Get it? Womb? It's a site for ladies, who have wombs! Anyway, thanks for the image, Jake. Weisberg's memo confirms that Double X publisher Peggy White is leaving, and that associate editor Samantha Henig will be let go at the end of the year unless another job can be found for her at one of the Slate Group's other sites. (We were dubious about Weisberg's characterization of White's departure as voluntary—"I'm sorry to say that Peggy White has decided to pursue other opportunities"—but we asked her, and she confirms that it was.)

A tipster tells us that Weisberg gave Hanna Rosin, Emily Bazelon, and Meghan O'Rourke a two-year commitment when they launched the site six months ago, and that the new site design—now abandoned—that Weisberg references in the memo had been scheduled to roll out today:

From: Jacob Weisberg
Sent: Mon 11/16/2009 2:45 PM
To: TheSlateGroup
Subject: The Next Double X

SLATE GROUP CONFIDENTIAL

We're writing to let you all know that we've decided to turn Double X into a section of Slate and to stop publishing it as a separate site. This is a business and a practical decision, not an editorial one. We love Double X and are extremely proud of what it has accomplished journalistically over the past seven months. We believe in it and want it to continue growing. We see this change as an example of fast evolution in response to what we've learned about a rapidly shifting marketplace. Bringing Double X back into Slate should make it easier to develop both the editorial and business sides of the project while reducing our costs significantly.

Returning Double X to Slate is a good option in part because Double X has done so well in maintaining Slate's DNA while branching out into areas Slate has never before covered in depth. David agrees that returning Double X to the womb from which it sprang should be an easy fit. To readers, there should be little visible change. Part of the Slate Group concept has always been that we can have it both ways on the question of what is and isn't a separate site — Slate V being a prime example. Some readers now understand Double X to be as a section of Slate. Some in the future will continue to regard it as separate. We're happy to fudge on this question.

Under the hood, there will be some changes. We have a lot still to figure out, but our expectation is that we'll begin publishing Double X on Gutenberg by the beginning of next year, and then migrate the archives from Drupal. Unfortunately, shifting the CMS means abandoning a very nice homepage redesign that was near to completion. We'll see the benefit of that work, however, in The Big Money's adoption of a similar template later this week, and eventually in a version of it on the Root.

Emily, Hanna and Jessica will continue to run Double X. As a section of Slate, it will report to Julia Turner. Noreen, whose time was divided between Double X and TBM, will now divide her time between The Big Money and Slate, which should help with the added copy-editing load. Samantha is staying with us at least until the end of the year to help with the transition, by which time we're hoping to have found
her another position inside the Slate Group. I'm sorry to say that Peggy White has decided to pursue other opportunities. It's been our pleasure working with her and we're sorry to see her go.

Jacob and John

It's unclear what, if anything, that means, but it's strange that the Slate Group—the unit of the Washington Post Co. that publishes Slate, the Root, Slate V, and The Big Money—would reverse itself so soon after launching Double X to much fanfare just a few months ago. The site grew out of the XX Factor, a group blog launched in 2007 that was, um, a section of Slate. When we heard a rumor that Slate was pulling the plug on Double X, we asked Slate Group editor in chief Jacob Weisberg about it, and he responded, "It's going to become a section of Slate, but otherwise pretty much as it has been. Not sure readers will know the difference—most think it's a section of Slate now. There will be still be a homepage at doublex.com."

We asked Weisberg if there would be any layoffs associated with the switch and he said, "Emily Bazelon and Hanna Rosin still co-editing and running it with a semi-autonomous editorial team a la Slate V." Very strange. As you can see from the logo, Double X never made it out of beta.

If you know of any more about what's happening at Double X, let us know.

Update: Shortly after this post went live Bazelon and Rosin posted about the coming changes to Double X. They echo Weisberg in saying that while they'll no longer be editing a standalone site, people won't notice the difference. But they add the change is being done for "business reasons" — making us suspect that there may be some job cuts as part of the move. Here's there statement in full:

After some deliberation, we have decided to fold DoubleX back into Slate. The site will now become its own section, with our XX Factor blog, articles, and special projects already in the works. Our aim is to create a more intimate version of the community we have built, with many of the same voices and passions.

For many of you, this won't much change your experience of reading us. We will have many of the same bloggers and writers, and Hanna and Emily will continue to run the project. The decision is being made for business reasons rather than as an editorial judgment. In fact, it's the editorial quality of the site, and the way in which it so perfectly embodies the Slate DNA, that makes this a natural next step. This is a new phase, not an ending-since we came out of Slate, where we started XX Factor, it's a return to our roots.

To give us time to map out the details, the site will live in its current form until sometime around the end of the year. We will tell you when we're ready to pack up our virtual boxes and move back into Slate. When we do, we will have a new commenting feature on Slate that will allow us to improve on the thoughtful and smart commenting many of you have been doing. It's been an absolute pleasure, and we look forward to continuing it.

It sure was an awesome story (written up last week by the NY Daily News, but it had been floating around long before that—Roxanne tells it herself on the Beef video series, for example): Warner Music put a throwaway clause in her record contract when she was still a teenager saying they'd pay for her education for life; she took advantage of it to go all the way through grad school on their dime.

But! Slate says the story has the following problems: Roxanne doesn't actually have a Ph.D. from Cornell; she didn't even graduate from Marymount Manhattan as an undergrad; she's not licensed to practice psychology; and all her record labels deny ever paying for her education. Caveat:

In a subsequent e-mail, Shanté wrote, "I also attended College under an alias, because of a Domestic Violence situation" and speculated that she "made a mistake on an application and put my old name so maybe that's the reason for the computer error?" But she was unable to substantiate such claims.

