A wholly personal and entirely idiosyncratic ranking of the what were the very best elements of what, apart from these and a few other gems, was a beast of year:

1.) London. A full week living the life of a roving journalist, enjoying posh circumsances, a limitless credit line, and the company of smart, thoughtful people.
2.) In the Loop, Armando Iannucci’s scathing political satire
3.) Wolf Hall, Hillary Mantei’s impressively realized reimagining of Henry VIII’s divorce crisis, and the role of the worldy, modern Thomas Cromwell
4.) Johnny Damon’s ninth inning of Game Four of the World Series, in which he singled after a nine-pitch at bat, stole two bases on one play, scored the go-ahead run, and effectively expunged hope from Phillie hearts
5.) An Education, Lone Schefrig’s tart, gimlet-eyed coming-of-age story set in London just before the sixties began swinging, with an excellent cast featuring Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina, Olivia Williams, Rosamund Pike, Dominic Cooper, Emma Thompson, and, in a career-establishing performance, Carey Mulligan
6.) Jon Stewart’s astonishing smackdown of Jim Cramer and CNBC’s slobbering market boosterism
7.) Liaquat Ahamed’s majesterial Lords of Finance
8.) The audacity of hope: the Inauguration of Barack Obama
9.) James Harrison’s amazing, huffing puffing 100 yard interception return as time expired before halftime in the Super Bowl, nearly thwarted by Larry Fitzgerald’s tackle after a desperate field-long pursuit
10.) Chesley Sullenberger lands his plane in the Hudson, a feat brilliantly captioned by a New York cop: “What’s there to say? A bird–a plane–super man.”

Honorable mention, in no particular order: Too Big to Fail, by Andrew Ross Sorkin, Go Like Hell, by A.J. Baime; Rachel Getting Married, Jonathan Demme’s poignant, gallant family drama, with really wonderful work by Anne Hathaway, Rosemary DeWitt and Debra Winger; Quentin Tarantino’s rollicking, unhistorical Inglorious Basterds, with a whole raft of thrilling, scenery-chewing performances; Joseph “You Lie!” Wilson; Glover’s Mistake, by Nick Laird; Battlestar Galactica; Mad Men; Closing Time, by Joe Queenan; teaching Cara to drive; “You and I and Love”, by the Avnet Brothers; and “Sometime Around Midnight,” by The Airborne Toxic Event

In Britain, Borders UK has gone into administration, as they call bankruptcy, and the other big chains, most notably Waterstone’s, are not asking for whom the bell tolls. Meanwhile, in the US, both Borders and Barnes & Noble both posted quarterly losses, and, according to the AP, both “forecast a difficult holiday season, saying competition from discount chains and online retailers is stiffening.”

Having whiled away many a pleasant hour in various outposts of these chains, I am sad to hear of their problems, and the prospect of losing pleasant shopping experiences in well-lit, well-designed, welcoming spaces is most dismaying–although, truth be told, it would be more dismaying, if the chains hadn’t used their powerful economies of scale in a similar way to drive out so many independent book shops. The net effect of this was bringing the boom or bust mentality which governs film and TV and Broadway–something needs to be an immediate hot, or it’s on to the next thing–into the world of books. The old practice of slowly nuturing authors as they grew in talent and ability under the financial protection of lucrative reference books and crossword puzzle books and so, which had been one of the glories of the sleepy world of publishing, is long gone. Authors need to be an immediate it, and the lucky ones who have attained that status become name brands and get to keep publishing. That’s why you can still read the new Ludlum, even though Robert Ludlum has been long dead.

It’s sad to contemplate the death of the bookstore, but in this way, it follows what netflix is doing to theaters and what online shopping is doing to stores. Civilization’s greatest achievement has been the city, but all this makes me wonder whether three decades from now, cities will even exist.

This is most minor footnote to what is, after all, a terribly large tragedy, but last week’s shootings at Fort Hood reminded us of a question that has long rattled around in our heads: why does the U.S. Army continue to maintain so many bases named after Confederate generals?

Fort Hood is named after General John Bell Hood, a hard charging Kentuckian who commanded a brigade of Texans at Bull Run and Gettysburg, and who lost an arm and a leg in combat. Texas is also home to Camp Maxey, an Army National Guard training facility named after Samuel Bell Maxey, who parlayed an undistinguished military career into a seat in the U.S. Senate.

