Q. In your new book our man Frank Bascombe says he wants to “decommission” certain words and phrases. What’s the idea here? What is on Frank’s list of decommissioned words?
RICHARD FORD: The idea is that we take this wonderful living entity in our lives, and we manage to reduce it to clichés and noun-verb constructions — to reduce it almost to babble, as fast as we can. What Frank wants to do is take out as many of these unlikable words, these corrupting and polluting words, as he can. For example: “I am here for you” — when you really mean just the opposite.
— – continued at LA Review of Books: HERE.
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Also: How a despised immigrant cuisine became a dominant force in American eating: UCI historian 
Plus: Art, sex, and politics in Manhattan in the seventies: The rise of the gay rights movement and the simultaneous rise of photography in the galleries; photographer Robert Mapplethorpe as the partner of Patti Smith and documentarian of the city’s S&M scene; and then Sam Wagstaff as a legendary curator, and patron of Mapplethorpe: 
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Plus: the rise of religious fundamentalism across the world’s religions:
And the first time Harry ever did Nixon on the radio was on KPFK in 1974, when the transcripts of Nixon’s White House tapes were first released and KPFK broadcast a reading of key scenes—with Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest, and Harry as Nixon (a decade later they teamed up to do “Spinal Tap”) — and featuring special guest Mama Cass Elliot as Haldeman. We’ve found the tapes of that historic broadcast, and will play excerpts during this hour.
How better to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Watergate than with Harry Shearer, whose “Nixon” has thrilled listeners for decades? And what better cause than the 
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The morning after a dark night for Democrats, California stands as the great exception to the national pattern of Republican power. In the state, not a single Republican was elected to statewide office . . .
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Also: Demon Dog radio! 
Laura Poitras’s documentary about Edward Snowden, “Citizenfour,” opens 10/24: “One Homeland Security agent says, ‘Drop the pen! If you don’t stop taking notes, we’re going to handcuff you.’ Why? They say my pen potentially was a weapon. I am facing two Homeland Security agents with guns, and they are shouting, ‘Drop the pen! Drop the pen!'”
At Grambling “I joined a fraternity, a tremendous exercise in violence. The hazing of pledges is masculinity run off the rails. It’s an obscenity. It takes advantage of young men wanting to prove themselves physically—by submitting to abuse and enduring it—and then keeping it secret.” continued 
