They do! And this is actually enjoyable, so bear with me, here. I mean, this does come from the same progressive parent Ayelet Waldman, who wrote her book about what it's like to be a mom that came out in May. Which the Times does mention. I wish they would've quoted from The Hamilton Review of Books, however:

...Look, she likes to fuck her husband, Michael Chabon, a lot, and playing with her kids she thinks is okay and everything, but not really in the same league as fucking her husband, Michael Chabon, and if she feels that way, that's her right. She likes to fuck Michael Chabon, period, deal with it.

And her husband wrote The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. So! These parents, they have these children. And a bunch of people do terrible things to their children like maybe put them in balloons or put them on TV or put them in beauty pageants or, I don't know, make them part of an outer-borough trend New York Magazine ends up having to document for a five page facepalm-heavy read. No, this is not that. These people write books about their children. And not just books, people. Michael Chabon books. Let's be honest: you have fucked up parents. They're either going to put you on a reality show or write a Michael Chabon book about you. What do you want? You want the book. Especially if it's Chabon. Phillip Roth, not so much. Part of me thinks this Times article was written explicitly to make half of grown-ass-man Brooklyn jealous of Chabon's children. Michael Chabon wrote books about them. And not you. Not only that, but he fact-checked with them, too. Neal Pollack, stick this up your AlternaAss:

When they do write about their children, Mr. Chabon and Ms. Waldman check with them first. If the topic might be sensitive, they read the child sections aloud and ask for their permission to publish. (In the Times Book Review published Sunday, David Kamp writes that Mr. Chabon "shows admirable restraint in not pimping out his children, in not giving away too much of their lives, their trials and their cute utterances.")

Boom. Michael Chabon does more fact-checking and on-the-record, off-the-record designating with his kids than the Washington Post does with their lobbyists. And after all of this effort, after having this Pulitzer-winning dad who's brilliant and incredible and god, he's writing a book about you! What do you give him for it?

And for their part, their children have not been particularly interested in what their parents spend their days writing.

SPOILED CHILDREN! And I wonder why they didn't like it? Hm. Anyway: Michael and Ayelet are still crazy in love with each other. They go on "plot walks," which is kind of like when I go have a smoke except I do it alone when I can't come up with a new way to write about Lady Gaga's genitals and they do it together and make brilliant Pulitzer magic their kids won't appreciate for how brilliant it really is. They do it together a lot. They do everything together a lot. They have such loving parents. Why won't these kids like these books??!?!?

The couple's eldest daughter, Sophie, has read a few of her mother's murder mysteries. "She did not enjoy the experience," Mr. Chabon said of his daughter's read. "She just wasn't ready to think of me as having ever been young or smoking cigarettes." Ms. Waldman jumped in: "Or being sexually active, sleeping with men."

Ah. That's why. Embarrassing parents are universal. Also, Ayelet Waldman still likes to fuck her husband a lot, really, is the point.

[Note: I have been informed by two readers (thank you Baroness and Sunroar) that the final quote reads strangely (as it does in the Times). Apparently, Chabon actually did sleep with men, and he discusses it in an essay about The Mysteries of Pittsburgh that now appears at the end of the paperback. That said, Waldman could've easily been talking about herself, and she still likes fucking Michael Chabon. Also, all parents are still embarrassing. Don't ever try to be a 'cool' parent. Ever. You will fail.]

• Rumors are swirling that the fairy tale love affair between Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds might be coming to an end. There have been numerous reports of ugly public spats between the two of late and now it appears as though a recent fight just prior to Comic-Con caused Reynolds to cancel his appearance because he didn't want to be around his delicious wife. Scarlett reportedly got so mad that she ripped off her wedding ring and threw it at him or something. And now the producers of Green Latern are pissed at Reynolds for canceling the promotional appearance over a fight with his wife. Now, I don't usually give two shits about celebrity breakups, but these two potentially breaking up makes me kind of sad, which is sad in and of itself I guess. [Update: Reynolds' reps at 42 West contacted us and say this tale, first reported by FoxNews.com, and say that he was never going to go to Comic-Con so there was no appearance to cancel: "The story you have posted about Ryan Reynolds is completely untrue. Warner Brothers never planned to have Green Lantern as part of their panel at this year's Comic Con and Ryan is in Europe shooting a film."] [Fresh News]
  
  
• Why are the men of America shunning America's deformed-thumbed walking Halloween costume, Megan Fox? According to a few men's magazines (probably staffed by gay males), the mens are tired of the Megan Foxes. Personally, I'm torn on Megan Fox. I go back and forth a lot, but after seeing her humble, witty, self-depreciating appearance on Letterman a couple of weeks ago, I want to cuddle with her and eat blueberries and watch Silver Spoon reruns on TV Land. Just saying. [Daily News and Asylum]
  
  
• Bar Refaeli is getting over Leo DiCaprio by boning a "Brazilian playboy" named Ricardo. Yep, that sounds about right. [Page Six]
  
