the last book I ever read (Desperate Characters: A Novel by Paula Fox, excerpt four)

from Desperate Characters: A Novel by Paula Fox:

She was bloated; it must have been the beer. Her body was not her own any more, but had taken off in some direction of its own. In this last year she had discovered that its discomforts, once interpreted, always meant the curtailment, or end, of some pleasure. She could not eat and drink the way she once had. Inexorably, she was being invaded by elements that were both gross and risible. She had only recently realized that one was old for a long time.

She pulled her slip off and dropped it in the straw basket she used for her personal laundry. The unvarnished straw tore her stockings, but she wouldn’t replace the basket, either out of inertia or as a small defiance against practicality. She stripped off the rest of her clothes. A bottle of Guerlain perfume had turned to alcohol but still she patted some over her beery belly. Then she went down the hall and into the bedroom, where she found her nightgown on the floor where she had left it.

the last book I ever read (Desperate Characters: A Novel by Paula Fox, excerpt three)

from Desperate Characters: A Novel by Paula Fox:

“What did the doctor say?”

“Nobody was in. Don’t you know you can’t get a doctor any more? Don’t you know this country is falling apart?”

“Just because you can’t get a doctor on Friday evening does not mean the country is falling apart.”

the last book I ever read (Desperate Characters: A Novel by Paula Fox, excerpt two)

from Desperate Characters: A Novel by Paula Fox:

They turned up Henry Street. Otto noted with satisfaction that there was as much garbage here as in their own neighborhood. He wouldn’t consider buying a house on the Heights . . . horribly inflated prices, all that real-estate grinning in dusty crumbling rooms—think what you could do with that woodwork!—everyone knowing it was a put-up job, greed, low belly greed, get it while we can, house prices enunciated in refined accents, mortgages like progressive diseases, “I live on the Heights.” Of course, the Bentwoods’ neighborhood was on the same ladder, frantic lest the speculators now eying property were the “wrong” kind. Otto hated realtors, hated dealing with their nasty litigations. It was the only thing he and Charlie still agreed on. He sighed, thinking of the cop who had been checking on voter registration last week, who had said to Otto, “This area is really pulling itself together, doesn’t look like the same place it was two years ago. You people are doing a job!” And Otto had felt a murderous gratification.

“What are you sighing about?” Sophie asked.

“I don’t know.”

the last book I ever read (Desperate Characters: A Novel by Paula Fox, excerpt one)

from Desperate Characters: A Novel by Paula Fox:

The cat had begun to clean its whiskers. Sophie caressed its back again, drawing her fingers along until they met the sharp furry crook where the tail turned up. The cat’s back rose convulsively to press against her hand. She smiled, wondering how often, if ever before, the cat had felt a friendly human touch, and she was still smiling as the cat reared up on its hind legs, even as it struck at her with extended claws, smiling right up to that second when it struck at her with extended claws, smiling right up to that second when it sank its teeth into the back of her left hand and hung from her flesh so that she nearly fell forward, stunned and horrified, yet conscious enough of Otto’s presence to smother the cry that arose in her throat as she jerked her hand back from that circle of barbed wire. She pushed out with her other hand, and as the sweat broke out on her forehead, as her flesh crawled and tightened, she said, “No, no, stop that!” to the cat, as though it had done nothing more than beg for food, and in the midst of her pain and dismay she was astonished to hear how cool her voice was. Then, all at once, the claws released her and flew back as through to deliver another blow, but then the cat turned—it seemed in mid-air—and sprang from the porch, disappearing into the shadowed yard below.

the last book I ever read (Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, excerpt fourteen)

from Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America by Andrew Riesman:

The McMahons also donated $4 million to the Donald J. Trump Foundation, Trump’s fraudulent and pocket-lining faux charity, in 2007—the biggest donation it received that year. Indeed, Vince and Linda gave almost as much to that foundation as they did to their own Vince and Linda McMahon Family Foundation that year. In 2009, the McMahons donated zero dollars to their own foundation, but $1 million to Trump’s. When reporters discovered these facts and requested explanations from WWE or Trump, they were given contradictory and confusing answers.

the last book I ever read (Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, excerpt thirteen)

from Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America by Andrew Riesman:

For years, the Undertaker had worn a black trench coat during his walks to the ring. That article of clothing abruptly became a problem on April 20, 1999, when two high school students who had sometimes identified themselves as the “Trench Coat Mafia” walked into Columbine High School and murdered twelve students and a teacher.

