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Breaking News: Opinion Page Stilted, Old-Fashioned
February 06, 2014
I’ll admit it: I had a long, blank moment. The New York Observer reported this week on “how deeply the liberal-leaning reporters at the New York Times resent the liberal-leaning editorial page of the New York Times,” and I couldn’t bring the opinion pages ...

In Search of Unspun News
February 05, 2014
The Congressional Budget Office, which partisans observe as either a neutral, omniscient force of total knowledge or a coven of innumerate hacks depending on how it scores one’s preferred policies, released a report yesterday on the effects of the Affordable Care Act. The ...

Your Soda Now Includes a Stance on International Affairs
February 04, 2014
Ah, the Super Bowl. As one of your other Baffler blog correspondents recently pointed out, there’s nothing more American, for unclear reasons. Like any big event, it was not without controversy. There was the young gentleman we got mad at for acting in a manner consistent with ...

Fox News: Not Worthy of Our Attention Until We Say So
February 04, 2014
Stranded referents, a shotgun spray of clashing claims and jumbled ideas, half-completed gestures. If you put two potted geraniums side by side and pointed a television camera at them, they would trade as much information as Bill O’Reilly and Barack Obama exchanged in the ...

Bcc: Dridge
B: There’s an asp. A: I follow you. B: You knew? A: No. B: But you follow; you do follow. A: Yes, now. B: I see. A: I failed to mention that reportedly there was some mix-up. Maybe I should have said this in the meeting just now, to everyone. It’s nothing to concern yourself ...

America at its Beautifullest
February 03, 2014
Last night’s Super Bowl was extremely America-y, even for the Super Bowl. Maybe because it was Fox’s turn to host this year? Or maybe people are just more into America than they were last year! But the whole spectacle—taped pregame segments, songs, the game, the ...

We’re Probably Going to Need More Snowpocalypse Puns
January 31, 2014
You may have either personally experienced or noticed in the news this week that the Atlanta metropolitan region was completely destroyed by a couple of inches of snow. You had your laughs—yes, you did. Then you saw that kids were stranded in schools and people were stranded ...

Battle of the Book Readers, Round ∞
January 30, 2014
Ah, here we are again, enjoying yet another round in the great Jennifer Weiner/Jonathan Franzen cage match. We have, in Franzen’s corner, Jesse Barron, writing for Harper’s. He wants to explore the way romance novelists succeed in their genre despite a lack of ...

Unemployment Rate Not So Bad for Employed People
January 30, 2014
There are those moments when a news story eats its own premise, but the people writing and editing the story don’t seem to notice: “Obama’s Puzzle: Economy Rarely Better, Approval Rarely Worse,” the New York Times announced in a headline on Monday. Yeah, ...

Executive (In)Action!
January 29, 2014
Give credit to the White House communications office: the way it billed last night’s State of the Union was one of the more successful spin jobs it’s pulled off in ages. Those jokers got the whole wide world to believe that President Obama actually has some sort of ...

Wrong if Republican, Right if Democrat
January 28, 2014
Sean Wilentz contains multitudes. Back in 2006, in a cover story that has since vanished from the Rolling Stone website, the Princeton University historian took up the cudgel against George W. Bush. “The Worst President in History,” the headline of Wilentz’s ...