Bad Journalist.
June 2013
1 post
May 2013
4 posts
"I won’t mention names, but I did have conversations about immigration where increasingly I had to defend the fact that the people most affected were human beings." →
salon.com
A year ago, Pablo Pantoja was the GOP’s Latino outreach director in Florida. He stumped for Romney and told the New York Times: “Hispanics in the area are going to realize the Republican Party is where they belong.” Yesterday, he became a Democrat. How does that happen, exactly? I asked him. He had a lot to say.
“When I was brought in here, I was explicitly told that the bloodletting had come to an end. I have enormous respect for the staff here and the work they have been doing, and I am not going to preside over further layoffs.”
— Will Bourne, editor of the Village Voice, explaining why he and his deputy, Jessica Lustig, walked off the job today. I had the privilege of meeting both of them recently, and know a few people that work in that newsroom. They struck me as ceaselessly talented, energetic, and positive. They were well on their way to making the Voice great again. I know they’ll be okay. I hope the rest of my friends will be, too.
April 2013
40 posts
Roxane Gay is Spelled With One "N": Things You Should Know About Isaac Fitzgerald →
roxanegay.tumblr.com
Yesterday, Isaac Fitzgerald announced that on May 1 he is leaving The Rumpus after four years as managing editor, and will be assuming the position of publicity director for McSweeney’s.
This is wonderful news and I couldn’t be happier for him. He deserves all the best things. He will also be…
Fuckin’ ay. Isaac is a wonderful tatted liquored man of letters, and I can’t wait to toss one back with him at the next AWP.
“A man in Afghanistan once told me that a third of this planet eats with spoons and forks, and a third of the planet eats with chopsticks, and a third eats with their fingers. And they’re all just as civilized as one another.”
— Rick Steves, Salon, 2009
Tumblr Staff: A year ago, Tumblr did something unprecedented — we created an... →
staff.tumblr.com
A year ago, Tumblr did something unprecedented — we created an editorial team of experienced journalists and editors assigned to cover Tumblr as a living, breathing community. The team’s mandate was to tell the stories of Tumblr creators in a truly thoughtful way — focusing on the people, their…
America. Because we know how to reward a smashing success.
“I’ll never forget how, many years ago, after another approach had failed to give relief, Matthew said ‘Dad, I know I’m going to heaven. Why can’t I just die and end this pain?’”
—
Megachurch pastor and Christianity franchiser extraordinaire Rick Warren, recalling his 27-year-old son Matthew, who committed suicide Friday at the family’s home.
Yes, we’re supposed to be solemn and respectful at a moment of loss such as this. But judging from the *press statement Warren’s Saddleback Church put out about his son’s suicide and longstanding depression*, and speaking as a past sufferer of existential depression, there seems to be no acknowledgment on Rick’s part that maybe, just maybe, his lifelong evangelism promoting a Christian cosmological narrative of love and everlasting life, juxtaposed with a clear inability to connect with his son on the most basic of loving levels, might have further screwed Matthew up and made self-oblivion seem an attractive choice.
As evinced in the quote above. I hear a troubled young man asking for help squaring his upbringing and dogmatic beliefs with what he feels so acutely and painfully. I’m not sure what Rick feels, but given the context in which he offered this anecdote, it seems less like a mea culpa or an introspective “what-if” than a supremely craven impulse to deny any responsibility: “Oh, you know, he was a tortured soul with a death wish, what can you do, anyway he’s in a better place now.”
This, from a man made millionaire many times over for penning a book titled “The Purpose-Driven Life.”
Rick, I’m truly sorry for your loss. I truly wonder whether *you* are.
Explainer: Everything You Need to Know (So Far) About the Largest Leak of Offshore Financial Secrets in History →
gawker.com
You say you don’t get how the whole offshore tax thing works in the first place? Take my hand.
Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate files petition to outlaw oral sex. →
motherjones.com
Not the Onion. Not the Onion. Not the Onion. Not the Onion.
Not the Onion. Not the Onion. Not the Onion. Not the Onion.
Not the Onion. Not the Onion. Not the Onion. Not the Onion.
Anyone out there ever had oral sex with Ken Cuccinelli? If so, big story. If not, also big story.
“We tell gun owners, there’s a time to hunt deer. And the next election is the time to hunt Democrats.”
—
In an interview with NPR, former NRA lobbyist and founder of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners Dudley Brown compared deer hunting season with election season.
When the next wingnut decides to take a shot at an elected official, you can be sure this guy will be quick to note that he didn’t specifically say that people should shoot Democratic members of Congress and that, obviously, “hunt” here means “vote for someone else” not actually shoot the person as one would, I guess, shoot a proverbial animal during “the proverbial hunting season.” Not a human animal, though.
Important distinction. This guy’s totally in the clear. Of course, these guys, who are almost certainly big fans of Brown and his rhetoric … well … I’ll keep an eye on them.
