite — Federico García Lorca and Luis Buñuel.

Salvador is absorbed into their decadent group and for a time Salvador, Luis and Federico become a formidable trio, the most ultra-modern group in Madrid. However, as time passes, Salvador feels an increasingly strong pull toward the charismatic Federico — who is oblivious to the attention he is getting from his beautiful writer friend, Magdalena. Finally, in the face of his friends’ preoccupations — and Federico’s growing renown as a poet — Luis sets off for Paris in search of his own artistic success.

Federico and Salvador spend the holiday in the seaside town of Cadaqués. Both the idyllic surroundings and the warmth of the Dalí family sweep Federico off his feet. Salvador and he draw closer, sharing their deepest beliefs, inspirations and secrets, convinced that they have found a kind of friendship undreamt of by others. It is more than a meeting of the minds; it is a fusion of souls. And then one night, in the phosphorescent water, it becomes something else.

A seemingly innocent kiss throws Federico and Salvador into the realms of the taboo. In the world of Spanish Catholicism, homosexuality is an affront against God and man. On their return to Madrid the two embark on an unspoken, secret relationship. When Luis visits, he is appalled to realize that Federico is apparently in love with Salvador. He leaves the city in shock rather than confronting his one-time friend.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Photo: Merrick Morton/Paramount Pictures
Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt.

Toggle Coat

Photo: Andrew Giammarco for The New York Times
Ralph Lauren wool toggle coat, $835 at Saks Fifth Avenue.

Pitt

Photo: Nadav Kander
Rolling Stone Interview (excerpt):
Did you go to church every Sunday [growing up]?
Yeah. And it was too much of what you shouldn't be doing instead of what you could be doing. I get enraged when people start telling other people how to live their lives. It drives me mental. This Prop. 8 thing just drives me mental.