People who are actually taken seriously

Right-wing blogger thinks closed captioning is an Obamunist mind-control plot.

Thanx to paft and Oliver Willis

20th-century hoss thief

Juicy gossip about Darrell Issa.

Thanx to Mercury Rising.

Quarterback geek

Sportswriters are such losers that they dream of moving up to the status of gossip columnists. Here's a particularly horrible example complaining that Jay Cutler "lacks social skills." Cutler was so crushed that he passed for two touchdowns and ran for two more, leading his team to the conference championship and creating one of those rare situations where I'm happy to see a jock making lots more money than a writer.

Better than us, but…

Being American, I have a soft bigotry of low expectations about intelligence ops. When I heard that the Mossad had successfully whacked the Hamas leader they were after without killing anyone else, I assumed they'd done it right. Turns out they didn't.

Thanx to Bruce Schneier

Instead of bowdlerizing

Lorrie Moore points out that we shouldn't rewrite Huckleberry Finn to take out the Mispronunciation, but we also, for that and other reasons, shouldn't make it assigned reading in public middle and high schools. Besides, it could be a bad influence on potential novelists. The plot resolution is definitely a Don't Try This at Home.