How about a nice refreshing Mecca Cola? (Login required, blah blah blah.)

Happy New Year, by the way. Let’s hope it’s a good one.

Art Spiegelman has decided not to renew his contract with the New Yorker:

“After Sept. 11, there was period when The New Yorker was as confused as everybody else and it was possible to produce very interesting images,” Mr. Spiegelman said. “More recently the magazine seems to have quieted down its covers for one thing. On the other hand, the place I’m coming from is just much more agitated than The New Yorker’s tone. The assumptions and attitudes [I have] are not part of The Times Op-Ed page of acceptable discourse.”

Story here. I’ve never had a contract with the magazine, though I was offered one at one point (the “right of first refusal” language made me uneasy, and I didn’t pursue the matter), but I do have a standing invitation to contribute Back Page ideas. But — I think I’ve discussed this here on the blog before — it’s been harder and harder to get anything I’m really interested in saying into the magazine since September 11, 2001. And with my weekly strip and my space in the American Prospect — both of which allow me complete editorial freedom, for better or worse — I just haven’t been feeling very enthusiastic about The New Yorker. And as it turns out, I’m not the only one. (If I had to make an educated guess, I’d say that Remnick recently rejected one of Spiegleman’s cover proposals…)

I’ve got a couple of deadlines staring me in the face and my brain is full of post-holiday cobwebs, so this site will probably remain on semi-hiatus for a few days. But please be sure not to miss this post about Hearts & Homes. I’m quite serious about this: thismodernworld.com receives somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 visitors a day — and that’s visitors, mind you, not hits, or page views, or any of the other obfuscational statistic-benders — and if every single one of you donated a buck, we could pull these people out of the hole.

We’re powerless spectators, so much of the time these days, watching events over which we have no influence or control. Here’s a situation in which the readers of this site alone could make a concrete difference. And that seems like a pretty decent way to head into an uncertain new year.

So go give ‘em a buck or two, okay? As a favor to me, if nothing else. Let’s make a small, but very real, difference.

Update: the response so far has apparently been huge. I’ll post specific numbers when I have them, but it looks like we’ve raised well over a thousand dollars in a single day, and I don’t think we’re anywhere near through yet. I am extraordinarily touched, and my thanks go out to everyone who responded (with special thanks to Wil Wheaton for helping to get the word out on his site as well).

I’m sure the dogs would thank you too, if they knew how to use computers.

…but it looks like Unocal got their pipeline.

The Bitter Shack of Resentment has some thoughts on the matter.

Update: well, somebody’s getting their pipeline. Alert reader Bill Von Novak forwards this CNN story, which states that “the Japanese conglomerate Itochu has expressed interest in participating, but no company has joined the project. Unocal said it has no plans to do so.”

The Washington Post plays catch-up:

High on the Bush administration’s list of justifications for war against Iraq are President Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons, nuclear and biological programs, and his contacts with international terrorists. What U.S. officials rarely acknowledge is that these offenses date back to a period when Hussein was seen in Washington as a valued ally.

Among the people instrumental in tilting U.S. policy toward Baghdad during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war was Donald H. Rumsfeld, now defense secretary, whose December 1983 meeting with Hussein as a special presidential envoy paved the way for normalization of U.S.-Iraqi relations. Declassified documents show that Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an “almost daily” basis in defiance of international conventions.

More.

Also, in case you haven’t seen it already, here’s the list of U.S. corporations that supplied Iraq’s weapons program.

(Links via Cursor.)

So Andrew Sullivan spent a week or so rattling the tip jar on his blog and apparently fattened his bank account by some eighty or ninety thousand dollars.

And it kind of makes you do a double take, if you’re keeping a blog, especially a blog with a substantial readership. Hey, you think, maybe I should start rattling the tip jar. Hell, why shouldn’t I try to get paid for my work? (And, to be honest, you think: eighty thousand f**king dollars? Jesus F**king Christ on a crutch!)

But you know what? I do get paid for my work. I’m already making a pretty decent living off of this whole opinionating business. Don’t get me wrong, I really don’t begrudge the average blogger his or her donations — it just doesn’t feel right for me. If you really feel a need to support my work, you can buy a book or a print or something. At least that way, you get something in return.

Still, I’m guessing that if I were to add a donation button to the blog, more than a few of you probably would contribute a buck or two, if only on principle.

So what if we take that impulse and channel it in such a way that we can actually make some small specific difference in the world? Something more important than fattening an online yuppie pundit’s wallet?

Specifically: there’s a non-profit here in Brooklyn called Hearts & Homes for Homeless Dogs, which, as you might surmise, cares for and finds homes for abandoned and abused dogs. (Brooklynites have probably seen them out finding homes for their charges at Seventh Ave and First Street on the weekends, or at Court and Montague all week long.) If you’ve been reading this website regularly, you might already be familiar with the story of my own dog, the happy fellow in the photo below, who was abandoned as a puppy with scabies, and is alive today only by the grace of someone who cared enough to take him in and nurse him back to health. So the work they do at Hearts & Homes strikes a personal chord with me.

Of course, since this is the internet, I’m sure I’ll get email from someone saying, why a dog charity, when there are so many other problems in the world? Well, I’m starting with this particular charity — and I hope this is only a beginning — because I support the work they do, and more importantly, because they are facing an emergency situation, and they need help, right now:

Unforeseeably, the shelter/home where Hearts and Home Inc. has worked from for the past 7 years has recently been sold. And now, they have only 2 short months to find adequate and affordable space — not easy in this economy! The costs of feeding and caring for an average of 21 dogs are staggering enough. But finding the funds to relocate everyone and everything could bankrupt Mel and Roseann, and they and their furry charges could wind up on the street.

So here’s the deal: there are a lot of you out there reading this site, and a dollar probably doesn’t mean much to most of you, one way or the other — but if every single one of you were to click here and donate a dollar or two to Hearts & Homes, then together, we could make an enormous, specific difference.

So come on. Who’s with me here?

Updated 2/21: Yeah, so I ended up adding a tip jar. I was a feeling a little more nonchalant about my income a couple of months ago…before my car was stolen, I got hit with a five-figure back tax bill, and I was faced with the imminent loss of a significant sources of income. I’m a little less sanguine now. So sue me.

See you next week.

Trent Lott did not do anything wrong, he did not say anything wrong,his heart was not full of malice when he got up there and made that honorable statement, or rather that benign statement for Strom Thurmond. The President of the United States stood up and stuck a knife in his chest…

— snip —

Now Chris (Matthews) is talking about getting the Jewish vote and the suburban soccer moms and all of that — the heart and soul of the Republican party is working class, middle class white folks, males, who don’t like what was done to Trent Lott.

Pat, calling it like he sees it, on MSNBC.

I think (Lott) had one chance, and that was immediately after he made this statement, he could have come out and said, “you know, of course I’m for civil rights, that had to come and it’s a good thing it came, I just thought there were other ways we might have been able to avoid all the street fighting of the sixties, and the police dogs, and the big, uh, turning the hoses on people, and the women doing awful things to each other, terrible things went on in those sit in demonstrations.”

— Chris on MSNBC a few minutes ago. I don’t know what that last bit means either.