Goldberg, Norquist, Harris vs. Day, Uribe, and Toilet Lady

Some media updates of interest, the first three being media items pointed out to me by Ali Kokmen:

•Jonah Goldberg got edited from eighteen minutes to an awkward six on The Daily Show — but his book (my December Book Selection) still went to #1, and I hope that means Random House hasn’t really gotten rid of his editor, Adam Bellow, but their loss if they have (not that Random House employee Ali had any official position on that side issue).

[UPDATE: Ali informs me Bellow is now an executive editor at Collins, where he'll be working with a former Free Press editor -- all is well; in other news, Valerie Bertinelli displaces Goldberg at #1 -- I was taken aback recently to hear a middle-aged woman refer to someone else as looking "as good as Valerie Bertinelli," but apparently she's a standard again. And I think the guy who played Schneider on One Day at a Time was the voice of the superhero the Atom on a cartoon show earlier in his career, so maybe he should write an autobiography too.]

•Grover Norquist, in another reminder that there are different ways of carving up the political spectrum (as I discussed in yesterday’s pivotal entry), talked on The Daily Show about his rather libertarian book about the broad coalition of people who just want to tell government Leave Me Alone — a message that’s perhaps a tad easier to sell than Jonah’s point about progressivism and fascism having common roots but no less important.•By some strange coincidence — unless it’s the result of a conspiracy — no sooner does Colombian president Uribe face political tensions with neighboring leftists such as autocratic Hugo Chavez than another man named Uribe, in Mexico City, has to cancel a date with his girlfriend after the flatbed tow truck he’d rented to carry him to the date (he being 800 pounds and needing a forklift to exit his house) crashes on its way to the encounter — coincidence? And which Uribe has bigger problems, really?

In other news:

•A woman in Kansas got fused to a toilet seat after sitting on it for two years despite pleas from her boyfriend to exit the bathroom, possibly indicating problems of a mental nature.

•And on a significantly more philosophical note, atheist Sam Harris officially replied to Vox Day’s criticisms of him (and of the “New Atheism” in general — which is also the topic of a Roger Scruton speech this month at the University Club here under the auspices of Eric Metaxas’ group Socrates in the City, by the way, on March 25 at 7pm sharp, $35 in advance, $50 at the door, space permitting). Day’s book The Irrational Atheist was one of my Book Selections last month, during my “Month Without God” (this month being my conservative “Month Without Buckley”).