Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Thursday, December 13. 2012

In praise of James Taranto

His daily post, Best of the Web Today at the WSJ site, is the wittiest and most engaging review of national news and random happenings that exists.


I envy his talent, his brains - and his cool gig. I think he has a small staff to help. A daily read with my cup of Dunkin.


Thanks, James, for what you do. Hope you are well-paid for it.

Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 12:25 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

A nice little honorarium. I'm actually something of a self-professed Tarantophile and have read every BOTWT column ever written.

I'm also his official unofficial proofreader. I catch about one little thing every few weeks. The other day he had word-space-semicolon, rather than word-semicolon-space. I, too, admire his work so much that I hated seeing anything amiss, so I asked him flat-out about four years ago whether he was actually 'pedantic' or not (meaning, actually caring that every i was dotted and t was crossed, even days after publication, as I am), and he replied in the definite affirmative. The deal is that it's grammar and punctuation only, rarely syntax (readability), and certainly never content.

One day he misspelled Michael Crichton's last name. I immediately corrected him.

He wrote back, "Whoops! How insulting!"

I told him, "Don't worry about it. He refers to you as James Tarantino."
    #1 Dr. Mercury (Link) on 2012-12-13 13:03 (Reply)
    Merc, back in 2002-03 i was a sort of shut-in a nine-hour drive from home (mom had had a stroke and was comatose and needed help), and around mid-morning every day i'd try to pass time writing 'informed' comments on BOTW. I say 'imformed' because i'd often have to learn something quick-like to make sure of something i wanted to put in the comment. It'd be something that had pestered me all my life, in a minor key at least. Little details historical and the like, finally looked up and placed. One day, the column featured Robert Bartley ruminating on with Taranto about the column (the idea for it had been Bartley's, back in the net stone age). They talked a bit about the comments column, and as i live and breathe, Bartley said his favorite comment was --and he quoted it --by a guy in Texas --and he named my name. Of course i like to fell off my chair, and immediately i fwds the thing to everyone who thought i was a dumbass, meaning, everybody i ever knew or shared kith & kin with.

    Know what they invariably answered?

    "Who is Robert Bartley?"

    ===

    ...and then i lost the URL (disc explosion), and now i can't find it, feh.
    #1.1 buddy larsen on 2012-12-14 12:38 (Reply)
    One of my daily reads. Interesting links, at times. Has a finely honed sense of snark, especially about Paullie "The Beard" Krugman. And Tommy "Mao's L'il Bro" Friedman.
    #2 Sam L. on 2012-12-13 14:57 (Reply)
    When my former employer discontinued the subscription to the Wall Street Journal, I signed up for Taranto's Best of the Web e-mail, circa July 2001. He kept linking to something called Instapundit. When my curiosity threshold was tripped, I clicked the link and was hooked.

    On 9/11/2001, as I drove to work, I was talking to a friend who was watching the morning pseudo "news" shows and he told me he was watching a fire at the World Trade Center. He called me, in shock, half an hour later to advise he'd just watched a plane crash into the other tower of the WTC.

    My go to site that morning was Instapundit and it is still a daily must read.
    #3 Shutterbug on 2012-12-13 20:41 (Reply)
    That makes at least two of us who found Glenn Reynolds via James Taranto. I wish they'd run for office as a team --Pres and VP on the hmm, Web Party. Really --both fellers' instincts are automatically unerring.
    #3.1 buddy larsen on 2012-12-14 12:45 (Reply)

    Add Comment
    (Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

    By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
    addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

    Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
    [url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

    Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
    E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

    To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
    CAPTCHA

    BBCode format allowed
     
     
    A Chris Southern Consulting website.