Valley of the Molls
It is now officially time to say, "Enough." Or, as Vanessa Redgrave, the most absurd TV Sicilian in the long and storied history of television Sicilians, might say, "Basta."
Redgrave mumbles her way through the role of matriarch to a female-dominated Mafia family (it includes Redgrave, Illeana Douglas, Nastassja Kinski, and Jennifer Tilly) in the worst Mafia drama ever made, Bella Mafia, which is brought to us by the increasingly desperate programming executives at CBS, the same people who earlier this year eviscerated Mario Puzo's The Last Don in order to make the second-worst Mafia drama of all time.
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Births of a Nation
We were an hour into a discussion about the war in Rwanda and the future of Africa when the President of Uganda, the dome-headed capitalist Yoweri Museveni, invited me to sit with him under an acacia tree and talk cow-talk. Mr. Museveni is the owner of a stupendous herd of Ankole cattle, and in the course of conversation I couldn't help but mention my own kibbutz-acquired calf-birthing skills -- one of the only real practical skills this Diaspora Jew possesses.
The mention of kibbutz gave Mr. Museveni pause, and he narrowed his already narrow eyes and asked: "Are you Jewish?" It is my policy never to deny my Jewishness except to tefillin-bearing pubescent Lubavitchers and so I answered yes, even though I worried about the arc of this conversation: Mr. Museveni knew me as a representative of The New York Times Magazine, and Third World intellectuals believe certain things about the leanings of The New York Times.
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Prisoners
