Pareene takes him down, hard:

But our target here is Russert, and he is not personally responsible for NBC’s decision to bequeath him a broadcasting job. If we focus on the work and not the means by which Russert got the job, things don’t look much better. Initially, at least, the grown-ups on the air always seemed to be holding Russert’s hand as he tried to remember his lines, as if he were a child and not a fully grown college graduate and professional. It’s obvious that everyone who knew his father loves Luke. But everyone’s affection for the kid is not transmissible through a television set, alas, and Russert’s appearances seemed like some rich guy’s kid’s piano recital suddenly taking place in the middle of a professional orchestra’s concert.

I could stand Russert doing weather, or telling me how not to confuse Olivia Munn with Olivia Wilde, but politics? Nope.

Our guest columnist is Albert Camus.

One does not discover the absurd without being tempted to write a manual of happiness. “What!—by such narrow ways—?” There is but one world, however. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd. Discovery. It happens as well that the felling of the absurd springs from happiness. “I conclude that all is well,” says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile suffering. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men…

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On this, the fourth anniversary of our Descent Into Blogging Hell — actually it was yesterday, but we’re declaring it a bank holiday — we choose not to run yet another variation on our first-post Joyride image, but instead offer a montage of Every Joyride Known to Dukes, Except the Final Season, Which Isn’t Included Because the Videographer Loaned Out His DVD Set, But Don’t Let That Stop You.

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Each time we watch this — and we’ve watched it more than a few times — we find ourself focusing on a different region: Germany first, then Russia, then the Ottoman Empire, then Spain, and what’s that happening with the British Isles?

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f9q4u4cdbs

We had been contemplating all day Wednesday an Important Post about Eduardo Saverin, the Facebook cofounder (better known as Spider-Man) who is giving up his naturalized American citizenship rather than pay an estimated $67 million in taxes when Facebook’s upcoming IPO makes him filthy rich. Our point was going to be opposite the Conventional Outrage on the subject: You’re free to leave — as long as you never set foot again on American soil.

And then, well, this.

[via Sully]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV1JDW43kUE

We can’t possibly improve upon the video title, so we’re not even going to try.

(Stinque viewing suggestion: Run the video on your iPad and send it to your flatscreen/stereo via Apple TV. Crank up the music loud enough so your neighbor can’t hear you cackling like a hyena. Trust us.)

[via Know Your Meme]

Okay, fine, so it doesn’t work as a palindrome. But you’d be thrown off too if you were just minding your own business when you were viciously attacked by a Raging Honker.