What does it take to be the most obnoxious Christmas letter ever? An unbelievable level of smugness, yes, but also bragging about "a meal that costs the same as a Nissan Sentra," probably. From the tipster who sent this in:
This morning we read how Yale Daily News, "Gutsiest Campus Newspaper of 2011," sat on the story of perfect Yale quarterback Patrick Witt's sex assault scandal for two months. Now, a humorous coda to their silence: We hear that YDN actually considered calling on wealthy alumni to charter a jet for the campus hero, so he wouldn't have to choose between the Yale-Harvard game and his Rhodes Scholarship interview.
Last Sunday, a group of hackers took down the website of the Ultimate Fighting Championships. This was a good choice, since it's sparked a week's-worth of enjoyable smack talk from UFC's president, including nerd put-downs and elaborate 9/11 analogies.
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.
The Washington Post is out with an excellent update on the history of the racist, homophobic, survivalist, nutcase newspapers that were published under his name in the 80s and 90s, which comes awfully close to confirming the most likely version of the story: He may not have written every word of them, but he sure signed off on them and wanted them written that way to pick up more subscribers and make more money.
What is happening with the greatest sociological experiment of our time? Everyone is getting along. Sammi and Ronnie aren't fighting. The Situation isn't being a dick. Everyone is getting along. It's so...so...boring.
It's been eight months since we exposed Silk Road, the underground online marketplace where you can anonymously buy any drug imaginable. After our article, a couple U.S. senators declared war on Silk Road. But it hasn't been shut down. It's bigger than ever, and now you can buy a Glock with your LSD.
God, Newt Gingrich blew it so badly in last night's debate. After lobbying for several days to allow debate audiences to cheer again, and landing Wolf Blitzer, the most destructible sally of a debate moderator in world history, he simply allowed Mitt Romney to take advantage of the crowd and win the debate and couldn't even scream Wolf Blitzer back into his cubby hole of sadness once.
On the left: Stephen Slevin in 2005, when he was arrested in New Mexico's Dona Ana County on suspicion of driving under the influence and driving a stolen vehicle (Slevin says the car was lent to him by a friend). On the right: Slevin in 2007, just before he was released after spending nearly all of two years in solitary confinement in the county jail.
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.
Here in America, our jails are full of old people, and it's costing us a ton of money to keep them in there. Huh. Now there is a problem which certainly could not have been foreseen by craven "Law and order" politicians prosecuting a useless "War on Drugs" for the sake of public popularity, nor by the simplistic bloodthirsty voters who repeatedly elected them in order to satisfy a primal hatred of "the other." Anyhow, we have a solution: let the old people out of jail.
A brief list of things you will see in this campaign ad for Republican congressional candidate Mark Oxner: bad special effects, a reference to a Cialis ad, a Guy Fawkes mask, slave-children rowing. It feels a little like a Ryan Trecartin thing? Or Tim and Eric? I don't know. Send it to all your friends. [via Wonkette]
Gawker's substantial Mormon readership has come through for us: Two readers have sent us confirmation that Edward Davies, Mitt Romney's militantly atheist father-in-law, was indeed posthumously converted to Mormonism by his family, despite the fact that when he was alive he regarded all religions as "hogwash." UPDATE: Romney's brother-in-law responds below.
On Wednesday, over on our sister (brother?) site, Deadspin, Steven S. DeKnight, the Executive Producer, Writer and Creator of Spartacus: Vengeance, the gloriously gory and steamy Starz series about gladiators, slave rebellions, and bored Roman widows, chatted live with readers. Why? It's all to honor the premiere of the sequel series to Spartacus: Blood and Sand which is happening tonight at 10 PM ET/PT. Check out the transcript of Steven's responses to probing reader questions below, and tune in to Starz tonight for the premiere of Spartacus: Vengeance!
"New York is less bookish than Cleveland?" the Daily News wonders incredulously about a study purporting to show the most literate cities in the U.S. One way of determining whether or not that's actually true might be to, say, see which city's hometown paper can spell "literate"?
