If you, like a lot of book lovers (including moi), find yourself these days with your nose in front of your monitor more often than between the covers of a book, read some book blogs—like Wyatt Mason’s Sentences, at Harper’s. They’ll get your juices going.

The other day, introducing a recently rediscovered author, Mason wrote:

Meaningful art—however long it might take—always reaches its audience. Writers or painters who work in obscurity and struggle to get an agent or gallery to give them a shot will, if their work warrants attention, eventually get it. That the attention may be too little or come too late, that the artist in the interim will have a fittingly miserable time being overlooked and unsupported–these sad facts are common enough, as anyone who has read, say, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh, understands.

The rediscovered author is Lamed Shapiro. Here’s what Mason writes about him:

This week on Sentences, I’ve featured the work of gifted writer Lamed Shapiro (1878–1948), of whom I’d not heard until last week. And yet the collection published by Yale University Press in 2007, Shapiro’s The Cross and Other Stories, is superior in every conceivable measure to any gathering of short stories I read in the past year.

Now, doesn’t that make you feel like reading those stories? If so, you’re in luck, because Mason reprinted one of them.

Read it.

Spencer Ackerman attended the hearings of “war criminal” Doug Feith today and left deeply unsatisfied:

About an hour ago, I followed Doug Feith on his way out of the Rayburn Building as he tried to flag a cab down on Independence Avenue to escape the women of Code Pink. “Torturer!” they yelled. “War Criminal!” Feith had a small retinue of Capitol Police officers to protect him from the five or so ladies — one Hill cop instructed a Pinker that she couldn’t unfurl an anti-Feith banner in a Rayburn “vestibule” even though she was clearly outside — and they shrugged off suggestions that they should arrest Feith for crimes against the Constitution. Feith, for his part, bit his lip and tried to ignore the yelling. But the cab took forever to come. “War criminal!” “Torturer!” No response. …

Jesus, I thought. Isn’t that enough, ladies? The cab came. Feith got in and sped away. Code Pink dispersed. But I kept thinking about it. Good Lord. To be called a war criminal everywhere you go, for ever and –

Then I came to my senses. Yes, the yelling was obnoxious. But Feith shares responsibility for the most disastrous U.S. war in 35 years; for abandoning the fate of a different U.S. war far more central to U.S. national security; and for creating and implementing an architecture of torture. Over 4700 Americans are dead as the result of policies Feith either partially designed or, in any case, fully endorsed. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans are dead as the result of policies Feith either partially designed or, in any case, fully endorsed. al-Qaeda is materially stronger, as an organization and as a broader movement, as the result of policies Feith either partially designed or, in any case, fully endorsed. And the worst he’ll ever have to endure is five women in pink screaming at him the obvious truth about what he is? It doesn’t even out.

That, plus his book got no play in the media.

What were you thinking Feith should endure, Spencer? (Man up, man. You’re much, much smarter than this.)

The NYT’s Bill Carter, supported by all the writers of late-night comedy, claims that there are no jokes about Barack Obama because … well, I’m not so sure what he claims—that there’s nothing funny about him.

Ann Althouse disagrees:

The best targets are the strong. Any decent political satirist should have an instinct to go after the most powerful individuals. I don’t believe Sweeney and Stewart for one minute. The real explanation for the lack of jokes is some combination of the desire for Obama to win and the fear of seeming racist.

The candidate himself has issued a list of permitted jokes. Andy Borowitz reports:

Saying he is “sympathetic to late night comedians’ struggle to find jokes to make about me,” Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) today issued a list of official campaign-approved Barack Obama jokes.

The five jokes, which Sen. Obama said he is making available to all comedians free of charge, are as follows:

Barack Obama and a kangaroo pull up to a gas station. The gas station attendant takes one look at the kangaroo and says, “You know, we don’t get many kangaroos here.” Barack Obama replies, “At these prices, I’m not surprised. That’s why we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.”

A traveling salesman knocks on the door of a farmhouse, and much to his surprise, Barack Obama answers the door. The salesman says, “I was expecting the farmer’s daughter.” Barack Obama replies, “She’s not here. The farm was foreclosed on because of subprime loans that are making a mockery of the American Dream.”