  
• The ridiculously beautiful Kate Beckinsale celebrated her 36th birthday out on the town in LA with Eva Longoria and Victoria Beckham. [Sun]
  
  
• Marilyn Manson has had enough of scumbag journalists saying bad things about him and he took to his Myspace page to issue a threat to all of them—If they write anything bad about him, Marilyn will eat their hearts in a teriyaki stir fry. [Page Six]
  
  
• Jay-Z got a huge book deal to write a tell-all autobiography and detail his past drug-dealing and womanizing and all that kind of stuff. [Mirror]
  
  
• Kid Rock is not a fan of Twitter. When asked what he thought about it he replied, "It's gay." Yep, Kid Rock is right again, and yes, I do have a Twitter account, so I can say that. [Page Six]
  
  
• Poor Paris Hilton is all broken up about the sex tape that made her dumb ass one of the most famous people in the world. She claims that she was betrayed and blah, blah, blah, but I think she was in on it. I could be wrong. [Sun]
  
  
• Michael Chabon is taking time off from writing books to launch an anti-circumcision campaign or something. [Page Six]
  
  
• Mischa Barton was all smiles as she returned back to work yesterday after a stint in a psychiatric ward. [Daily Mail]

See, there was a passionate outcry against Waldman's 2005 NYT essay on how "when I catch a glimpse of my husband from the corner of my eye - his smooth, round shoulders, his bright-blue eyes through the magnification of his reading glasses - I fold over the page of my novel" and fuck him, while not thinking about her four kids. So she had to write a book, called "Bad Mother," which is provocative! Let's hear what she has to say, shall we?

[...]

Okay, we read this whole profile of her and there's really nothing that obnoxious about her save for the fact that she wrote a fucking "Mommy" book in the first place, and her previous infractions like sending one of America's smuggest post-inauguration emails, and of course oversharing about her sex life which set her on this path to begin with, but look, she likes to fuck her husband, Michael Chabon, a lot, and playing with her kids she thinks is okay and everything, but not really in the same league as fucking her husband, Michael Chabon, and if she feels that way, that's her right. She likes to fuck Michael Chabon, period, deal with it.
[WP. Pic via]

The missive, which made its way to our inbox, is the inauguration brag to end all inauguration brags, an epic tale of hope and personal glory. Know someone who went an inaugural ball or two and can't stop talking about it? Ayelet Waldman can and will top him. She is determined to one-up any and all inauguration stories, even if it means hiring an email marketing company to do so. The woman brags about the inaugural balls she didn't have time for.

For all the new president's talk about sacrifice, change, equal opportunity and an end to divisiveness and arrogance, he has (as one would expect) plenty of supporters who can act as smug, partisan and plutocratic as the conservative cabal they helped sweep out of power, as isolated and oblivious to the concerns of the rest of the country. Fair or not, Waldman's email could be used as Exhibit A in a tutorial on how best to exude such an image.

Here's the full email, with our commentary, for your enjoyment and education:

[Correction: Waldman took up blogging last September over here.]

...I have nodded and looked into their eyes and hummed sympathetically as people gave their reasons and made their excuses and generally offered up, as if they were golden ingots of profound wisdom, the handful of two-penny nails with which they plan to board up the windows of their hopes for themselves, their families, their country and the world.

...I admit that I'm getting tired of listening to rationales from people who know that Obama is a remarkable, even an extraordinary politician...

In a better world, people tell me, in theory, sure, having a president like Barack Obama sounds great. But not, you know, for real... Things are so bad we just can't afford to waste our votes, people tell me, on some fantasy super-president with magical powers. We need someone electable, someone, as I have been told repeatedly in the past year, who can win.

The point is that this mess is our fault. We let in the serpents and liars, we exchanged shining ideals for a handful of nails and some two-by-fours, and we did it by resorting to the simplest, deepest-seated and readiest method we possess as human beings for trying to make sense of the world: through our fear. America has become a phobocracy.

But the alien culture of the rest of the world still threatens to encroach on Waldman-Chabonism sometimes. How does Ayelet cope when it does?

I told [my daughter] Sophie, as I have since told her younger siblings, that there is no such thing as Santa Claus, that he is a character in a story just like Willy Wonka or Amelia Bedelia. I further instruct them that their Christian friends are sweet but gullible, and out of respect for their limitations, we should all work hard to sustain their delusions for as long as possible.

• Page Six, citing "word on the street," says Lindsay Lohan was caught on cellphone cam doing something unwholesome. OMG! Was she inhaling a virgin daiquiri through her nostrils? [NYP]
  
• Michael Chabon says his mother "was kvelling" when he was described as an anti-Semite in the Post. Because she hates Jews too! (Kidding, Mrs. Chabon!) [NYDN]
  
• Bob Dylan terrifies Malibu schoolchildren. [NYP]
  
• Who Paris Hilton is working out on these days. [NYP]

• Salman Rushdie was spotted patting Padma Lakshmi's rump at the PEN gala on Monday. Perhaps Diane von F. declared their overness too soon. [R&M, last item]
  
• Britney Spears treated the fans who shelled out $125 to see her "secret" San Diego show to fifteen minutes of "comeback." [AP]
• Neve Campbell is maybe getting married in a low-key way this weekend. [Page Six]
  
• Zach Braff really appeals to Zach Braff! [NYO]
  
• At a book release party given by his pals at Details, a conspicuously Ayelet-unencumbered Michael Chabon said he thinks his work "speaks for itself" in terms of not being totally hateful to the Jews. [NYO]

We read it with great curiosity. Because, really, we wanted to know: what kind of reader does it take to see anti-Semitism in a book warmly lauded in both the Jewish Forward and the New York Sun?

