Good afternoon/evening, 'rons and 'ettes.

First up, everybody loves drinking the Kool-Ade:

I think the actor playing the taller boy is a very young Markos Moulitsas.

It would explain a lot. (/deadpan)

Next, below the fold, you've probably never seen Ronald McDonald quite like this:

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 02:36 PM | Comments (184)
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lulzzzz.

Woman Falls 17 Stories to Her Death; AP Implies She Deserved It

Every urbaniteÂ’s worst nightmare came true for one New Yorker this week: Jennifer Rosoff, leaning against the railing on the balcony of her Upper East Side apartment, suddenly fell 17 stories to her death after the railing gave way. This is obviously horrifying and tragic. Rosoff was a media executive with stints at The New Yorker and Cosmopolitan on her resume. ItÂ’s outrageous that the owners of her building were so remiss in their balcony inspection duties. But if you skimmed the beginning of the Associated PressÂ’s account of RosoffÂ’s accidental death, you wouldnÂ’t get much information about RosoffÂ’s promising career or about the structural inadequacies of her balcony. Here are the first two paragraphs of the APÂ’s article about Rosoff:

A 35-year-old media executive on a first date plunged to her death Thursday after the railing on her 17th-floor New York City balcony gave way, police said.

Jennifer Rosoff went outside for a cigarette around 12:50 a.m. when she either sat on the railing or leaned on it. Her date told her that she probably shouldn't do it, and then moments later, she apparently fell backward and landed on construction scaffolding at the first floor, authorities said. Police spoke to the man and no foul play was suspected.

LetÂ’s break this down. According to the AP, the crucial facts you need to know about Rosoff right off the bat are that:

1. She was 35 and single.
2. She was a smoker.
3. She invited a man back to her apartment late at night on a first date.
4. The man warned her not to lean against the balcony, but she did it anyway.

The implication being that this smoking slut totally had it coming.

That's exactly what I was thinking. You nailed it. You and Andrew O'Hehir should get together and open a nail salon called Utter Nailures.

A reader is left with the distinct impression that if Rosoff hadnÂ’t invited her date inside, hadnÂ’t gone outside to smoke a cigarette, and hadnÂ’t defied the advice of the wise and logical man she was with, she would still be alive.

Exactly. As the Bible said, "Gravity is just the comeuppance for red-painted whores."

Not the Bible. Some Tijuana bible I had said something like that.

According to the AP story’s subtext, the problem wasn’t that Rosoff’s balcony railing was shoddy and unsafe—it was that Rosoff defied gender norms by being unmarried at 35, by being sexually liberal, and by insisting on making her own decisions instead of deferring to men’s logic.

Of course.

This is an AP story, by the way. The archliberal AP has now joined the #WarOnWomen.

You may accuse me of overreacting...

I accuse you of nothing. This is a safe place. I'm here to help. Now tell me: Who did this to you? Who robbed you of your capacity for lucid thought? Who took out your brain and stuffed your head full of bubblegum and sillystring?

I'd like to focus on this claim:

But if you skimmed the beginning of the Associated PressÂ’s account of RosoffÂ’s accidental death, you wouldnÂ’t get much information about RosoffÂ’s promising career or about the structural inadequacies of her balcony.

So much here is stupid, and dishonest. Note what she says: if you skim the beginning of the article, you wouldn't find out these things.

Well no, you'd have to read all the way down to short paragraphs 6, 7, and 8 in a very brief 8 paragraph article. Slightly more fluffed up than a stub.

I don't understand what sort of retard she thinks will read the first 200 words of an article and then say, "Well, that's it for me. No way in hell I'm reading the next 250 words. My work is done for the day."

I'm also curious about why this idiot thinks the most important news information in a story about an accidental death is this woman's super-fabulous career. She believes, and you see this in her "rewrite" of the article, that the headline news bites in this article are, in approximate order of importance:

Independent Working Woman Makes Good, Has Promising Future In Media Career

This Sister Is Doing It For Herself!!!

Also, She Fell 17 Stories to Her Death Due to a Faulty Balcony

The Balcony Was Probably Built by a Man

Probably a wife-beater too. If they're not cheatin', they're beatin'... Amirite, Ladies? Give me a round of applause if you know what I'm talkin' about

For some ludicrous reason I don't even think she could sufficiently explain, she actually thinks "35 year old woman poised to Shoot Across the Sky Like a Star in the lucrative magazine article-writing market" is the lede here.

