Cry Fire

You can't yell 'Fire' in a crowded hall. Everyone uses that analogy to describe the limits of free speech. And you don't call a man an arsonist in a crowded pub.

Joseph Murphy was having a drink (or several) in a Leitrim pub when Eoin McManus sauntered in. They got to talking, as men will do over a pint, and before long, the topic shifted to a recent arson attack at a local quarry. Someone burned out a couple of excavators, and Mr. Murphy declared that it was not Eoin or his missus who done the burning. No, it was his brother Michael, the "buck from Sligo" who committed the crime. Mr. Murphy knew it was Michael done it, and he was going to catch up with the arsonist.

Tell one man something in a pub, and the whole town knows of it before the night is over. Everyone who had stopped in at Flynn's Pub after a funeral were suddenly made aware that their neighbor Michael McManus had set fire to machinery and caused damage. And there was the man's brother, drinking in the pub, being told that his brother was a criminal. From the pub, and out into the street, word spread.

After a week or two, Mr. Murphy rang up Mr. McManus and apologized. It was the drink talking, not Joseph Murphy, and he was wrong to have let his tongue wag without putting a leash on it.

In court, Mr. Murphy claimed that he never said any such thing about Michael McManus being an arsonist. As far as he could judge, it was just a case of extortion and blackmail, with Mr. McManus trying to put the squeeze on him and making some unjustified claims. That notion, however, failed to explain why Mr. Murphy rang up Mr. McManus and apologized for speaking out of turn, and the jury saw it that way as well.

Free speech is priceless. For Mr. Murphy, the price of his speech has been set at EU300,000. His legal team plans to appeal the ruling.

On The Heels Of Last Year's Success

What if you held a parade and rioters came? Does love really mean never having to say you're sorry? What about Love Ulster? Ah, they're a sorry lot, but they'll not be apologizing.

This summer, Dublin could once again be treated to the Love Ulster parade, a marching celebration of all things sectarian. Last year, Willy Frazer organized a parade so that the Protestant victims of The Troubles could strut their stuff in Dublin, beating drums and waving the Union Jack, wearing Orange Order sashes as a reminder that Ireland is still divided and Love Ulster wants to keep it that way. Sinn Fein begged to differ, and the parade never quite took that first step. A riot broke out, shops were looted, bits of construction materials were thrown through windows, and forty-two protestors were arrested. Businesses saw trouble coming and they shut their doors. By the time it was over, they claimed EU10 million in lost sales and physical damages.

Why is Mr. Frazer trying again? Because Sinn Fein got trounced in the recent elections. In his mind, that means that the people of Ireland don't like Sinn Fein any more than he does, so they should also be in favor of his parade, just like he is. Flawless logic, there.

He has spoken to Garda representatives, who have told him that he can parade. The problem is, it's going to take a massive amount of manpower to police the parade. The bands and paraders will probably end up marching between cordons of gardai, which is not quite what the Love Ulster people had in mind. No one could see them, and what's the point of a parade if you've no audience?

The Love Ulster parade committee is going to think it over, in light of the advice from An Garda Siochana. They might want to think over something else while they're at it. Just because Sinn Fein lost seats in the last election doesn't mean that the people of Ireland have come to love the Orange Order and sectarianism. It doesn't mean that everyone in the Republic is happy about the partition of 1922, or that they don't want a united Ireland. Sinn Fein isn't particularly welcome, but that doesn't mean Love Ulster is about to be welcomed with open arms. Sorry.

In Case You Were Thinking Of Submitting

After six and one-half months, it's a 'No' from the Gettysburg Review. In my fantasies, I shall imagine the editor, Peter Stitt, reading the short story over and over, giving it serious consideration, but then, at the end....no credentials, no room in the journal.

There was more than just the little card that said 'Rejection' in so many words. Clipped to the first page of the story, back to back with the rejection, was another card that pretty much said, If you're thinking about submitting again, well, we're closed.

I'm not taking it as a warning, however. I know they don't read in the summer, but not everyone does. The extra note was for all those faceless others who don't remember to read the journal's submission rules and regulations before posting their works of literary art. So I won't send another story just yet. I'm waiting for August and September, when the happy little English majors are back at university and ready to do that work-study business by tackling the slush. Ah, the things you'll do for an education.

Hip-Waders Optional

Such a troubled individual was JT Leroy. And Laura Albert. But Laura was JT. JT was Laura....is Laura. Her respirator, JT, her channel for air.

Pull on your hip-waders or slap on the Wellies. The muck is piling high, higher and deeper. Laura Albert is in the midst of a contract dispute and she's pleading a form of insanity. Money's at issue, and how else could she hope to salvage something out of the web she wove when first she practiced to deceive? So it's to be the artiste, the creative genius slipping into insanity, replacing JT Leroy with the next character.

A contract signed by JT Leroy is null and void because JT Leroy does not exist. That's what the film production company said when they cancelled out on the film rights for the JT Leroy epic novel Sarah. The critics loved the book, but they really loved that deranged author who was so asexual as to be androgynous. Then the world discovered that this brilliant author was only a real person who said she was what she was not, and that was the end of the ride for Ms. Albert.

Why should Ms. Albert not lose the money? Let me count the ways. She was sexually abused by a family friend and by her mother's former boyfriend. Then she had to deal with obesity as a child, and endure the teasing and torment of her peers. She spent time in a mental hospital, and then she worked a phone sex line in San Francisco. Yes, but, what does this have to do with signing a contract with a false name? Writers use pseudonyms all the time and sign their contracts with their real names.

In a nutshell, Ms. Albert was a nut case. She created this artificial persona of JT Leroy and took to inhabiting it full time. When Steven Shainberg came around to discuss the movie deal and meet the author, the tangled web wrapped around Ms. Albert and she fought to get free. She had to spin even more lies, to cover up the original lie. As far as Antidote International Films is concerned, that's fraud and it's illegal and that nullifies the contract.

Not so fast, says Ms. Albert. She was not really pulling a fast one. Her ex-boyfriend's sister was not merely fronting for JT Leroy when Ms. Albert was pretending to be someone else entirely. No indeed, this friend was possessed by JT Leroy when they met with Mr. Shainberg. Or pregnant with JT Leroy. There was a JT Leroy, Ms. Albert insists, sort of like an invisible friend or the creation of a very troubled mind, so she was not deceiving the production company after all.

Fraud, however, is fraud, and even a lunatic cannot claim insanity as a defense and then expect to keep the money that was paid out on a fraudulent contract. It's a nice try. Maybe Ms. Albert can walk around in public in a bathrobe, looking dishevelled, to demonstrate her incapacitating mental state. Then again, that tactic didn't work for a New York mobster.

The critics raved about the book, but it withered when the public found out that the writer was not JT Leroy. That was the end of the plaudits, the adulation, the oohs and ahhs. And the literary agents insist that it's all about the writing that gets you published.

Transcript of a Job Interview

"And what are your qualifications, Tony?"

"My good friend George phoned me. Knew I was looking for new employment. And he mentioned this position in particular, with my unique qualifications. My resume is extensive and all past experience points towards this exact job opening."

"There's some suggestions that you might be interested in another job. We've gotten wind of some rumors."

"Front-line politics? No, not for me. Frankly, the presidency of the European Union would be akin to becoming the ringmaster in a circus. On the surface, one would expect to have a great deal of power, but the fact of the matter is, they can't agree what to have for lunch, let alone reach any sort of governing accord. President of nothing with that position. No, honestly, I would much prefer this position that my dear friend George asked me to apply for."

"You have a recommendation here from former President Carter."

"And who wouldn't humor an old man? He insisted, and, that is, he means well, doesn't he? Full of good intentions. And he does make a strong point, with my experience in the peace process. For example, there was an election ninety years ago that we felt was not in the best interest of the island. Before long, the populace rose up and we had several years of civil war. Brother against brother, destruction, the lot. So we split the island into two countries. Partition worked, and it will work in the Palestinian territories."

"But partition led to The Troubles. More slaughter, bombings, disappearances. Is that what you would bring to the Middle East as Quartet envoy?"

"The Republic of Ireland, the break-away nation, is thriving today. They cast off their fundamentalist Catholic cloak and stepped out into the world. Look at how successful they are today. So you see, partition does work, and work effectively. If I am given the position I seek, I plan to encourage the separation that exists today. Gaza will be cast loose, while the West Bank will be shored up with donations and cash stipends, expand the public sector, turn it into a nation of bureaucrats. Just like Northern Ireland has been supported by hand-outs from London."

"And you see Gaza blossoming like the Irish Republic. An Arab Tiger, if you will?"

"If they get out from under the thumb of religion. And if they don't turn inward, as Ireland did, and become a backward, repressed society."

"You do indeed have a great deal of experience in this field. Highly qualified. Now, about the salary."

Declining The World Over

At the recent BEA convention, the story was the sorry state of publishing. So many titles, so few readers, the moan went up amongst the crowd. What does the book-buying public want? Why can the publishing houses not figure it out?

Tony Farmar, past president of the Irish Publishers' Association, is worried about the health of Irish publishing houses, those small presses that struggle to compete with the mighty powerhouses in England. Irish authors are lured to London with the promise of large advances, loads of publicity and plenty of hype, so how can some small beer of a press ever hope to compete against those big wallets? His suggestion has some merit.

