The Microeconomics of Poetry : Harriet Staff : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation.
Or, a sad testament to how little poetry pays and how it’s even worse than you think.
I set this column/review aside almost a month ago. Since then, Hitchens died. How does that change one’s reading of it? How has its meaning changed?
A wistful, critical account of Christopher Hitchens, including his bullying and his drinking.
IEs. ‘Independent expenditures.’
That’s the money that groups theoretically unaffiliated with a campaign spend (usually on paid media). The preferred form of those groups in the post ‘Citizens United’ (look it up and weep for our democracy) world are so-called ‘Super PACS’ which have virtually unlimited ability to raise and spend (often secret) money.
Romney has the support of a bunch and they hammered Gingrich hard once he took the lead. Romney was able to maintain rhetorical distance while pro-Romney groups attacked the Newt.
Newt’s failure to build a campaign infrastructure (which these days has to include supposedly unaffiliated Super PACs) means that he has struggled to respond.
And so, Newt, like all the rest, falls.
I kind of thought he wouldn’t fall, at least not until racking up some wins.
I underestimated the role that these outside groups would play in the new world of campaign finance. And now, I’m terrified of how things will work in the future, now the campaign finance limits are very nearly meaningless.
I’ve always liked the idea of broadsides. The original ‘newspapers,’ passed around seventeenth century coffeehouses, were broadsides. I’m even working a newsletter for work that mimics old fashioned broadsides.
Jeb Bush published a little op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today and it’s titled ‘Capitalism and the Right to Rise.’
But let’s be honest, it’s real title is ‘Don’t Worry That Romney Is a Tool, I’ll Be Running for President in 2016 and You’ll Get the Guy You Really Want.’
The subtitle is ‘Just Let Obama Win, But Don’t Make It Look Like You’re Letting Obama Win.’
To paraphrase Han Solo from Return of the Jedi (which was originally going to be titled Revenge of the Jedi – I know this because some of the first toys that came out between Empire and Jedi had the first draft of the title on them), ‘I don’t know… campaign casual.’
But seriously. This op-ed is hilarious. Jeb might as well be telling Republicans ‘this current field of GOP candidates is so stupid and I’m so awesome, so stay unengaged and uninspired this election season so that Obama will win and there won’t be an incumbent when I run in 2016.’
I have seen a lot of articles lately offering advice as to what to give the booklover in your family or social circle.
Let toss in my own two cents. A suggestion that seems to be strangely lacking in many of these lists.
You see, as a booklover myself, I am not very interested in retro-fashionable reading glasses, literary themed bookends, neckties with pictures of books on them, or things that look like books but – and this is so wacky! – aren’t actually books.
What I would like for Christmas is a book.
the coffee philosopher 