High on his own supply is a good way to put it.

Taleb's massive ego makes him unlistenable at all times.

Black Swan was a thinly-veiled brag about how he predicted the recession while everybody else ignored him. He could have reduced the entire book to one sentence by writing, "I told you so!"

I agree - I found Fooled By Randomness a much more interesting book.

As I recall, Fooled by Randomness could be summarized in two sentences.
"Not every statistical distribution is normal. My neighbors are idiots and you should recognize me as a genius."

Ranting about Fly while assuming he is black is a massive tell

Kinda unrelated to anything but I don't think the president should ever attend the correspondents dinner. Obviously, though, the reasons TRUMP skipped it were completely selfish and probably had zero overlap with why I think he shouldn't attend.

Black Swan's popularity was mostly due to it being published prior to the recession and it being touted during the downturn.

Taleb is a massive ******* but dude is smart and precient.

There shouldn't be a correspondents dinner at all, it's bizarre when you think about it. The whole enterprise of drone jokes and funny videos about trying to find WMDs trivializes politics, really lays bare the core ****ing issue with the press that they think all of this **** is a game.

I've trotted this podcast episode before here, want to re-recommend:

When The Watchdogs Wear Tuxedos, Politicians Rest Easy

right, this is what makes Sam Bee's "event" even more dumber.

Smells his own farts is another.

At the level those guys play - everyone knows it's a game.

I would guess it's like in a newsroom when everyone starts joking about a double homicide saying we need one more or a cute white girl and we've got a story. Cynicism brought on by years of desensitization.

I think the WHCD kind of like the Purge - one day a year the press gets to bite back instead of swallow bull**** that both sides know is bull****. It helps them let off steam and presidents know this.

Somehow I wound up following a couple links to this lol Daily Caller article. But holy **** this is the kind of stuff liberals are terrible at. http://dailycaller.com/2017/04/27/co..._medium=Social

Use some common ****ing sense and look up the woman's crimes. If she's not fully ready to come clean and own everything (which in this case still might not be enough) - then don't have her as a keynote speaker/panelist. It's not that hard.

The French election is really showing just how much the issue Never Trumpers had with Trump wasn't his racism or his fascism, but his incompetence and vulgarity.

P.S. Every ****ing libtard dork who subscribed to the NYT to be part of the #resistance who is now mad about Bret Stephens, check out how long Douthat has been writing for the Times. NYT editor who signed off on running breathless Clinton Cash stories and blasting a front page about emails a week before the election probably more personal responsibility for Trump's election than anyone not involved with either campaign, and in a just world they would've committed ritual suicide on the front steps of the NYT building November 9th.

Yeah it's not the puppy bowl. This is real ****, people are dying.

Imagine Woodward & Bernstein trading good-natured riffs with Nixon. ****. That. ****. Get back to work.

I agree.

Another issue is that being all buddy-buddy with the political establishment shows a lack of journalistic integrity. The media should oppose the administration and force it to answer tough questions rather than sip tea with the enemy. Unfortunately, that will never happen because journalists want their photo ops and media access.

When did the dinner become a series of jokes and skits anyway? Was it always like this?

People like the dinner and the entertainment. It's a complete joke that isn't taken as a joke. So, it was good for Samantha Bee to make a mockery of it.

The problem is Bee's mockery isn't mocking the right issue, because mocking the journalists themselves as toadies sucking up to power for access would be far too cutting. The Daily Show's writing staff helped Obama with those drone jokes!

this was pretty good tho

although his timing wasn't good for the Don Lemon joke, should have waited a beat between "some of the finest black journalists are here tonight" and "Don Lemon's here too"

They aren't ****ing enemies of each other, that's the point of the dinner. They are supposed to be professionals, on both sides, who once a year sit down and burn each other. The idea that the press is the enemy of the state is bull**** Trump made up that you are normalizing buy implying it's true. If you can't have dinner with someone you're covering without losing your objectivity you probably didn't have any to begin with.

The original goal of the press was to act as government watchdogs to make sure that they didn't pull the wool over the eyes of the American people. Journalists were supposed to perform a public service for us. They were supposed to take politicians to task when things went wrong. That's no longer the case. These days, the press throws softballs at the government because they fear retribution from them and their bosses if they make them look bad. It is this patty-cake approach that makes them complicit in the debacle we face today.

The Correspondents Dinner is a yearly reminder of this buddy-buddy relationship the media has with the government. It is also a reminder of the news media's collective failure to hold the government accountable for atrocities such as human rights violations in the Middle East and the expansion of the surveillance state.

i think i have mentioned it here a couple of times before but douthat wrote some of the worst opinion pieces on refugees in europe and repeated many of the dumbest far right ideas. he writes in the language of upper class ny times readers/writers, so apparently people generally miss that the guy is essentially breitbart. the most surprising thing about the le pen column is that he wasnt pushing the even more retrograde and right-wing catholic marion le pen.

That Douthat column is an embarrassment. JFC.

I don't even need to read the article to know that it's an abortion.

2:40-4:20