Free Republic

He can't help himself, or he doesn't want to. Notoriously hot-tempered Twitter-fight addict Alec Baldwin, who has sworn off the service, the city, and public life multiple times, got into it again over basically nothing today, quickly resorting to his default tactic: questioning his opponent's manliness in a way that could be construed as homophobic."You're on your knees in that photo," Baldwin tweeted at former Mitt Romney aide Garrett Jackson, after a derisive mention of working in fashion. "What's up with that, Garrett?" It all started with a tweet by Baldwin endorsing a documentary about the Keystone pipeline and a...

The honeymoon is over: Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was seen using utensils to consume a slice during lunch today at Goodfellas Pizza on Staten Island, horrifying onlookers. Worse, he flip-flopped, switching back and forth between fork and hand. You know who else used a fork to eat New York City pizza? Sarah Palin. And Donald Trump. Together. The man has some things to learn about this city yet. Update: Mayor De Blasio blames Italy, as if this isn't America.

All kinds of people and organizations, from media to scientists, have been pushing back against the idea, popular among the Rush Limbaugh set, that recent bitingly cold weather disproves global warming. Rather, they say, global warming actually causes this extreme weather, by making the polar air mass more unstable. That's now the official line of the White House, which is embarking on a bit of a media blitz to deny the notion that one cold snap means climate change is a lie. In a video released Wednesday, President Obama's science and technology advisor, Dr. John Holdren, made the two-minute case....

George Goodman, a journalist, business author and award-winning television host who under the pseudonym "Adam Smith" made economics accessible to millions of people, died Friday at age 83. Goodman's son, Mark Goodman, said his father died at the University of Miami Hospital after a long battle with the bone marrow disorder myelofibrosis. Starting in the 1950s, the elder Goodman had a long, diverse and accomplished career, whether as a founder of New York Magazine, as a best-selling business author or as the personable host of "Adam Smith's Money World."

The current furor over President Obama’s broken “keep your plan” promise confusingly melds together two very different claims. The first is a simple question of accuracy and honesty: Obama made a promise about his legislation, the promise has not come true, and a certain level of abuse is deserved. (Karl Rove huffs, “This is a serious breach of trust with the American people.” And you know that Karl Rove takes breaches of presidential trust with the utmost seriousness.) The justifiable scrutiny of Obama’s veracity has melded seamlessly into a second and very different claim: That Obama’s broken promise is not...

D.C. United, a Major League Soccer team, is going to be helping to publicize Obamacare's new exchange. Wait, you may be asking — how can this be happening? Earlier this summer, the Obama administration, attempting to copy a Massachusetts campaign to use the Red Sox to publicize Romneycare, floated a plan to enlist the National Football League to raise awareness of the new health care exchanges. In response, Republican leaders sent a threatening letter to the NFL warning it to stay out. And, for good measure, it sent the same letter to all the other major leagues: Major League Baseball,...

Two week ago, when John Heilemann wrote a cover story for New York Magazine outlining the perfect storm that could carry Sarah Palin to a Presidential election victory in 2012, I would have told you that Sarah was much more powerful as a king-maker and not a King. And then she went and bragged to Barbara Walters that she can beat Obama in 2012 this. Hah ha. Funny. In an Armageddon kind of way right? We can’t be that stupid, can we? Well… in the immortal slogan of an era long ago: yes we can! So I decided to re-read...

Author Kurt Andersen came out swinging this week in New York Magazine against democracy in action! He hates the Tea Party Movement in particular. Andersen, a novelist who at one time was New York Magazine’s chief editor, prefers when “a calm club of like-minded wise men (and women) in Washington” is calling the shots, not the people. Andersen agrees with Elitist-in-Chief President Barack Obama who believes the opponents of his far-left policies should just sit down and shut up. Andersen liked the good old days when: the elite media really did control the national political discourse…Until fifteen years ago, presidents...

A few weeks ago, on a Thursday around noon, Nancy Pelosi whirls through the second floor of the Capitol in a sea-foam pantsuit with lots of gold jangling on her arms. The Speaker of the House, the highest-ranking woman in government and third in line to the president, is about to walk the pink-painted halls of her private chambers to another series of closed-door meetings with the Democratic caucus about the health-care bill. Today, she’s set up a powwow of progressives in one of her conference rooms, and another for the Blue Dogs down the hall, but first she has...