God damn it Slate. We are going to ignore these enormous red flags and cling to our hopes of some bit of good in the world. Everything was fine until you journalists started poking around.
[Pic via]

To summarize: Greenwald goes over the New York Times' revelation of a Charlie Rose-officiated summit between News Corp and GE chiefs that ended the battle between their respective professional blowhards, Fox News' Bill O'Reilly and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. The battle embarrassed their corporate parents, and that's why the beef was squashed. He notes that the Times' Brian Stelter, who penned the piece, missed the big picture in all of this: that we now shamelessly live in an age where corporations can control their news divisions simply by getting a few guys in a room, and ordering them to stop fighting. Which is absolutely true, but we already knew that. He's right, however, in its absolute shamelessness. Even Charlie Rose, who brought the corporate titans together, is dirty. Even better, Greenwald pulls from an old interview of Charlie Rose's. In conversation with reporter and columnist Amy Goodman, Rose noted:

I promise you, CBS News and ABC News and NBC News are not influenced by the corporations that may own those companies. Since I know one of them very well and worked for one of them.

Which is great, coming from the guy who just moderated a meeting of two corporate giants who need to reign in their news networks.

But when not pointing out the long-kvetched, now manifest complaints of anarchists everywhere, he gets to something even more insidious: former Newsweek reporter Richard Wolffe's guest stint on MSNBC, filling in for Keith Olbermann. Wolffe is noted as a "political analyst" when he appears on MSNBC. Which is funny, because his day job is for a corporate strategies firm run by the former Bush White House Comm Director Dan Bartlett:

Wolffe left Newsweek last March in order to join "Public Strategies, Inc.," the corporate communications firm run by (Bartlett), its President and CEO...

...Having Richard Wolffe host an MSNBC program — or serving as an almost daily "political analyst" — is exactly tantamount to MSNBC's just turning over an hour every night to a corporate lobbyist

Hot damn. He also goes on to note those who've previously written about MSNBC and Wolffe's lack of disclosure over this (Ana Marie Cox), and links to Public Strategies' website. Want to know what one of their divisions is? This is neat:

Media Intelligence™

The Situation

A leading media company faced negative public perception and sagging stock prices resulting from a personal legal situation involving its CEO. Senior Management engaged Public Strategies to reposition the company as a trusted, respected, and innovative leader in its industry, and to help mitigate the crisis and restore confidence in the brand.

Public Strategies' solution

In addition to providing strategic counsel, Public Strategies immediately responded by enacting its Media Intelligence™ service providing the client with a 360-degree perspective of public opinion around the globe

A "360-degree perspective," and a four-dimensional one, too, like A CALL THAT COMES FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE. Furthermore: he points out how Wolffe has gone on the record to a Newsweek reporter after announcing his departure from the weekly as not giving a shit about the line between corporate interests and news. And get ready to walk away from your computer, because you might want to break something:

"The idea that journalists are somehow not engaged in corporate activities is not really in touch with what's going on. Every conversation with journalists is about business models and advertisers," he said, recalling that, on the day after the 2008 election, Newsweek sent him to Detroit to deliver a speech to advertisers. "You tell me where the line is between business and journalism," he said.

Jesus.

At least former MSNBC correspondent, the (potentially) conflict-of-interest-happy Dan Abrams, tries to run interference on the inherent conflicts between owning a media strategies firm Abrams Research and owning a media reporting website Mediaite (or at least: has henchpeople furiously sending emails, telling everyone writing about them to get their facts right).

The kicker, however, is when Greenwald points out Wolffe's bio on the Public Strategies website, where they actually tout him as a news source: "In addition, Wolffe is an NBC political analyst. He provides political commentary on several MSNBC programs, Meet The Press, and TODAY."

As in, in addition to being our employee, we can send him into the field to say whatever you want him to say! For a price, of course. There's clearly a very small difference in being able to pay to put something in someone's mouth, and being able to pay to get something out of someone's mouth in front of a bunch of other people. Richard Wolffe is about as dirty and shameless a media whore as you can get, taking money from corporations, going on the news with his pockets lined by said interests, and being framed in a context as an objective, righteous news commentator. Richard Wolffe, and by extension, MSNBC, are completely - and I guess, at this point - unexpectedly dirty, and pretty much nothing they claim to be and everything they don't.

Glenn Greenwald, on the other hand? You deserve something. I don't know. A steak dinner. A stiff drink. But mostly, lots of people to read your column. It's nice to see someone who's not answering to the interest of brass somewhere, which, apparently, is becoming more and more rare as we move forward in this great new era of news, or whatever we're eventually going to call it.

GE's silencing of Olbermann and MSNBC's sleazy use of Richard Wolffe [Salon]

Also he is very proud that he totally knew that John Edwards slept with that lady and he is mildly embarrassed at totally being positive that Gary Condit killed Chandra Levy, and he would like an apology from anyone whose recollection of the latter might've colored their response to his insistence on the former.

And he is kind of sorry that he totally thought Bush would be a wonderful bipartisan president back in 2000, but he points out that Gore would've probably not been very good either so whatever, get off his back.

(Of course if it hadn't been for Bush's terrible unwillingness to send all the Mexicans back to Mexico and then build a wall, Mickey would never have realized how terrible Bush was, years after everyone else did!)

[Ed. note: I've been enjoying T.A.N.'s stuff so much on Saturday afternoons that I decided to move him up to a primetime slot on Fridays where he'll post a couple things each week.]