The news media started to cast blame on violent pop culture. USA Today ran a story in which they juxtaposed Taker’s trench coat with those of the killers. As a result, Taker didn’t wear the coat at April 25’s Backlash ’99 PPV. He did, howver, kidnap Stephanie once again at the very end of the show.

the last book I ever read (Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, excerpt twelve)

from Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America by Andrew Riesman:

Tyson had grown up as a huge fan of Vince Senior’s programming—he says he used to make WWWF championship belts out of canisters of Pillsbury dough strung around his waist as a child. He idolized Bruno Sammartino and Gorilla Monsoon and Billy Graham. As such, he was delighted to hear from Vince.

In the final days of Vince’s eventful year of 1997, the WWF closed a deal with Tyson for the boxer to appear at WrestleMania XIV in March. He would be paid roughly $3.5 million to do it.

the last book I ever read (Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, excerpt eleven)

from Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America by Andrew Riesman:

Shawn did, indeed, get away with a lot. For one thing, he was, at the time, an unrepentant and unreliable addicted to any number of substances. He rarely failed to impress in the ring, however intoxicated he might have been, but he was living proof that the WWF’s commitment to wrestler health was limited, at best.

the last book I ever read (Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, excerpt ten)

from Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America by Andrew Riesman:

Vince demanded more wrestling with the Boys. They indulged him, carefully. “We were pretty friendly and gentle with him,” Bret says. “Playful. And I think Vince liked that, that we played around with him.”

That is, until Vince knocked down Hercules Hernandez (Raymond Fernandez). “Hercules was pretty drunk and probably not the smartest guy in the world,” Bret recalls. “He got really mad.” Hernandez suplexed Vince and threw him backward in the air—almost to the ceiling. “Vince was out of control, he’s in the air, upside down, in a dangerous, reckless way.”

Vince landed on Earl Hebner’s rollaway bed. Oh my god, Bret thought, do you realize you’re throwing the boss that writes your check every week?

“I remember Vince looking at Herc and thinking he just locked that thought into his head,” Bret says, “that the only thing he’ll remember of this whole night is to fire that guy tomorrow.”

And he did. “I never saw Herc again after that TV taping that week,” Bret says.

the last book I ever read (Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, excerpt nine)

from Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America by Andrew Riesman:

Just nine days after the inaugural WBF Championship, the federal government’s steroid distribution case against Dr. George Zahorian went to trial in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. On the witness stand, Superstar Billy Graham claimed, as did a handful of other disgruntled wrestlers, that the WWF was a den of chemical iniquity, and that Zahorian was the pusher.

The WWF fought hard to keep Vince and Hogan from having to appear. But Piper? They were less willing to put the effort in. Rod Toombs was thus summoned to the stand on the morning after he sustained a head injury in the ring. He reportedly had a series of seizures on the plane to Harrisburg and, looking haggard, he told the jury he’d bought steroids from Zahorian. On June 27, the doctor was found guilty on twelve counts.

the last book I ever read (Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, excerpt eight)

from Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America by Andrew Riesman:

The film’s origins are murky. I tried to interview the credited writer, director, and producers for interviews; all turned me down or were nowhere to be found. In his first memoir, Hogan wrote that he had been approached about making a wrestling-oriented movie called No Holds Barred, but that “Vince and the company weren’t involved. Then Vince stepped in and said, ‘I’ll produce this movie and I’ll pay you the same amount of money that you would have gotten.’” Hogan did what he generally did: what Vince wanted.

“Originally, a writer had been hired to come up with the script for No Holds Barred,” Hogan continued. “But when he turned it in, it sucked. Of course, he was going to get credit for it even if it got rewritten fifty times, because that’s how the Writer’s Guild works. But Vince and I didn’t care about who got credit for it.” No, they just wanted a hit movie. And who knew action and delight better than them?

So, according to Hogan, he and Vince locked themselves in a hotel room near a beach outside St. Petersburg and, for either two or three days straight (depending on which of his memoirs you believe), they “wrote it from beginning to end without stopping, without sleeping.”

the last book I ever read (Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, excerpt seven)

from Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America by Andrew Riesman:

At some point around the run-up to the first WrestleMania, the WWF had started lobbying for deregulation in Connecticut. On May 15, 1985, Republican state representative Loren E. Dickinson had presented a bill that would remove most government oversight of wrestler health and safety. A WWF lawyer had appeared before the body to defend the effort with a remarkable admission: he said wrestling was fake.

