Oh fer fuck’s sake.
By 2018, will EVERY Democratic candidate be a relative of someone who made it on his or her own? #DecadentLiberalism
http://t.co/2laoazcKLG
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) October 26, 2014
Completely oblivious.
by John Cole| 76 Comments
This post is in: Assholes, Clown Shoes, Our Awesome Meritocracy
Oh fer fuck’s sake.
By 2018, will EVERY Democratic candidate be a relative of someone who made it on his or her own? #DecadentLiberalism
http://t.co/2laoazcKLG
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) October 26, 2014
Completely oblivious.
This post is in: Open Threads, Assholes, Our Awesome Meritocracy
Chelsea was going to have a Hispanic boy named Orlando -but while the overnights were positive, it just didn’t focus group
— David Frum (@davidfrum) September 27, 2014
A terrific example of why I ran screaming away from the right.
https://t.co/B4mbQibDQQ
— Charles Johnson (@Green_Footballs) September 27, 2014
Axis of weasels evil — never forget.
Late Night Open Thread: Putting the Crass in ClassyPost + Comments (55)
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Open Threads, Assholes, Decline and Fall, Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?, Our Awesome Meritocracy
This is one of history's great with-little-more-thans pic.twitter.com/m5w19X4Cvx http://t.co/EOM7QUfYel (via @BigMeanInternet)
— Tom Gara (@tomgara) September 11, 2014
Where are the godsdamned tumbrils?
From the NYObserver article:
PolicyMic had over 1 million uniques a month by July 2012, according to internal company metrics. As successful as the model was in bringing in content and readers—particularly young 20-somethings who were used to discussing political issues on Facebook rather than reading The New York Times—it did not ensure quality, a gap that was highlighted when PolicyMic invited contributors to apply for writing fellowships and realized that none had the chops to make it as writers.
Without a consistent voice and with big-name media including BuzzFeed and Gawker ramping up their own contributor models, PolicyMic struggled to gain traction as a brand. By 2013, the founders decided to pivot away from the contributor model and hire writers to report and repackage news of interest to millennials, a lucrative demographic that has become the brand’s defining characteristic.
“Our value proposition is we understand smart millennials, we can help reach them on a deeper level,” he told the Observer over watermelon lemonade coolers at a Le Pain Quotidien near the former Mic offices (they left Midtown for hipper Hudson Street last month). In multiple conversations, the Mic team was quick to cite the spending powers of the 80 million millennials, half of whom are college-educated and most of whom are addicted to smartphones.
In March, the start-up raised $10 million in a Series A round of funding, led by Netscape’s Jim Clark. Venture capital firms like Lightspeed Ventures, Lerer Ventures, Advancit Capital, Red Swan, the Knight Foundation and Digital News Ventures again invested, bringing the total funding to $15 million since launch.
Following the most recent cash infusion, the company dropped the ‘Policy’ from its name. Rebranded the snappier Mic, the site got a bold, approachable new look along with verticals such as sports, culture and gender identity…
“While I don’t buy a lot of arguments made about millennials vis-a-vis our purported apathy, entitlement, and so on, it’s common sense that we know a different set of facts about the world than our parents do,” Identities section founding editor Samantha Meier, Harvard ’12, said in an email (she left in December for The Public Goods Project). “We’ve only been alive for so long.”…
Why does the NYObserver find these people so meaningful, and also charming? Here is the publisher’s Wikipedia entry:
Jared Corey Kushner (born January 10, 1981) is an American businessman and investor. He is the principal owner of Kushner Properties, his family’s real estate holding and development company, and The New York Observer, a newspaper publishing company which he purchased in 2005. He is the son of American real estate magnate Charles Kushner and is married to Ivanka Trump, the daughter of American business magnate Donald Trump…
At least the robber barons of the original Gilded Age left behind some pretty mansions. This crew, not so much.
