ComPost

He wishes he were a New York Mayor Weiner

Alexandra Petri — Wed, 22 May 2013 17:56:30 GMT

As with almost any joke with Weiner as its punchline, we saw this coming from a mile away. Yup, Anthony Weiner’s running for mayor. The “disgraced ex-congressman” (this seems to be his peculiar epithet) has thrown down the glove. No, … Continue reading →

Some Weiner headlines to avoid

Alexandra Petri — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:35:19 GMT

Well, he’s back. He’s on Twitter, with his 64-point Plan To Keep New York The Capital of the Middle Class. It’s really happening. And here are just a few of the dozens of headlines I beg you not to use. … Continue reading →

Star Trek Into Darkness and The Buddy Spectrum

Alexandra Petri — Wed, 22 May 2013 12:14:15 GMT

Watching “Star Trek into Darkness,” with the interactions between Zachary Quinto’s logical, calm, surpassingly knowledgeable Spock and Chris Pine’s intelligent, excitable, courageous, impulsive Kirk, on the heels of a healthy bout of P. G. Wodehouse’s “Jeeves and Wooster,” I was … Continue reading →

What the Senate should ask Apple CEO Tim Cook instead

Alexandra Petri — Tue, 21 May 2013 21:19:29 GMT

Senator John McCain started it. During the Senate hearings on Apple’s elaborate tax-avoiding techniques — what The Post’s article described as a “‘complex web’ of offshore entities — with no employees or physical offices — that allowed it to pay … Continue reading →

With AP and Rosen news, a great week for President Nixon

Alexandra Petri — Tue, 21 May 2013 18:20:41 GMT

Between the news about the AP hacking and the leak probe into Fox News reporter James Rosen, this has been a distressing week for fans of investigative journalism. Fox News issued a statement that, “We are outraged to learn today … Continue reading →

Tumblr bought by Yahoo! I’m not excited, that’s just how you spell Yahoo!

Alexandra Petri — Mon, 20 May 2013 19:49:37 GMT

Yahoo! has purchased Tumblr for $1.1 billion. The only appropriate way to respond to this news is with a series of GIFs. It was as though a million tween voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. Tumblr is … Continue reading →

Next to normal — daily madness and the DSM-5

Alexandra Petri — Fri, 17 May 2013 20:08:27 GMT

Countless daily insanities comprise what we call “normal.” Well before you get to the edge of what is generally regarded as sanity, we’ve got a few weird, widespread behaviors that belong in a book of some kind. We just don’t … Continue reading →

The IRS’s unreasonable 501(c)4 requests

Alexandra Petri — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:14:03 GMT

The IRS is now being investigated by the Justice Department and heads are rolling, after word leaked that the tax organization was making a point of applying added scrutiny to tea party and Constitution-related groups applying for tax-free 501(c)4 status. … Continue reading →

National Review writer actually throws rude theater patron’s cell phone — do we applaud?

Alexandra Petri — Thu, 16 May 2013 20:17:37 GMT

As someone who has been in theaters where people have not turned off their cell phones, I have many long, elaborate fantasies about what I would like to do to those people. In some of these fantasies, I merely clear … Continue reading →

Amy’s Baking Company vs. The Entire Internet

Alexandra Petri — Thu, 16 May 2013 17:28:07 GMT

If you were, for some bizarre reason, to gather children at my knee and ask me to impart to them the hard-earned wisdom of my years, I know exactly what I would say: “If you do something stupid on the … Continue reading →

Aspersions? Asparagus? One moment from the Holder testimony

Alexandra Petri — Wed, 15 May 2013 22:00:33 GMT

Amid the tense atmosphere of Attorney General Eric Holder’s testimony on Capitol Hill came a bizarre exchange in which representative Louie Gohmert (R-Tex) accused Holder of attacking his integrity and “casting aspersions on my asparagus.” In isolation, it’s almost Dada-esque. … Continue reading →

Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Great Gatsby’ and the new American Dream

Alexandra Petri — Wed, 15 May 2013 21:33:11 GMT

I noticed something funny when watching the much-ballyhooed “Great Gatsby.” The moral had changed. I will preface this with a spoiler alert, since as I boarded the escalator down from the theater someone accosted me and said, “Did you just … Continue reading →

Ten solid reasons to watch Eurovision 2013

Alexandra Petri — Wed, 15 May 2013 12:32:07 GMT

Ah, Eurovision. It’s like American Idol staged in the Seventh Circle of Dante’s Inferno, if that’s the one that features people singing in heavily accented English in front of what appear to be Windows Media Player Music Visualizations. It’s the … Continue reading →

The unfettered press — what’s in a word?

