Racist xenophobe cretins who voted for Bush-Cheney’s laissez-faire “leave Wall Street alone, let the greedy pirates have fun” policies in ’00 and ’04, and who are therefore primarily responsible among the electorate for the current economic catastrophe. And so they’re marching against….?

“Sharif Ali, so long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe, so long will they be a little people, a silly people…greedy, barbarous and cruel.” One or two people might not know what this line is from.

“It used to be Diane Keaton with me — she always used to tell me, ‘I’m terrible, I’m awful, I can’t do it, you should get someone else.’ And she was always brilliant. Well, Larry is like this,” said Woody Allen via telephone from his Upper East Side apartment last week. The 73-year-old director was discussing his new movie Whatever Works, which stars Larry David, and will open the Tribeca Film Festival on April 22 before hitting theaters in June.

Woody Allen, Larry David.

“I’d always been a fan…I asked him to do it, and he said, ‘But I can’t act! I can only do what I do, I’m not an actor, you’ll be disappointed,'” said Mr. Allen. “You know, those are the ones who can always do it. The ones that tell you how great they are can never do it. Larry is all, ‘I can’t do it. I can’t do it,’ but when it came time to do it, right out of the box, he did it. And not just the comedy, which I expected, but all the other things he had to do which required acting and emotions and being touching and all that — he did that, too.” — from “The Unshine Boys,” a Sarah Vilkomerson article in the New York Observer that was posted last night at 6 pm..

“I was so excited to get a story in Vanity Fair‘s Hollywood issue two or three years ago. But I was so disappointed in the time I spent with the journalist, because she was giving me stuff about people’s opinions. ‘Well, Ain’t it Cool News says…’ Well, what do you say or think or feel or know about me?

“A lot of journalism has become gossip. I understand it’s a business; people want to sell magazines. But I just think it’s prattle. When I was sitting with this woman from Vanity Fair, I thought her questions were prattle. They were gossipy, they were shitty. It’s like disemboweling a ghost — that’s what Brando called it.” — Brett Ratner talking to Movieline‘s Stu Van Airsdale about Rat Press, which is re-publishing some very cool journalistic essays/interviews.

The Vanity Fair writer Ratner is referring to, apparently, is Nancy Jo Sales. The piece ran in the March 2007 issue, and was called “The Most Happy Fella.”

For those who read my 4.16 “Beans and Peas” story, which included a unpleasant disclosure about food tampering at a Del Monte Bean and Pea canning company, here’s more to ponder along those lines.