Like the publishers in New York, the London-based presses aren't much interested in culture beyond their city limits because they can't relate to it. If they don't relate to it, the reasoning goes, neither can anyone else, so why bother publishing something that won't sell. Irish authors go unpublished, even though they have something to say, because what they are saying has been judged too regional, 'wouldn't know how to sell it' as the literary agents say. Change the setting to London or New York City and throw in a bit of shopping at high end establishments and then we'll talk.

Mr. Farmar has suggested that the government treat small presses as cultural institutions, and support them as they support painters or sculptors or theatres. If it doesn't get written down and put into print, it gets lost, and if the big houses aren't buying something they deem too "Irish", shouldn't Ireland step in and rescue its written culture? In a land famous for writers and poets, is the written word something worth shoring up? It's been done in Canada, to help Canadian publishers keep their heads above the flood that is publishing in New York City.

Is it time for the states of Montana or North Dakota to promote local authors? If the literary agents in New York won't represent someone writing about a winter in the High Plains, should the local authorities step in to help so that their unique culture isn't lost? Would people read more if they had good books about people like them, living in the same sort of place and doing the same sort of things? Not shopping at Bergdorf Goodman, that is, or trading bonds on Wall Street.

Splitting Hairs

What did Mr. Finian McGrath get for his support of Fianna Fail, and what was his prize for joining the coalition of FF and the Greens?

Sure 'tis a secret. The Independent TD has to talk to his constituents first, but he might reveal a bit of the deal. Or at least the part that covers the use of Shannon Airport by the US military. That's no secret, of course. Planes from America touch down in Shannon, the soldiers get a chance to stretch their legs, buy from the duty free shops, and enjoy a lovely cuppa tea before continuing their journey to Iraq and Afghanistan. A plane needs a rest as well, and a refueling, and the Irish Exchequer benefits all around.

Mr. McGrath is not at all pleased that the evil empire's soldiers are setting foot on Irish soil. It's that war, you see, and all that imperialism. Well, when you don't much care about Afghani women being stoned to death for perceived crimes, or you prefer to turn a blind eye to the suffering of the ladies, and the blatant discrimination against Christians, you're more likely to rant and rave about soldiers walking about Shannon. It's as if Ireland is supporting the war, and it's a neutral country, and the war is all wrong. So what if a mullah wants to oppress women. It's their problem. Am I my brother's and my sister's keeper?

The thing about the deal is, Mr. McGrath signed a letter before the election, vowing to not participate in any government that allows the US to use Irish facilities to conduct war in Iraq, or anyplace else for that matter if the letter writers think said war is imperialistic. Here he is today, going into government with a group that hasn't paid the slightest attention to all the anti-war protesters who want the use of Shannon ended. How to reconcile such contrary positions?

Here's where the hairs get split. Mr. McGrath made an agreement with Bertie Ahern, reaching a brilliant compromise that gets both men what they want. Sure, says Bertie, the US can continue to use Shannon as a stopover on the way to Iraq. But that's as far as it goes. Any non-UN mandated military operations can't stop by for a cuppa and a scone. Unless the Dail votes on it and allows the stop, say, if the pilot called for an emergency landing. Being anti-war is one thing, but there are humanitarian concerns after all.

What's so exciting about a UN mandate? The US is operating under a UN mandate in Iraq. As a member of the UN, Ireland has always followed the body's mandates. The government has no intention of blocking the Shannon stopover, because doing so would violate Ireland's agreement with the United Nations. There's nothing more to be done about it, unless Mr. McGrath would like to legislate Ireland's exit from the UN?

Flights Of Mobsters Sing Thee To Thy Rest

Fans of The Sopranos are sorry to see it gone. No more excitement on a Sunday night. No more suspense, who gets whacked and who rises in the televised world of organized crime.

How real was the program, anyway? Was it largely flights of fancy, cooked up to follow along the lines of King Lear or something equally tragic? Did the screenwriters take news items and cook them up into juicy scenes, to lend that tasty air of reality? A new series is about to begin, and it will dish up all kinds of reality. Follow along and judge for yourself, just how accurate The Sopranos version of mob mayhem might have been.

In Chicago, the trial of Conrad Black is drawing to a close and court watchers are keeping an eye on the next trial. Joey "The Clown" Lombardo is about to be hauled into court, along with four of his closest friends who were the core of Chicago's crime syndicate.

Contract killings? It will be there, brought out in an open courtroom. Unsolved murders, loan sharking, the numbers racket; all fodder for the prosecution. Who was the boss of the family, who were the made men, the enforcers, the hit men? Day by day, the evidence will be presented. Flow charts will be fashioned for PowerPoint presentations, a roster of who reported to whom, and where the money went.

The Sopranos was entertainment, with family conflict as much a part of the show as the crime, but it was the cold-blooded nature of the criminal enterprises that held viewers spellbound, week after week. Now, instead of turning on your television to HBO, you can click on a link to the Chicago Tribune, and watch the drama unfold.

You can be sure that City Hall will have its collective eyes glued to the courtroom, carefully watching the action and trying to guess which mobster will be legally whacked next. The trail leads back to the fifth floor office of Richard Daley, it is said. So you thought it was exciting, that last bit at the end of the final episode of The Sopranos? You ain't seen nothing yet.

Climb Aboard

Leading by example, that's the image that Minister Eamon Ryan presented when he turned up for his first day on the job. If a man's to be the face of energy and natural resources, he'd best be aware of the press and the television camera. And so, the member of the Green Party rode his bicycle to work and urged others to follow suit.

Begin by living close to your job. Admittedly, that could be difficult if you work in central Dublin and you can't even hope to afford as much as a single room nearby, what with the price of real estate these days. File a complaint with Mr. Ryan or sue the government to provide accommodations for workers who wish to peddle rather than put the peddle to the metal. You'd cycle if you could, and it's up to the State to make it possible.

Need to pick up the week's shopping at Tesco or Superquinn? You've only the basket on your bicycle, remember, so you'll have to shop daily. That should help you cut food costs. Only what you can carry, and once you've picked up the essentials, well, no room to port that giant pack of Fig Rolls, is there? What about it, ladies? Perhaps two or three trips per day might be needed to keep the larder stocked. You should petition the government to mandate breaks during the day, with pay of course, so that you can cycle to the grocer's, bring home the bacon, and then head back to work.

Car-pooling the kids to sports and dance and music lessons and tutoring after school could become a bit of a challenge, but there are carriers available that attach easily to the rear wheel or seat post. With careful packing, you could stuff at least six children, one soccer ball, and the sports drinks for the team. If this is currently illegal, it's merely a matter of petitioning Mr. Ryan to craft the proper legislation to make it possible for mothers (and the occasional father) to haul around several children.

Mr. Ryan has admitted that he may not always be able to ride his bicycle wherever he needs to go. Of course, he could hire a rickshaw to carry him, leaving him free to sit in the back seat and work on his government papers and arrive for a meeting looking fresh and well-groomed. He could set the example, and then all the well-heeled of Dublin would hop on the trendy bandwagon. Why peddle your own self, when you can afford to hire someone to do it for you? And what better way to get home after a night at the local?

Would the gardai be put back on bicycles? That could be a bit of a problem, trying to chase after a criminal who's driving a car. To make things equal, the government will have to enact new legislation that adds extra penalties for those who elude the guards via petrol-guzzling motor vehicles rather than leg-powered locomotion. And drink driving penalties will have to be changed, to reflect the fact that a drunkard can easily elude the breathalyzer by speeding up when he sees the garda at a roadblock just outside the pub.

Ireland is well on its way to reducing its dependence on foreign oil. If everyone would join together and do their part to cut back on energy consumption, carbon emissions would plummet. As for installing better insulation for efficient heating, and adding solar panels to reduce electric usage, everyone should step up and do their part. Keep in mind, however, that you'll need to do some heavy thinking to figure out how to carry all that home on the bar of your bike.

Head-hopping And POV Shifting

Who is telling the story? You write your novel, but someone in the book is there, facing the reading audience. Whoever you choose, that character is possessed of the Point Of View.

Is it first person POV? Lots of 'I' this and 'I' that, with the occasional 'we' thrown in for good measure. And what becomes of the bits of the tale that are never witnessed by the 'I'? The author has to tred carefully here, because changing the POV, shifting from the thoughts and impressions of 'I' to a different character, can result in some unpleasant and disconcerting head-hopping.

Good authors can move in and out of the heads of characters, but they let the reader know that someone else is doing the story-telling. The girl looks at the boy, describes his ratty jeans or his shaggy locks. Can't have the lad pop up in the very next sentence to describe the ant crawling on the girl's back when she can't see it or feel it. And then hop back to the girl, to get her reaction to the boy brushing her back. The reader gets confused about who is talking, who is seeing, and a lost reader is a reader the author has lost.

If you watched the last episode of The Sopranos, you may or may not have liked the ending, but you have to like the newest conspiracy theory that has erupted. The problem is, if you accept the latest suggestion that the director went all artsy and philosophical, then you would find yourself a bit disconcerted. It's a case of head-hopping, a shifting POV that makes for some very confused viewers.

The suggestion now being floated is that Tony was indeed whacked in the final minutes. There was foreshadowing, it is said, with some flashback scene in which death was described as everything going black. Well, there's the final few minutes right there. The screen went black.

And before that? As a television viewer, the program happens through your POV, not that of Tony Soprano. You saw the family enter the diner, one by one. You saw the daughter struggle to park her car, outside, where Tony could not see her. The story was not coming out of his POV at all, but you were the eyes that witnessed the events.

