Sunday, February 26, 2012

GAWKER: Rich-Guy Marionette Slapfight

My first piece wasn't a catastrophe, so the good people at Gawker allowed me to keep going. That looks to be the norm from here on out. (More below the pic.)

This time, I wanted to talk about how bizarrely satisfying it is to watch the Republican primary surrogacy developing via individual billionaire sponsorships. It is, of course, a horrendous development for democracy, and exactly the sort of thing we don't want to see happen. But if we are fated to be kicked around by bored people with lots of money who feel like buying a presidency, at least we've been blessed with an incredibly entertaining version of that fate, via a bunch of weird old coots.

Once again, Jim Cooke was kind enough to whip up a fun piece of original artwork for my article. His contribution is actually much larger than this, but I've cropped it down a bit, to feature the man whose think tank I recently joined. Click on Foster Friess to continue to the Gawker article:


I should be contributing to Gawker for the foreseeable future, under the recurring column tag of "America's Screaming Conscience." This unfortunately means the end for my weekly appearances at Vice, since the focus of the two columns is so similar that it felt like a conflict of interest. My decision certainly shouldn't reflect poorly on Vice; unless you mean the general concept of vice, like "greed" or "pride," in which case maybe it does. My co-workers like David Roth and Kate Carraway were awesome, as was my editor, Harry Cheadle. What I'm saying is, go get a job there yourself already, or just read their stuff.