things are tuff all over

2-20-09—The Justice Dept. sued UBS AG to obtain access to 52,000 accounts belonging to US clients—some 30,000 more than previously known—a day after reaching an agreement to settle a criminal investigation that called for the Swiss bank to turn over 250 accounts in a wide ranging tax-evasion probe. WSJ A1

--The very first actress to win an Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences played a woman reduced to prostitution [1929] ... During the following decades, the Academy would nominate dozens of actresses for playing prostitutes, call girls, and courtesans of one sort or another ... Jeanine Basinger: “The way to land an Oscar as a woman is either to take off your makeup or put on a lot more. You’re either a prostitute/stripper or you’re a mother/nun.” ... [Oscar nominee Michael Radford] let his cast choose what kind of roles they wanted to play . And what roles did they choose? Strippers, naturally. Mr. Radford says the actresses were attracted by the edginess of that occupation as well as the ways that stripper roles deviated from the “vacant romantic roles” so often offered to women in Hollywood.—WSJ W4

--March 2, 2009—GLOBE, pp 16.17: With his legacy and marriage in tatters, former President George W. Bush has plunged into such a depression friends fear he may be suicidal. ...[he] is * scared to death the Obama administration will prosecute him for war crimes or other illegal acts. * Worried that former First Lady Laura will expose embarrassing secrets in her upcoming memoir. * Devastated that people are calling him the worst President in American history ... sources say Bush—who stopped drinking at age 40—has been finding solace in his old friend, Jim Beam.