Everyone should have a go-to quote to come off like a learned smarty-pants. Mine is from Nietzsche who said, "the only proof of strength is excess of strength". I love it because in our current link-don't-tell culture it speaks to how proof of brilliance needs to be hyperlinkably obvious. For Woody, Eddie, and Michael this was never an issue. No one ever calls into question their obvious excess of talent. But yet, reading the news and reviews from the past week or so, and it seems being a genius doesn't seem to hold the same water it used to. At the least, critics and journalists appear to be challenging the statute of limitations on genius privileges like never before:

Eddie Murphy: This post was seeded by Brooks Barnes in the NY Times (who also was involved with NYT coverage of MJ) wondering how/why Eddie Murphy still had so much Hollywood clout, despite being the butt of more jokes than he makes these days. In the sidebar they list his top 5 box office grosses, totaling up to $780 million. If you throw in Coming to America and a couple of his middling performers like, say, Boomerang and Harlem Nights, you're approaching a billion dollars in box office bank before you even get to ten movies. Murphy is the #2 man all time at the box office, right behind Tom Hanks and ahead of names like Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise. So, what's the question again? Asking Hollywood why they keep going to Eddie Murphy is like asking why the Yankees keep putting ARod in the cleanup spot (despite inconsistent production).

Make no mistake, it's not all bankability with Eddie (worth noting: the above tallies don't even include Shrek 1, 2, 3 paper; talk about "still spending money from '88"); the man is a true and living legend. You could probably make a decent argument that SNL is a franchise as much due to Murphy as Lorne Michaels. His approach to race-humor set the template for every non-Cosby comic alive today. He's a pillar of comedy, cinema, and racism. And, you know, he could even dabble with music a little bit.

But what has genius brought Eddie? Every review nowadays shits on him for wearing fat-suits. His old comedy specials are increasingly noted less for comedy and more for their rampant misogyny and homophobia (which he has apologized for). And the "Relationships" section of his Wiki entry is chubby from controversy; including phrases like "DNA testing" and "transvestite prostitute". That's enough drama to make a man want to make a movie in a fat-suit just to get away from it all. Or at least have some homicidal hot-flashes.


Woody Allen: For Woody, I can probably say even less. Or anything. Talk about prolific excess: Plays, books, movies, no one of today's generation remembers his career as a stand up, but yeah, that too. His brand of literary humor has influenced legions. He's responsible for the Jewish nebbish male ethnic archetype. The man is a pillar of comedy, cinema, and racism. And, you know, he could even dabble with the music a little bit!

And what has genius brought Woody? Here he's probably thinking he's the man because a script he wrote in the 70s still has enough legs to be made into a movie some thirty years later. It doesn't work and all of a sudden some critics might use it to erase his whole oeuvre from the Hard Drive of Cultural Import. Of course, he too has been married multiple times. And the "Relationships" section of his Wikipedia entry reads like some sordid psycho-sexual Freudian dream sequence gone awry and remixed by Danger Mouse and David Lynch. Don't geniuses just get the hot chick and live happily ever after?

In Woody's case you at least have the premise for it all being worth it to shoot Penelope Cruz and ScarJo lustily making out with Javier Bardem. But at his age all of that likely falls under the rubric of "indigestion". And can't you see Woody breaking the 4th wall and asking what a comic legend of his stature has to do to just be left alone to his work.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.


Michael Jackson: God bless his soul. This was originally conceived as strictly an Eddie and Woody comedy pairing, but much of the narrative is the same: Indisputable genius: check! A robust "Relationships" wikipedia section: check! A pillar of comedy, video, and racist implications: check! (re. comedy: Jackson jokes are now a genre unto themselves, no?). And, it turns out, he could dabble with the music a little bit.

Last but not least, a growing throng of critics stomping on his fading-but-timeless legacy was the man in Michael's mirror before his unfortunate cardiac arrest yesterday. But doesn't the genius required to sell a love-ballad-to-a-rat as a hit single last forever?

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.


Nick Denton in an AdAge interview recently spoke of Gawker's audience having a significant percentage of content producers; in many ways it's like a comic working a room with a lot of other comedians in it. So maybe this is the best place to ask: if a legacy of genius only matters but so much, what's the point? Do we aspire to emulate the artist-genius anymore? Does a hot Twitter-feed qualify as such in the 0-9?

I guess all that's left is to fatten up our respective "Relationships" sections. The only proof of sex is excess of sex, or somesuch.

image:via

Negropedia took a deep breath before explaining himself to Jody Rosen. He liked solving mysteries, but hated being critical of people:

Well I dunno, Mr. Rosen, I guess the first thing is that you're so mean about Jay's age. Here you two are born the same year, and you've written a book about an old christmas song, and another one where you collected old novelty Jewish songs, it seems you'd have an appreciation for Jay's desire to get back to traditional basics. When you wrote about Run DMC being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame you said, "Hip-hop may have gotten more sophisticated in the decades since, but Raising Hell (1986) has never been improved on."

Well gosh, I don't want to argue with you about all the great albums in the past twenty-three years, a time frame that spans the entire career of artists like Public Enemy, Outkast, Eminem, Snoop, Kanye, The Roots and more, but if Jay is a curmudgeonly hip hop purist, wouldn't that make you — excuse me, Mr. R, I lack your vocabulary — but what's, like, bigger and even more curmudgeonly than a curmudgeon?

I don't want to belabor other blind spots or inconsistencies in your hip hop files: in your Kingdom Come review you say Jay has 11 solo albums, he had 8 at the time; you suggest 50 Cent is the"pioneer of the hip-hop beef as postmodern marketing strategy", which willfully ignores a lot of hip hop history (KRS-One, LL Cool J, Ice T, just a few curmudgeons to use "beef" to market); you psychoanalyze Biggie as a "thugged-out neurotic" in the mold of Woody Allen (please someone comment with mash-ups of Biggie lyrics in the style of Woody Allen schtick).

