"Lies" is laugh-out-loud funny, and it is well-informed and informative, as well. Its foundation is a love of America and a desire to better the human condition and live up to the promises of our Founding Fathers and Mothers. Its method is rigorous research, applied tactically and courageously, combined with humor.
I'm a stickler for civil discourse. I reject ad hominem commentary and obscene language.

Yet Franken gets away with both and is very funny to boot.

He says things about Ann Coulter that I suspect many of us have been thinking since first seeing her on TV, but haven't wanted to say, out of courtesy's sake. Franken says these things in a way that is so funny you are laughing too hard to monitor your laughter to make sure it is polite.

In his own defense, he points out that his targets, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, etc, have made ad hominem commentary their stock in trade. Franken reports on Limbaugh referring to the teenage Chelsea Clinton as the "White House dog," for example, and Ann Coulter naming a list of ugly Democratic women. After Franken exposes the venom, the distortions, and the mean-spirited sneakiness of his opponents, you see the logic behind his own exasperated and yet precise attacks.

Too, Franken points out the simple, basic lies that these same folks have promulgated as facts. And he has had the courage to confront his opponents in person.

"Facts are stubborn things," as John Adams said. Franken has done considerable research to use facts to expose his opponents as basing their positions on sand.

And yet, for all its genuine erudition, its core of compassionate and patriotic outrage -- this is a very, very funny book. This is the kind of book that is dangerous to read in a public place. You can't help but laugh out loud and draw attention to yourself.

This book aroused in me a great admiration for Al Franken, and a feeling that if liberals want to regain power in America, they might do well to learn from his humor, his armory of facts, and his considerable courage.

What is day-to-day life like for a thirty-year-old professional WASP from the Midwest, used to three-piece suits and high-heeled shoes, who now does "development work" in one of the most primitive, and exquisitely beautiful, places on earth?
"Mountains Diminish Underfoot" answers that question. In intimate and vivid detail, in accessible language, Finefrock takes the reader so thoroughly into her day that the reader begins to feel as if he were living in Nepal, rising at five, walking uphill for hours on an empty stomach, overwhelmed by natural beauty, intestinal parasites, serendipitous companions, and the occasional surly high-caste man.
In a day of body-shattering labor, rice is transplanted during monsoon. Finefrock travels to a conference; en route, she must share her crowded tea-shop sleeping quarters with six Brahmin men. Stepping over them in the night to relieve herself would ruin their caste status and her reputation. Another night, she sleeps with an entire family whose baby, mistaking her for his mother, demands her (...). The baby's father, to this day, chuckles over that anecdote; Finefrock does not. Finefrock's students, living, as they do, miles from roads, electricity, running water, use common items to construct toys, including an "electrified" letter, really a prank, that has Finefrock jumping in fright, and then urging the kids to play the same prank on an unsuspecting, elderly neighbor.
Finefrock ponders the big questions: "What am I doing here?" and the smaller ones: "Do water buffaloes always chew clockwise?" She informs her neighbors about ideas like family planning; they inform her about hospitality. She aches over long trails, while reading of those who have gone before: the author of "Seven Years in Tibet," she is saddened to learn, came to be fluent in Tibetan while walking to Lhasa. She hopes her walks will not be *that* long. She prays never to become blase about Nepal's natural beauty, from a paradise flycatcher that, overhead, appears to be a large white fish swimming in a tree, to the ever-awesome Himalaya. At times her prose reaches the sublime, as when she records of Nepal's heavily deforested slopes, "The mountains cry a landslide of tears."
Finefrock's book closes with three stunning bits. First, there are excerpts from recent news accounts describing the Maoist insurgency in Nepal. The battle between the Maoists and government troops has shattered Nepal's status as a "Zone of Peace" and broken many hearts that had hoped that Nepal could continue being the dreamed-of Shangri-La it was when they first encountered it.
If "Mountains" has one weakness, it is this: Finefrock hints at the tensions that would explode in mass bloodshed a few years after her departure, but does not bring them to the reader's attention in a detailed way. One wonders if, perhaps, Finefrock had succumbed, however slightly, to the "happy savage" syndrome. I say "however slightly" because, otherwise, Finefrock is sharp enough an observer to record encounters not just with hospitable, kind, enthusiastic Nepalis, but also some who are very much *not* happy savages, but who are money-grubbing and rude. It's important to note that Finefrock does suggest the tensions that plagued even a pre-insurgency Nepal. While Brahmins, who monopolize the best land, kibbutz during the crucial rice transplanting, for example, it is Magars from the hills who arrive to do the backbreaking labor, all for five rupees a day (.35 cents) and flatbread. Too, one can only guess that the presence of foreigners like Finefrock, even dressed, as she dressed, in a sari and walking the trails rather than riding the jeeps, and speaking Nepali, also contributed to the crack in Nepal's peaceful facade.
The book closes with two startling essays. They are by students who had known Finefrock in Nepal and have since become students and/or professionals in the West. They inform the reader that the Nepal that Finefrock inhabited is not just far away in place, but also in time. Since Finefrock's departure, Nepal has entered the modern world, with telephones, electricity, and roads in her once-isolated world.
I can't recommend this book highly enough. If you've thought of doing something like this but have hesitated, reading this book will be like having the experience without risking the intestinal parasites.

