The Consolidated "Slate Is Stupid" Thread

[dieblucasdie]

Since we talk about it so much here and there that it probably deserves its own.

http://www.slate.com/id/2187529/

Nevertheless, if it ever came out that Obama was spending an hour primping every morning, it would hurt him, not help. Whereas if Hillary Clinton were known to spend an hour dressing and primping, no one would be surprised. And if she looked as if she had spent much less than that, it would hurt her.

MAKE IT STOP

[jebreject]

Are all these articles written by drunk monkeys or what

[difficult]

No, drunk monkeys would be amusing or something. These are monkeys who belong to the Temperance Union.

[peacocks]

But in order to find stupid things in Slate to talk about, we have to actually read Slate.  I don't want to do that.

[Maaik]

Amen.

[Doctor Bob]

I thought it said

...if it ever came out that Obama was spending an hour pimping every morning...

[lastclearchance]

just dropped in to rep for dana stevens and jody rosen, and whoever at slate cuts their paychecks

ok you can go back to hating on their abysmal election coverage now

[Greg Nog]

Obama's a primp.  And primps don't commit political suicide.

[guanajuato]

i was surprised at this thread. do a consortium of people really 'hate' slate? the same slate that has a fun article up today about the history of hangovers?

it dawned on me, dieblue and lastclearchance are the only posters in this thread who actually read slate. if dieblue decides he doesn't like it... that's his deal, he actually reads it.

what's the deal, other people?

But in order to find stupid things in Slate to talk about, we have to actually read Slate.  I don't want to do that.

oh, okay, that's the deal. sushi tastes terrible, but i've never tasted it...

[YojimboMonkey]

fun article up today about the history of hangovers?

link plz

it dawned on me, dieblue and lastclearchance are the only posters in this thread who actually read slate. if dieblue decides he doesn't like it... that's his deal, he actually reads it.

what's the deal, other people?

But in order to find stupid things in Slate to talk about, we have to actually read Slate.  I don't want to do that.

oh, okay, that's the deal. sushi tastes terrible, but i've never tasted it...

sez you

[guanajuato]

http://www.slate.com/id/2187387/

[guanajuato]

also, i wanna give a shoutout to 'blogging the bible'. david plotz spent a year or so reading the bible and blogging about it at slate.

http://www.slate.com/id/2150150/

[jebreject]

Jon, their Wire talk was pretty abysmal, so there's that

[andronicus]

Somewhere once I saw a similar series oriented around 'blogging the qur'an', which is just prima facie the stupidest thing I have ever heard in my life.

[dieblucasdie]

also, i wanna give a shoutout to 'blogging the bible'. david plotz spent a year or so reading the bible and blogging about it at slate.

http://www.slate.com/id/2150150/

God, the "Blogging the Bible" series was one of the stupidest things ever.  Plotz read the whole Bible and wrote about the whole Bible, all the while making zero effort to gain even the most cursory understanding of modern biblical scholarship.  He was willfully ignorant on the subject, and about every-other line in his commentary is a half-retarded misreading that no one who's even taken Theo 101 would make.  Most of the entries start with "OK, here are all the mistakes I made last time that people wrote in to correct me on:"

[dieblucasdie]

just dropped in to rep for dana stevens and jody rosen, and whoever at slate cuts their paychecks

ok you can go back to hating on their abysmal election coverage now

Yeah Dana Stevens and Dahlia Lithwick are about the only reason I read it anymore.  (I could take or leave Jody Rosen).

But seriously, I might hate William Saletan more than anyone else in journalism. 

[guanajuato]

Jon, their Wire talk was pretty abysmal, so there's that

yeah, but you gotta admit, all wire talk is pretty abysmal. it's a great show, but it brings lots of fanboy schmuckness to the table (i am including myself).

