News

Yes! That is Vera Farmiga, as surprised as I am to note that I have 9,000 articles up this week on the apparently inexhaustible topics of marriage, child-rearing, discrimination and health care, though I only traffic in one and I pay for it dearly. (Health care.) In brief:

This July, Bloomsbury put a white girl on the cover of Justine Larbalestier’s Liar, the story of a black girl, leading to a larger discussion on the paucity of black people on covers, to say nothing of black girls. For this weekend’s Los Angeles Times Book Review, I dig up my old childhood covers — riddled with black people! — and discuss reading every single one of my parents’ collection except “The Black Jews of Harlem.”

Tonight, my sister-in-law and I were looking at text messages of the Tiger Woods case and saying it was too sad a story to even follow anymore, though we did for five more minutes. AND YET. Earlier this week I wrote a piece on the Mom Factor during the sex scandals for the Daily Beast.

THEN for same…I mentioned Tiger in my piece about female cheaters and Up in the Air, which movie may — though one hopes not — herald an era in which females exercise a similarly inexplicable duplicity. (I would also like to point out to that commenter that I KNOW ABOUT Nola in She’s Gotta Have It. She just is such a bobble-head Spike Lee fantasy I didn’t want to include her.)

The perils of the Professional Parent are discussed in my defense of Sandra Tsing Loh, who is very funny and allowed to leave her husband and drive around with her daughters pulling over by the side of the road to read if she wants to, for God’s sake. (I just liked being able to describe a body of people as “researcher[s] of fashionable slingwear.”)

I wrote recently about why Men Get Important Literary Prizes, Even If They’re Dead, And a Woman That Year Wrote A Better Book. I think I wasn’t supposed to, but no one has sent the secret book judge police after me yet.

And last, the most recent dispatch on my quest to get my insurer to reimburse me for THINGS THEY NEED TO, a series designed to point out why it doesn’t matter if we insure everyone if BlueCross still keeps hanging up on me. I have spent about $64 on copies filing appeals with various heads of state and agencies, and I will keep you in the loop.

Merry Christmas and, more pertinently, Happy Chanukah! See you in the New Year.