Katherine Eastland has pointed out a very good article on the Amazon Kindle by Stephen Marche, which reminds me that I wrote a little something on the subject for The American Conservative last month when this blog was still on hiatus. Enjoy it now, if you like:There is no...
Monday, November 30, 2009
A poem called "Short People" by one Jennifer L. Knox
When Emperor Hirohito told the Japanese people it was time to surrender, he never used the word surrender. Instead, he talked about how everyone had done their best, tried so hard, etc. His speech was broadcast over loudspeakers hung outside on electrical poles. People had never...
"Sad Panda is actually pretty sad."
The New York street act known as Sad Panda—a guy in a panda suit who earns tips from tourists for standing around glumly on Wall Street—is actually a 62-year-old Chinese man with a hard-luck story. He quit his restaurant job to go to China in order to make his mother's funeral...
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Tip O'Neill was such a girl
I don't mean it, of course, but you just try resisting the thought as you read the last line of this snippet from James A. Farrell's biography:. . . He had even taken fifty pounds off his corpulent frame by attending Weight Watchers classes at Catholic University. He was the...
Saturday, November 28, 2009
The Golden Age of Right-Wing Novelty Songs (is Obviously Over)
Of embarrassing right-wing rap videos there will be no end, and the latest one is simply awful. But this was not always so. To prove that there was a time when novelty songs could be conservative and non-terrible, here are five favorites.1. "Tea Partay" [video]Oh, the summer...
Friday, November 27, 2009
No Mercy!
Nick catches an embarrassing slip-up:OVERLY TECHNICAL CORRECTION OF THE DAY: The Chicago Tribune, writing about the soundtrack for An Education, praised its new songs "in the Mercy Beat" style. Which is great, except I have no idea what "Mercy Beat" is. Merseybeat is the style...
Bookblogging: The Headless Republic
Of all the blogs I've ever liked, not one has ever posted any poetry. But these are special circumstances. First of all, I read Jesse Goldhammer's The Headless Republic: Sacrificial Violence in Modern French Thought, and I liked it. Moreover, I want Mr. Goldhammer, when he...
Thursday, November 26, 2009
A woman is a woman, but a good Speaker of the House is a smoker
From John A. Farrell's Tip O'Neill and the Democratic Century:When Whip Thomas Foley's wife and chief of staff, Heather, asked O'Neill to put out his cigar at a leadership meeting, O'Neill leveled her. "You know, we only tolerate you in these meetings," he sa...
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Thanksgiving is the perfect time to reduce the minimum wage. Wait, why are you laughing?
Sean, who ReadsTheNews, draws a holiday lesson from this Forbes article about programmers who give away their software for free because they're in it for sheer love of the pixels. Sean:The result is an off-beat story about interesting people doing important work. I love stories...
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Self-Promotion: "Average Janes: To save feminism, get rid of the lady-blogs"
I've got an article about women's blogs like XX Factor and Broadsheet in the current issue of Doublethink:It’s possible to write interestingly about body image, sperm donation, or your foibles as a mother. Caitlin Flanagan and Virginia Postrel have done it, and one of these...
The Plight of the Condorf
It's pretty obvious what Conor Friedersdorf wants to do. He wants to be every pundit's conscience. In his perfect world, he'd be the guy who purged the propagandists from journalism's noble ranks in a grand final battle, maybe with a broadsword. Love it or hate it, that's...
What's My Name, Fool? Hint: Not "Mister T."
Dave Zirin proves that hippies hate sports:I did a book talk for my first book, What’s My Name, Fool!, which has this big picture of Muhammad Ali on the cover, and I did it at a very left-wing anarchist bookstore with tons of antiwar stuff everywhere. I go into the bookstore...
Future Senator Seeks Blogger; Must Be Willing to Time-Travel
Advertising for Love is the blog of a Rutgers PhD student who posts nineteenth-century personals, matrimonial ads, and missed connections. Some of the authors are reactionary teenage girls ("No abolitionists need apply"). Some are Republican Party operatives, maybe. Some are...
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