The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘News’ in the Post-Literate Age

Sitting here with my office TV tuned to CNN — I watch CNN, so you don’t have to — I’m struck by the arrogance of their assumption that they get to decide what is and is not newsworthy, as if their audience had no other source of information about what’s going on in the world, […]

What Part of ‘Learn to Code’ Do We Need to Explain to Laid-Off Journalists?

Does she look particularly Hispanic to you? I say this as someone with a Hispanic son-in-law and daughter-in-law, both of whom are wonderful people from families that are at least as affluent as my own. The notion that every person of Hispanic ancestry is a victim of racist oppression — mired in poverty, “living in […]

Thank You for the Orgasmic Pleasure

Did I just wake up from dreaming of a three-way with Sydney Sweeney and Olivia Dunne, or is Taylor Lorenz complaining about the downfall of establishment journalism? It makes no difference. Either way, I’m experiencing a pleasant surge of endorphins in my bloodstream. Permit me to share a few excerpts: “[The] journalism industry is basically […]

Priorities: Plastic Straws or Fentanyl?

Did you know that the idea of banning plastic straws was inspired by a nine-year-old boy’s science project? After reading that startling fact, I found myself going down a research rabbit-hole, during which I discovered that in 2018, Seattle became “the first major U.S. city to ban single-use plastic straws and utensils in food service.” […]

‘Tunnel Girl’ Update: Why KiwiFarms Is Better Than Mainstream Journalism

In my previous post, I expressed dismay that KiwiFarms didn’t have a “lolcow” thread about “Kala,” the TikTok personality who is digging an (apparently illegal) tunnel under “her” Northern Virginia home. Now I must apologize to the KF crew, after a commenter pointed out that there was such a thread, which I hadn’t found because […]

Matt Taibbi vs. the Borg

If you wish to amuse yourself sometime, go check out Matt Taibbi’s feed on The Social Media Platform Formerly Known as Twitter. In case you weren’t aware, Taibbi is a (former?) left-wing journalist once celebrated by his peers for his reporting in Rolling Stone, but who reached some kind of epiphany during the Trump years, […]

The Strange Return of ‘Radical Chic’

When I was a college student, Tom Wolfe’s Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers was one of the assigned texts in our feature writing class — studying the “New Journalism” as it was then called. The slim volume combined two articles Wolfe wrote for New York magazine, a publication that has since become just […]

While Hamas Supporters Terrorize Jews, Can You Guess What Noah Berlatsky Considers a More Important Menace?

America must beware of “Christofascism,” Berlatsky practically screams. The “white evangelical Christian nationalist tradition” of new House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, must be stopped: Based on his stated supposedly biblical positions, the Bible in Johnson’s head is a silly, vicious farrago of ignorance and bigotry, and a blueprint for Christofascist tyranny. . . . […]

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