I think it would have been a good question, at least about how she thinks AR has influenced those shows. She kind of referenced it unprompted near the end.

I've actually never seen AR, but American Pickers and Pawn Stars are my fall-back shows when nothing else is on. So I'm just a bad person. Those shows, and Pawn Stars in particular, suffer when they get away from the actual appraisals/negotiations as well. But they're still a good take on the AR format despite the…

What about… Obama?

I had someone tell me that there's a grassroots movement around Bernie's ideas now, but that it would only happen if Bernie was president.

That's not how tone works. You automatically make a determination one way or the other based on no evidence. So again, I think she meant exactly what she said, but there's nothing inherently unfair about reaching the opposite conclusion. You can be wrong or misunderstand a tone without being unfair.

I didn't read it that way, but yes. I think it's fair. There's rarely evidence when determining someone's tone on the internet. Given Schumer's stance on this sort of issue lately, I don't think she's being disingenuous, but if someone else thinks she is, fine.

And the scandalous part? He was black.

Don't worry, they'll throw a ball at his head at 99 mph so that he thinks about safety next time.

I think this is actually part of the point. These players bring some flair, some recognizable and exciting emotion, to the game, and they get killed for it by the "traditionalists." They make the game LESS boring, but the old generation (which is largely white, but it's as much or more a generational divide) wants…

I agree with your last point. We don't need sack dances for every home run, but that was a huge moment in a huge, crazy game. If that was so bad, why are teams allowed to run out on the field and jump around like idiots after a walk-off home run? Shouldn't the batter calmly jog around the bases, tip his cap to the…

This explains why the game is still so popular in my hometown, St. Louis.

Honestly, I know it's the popular thing to hate these articles, but I don't mind them. They're short pieces that fill the day in between the longer daily features, and the alternative is nothing. If you already know about a story, skip it. If you don't, maybe sometimes you'll see something interesting you wouldn't…

Same thing for me. Pretty much any food it talked about, no matter what horrible thing the discussion was saying about that food, just made me want to eat it.

And I forgot to even include his awful screenplay for "Promised Land," which was released in this same period. Same pattern as the books: potentially interesting concept ruined by the fact that all story is jettisoned in the end just to hit you over the head with a message. Subtlety is a good thing, novels and movies…

The C+ review from this esteemed website states it perfectly when it says "[a] story covered with current-events trappings without actually saying anything."

Eggers used to be one of my favorite authors, and I still read his books when they come out because they tend to be very quick. But his recent books, at least the last three, have been all message and no story. The Circle just hits you over the head until you can't think anymore and accept it. And the messages largely…

Now we know what Arby's meat is made of.

It's always odd when an AV Club review is more negative than any other I've seen. It happens so rarely.

I think it's better conceptualized a different way. This is a comedy show. The name part is the punch-line, and everything else is the setup. So everything is leading up to the punch-line, sure, but in really good bits the setup is just as important.

It's actually a somewhat nuanced point, which as usual has gotten lost in the hashtagization of the point. The point is that "Donald Trump" is a fictional character that has been made to connote success, power, and straight-talk, when Donald Trump the actual person has participated in a lot of failures and is anything…