I've read this book straight through twice.

I really thought I'd never laugh out loud, as frequently and as uproariously, the second time as the first time, but I did.

Franken's "review," ostensibly by Jeanne Kirkpatrick, of RLIABFI is, alone, worth the price of the book. I laugh so hard when reading this I double over.

This humor is not for everyone -- it is for people who, like Franken, are both intellectuals and political junkies.

On the down side, I do have trouble with the title. It's funny, but ... it's rude and mean. I don't have a solution here. I don't know how to create humor that never hurts anyone's feelings, and I don't know the best way to respond to hatemongers like Rush Limbaugh.

If nothing else, the title of this book, which has become a classic, got us thinking and talking about the Right's muddying of public debate and its abandonment of civil discourse.

Too, at times I do find Franken's ability to be impressed by his own intelligence and high-power connections a bit hard to take, but ... I forgive him for that, he is such a valuable resource.

In the wake of the crisis in the Catholic Church around child sex abuse, a crisis made inevitable by Catholicism's institutionalized misogyny and its evil twin, homophobia, Tony Hendra has come out with a book idealizing the author's relationship with a Catholic priest.

I and my fellow Catholics, especially fellow Catholics who are also fans of the kind of satire Mr. Hendra produces, rejoiced over the appearance of this book. We hoped to find in it a worthy depiction of what we value in Catholicism, in spite of its failings.

On July 1, the NYT published an article detailing Tony Hendra's daughter's account of her being subject to incest.

Outsiders can't know if Jessica Hendra is telling the truth. I can say that the details provided in the article, including corroboration by Jessica's mother and Tony's ex-wife, by therapists who treated Jessica, by Jessica's husband and by friends of Jessica who have known her for years, struck me as compelling.

On the other hand, Tony Hendra's protest struck me as not only not compelling, it struck me as suggesting that the story might be true. For example, Hendra referred to his *adult* daughter as "my beautiful little daughter" who "has a pathology."

Hendra's current wife said that Jessica's claims were "a ploy to grab publicity."

Surely, Jessica could have made these claims public at any time, and given that her father is a famous satirist, she could have become famous in the past. She made the claims public now, she said, because her father has written a memoir about being a good person, a good Catholic, a good spiritual person. *That* is what agonizes her. He never addressed what he did to her, though she confronted him.

