The Fantasy World Of Saddam Hussein

"The evidence now clearly shows," the authors conclude, "that Saddam and those around him believed virtually every word issued by their own propaganda machine."

Reading this fascinating piece, you can't help pondering the strange propensity of the powerful to believe their own delusions. But of course, such things could never happen in the good old USA.

A president who surrounds himself with sycophants and gets rid of anyone who disagrees with him?

A defense minister who ignores the advice of his generals and then announces that "we are doing great" even when it's obvious that we're not?

A commander in chief who ignores the intelligence and goes with his vision?

Nah. It can't happen here.

In Touch With a Glute Culture

When Oxygen, the women's fitness magazine, published "Glutes," a special issue devoted entirely to the care and feeding of the buttocks, it was appealing primarily to three groups of readers:

1) Women who want to learn new ways to improve their butts.

2) Dirty old men who like to look at pictures of scantily clad women doing butt exercises.

3) Linguists and other students of the English language, who are amazed at just how many different ways Oxygen's editors can come up with to refer to butts and butt exercises.

Of course, the staff of The Magazine Reader is in group 3. And we were not disappointed.

The cover alone is a cornucopia of butt-centric linguistics: "Build your Best Butt Ever!" and "10 Surefire Moves to Sculpt Your Rear End" and "3 Ways to Boost Your Bottom Line" and "Get Your Own Dimple-free Derriere" and "advice for rock-hard buns!" and the cheery "Look Great From Behind!"

After a cover like that, you figure the folks at Oxygen have run out of steam. Wrong! They're just warming up.

Inside, the publisher's column is titled "Let's get cheeky!" and the editor's column is called "Perfecting your rear view." After that come articles titled "The Bottom Line," "Why Hot Buns Make Life Better" and "Refine Your Rear" as well as "Walk Your Way to a Tighter Butt," which was written by Tosca Reno, author of "The Butt Book."

If you follow the instructions in these articles, you, too, can have a "toned tush" as well as a "noteworthy booty" and a "to-die-for derriere" plus a "bulletproof back end."

The mag also contains a photo gallery of celebrity butts (Madonna, Marilyn Monroe), plus a list of songs to listen to while doing butt exercises, including "Bootylicious" by Destiny's Child and "Shake Your Booty" by KC and the Sunshine Band.

Why all the attention for this much-mocked part of the human anatomy?

"We are in the midst of a glutes culture, where a shapely derriere is celebrated," Reno writes. "It time to shift gears and shape rears."