SLATE: Around the corner, I spotted a familiar sight: Vermin Supreme, the anarchist/performance artist/perennial candidate who shows up to every locus of media shouting through a bullhorn and wearing a boot for a hat. For the last time this year, I saw Supreme pull his classic stunt, walking up to a window, placing the bullhorn on it, and yelling things to irritate the people inside. New Hampshire has extremely lax ballot standards, and all manner of harmless kooks can turn themselves into “presidential candidates.” Supreme’s schtick, mocking the presidential campaign process with dada stunts and “debate” challenges, isn’t new. What […]
EARLY WORD: The Internet Is Out To Get You
The Founding Fathers who drafted the U.S. Constitution protected important rights—from the right to privacy to the right to a fair trial. But now, online social networks are creating an entirely new set of questions and challenges regarding our individual rights. Colleges and employers routinely reject applicants because of publicly available information and photos found on social networking sites. Jurors post details on a case and ask their friends to vote on whether the defendant should go to jail. Marketing companies are facing lawsuits for allegedly collecting information about citizens based on our travels on the Web, without our knowledge […]
SIDEWALKING: Bridge Over Troubled Waters
George Washington Bridge in the rain, date unknown, by DAN BURKHOLDER
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR According to Kantor, the first lady initially had serious reservations about her husband’s ambitions for the White House. “She was worried, in part, about the impact on her family. But she also had concerns that it may not be the right time,” Kantor says. “Her chief of staff told me that during that time, the decision just weighed on Michelle Obama — because she really believed that her husband could accomplish great things as president, but she wasn’t sure if it was the best thing for their family. And how do you make that choice between what is […]
SEPARATED AT BIRTH: Rick Santorum/McLovin’
Just sayin’. RELATED: We will soon find out whether Santorum’s Iowa momentum will pay dividends in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and beyond. It’s not clear that he has the message, organization, and fund-raising ability to make that happen. But even if he falters, Jon Huntsman fails to catch fire, and Mitt Romney starts to pull away from the pack, it’s worth pausing to consider Santorum’s sweater vests and their relationship with what we want in a president. Until the media took notice, Santorum seems to have given little thought to his wardrobe – unlike Romney, whose Iowa fashion statement, his […]
GIRLS: Lust For Life
Girls play Thursday at Union Transfer. You know what to do. TANGENTIALLY RELATED: The War On Drugs perform tonight on Jimmy Fallon. PREVIOUSLY: RAWK TAWK: Q&A With The War On Drugs
DEAR GUV: Fat, Mean And Telling Female Hecklers To ‘Suck It!’ Is No Way To Go Through Life, Son
WASHINGTON POST: Chris Christie, stumping for Mitt Romney, managed to shut down a heckler at a rally on Sunday with the political equivalent of a Your Mom joke. She yelled something indistinct, and he shouted back, “You know, something may be going down tonight, but it ain’t going to be jobs, sweetheart!” If he’d yelled, “That’s what she said!” I would have let it pass, because we can all agree that that would have been awesome. I thought the Republicans had gotten all that sex business out of their system at the Saturday night debate. This seems rude and uncalled […]
FUNNY GIRL: Q&A With Sandra Bernhard
[Artwork via FREAKINGNEWS] Caustic comedienne, fearless actress, incisive social critic, enemy of narrow minds and all-around envelope-pushing cultural provocateur, Sandra Bernhard has somehow maintained a 30-year career as the proverbial bull in the china shop of show business. And for all of that, we love her. In advance of her week-long run at the Painted Bride, which starts tonight, we got Miss Bernhard on the horn to discuss, among other things, Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis, Madonna, Roseanne, Philip Roth, Adele and the President Of The United States Of America! PHAWKER: You were born in Flint, Michigan. Do […]
What’s With All The Oral Sex Innuendo, Guv?
So, as you may have heard, on Sunday Chris Christie literally pulled his pants up to his man-tits and headed to New Hampshire to stump for Mitt Romney, who at a breakfast this morning with N.H. Chamber Of Commerce types put his foot firmly in his mouth when he told the crowd how much he likes firing people. That gaffe was destined to get the lion’s share of the media attention this newscycle, but then there’s this video [SEE ABOVE] of Christie appearing with Romney and responding to hecklers shouting that he kills jobs by saying, “Something might go down […]
LISTEN LIKE THIEVES: The Shins “Simple Song”
Beginning 3:00 p.m. EST today, The Shins offer up a free stream of “Simple Song,” the first single from their eagerly anticipated fourth album Port Of Morrow, at TheShins.com To listen now click on simplesong.theshins.com The long awaited follow-up to 2007’s Grammy-nominated gold-certified Wincing The Night Away, Port Of Morrow will be released March 20 via James Mercer’s own Aural Apothecary label and Columbia Records. Port of Morrow was recorded in Los Angeles and Portland over the course of 2011 with Mercer customarily handling all songwriting duties, lead vocals, guitar, lap steel, percussion and glockenspiel. The record was produced by Greg Kurstin, who also contributes keys, guitar and […]
1 Year Ago This Man Slaughtered 6 People, Maimed 13 And Killed Sarah Palin’s Presidential Dreams
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] ABC NEWS: In the stunned aftermath of the Tucson massacre, Sarah Palin has found herself in the crosshairs of the ensuing political debate with opponents suggesting she may have fueled the gunman’s rage and her supporters saying it is “grotesque” to blame her and to politicize the tragedy. Crosshairs is a political phrase that emerged from Palin’s political action committee SarahPac that targeted congressional districts for the Tea Party campaign in the last election, including the district of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Although Palin later denied she meant the graphic over the districts to look like a […]
WORTH REPEATING: Colbert Vs. Citizen’s United
NEW YORK TIMES: In August, during the run-up to the Ames straw poll, some Iowans were baffled to turn on their TVs and see a commercial that featured shots of ruddy-cheeked farm families, an astronaut on the moon and an ear of hot buttered corn. It urged viewers to cast write-in votes for Rick Perry by spelling his name with an “a” — “for America.” A voice-over at the end announced that the commercial had been paid for by an organization called Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, which is the name of Colbert’s super PAC, an entity that, like […]
BEST OF CINEMA: Dan Buskirk’s Top 10 Of 2011
BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Most critics get their year-end piece done before Santa’s arrival, I’m always holding out hope that I could still see a year-end contender in the final days before the New Year. I finally caught up with Michel Hazanavicius’ silent film homage The Artist on New Year’s Eve and left feeling it has been preposterously over-praised. Conceptually, I am sold on celebrating silent and black & white cinema history, but its feel for the era is so lazily inauthentic and its plot so derivative and thin that it failed to levitate my spirit, although I’ll attest […]