Today was a day when I was very glad that it is no longer my professional responsibility to follow the book publishing industry or the political media industry or the points on the Venn diagram where they meet.

Isn’t that the majority of Fight Club fandom? *ducks, hides behind dumpster*

NGL I feel like with the latest round of big name abusers we are just repeating the same mistakes that unfolded with #MeToo, which is to say, we are focusing on how to punish bad individuals rather than on create systems that limit abusers’ power and make it easier for victims to escape and heal.

Trump take presents.

Post your favorite "The Lord of The Rings" character. Wrong answers only.

Yeah, I’d watch that.

Bob Roberts turned out to be the most prophetic American film of the 1990s. It became slightly uncomfortable to rewatch in the years of Enduring Freedom and the Second Iraq War—from 2015 onward, it’s become almost painful. But the film still has a LOT to say about how it can, in fact, happen here.

Your last saved meme is your moral philosophy.

What sticks out for me, looking at the Nuzzi excerpt in this light, is that her dreck is about to get published while S&S cut Milo loose a few years ago, his manuscript deemed unpublishable by professional standards. Now, I haven’t SEEN what he submitted, but by inference… it must have suuuuucked.

I noticed this is getting engagement so folks must be talking about Olivia Nuzzi again

An all-time classic!

No lies detected.

Every now and then, I’m reminded that the literary-political complex cancelled Dale Peck so progressives could pin our hopes for the future on… this guy.

My cats, looking disdainfully upon the proceedings.

It’s not so much the weak-ass Robin Leach imitation of the voice-over artist that gets you as the sound bites from the dead-eyed journalists celebrating Epstein’s real estate holdings and his ability to network with Bill Clinton.

Part of me would be delighted if Elisa New used this to take Larry Summers to the cleaners, but then there’s the part of me that remembers New was also sucking up to Epstein for favors around this time and probably knew exactly what her husband was getting out of his friendship with the guy.

“The history of classical music is …one of rupture[,] characterized by the porous and readily-breached border between art and politics. When artists today demand that their work hover above the conflicts around them, they’re not defending tradition or history; they’re abandoning it.”

I was today years old when I learned that John Candy introduced Canadian TV audiences to You Can’t Do That on Television.

Right-wingers used to manufacture images like this with AI or cartoons to claim Christianity was "under attack" in America "because of Democrats." Here they are making it real over punitive, inhuman treatment of immigrants.

This text may possibly be the stupidest pitch I’ve ever received on behalf of a political candidate, so of course it comes from James Carville. I’m *almost* tempted to revisit a McGrath candidacy. ALMOST.

That’s the way you do it.

“my most woke opinion is that nobody should ever go to prison for a crime they didn’t commit” OK yes good but how is that your opinion and not, you know, like, morality

Right on, Catholic bishops.

This pizza joint just segued from “Let Your Love Flow” to a live version of “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall,” and I have questions.

The idea that what people need is more proof rather than an honest reckoning, explanation and campaign around the already out there truths we all have access to is liberal propaganda

I mean, hasn’t “how Michael Wolff aspired to be part of elite circles he wrote about” been the Michael Wolff story in a nutshell since 1998?

Predictable but still amazing to watch people who spent literally years accusing every librarian, teacher, and trans person they could find of sexually grooming children suddenly throw themselves in with "actually it's ephebophilia"

These are the people who want to inspect your kids genitals before they play soccer btw

Make Zac Segal famous for all the wrong reasons. dailyfreepress.com/11/13/10/216...

This was a fun book review — and not just because Douglas Gwyn’s political theology aligns pretty neatly with my own, although that’s a big piece of it.

“You simply cannot create a culture or a party of wholesale male entitlement and not wind up with women and girls paying the price — being the ones who bodies, livelihoods, and lives those men feel entitled to.”— @jillfilipovic.bsky.social

this country will not be healed until genuinely rich and powerful people start experiencing genuinely severe consequences for their evil actions. these people will only respond to force. And no, don’t tell me it’s somehow impossible - the U.S. is by no means exceptional in this regard, either.

Accurate chart is accurate.

Today is a good day to remember, and to say, that the #MeToo movement was right, and was righteous, and has been vindicated over and over again. There was no overreach. There was no excess. There was no they-went-too-far. So much work remains to be done.

I have a joke about dog whistles but most people aren’t ready to hear it.

“I was not prepared for how hopeful and connected this festival would leave me feeling. When I got home, the first draft poured out of me over the next few days... I’ve never published anything so close to my heart. I hope you’ll take some time to enjoy this one.”

“Some time after the book was canceled, I told Julie that Jack was still a little sore they hadn't let him edit it and that he felt… he could have made the comic a tremendous hit. Schwartz replied, ‘I wish to God they'd let him do it too.’” Imagine a world where Kirby gets Shazam!, not Jimmy Olsen.

When people tell you who they are, believe them the first time. In 1998, Michael Wolff published Burn Rate, the story of how he got cozy with a bunch of “new media” types (as we called them back then) to seek his own fortune.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns

🎶Wished ill on a man from Reno, got banned from Bluesky🎶

From the director of Mouse Hunt! (I genuinely love Mouse Hunt as an example of formalism pushed to the brink of absurdity, and then leaping over the edge of its own accord.)

Yep. The people who benefit the most by Trump’s presidency have probably known exactly what he’s done since 2015—and some of them didn’t have to be told about it—and it doesn’t matter to them as long as they get to keep money and power flowing to them. Break THAT up, and maybe we’ll get somewhere.

This email from a “marketing manager” telling me how great my last book was and how much he thinks he could do to get it to a wider audience would be more convincing if he hadn’t signed off “Warm Regard” and then put a period after his name.

Robert Anton Wilson’s Masks of the Illuminati sent me down quite the rabbit hole forty years ago, but I *think* I managed to get through Chapel Perilous fairly intact.

I can no longer remember the actual lyrics to Vincent Price’s rap in “Thriller,” and whenever I try, my mind invariably turns to the spoken word introduction to “Diamond Dogs,” which is funny because if anyone were going to do that besides Bowie it would be Orson Welles.

You know, if A Better Tomorrow 2 could figure out how to deal with Chow Yun-fat’s character dying at the end of the previous film, I think the Bond screenwriters should be able to slap something together.

If you haven’t read Cecilia Grant’s historicals, boy are you in for a treat. And then you’ll get mad that there haven’t been more!

Just think: Once upon a time, the majority of the American people wanted this guy to be a heartbeat away from the Oval Office.

“Some folks have used Paul’s advice to attack programs like SNAP—along with assistance programs in general. People can’t expect handouts, they tell us, often with a particular racial category in mind. Yes, even in Christian congregations, they say such things—and, yes, even in Quaker meetings.”