Quote out of context
Arugula is a type of lettuce that is offensive to some conservatives.
headline of the day
EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration
tweet of the day
In case you need more context.
Phil Ochs: “I’m Going to Say It Now”
Achingly brief clip of Ochs in performance. Said to have been filmed at a Free Speech rally held in the spring of 1965 on The Oval at The Ohio State University campus in Columbus, Ohio.
Image with a Little Bit of Context
I stumbled across this picture a few days ago and meant to post it sooner. The headline? ‘Cain’s Bodyguards Get Physical with Reporters‘.
Is that not the most comically over-intimidating presidential bodyguard you’ve ever seen?
photo out of context
Mic Check
You heard about them, but have you seen one?
oops
headline of the day
Ohio Elections Board Says Worker Bit Voter’s Nose
headline of the day
Financial crisis forces Berlusconi to delay release of latest love song CD
in a haze
seeing isn’t necessary, running is. so say the limbs to the eyes.
screams echo in a haze but there is no body.
Police fire tear gas at protesters in Oakland
(thanks, Sarah)
Tomorrow, it’s one day closer to the White House
If you haven’t already seen this Herman Cain campaign ad, you owe it to yourself to take a look. It’s no Demon Sheep, but still.
How a reporter was arrested at #OWS for standing lawfully
Naomi Wolf in the Guardian:
I went over to the sidewalk at issue and identified myself as a NYC citizen and a reporter, and asked to see the permit in question or to locate the source on the police or event side that claimed it forbade citizen access to a public sidewalk. Finally a tall man, who seemed to be with the event, confessed that while it did have a permit, the permit did allow for protest so long as we did not block pedestrian passage.
I thanked him, returned to the protesters, and said: “The permit allows us to walk on the other side of the street if we don’t block access. I am now going to walk on the public sidewalk and not block it. It is legal to do so. Please join me if you wish.” My partner and I then returned to the event-side sidewalk and began to walk peacefully arm in arm, while about 30 or 40 people walked with us in single file, not blocking access.
Then a phalanx of perhaps 40 white-shirted senior offices descended out of seemingly nowhere and, with a megaphone (which was supposedly illegal for citizens to use), one said: “You are unlawfully creating a disruption. You are ordered to disperse.” I approached him peacefully, slowly, gently and respectfully and said: “I am confused. I was told that the permit in question allows us to walk if we don’t block pedestrian access and as you see we are complying with the permit.”
It feels more à propos than ever, no?
Every conversation about #OWS sounds like this to me.
BUT YOU DON’T HAVE ONE
The Ides of March
Has anyone seen The Ides of March yet? If not, I highly recommend it. I haven’t been this excited about a movie in a long time, and I was pretty surprised at my reaction.
After discussing it a little, it became apparent that there were at least two ways of reading the overall storyline — I preferred to read it as a sort of Fall story, though that interpretation has some flaws (which I’d like to discuss), but on the other hand, it’s a story where no one, except perhaps Paul, has any real integrity. Any reactions? Who do you think is the hero, or are there any heroes?
From streetbonersandtvcarnage.com
A reflection on #Occupywallstreet by a twenty-something hipster-ish business owner:
To make ends meet while my business grows, I work at a wine shop and that nets me a whopping $12.50 an hour. As a bonus for my ears, I am privy to humoring whatever bat-shit crazy political stance my customers offer up as they wait for me to ring up their booze. Lately, I’ve been getting customers buying hooch on their way to Occupy Wall Street. Funny, because I don’t recall seeing any of the Little Rock Nine being armed with flasks of Evan Williams. Anyhoo, today this British girl with legs that nearly scraped the ceiling strutted into the shop wearing a see-thru dress. She was particularly amped because she was on her way to the protest and asked if I would like to go. I said no thanks. Without skipping a beat she asks, “Why not? Don’t you hate the banks?”
And there my friends lies the problem with Occupy Wall Street. There is a considerable lack of education on what caused the economic crises and therefore we are playing the blame game. To make matters worse, there seems to be no clear resolution being offered by the protest’s organizers. And if you are reading this and saying, “Well, the giant corporations could just give us the money,” then you sir are a jackass. That mode of thought is reserved for friends of successful rappers who thought that they’d be getting a free ride out of the hood.
I don’t think people shouldn’t be angry, but this feels more like a mood than a movement.
Photo out of context
Louis Mensch
People like this delightfully baffle me, but I do wonder why they always seem to be British:
Then July brought Rupert and James Murdoch’s appearance before the culture select committee, from which she emerged a surprise star. Within minutes, however, Piers Morgan was taunting her live on CNN for misquoting him to the committee, and subsequently extracted a public apology. Somebody else evidently also took exception, because she received an email from a pseudonymous investigative journalist claiming to have proof that she took drugs and danced drunkenly with the musician Nigel Kennedy in a nightclub in the 1990s, in full view of journalists, while working as an EMI press officer.
Her response will probably be studied by students of political spin for years to come: “Although I do not remember the specific incident,” the MP wrote in a press release, after reprinting the allegations in full, “this sounds highly probable.” She went on, “I’m sure it was not the only incident of the kind; we all do idiotic things when young. I am not a very good dancer and must apologise to any and all journalists who were forced to watch me dance that night.”
log cabin?
Somebody made this
This study of Richard M. Nixon’s television-centered campaign remains a tour de force of reporting and analysis, as relevant today as when it first appeared
In a review of Joe McGinnis’s new book on Sarah Palin, we get this context for his first book of political reportage, The Selling of the President:
Remembering those days, Mr. McGinniss described an incident at a campaign stop when Kennedy’s motorcade came through. “I stood out there in the crowd, and he was in the open car waving to thousands and thousands of hysterical people. And he spotted me. I was tall, standing close. He said ‘Come on up here.’ ”
A Secret Service man pulled Mr. McGinniss into the car alongside Kennedy, who said, “I just want you to see what this is like from my side.”
“Then,” Mr. McGinniss remembers, “he made this wry comment. ‘They keep telling me talk about the issues. You think these people care about the issues?’ They were there because he had a star quality, and that was back in 1968.”
Less than two months later, Kennedy was assassinated. Mr. McGinniss flew to Los Angeles to report on his death, in the company of older journalists, like Murray Kempton, whom he idolized.
When he got back East, Mr. McGinniss learned that admen were already planning to market the presidential nominees “much the way they had for Avis, Volkswagen and Heinz ketchup.” The contrast with the tragic scene in Los Angeles was shocking to him.
This was the mood in which the brilliant “Selling of the President” was written. Its “New Journalism” cool rides on a young writer’s wounded idealism.
What he said.
Clint Eastwood: ‘I don’t give a fuck who wants to get married to anybody else’.
The I don’t give a fuck slide show.
Clerks
at a gas station convenience store. Near Madison, Wisconsin.
“What is the difference between the Dutch and the Germans?”
[Gesturing.] “A boundary — which the Germans have breached on many an occasion.”
“Do they speak the same language?”
“Dutch and German are very close.”
“Because, you see, between Kenya and Tanzania, there is a boundary, but we speak the same language.”
“That — is colonialism, my friend!”
