Bad Journalist.: Archive

“There may never have been a White House that inherited a crap sandwich — from terrorism, to the economy, to wars, to debt, to the Tea Party — quite like this one. They are running around with their hair on fire for good reason, and they simply have to shoot the closest rattlesnake.” —Do you read Battleland, Mark Benjamin’s defense blog at Time? Man, you really should.

Jul 28, 20111 note

“Today in the Senate, I met with Senators Jon Kyl and Mark Kirk. The meeting is very useful because it shows that the alternative to Barack Obama is a collapse of all the programs of cooperation with Russia. Today, I had the impression that I was transported in a time machine back several decades, and in front of me sat two monsters of the Cold War, who looked at me not through pupils, but targeting sights.” —Russia’s ambassador to NATO is none too pleased with US conservatives. Wait till you see what one of those conservatives said in response.

Jul 28, 2011309 notes

#russia #united states #diplomacy #politics #gop #republicans #congress #news

The best writing advice I've read today.

I don’t recommend, or even approve, writing personally. It can lead to dreadful writing. The danger is that you’ll get lost in the contemplation of your wonderful self. You’ll include things for the lousy reason that they actually happened, or that you feel strongly about them; you” forget to ensure that the reader feels anything whatever. You may hold the popular view that art is self-expression, or a way of understanding the self — in which case the artist need do nothing more than babble uncontrolledly about the self and then congratulate himself that, in addition to all his other wonderfully interesting attributes, he is also an artist.

— Annie Dillard, “How I Wrote the Moth Essay — and Why”

Jul 21, 20114 notes

#lit #writing #creative writing #art #self-indulgence #annie dillard

Bad Journalist.

July 2011

3 posts