• So President Obama sits down with Mark Maron on the WTF podcast, but nobody at Fox News is upset about the F-word. They’re upset because the president talked about the use of the N-word. Mainly, though, they seem to be upset because they’re not allowed to use that word and they really, really want to.
• “This is the fiction evangelicalism is predicated on: there is this plain reading of the Bible and anyone who sincerely sits down and reads the Bible, regardless of their education, regardless of their background, can get it. But you end up getting problems.”
• Old friends of our old friend The Liar Tony Perkins are back in the headlines:
• “Lack of curiosity might be a sin.” I don’t think that needs to be qualified. Lack of curiosity is a sin. Incuriosity always winds up killing a lot more than cats.
• “If House for dinosaurs doesn’t sound awesome to you, you’re just a very different person from me.”
• Waffle House managers deserve to be scattered, smothered and covered over this: “Woman Alleges Waffle House Manager Asked, ‘You’re Pregnant Again?’ Then Fired Her for Pregnancy.”
Last month, a Houston nonprofit called United Bible Fellowship Ministries was forced to pay $75,000 to a former employee fired for her pregnancy. United Bible, “which provides housing and residential care to clients with disabilities,” was sued by the EEOC for “an unlawful ‘no pregnancy in the workplace’ policy which prohibited the continued employment of any employee who became pregnant.” Nothing says “pro-life” like treating pregnancy as a firing offense.
• Good long read from Fast Company’s Jon Gertner: “Inside Obama’s Stealth Startup.” The right stuff.
• Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan spun a web of Spider-Man references in her ruling on Kimble v. Marvel, including a footnote citing “S. Lee and S. Ditko, Amazing Fantasy No. 15: “SpiderMan,” p. 13 (1962) (“[I]n this world, with great power there must also come — great responsibility”).”
Related: “She is a comic book fan and an avid fan of comic-book based action films, claiming that she has seen them all and that her favorite film is The Avengers.” (via)
• Having to resign as senior pastor of a mega-church because you got caught having an adulterous affair is Not Good. But that doesn’t lower my respect for Tullian Tchividjian as much as this, from his non-apology “statement” to the media: “As many of you know, I returned from a trip a few months back and discovered that my wife was having an affair.”
Pretty sleazy. Old school — “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree …” — but still sleazy.
• More about this later, but recent events at the South Carolina statehouse reminded me somehow of the best scene from Cameron Crowe’s 2005 movie Elizabethtown, featuring My Morning Jacket:
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