WASHINGTON (CNN) — The influential former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee has called on President Bush to start bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq by Christmas. Republican Sen. John Warner is urging President Bush to begin a troop withdrawal from Iraq in September. Sen. John Warner, a Virginia Republican, said Thursday that a pullout was needed to spur Iraqi leaders to action. He has recommended that Bush announce the beginning of a U.S. withdrawal in mid-September, after a report is released from the top U.S. officials in Iraq, and that those troops should be back in the U.S. […]
PAPERBOY: Special ‘Hooray For Us!’ Edition
BY AMY Z. QUINN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right — these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. Hey, we know how it is — so many words to read, so little time to surf for free porn. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you, freeing up […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR NPR’s Baghdad bureau chief, Jamie Tarabay, has been living in and covering Iraq since December 2005. She spoke to Terry Gross in Fresh Air’s Philadelphia studios, during a two-week break from her reporting duties. Australian by birth and Lebanese by heritage, Tarabay speaks fluent Arabic and French. She lived for three years as a child in Beirut during the bombings there. Before joining NPR she was a correspondent for the Associated Press, reporting from Southeast Asia, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt. She’s the author of the book A Crazy Occupation: Eyewitness to the Intifada. Tarabay talks to Fresh Air […]
BLOGADELPHIA: MEET BETTY CONFETTI
As you may have heard by now, our esteemed colleague and Phawker Editrix AMY Z. QUINN, aka Citizen Mom, has been hired by McClatchy Newspapers’ Washington, D.C. bureau chief as a full-time blogger to cover the 2008 Presidential election. Her bi-weekly columns will run under the header BETTY CONFETTI, and her beat will be the intersections of pop culture and political culture rendered with all her patented Maneater-From-Manayunk bitchslap sass. We will be proudly excerpting her BETTY CONFETTI columns on a regular basis, and could not be more proud or horny. Here’s her auspicious debut: So, if we’re talking about […]
INSTA-REVIEW: M.I.A. Kala
NOW PLAYING ON PHAWKER RADIO. WHY? BECAUSE WE LIKE YOU! BY SARA SHERR As you’ve no doubt read in a million and one places already, M.I.A. was set to make her sophomore effort, Kala, with Timbaland, but then visa troubles (her father being a Tamil Tiger can’t help) kept her from working in the U.S. So she traveled the world, collecting beats, textures, and sounds. Unlike most of the acts that garner a lot of blogger hype and print-crit “me too”-ing, M.I.A. is truly worthy of your time and effort. No other record that comes out this year will sound […]
ADVERTISING: The Movement To Save The War
Ad Wars Heat Up Ahead of ‘Surge’ Report Gen. David Petraeus is scheduled to begin testifying on Capitol Hill about the troop surge strategy on Sept. 11, exactly six years since the attacks in New York and Washington. Several anti- and pro-war- groups are spending money this month to mold public opinion ahead of Petraeus’ comments, and the broader debate on the future of the war. The latest pro-war campaign rolls out today. Freedom’s Watch is a non-profit group “dedicated to educating individuals about and advancing public policies that protect America’s interests at home and abroad, foster economic prosperity, and […]
PAPERBOY EXTRA! Today I Saw Jeff Deeney On The Cover Of The Rolling Stone The Philadelphia Weekly
BY AMY Z. QUINN Today I saw Phawker’s own Jeff Deeney rockin’ the cover of this week’s Philadelphia Weekly! Of course we’re happy for him, but the story itself is sad and sickening — and I know Deeney will understand the compliment that’s in there — elaborating what happened on Hurley Street, said to be the city’s worst, before and after one of the city’s shootings this summer. It’s one of those stories about how people trying to live and raise children in Philadelphia live in a literal war zone, and how a block rots from the inside out while […]
JUST IN: Inquirer Confirms Our Stephen A. Story
BY PETER MUCHA/INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Inquirer columnist Stephen A. Smith is due to resume his career as a reporter, where he made his name as a beat writer for the Sixers and the NBA. William K. Marimow, the newspaper’s top editor, said this morning: “Stephen A. Smith is an excellent reporter. He’s got a huge reservoir of sources in the sports world, and we want him to return to reporting.” Marimow declined further comment. * PHAWKER EXCLUSIVE: Stephen A. Smith Stripped Of Inquirer Column
REVEALED: White House Handbook For Squelching Public Protest At Bush Public Appearances
BY PETER BAKER/WASHINGTON POST STAFF WRITER Not that they’re worried or anything. But the White House evidently leaves little to chance when it comes to protests within eyesight of the president. As in, it doesn’t want any. A White House manual that came to light recently gives presidential advance staffers extensive instructions in the art of “deterring potential protestors” from President Bush’s public appearances around the country. Among other things, any event must be open only to those with tickets tightly controlled by organizers. Those entering must be screened in case they are hiding secret signs. Any anti-Bush demonstrators who […]
MYSTERY TRAMP: I’m Not There
Todd Haynes’ speculative fiction/magical-thinking Dylan biopic, set for release November 21st. NEW YORK TIMES: Imagine you’re a film distributor, handling an experimental movie by one of the country’s most iconoclastic directors. The subject is an enigmatic occasional recluse who is being portrayed by four actors, an actress and a 13-year-old boy. Where do you open that film? If you’re very lucky, you get to book it at Film Forum, perhaps the most exclusive art-house cinema in Manhattan. Now what do you do with a movie that stars Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, Christian Bale and Heath Ledger; whose subject is Bob […]
BREAKING: After 43 Years, Harper Lee Speaks!
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Pulitzer Prize-winning author Harper Lee is a woman of few words and generally avoids media interviews and public appearances. But the author of “To Kill a Mockingbird” broke her silence briefly Monday at a ceremony inducting four new members, including former home-run king Hank Aaron, into the Alabama Academy of Honor. Lee, who lives in Monroeville, is a member of the academy, which honors living Alabamians, and was in the audience for Monday’s ceremony. At the end of the ceremony, Academy of Honor chairman Tom Carruthers joked with Lee, saying he knew she had something she wanted to […]
Raging Against The Right-Wing Noise Machine
[Video: rage against the machine vs fox news] “A couple of months ago, those fascist motherfuckers at the Fox News Network attempted to pin this band into a corner by suggesting that we said that the president should be assassinated. Nah, what we said was that he should be brought to trial as war criminal and hung and shot. THAT’S what we said. And we don’t back away from the position because the real assassinator is Bush and Cheney and the whole administration for the lives they have destroyed here and in Iraq. They’re the ones. And what they refused […]
REQUIRED READING: The God Bullies
The Politics of God* *Quite possibly the most important magazine article you will read in the next 50 years BY MARK LILLA/NEW YORK TIMES Published: August 19, 2007 I. “The Will of God Will Prevail” The twilight of the idols has been postponed. For more than two centuries, from the American and French Revolutions to the collapse of Soviet Communism, world politics revolved around eminently political problems. War and revolution, class and social justice, race and national identity — these were the questions that divided us. Today, we have progressed to the point where our problems again resemble those of […]