Six years into the Obama presidency, I thought we'd finally run out of hotshot administration bros the political press could glowingly profile in exchange for future access to meaningless scooplets. I was wrong.

Yesterday, The New York Times introduced us to Cody "Hemingway" Keenan. The president has given him the nickname "Hemingway," not because he is an overrated drunk— though he may indeed be that—but because he writes and has a beard. Unlike Hemingway, who wrote novels and stories that people still revere decades after his death, Keenan writes speeches that the president delivers and that everyone promptly forgets, because modern political speeches are disposable garbage. Judging by this profile, though, no one seems to have explained that distinction to Keenan, his friends, or Times reporter Michael Schmidt.

Keenan is presented as a classic hardboiled writers' writer type. He drinks Scotch, like a man might do! He stares at a blank page, because writing is a difficult, solitary business. The words just won't come! But also sometimes he stays up until 5 a.m. hashing out speeches with his other writer friend, because the only thing more writerly than writing is writing with another writer. They drink Scotch. They write, writingly. They are The Single-malt Scotch Bastards of the White House.

On Tuesday, Mr. Obama will deliver his next-to-last State of the Union address from a text written, rewritten, revised and sweated over by Mr. Keenan. In all the policy pronouncements about tax increases on the rich and tax cuts for the middle class, Mr. Obama’s remarks are certain to address the struggles of ordinary Americans in some of the gritty, Everyman prose that has become Mr. Keenan’s trademark.

Ah, who can forget all those examples of President Obama delivering the "gritty, Everyman prose that has become Mr. Keenan's trademark." The president sounds like a regular Hank Chinaski these days, haven't you noticed?

"He reminds me of some of the folks I grew up with in the old days in Chicago journalism — those hard-bitten, big-hearted, passionate writers who brought the stories of people to life," said David Axelrod, a longtime adviser to Mr. Obama and a former newspaper reporter.

Axelrod, in the spirit of political communication, is using words to advance not a set of facts but an impression. I have no reason to doubt the size of Keenan's heart, or the force of his passion, but the Times helpfully provides a capsule biography on how "hard bitten" he is:

In fact, Mr. Keenan, born in Chicago, went to high school in the wealthy town of Ridgefield, Conn., in Fairfield County, where he threw more interceptions than touchdowns, voraciously read spy novels and was president of the student body. He graduated from Northwestern University, and rolled into Washington at the age of 21 with just a fraternity brother’s couch to crash on and a cocky attitude.

Right, yes, he is exactly what he appears to be: Another of the legion of frat boys who go to DC after college to begin careers in politics. If he in any way reminds you of an old-timey hardscrabble Chicago newspaperman, you have been in politics far too long, or you are blind and illiterate.

Modern political speechwriting is not a high-minded pursuit for brilliant talents. Aaron Sorkin should be shot into space for perpetuating this bullshit fantasy that still enamors hacks like Cody Keenan. Writing a 6,000-word presidential speech is a process that bears only a mechanical resemblance to writing 6,000 words meant to be read and appreciated by normal humans. Some political speechwriters may also happen to be good writers, but they would have to achieve success in a field other than political speechwriting to prove it. (Former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett, for example, is funny on Twitter and a good political columnist. Neither of those things were evident in his work as a speechwriter.)

I am not arguing that any untrained schmo off the street could write a State of the Union address. Modern political speechwriting is certainly a skill, and one that requires experience and practice to master. It is not, however, a literary endeavor. It is marketing, and not even particularly imaginative marketing. Advertising people who call themselves "creatives" do more actual creative work than political speechwriters. Do the people who write statements of risk for pharmaceutical ads walk around swishing single malt in tumblers and comparing themselves to The Lost Generation? (Well, they probably do, but they are wrong.)

Political speechwriting is an exercise in the proper arrangement of cliches and platitudes, with a bit of "messaging" of policy ideas to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Speeches like the one the president will deliver tonight are designed to deliver pleasant inanities (The State of the Union is Strong) and sell certain carefully audience-tested proposals as vaguely (or misleadingly) as possible. The State of the Union is less written than it is designed, structured and organized around applause prompts and camera cues.

Here, for example, is some of Keenan's hard-bitten, muscular prose, from a previous State of the Union address:

"Today in America, a teacher spent extra time with a student who needed it, and did her part to lift America’s graduation rate to its highest level in more than three decades," Mr. Obama said in the opening lines of last year’s State of the Union address, written by Mr. Keenan.

The president went on: "A farmer prepared for the spring after the strongest five-year stretch of farm exports in our history. A rural doctor gave a young child the first prescription to treat asthma that his mother could afford. A man took the bus home from the graveyard shift, bone-tired but dreaming big dreams for his son."

That is boilerplate State of the Union rhetoric. Do you know what it doesn't sound like? Good prose by a good author. Peggy Noonan could down two bottles of white wine and crank this kind of shit out in ten minutes before passing out. Paul Harvey would've been embarrassed to read this on the radio. It's a storyboarding session for a TV commercial. If you actually imagine those images, the first thing that comes to mind is a soothing voice rapidly reading pharmaceutical contraindications.

Because Barack Obama is himself actually a decent writer, and because he is a good orator who has delivered some memorable speeches, his speechwriters have been showered with attention since before he was even elected president. Jon Favreau got a similar Times profile during the 2008 campaign, one of the first of a flood that would be written about him until he left the White House for the more lucrative fields of consulting, speaking, and screenwriting.

It's not even limited to the Obama bros. John McCain had his own ersatz Hemingway in longtime aide Mark Salter—who at least ghostwrote McCain's books, something that more closely resembles literary writing than preparing campaign speeches or Senate addresses. Salter was the recipient of numerous profiles during the 2008 campaign. ("Salter, 53, comes by his love of grit and combat honestly.")

It probably all dates back to the cult of Kennedy, and JFK's partnership with Ted Sorensen. But political rhetoric has inarguably declined in literary quality since the 1960s about as much as it had already declined, by then, since the 18th and 19th centuries. No one currently involved in speechwriting is ever going to craft a Lincoln's Second Inaugural or a Washington's Farewell Address, because speeches of that nature are not considered effective political communication in the 21st century. Modern speechwriters are certainly not doing anything comparable to writing deathless fiction about the realities of the American experience, because it would be weird if a politician delivered stark observations on the human condition instead of trying to make himself appear more acceptable than his political opponents to people who pay attention to presidential speeches once a year.

