Quote of the Day (Fran Lebowitz, on Lunatics and the Internet)

“I'm sure the Internet is a wonderful thing in many ways. But one of the bad things it does is connect a lot of people that, before the Internet, would have just been by themselves being lunatics. If someone is just a lunatic in their room, or a lunatic in their town, society can absorb it pretty easily. But if all the lunatics connect up, it can be very dangerous.”—American humorist Fran Lebowitz quoted by Jim Beckerman, “Fran Lebowitz Always Speaks Her Mind as a Quintessential New Yorker, by Way of Morristown,” The Bergen Record, Feb. 19, 2023

Quote of the Day (Amanda Mull, on Opening a Package in the Digital Age)

“Opening up a brand-new purchase is the carefully orchestrated emotional crescendo of the consumer experience, and it has the power to give basically anyone a dopamine hit. These opportunities used to be more isolated—maybe you went to the grocery store once a week and the mall a couple of times a month. Now, if you have an internet connection and a credit card, something new to open can always be on the way. It feels good to dig through all those layers and unearth a little treat, no matter if it’s just hair dye or sweatpants….

“This phenomenon has only accelerated as Americans have shifted more of their consumption online, where they can’t touch or smell or otherwise size things up the way they would in a store. On the internet, packaged products are often judged by how attractive they look in photos, and there’s no shortage of alternatives on offer. As the sheer number of consumer choices has grown exponentially, the purposes that packaging serves have grown more intricate. At this peculiar moment in American consumer history, the experience of opening and handling a purchase can be more important than the thing itself.”— Amanda Mull, “Unwrappers' Delight,” The Atlantic, December 2021

TV Quote of the Day (‘Veep,’ As Selina Endures Meme Mortification)

Vice President Selina Meyer [played by Julia Louis-Dreyfuss]: “What are you laughing about, Jolly Green Jizzface?”

Jonah Ryan [played by Timothy Simons]: “I was…” [Stammering] “Sorry, ma'am.”

Selina: “God damn, why are you even here?”

Jonah: “Oh, I came here to tell you that you're a meme, ma'am.”

Selina: “I'm a meme ma'am? What are you talking about? Speak English, boy.”

Jonah: “A meme, an Internet phenomenon.”

Amy Brookheimer [played by Anna Chlumsky] [confirming this at her computer]: “Okay, yes. There are Photoshopped versions of this springing up all over Twitter.” [Images start flashing on her screen of Selina typing on her cellphone.] “You at the Declaration of Independence... Oh, my God: With Mary Magdalene at the crucifixion…the 2004 tsunami….”

Gary Walsh [played by Tony Hale]: “If there was a tsunami, you'd be genuinely looking at your phone 'cause you'd be checking the weather.”

Selina: “You know what? I don't need you to talk.” [Gary looks abashed. Then, Selina, back to the whole staff]: “How do we stop this ‘meme ma'am’ shit?”

Jonah: “No, it's just a meme, ma'am. Not a ‘meme ma'am.’” [Selina is stupefied.]  “And usually they flame out after about 48 hours, but sometimes they blow up and become a super meme like Downfall or Gangnam.”

Gary: “I love Gangnam.”

Selina [turning on him]: “What did I just say?”

Jonah: “If it gets on Reddit or Tumblr, that can happen.”

Selina: “Yeah, okay. You've got to get out of here, okay? Take all these meaningless syllables with you and just get out.”— Veep, Season 2, Episode 4, “The Vic Allen Dinner,” original air date May 5, 2013, teleplay by Simon Blackwell and Armando Iannucci, directed by Chris Addison

Selina’s acute embarrassment over becoming an object of Internet ridicule was just a small preview of what befell Chris Christie four years later after an ill-advised trip to the beach, or Andrew Cuomo a month ago as he walked outside the governor's mansion in Albany wrapped in a blanket. (At least Bernie Sanders was able to turn all those mitten memes to political gold by helping to raise $1.8 million for charity.)

