Charlie Pierce on Heath Shuler:

….a man who has found two careers in which his most remarkable accomplishment is consistently throwing the ball to the wrong team.

Mike Hale of the NY Times on Skyline:

Trapped inside what looks like a Marina del Rey condo complex, the principals raise and lower the blinds, run up and down the stairs and occasionally venture outside, while the audience, if it has the energy, yells: “No! Don’t do that! That’s stupid!”

James Wolcott on Cynthia Ozick:

In Thomas Mallon’s rave review of Ozick’s Foreign Bodies in next Sunday’s Book Review, he cites the following sentence as a sample of her “superb aptness”:

“The wedding cake was wheeled in on a cart, like a belated and infirm guest gallantly overdressed in too many fringes and tassels.”

See, to me that sentence is overdressed, as most of her prose is. It would be more interesting if an infirm oldie were being wheeled in like a wedding cake, rather than the other way ’round, but that’s why I’m not on award panels, handing out awards to the usual illustrious humdrum names.

Jon Stewart (who is now apparently not right thinking enough these days and so is now the enemy. Please amend your scorecards) on John McCain:

“It’s the maverick way — spend a year studying whether soldiers deserve full civil rights, and a half an hour deciding who will be your presidential running mate.”