These things are odd, Mr. Rosen. But they're just nits, fodder for us to discuss while we sip lemonade on a Saturday afternoon and get to know each other. I don't have your years of wisdom, but it seems inconsistency is human. Blind spots, too. So all of this amounts to arrows and flags pointing to a problem best captured in your third paragraph.

Who exactly Jay-Z is taking on in this polemic is unclear. [—snip—] In lieu of picking a fight with human beings, Jay-Z disses technology itself, calling out not just pitch-correction software but iTunes and ringtones. (We await the release of the rapper's forthcoming Blueprint 3 album for Jay-Z's rants against the cotton gin and the steam engine.)

Well golly, Mr. Rosen, why in heavens would you take Jay-Z's lyrics so literally? His seond line says, " this [song] ain't for itunes." It's just illustrating a manifesto. You think this multi-millionaire artist who just purchased the rights to be independent with his next album is really anti-itunes?

When Lady GaGa does a song about "Paparazzi" we don't stop to ask if she's considered what would become of her career without paparazzi. We accept it as a piece of art, and deconstruct it as such.

I love Run DMC, Mr. Rosen, and I think it's easy to say nice things when they get honored. And I'm sure it feels good to find the positives in a rather pedestrian mainstream biopic of a hip hop legend, because not many of those exist. But you wouldn't treat other genres with such kiddie gloves; your take down of the Decemberists concept album is amazingly incisive. You pull apart the pretensions, and show where "the whimsy is suffocating".

Meanwhile you claim Jay is anti-technology because he does a song against digitized singing? I think a dumbed-down hip hop critique just makes hip hop seem dumb.

A song like DOA provides the opportunity for a thoughtful meditation on the import of auto-tuning as a "sign of the times". A technology that only two years ago you clunkily described in a T-Pain review as: "a talk box, or some synthesizer-simulated version thereof-a gizmo that transforms the human voice into a kind of robo-drone."

Now we all know about auto-tuning, the en vogue technique for digital voice correction. It's kind of like Photoshop for graphic artists! Or maybe the audio equivalent of editors at a magazine.

Which means, I guess, that you're not so bad Mr. Rosen. It's just your hip hop criticism is a little off and could probably use some auto-tuning.

Come back next weekend for The Case of Vanity Fair and Is Obama Gonna Have to Smack a 'Trix? (the solution will be much shorter!)

illustration via Brandon

Mr. Brown was the chief media mind on matters of race and culture. The CEO or Chief Ethnocultural Officer. Whenever a TV station or radio show or magazine needed counsel on issue relating to race/culture, they'd ask Mr. Brown. And Mr. Brown always had a good answer for them. His track record in the realm of race was without blemish since 2005.

But Mr. Brown had a secret weapon. And that was his son, TAN. No one would believe it, but it was really Negropedia that provided Mr. Brown all his insightful fodder! The streak since 2005 was no coincidence; it was also when young TAN started his blog.

Now TAN would typically help his father solve cases for free. But after a while he realized he enjoyed ethnocultural matters so much he should open up a detective agency to help others bridge culture gaps and generally get along. So he stole some money out of his father's wallet, rented out a bodega, and set up shop. He hung up a sign to advertise himself:

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

One Saturday afternoon while Negropedia was sipping on some lemonade, Jay-Z came into the office. "Allow me to reintroduce myself..." he proclaimed over a thundering backbeat. Of course Negropedia was very familiar with the superstar rapper Hov, and needed no introduction.

Mr. Carter scanned the cozy confines and then a couple assistants followed him in and dumped buckets of money on TAN's desk, "I want to hire you. I got 99 problems, but maybe you can help solve this one."

Negropedia looked at Jay and said, "thanks, but like the sign says, I only need a quarter. And considering who you are, I would be honored to help you. What appears to be the problem? Is it something with Beyonce?"

"Nah, she's off showing off her booty and overachieving somewhere. This has nothing to do with her" Jay responded.

"OK" said Negropedia. "Well, what problem could the Black Warren Buffett possibly have?"

"Well I released my new single, Death of Auto-Tune. Did you peep it?"

"Oh yeah, in fact I was reading the rhymes earlier this week."

Jay nodded in approval, "Well, here's the problem: I want to be great. But in order to make history I have to get these older white people down with the program."

TAN looked at his diploma hanging on the wall, "I know what you mean, Jay."

"So I don't know, I mean if the young grasshoppers start chirping, I'm not worried about that. I understand where they're coming from. But this guy Jody Rosen, this blog he wrote about DOA — which B told me was featured on Slate's front page and all this — I don't know, it's just rubbing me the wrong way."

Negropedia mulled, "Hmm, well Jody's a great writer. And he's got to cover a lot of different music for Slate. What did he say?"

Hov started pacing, "well first he's like the beat is a "snooze". And honestly, diss my lyrics and flow all you want. But the drums by NO I.D. on that track are incredible. Even Jody himself called them "walloping". How can you be walloping and noodling and still be snoozing?"

"Valid point, I guess" Negropedia offered. He hoped that wasn't all.

"Then this guy is trying to call me a "curmudgeonly hip hop purist". And y'know, maybe I'm getting sensitive as I approach the big 4-0 (and I'm not talking about the club) but just seems like some toss-off shit to say..."

Negropedia rubbed the melanin on his skin. He always did that when deep in thought.

"It is a little odd that he would call you out for that, Jody wrote a book about the song "A White Christmas" and what could be more curmudgeonly purist than that?"

Jay raised his eyebrows, "That's what I'm saying, Negropedia. That's why I need you to investigate!"

"He also wrote this piece hating on Akon a couple years ago, so you'd think he might agree with the spirit of your song. Unless ..."