The latest politician to suffer meme mortification: Matt Gaetz. (The best ones I’ve seen of the belligerent and beleaguered Florida congressman have likened him to a Sixties sitcom character—or, as my good friend Rob put it: “He’s like Eddie Munster, only older and more dangerous.”)

Quote of the Day (Michael Kinsley, on the Impact of Personal Internet Writing on Journalism)

“The personal and opinionated nature of Internet writing has rubbed off on the more traditional style of newswriting. The new apparent standards are a big jump away from ‘objectivity’ as practiced—or at least aspired to—by American newspapers for the past century. They are a move toward the model more common in Britain and elsewhere, where bias is allowed to show and readers are allowed, indeed required, to discount accordingly.” — Michael Kinsley, “Donald Trump and the Limits of Data Journalism,” Vanity Fair, September 2016

This trend has accelerated, as with so much else, in the aftermath of the election of 2016. I do not regard it as a plus for either the craft or perception of American journalism.

Joke of the Day (Pauly Casillas, on How Close He’s Come to a Diet)

“The closest I've been to a diet this year is erasing food searches from my browser history." — PaulyPeligroso (Pauly Casillas), tweet of Apr. 20, 2014

Joke of the Day (Aziz Ansari, on Internet Reading)

“I read the Internet so much I feel like I'm like on page a million of the worst book ever.” —Comedian-actor Aziz Ansari, “Aziz Ansari Needs Another Toothbrush,” Freakonomics Radio podcast July 22, 2015

Quote of the Day (Joe Queenan, on Illiterate Internet Crooks)

“Emails from illiterate scoundrels hoping to get my personal financial information are forever pouring into my inbox. Sorry, guys, but ‘credit kard’ is a dead giveaway that you’re not really from Bank of America.”— Joe Queenan, “Moving Targets: Today’s Criminal Class Is Just a Click Away,” The Wall Street Journal, Apr. 9-10, 2016

TV Quote of the Day (SNL’s ‘Arianna Huffington,’ on American Women in Europe)

“It doesn’t matter if you wear glasses or you forget to wash your hair, or you have Nutella stuck in your teeth, European men will think you’re sexy. You know how it smells, Seth, when you walk into a room where people just did sex? Yeah, that’s what it smells like when you get off the plane in Europe.”—“Arianna Huffington” (played by Nasim Pedrad) to Seth Meyers, on the “Weekend Update” segment, Saturday Night Live, Season 38, Episode 12, January 26, 2013, directed by Don Roy King

Today is the 65^th birthday of the real-life Arianna Huffington, whom former journalist Sidney Blumenthal once called “the most upwardly mobile Greek since Icarus.” Nasim Pedrad’s impression only seems over the top if you haven’t seen the real Ms. Huffington, in all her glory, on a TV show, such as her appearances on Bill Maher's talk show.

Before her current incarnation, as the entrepreneur who founded the liberal blog “The Huffington Post” 10 years ago, this chameleon had been a biographer of Maria Callas and Pablo Picasso, a GOP political wife, a cable TV guest, a failed gubernatorial candidate in her own right, an environmentalist, and a blogger.

It was as an outgrowth of that last role that Ms. Huffington came into her current position as an Internet mogul. That success is, like the lady herself, outrageous, paradoxical and confounding.

Give her credit—she has never stiffed others after assuring them that they would be paid in good time, as a certain hair-challenged GOP candidate did in his not-so-distant past as a businessman “surviving at the top” by keeping creditors barely at bay. No, she has been open about the tradeoff with countless bloggers: they would receive much-desired exposure, as long as they did it for free.

Something must be wrong with Google’s algorithm: When you search “Huffington Post” and “wage slavery,” you come up with all kinds of articles written for the "Post" itself about underpaid workers, but never about its own compensation practices concerning the thousands of scribes whose work has turbocharged the site that made Ms. Huffington very rich lady. (See this New York Magazine article from a few years ago that looked at the issue in dry-eyed but unblinking fashion.)

It’s hard to think that Ms. Huffington has been in her current role for a decade now. Considering her history, it’s surprising that she hasn’t morphed into another identity yet. Whatever she chooses to be, the only constant in her life will be that she’ll remain just as charming as she is crafty.