In his WSJ review, Smith proclaims that "Mr. Palahniuk's gleeful anarchism attracts Goths, skateboarders and others who fancy themselves desperadoes of the fringe." What Smith doesn't say, though, is that he knows a thing or two about fringe himself. Indeed, as we discovered by way of a little research, Smith represents a very specific kind of fringe-dweller: the sort that quotes the Onion, thinks in terms of band references, and gets compared by his publisher to Philip Roth and Jonathan Safran Foer while existing, more accurately, as an echo of Nick Hornby.

According to an official bio, Kyle graduated Summa Cum Laude as an English major from Yale. After that—curveball!—he joined the army, and led a platoon into combat during the Gulf War while sending dispatches to the Dallas Times-Herald. Upon returning home, he did some time in the New York bureau of the AP, then three years at the New York Post. From 1996 to 2005 he edited book and music reviews for People. Since then, he's been doing this movies thing for the Post.

Hate to rag on a veteran, but if anything, that part of the portrait only makes the rest more confusing. Exhibit one is the Palahniuk review itself. Never mind what he thought of the book—our eyebrows are up for the contextualization. Namely: "To the keep-it-real generation, Mr. Palahniuk makes Eminem look like a spoiled preppy." And to close: "Mr. Palahniuk may justly fear the same fate as the gruesome 1990s rocker Marilyn Manson, who, as a mock headline in the Onion once put it, is 'Now Going Door to Door Trying to Shock People.'"

Exhibit two is Smith's career in fiction writing. That's right, folks, our man is also a novelist. His latest book is A Christmas Caroline—it's about a self-centered, size-zero redhead from a fashion mag who learns all about the meaning of Christmas when she is visited by three spirits from her past. More interesting, though, is the book Smith wrote before that: Love Monkey, which by all descriptions seems to have been a sort of proto-lad-lit knockoff of High Fidelity (it was also made into a TV show involving Jason Priestley). At the center of the book is 32-year-old Tom Farrell, a man-boy rewrite guy at a paper called The New York Tabloid. Maybe it's unfair to judge Mr. Smith based on his fictional characters, but the evidence should nevertheless be considered.

Based on what we've gathered from reviews and the couple pages available for view on Google Books, dude likes to chill out and watch sports, and he loves, loves the weekend pussy hunt. He prides himself on not reading the New Yorker or Ernest Hemingway, and on Saturday mornings he watches cartoons and eats cereal out of a Star Wars bowl. "Stacks of CDs" are strewn about his apartment, and he has some opinions about the song "Yellow" by Coldplay. He makes jokes involving puns like "Banana Republican." An excerpt: "I own forty-three T-shirts. I watch The Simpsons 3.7 times a week, and I floss 3.7 times a year. When the house lights go down before a rock concert, I am often the first to shout, 'Freebird!'"

Look, we're not judging the guy. He is probably a pretty nice person and a good doggie to run with. And while some of his work does seem to be pretty middling, there's nothing criminal about it. What we're confused about is this anti-Semitism thing he pulled on Michael Chabon in Page Six. All the evidence suggests that Smith—the author of fucking Love Monkey, the guy who thinks Chuck Palahniuk attracts desperadoes of the fringe—read his new book, thought about it, and found it offensive. Or thought that other people might. Jews, specifically. Not trying to defend Chabon here, really, but WHY DID KYLE SMITH SAY THAT ABOUT HIM? THIS IS A CULTURAL MYSTERY.—LEON

Ayelet [My.BarackObama.com]

Chabon's Amazing Rewrite Adventures [WSJ]

michael chabon was supposed to speak at my college tonight (uf, gainesville) and he cancelled at the last minute because "of basketball (seriously)." despite the brilliance of mysteries of pittsburgh, the man's a royal dick. the uf center for jewish studies, which was hosting the event, says no one's ever cancelled this way.

When the Jews give in to the athletic department? It's more than just a shonda — it's an identity crisis.

Update: A clarification: Chabon himself didn't cancel the appearance; it was a decision made by the school's Center for Jewish Studies. Shift the blame, but the identity crisis remains the same.

An Evening With Michael Chabon - Cancelled [UFCJS]

But wait. This duo has its Lex Luthor, too — and it's one who's been terrorizing New Yorkers of both genders for more than a decade. Who is this masked nemesis? And can the heroes vanquish her? You'll have to read the comic to find out.

The Amazing Adventures of Lethem and Chabon [link via emdashes]