Wonkette

David Brooks allows a made-up reader to address him as “Mr. Kierkegaard” today in his column. Here is what “Existential in Exeter” asks Søren Kierkegaard, who is David Brooks, about Culture: “All my life I’ve been a successful pseudo-intellectual, sprinkling quotations from Kafka, Epictetus and Derrida into my conversations, impressing dates and making my friends feel mentally inferior. But over the last few years, it’s stopped working. People just look at me blankly. My artificially inflated self-esteem is on the wane. What happened?” David Brooks gets high and then answers — oh man, does he ANSWER — this question (which he actually wrote to himself after getting high, too). MORE »

Oh come now, will everyone please stop pickin’ on poor John McCain for his limited knowledge of the future techmologies? This is something that irks political writers on the Internet to a strange degree (probably because it means McCain cannot give them page views.) Even McCain’s best friend Jon Chait of The New Republic has been calling him “President Grampa Simpson,” which is Ageist. While many of us are more concerned about McCain for other reasons — the fact that he is solidly to the right of George W. Bush on foreign policy, for example — we understand how problematic it would be to have a president who uses Yahoo! instead of Google. And yet it’s still hilarious whenever McCain tries to defend his technological know-how to a crowd of nerds, as he did yesterday in liberal San Francisco. MORE »

Since John McCain cannot appeal to America’s Youth in any demonstrable way, he has to rely on the famously hip and “with it” RNC to awaken the young voters’ elan vital. And what do the children like this millennium? The Facebook, of course! And, perchance, would there were a way to use New Yorker Satire to mock Barry Hussein with a Facebook spinoff, on the Internet? One might call it the “BarackBook”! Let’s explore the RNC’s ingenius new “BarackBook,” and possibly not kill ourselves in the process. MORE »

It has been merely a HALF-YEAR since John McCain locked up the Republican nomination, and his team has somehow found the time to develop an online grassroots strategy between those 20-person town halls in nowhere that it holds every other day. From campaign manager Rick Davis’ email client, he writes, “Through the McCain Nation online headquarters you can create events, upload and invite your contacts, send out invitations, get maps and directions, and much more. You can also search for events in your area and ask hosts to attend.” Oh right! Hasn’t that black guy used something exactly like this for the past year or so, to defeat Clintons? Three months should be plenty of time for WALNUTS! to catch up. [John McCain]

Some company called the Markham Group, which organized political events for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, has bought the domain HRC2012.com. Obviously this means that Hillary Clinton still plans on sabotaging Barack Obama’s presidential bid by sending a complimentary copy of the New Yorker to every resident of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Indiana, so that John McCain can get elected in November, so that he can perish in office and be replaced by a lame-duck Vice President Charlie Crist, so that she can win the 2012 election in a walk — none of which would be possible if the Markham Group had not bought this very special domain name. [Marc Ambinder]

Corrupt Alaskan Sen. Ted Stevens, the old hack whose limited understanding of the Internet as a “series of tubes” launched a soul-crushing meme, has redesigned his Internet web site! And he’s sent out a release about the changes that we found funny, but probably only because, you know, he’s Ted Stevens and he’s writing about the Internet again. For example: “Online communities - We now have a presence on YouTube, Flickr (photo sharing site), and MySpace in addition to the Facebook page we have had. You can become a friend or subscriber to these pages and this will allow you to stay in touch with the campaign in a whole new way. Links to all of these sites are located on the front page of the website.” OK, you tell us Flickr is for photo sharing, but what in the hell are YouTube, MySpace and the Facebook?? [Ted Stevens]

Wonkette Political Apparel Operative “Lisa” directs us to a magical store on CNN where you can buy tee shirts with funny quotes on them. But buy now because the shirts are only on sale until the headline falls off the “Latest News” section!!!! Oh no wait they have an archive too. Brilliant. [CNN Shirt]

Here’s video of the panel at the Personal Democracy Forum (WONKETTE PREMIUM AD $$$) where McCain “Internet Guy” Mark Soohoo informs the world that “John McCain is aware of the Internet.” Since this was a conference about technology, you can only imagine the giggles from the techie crowd, all of whom immediately Twitter the quote to their pet gerbils. Then Tracy Russo, a blogger gal, says your grandmother cannot understand Facebook, and neither can John McCain. Who gives a shit? [YouTube]

DEFENSE OF THE DAY: From Mark Soohoo, McCain’s deputy “e-campaign” director: “John McCain is aware of the Internet.” MEME! [New York Times]

Oh this is rich. You may remember when Hillary said in her speech tonight that she cannot make a Decision about the future, and that you should go to her website — www.HillaryClinton.com — to share your thoughts (and money). Sure enough, there’s a form! And how nice of Hillary to create this push poll for us, where she tells us exactly what to say. Now she can mention “all the passionate support” she’s received at some press conference in a few days when she announces her plans for Denver. So be sure to give Hillz your advice, but keep to the script. [Hillary Clinton]