If Tony was whacked, and the foreshadowed blackness was meant to indicate death, then it was death from Tony's point of view. Only seconds before, it was your point of view, but hop over to another head and there's an artistic statement. To hold the POV, the whacking would have to happen before your eyes, but it did not. Was Tony murdered? You watched it, through your eyes, but if you could suddenly jump into his head, then maybe he was. Getting all existential or whatever sort of philosophy might apply; a bit deep for a Sunday evening.

Or maybe the screenwriters and the director wanted to create enough confusion to keep people talking about a series that has ended its first run. After all, who would buy all the DVDs if they knew the main character died at the end?

As Expected

Bertie Ahern has been elected Taoiseach for the third time. Did anyone really doubt that he would win this time around?

John Gormley of the Green Party was named Minister of the Environment. Well, what other post would he have accepted and still gone into government? Would anyone doubt that he was going to be put in charge of all the things that the Green Party weeps over? And with Eamon Ryan taking the helm, to steer the ship of Energy into choppy waters, it looks like Mr. Ahern may succeed in cutting the heart out of the Green Party.

Before long, the Greens will be touting lower emissions, reducing the carbon footprint that has been casting an ever longer shadow in Ireland these days. With success in the global market comes financial largesse and the means to put a car in every garage. People don't walk anymore if they can drive. They don't take public transportation anymore if they have access to a car. And Mr. Gormley will trot into the Dail with all sorts of plans and ideas to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Businesses will jump and scream, waving flow charts that show how the Green Party's ideas will drive away manufacturing by adding costs. The average citizen will let it be known that they are having enough trouble meeting their monthly bills as it is, and 'Rip-off Ireland' need not become even more expensive.

Back at the Ministry of Energy, Mr. Ryan will talk up projects that cannot actually be done just yet because the technology isn't there. He will call for changes, but anything that involves an increased cost to the consumer will fail. The problem is, everything that has been suggested before has involved an increased cost to the consumer, and Mr. Ryan will soon discover that his powerful ministerial position has brought him nothing but bad press and the censure of the electorate. After all, the voters did not cast their ballots with an eye to putting Fianna Fail into coalition with the Green Party. They've gotten what they don't want, and they won't be standing tall behind the Green Party and any proposals that the coalition partner puts forward.

By the time the next election rolls around, the Greens will be looked on as a bunch of egg-headed crackpots full of dangerous notions that will destroy the Celtic Tiger, make it financially impossible to live large, and that is not at all what the people want. With public outcry crushing their plans for new laws and regulations that promote their agenda, their chances of ever taking another seat will plummet to new lows. On the heels of devastating failure, they will either tone down the rhetoric and become more Fianna Fail-like, or they will shrink into relative insignificance. What politician couldn't like that, when his opposition withers away and the road to the next election is made a little smoother.

Less air pollution and energy consumption? Sure, but not if it comes at the cost of giving up the car and the weekends at the holiday home in Kerry.

Coming Up Empty

Two days without a computer, without e-mail, without access to the short story submission records, and I didn't go mad at all. And the minute I come home, it's straight at the computer to see if, as it surely must be, someone got back to me.

Nadia Cornier, after two weeks, sent a form e-mail rejection, declining. That's the sort of thing I've come to expect. Even William Clark declined a query that I sent.....six months ago, I believe. After a month with an e-query, you already know it's a 'no', but still. Nice to get the formal notification when no one else is replying to anything.

What about the short stories? Gettysburg Review is late on their response, going past the six month time. Blue Mesa Review has had a story since last November, and nothing. Have they lost it? Then there's the Boston Review, also well past their notify-by date. So that's it. I come back after a couple of days, and there's no news. No requests for more, no SASEs in the mail.

The agents don't respond anymore, and now the literary journals don't respond either. Have I become invisible without realizing a change was taking place? Or does the postman have it in for me?

Just Like In The Movies

Admittedly, Gerard Depardieu was a bit too old for Andie MacDowell, besides being a bit, shall we say, large for a romantic lead. Green Card was, in spite of its minor flaws, a charming bit of fluff that made for a night's entertainment.

The story was an old one. Illegal immigrant wants to stay in America, but he needs an American spouse. Through comedic means, he pairs up with a willing citizen and the rest is screwball comedy history. Pity it doesn't work that way in real life.

Jeremy Stames came to the aid of Svetlana Kostigova, who did not wish to go back from whence she came. Life is good in the States, no matter the whinging of the politicians, and there's plenty doing in Chicago for a go-getter from Eastern Europe. So, like the movie (except the illegal immigrant was the male, rather than the female, lead character) the couple entered into a sham marriage in 2002 and Ms. Kostigova could breathe easy. She found such relief, in fact, that she joined in with Mr. Stames to bring that same peace and harmony to others in similar situations.

In the movie, the prize for the illegal scam was a much desired apartment. In the real version of events, the award for scam marriages was $5000. Not much work for such a large pay-out, and anyone with a decent memory could pull it off. The participants were required to convince INS agents that the marriage was real, so there was a bit of time and effort involved. That $5000 was earned, not given away recklessly.

American citizens who took part in the scheme all worked together, going to each other's fake weddings and posing for pictures as if it were a real wedding. And then, like the movie, they used the pictures to bolster their claims of marriage.

The Federal authorities who broke up the ring are no doubt great fans of Gerard Depardieu or Andie MacDowell, because they didn't fall for it. Obviously, they were quite familiar with the plot line and clever devices of Green Card. Nine U.S. citizens and their nine Eastern European spouses have been arrested and charge with marriage fraud and immigration fraud. The Yanks face five years in prison. The foreigners face deportation.

That's not how it happened in the movie. Aren't these people supposed to fall in love and live happily ever after?

Lean To The Right

The French rule the fashion world. They set the pace for culinary excellence. For a long time, they were the standard bearers for European socialism. They're not quite so left-leaning any more, but the food is still outstanding.

The political battle between Nicolas Sarkozy and Segolene Royal was touted as the great ideological struggle between Right and Left, between the more Anglo-American model and the post-WWII love of socialism. All things on the right were decried, all the evils of crass commercialism and greed, while the left leaning politicians promised a bright future with something for everyone and a poulet in every pot.

The inconvenient truths of economics intruded on the French idyll, as socialism revealed itself to be a budget busting and costly venture that could not sustain itself. Due to restrictive laws that were supposed to protect the worker, it was getting more and more difficult to get a job. With everyone promised a place in university, a university education became meaningless with the need to dumb down the program to fit all. The French looked over what they had created, and decided that this was not, after all, what they had in mind. So they voted Nicolas Sarkozy into office.

Now the legislative elections have come and gone, and the Socialist party of Segolene Royal and her partner Francois Hollande has been trounced. 577 seats were contested, and Mr. Sarkozy's colleagues took all but 110 of them. By any account, that would be a resounding majority, a mandate (to steal a phrase) for change, for a lean to the right.

Socialists now preach fear, warning people that democracy will be smothered because Sarkozy's party has such an overwhelming majority. "Respect for basic rights (is) in peril" Mr. Hollande says, because he, as party leader, screwed up royally.

But what did the socialists have to offer to the French people, who live with their weak economy and high unemployment every day? That's the problem, right there. They had nothing to offer. Except for more of the same, that is, because it's socialism that brought France down and the French people have clearly had enough.

When it next sits, the French National Assembly will look rather like the American Congress, with one party in the majority and the other in opposition. The small groups, like the communists and the far right National Front, are represented in such small numbers as to be nearly extinct.

Will they be able to bring about the hard-nosed changes that are needed to get France back on solid economic footing? Will they weather the protests and riots that are sure to erupt when they try to change the wrong-headed laws that have weakened the economy but promised the moon to the average citizen?

How much did Congress get done when it was controlled by Republicans, with a Republican in the White House? Plus ca change, and all that.

Enjoy The Fried Kidneys

It's Bloomsday!

Fry up a lovely batch of lamb kidneys for breakfast, pour another cuppa tea, and crack open that copy of Ulysses that you've been meaning to read.

James Joyce fans have descended on Dublin and they're making the grand tour, following in the footsteps of the beloved Mr. Bloom.

Here's to James Joyce, and Irish literature in general.

Hard Sell

Random House thought it was a good idea to push literary fiction. In came Daniel Menaker, who was taken on to find all sorts of lovely literary fiction that would boost sales at Random House. Oddly enough, the plan failed.

Mr. Menaker, with a very extensive resume, will go off to write a novel. It will, no doubt, be literary fiction. As for the titles that he picked up for Random House, they will fall into the dark abyss of the back list and fade away.

It was Mr. Menaker who gave the world Absurdistan, a satirical send-up of American consumerism. Author Gary Shteyngart skewered Halliburton, American culture, the whole concept of prosperity, and Daniel Menaker 'fell in love' as the literary agents like to say. At the age of 65, can we presume that Mr. Menaker is a product of the 1960's, free love, make love not war? Can we also suggest that Mr. Menaker, from the old counter culture, thought that Absurdistan was a brilliant bit of fiction? Should we wonder, then, that the novel fell flat?

In New York City, one could see where the satire would find a home. The problem is, a book has to sell in between the coasts, that vast unknown wilderness. Would the average book buyer find the Shteyngart novel amusing, in the vein of Animal Farm, or do the great unwashed that populate the center of the nation prefer things like Animal House?

