Richard Cohen believes De Blasio’s biracial marriage causes regular voters to “suppress a gag reflex.” CRAISINS. http://t.co/sz4eiaeIFn

— Heidi N. Moore (@moorehn) November 12, 2013

Huh? “People with conventional views… repress a gag reflex when considering a white man married to a black woman.” http://t.co/yXSjJuCtkx

— Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) November 12, 2013

Richard Cohen just wrote his retirement notice. http://t.co/WYhScySvmj

— Jack Shafer (@jackshafer) November 12, 2013

In. SO FUCKING IN. RT @anamariecox: Who wants to get Richard Cohen fired today? Time to punch the clock, Internet.

— delrayser (@delrayser) November 12, 2013

“Oh shit, we accidentally published the racist draft!” — The Washington Post

— Meagan Hatcher-Mays (@ohmeags) November 12, 2013

The thing about Richard Cohen is that he’s provably wrong: http://t.co/CPqpRILqwo pic.twitter.com/EpASZNDNaD

— Todd Gregory (@ToddGregory) November 12, 2013

We can do this. Today is the day. Richard Cohen is on the edge of donezo. Just a little push and the nightmare is over.

Crazy: a tiny island at sea level (well: it peaks at 18 feet above sea level) is making plans for our watery future. The secret? Putting buildings higher. And collecting rainwater. Who would have ever thought. Let’s get boats.

With the news that editor Hugo Lindgren will be leaving the top slot at the New York Times magazine at the end of the year, it’s incumbent on all of us to dream of who we’d like to take the helm next. Last time around Daniel Zalewski came close to taking the job before being quite well-retained by the New Yorker. Sam Tanenhaus was also in that mix; he is now without particular portfolio. There are plenty of good editor candidates inside the Times: Bruce Headlam, for one, and certainly Sam Sifton isn’t being taken advantage of currently, tasked with creating “an immersive digital magazine experience” at the Times. (There were conflicting views on what this new posting meant: some people viewed it as Sifton being out of favor with the powers that be; others viewed it as a holding pen until the departure of Lindgren. Oh also some other people thought it was a real job too, sure. In any event, we’d all happily read a Sifton-led magazine, no doubt.) Who else? Probably Trish Hall (now running Op-Ed); also Carolyn Ryan, who’s held two big jobs (metro and politics) since coming to the paper in 2007. Oh, and also there’s Pamela Paul, who just literally turned the Book Review into a different animal over night — quite a feat. I would certainly also read a magazine put together by Alexandra Jacobs, currently in Styles. But they’re all busy. Apart from them, there’ll be a bunch of hungry young fellows who have been dreamin’ and schemin’ for this job. Who wants that though?

The problem with choosing a magazine editor is: do you want an editor, or a business-person, or a manager, or a visionary? Maybe you want all four, but those that bridge those skills entirely are usually boring, or monstrous, or insane. So let’s look further afield, shall we? I mean not too far, but, at least beyond a certain kind of list, you know?

• Valerie Steiker
Long-time Voguer, currently the culture editor; sharp, precise, disciplined, well-connected, passionate, and extremely smart. While the Times unfortunately couldn’t appreciate the genius that is Sally Singer, Valerie might be a better match.

• Janine Gibson
Came to our baffling country to run the Guardian’s U.S. edition, snapped up talent and then mopped the floor with the competition, changing America’s view of its government along the way.

• Janice Min
I have no idea what’s going on out on the other coast these days, but back in New York, Janice Min just absolutely destroyed at Us Weekly. But even while she dominated the landscape of celeb tabloid, she was plugged-in, thoughtful and hyper-literate. From a business perspective, at the very least, there may be no better magazine editor today.

• Ellen Barry
Surely one of the greatest reporters in the world would know how to make a publication that demands attention from the entire planet.

• Sina Najafi
Founding editor of Cabinet, the 13-year-old smarty-pants yet also hilarious non-profit publication, Najafi exists way outside the media bubble, busy not just making a top-notch magazine but creating pranks, panels and performances.

• Tom McGeveran
Capital New York, now under the stewardship of Politico, won’t need him forever. Perhaps the last of the great culturally polyglot story-telling editors.

• Fletcher Roberts
This Times editor that you never hear about? He edits both Jons Caramanica and Pareles, so, yeah.

• Mark Lotto
Just landed at Medium after a few years at GQ after a good stretch at the end of the David Shipley-era Times op-ed page; he edited this, so, yup. (Also we needed a straight white man for this list. You know. For “balance.”)

