Lowell Birge Harrison
Fifth Avenue at Twilight
c.1910
Oil on canvas
76.2 x 58.42 cm
Detroit Institute of the Arts (United States)
(via johnhwatson-)
The Doctor
Master of deduction
(Source: likeapuck)
[video]
“
Say what you will about Bristol Palin, she’s a quick study. It didn’t take her long to master the ways of her elders on the censorious right and decide that personal circumstance and past error needn’t prevent someone from claiming righteous leadership. Uncle Rush must be proud.
Soon after President Obama stated support for same-sex marriage, Bristol publicly weighed in. Because, you know, the world was on tenterhooks.
In a blog post she focused on the reference that Obama made to his daughters — and to the same-sex parents of some of the girls’ friends.
“It would’ve been helpful for him to explain to Malia and Sasha that while her friends (sic) parents are no doubt lovely people, that’s not a reason to change thousands of years of thinking about marriage,” wrote Bristol, making her heady debut as the new Dr. Spock for a nascent millennium. She added that “in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home. Ideally, fathers help shape their kids’ worldview.”
Fathers like … Levi Johnston? It’s with him that she conceived her child — out of wedlock, at the age of 17 — and by most accounts, his relationship with her and the Palin family isn’t any warmer than Juneau in January. A mother/father home is not what he and Bristol have succeeded in creating.
What’s more, she has made sure that their son, Tripp, will at some point be treated to a worldview-shaping image of Dad as something akin to a date rapist. That’s the description of him immortalized in her memoir, one of her many efforts to monetize her surname. It recounts the loss of her virginity as a result of getting drunk and blacking out in the company of Levi, who pounced. What a gift that narrative is to Tripp, now being hauled into a TV reality show, “Bristol Palin: Life’s a Tripp,” already in production. Little children are known to thrive in such environments.
I hesitated before picking on Bristol because she’s an easy target. It’s like shooting moose from a helicopter flying low over the tundra.
But she so perfectly distills the double standards and audacity of so many of our country’s self-appointed moralists and supposed traditionalists: hypocrites whose own histories, along with any sense of shame, tumble out the window as soon as there’s a microphone to be seized or check to be cashed.
” —FRANK BRUNI, writing in the New York Times, “The Right’s Righteous Frauds.”
Read the whole thing.
(via inothernews)
To be fair to Bristol Palin, I really didn’t get the sense that she was holding herself up as a paragon of parenthood there…quite the opposite. The reading I got from it was that, as a single unwed mother, facing the everyday challenges of raising a child without a father, she felt perhaps more keenly than anyone how important a father can be in raising a child, and how devastating his absence can be. Ie, not “look at me I’m so perfect”, but “I made this mistake, and it has had unhappy consequences; so I would like to share my experiences in the hopes that others may avoid the unhappy consequences which I am now dealing with.”
That said, though, I still think she’s an asshat for trying to legally invalidate other peoples’ relationships.
(via wilwheaton)
(Source: pinterest.com, via alleyesandears)
Pangolin_0058a by pamelainob (Pamela Schreckengost) on Flickr.
(via inkgeek)
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The super villain: Andrew Scott
Andrew Scott declares his role in BBC’s Sherlock as arch-nemesis Jim Moriarty to be an absolute blast. “Every time he appears he gets great stuff to do. You get real bang for your buck.” Though Scott first made his mark in theatre – appearing in such award-winning productions as Cock and A Girl in a Car with a Man in London and in David Hare’s The Vertical Hour in New York – he has two more TV dramas coming soon. First, there’s psychological drama The Fuse, starring alongside Christopher Eccleston, for the BBC – “It’s a very human story about obsession,” he says – then an adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s The Scapegoat for ITV.
After that there’s the third series of Sherlock to consider – well, possibly. Any hints about the resolution of season 2’s cliffhanger, which seemed to end with the deaths of Moriarty and Holmes? “I have to remain schtum. Even my mother doesn’t know what happens.”
Favourite sitcoms? Grandma’s House and Twenty Twelve. Olivia Colman and Jessica Hynes are brilliant.
Favourite childhood show? The Muppet Show: the theme music makes me excited even now. I used to watch the drama Chocky, too. There’s something about sophisticated drama for kids – it’s just great.
Guilty pleasure? Judge Judy. It appeals to some weird side of me, I like the way she deals with idiots. I got into it when I was doing Emperor and Galilean at the NT last year. You can’t go home and watch BBC4’s The History of Desks after Ibsen.
Favourite US show? I’ve just started Mad Men. I want to be that person who watches it until 4am, but I don’t think I am.
HELLYEAH
It’s time to play the music
it’s time to light the lights…
(via hellyeahandrewscott)
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Whistler by Thomas Powell