A friend came to me last year with a dilemma. Her neighbors were insisting on taking up a collection for her, since her husband was posted to Iraq on a tour of duty that pulled him from his managerial position to an intelligence mission in a foreign land. All the soldiers are poor, the neighbors had learned from television and the pages of the New York Times, and they longed to help. To help the poor family that could afford to buy a home for three quarters of a million dollars. To help the poor family that owned two SUVs. Of course they must be poor, the reasoning went, because himself is overseas doing his army reserve duty and the folks who sign up for military service are doing it because they need the money.

"How can I explain to them that we don't need anyone passing the hat?" she asked, but she's a very sweet and polite lady and wouldn't have followed my advice if I had given her my honest opinion. And I did feel badly for her. She's an executive with a very large bank, and she makes a very large salary. Bit of an insult, really, when the neighbors came around thinking she needed financial assistance.

That's the sort of thinking that's behind the publication of Absurdistan. The clueless, in a miasma of utterly misguided good intentions, presume that they know what's what. And then they get out there in the big broad world and things don't fall into place. So an editor in New York thought Absurdistan was brilliant, and the country pointed out that they didn't really care to be insulted by some foreigner. It's not a slap at literary fiction. It's a slap at one editor's good intentions paving a road to hell for any other authors who compose literary fiction that would be well received, except that the clueless can't figure out what's going on in the rest of the book-buying world. Rich kids do indeed sign on to serve their country. And their parents buy books. Or they don't buy what they find offensive or insulting. No need to pass the hat for them.

Cicada Watch: In Their Millions

The trees are full -- no room at the leafy inn. The blades of grass have to serve for vertical surfaces. Everywhere you look, the turf is crawling with cicadas, and it's getting rather disgusting to mow the lawn.

Dancing With The Politicians

Fianna Fail and the Green Party sat around a table and did all they could to reach common ground on forming a new government. Couldn't do it, the exhausted Greens said when the deadline came and went without an agreement. There were too many things that the Green Party wanted, like strict emissions controls and no more American military planes touching down at Shannon. No can do, said Fianna Fail, because that which the Greens wanted would cost too much money and there's all the signs of a downturn up the road.

Ah, but do you really, really, really want to be in government? Because if you do, Green Party, you'll take a few steps back and revise your positions or Labour just might step up and take your place.

It would be easier, as far as numbers go, to do a deal with the Green Party and be done with the negotiating. There are only two PDs who would of course be happy as larks to sign on for another five years with Fianna Fail. There are a few independents that arose from Fianna Fail stock, and being of similar minds they might join in as well, getting a little bit of a treat for their constituency in the bargain. That's how the dance is choreographed: right hand outstretched, money for a new creche received, turn and step. And if you're not chosen to dance? There's not much doing for the people who put you in office, and don't think they won't be reminded of it in the next election.

Won't dance with Fianna Fail, will you? Well look over there, it's a new partner for the political pas de deux. Labour might be interested. They flirted with Fine Gael, of course, but things didn't work out in the end and Labour would very much like to get into a coalition and have an impact on Ireland. They have the numbers, and it would be a one-stop shopping expedition to find enough bodies to form a majority coalition.

Think it over, Green Party. You could be left out in the cold, stuck on the Opposition benches and all because you played hard to get. Labour is lacing up its dancing shoes, ready to take to the floor. Fianna Fail cavorts openly with them, to remind the independents that they, too, could be wallflowers this time around if they push too hard and don't agree a reasonable compromise. There is a great deal at stake here, with political fortunes to be made.

Fianna Fail has every intention of filling its dance card, and it's not overly concerned with partners, except of course for the toe-stomping clods from Sinn Fein, who never get asked for so much as a short reel. Negotiators have let the Green Party know, in a rather roundabout way, that they may be left off completely if they're not careful, and all their dreams of ministerial positions will evaporate like so much fog on the disco floor.

Will The Sopranos End This Way?

Right now, odds are running two to one that HBO mobster Tony Soprano will die. That would make for the morally right ending, in a Victorian sort of way. The bad guy gets his in the end, good wins out over evil, and all that. But is that how things really go?

What became of John Gotti? Died in prison, not on the streets. There are others as well, heads of crime families who went to their just rewards after a bout with cancer or a heart attack or the ravages of age. Nothing dramatic.

Maybe Tony Soprano's saga will take a page from John Gilligan's life. The Irish thug was never convicted of murdering journalist Veronica Guerin, but it's a sure bet that he put out the contract on her when she got too close to uncovering his crime kingdom. Where is Mr. Gilligan today? Sitting in a prison cell, convicted of selling cannabis, doing twenty years, and the Criminal Assets Bureau is fighting him to get possession of his ill-gotten gains.

Gilligan's beloved Jessbrook Equestrian Centre and houses in Lucan have been in the hands of CAB since 1996, and Gilligan has been fighting in the courts to get his property back. There have been court cases, hearings, Supreme Court decisions and appeals galore, and still the criminal will not give it up.

Recently, Mr. Gilligan asked the courts to provide him with legal aid to help pay for a review of a Supreme Court decision that went against him. He's been arguing the constitutionality of a decision, the Supreme Court decided it was constitutional, and now he's trying to get the High Court to consider the Supreme Court ruling. No, said the State. No money for your attorney, no money to try to bring a nonsense to trial. You're not getting Jessbrook back.

There are those who believe that Mr. Gilligan transferred his wealth to his wife, and that he still retains much of the proceeds of his drug-selling business. He denies it, claiming he is destitute but finding the means to fight against the confiscation of his properties for ten years.

How's that for the final episode of The Sopranos? Tony in jail, his grand mansion forfeit to the state, his strip-club in the hands of the Feds....and the show could close with him talking to his lawyer, trying to find a way to hold on to all that was purchased with the proceeds of his crimes. The show would end with a whimper, not a bang, but that's how criminals usually go out these days. Makes for a rather boring program, though.

Part Of The Problem

Inflation is the reason why your salary buys less today than it did ten years ago. Call it the cost of living, if you like. Petrol for your automobile costs more, but you are only making the same wage as last year, so your cost of living is higher and something has to give. You aren't living as well as you were before; you do without a few luxuries like dining out or a weekly trip to the cinema.

Jack O'Connor, president of Ireland's biggest trade union, is alarmed about rising inflation, pegged at the seventh highest rate in the EU. Union members, with wage agreements in place for years to come, would lose out if their cost of living went up while wages held steady. That's not what the union is all about. As far as Mr. O'Connor is concerned, it's time that the previously agreed wage rates are visited again. Sounds like he's about to ask for pay increases for all the union members, to keep their wages in line with inflation.

He's upset about the ever rising interest rate on home mortgages, which is under the control of the European Central Bank. As for the cost of a house, the Government doesn't control the price of buildable land, but that's how the free market economy works. If I have a prime piece of real estate, and you want it bad enough, I can get my price and you'll pay through the nose. Now, if you want it really badly, but you can't afford it, you're out of luck. Mr. O'Connor would like Government to step in, to meddle with the market, so that his union members can buy houses where they would like to live, even if they are getting priced out of the current market. If you are the owner of a house that is going up in value, and thinking of making a comfortable profit when you sell it later, those are not the sorts of words you'd like to hear.

In the end, Mr. O'Connor is going to lobby for pay rises, appeasing his membership with a promise of more money. Manufacturing businesses, already stressed by competition from Eastern Europe and Asia, will increasingly pull up stakes and relocate their factories where the workers come cheap. Jobs in Ireland are already being lost to foreign wage competition, and raising worker salaries will escalate the rush abroad.

As workers lose their jobs, their homes will be lost and a flood of available housing will depress housing prices. Homes will indeed become more affordable under Mr. O'Connor's plan, but his union members will still not be able to buy because they won't have jobs. With the loss of manufacturing and related industries, the Exchequer will face reduced tax income, and the social housing program will have to be scaled back, along with everything else.

What does help to reduce wage inflation is increased productivity. That means the union worker has to produce more in the same amount of time, without getting more money for it. Fewer vacation days, longer hours, that sort of thing all help to increase productivity. Paying the worker more to do the same will only raise costs, and that generates more inflation.

Telling workers that they should be paid more, since it costs more to live, is fine if a man is trying to keep his lofty position. As a practical solution, it's nothing more than adding to the existing problem. Socialism doesn't work, as has been proved time and time again. The free market builds wealth, but it builds wealth on the backs of the lowest paid workers. Life's a bitch, isn't it.

It Wasn't Riverdance

Pirates are hot right now, but The Pirate Queen never caught fire. The musical spectacle was received well enough in Chicago, where it played on a trial basis before making its way east to the Big Apple, but audience polls and random tinkering did nothing to improve the problems that were exposed during the Chicago run.

The stage play relates the life of Grace O'Malley, a 16th Century Irish woman and pirate, and it should have been a grand story. Moya Doherty and John McColgan, who gave the world Riverdance and made a fortune in the process, were the producers and promoters who hoped to bring their Riverdance magic to another show-stopping show. With book and music by the creators of Les Miserables, it sounded, on paper, like it couldn't lose. And yet it did.

New York critics were so brutally savage that the tone of the negative reviews made the news. To a man, they hated the production, couldn't figure out what was going on, derided the plot and the story line, and made a mockery of the lavish production. The ticket-buying public heard and obeyed. Sales declined, the audience shrank, and Mr. McColgan and Ms. Doherty are pulling the plug, turning out the lights, and going to Europe. Their pet project, the life and times of a legendary Irish woman, lasted only about two months.

They hope that Europe will take to the grandiose musical numbers, the elaborate costumes and stunning special effects. Indeed, if Europe does not, the producers stand to lose a tremendous amount of money. Estimates put the cost of the production at $16 million, with only about $7 million recouped in poor sales.