[elpollodiablo]

A few weeks ago I was thinking "We should just link the 'stupidest thing you've read today" thread to Slate's front page, but blucas has to be all with the middleman

[guanajuato]

also, i wanna give a shoutout to 'blogging the bible'. david plotz spent a year or so reading the bible and blogging about it at slate.

http://www.slate.com/id/2150150/

God, the "Blogging the Bible" series was one of the stupidest things ever.  Plotz read the whole Bible and wrote about the whole Bible, all the while making zero effort to gain even the most cursory understanding of modern biblical scholarship.  He was willfully ignorant on the subject, and about every-other line in his commentary is a half-retarded misreading that no one who's even taken Theo 101 would make.  Most of the entries start with "OK, here are all the mistakes I made last time that people wrote in to correct me on:"

i think you mean 'one of the most awesome' things ever. you can't really expect slate to write articles about 'modern biblical scholarship'? who would want that? look, i don't know what got your gander up about slate, but i'm wagering it is the political coverage which has been really ...erratic. there are a lot of other sites to hate for their political coverage, far more than slate, so i'm guessing you liked slate but they've done something in your mind to evaporate that connection. namely, the political coverage. sit back, have a shake, walk it off.

to illustrate my point about how blogging the bible is far tastier than 'modern biblical scholarship', here's an example:

2:18-24: Before God creates Eve, He brings all the animals to Adam, so that Adam can give all of them their names. This episode captures something fundamental about the male brain: our obsessive categorizing behavior. I once spent a whole spring looking at Washington, D.C., taxicabs to see if I could memorize every cab company—there are scores and scores of them—by the paint scheme on its cars. The bird-watcher, the stamp collector, the guy trying to visit every Starbucks in America—we are all re-enacting in a small way Adam's introduction to the animals.

[dieblucasdie]

...You're like, using that quote as an example of something good?  I don't really know how to respond.

I didn't expect drawn-out, painful exegesis from a Bible Blogging series, but I did expect someone vaguely curious about delving into the text of the Bible as opposed to someone who just wanted to use the Bible as an excuse to talk bullshit for a year.  And he just got so. many. things. wrong. that he could've gotten right if he spent two minutes googling. 

And milly, I disagree that there are places with worse election coverage.  At least, none as well-known as Slate.  Did you see that article claiming Obama would win because he's like Bugs Bunny?  Or the Emily Yoffe piece about single mothers destroying America?  Slate's been on a slow decline for at least the past 3 years, I can't believe it has any apologists left.

[Wally]

So, I guess Slate is the new Pitchfork. Fair enough.

[YojimboMonkey]

someone who just wanted to use the Bible as an excuse to talk bullshit for a year. 

As opposed to those who make an entire career out of it?

The bible's on my bad side today grrr

[dieblucasdie]

It's exactly the same hubris that the evangelical movement has, Jim.  Here's the Bible.  Two thousand years of scholarship on it (more for the Old Testament).  Who knows how many lives lost over it.  I'm going to ignore all that context and just spout my uninformed opinion after skimming it for thirty seconds and cherrypicking the stuff that fits my worldview.

You wouldn't try to discuss Bhagavad Gita without delving into the background of ancient Asian history and culture at least a little bit.  It wouldn't make sense otherwise!  The Torah's no different.  It's an ancient text for God's sake.  It's not going to make any sense stripped of its context.  It's just going to reveal a bunch of idiotic dimestore human insights like the above "d00dz like to classify things!"

[YojimboMonkey]

OK your edit is better, but your original post had kind of a gatekeeper sentiment that brings to mind one of Luther's complaints.  But anyway, yeah, I studied the old testament in a class called "Literary Origins" where we studied it as a text with special attention to its historical context and it was one of my favorite classes in college, terribly fascinating.  It's rare to find anything like that within evangelical Christianity.   And actually I attended a Franciscan university.  That professor was not one of the friars though. 

But tell me, was the guy from slate using the shallow insights gained from reading the bible to try and justify restricting people's freedoms or making war, or to attack science and reason and promote ignorance?  Or was he just making some cheap gags?

[dieblucasdie]

Cheap gags passing as "keen insights in to the human condition."  I'm not trying to say he's Hitler or something, just that the whole enterprise is inane at best, intellectually dishonest at worst.