The Keyboard Stylings of Johann Hari

Man, lately you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting an article by Johann Hari somewhere. If, by some chance, you have been swinging your dead cat and missing, Hari is a young British journalist, who rose to fame while at Cambridge about 10 years ago, and, like a lot of contemporary journos, is known for his political activism and advocacy as well as his writing. He’s won a bunch of awards including the 2008 George Orwell Prize for political writing and the 2010 Martha Gelhorn Prize for war reporting.

Personally, I rather like his writing. He’s a lot more versatile than some older and well-established political journalists, but a lot less “watch me, I’m amazing” than people like Malcolm Gladwell. Here are thee recent articles in three different publications which give you a sense of his versatility:

This review in the New York Times of a new biography of Winston Churchill looks at the fundamental contradiction of Churchill’s own Victorian/Edwardian worldview versus the repudiation of the very same ideals as re-interpreted by Nazism decades later and Churchill’s seeming embrace of democratic ideals in response.

At his regular gig as a commentator for the British newspaper The Independent, Hari looks back at the Good Old Days of the 1990s and 2000s and the way management consultancy firms basically bullshitted their way to extreme profitability and helped to created the failed corporations that litter the landscape today.

And at The Huffington Post, he has this depressing piece that sort of restates an obvious situation: global warming is getting worse, but nobody is really willing to do a damn thing about it, even if they aren’t busy denying its very existence.

Area Man Knows What He Knows

The Onion isn’t even satire anymore, it’s straight reporting:

“Gentries, 48, said he had absolutely no interest in exposing himself to further knowledge of Islamic civilization or putting his sweeping opinions into a broader context of any kind, and confirmed he was “perfectly happy” to make a handful of emotionally charged words the basis of his mistrust toward all members of the world’s second-largest religion.”

Now Dancing The Merengue…

Oh, DWTS, how badly you have disappointed me. Thanks for leaking the story about Bristol Palin being a contestant over the weekend so that I had a few days to wrap my head around that, but the announcement of the rest of the cast last night leaves me weeping and in despair. The fat kid from “That’s So Raven”? Margaret Cho? Is she even ALLOWED on network television? THE SITUATION?!?!?!?!?!?!

And to top it off, Edyta quit! Now who’s going to be all naked ‘n’ stuff? It better not be Florence Henderson!

I’m seriously evaluating whether or not I’m even going to watch this season. At this point, I think I’d rather watch one of those midget/quintuplet/cake decorating shows on TLC.

Here’s a dog dancing the merengue in a clip that is bound to be better than ANYTHING Bristol Palin does:

Make Your Own Teabagger

Talk About Your Government Stimulus

Words To Live By

‘Maters

All Original Content Copyright © BrianKaneOnline
All Other Content Copyright © Its Original Authors

Built on Notes Blog Core
Powered by WordPress