Scroll of Shame

Embarrassing moments in prose

Scroll of Shame has not been on sabbatical or holiday or hiatus but on a top-secret mission in the poolrooms of Bensonhurst. About H ■ which we must remain mum. And awayyyy we go!

Patriotic Gore.

I think the heroic choice is not to vote at all and join the 50 percent who are the real people in the country, and stay away from the 50 percent who do vote. .. .

I'm looking forward to the election when 70 percent don't vote for president. That means only 20 percent vote for one, 20 percent vote for the other [,v/c ], and then he says, "I have a mandate." That's when you start laughing at them. It will come to that. It is war now.

—Gore Vidal speaking before the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee

The unkindest cut.

Indeed, it was as Miss Castration Anxiety—in her 1981 debut as Matty Walker in Body Heat—that Kathleen Turner first placed the American male's libido on the chopping block and began hacking away.

—Craig Unger in New York Woman

Thank you for sharing that.

My father liked to burp. Saturdays, he'd take me to Cobb's cafeteria on Eighth Avenue, where seltzer came out of spigots for free. He'd sip, letting bubbles tickle his nose, and belch to his heart's content. With the exception of the sneeze—which is unstoppable—the burp is the politest excremental pleasure.

—Laurie Stone in The Village Voice

JAMES WOLCOTT