Her words, from the NYT article. Hendra's spiritual memoir, she wrote, is

<<... being seen as completely confessional, totally honest, the whole story,'' Ms. Hendra said. ''It's not the whole story. By not saying anything, I felt I was being complicit in it. This book is an erasing of what happened to me. I want people to understand these things don't go away.''>>

Too, if she merely wanted to be famous, she could have taken any number of other routes to fame on her father's coattails. Many daughters have capitalized on their father's fame -- from Natalie Cole to Jane Fonda. It is not necessary to make a claim of incest to become famous.

Finally, even if she were merely making these claims to be famous, what does it say about Hendra's grasp of spirituality that he raised a daughter who would make such a heinous claim falsely, and what does it say about his grasp of spirituality that he would so virulently denounce her?

When Cardinal Bernardin was falsely accused of similar abuse, he did not vilify his accuser. Following Christ's dictum, "Resist not evil," Bernardin merely let the investigation proceed and let it makes the facts known, facts that ultimately exculpated him.

As a woman, as a human being, and as a practicing Catholic, I despair at this story; I despair so very profoundly because its misogyny and its blindness all feel so very familiar to me.

For years I have seen Catholics use Catholic ritual, costume, and drama to depict Catholicism as the ur source of good in the world, even as Catholicism preached and practiced a misogyny and a love of power that made the erasure of women's lives and pain so inconsequential as to be unworthy of note.

In Hendra's book, covering forty years of his life, he gives scant mention to his wife and children. They are, by his own admission, footnotes, props, for the important drama, the drama that centers on Tony Hendra. His imprimatur, his validation of worth, is that he has a relationship with a Catholic priest, another man. What role do his wife and children play in the central dramas of his life, either his career, or his spirituality?

A clue can be found in the NYT article. His first wife, Judith, said that Hendra had told her that he had his daughter, Jessica, engage in sexual activity with him in the household shower.

Judith did nothing, she said, though she was "horrified" and "ashamed" because she was so afraid of Mr. Hendra.

(...) The man who created that household has now written a best seller that talks about how to reach spiritual enlightenment through Catholicism and through the intervention of a Catholic priest. And dismisses the wreckage of his family, his wife, his daughter.

Well, they are all female, after all, and, in a misogynist world view, one tragically upheld by the Catholic hierarchy, unworthy of his concern.

I hesitate to post this review because it disagrees so strongly with the accolades the book has racked up so far. Obviously, many readers greatly appreciate this book and genuinely love Louise L. Hay for writing it.

I picked up the book at the local library on a whim. I was horrified by it. The book struck me as evil, stupid, and cruel.

Evil -- the book states that those who experience ill fortune are responsible for their own ill fortune.

So, all those women in Sudan, who, right now, are being raped and made homeless by invaders. Well, it's their own darn fault, and we don't have to worry about them.

People starving in famines ... children being kidnapped into sex slavery ... people killed in earthquakes, or by disease -- again, it's their own choice, their own fault.

This philosophy is sick and cruel.

It is also stupid. Ms. Hay produces not one iota of evidence to support anything she says.

Yes, readers here claim that Ms. Hay's writings have changed their lives, but if you go to a St. Jude website, you will see an equal number of enthusiastic posts claiming that St. Jude performed miracles that changed lives. If you go to the shrine of a Hindu idol, you will hear testimonials that the Hindu idol changed lives for the better...

In other words, there are numerous people willing to testify to any number of belief systems or modes of behavior.

What separates these testimonials from real evidence?

A little ritual called "The Scientific Method."

Let's take those women in Sudan. If the women in Sudan being terrorized by invaders were to repeat, everyday, some Louise Hay style affirmation, like, oh, say, "My farm is not being invaded today; I am not going to get raped today; my husband will not be murdered before my eyes today," would that deflect the invaders?

I don't think so.

If Hay thinks so, let her travel to people in real need and test her methods out, rather than dispensing her "wisdom" to rich denizens of Malibu.

Hay claims that her own life story is proof of her method. She recounts her life story, and it *disproves* her method.

