February 19, 2007

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SOCIETY

STATE OF OUR UNIONS

Have you heard this rib-tickler? My husband went to a mind reader and he only charged him half price—as there was so little to read! It’s among the dozens of old chestnuts featured in The Tiny Book of Marriage Jokes. Or this one, from Rodney Dangerfield: By LIANNE GEORGE, BARBARA RIGHTON

BUSINESS

FILL ’ER UP FOR PEACE

At a small self-serve gas station in the west end of Omaha, Neb., a group called the Terror-Free Oil Initiative is fighting a global war—by refusing to sell gasoline that comes from the Middle East. “Our main goal is to send the message to the gas companies, to the government of the U.S.,” says spokesman Joe Kaufman. By SUZANNE TAYLOR

NATIONAL

CHAREST SHOWS HIS STRIPES

A funny thing happened to Jean Charest on the way to his muchanticipated, high-stakes appointment with Quebec voters, in an election now expected as early as March 26, a week shy of his fourth anniversary in power. “I think he has finally found a way of becoming a Quebec Liberal,” one of his advisers quipped earlier this week. By BENOIT AUBIN

MAIL BAG

‘I agree with your critic about Jon Stewart. Shouting doesn’t make things funnier.’

YOUR COVER ARTICLES always interest me, but what’s up with your story on Barack Obama (“Guess who’s coming to the White House,” World, Feb. 5)? Six pages dwelling on whether or not America is ready to elect a black man says loud and clear that you’re still living in the sixties.

THE BACK PAGES

FINALLY A BOOK ABOUT...HUCK FINN’S DAD

Pap Finn—alcoholic, racist and one of the nastiest characters in American fiction—finds his own novel in Jon Clinch’s ambitious Finn (Random House). In Mark Twain’s classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck and Jim find Pap’s body in a house floating down the Mississippi.

THE BACK PAGES

Get out the fishnets

The voice on the CD that comes with the book Edie: Girl On Fire is thick and dreamy. “The whole fashion scene—” it says, “I didn’t realize I was beautiful, it’s taken me 27 years to realize it and practically destroy it.” Less than a year later Edie Sedgwick was dead, killed by her drug habit. By BARBARA AMIEL

THE BACK PAGES

Coming in from the old Cold War

We have entered the Surveillance Age. As the world becomes one vast unblinking retina—a maze of cellphone cameras, satellite imaging and security monitors—almost everything we do is being watched. Intimate, one-on-one espionage seems almost quaint by comparison. By BRIAN D. JOHNSON

NATIONAL

More green for all

Is it a grassroots movement or artificial turf? An attempt last week to get Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to recant on taxing income trusts tried hard to appear grassroots, but was driven almost entirely by business interests. That same day, however, an eclectic assortment of stay-at-home parents, academics and fringe politicians held their own meeting on Parliament Hill hoping to convince the government of a different cause: income splitting. By PETER SHAWN TAYLOR

February 122007