Trump-Gingrich 2016! This is going to happen, writes Jim Newell. “It just makes too much sense, in its blanket obliteration of what was previously considered ‘sense,’ ” Newell argues. “Trump judges the value of his actions almost entirely on splash factor. Hoo-boy, would Gingrich be splashy.”
President Obama needs to start calling the people he kills radical Islamic terrorists, argues Will Saletan, tongue firmly in cheek. “Some Republicans say Obama has been too quick on the trigger,” Saletan writes. “Others say he’s been too cautious. But they agree on one thing: When it comes to calling our enemies names before blowing them up with Hellfire missiles, he’s soft.”
Retired kindergarten teacher Mary Lou Bruner lost a tightly contested run for the Texas State Board of Education on Tuesday. That, writes Zack Kopplin, is an extremely good thing. Here’s a small sample of the things Bruner believes: “Bruner has written that it would ‘DESTROY PATRIOTISM’ (caps hers) to teach about historic injustices toward Native Americans. ‘Many [Native American] tribes were war-like and vicious and they lived like many of the tribal people in Iran and backward Middle Eastern Countries,’ she once wrote on Facebook.” Tip of the iceberg.
Journalists must stop calling their journalism content, argues Jon Christian, sadly. “Content is created by the lowest bidder, in the highest volume and to the lowest standard that’ll still attract eyeballs on Facebook,” Christian writes. “That doesn’t mean it’s all terrible, I suppose—the success of BuzzFeed and Upworthy is a testament to its apparent appeal—but, for the most part, units of content are fundamentally interchangeable, like off-brand Oreos.” Rather than identifying with this approach, journalists should “take enough pride in what you do to be specific.”
Millennials! Watch Strangers With Candy, now on Hulu, writes Rebecca Schuman. It‘s funny, and it was groundbreaking. “Strangers With Candy was more than gnarled parody, more than absurdism, more than the occasional gross-out gag,” Schuman argues. “[I]t was the earliest showcase for a particular brand of straight-faced bombastic satire that should now be rather familiar to mainstream audiences.”
For fun: Look at these sweet, bumpy, small early-20th-century strawberries.
Tasty fruit of days of yore,
Rebecca
