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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 ...

State of the Union: Partly Cloudy, High Likelihood of Tedium
January 27, 2014
Tomorrow, an American president, invited by Congress, will deliver his annual address to lawmakers on the state of the union, and literally not one person in the world really gives a shit. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be covered! Oh, it will be covered. Every news ...

The Debtpocalypse Is Always Upon Us
January 24, 2014
Peter G. Peterson has been called “the most influential billionaire in America” based on the impact his namesake foundation has had in more-or-less creating deficit reduction hysteria. While the deficit has been rapidly shrinking, the hysteria of Very Serious People ...

Stuck in Detention with a Handful of Nukes
January 23, 2014
I’ve got this great idea for a movie. It’s about the people responsible for launching nuclear missiles in America, and how their daily lives are some Beckett-esque hellscape of waiting for something that will never arrive, forced to be on alert for no reason, and trapped ...

The Wolf of Wall Street, Print Version
January 23, 2014
Let us assume, for the sake of kindness rather than on any available evidence, that an editor at the New York Times had a bad morning. Maybe there was a hangover, or a new baby who cried all night, and the editor to whom we’ve decided to grant our narrative charity went to ...