Oh FINE. She’s not fat, she’s just pregnant. Whatever, we’re just jealous. The Palin family — most importantly, let's face it, Bristol Palin and her baby Daddy Levi Johnson— recently arrived at the airport in St. Paul, where they were greeted by John and Cindy "Crazy Hair" McCain, etc. Levi was casually dressed in a sweater and pants that, while baggy, did little to disguise the splendor of his muscular teenage jailbait frame. Alas, ladies and gents, this one is, obviously, taken. The McCain campaign earlier announced that Levi and Bristol were planning on getting married, and the eagle-eyed biddies...

The title of this column is one of my favorite lines from William Faulkner’s masterpiece, The Sound and the Fury. It is also a precise description of what is wrong with the American press, as two examples from the past week demonstrate. One concerns the blogosphere. The other concerns the nearly universal incompetence of the press in reporting on “the” Danish cartoons that are “causing” the Muslim riots. Faulkner’s character, Quentin Compson, on the day of his suicide at Harvard, reflects on his sister’s long-lost virginity with these words, “which, being believed, was, whether it was or not.” The first...

Terror InterruptedThe most compelling theories on why we haven't been hit again. Reasons They Haven't Hit Us Again  Answering the big question. The official position of our government is that it is not a matter of if there will be another attack on the United States again, but when. On this, George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden seem to be in agreement. This is especially troubling to New Yorkers, who feel, with some degree of certainty, that our city remains the most inviting target for terrorists. [snip] Anatomy of a Foiled Plot  Two would-be bombers of the Herald Square subway station...

NEW York magazine pulled a sneak attack on local Republicans even before the conventioneers hit town. Two weeks ago, the magazine's "issue editor" Maer Roshan asked Fox News Channel commentator Monica Crowley to assemble 18 GOP grandees for a photo spread in the convention special issue. He promised her a glamorous group photo splashed across two pages. When the issue hit the stands, the subjects discovered the group photo had been reduced to half a page, and across the two-page spread were extremely unattractive individual photos of the party stalwarts. "It's the most frightening collection of mug shots since the...

<p>NEW YORK -- An investment group led by financier Bruce Wasserstein confirmed that it signed a definitive deal to buy Primedia Inc.'s (PRM) New York magazine for $55 million cash and the assumption of certain liabilities.</p> <p>In a press release Tuesday, New York Media Holdings LLC said it expects the deal to close within 30 days. A representative for the group wasn't immediately available to provide the estimated amount of debt to be assumed.</p>

<p>AFTER the New York Observer's Stephen Metcalf slammed Michael Wolff's "Autumn of the Moguls" (HarperCollins) in the salmon-colored snark sheet, New York magazine columnist/wannabe owner Wolff fired off this e-mail to Observer editor Peter Kaplan: "[Bleep] you. Let's pretend we've never spoken; let's go out of our way not to talk again. If, per chance, someone other than me buys New York magazine and selects you as editor, I quit. Michael." Kaplan wrote back: "Dear Michael, Is this really you? A review's a review, and I'm not in the business of undermining my book editor by killing what he's assigned out of deference to the author, even when I like him. Anyhow, if it is you, I'm sorry. You've gotten, and will get, plenty of nice notices, which will be nice balm for this minor bruise in a good career. Yours, with respect, Peter." Kaplan wasn't expected at Wolff's book party last night at Michael's.</p>

I was only asking In the second of his dispatches from the million-dollar media centre at Qatar, Michael Wolff recounts how he angered the US right Monday April 14, 2003 The Guardian The sandstorms blowing through Iraq left a kind of mustard cloud over the desert flats of Qatar, creating a fair approximation of the end of the earth. Serendipitously, Midnight at the Oasis was playing on the car radio as I came up to the camp gate just before 5am - my 10th day in Doha. Then the cellphone was ringing with a nervous producer from CNN in New...

FOX News is not really about politics. CNN with its antiseptic [inside the] beltway point of view is arguably more about politics than FOX.It certainly isn't about arguing a consistent right wing case.Rather, it's about having a chip on your shoulder, it's about us versus them, insiders vs. outsiders, phonies vs. non-phonies, and in a clever piece of post modernism, established media against insurgent media.Perhaps most interesting, its about language and expressiveness-which politics have not been about in a long time.Fox has cultivated a fast talking garrulousness.Traditional news is rendered slowly at a deadly, fatherly pace. Fox News has gunned...