The Year in Abe Sauer
A list of important, funny, overlooked and/or popular things I wrote in 2010. In no particular order:
BP Stock,One Awl Reader, Both Winners Six Months Later - The Awl
Two Hours in Marinette: Lessons From a School Shooting - The Awl
Sarah Palin the TV Star Exposes Sarah Palin the Fake Hunter - The Awl
Sarah Palin’s Accidental Social Network - Esquire
If You Don’t Support Health Care Reform, You Don’t Support the Troops - The Awl
Target Doesn’t Support Gay Equality Because It Never Did - The Awl
After the Apology, Target’s Anti-gay giving Never Stopped - The Awl
Gap Rebrands itself into Oblivion - Brandchannel
Dystopian Wisconsin: Who is Ron Johnson? - The Awl
Inside Ron Johnson’s Victory Party: Reason Concedes to Ron Johnson - The Awl
The November 29 school shooting incident in northern Wisconsin, at time of publication America’s latest, is being spun as a success of the post-Columbine system. A trained school staff and law enforcement levelheadedly defused a heavily armed student prepared to do the worst. But when police finally responded to the 911 call, more than two hours had passed since gunshots were fired. These gunshots were heard by many—although, apparently, not the on-duty police officer stationed at the school…
“Want a Heineken,” asks Gordon Gekko moments before the beer’s label slides in to fill the screen. The scene takes place at New York’s Shun Lee restaurant, where staff confirmed to us that they do in fact serve Heineken. In the closing credits, the IWC logo floats over the screen like a reflection in a pool. Everything in between is branded. In fact, one difference between the first Wall Street and its sequel is that Money Never Sleeps has a credited crewmember (Allison Robin) responsible solely for “product placement.”
So, you people of the coasts: what do they want? They want Washington to “listen.” They want to not be “treated like sheep.” They want better education (maybe). They want Ronald Reagan bon mots. They want jokes about moving D.C. to North Dakota because the cold would “force politicians to keep their hands in their own pockets.” They want to sing God Bless America. They want, in one speaker’s words, “to take it back for the United States Constitution for liberty.” They want, more than anything, lower taxes…
This isn’t the subjective business of mediums, larges and extra-larges — nor is it the murky business of women’s sizes, what with its black-hole size zero. This is science, damnit. Numbers! Should inches be different than miles per hour? Do highway signs make us feel better by informing us that Chicago is but 45 miles away when it’s really 72? Multiplication tables don’t yield to make us feel better about badness at math; why should pants make us feel better about badness at health? Are we all so many emperors with no clothes?
