Month / March 2004

by DrMabuse

A Special Message from Bill Keller

keller.jpg3/10/04 12:24:06 PM

Comrades,

I’m excited to report that we’ve managed to fool everybody all the time. Not only was Sam Tanenhaus selected four months ago, but we deliberately allowed people to believe that there was actually a major race here. Some folks actually thought that their votes and their sentiments counted. Well, I assure you that nothing could be further from the truth.

Not only was Chip McGrath quietly ushered out of the building months ago, collecting his box with all the terrible grace of a mall Santa heading to a dive, but Sam’s been the man editing the NYTBR all along. This grand announcement is yet another stone that we should add to Chip’s cairn. And what a grand display it is. But what was the poor bastard thinking leaving us like that?

Well, I’ll tell you exactly what he was thinking. Profit and attention. Now every book freak has a Tiger Beat spread of Chip cater-cornered to their Proust set. He is, as we all secretly knew and planned all along, hotter than Justin Timberlake. Now that Chip’s left, his approval rating in the polls is now, for the first time ever, higher than both Randy Cohen and Maureen Dowd combined! Yes, we here at the Gray Lady watch these demographics like a hawk. And the fact that these foolish journalists and bloggers got all excited about the Book Review (including those silly Book Babes), well, let’s just say that I’m getting some special service tonight.

The time has come for endless boasting and complete subservience. I don’t just want you to love me. I want you to pledge your firstborn. I want to see your children here at the Times as indentured servants.

Rest assured, you will love Sam. Just as you loved Chip. I will see to it that you will not stop submitting to the Gray Lady.

Your beautiful overlord,

Bill

by DrMabuse

NYTBR: It’s Sam!

My sources tell me that Sam Tanenhaus is the next NYTBR editor. Publishers Weekly has more. Tanenhaus has authored bios of Whittaker Chambers and Louis Armstrong (and has an upcoming one on William Buckley), contributes to The New Republic and is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair. He is a writer primarily known for nonfiction bouncing between politics, biography and literature, which is what Keller was looking for. Here’s Tanenhaus on Updike.

[UPDATE: Maud found the link to the memo.]

by DrMabuse

The Nation Green Preservation Society

Charles has dug up some fascinating info about Bailey’s. Apparently, the creamy liquor is preserved through the whiskey. And it can last as long as two years. However, Bailey’s suggests that you drink it within six months. Charles, however, was able to detect a suitable creamy taste after a year and a half. Presumably, in sharing this information, the company isn’t considering its profits at all. It has only its customers’ best interests at heart.

But all this talk of alcohol preservation has me contemplating the future of liquor, should Bush be elected to a second term.

After the Super Size recall and Ashcroft’s hijinks, I genuinely suspect that we’re going to see bottles that are modified for each individual. A tiny blade will extract a blood sample from each individual purveyor at a liquor store and decide in an instant just how much liquor is good for them. The blood sample will be compared against a database (specifically DUIs and D&D charges), as well as that individual’s tolerance for alcohol.

This will be necessary. Because the state remains convinced that people cannot be responsible for their own lives and, with states bereft of funds, there aren’t any additional funds to educate people. (Plus, parents and people in general are offended too easily. To introduce anything beyond the limited parameters of the No Child Left Behind Act will cause too much trouble.)

Beyond preserving the national supply of Bailey’s, this new bottle technology will raise the price of alcohol (and expand profits and consumer confidence; good for everyone, yo). But, more importantly, it will prevent auto collisions. And the state, in extracting a liberty, will be able to look upon this declining statistic and proudly proclaim its progress. Forget the people thrown in prison on trivial charges or the suspected terrorists hied away to closed military tribunals. Or for that matter the individual’s ability to decide how much alcohol s/he can drink.

Meanwhile, the drugs that harm no one and that do not cause a single fatality will remain criminalized. And the street peddlers susurrating “green bud” will be arrested by a renewed police force. Never mind that these small-time merchants have the same preservationist interests at heart and are probably just as ruthless in their dealings as R & A Bailey & Co.

The important result here is that liquor will be preserved. And people will no longer be sauced on a Saturday night. They will stare like lucid does into the headlights of that steamroller about to mow them down and, with stupid uncritical eyes, not understand that their spirits have been diluted.