WHY DEMS ALWAYS LOSE: A Q&A With Righteous Mind Author Jonathan Haidt

[Illustration by Johnny Selman] You’re smart. You’re liberal. You’re well informed. You think conservatives are narrow-minded. You can’t understand why working-class Americans vote Republican. You figure they’re being duped. You’re wrong. So begins William Saletan’s recent book review of Jonathan Haidt’s Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion in the New York Times. Haidt, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, argues that the left will continue to fail to capture the sympathies of the Great American Middle until it begins to understand what motivates ordinary people. Haidt argues that contrary to the conventional […]

THE EARLY WORD: Wayne’s World

If consistency is a positive quality in rock ‘n’ roll, then the Fountains of Wayne belong in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. Since the late 90s, Fountains of Wayne have created one record after record with the same style, approach, personnel, pacing, and subject matter. Each record has the same clean, straight-ahead pop style with the same guitar/bass/drums arrangements. They have the same dry humor and flat, no-frills delivery they had when they started. The same singer sings lead each song, the same backup singer sings backup, the same guitarist plays the occasional leads. Did I mention that […]

THE SECRET HISTORY OF AMERICAN BANDSTAND: The Fall Of Bob Horn And The Rise Of Dick Clark — Drunk Driving, Statutory Rape, Geator The Bagman, And Mrs. Annenberg Is NOT Amused

Let us just say up front, we have no idea where the truth lies in all of this and merely offer this up for your consideration. In the last 10 years, a very different story about the rise of Bandstand has emerged that runs counter to the soft-focus squeaky-clean nostalgia we’ve all come to know and accept about the beginnings of the Philly-based Mecca of Sock-Hopdom. It is the story of a man named Bob Horn, a middle-aged hipster DJ, who hosted a show with a simple but then-unheard-of concept: Play rock n’ roll records for teenagers dancing on camera. […]

The End Of Phawker As You Know It

Take a good look at the old Phawker, it’s your last chance. Later today Phawker will be unveiling a radical site re-design. Bold. Clean. Sharp. Uncluttered. Easier to use, easier to read, and easier to tell all your little friends about. Great taste, less filling. Even better than the real thing. No, this isn’t the new look, it’s a full-page, four-color ad trumpeting our makeover on page 40 of this week’s issue of the City Paper which hits the street today. See you on the other side.

RIP: Dick Clark, ‘America’s Oldest Living Teenager’, Dead At 82

VARIETY: Dick Clark, known to several generations as the host of “American Bandstand,” died of a heart attack today. He was 82. Though he was most closely associated with the TV dance show, Clark was a shrewd entrepreneur in radio, television and music, creating a production empire that elevated his net worth to more than $100 million. During his career he won five Emmy awards, including one for “American Bandstand.” Attempts to act in front of the camera, however, proved virtually fruitless despite Clark’s wholesome American good looks and his predisposition for remaining youthful looking well into his later years. […]

STUDY: Florida Welfare Drug Tests Winds Up Costing The State Instead Of Saving Money

NEW YORK TIMES: Ushered in amid promises that it would save taxpayers money and deter drug users, a Florida law requiring drug tests for people who seek welfare benefits resulted in no direct savings, snared few drug users and had no effect on the number of applications, according to recently released state data. This week, Georgia instituted a nearly identical law, with supporters saying it would foster greater personal responsibility and save money. From July through October in Florida — the four months when testing took place before Judge Scriven’s order — 2.6 percent of the state’s cash assistance applicants […]

The Ritthenhouse Square Doyenne Who Moved A 1/2 Ton Of Weed Across The Mexican Border When She Was A 20 Year Old Hippie Chick Could Be Your Boss

JEFF DEENEY: This tale of drugs and death begins and ends far from Nogales—in Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, probably the last place you’d expect to find a former drug smuggler. The small park is ringed by high-rise apartment and condo complexes filled with old-money blue hairs, baby-boomer corporate execs and U. Penn kids whose rich parents happily shell out for luxury off-campus housing. Nestled among the city’s elite is a woman with a secret past [not pictured, that’s Marianne Faithfull] that includes having moved almost a half-ton of weed from Mexico to the East Coast. Rita (her executive-level career position […]

CONTEST: Win Tix To See Fountains Of Wayne @ UT

Let’s not mince words: Fountains Of Wayne are hands down, the greatest power pop band of all time. Greater than The Knack, greater than the Cars, greater even than Cheap Trick (yeah, we just went there). Sadly, in the grotesquely warped reality of the here and now — where the shittiest people (think Mitch McConnell) and the shittiest music (think Ke$sha) get all the glory and the complimentary gift bags that come with it — being the greatest power pop band of all time plus four bucks gets you a cup of coffee at Starbucks and, well, that’s about it. […]

THESE ARE PEOPLE WHO DIED: Photos Of The 77 Unarmed (Mostly) Teenagers Norwegian White Supremacist Anders Breivik Killed In ‘Self-Defense’

DAILY MAIL: Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik broke down in tears on the first day of his terror trial today — when a video clip he had created, mentioning Vlad the Impaler, was screened. The 33-year-old, who admits killing eight in an Oslo bomb blast and 69 in a shooting spree on the island of Utoya last July, remained emotionless as prosecutors spent two hours describing in graphic detail how each of his victims died. But he suddenly became emotional when shown an anti-Muslim 12-minute video he had posted on YouTube before the carnage, wiping away tears with trembling […]

FAUX-PAC: Even Better Than The Real Thing?

BILLBOARD: If you haven’t heard, Tupac was at Coachella on Sunday night! No, the rumors of the rapper being alive and in hiding aren’t true; the rumors that Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg were going to re-create Pac as a hologram during their headlining performance on Sunday night were accurate, though, as the West Coast titans unveiled the radical visual midway through their set and let Faux-Pac perform “Hail Mary” and “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted” before drifting back into the ether. The crowd had no idea what to do with the hologram. For one, its arrival came after Dre […]

Inquirer Wins Pulitzer For ‘Assault On Learning’

INQUIRER: The Inquirer’s investigation of the climate of pervasive violence in Philadelphia’s public schools Monday won the Pulitzer Prize for public service, the profession’s most prestigious honor. The award is the 19th Pulitzer Prize for the 183-year-old newspaper and its first since 1997. The seven-part series, “Assault on Learning,” revealed that violence in city schools was widespread and underreported, with 30,000 serious incidents over the last five school years. Those findings were later corroborated by a Philadelphia School District blue-ribbon panel on safety, spurred an overhaul of incident reporting in the district, and prompted the hiring of a state-funded safe-schools […]

NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t

FRESH AIR Sadakat Kadri is an English barrister, a Muslim by birth and a historian. His first book, The Trial, was an extensive survey of the Western criminal judicial system, detailing more than 4,000 years of courtroom antics. In his new book, Heaven on Earth, Kadri turns his sights east, to centuries of Shariah law. The first parts of his book describe how early Islamic scholars codified — and then modified — the code that would govern how people lead their daily lives. Kadri then turns to the modern day, reflecting on the lawmakers who are trying to prohibit Shariah […]