Category: Thoughts

While we’re at it, let me make fun of the way Jeff Jacoby uses his latest column to insult the American Booksellers Association and defend predatory dumping.

This time, he’s not quite as wrong as he usually is – the line between aggressive discounting and destructive predation is blurry, after all, and the ABA has some silly arguments about how discounting hurts the prestige of books as such.

Nonetheless, he’s wrong: Give Harry Potter away below cost to draw traffic which might buy t-shirts, and you’re going to destroy the businesses that sell a variety of books beyond the top 40. That’s not good.

Whether this instance counts as illegal predation I will leave to the courts, but Jacoby seems to be implying that no such thing exists. That’s entirely false. He may not be wise or cogent enough to remember the lessons of Standard Oil and the trust-busters, but if not, he doesn’t deserve his job. And if he is, and he’s lying, then he definitely doesn’t deserve his job.

… And once again, we return to the central mystery of Jeff Jacoby: How the hell he still has a job. I could do twice his work for half the money. A quarter of the money.

You want an economic stimulus? Reallocate whatever money goes to Jeff Jacoby and spend it on strippers. It’ll do more good for society. Not kidding.

Mr. President: We want a public option. Olympia Snowe’s vote isn’t worth a bad bill. I’d love to see a good bill (i.e. with a public option) come to the Senate, and I’d love to see progressives dare the Republicans to filibuster. Go ahead. Make my day. Stand up and admit you’re the party of no. And watch that filibuster get crushed, and watch health reform pass over your objections, and watch your party of hubris and idiocy and reactionary greed burn.

Angry Town Hall reminds us that if you catch fire, you deserve to die and/or go broke because of it. Thank god there are some ideologically pure libertarians out there?

People have been asking that, of course, for several weeks now. Since even before his death. They’re naming a school and maybe a health-care bill. But how about a bridge or a stadium?

One of my friends suggested naming the Cape Wind project after him. After all, now that he’s gone, they can build it, right?

Yeah, I was on vacation. I’ve got a draft I’m working on for next week. Until then, check out these links:

Slate points out that it’s the Republicans who want to kill your grandmother.

Inverse Square illustrates another reason why we’re dropping our subscription to the Atlantic: Megan McArdle’s well-funded nonsense.

The Negroni: One of the great classic cocktails. Invented in Florence.

Achewood really has the perfect coda to Michael Jackson: The old guy interrupts the middle-aged guys to explain their grief to them. “He was your Elvis,” he says, “and when your Elvis dies, so does the private lie that someday you will be young once again, and feel at capricious intervals the weightlessness of a joy that is unchecked by the injuries of experience and failure…. In other words, you died a bit today. Welcome to the only game in town.”

It reminds me of Neal Stephenson on being under 25 – his assertion that youth comes with the delusion that you could, if necessary, become totally badass. And growing up requires acknowledging that you’re not going to be what you once thought you could.

Michael Jackson never grew up, never acknowledged that he was never going to become perfect. He knew it, of course – who other than someone fleeing adult responsibility names his house “Neverland?” But still, some days, I wish I could avoid growing up too. I guess we all do.

But no: I’m never going to be a race-car driver, ninja, astronaut, poet, novelist, or public intellectual. Those aren’t really in the cards. What I am going to be – technical writer, marketer, blogger, husband, citizen, adequate gardener, affable dinner-party host – is just going to have to be enough.

I only hope that truly growing up doesn’t mean being forced to face the fact that even those diminished dreams are not feasible, or not capable of redeeming me.

On the one hand. On the other.

I grew up with those songs. But I am not touched by the death of the singer. Others are, and who am I to disparage their emotion, especially if they acknowledge the emotion is strange or illogical.

But it’s strange and illogical.

Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) gets schooled by snappy Twitter comebacks to his claims.

I got insulted on twitter once. It was just like being beaten to death by riot police.