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Monday, December 01, 2003
Thursday, November 27, 2003
Sunday, November 23, 2003
In my more psychotic moments, I find Ann Coulter hilarious. Ann Coulter: The party of ideas You know, it's quite possible that a substantial portion of the American power structure elite has subscribed to the values of a low level personality disorder. Coulter is cruel. At least my friends chide me for going over the line. Her friends must be like, 'Ann, your last column urging people to murder Democrats had a sort of literary charm. More brain truffles, anyone?' Saturday, November 22, 2003
Shorter David Brooks "When liberals argue for gay marriage, it's because they are into stupid immoral things like civil rights. When conservatives are for gay marriage, which they don't do enough, it's because they are moral and good." Now, how does the salacious homoerotic detail mongering of the conservatives, the man-on-dog commentary, fit into this schema? Friday, November 21, 2003
Thursday, November 20, 2003
This is damn cool. And ya know, violence is bad, yada yada, and I hate war, and all that, and force should be used as a last resort, and but this is really neat. And useful in killing bad people. Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Bosnia: Time for Europe to Step Up We're leaving Bosnia to put more resources into Iraq. It would be great if the Europeans would take over for us, and help keep the country secure. Yeah, we did bad in Iraq, but that's no reason to sacrifice where we did good a few years ago. Bosnia. Well, I guess you could say that helping us in Bosnia would give an incentive for us to continue bad behavior, allowing us to offload our responsibilities to others so we could concentrate on dominating the rest of the world. You could say that. But, really. Come on. |
Other Readings:
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Simon:
The Body in Pain. Lit prof Scarry's sensational book. With an examination of AI accounts of torture in Latin America, and a critical and compelling account of how language is used to "sanitize" the effects of war in policy-making and journalism, this book is required reading for those trying to grasp the moral aspects of war reporting -- and the wider questions entailed. Scarry's work is one of impeccable scholarship yoked to a question of great contemporary importance, and ranks in insight with Philip Gourevitch's work on resistance and collaboration in Rwanda. /
Matt: What Liberal Media? Eric Alterman describes the media establishment and how it slants conservatively on most issues. Touching on the intellectual bankruptcy of the punditry class, the vicious lies of such personalities as Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, and the structural incentives determining editorial priorities, Alterman shows that the myth of the liberal media is a hugely deceptive lie meant to cover up a sinister power grab on the part of conservative interests. This should be obvious to anyone with a grounding in international relations, history, economics, or any system of studies that relies on empirical evidence to substantiate claims, but to have it spelled out in such systematic detail by such an excellent scholar morphs one's vague feelings of unease with the media into true anger at this invisible coup. |
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