Bill Maher's Real Time

Over the weekend, a friend sent me a link to a site where Meghan McCain's appearance on Bill Maher's Real Time was posted for viewing. It never ceases to amaze me the degree to which people are willing to express themselves when they know absolutely nothing about which they speak. Meghan's escape clause and justification for her self-contented ignorance--"I wasn't born then"--was appropriately countered by Paul Begala's retort that he knew of the French Revolution though he, as she, hadn't yet been born.

Meghan's most naked revelation came when she asserted that she hadn't come onto the show to look back but was there to talk about "my career". Reminds me of the inimitable Francis Urquhart's comment about "...a sack of squirming appetites."

Watching Meghan caused me to think of Christopher Hitchen's appraisal of Sarah Palin as a "...woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses." Perhaps the party has found its new brand.

10 big banks get OK to repay $68 billion in bailout money

According to the L.A. Times--and please don't ask me what I'm doing reading that newspaper when Le Figaro arrives at my (junior) suite even without my insistence--the Obama administration has announced it has given approval to 10 of the nation's largest banks to repay $68 billion in government bailout money which they had received to "stabilize the financial system".

Wish I could write like that!

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is quoted as saying, "These repayments are an encouraging sign of financial repair..." Elsewhere, a housewife told an interviewer, "The Gold Bond Medicated Foot Powder really helped."

It's always good to hear good news..

La place de La comédie des quatre femmes

Sitting at Les Deux Magots recovering from my recent torments experienced at Cannes--or rather on the way back from Cannes--an actress/co-conspirator sought me out to present me with a copy of La place de La comédie des quatre femmes by Marguerite de Navarre. And while the title refers to four women, it does not contemplate the old math problem of the seventies (How many times does one go into four?), but rather, it delves into celibacy as the path to happiness as opposed to being an end unto itself.

I have to admit to being nonplussed by her offering. Whether it was given as an intervention, a provocation or, perhaps, because there's a good part in it for her should I decide to adapt it for the screen, I cannot say. All I do know is that, after I accepted the gift, she accepted the card key to my (junior) suite and it is possible that her true intent will become clear as the evening progresses.

In the mean time, I suspect there exists a connection to Gabrielle Suchon's manifesto, Du célibat volontaire, though she most certainly formed her conclusions without the benefit of a Hollywood perspective, the 1700s being what they were.