Critics complained that the show seemed to lack a point. There was music and singing, actors moved about the stage, but there was no central focus. Hard to say if more tinkering with the script could fix things at this point, or if a complete rewrite would be needed to make the show more appealing to the viewer. Maybe the writers left out too much back story, assuming that everyone knew of Grace O'Malley, when the American audience knew nothing about pirates beyond Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow character.

There's always the Riverdance option, of course, if the producers should elect to tone down the costly parts of the spectacle. Put Grace O'Malley on the road, with dozens of touring companies playing venues both large and small. It could be that The Pirate Queen is not Broadway material, but it could play to sell-out crowds in Peoria.

Save A Stamp

Thinking of querying Danielle Egan-Miller of Browne & Miller? You might want to think again, if you can't stand to see another rejection.

Their clientele list is currently full. No more room. Couldn't take another manuscript, sorry. Unless, of course, it was something written by a previously published author or a celebrity, but for a first-time novelist? Can't squeeze in another one, impossible.

On the other hand, Artists and Artisans has added a new agent, and I've sent in my query. If you plan to query as well, you'd best hurry. I have a tendency to drive these poor rookies out of the agenting game with my queries, and Jamie Brenner may not last much longer.

Hello, Is Anyone Listening?

The Greens have been meeting with Fianna Fail on a daily basis. They exchange position papers, move about, and take up new positions, trying to find common ground on which to form a stable government.

Fianna Fail, in a very clever maneuver, is also trying to rope in a few independents, which would make it mathematically impossible for the likes of Sinn Fein to form a technical group and retain speaking rights in the Dail. If things fall into place, the last remnants of Sinn Fein would have little or no function in the next Dail, no input on anything, forced to sit on their hands during leaders' questions, and stay out of the way of the big dogs. Not at all what Gerry Adams had in mind, but such is politics in the Republic.

But wait.....do you hear it? It's a very tiny voice, but if you listen closely, you can just make out Enda Kenny. There he is again. Wanting everyone to know that the Fine Gael - Labour coalition isn't quite out of it yet. If he can seduce the Greens, convince them to climb into bed, then he can be the next taoiseach and his dreams will be realized at last. So let Fianna Fail woo the Greens, promise to respect the in the morning and the whole bit. He's going to talk to them as well, and offer them a loving, stable relationship for the next five years.

There he goes again, singing the same old tune. Bertie Ahern has had questionable financial dealings. Dearest Greens, you can't possibly want to hold hands with a man of such low character. He doesn't really love you, not like Fine Gael and Labour could love you if given a chance.

Reminds me of old movies, where the girls were dazzled by the bad boy, to the chagrin of the clean cut young gentleman who never failed to open a door for a lady. And just like that same good lad that any mother would be proud of, no one pays him much mind. The bad boy is so much more fun to be around.

Eating Up The Book Tour

Novelist Barbara Kingsolver has a new book to promote, marked by an appearance that was sponsored by the beloved Women and Children First Bookstore. She spoke at the Swedish American Museum Center, an appropriate venue to discuss food culture.

The non-fiction being touted describes the Kingsolver family's adventures in eating locally grown foods for a year. There's a whole movement out there, apparently, to eat locally grown foods, but I guess when you live in New York City and not the heartland, it's a bit of a novelty to eat something that's just been picked. For those of us who have always had a vegetable patch in the back garden, it's hard to see what all the fuss is about.

Ms. Kingsolver bemoans America's lack of a food culture. Sure we've been bemoaning a lack of food culture in Ireland as well. Peas boiled to a mush and then let simmer an extra ten minutes, just to be sure they're done, boiled cabbage, boiled potatoes, boiled bacon....not exactly a culinary delight, but filling the belly is the highlight of the poor man's table. And I wouldn't describe Swedish cooking as much of a culture to treasure, based on the comments of some friends. The fruit soup in the summer might be pleasant, but that's about it. Rather like preaching to the choir, to complain about a lack of food culture, when you're sitting in the middle of Chicago's traditional Swedish neighborhood.

Food culture thrives in Chicago, where "a population's collective wisdom about the plants and animals that grow in a place" can be found on Taylor Street, in Bronzeville, on Jackson St. north of the Eisenhower Expressway, south on Wentworth....not trendy, but the locals know where to find culture. They live it, as their parents lived it and brought it over from the old country. I don't much think that those are the sorts of people who would buy Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and read it without laughing over the author's starry-eyed sense of discovery. There'd be less Type 2 diabetes if the nation only knew about fresh foods, the author claims. And there'd be less Type 2 diabetes if the nation got up off its collective arse and went out back to weed the bean patch.

There's more to this dreadful problem, however, for Ms. Kingsolver also decries the unsustainable nature of our food system. All the fossil fuels, the loss of topsoil....she hasn't heard of no-till agriculture, apparently, but then, not everyone is privy to the wisdom of Orion Samuelson and his weekly farm reports, readily available on WGN Radio. After Ms. Kingsolver finished talking, she probably was too pressed for time to drive into southern Illinois, to see what the farmers are doing to retain topsoil. And how is any farmer supposed to work his land without a gas-guzzling tractor or combine? Such answers are not to be found on some friend's hobby farm in Vermont.

Bacterial contamination, God in Heaven, it's a crisis. She apparently never read The Jungle, either. It's an old book, but the premise remains the same. Cutting costs to increase profits, the big meatpackers endanger the health of the consumer. Buy from a local meat purveyor, then, and presume that the meat's not coated with E. coli. But you'll pay more, and for those who are not best selling authors, it's a bit of a budget buster.

Speaking of busting budgets, there's a nutrition crisis out there as well. The government should spend money subsidizing organic fruits and vegetables, according to Ms. Kingsolver, even though there's no more nutrients in organic produce compared to the cheaper inorganic variety. Look at government subsidized children's lunches, for example. Fresh inorganic fruit gets issued to every recipient and most of them toss it in the trash, but would it be different if the fruit was certified organic? Perhaps the government could subsidize time outs until the little ones eat their apples and bananas, and there'll be no pudding, young man, until you eat every last carrot stick.

Ms. Kingsolver is highly impressed with friends in Vermont who grow tomatoes in fabric covered tunnels. It's a form of greenhouse, we used to call it a hothouse, and it's not new technology. It's the technology of the poor immigrant who wants fresh tomatoes when he lives in Chicago and the growing season is too short. She'd be impressed, I have no doubt, with some of my old neighbors who extend the growing season with a few planks of old two by fours and some recyled double-hung windows (a cold-frame for those of you keeping score at home.)

And how do we get people back into their kitchens? Well, we can educate people, as Ms. Kingsolver suggests, or we can take a shortcut that is favored by savvy Irish immigrants. Find a lovely Italian girl and settle down, and you'll not be living on boiled spuds for the rest of your days. Can I fix you a plate?

The Votes (Books) Are In

Election season, and books spring eternal. The two competing titles that sling the dirt on Hillary Clinton are ready to roll, and the NYT has dueling book reviews today. Bernstein gets one treatment, the star treatment, while the former New York Times writers are raked over the literary coals by Robert Dallek.

Well before the biographies were in print, there was much discussion about the Bernstein version, and how it lacked anything new. How will it fare against the Van Natta/ Gerth version of events? The latter has been described as "uniformly negative". Book sales could shape up into a form of public opinion polling, and political pundits are going to watch the Bookscan numbers very, very closely.

"Overly focused ...on...the Clintons' scandalous past and the darker aspects of Mrs. Clinton's personality" says Mr. Dallek. There you have it. Buy this book, and it's obvious that you're a right wing conservative Republican. This one is geared up to you, to shore up your opinion of the woman. The woman who once spoke about going out to the nearby farms to help tutor the children of migrant workers....but she grew up in a middle class Chicago suburb and there's not a farm employing migrant workers for miles. Corn and soybeans, family farms, that's all that's within striking distance, and it would have been a long drive to get to the nearest one.

The funny thing about master politicians is that they can talk out of both sides of their mouth with the greatest of ease. Get to know one of them well, see them in action before different segments of their constituency, and you might be amazed to hear them make arguments for both sides of an issue. That's what politics is all about, pandering to the voters to get their vote. Shade the truth, find out which way the polling winds are blowing, and adapt to the conditions. That's the way they keep their jobs, election after election. Look closely, and you'll realize that nothing really gets done in Washington; the same problems fester year after year, and hot air keeps right on blowing.

Some folks, like Mr. Gerth and Mr. Van Natta, can make literary hay out of it, pointing out the hypocrisy and affixing a dark label. Others, like reviewer Robert Dallek, compare Ms. Clinton's failings to the weaknesses of others, in a "look she's like all the rest" attitude that does not excuse immoral behavior, but accepts its ubiquitous presence. It's politics, he implies with a shrug. It's politics, the other side grumbles with anger.

Even reviews of the reviews will be fodder for talk news shows. Carl Bernstein's book, being less of a hatchet job on the woman who would be president, garners all the praise, and if you want the world to know that you support Hillary, well, it's obvious that you'll be after buying Mr. Bernstein's biographical version. It's more balanced, as far as Mr. Dallek is concerned, and it's clearly the better book to him. But he's writing in the New York Times, that cradle of left wingedness, so how could he be fair and balanced?

