Wednesday March 26, 2003

RED BOROUGH, BLUE BOROUGH? Very strange Ron Rosenbaum column today in the Observer. He says we Brooklynites "sneer" at Manhattan residents because, in a terror attack, we would die less swiftly than they. I have literally no idea what he's talking about.

But who knows what the kind of conversation goes on among Professor Ron and his peeps?

Great to be alive in this high, unmean decade! But we must do something about irony!

What do you mean "we," old boy? You'll be incinerated immediately in a dirty bomb attack! Best leave irony to those of us who will only experience severe radiation poisoning!

Ha, ha! More non-French wine, chum?

Brrrr.

Then RR interrupts his transmission to tell us about the column he yanked before filing his current dog's-Sunday-brunch. It had to do with Rosenbaum's Hitler book and a TV special bearing a sub-title that came too close for comfort to one of Rosenbaum's. That sounds every bit as uninteresting as the substitute; why'd he switch? "With war about to start," he writes, "it seemed just too self-involved to devote an entire column to my own concerns. "

Then he writes about stuff he read in the New Yorkerand "Lunch with Farrar, Straus & Giroux editor in chief Jonathan Galassi."

If you want to know how New York intellectuals got so bad, you might start by viewing Pennebaker's "Town Bloody Hall" and reading some back issues of Commentary.But you know, it's a lovely day outside. Maybe you should take a walk instead.