• Clara Jeffery
Co-honcho of Mother Jones for the last seven years, breaking news and egos, but has roots in story-making from the last great era of Harper’s magazine — including the work that became Nickeled and Dimed.

• Anna Holmes
The anti-narcissist; the behind-the-scenes Jezebel founder knows how to make a genre-altering publication by letting writers be stars.

• Tom de Kay
Ran a spectacular iteration of the Home section at the Times for a few years before becoming art and architecture editor; was once an editor-in-chief before, at Surface.

• Rafil Kroll-Zaidi
The wild man of Harper’s magazine makes the pieces run. He’d turn the mag into a delightful animal, alienating the suburbs but bringing in a next generation of readers.

• Mark Harris
Well-regarded as a columnist and currently on the eve of the publication of his second intensively researched book of film history, it’s easy to forget that his reign as executive editor at Entertainment Weekly made it into a powerhouse.

• Renata Adler
Word on the street is that Ms. Adler is returning to New York City from Connecticut and is ready to rumble. Can you imagine? I certainly can. Oh did you want her to have a meeting with the ad boys? Lotsa luck!

We are taking today to do all the pesky things that must be done: payin’ bills, doing annoying paperwork — just straight up taking care of business. Life, and inboxes, pile up. Maybe we’ll get it all done super fast and we’ll resume publishing later today! Haha maybe. Whatever you do today, don’t read the Ariel Levy story in the New Yorker. Not if you want to be able to go on with things.

by Marcy Campbell

To the parents of students at Sunnyvale Public Elementary:

The PTO has been asked by Principal Steiner to write a letter of apology which addresses complaints surrounding the all-school assembly featuring a show by the “J.C. is Magic! Magicians.”

And so, we the PTO officers (minus Rachel Greenberg) are writing this letter to say we are sorry some of you were offended by the magic show. First off, we didn’t even know the show had anything to do with Christianity. We thought the guy’s name was J.C. since that’s how he answered his phone!

In any case, we don’t understand why anyone would even be offended by an assembly that promoted positive messages for children, like studying hard, not stealing, not killing anybody (who’s against that???), keeping the Sabbath holy, etc., all as part of an entertaining magic show.

When J.C. was playing the guess-which-card game, and he asked which card was the highest of all, the PTO had no idea he would pull out a card labeled King of Kings with a photo of a feathered hair Jesus looking kind of like one of the BeeGees. We did not know he was going to give candy only to the children who had been “saved” and that the unsaved kids (which wasn’t many, which makes us think they did not understand the question) would have to sit criss-cross applesauce while the chosen children filed up to the stage to collect their tootsie rolls. We did not know J.C. would describe the scorching fire that would melt the skin off the kids sitting criss-cross applesauce, causing some of the kindergarteners to cry. To his credit, J.C. explained the kids had a choice of whether or not they wanted their skin to melt off. We all have a choice!

We realize that, technically, public schools should not sponsor religiously themed programs, but as we understand it, local jurisdictions have some “leeway” to “creatively interpret” those laws as befits their particular community. And, come on, the Christian schools are expensive! It’s not fair to expect all the Christian kids (though there is no formal polling of Sunnyvale families’ religious beliefs, because that would be “illegal,” we are sure it’s the vast majority) to get the lessons they need only on Sundays. During the five perfectly good weekdays, it wouldn’t hurt any kid to learn a little bit about why he is here in the first place, and who brought him here to this world, and to the greatest country on earth, to the greatest school in the county. Go Sunnyvale!

One more point… not one of our K-4 students left the auditorium during the magic show, so no one must have been that upset. All they would have had to do if they wanted to leave was raise their hand, walk across the gym to Mr. Slater, get a red hall pass, have it checked and time-stamped by Mrs. Flanders on the other side of the gym, and leave via the fire exit to sit outside quietly until it was over. But none of them did!

Also, we are STILL getting messages regarding the band that played at the end-of-year cookout. We are sorry some of you were offended by the band’s positive, G-rated Christian rock. If you’d like, if it would make it more palatable to you, just substitute any of the band’s lyrics including the words “Him” or “He” or “Lord” with Krishna, Allah or the Easter Bunny. We are also sorry some of you would not eat the all-pork hot dogs. But, if you want Green Day and a veggie burger, you really need to go someplace other than the Sunnyvale Public Elementary End-of-School Picnic. Plus, that was LAST YEAR, people!

We have not had any calls, by the way, regarding Mrs. Gupta taking her 3rd graders to some “nature center” in the city last week, which the PTO understands contains some kind of “meditation garden” that kids were “encouraged but not required” to walk through. Apparently Mrs. Gupta thought this was a perfectly acceptable field trip, taking kids to a park where stone Buddha heads were lolling around every corner where kids couldn’t fail to see them! Plus, they did yoga!!!

