Darlings, Seek And Ye Shall Find!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Girls, I am telling you, search under a rock or a peer under a crevice long enough, and sooner or later, a bitch will pop out. Lately, we have had our pick, what with that deranged college student Michael Enright attacking a cabbie in our city for being Muslim, adding further fuel to the Mosque Fires that have already been stirred, not to mention that horndog Tiger Woods, who is divorced now and will do freely what he did anyway to get himself divorced. Keep it in your pantes, pig.

And we have this week's winner, who only cropped up yesterday. I am talking about the winner of this week's Raving Queen Bitch Of The Week Award--Jennifer Weiner!!!!

Who? I can hear some of you asking. Sounds familiar, I can hear from others. We4ll, for the completely uninitiated, Jennifer Weiner is a lucratively successful pop novelist of chick lit tomes, with titles such as "Fly Away Home," "Certain Girls," "Good In Bed" (how disgusting!!!!!) and "In Her Shoes." I mean, gag me with a spoon; you could not PAY me to read such GARBAGE. But that does not mean, dears, that I am unfamiliar with the genre. Not when I have torn through no less than several of Miss Candace Bushnell's books, and those of Lauren Weisberger, she of the fabulous hair, which is one reason why she is published, and whose penchant for New York city namedropping runs a close second to MOI!!!!!!!!!!

So why is Miss Weiner, who should rate no more than a radar blip, the Bitch Of The Week???? She has the termerity--the termerity, mind you--to ATTACK Jonathan Franzen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't mean, physically, and a good thing, because Weiner, who lives in Philadelphia (and you can be sure not the Main Line) and is a hefty gal, certainly no Grace Kelly or Blythe Danner, could knock over Franzen with all the alacrity of an NFL'er. No, she is attacking Franzen on his own turf, and who does Little Missy think she is???????

It seems Miss Weiner (and cohort, Jodie Picoult, who is at least somewhat attracitve) are all bent out of shape over the prepublication attention given to Franzen's forthcoming novel, "Freedom". Their (with mostly Weiner sounding off) contention is that Franzen is a product of white Male syndrome, and that The New York Times flips out only over white Male writers with MFA's. Kiss it, doll!!!!!!!!!

What Weiner is really upset over is that she and her chick lit cohorts do not get the same, "serious" attention that a writer like Franzen gets. This, of course, amounts to shit, especially when one takes into consideration that not a single of the High Power Literary Women Out There--Jame Smiley, Joan Didion, A. S. Byatt, the Amys Hempel and Bloom, Alice Munro, Toni Morrison, Jharma Lihair, Zadie Smith, Zoe Heller, even the unstoppable (sometimes GOOD sometimes AWFUL) Joyce Carol Oates, have come out in defense of Weiner and her ridiculous claims.

She furthe adds that any number of female writers are on the same subject turf as Franzen, and she cites "Digging In America" by Ann Tyler as a prime example. Now, I have not read this one, but I have read a number of Ann Tyler's works ("St. Maybe" I consider the best) and while she does write about famileal matters with a certain amount of insight and depth, she does not venture into the realm of social criticism as Franzen does. The best to be said of Tyler is that when she is good, she is good; the worst, that she is overrated. I think Picoult mentioned Zoe Heller's "The Believers," which I actually DO want to read. On the basis of 'Notes On A Scandal', she too, seems bent on exploring relationships, which is fine, and vell done, but not a metier on HOW WE LIVE TODAY AND WHAT IS WRONG WITH OUE SOCIETY that Franzen specializes in. And one of the things that is wrong is that garbage like Weiner's keeps gettng produced, and people keep reading it, instead of reaching for the gold like that of Franzen and his aforementioned female colleagues.

Poor Jennifer, she makes me laugh. Missy is just a bit insecure, because her genre, which by the way, has provided her with a hefty income and lifestyle for which she should be grateful, wants her genre, and those who practice it, to be taken as seriously by The NY Times and elsewhere, as Franzen and his crowd. Baby wants to have her cake, and eat it, too! Hey, Jennifer, from the looks of things, you have been eating TOO MUCH cake; go to Weight Watchers; it's not like you cannot afford it.

As stated earlier, you could not pay me to read such garbage. It makes Tolkein seem like Tolstoy, and I have certainly read the former, though I do not go around gobbling in Middle Earth ligo like his pubescent, acne ridden male groupies.

Sweeties, we are all groupies of one sort or another, whether one lowers oneself enough to Weiner's standards, or like yours truly, is a Disciple of Franzen.

One last thing, For Weiner to attack Franzen for who and what he is would be like me, as a gay man, attcking him because he is straight. Since when did sexual orientation correlate to good literature, loves???? I don't care if a writer is gay or straight; I just care that they are GOOD. Franzen is BRILLIANT, he just happens to be the SAGE CHRONICLER OF OUR TIMES. If you want to see some real male sexist writing, read between the lines of David Denby, especially in his "Great Books" opus, wherein every other sentence he is throwing in details about his wife and children, the implication being that he may be literary, but he is a "regular guy." The further implication that men who happen to be literary are effete or gay, and he is not. Do you hear such crap from Franzen? Of course not!!!! I mean, Denise Lambert in "The Corrections" is a lesbian, and I understand in "Freedom" two guys circle around each other with a certain amount of sexual tension. I salute Franzen for this. Perhaps Mr. Denby sits at home in private beating off to the kind of garbage Weiner and her ilk write. To writers like Denby and Weiner, I say, don't beat off--JUST BEAT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now go ahead and call ME a bitch, kitties!!!!!!! As Gena Rowlands said in her classic performance in "Gloria!"--"Come on, come on, I LOVE IT!!!!!!!"

Love to all my darlings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!