Late Night Open Thread “With Little More Than… “Post + Comments (51)
This post is in: Open Threads, Sports, Our Awesome Meritocracy
Love this piece and particularly love the "quote text exchange w/ my friend" power move http://t.co/O0YVMchJzD
— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 9, 2014
Rembert Browne, Atlantan native & person of color, reports:
… First, the sentence from his email that clarifies Levenson’s observational logic:
i never felt uncomfortable, but i think southern whites simply were not comfortable being in an arena or at a bar where they were in the minority
Translation:
Blacks and whites don’t mix. But it’s mainly the whites that are having issue being around so many blacks. And the whites have the money. But the blacks are everywhere. And not spending money. But I need the money. And the money is white. So we need fewer blacks. And if that happens, the whites will come. With their money. Disclaimer: I love black people.…
This isn’t racism. This is simply the elementary thought process of a powerful 62-year-old rich white man with a crippling debilitation: being a powerful 62-year-old rich white man.
Is that a generalization? Absolutely. But Levenson’s email turned generalizations into a sport, so why not play his game for a bit? He’s making leaps about race and class that are irresponsible — they’re only understandable if you live a life truly concerned with one demographic. And if you’re a living representation of your primary concern — white money — then it’s not such a surprise that you believe that is the only concern…
But again, none of this makes Bruce Levenson a racist. An interesting byproduct — perhaps a trick — of labeling someone a racist is making them an exception. Racists, once outed, are banished to Racism Island, and then it’s business as usual for everyone else. That’s the Sterling example. But Bruce Levenson isn’t an anomaly. Who doesn’t know a Bruce Levenson? Who hasn’t overheard someone at work or a friend’s dad talk like this before? They’re everywhere. And the worst thing that could come out of this melee is to make his case a special one. Because it’s not. It’s lazy, it feeds the cycle of misguided outrage, and ultimately it’s giving this generation a pass by making Levenson seem like an outlier.
What’s true is that he’s not good at his job. Because as much as I love the Hawks in success and in mediocrity, the team is still a joke to the rest of the NBA. And it’s a cop-out for Levenson to get in front the story, create his own narrative, and leave on the grounds of “Bruce Levenson, embarrassed by Bruce Levenson’s comments.” Because a powerful 62-year-old rich white guy can bounce back from a racial brain fart. But being a bad businessman, running an organization terribly? Not so much…
Late Night Sports Open Thread: Rich Aging White Guy ProblemsPost + Comments (47)
This post is in: Open Threads, Our Awesome Meritocracy, Our Failed Media Experiment
Boy, this "autonomous billionaires as the saviors of American journalism" idea sure is working out swell!
https://t.co/hK0Y0IZob8
— Billmon (@billmon1) September 2, 2014
The Washington Post: From "Pravda on the Potomac" to "Chamber of Commerce chew toy" in less than 20 years. Quite a ride.
— Billmon (@billmon1) September 2, 2014
Jim Newell at Salon reports “Ronald Reagan’s No. 1 superfan now runs the Washington Post“:
The Washington Post has been a much more ambitious beast since Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos bought the paper last year. Since it’s been in private control, and no longer subject to public shareholder pressure, the paper has invested in hiring dozens and dozens of new staffers with all sorts of cutting-edge “online experience,” writers who understand that the journalism of the future will involve getting lots of people to click on lots of stuff. No word yet on when/how this all becomes profitable. But that’s for the suits to worry about….
… Fred Ryan, who’s just been named the Post’s new publisher, is among the more Reagan-y people to ever walk the earth — somewhat less Reagan-y than Ronald Reagan himself, but probably more Reagan-y than Nancy Reagan or other members of the Reagan family.
“Ryan’s background in Republican politics,” the Post’s own write-up of the leadership switch notes, “also is certain to raise questions about the direction of The Post’s editorial page, among the most influential in the nation.” Make what you will of that “most influential in the nation” business. But as for the part about how it’s certain to “raise questions about the direction of The Post’s editorial age” — well, yeah! This Fred Ryan cranks the Reaganmeter dangerously into the red…
More at the link. I’m sure you all have strong opinions about this.
