This thing looks like this thing.
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They say that President Obama is a Muslim, but if he isn’t, he’s a secularist who is waging war on religion. On some days he’s a Nazi, but on most others he’s merely a socialist. His especially creative opponents see him as having a ‘Kenyan anti-colonial worldview,’ while the less adventurous say that he’s an elitist who spent too much time in Cambridge, Hyde Park and other excessively academic precincts.
Whatever our president is, he is never allowed to be a garden-variety American who plays basketball and golf, has a remarkably old-fashioned family life and, in the manner we regularly recommend to our kids, got ahead by getting a good education.
Please forgive this outburst. It’s simply astonishing that a man in his fourth year as our president continues to be the object of the most extraordinary paranoid fantasies. A significant part of his opposition still cannot accept that Obama is a rather moderate politician quite conventional in his tastes and his interests. And now that the economy is improving, short-circuiting easy criticisms, Obama’s adversaries are reheating all the old tropes and cliches and slanders.
” — E.J. Dionne“So the best possible technique, we figured, to get rid of the flying gnat menace was to obtain their natural predator, the ladybug. Which is an adorable-seeming and charming critter and all but really they are quite monstrous, carnivorous animals. So we ordered a small box of ladybugs (they ship them! You probably know this) and then you release them at night and then they wake up in the morning and they eat everything and I guess at some point there’s a plan to help them get out of the apartment but that’s not completely thought-out yet. (Yes, I understand, maybe releasing ladybugs in your house isn’t the best idea overall, and what if it’s like the rabbits in Australia, where they just eat everything and take over? And you have to live with an angry, buzzing fleet of scary beetles? Also please don’t tell any hardcore vegan animal rights people about this. Already I’m on the gluten-free people’s hit-list. I’m making way too many niche enemies these days.)” — And This is Why You Should Be Subscribed to the Awl Newsletter
coffee ➜ nose
I don’t know why this had me in stitches this morning, but it did:
Debbie the Secretary’s vote is in the bag, but Joe the Plumber is running for Congress as a Republican in Ohio’s Ninth District. “Americans deserve all kinds of people representing them,” he said, “not just an élite ruling class.”
That’s Joe the Plumber. Saying “élite.” With an é.
Jeremy just got the best sweater from Ebay. So jealous!
wtf i’m twenty feet across the office how am i finding out about this on tumblr THIS IS SO AMAZING!!
“I took a great piece by an excellent reporter and created a version of it that was better for an online audience. This is a big part of what I do as a ‘new journalist.’” — ~ ~ ~ ~ L O L ~ ~ ~ ~
“There are amusing moments, among them when Senator Carl Levin, the grandfatherly Michigan Democrat, approached Mr. Feingold and the late Paul Wellstone on the Senate floor during the 1999 impeachment trial. ‘I am a little embarrassed to ask you guys this,’ Mr. Levin said sheepishly. ‘But what’s a thong?’” — In New Book, Ex-Senator Says Fear Clouded Judgment After 9/11
Um, idk, seems to me like maybe scolding a victim for not coping the way you think she ought to be coping is the real All Kinds of Wrong of the Day here? Just a thought.
How Forbes Stole A New York Times Article And Got All The Traffic -
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but how much is a title worth? If the story that proceeds is any indicator, a title is worth over 6700 words and months of research. It all began Friday when the New York Times published an article “How Companies Learn Your Secrets“. It was an extremely long article which discussed how large companies like WalMart and Target collect data about your individual consumption patters to figure out how to most efficiently make you happy. It was a great piece but there was one problem: it didn’t have the title it deserved.
The original title was “How Companies Learn Your Secrets”. Kashmir Hill, a writer at Forbes, realized this and quickly developed a condensed version of the article with a far more powerful title: “How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did“. It cut out the crap and got to the real shocker of the story. As of the writing of this story, the New York Times article has 60 likes and shares on Facebook versus 12,902 which the Forbes article has. The Forbes article also has a mind boggling 680,000 page views, a number that can literally make a writer’s career.
Forbes did some journalism this weekend.
I demand to see the long-form birth certificate of this “Kashmir Hill” before I’ll believe she’s not a robot.
Oh Brooklyn you’re so precious!!
It is a truth universally acknowledged that apparently a lot of people read the first page of Pride and Prejudice before promptly switching over to Hunger Games.
Something something The Best Time I Tried Watching a Basketball Game at a North Brooklyn Bar.
Anna Wintour and Karl Lagerfeld, back when one was fat and the other was a brunette.