DEADSPIN 2014: What we have in Gamergate is a glimpse of how these skirmishes will unfold in the future—all the rhetorical weaponry and siegecraft of an internet comment section brought to bear on our culture, not just at the fringes but at the center. What we’re seeing now is a rehearsal, where the mechanisms of a toxic and inhumane politics are being tested and improved. Tomorrow’s Lee Atwater will work through sock puppets on IRC. Tomorrow’s Sister Souljah will get shouted down with rape threats. Tomorrow’s Tipper Gore will make an inexplicably popular YouTube video. Tomorrow’s Willie Horton ad will […]
RACIAL JUSTICE: Just Do It
THE NEW YORKER: In July of 1988, Nike released the first of its ads under the slogan “Just Do It.” The spot featured Walt Stack, an eighty-year-old man, ebulliently trotting across the Golden Gate Bridge as part of his daily seventeen-mile run. “People ask me how I keep my teeth from chattering in the wintertime,” Stack says. “I leave them in my locker.” The same year, Nike released the first of a series of ads that paired the director Spike Lee with Michael Jordan, who was with the Chicago Bulls at the time. The wildly popular Spike-and-Mike ads didn’t fall […]
BEING THERE: Dog Day Afternoon
The Linc, 8:04 PM Saturday
Q&A: Connor Barwin, The Hippest Guy In The NFL
EDITOR’S NOTE: This short but sweet-natured 2014 Q&A with then-Eagle defensive end Connor Barwin ran in advance of one of his indie-rock fundraisers to fix up long-neglected playgrounds in depleted neighborhoods in North and West Philly. To mark the sad occasion of Barwin being released by the Eagles we present this reprise edition. Godspeed, Mr. Barwin. We will, on multiple levels, be poorer for your absence. BY JONATHAN VALANIA If Eagles defensive end Connor Barwin did OK Cupid, it would read something like this: Chiseled 27-year-old 6’4 260 lb Fred Flinstone-type with Cosmo Kramer haircut and biceps the size of […]
A DAY THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMY: When Jackie Robinson Came To Town We Let Progress Down
PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS: Whatever degradation Jackie Robinson faced during the 1947 season – and it was immense – few teams treated him as disgracefully as the Phillies. To Jackie Robinson back in the spring of 1947, Philadelphia was far what it purports to be: “The City of Brotherly Love.” Before the Dodgers came to town for the first time, Herb Pennock [pictured, below right], the Phils’ general manager, telephoned his Brooklyn counterpart, Branch Rickey, and told Rickey he just could not “bring that nigger here with the rest of your team.” “We are just not ready for that sort of […]
REWIND: John Oliver Watch
Good Ol’ Johnny Boy, without you I would have to suffer through the second season of True Detectives. I wouldn’t wish that on Justin Bieber, and there isn’t much I wouldn’t wish on Justin Bieber. For all of the common folk out there, yes you, the individual not suckling at the teet of HBO, I will breakdown the major issue John Oliver tackles, as he most commonly does, in his sprightly, rosey posey-cheeked, British manner. This week? Stadiums. Now before the masses of cheese steak-chomping, gold chain-slinging, beer-smuggling 700 Level fight clubbers that Philadelphia has (in)bred for going on countless […]
REWIND 2014: The Year In Questions And Answers
If armies run on their stomachs, blogs run on their big fucking mouths. We’re no exception. But we’d like to think that, on a good day, we put all that hot air to good use when interrogating visiting dignitaries in advance of their triumphant arrival into the City Of Brotherly Love. We’ve never pretended to have all the answers but we do know all the right questions. And we’ve never settled for easy answers to hard questions. Sometimes feelings get hurt and sometimes new connections are made. Sometimes painful truths emerge and sometimes we actually learn something. And sometimes we […]
If The St. Louis Police Officers Union Wants NFL Players To Stop Showing Solidarity With Mike Brown They Should Stop Killing Him
THE GUARDIAN: A Missouri police union has condemned players from the St Louis Rams football team for making “hands-up” gestures on the field in solidarity with Michael Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old shot dead in Ferguson, and has threatened to boycott NFL advertisers in response. The St Louis Police Officers Association claimed that officers found the actions of Tavon Austin, Stedman Bailey, Kenny Britt, Jared Cook, Chris Givens and Tre Mason to be “tasteless, offensive and inflammatory”, and demanded that they be disciplined. Five of the players emerged for their game against the Oakland Raiders on Sunday with their hands aloft, […]
Q&A: Talking Trash, Twitter, ESPN, & Appetite For Self-Destruction w/ Badboy Funnyman Artie Lange
“Lamentations Of A Jersey Prince” by AUGIE PAGAN BY JONATHAN VALANIA In advance of his show at the Keswick tomorrow night and in the wake of the The Great ESPN-Twitter Reverse Mandingo Masturbation Fantasy Fiasco, we got badboy fatass funnyman Artie Lange on the horn. DISCUSSED: The Eagles, The Fightins, Riley Cooper, Woody Allen, robbing banks, opiate addiction, the ESPN-TWITTER fiasco, why he’s not backing down, why he shouldn’t, the struggle to stay sober in a business full of “hot babes with blow,” falling off the wagon, John Candy, Chris Farley, his work with Wounded Warriors, the double standard of […]
SPORTO: It Would Be Funny If It Weren’t So True
[VIA NFL MEMES] WASHINGTON POST: Larry Wansley convinced himself long ago that three hours’ sleep is plenty. His thoughts kept him up anyway, but even if he did drift off, the chances were good that the phone — always next to his ear, whether at home or in a hotel room — would ring. Sometimes it would be a contact in the Dallas Police Department; other times there’d be a nightclub owner on the other line. So rather than close his eyes and take his chances, the Dallas Cowboys’ longtime security director learned to stay up and wait. “All my […]
BREAKING: Pollard Throws No-Hitter — In 1978!
MAGNET: For reasons unknown, except that it’s the internet, news of Guided By Voices‘ Robert Pollard tossing a no-hitter as a college hurler on May 11, 1978, has gone semi-viral. We noted it in MAGNET’s Top 25 Of 2012 and thought it was relatively common knowledge among diehard GBV fans at the very least. Still, it’s a treat to see Pollard’s mug in the Wright State student newspaper account of his masterpiece. At the time, the no-no was the first in school history. Given the unlikely resurgence of interest in his mound milestone, we asked Pollard to share any […]