Sunday Links
As promised, some Sunday links.
* Jon Stewart had odious liar Betsy McCaughey on his show Thursday night, and you should watch it; video at Crooks & Liars. Kevin Drum says Stewart shouldn’t have had her on at all; I think the video made McCaughey look terrible and in that sense was an important public service.
* Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World’s Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica.
* Mandatory pre-Mad-Men reading: Pandagon’s defense of Betty Draper.
* Have we reached Peak Crazy? Fox forces Glenn Beck to take a vacation.
* Responding to Krugman, Glenn Greenwald considers whether Obama has lost the trust of progressives. More on the latest polls showing progressives’ loss of faith from Steve Benen, while Matt Yglesias ponders the meaning of GOP approval numbers that “appear to be stuck near some kind of theoretical minimum” and TPM reports Sarah Palin winning the all-important Birther primary.
* Margaret Atwood blogs her book tour.
* Cynical-C has the trailer for Michael Moore’s next film, Capitalism: A Love Story.
* Lt. William Calley has apologized for the My Lai massacre, though the MetaFilter thread suggests there may be significantly less here than meets the eye.
“In October 2007, Calley agreed to be interviewed by the UK newspaper the Daily Mail to discuss the massacre, saying, “Meet me in the lobby of the nearest bank at opening time tomorrow, and give me a certified cheque for $25,000, then I’ll talk to you for precisely one hour.” When the journalist “showed up at the appointed hour, armed not with a cheque but a list of pertinent questions”, Calley left.”
* Also at MetaFilter: SIGG admits to misleading the public about its water bottles and BPA.
* Inglourious Basterds as alternate history.
* Game of the night: Max Damage.
* And the Smart Set looks at The Martian Chronicles in the context of 1960s optimism and the New Frontier. My Writing 20 for the spring (“Writing the Future”) begins there as well (though with Star Trek instead of Bradbury) before veering off into The Dispossessed and, later, Dollhouse.
Written by gerrycanavan
August 23, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged with alternate history, Barack Obama, Betsy McCaughey, blogs, BPA, capitalism, Daily Show, Dollhouse, Fox News, games, Glenn Beck, health care, Inglourious Basterds, Mad Men, maps, Margaret Atwood, Mars, Michael Moore, My Lai, Peak Crazy, plastic, politics, polls, Ray Bradbury, science fiction, SIGG, Star Trek, The Dispossessed, the inadequacy of apology, Ursula K. Le Guin, what it is I think I'm doing
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