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Politics
August 29, 2005
Better yet, Scalia can add!
Here's some thousands of pages of documents. Find something newsworthy in 'em. Pity the reporter who has had to slog through stacks of memos by Johnny Roberts, America's newest Supreme Court justice (in waiting). I guess if I had to read through that much interoffice inanity, I, too, would want an article to show for it. But the New York Times's Anne Kornblut must really have been desperate. Her breaking news: Judge Roberts can spell! Even complex words like Namibia! And he has a command of basic grammar!
Media
August 27, 2005
Loan a Lesbian
In this week's edition of Zooming In, Gelf's quasi-weekly round-up of undercovered local stories from around the world: A country bans lip-synching; a band gets portrayed as a gang; Coke's PR problem; and Australia's drug problem. One of our favorite stories this week concerns a Swedish library's attempt to break down prejudices.
Media
August 27, 2005
We All Scream
Ah, summer. Heat, beach, ice cream—and ill-founded ice-cream trend articles. Behold: "For the old-fashioned ice cream truck business—now serving nostalgia alongside modern-day munchies like the Fantastic Four ice cream bar—business is booming," the Associated Press reports. Surely the AP has numerical support for that statement. Let's check the record:
Sports
August 24, 2005
Jay Mohr Does a Bill Simmons Impression
Jay Mohr's transmogrification from Saturday Night Live comedian to Sports Illustrated blogger has been an interesting one to watch. Certainly, Mohr knows his sports—he used to host his own show on ESPN. Gelf thought that tuning into his humorous insights might finally allow us to stop compulsively reading Bill Simmons's extended riffs on Anchorman. But after only five columns on SI.com, Mohr seems to be stuck in a comedic rut. Like the writers of his former show, Mohr seems to think that it's okay if the premise of an idea is subpar so long as he's willing to really sell it. For those of you who like your sports/comedy mix without too much chaff, here's an abridged guide to Jay Mohr's new column, The Hot Read.
Media
August 23, 2005
Irony Is Lost on the Copywriters
In this week's edition of Blurb Racket—the Gelf feature in which we take a close look at those critic blurbs that are a fixture of ads for movies, books, and more—see breakdowns of blurbs for The Dukes of Hazzard, Must Love Dogs, The Truth About the Drug Companies, and more. This week's winner of the Bogus Blurb of the Week award comes in an ad for The Aristocrats, the flick about a single, obscene joke:
Media
August 23, 2005
Meth Head
A few weeks ago, Slate's Jack Shafer wrote a Press Box column in which he asked Tom Friedman of the New York Times to quit saying that things are "flat." (Gelf seconded the notion.) One of the reasons, certainly, was that Shafer was tired of seeing Friedman using the Times op-ed page to plug his book The World is Flat. Presumably, though, he also thought that writing narrowly makes a columnist boring. But Shafer has fallen into a similar trap. Six of his last eight Press Box columns have concerned reporting about drugs—in particular, crystal meth.
Media
August 22, 2005
If He's So Great, Why Does He Keep Playing 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat'?
The mystery of the "Piano Man"—the supposedly mute and amnesiac virtuoso pianist who was found in early April soaking wet on a beach in Southern England—has been solved, to the great humiliation of several news organizations who have been covering the story.
Media
August 18, 2005
Bono Has Left the Building
Yesterday's Washington Post notes that no one, not even the World Food Program (nor, it goes unsaid, the Washington Post), paid attention to the growing humanitarian crisis in Niger until a BBC camera crew showed up and started broadcasting pictures of emaciated children around the world. "It went virtually unnoticed for a good many months," notes the WFP's executive director James Morris, explaining that what with the tsunami and all, "People do get preoccupied by the high-profile emergencies."
Media
August 18, 2005
Intelligent Following
Note: This article has been updated. See the end for a response from The Onion. The idea that the government would want to promote teaching a theory of "Intelligent Falling" alongside gravity in science classes around the nation—as reported by the Onion this week—is a hilarious commentary on the state of this country. It has also been done before.
Media
August 17, 2005
According to the ACT, the ACT is awesome!
In today's New York Times, reporter Tamar Lewin writes that many high-school graduates do not have the skills necessary to succeed in college. How does Lewin know? The ACT said so, and the ACT is the new arbiter of all things educational.
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