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"If you were to hand out sufficient sodium pentothal on the lawn outside the Ohio state capitol building today, how many of those people would be dittoheads? How many of them bought the whole reactionary package until it fell on their heads? How many of them actually voted in 2010? How many of them… shhh… voted for John Kasich, or a Republican state legislator, because they liked his stance on abortion, or what some men do to other men in the deep, sweaty dark? Oh, look, dear, we stood up for American Values. What do you mean my pension’s gone?"

"Cornelius Vanderbilt was so angry when he learned that he had been betrayed by Morgan and Garrison that he wrote them one of the shortest, and surely most ominous, letters of all time. “Gentlemen: You have undertaken to cheat me. I won’t sue you, for the law is too slow. I’ll ruin you. Yours truly, Cornelius Vanderbilt."

"Coldplay’s followup to 2008’s biggest-selling album is a curious thing. On the one hand, it aims for a certain ponderous gravitas. Mylo Xyloto is a concept album complete with a short filmic overture, interstitial instrumental pieces called things like A Hopeful Transmission, and recurring lyrical themes, set, as concept albums are legally obliged to be, in a futuristic dystopia: you can tell it’s a futuristic dystopia because one of the interstitial instrumentals, M.M.I.X., is helpfully bedecked with the sound of burbling computers. An oppressive regime wields power: “They got one eye watching you, so be careful who it is you’re talking to.” But the kids – it literally talks about “the kids” – are rising up against them, inspired by the power of rock’n’roll: “I turn the music up, I got my records on/ From underneath the rubble sing a rebel song.” Among the kids’ ranks lurk the two curiously named lovers of the album’s title. “The ending is very powerful, and about love conquering all,” explained drummer Will Champion, clearly a stranger to the spoiler alert. Without wishing to join the motley crew of petitioners who’ve cried plagiarism at Coldplay over the years, the plot sounds a bit familiar. It’s We Will Soft Rock You."

"Our Internet intellectuals lack the intellectual ambition, and the basic erudition, to connect their thinking with earlier traditions of social and technological criticism. They desperately need to believe that their every thought is unprecedented. Sometimes it seems as if intellectual life doesn’t really thrill them at all. They never stoop to the lowly task of producing expansive and expository essays, where they could develop their ideas at length, by means of argument and learning, and fully engage with their critics. Instead they blog, and tweet, and consult, and give conference talks—modes of discourse that are mostly impervious to serious critique. They do write books, of course; but as the example of Jeff Jarvis demonstrates, the books tend to contain almost only the slogans that they have peddled in more lucrative and less rigorous formats. They reject “the best that has been thought and said” for the best that has been blogged and tweeted."