Free Republic

A New York Times star columnist has lashed Barack Obama for axing people who helped him to the top from his lavish 60th birthday guest list in favor of A-list stars. Maureen Dowd branded Obama 'Barack Antoinette' - a reference to the out-of-touch renaissance queen - and likened him to Jay Gatsby, the shallow people-pleaser from F Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby in her scathing piece, published Saturday. She highlighted how the former president cut his ex-chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and former campaign strategist David Axelrod from the original 600-person guest list, despite both helping him secure his...

A sustained effort is under way to deny children access to literature. Under the slogan #DisruptTexts, critical-theory ideologues, schoolteachers and Twitter agitators are purging and propagandizing against classic texts—everything from Homer to F. Scott Fitzgerald to Dr. Seuss. Their ethos holds that children shouldn’t have to read stories written in anything other than the present-day vernacular—especially those “in which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm,” as young-adult novelist Padma Venkatraman writes in School Library Journal. No author is valuable enough to spare, Ms. Venkatraman instructs: “Absolving Shakespeare of responsibility by mentioning that he lived...

If you haven't already, you're going to hear a whole bunch of gripes about "The Great Gatsby" movie out this weekend. And the biggest of them all will likely have something to do with how faithful it was to the classic F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. Needless to say, there are some significant changes. But there are significant changes in "Iron Man" when put up against the comic books -- sometimes change is necessary, and even good. Then again, sometimes they're not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2jh6XkjrHU&list=PL9pRcaYn5SdyILL3bVgSfwDcTJYlRujfV&index=1&feature=plpp_video Today's feature is the 2nd film version and 1st talking one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel about the mysterious Jay Gatsby and the decadent rich Long Islanders of the Jazz Age. This version has been harder to find. I don't believe it's ever been officially released on home video and it's rarely if ever aired on TV. I suppose Paramount may have limited exposure of it in favor of its better known lavish 1974 remake with Robert Redford. Not a perfect film(the death of Myrtle is unintentionally hilarious) but worth watching for fans of the novel. Alan Ladd...

Maybe F. Scott Fitzgerald is rolling in his grave. Then again, maybe not. All I know is, entrepreneurial 'N Sync singer Lance Bass is getting ready to produce a big-screen take on "The Great Gatsby" with Paris Hilton as an updated Daisy Buchanan. Maybe someone will ask Paris tonight at her, uh, book party if she's even read "The Great Gatsby." Perhaps Merle Ginsberg, the ghostwriter of "Confessions of an Heiress: A Tongue-in-Chic Peek Behind the Pose," will read it to her tonight at Lot 61. Anyway, if Bass and his partners get their way, the Jay Gatsby character will...