As the books are laid down, the Clinton camp will attack both books, but you can bet that they'll use most of their strength to shred the Gerth/ Van Matta version of events. It won't make any difference, really, because the people who buy one or the other are expressing their opinion of Hillary Clinton, and whatever rhetoric dribbles out of her camp will only serve to reinforce an already set position. But it gives the twenty-four hour news shows something to talk about besides car chases in California.

Value Added

The Polskys, husband and wife, came from Kiev with little more than the clothes they stood up in. Thirty years later, they are fabulously wealthy, but no longer husband and wife. So what is a wife worth, anyway? A price above rubies? Or next to nothing?

Michael Polsky doesn't place much value on the position of wife, homemaker and mother. He's hotly contesting Judge William Boyd's decision to award Maya Polsky half of the couple's assets, claiming that he's the only one of the couple who actually built up all that money. What was she doing anyway, but staying at home?

Easy to forget that when he came home from a long day, growing an energy firm, she had his dinner on the table. Saved him hours of time every week, in that he didn't have to cook or shop or cut or chop. What's the value of a chef, live-in help, preparing three meals a day, seven days a week, for thirty one years?

Michael could open the doors of his closet and find pressed suits, starched shirts and clean underwear. What is the cost of laundry service for thirty one years? What is the worth of a personal manager who will see to it that the laundry is done, that a lucky suit is ready for the big meeting? How much would one pay for a housekeeper? A party planner? A social director to organize business entertainments? At what price would a man hire on a confidante, someone to patiently listen to his whinging but with a commitment to remain in the post until death.

They had two children, two sons to carry on the family name and genetic heritage, and to take over Daddy's business empire so that it does not expire with the old man. What would it cost to hire someone to produce two children, and then raise them? A full time nanny does not come cheap, and then there's the cost of the chauffeur to ferry them about to all the activities that are selected to edify the child's mind and body. To say nothing of staying current with the latest trends, so that the kids aren't out of the social loop. Researching schools, hiring tutors, monitoring educational progress...all of that is done by the wife who stays at home, but is it valueless employment?

Then there's sexual services, nursing services when Michael fell ill, gift-buying services so that no one was forgotten when Michael was too busy at work to take care of the domestic side of life. To listen to Mr. Polsky's lawyer, one would think that the missus had no stake in the growth and success of the Polsky business, and has no right to be given half, because what she did was worthless. Judge Boyd didn't see it that way, so he divided up the pot, 50/50, and now Mr. Polsky is hell-bent to fight it.

He'd be wise to stop while he's ahead. A savvy attorney and a judge who appreciates his wife just might figure out what a wife's services were worth to the Polsky empire, and Michael Polsky could be left with little more than the clothes he stands up in.

When Gerry Adams Comes Calling

To read the news, the average US citizen would have no idea that Ireland's soldiers are serving in Afghanistan. Only seven of them, but they're there, doing their unique bit. They have certain types of, shall we say, experience, that makes the Irish contingent a valuable component of the coalition that is fighting against the insanity of religious fundamentalism.

The Irish soldiers are the resident experts when it comes to bombs. It's the Irish Army Ordnance Corps that heads up training for the NATO forces that dispose of bombs. Why the Irish, one might ask. Why the Irish indeed.

Bombs and their components and methods of detonation give clues to the origins of the bombers. It is now thought that bombers from Al-Qaeda in Iraq have gotten into Afghanistan to share their murderous knowledge of explosive devices with their fellow loons. Where did the Iraqi group learn how to make bombs? From the thugs who terrorize the peaceful people of Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. And who, pray tell, taught Hezbollah and the PLO how to blow up and maim? None other than the IRA.

The clever bombers of the IRA, having perfected their techniques during the Troubles, exported their murderous efficiency to the Muslim whack-jobs of the Middle East, in exchange for cartloads of cash. The Irish members of the ordnance corps, familiar with IRA bombing techniques and bomb construction, are perfectly suited to instruct their fellow soldiers in the ways to defuse the bombs that the Taliban learned how to make from the IRA.

So next time Gerry Adams turns up at a fundraiser, hat in hand, looking for donations to Sinn Fein and the continuing struggle for a united Ireland, think of the young man or woman who was sent to Afghanistan, only to come home without an arm, a leg, a hand. Without part of their brain and skull. Know that the money you gave him all those years ago are serving a radically different purpose than what was originally stated. The blood of the wounded soldier, damaged beyond repair in Afghanistan or Iraq, is on Gerry Adam's hands. Is it any wonder that Ian Paisley won't shake that fist? And Sinn Fein is demanding that American military flights be banned from the Shannon stop over, citing the death of Iraqi civilians at the hands of American soldiers. Excuse me?

Disgusting But Equal

Ian Paisley founded a religion so that he could justify hatred. The Pope is the Anti-Christ, according to him, and it's perfectly all right to hate Catholics, and his followers are assured of their heavenly reward because the diploma mill reverend said so. All well and good to preach to your personal choir, but it's a different story when you're addressing a mixed bag of citizenry.

Ian Jr., a chip off the old block, has been elevated to a ministerial position now that dad is the First Minister of Northern Ireland. Rather obvious that he didn't get his post through extensive training or advanced education, but Chicago's been run through nepotism for ages and the garbage gets picked up regularly so what's the problem? Junior has been inculcated in daddy's faith, but he never did get the hang of public speaking when the public being spoken to are not pseudo-Presbyterians.

While the ministers are busy working on legislation to ensure equality for all, regardless of race, creed, or sexual orientation, Junior is shooting off his mouth, lambasting homosexuals. He's supposed to be promoting human rights in his position. Is there some conflict here, when he's quoted as being "pretty repulsed" by gays who he believes are harming society? Junior doesn't think so.

The Assembly meeting at Stormont was considering censuring the lad, until SDLP equality spokesperson Dolores Kelly tabled the motion. She'd rather take him behind the shed and have a stern talk with him, give him some limits and perhaps a time-out so that he can think about what naughty things he said. A minister crafting equality legislation does not exactly engender confidence in the downtrodden when he tears them down publicly. With that sort of mindset, the public will say, how can he be in favor of equality? He's not trying to inflict his religious beliefs on us, is he? That's Taliban talk, that is.

Junior insists that he can do his job and still hate homosexuality, and all this criticism is political correctness run riot, and anyone who says he is discriminating is discriminating against his right to free speech. Yes, it's true. If you deride Junior for being a bigot, he points the finger right back at you and says that you are the bigot for not accepting his right to preach against homosexuality. As far as he's concerned, he doesn't hate anyone, and it's his critics who are the intolerant ones.

And there are none so blind as he who will not see.

Got Blockbuster, Will Publish

The buzz at BEA this year is all about flatness. Book sales are flat, the publishers are saying. It's a fully developed industry, no more growth, just...flatness.

Religious books were growing, with sales up over 3%, but that segment looks to be maturing as well. There won't be such lovely big numbers next time around. After all, once you've got your hymnal in hand, you won't rush out the following year for a new one. The song pretty much remains the same. And there are only so many self-help books that will leave the shelves, as one is largely the same as the next and eventually the reading public figures it out and stops buying.

Paperbacks are looking good, but that should not be a surprise. Hard bound books cost a lot more than a trade paperback, and when you're paying over $3.00 for a gallon of gas, you have to cut back somewhere. The hard covers are fine for the libraries of the world, where a book gets a great deal of hard use and a paperback would fall to bits after a few times around. Publishers are looking to make money, however, and it it's merely a matter of selling two paperbacks instead of one hard cover, if the profit is the same, the higher sales figures don't matter.

It's the blockbuster, the million copy seller, that really gets the publishers salivating. For the past several years, the Harry Potter series has fueled the rise in sales. Millions of copies were sold, but the best part of the HP success was the increase in traffic. More people came out to pick up Harry for the wee ones and found something for themselves. Other books sold because readers were lured into the store. But Harry Potter is done after this year, so what will the publishers do now?

They need a new Dan Brown, but they can't lay down some novel about Catholic conspiracies because it's been done to death. They want something similar, in that they want a book that will sell like hotcakes. Problem is, the publishers don't really know what that is. No one expected Mr. Brown's book to take off like it did. Now the publishing houses would like to find another one that will sell just as well, but they still don't know what will hit it big.

It doesn't have to be the writing. There's literary fiction titles out there that were published with a bit of hoopla, only to sell about 6000 copies. It doesn't have to be the setting. Not everyone wants to read about trendy bars in New York City and the angst associated with gaining admittance. All that is needed is a good story, well told, that appeals to the vast majority of readers who live in between the coasts. Could the problem be that the entire publishing industry has confined itself to one small part of the world, and has no idea what the rest of the country looks like, smells like, sounds like, or cares about?

Legal Jigs and Reels

Michael Flatley took Irish dance, with its rigid as a board, arms compressed to the sides, unbendable form, and made it sexy. The former Chicago plumber found success and incredible wealth in a pair of fast moving feet and a bit of a twist on the old way. No matter if the man were as ugly as ugly could be, for what woman wouldn't find all that money attractive enough to keep her from examining the face? A dancer's grace, cavorting across the stage, but in a manly way to be sure, and Michael Flatley is a bit of a sex symbol in certain circles.

Tyna Robertson found something appealing about Mr. Flatley, but whether it was his skill as a dancer, his rippling muscles, or his bulging wallet, is hard to say. According to her, she went to Las Vegas in 2002 to spend the weekend with the famous dancer. A month later, she was phoning the Las Vegas Police Department to report that she was raped.