It's a very weird thing. First of all, it's classist; she thinks the Big Story is that someone of her class -- the New Class -- existed, and should be celebrated for that alone. You would not hear her screeching so shrilly had the victim been a construction worker. She would not demand that we drop everything in order to ponder that man's career.

In fact, later in the article, a death of a male social worker who fell to his death due a faulty balcony is similarly hastily recounted by AP. This gynarchist bozo doesn't mention him at all, and doesn't ask why his promising career is also given short-shrift by AP. (Hint: Because it's not the career that is the story here.)

For another thing, it's self-condescending: She still wants to treat the phenomenon of women working in, and succeeding in, the workplace as some sort of Compelling and Arresting Exotica which we must all deeply ponder due to its Man Bites Dog nature.

35 year old woman in New York City works in the media world, specifically the magazine world? This is what she insists the Big News Take-Away is?

Now, don't notice whatsoever at all that she herself is a female magazine writer (well, an amateur webzine writer, as far as I know). And don't even think for one hot second that her cloying pitch for attention is fundamentally a cry of

"I matter, Dad! I'm somebody too, Dad! And I have ideas! Good ideas, Dad! Good ideas about rolling back the patriarchal cryptotexts present in toss-off AP blurbs!"

Yeah it's not All About You at all. It just so happens that newspapers are required to drop everything to Celebrate Women very similar to yourself on the same approximate career track and talk up how super-amazing a career in magazine writing is.

So much Dumb. So much Dumb.

It's important to read stupid shit like this because Dumb People rule the fucking world. We need to know what Dumb People are thinking, because their stupidity will end up harming us eventually.

That's what the Stupid do -- they fuck shit up for everyone else.

By the Way: New podcast up.

Posted by: Ace at 11:22 AM | Comments (537)
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Actually to call it "Another Gosnell" is misleading; we don't seem to be talking about slaughtering live-born infants here.

The charges concern abortion assistants with no medical training and "rushed abortions" which result in “sedated patients to wander down [the street] dazed and confused.”

Now, the pushback from the Late Term Abortion Super Fans on the left in the Gosnell case was Serious You Guys We Don't Support This Either and Stuff, Because #womenshealth. (They neatly ignored the murder charges against Gosnell which weren't about the deaths of clients, but of infants.)

Well, here is a case where Serious You Guys #WomensHealth is in play and once again the only people I see discussing it is pro-lifers like Kirsten Powers.

The Washington Post's Sarah Kliff infamously dismissed Gosnell as a "Local Crime Story." She covers "health issues" for the Post, which chiefly means abortion-rights issues. She also infamously squeeted (a squee in the form of a tweet) about Wendy Davis: "Open eyes, full hearts, can't stop talking!"

Well here is another woman's heath story which, if abortion is Kliff's main beat (and it is), should be of interest to Kliff. She can't even dismiss it as a Local Crime Story because Delaware is in fact local to Washington DC.

If you share an airport, you're "local."

And yet a Google search for "Kliff Delaware abortion" discloses no hits.

Are we still pretending? Does the media find some value in lying overlooked by all previous philosophers, theologists, and ethicists?

Posted by: Ace at 03:25 PM | Comments (186)
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In August, Silence = Amnesty. Kaus is right, especially this part.

You can’t win if you don’t play: If you’re an amnesty foe, it’s ‘or forever hold your peace’ time. If you’ve never been to a Congressman’s town hall, and never want to go, this would be a good time to make an exception. Phone calls and (especially) letters also have a disproportionate impact.

Posted by: CDR M at 06:31 PM | Comments (587)
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Soon.

Ben and CDR M will set up 6 leagues with 50 teams each.

Very soon.

Updated. Commenter Buzzion suggests this video which we've all seen before but hell, we can see it again, can't we?

Yes we can.

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Posted by: Dave in Texas at 09:17 AM | Comments (193)
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Posted by: Purple Avenger at 07:26 AM | Comments (157)
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Actor Michael Broderick (a close, personal friend of mine)* is engaged supporting a newly formed organization called Veterans in Film and Television whose mission is to help veterans who want to work in the entertainment industry. They would appreciate your support. VFT is a 501(c)3 and your contributions are tax-deductible.