Texas is hardly alone in honoring rebel generals. Virginia has Fort Lee, named after Robert E. Lee, the south’s most distinguished leader; Fort A.P. Hill, named after Lee’s gutsy but frequently illness-wracked subordinate, and Fort Pickett, a Virginia Army National Guard installation, named for the George Pickett, anofficer best known for his disastrous attack at Gettysburg and his hair-do (perfumed ringlets).

North Carolina has Fort Bragg, named for Braxton Bragg, an irascible and largely incompetent commander. Louisiana has Camp Beauregard, named after Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, a general with a natty name and neat goatee who commanded the forces that fired on Fort Sumter and started the war, and Fort Polk, named after Leonidas Polk, a bishop who was named a corps commander because of his friendship with President Jefferson Davis, and who is best known for being decapitated by a cannonball fired by an uncannily accurate Yankee gunner. In Georgia there’s Fort Gordon, named for John Gordon, a competent commander during the south’s declining years; Fort Benning, named after Henry Benning, whose troops fought well at Burnside’s Bridge, Devil’s Den, and other engagements where apostrophes aren’t required; and Fort Rucker, named after cavalryman Edmund Rucker, a colonel who was presented with title of general after the war stopped.

It’s not hard to see why bases were named after these men–tender local feelings, a desire to mend the nation through magnaminity, the invocation of a native son’s martial example. But as we get farther and farther away from the Civil War, it’s hard to see why we continue to honor men who, after all, did secede from the union, and who did fight for a racist government in the cause of preserving Negro slavery, and who did, ultimately, lose the war, thanks in part to strategic and tactical mistakes committed by these very generals. Surely the almost endless conflict in which we have been engaged for the century and a half since the Civil War has produced heroes worth honoring who are encumbered by less baggage than these men, whose principle claims on distinction were for actions perpetrated against the United States and the soldiers in its service.

It could be more embarrassing. There was a time when there was a Camp Forrest in Tennessee, named for Nathan Bedford Forrest, the slave trader, general, and founder of the Ku Klux Klan. Lucky that’s been deactivated.

I loved the article in The New York Times the other day about the new ideas about the Battle of Agincourt, the mythic victory that the English under Henry V enjoyed over the French on St. Crispin’s Day, Oct. 25, in 1415, and that gave rise to Shakespeare’s stirring “Band of Brothers” speech. “They devastated a force of heavily armored French nobles who had gotten bogged down in the region’s sucking mud,” writes James Glanz, “riddled by thousands of arrows from English longbowmen and outmaneuvered by common soldiers with much lighter gear. . . . But Agincourt’s status as perhaps the greatest victory against overwhelming odds in military history — and a keystone of the English self-image — has been called into doubt by a group of historians in Britain and France who have painstakingly combed an array of military and tax records from that time and now take a skeptical view of the figures handed down by medieval chroniclers. The historians have concluded that the English could not have been outnumbered by more than about two to one. And depending on how the math is carried out, Henry may well have faced something closer to an even fight.” The painstaking detective work undertaken by the hsitorians is truly impressive. I also enjoyed seeing a mention in the article of the historian Conrad Crane, who made news in recent months as the lead writer of the Counterinsurgency Field Manual that mapped out the successful strategy adopted by General Daniel Petraeus in Iraq. I will always be grateful to Dr. Crane, who as Col. Crane, West Point instructor, led me on a privileged tour of the cemetery at West Point, which turned into a pretty damn good piece for Time magazine 12 years ago.

Writing in The Daily Beast, Rebecca Dana contends that by avoiding the use of euphemisms in his announcement of his sexual affairs, David Letterman “has perfected the art of disclosure.”

“When David Letterman confessed last week to having had sex with women who work on his show, the real shock wasn’t the affairs themselves (I mean, honestly people) but rather the language he used to describe them. “I have had sex with women who work on this show,” he said.

He didn’t euphemize. He didn’t dissemble. He didn’t confess alcoholism, drug addiction, or personal weakness. He didn’t appeal to Jesus or the state of New York; didn’t define simple verbs, praise his in-laws, haul out his wounded spouse or dwell on how much he’d let everyone down. It was the most skillful handling of a sex scandal in the modern era.”

Dana contrasts Letterman with Mark Sanford, Eliot Spitzer, John Ensign and other politicians who cloaked their admissions with evasive language. “All of these men had sex. But none of them plainly mentioned the fact of it, as if `seriously sinning’ somehow softens the blow.”