Hay was negative and her life was miserable. Then, because she was good looking, as she herself reports, she was able to earn a living as a model, and attract a rich husband. Presto changeo, everything in her life got better. Not because she practiced "affirmations," she didn't. But because she was able to market her good looks and marry a well-to-do man.

The low point of this book's inanity is the appendix at the end that claims that diseases are caused by given attitudes, and that if people repeat affirmations, their disease will go away.

So, AIDS is not caused by a virus, but by low self esteem. If people will just think better about themselves, their AIDS will disappear.

No need to worry about condoms, or safe sex, or anything. Just maintain a positive attitude, and condoms aren't necessary.

Such a lie is nothing short of grotesque. No, really, it is murderous.

Hay's brutal insistence on blaming persons not as fortunate as herself for their suffering is one of the most heinous things I've ever encountered in any book.

In reading this book, though, I learned at least one important source for the vicious New Age phrase, "You give yourself breast cancer."

There must be something highly appealing in this book or else it would not have racked up so many positive reviews on Amazon, and Hay would not be the very, very wealthy woman she is today.

What that positive feature is is totally beyond me.

I first became aware of David Klinghoffer when I saw articles by him on the controversy surrounding Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion." I appreciated his comments and wanted to read more by him. So, I picked up this book.

I have mixed feelings about it. At times I got the strong sense that someone had informed the author at some point in his life that he was brighter than other people and that he didn't need to do the same intellectual work that others do. Further, I got the impression that, thanks to that perception, the author is a bit contemptuous of other people and a bit lax in presenting the facts.

I don't mean to make ad hominem attacks on this author, but if my perception is correct, it is unfortunate. Klinghoffer writes about Judaism and Christianity and troubled interactions between the two faiths. This interface is of world importance. One must be very circumspect when addressing these issues. For this reader, Klinghoffer was not adequately circumspect.

An example of intellectual laxity: Klinghoffer claims that Paul converted to Christianity from Judaism because he did not want to, or could not, follow Torah. This statement alone renders every reported fact in Klinghoffer's entire book suspect.

People who know nothing else about Paul often know that he converted as a result of one of the most famous conversions experiences in history. Paul's dramatic conversion is so famous that "road to Damascus" has become a phrase to describe a conversion experience of any kind, Christian or non-Christian, indeed, religious or secular.

Too, Klinghoffer implies that Catholics sing "Deutschland Uber Alles" as part of the mass. I'm a lifelong Catholic and I've never heard the German national anthem sung during mass. There is a Christian hymn that uses the same music, but I've never heard that in mass, either. Klinghoffer never makes any of this clear, which is unfortunate, given one incorrect current trend that equates Christianity with Nazism.

Klinghoffer is no kinder, in some ways, to Judaism. His description of a synagogue bar mitzvah in Los Angeles where rude Jews speak at football-stadium volume while a rabbi inveighs against evil "Goyim" creates, however inadvertently, a negative stereotype of Jews. This may be an accurate description of a real service, but it was not presented with enough context to render this passage comprehensible as anything other than an anti-Semitic caricature.

An example of the author's condescension is the misogynist way he discusses his Catholic girlfriend, Maria. Three times when talking about her, he says, "Women cry so easily." When Maria creates something artistic, the author describes her as "adorable" in a very condescending way.

Also, as a person of faith who struggles with the misogyny and homophobia in my own faith tradition, I found Klinghoffer's attempts to explain away the Levitcal association of menstruating women with abomination not at all convincing, and his association of homosexual love with death to be truly alienating.

In short, Klinghoffer works too hard to make God -- or our human understandings of God -- rational. In general, this reader was uncomfortable with Klinghoffer's tendency to set Judaism and Christianity against each other as if they were horses competing in a race. Certainly, Klinghoffer himself set these two traditions in competition with each other when he was deciding, like the nuns in "Sound of Music" how to solve the problem of Maria, his Catholic lover, but the stance of competition is not the happiest one for Judaism and Christianity to be assuming vis a vis each other right now. Rather, the two faiths had better learn to coexist.