Alexandra Petri — Tue, 14 May 2013 19:23:13 GMT

Free and unfettered are not the same. At Tuesday afternoon’s news conference, White House spokesman Jay Carney kept going on about how President Obama believed in an “unfettered” press. “The president believes that the press as a rule needs to … Continue reading →

The Obama administration’s terrible horrible no good very bad week

Alexandra Petri — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:20:41 GMT

This has been one of the worst weeks for the Obama administration in recent memory, and it’s only Tuesday. There were the Benghazi hearings, which actually crept onto Mainstream News Outlets, even if they haven’t generated much more than indignation, … Continue reading →

Justice Department secretly monitors AP phone calls out of respect for press freedom

Alexandra Petri — Tue, 14 May 2013 12:43:31 GMT

“We take seriously our obligations to follow all applicable laws, federal regulations, and Department of Justice policies when issuing subpoenas for phone records of media organizations. Those regulations require us to make every reasonable effort to obtain information through alternative … Continue reading →

How the AP can keep the Justice Department off its trail

Alexandra Petri — Mon, 13 May 2013 23:30:30 GMT

So the Justice Department secretly obtained two months of the Associated Press’s call records — or as the AP reported, “outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, … Continue reading →

Hipsters are mainstream, poll finds

Alexandra Petri — Mon, 13 May 2013 22:07:34 GMT

The most alarming thing about the recently released poll from Public Policy Polling on hipsters is that 50 percent of voters 18-29 identifies as hipsters. I am pretty sure this is inaccurate, since actual hipsters would have been unable to … Continue reading →

Mother’s Day gift ideas for literature’s best and worst moms

Alexandra Petri — Fri, 10 May 2013 18:35:05 GMT

Mother’s Day is upon us again. What do you give the woman who brought you into this world? If you are anything like me, you forget the day entirely and belatedly e-mail her a Groupon for threading services she does … Continue reading →

Fix the girly book covers!

Alexandra Petri — Thu, 09 May 2013 20:07:45 GMT

Maureen Johnson is absolutely right. This needs to stop. The author suggested on Twitter: “PROJECT! Redesign book covers by Literary Dudes. Imagine they have been reclassified as by and for women. #challenge.” The responses poured in – HuffingtonPost has a slideshow … Continue reading →

The real reasons why voters gave Mark Sanford a shot

Alexandra Petri — Thu, 09 May 2013 17:16:11 GMT

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t,” Mark Twain wrote. Mark Sanford probably appreciates that. The only thing I’ve enjoyed more than the Sanford campaign is the explanations offered for … Continue reading →

Jodi Arias tossed into volcano; the Old Ones are appeased

Alexandra Petri — Thu, 09 May 2013 15:59:31 GMT

An alien, visiting from another planet, would be forgiven for assuming that, if we did not showcase the sensational trial of a brunette every two years at minimum, the Earth Would Be Engulfed In Flames and Nancy Grace would resume … Continue reading →

Chris Christie’s lap band weight loss surgery: So he can run with kids, or so he can run in 2016?

Alexandra Petri — Tue, 07 May 2013 14:00:27 GMT

The New York Post reported Tuesday that famously corpulent New Jersey governor Chris Christie had undergone lap-band stomach surgery as part of a weight loss regimen. Christie said that he had done it because he wanted to be healthier in … Continue reading →

In defense of The Great Gatsby

Alexandra Petri — Tue, 07 May 2013 12:55:54 GMT

The attack has already begun. “Why I despise The Great Gatsby” is an essay by Kathryn Schulz at New York Magazine in which Schulz notes that she’s read it five times without deriving any pleasure from it, it’s too polished, it … Continue reading →

Talk to cavemen! More fun sentences with ultraconserved 15,000-year-old words

Alexandra Petri — Tue, 07 May 2013 12:13:50 GMT

According to a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, there is a small, select group of words that have remained largely unchanged since our hunter-gatherer days. The Post’s article on the subject suggested … Continue reading →