Negropedia continued to rub his melanin. Slate was one of the bigger media bullies on the block, no one wanted to pick a beef with them unless they had their facts straight. Finally he sprang to life, "Alright, let's go talk to Slate and Jody and get to the bottom of this."

Jay said, "Word, let's take the baby blue Maybach."

TAN mumbled, "ok."

After driving around the neighborhood they saw Jody sitting outside a coffee shop, he was listening to Jewish minstrelsy songs on an old transistor radio.

Negropedia went up to Jody and asked him about the review.

"What can I say, that's what I think." Jody responded calmly. "Artists and critics disagree all the time. It's the nature of the business. Sorry."

"Yes, but you're a music purist who hates autotune. Shouldn't you love this song? There seems to be a disconnect. Even one of the Slate commenters wondered if something was amiss."

"Yeah, well, obviously I'm not trying to be racist. Look at all the black music I've written about in my archives. Shoot, I might know hip hop better than you, Negropedia."

Negropedia pulled out his iphone and started surfing hither and thither. Jay walked around composing new songs in his head.

As Negropedia surfed he thought it was a sticky case. He wanted to help one of his rap heroes, but he didn't want his blog detective agency to be thought of as Race-Police. Hov was getting old. And Jody did have a track record with hip hop music.

All of a sudden Negropedia stopped dead in his tracks. He looked up confidently and asked, "You wrote this piece on 50 Cent?"

"Yessir", Jody responded.

"And this one on Eminem for The Nation?"

"Yeah, that's me. You're really going back now aren't you." Jody was starting to fidget a little.

Negropedia continued, "And you wrote this Slate review of Jay's Kingdom Come, right"?

"Yes, yes, yes. Annnnd?"

"And, well, I think Jigga-man has a point here. You may have been better off sitting this one out, Jody"

Jody was dismissive, "No way, I'm the editor."

Yeah, but looking at all of these it's clear your grip on hip hop is not as firm as you would like to think. Maybe you should have let one of the young grasshoppers handle this one.

WHAT DID NEGROPEDIA SEE IN THE ARTICLES?

(click/turn to page 91 for the answer to The Case of the Undead Autotune!)

Illustrations by Brandon

A future where weed is legal, and we all walk around with mini-computers in our pockets.

I saw this Slate article breaking up the finer points of how the government can make money via the taxing of marijuana, and I thought, not a bad subject for a convo on Gawker. So let's get to it:

Sparking us up: Internet celebrity Jason Mulgrew who blogged his way into a tv development deal, then smoked his way back to blogging. Dude's a hero.

As a regular (some would say "heavy," others might say "awesome") marijuana user living in the only state in the Union run by a man who once got paid $10 million to ask a kindergartener "Who is your daddy and what does he do?," I, for one, am greatly in favor of the legalization and taxation of marijuana. Not because it might help my friend Amy, whose recent CA State unemployment check bounced. Nor because it might help my help Lauren, a dedicated teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District who almost certainly will be laid off in the next few weeks. And not even because I want to help out poor ol' way-in-over-his-head Arnold, who's learning that the California budget is an even more formidable opponent than the Predator (apparently the budget does not bleed; therefore, he can't kill it).

No, I am in favor of the legalization and taxation of marijuana because it would help me. Next time I'm sitting in my living room, stoned as fuck, awash in a sea of empty bags of Doritos and mesmerized by the same Tivo'ed episodes of "Wildboyz" that I've seen two dozen times before, I will not have that lingering feeling that maybe I'm not actualizing my full potential. Instead, I can stay seated where I am, content with the knowledge that with my legitimately purchased weed, I am doing my part to help save my state for a full-blown budget meltdown. A good American citizen, am I.

Now pass the Doritos – my favorite part is coming up. This shit is hilarious!

Dude, Doritos are so good they should totally be illegal! Word. Now we're gonna take two-and-pass it off to Jeff Weiss, regular contributor to the LA Times, LA Weekly and the editor of Passion of the Weiss.

Other than home prices in the smog-strangled Inland Empire east of Los Angeles, no other local product has plummeted in price more than marijuana. As both a lapsed Jew and a smoker, this is probably the greatest development in cultivation since the development of Novia Scotia salmon farms and Bialy bagel mass-manufacturing. The genesis for the supply and demand declivity is obvious: 1996's Proposition 215-which made it impossible to prosecute California physicians and patients who follow "guidelines in recommending or approving the medical use of marijuana."

On paper, this conjures visions of white lab coats and concerned medical professionals scrutinizing you for stress, neuroses, and anxiety-or Alvy Singer Syndrome, as I told the genial quack who wrote my "recommendation." In reality-as any cursory Google Search, perusal of the LA Weekly, or stroll down Venice Beach would tell you-marijuana is already essentially legal, with even the infirm and mentally feeble able to score.

In Los Angeles, the number of marijuana dispensaries currently approaches that of unemployed actors. They sell weed lollipops, weed cough spray, weed ice cream, weed brownies, and enough Hindu Kush to pacify Kashmir. Shit's like Roald Dahl meets Redman. The city is now feebly attempting to crack down on storefronts that illegally sprang up in the wake of a 2007 moratorium on new pot shops. Half my high school classmates have abandoned the train wreck that is California real estate for growing True Train Wreck.

In a time of fiscal crisis, the question of taxation is less a matter of legalization, but more common sense. Provided it hews closely to regular sales tax rates, states should be able to have their space cake and eat it too.