On the other hand, this book offers truly precious moments that make up for the book's failings. At times the author loses his arrogance, his lax hold on important facts, and his contempt, and he writes of his own experiences from his own heart, and it is at those moments that this book is most valuable. When the author is most himself, and most vulnerable, he is the most powerful as a writer.

When the author, early on in the book, compares Judaism's appeal to him with the appeal a sunken ship holds for an explorer, his writing reaches its poetic height. When the author confesses that Catholic Maria married someone else and has children, and, yet, when he sees her, his former love for her seems to hover in the air as an almost palpable presence, when the author admits his yearning for his roots, biological or spiritual (the author was an adoptee), the sensible reader will not be able to avoid being moved, being taught, and being changed.

Too, at other times, Klinghoffer does a good job of presenting key facts. He is entirely correct in telling Maria that Jesus did not fit every model for a Messiah as presenting in Jewish scripture.

This reader hopes that Klinghoffer will continue to write in a confessional, memoirist vein, which was his strength here. This reader further hopes that Klinghoffer will sharpen his fact checking skills, and consider the impact of episodes like his description of his visit to the LA synagogue, and place such episodes in some illuminating context, if he does use them. This reader also hopes that Klinghoffer will lead with what he revealed here as his greatest strength -- reporting with courage and honesty his own unique experiences.

I'm a fan of Boyarin's work. There's much to admire. For example, he takes a progressive attitude towards issues of gender, including the status of women and of homosexuals, and he takes this stance as an Orthodox Jew. As a church-going Catholic who actively supports Gay Rights, I admire Boyarin both for his faith and for his support of gender non-conforming people.

In a world of intolerant, rigid, and destrucitve so-called "fundamentalists" and "fundamentalisms" insisting that there is ONLY ONE way to read a text or a tradition, including scripture and the history of Judaism and/or Christianity, insisting that the ONE WAY to read the Judeo-Christian tradition is to read it as male supremacist and oppressive, I greatly appreciate that Boyarin says, as he says so clearly in his introduction to this work and in another book, "Unheroic Conduct," that there are many ways to read texts and traditions.

For example, as Boyarin says here, if one uses as one's starting point in Paul the verse, "In Christ there is no male; there is no female; there is no slave nor free man" one will read Paul very differently than others who see, in Paul, an oppressor who upheld slavery and the oppression of women.

I also admire Boyarin's wide-ranging store of knowledge, his humanity, his enthusiasm, and his humor.

And he takes on issues that this reader enjoys reading about.

On the other hand, and it is a big other hand, Boyarin is a self-indulgent writer who has lived a sheltered, purely academic life. He writes as, one imagines, he would talk when talking to someone who shares his interests, his references, his enthusiasms, as closely as would a doppleganger or an imaginary best friend.

Boyarin just about never shows any consideration for any audience who might not be an exact duplicate of him.

So, the reader has to slog through paragraphs or pages not knowing what Boyarin is talking about, not because the ideas at play are all that complex -- they never really are -- but because neither Boyarin nor his editors have taken the time to frame what Boyarin is saying in a way that will be readily understood by someone who is not sharing the exact same brainpan as Boyarin himself.

Oh, how I wish there were an edited version of Boyarin's books, in which references that need not be obscure are presented in a way so that someone who has not lunched with the exact same clique of grad students that Boyarin has lunched with would be able to grasp what Boyarin is saying, without reaching for outside references -- which, sadly, I always have to do when reading Boyarin -- or slogging through his endless, and, yes, self-indulgent footnotes.

This is a positive review. Boyarin is, again, well educated, enthusiastic, and he takes a humanist approach from a tradition, the Judeo-Christian tradition, that too often has been used as an excuse to oppress others. His work is a marvelous antidote to intolerant "fundamentalisms" and "fundamentalists."