Dana’s observation is accurate but myopic. Letterman not only broke no law but is allegedly the victim of a crime, while Spitzer and Ensign may have been guilty of violations and Sanford had disappeared. More importantly, a frank admission based on the Letterman model would have been useless to these men. Does Dana really believe that if Spitzer had said “I was having sex with high-priced call girls” his `perfect disclosure’ would have helped him weather the storm any more easily?

The real implication of Letterman’s admission is that for a large and growing segment of the population, shame is an outdated concept, a vestigial idea from a disappearing world. Whole ranges of behavior that just a generation ago needed to kept secret out of fear of embarrassment and humiliation are now forgiven, accepted and even encouraged. Young people live their entire lives on Facebook with no fear of reproach. Various empowerment efforts mitigate the stigma of a disadvantaged background. Struggles with drugs and alcohol are causes for therapy and ultimate vindication. Homosexuality, interracial relationships, children born out of wedlock, divorce–mere retro plot points on Mad Men. People don’t even bother to deny looking at internet porn. Ordinary girls go wild and bare their boobs while starlets flash their labia. In the UK, where CCTV security cameras are prevalent, young drunks arrested for fighting outside pubs frequently ask police for copies of the tapes of their brawls.

Privacy is a crucial legal concept to those of us who remember when a person’s private actions could be used to cause him or her emotional, financial and even legal harm. But among young people, the domain of privacy is shrinking, and as it diminishes, the idea of shame is shrinking as well, and across all sectors. Is there any sense that the gang of bankers and brokers who brought on the financial collapse feel any shame? I’m not aware of any.

Letterman could get away with his admission because audiences have fewer moral expectations than electorates, and because his audience in particular simply had no expectation of faithfulness on his part at all. He would have invited judgment had he acted ashamed. But younger people are getting older and older people are getting deader. One can well imagine in twenty years time a politician who’s being questioned about sexual misconduct looking into the camera and saying “Yeah, I did it. Haven’t you?”

This is high season for sexual censoriousness. Facts are in short supply, but conclusions are abundant. We do know that David Letterman has allegedly been the victim of a crime involving affairs with members of his staff. We don’t know whether Letterman was married at the time of any of these events (as if it was any of our business), or if they may have involved acts of sexual harassment. Still, on Morning Joe today, Mika Brzezinski, the Red Queen of public affairs commentary (“Sentence first–verdict afterwards”) did not let a lack of facts keep her from condemning Letterman for “hypocrisy,” as he put it, for joking about Bill Clinton and other public figures whose sex lives became public fodder. Thus she ended the week with same tone of indignation that she began it when she, along with many others, declared Roman Polanski “guilty of rape” and “being a pedophile,” as well as lesser charges of being artistic, being foreign, being European, living in France, and having friends in Hollywood. Polanski may very well indeed be guilty of rape, but that’s something that a jury gets to decide after a fair trial in a court of law. It’s as though the word “allegedly” no longer existed, as though “innocent until proven guilty” was one of those niceties advised to children that adults feel free to ignore.

Now, into this raging storm of censoriousness arrives An Education, a movie that has already been touted as one of the year’s best. The film, which opens October 16th, is about a teenage girl’s romantic relationship with an older man, and—here’s what’s provocative—does not rush to condemn it.

Based on a memoir by the English journalist Lynn Barber, directed by Lone Scherfig, written by Nick Hornby, and featuring a brilliant, career-making performance by Carey Mulligan, An Education is set in the early sixties, in a suburb of London. Sixteen year-old Jenny, too intelligent for the confining middle-class life she is temporarily mired, dreaming of the day when she can join a smokier, jazzier, more francophonic world, one day meets David, a man nearly twice her age. The assured and sophisticated David (excellently played by a debonair Peter Sarsgaard) offers the most romantic gesture possible: he takes an interest in her, a genuine interest in who she is and what she wants. And while he woos Jenny by giving her access to art and music and eventually Paris, he also woos her parents, offering them a combination of a suitor’s respect and a peer’s recognition. And even though Jenny eventually sees that David supports his splendid lifestyle with a web of shady of not criminal enterprises, she turns her back on her the dull, earnest school teachers who have supported her efforts to get accepted into Oxford, and accepts David proposal of marriage.

