The Kicker

Here are two things I love: 1) John Hodgman, of the “I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” ads, also of the “Daily Show,” of “This American Life”, formerly of The New York Times Magazine and formerly of the forever-on-hiatus Little Gray Book reading series. 2) TED Talks, of the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference series. […]

At first, you don’t think she’s going to go there. Sure, it seems like she might, you think to yourself. But, then: No, you decide. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. “My husband called it first,” the National Review Online’s Kathleen Parker begins her latest Sarah Palin-pondering column. “Then,” she continues, “a brilliant, 75-year-old scholar and raconteur […]

Having been on the receiving end of an article assignment that’s either a dream come true or a horrific nightmare, depending, Slate’s Nina Shen Rastogi spent Wednesday afternoon at Saks Fifth Avenue’s flagship store in Manhattan in an attempt to blow $150,000 on designer duds, Sarah Palin-style. (Virtually, anyway: As Rastogi points out, ruefully, “Slate […]

…Bloomberg’s Margaret Carlson! Here’s the winning performance, rendered while Carlson discussed campaigns’ conclusions with Keith Olbermann on Countdown last night: “It’s a little like dying, the day after an election,” Carlson declared. “It’s–the lights go out.” And…scene. Beautiful! Cut! Print!

Here’s pretty much the last thing John McCain–who just today was excoriated by the Times for “running a campaign on partisan division, class warfare and even hints of racism”–needs right now: the revelation that the 20-year-old female campaign worker who claimed to have been robbed by “by a black man” in Pittsburgh, and sexually assaulted […]

Okay, here’s a question I know is trivial and superficial but that I’m going to throw out there anyway because there’s a point at the end and also because we’re in ElectionLimboLand and also because it’s Friday: Ever noticed how MSNBC’s on-air personalities have really good skin? In a too-good-to-be-true, even-for-TV, lit-from-within-with-the-glow-of-a-thousand-suns kind of way? […]

McCain’s planning a rather unorthodox election night tableau. From the AP: Instead of appearing before a throng of supporters at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix on the evening of Nov. 4, the Republican presidential nominee plans to deliver postelection remarks to a small group of reporters and guests on the hotel’s lawn. … McCain’s remarks […]

So, in a totally shocking and unforeseen move, the The New York Times has endorsed Barack Obama. Here’s the meat of the endorsement: Mr. Obama has met challenge after challenge, growing as a leader and putting real flesh on his early promises of hope and change. He has shown a cool head and sound judgment. […]

Newsweek Jonathan Alter was on the Colbert Report last night promoting his new book. Some funny exchanges ensued. ALTER: Remember the 1920s… On the economy, we had this idea that if was good for Wall Street, it was good for America. COLBERT: It is good for Wall Street, it’s good for America. You know how […]

In this final-days-of-Campaign-2008 silly season, three rumors–each of them as-yet-unproven–have emerged: 1. Sarah Palin has begun running against John McCain and toward the GOP base2. McCain is increasingly detached from the inner workings of his own campaign3. President Bush is self-medicating SNL, with an assist from the glorious Will Farrel, manages to tackle all three:

In The American Scholar, Christopher Clausen investigates the phrase that comes ’round and ’round. He starts in July 1864, when Lincoln was running for a second term against Gen. George B. McClellan, three years into the Civil War. A New York Times editorial that year stated: “We have had many important elections, but never one […]

Andrew Sullivan, in the new Atlantic, explains why he blogs: Each week, after a few hundred posts, I also write an actual newspaper column. It invariably turns out to be more considered, balanced, and evenhanded than the blog. But the blog will always inform and enrich the column, and often serve as a kind of […]

However the election goes in two weeks, we’re likely to see less of Sarah Palin, whether she’s sitting in the VP office, or moving back to Alaska, and that might be a problem for some people: After Nov. 4, psychologists predict, there will be legions of people all across America who will find a hole […]

That Ukranian ship stocked with weapons? Still being held by Somali pirates. The BBC

NBC News’s Tom Brokaw was on The Daily Show last night talking about his experience moderating the third presidential debate. Brokaw told Jon Stewart that he got some positive feedback afterwards, in that people “came up to me and said, ‘Well, thank God you were trying to keep [the candidates] to the rules that they […]