The next thing Michael knows, he's getting a letter from an attorney, threatening to sue him for $30 million. Not only that, but if the dancer didn't settle things out of court, the whole world would soon know that their beloved set dancer was a rapist. That's the sort of thing that is typically referred to as extortion, and it's quite illegal. Mr. Flatley's legal counsel probably told him as much, because he didn't pay up.

A bright day dawned in March of 2003, and attorney Dean Mauro popped into the Lake County, Illinois, courthouse to file a lawsuit, accusing Michael Flatley of performing vile deeds. Two days later, Mr. Flatley turned around and sued Mr. Mauro and Ms. Robertson, citing extortion, fraud and defamation as grounds for his case and seeking some financial compensation to cover the damages to Mr. Flatley's good name. $100 million was the price, the amount that Mr. Flatley wished to extract from the lawyer and his client who wanted to finagle $30 million out of him.

It took six months for Mr. Mauro to blink, but he did indeed dismiss his lawsuit against Michael Flatley. He's doing a great deal of nervous blinking these days, because the Illinois Supreme Court's attorney disciplinary committee has just suspended Mauro's license to practice law. He's not a lawyer these days, having been hit with a suspension of five months to a year, and that is a very serious blow to Mauro's career and reputation.

Apparently, Mr. Mauro threatened to use some forensic experts to back up his client's assertion of rape, but when the committee checked with said experts, they knew nothing about a case because no one had talked to them about it. Mr. Mauro denied any wrongdoing on his part, but once he gave a statement to the panel investigating his little scheme, he never bothered to attend the hearing that investigated his acts of misconduct. The three members of the panel did not take kindly to being ignored with such blatant rudeness.

Mr. Mauro got off lightly, considering the fact that panelist Kenneth Peters wanted Mauro disbarred, so egregious was the attorney's actions. As it stands now, the committee will have to decide in future if Mauro gets his law license back, with the suspension left open-ended "until further order."

Lawyers cannot threaten to take legal action against a defendant for the sake of harassing them. Nor can they make statements that they know are false. There's a tale in there somewhere, of a small time lawyer looking to make a big score but over-reaching, dreaming of a $10 million cut of the action, only to get his feet cut out from under him by the man with the fastest feet in the dance world.

Is that the ghost of Flannery O'Connor whispering in my ear? I feel a short story coming on.

michael flatley

Lux et Not Much Veritas

Certain groups are vulnerable to being scammed. The elderly are often preyed upon, with their old-fashioned sense of trust turned back on them by criminals without morals or scruples. And then there are the illegal immigrants, the people who hide in the shadows and just want to make a decent living.


The illegals are not as naive as the old folks in the small rural enclave, so a hustler would have to be a bit more clever to get around any sense of distrust. A man looking to put one over on some illegal Irish immigrants in New York, for example, would appear to be quite a legitimate businessman if he were to set up shop at Yale University, for example.


Ralph Cucciniello managed to get hired by a Yale professor who was in need of a research assistant. The professor was working on a case, to get a man cleared of a murder charge. It was a Mafia hit, to be precise, and said professor must have thought that Mr. Cucciniello could blend in better and obtain the key facts that would allow the convicted murderer to go free. One would think that a professor at Yale would be pretty sharp, but one would be misled by such a presumption. The professor never bothered to do a background check on Mr. Cucciniello, just went ahead and hired him and gave him some space in the Yale law library to conduct his research for the case. As it turned out, Ralphie-boy had a rap sheet that detailed his many convictions for fraud.


With office space provided, and in a most prestigious setting, Mr. Cucciniello opened up shop. He advertised in the Irish community, claiming that he could obtain green cards via some previously unknown loophole in the law. From space that lent an air of credibility to his claims, the scam artist promised to help people become legal residents and escape the endless worry of being found out and sent back. At a cost of $5,000, he suckered in at least 50 people, but it could be more. Fearing deportation if they go public, potential victims of the scam would of course be hesitant to come forward and the full extent of the crime may never be known.


Thanks to the lack of oversight of the Yale University professor, Mr. Cucciniello was able to operate freely, and would still be running his scam today but for the outcry of a few of his victims. He has been charged in Manhattan with fraud and impersonating an attorney, and the police in New Haven (home of Yale University) are putting evidence together so that they can obtain a warrant for Cucciniello's arrest.


As your mammy often told you, if something sounds too good to be true, it isn't.

Cicada Watch: Sing, Sing a Song

As recorded in a Chicago suburb -- the boys serenade the girls and doesn't it sound like an alien invasion? They're just about ready to start flying all about in search of hot cicada sex.



Enjoy the cicada songfest.

Time To Rest

Five e-mail queries were sent on Friday, and two rejections came in promptly on Tuesday morning. He likes humor, but the humorous manuscript was not right for Dan Lazar. Susan Ramer at Don Congdon's agency is too swamped. Holly Root, now with the Waxman Agency, lacks the necessary enthusiasm or whatever is needed to push a project down the throats of the big publishing houses. The other two agents will most likely not bother with informing me that they, too, are not right or too swamped.

The query is not working. Of the batch of snail mails sent on the 21st, Katie Kotchman of Denis Marcil Literary Agency might be seeking clients, but she says they're scaling back on their fiction stable. Jessica Regel and Mollie Glick are too busy with existing clients; can't consider the manuscript. It's not right for Malaga Baldi. After thinking about it for almost three months, Deborah Schneider has decided that she's too busy as well.

There comes a time when the brain grows weary of the marketing side, when the clever hook fails to materialize and the query letter fails to attract the least amount of interest. Time to pull back from querying and have a little fun with the writing. Another manuscript is taking shape, there's another short story about half-drafted, and the query letters are best left for another day.

The Race Goes To The Swift

In the heyday of the Union Stockyards in Chicago, Gustavus 'Stave' Swift was a legend. He invented the refrigerated rail car, cooled by blocks of ice, which allowed for a central slaughtering house and improved efficiency. Granted, his abattoir in Chicago became fodder for The Jungle, but the man did revolutionize the industry.

Soon, the Swift meatpacking business will cease being an American concern, in spite of its origins as a uniquely American development. JBS-Friboi of Brazil is going to buy the whole company for $225 million in cash, taking on $1.2 billion of debt held by Swift., in a deal that has caught analysts off-guard. The wise men of the markets expected Swift to get bought up piecemeal by other American meatpackers, but JBS-Friboi saw an opportunity and grabbed it. That's it then. Stave Swift's creation is about to be transformed.

JBS-Friboi wanted to get into the American market, which is closely regulated, and not particularly open to foreign imports. The biggest beef producer in South America wanted to be the biggest beef producer in the world, and they will be all that once Swift is taken under their wing. From their origins as cattle buyers in the 1950's, the Sobrinho brothers have grown a company that now slaughters 22,000 cattle. Per day. And they'll soon be adding to that number.

Buy American, the local businessman trumpets. Buy Swift Premium meats, and you'll support an American rancher. But the profits are heading for Sao Paolo. What's a consumer to do?

Pass The Hat For Illinois

The state is in need of funds. Billions, in fact. The governor must have more money to fund even more programs to make his legacy...well, to make his legacy something other than the impending indictment for campaign finance shenanigans. But where will this money come from?

The notion to tax the gross receipts of every single business in the state fell flat. More than flat, as there was not one single vote in favor of wrecking what business remains in Illinois. With that avenue torn asunder, how will Blagojevich generate enough cash to pay for health insurance for all?

First, he should figure out how to pay for the health care that is already available. The poor and uninsured are legally entitled to state funded care, but the state is so far behind on paying the bills that physicians will not see a Medicaid patient. For them, it's charity work and there's only so much charity they can dole out and still pay their bills. So you're poor in Illinois and you've got Medicaid coverage? Take a number. Maybe you can see a doctor in a few months.

Treating the past due bills like so much old news, Blagojevich sallies forth with new plans that will require tremendous amounts of money. The state budget is already bloated, the accounts are overdrawn, but he wants to do more. Where else can he turn to? How about more casinos and gambling?

House Speaker Mike Madigan is no fool when it comes to politics, and he knows that the average citizen is not keen on gambling, aware that it is the poorest and those least able to afford the losses that are attracted to the casinos. Senate President Emil Jones, who is questionably literate, wants more casinos....and he wants the state to bail out the wealthy folks who invested in a casino that was never built. Seems that the Mafia was trying to weasel in on the deal, and the Gaming Board put an end to it, but unfortunately, the investors figured they had it made and went right ahead and started building. As for the original investors, many of them had strong political ties to Chicago's mayor. It was a typical Illinois deal, one that stank of corruption from its inception, and it continues to fester. The gambling bill put forth by Jones was a move by a politician to do a favor to those who donate to campaigns.

Attempts to bury the bail-out in over two hundred pages of legislation failed, however. Once word got out that the Emerald Casino folks were going to profit, Madigan was sure to pull the plug on the legislation or face the ire of his electorate. As things now stand, he has no intention of bringing the gambling bill to the floor for debate and a vote. The state of Illinois is not going to generate more money from new gambling licenses and more casinos, as far as Mike Madigan is concerned.

But how to get more money for state projects? The funny thing is, not one politician has suggested trimming the budget of pork and fat and waste. A friend of Blagojevich earned over $100,000 through fraud. How about eliminating payments for work never performed? How about a bit of oversight at Emil Jones' pet project, Chicago State University. The folks who run the place have been siphoning off money for trips, dinners and anything else they desire, leaving less money for education. Any chance of using the state's income wisely?

