Forget it. There is no good news. Let's have a diversion into the world of pop-cult photography before we hazard a journey into more politically troubled waters, as well as the re-legitimization of Ralph Nader. Without further ado:

"Big Up"
By Ben Watts
 192 pages
Princeton Architectural Press
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Now that hip-hop is everywhere, it's often easy to forget what it looked like when it came of age as a sneering urban punk sick of Reagan and Bush back in the late '80s and early '90s. Since that's when I also came of age, I have a particularly pathetic nostalgic pull for that period, one when De La Soul, Public Enemy, Eric B and Rakim, and more laid the foundation for the explosion currently splattered all over MTV, BET and VH1's face.

That nostalgia kicked into overdrive when I peeped Ben Watts' "Big Up," especially the gritty photos of breakers, boxers and bullet-scarred G's lining its well-prepared pages. Sure, Watts has photographed celebrities -- including his sis, Naomi -- of some stripe for top-echelon pubs for years now, and those are included in "Big Up" as well. It is, after all, his personal scrapbook.

But Watts impresses more when he's away from cats like Chris Rock and Kelly Slater -- although his Lennox Lewis shots are worth the price of the book alone. It's when he's shooting those who don't live in the glow of the spotlights that he delivers, whether they're injured wrestlers, wannabe pugilists, poor kids hijacking fire hydrants, or heavily pierced femmes with "Connecticunts" tattoos.

"A lot of those pictures come from just carrying my camera around and taking pictures of people in the streets," Watts told me in an interview. "And I still love to do that, but there's so much corporate signage and everyone's so kind of aware of the camera now. Since the Internet took off, everyone is a little suspicious. It all has kind of wrecked things some. I look back at those pictures and go, Wow, that's cool because there isn't a fucking Starbucks in the background."

One of the coolest things about Watts' work is that it is often interactive. The photographer loves using Polaroids, probably the easiest to use, because his subjects can see the immediate result and autograph it with their own personal trash talk. "I love Polaroid, because it offers instant gratification," he explained. "I keep the negatives and print from that. And I love the idea of people writing comments on them. I also like the look of foreign languages, how everyone's handwriting is different, stuff like that. I loved having Chinese characters written on them, because it looks great. I know it sounds kind of shallow to say art looks great, but it does."

Looks aren't everything, of course, which is fine because Watts' photography works on enough different levels to avoid falling into the celebrity photographer trap. It strips the artistic pretension away enough to not feel like an extended exercise in hero worship, while his subjects' various scribbles add enough meta to make "Big Up" one sloppy, gorgeous mess. Which is exactly what scrapbooks are supposed to be.

"The W Effect: Bush's War on Women"
Edited by Laura Flanders
295 pages
The Feminist Press at CUNY
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Laura Flanders' last interrogation of the state of women who've been absorbed, Borg-like, by the Bush administration, "Bushwomen," already captured the attention of Salon's Suzy Hansen. But this companion book of sorts, from the City University of New York's Feminist Press, flew right past my radar until one reader e-mailed me about it. I'm glad she did, because if you're looking for a comprehensive introduction to how Bush and his friendly female cohort have gone to war on equal pay, family leave, sex education, abortion, Title IX and more, look no further.

This weighty anthology brings together essays from Cynthia Enloe, Farai Chideya, Katha Pollitt, Gail Sheehy, Gloria Steinem and others, adding up to a comprehensive analysis of the actual programs that the president and his "Bushwomen" leading ladies have implemented, withheld or exploited. With the president having won a higher-than-expected percentage of women's votes, the book makes sobering reading as we face the impending battles of the second Bush term.

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