Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2594

Cool Ad Watch

by Chris Bodenner

This one is only partly an ad, and most people will find it super creepy, but fellow fans of Dina Martina will find it pretty damn cool:

Hosting - Web Design and Development - Free - Dina Martina - Chris Bodenner

The Unique Quality Of "Lifelong Heterosexual Monogamy" Ctd

by Patrick Appel

I missed the following reader e-mail until just now. A reader writes:

I'm not sure how this illuminates the discussion, but here goes.

I am female. My best friend in the whole world is male. We are housemates, and have been for many years. We are both straight, but not interested in each other, and our relationship is platonic but deep (think Will and Grace if Will were straight). When I became unexpectedly pregnant with a man I was seeing at the time, we gave the situation...

School And Strip Clubs, Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

I returned to Indiana University in Bloomington to take an oral exam to fulfill my single remaining course, "Historical Interpretation of Baroque Music". The exam went swimmingly, and I had a day to kill before driving back up to Indianapolis to catch my flight home. I'd already eaten at my favorite restaurants, visited my local friends, and decided to catch a strip show at a small club on the outskirts of town.

There must have been a school break, because I...

Protesting Too Much, Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

From the horse's mouth:

Meanwhile, Beck and his followers go to war over crowd estimates, claiming the number was six times the independent figure of 87,000.

Web Design and Development - Hosting - Free - Sports Related - Business

Justice Scalia and How Elites Are Hired

by Conor Friedersdorf

Apropos recent posts on the subject, here's a 2009 account of the Supreme Court Justice explaining why he isn't going to hire any clerks from second tier law schools:

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was his usual blunt self last month when he responded to a law student's question on how to become "outrageously successful" despite a lack of connections and elite degrees. At first, Scalia gave the American University law student some general advice, the New York...

Mental Health Break

by Chris Bodenner

This Disney dub of the classic drill sergeant scene from Full Metal Jacket is almost too cute for a NSFW label:

Full Metal Jacket - Arts - Business - Arts and Entertainment - Web Design and Development

The End of the Preppy Era?

by Conor Friedersdorf

In a review of a new book about preppies, Mark Oppenheimer says the subculture will only survive if embraced by outsiders:

Perhaps young black and Jewish academics will take cues from their unrepentantly preppy elders, like Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Willard Spiegelman. Surely gay men will continue to do the tradition proud, and I suspect they are responsible for the current vogue for "heritage" clothing, which leads prep away from Anglophilia and into a rugged American...

The Evolutionary Case For Monogamy: Heartbreak, Ctd

by Patrick Appel

McArdle agrees with Bering:

If we're evolved to be polyamorous, why do we also seem to be evolved to be extraordinarily possessive?  This seems like an evolutionary maladaptation.  And I find it hard to believe that this is just a cultural quirk, given that it does appear to be cross cultural, and it doesn't fade much over history the way that, say, attitudes about female dress have.

Lifetime monogamy may not be the evolved human template.  But I'm pretty sure that carefree...

"Love the Way You Lie"

by Conor Friedersdorf

The video above is quite popular, and generating some controversy in the blogosphere. Here's Joe Carter denouncing it at First Things, The Last Psychiatrist defending its message, and Alyssa Rosenberg panning it as art elsewhere at The Atlantic.

I've long been vexed by Eminem, a tremendous talent whose narrow range, stubborn repetition of theme and sub par album tracks caused me to steadily lose interest in his career. Imagine if Dave Eggers had written A Heartbreaking...

Keeping His Promise

by Patrick Appel

Marc Lynch thinks it "somewhat surprising how little attention has been paid to the steady drawdown of U.S. forces from Iraq":

Obama deserves the credit he is likely to claim for drawing down troopson schedule and moving towards a vastly reduced U.S. role in Iraq.  No,the war inside Iraq isn't over yet and American forces aren't all goneyet.  And I'm perfectly willing to give credit to the Bushadministration for the SOFA it eventually negotiated (which I'vepreviously called