What’s remarkable about the film—and what may leave it susceptible to condemnation by the Mika Brzezinskis of the world—is that David is never portrayed as exploiting Jenny. We may not end up trusting David very much, but we never really dislike him, and we never feel has mistreated Jenny. Instead, he is shown to be solicitous of desires and patient with her feelings. His sexual interest is part and parcel of the emotional and intellectual connection he feels with her. This is strikingly different from the way in which the movies, particularly Hollywood movies, portray adult male sexuality, as something dangerous, or destabilizing, or laughable, and which must usually be walled off in marriage or buried in widowhood if a protagonist is to be accepted. Very few male characters are allowed the latitude enjoyed by, say, Diane Lane in most of her films, or by the Sex and the City women. James Bond, once the exemplar of the predatory male, has been on a short leash since the dawn of the Timothy Dalton era. Indeed, one of the attractions of Mad Men is seeing what has become a piece of forbidden fruit: men at the height of their masculine power taking a sexual interest in women.

The complicated nature of Jenny and David’s relationship is summed up by the unspoken implication of the film’s title. Jenny received an education from David, a tutorial in things nice and not so nice, from which she profited. It’s an unsentimental view of the way romantic relationships often work, and the climate for its discussion has suddenly turned cold.

Those condemned to live somewhere other than Manhattan may not know this, but we have this enormous skyscraper right in the middle of the island that we’re all rather proud of called the Empire State Building. Not content enough to allow the building to speak for itself and project an image of strength, power, sophistication, and confidence, the hucksters who own the thing often bathe the building in light to convey some other message. Typically the message is some kind of civic boosterism, like using blue and red lights to celebrate the Giants’ victory in the Super Bowl, or green lights on March 17th to signal a day of public inebriation.

Usually it’s all rather harmless. But according to a story on google news from AFB, on Wednesday of this week–tonight!–the building will be lit up red and yellow Wednesday in honor of the 60th anniversary of communist China. Yes, the People’s Republic of China, that big, repressive, violent totalitarian regime that takes up such a huge chunk of Asia. They own a great big chunk of America’s debt, and I guess when a country has your balls in a vise like that, they can pretty much do what they want, including make everyone pretend that none of us remembers the day the tanks rolled into Tiannamen Square. According to reports, the Chinese consul, Peng Keyu, will be among the officials who will take part in the lighting ceremony. I wonder if Peng is aware that the Empire State Building is just a couple of blocks from Herald Square, because, you know, if he wanted to make a day of it, I’m sure somebody would be happy to kiss his ass in Macy’s window, too.

You know, the students at Tiannamen Square made a paper mache model of the Statue of Liberty. Now the real one will have a ringside view of Wednesday’s lighting.

Welcome to the Chinese century.

Knowing of my longstanding fascination with private conversations made unintentionally public, my friend David Hochman sent along this treasure from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library. Please note what the very specific president does not discuss (payment). Click here to listen.

You never can tell what a summer will be remembered for. The summer of 1975 got Jaws, the summer of 1916 got the Somme. One summer gets a hummable ditty from Mungo Jerry that will be played on the radio until the end of time, and another summer gets Hurricane Katrina. With about four weeks left, the summer of 2009 has its identity: it is the summer of the penis joke.

Of course, penis jokes have been around a long time and in recent years become increasingly prevalent. But this summer, with the new films Funny People, The Hangover, Bruno (above left) and who knows what else I’ve missed, and with the new HBO series Hung, about a middle-aged man who starts a career as a gigilo, penis jokes have reached a critical mass. Now comes a report that MTV is working on a series called Hard Times, a story about an unpopular 15-year-old whose anatomical gift is revealed in front of the whole school.

I don’t get it. I mean, I do get that all humor is inherently anti-authoritarian, that it has the effect of elevating the teller and reducing the person who is the butt of the joke. And I do get that anatomical humor does that especially effectively, since no matter if a person a pope, a president or a pasha, he or she inevitably is subject to the requirements of anatomy. And for some people, these jokes are the gold standard, the never-fail punch line that always elicits a laugh. “There are no limits to the amount of time a comedian will talk about his penis,’’ said Jud Apatow (left), the writer and director of Funny People on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, “because the jokes are endlessly funny.’’

