There is a certain percentage of the population that objects to giving their kids vaccinations, because of stuff like Jesus, some book, Jenny McCarthy, whatever. You know, crazy people. Fine, in isolated instances. But when the crazy people reach a critical mass, we all die.
Breathy Reaganite Peggy Noonan dislikes the coarseness that has crept into our public dialogue. The coarseness, she dislikes it. But there it is, in our public dialogue. Peggy Noonan did not create this world. Creating this coarseness is not something which sings to Peggy Noonan's soul. But she must acknowledge it. She is a columnist, you see. The coarseness, it is a topic of our time. "All this has devolved into a political argument about who's worse, the right or the left," sighs Peggy, metaphorically, by writing a sentence in her WSJ column. "I don't think that's the most important question, but since it's on the table the answer is the left."
Here is a story on the New York Post's website about a jury ruling that Americo Lopes, a New Jersey man who hit a $77 million lottery jackpot, must share his winnings with his coworkers, who were in a lottery pool with him. The details of this story are unimportant. It is fascinating because, like a petri dish freshly set with agar gel, it has attracted every variety of Awful Internet Commenter. Behold:
Harper's Magazine publisher John R. "Rick" MacArthur is a man who was born wealthy and has used some of his wealth to publish a great magazine. That's good. Where he pays his staff notoriously meager salaries and fights against their efforts to form a union. That's bad. Rick MacArthur, though, has one overriding redeeming aspect: he is fucking hilariously dumb when he talks about the internet.
Cat-stroking xenophobe Andrea Peyser has a Google Alert that plays the entire score to Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will every time it finds a story under "New York Times AND NYPD AND I Hate Terrorist Muslims." Ding ding ding! Today, like every day, is Andrea Peyser's lucky day.
The message boards of UrbanBaby.com are home to some of the most self-loathing, wealthy, haughty, and miserable parents in all of America. Or are they? Even to our keen internet eyes, it is sometimes impossible to tell whether an UrbanBaby poster is a rich person, or a troll impersonating a rich person. Can you help?
We all know that frenetic tabloid sex oracle Andrea Peyser is strongly opposed to hussies, as well as sluts. But how does she feel about loose lying whores who cry rape as a way to cover up for their own loose, whorish behavior, and maybe they should have just never opened their legs for every man who says hello? Today, she clarifies her stance on this important matter.
Long shot write-in Democratic presidential candidate and generally disliked media whore Randall Terry's bizarre quest to win supporters for his extreme anti-abortion agenda by assailing millions of Super Bowl viewers with a campaign commercial full of images of dead fetuses is not surprisingly meeting with oh, just a bit of resistance from at least one TV station in Chicago. While FCC rules dictate that local stations are required to air whatever insanity a federal candidate is willing to put in campaign ad form for 45 days leading up to a primary election, Chicago's NBC affiliate is trying to get around the requirement that it run Terry's commercial with the correct argument that the rules should not apply in this case since he is not, you know, an actual candidate.
One rock solid rule of editorial writing is, if you're against something, you always want to find a way to compare it to Hitler. This works because people hate Hitler a lot—and, through the simple principle of transference, they will have an equal amount of hate for whichever thing you compare to Hitler. This is just a basic "trick of the trade" which cannot backfire.
Now and then, we get forwarded crazy emails that people — most of whom are men involved in the finance industry — send to the people they're dating, or have dated, or want to date. Today: a thesaurus-happy hedge-fund manager accuses a woman he's been on one date with of lying to him and decides he'll teach her the best way to reject someone.
Animatronic tabloid rage sex screed-writer Andrea Peyser has set aside her sexcellent sexcapades for a day in order to get good and rageful about something deplorably predictable. "More rage, less sexxx" may be Andrea Peyser's catchphrase, in 2012 (time will tell). What is Andrea rageful about, today? Well, let's just see what's in the movie theaters, shall we?
When we started documenting the phenomenon of guys who deal with rejection by sending bizarre, overlong, passive-aggressive emails to women they've gone out with once, we figured it was restricted to brokers and investment bankers. Until an anonymous tipster forwarded us these emails from a tutor who's been emailing her for seven months — after only one date.
Why did Jay-Z and Beyoncé name their daughter Blue Ivy? Possibly because they are exceedingly wealthy celebrities for whom the act of procreation is chiefly an exercise in branding... or because "Blue Ivy" is a secret code revealing her membership in an ancient and all-powerful occult secret society. Which could it be??
The New Hampshire primary is supposed to be a civil, grassroots affair in which Granite Staters politely listen to a class of sophisticated presidential candidates discuss the important issues — trade, housing, etc. — and then pass on their choice of the most serious of the serious candidates for the nation to certify. There is no time for silliness; this is an affair of statesmanship. Also, there's this crazy guy who wears a boot on his head and shouts nonsense who shows up in Manchester every cycle.
Newt Gingrich never got to complete his political career. He only lasted as Speaker of the House, a job he'd successfully wrangled after plotting his path for a psychotic 14 years, for a couple of terms, the latter half of which he spent as an incompetent figurehead. He was reprimanded and fined for ethics violations and forced out of power by the House Republican majority he'd brought to power for the first time in half a century.
Peter Braunstein was a former writer for The Village Voice, WWD and other New York publications who became a tabloid sensation in 2005 after he went crazy, raped a woman [Correction: Braunstein was convicted of kidnapping, sexual abuse, robbery and burglary. He was never charged with rape], and went on the run. Aaron Gell (now an editor at the New York Observer), a former colleague of Braunstein's, has revisited the man and tried to make sense of his crimes in his new Kindle Single, Speak of the Devil: How Peter Braunstein went from Fashion Casualty to Tabloid Monster.
What a year it's been for Andrea Peyser, the sourpuss racist lesbian xenophobe sex fiend who serves as the conscience of New York City's most fascist tabloid. Today we are blessed with Andrea's "Year in Review" column, widely considered journalism's most exciting day after the Pulitzer Prizes. Equally looked-forward-to is our condensation of this column into readable form! Without further ado, we present The Shorter Version of Andrea Peyser's Year in Review Column, Which Is, Naturally, on the Topic of SIN:
