Oct 19, 09 | 8:09 AM
The boy in the balloon or, as it were, the boy not in the balloon, is a publicity stunt which has many people outraged, questioning the sanity of the boy’s father, the intelligence of the media, and the values of a media-driven culture. But other than the lower-than-usual trick of using a child’s welfare to get attention, and the better-than-usual trick of staging a runaway balloon, why is this publicity stunt different from all the others that now fill the Newser grid? You don’t really think Al Sharpton, for instance, is going to sue Rush Limbaugh for damaging...
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Oct 16, 09 | 8:37 AM
Here’s the setup: There’s a gay guy named Kevin Jennings who’s made a career dealing with the issues of gay kids in American schools. In what must have seemed like a kinder-gentler-bureaucracy good idea, the Obama administration gave him a job promoting school safety, which seems to be about dealing with bullies instead of recruiting more crossing guards. Of course, we can reasonably assume this is a lot more well-meaning than it is effective, and a lot more bureaucratic than it is enlightened, but that’s not the point. The point is the Republicans can conflate a gay...
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Oct 15, 09 | 8:11 PM
I know it’s a little odd to eulogize someone who fired you, but I can’t resist: I think it’s very important that Bruce Wasserstein be remembered not only as a Wall Street genius but as the patron of New York magazine. There aren’t enough Bruce Wassersteins: rich guys willing to pour millions into media properties instead of nerd-porn yachts or silly chalets in Switzerland. People willing to lose money, for a long time if necessary, on publications that are worth saving, don’t get enough credit: Si Newhouse and the New Yorker, for example, or...
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Oct 15, 09 | 12:39 PM
Twitter celeb brouhaha of the day: Meghan McCain, in a bid to show how dorky she’s becoming in her old age, posts a photo of herself, curled up at home on a Wednesday night with a book—in a tank top that shows off her very ample bosom (and super push-up). She gets called a slut, claims to be hurt, apologizes to whoever she’s offended, and, in the meantime, gets more than a hundred thousand views. The tweet is the new drunk dial—something easy to do without thinking, and all but impossible to undo—and celebs have gotten endless flak as of late for baring their...
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Oct 15, 09 | 8:25 AM
I think I’ve got it—the hate in America and where it’s coming from. Rush Limbaugh’s effort— aborted by his fellow investors, it seems—to buy the St. Louis Rams has given me the insight. Other people, when they don’t get something they want—and rich guys really want football teams; for them this is true love—get sulky, or shrill, or litigious. (Well, Rush does threaten, of course: "We are in the process of working to get apologies and retractions with the force of legal action against every journalist who has published these...
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Oct 14, 09 | 9:47 AM
Bernie Madoff shoves a 60-year-old inmate in the prison yard and, as of this morning, it’s the top story on Newser. But a series of books about Madoff started coming out this summer and not one of them has done any business to speak of. Aside from the obvious point that books are long and Newser stories are short, how come we’re so fickle in our attentions to Bernie? The book thing makes a certain sense: It would be hard to fashion a less sympathetic character than Madoff. He not only lacks any aspect of virtue or even pathos, his sort of evilness is, in the end, only accountant-like....
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Oct 13, 09 | 2:54 PM
It doesn’t really matter how many troops Barack Obama decides to send to Afghanistan. Obama could send every man and woman he’s got into those mountains, he could call every veteran out of retirement, he could revoke Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and send recruiters to every gay club in San Francisco, and it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference. Afghanistan is screwed. We’ve heard often now that the disputed election has changed the calculus in Afghanistan, that without a reliable, legitimate partner in the government, counterinsurgency tactics aren’t worth...
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Oct 13, 09 | 8:30 AM
The plan now is to harrumph. Fox is "undertaking a war against Barack Obama," the White House says, and therefore it’s not going to treat Fox the same as "legitimate news organizations." That’s a harrumph. A petulant harrumph. And a gift—to Fox. The network was out in force yesterday, basking in the White House’s disapproval. Beck and O’Reilly were nearly orgiastic. Every presidential harrumph sends their ratings through the roof. The Obama campaign is so ass-backward that I’m tempted to surmise that the White House must purposefully...
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Oct 12, 09 | 8:41 AM
Who’s the most venomous and pernicious person in American life today? That person who, without an iota of irony or self-dramatizing exaggeration (Rush Limbaugh, in that sense, is rather a kitten), really believes the nation has descended into a malignant state and can only be saved by baneful and constant censure? Nominations? Here’s mine: Liz Cheney. Sour, wounded, aggrieved, graceless, paranoid (I’d guess), self-pitying, doubtless, extreme, aggressive, and defensive, she might literally kill you, and your kind, if she could. Yesterday, she went on a Sunday morning...
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Oct 9, 09 | 1:41 PM
President Obama today achieved his long-sought goal of overcoming the nation’s factional divide as all sides of the political spectrum came together to agree that he did not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. Republicans, Democrats, and independents were in unprecedented agreement, as politicians and citizens alike registered their astonishment and outrage at the Nobel committee’s selection. Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann were spotted in a bar in New York City, buying each other drinks and sharing snide bon mots about the award. Even Obama himself joined in the condemnation...
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