But, Daniel, if you would -- please be a bit more mindful of your audience. Making your work more readily accessible would be a very good thing, because the wider world -- the one outside of Berkeley -- greatly needs voices like yours.

If you've never been exposed to Shroud material before, "The Resurrection of the Shroud" is a worthy introduction. Mark Antonacci provides an exhaustive introduction to several shroud theories, from several different scientific fields. There are, for example, the Mandylion theory from international art history, the VP-8 3 D theory, from high tech imaging, the paint theory, from microscopic examination, the pollen theory, from botany ...

Antonacci writes well, but there are places where his prose could have benefited from a careful copy editor. Compared, though, to the often execrable writing found in many best selling books today, Antonacci's prose is just fine. There are a couple of places where he makes minor errors of fact, for example, when he refers to Veronica's veil as one of the fifteen Stations of the Cross. There are fourteen Stations of the Cross.

The insurmountable problem is, of course, that shroud scholarship is very much alive. Visit Barrie Schwortz's excellent website www.shroud.com, and you will read active, living exchanges between high powered scholars who are convinced that diametrically opposed points of view are correct. Are there traces of paint on the shroud, or aren't there? One can find opposite opinions, firmly attested, by equally prominent scholars.

In short, the mystery of the shroud *is not* something that will be solved for you by this book. You will merely be introduced to a mystery that has gripped minds for over one hundred years, since it was first revealed, through the first photographs of the shroud, that what the naked eye sees when viewing the shroud is a blurred shadow compared with what the camera reveals in its *negative* images of the shroud.

What does all this mean? I came to Antonacci's book knowing that no definitive answer has yet been produced, and that scholars in hard sciences better qualified than I to assess evidence are convinced of the fantastic premise that the shroud is the burial cloth of Jesus.

Even though I know that the issue is not settled, Antonacci's book was a real page turner for me. I read late into the night, hoping that I would hit upon that one bit of evidence that conclusively proved either that the shroud is a fantastic forgery, or an even more fantastic artifact.

That final, conclusive bit of evidence has yet to surface, but that did not interfere with my considerable enjoyment of this book. I do recommend it, to skeptics and believers alike.

I came to this book as a feminist and as a student of American racism.

A pernicious and powerful form of racism took root in the US during the time of the c. 1880-1924 immigration of Eastern and Southern Europeans. Scientists, academics, journalists and politicians in the US, during this era, decided that Eastern and Southern Europeans were different and lesser peoples than those of Northwestern Europe, whom they labeled "Nordics."

This racism was so powerful that these Eastern and Southern Europeans, along with East Asians, became the only immigrants in American history whose numbers were limited by the US Congress on the basis of their racial inferiority.

It is more than ironic, it is utterly fascinating, that the most desirable man in America at this time, a man whose very name has come to signify romance, and whose film role, "Sheik," has become the name for a brand of prophylactics, was an Italian immigrant, once so poor he had to sleep outdoors, and his consorts were Natacha Rambova, a WASP who took a Slavic name, and, then, Pola Negri, a Polish-born actress.

Emily W. Leider does an excellent job of presenting the popular press reaction to the racial and sexual threat Valentino posed. I wish she had had presented more and wider background on the racist literature of the day, but readers can find this literature elsewhere, in, for example, Higham's "Stranger in the Land."

I also came to this book as a feminist. Valentino may have been unique. He was a star of the first order whose career was built on his ability to arouse women. Valentino had other talents - he was a dancer, and, as his performance in "The Eagle" shows, a fine comic actor. He was no bimbo; Leider notes that copies of Proust, in the original French, were among his possessions. He could converse in several languages.

But his career was ultimately about his ability to please women erotically. That cost him. The press hounded him. Men criticized him. Panic can be sensed in some reactions to him. Would his career, his willingness to wear such a feminine item of apparel as a *wristwatch,* cause "matriarchy" to break out? This panic is, again, fascinating.

