Dear American Public (Or, More Specifically, That Very Scientific, Completely Unbiased Cross-Section Recently Polled by the Washington Post and ABC News):

49% for Bush? Are you nuts? If the President were to be photographed in Iraq standing on the bloody chest of an American soldier, would you still vote for him? If the President declared that all people who earned less than $50K would have to submit 82% of their income to the government, would you still vote for him? If the President lined up every world leader in a line and systematically punched each of them in the gut in the name of unilateral diplomacy, would you still vote for him? If the President revealed that the $87 billion Iraq aid package actually involved hookers, vintage claret and overpriced fillet mignons served on the naked backs of women hoping to get partial birth abortions, would you still believe this man was equipped to deal with this nation’s most pressing concerns?

Really, folks, I need to know what it takes. Because frankly you’re scaring the shit out of me.

I’d say more, but if I continue in this vein, I’ll reveal more wanton cliches, more ignnoble and vitriolic wonkage. And who wants more of that? But then since 6% of you are determined to waste your vote on that muddafugga Ralph, whose blustery ego seems incapable of comprehending that a second Bush term will undo much of the public service he’s spent a lifetime fighting for, perhaps what you secretly desire are these overbearing platitudes, no better than the pretzel logic placards you see at rallies. Perhaps the crooked status quo is what you’ve been pining for all along. Perhaps you’re all like that fulminating idiot I encountered on the N Judah the other day who demanded that the world listen to his vociferous protests, dammit, but who ostracized everyone in the streetcar because he couldn’t understand that a reluctant yet practical vote for Kerry doesn’t obviate a desire for greenjeans idealism, a cognizance of globalization, or a concern for social justice.

American Public, if you allow this chickenhead to win again, if you fail to evince the same pragmatism and solicitude that you expressed in the immediate days following September 11, when our President was Un-Presidential and it took an Unlikely Times Square-Destroying Mayor to Express Equanimity and Stature and steer this nation forward, then I will turn my back on you. You will, as Jefferson noted, deserve the government you get. Do you have any memory?

Begrudgingly yours,

Edward Champion

Lots of solid long-form author interviews up: Birnbaum takes on Edwidge Danticat and Stephen Elliott, and Laura Miller talks with Neal Stephenson.

Another great Philip K. Dick novel is destined for cinematic ruin. Keanu “Whoa!” Reeves will star in A Scanner Darkly. Hopefully, director Richard Linklater won’t have him speak that much, although given the talkiness of his other films, I fear the worst. And, besides, who can forget how awful Johnny Mnemonic was?

Chick Lit has a bigger problem than what you might expect: where are the black women?

What makes the wiping of prison imate hard drives more pernicious is that it comes as inmate Barbara Parsons Lane is set to win tonight’s PEN/Faulkner First Amendment award. If prisoners were not allowed to write, we wouldn’t have the words of Eldrige Cleaver, O. Henry, Jean Genet, or Marquis de Sade to stack on our bookshelves.