Yglesias notes that when The Beatles came to town in 1964, tickets to see them were actually pretty reasonable, if not downright cheap: Adjusting for inflation, those tickets ranged in price from $15 to $30. These days $30 will get you in to see St. Vincent at the 9:30 Club but prices to see Kings of Leon at the Verizon Center start at about $60. There are a number of concomitant reasons why, despite it being the hottest show in the world, it was so much cheaper than any popular concert would be in 2014. First is the simplest of...
Continue reading...February 2014
New York Times Columnist Line of the Day
If you’re one of the three people who remembers this here blog from its hay-day, you have once in a blue moon checked out the New York Times op-ed page. You probably recognize the names of the columnists, who every day spout the most conventionally wise of the conventional wisdom. This is a feature that is dedicated to these folks, highlighting one line that is either funny, ridiculous, strange, or actually intelligent or well-written. Today\’s is from Paul \”The Little Professor\” Krugman, who in his column today \”Writing Off the Unemployed,\” writes: Indeed, one often gets the...
Continue reading...New York Times Columnist Line of the Day
If you’re one of the three people who remembers this here blog from its hay-day, you have once in a blue moon checked out the New York Times op-ed page. You probably recognize the names of the columnists, who every day spout the most conventionally wise of the conventional wisdom. This is a feature that is dedicated to these folks, highlighting one line that is either funny, ridiculous, strange, or actually intelligent or well-written. Today\’s is from David \”Good God You Have A Job Doing This?\” Brooks, who in his column today \”Other People\’s Views,\” writes: We...
Continue reading...Poems for the Cruelest Month
T.S. Eliot was wrong. February is the worst. February by Bill Christophersen The cold grows colder, even as the days grow longer, February\’s mercury vapor light buffing but not defrosting the bone-white ground, crusty and treacherous underfoot. This is the time of year that\’s apt to put a hammerlock on a healthy appetite, old anxieties back into the night, insomnia and nightmares into play; when things in need of doing go undone and things that can\’t be undone come to call, muttering recriminations at the door, and buried ambitions rise up through the floor and pin your...
Continue reading...New York Times Columnist Line of the Day
If you’re one of the three people who remembers this here blog from its hay-day, you have once in a blue moon checked out the New York Times op-ed page. You probably recognize the names of the columnists, who every day spout the most conventionally wise of the conventional wisdom. This is a feature that is dedicated to these folks, highlighting one line that is either funny, ridiculous, strange, or actually intelligent or well-written. Today\’s is from Gail \”The Colander\” Collins, who in her column today, \”Calling All Candidates,\” writes: Some voters get primaries, others barely get...
Continue reading...Feminist rant of the day
[I’m sure this won’t actually be a daily feature here at V&V, but it’s a pretty reliable description of what much of my blogging is about, so.] This is how it goes. You tell me you’ve figured out what the “77 cents to a dollar” means, and it isn’t that a woman working the same job as a man gets paid that much less. It’s comparing women’s median pay with men’s median pay, without accounting for the jobs they’re in or hours worked or what. And also there’s a study that among educated 22-30 year old non-parenting...
Continue reading...Economic inequality and mobility are not the same thing
It\’s the story of the day. Well, it\’s the story of the past, well, ever. It seems the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the middle gets squeezed. And, truly that’s at least been the case since 1980. Some see the cure for this malady to be “economic mobility,” which basically means, making it easier for people who were born poor to stop being so poor and start being middle class (or rich even!). Hard work and smarts! The American dream! It’s the obsession of Americans, this idea that there’s a path for people...
Continue reading...New York Times Columnist Line of the Day
If you’re one of the three people who remembers this here blog from its hay-day, you have once in a blue moon checked out the New York Times op-ed page. You probably recognize the names of the columnists, who every day spout the most conventionally wise of the conventional wisdom. This is a feature that is dedicated to these folks, highlighting one line that is either funny, ridiculous, strange, or actually intelligent or well-written. Today\’s is a special installment. In a column today, Joe Nocera discusses The Gun Report, a project he started a year ago, that...
Continue reading...You probably didn’t get to see the best Super Bowl ad
We at V+V have a pretty strong history of highlighting the best advertisements out there, even if they almost always political. Thanks to Ghost, we have the first new awesome ad of the relaunched V+V. Turns out Savannah, Ga.-area local personal injury lawyer Jamie Casino (that name, bro) bought some local ad time during the Super Bowl and showed them the most heavy metal advertisement of all time. I don’t even know what else to say, except maybe friggin sledgehammer.
Continue reading...New York Times Columnist Line of the Day
If you’re one of the three people who remembers this here blog from its hay-day, you have once in a blue moon checked out the New York Times op-ed page. You probably recognize the names of the columnists, who every day spout the most conventionally wise of the conventional wisdom. This is a feature that is dedicated to these folks, highlighting one line that is either funny, ridiculous, strange, or actually intelligent or well-written. Today\’s is from Ross \”Do That Thing\” Douthat, who in his column yesterday \”The G.O.P.\’s Immigration Delusion,\” wrote: Admittedly, a big push for...
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