We are missing the point if we consider ourselves to be more advanced than those in Valentino's day. No star has taken up the mantel that was dropped when Valentino met his untimely death. And attractive male stars today have to work to prove themselves to men by, for example, fighting and damaging their prettiness, as Brad Pitt did in "Fight Club."

I came to this book for an in-depth discussion of issues of race, class, gender and eroticism, issues that have, by no means, been settled in our own day. I got that discussion, and so much more. I found Leider's style to be distant and careful. She dots her i's and crosses her t's; her sources are cited and she is careful not to cross the line into intense psychoanalyzing, or into fervent or even just highly detailed critiques of the Valentino filmography.

But I was unexpectedly moved by the Valentino I met in these pages. Leider quotes H.L. Mencken's account of his encounter with Valentino, shortly before the star's death. I came away from Leider's book feeling similarly to how Mencken felt after his real life encounter with Valentino. I felt as if I had crossed paths with a tender, boyish, charismatic, uniquely gifted/cursed, somewhat lost young man, whom I would never forget, and whom I couldn't help but, however distantly, cherishing.

A Trappist monk, who holds the secret of the monastery's excellent liqueur, makes a break for it, bumps into, and falls in love with, Marlene Deitrich, a devout Catholic, who learns the truth of his past from *BASIL RATHBONE* while vacationing in the trackless wastes of the Sahara desert. Will he or won't he return to the monastery, and why?

OMIGOD.

I never allow Political Correctness to get in the way of my enjoyment of a movie. In fact, I'll enjoy a movie to *spite* Political Correctness.

But this is one of the most racist movies I've ever seen. And it is massively inept. You really wonder how the same man who produced GWTW, David Selznick, could have produced this fiasco.

"The Garden of Allah" is unintentionally funny. In scene after scene, Arabs are depicted as being sex-obsessed bafoons. They are also depicted as having the same facial features as Northern Europeans, only with heavy dark make-up. And blue eyes peeking out.

Joseph Schildkraut and John Carridine play Arabs. Oh, okay. Then why not we use Hattie MacDaniel in our next movie to play Pat Nixon. Makes exactly as much sense.

There is a scene where a bunch of Arabs, all in matching white burnooses, are sitting around the desert at night, singing folksongs with some French Foreign Legionairres, and their heads are all moving back and forth to the same beat. One of the funniest scenes I've ever seen. Not meant to be.

In another scene, a "dancer" squats and bends backward, utterly grotesque, an insult to real belly dancing.

AAAAA!!!!

All I kept thinking was, "What would an Arab make of this movie?" Probably they couldn't even watch it, or would watch it in a boiling rage.

But there are other scenes, equally funny, that have nothing to do with Arabs. Marlene Deitrich goes to a European convent to get advice on what to do with her life. She's dressed, OF COURSE, to the nines. She couldn't survive more than a mile away from a 24-hour source of silk stockings. This is a woman whose greatest trek would be from the backseat of a limo to the front door of a nightclub.

So this nun, a propos de rien, says, "Why don't you go out into the desert?" Yeah, right! Nuns always say that to women who go to them for advice!

And ... Basil Rathbone. Need I say more? Basil Rathbone in a bright red robe -- thrown over a houndstooth check wool jacket -- wandering around the Sahara, trying to look at home? I don't think so.

AND THEN you get an hour into this unintentional laugh-fest and there comes the scene where Boyer has to explain to Deitrich why he left the monastery, and Boyer is so fantastic in this scene, so genuinely, deeply moving, when he's finally given a chance, by this movie, to act, and given a chance, by this script, to say something coherent, and it's one of the most moving moments that the movies have produced on the matters of faith in God, and worldliness, and sex, and eroticism, and love. Really. It's that good -- good enough to sit through an hour of inept movie-making just to see it, and place in it context. Check it out.