Why did Jeff Bezos buy the Washington Post? Knows God, as the saying goes. As everyone knows, Bezos and Amazon have been totally about the process; the customers sort out the content for themselves. As Felix Salmon notes, Jeff has never had to deal with “talent,” which is what journalists like to think they are….
Peggy Noonan plants one in the center-field bleachers
I have made, if not a career, at least a habit, of subjecting Peggy Noonan to (hopefully) withering ridicule and scorn. Well, hold back the ridicule and send back the scorn, because Peggy has penned a stunner of a column belting Chris “I love widows and orphans and Rand Paul doesn’t” Christie all over creation….
Barack Obama, Wall Street’s Man In Washington
Michael Lewis has it long, and Felix Salmon has it short: the U.S. Department of Justice looks out, not for the people of the United States, but rather the people of Goldman Sachs. Lewis discusses in detail the case of Sergei Aleynikov, a one-time Goldman Sachs employee who now faces an eight-year prison sentence, on…
Katy to Jill: I don’t need no lousy, stinkin’ mouth to mouth!
No, she doesn’t, not when the Graham family is sitting on the $250 million Jeff Bezos has ponied up to buy the venerable Washington Post. How long Katy will remain as publisher of the Post is undetermined—my guess is, not very long. She got the job exclusively on family ties and her tenure has been…
Barnicle Bill Trio: Brilliant Corners
The group’s name is, I guess, a salute to the old Bix Beiderbecke recording of “Barnacle Bill the Sailor.” Don’t understand the misspelling. Maybe it’s hip. Posted by ebbarkj
Broads in the news: NYT’s Jill Abramson offers mouth to mouth to WP’s Katy Weymouth
As everyone in Washington, DC knows, the Washington Post is in free fall to the crapper, thanks to, well, thanks to a lot of things, but the gleaming, glistening cherry on top of this sundae o’ disaster is the stunning ethical incompetence of publisher Katy Weymouth and editorial page director Fred Hewitt, whose multitudinous shortcomings…
Pseudo New Yorker
Legal humor here. “Yes, I am a talking fish. What’s more, I’m a talking fish who wants to keep on talking for quite a few years.” “Sushi, huh? Well, suppose I sushi your ass? How does that sound, Mr. Gourmet?” “I have a cousin who’s a piranha. I could give him a call. Things could…
And if God wanted a competent Pope, he’d get one of those, too
Ross Douthat has some interesting/amusing thoughts on Pope Francis I, who it appears is scaring conservatives by talking as though he doesn’t hate homos as much as he ought to. Ross is pretty agnostic, so to speak, on the whole homo thing, but he kind of likes the idea of a pope who pisses conservatives…
Reid Wilson, not getting it, and not getting that he’s not getting it
Over at Slate, Dave Wiegel, whom I usually enjoy, links without irony to the National Journal’s Reid Wilson, who files a heartfelt moan titled “When Washington Forgot How To Negotiate Dispute over the farm bill is a textbook example of the dysfunction within Congress.” Speaking of the farm bill debacle, Wilson explains the current Democratic/Republican…
Compared to what?
There have been endless columns and discussions about our slow recovery from the Great Recession, and our recovery has been slow and the recession was great, and we should be doing better, and I take the Krugmanesque position that a bigger stimulus package would have left us in better shape, but. Yes, but. But why…