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January 2008

Screw Turns Again [Dan Collins]

Our own SarahW is mentioned in a WaPo story about the cyber “lynching” (a strange choice of terminology) of Lori Drew for her role in Megan Meier’s suicide:  a poignant potboiler version of the story that is nevertheless accurate. What’s hilarious, though, is the author’s representation of cyberspace as a place where falsehood reigns supreme–as opposed to the mainstream media–and where poor judgments have terrible consequences for real people.  Not that naming

Clinton 2008: Shucking and Jiving in the Mud? [Karl]

The top story at Memeorandum at the moment is a comment by NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo — a prominent Clinton supporter– on the NH primary (and possibly the IA caucus): “It’s not a TV crazed race. Frankly you can’t buy your way into it,” Cuomo said. “You can’t shuck and jive at a press conference,” he added. “All those moves you can make with the press don’t work when you’re in

Election 2008: Clinton, Sexism and Post-Identity Politics [Karl]

In this election, as the New York Times informs the unwashed: If the race wasn’t about gender already, it certainly is now. And if it is not now, the New York Times is working hard to make it so with pieces like “Women’s Support for Clinton Rises in Wake of Perceived Sexism.” This piece does not cite any polling data to support its thesis, relying instead on anecdotal data from

Election 2008: Getting It Wrong About Getting It Wrong

Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, has penned an ignorant op-ed for today’s New York Times about the ostensibly bad polling of the NH Democratic primary.  After considering a number of factors that may have affected the poll results, Kohut turns to racism by lower-class whites as an explanation: To my mind all these factors deserve further study. But another possible explanation cannot be ignored — the longstanding

Dems 2008: The media discovers that organization matters [Karl]

Having over-reported stories based on polling — and having been embarrassed by the polling in both Iowa and New Hampshire — the media may be waking up to the importance of the “ground game” of presidential politics… for a day, anyway. The first example is the New York Times story on the race in Nevada, the next stop on the Democratic campaign trail (this caucus is non-binding for the GOP, so only Mitt Romney and

Pustules Imitate Lancet [Dan Collins]

A recent Los Angeles Times editorial claimed that one-fifth of Americans live on $7 a day — barely enough for a trip to Starbucks. Annie Jacobsen searches for the truth behind this dubious statistic and finds a tangle of shoddy analysis along the way. I mean, how can one go to Starbucks after reading this?  In the LA Times?  At Starbucks?

Greatest Talking Vagina Movie of All Time [Dan Collins]

excepting, maybe, some flicks with Alec Baldwin in them, is Chatterbox.  I bring it up because of yesterday’s talk about this, and because people tend to forget these things in all the hype about the cutting edge, groundbreaking, taboo smashing blahblahblah that always accompanies such “outlandish” “events”. In point of fact, Aeschylus seems to have dramatized the vagina dentata in his lost play, The Phallophagos, which appears to have gotten

The Yellow Period [Dan Collins]

Nothing new, but well stated: “Art is not what you see,” noted Edgar Degas, “but what you make others see.” Ninety years after his death, a new maxim applies to Europe: The art that you do not see reflects what everyone already sees. And what we see is the preemptive surrender of public freedoms in the name of appeasing the continent’s restive Muslim underclass. Grayson Perry serves as the ideal

They Spoke on Condition of Anonymity [Dan Collins]

for their enormous pie-holes, the c*nts.

A Little Lower Than the Angels [Dan Collins]

It takes a village: Jones added that in recent months he had noticed a “strange odor” coming through his vent.”We thought it was probably dead mice in the vent or something,” he said, adding that he had talked to the landlord about it. D.C. Council member Marion Barry, who represents the neighborhood where the bodies were found, questioned why no one had reported the four missing.” Somebody should have known