Ever since the internet I've kind of scratched my head at why these particular individuals, of all people, get paid so much money to opine about stuff every week
― Burt Stuntin (Hurting 2), Friday, 7 February 2014 03:17 (ten years ago) link
you don't get why someone might prefer to read paul krugman vs some random dude w/ a tumblr?
― balls, Friday, 7 February 2014 03:19 (ten years ago) link
that's not fair. ppl do like krugman. obv much more embarrassing is friedman + brooks + dowd etc
― Mordy , Friday, 7 February 2014 03:21 (ten years ago) link
Paul Krugman is the one exception. I don't get what's special about most of the rest of their regular columnists though, like special enough to warrant once a week for years on end.
― Burt Stuntin (Hurting 2), Friday, 7 February 2014 03:21 (ten years ago) link
I love being able to avoid Krugman, too.
― Pale Smiley Face (dandydonweiner), Friday, 7 February 2014 03:22 (ten years ago) link
Friedman is embarrassing, but Brooks and that insufferable prig Douthat still worse
― condo associations are people my friend (will), Friday, 7 February 2014 03:24 (ten years ago) link
friedman and brooks regularly churn out bestsellers, ppl do like them. dowd won a pulitzer and is still (and once was very) taken seriously by a demographic that's very attractive to advertisers. it's not a mystery how these ppl have jobs. it might be a disgrace but it's no mystery.
― balls, Friday, 7 February 2014 03:25 (ten years ago) link
and yet so easy to avoid them entirely. Makes me happy.
― Pale Smiley Face (dandydonweiner), Friday, 7 February 2014 03:28 (ten years ago) link
George H.W. Bush used to love reading Mo!
― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 7 February 2014 03:33 (ten years ago) link
xp but i wonder if they'd be bestseller writers without the vestigial name recognition of being times columnists
― Burt Stuntin (Hurting 2), Friday, 7 February 2014 03:34 (ten years ago) link
douthat (esp at the time they hired him) is a 'reasonable conservative', the type the times has always thought good for their brand the way fox news used to have alan colmes. brooks is the quintessential 'reasonable conservative', to get any more reasonable you'd need aaron sorkin. he's useless as a window into current conservative thought or current conservative politics but he allows the times liberal readers to tell themselves they're exposing themselves to opposing viewpoints, to a range of opinions, that they're not like some fox news watcher. plus he indulges in the kind of dumb social pseudoscience and ted talk worthy ideas that malcolm gladwell and a good half dozen ilxors truck in. kristol was a bigger hack than either (truly a feat), but more useful. you could read him and get some idea of 'here's what these morons think', there's an element of this w/ douthat and evangelicals but he's not nearly as unmitigated a hack and hence not as useful, w/ brooks the only thing to be gleaned is 'here's what this moron thinks'.
― balls, Friday, 7 February 2014 03:35 (ten years ago) link
brooks and friedman were both bestselling authors before they landed on the times editorial page
― balls, Friday, 7 February 2014 03:37 (ten years ago) link
gail collins on why she hired brooks in 03 - “I was looking for the kind of conservative writer that wouldn’t make our readers shriek and throw the paper out the window,” says Collins. “He was perfect.”
― balls, Friday, 7 February 2014 03:41 (ten years ago) link
now only NPR's Robert Siegel can be in a room without gates covering the window.
― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 7 February 2014 03:42 (ten years ago) link
kristol was a bigger hack than either (truly a feat), but more useful. you could read him and get some idea of 'here's what these morons think',
^ yup
― condo associations are people my friend (will), Friday, 7 February 2014 03:44 (ten years ago) link
a role played on cable news by "Morning Joe"
― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 7 February 2014 03:57 (ten years ago) link
http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/ABC_bill_kristol_this_week_jt_130818_16x9_608.jpg
rare to find two generations of finks but Irving and Bill were, god bless'em.
morning joe is 'reasonable conservative' plus beltway politico type crap right? i watch live with kelly and michael myself. sean hannity is the one to listen to if you want to know what these fuckers think today, rush limbaugh is the one to listen to if you want to know what these fuckers will think tomorrow, george noory is the one to listen to if you want to know what these fuckers will think twenty years from now.
― balls, Friday, 7 February 2014 04:04 (ten years ago) link
Barack Obama is who you listen to when these morons get it.
― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 7 February 2014 04:12 (ten years ago) link
plus he indulges in the kind of dumb social pseudoscience and ted talk worthy ideas that malcolm gladwell and a good half dozen ilxors truck in.
― balls, Thursday, February 6, 2014 10:35 PM (49 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
name names
― lag∞n, Friday, 7 February 2014 04:27 (ten years ago) link
\o
― 龜, Friday, 7 February 2014 04:34 (ten years ago) link
Surely it's more than 6. At least 8, maybe 9
― 龜, Friday, 7 February 2014 04:36 (ten years ago) link
a bakers half dozen
― lag∞n, Friday, 7 February 2014 04:38 (ten years ago) link
hey side note what is the deal with bakers not being able to count
― rhyme heals all goons (m bison), Friday, 7 February 2014 04:45 (ten years ago) link
Bakers are only good at counting dough
― 龜, Friday, 7 February 2014 04:46 (ten years ago) link
youre thinking of bankers
― lag∞n, Friday, 7 February 2014 04:51 (ten years ago) link
balls OTM re: Brooks
― What is wrong with songs? Absolutely nothing. Songs are great. (DL), Friday, 7 February 2014 14:35 (ten years ago) link
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/02/bill-kristol-joins-abc-news-182527.html
Facepalm. leaving Fox to join George Stephanopolis.
