Taibbi vs. Brooks

Another satisfying Matt Taibbi take-down of David Brooks. This one about Brooks' reaction to the Rolling Stone article that took down General McChrystal. The gems:

In it, the world's BoBo-in-chief says, out loud, that reporters should protect public officials from their own stupidity. The column is so full of typically Brooksian power-worshipping pathology that the fact that I failed to predict it makes me worry that I really am slipping, now that I'm past forty.

And,

Yeah, we have a press corps that goes after "impurities" these days, but you know what kind of impurities they're after? They're after Monica Lewinsky's dress, they're after gay blowjobs in train stations, they're after governors who like high-priced escorts and televangelists who like to do meth with male escorts. And yes, they go after that stuff with an Inquisition-like intensity nowadays, but that has nothing to do with Watergate and Vietnam and everything to do with the media business turning into a nihilistic for-profit industry every bit as amoral and bloodless as oil or banking or big tobacco.

The Palin Rollercoaster

From Rumproast.com:

Sarah Palin's controversial speech last night from the campus of California State University was not allowed to be filmed directly, but rather a local TV station had to shoot a camera at a projection screen inside a media room down the hall from the speech. The attempt made by Palin and the University backfired a bit when the live feed picked up reporters' comments following the speech.

One reporter is heard saying, “Oh my god, I feel like I just got off a roller coaster." There are, however, more comments and a general WTF sentiment. (The reporters obviously did not realize that there voices were being picked up on the feed.)

Disgustipublicans

From Politico:

Chicago philosopher Martha Nussbaum has rejected former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee's claim that she's the source of a controversial phrase he used in discussing opposition to same-sex marriage.

She responds:

In fact, I have never used the phrase "ick factor" in any of my three books dealing with the emotion of disgust, or in any articles. I use the term "projective disgust" to characterize the disgust that many people feel when they imagine gay sex acts. What does that term mean, and to whom does it apply? The view I develop, on the basis of recent psychological research, is that projective disgust has its origin in a discomfort with one's own body and its messier animal aspects, including sexuality, and that, in a defense mechanism, disgust is then projected outward onto vulnerable groups who are characterized as hyperphysical and hypersexual. In this way, the uncomfortable people displace their discomfort onto others, who are then targeted for various forms of social discrimination.

Thus the people to whom the term "projective disgust" applies are the insecure and emotionally stunted people who campaign against equal rights for gays and lesbians, not gays and lesbians themselves.

Pick Flick

Weigel, WaPo, and the Tracy-Flickization of Public Life, Megan McArdle's excellent piece on the smearing of Washington Post blogger Dave Weigel.

So the lesson for young writers from all this: Be Tracy Flick. Don't say anything remotely interesting, certainly not over e-mail. If you lack the mental discipline to completely suppress critical thought about people and institutions you spend your life covering, get good at pretending.

What is Going On in Iceland?

From the NY Times:

A polar bear display for the zoo. Free towels at public swimming pools. A “drug-free Parliament by 2020.” Iceland’s Best Party, founded in December by a comedian, Jon Gnarr, to satirize his country’s political system, ran a campaign that was one big joke. Or was it?

Last month, in the depressed aftermath of the country’s financial collapse, the Best Party emerged as the biggest winner in Reykjavik’s elections, with 34.7 percent of the vote, and Mr. Gnarr — who also promised a classroom of kindergartners he would build a Disneyland at the airport — is now the fourth mayor in four years of a city that is home to more than a third of the island’s 320,000 people.

In his acceptance speech he tried to calm the fears of the other 65.3 percent. “No one has to be afraid of the Best Party,” he said, “because it is the best party. If it wasn’t, it would be called the Worst Party or the Bad Party. We would never work with a party like that.”

The Best Party, whose members include a who’s who of Iceland’s punk rock scene, formed a coalition with the center-left Social Democrats (despite Mr. Gnarr’s suspicion that party leaders had assigned an underling to watch “The Wire” and take notes). With that, Mr. Gnarr took office last week, hoping to serve out a full, four-year term, and the new government granted free admission to swimming pools for everyone under 18.

Not quite sure what it means, but any reference to The Wire is a good enough excuse for a clip.

Form Follows Function

A fascinating article about how documentary filmmakers ended up making a genre-bending film about Allen Ginsberg's Howl. From the guardian.co.uk:

Epstein and Friedman ended up overshooting their deadline by three years, losing themselves completely in what turned out to be a mad project, struggling to create something worthy of Ginsberg's incantatory work.

Streetcar in the Lobby

From the NY Times:

If you’ve seen the Barrow Street Theater’s production of “Our Town,” then you know the director David Cromer likes his audience to be intimately involved with his productions. So how to get theatergoers even more up close and personal with his “Streetcar Named Desire,” currently running at the Writers’ Theater in Glencoe, Ill.? How about a pop-up performance of a scene from the show (featuring Matt Hawkins and Stacy Stoltz) at the 2010 TCG National Conference?

Writers Theatre from Ben Thiem on Vimeo.