MOTHER JONES: It’s early in 1965, and President Lyndon B. Johnson faces a critical decision. Should he escalate in Vietnam? Should he say “yes” to the request from U.S. commanders for more troops? Or should he change strategy, downsize the American commitment, even withdraw completely, a decision that would help him focus on his top domestic priority, “The Great Society” he hopes to build? We all know what happened. LBJ listened to the generals and foreign policy experts and escalated, with tragic consequences for the United States and calamitous results for the Vietnamese people on the receiving end of American […]
SPORTO: A Confederacy Of Dunces
BY MIKE WOLVERTON SPORTS GUY Has anyone noticed that the Eagles have played four snoozers so far, without an ounce of drama? It’s not likely to change next week when the Birds travel to Oakland to play the dismal Raiders. In other NFL news, Cleveland beat Buffalo 6-3. Browns QB Derek Anderson completed 2 of 17 passes. Two complete passes, and his team won! I have Browns WR Mohamed Massaquoi on my Fantasy team…I’d have been psyched if you told me he accounted for 70% of the Browns’ passing yardage. Well, he did, and it was worth 16 yards.Have you […]
CINEMA: Lost In Adaptation
NEW YORKER: The opening sequences of Spike Jonze’s “Where the Wild Things Are”—a live-action feature based on Maurice Sendak’s 1963 children’s classic—are sensationally good. Max (Max Records) is an angry nine-year-old boy: his teen-age sister has abandoned him for her friends, and his divorced mother (Catherine Keener) noodles on the couch with her boyfriend. The way Max Records plays him—with darting eyes, and lips pressed together in rage—the boy has no idea that anyone’s feelings but his own could be real. He builds forts in his bedroom and an igloo in the front yard. He wants to be enclosed in […]
GAME 3: Ryan Howard Sacrifice Fly Puts Phils Over 6-5
NEW YORK TIMES: The score was tied, 5-5, entering the ninth inning, before Philadelphia’s Ryan Howard hit a sacrifice fly to left-center field that scored Jimmy Rollins. Rollins was 2 for 13 in the series before singling to lead off the top of the inning against Colorado closer Huston Street. He advanced to second on Shane Victorino’s sacrifice bunt, and then to third as Chase Utley reached first on a check-swing bunt that Street had to gather and throw from foul territory. Leading by 6-5, the Phillies turned to Brad Lidge, who closed all 48 save opportunities in 2008, including […]
SARAH SILVERMAN: Sell The Vatican, Feed The World
PREVIOUSLY: Sarah Silverman Is Available! PEOPLE: After parting ways with Sarah Silverman, his girlfriend of five years, in March, Jimmy Kimmel, 41, has found love again. A source close to the Jimmy Kimmel Live! host confirms to PEOPLE that he has been dating Molly McNearney, a longtime staffer on his ABC show, for several months. Kimmel’s rep also confirmed the news. MORE PREVIOUSLY: JIMMY KIMMEL Is F*cking Ben Affleck PREVIOUSLY: SARAH SILVERMAN Is F*cking Matt Damon MAILBAG: Turns Out Jesus Is NOT Magic PREVIOUSLY: Forget Dave Chappelle, It’s Now Official, Sarah Silverman Most Controversial Negro In The Known Universe
MEDICAL MARIJUANA: High Anxiety
NEW YORK TIMES: “I’m so totally paranoid I can’t stand myself,” said the distributor, who runs a nonprofit group here that grows and sells marijuana for medicinal purposes and who insisted on meeting in the privacy of a hotel room. It was not meant to be this way. New Mexico’s new medical marijuana law was intended to provide safe, aboveboard access to the drug for hundreds of residents with chronic pain and other debilitating conditions. By licensing nonprofit distributors, New Mexico hoped to improve upon the free-for-all distribution systems in some states like California and Colorado, where hundreds of for-profit […]
Under Pressure From Homeland Security, American Apparel Fires 1,800 Undocumented Workers
LOS ANGELES TIMES: American Apparel is in the process of firing all of its undocumented workers, under pressure from the Department of Homeland Security — a move that will cause as much real harm to Los Angeles as it will imaginary good. Taking away as many as 1,800 jobs that pay $10 to $12 an hour plus benefits will probably drive those workers into an underground economy or into sweatshops, maybe into crime, maybe homelessness. They and their children will be more susceptible to poverty and hunger and more likely to require public assistance. There are those who believe that […]
DUH: Masked Lout Steals Phillies World Series Rings, Leaves Behind His Name And Home Address
[Photo by ELIZABETH ROBERTSON] INQUIRER: After three World Series rings where stolen yesterday from a Phillies office, police arrested a mask-wearing fan who was kicked out of the game earlier for being rowdy. Matthew Mervine, 22, of Berlin Borough made detectives’ work easy, because, not only was he videotaped stealing the rings, he had just left his real name, address and phone numbers on a job application, police said. Apparently, Mervine, who wore a rubber skull mask to yesterday’s game against the Rockies, found his way to the Phillies offices after being kicked out of the game with other fans […]
GREATEST HIT: ‘Today I Saw’ Revisited
BY JEFF DEENEY TODAY I SAW two fresh faced white kids in almost military looking black overcoats, starched slacks and gleaming patent leather shoes canvassing a bleak stretch of 19th Street near Wingohocking, an area of North Philly pocked with crack markets and tiny row houses covered in flaking paint. They were standing under an awning on one of the small front porches that lined the block. One of the kids banged repeatedly on the door while the other peered through the blinds, trying to see if someone was home. After waiting a minute they moved on to the next […]
LISTEN LIKE THIEVES: “South Philly (Drug Days)”
ALL ABOUT THE MUSIC: “South Philadelphia (Drug Days)” is featured on Clap Your Hands And Say Yeah frontman Alec Ounsworth’s forthcoming solo-album, Mo Beauty (ANTI- Records) which was recorded in New Orleans and produced by Philadelphia native, Steve Berlin, of the band Los Lobos. The album is scheduled for release on Tuesday, October 20. Download it HERE.
BREAKING: Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize
BLOOMBERG: U.S. President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” the Nobel Committee said in Oslo today. Obama, 48, last year was elected the first black U.S. president on a platform of extracting the U.S. from the Iraq war while increasing focus on an eight-year conflict in Afghanistan. Obama is the third sitting U.S. President to be awarded the prize, following Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson in 1919. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter won in 2002. MORE GLENN GREENWALD: As critical as I’ve been of […]
Bill Clinton Awards Spielberg The Liberty Medal
INQUIRER: Steven Spielberg has grown accustomed to praise. One of the world’s most successful filmmakers, ever, anywhere, he has received Oscars and honorary doctorates, won awards for public service and humanitarianism, and been granted nearly every superlative a man of art, thought, and heart could imagine. But he still seemed sincerely moved last night to be joining the ranks of the distinguished recipients of Philadelphia’s Liberty Medal. “I am very, very genuinely humbled by this,” Spielberg said after bowing his head so former President Bill Clinton, chairman of the National Constitution Center, could slip on the red, white, and blue […]
SEX IN THE CITY: Men I Have Dated
BY GLORIA MARIS In the early 1990s I was halfway through my undergrad degree, and my high-school boyfriend invited me to his wedding. He had gone to a small state university out West, while I stayed in the mid-Atlantic to finish high school and start college more locally. We’d kept up the long-distance relationship for a while, going through a fortune in long-distance dimes (this was the olden days, before everyone had e-mail); but eventually he fell in love with a fellow engineering student, and they married in the summer after his college graduation. It wasn’t the first time I’d […]