Next Year in The Hague!

Tonight at Jane Smiley's book reading in Oakland, CA, she opened by celebrating this: Former Cheney aide found guilty in CIA leak case - Yahoo! News.

Ms. Smiley led us in a cheer, then took off her shirt to show us the fetching tank top she wore underneath in honor of Dick Cheney. It was printed with his famous curse across her chest. (Go F*** Yourself - he said it on the floor of the Senate, isn't he a credit to the Vice Presidency?)

Ever the loudmouth, I shouted from the back of the crowded bookstore: Next Year in The Hague! Ms. Smiley loved that, repeated it, and said she was going to lead us in a cheer at the end of the reading. Sure enough, when she was finished with reading and questions, she made us yell it three times:

Next Year in the Hague!

Let me spell it out: I hope we get to see Bush in the dock at the Hague, on trial for war crimes. Impeachment is too good for this guy (but I'll take that too). Cheney needs to go right with him.

In other, literary news - Ms. Smiley's new book, Ten Days in the Hills, looks to be a fun romp in the hills of Los Angeles, loosely inspired by the form and the sensibility of Boccaccio's Decameron. She read us a sort of stream of consciousness sequence from Day Six in which a mystic healer and possible charlatan lies in bed with his movie star girlfriend, talking and snuggling and breathing and *not* having sex, yet. The book is R rated, or so says the cover (they don't really rate books you know).

Ms. Smiley is smart and funny and a fine American writer. She is also a firebrand political blogger whose postings at Huffington are too good to miss. She says her blog self is different from her writing self - I know how that is. Go buy her books, and read her blog, too.

Comments

[Donna]

It makes me so sad to say this, but I would like to see him and his braintrust punished for this mess he made, too. Next year in the Hague indeed.