A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Why the long face?” Barack Obama replies, “His jockey just lost his health insurance, which should be the right of all Americans.”

Q: What’s black and white and red all over?
Barack Obama: The New Yorker magazine, which should be embarrassed after publishing such a tasteless and offensive cover, which I reject and denounce.

A Christian, a Jew and Barack Obama are in a rowboat in the middle of the ocean. Barack Obama says, “This joke isn’t going to work because there’s no Muslim in this boat.”

Did you hear anyone complaining about this?

Or this?

Satire has an illustrious history.

This one came from the left:

“I Shall Exterminate Everything around me That Restricts Me from Being the Master,” George Grosz, 1921

This is one came from the insane brain of Sacha Baron Cohen:

The Brits really loved Margaret Thatcher:

Arianna Huffington thinks Barack Obama needs more sleep, and that perhaps if he got it, he’d stop straying from his core message. (And she also claims that this is not a critique from the left; she’s lying (you knew that, right?), because on June 30 she wrote a post titled “Moving to the Middle Is for Losers” and we know she’s no longer a Republican insider and right-wing harridan but rather a Democratic operative and left-wing propagandist):

He needs to remain true to himself — and, above all, to make it clear that he will not lead by sticking his finger in the air to see which way the political wind is blowing.

Too late, Arianna dear! Barry hasn’t only changed his stripes on Iraq and the surge—he has rewritten history!

Barack Obama’s campaign scrubbed his presidential Web site over the weekend to remove criticism of the U.S. troop “surge” in Iraq, the Daily News has learned.

The presumed Democratic nominee replaced his Iraq issue Web page, which had described the surge as a “problem” that had barely reduced violence.

“The surge is not working,” Obama’s old plan stated, citing a lack of Iraqi political cooperation but crediting Sunni sheiks - not U.S. military muscle - for quelling violence in Anbar Province.

Barry’s “plan for Iraq” gets thorough responses here and here.

Hitchens demolishes the let’s-leave-Iraq-and-fight-”them”-in-Afghanistan argument here.

Bonus reading: Joe Klein is sticking to his “Iraq was a disaster“ story.

Please note: I’m not saying Iraq hasn’t been a disaster. Indeed it has been—and continues to be—a disaster and a half. But thanks to the shift to the surge, thanks to Petraeus-style counterinsurgency, and, yes, thanks to George W. Bush’s stubbornness in seeing it through (despite getting the bum’s rush from his father’s closest pals), I can see the light at the end of the tunnel (far, far, far away).

I can also see that Iraq will be a losing issue for Barack Obama, whose judgment was so prescient that it had to be erased from his website. Via Gateway Pundit:

Here is Obama’s website before the scrubbing this weekend:

This previous page said: “The goal of the surge was to create space for Iraq’s political leaders to reach an agreement to end Iraq’s civil war.”

And, here is Obama’s current webpage on Iraq and the surge:

And, now… Voila!– *poof* –No more civil war!

Which is why he’s doing the fancy soft-shoe routine now. I also don’t think it’ll help much. Americans like him, but they really don’t like him as commander-in-chief.

One reason McCain can push back on Iraq is his advantage as commander-in-chief — a striking one, albeit perhaps not surprising given his military background. Seventy-two percent of Americans — even most Democrats — say he’d be a good commander-in-chief of the military.

By contrast, fewer than half, 48 percent, say Obama would be a good commander-in-chief, a significant weakness on this measure. (McCain’s rating is much improved from his unsuccessful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, when 56 percent said he’d be a good commander-in-chief — no more than said so, at the time, about George W. Bush.) [e.a.]

I’m sure you’ve also been wondering about where Obama’s number-one fan stands on all this flip-flopping, waffling, rewriting of history, and purging of his website. Sullivan has got no comment about any of that. Of course, he’s no longer declaring defeat in Iraq, as he did when he endorsed Ron Paul for the Republican nomination. But he’s still banking on the wisdom of the Obama Messiah (who’s right even when he’s wrong):

[J]udging now what we should be doing next February is foolish. Our choice will be rooted in a core judgment of whether Obama’s instincts will be better than McCain’s - in blending the diplomacy, military tactics and strategic vision to win the war on terror.