Time Magazine may have seen fit to put the be-wigged visage of Hollywood’s surliest bastard on its cover last week, but it’s this week’s Newsweek that shows us the real life Master and Commander: Vice President Dick Cheney.
The story, by Mark Hosenball, Michael Isikoff, and Evan Thomas is so scary, I half wonder why Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker didn’t run it on Halloween. Tales of Cheney’s monomania on Iraq, his “free floating power base,” his near-clinical paranoia, his incredible influence on the President and the direction of foreign policy, the fact that he’s “far to the right politically,” and the most frightening reference to Thomas Hobbes you will see all year add up to the thesis posited by Hosenball, Isikoff, and Thomas: Cheney is a “vice president who may be too powerful for his own good.”
What they don’t say—but what hangs over the piece—is the addition: He may be too powerful for our own good, too.
If you don’t have time to read the Newsweek piece—c’mon, you can print it out and read it on your ride home—at least read Maureen Dowd’s summary from today’s Times. You owe it yourself and to your country.
Author: matt
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Even more on cupcakes
First Gothamist told us that New York is a Cupcake Town. Then The Curiosity Guild introduced its cute (but totally inedible) crocheted cupcakes to the world.
Now, bringing up the rear (so to speak), is Rolling Stone with Jessica Simpson on its cover wearing cupcake panties.
Is this some kind of Hostess conspiracy or what? Is Captain Cupcake (left) the legendary Badgeman (AKA, “the Prince of the Puff of Smoke”) spotted near Dealey Plaza? (Personally, I think Sara Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.)
Sidebar: For all you fans of glossy expertly-manufactured photos of glossy expertly-manufactured pop stars (that means you, Grambo), RS helpfully provides 88 (!) photos of Jessica Simpson, only one of which also features of Swiffer.
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New York‘s Amazing Feet
It seems that New York Magazine has taken Gawker‘s scientifically-precise criticism of its covers to heart, and decided to create a concept cover this week that harkens back to its Felker/New Journalism era. By using the image of an enormous woman towering over a man, it simultaneously evokes dread, feminist backlash, recession anxiety, and kinky fetishism: a deft combination of rapid-succession signifiers that would’ve done Esquire‘s George Lois proud.
You gotta hand it to New York, it’s not bad. Sadly, it’s been done before. In 1995.
Submitted for your approval is the cover of The Nose, issue 26. For those who missed its brief—but great—run, The Nose was a satirical news and entertainment magazine out of San Francisco. It was sort of like a West Coast version of SPY Magazine, or The Onion, were it more obsessed with conspiracies, porn, cable access shows, and comedians. There’s really almost no legacy of The Nose on the Web, but you can check out founding editor Jack Boulware’s book, Sex, American Style: An Illustrated Romp Through the Golden Age of Heterosexuality. Oh, and in case you’re wondering: smushed under the pump of that amazon woman is the comedian Patton Oswalt, who also wrote the accompanying article about the “giant woman” fetish.
I’ll leave it to other, more skilled writers to critique the actual article accompanying the New York cover.
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You’re a lucky mother, Tucker
Will the bias and the slander of the liberal media ever end? Sadly, not in our lifetime, as the new Mel Gibson movie and TV series prove.
And now this: today brings news that bow tie-loving conservative commentator Tucker Carlson has been given a new show by PBS scheduled to air sometime in June 2004. According to reports (translation: press releases spun into articles), the still-untitled show will be “a lively discussion of the week’s news stories from a wide range of perspectives.” So, I’m guessing it’s a lot like The Man Show meets This Week… with bow ties. I don’t know about you, but I’m setting my TiVo now!
Anyone have any suggestions for titles? I was thinking Nip/Tucker or maybe Tucker MC’s Call Me ‘Sire’ but both sort of suck. Little help? Anyone…
When two seemingly unrelated phenomena occur at the same time, we call it a trend. Used to be three things, but among its many contributions to the culture, Entertainment Weekly lowered the bar to two phenomena.
Here’s how it works:
FOX Sends ‘Skin’ Crawling After Just Three Shows
Can you be a Porn Star? The Ultimate Reality Show
[Thanks Krusty!]
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Jesus, Mel!
It looks like God, the Jewish-run media, and those sneaky, learned elders of Zion continue to hold Mel Gibson down:
Oscar winner Mel Gibson has teamed with ABC and Universal Network TV for a family comedy inspired by his life as a father of six boys.
The still-untitled project, which has received a put pilot commitment, centers on a blue-collar single father who is raising five teen boys on his own…
Will the persecution ever stop!?!
Related: Mel Gibson’s Jesus Christ Pose by Jessica Winter
And you thought Ari Fleischer had a tough gig. Imagine trying to be Paris Hilton’s press spokesperson. This comes from the celebrity advocacy journalists at Page Six:
PARIS Hilton – who has already weathered the worldwide circulation of a graphic photo of her exiting a car minus her panties – is now starring in an amateur porno, a la Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee. The video, shot three years ago, features the hot-blooded hotel heiress and Shannen Doherty’s husband, Rick Solomon, in a variety of X-rated activities. Doherty and Solomon split up after the tape was made, but have since reconciled. Hilton “keeps staring into the camera and trying to show her best side,” said a source. “She knows she is being taped and [Solomon] keeps trying to get her into sex positions that are better for taping, if you know what I mean.” An anonymous donor, who may be planning to sell the tape over the Internet, dropped off copies to media people. A rep for Hilton said: “This was something she did with Rick while they were dating, after he was no longer with Shannen, and it was something that was intended for their own personal use. This tape was never intended to be viewed by the public and it is in poor taste that someone has decided to release it.”
If only Fleischer had been this honest. (“There are no W.M.D. The President said that for his own personal use…”)
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Blogmore Academy Class of 2003
It’s been said before, and it’ll be said again: the blogosphere is just high school with more bandwidth. And most headshots are just yearbook photos, right? So, it’s with that in mind, we present to you, The Blogmore Academy Class of 2003.
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Like Fallin’ Off a Log
It’s been about two weeks since Amazon introduced its “Search Inside the Book” function, and already, we’re witnessing a change in journalism. Take, for example, this unsigned New York Times Week in Review piece that wrote itself simply by going to Amazon and typing in Santa+Ana+winds.
Writing articles hasn’t been this easy since the advent of The Internet Movie Database.
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They’re Ba-a-a-ck!”
Finally! Richard Rushfield and Stacey Grenrock-Woods (and their stellar contributors) are back with a second issue of LA Innuendo.
What you will find inside (or on the Web site if you don’t live in Los Angeles):
Brett Ratner bashing, obligatory (but still funny) Gigli jokes, and more of those great Overheard Conversations like this beaut overheard at the Gold’s Gym Parking Lot in Hollywood:
Two women in workout clothes argue before getting into the car.
FIRST: “Do you want to get something to eat?”
SECOND: “No, I just ate.”
FIRST: “So what, you’re fully bulimic. Let’s go.”
Makes me sad that there wasn’t anything this good to read when I lived in LA.