The Times asks why we relish celeb break-ups, but the more important question to ask is why humans relish “celebrity” at all?

I assume that those who follow the lives of others (that is, those whom they don’t personally know, in particular “celebrities,” the vacuous idols and contemptible gods of modernity)—either through tabloids, glossy magazines, TV gossip shows, Twitter, etcetera—are trying to fill the holes in their own desperately empty lives.

I can think of fewer sadder existences.

Has any man wanted to be The Messiah more than Al Gore?

It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.

. . . [W]hat a burden would be lifted! We would no longer have to worry that our grandchildren would one day look back on us as a criminal generation that had selfishly and blithely ignored clear warnings that their fate was in our hands. We could instead celebrate the naysayers who had doggedly persisted in proving that every major National Academy of Sciences report on climate change had simply made a huge mistake.

I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion. . . .

From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption. After all has been said and so little done, the truth about the climate crisis—inconvenient as ever—must still be faced.

Oh, Al, Al, Al . . . how my heart doth bleed for you! Oh how I wish that anthropogenic global warming were real so that you could fulfill your most desirous wish of saving humanity from itself . . . nay! of SAVING THE WORLD! It just doesn’t seem fair that someone as doggone sincere as you not get the chance to be the world’s Superman and Christ.

You’re right on one point, though, Al: we have overcome existential threats before. And we will overcome you and your self-righteous goodists in due time . . . just as our grandparents overcame the Nazis who believed that they, too, were saving the world. (Sorry for the comparison, Al, but you started it by quoting Winnie.)

Fear not, however, Al: Hitler was evil; you are simply a fool.

Booker prize-winner Hilary Mantel writes in The Observer on living in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia:

I had been thoroughly frightened by life in Jeddah, and my conversations with Muslim women, my neighbours in the city, had alerted me to the cavernous gap of understanding between the west and the Islamic world as one saw it in the Kingdom.

Feminism? A confidence trick, a trick that the men of the west had perpetrated on their womenfolk, to make them work both at home and outside. Freedom? A delusion. Democracy? An evil system, a defiance of the natural order. Obedience, deference to authority, reverence for tradition: these were the civic virtues paraded in the Kingdom. It was like travelling back in time. The Enlightenment? When was that?

. . . What were the rules? No one knew. What infringed them? A look or a smile could do it. Sometimes I would step out and know I’d got things wrong. Not even my Muslim women friends could explain how I could get it right. It’s legs, one said, that are the objection; you should be covered to your ankle. No, no, said another, it’s arms that are the problem; you should be covered to your wrists. I did both. I had no desire to show an unwonted inch of flesh. If you left your husband’s side in the supermarket, some sad man followed you and tried to touch you up in the frozen fish. You were western, and they knew you wouldn’t scream: just a silent bug-eyed flinch, a squirm out of their reach. You were probably a prostitute anyway. Most European women were. Male desperation, loneliness and need, the misunderstandings they bred: these hung in the refrigerated air, permeating public spaces like dry ice.

And upon leaving:

We sat at a pavement table in the traffic fumes and drank cold beer.

We in the West take our freedoms for granted . . . and it should be our desire that all on this planet be afforded the freedom to take freedom for granted.

Thanks to the Kevin Smith – Southwest Airlines imbroglio, I can sum up everything that is wrong with the world by invoking the name of one “civil rights organisation”: National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance.

Here’s a deal: I’ll “accept your fatness”—whatever that means—when you accept that being double-wide means you need to pay double for two seats.

What’s really sad is that I think modern airlines suck and I rarely believe that they’re in the right . . . But I’ll support them whenever they see fit to throw fatties off the plane to make the non-morbidly obese’s journey pleasanter.

In his Reason op-ed “Class War”, Steven Greenhunt asks how public servants became our masters:

According to a 2007 analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics by the Asbury Park Press, “the average federal worker made $59,864 in 2005, compared with the average salary of $40,505 in the private sector.” Across comparable jobs, the federal government paid higher salaries than the private sector three times out of four, the paper found. As Heritage Foundation legal analyst James Sherk explained to the Press, “The government doesn’t have to worry about going bankrupt, and there isn’t much competition.”

In February 2008, before the recession made the disparity much worse, The New York Times reported that “George W. Bush is in line to be the first president since World War II to preside over an economy in which federal government employment rose more rapidly than employment in the private sector.” The Obama administration has extended the hiring binge, with executive branch employment (excluding the Postal Service and the Defense Department) slated to grow by 2 percent in 2010—and more than 15 percent if you count temporary Census workers.

The average federal salary (including benefits) is set to grow from $72,800 in 2008 to $75,419 in 2010, CBS reported. But the real action isn’t in what government employees are being paid today; it’s in what they’re being promised for tomorrow. Public pensions have swollen to unrecognizable proportions during the last decade. In June 2005, BusinessWeek reported that “more than 14 million public servants and 6 million retirees are owed $2.37 trillion by more than 2,000 different states, cities and agencies,” numbers that have risen since then. State and local pension payouts, the magazine found, had increased 50 percent in just five years.

Ah, to live the life of Reilly.

The world over, taxpayers have become suckers and slaves to the political class.

(Link via Arts & Letters Daily)

I’m not a big fan of rules—and rules about writing I find particularly egregious—but there are some entertaining nuggets scattered throughout the Guardian’s “Ten rules for writing fiction.”

Richard Ford wins for steering far away from the mechanics of writing. His No. 1 rule is also the most important:

Marry somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer’s a good idea.

Opposites may attract, but a successful marriage demands that insanity be equally proportioned among husband and wife.

It’s a good thing most writers don’t become writers out of some deep-seeded need for respect:

Walter Kirn, the author of the novel “Up in the Air,” may be watching the Oscars in his Montana living room. Although the movie has been nominated for six Academy Awards, including best picture and best adapted screenplay, Kirn hasn’t gotten an invite for writing the original work.

Of course, my first thought upon reading this was Cormac McCarthy’s brilliant response to John Jurgensen’s question about Hollywood’s fondness for collaborative writing:

JJ: But is there something compelling about the collaborative process compared to the solitary job of writing?

CM: Yes, it would compel you to avoid it at all costs.

My suggestion is that Kirn also avoids Hollywood’s annual festival of self-fellating at all costs.