Ok. But we're all lowly blogger/writer types who are happily pelted with pennies as long as we can "live the dream". What about real people, with real money? Luckily, where I panhandle there's a hedgefund guy who loves to chat me up before telling me he doesn't have any change on him. He offers this from an investor perspective:

In California alcohol is taxed by the metric (gallon) and potency (proof).  The reason California will have trouble doing the same thing with weed is that it is easier to grow weed for personal consumption than it is to brew alcohol or grow tobacco.  It puts a whole new twist on Mrs. Obama's gardening self-sufficiency initiative.  Any hope of a material revenue stream would have to be based on licenses for pot bars, other public smoking areas and possibly personal licenses similar to a driver's license.  I'm not sure how much social appeal a bar full of stoned people has, but my guess is it's a niche audience once the novelty wears off.  Even if a personal license is issued, by law pricing could not be economically discriminatory and it would be difficult to enforce civilian compliance.  That means that the tax revenue is not likely to be a game changer for the California economy.  Does every little bit help?   On the plus side, it would require minimal new bureaucracy since similar licenses are already issued by the state and local governments.  Additionally it would take away a very profitable revenue stream from criminals.  On the negative side is the potential threat of unintended consequences.  If marijuana is legalized in California, invest in seeds, Miracle Gro and tin foil.

Miracle Gro: Buy Buy Buy!

Well we can't leave a subject like this without consulting Redman, can we? What say ye, Redman?

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Because the "competitive advantage" gained by driving a "hard bargain" with the UAW would've definitely helped with those 300,000 unsold cars that "depressed" Mickey so much, a few days before, and slashing benefits and wages would not have just prolonged the "drawn-out, flailing, tortuous demise" of "the Detroit dinosaurs."

Fucking over workers is always the magical key to economic success, people.

Did you know that women are less happy these days? And that research didn't even include the fallout from finger-wagging Slate-offshoot Double X. ME-OW!

One of the more salient criticisms to come out of the cat-fighting over who/how/what a feminist is these days came from Jez editrix Anna Holmes f-word laden diatribe: Basically many mainstream media type outlets take higher profile sites like Jezebel and use them as avatars for smaller-niche issues. Say, feminism. This despite those sites having an ostensibly broader agenda. This allows them to make arguments about, say, "the state of feminism", without needing to integrate the likely-overwhelming and argument-splintering fodder the best feminist-focused sites provide.

But, we have the power now! And I rounded up some feminist media peeps peepettes and asked them to weigh in on the new Lady-blog in town:

First up: Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon. She herself has been roasted over the feminist-media fire a few times, does that mean she's sympathetic?

I can understand why the new online magazine Double X wants to distinguish itself from other women's sites like Salon's Broadsheet and Jezebel, but I'm unsure that the way to do it is by publishing a bunch of "contrarian" articles that blame victims instead of rapists for rape and argue that now that women make ¾ of what men do, we're living in a dystopian, man-hating matriarchy. Poor Christina Hoff Summers! If women even got up to 1/3 of seats of federal power, she'd have to steal her male family members away to live in one of the few places on earth where a man can get justice. Perhaps Saudi Arabia?

The problem with the Slate brand is that they're all about trying to push the envelope and shock, but they seem to think the way to do this is by plugging into narratives that are, by any reasonable measure, still the staid conservative beliefs that actual rebels are trying to overturn. Victims of gendered violence have only themselves to blame? That's not a brave thing to say—-that was the internet's consensus on the Chris Brown/Rihanna situation, and sadly, that's what many rape victims face when they enter the justice system. Men need twice as many rights and privileges to feel equal? That's the argument of 95% of popular comedies now, and the prevailing notion in most American households where women still do most of the housework, even if they have full-time jobs.

Double X has a lot of fine writers that don't write this reactionary nonsense, but right now you have to comb through a lot of sexist crap to get the gems. But I can't say that it won't draw the readers—-the only thing conservatives like more than hearing their own baseless beliefs echoed back at them is to pretend that pushing the status quo is rebellious.

Got that, Slate? You are white, male, and boring. (Slate Rebuttal?: "Why white, male, and boring is no longer white, male, or boring!") Next up is Jill Filipovic of Feministe:

DoubleX premiered by attacking women who don't report being raped, urging Michelle Obama to wear pantyhose, and sounding the death knell of feminism — impressive, even for an offshoot of a website that thrives in large part by passing off half-baked traditionalism as intellectual contrarianism. To DoubleX's credit, it has a great editorial staff and some amazing writers to balance out the purely inflammatory ones; less appealing is Slate's arguable ghettoization of women's voices, it's ongoing offensives on women's rights, and the differences in how the two sites cover and categorize stories (both have News & Politics, Arts and Life, but Slate offers Business & Tech while DoubleX lists Kids & Parenting).

No one expected DoubleX to be an exclusively feminist blog and its editors are quick to assert that they're about more than just feminism, but the magazine does seem to be suffering from a crisis of consciousness. If feminism is dead, why the obsession with feminism? If women's lives are so fantastic that men are now the "second sex," why do we need a lady-mag offshoot of a more successful boys site?

Of course, DoubleX exists in part because of the feminist writers who cultivated strong and engaged online communities, and who worked to mainstream feminist thought into online political discourse. The ongoing DoubleX-related conflicts have only gained traction because feminist readers and writers have voiced their discontent, and larger media souces have (wrongly) picked up the story as a cat-fight or an intergenerational battle. The cynical part of me suspects that the inaugural flamethrowing was a ploy for traffic; I can't imagine why else anyone would publish a noted conservative hack like Christina Hoff Summers or recycle a 1998 Time magazine cover. But I'm holding out hope that DoubleX turns out to be a pleasant surprise, and that instead of continuing its embrace of anti-feminism and its finger-wagging at women who drink or forgo nylons, it'll address the seldom-covered issues that actually impact women's lives — even if that makes it one of those "feminist" blogs.

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Word.

