EXTRA...

Manso attacks Mailer; Fed Chief's granddad was Selectman; Counting Herring

TODAY's quote: "Peter isn't a journalist - let me say that straight out. He doesn't observe conventional standards of ethics and fairness, and he's not particularly interested in the truth. He is an angry and troubled guy." - Hamilton Kahn

Hounding Mailer beyond the grave
With Mailer snugly in the grave, Manso is firing back

Manso doesn't worry too much about being invited back to parties... He made a whole new boatload of enemies during the trial of Christopher McCowen

A few months ago, I suggested a magazine piece called "Everybody Hates Peter," about writer Peter Manso, who divides his time between the Outer Cape and Berkeley, California. I didn't offer to write it. I rather like Peter. He's smart, and he writes in a sharp and energetic style. I thought his most recent book, "Ptown: Art, Sex and Money on the Outer Cape," was hilarious and its thesis - "that the nation's most legendary arts colony had been taken over by increasingly wealthy 'separatist' gays" - was refreshingly beyond the pale.

Manso doesn't worry too much about being invited back to parties; I wish there were more journalists like him. He made a whole new boatload of enemies during the trial of Christopher McCowen, convicted of the murder of fashion writer Christa Worthington.

Manso told anyone who would listen that the defendant was a victim of Cape Cod racism. He believes that his grandstanding prompted "an insane district attorney" - that would be Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe - to bust him on felony gun possession charges, which have yet to be resolved... One thing that has long troubled Manso is his relationship with the now-deceased Norman Mailer. Manso was once Mailer's acolyte, and the two men shared a home in Provincetown in the early 1980s. With Mailer's permission, Manso compiled the readable oral history, "Mailer: His Life and Times," which was reissued last week.

Mailer called his antagonist "poison drip" Manso

Manso feels that Mailer unfairly trashed him in a letter to the Provincetown Banner that was picked up by New York magazine. Mailer accused him of jimmying many of the quotations in the oral history. The theatrical, two-time Pulitzer winner called his antagonist "poison drip" Manso, and twisted the knife for good measure: "P.D. Manso is looking for gold in the desert of his arid inner life, where lies and distortions are the only cactus juice to keep him going"... Alex Beam in The Boston Globe.
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New Fed chief's Cape Cod connection
Grandfather was Orleans Selectman and benefactor

Editor's Note:
Charles F. Moore's grandson

Geithner's grandfather, Charles F. Moore, was a vice president of the Ford Motor Co. who served as an adviser to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and advised Republicans Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney in their run for the GOP nomination for President in the 1960s and 70s.
   Charlie was a native son who returned home and became the Orleans Selectman in the 1970s, and gave the town the music shell at the Eldredge Park baseball field. The town's ice rink is also named in his honor.

In many respects, Timothy F. Geithner is an unconventional choice for secretary of the Treasury. With little private-sector experience and none as a commercial banker, he has maintained the lowest of political profiles despite spending most of his adult life in top posts at key government agencies, the last five years as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Like President-elect Barack Obama, who nominated him, Geithner is global in both outlook and upbringing, having spent much of his boyhood in Africa and Asia, where his father, Peter Geithner, worked for a US development agency and later the Ford Foundation. The treasurer-designate and Obama are both 47, born two weeks apart, and have risen quickly in public life with help from networks of influential friends.

Geithner, a protégé of Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary who will be Obama's chief White House economic adviser, holds views on the federal government's role in assuring US competitiveness in a global economy that are in line with the president-elect's... Globe.
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VIDEO: Herring count confirms decline

The stories and tales are always there, you'll hear some here, but true, hard-as-granite data is hard to come by. (Scroll down to watch the video.)  Massachusetts has extended its river herring harvest moratorium, which began three years ago, until 2012. The numbers are down, due to predators such as striped bass, seals, cormorants, dogfish, etc.; at least that is the latest surmise. But while some of the decline can be measured, much of it is anecdotal.

Association to Preserve Cape Cod and teams of town volunteers are endeavoring to remedy that, and they've completed and tallied the first official herring count at the Pilgrim Lake run...  Anyone interested in counting herring should call Mitchell at 508-255-3381 or email wjmitchcapecod@comcast.net... The Cape Codder.