(via kohenari)
Oopsie: GOP governor Rick Scott writes a love letter to Florida Democrats' top-ranking woman
Either Rick Scott is taking this “moderate makeover” thing a little too far, or he delegated his correspondence to the wrong intern.
In a form letter dated March 22, Florida’s conservative tea-party governor congratulated state Democratic Party chairwoman Alison Tant for making a local list of notable women…with surprisingly florid praise. “Your efforts are helping move our state in the right direction,” he told Florida’s progressive-in-chief, adding: ”It is my pleasure to extend best wishes to you for your continued success.”
See for yourself:
Now, a little more bipartisan chumminess would be a fantastic thing, but it’s a stretch to believe that Scott — he of the tea party paradiso, the drug-tested welfare recipients, the long voting lines, the cheap health care (for himself), the Trayvon debacle, the war on liberal arts — is pleased with the recent Democratic direction of his state.
More likely, there are 25 of these letters, one for each of Tallahassee’s “Women You Need to Know in 2013.”*
Which means Scott is simply guilty of not accounting for what goes on in his name… as when he ran a medical conglomerate implicated in the largest Medicare fraud case in US history. In that case, good news for Republicans: Rick Scott is not a traitor to the conservative cause. He’s just a poor manager.
That should look excellent on a bumper sticker in 2014.
—-
* Editorial note: There are, in fact, many more than 25 women worth knowing in Tallahassee.
(via)
Florida lawmakers: No welfare benefits will go to strip clubs or casinos on our watch!
Via Schorsch at Saint Petersblog:
Patrons of strip clubs won’t be able to make it rain with government assistance under a measure that got its first vote of support from state senators on Tuesday.
The Regulated Industries Committee approved with little discussion the proposal (SB 1048) by Sen. Andy Gardiner to prohibit electronic benefits (EBT) cards from being used at strip clubs, liquor stores and gambling establishments, including casinos, pari-mutuels and Internet cafes.
The House version (HB 701) has cleared two committees with little trouble and is set to go before Health and Human Services Committee on Thursday.
And exactly how many EBT cards pop at these dens of vice? Florida’s puritanical legislators have yet to say. Though it’s probably similar to the numbers of Florida welfare recipients who are doing drugs: very, very few.
Holy shit I'm being followed by the Heritage Foundation Tumblr and it is a LAUGH RIOT. →
theheritagefoundation.tumblr.com
At least they’re not as funnysad as these guys. Just really, really close.
“She’s a product of not very far from here, in Waverly, Tennessee, where she was most likely to succeed in her class, a member of the 4-H. Her dad is a colonel in the Tennessee National Guard. This is somebody that’s very Tennessee, and I think maybe the important thing to recognize is this is somebody who could have a lot of great jobs in a lot of places.”
—In which Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam (R), kindly tells conservative critics upset over the appointment of a Muslim woman to a state office, to back off. (via motherjones)
Come on, Tennessee. It’s just one Muslima. You still owe us all for letting Taylor Swift happen.
Florida Republican and evangelical leader is arrested on child porn charges. →
nwfdailynews.com
“He has for sure got some pretty significant images.” That’s what Walton County Sheriff Mike Adkinson said of Lane Rees, 61, a GOP higher-up now charged with possession and transmission of child pornography.
Rees is a party committeeman, though the Republican Party of Florida appears to have purged him from its directory of leaders (an archived listing from last August listing Rees is here.) He also helped oversee the GOP’s state budget in 2011, and was appointed to serve on several policy panels by then-Gov. Jeb Bush and the Republican speaker of the Florida House. (A sparse user of Facebook, Rees excitedly updated his personal page in January 2011: “At Florida Inauguration for Governor Rick Scott, LT. Governor Jennifer Carroll and other members of the Cabinet — awesome time.”)
Rees until recently served as chairman of the board for the Foundation for Evangelism, which is associated with the United Methodist Church. (He continues to serve on the board.)
Just last month, Rees reportedly helped train other lay ministers at a retreat in Alabama. His lesson was titled “Living our Beliefs: The United Methodist Way.”
(h/t NW Florida Daily News)
Had lunch today with a writer whose work I grew up reading, and loving. Afterward, he sent me this email.
Adam,
Enjoyed meeting and talking to you. Not often does one hear “jeremiad” and “halcyon” in a Fort Lauderdale lunch conversation. Keep in touch.
Best,
Xxx
PS Ben Yagoda.
I went on a follow binge today. →
adamweinstein.tumblr.com
And changed my theme so you can see (and follow) who I follow.
Love is real, people.
September 2012
1 post
July 2012
3 posts
My two most recent followers...
…are the Heritage Foundation and Neil Strauss’ The Game.
You want me.
March 2012
3 posts
Play