We're Jezzin' it up this weekend with a whole bunch of X chromosomes in the house: We've got Amanda Marcotte of fem-political blog Pandagon; Jill Filipovic from Feministe; Jess McCabe imported from The F Word across the pond; and then, to throw in a smidgen of peen, I asked masculinist Matt Ufford of With Leather and Warming Glow to romp with the ladies. They're basically gonna get all up in the coochie of the recently launched Slate: Woman Double X blog until it's worn out and really truly knows the pain that comes with giving birth to a blog. Babies should see this level of backlash.

After all that hot mostly girl-on-girl action, we'll put up my interview with existential porn princess Sasha Grey who stars in the mucho-hyped and just-opened Stever Soderbergh meditation, The Girlfriend Experience. Then we'll send it back to Foster: Live in Vegas!

For the uninitiated, I go by the three letters you probably need a little more of in your life: TAN. Sometimes also, "The Assimilated Negro", and/or, "the black dude who's on Gawker sometimes. holla!"

Now that's out of the way, let's have Jay-Z set the tone with his classic ode to the ladies. Please place your laptop/mobile phone speakers in the loud and upright position so the whole park can hear:

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If you missed it while paying attention to the world at large: earlier this week typically-dignified New Yorkerers started pulling each other's hair and wrestling in the nude! Journalistically speaking, of course.

So what else could I do but round up some more mud and jello and media peeps and tell 'em all to 'rassle through the weekend: What of these monolithic media institutions and their "culture"? Would-be twitter-philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once quipped "the will to a system represents a lack of integrity", so perhaps Mr. Baum is right to give us a peek inside the machine? Shows character! No magazine or editor is bigger than the power of an "idea", darnit!

Or maybe you disagree. Let's see what my guests think:

Appropriately setting things off is Emily Gordon, the founder of blog-shrine and sanctuary for all things New Yorker, Emdashes.

The older an institution gets and the thicker its mythology, the more everyone involved—inside and outside—will grouse. Magazine workers, like residents of gentrified neighborhoods, are accustomed to hearing that people used to have more patience for eccentricity before it all went to hell. There could be an anthology of complaints by stung writers for any number of vaunted magazines, especially the ones that have the luxury of rejecting most of their supplicants. The anthology for The New Yorker would have a distinguished roster: from John O'Hara to Mavis Gallant to James Atlas. Still, many of these same writers were and are deeply grateful to be in the magazine at all.

Who wouldn't be? Even the prickliest of blog commenters reluctantly admit it's the magazine to beat. The New Yorker's populace and process have inspired plenty of wails and retorts over the past 80 years (and the same goes for Harper's, The Atlantic, The Nation, and on and on). The web just makes them searchable, and Twitter makes them into addictively bitter little snacks. I prefer Daniel Baum's long-form writing about New Orleans, Mexico, and his many and fruitful future subjects to his pulling back of the Remnickian curtain.

"It's not a magazine, it's a mission," Harold Ross once said, but any magazine is also a series of relationships and a social hive, for all its buzzing productivity. But even bees will eject a visitor from a foreign hive, or a worker who strays from his assigned task. It's not fair, but neither nature nor The New Yorker, as Baum knows, guarantees freedom from devastating turns of fate.

I think that means, "get over it, Mr. Baum." Next up Troy Patterson, who slaves as Slate's television critic, and recently argued for the genius of The Golden Girls. Surely he appreciates the spirit of rebellion:

In the matter, the general matter, of Former Writer v. Eustace Tilley, there is no improving on the fine analysis of the late John Leonard. His subject was a slew of books by former residents of the house of Mr. Shawn: "As if from Atlantis, Babylon, Brigadoon, the heart of darkness or a progressive preschool food fight, refugees from William Shawn's New Yorker flee the catastrophe of Newhouse directly into lurid memoir. Because they have injured feelings and scores to settle, they tend to bite one another on their kneecaps and pineal glands." Thus, turning Tilley's monocle back at him, Former Writer resembles, as often as not, The Penguin or Mr. Peanut. Or perhaps, in the case of Renata Adler, Count von Count.

Adler really does have a vampiric touch, which is what makes her Pauline Kael takedown so great and her "Gone: The Last Days of The New Yorker" so pointlessly cold-hearted. "As I write this, The New Yorker is dead," Adler wrote in 1999, in a book that fumes like dry ice. I can't be the only person to think that statement silly. But who are we to begrudge a writer her disgruntlement or his grudges? We—you all, them over there, whoever—are the voyeurs fanning the flames of an ashtray fire, just because the magazine is very fancy and because, in Tom Wolfe's phrase, it has—or used to have, or whatever— a code of omerta. But every magazine is unhappy in its own way, duh.

Hmmm, well about Eric Easter who serves as the VP of Digital & Entertainment at EbonyJet; another media institution:

There's a pretty simple reason why this is a problem. Magazines don't want anyone to hear about how they do contracts because almost no mag has a standard way of doing contracts. The value of one writer or the next is subjective and one guy's contract almost never looks like another guy's when it comes to money, or usage rights for that matter. Plus, any contract in any business is seen as a bond. Unless you're an NBA draftee or a government contractor, revealing the details of a contract, is seen as breaking an assumed bond.

Nevertheless, people in the media business pretty much suck at handling the media. Go figure.

Awesome. No advocates for Baum here, the baums. Heh. But maybe one of you proles can sympathize with his struggle? If you can, do so now, or forever hold you peace. A bit later Susan Orlean, one of the central protagonists in this Hundred Hours Twitter War will have a few things to say...

.... after this commercial break, natch.

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The Great Magazine Die-Off hits the gay porn world: Mavety Media Group is mass-folding Playguy, Torso, Honcho, Inches, and the 34 year-old Mandate. RIP to the "After Hours Gym Fuck" issues. A good eulogy is here.


