I think M. J. Rosenberg (my favorite TPM cafe person) is onto something here: Watch this space. I guess the reports that Jeff Goldberg is about to publish a neocon magnum opus calling for bombing Iran are true. […..] Following the Iraq pattern (Goldberg was lead boy in the Iraq pro-war chorus) his piece won’t …
David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute
Into the mystic
Jon Chait and Brendan Nyhan had some good pieces last week about how Peggy Noonan’s columns are essentially mystical in outlook. Obviously, you don’t need them to tell you that; nevertheless, I was happy to see two semi-VSPs touch on one of the things we rant about here regularly. I would argue that David Brooks’ …
Shot of salvation
I was about halfway through this extended NY Magazine Bobo blowjob, as the hesitation marks on my wrists prove, when these gems from Matt Taibbi came in: Matt Taibbi on True/Slant called Brooks, among other things, a “spineless Beltway geek” on a “pencil-pusher’s eternal quest for macho cred” who “looks like a professional groveler/ass-kisser” and …
Black Jimmy Carter, Part 50
Time for yet another blogger ethics panel: the very serious Economist magazine photoshops a picture of Barack Obama (via) to make him look more alone and depressed, a la Jimmy Carter.
Absence of malice
The New Yorker is the only magazine, other than various alcohol-related periodicals, I’ve ever regularly subscribed to. I don’t like it as much as I used to — there are too many favorable profiles of VSPs and CEOs and too few of weirdos, trouble-makers, fuggers, and thieves (aw, but they’re cool people). I already knew …
The Barber of civil
There’s been quite a lot of discussion of this whacky video Alabama Republican Rick Barber is running. If you haven’t seen it, it’s pretty damn entertaining, though I think they should have had the singer cry (they do close-ups of his watery eyes several times, but the waterworks never quite materialize): There are images of …