This will be an especially personal post, but as it brings into sharp relief many of the ideas I’ve spent years writing about here, I figured it’s worth sharing. As many of you know, a few evenings ago I received the following email from one of my old creative writing professors:

The most transparent, post-partisan administration ever! Barack Obama has threatened to give Craig Becker, the labor union lawyer apologist, not the curmudgeon Ted Danson character, a recess appointment. It could come as early as next week. You might remember that last month, the Senate failed to come up with enough votes to bring Becker’s nomination for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to the floor in a bi-partisan rejection of

From the NYT: Buried deep in the health care legislation that President Obama signed on Tuesday is a new requirement that will affect any American who walks into a McDonald’s, Starbucks or Burger King. Every big restaurant chain in the nation will now be required to put calorie information on their menus and drive-through signs. In other words, as soon as 2011 it will be impossible to chomp down on

Just received an email from Antik denim asking me if I wouldn’t mind removing the rear tags and signature stitching from my Antik “McQueen” jeans. Because while Antik has always liked the way I look in the jeans, they are nevertheless “more and more alarmed,” they tell me, by my “propensity to clench my ass” in a manner that “some might construe as aggressive and potentially violent. Or maybe racist.”