Political protests are hardly occasions for subtlety, but even so, the overblown analogies to the Middle East in Wisconsin are rather difficult to take. Scott Walker is the "Mubarak of the Midwest"— or, to more Biblically minded commentators, a "Pharoah." Similarly, the protesters are the people who have finally risen up to bring a "Tunisia Moment" to America. Paul Krugman has fallen for it too, terming Paul Ryan's comparison of Cairo and Madison "unintentionally apt." No list of pizza donations goes by without mention that some benefactors are Egyptian. Even the protesters themselves have picked up on it, suggesting Walker become President of [...]

Local blogger and Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff apparently made fun of a piece written by Tony Judt with his son for Father's Day. The son now responds: "I can't get around one blockade that will prevent me from proving that I wrote my half of the article: your habit of parading your own opinions as fact, caused by your willingness to make up anything in order to get a few reads, comments, and tweets."

"To be sure, we all have our complaints. And while there is no other city where I could imagine living, there are many places that, for different purposes, I would rather be. But this too is a very New York sentiment." —The posthumous op-ed from Tony Judt in today's Times reads like a scholarly, world-history-considering version of LCD Soundsystem's "New York I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down." Speaking of LCD Soundsystem, and how mind-blowingly awesome they are live (were we speaking of that? we should have been), they have a live-in-studio album (God, that sounds dumb, but you know what I mean, right?) coming out [...]