Tonight's State of the Union might be an effective speech, but it definitely won't be a good one.

[Image by Jim Cooke, original photo via Getty]

Viral content is as inescapable and radioactive as the sun, and yet sometimes viral videos come along that are so gross and bad that we must stop and admire their toxicity. Today: a Surprise Marriage Proposal featuring a Good Cop and his Shocked Wife.

BuzzFeed has the story of Texas cop Greg Parris' "unforgettable marriage proposal," in which he pulled over his wife-to-be and presented her with a wedding ring. Says BuzzFeed:

The dashcam video, obtained by KHOU, shows the officer pulling Wolff over and telling her she has a broken taillight.

He then tells her she has to get out of her car because she has outstanding warrants.. Wolff was so convinced by the officer that she began to cry.

However, her tears soon turned happy when Parris arrived and got down on one knee.

And then he pulled out his gun, and aimed it at her head, and inside the barrel was an engagement ring. And then he beat her into a coma with his nightstick and around the nightstick was an engagement ring. And then he got a no-knock warrant so he could break down her door and kill her dog, around whose collar he had attached an engagement ring. And then he applied for millions of dollars of DHS funding to purchase a military assault vehicle, and used it to buy a wedding ring with a rotating gun turret.

Actually, this video is boring as hell. This guy proposes to his wife in the street in the middle of the day. What did he even say to her? "Ma'am, are you aware why I pulled you over? I smell the scent of...marriage-uana in your vehicle. You have the right to... remain my wife."

This video is especially skincrawling because it synthesizes the web's worst content (the caught-on-camera marriage proposal) with its most useless truism (some cops are actually good) in a piece of content that ends up feeling less like a recording of a joyous moment in the lives of two strangers than assembly line propaganda. Cops need good PR right now: What better way to land it than with a beautiful and humanizing proposal?

Look at this shit:

"Remember when I asked you to spend the rest of your life with me as we both inhaled exhaust from your SUV?"

This video is perfect and horrible. Please share it so everyone knows cops are cool.

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The service is called Invisible Girlfriend, and the idea is that you sign up and pay $25 and they will send you text messages and photos and make you feel as if you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend (your choice), and if you can laugh at this without your laughter getting caught in your throat and turning to sobs, then you are a heartless tool.

Apparently this is a real service. The guy who created it, Matthew Homann, won a startup competition in St. Louis back in 2013 with this idea, and has spent the past year writing code and building out whatever back end you need to make something like this work.

There's also a companion app called Invisible Boyfriend. With either one, you fill out a little mad libs type thing where you make up a a back story for how you and your imaginary partner first met. Then you start getting texts and photos.

The work is not done by bots. There are real human beings on the other end, communicating with you, although the person writing to you will probably be different every time.

For $25 you get 100 text messages, 10 voice mails, one handwritten note — and a lifetime of secret shame.

Homann told me he came up with the idea and bought the domain names invsibleboyfriend.com and invisiblegirlfriend.com about nine years ago when he was going through a divorce and was sick of people bugging him about whether he had met someone new.

Some users, Homann says, are people who don't want their conservative grandparents to find out that they're gay. Others are soldiers overseas who want to pretend they have girlfriends back home. (Sniff.) A few others have been guys (presumably wearing Forever Alone T-shirts) who want to practice having a girlfriend so they can see what it's like, and so they can learn how to flirt over text messages. That way, if they ever meet an actual woman, they will know what to do when it comes to texting and leaving voice mail messages and other things that people who have real boyfriends and girlfriends do. Because, in fact, there are people who do not know how to do this.

Laugh all you want. But I've gone through a box of Kleenex just trying to write this post.

Footnote: Yes, I did notice in the screengrab (above) from their site that they spelled the word believable two different ways on the same page, once correctly, once not so much. Look, it's in beta. Now if you will excuse me I'm going to lie down and have a good cry.

It has been nearly a week since John Travolta introduced himself to a male stranger at the gym, where they were alone, together, at three in the morning. In that time, the photo of Travolta and an unsuspecting man has gone viral, and both Travolta and the man have had to explain exactly why Travolta approached him at the gym, where they were alone, together, at three in the morning.

For the defense, here is Travolta's explanation, as told to Access Hollywood:

"[I work out] for my health… as you get older, if you have kids that are young – I mean, my son's 4 and my daughter's 14. I should be really a grandfather, but I'm a father," John told Access at the Living Legend Aviation Awards on Friday. "They still want me to play with them at the level of a much younger man. So in order to stay healthy for them, that's what I do."

Here is what the man, named Justin Jones, told the National Enquirer:

"I was completely aware of what was happening," said Justin. "He just walks right up to me and introduces himself – 'Hi, I'm John.'"

When asked if he thought John was sizing him up, Justin said, "I understood what was happening when it was happening – it was in his body language. It didn't make me uncomfortable, but I noticed it."

"I understood what was happening when it was happening," says the man who was approached by John Travolta, at the gym, where they were alone, together, at three in the morning.

We all did, Justin. We all did.

Welcome, fans, to the first annual official mid-January liveblogging of an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" that is currently (as of 9 p.m. Eastern time) airing on BBC America. If you want to play along at home, you can find BBC America on your local cable network here. Tonight's episode is "Chain of Command: Part II."

In case you missed Part I, please catch up with the episode's entry at Memory Alpha, the premiere Star Trek wiki. In short: Following a secret mission into Cardassian space, Captain Picard is taken hostage, and the prickly Captain Jellico has taken command of the Enterprise in his stead.

9:06: Wow, what a teaser! We're in for a pretty intense one, gang. Captain Picard is being interrogated by Gul Madred (though his name is never used in the episode), played by veteran character actor David Warner, a Star Trek veteran. (You may remember him as Klingon Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.)

9:13: Here's Ronny Cox as Captain Jellico — it's so weird hearing someone else do the captain's log, right? — facing down another dastardly Cardassian.

Picard's interrogation continues. "I understand that you're a student of archeology" — classic evil interrogator stuff. The Cardassians were the best villains of the TNG era (though they didn't really come into their own until DS9 obviously). Right now the interrogation is pretty chill — would Picard care to tour the Hebitian burial vaults?