Lastly, to answer some of the parents’ specific questions left on the school secretary’s voicemail (Note: please do not leave messages for PTO on the secretary’s voicemail; instead contact your PTO president via email at: joycepraiseshim@yahoo.com):

• No, you may not get your money back from the cupcake cook-off fundraiser used to pay J.C. He has already cashed the check. Also, we bought new, folding tables for the book sale. So, that ship has sailed!
• No, we are not resigning, because, what kind of message would that send the kids about “conflict resolution?” If you have prominently displayed on your refrigerator the Buster Beaver’s Choice O’ Meter that was sent home in September, you know that Sunnyvale kids are being taught that they have options in the face of disagreement, which includes talking it out with the other person, telling a teacher, or walking away. But, “walking away” should be the last alternative! The PTO is not walking away.
• No, our heads are not stuck in a hole in the ground, nor in our “butts,” as some of you have so rudely suggested using other language we will not print here.

So, to conclude, we are sorry some of you were offended. We are sorry that a perfectly pleasant magic show, which also contained wholesome messages of Jesus’s kindness and love, offended certain parents at our public school. And we thank others of you for the phone calls and notes in our support 😉

God bless,

Your PTO Officers (minus Rachel Greenberg)*

*resigned for “personal reasons”

P.S. The PTO, after much discussion, decided to accept the geologic rock collection donated by the retired college geology professor with grandkids at the school, so you can quit calling about that. The only thing we changed was taking off the dates on the rocks because, seriously, some of these rocks, if the attached signage was to be believed, are supposed to be, like, a million (!) years old. The “professor” refused to remove the dates, saying that was the whole point of the thing, which really showed a lot of inflexibility on his part, and disrespect, we might add, to the Creationist children at our school. How are kids supposed to learn “critical thinking” if “scientists” are always “telling them things?”

P.P.S. We need volunteers for the annual book sale! This year, we’re pleased to be partnering with a new supplier that promises books “teaching the values kids so desperately need in today’s increasingly secular world.” Please give a warm Sunnyvale welcome to LightHouseKids Books!

Marcy Campbell’s recent work appears in The Rumpus, The McSweeneys Internet Tendency and The Millions. She writes inside a closet in rural Ohio and blogs as The Closet Creative. Image from a montage by Daria Blase.

★★★ The jacket, shed and draped on the stroller in the gray warmth of Amsterdam Avenue, now threatened to blow off into a puddle on Riverside Boulevard. The weight of the two-year-old, rather than stabilizing the bucking stroller, was up on adult shoulders, where more bucking was going on, accompanied by whooping. Ever the river wind was not cold, exactly, but there was certainly a lot of it. It trailed along on the way back from the river, helping linden leaves infiltrate the basement hallway of the apartment. A little after 10, a few drops began to fall, and almost instantly there was full rain, invisible but thorough. Downtown, the showers had not rolled in yet. The maple leaves accumulating on the sidewalk outside the churchyard were bright despite the dimness. Then the raindrops came too, bigger ones than uptown. By afternoon, everything was wet and cold, but only as a transitional state, aimed toward a different target: a dry and cold night, under a hard bright moon.

“Feces in the sandbox, barking all night, the fear of being bitten: There are many reasons not to like dogs. Now one journalist from Hamburg is trying to raise money to launch a magazine to finally give dog haters a voice.”

“The manner by which a mother interacts with her friends serves as a role model for how an adolescent child develops his/her own peer friendships. Unfortunately, teens often pick up on the negative elements in a relationship, such as conflict and antagonism, and then copy these attitudes into their own relationships.”

Is the future going to be watching a commercial before you watch a commercial? Depending on what the pre-roll you get here is, probably, yeah. Anyway, “Get ready to sob… it’s the John Lewis Christmas advert: Tear-jerking commercial tells story of hare making sure his bear best friend doesn’t miss out on the big day,” is pretty much the story. I mean, whatever, I have enough that makes me cry already, weepy touts for English department stores don’t make the list but, you know, bears and Britain, plus it’s Friday? It would be insane if we didn’t post this. That’s Lily Allen singing in there, by the way.

Here is the story of an oversize fungus from China. “The giant puffball fungus was found on a mountainside near the Chinese city of Chonngqing,” says the report. There is video, but once you watch it you will realize that you have now seen images of a giant mushroom and yet your life reamins as empty as it was before you clicked on it, so maybe it is better to just stay as still as possible until it’s time to go home, huh?