One of the effects of downsizing our military is a lot of veterans entering the workforce. Thousands of men and women leaving military service need jobs and in this economy it's a difficult challenge. VFT has a very specific focus, but then we all try to make a difference where we can in the places that we know.

Veterans' service organizations (VSOs), such as the DAV and MOAA provide valuable services to our veterans including job search assistance, vocational training and assistance with VA disability claims.

They help us keep an important promise, "to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan".

* by close, personal friend I mean there's no restraining order. As far as I know.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:34 AM | Comments (96)
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From the genius minds who want to tell everyone else how the economy should be run.

The New York Times company bought it for $1.1bn (£700m) in 1993 but has now agreed to sell it for $70m.

Like many US newspapers, the Globe has been hit by a slump in advertising revenue with circulation declining.

The buyer is John W Henry, the main owner of the Boston Red Sox baseball team and Liverpool Football Club.

In a statement in the Globe, Mr Henry praised the paper's journalistic pedigree: "The Boston Globe's award-winning journalism as well as its rich history and tradition of excellence have established it as one of the most well-respected media companies in the country."

$70 million is just about half of the Red Sox payroll for this season.

This really is the equivalent of selling Newsweek for a buck, and the guy who did that said it was a mistake (in fairness, he took on their debt). You'd have to figure the physical assets of the Globe alone are worth more than that. Hell, some people think their HQ building is worth the purchase price.

Journalists keep telling us how important they are but the market keeps saying otherwise. Maybe they need to realize that it's not just the business model that is failing but that people are tired of paying for propaganda, even in Boston.

Actually reporting on news and events and not simply serving as a lapdog for an ideology is such a crazy idea it just might work. Either way, it's worth a try. Or not.

Added: It get's better...Henry isn't taking on the Globe's $100 million or so in unfunded pension liabilities. The Times kept those.

Posted by: DrewM at 04:56 AM | Comments (165)
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This week's podcast episode is linked in the sidebar and available for direct download and on iTunes.

Posted by: andy at 03:38 AM | Comments (177)
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Precisely. You nailed it, Dummy.

By the way, we also deliberately engineered the flooding of New Orleans.

This was printed in Salon, an amateur fetish webzine specializing in political pornography which occasionally pokes fun at some rightwingers for their bizarre conspiracy theories.

Without ever noticing that those conspiracy theories tend to be "published" in blog's comments areas, rather than in the front pages of a supposedly professional webzine like Salon.

Is it pure coincidence that these two landmark cities, known around the world as fountainheads of the most vibrant and creative aspects of American culture, have become our two direst examples of urban failure and collapse? If so, itÂ’s an awfully strange one.

I’m tempted to propose a conspiracy theory: As centers of African-American cultural and political power and engines of a worldwide multiracial pop culture that was egalitarian, hedonistic and anti-authoritarian, these cities posed a psychic threat to the most reactionary and racist strains in American life. I mean the strain represented by Tom Buchanan in “The Great Gatsby” (imagine what he’d have to say about New Orleans jazz) or by the slightly more coded racism of Sean Hannity today. As payback for the worldwide revolution symbolized by hot jazz, Smokey Robinson dancin’ to keep from cryin’ and Eminem trading verses with Rihanna, New Orleans and Detroit had to be punished. Specifically, they had to be isolated, impoverished and almost literally destroyed, so they could be held up as examples of what happens when black people are allowed to govern themselves.

Why, that is a perfectly reasonable conspiracy theory you've just made up whole cloth out of Hate and Failure Issues. I'm no psychiatrist, but I would say that that is no way whatsoever some sort of florid psychotic fantasy one might occasionally indulge in to keep the Bad Thoughts at bay.

Now since I've been forced to read this imbecile's piece, I'll just run with it and note that this guy, Andrew O'Hehir, usually fills his days embarrassing himself in movie reviews.

Here's his review of The Conjuring, a horror movie about a demonic possession and exorcism which supposedly occurred in real life, during the 1970s. The 1970s are a special problem for O'Hehir, and clearly the time this brokedown hippie came of age, as we'll see a little later. more...

Posted by: Ace at 03:49 PM | Comments (604)
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