This post is in: Excellent Links, Open Threads, Assholes, Jump! You Fuckers!, Our Awesome Meritocracy
Hey, remember Sean “(Tolkien-inspired) Weddings Used to Be Sacred” Parker, the Internet-enabled billionaire who threw a 9,500-word on-line tantrum when Internet-enabled strangers made fun of his overwrought wedding planning? He’s still a douche canoe — or, at the least, a very public sucker. Heather Digby Partington Parton is not usually known for cheap mockery, but Parker just seems to have that effect on people:
The last we heard of the Napster billionaire and Baby Mugwump, Sean Parker, his interest in politics had led him to embrace a “No-Labels” style approach in which he would pay large sums of money to various inside the Beltway players to help him decide which members of both parties he should donate to. You see, he’s very concerned about the loss of bipartisan spirit in Washington and he wants to invent a new app for Congress!…
Yesterday, we got an update on his exciting new project. He’s hired the company of the tri-partisan former adviser to conservative Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, President Barack Obama and the U.K. Conservative Party Jim Messina and his hardcore GOP partner Charlie Black. And they’re doling out the big bucks to Republicans who have drawn primary challengers. Evidently, the Beltway now sees that the only way to bring the country back to the sensible center is by helping very conservative Republican incumbents win reelection. How very convenient for the GOP…
It’s fairly clear what’s happening here. The youthful billionaire decided that he needed to talk to the “experts” about what to do with his money. And all those experts, knowing a rich sucker when they see one, persuaded him that the biggest problem in Washington was the lack of bipartisanship, which they attributed to the Tea Party. They told him that the only way to get anything done is to give money to incumbent Republicans…
More (bilious) entertainment at the link.
Either nobody shared the Original Poker Secret with Mr. Parker, or he was too egregiously self-assured to understand it: There’s a mark at every table. If you look around the table and can’t spot the mark — it’s you.
Late Night Open Thread: Sean Parker, Still A Douche CanoePost + Comments (296)
This post is in: Excellent Links, Our Awesome Meritocracy, Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.
Asking Dick and Liz Cheney about public policy is like asking Jenny McCarthy about vaccines.
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) July 14, 2014
.
Liz “Mini Darth” Cheney has a new non-profit-except-to-its-board to pimp, and Lynne “Mrs. Darth” Cheney has a book (on James Madison) to sell, so they’re dragging the Dark Lord out on the hustings. Jim Newell, at Salon, did a pretty good job reporting what attending Politico‘s free lunch was worth. But Mr. Pierce at Esquire was positively magisterial:
… Its puerilty has finally crossed over into indecency. Its triviality has finally crossed over into obscenity. The comical political starfcking that is its primary raison d’erp has finally crossed over into $10 meth-whoring on the Singapore docks. Once a mere surface irritation, Tiger Beat On The Potomac has finally crossed over into being a thickly pustulating chancre on the craft of journalism. It has demonstrated its essential worthlessness. It has demonstrated that it has the moral character of a sea-slug and the professional conscience of the Treponema pallidum spirochete. Trust me. Stephen Glass never sunk this low. Mike (Payola) Allen has accomplished the impossible. He’s made Jayson Blair look like Ernie Pyle.
It’s not just that TBOTP invited the Manson Family of American geopolitics to come together for an exercise in ensemble prevarication. It’s not just that the account of said exercise is written in the kind of cacophonous cutesy-poo necessary to drown out the screams of the innocent dead, and to distract the assembled crowd from the blood that has dripped from the wallet of the celebrity war-criminal leading the public display. And it’s not as though this was a mere interview—a “get” that could help you “win the morning (!).” In that, it might have been marginally excusable. No, this was one of Mike Allen’s little grift-o-rama special events—a “Playbook lunch,” sponsored by that noted mortgage fraud concern Bank Of America. There’s an upcoming TBOTP “event” in L.A. that is sponsored by J.P. Morgan. I know what Mike Allen is, but I am so goddamn tired of haggling about the price…
I wonder: Has anyone ever seen Renfield and Mike Allen in the same room?…