Elections

[Disclosure: I dropped a day’s pay on Obama’s cam­paign about a week before the pas­tor thing hap­pened, and hope I never feel com­pelled to write about this elec­tion again.] Matt Taibbi is (as usual, and in spite of his ridicu­lous hump­ing of Hunter Thompson’s legacy) repeat­edly cor­rect in his assess­ment of American pol­i­tics as a bunch …

Four Stages of a Media Event

How is it that I don’t even own a tele­vi­sion and I know what the Mooninites are? (Well, I couldn’t remem­ber their names before read­ing it, but I knew what they were and where the ref­er­ence came from). I think the whole sit­u­a­tion is really an emo­tional onion. First there’s the laugh­ter when you realize …

President Batman

A friend of mine IM’d me an arti­cle osten­si­bly about how Russia is trag­i­cally under the (now-former) KGB’s thumb again. Yes, yes, we all know Putin is a dirty bas­tard who should never be in charge of any­thing more involved than [insert menial civil-service gig here]. And the more media-savvy (ahem) will fig­ure out that …

Cynicsm for Fun and Profit

Glenn Greenwald is dis­cussing the stun­ning hypocrisy of Republicans, as they decry the viciously par­ti­san Democrats for out­ing a gay Republican — osten­si­bly because drag­ging per­sonal sex­ual con­duct into pol­i­tics will drive good peo­ple from gov­er­nance. Color me cyn­i­cal, but why is this such a shock? This is the same crowd that spent a large chunk of …