“We consider ourselves in the same class or league as the circus and the Harlem Globetrotters,” the lawyer had said, adding that while such performances featured “terrific athletes” and “tremendous entertainment,” the nevertheless “do not have the regulation by the government.” If something wasn’t real, how dangerous could it be?

the last book I ever read (Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, excerpt six)

from Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America by Andrew Riesman:

The weight of André’s enormous bones was destroying his legs, and he had to wear a back brace under his black, single-strapped caveman leotard. His face was pale, his teeth stained, his eyes half-dead. However, his dreadful appearance only added to the intended effect of making André look like he'd sold his soul.

After about eleven minutes of lackluster grappling, all of which was rewarded with enthusiasm by the crowd, Hogan managed to lift André’s enormous body—at that point, about 550 pounds—just barely high enough that he could then invert the man and slam him into the mat. Hogan went for the pin. One, two, three—it was over. The masses exploded with joy.

the last book I ever read (Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, excerpt five)

from Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America by Andrew Riesman:

Then “Captain” Lou Albano showed up.

Albano was a bombastic ex-wrestler who had become even more famous as a heel manager, talking up and aiding various baddies of the ring. The size of his midsection was rivaled by the size of his mangy salt-and-pepper beard, which he’d adorn and contort with rubber bands—one of his idiosyncratic trademarks, along with his piercings, Hawaiian shirts, and flip-flops. He talked fast and well, and his main job on TNT that night was chatting up a story line that would prove to be massively consequential for the WWF: his feud with pop star Cyndi Lauper.

the last book I ever read (Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, excerpt four)

from Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America by Andrew Riesman:

Looking back now, Meltzer says that, if anything, his younger self wasn’t being hyperbolic enough.

Maybe the most important year in wrestling history would be 1984, when I think about it,” he tells me. “In 1984, there were the machinations every single week. That was the year that changed everything.” The territory system didn’t disappear that year, “but the seeds were sown in ’84,” he says. “When [Vince] went out, it was obvious to me that the Kansas Cities and the Portlands—those types of territories were doomed, and there would be a few that survived. But you what, I was even wrong on those.”

the last book I ever read (Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, excerpt three)

from Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America by Andrew Riesman:

The potential for scandal—dead girl, live wrestler, previous incident, blind eye turned—was enormous. Vince was less than a month away from securing ownership of his father’s company, and now it was all in jeopardy.

To make matters worse, Snuka changed his story in that morning confab. This time, he told the police that he had been driving with Argentino in the early hours of the previous morning, that she’d needed to relieve herself in some roadside bushes, and that she’d slipped and hit her head on the pavement while coming back to the car.

A wrestler who was trying to defend Snuka would, decades later, inadvertently undermine this story when he told a documentary crew that he was in the car with them that early morning and had no recollection of the roadside incident.

But that was the story Snuka held on to for the rest of his life, and he never offered a satisfying answer as to why he’d said anything different beforehand.

the last book I ever read (Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, excerpt two)

from Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America by Andrew Riesman:

Unbeknownst to viewers, GCW was racked by internal division between co-owner Jim Barnett and Ole Anderson, who was his “booker”—the guy given the weighty task of mapping out story lines and deciding who was going to beat whom. They each represented much about the questionable morals of the NWA.

Barnett was a bespectacled nonwrestler from Oklahoma City with a business degree and a somewhat openly gay lifestyle. He has been among the most powerful promoters of the preceding decade. He developed a reputation as a colorful, beloved personality, a friend of celebrities, and a pathbreaker for gay men in the athletics industry.

Anderson (born Alan Robert Rogowski), by contrast, was a deeply disliked ex-wrestler—“Ole was a true curmudgeon; he very much liked to bully people,” is how one former colleague put it to me.

That said, the beloved Barnett had also been accused of running an informal brothel during the early 1960s, in which he induced college football players to have sex with himself and others—including actor Rock Hudson. It’s hard to find a blameless man in wrestling.

the last book I ever read (Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, excerpt one)

from Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America by Andrew Riesman:

There is a story that is illuminating, one passed down by J. J. Dillon (James Morrison), an ex-wrestler who worked for Vince Senior (and, later, Vince). He says Vince Senior was beloved by the Boys, the term of art for a wrestling roster. “The old-timers had such adoration for the father,” Dillon says. “I could even go so far as to say it was almost an impossibility for his son to come along and ever completely fill his father’s shoes and have that same level of respect.”

