You’re Welcome, South Carolina: Colbert & Cain
The political scene in Charleston, South Carolina.
One man wants on the ballot, the other might as well be off.
Together, they arrived here Friday in the official vehicle of a defunct campaign to address an overflowing Cistern Yard, at the College of Charleston.
On the eve of the Republican Primary, or the election for “President of United States of South Carolina,” former Republican nomination candidate Herman Cain joined comedian Stephen Colbert in the Holy City, backed by the Coastal Carolina University Marching Band and a local gospel choir.
The Rev., The Nurse and The Director
Late last summer, on the secluded tip of Conanicut Island, in Rhode Island, an Episcopal reverend and his wife, a nurse, were watching Wes Anderson shoot his new movie, Moonrise Kingdom.
The Rev. and the Nurse, who live just a few houses away, were drinking frozen daiquiris and had been corralled, along with the rest of the neighborhood folks, a little way up the road, so they didn’t disrupt the filming.
“You know, we talked to Wes for a while yesterday,” the Rev. said, hushing his tone, because someone already had called for quiet on the set. “And he’s very nice. Very, very nice.”
“Yes, a very, very nice young man,” the Nurse agreed.
Foxy Knoxy Found Not Guilty, but The Mail Convicts Anyway
Yesterday, as the media fervor over Foxy Knoxy’s Perugia, Italy, murder appeal reached its peak, everyone — everyone — geared up to break the news. While most on-the-scene reporters were getting ready to tweet and file copy — doing groundwork, gauging the crowd, etc. — at least one outlet had already written its story — the wrong one, coincidentally.
Nick Pisa, a reporter with London’s The Daily Mail, already had pre-written two stories: Amanda Knox was both guilty and not guilty. Then, at 9:50 Perugia time, as the verdict was read, the “guilty” story landed on MailOnline.
OK, you say, so what? Anyone who has ever been in a newsroom knows that hedging time constraints with prepped copy is standard fair. Both the stories were loaded into the paper’s CMS, but someone published the wrong one.
But what made Pisa’s story egregious wasn’t simply that it was pre-prepared. Instead, Pisa’s “guilty” story pretended to shine a light on what had happened in court as the verdict landed. Read More →
A Kelleriana for Bill Keller
In 1928, Alfred A. Knopf Inc. published Menckeniana: A Schimpflexikon, a book compiling assaults, slurs and rants against H.L. Mencken.
Its pages insulted Mencken, the critic and reporter whose viewpoints were seldom secret, in every way.
How to win The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest
Unless you write like Malcolm Gladwell or Susan Orlean, your best chance at appearing in The New Yorker is probably on its last page, the Cartoon Caption Contest. But even that’s improbable. It took Roger Ebert 107 tries. Yes, that Roger Ebert, the famed film critic, journalist, Pulitzer Prize winner, screenwriter and all-around ass kicker.
Our Holiday
A few weeks ago, while I was typing away in a newspaper office in South Africa, one of my co-workers stumbled out of the lunchroom with half a sheep’s head on a plate. The head had been boiled and cut lengthwise between the eyes. “It’s skobo,” she said, picking meat from between the bones. “It’s good. Want some?” And that’sRead More →
Tumblr Back Online, Balance in Universe Restored
The Tumblr crisis of 2010 has finally ended. For the past 24 hours, the microblogging service was down because of a database failure.
Featured on Flood Lite
One hell of a meal. These guys are cooking up a storm. The combination of a very pretty lady and a corndog that screams, “cardiac arrest,” is must-see tv.
It Builds Character
Twenty-five years ago yesterday, a stuffed tiger and a kid — eponymous of philosophers — began a decade of newspaper syndication. You remember them: They hung around in the woods. In the winter, they carried a sled. In the summer, time always grew short. Read More →
James Franco Graces Cover of The Atlantic… From 1952
The other day I was browsing through old magazines, as I often do, when I discovered this gem of a cover, from a January 1952 issue of The Atlantic, depicting a mustached James Franco chilling on a rock next to a drove of deer.