"Want to Make a Killing on Wall Street? Buy Newspaper Stocks." Is the headline of a story that's wrong.

Semi-late pass, but Chevron went and hired a former CNN correspondent named Gene Randall to make a fake news video telling its side of the story, about why it poisoned the rain forest, to offset a 60 Minutes report on the same subject. We haven't watched it but we're sure it's persuasive. In other news, Gene Randall is now disgraced.


Slate is spinning off its womanly XX Factor blog into a new site. JEZECOMPETITION.

Turns out that the best radio station in the UK is the one at Brixton prison. It only broadcasts to 800 inmates but it's up for as many awards as the BBC. Awesome.

Which is impressive. Not that Silda has forgiven her husband, since we live in an age when it's all about personal growth and learning from experience and going through a journey to arrive at a reconciled space. No, we just think it's brave of her to admit the best date she can get is some guy who writes for Slate.

(Photo via New York Daily News)

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon producer Gavin Purcell hopelessly shopped for shoes.

CNET News reporter Caroline McCarthy stayed focused on the big, important story of the day.

Slate writer John Dickerson exhibited profound laziness.

Meet the Press host David Gregory fell victim to Twidiocy.

Techmeme editrix Megan McCarthy made a joke about Google's nondiscovery of Atlantis.

Anyone else's tweets we should keep an eye on? Send us more Twitter usernames, please.

There are many reasons to hate Orman, from her pitiable love of animal prints to her grating voice. The piece mentions her "toothy, cougar-like visage," which is funny! And it criticizes her loopy belief that money problems have to do with "emotional roadblocks" rather than, say, running out of money.

But dollar-cost averaging — steadily investing in the stock market over time as prices rise and fall — is generally regarded as better than the alternative, which is trying to time the market. The Big Money piece calls it "throwing good money after bad," which is just silly.

Indeed, here's Slate on the subject of dollar-cost averaging last fall:

Instead, by making regular, systematic investments throughout the year, you get the benefit of "dollar cost averaging," and don't have to worry about timing the market. Contrarian thinking today is that the market meltdown is a wonderful opportunity because stocks are ‘on sale'. If you are making regular 401(k) contributions, you are buying more shares than you could've bought previously.

Oh, sorry, that's not exactly Slate — that's BizBox by Slate, a Special Promotion by Open from American Express on Slate. An advertorial, in short.

So let's get this straight: Slate got paid by American Express to give its readers financial advice that it later badmouthed. Is that the publication's real beef with Suze Orman that it doesn't like the competition?

(Mickey Kaus is the noted liberal Democrat blogger who hates unions and immigrants.)

Then he seems to insinuate that a union drive at HuffPo's headquarters would involve intimidation tactics by SEIU, and the terrible, nightmarish end result he predicts: Sam Stein and the wonderful Jason Linkins get rich, on Arianna's dime. Which would be terrible! For everyone! Can you imagine? The HuffPo management not being allowed to fire anyone they like based on Arianna's mercurial whims! Content-producers getting paid to produce content!

Unless he's arguing simply that rich liberals are hypocrites, which, welcome to the working week, Mickey. But, hah, the fact that a rich person wouldn't want their company unionized and that such a unionization would basically be impossible to accomplish at the moment and the fact that the end result of such a unionization would be that good workers like Linkins would be better-compensated is basically the argument for the terrible scary Card Check legislation, so good for you, Mickey, you are doing the lord's work.

Joel is the the third rail of American pop culture. Though Rosenbaum doesn't seem aware of it, his isn't even Slate's first takedown of the musician. Jody Rosen floated many of the same arguments — Joel is almost unforgivably cheesy, derivative, egotistical and insecure, and has squandered his talents —with more nuance and context in 2005's "The squandered genius of the Piano Man."

Chuck Klosterman's 2002 profile in the Times Magazine explored precisely how uncool Joel was and quoted the Village Voice's Robert Christgau at length on the mediocrity of his music and "grandiosity" of his temperament.

A kiwi music critic was just this past summer slammed by Joel for interviewing him and then savaging his music.

Music writers will rant about their hatred for Joel at the drop of a hat, it seems. For Rosenbaum, the catalysts were a book about art and evolutionary psychology, along with the death of purportedly schlocky painter Andrew Wyeth.

His addition to the anti-Joel canon? The assertion that the piano-playing singer is loathsome because his work is shot through with "unearned contempt:"

Both a self-righteous contempt for others and the self-approbation and self-congratulation that is contempt's backside, so to speak. Most frequently a contempt for the supposed phoniness or inauthenticity of other people as opposed to the rock-solid authenticity of our B.J.

Oh God "unearned contempt." As though the emotions in music are ever "earned." Yes, let's analyze whether snotty young poseur (slash brilliant musician) Bob Dylan earned his hugely self-righteous anger at some fellow twentysomething East Village scenester in "Like a Rolling Stone," or whether Ani DiFranco had a right to say "Fuck You" to Goat Boy  in "Untouchable Face." Sounds fun.

Rosenbaum also writes that "She's Always a Woman" is misogynist. It's also a total copy of Dylan's "Just Like A Woman," Rosenbaum adds, but Dylan's song isn't misogynist because it came out first, and God knows no one was writing about how women are contradictory and confusing before he did.

Anyway the point here isn't that Joel is brilliant — we never actively choose to listen to him, but he's fun enough during a spin class — but that critics seem to take a perverse pride in constantly slamming the guy, and it doesn't seem to be getting any better, even though Google now theoretically allows the ranters to see just how much old ground they are covering. We suppose the race now will be to the most creative and outlandish criticisms, and the most definitive. Knock yourselves out guys. We'll take your word for it that your contempt is earned.