Sometime later, Vince the younger told Dillon about a conversation he’d had with Vince Senior. The father’s wisdom, as imparted to the son, was: “Wrestlers are like seagulls: all they do is eat, shit, and squawk all day.”

the last book I ever read (Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, excerpt twelve)

from Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson:

In a fifteenth-anniversary tribute Thomas delivered to Weyrich’s group in April 1993, he made explicitly clear how much he felt he owed the right wing. Joining a group of speakers that included the North Carolina senator Jesse Helms, the conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, and Oliver North (soon to be a Republican candidate for the Senate from Virginia), Thomas said, “One of the things I can say about Paul and Free Congress and all my friends over here is that in this city, when times are good, your friends know you. When times are bad, you know your friends. And I got to know these friends when times were bad. So it’s with deepness and a sense of gratitude, and a sense of loyalty and friendship, that I congratulate Free Congress and all my friends here.”

Although many of the justices appear publicly before legal groups and several have been keynote speakers at events organized by the conservative Federalist Society, Thomas’s ties to Weyrich and other political activists who were taking sides on major issues before the Court are unparalled. In fact, at the momemt that Thomas appeared at Weyrich’s anniversary gala, the Court was considering a case about religious instruction in public school facilities in which Free Congress Foundation had filed a friend-of-the-court brief.

the last book I ever read (Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, excerpt eleven)

from Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson:

Characteristically pugnacious, Thomas confided to friends like Bolick and Mackey that he was uncomfortable with Duberstain’s stealth approach. Perhaps, left to his own devices, he would have given the Senate and the public a more forthright and illuminating exposition of his views. But honesty was not the best policy, in the view of the White House strategists. As they kept reminding him, their job was to get him to the Supreme Court; once there, he could take on his critics and vote as he pleased.

On the volatile subject of abortion, the White House made a firm decision that Thomas must say nothing definitive. Among other concerns, any indication that the nominee might abrogate a woman’s right to an abortion would risk alienating a crucial Republican moderate on the committee, Arlen Specter. A former prosecutor, Specter had led the Republican mutiny against Bork, dooming him with a sharp cross-examination that lasted two days. During 1991, he had voted with George Bush less than 40 percent of the time, marking himself as a dangerous wild card whom Duberstein’s team would need to woo assiduously. The White House knew that the ardently pro-choice Specter was up for reelection in 1992 and was counting on strong support from women’s groups. If Thomas were to speak out against abortion, Specter would almost certainly have to vote against him, which is why, as John Mackey, the Justice Department handler, later conceded, avoiding the abortion issue was a calculated decision. “If he had answered the abortion question, it would have cost him votes,” Mackey said. “Specter was critical in the outcome. If he [Thomas] had answered, maybe Specter would not have supported him.”

the last book I ever read (Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, excerpt ten)

from Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson:

Brown, a tall and boisterous self-promoter barely in this thirties, was convinced after Bork’s defeat that attack politics was the only way for conservatives to reach the Court. “In the Bork fight I watched the conservative movement take a pass card and not fight,” he recalled. “After the Bork battle I said, I’m going to form an organization and be ready for the next one. I felt we had to approach these nomination fights like they were political battles, to be aggressive and fight the battle on enemy turf.” Even before there was another opening on the Court, he formed a group called Citizens United in preparation for the next nomination fight. If nothing else, a bruising confirmation battle would prove an enormously useful way of energizing conservative donors and invigorating his mailing list.

the last book I ever read (Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, excerpt nine)

from Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson:

The Democrats on the Judiciary Committee were still nervous about the nomination. They, too, were weary after the Lucas fight. But they were also concerned about rumors that Thomas’s D.C. Circuit nomination was a prelude to bigger things, especially if Thurgood Marshall should ever resign or die. Joseph Biden, the Judiciary Committee’s chairman, got in touch with the White House. If Thomas was auditioning for the Supreme Court, Biden said, he could expect rough questioning. The Justice Department sent word back that there was no intention of pushing Thomas that high. If Biden gave his support now, he could rest assured that the Supreme Court was not in the picture.

the last book I ever read (Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, excerpt eight)

from Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson:

Not surprisingly, Thomas’s staff seemed to be composed of deferential people who could be counted on to agree with him. (Many of these same staff members would testify for him during the hearings.) Among them was his secretary, Diane Holt, whom he brought with him from the Department of Education. Another close aide was his assistant and personal friend J. C. Alvarez, who had also previously worked for Senator Danforth.

