Month: October 2011

A reader writes:

Besides Americans. Besides the obvious name, look at the website. It's a bunch of goony guys in pinstripe suits, and the "order online" link features a computer button that says "Do It!", which I'm sure is meant to evoke an intimidating grunt from a mafia thug.  I'm not Italian, and I don't normally get all bent out of shape every time a stereotype appears in the media.  I'm as big a South Park fan as you are.  But this marketing gimmick is especially, er, cheesy, and it looks like a relic of how Americans (especially those outside cities with large immigrant populations) viewed Italians 40 years ago, when "The Godfather" first came out, as opposed to the way most people view them today: as American as anybody else ("Jersey Shore" notwithstanding).

Another notes:

As Politico’s site acknowledges, the closest Godfather's location is two hours away, so the pizza they tried certainly couldn’t have been fresh. Hard to see how the comparison in that taste test was fair.

Another also defends the pizza chain:

I must disagree with Politico's assessment. Godfather's cinnamon struesel dessert pizza is meth without the possibility of explosions (but still bad teeth). Moreover, this snark on Cain's pizza chain plays into the snooty liberal opposition. Liberals who whine about his pizza tasting bad come off like they want broccoli and brussel sprouts on their sauceless, seven-grain crust gourmet nonsense. Godfather's is cheap, goes good with beer or soda (an underrated feature of pizza), and boasts a killer buffet.

Another reminiscences:

It was the pizza of my childhood. I remember Christmas commercials with a mafioso dressed as Santa, singing a version of "Deck the halls" that included the line "18 inches wide, A POUND OF CHEESE". It's the pizza we ordered first thing when my older brother came home from college. It was my first cold pizza. And as a cold pizza, it was glorious. It was a thick-crust pizza with a dark, sweet sauce and tons of cheese. I'd keep my fingers crossed that we'd order too much so there'd be some in the fridge the next morning. The cheese would solidify into a kind of brick, encasing the sweetness inside. The pepperoni was just think enough that it would crinkle and brown around the edges.

So you East Coasters can slander our modest Midwestern pizza if it makes you feel better. You won't have old Herman Cain and his stink-pizza to kick around much longer.

The drug war foments another chilling innovation in Michigan.

His official bio is wrong, and it’s worth pointing that out. And the issue is not trivial: there is a difference between assessing one’s options and leaving Cuba before Castro came to power and fleeing his persecution afterward. But the get is underwhelming. Marc Caputo notes that the WaPo has no rhetorical smoking gun from Rubio’s own mouth, and that the Senator himself had already told journalists that his family left Cuba before the revolution:

Rubio’s office has told both the Washington Post, the St. Petersburg Times and The Miami Herald that his parents came to the United States prior to Castro taking power. And he has said it more than once. In the article we wrote last month about his pending autobiography, Rubio clearly told us his parents came here before Castro took power. He struggled to recall the year (this isn’t in the story, it’s in my notes) and said it was in “57 or 58 or 59.” When asked pointedly: Was it before the revolution? Rubio said it was before the revolution.

Not blameless for some of this, as the ad above proves, but perspective, please.

No, but we think they are:

While the subjects rated men's and women's [humorous] caption-writing abilities roughly equally in a gender-blind test, they were so devoted to the stereotype of women being less funny that the subjects misinterpreted their own rankings. … Most women who have a sense of humor can tell you about a time they've told a joke, had it blatantly ignored by their friends and family, and then heard a man tell the same joke (having subconsciously stolen it from the ignored woman) to peals of laughter.

Ackerman wrestles with the doctrine that brought down Qaddafi:

To support the R2P seems like a recipe for endless war; to oppose it, a recipe for endless injustice and impunity. The responsible work of intellectuals and policymakers is to bridle it, to make it commensurate with American capabilities and American interests; to shape a world in which America is not the only nation burdened with enforcing it; and not to avoid the circumstances in which it conflicts with American capabilities and American interests. Conservatives will and should be a part of that work, because they believe in human rights as well. 

As the World Series begins, John Timmer unpacks a psychological trend:

[M]any major league players have been spotted wearing these bulky metal necklaces during games. Their symbolism isn't religious. … Instead, these necklaces supposedly help players perform better by easing fatigue and shortening recovery time. The secret to these supposed benefits: titanium nanoparticles that help the body's own energy flow more readily. As we'll see, there's zero biological basis for any of these claims … That does not mean, however, that there's no benefit to wearing these things. The placebo effect is incredibly powerful.

(Photo: C.J. Wilson of the Texas Rangers. By Harry How/Getty Images.)

Michael Agger spends some time with the tumblr:

The choice to make Siri a woman leads to predictable sorts of harassment, though I like how she brushes it off with both sarcasm and a turning of the mirror upon the master. If you call her a "bitch," she will sometimes reply: "Why do you hate me? I don’t even exist."

Alyssa Rosenberg wonders whether Siri is a feminist.

TNC compares Django Unchained, Tarantino's upcoming slavery revenge flick, to Inglorious Bastards:

When I think of Django Unchained all I see are rape scenes and scowling dudes. One of the problems, at least for me, is that I don't actually hunger for a revenge flick about slavery. I understand why Jews might hunger for a some cathartic revenge in terms of the Holocaust. There's a certainly clarity to industrialized genocide. But slavery is something different, something at once more variable, intimate and elusive. 

J.L. Wall unpacks this distinction.

By Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal (Hat tip: Erik Voeten)

Frederick Hess fears that focusing on the most disadvantaged students hinders the development of their more advanced peers:

Gap-closing strategies can be downright unhelpful or counterproductive when it comes to serving most students and families, and so can turn them off to education reform altogether. Longer school years and longer school days can be terrific for disadvantaged students or low achievers, but may be a recipe for backlash if imposed on families who already offer their kids many summer opportunities and extracurricular activities. Policies that seek to shift the "best" teachers to schools and classrooms serving low-achieving children represent a frontal assault on middle-class and affluent families. And responding to such concerns by belittling them is a sure-fire strategy for ensuring that school reform never amounts to more than a self-righteous crusade at odds with the interests of most middle-class families.