The Dish

My old friend, Kevin Sessums, has written a memoir of growing up gay in the deep South. It’s called "Mississippi Sissy." Michael Cunningham has this to say:

"Mississippi Sissy is a book I’ve been waiting for most of my life, though I didn’t fully understand that fact until I read the book. We have, as it turns out, been sorely missing a book by a writer who is equally at home with Flannery O’Connor and Jacqueline Susann; who understands that Eudora Welty and Johnny Weissmuller are not only members of the same species but are intricately related; whose wit and insight are up to the highs, lows, and in-betweens that compose life as we know it. Kevin Sessums is some sort of cockeyed national treasure."

Andy Towle has an interview with Kevin here. You can buy the book here.

A reader writes with respect to this item:

I’m an American living in a 375 square foot house in the South. Used to be a guest house made from an old outbuilding from a farm house somewhere here in town from the late 1800’s. Love it. It’s small and I constantly have to find places to put stuff, but I really adore it.

I used to live in one 13′ x 13′ room (169 square feet) off a barn with my partner and our 9 dogs, 9 cats.  We slept in a separate room that was 9′ x 7′ (63 square feet) for a grand total living space of 232 square feet. Loved it.

Each to his own. My Provincetown wharf condo is around 265 square feet. When I first bought it, it had three separate rooms, and almost no windows. I made it one room – with a shower nozzle in the middle pointed at a slate wall. Of course, the tininess is alleviated by a deck and a bay right before it. Round about now, I start dreaming of getting back there.

Apart from Obama-ads, they’re what YouTube was made for:

Arnold says so. I’m waiting for the first Republican to actively run against the toxins of Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity and the rest. If the culture shifts more decisively against the angry right, I may not have to wait long. Which has got to worry Adam Bellow.

Lily Tomlin isn’t always cool under fire. Here’s another out-take from "I Heart Huckabees." Again: do not click if you have any problem with profanity. The air is puce.

The public’s disapproval of the Congress is back at 2006 levels. The Democrats had the briefest of honeymoons – and mostly because Democrats are ticked off:

It is difficult to pinpoint precisely what is behind the drop off in optimism about Congress among Democrats. One possibility is that Democrats are disappointed that their party has been unable to do anything substantive about the Iraq war — the dominant issue in last November’s midterm elections. The increase in the price of gas and/or other economic concerns may also be a factor. Overall satisfaction with the way things are going in the United States and ratings of economic optimism are both down in the March Gallup Poll.

England’s Andrew Flintoff is shown during a press conference at the team hotel in Rodney Bay, St. Lucia 19 March 2007. Flintoff apologized for his late-night antics which led to him being sacked as England’s vice-captain and banned for the game against Canada. The all-round player was reprimanded after he fell off a peddle boat in the sea following a late-night drinking session, early Saturday morning. (Photo: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty.)

Ad revenue for the NYT plunged 6 percent in Feburary – but online ad revenue is up.

Things are rough when I’m gentler on POTUS than NRO:

While delivering his remarks lost his place at least once, and sounded like an exhausted lame duck lamely reading his unconvincing statement. There are two years left in this administration and the president had better exude some confidence. And be confident about his people. And get rid of them if he’s not. Anything else strikes me as lame.

Gonzales is too close to the president to be sacrificed, it appears. The risk is that this will only prolong the investigation, and expose more of the seamy underside of the politicization of the justice system. The benefit is that Bush seems less a victim of events and more – temporarily at least – in control of them. Besides, losing Gonzales would have been a big personal blow, and my guess is that Rove and Cheney both wanted to dig in. I should add that the actual, substantive position of the president is not that unreasonable. Gonzales will testify under oath; they’re releasing mounds of evidence; others on Bush’s staff will willingly cooperate. The attempt to protect executive privilege is a defensible one. But the attempt by Bush to portray himself as somehow above partisanship on this is a little rich. It was the triumph of partisanship over good government that brought this scandal to the surface in the first place. And partisan politics is surely playing a key role in the push-back. The specter of Karl Rove under the "klieglights" would have been political poison to Bush – and to the GOP. So he’s digging in. And the hole could get a lot deeper.

(Favorite line: ‘The serve at our pleasure." He really is getting monarchical, isn’t he?)