An especially loyal member of this group, who called himself Thomas’s “confidential assistant,” was Armstrong Williams, who came to work for Thomas in January 1983. A suave and stylish African-American, Williams was a protégé of the former segregationist Strom Thurmond and had a flair for social networking. Williams caught Thomas’s attention when, as a low-level aide at the Department of Agriculture, he managed to convince Richard Pryor to speak at a Reagan administration event commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The bold stroke turned into a publicity coup that helped deflect attention from Reagan’s opposition to making King’s birthday a national holiday.

the last book I ever read (Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, excerpt seven)

from Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson:

In February 1982, nine months after his arrival at the Department of Education, Thomas was nominated to become the next chairman of the EEOC. As Thomas had divined, the Republicans were eager to the point of desperation for black recruits. A full year after Regan took the oath of office, the White House had still identified so few qualified black conservatives for positions in the administration that it was having trouble filling vital posts. A particularly embarrassing hole was the chairmanship of the EEOC. Despite the administrations’s stance against affirmative action, it was widely understood that the White House had been looking for a black for the job in order to insulate itself against any charges of racism. A White House aide told Newsweek that the administration had approached ten or twelve black lawyers, but none wanted to implement Reagan’s plan to dismantle well-established methods of fighting discrimination in the workplace.

the last book I ever read (Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, excerpt six)

from Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson:

Thomas was also quite taken with Sowell’s controversial opinion of women. Acquaintances remembered Thomas’s approvingly paraphrasing Sowell’s view that the reason women earned substantially less than men on average was that many women wanted it that way: they took less demanding jobs so they could drop in and out to have babies. Later Thomas would echo this theory when, as chairman of the EEOC, he was forced to wrestle with the issue of pay inequity between the sexes.

the last book I ever read (Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, excerpt five)

from Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson:

There was one jarring recollection in the generally positive picture painted by Thomas’s colleagues in the attorney general’s office. According to Andy Rothschild, now an attorney in St. Louis but then a friend and fellow lawyer, Thomas liked to taunt another member of the office, who was prim and painfully shy, by making outrageous, gross, and at times off-color remarks. “Clarence was loud and boisterous, kind of the office clown. He couldn’t help himself but to needle the guy – he just liked to get under his skin,” Rothschild recalled in an interview.

The target of Thomas’s taunting was John C. Ashcroft, who would later replace Danforth as attorney general and eventually become Missouri’s governor. A tightly wound, strait-laced teetotaler who was the son of a fundamentalist minister and who was himself a gospel singer and songwriter, Ashcroft was easily flustered by Thomas, according to a second colleage who also remembered such episodes. This apparently encouraged Thomas to goad him further.

the last book I ever read (Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, excerpt four)

from Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson:

Looking back, Thomas and many of his admirers would explain his migration to the right as a genuine intellectual evolution resulting from long hours of reading and discussion, which persuaded him that the liberal remedies for poverty and racism were not only ineffective but harmful. Inevitably, others were less convinced by his increasingly conservative ideology and saw rank opportunitism in this political transformation. They charged that Thomas’s ideals seemed tailored to fit the opportunities, which, starting with the moderate Republicanism of Danforth, followed an increasingly rightward course. In all likelihood, Thomas’s conversion was some combination of the two, both an iconoclast’s rejection of conventional thinking and a young man’s recognition of the path that offered him the best chance to get ahead.

Thomas was unabashed about the usefulness of being a black conservative. Cindi Faddis, who met him during the years he worked for Danforth, remembered that “he said that he thought he’d have an advantage as a Republican. He was up front about it. He said, ‘If I belong to the Republican party, I could go further.’”

the last book I ever read (Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, excerpt three)

from Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson:

At a time when the country’s top corporate law firms were still hiring very few blacks, opportunity arrived on the Yale campus in the form of John C. “Jack” Danforth, Missouri’s Republican attorney general. A Yale Law School graduate, a member of the school’s board, and a man committeed to advancing the cause of civil rights, Danforth came to New Haven expressly to recruit a black lawyer for his office. Professor Guido Calabresi, later the law school’s dean, recalled Danforth’s asking “for the names of very able black students. He was concerned with diversity very early on.” Calabresi recommended Thomas’s friend Frank Washington and one other recent graduate, Rufus Cormier. However, both already had solid job offers. But Washington, in turn, suggested that Danforth talk to Thomas.