No, it's easier to turn to the taxpayer with outstretched hand, weeping crocodile tears and bemoaning the fate of the little children with their low-quality education and lack of health insurance. The tears being shed by the taxpayers? They've just filled up their gas tanks with fuel that costs more in Chicago than anywhere else in the nation.

Cicada Watch 2007: Good Morning Starshine

The earth says hello...and isn't it like a bunch of teens to discard their skin and leave it laying around the house. Do they never clean up after themselves?







This is one small area of a Profusion crab tree that measures about 8 inches in diameter.





They crawled out of the ground last night, the little divils, and climbed up the trunk of the tree. Once they got up where they wanted to be, they split their skins right up the middle of the back and pushed their way out of their juvenile skeletons. They spread their wings, as children are wont to do, and crawled up into the branches where the leaves are doing a fair job of hiding them from the hungry birds.









And the shells that didn't stick for good on the tree fell to the ground, to make a lovely crunchy pile for the lawn mower to pick up and grind into mulch.







They haven't started their love songs just yet, but if you'd like the complete experience, go to: www.media.suntimes.com/images/cds/MP3/cicadas05.mp3 (can't get the link to work but you could copy and paste) courtesy of the Chicago Sun-Times. Then crank up the volume on your speakers until you've reached the decibel level of a gas-powered leaf blower.....and enjoy.

Advanced Statistics and Probability

Maths must have been Enda Kenny's favorite subject. He's counted up the seats in the 30th Dail, divided by 2, added one, and come up with Enda Kenny as An Taoiseach. Numbers don't lie.

For Mr. Kenny to achieve his life's ambition, he has only to form a coalition. It would be the All In Except For Fianna Fail, You Can't Play With Us umbrella organization that would take in every party save the one with the most seats. He's started up already, whispering in the school yard behind Bertie Ahern's back.

"You don't want to go into government with him," he says to his would-be friends. "He's not the sort of boy your mammy would like you to associate with. He's done some very bad things. Dishonest lad, and not coming clean at all."

While Mr. Ahern's legal team takes the Mahon Tribunal behind the shed and beats it to a pulp for 'leaking' certain documents meant to damage Mr. Ahern's reputation, Mr. Kenny is reminding all of the newly elected politicians that Mr. Ahern's finances have been called into question. Intimating that the man who figures on being An Taoiseach for a third time is a dishonest thief, Enda Kenny is going around in search of coalition partners and presenting himself as the better choice. Sure he looks like a choir boy, clean cut and earnestly intense. Play with his team, he says, or you'll be cast in the same dim light as that nasty boy who has yet to explain where the money came from and how is that the amount lodged equals exactly $45,000. You're not like him, now, are you? You don't want the neighbors to think you turn a blind eye to such goings-on, do you?

The one problem with Mr. Kenny's mathematically feasible coalition is that, like a house built on sand, it isn't stable. Fine Gael and Labour had gone into the election as a team, agreements agreed, but if Mr. Kenny is to be Taoiseach his coalition will have to include the two Progressive Democrats who retained their seats, former enemies made over into pals. He would have to make the Greens happy, throw them a sop of reduced carbon emissions by 2020 or something along those lines. Sweep up the occasional independent, offer a low level ministerial position, and then Fine Gael would have to go into government with Sinn Fein. That part of the equation just doesn't add up.

A Thousand Splendid Reviews

Khaled Hosseini wrote The Kite Runner and it took off. Maybe it was timing, a book about the hardships in Afghanistan being published when interest in the country was still high. We're fighting a war there, where is Afghanistan exactly, and what are they like? A novel can give a better sense of a people than some dry treatise by the Margaret Meads of the world.

If you believe reviewer Michiko Kakutani, the book was a hit in spite of its flaws. Old-fashioned story-telling, and in this day and age. Too much emotion, too much melodrama, the characters right out of a cartoon...none of those elements go into best sellers that ride the crest of the New York Times weekly list. Well, it wasn't a book review that set The Kite Runner off into the stratosphere. Must have been word of mouth. Those book group things where ordinary people discuss books.

Mr. Hosseini's new book, again with a setting in his native country, garnered a positive review, but his book still has those....flaws. There's a "villainous villain" and a "saintly best friend" according to Ms. Kakutani. And there are "embarrassingly hokey scenes" of the B movie caliber as well. But there is still enough quality in there to salvage the novel.

What's wrong with old-fashioned story telling? Must everything published be self-centered and introspective and full of deep thought? In spite of what a reviewer sees as flaws, a novel became a best seller because people read it, liked it, recommended it to friends, and more readers came on board. Obviously, they didn't much care that the plot was contrived in parts. It was not critical to the readers that a character not have some cartoonish elements, or that the villains were painted with broad strokes of evil intent.

The point of a novel is to entertain, and if the reader gets a bit of an education as well, that's a bonus. It doesn't have to be the other way around, where a writer beats the reader over the head with his examination of the day's profound issues and maybe throws in a bit of entertainment on the side.

Iranians don't read much anymore, but their books are so heavily censored that they can't be bothered with what is available. Are Americans not reading much anymore because the big publishing houses are self-censoring, only putting out heavy-handed tomes that fail because they're dull? Have we moved so far away from the art of story-telling that a book that manages to tell a story has become a rarity?

Fahrenheit 451, The Modern Version

I haunt used book shops because I can't afford to buy new. I frequent used book websites because that's the easiest way to find the old and out of print or the novel by George Ade when no one seems to know who George Ade was. To think that a used book seller has resorted to burning his overstocks is mind-numbing and heart-breaking.

Tom Wayne has owned and operated Prospero's Books in Kansas City, Missouri, for many years. He's built up quite a collection, from former best sellers to Victorian era treatises on the way things were at the time. Children's literature from the time of the Great War, novels from the Civil War era -- surely there's a home for everything he has, but Mr. Wayne has found that this is not the case.

Libraries and thrift shops told him that there was no room at the inn, so to speak, when he tried to give away some of his stock. Their racks were full, they wanted no more, and it's due to the sad fact that people don't read as much as they used to. If Google has their way, whatever you might want to know could be found in a search engine, and you'll not need to thumb through the library's collection or the used book vendor's dusty shelves. The downside there is the loss of the idle search, the wandering that brings to light something you'd never know you wanted because you'd not known it existed.

Mr. Wayne started the bonfire because he feels that the American public is not turning to books for their entertainment and amusement. They have the Internet now, and movies and DVDs and television. Watch the HBO special "Bury My Hear At Wounded Knee" and you'll know all there is to know about the last days of Sitting Bull and the decline of the Lakota Nation. Except, of course, that the HBO special was largely fiction and did not give an accurate, historical treatment of Indian affairs at the end of the previous century.

The Kansas City fire department put a quick end to the burning, but only because Mr. Wayne lacked the necessary permits for a bonfire. He plans to get that permit, however, and fire up another batch of books in an act of destruction that reveals his outrage. In the meantime, local people who were aware of the planned conflagration bought up what they could, and at bargain prices. How could anyone turn down the chance to cart away an armload of old children's books for $10? Sacrifice a couple of pints for the sake of keeping a book alive.

A good book can be company on a quiet night; it can be an amiable companion on a summer holiday or a long weekend when it's too chilly to lay out in the sun and get the first sunburn of the season. Antique novels provide a window into another era, acting as a better history lesson than anything you might see dramatized on a flickering screen. Are there not some things that are well worth saving, too important to lose?

As Predicted Here

Who's that on the front page of today's Irish Times?

And didn't I predict that Bertie Ahern would be posing for pictures with Rocco and Jay Byrne as soon as the election was won?

Doesn't he look all proud and grandda-ish? The boys are beautiful, wee little things, aren't they?

Now if An Taioseach can just get past the Mahon Tribunal, his smile would be ever bigger and brighter.

Where Is Everybody?

Granted, it's the start of summer, the long weekend that opens the season of beaches, vacations and white apparel. Chances are, the literary agent you're waiting on is opening his or her cottage in the Hamptons this weekend, and has no intention of reading your query letter.

And then? It's Book Expo America time once again. This year, the exhibition is being held in New York City, so you'd think the agents would be dropping in at the office from time to time. And there's more than one of them who works out of their flat, so they're dropping in the office every single night. But no. This is party time. Meet and greet. Sidle over, make a contact, make a deal, get a name out there.

If you want to get an idea as to what is going on, keeping your dream agent from perusing the query letter you spent months polishing, you can always go the BEA website. There will be authors signing, publishers selling, librarians wandering in little herds like so many lost sheep, and the literary agents are just too busy buying drinks to have time for agenting. They've got plenty of clients already, and this week they will be spending their time promoting all the birds in the hand.

In another week, they can consider your bird in the bush. Might as well get the snail mail query in the mail and have it waiting for them.

For Fans of Sara Paretsky

As promised, the new Saturday edition of the Chicago Tribune book review section highlights a local star. This week, reviewer Samuel Freedman tackles Sara Paretsky's brief memoir. The creator of the V.I. Warshawski series has put her past on paper, detailing an origin in Kansas that blossomed in a career in Chicago. She's one of Chicago's own these days.

Even if you're not a great fan of mysteries, it will be worth your time to read up and see what goes into the development of a talented writer. Her story is dismally depressing, and I've come away from it wondering if abject misery in childhood is requisite for the right sorts of neural connections to be made if one is to be a published writer.

What you thought you knew about the woman who worships the city of Chicago on the pages of her novels may prove to be quite different after you've read over some of Mr. Freedman's key points. It's worth the time to click on the link and do a bit of reading.