i hear things

But if you’re a Democrat who has affirmed that you’d never vote for an opponent of gay equality, or a torturer, or someone caught using racial slurs, how can you vote for the guy who orders drone strikes that kill hundreds of innocents and terrorizes thousands more — and who constantly hides the ugliest realities of his policy (while bragging about the terrorists it kills) so that Americans won’t even have all the information sufficient to debate the matter for themselves?

How can you vilify Romney as a heartless plutocrat unfit for the presidency, and then enthusiastically recommend a guy who held Bradley Manning in solitary and killed a 16-year-old American kid? If you’re a utilitarian who plans to vote for Obama, better to mournfully acknowledge that you regard him as the lesser of two evils, with all that phrase denotes.
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Conor Friedersdorf, “Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama”, The Atlantic (a completely valid argument - Obama’s (ab)use of drone warfare has rendered that Nobel Peace Prize patently absurd)

28 Jun

09:30 am

But of the Big Three kids’ cable networks, one doesn’t seem keen on playing the fame game. Cartoon Network—which has seen double-digit growth in the last year and ranks no. 1 with boys age 6 to 11 on all of television—boasts lots of wacky animation and fantasy-rooted live-action shows. No secret stage identities or synth-heavy dance numbers here. Instead, you’ll find a shape-shifting dog named Jake living in a post-apocalyptic world in the cartoon Adventure Time and a portal that sends videogame characters into reality in the live-action Level Up. Also: a Looney Toons reboot and the latest Pokémon series. There’s also The Amazing World of Gumball, starring a mischievous cat and his pet goldfish, which grew legs after radiation exposure. Finally, The High Fructose Adventures of Annoying Orange, based on the Internet meme of an anthropomorphic citrus, debuted earlier this month, winning Cartoon Network the primetime 8:30 p.m. slot’s highest ratings among all boys, plus all kids age 2 to 11, 6 to 11, and 9 to14."

Bryan Lufkin, “The ‘Hannah Montana’ Effect: Why Are So Many Kids’ TV Shows About Fame?”, The Atlantic (I want to watch ALL OF THESE.)

16 May

11:37 am

I have to give other lectures, and I have chosen very ambitious subjects for those lectures, and I have three more that I consider to be very major. But I am also working on a novel. And I’m very well into it."

Marilynne Robinson, in an interview with Joe Fassler (please read this whole thing, then rejoice with me over those last fourteen words above)

13 Jan

09:11 am

the kanye debate

A much-needed rational take on Kanye’s latest album, hip-hop, etc. by Chris Jackson at The Atlantic:

“…on the basis of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy alone, it’s very hard (but not impossible) to make a moral judgement about Kanye West. It’s a concept album—a narrative—which immediately complicates the question Then there’s the style of narration: stream-of-consciousness. As I noted to T, Kanye is like Montaigne, who said of himself that he doesn’t record being, but passing. That is, Kanye’s raps aren’t about a static, fixed identity as much as they are about the passing flow of thoughts through our consciousness, thoughts that are wild and contradictory and hard to justify in the light of day. They pulse with love and seconds later hate.”

i hear things

Posts tagged “the atlantic”