Speaking of the Wonderbra, they came up with another clever billboard, a photomosaic made up of hundreds of photos of women in their bras.
If I work on the top floor of this building and they announce that they're doing a fire drill test some day, I'm calling in sick.
Backlashes seem to have been accelerated by the Internet, so it's surprising that it took so long for the Radiohead backlash. Me, I'm going to see Radiohead at the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday and I couldn't be more excited.
At this moment, there might not be a bigger way for a woman to summon a world of fame onto herself than by dating Michael Phelps. First contender: fashion model Lily Donaldson.
The most interesting thing about this John Edwards story: the National Enquirerscooped the MSM. Second-most interesting angle: Edwards admits that all that time on the campaign trail made him a narcissist.
That one must be a bit self-absorbed to want to run for President is not surprising. As Chris Rock opined in his current comedy tour, "Do you realize how arrogant you have to be to think you deserve to be President of the United States?" But I haven't heard a candidate explain an affair that way before.
Back in 2002, Edwards sent me a Ken doll dressed in bathing trunks, Rio de Janeiro Ken, with a teasing note, because he didn’t like my reference to him as a Ken doll in a column.
In retrospect, the comparison was not fair — to Ken.
[via Marginal Revolution] A study on the value of Oprah's political endorsement to Barack Obama concludes that "her endorsement had a positive effect on the votes Obama received, increased the overall voter participation rate, and increased the number of contributions received by Obama." They also note that "the results ... suggest that Winfrey’s endorsement was responsible for approximately additional 1,000,000 votes for Obama"
I cannot tell if 1MM incremental voters is valuable, though it feels like a strong number.
My curiosity is stoked: what are the five most valuable endorsements a candidate can receive? Labor unions? Governors? Senators? Newspapers? Which ones?
Longer than the 3OT Penguins-Red Wings game last night, the Obama-Clinton battle finally comes to a close, with Obama claiming the Democratic nomination. Every one is ready to move on, except Hillary, who still has not conceded.
But I'm going to crack open a bottle of the good stuff tonight and celebrate. I would've loved to have been there for Obama's speech tonight. Even reduced to a small web video window, Obama's speech gave me goosebumps. Contrasting his speech with McCain's speech tonight isn't like comparing apples to oranges, because it would give McCain's performance too much credit to place him in the the same food category.
These are the two candidates I wanted running against each other in the Presidential election, but, well, you know where I stand on the ultimate outcome. Ironically, McCain would prove most formidable and interesting an opponent if he reverted to the McCain of old, the one David Foster Wallace covered in the 2000 Election. But that day has passed.
The NYTimes profiles Barack Obama's "body man" Reggie Love. Personal aide to Obama, Love plays hoops with the Presidential candidate, watches Sportscenter with him, and handles miscellaneous issues like food stains on the tie. Previously, Hillary Clinton's personal aide Huma Abedin garnered a lot of press attention--the NY Observer article titled "Hillary's Mystery Woman: Who is Huma?" practically described her as a superhero, a glamorous, cool, fashion icon.
Now that I'm on crutches, I'm ready to accept applications for my own body person. For the near future, the job will be more Driving Miss Daisy than pickup hoops, but the nightly Sportscenter viewing can commence immediately.
The long lost first episode of The Dana Carvey Show is now available on Hulu, featuring, yes, the infamous "Bill Clinton breastfeeding puppies" sketch. Timely satire, perhaps, given this election season?
In one of those inadvertent and bizarre coincidences, the ad campaign on this skit happened to be Ragu's Feed Our Kids Well campaign, leading to the the unplanned visual convergence below (click for a larger view; you won't fully understand unless you've seen the skit).
One of yesterday's hot Internet stories was this photo from the White House website which appeared to show Dick Cheney leering at a nude female sunbather.
In a bit of PR control, and perhaps as evidence that we see what we want to see, the powers that be released a larger version of the photo which reveals that the reflection in his sunglasses was nothing more than a hand holding a fishing rod. [via popurls]
Another fun place I found a Hulu embedded video: in Sasha Frere-Jones New Yorker blog.
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PicLens, a cool browser plugin I often use to show people photos on Flickr, has a beta version that supports YouTube video browsing in Firefox, including Firefox 3b5, and IE. I couldn't get any videos to actually start playing, but I saw it working in a demo. Select a video and it starts playing right there within PicLens' 3-D wall.
Who is Jimmy Carter endorsing? Seems pretty clear it's Obama.
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Is it possible to go out both with a whimper and a bang? This may be the business equivalent. RIP ATA and your dirt cheap airfares which I've taken advantage of a few times over the years.
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One of the cooler hacks I've encountered recently: hack your portable Canon digital camera to enable new functionality like RAW file formats, live historgram displays, unlimited interval shooting, high speed shutters, and much more. I'm so going to do this once I can track down a card reader.
Bill Richardson spoke to Hillary Clinton before announcing his endorsement of Barack Obama. Said Richardson:
"Let me tell you: we’ve had better conversations."
James Carville, reacting to Richardson's decision:
"Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic."
I've read the transcript of Obama's speech a few times now. He's been attacked for being all talk, but this speech, said to be one that he wrote himself (unique only in how few of our leaders, political or business, write their own speeches and statements and quotes these days), reveals how and what he thinks. In that, words matter a great deal.
