Happy Birthday to Matthew Lewis, 23.
A little good stuff:
1. "Gaffe receivers are expected to be less persuadable." Michael Tesler, getting deep into how "doing fine" didn't move anyone. Via Sides.
2. Jared Bernstein on employment vs. investment.
3. And Alex Pareene on David Brooks and other hip-for-Bruce conservatives.
I would like to point out that in the Brooks column, he pretty much confuses The Boss's "Darkness on the Edge of Town" with "Nebraska" (two very different albums). Trying to compare the difference between Darkness and “Born to Run” Brooks says "Instead, Springsteen went deeper into his roots and created "Darkness on the Edge of Town," which is more localized, more lonely and more spare." That’s a terrible argument, Born has tracks like “Meeting Across the River” and "Jungleland" which are as lonely as any other tracks Boss ever cut. Brooks then goes on to say millions of people think of "Tupac Shakur's version of Compton". Brooks is obviously now confusing Tupac with N.W.A (one of which was a solo artist and the other a group with a bunch of guys in it that recorded largely years apart and sound totally different), Tupac largely rapped about California in general while N.W.A. recorded the album "Straight out of Compton". Oh and Tupac was born in Harlem. These types of columns are great examples of why Brooks is so awful. The areas he's suppose to know about, pop culture is this instance, he actually knows little about. Like someone writing about Football and not knowing the difference between a wide receiver and a running back or talking about national security and not being able to tell you how many people are on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and what organizations they represent. And this column is another reason why I don't read Brooks.
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