Bill Kristol: Palin Would Be 'Formidable' Presidential Candidate said yesterday on Morning Joe...http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Sarah-Palin-Bill-Kristol-politics-Joe-Scarborough/2014/02/06/id/551314
― curmudgeon, Friday, 7 February 2014 16:34 (ten years ago) link
It should say 'rejoin" -- he was a nineties staple.
I heard that fool praise Palin yesterday morning when flipping through cable news and nearly yarfed into my oatmeal.
― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 7 February 2014 16:39 (ten years ago) link
when you guys are saying "editorial page" you are referring to the op-eds, right? because the times editorial page ain't bad
― k3vin k., Friday, 7 February 2014 16:44 (ten years ago) link
yeah, poor phrasing on my part
― balls, Friday, 7 February 2014 18:24 (ten years ago) link
acc to the article linked the reporters don't like the op-eds or the editorial page
― Mordy , Friday, 7 February 2014 18:25 (ten years ago) link
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/02/way-we-live-now-by-david-brooks.html
― Murgatroid, Friday, 7 February 2014 19:30 (ten years ago) link
http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view4/3508663/travis-bickle-clap-o.gif
― balls, Friday, 7 February 2014 19:40 (ten years ago) link
Murgatroid, that link is priceless.
― Aimless, Friday, 7 February 2014 19:48 (ten years ago) link
god the suffering that you have to be willing to endure to put something like that together
― balls, Friday, 7 February 2014 19:48 (ten years ago) link
"All my life I’ve been a successful pseudo-intellectual."
― marcos, Friday, 7 February 2014 20:03 (ten years ago) link
his lack of self awareness is breathtaking.
― nothing a reincarnated ronnie james dio couldn't fix (brimstead), Friday, 7 February 2014 21:11 (ten years ago) link
Said forty seconds ago on NPR: "This is the problem with democracies. If we lived in a country run by elites, which I believe we should, we would" etc
― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 7 February 2014 21:17 (ten years ago) link
woooowwwww
― lag∞n, Friday, 7 February 2014 21:59 (ten years ago) link
he shd be murdered not because he deserves it or anything just as a prank
― lag∞n, Friday, 7 February 2014 22:02 (ten years ago) link
"I was speaking out in Minnesota — my hometown, in fact — and a guy stood up in the audience, said, 'Mr. Friedman, is there any free trade agreement you’d oppose?' I said, 'No, absolutely not.' I said, 'You know what, sir? I wrote a column supporting the CAFTA, the Caribbean Free Trade initiative. I didn’t even know what was in it. I just knew two words: free trade.'"
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/opinion/sunday/friedman-start-up-america-our-best-hope.html
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Sunday, 16 February 2014 08:17 (ten years ago) link
"speaking out"
― i want to say one word to you, just one word:buzzfeed (difficult listening hour), Sunday, 16 February 2014 18:31 (ten years ago) link
Minnesota isnt a town iirc
― lag∞n, Sunday, 16 February 2014 18:41 (ten years ago) link
it's a village
― mookieproof, Sunday, 16 February 2014 18:51 (ten years ago) link
it takes a village to create friedmans
― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 16 February 2014 18:52 (ten years ago) link
unfuckingbelievable
― zombie formalist (m coleman), Tuesday, 30 September 2014 12:12 (nine years ago) link
spiritual experiments led by the charismatic and the zealous are essential to religious creativity and fruitful change. From the Franciscans to the Jesuits, groups that looked cultlike to their critics have repeatedly revitalized the Catholic Church, and a similar story can be told about the role of charismatic visionaries in the American experience. (The enduring influence of one of the 19th century’s most despised and feared religious movements, for instance, is the reason the state of Utah now leads the United States on many social indicators.)
challenge for ross douthat: name fruitful change or innovation resulting from outliers jim jones, reverend moon, l-ron hubbard, chas manson
― zombie formalist (m coleman), Tuesday, 30 September 2014 12:17 (nine years ago) link
this column is formulaic recycling, cherry-picked from others work (a time honored and lazy journalistic ploy when the till is empty come deadline). no surprise that douthat quotes philip jenkins who dismissed the 70s cult phenomena as hysteria fueled by secular media. i think jenkins argument is disingenuous and politically motivated. what's forgotten in this revisionist argument is the extreme psychological manipulation that was a defining characteristic of 70s-style charismatic cults. the human toll, lives ruined and personalities exploded, not to mention the suicide victims in jonestown who douthat somehow never mentions.
― zombie formalist (m coleman), Tuesday, 30 September 2014 12:24 (nine years ago) link
what has happened, from the post-moon unification church to the second-string cult a relative of mine is involved with, seems to be a backing off from the sick controlling nature of the groups (due to decades of bad publicity) and a subsequent mainstreaming of former fringe elements.
― zombie formalist (m coleman), Tuesday, 30 September 2014 12:27 (nine years ago) link