Thursday, April 07, 2005

Jane Fonda’s not a lesbian

No news there. But she does like women. From Salon’s review of My Life So Far:

Her story is full of respect and admiration—both intellectual and physical—for other women, and much of it sounds more authentic than her affection for men. As a teenager Fonda notices Greta Garbo’s “healthy and athletic” body; she comments that friend Elisabeth Vaillard “was handsome in a Georgia O’Keeffe way,” and describes her producing partner Paula Weinstein as “a tall brunette with sexy brown eyes.” She is full of love for her onetime stepmother Susan Blanchard, for friend Brooke Hayward, for Signoret, and for Dot, her daughter’s nanny. She mysteriously points out to Hayden that a baby sitter is sexy (he promptly initiates an affair). And hilariously, in the chapters about the unwanted threesomes with Vadim, Fonda writes: “I’ll tell you what I did enjoy: the mornings after, when Vadim was gone and the woman and I would linger over our coffee and talk.” Whether or not Fonda has lesbian impulses—she denies the rumors that she and Vaillard were lovers—her obvious desire to surround herself with beautiful, compelling women belies her claim that she played only to the guys. Fonda may have seen herself as a man-pleaser, but her story makes it clear that it was often other women who pleased her best.

I like Jane but I won’t be buying the book. Here’s Slate’s take.

Blogger woes

Folks at Blogger have been having a rough time. From Wired:

What’s up with Blogger, the institution that is eponymous with the media phenomenon it helped spawn?

Lately, it seems like almost every time you tune into your favorite Blogger-hosted blog to catch up on the latest gossip, meme, political diatribe or cybersnark, you find that the site is frozen in time. Or, there are multiple posts with identical content. Since Blogger, which is owned and operated by that sleek geek machine, Google, is a lot like a public utility, when it goes down, so do the lights on a large swatch of the blogosphere…

In fact, enter “Blogger sucks” in Google and you get 720,000 results, with most of the entries on the first few pages (read: the most popular) dedicated to these exasperating tech snafus.

It can make for some pretty ugly reading. Imagine what they might say if they actually paid for the service?

Yes, imagine.

Glenn are you listening?

Cory at BoingBoing points to the “geniuses” behind the April fools spoof site BoringBoring.

I myself think the genius behind It’s A Pundit deserves similar notice from Glenn. But then, that’s not why he did it.

Full disclosure: I’ve been an invited guest blogger at It’s A Pundit but given that I am not [gasp!] a regular reader of Glenn, my spoofing abilities are somewhat stilted. I’ll keep trying.

Schiavo memo came from Martinez office

So the memo calling the fight over removing Schiavo’s feeding tube “a great political issue … and a tough issue for Democrats” did come from the Republicans. AP:

A one-page unsigned memo that became part of the debate preceding Congress’ vote ordering a federal court review of the Terri Schiavo case originated in Florida Republican Sen. Mel Martinez’ office, Martinez said Wednesday.

Via I’m just waiting for the robot invasion.

Of course those who suggested it came from the Democrats now blame the press:

UPDATE: Mike Allen has an article in tomorrow’s Washington Post, which says that Mel Martinez’s “legal counsel,” Brian Darling, was the author of the memo. Otherwise, his story doesn’t add much that is new, and doesn’t attempt to explain the discrepancies between his original reporting and the most recent version. In particular, Allen offers no explanation as to why the anonymous memo was attributed to “Republican officials” or “Republican party leaders,” or why it was said to have been distributed “to Republican senators,” when the current story provides no support for those statements.

UPDATE: One more thought: The story as we currently have it does not account for the two versions of the memo, the second of which corrected three of the typos in the first draft. I have no idea what that means, except that the story as we are currently getting it from the AP, the Washington Post, and Senator Martinez does not account for all of the known facts.

World O’Crap has the goods on the Blog of the Year and details on “chief legal counsel” Brian Darling’s background. Crooks and Liars chimes in that Powerline looks the stupidest of them all.

AMERICAblog has the REAL memo and a transcript of Rush Limbaugh’s rant about how it was really the Dems who dummied up a fake memo.