In “The Politics of Personality Destruction,” Jennifer Senior talks about the front stage and backstage persona of politicians, and how YouTube plays an important role in exposing the latter:

When television came along, politics may have become a scripted teleplay. But with YouTube, it’s a reality show, where the audience gets to see not only the final, blow-dried product, but the blow-drying itself (John Edwards, predictably, is the poster boy for this effect), as it happens in real time. This is a very profound change. YouTube has the power to expose the lies that make political theater possible. It has the power to show how backstage versions of our politicians can, at times, not just be unlovely but directly contradict the image of the person we see on television. If this new world of amateur surveillance makes candidates paranoid and self-censoring, their speech really could be like something out of 1984—measured, state-approved, one size fits all.

In order to become a president, a candidate must pass the stage of phoniness. While Bill Clinton was a master at it, Michael Dukakis failed badly:

During the second presidential debate, CNN’s Bernard Shaw famously asked Dukakis whether the death penalty would be appropriate if a stranger raped and killed his wife. He gave a characteristically unemotional answer: No, I don’t, Bernard. And I think you know that I’ve opposed the death penalty during all of my life … People say it cost him the election. Kitty [his wife] herself was stunned. (“Afterwards, I turned to him in the car and said, ‘What were you thinking?’ ” she says.)

The ABC of Sex Education for Trainables

10 reasons why Coudal Partners love the 2012 Olympic Logo while most of the world hate it.

Smooth morphing of Women in Art.
Rough cutting of everyday shots.

If you have an hour to kill, kill it on Vietnam Idol 2007. The last chick got picked because she looks kind of cute.

Imagine what America would be like if we have the first female leader and a black Vice? One thing I know for sure; they wouldn’t fuck up as bad as what the Bush adminstration had done for the past seven plus years. Still the Clinton-Obama possibility is quite thin. Why? Chris Rock had a halarious point on why we would never see a black VP while the President is white. Not that Rock’s view is to be taken seriously, but I still would love to see that he is wrong.

Witness Jay-Z’s improvisational skills at work through the clips showing his recording session of “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” with Timbaland and “Lucifer” with Kanye West. Like jazz musician, Jay-Z works on the spot. He doesn’t write down his rhymes. He just comes into the studio with his producer, listens to the beats, select the ones he likes, and lays down his vocals.

The new left-aligned layout is for Be Ti. Your archangelic face never fails to place a smile on my grumpy face. Thanks baby!

From Yellow-Cab driver to drug deal to sex shop to Goldman Sachs, “The Profit Calculator” breaks down how New Yorkers make their money.

A lengthy piece on Hillary Clinton’s stand on war:

So it was hardly a surprise that as Clinton took to the campaign trail, journalists and voters repeatedly tried to ask her whether her 2002 vote was a personal “mistake.” She has never said it was. Instead, she told “Good Morning America” that the vote “turned out to be a terrible decision for everyone” and on MSNBC’s “Countdown With Keith Olbermann,” she acknowledged that “those of us in the Congress” had made “a lot of mistakes.”