wingolog

Lewis Lapham of Harper's fame started a new quarterly, which my friend Jon and I were thinking might be worth a look. Think twice, Jon writes, linking to this wonderfully scathing piece over at Slate:

The Bush administration's forbearance as Gen. Pervez Musharraf proclaims, like [vainglorious monarch], that [famous megalomaniacal statement] recasts [open Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to any random page, close eyes, plunge finger into text, and insert here a précis of incident described therein] as opera bouffe. The sham outrage teases forth memories of the contortions displayed by [famous Ottoman acrobat of the 15^th century] or the prevarications of [obscure three-fingered gangster of the 1930s] as the Katie Courics and Wolf Blitzers of their day distracted the starving masses with [celebratory ritual performed by an island-based indigenous people] and competitions to mimic the cry of the mighty [extinct animal from the Cretaceous period].

How to write the sentence Lewis Lapham has been drafting for 40 years, Timothy Noah

Zing! If, after finishing that article, you find yourself craving more acid in your day, try Dabblers and Blowhards.