Today, while all good Americans celebrate a menacing, imperialistic Italian who systematically murdered brown people, Google is wishing a happy 50th birthday to Paddington Bear. Slate was right about those gazillionaire bastards.
Beside speculating on why Bill Clinton isn't showing his full support for Barack Obama — one theory says it's because the Democratic nominee wouldn't guarantee Hillary a Supreme Court seat — another favorite game of the MSM is figuring out how much money those pesky bloggers make. Are they raking in the cash like a lobbyist without a soul, or are they in the poorhouse and typing away on an ancient Brother typewriter? To the fuzzy math! CONTINUED »
If movies and television are rated to warn potential viewers they contain foul language, drug use and/or boobs, why can't they be rated to warn potential viewers they contain not so subtle ads for crap like Old Spice, also? This is the central question of a new piece in today's Slate. A piece in which Alissa Quart slowly unravels an argument, asks a lot of questions and then never really approaches a conclusion, as writers at Slate are wont to do.
Here's the story in a nutshell: The FCC has said that it would like a way to make sure the public is "informed of the sources of program while concurrently balancing the First Amendment and artistic rights of programmers." Quart proposes a rating of B for "branding." The problem is that the FCC currently has no control over cable and film and to get control would take an act of Congress. The end (surprisingly without any discussion of the concerns a rational person would have about the FCC having control over film and cable). Time for Quart to ponder:
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True to Slate form, the bizarro-world web magazine's financial spin-off The Big Money sees the collapse of Wall Street as a good thing. Michael Lewis has five reasons for you to see Lehman Brothers, AIG, and Morgan Stanley as a glass half-full type of thing. Reason No. 3: Ordinary Americans get a lesson in low finance.: "It's been expensive but, then, so is kindergarten." Take that zing all the way to your collapsed stock portfolio! [The Big Money]
"In one of the most dramatic two days in Wall Street's history, Merrill Lynch agreed to sell itself to Bank of America for roughly $50 billion to avert a deepening financial crisis, while another prominent securities firm, Lehman Brothers, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection."
That was yesterday. Also, yesterday, Slate — the website where everything that is up is down, and everything that is right is wrong — launched The Big Money, its financial website that cares less about whether the Dow Jones is posting gains and more about taking conventional fiscal wisdom and arguing against it. CONTINUED »
Slate loves telling you why what you believe is wrong—that's their thing. It is kinda fun, so we know why they do it, but after a while it must get as boring to write as it is to read. That's why we weren't surprised to find that the site today posted Spend It While You Can, a snail-mailed letter from grandpa on a site otherwise made up of smart-alecky e-mails from an Ivy League sophomore.
Get this: "It turns out that money can buy you happiness—but young people get a lot more happiness out of their dollars than old people do." Wow! So you mean to tell us that when people get older, they find less joy in buying heroin and fancy sinks or whatever? Gee, thanks, Slate—truly enlightening. Though this revelation might have been more impressive had it not already been the main point of about a million billion poems, movies, songs, plays, old sayings, comic strips, preachy t-shirts and deathbed confessions throughout history.
But oh, we forgot: Slate gave their story credence with the help of an economist, something hundreds of years of untrustworthy anecdotal evidence never did. Says Slate: "It's not every day an economics paper gives you an excuse to spend your money and live life to the fullest. I'd say seize the moment." Can't you tell from that sentence alone how pleased with themselves they are? Jesus.
We'd say if you look to economics papers to tell you how to live your life, you're already dead. Spend foolishly.
Battle in Seattle, the star-studded re-enactment of the 1999 WTO riots, was screened at Denver's DNC this month, but the real life equivalent was happening a week later at the Minnesota convention. The RNC already features at least three acts of random violence that are not related to Gustav, which just means you can expect a film version called Scrap in St. Paul in 10 years.
So who had the piss beat out of them by overzealous cops and cranky GOPs?
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If you dare, enter the new self-described "conservative Slate," a.k.a. Culture11. Don't know why you would, unless you have a giant schadenfreude boner, but site just launched today and has already sent over some prefab talking points for liberals to get blustery about. For example, did you know conservatives hate "gansta' rap?"
But wait! Wasn't there already going to be a conservative Slate called Liberty Wire?
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Jack Shafer has previously put his two cents in re: the giant clusterfuck that is the national conventions. But this is a man with a personal vendetta against the DNC, or rather, against networks trying to make the DNC the next Olympics, despite the fact that nothing ever happens at the conventions that wasn't totally scripted and thought out months in advance.
Not that he doesn't have a point. CONTINUED »
Because Slate just had to find out why more white people aren't winning sprinting medals, the folks there turned to the old argument that West Africans are genetically predisposed to running better than whites.
Web magazine of ridiculous rhetorical questions Slate is live-blogging the Olympics! Or rather, they're live-Twittering it, because that's cooler. This is in case you find yourself unable to find any of NBC's 3,600 hours of Olympics coverage or NBCOlympics.com. So what fun tidbits are stuffed inside Slate's Twitter feed of sport? CONTINUED »
"Have you ever been reading Slate and found yourself thinking, 'This is great, but if only if were more conservative…'?" No! But every time we do read Slate we find ourselves thinking, "Why do they keep disagreeing with common sense? Is this some sort of prank?" To our question, we will not get an answer; to the first question, you will, because right-y types David Kuo (former special assistant to President Bush) and Bill Bennett (former Secretary of Education and Drug Czar under Mr. H.W. Bush) are starting something called Liberty Wire. It will "publish apolitical pieces, explicitly conservative and libertarian pieces and even an occasional left-of-center piece." Yes, but will they publish an alternative to Dear Prudence, Slate's advice column? Surely Liberty Wire's version will include more tips about avoiding abortion and not giving in to those homosexual desires! [TNR]
The media is in love with Barack Obama! But according to another version of things, the media is attacking him! And they should totes leave him alone. Everything Is Upside Down website Slate has reimagined this scenario with a visual that's one-part barely clever, nine-parts not worth swallowing, with this Chris Crocker parody. He, of "Leave Britney Alone" cewebrity. Slate, of the "Arguing Against Common Sense" editorial policy.
Ugh.
Just how the hell did we get here? CONTINUED »
If legislation passes requiring New York's chain restaurants to post calorie counts on their menu, will the city's residents actually change their eating habits?
According to Men's Fitness, NYC is the 19th fattest city in America. So makes for the PERFECT NEWSPEG to have Slate send out Christopher Flavelle for some man-on-the-street interviews to see whether anyone thinks having this information available while ordering will change what we feast on.
The only problem with Slate's methodology? It's unclear whether they asked actual New Yorkers. They went to Times Square, after all, and the people eating at chain restaurants there are, uh, often tourists. Like the guy, pictured here, wearing the ridiculous vest. (If he's a New Yorker, we're moving.) CONTINUED »
Merging the Web 2.0 mantras of "user-generated content" and "don't pay your writers," Slate is proud to announce the June 24 release of Obamamania! The English Language, Barackafied, which is composed of submissions some 800 of you submitted to their Encyclopedia Baracktannica since February. All your hard work and due diligence has finally paid off, and you didn't even need to put together a manuscript, find a literary agent, and shop it to a publisher. See you at your book party! [Slate]
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