Well, as unpromising as it may be to argue humor with the auteur behind The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Forgetting Sarah Marshall (right), and other penis joke laden hits that have earned a bazillion dollars, let me try. Perhaps penis jokes are endlessly funny, but the problem is not that Apatow and his ilk have lots of penis jokes in their shows, it’s just that they have a lot of penises. The jokes aren’t funny. Much of the humor that is generated by invoking the penis is based on the shock or surprise of its unexpected appearance. But that wears off, and the result is not a joke but simply an intruding penis, which is not exactly funny. Lots of penis-laden phenomena ca be funny: lust, desire, anxiety, propriety, dignity, ego—all these things can be quite funny when entangled with sex. But saying that some character has a small penis is just exhibitionism. Saying it becomes a badge that says “I’m a comedian” or “This is a comedy.” There was a time that the ability to elicit laughter was the badge that identified a comedy or a comedian. Now it’s just sort of a coincidental by-product.

Of course, penis jokes aren’t always unfunny. In this summer’s very funny, very profane political satire In the Loop, for example, the frequent obscenities are hilarious–creative, original, shocking, mean, and always, always indicative of character (I will never be able to hear the phrase “lubricated horse cock” without thinking of Malcolm Tucker). In Funny People, though, the penis jokes don’t really go anywhere. And it’s weird–Funny People is an interesting, intelligent, sensitive, thoughtful film about aging, mortality, ambition, and love, set among a group of people who tell lots of penis jokes–to no apparent humorous benefit. It could just as well have set in a language institute, where every once in a while the characters have to start speaking Russian just to establish their bona fides.

As anyone who has seen the documentary The Aristocrats knows, comedians happily compete to outdo one another with their coarseness. For years the competition took place in private, and by knowing that the jokes could never be told in public, amusement was generated in imagining the audience’s shock and horror. The very idea of transgression was hilarious. But now the jokes are told in public, and audiences aren’t shocked any more. And because there is no transgression, they’re not very amused. Indeed, if one can rely on the tepid box office that Funny People has so far received, audiences might in fact be bored. Of course, the danger is that Hollywood may conclude that not that it has given audiences too many penis jokes, but that they haven’t been given enough.

By the end of the week, we will embark on the 40th anniversary of one of the most amazingly newsworthy months of our history. July 16th, of course, is the anniversary of the day in 1969 that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first me to walk on the moon. Two days after that, on Martha’s Vineyard, Teddy Kennedy drove off his Oldsmobile Delmont 88 off the Dyke Bridge, and young Mary Jo Kopechne lost her life. Three weeks later, on the nights of August 8th and 9th, the Charles Manson and his followers brutally murdered Sharon Tate and five other people. The following week, in a small town in Sullivan County, New York, the Woodstock Festival proved to the world that the kids could have three days of fun and music, and nothing but fun and music.

Four weeks, four signature, name-brand moments that serve as memorable signposts to the era. What did they have in common?

Not much, really. Maybe you could argue that they were climactic moments to long-running stories that dominated the decade: the space program never mattered as much once we reached the moon, hopes of Kennedy presidential dynasty ended that night, and the counterculture had both its triumphant flowering and cruel, most horrifying crash. But of course, this is just a lame construct built with the most ephemeral substance known to man—ideas. Not even did the people who were most tuned in at the time see connections. “In truth,’’ one friend has written to me, “1968 was so incredibly tumultuous, this seemed like a normal news flow.’’

There is one connecting element: for all four of those events, the Number One song in the country was a turgid, apocalyptic bit of melodrama called “In the Year 2525.’’ Had the Beatles delayed “Get Back’’ a few weeks, or had the Rolling Stones hurried a few weeks to release “Honky Tonk Women,’’ the honor of being the background music to a momentous event could have gone to a momentous band. Instead, the distinction fell to a one-hit wonder duo out of Nebraska called Zager and Evans, whose marketing acumen was such that their follow-up to this megahit was “Mr. Turnkey”, a song about a rapist who nails his own wrist to the jail wall. Still, with its bizarre subject matter, Evans’ quivery evangelical tenor, and a simple, propulsive riff that kept the strange brew moving, “In the Year 2525” does have its weird appeal. After all, who can resist a lyric that says ``In the year 9595/ I’m kinda wondering if man’s gonna be alive/ He’s taken everything this old earth can give/ And he ain’t put back nothing/ Wo-oh-wo.’’

Wo-oh-wo. Just so. Exactly right.