What do his words reveal? That he has a deep understanding and empathy for the racial hurt in this country, an unwillingness to reduce the complexity of these issues to politically digestible soundbites, and an honesty that has made him the most refreshing and exciting candidate in politics in my lifetime.
He speaks of Reverend Wright, denounces his pastor's' words, and yet does not forsake him. Who among us doesn't have one racist relation whose views have made us roll our eyes in exasperation or disgust, and yet in every other respect is a person we care for?
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
And one of the things that came up in the conversation is, if you think about it, the challenge for someone named Barack Hussein Obama is that he's such an unprecedented figure in American politics--so much so that everything he's trying to do is, in a way, trying to make him look smoother and more normal. Someone said, "Well, why shouldn't he have revolutionary looking graphics--graphics that make him look like grassroots, like an outsider? Things drawn by hand, things that look forceful and avant-garde." But I think he's using design in a way to make him look as normal, as comfortable, as inevitable as a brand can look in American life. Those are really deliberate, interesting choices. Whether or not a sans serif font like Gotham looks more "American" than a Swiss font like Helvetica, that's in our imaginations to a certain degree. I think it's much more incontrovertible that he's actually using the seamlessness of this branding to convey a candidacy that's not a dangerous, revolutionary, risk-everything proposition--but as something that is well-managed and has everything under control.
2008 is clearly a year of unusual thinking in political circles, because none of these familiar approaches can explain the utterly confounding typographic dress chosen by Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Hillary's snooze of a serif might have come off a heart-healthy cereal box, or a mildly embarrassing over-the-counter ointment; if you're feeling generous you might associate it with a Board of Ed circular, or an obscure academic journal. But Senator McCain's typeface is positively mystifying: after three decades signifying a very down-market notion of luxe, this particular sans serif has settled into being the font of choice for the hygiene aisle. One of McCain's campaign themes is "Making Tough Choices:" is this the one you would have made?
Interesting analogy about the plagiarism flap between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Nevertheless, to understand why Clinton’s borrowing is worse than Obama’s, I’ve prepared some analogies of my own. First, consider what Obama did to his friend, Deval Patrick. Let’s say that last night I was out two-stepping at some tavern along the Monongahela River and I spotted a young and barefoot, curly-haired deli girl from the Giant Eagle wearing tight jean cut-offs and a red-checked restaurant napkin for a top. I suddenly remembered a line you used to great success when we were trolling the singles bars during the 2003 Appalachia Festival of the Book, a line that this gal would surely go all Patsy Cline for. So I walk up to her and I pull my lower lip all the way out so she can see my tobacco chaw, big as a Bumblebee Hummingbird, and then I drop my cell on the bar—just the way you did—and I say, “Sweetheart, if the governor of Pennsylvania calls on this phone tonight, it’s because he heard your tongue might be trapped in the Skoal mine.
Washington, Nebraska, Louisiana, Maine, and even the Virgin Islands (carrying with them all of 3 delegates), and all by healthy margins. And he beats out Bill Clinton for a Grammy! In my lifetime, I've never known so many of my peers to attend a caucus as did this past weekend up in Washington. It's proof of the transformative power of Obama that he has aroused my generation's political hopes. I may be hasty in assigning so much credit to Obama for galvanizing the youth vote, but whatever is happening, the number of 18-29 year olds turning out for primaries and caucuses is up significantly over 2000.
In the process, perhaps we're seeing a weakening of the so-called political establishment. It certainly feels that way when you see Obama out-fundraising Clinton by collecting small amounts from many donors, rather than large amounts from fewer but thicker wallets (some enclosed in serious baggage). It feels that way when you see that Obama has won nearly every caucus state, where passionate supporters are critical. Let's hope it's a movement that isn't derailed by the peculiar Democratic Party subspecies known as superdelegates.
Some day, instead of an exit poll saying that X percent of people listed health care as the number on issue, I would like to see an exit poll saying that Y percent of people were able to correctly identify correctly the differences between the candidates' proposals on health care. I think that Y would be less than 5 percent.
If the United States had a multi-party parliamentary system with proportional representation, our patchwork of prejudices would likely yield a government comparable to Italy's.
He might be right, but this young interviewee must fall into that 5%. His answers during this interview are great and seem to win over the conservative interviewer:
Clinton would make a very capable President, of that I have little doubt. And I almost certainly believe she suffers from some prejudice against women, which is unfortunate, just as Obama's skin color is an obstacle for many voters. But the chance to move past partisan politics is so potent a possibility, and it's one that I only envision with Obama. Even though Clinton-hate is less about Bill and Hillary than about those who feel it in their heart of hearts, the net effect is the same; a return to that disillusioning and toxic mood of politics in the mid nineties.
Ken and I wondered if Obama would be the first black candidate to be elected head of a country in which blacks were not a majority of the population. Does anyone know? If so, it adds to what would already be a historic victory.
I wonder how possible a Clinton-Obama ticket would be. Such a pairing would be unbeatable. For the good of the party? Doubtful now given how many blows they've dealt each other in the ring. Ken read somewhere that if Clinton won, she'd neutralize Obama by nominating him for the Supreme Court. That made me laugh.