9:15: Picard protests! "Torture is expressly forbidden by the terms of the Seldonis Four convention governing treatment of prisoners of war!!!" Jean-Luc, study your 21st Century Earth history, these conventions are worth less than the paper they're printed on, even in supposedly civilized societies.

(Weird Vaseline lens blur in this ep that I don't really remember, is this some sort of weird standard def-to-HD artifact?)

9:18: Why was Dr. Crusher on this undercover mission again?

9:20: Captain Picard has been implanted with "a small device" ("it's a remarkable invention") that, even on the lowest possible setting, inflicts an unbelievable amount of paint. Picard's torturer isn't asking him what Picard knows about Starfleet's plans for Minos Korva — he simply wants to know what how many lights are on behind him.

9:25: Picard will be treated "as a terrorist" as long as the Federation refuses to withdraw from the sector. Jellico won't budge. Riker's pissed! He's relieved of duty! Dammit Jellico you can't just leave Picard to die in Cardassian custody!!

9:30: As Enterprise senior officers debate why Cardassians would specifically want to capture Captian Picard, the poor captain witnesses his interrogator telling his daughter that Human parents do not love their children as much as Cardassians — a scene that briefly and economically shows how societies dehumanize their enemies. Picard and Madred debate Cardassian history: Is Cardassian society better off since the military took charge? Madred's daughter will never go hungry — but what about her spirit? Tough questions from a classic episode.

9:35: "Is that what's keeping you from breaking? Memories of home and hearth? Images of happier times? I must congratulate you. You're remarkably strong willed. I see no point in holding you further. You may go. Someone will give you clean clothing before we return you to your ship." Sounds good! BUT: "We will get what we need from the human female." It's Dr. Crusher! It's a trick, Jean-Luc!

David Warner in this is like Alan Rickman in Die Hard-level good. Shoulda got an Emmy.

9:37: Mortdecai ad alert.

9:39: Gang, which do you like better, this one or the one with the flute? Please leave your answer in Kinja.

9:42: BTW you can purchase a formatted copy of the Senate torture report from publisher Melville House.

9:45: A little "humanizing" background on Picard's torturer. "Torture has never been a reliable means of extracting information," Picard says. Early 90s syndicated scifi tv: Improbably smarter than 75 percent of 21st century political debate.

Suddenly, Picard has the upper hand. Incredible stuff from Patrick Stewart here. "In spite of all you've done to me, I find you a pitiable man." "THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS." Also shoulda got an Emmy.

9:46: That Riker — "he's the best there is." Literally any time on this show characters just explicitly tell us how cool and talented and awesome Riker is it is always hilarious.

9:50: Now Riker is wearing his sexy robe, talking about jazz. Ronny Cox hates him but now there is grudging respect. "I don't like you. I think you're insubordinate, arrogant. willful, and I don't think you're a particularly good first officer. But you are also the best pilot on the ship." THE BEST DAMN PILOT ON THIS SHIP. I doubt this. I mean, surely Data — whose reaction time is surely infinitely superior to that of a human pilot — is better.

9:55: "The Enterprise is burning in space." A great thing about this episode is that the torture is portrayed as a brutal combination of physical and mental — it's not a car battery connected to the scrotum, it's systematically attacking what Picard cares most about (The Enterprise, Dr. Crusher, the Federation) while also causing him significant physical discomfort and pain.

9:57: THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS. FUCK YES. THE STATE OF THE UNION IS THAT THERE ARE FOUR FUCKING LIGHTS.

9:59: An important coda. Picard isn't a superman who could stand up to torture thanks to his grit and bravery and sense of duty — he's a mere human being. "I was going to. I would have told him anything. Anything at all. But more than that, I believed that I could see five lights." Goddamn. Classic TNG.

10:01: LOL and we're straight into goofy-ass Data and LaForge playing Homes and Watson in the Holodeck in the opening of the next episode. A jarring segue! Thanks for following along, everyone. Same time next year!

10:08: Wait one last thing I only just now learned that the guy who played Moriarty on TNG, who is the same guy who played Niles on The Nanny, is NOT EVEN ENGLISH. He's from Arkansas! What the hell!

Time for your annual checkup, America. This year's diagnosis: income inequality.

The proposals won't exactly be new—Obama's been workshopping them in speeches over the past few weeks—nor will the ceremony. People on one side will clap. People on the other will not. The union will be diagnosed as "strong." The speech will be appropriate. The camera will pan to one or more of these people.

But there's always a few potential wild cards:

Will newly-elected Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, slated to deliver the Republican response, do that natural laugh again?

What faces will Joe Biden make ?

Will Michael Grimm make it into the In Memoriam slideshow?

Here's the official White House lifestream. For a fun "SOTU" drinking game, take a shot every time the minute hand on the clock changes.

Or just switch on over to Star Trek.

[Photo via Getty]

A man who accidentally fell into the back of a dump truck reportedly survived the garbage ordeal by building himself a trash coffin.

The man told cops he had been inside a dumpster looking for his wallet when the entire thing was dumped into the back of a garbage truck bound for—no joke—Yolo County, CA.

To protect himself from suffocating in the wet tangled trash nightmare, he maneuvered pieces of lumber around himself to "build a coffin."

"The man said he was stuck in the truck for about an hour, but estimates show it was more like 3 or 3 1/2 hours," Lt. Martin Torres of the Yolo County Sheriff's Office told reporters. "The truck made several other pick-ups before arriving at the landfill, where the driver saw the man crawl out of his trash pile."

He was eventually rescued when the truck dumped its load at the Yolo County landfill, where the operator noticed him flopping around in the trash.

"He was lucky the truck was only half full," Torres said. "Had it been full, he would have certainly been crushed and suffocated to death."

[h/t UPI, image via KCRA]

Barack Obama delivered the State of the Union speech on Tuesday night. This is what you need to know:

• The speech was boring and not particularly stirring or smart.
• These people came.
• Barack Obama made this joke and everyone laughed.
• In terms of honestly and intelligently reckoning with torture, duty, military power, and leadership you were better off watching tonight's rerun of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Chain of Command: Part II."
• The following four GIFs were the best GIFs.

Wanna golf with Rob Lowe? That's great, he loves golf! But arghhh such bad timing—he quit golfing years ago. Which is so hard. Because he loves golfing. But he can't, you know, because of the bird.

