Heart him: Jon Stewart is super crazy smart on Rachel Maddow

12 Nov

Jon Stewart did an interview with Rachel Maddow responding to media criticism of his Sanity rally’s intense criticism of the media …

I’ll give you a minute to catch up.

I don’t know why I refuse to write more clearly.

Anyway, it’s a wonderful conversation about the toxicity of what Stewart called [at the Oct. 30 Rally]  “the country’s 24-hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator,” which, he added, “did not cause our problems, but its existence makes solving them that much harder.”  I watched it twice.  It’s better than The Good Wife.

Watch it, watch it, watch it.  Please.  It’s long, almost an hour, but really, really good.  I promise.  If you hate it, I will watch two hours of the interview of your choice or two hours of Fox News.

But I won’t watch Glenn Beck.



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From my Day Job …

11 Nov

My latest on Newsweek.com

How Not to Be an Eco-Hypocrite!

This is why some people think I heart BP, when the reality is that reality is somewhere in the middle. I take public transportation, recycle plastic bags, and use CFL bulbs. I do worry about polar bears and global warming, and toxic messes, but I don’t use my concerns to push people into doing what’s “right.” The simple reason: I don’t want to be an eco-hypocrite. If you think you don’t know what that means, trust me, you do.

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Heart Him: Jon Stewart is simply amazing.

21 Mar

Just when you think he couldn’t take his constant criticism to a more bracing and contemptuous level, he does.  It’s as if Stewart is desperate not to let the Tea Party movement define the language of healthcare reform … he’s racing to put out conspiracy theory brush fires.  He deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.  And, I almost mean that.

From the Huffington Post …

Words don’t really do it justice, unless they’re on a chalkboard, so just enjoy the video …

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Must Read: Amazing Newsweek Story not written by me!

21 Mar

Shocking, I know.  My Newsweek colleagues Jessica Bennett, Jesse Ellison and Sarah Ball have written a wonderful piece on the state of affairs vis a vis women, the workplace and sexism … (not good enough by far).  Check it out

At first there were just three, then nine, then ultimately 46—women who would become the first group of media professionals to sue for employment discrimination based on gender under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Their employer was NEWSWEEK magazine.

Until six months ago, when sex- and gender-discrimination scandals hit ESPN, David Letterman’s Late Show, and the New York Post, the three of us—all young NEWSWEEK writers—knew virtually nothing of these women’s struggle. Over time, it seemed, their story had faded from the collective conversation. Eventually we got our hands on a worn copy of In Our Time, a memoir written by a former NEWSWEEK researcher, Susan Brownmiller, which had a chapter on the uprising. With a crumpled Post-it marking the page, we passed it around, mesmerized by descriptions that showed just how much has changed, and how much hasn’t.

Forty years after NEWSWEEK’s women rose up, there’s no denying our cohort of young women is unlike even the half-generation before us. We are post–Title IX women, taught that the fight for equality was history; that we could do, or be, anything. The three of us were valedictorians and state-champion athletes; we got scholarships and were the first to raise our hands in class. As young professionals, we cheered the third female Supreme Court justice and, nearly, the first female president. We’ve watched as women became the majority of American workers, prompting a Maria Shriver–backed survey on gender, released late last year, to proclaim that “the battle of the sexes is over.”

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Deep Thought for Health Care Day

21 Mar

This is not just about healthcare.

Rob the average man of his life-illusion

and you rob him also of his happiness

Henrik Ibsen

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It’s Gonna Happen – It’s Useless for me to Deny it.

20 Mar

I’m going to just disappear for a couple of days … I just don’t know how to finesse the whole work/life/blog about thing.

Orwell du Jour

15 Mar

My Man!

The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim — for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittenly conscious of anything outside their daily lives — is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal.

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