I know what Silverman did at other networks, and why NBC would give him license to put disasters like this on the air. I just don't know if that power came by design, by stubbornness, or by sycophancy.

In Rabin-speak, a "failure" is an expensive production treated with indifference, whose end result is an eminently forgettable piece of culture. Should he do a feature on this year's Fantastic Four reboot, he'd certainly deem that a failure. A "fiasco" is a terrible product treated by its creator with the same esteem…

Here's what I've never been able to gather: did NBC give Silverman 100-percent control of programming, without having to clear decisions with anybody? Or, were other network executives so enamored by his track record, they were too afraid or deluded to object to the clearly terrible shows he was greenlighting?

Rick Neuheisel alone would be a better subject. Not only is he a terrible coach and judge of character, but he was fired for entering a March Madness pool.

Primus?

RHCP has been a legacy act, whose music can sustain its popularity entirely separate from the trends in popular music, since "Californication," at the very least. That's sixteen years of being a huge act despite being irrelevant in the terms of how its sound influences other people.

A mnemonic device is a mnemonic device, no matter where you pick it up!

If Jeb had his father's wit and his brother's charm, he'd be formidable enough of a candidate to ward off the crazies in the GOP primary. Too bad for him, he inherited the opposite.

Just going by major party nominees and third-party candidates who received electoral votes…

No, but when Steven Hyden comes groveling back to the Onion mothership, he, like Nathan Rabin, will find his old work space exactly as he remembers it…with the exception of a sign reading "Don't Forget, You're Here Forever" taking up one side of the cubicle.

Good point. If it's a fight to the death with no time limit, take the hundred duck-horses. You can't put them in a submission hold or win on points over twelve rounds, but you can beat them in a war of attrition.

Except that ducks aren't predatory creatures; for that matter, neither are horses. Neither are going to hunt you down, so it all depends on whose self-defense mechanisms come out better with the change in size.

Even if a horse-sized duck has horse-strength bones, its body shape is all wrong to put up a fight. Its legs and neck simply aren't long enough to be of any use in an attack. It will try to keep you out of range with its long wingspan, but once you find a way to work around that, it's easy pickings.

Depending on how the duck manages to become the size of a horse, the end result would be either a bird too heavy to fly, or one whose skeleton is too weak to support its own weight. In any case, the duck is going to have serious mobility issues that will render any feistiness on its part irrelevant; it will truly be a…

He also was responsible for this rhetorical gem:

It's sort of the logical extreme of Poe's Law: The Turner Diaries is so over-the-top with its extremism that it's hard to take it seriously enough to be offended by it. Only a completely delusional neo-Nazi militia fanatic could read an excerpt or synopsis of the book and treat it as anything but a sick joke —…

As far-right polemic literature goes, it still has nothing on the Turner Diaries.

I think the joke is that Serie A is the name of the top Italian soccer division.

Kevin Johnson was my favorite non-Chicago Bull NBA player of the '90s. I first thought it was kind of neat when I heard he became mayor of Sacramento, but good Lord, what a scumbag he's turned out to be.

"Alright, here's the plan. This model car represents my car, huh, and this olive is you. Now…"
(Homer immediately eats olive)
"Mmm…me."
"Hey, hey! That's great; now the car's gonna have to represent you, and this little toy man will represent the car. Wait…"