In reading The American Spectator, the top-shelf, right-wing magazine, you might have spotted the byline of assistant editor Patrick Howley. Yesterday Intrepid Patrick joined up with anti-war protesters at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum not only to write about the goings-on but also—and this is the best part—"to mock and undermine" the protesters, as he admitted in his eventual report.
As far as gimmicky tourist attractions go, none tops the great Madame Tussaud and her house of clones. Not to wax poetic here, but there is something equal parts satisfying and unnerving about a dead-eyed Susan Boyle. The resemblance is uncanny! And even if it isn't and the wax statue looks nothing like its real-life counterpart, well, even that is something to see.
Four lawyers face an ethics complaint after helpfully pointing out that a study of mountaintop mining and birth defects in Appalachia "failed to account for consanquinity [sic], one of the most prominent sources of birth defects." In non-legalese: maybe those babies have defects because of how hillbillies like to screw within the family all the time.
In your finally Friday media column: Carlos Slim parsed, a Miami reporter has a bad day, Michael Wolff lives on at Adweek, James Murdoch's board seat in jeopardy, and Disney's CEO will peace out in four years.
A computer virus has infected the cockpits of America's Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots' every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other warzones.
The Occupy Wall Street movement is growing, and with it a national fervor increasingly backed by progressive base groups.
In the days after Steve Jobs' death, friends and colleagues have, in customary fashion, been sharing their fondest memories of the Apple co-founder. He's been hailed as "a genius" and "the greatest CEO of his generation" by pundits and tech journalists. But a great man's reputation can withstand a full accounting. And, truth be told, Jobs could be terrible to people, and his impact on the world was not uniformly positive.
Liberian peace activist Leyma Gbowee, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Yemeni democracy activist Tawakkul Karman somehow beat animal rights advocate and Egyptian revolutionary Mark Zuckerberg in winning the Nobel Peace Prize. What could these women possibly have done to outshine the man who has perhaps done more to liberate private information than anyone else?
Recently we stopped by a Halloween superstore in search of some new work clothes (dressing up in costumes helps stave off writer's block), and noticed amidst the racks of Slutty Thises and Slutty Thats a pile of rubber Charlie Sheen masks for sale. It didn't surprise us that someone would want to dress up as this year's ultimate Hollywood meltdown and fright show, given the "Boo!! Scary!!" angle of the holiday—but little did we know that "Charlie Sheen" would actually win this year's costume popularity contest.
The NYPD equivalent of "don't bite the hand that feeds you" should be "don't crack the skull that generates your extra spending money": so far the Occupy Wall Street protests have racked up $2 million in police overtime pay—"and counting," as the New York Daily News anxiously points out. That's a lot of new tires for the SUV. [Image via AP]
Michelle Obama is gathering hundreds of children at the White House tomorrow to attempt to break the Guinness Book of World Records record of the number of people doing jumping jacks at the same time. She's part of a push by National Geographic Kids to get more than 20,000 people around the world to do jumping jacks for one minute at the same time.
Hank William Jr. has had it with the political correctness of the Hitler-ish ESPN sports television corporation. You will never hear his "Are you ready for some football" song on Monday Night Football ever again. He's refusing the to lend the economy his productive services, now, after being treated so badly for sharing his political views on Fox & Friends Monday morning. Either that, or he got fired.
The presumed Scott Brown-Elizabeth Warren matchup for Senate in Massachusetts is off to a very serious issues-related start, with each one joking about the other's history (or lack thereof) of posing naked in magazines.
Derrick Bell, a leading racial thinker and law school professor, has died at the age of 80. Besides being an accomplished author, founder of critical race theory, and the first tenured black law professor at Harvard, Bell was famous for quitting jobs on principle: as a young man, he quit a job at the Justice Department rather than resign from the NAACP; and later, he gave up a teaching job at Harvard in order to protest their minority hiring record. From the NYT:
