Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 1052

Congress Still Hasn't Cracked the IRS Case — but There May Be More Lists

For the third time in a week, officials from the IRS appeared before a Congressional committee Wednesday morning to apologize for/not offer many new details on how and why the agency improperly targeted conservative groups for scrutiny — though one witness indicated others may have received the same treatment. In general: The machine spanks on.

Chair of the House Oversight Committee Rep. Darrell Issa announced today's hearing — "The IRS: Targeting Americans for Their Political Beliefs" — last week. The highlight was intended to be the pillorying testimony of Lois Lerner, the director of the agency's Exempt Organizations Division which, in 2010, began using the terms "Tea Party" and "9/12" to identify applicants for tax-exempt status that warranted additional screening. It was the first time Lerner would appear before one of the hearings. And she is of particular interest. It was Lerner who awkwardly revealed the profiling at a conference two weeks ago. It was Lerner who had, according to Issa, provided the committee with "false or misleading information" during 2012.

Yesterday afternoon, it became clear that Lerner's testimony wouldn't reveal much. In a message to the committee, she stated that her attorneys were recommending she invoke the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination. And so she did, as reported by The Hill.

"I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations," Lerner, the head of an IRS division overseeing tax-exempt groups that targeted conservative groups, said before the House Oversight Committee.

Lerner then said she was following her counsel's advice not to testify. "I know that some people will assume that I have done something wrong," she said. "I have not."

Here's video of the opening statement, and the ensuing exchange:

As you can see, Issa tried to prompt Lerner to respond to subsequent questions; she refused. Given that there has been discussion of exploring criminal charges in the case, this was probably good legal advice. Nor is it likely that if Lerner had testified, the result would have done much to improve the IRS' terrible public relations track record on the issue.

Other testimony was provided by Treasury Inspector General J. Russell George (who also testified in front of the House Ways and Means and Senate hearings), Former Commissioner Douglas Shulman (who also testified in front of the Senate), and Deputy Secretary Neal S. Wolin, who hadn't appeared before.

Issa described the rationale for the hearing as being that "the IG report indicts IRS for a colossal management failure, but leaves many questions unanswered." That statement came out two days before the first hearing, six days before the Senate's. Given the breadth of the IG report, and that two of the people called to testify would already have testified, it's not clear what answers Issa and the Oversight Committee expected.

What the committee did expect, it got: The chance to speak sternly to IRS officials, as their colleagues have already done. It's political fruit hanging so low that it's fallen in their laps — obvious misbehavior by one of the least-popular government agencies. Members of Congress, right and left, each took a turn to lambaste the witnesses, though Wolin was mostly left alone.

Update, 12:20 p.m.: One of the only suggestive responses came late in the hearing, in a response from George to Issa. Issa asked if the IG had uncovered other BOLO lists — "be on the look out" lists like the one that listed "Tea Party" as a criteria for further review. George indicated that there were other lists, using a variety of criteria: local chapters of national organizations, groups tagged for fraud, etc. Issa followed up: Was there a BOLO list for groups like MoveOn? "I'm not in a position to give you a definitive response on that at this time." Issa, clearly surprised, tried to clarify: But were there other political BOLOs? George repeated his response. Since the IG's original investigation was narrowly focused, further study may still find new filtering mechanism, it appears — maybe even ones using other political criteria.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney asked George if he thought there was a violation of the law. He didn't. Maloney said she would push to see that it was. "Do you agree that [this] doesn't represent our democratic values?," Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio asked Shulman. Shulman grimaced. Issa pressed George to explain why he didn't reveal details of the investigation to Congress before the audit was done; George explained that this wasn't proper procedure. (Before the hearing ended, Issa released a statement to the press on the topic.)

It went on. "You're sure you're being square with us?," Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio asked Shulman. A beat, then Shulman replied: "Excuse me?" Rep. John Mica of Florida had props, as below, holding up a Constitution and a diagram showing (somewhat obliquely) how the IRS failed to respond to applications for tax-exempt status for 27 months. One of the better lines came from Delegate Eleanor Holmes-Norton of DC, who suggested that the employees were doing "their incompetent best."

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Rep. Jackie Speier of California got one nugget of news. She asked if the IG had identified the person responsible for initiating the use of "Tea Party" as a filtering mechanism. George said he hasn't. "We have had some difficulty in getting clarity from some of the people we've interviewed." If he were able to subpoena people for that information, he indicated, he might be able to isolate where it started.

Largely, the committee's fury slammed into a wall. The witnesses largely dismissed the questions or fought back against personal attacks, which, according to Politico, is the new style. That Shulman no longer works for the IRS probably made his generally hostile responses easier.

Everyone agrees that those responsible for the screening system should be held accountable. How these hearings fit into that, though, isn't clear. So far (the hearing is still going) the committee has gotten information out of all of the witnesses basically equivalent to what it got out of Lerner: nothing new. But the members of Congress got some airtime and some footage of them yelling at the IRS, so the day wasn't a total loss.

Photo: Lerner arrives at the committee to testify. (AP)

       

'American Idol' Is Too Old and Bad for Old and Bad Contestants to Save It

As American Idol struggles to reverse its inglorious downfall, the producers are bound to come up with some wacky plans. They've fired all the expensive judges from this year, and now the latest wacky plan is to hire former contestants to judge the competition. This is but a rumor right now, but it could become fact.

Vulture says that Jennifer Hudson and Kelly Clarkson have already been approached, which I can't imagine went well. "Hey, want to spend your entire winter and spring listening to a bunch of jerks sing? Oh, and you'll have to take a ton of trips this summer to places like Salt Lake City and Omaha?" I hope Jennifer Hudson's answer was, "Let me go get my Oscar so I can hit you with it." Clay Aiken and Adam Lambert are apparently also on the wish list, and I'd think they are more realistic candidates. Still, I'm not sure what this would really accomplish.

As I've said before, I really don't think the judges are the problem. The show's ratings are tanking because it's an old show and no one spectacular has won in eight years. I'm sure the judges have some small role in attracting viewers, but I can't imagine it's that significant. And really, old contestants? It's a nice, sentimental idea, but who's going to get excited for that? Only the show's diehard base and, well, they're already watching the show. I guess if they managed to get Kelly, Carrie Underwood, and Hudson, then people might find it worth tuning in to, but if it's Jordin Sparks and Kris Allen, I'm not sure that's gonna do it. Really, Fox should accept the natural death of a show that had a long and fabulous life and let Idol die gracefully, but that's not what TV networks typically do, is it?

       

Five Best Wednesday Columns

Dana Milbank at The Washington Post on how the government criminalizes reporting The Department of Justice's ongoing investigation of Fox News reporter James Rosen "is as flagrant an assault on civil liberties as anything done by George W. Bush's administration, and it uses technology to silence critics in a way Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of," argues Dana Milbank. "To treat a reporter as a criminal for doing his job — seeking out information the government doesn't want made public — deprives Americans of the First Amendment freedom on which all other constitutional rights are based. Guns? Privacy? Due process? Equal protection? If you can't speak out, you can't defend those rights, either." New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza called Milbank's column "excellent" while Salon's David Sirota defended his and others' comparisons between Nixon and Obama: "Just like Nixon’s decision to prioritize loyalty and vindictiveness against dissenters and whistleblowers resulted in infamous abuses of power, so too have Team Obama’s comparable obsessions now resulted in similarly destructive abuses."

Sharon Stapel at The Guardian on homophobia in America Sharon Stapel observes how political rhetoric and actual violence converge in the discussion of gay people in the United States. "In 2013, it is still lawful to discriminate against people because of their sexual orientation or gender identity," she notes. " ... This legal discrimination sends a message that it's acceptable to treat LGBTQ people as less than human." She adds that "vitriolic hate speech reinforces this culture; public figures accuse LGBTQ people of being degenerates, freaks and pedophiles, and call for LGBTQ people to be 'penned up,' have their children taken away, and some even call for murder. It's no surprise, then, that this culture spawns acts of violence." But Michael Kinsley at The New Republic cautions against quick condemnation of those who don't support gay marriage, like Fox News contributor and neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who withdrew from speaking at Johns Hopkins' graduation ceremony: "Denying Carson the right to speak was not just unprincipled. It was unnecessary. The proponents of marriage equality have not just won. They have routed the opposition. It's a moment to be gracious, not vindictive." Gawker's Tom Scocca disagrees. Kinsley, he argues, is "confused about the difference between the 'right to speak' and the right to speak without being criticized."

Jarrod Shanahan at The New Inquiry on why we believe in conspiracies What underlies the conspiracies that people believe in? Jarrod Shanahan searches for a common thread between stories of new world orders, shadowy billionaires, and secretive organizations. "The conspiracy fills the seeming vacuum at the center of society, the paralyzing abyss beneath our flimsy facades of order, with a reassuring rational kernel," he writes. "Beneath the purported chaos of a modern world seemingly driven inexorably toward its own destruction, a secret logic hums away, unseen, yet steering with the circumspection of a protective father. In this way the conspiracy theory is a secularized monotheism which replaces our dearly departed God with an equally shadowy intelligence serving the same omniscient function. Sometimes it even lives in outer space and knows what we’re thinking." At The New York Times, Maggie Koerth-Baker considers the scientific angle. Research, she notes, says that "conspiracy theories ... seem to be more compelling to those with low self-worth, especially with regard to their sense of agency in the world at large. Conspiracy theories appear to be a way of reacting to uncertainty and powerlessness."

Ma Jian at The New York Times on the brutality of China's one-child policy Ma Jian reports on how China's one-child policy, which limits the number of children certain couples may raise, damages both individuals and society. "Almost every one of the pregnant women I spoke to had suffered a mandatory abortion. ... The one-child policy has reduced women to numbers, objects, a means of production; it has denied them control of their bodies and the basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children," she writes, adding, "Ending this scourge is a moral imperative. The atrocities committed in the name of the one-child policy over the last three decades rank among the worst crimes against humanity of the last century. The stains it has left on China may never be erased." The policy also affects the personalities of Chinese children, writes Carrie Arnold at Scientific American: "China's so-called little emperors to be more pessimistic, neurotic and selfish than their peers who have siblings."

Emily Bazelon at Slate on who to blame for tax-dodging corporations Don't blame the Internal Revenue Service for failing to capture as much tax revenue as possible — Emily Bazelon shows how our tax agency is only as effective as we want it to be, especially when it comes to taxing global companies like Apple: "When it comes to fighting tax evasion, the IRS actually doesn’t fry the little fish while letting the big ones swim away. The IRS has increasingly tried to go after the big fish. When they get away, it’s because there are giant-sized legal loopholes for them to swim through, not because the agency has failed or has the wrong priorities." The Atlantic's Derek Thompson, meanwhile, says that outrage toward Apple is misplaced. "We are accusing them of behaving like corporation, since it is in the nature of corporations to find ways to save money," he writes. "Rather than a story about patriotic duty, or funding the social net, or corporate ethics, this is really a story about unrealistic expectations. We wish we could tax American companies on their earnings from all around the world. And we can't. We just can't." 

       

The HTC One Isn't Saving HTC from the Facebook Phone

Despite all the glowing reviews of the HTC One, including all the reviews for the Samsung Galaxy S IV that ended up championing all the great things about the HTC One instead, HTC is currently falling apart — at least in part because of "disastrous" sales that wiped the HTC First (aka the Facebook phone) on its way out of the market. Two top executives have quit amid the company's decline: HTC's chief product officer, Kouji Kodera, left last week, sources tell The Verge's Chris Ziegler, while HTC Asia CEO Lennard Hoornik has also left, reports CNET. And those are just the most recent departures as employees have hurled themselves off the sinking ship in the last few months. "They're in utter freefall," an anonymous source told Ziegler. 

That's because HTC hasn't had a hit since 2011. After a year of poor sales, the once-popular Taiwanese smartphone competitor needed something like the One to lift it out of a bad year. The phone should have been good enough to do that, given all the laudatory praise. But it didn't: Sales of the device, which debuted in mid-April, started off slow, sources tell Ziegler — and that was a worse outlook than earlier reports, which had the One "selling well," but not as well as its biggest competition, Samsung's Galaxy S IV. One source attributes the lag to "supply issues," which had to do with internal disorganization. But even if they get on track, HTC might be too late to fix this mess. The Samsung Galaxy S IV has already captured a lot of that high-end, non-iPhone smartphone market, getting Consumer Reports' top pick and selling 10 million devices in less than a month. (The Galaxy S III took 50 days to hit the same mark.) 

Unfortunately, the One's decent sales are the better part of the news for HTC. The Facebook phone's complete failure has only made things worse. One of Ziegler's sources called it an internal "disaster," which pretty much mimics its performance in the outside world. After a little over a month, the company discontinued the HTC First, despite the hype of a Facebook partnership, straight from Mark Zuckerberg himself. Things only look to get worse from here: HTC CEO Peter Chou told other senior executives he would step down if the One failed, sources told The Wall Street Journal's Lorraine Luk. At this point, it remains unclear if that bigger, better phone is a failure, per se, but it's definitely not the type of huge and huger success that HTC really needs. 

       

Justin Bieber Will Sue You for $5 Million if You Gossip About Him

Today in celebrity news: Justin Bieber has a pretty strict social contract, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Swift have a hang, Madonna's daughter goes on a date with Finn from Homeland, and Ellen buys her Oprah house. 

TMZ has found a document which Justin Bieber makes all his party guests sign that insists that everyone be cool and not talk about or take pictures of whatever goes on inside the Bieberdome. If you do run your dumb mouth, you have to pay $5 million. Well, ha, they'll sue you for $5 million, whether you have it or not. So basically Justin has created a very legal, serious pinky swear arrangement with his friends. TMZ is careful to point out that other celebrities make people sign things like these, but it's kind of funnier with Justin Bieber, isn't it? I mean what is this kid worried about? Or rather, what is this kid doing at his parties that is so shocking? Is he drinking wine with his besties and shrieking at Bravo shows? That would probably affect his image, yes. Is he chasing hookers around in a fur coat, swinging a mace and yelling "Here come da judge!"? I mean what could he possibly be doing that is so rude, so shocking, that he makes people sign a legal agreement saying they will say nothing? My guess? When guests arrive at Justin's house, he answers the door in his sweats, says "Oh, hey," and then they go sit in his living room and watch episodes of House Hunters while eating Pirate's Booty and not talking. That would probably be the most shocking Bieber party of them all. [TMZ]

So Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson have finally split, it seems. There's been lots of fighting and he didn't come to her birthday party and now it's done. Oh well. As people are wont to do during a breakup, Ms. Stewart sought the counsel of friends, one friend in particular. That person? Taylor Swift. Yup, Kiki was spotted being driven over to a friend's house and that friend turned out to be Taylor Swift. Stewart apparently stayed there all day, so they must have had a lot to talk about. Christ, can you imagine? What those two people talk about when they talk about relationships? My guess is that Kristen was asking Taylor how one deals with a very public breakup while Taylor asked her, "What does kissing feel like?" That probably takes a while to explain, hence the all-day hang. Taylor advised Kristen to acknowledge the issue but not divulge too much personal info, give them just enough without really giving them anything, while Kristen helped Taylor practice on her hand, Taylor saying "Gosh, you're supposed to use your tongue?" Good hang. [Us Weekly]

Madonna's teenage daughter Lourdes is dating Timothée Chalamet, aka Finn from Homeland, and it's all very cute and teen-age — they met at LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts — except that of course Lourdes is followed by bodyguards all the time. Yeah, Madonna is protective of her daughter, so while Tim and Lourdy ate together at Brother Jimmy's on Second Avenue (total kid choice) this weekend, a bodyguard sat a table away and stared the whole time. Pretty awkward for everyone involved, I'd imagine. But I guess it ensures that no one kidnaps Lourdes and that the two puppy lovers don't, y'know, go to Taylor Swift's third base, which is saying the word "heck" to each other. Chalamet graduated this year but Lourdes still has another year so who knows what the future holds for them. Hopefully they'll at least have a nice summer. Maybe they can sneak away from the bodyguard at some point and run over somebody. No, wait, I mean go all the way. But Taylor Swift's version of that, which is giggling and touching knees. Happy summer, kids! [Page Six]

Jesse James, Sandra Bullock's jerk ex-husband, apparently cut off part of his pinky finger by accident and posted a picture of it on Instagram, which is gross. It's unclear whether they can sew the finger back on, but James doesn't seem fussed about it either way. Meaning Sandra needs to make her magic stronger. The spell technically worked, but it didn't have the desired effect. Spell harder, Sandra! Get the Practical Magic crew back together if you must. [Us Weekly]

Oh boy. Ellen DeGeneres just dropped $26.5 million on a huge mansion in Montecito, the wealthy enclave of Santa Barbara that's also home to Oprah. So Ellen just bought her Oprah house. It's 10,000 square feet, it's on 13 acres, and it has grounds that make it look like some sort of Mediterranean palace. Ellen, duchess of Dubrovnik. Must be nice. This likely won't be DeGeneres's permanent home, as she also owns property in Beverly Hills and Hidden Valley (just outside Thousand Oaks). Maybe this is something of a weekend house? Who knows, with her life. Maybe she just bought it to buy it, to have an Oprah house and say she has an Oprah house. Now she needs to buy a place in Hawaii and then some elaborate townhouse in Chicago. Then she'll really be there. She's on her way to full Oprah. Anyway, go look at the pictures. It's a nice house (with bad furniture). [TMZ]

Apparently Sharon Stone made some terrible faux pas by showing up on the Cannes red carpet and entering the theater for a screening of Behind the Candelabra after its stars and director had walked the red carpet. That's something of a no-no at the festival, it seems. You know what's more of a no-no, in my eyes? Having silly rules about who gets to go on the red carpet first and then being offended when someone unwittingly breaks them. That seems way worse than Sharon Stone going to a movie the wrong way. Oh well. What can you do. Showbiz. [Page Six]

Here are some pictures of Harry Styles holding a small child, if that's the kind of thing you're into. Lord, look how dumb those tattoos are. [Daily Mail]

       

Amazon's Kindle Worlds: A Way to Sell Fan Fiction Without Legal Hassles

50 Shades of Grey, which started out as Twilight-inspired fan fiction, raised a few copyright questions that didn’t stop it from selling millions and millions of copies. But when a work is more directly based on another author’s creation — using the same characters and setting, for instance — the legal hurdles can be greater.

That doesn’t stop readers from writing their own spinoffs anyway: The largest fan fiction site, FanFiction.net, hosts millions of free stories. And in works like these — and the passionate readers who create them — Amazon sees the potential for profit.

On Wednesday, Amazon Publishing announced Kindle Worlds, “the first commercial publishing platform that will enable any writer to create fan fiction based on a range of original stories and characters and earn royalties for doing so.” The company is making this work by securing licenses from existing entertainment properties and by paying royalties to both the original author and the fan fiction author.

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So far, Kindle Worlds has licenses for three Alloy Entertainment properties: Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars and Vampire Diaries. Writers can publish “authorized stories” inspired by these properties and sell them in the Kindle Store; Amazon says it will add more licenses soon, in areas like “books, games, TV, movies and music.”

The fan fiction authors get a royalty of 35 percent for works of at least 10,000 words, and a royalty of 20 percent on works between 5,000 and 10,000 words. Amazon is also paying royalties to the original authors of the properties, but would not disclose that royalty rate.

Kindle Worlds is not a self-publishing platform like KDP. First of all, any works published through Kindle Worlds are published by Amazon Publishing — they’re not self-published, so the author doesn’t retain print or digital rights and doesn’t set the work’s price. The website notes that “Amazon Publishing will acquire all rights to your new stories, including global publication rights, for the term of copyright.” Second, Kindle Worlds won’t publish all of the works submitted to it; it will only accept some (though the company says it aims to accept as many as possible, as long as they adhere to content guidelines). Finally, “Amazon Publishing will set the price for Kindle Worlds stories. Most will be priced from $0.99 through $3.99.”

Kindle Worlds will officially launch in June with “over 50 commissioned works” from authors like Barbara Freethy, John Everson and Colleen Thompson. At that time, readers can also start submitting works to Kindle Worlds.

       

The War on Christmas Is Losing in Texas: Teachers Can Now Say 'Merry Christmas'

For those of you worried that government can't be proactive, good news out of Texas. On Monday, the state's legislature sent Governor Perry its "Merry Christmas" bill, which would authorize schools to refer to the holiday in non-generic terms. Perry is expected to sign it.

The bill was introduced shortly before Christmas last year by Rep. Dwayne Bohac. Bohac describes his motivation for the legislation at a site created to advocate for the measure, MerryChristmasBill.com.

This bill originated when I picked up my first grade son from school last year and asked him how his day went. He told me that his class had decorated their holiday tree with holiday ornaments. When I asked what a holiday tree was, he told me it was the same as a Christmas tree.

It's isn't just Bohan. The site also features a number of stories apparently from regular citizens, all of which center around the exclusion of Christmas (but no other holidays) from school celebrations. In Bohan's case, he asked school officials why they didn't use the word. The officials told him that they were "fearful of litigation."

House Bill 308 was meant to assuage those anecdotal concerns. The legislation is brief. There are four elements. One, schools may educate students about the history of traditional winter celebrations. Two, students and teachers can offer "traditional greetings," like "Merry Christmas," "Happy Hanukkah," and the dreaded "Happy holidays." Three, schools can put up displays if they either include multiple religions or a religion and some sort of "secular scene or symbol." Four, the display can't include a message "that encourages adherence" to a religious belief. According to the Fox News report on the bill, that third point includes nativity scenes.

During debate on the measure, the Texas House held a hearing in its Public Education Committee. The case for the bill was presented by a group called Texas Values, which advocates for issues like religious freedom and against domestic partnerships. (Today the group is holding a rally to protest the Boy Scouts proposal to allow openly gay boys to participate.)

The Huffington Post reports that the bill will soon become law.

Asked for comment on whether the governor would sign the bill, Perry spokesman Josh Havens told The Huffington Post, "This bill is about the freedom of religion, not freedom from religion, and Gov. Perry supports it."

A recent Gallup survey indicated that at least three-quarters of Texans are some denomination of Christian. Despite the timidity of school officials, that figure has largely remained consistent over the past several years.

       

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Money: A First Edition Sells for $227,421

Everyone loves Harry Potter, but some people love Harry Potter more. A first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the first book in J.K. Rowling's phenomenally selling 7-part series, has been acquired for 150,000 pounds (or $227,421) at a London charity auction held by Sotheby's and organized with the English PEN writers' association. 

This is not just any Harry Potter, it's a special one, because only 500 first editions of the book, published in 1997, exist (they are dear!). And this particular tome is more special yet, because it includes handwritten notes and original illustrations from Rowling, as well as "a 43-page 'second thoughts' commentary by the author," reports Reuters' Piya Sinha-Roy. "Rowling’s personal annotations range from notes on the series as a whole and the film adaptations, to commentary on the unpopularity of the first chapter and an anomaly in chapter four about snapped wands. Her illustrations include a sleeping baby Harry on the Dursleys’ door step, an Albus Dumbledore Chocolate Frog Card, and Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback dragon," writes Eileen Kinsella at ArtInfo. Oh, and there's "a note on how she came to create the game of Quidditch."

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In accordance with all this extra good stuff, $227,421 is the highest price to date for one of Rowling's print books. The new owner of the book has not been identified, but he or she outbid the rest — there was a bidding war, of course — via telephone. 

The auction included 50 first editions with their own author annotations and commentary, among them, Roald Dahl's Matilda, featuring new illustrations by Quentin Blake, for $45,470; Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day for $27,278; and Julian Barnes' Metroland for $21,216, as well as books by Margaret Atwood, Helen Fielding, Nadine Gordimer, Seamus Heaney, Lionel Shriver, Tom Stoppard, Jeanette Winterson, and others. The entire auction brought in 439,000 pounds ($665,410) to benefit English PEN, a global literary network that promotes freedom of expression.

AP Photo.

       

Who Should Be the New Voice of 'This Is NPR'?

Your favorite public broadcasting network, NPR, is looking for someone to record their "this... is NPR" voiceover show closers, "support for this program comes from..." ramblings, and more. You could be that person! Although, come to think of it, the following people have voices made of gold and silver and other precious things, so they might deserve the job. Because, really, you don't really want the job anyway. Hearing yourself after Ira Glass or Terry Gross might send you into a state of anxious paralysis. So it's best to leave it up to these pros who have become renowned for their vocal beauty. 

Morgan Freeman

Morgan Freeman is literally the voice of God. He's been recruited by the president, and more people are familiar with his larynx than Obama's, right? We have no data to prove that, but we're certain PPP could do one of their ridiculous polls, and that they'd find just that. Freeman, clearly, is the most obvious choice for any voiceover — like, ever — but his price tag may be too high. There's not a lot of money in public radio. But he has said some things on NPR's Tell Me More that made some waves, so, hey, maybe he'll do it for free?

David Attenborough

Another too obvious choice. You're probably already familiar with Attenborough from his work on the BBC's Planet Earth. He's clear and concise, but the British accent doesn't exactly scream American public radio. 

Niel Degrasse Tyson

This smooth-speaking scientist will be the favorite among the geek crowd. He's a regular guest on Colbert and Stewart, if you don't know him from his usual work on PBS and the History Channel. He has a soft, clear, velvety voice that would work well on the radio. 

Liev Schreiber

He may not be an immediately obvious choice, but he's still got a proven body of work behind him. Like Tyson, Schreiber has done work for PBS's Nova, but you would probably be more familiar with his HBO work. Schrieber's provided the voiceover narration for the 24/7 series and a number of other heralded HBO sports docs. He sounds completely differently when he's doing narration than in the movies.

Whoopi Goldberg

Perhaps you only know her as the star of Ed or for her work on The View, but Whoopi is an accomplished narrator, too. She has a very distinct voice, and that helps with these things. It's a little gravelly, sure, but those years of stand-up experience have honed her into an effective speaker. 

Benedict Cumberbatch

He may be too booked up with his busy slate of movies and Star Trek promotional work and, eventually, another season of Sherlock. But any man well spoken enough to play the famous British detective would probably do fantastic on the radio. Check out how quick and clear his delivery is here. He doesn't stutter or stumble once: 

Fran Dresher

Who wouldn't listen to "... and this is NPR, hanhanhanhanhanhan"?

       

Teens Are Turning Away from Facebook Because Tumblr Is Real, and Parent-Free

Teenagers really are over Facebook. In February the social network warned investors that "our younger users ... are aware of and actively engaging with other products and services similar to, or as a substitute for, Facebook." And in April the investment bank Piper Jaffray reported that products and services like Tumblr and Twitter were further eroding Facebook's dominance among the Justin Bieber set. But why? In a deep report published on Tuesday, Pew Research explains that teenagers departing the social network's blue confines are looking for something more... real. More authentic. Which, ironically, was the initial draw of Facebook, one of the first social networks