Splitsider

Posts tagged as Slate

journalism

The Other Belushi Biographer Breaks Down 'Wired'

by | March 13th, 2013

Journalist Bob Woodward's journalistic tactics were called into question a couple weeks ago over a dispute with the White House, and Tanner Colby has taken this as an opportunity to analyze Woodward's reviled 1984 John Belushi biography Wired in a new piece for Slate. Wired  being criticized for its inaccuracy is nothing new. The book has long been thought of as inaccurate and sensationalist, but the Slate piece is the most damning and clear evidence of this yet. Colby, who co-authored a different biography of the late comedian called Belushi: A Biography, writes of Wired, "It’s like someone wrote a biography of Michael Jordan in which [...]

Quicklink

The Politics of Parks And Rec

by | April 29th, 2011

Over at Slate, Juliet Lapidos takes a look at the politics of Parks And Rec which she characterizes as the "abstract vs. personal take on liberals and conservatives." Lapidos cites Leslie's tyrannical near-breakdown during the office brain-storming camping trip and Ron's self-sacrificing offer that state auditors fire him instead of her as evidence of not only personal, but political, character traits. Or as Ron might have put it, "Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Don't teach a man to fish…and feed yourself. He's a grown man. And fishing's not that hard."

Standup

Maria Bamford Tries to Find the Humor in Mental Illness

by | May 11th, 2012

"Yeah. I have a joke about how people don’t talk about mental illness the way they do other regular illnesses. 'Well, apparently Jeff has cancer. Uh, I have cancer. We all have cancer. You go to chemotherapy you get it taken care of, am I right? You get back to work.' Or: 'I was dating this chick, and three months in, she tells me that she wears glasses, and she’s been wearing contact lenses all this time. She needs help seeing. I was like, listen, I’m not into all that Western medicine shit. If you want to see, then work at it. Figure out how not to be so myopic. You know?' [...]

Comics

Marc Maron on Relating To Other Comics: "It's like a first-date for emotionally unstable people."

by | July 28th, 2011

At its best, hearing  Marc Maron talk about WTF is like reading a prickly, cat-haired covered Valentine to his fellow comedians. "As a comic, the one thing I know about us is that we surrendered a life. It's a tremendous sacrifice," Maron tells Slate's Culture Gabfest, starting around minute 27. "To commit to this life of being a standup, you have to be somewhat delusional, because it's a long shot. Most of us don't fit in anyway, and I knew that too. We're fighting any sense of security, normal jobs, workplace ethics, ethics in general, a sense of personal morality. There's a lot of things that comics go [...]

-->