Lowe told Conan Monday he left the sport for good after causing a traumatic bird injury while golfing for charity a few years ago, which is so fun, Rob Lowe loves charity tournaments. But then he accidentally bagged an eastern goldfinch, Iowa's state bird? Mid-tournament! Via the NYDN:

"I gave golf up because I killed the Iowa state bird in flight, in a golf tournament"

"I went to a PGA Pro-Am celebrity thing in the state capital of Iowa, and I hit a really, I thought, nice sand wedge"

"And BOINK, in the air, dead — into the trap," he said, describing the doomed bird's path with his finger.

"That's the thing, it's not like Randy Johnson, the pitcher who killed a seagull ... it's a finch," he said.

It was horrific! And almost statistically impossible! Lowe says the odds of making that birdshot was one in 747 million—so it's highly unlikely he'll kill another bird that way in this lifetime. But Rob Lowe, who—make no mistake—loves golf, isn't going to take that chance again. So he's going to have to respectfully decline your charity tournament invitation this year. Because of the bird :(

[image via AP]

Caity: Someone at a New Year's Eve party told me they felt we had hit a melancholy streak in our Best Restaurants lately.

Rich: Really? Was it the joy we took in watching children fall or traipsing through a toy store before it opened that conveyed sorrow?

Caity: I think also our recent observance of 9/11.

Anyway, bearing that in mind, I'm thrilled we decided to cheer things up with a trip to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

The best restaurant in New York is

The Lower East Side Tenement Museum's Tastings at the Tenement

Menu style

Prix fixe seven course tasting menu

Cost

Normally $35/person; a museum representative offered us complimentary media passes

Rich: For people who want to feast while thinking about New York City's bleak tenement past, the Tenement Museum offers two options: A walking tour called "Foods of the Lower East Side," and a weekly sit-down meal with a pre-set tasting menu called "Tastings at the Tenement." We opted for the latter, because it entailed less walking. Tickets for the tasting cost $35, but the museum covered ours.

Tastings at the Tenement are hosted by a museum guide. We met ours in the souvenir shop, after being instructed by PA to line-up in front of "educator Anna." I immediately scoffed at that title, only to find that we would be led for the next two hours by probably the most knowledgeable person on earth.

Caity: Anna was like the cool TA who actually teaches the professor's classes. Or maybe I'm just saying that because she's a young woman. Anna was like the cool professor who shouldn't have to prove herself just because she's a woman!

Rich: Educating the ignorant seemed like a joyous experience to her, rather than a frustrating one.

Caity: She was also beautiful. In any other town, she'd be the town model, but in New York we make her work in a tenement. Her voice was soothing—simultaneously sing-songy and deep. I sometimes forgot to pay attention to the facts she was telling us because I was so relaxed. Her speech was like the binaural beats app on my iPhone, "Pre-Sleep" setting.

Rich: She was full of fun facts—did you know that there are 700 kinds of German sausages—and endearingly formal expressions, like, "Dare I say!"

Caity: I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Anna was the ghost of a bookish young woman who died in a tenement fire two hundred years ago. I would be more surprised to learn that Anna was NOT such a being.

Rich: Before settling down for our tasting, Anna gave us a brief tour of one apartment in the museum, which is itself a preserved tenement building, located at 97 Orchard St. We were told not to rub against the walls, as they were made of "21 layers of wallpaper, 10 layers of paint, and horse hair." Frankly that sounds more stable than any wall that I've rubbed up against in recent memory.But fine, I thought. I'll listen.

And then, immediately, I rubbed up against a wall.

Caity: Oh my God, really?

Rich: I tried to tell you with my eyes.

Caity: I'm so glad I didn't make eye contact with someone who broke the rule.

Anna, I did NOT rub up against the wall. I respect your former home. And forever home.

Rich: We entered the apartment and were immediately quizzed.

Caity: "This was my room—" said Anna. "—I MEAN...What can we say about the people who might have lived here?"

Rich: "What are your initial reactions to this home? What questions do you have?"

Caity: My initial reaction was JEWS because there was something written in Hebrew on the wall, but no one else said that, and I didn't want the other people in our tour group to think that all I had to say about the apartment was that the people who used to live in it were Jews.

Anyway, that was the only thing I noticed about the apartment.

Rich: My initial reaction was "It looks like Brooklyn." I have been in many buildings that look pretty much exactly like the tenement, no TV and all.

Caity: I agree that at first it didn't seem that much worse than my or my friends' apartments...until we were informed that a family of EIGHT had lived there. (The Rogarshevskys.) (Jewish.)

Rich: Some people slept with their heads on the couch and their legs propped on boxes. They even took in boarders sometimes.

Caity: Like Anna.

Rich: We were told to consider the solitude of Fannie Rogarshevsky, which sounds like a Belle & Sebastian song. Anna used the terms "air shaft" and "fire door," which made me think of Ani DiFranco. The whole experience gave me flashbacks to my freshman year in college, when I, a poor immigrant from Jersey, came to live in New York. Culture is cyclical.

Fun fact: "tenement building" just describes a multi-family building, but the term came to have such a negative connotation that new builders switched to the euphemism "apartment". Technically, Donald Trump lives in a tenement building — another bit of wisdom from Anna.

Caity: Another interesting thing Anna mentioned about the building at 97 Orchard is that it was condemned in the 1930s because it was not fire-safe. Floors two through five were boarded up (commercial spaces in the basement were left open), and then one family just sat on the building from 1935 through 1988, when the museum took it over.

Rich: Being instilled with the fear that we could die at any moment standing in that tenement building really gave the tour an uncommonly immersive quality.

Caity: After Anna showed us her home and impressed upon us her ghostly message of fire safety, it was time to return to the museum's other building, where touching the walls is allowed, presumably, but not outright encouraged.

We walked up a flight of stairs, and then she led us to the homiest conference room in New York City. The tables in front of the PowerPoint presentation were decorated with cloths, paper flowers, charmingly mismatched old world plates, and candles—their flames' brazen jig reflected back to us in Anna's dark eyes.

There, Anna introduced us to a woman named Elana, who would be plying us with food and booze for the next ninety minutes.

Rich: We sat amongst five other couplings. I was convinced that the women on my right were lesbians. They had short hair and one drank beer. Nope. Mother/daughter.

Caity: Wait—they weren't mother/daughter. They were friends.

Rich: No, they were definitely mother/daughter.

Caity: I thought one's daughter bought her the tickets. Are you sure?

Rich: OHHHHHH.

Caity: Rich, they were like the same age.

Rich: I thought that too! But one had grayer hair! So I just figured "Oh, she must have had her very young" OK, so they were lesbians.

At the other end of the table, the presumed homosexual daddy/son couple ended up being...an actual father and son. I mean, I was SURE that they were gay. And perhaps they are. My mind got blown a lot that night.

There was also a decidedly mixed-gender ACTUAL couple. The woman looked like Lena Dunham and the man looked like Nate Silver. IMAGINE THAT.

Caity: I loved the other mixed gender (engaged) couple, who were there because the man LOVES the Tenement Museum and the woman had never taken part in one of these tastings. If you can believe it, this couple was conventionally attractive, and not outwardly strange. Just two good-looking people who really enjoy the Tenement Museum.

Rich: After taking our seats, we were made to go around the table and explain why we were there, which was like: MOMENT OF TRUTH.

I had to go before you.

Caity: Here, I assumed Rich would say "I write a restaurant review column for a website." But instead he made up some bullshit lie about loving history.

Rich: Should I reveal our true intentions or continue to look like an insane person who just likes to take notes on things?

I chose the latter. "I'm generally interested in New York history." Not a lie. Not the truth.

Caity: People always ask me, What's Rich like in real life?

"Generally interested in New York history," is the reply.

Meanwhile, I had actually recently watched two documentaries on topics relating to this chapter of New York history (one about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, another on the construction of Penn Station) and I could not think of anything to say.

Rich: I think I took your answer. You seem generally interested in New York history.

Given that we were invited by a Tenement Museum employee, I think Anna must have known our true purpose there and it's testament to her character that she didn't doxx us.

Caity: I was panicking that Anna would think we were weird for lying, so I just made up a bizarre long answer that didn't make sense. I rambled for eleven hours about everything and nothing.

....and speaking of New York Harbor, you may be saying to yourself, "Hey, the Statue of Liberty is made of copper like a penny so why isn't it brown like a penny?" Here's my guess:...

Eventually I had to stop talking because it was time for the birth of my first great-grandchild.

Rich: Honestly, I just didn't want to compromise the integrity of our shared meal. I wanted people to be "natural" without feeling like they were being documented

Caity: Little did they know you were taking notes on all of them. "Gay," you wrote "He's gay. He's gay. They're gay together. Gay."

Much better for everyone to find out what you were writing down now, by surprise.

Rich: This surreptitiousness ultimately led to me feeling like an asshole for taking a picture of every single thing that was put on my plate. If you're doing that for work, well, you look like LESS of an asshole.

Caity: We're foodies and we love these little pretzel parts.

Rich: I really wanted to be like, "I'm not one of those people! I promise I'm doing this for a reason." But, I guess ultimately, job or no job, I AM one of those people.

Caity: After we learned why everyone was there (turns out most people have a general interest in New York history), it was time for the bacchanal to begin. Elana had given us all wine or beer of our choosing.

Rich: I chose beer so as to look butch. Lots of covers to refrain from blowing that night.

Caity: I chose white wine so people would think I was there filming a scene for The Real Housewives of New York, which I'm sure is one of the lies I told in my rambling explanation of why I was there.

Rich: I was so hungry that I immediately got drunk on the beer. I felt like Lita Ford.

Caity: Everything we were served came from a represented a specific immigrant group and chapter of the Lower East Side's tenement history. The food is all procured from neighborhood businesses. The first thing Elana placed in front of us was PRETZEL PIECES numnumnumnumnumnum.

Rich: They were wonderful and the accompanying sauces were even more wonderful, BUT I got very small pieces! I got the slim internal connectors, not the fat hunks that make the perimeter.

Caity: This is not going to make sense to anyone reading but Rich would not stop WHISPERING to me about it so I guess I'll leave it in.

Rich: I was so hungry! It felt like a loss. I'm a big guy! I need big pretzel bites! Why didn't Elana tend to my needs? If I saw me, I would think "He has a big body and must need more food to be full than most people. I'll make sure to give him the most."

Caity: Elana did the right thing by giving me the most, because I eat the most and I CERTAINLY love pretzels the most. They reminded me of my homeland, Harrisburg, Pretzelvania.

The pretzels were accompanied by mustard and a spicy cheese spread called "liptauer," both of which I ate like a pretzel, in that I ate them alone, after all the pretzel was used up. We were also given baby portions of German potato salad, which was delicious. Anna explained that the first immigrants to settle that neighborhood were German, a fact of which even we—two people with a general interest in New York history—were not previously aware. She pointed out that these foods were the kind the owners of Schenider's saloon, which opened there in 1864, might have eaten, pretending not to have vivid, specific memories of sitting around the table with the Schneiders, eating dinner with them, and telling them about her day.

Rich: It was almost maddening how good the food was. We were given such small portions, in a trickle. A kind of Chinese water torture for your stomach. I was so hungry I wanted to lick the plate.

During the next course, we were given a fantastic pickled pineapple, which tasted of cloves, and a pickled green tomato, which tasted like cheese. Included in the trio: good old fashioned pickled cucumber.

Everyone else also got two pickled cucumber pieces but I just got one.

Caity: Wow, Rich, you basically lived in a tenement for 7 minutes.

Rich: Again, it was an immersive experience. Did I like suffering? No. Do I understand what it was like to go to a tasting at the turn of the 20th century? Absolutely.

Caity: A true taste of the tenement would have been serving us nothing, but it would be ballsy to charge people $35 for the taste of hunger.

Rich: For our third course, we visited the Italian immigrant population via Soppressata wrapped around a piece of Parmesan, a slice of prosciutto, and an olive. No wait—we got two olives but I was so hungry that I ate one before I took my picture.

Caity: Your vegetarianism was accommodated by the removal of the meats. I can't believe you revealed that truth about yourself to the group. The only true thing you said all night.

Rich: It was the hardest thing I've ever done. It really did make me feel like even MORE of an asshole.

Caity: Me? My name's Candybar. I have a general interest in New York history and I'm 16 years old. Wandered in here looking for my aunt—she works here, and, uh...

Rich: I'm taking pictures of my food because it's just something I like to do. And...I'm a vegetarian.

Anyway, I hate letting people know that. Feels like it gives them some power. Enough about me, the olive and cheese were great, no complaints.

Caity: One thing that struck me as a little odd, but which I suppose was unavoidable: Everyone was given given a nice ceramic plate to mark their place at the table, but all the food was served on biodegradable cardboard plates that were placed on top of the pretty plates. I guess it would have been clunky for Elana to lug around serving dishes, or scoop up all the plates every time, but it did make it feel a little like we were in a plate museum, pretending to use plates but not touching them.

Rich: Some tenants don't have any plates, and there you are complaining about having too many.

Caity: Our fourth course was cheddar cheese, queso blanco with guava paste, and maduros. This was representative of the time Rosie Perez lived in the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

Rich: I love love love guava and cheese combos. Almost as I love platanos. I love my food like I love my men: Latin.

Caity: I prefer my food without paste on it but, of course, no amount of paste will stop me from ultimately eating it.

Rich: I want gobs of paste on my tongue, as long as it's Latin paste.

Caity: Everything was, in keeping with the theme of the night, delicious. I do think the small portions, coupled with Anna's history powerpoint interludes, made me really savor every bite.

Rich: I agree. I usually wolf, and this time I nibbled. It almost worked in satiating me. It made me feel fortunate to have anything in my mouth at all.

Caity: I would have eaten the cardboard plates if Elana had not collected them so efficiently (always from the right, and served from the left). Our fifth course was the most plentiful: peanut noodles. A mountain of peanut noodles. Peanut noodles spread across our plates like amber waves of grain.

Rich: They were greasy, which is not a bad thing to be. I prefer sesame noodles, but these were good.

Caity: The peanut noodles would have been my least favorite dish of the evening, except that there were so many of them. (As it was: I guess I have only favorites?) It was the only thing that came close to approaching my standard portion size. I was grateful for that. Grateful for peanuts, even in the form of noodles.

Rich: Right there with you. It also opened a conversation about Chinese-American food and authenticity, which I took part in.

Caity: What is a peanut noodle? Is it made of peanuts?

Rich: Nah, it's the sauce that has the noodles.

Caity: I thought they were made of peanuts. Less impressed now. Not very innovative to make a noodle not out of peanuts.

Rich: Seems impossible, but when you're you, you have the right to demand the best.

Caity: I was SO IMPRESSED someone had found a way to do that. What's next? Computer made out of peanuts? Song made out of peanuts?

Rich: The woman next to me talked about a wedding she went to where they served authentic Chinese food, including jellyfish tentacles. They were "kind of rubbery," according to her. Good to know.

Caity: Were the jellyfish made out of peanuts?

Rich: Nah, they were made out of sesame.

Caity: Not. Interested.

At this point in the meal. I was wondering if we were ever going to get something really substantial. The noodles were our first warm dish, but I had a taste for meat.

Elana heard my internal wonders, and next, brought out plates of fried pork-and-chive dumplings and boiled vegetable dumplings. She gave you double vegetable dumplings which was the worst thing that ever happened to me. I could have had your meat, and you could have had my peanuts, or whatever the vegetable dumplings were made of.

Rich: You'll never have my meat! I forgot to take pictures of the dumplings altogether.

Caity: Oh, man, I did too! We were so hungry, we forgot to take pictures of the best thing!

Rich: Haha, well, imagine dumplings, readers.

Caity: Imagine, if you will, two enormous peanuts.

They looked basically like this: O O

Rich: Here, I'll draw a picture.

Caity: There they are. Anyway: As you can see, they were delicious.

Rich: It is a compliment NOT to be photographed.

Caity: Our seventh course consisted of a trio of desserts: a black sesame cream puff, a chocolate-covered pretzel, and halvah. The cream puff was phenomenal.

Rich: Cream puffs generally are. I have a general interest in eating cream puffs.

Caity: Black sesame sounds like something that would ruin a cream puff, but it made it great.

A fellow diner expressed concern that Anna had not partaken of any dishes, which is a very rude thing to say to a ghost. "I'll eat later, don't you worry!" lied Anna.

Rich: Also, Anna's mug was mysteriously full of something.

Caity: Air.

Rich: As for the rest of the dessert: all good. I love chocolate covered pretzels. I love cream puffs. I love that creamy smear of whatever. Also, I was still very hungry after. This tasting fed my head but not my stomach.

Caity: We clapped for Anna, and for innovative peanut technology, and for tenements, and then set out into the night to purchase a second order of dumplings from the restaurant that provided the first (Vanessa's). The tasting made us better, more involved community members. Also peckish.

Is Everything OK?

Questions About the Dining Experience

Would you go back?

Caity: I would go back in a heartbeat. I plan to revisit the museum itself, which we we didn't get to spend much time in. I would absolutely re-do Tastings at the Tenement if a friend wanted to. Maybe a few years from now I'll be the insane man dragging my future bride to an evening of small snacks. I LOVE the Tenement Museum and she's never been to the tasting.

Rich: Even though I learned a lot and leave the Tenement Museum a changed man, I bet we didn't get a hundredth of Anna's knowledge, so I feel like going back would provide more food for thought and more food to be tantalized by until we eat a real meal at Vanessa's Dumplings. The real solution is to go to the Tenement Museum on a full-ish stomach. Modern society compels it.

Is it a good first date spot?

Caity: It is almost a perfect first date spot, except that Anna, God love her and one day free her from this earthly realm, kept asking us enthusiastic substitute teacher-like questions, which were always greeted with a few seconds of uncomfortable silence. If she were allowed to simply produce information without involving us, it would be a great first date spot.

Rich: It's about as good of a first date as a movie in that you won't really get to talk to your date very much, but you'll both exist quietly, listening. The good news is that you won't fill up on food, which makes sex a more plausible outcome (especially of the anal variety). (In my old age, I have come to be less interested in sex on a full stomach.)

Is it a good place to have an affair?

Caity: The great thing about Tastings at the Tenement is that once you get there, you can totally reinvent yourself and be anyone you want to be. It's a little like the Big Apple itself that way. Maybe you and your mistress are doctors from Switzerland. Maybe you have a general interest in New York history.

Rich: Yes, this is a wonderful place to have an affair with your parent.

Is it a good place to bring a doll?

Caity: This is a great place to bring a doll, because the portions will be just what she is used to.

Rich: Did you make your doll out of a dirty washcloth and some raisins stuck to it for eyes? No? Then leave her home and don't expose her to the old timey squalor. There's no reason to give her bad dreams.

There are a bunch of restaurants in the world, including some in New York City. But in a city of over 24,000 restaurants, how do you find the best? You begin your search in places that are already popular: New York's hottest tourist destinations. In The Best Restaurant in New York Is, writers Caity Weaver and Rich Juzwiak attempt to determine the best restaurant in New York.

Previously: The Best Restaurant in New York Is: The Best Restaurant in New York Is: FAO Schwarz; The Rockefeller Center Ice Rink; The 9/11 Memorial & Museum Café; The Empire State Building; The Macy's Basement; Wall Street Bath & Spa; El Museo del Barrio; The Williamsburg Urban Outfitters ; The Central Park Boathouse; The Tommy Bahama Store; The Bronx Zoo; The Armani Store;The Crown Cafe at the Statue of Liberty; The Campbell Apartment inside Grand Central; The U.N. Delegates Dining Room; Play at the Museum of Sex; Le Train Bleu inside Bloomingdales; LOX at The Jewish Museum; The American Girl Café

[Top photo and museum exterior shot courtesy of The Lower East Side Tenement Museum / Other images by Rich Juzwiak and Caity Weaver]

The University of Moncton in New Brunswick, Canada is famous for one thing: hot, hot students grabbing each other passionately in lustful embraces all over campus. Why can't the teachers "get with" that?

Above you will find the hot and sexy 30-second ad that the University of Moncton is currently running to attract new students to its fuck palace/ place of learning. Amid all the rapid cuts and action shots is a scene of two highly attractive "students" kissing each other in what appears to be a library, in the manner of two professional porn actors preparing to theatrically fuck "in the stacks." So what? I can only assume that this is an accurate, documentary-style reflection of the hot, hot atmosphere pervading the University of Moncton campus, where any and all students run the risk of being grabbed lustfully by a sex-crazed coed intent on fucking you right there—passersby be damned.

Have the University of Moncton's professors not read the handbook? Or what?

Marie-Noëlle Ryan, the president of the university's professors' and librarians' association, calls the video "pathetic." ...

"And it's not that way that you will recruit serious students and people who really want to learn and have good diplomas."

It is, however, the way you will recruit serious students and people who really want to make out and have hot, hot sex in your university library—not to mention countless other locations on campus. Why discriminate against this sexy demographic?

[CBC via Inside Higher Ed]

The Hollywood Reporter confirms our scoop that Jennifer Aniston is, indeed, fine. The new issue promises a close look at all of the things Jen is O.K. with, including but not limited to: "her struggles with anger, her dyslexia, that Oscar snub," and her dead dog tattoo. "I know I have a bigger purpose," Jen says. She's fine.

Reminder: Gawker is trying a new publishing system where post less often to the home page. Read about the change here. Happening elsewhere: Defamer Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson Are Either Beefing or Not Beefing, IDK | Internet The Man Who Singlehandedly Made 4chan Is Finally Quitting | Newsfeed Cannibal Cop Is Looking For Love From Someone "A Little Kinky ;)"

On the second episode of The Nightly Show, Larry Wilmore used his new platform to address the numerous sexual assault accusations against Bill Cosby. Did he do it? Yes, says Wilmore, that motherfucker did it, and the proof is common sense.

In his opening monologue, Wilmore pointed out that Cosby now faces allegations from 35 women, "which is like if Bill Cosby drugged and raped every U.S. President from George Washington to John. F Kennedy." Miss Stephen Colbert if you want, but Wilmore probably does a better impression of Bill Cosby preparing to sexually assault Grover Cleveland during his second nonconsecutive term.

Seriously, though, Wilmore is asking the right question about the Cosby situation: Why don't people believe these women?

Here's how the Nightly Show's panel answered it:

[h/t Comedy Central]

"I feel very strongly about that: an alternative to the idea of women being a certain way." Janet Weiss, the drummer for Sleater-Kinney, was sitting on a leather green swivel chair three feet in front of me as she responded to a question from Broad City's Ilana Glazer about feminism. "The quiet, demure, soft-spoken sort of stereotype. The three of us get on stage and we really try to break that down and give people who feel differently than that a place to go and a place to express themselves."

It was a Friday night at the Ace Hotel in Chelsea, and there were five women sitting at the front of a basement room, commanding a small crowd: Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, stars of the Comedy Central hit show, Broad City, and Janet Weiss, Corin Tucker, and Carrie Brownstein, who make up the guitar-centric, socially aware '90s rock band Sleater-Kinney. After a nine-year hiatus, Sleater-Kinney has reunited with a new album and the effervescent Broad City duo was on site to pick their brains.

My friend and I arrived to the event a bit early. I scanned the room and found that my expectations lived up to my prediction: the crowd at the event was largely made up of women, probably close to a 3:1 ratio, the reason behind which was fairly obvious: both Broad City, with its honest portrayal of what young women's lives in New York look like, and Sleater-Kinney, whose music has unapologetically inserted the female perspective into rock music for two full decades, resonate strongly with a certain type of woman: one who is aware of her gender but who is eager to defy its constraints.

"Our culture has changed in the past twenty years. It's evolved a little bit and that's kinda rad," said Corin Tucker, one of Sleater-Kinney's two guitar-playing vocalists (the other is Carrie Brownstein), in response to a question from Glazer about the two iterations of the band: their riot grrrl origin versus their new "adult" version: a more polished sound with sharper aggression. What had changed for them and how?

"A lot has happened. A lot of people have worked really hard to include more people and to feel more inclusive and to feel more empathy for more kinds of people," Tucker continued. "We want everyone to feel comfortable, no matter how they identify."

The conversation among the five women was fluid and freeform, and while it was underlined by actual questions that Glazer and Jacobson had written on large-format index cards and loose scraps of paper, it more than once went off the rails when the women became engrossed in side tangents like they were the best of friends. Jacobson admitted she was something of a new S-K listener, but no one treated this admission with any disdain.

After Weiss pointed out that their new record, No Cities to Love, feels "desperate" and Brownstein added that she is aware of her "constant sense of agitation at the world," the women moved on to talked about their icons—Amy Poehler, Miranda July, Kim Gordon—and their inspirations—Anjelica Huston, HBO passwords, James Baldwin, each other. The result was a long syllabus of things that, for future feminists, needed to be read and watched.

