Today Phantom of the Opera makes musical theater history with its 10,000th performance. That's 10,000 soprano near-murders, 10,000 disfigured face reveals, and 10,000 performances of a love song with seriously nonconsensual undertones.
Remember when M.I.A. flipped America off, and we pretended to give a damn? (Well, some of us didn't pretend.) Apparently this is a thing we're still talking about, because on Friday Madonna spoke to acclaimed journalist Ryan Seacrest about The Middle Finger Seen 'Round the World. MTV News has the full report.
Cranky Old Man Who Really Has No Original or Insightful Ideas About The Internet or Media in General But Thinks He Does Because He Lived in a High-Powered Bubble For Many Years as NYT Editor and Now Nobody Will Tell Him That His Columns Are All Tedious and Pedestrian Bill Keller has written a snide response to all the snide tweets about the snide response to his last snide column about the internet that was itself not particularly new or interesting.
In 2007 Rolling Stone published a devastating investigative piece on pig factory farms in the United States that made Upton Sinclair's The Jungle look like a pamphlet for Omaha Steaks. How devastating? Since reading it I am still barely able to consume pork products unless they're on some Williamsburg/Portlandia tip where the waiter is like, "This bacon comes from a pig named Steve that was raised on a farm one hour outside of Albany and fed on a diet of organic Georgia green grass." Unless I'm drunk or hungover, in which case I'll eat the dirtiest of dirty bodega bacon.
[This article has been updated to reflect new results.]
We are all, by now, familiar with the mantra, "elections have consequences." This is especially true tonight. It also kind of doesn't apply whatsoever.
Today, it is tricky for governments and corporations to constantly spy on people using drones. By 2015, it wil be much much easier, thanks to a Monday Congressional vote authorizing drones above 400 feet, in the same airspace as commercial airliners.
We take a backseat to no one when it comes to spewing forth venom at the public relations industry. But we feel compelled to stand up and make this point: PR people doing research on what reporters have written and making a file on that topic is not a scandal. It is the same thing that reporters do, okay?
America currently has three major 24-hour cable news networks. The repugnant right wing propaganda one that's actually successful, and the one that's trying to be left wing propaganda that's less successful, and the one that used to be the "real news" one and is now pretty much down for whatever in order to avoid being the least successful.
A British watchdog group called Big Brother Watch is upset over some new closed circuit security cameras in London that have the ability to speak.
Just hours ago, the Romanian government collapsed as the Prime Minister and his cabinet resigned from their respective positions. There are likely very few of us who know enough about Romanian politics to have any sort of educated perspective about this, but it sounds really important. It would probably be irresponsible to not mention it.
Fearful that Santorum might do better than expected in some upcoming primaries, the Romney campaign is sending out surrogates to attack the former senator's conservative credentials. The thing is, though... they're attacking him for trying to fund things that sound really nice and pleasant. And fluffy. The Huffington Post reports that Romney supporter Tim Pawlenty participated in a conference call today.
Earlier today I posted about Romney's win in the Nevada caucus yesterday, with nary a mention of completely legitimate presidential candidate Rick Santorum. But Santorum, despite coming in fourth behind Romney, Gingrich, and Ron Paul, has some strong words for us: "This race is a long, long way from being over."
