I think humor can be an effective way of getting the point across, but there are definitely times where I just write very earnestly. – Alex Pareene
‘Political junkies’ and liberals will watch MSNBC, and angry, old right-wingers will watch Fox. – Alex Pareene
The State of the Union is less written than it is designed, structured and organized around applause prompts and camera cues. – Alex Pareene
‘The Newsroom’ is phenomenally bad good TV. Sam Waterston and Jeff Daniels and Emily Mortimer are all terrific! So is the production, and the direction, and even the editing! – Alex Pareene
‘Flash mobs’ are reported on extensively because they’re novel and can be used to stoke fears of young people and the Internet. The media, of course, have absolutely no clue what they’re reporting on. – Alex Pareene
In case you’re unfamiliar with TED, it is a series of short lectures on a variety of subjects that stream on the Internet for free. – Alex Pareene
It’s been possible for years to use a PC to watch and record over-the-air television broadcasts, and unencrypted cable television tuners have been available almost as long. But for a long time, you could only watch copyright-protected channels with a cable company-leased box. – Alex Pareene
The thing with ‘The West Wing’ is that the fantasy was legitimately better than the reality – these were smarter, better people than their real-life counterparts, working together at a better White House than the one we had. – Alex Pareene
Medicare is expensive because we spend a lot on healthcare. We spend a lot on healthcare basically just because we want to, and doing so has been very good to a lot of people who work in healthcare fields. – Alex Pareene
I grew up in a politically aware household: very civically-minded, good Minnesota liberals. – Alex Pareene
It’s easy for the thought-leader and executive classes to embrace a ‘do what you love and love what you do’ philosophy when they are wealthy enough to work hard only voluntarily, and when their jobs grant them status. – Alex Pareene
There are two important things to remember about ‘entitlements’: They are hugely popular programs for a very good reason, and actual sensible ‘reform’ would mean improving them, not sacrificing them at the altar of ‘fiscal responsibility.’ – Alex Pareene
Sen. Rand Paul is a Different Kind of Republican. He will drag the party, kicking and screaming, toward a new kind of conservatism that appeals more to today’s youth, who embrace liberty and are skeptical of foreign intervention. – Alex Pareene
For the most part, congressional Republicans represent people who are whiter, older and richer than most Americans, and our creaky old political system gives those Americans disproportionate influence over public policy. – Alex Pareene
Only a small rich fringe hates Social Security for disincentivizing 80-year-olds from seeking full-time employment. – Alex Pareene
The late Christopher Hitchens had the professional contrarian’s fixation on attacking sacred cows, and rather soon after his cancer diagnosis, he became one himself. – Alex Pareene
Conservatives frequently complain of being frozen out of the culture industry, though, like all industries, the culture industry will produce or sell anything it expects to profit from. – Alex Pareene
FreedomWorks, which is funded primarily by very rich people, solicits donations from non-rich conservative people. More than 80,000 people donated money to FreedomWorks in 2012, and it seems likely that only a small minority of those people were hedge fund millionaires. – Alex Pareene
John Boehner was and is an unprincipled ward-heeler who simply couldn’t weather the transition of the Republican Party from a corporatist party with a sizable conservative base to a purely conservative party. – Alex Pareene
The song ‘Take This Job and Shove It’ spent 18 weeks on the country charts in 1977. 1970s country music fans had a clearer understanding of the ennui of wage-slavery than modern elites. – Alex Pareene
CNN’s problem goes to its very core and to the identity it’s sought ever since the rise of Fox News, on its right: CNN is the channel for people who don’t want to watch the other channels! That’s a stupid strategy. – Alex Pareene
For the cable news guest, nothing happens for a while until suddenly everything happens very quickly. After you receive your television face, you stand around for a while, ignored, until you’re sat down at a desk and asked to argue with strangers. – Alex Pareene
For most of the millions of people who watch TED videos at the office, it’s a middlebrow diversion and a source of factoids to use on your friends. Except TED thinks it’s changing the world, like if ‘This American Life’ suddenly mistook itself for Doctors Without Borders. – Alex Pareene
We’re getting the sort of ‘compromise’ American politics specializes in: the one where things are intentionally made worse for most people in the hopes that if things are made bad enough, the other side will cave. – Alex Pareene
I think Matt Yglesias is wrong to declare that the world of ‘This Town’ is dying, unless he thinks publicly financed elections, strict lobbying bans and Scandinavian-style wealth distribution are imminent. – Alex Pareene
Vaccines don’t cause autism. Vaccines, instead, prevent disease. Vaccines have wiped out a score of formerly deadly childhood diseases. Vaccine skepticism has helped to bring some of those diseases back from near extinction. – Alex Pareene
Ideally, in the future, you’ll just pay your cable company for the stream, which you’ll be able to watch and manipulate through whatever means on whatever devices you like. – Alex Pareene
