Media-insider nepotism baby John Podhoretz, whose many professional duties include criticizing film for the Weekly Standard, alerts that publication's readers to a troubling development in the culture wars: His television is full of "white trash." This is the fault of "fancy high-end TV producers," and by extension Obama.

The talkathon by Senator Ted Cruz is almost certainly the most newsworthy speech that's been given by a member of the Senate on the Senate floor today or yesterday. Yet some of the response to it from the news media has been dismissive. Dylan Byers, the dumbest reporter alive, dedicated an item in The Politico to trying to think about what it all means (it means: "Media Bias").

D.G. Myers, a literary blogger for Commentary magazine, was fired by editor John Podhoretz under murky circumstances last week. Myers alleges that he was given the axe because of a post he wrote called "The Conservative Case For Gay Marriage". He says that his editors at the neocon magazine, specifically John Podhoretz, weren't too keen to the his new ideas in the wake of Tuesday's election.

Paul Ryan's handlers abruptly ended an interview with Flint, Michigan's ABC12 today after the reporter attempted to connect Ryan's proposed tax cuts to his plan to lower gun-related violence. To be fair, the tax question was unrelated, but Ryan's response was a bit childish.

In your soggy Thursday media column: hurricane coverage rules the universe, commenters can sometimes write, John Podhoretz discusses cocks, the NYT op-ed section is not working class, and Jack Shafer says goodbye.

Commentary, the political magazine most famously edited by former literary party animal turned conservative crank Norman Podhoretz, is changing editors for just the fourth time in its 61-year history. Everyone please welcome five-time Jeopardy! champ John Podhoretz, the flightier, flakier son of Norm! Now that the magazine has long completed its transition from home of critical thinking from legendary figures like Lionel Trilling to clearinghouse for vitriolic uber-Zionist right wing bullshit with too many three-dollar words for the Weekly Standard (originally JP's venture with fellow son-of-famous-conservative Bill Kristol), the editor of the New York Post's intellectually rigorous editorial page is the perfect figure to lead it into this glorious neo-conservative future.

Last night Esquire scribe and gimmick book writer AJ Jacobs celebrated the publication of his latest, The Year of Biblical Living, a memoir about the healing process after his husband died. Oh wait. That's the other Year of Adjective Present Participle book. This one traces Jacobs' efforts to live his life according to the strictures of the Old Testament. Sounds hard, right? According to Jacobs, it was! The book party was heavily attended by Esquire editors and was at an Upper East Side bar called Genesis. Get it? And we didn't have to blow anyone to get tickets.

John Podhoretz, proof that online dating can work miracles, did have the advantage of being Jewish. Here's a cry of despair from a single goy, eliminated by New York's ruthlessly selective dating machines: "I don't like music enough, I'm not artsy enough, I'm too much like a banker, but not enough like a lawyer, and I am definitely NOT Jewish enough, or at all for that matter."
My trials and tribulations [Craigslist.org]

Michael Wolff goes trolling AOL chat roomsyou know, for research purposes and reveals what has long been the Internet's biggest open secret: AOL is essentially an "adult entertainment" business. Wolff correctly surmises that Time Warner "doesn't get it." Online dating is now socially acceptable, and the dirty side of AOL gets more respectable as the taboos about meeting people online erode. (John Podhoretz is doing it for chrissakes!)
You've got sex [NY Magazine]