03/12/2010 5:00 am
Culture
Liz Smith: Elvis and Las Vegas – The Real Story
Also in Our Gossip Girl's weekend dish: The Ten Commandments – Christopher Hitchens style … Twitter, job-hunting and Tex-Mex at El Rio Grande.
© AP
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DURING THE Oscars, the widowed First Lady, Nancy Reagan, was out a bit enjoying herself. Her new passion (if she can be said to have ever had a passion other than her Ronnie!) is that man about CNN, young Anderson Cooper.
He seems to be popular and well-liked everywhere he goes. Mrs. Reagan found him delightful.
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I’M HOPING we’ll see a TV documentary called "A Kick in the Head – The Lure of Las Vegas." (It was a big hit on Great Britain’s BBC recently.)
This purports to show us that Las Vegas is a kind of American "pressure valve" and writer Adam Sweeting describes it as having the value of falling "between Bible-bashing Puritanism and a wild urge to party."
Among other revelations in this film comes the fact that Elvis and his manager Col. Parker were in debt to the casinos for $39 million (back when $39 million was a lot of money). This is what kept Elvis performing in Vegas for so long.
There are fascinating interviews with Jerry Weintraub, Wayne Newton, Brandon Flowers of the rock group The Killers and Keely Smith, who describes "the kindness of Frank Sinatra" and says "what delightful chaps the Mafiosi were."
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TOLD YOU recently about running into someone I admire so much – the wicked witty Christopher Hitchens. Now Mr. Hitchens, who has thrown literary darts at Princess Diana, the Queen Mother and Mother Teresa, takes on The Ten Commandments in the April issue of Vanity Fair.
This piece is so fall-down funny that I’d think even preachers, the religious orders and spiritual souls would get a thoughtful kick out of it. Hitchens pronounces that the laws of God to Moses have several different scriptural versions and show The Almighty as having injured vanity as well as being capricious, fierce and violent. Hitchens rather likes "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor," calling it the most sophisticated ruling of the Ten. He feels honoring thy father and mother is just innocuous and obvious and "comes with an inducement instead of an implied threat." He says the "adultery" thou-shalt-not is the only one of the Commandments widely known by its actual number (seven). I liked his dismissal of Commandments one through three: "These can simply go, since they have nothing to do with morality and are no more than a long, rasping throat clearing by an admittedly touchy dictator." (He means the Lord himself.)
Do read this for yourself!
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Back in the ’50s there was an actual program where orphan children were introduced into American academic life and brought up as part of a home-economics course to give girls a hands-on chance at child rearing.
My friend Lisa Grunwald has written a simply dandy novel on this imaginative unusual theme, titled The Irresistible Henry House. And just as you fell in love with T.S. Garp or Forrest Gump or Benjamin Button, you will love Henry. The writer nails the time period of "Mary Poppins," the Beatles’ "Yellow Submarine," Dr. Spock and Walt Disney. This novel has won a starred review from Publishers Weekly and I do thank Random House for publishing it. Wonderful.
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Jennifer Jordan’s middle name must be Jewel - and she’s living up to her name!
Oh, Paul I thank you! Somehow Gide merged in my mind with Céline. Too early in the morning to be posting, I guess. Céline was a Nazi sympathizer and an anti-semitic of the first order. Gide was indeed a literary genius and I feel foolish for my mistake.
Hitchens obviously did come up with some new jibe at Christianity. Why I wonder do you think that taking an aim at this time honored religion is a punk act? He has addressed the Islam in his book, "God is not Great." No one would dispute that religions have inspired great art, great architecture, but I don’t find that relevant to discussing or taking jibes at religion itself.
Although I find Mr. Hitchens brilliant, funny, provokingly nasty—and not terribly well-groomed most of the time—I think PaulSmith has a point. We get it—-you’re not big on Christians. Next! It’s not like anybody’s mind is going to be changed. That said, the piece is wickedly amusing. But I could live forever without another Hitchens rant on religion. Especially as the capricious nature of the Old Testament Deity has been remarked upon endlessly—Job was a awfully good sport, I must say. (Still, the recent Vatican sex-scandal seems too good for Mr. H. to ignore,so we can prepare for Hitchens at his best/worst pretty soon.)
Now I’m heading over to El Rio Grande for employment advice. Times are tough all over, and even Mr. Wow might have to Twitter to make ends meet. Yeah, I know the book party is Monday. It’s Friday and I need a drink…okay?
Well, my heavens! Even my admirer, the mysterious Mr. Wow seems not to have taken well to Christopher Hitchens' current 'attack on Christianity" as some call it , which was in this particular column. As for the Gide opening quote, it was justIHEY, HEY, guys, Wow! My fan Mr. Wow seems to be saying we should pay no attention to Christopher Hitchens and also my Gide quote somehow came to be linked with Hitchens idea. It was to me only an interesting remark with which to open the column and I had no thought of the Hitchens piece being in the same posting. Do you guys mean you think Hitchens should desist from his attacks? Give up. Go away. Why this is his forte, his stock in trade, just as the evangelicals never give up their messages, Mr. Hitchens can't give up his polemics. And I feel sure there have been many have been many attacks on Muslim and other religions but you can't expect Mr. Hitchens to include them all in a dissection here of the viccissitudes of the Old Testament. I like reading off-beat opinions, maybe I'm crazy. And nobody can fault me in my defense of the beauties of what Christianity has meant to western civilizations -- the art, the architecture and the sheer civilizing force of the aura of Jesus. But there are plenty of detractions in history including the upheaval over the rise of Luther, the proper damning of the Popes and Rome, the horrors of the Inquisition and the burning of witches in Salem all in the name of Çhristianity. Let's go on reading, disagreeing, arguing; it's the only way. But diverging opinions don't need to be condemned for their mere existence. Downward and onward with Mr. Hitchens contrarianism. Is that a word? LIZ
My dear Miss Smith….in no way did I imply that attention should not be paid. I was expressing my own thoughts on Hitchens’ religion-bashing, which I enjoy very much, but which I can’t say is new territory for him. Did I say his piece was amusing? Yes I did! Did I warn anybody off it? No, I did not! The Gide quote, which I like, wasn’t even mentioned by me.
Mr. Wow is a big fan of religious imagery and sentiment. He loves to visit a quiet church to sit and restore himself. He leaves calm and still agnostic.
I want Mr. Hitchens to thrive. I tend to agree with every word he writes. But he’s preaching to the converted—sort of—so, I’d rather he wrote about…Madonna. (Think what he could do to her charity efforts—this, a man who excoriated Mother T.)
Love Mr. Hitchens. Someone for my side. I am an atheist. I have no representation in Congress. Until someone comes out and admits they are an atheist I have no representation in Congress and feel I should not have to pay taxes until I do. I have just read the book "The Family" and if there was a demonstration and description of a dangerous religion this book describes it. This book will scare your pants off. It involves the C Street group in DC and their wide spread influence in this world.
Just read an article yesterday about Nigeria where 500 people were killed in the name of religion. They set their house on fire and when the people ran out they killed them with guns or chopped them up. I believe they were Christians and the killers were Muslims. According to the Muslims it was revenge for when the Christians had killed a bunch of their people. This comes from a crazy idea that makes no sense if you really think about it. It is just a story. It makes no sense. I am grateful for Hitchens. He gets it.