When I was an editor of a music and culture website two years ago, I constantly felt like I was fighting against a current to feature women who played music or women who made art. I don't doubt that in the process, I was careless about how I labeled these acts or quantified their talent because they were not just talented, they were women, and that point—that so many of them were also fighting against a current themselves—was something to be proud of and celebrate.

The idea at the time was to focus as intently on female artists as possible, to give them a spotlight that was shining so brightly that no one could negate the fact that there were women making fantastic music. The quantification was meant to boost female artists by highlighting them and drawing attention to their gender, their feminism, their battle to earn respect. But this system only failed by limiting women musicians to certain constraints that meant nothing. Did they play music? Yes. Was it good? Yes. That was all anyone really needed to know.

When one of my best friends' bands (a postpunk trio made up of all women) played at CMJ this year, she texted me angrily about how one website had chosen to highlight a show they were playing with: "Girls, guitars, girls, guitars, girls, guitars, repeat." I found it infuriating. How could someone diminish my friend's music by using gender as a qualifier? And not just gender, but the presumption that "girls" (not women, which also drove me insane) were somehow alien for playing guitar? You would never see "men, guitars, men, guitars, men, guitars, repeat" written to describe a show, unless that preview was intended to turn you away.

Both my best friend and I have been playing guitar since we were teenagers, and there are women everywhere we go who have done the same. The number of female-only shows (on stage and in the crowd) that I attend and have played have only been increasing since I left my editing job, but there is a feeling of fragmentation that makes me uncomfortable. Which side am I on? Opting out of the male rock machine and embracing my inclination toward gender discussion and feminism? Or am I happier participating in it by denying that women in music deserve any more attention than men, and that the music is all that matters?

The same friend who had gotten mad about "girls, guitars, repeat" was describing to me an interview her band had done where the female journalist was pushing a lot of questions about feminism and "women in music." My friend was once again angry that she had to even dignify her questions with answers. "Why should this label be put on us?" she'd asked. A few weeks later, she knew that I would be interviewing a band made up of all women and encouraged me to ask them about feminism. "They like talking about that stuff," she said. That was when I started to recognize the in-or-out division, and I began seeing it everywhere.

On a song called "Surface Envy" on the new Sleater-Kinney record, the women sing: "We win / we lose / only together do we break the rules. We win / we lose / only together do we make the rules."

At a party in mid-December, I'd debated with another female friend, a music critic, about Nicki Minaj's new album, The Pinkprint. She was preparing to write her review, which was going to be long and positive, but I told her that the record had left me cold after a few listens. I loved Minaj's power when she was featured on tracks by other artists but her radio singles never resonated with me. I really wanted Minaj's album to be a concise gender-defying record of ten unassailable bangers to prove that she could come out and be the boss, woman or man. Maybe I'd gotten so weary of hearing "Fancy" in the summer of 2014 that I wished Minaj would come ether everyone. A radical act when it came from a woman.

I wanted Minaj to eviscerate a system that she seemed eager to set herself apart from.

But what Minaj released was a human, empathetic response to a fucked-up breakup, and it came loaded with braggadocio, courage, relief, and a personal narrative that couldn't be matched by any other album I'd listened to all year. When my friend's review went up a few days later, I had spent more time with The Pinkprint and noticed that my initial response: "Show them you can do what they do, but ten times better!" meant that I didn't want Minaj to embrace her gender and her feminine experience, in whatever form she felt comfortable. I wanted her to join the boys' club.

Not surprisingly, I began to seriously love and identify with the record. She spoke on experiences I'd had with men myself: "I can tell you lyin' / Get the fuck out / don't yell at me." She didn't hide from hurt and being herself. She was a woman who had felt pain. I had felt pain, too. What my friend had heard in this record—"a candid document of the ambivalent feelings and unexpected complications that can arise from female ambition, power, and success"—was a version of Minaj opting out of the male world, going her own way, and not caring who judged her for it. Being a part of the boys' club or doing what felt best to her—Nicki had the right to choose either way.

During a portion of the interview with Sleater-Kinney, Glazer and Jacobson asked the trio questions that they had sourced from their Twitter followers. A man named Michael Guerrero had submitted the best one: "Is it frustrating to be described with phrases like 'female-fronted' and 'female-centric'? In 2015, this needs to stop." The crowd erupted into cheers and excitement, recognition that what needed to be said most was said through a conduit. The pressure had been relieved, someone else had absorbed the burden of bringing up the thing most female bands hate to talk about.

"Nobody's ever asked the question, 'Why did you decide to be in a band with all men?'" Brownstein replied. Jacobson and Glazer were insistent that their brand of womanhood required "throwing it back" and displaying their "vag badges" t0 their potential audiences. The two attitudes counteracted each other.

"The all-women's issue. The women in rock. This ghetto that they put us in. You get the one issue a year. People always compare us to bands with female singers. Not that we don't love those bands, but it seems so narrow-minded to me," Weiss said.

"Who wants to be a white male? I know I don't." Brownstein went on to insist that she loves plenty of white men, but what she touched on was important: in the vein of Sleater-Kinney, Broad City, Nicki Minaj, and today's musicians and entertainers who choose to make art while happening to be female, the focus of what they do is not about the men with whom they relate. It's about them. It's about the human connections they make. It's about the women who are hearing them. It's about anyone who is hearing them talk about the female experience.

The evening concluded with a question-and-answer session with the audience. One young woman immediately sprang up and announced, her voice wavering, that her band was releasing their first album the following week. She was unsure about how to promote herself, and was hoping Sleater-Kinney could give her some advice.

"I don't want to stop playing music. I'm only seventeen, so it's kind of a shitty situation," she said, cradling the microphone in both hands.

Weiss took up responding for the group, first congratulating the young woman on releasing an album at her age—"I didn't start playing drums until I was 22!" she said.

"It's so hard to give advice because so much of doing this has to really come from within. You have to really find your strength," Weiss said. The room felt heavy with the dense reality of her guidance.

"If you need to do it, you'll find a way to do it."

Weiss looked right at the young woman, but really she could have been talking to any of us.

[Photo via Shorefire]

Kevin Martin, notorious purveyor of weather hoaxes and second prize in a Johnny Depp lookalike contest, is the subject of a federal investigation after issuing threats of violence last month against the National Weather Service in San Diego, CA. He recorded the FBI visiting his house, and surprise!, it didn't go well.

If you've followed weather news for any length of time, you're probably aware of Martin's reputation of threats, intimidation, and wildly inaccurate weather information he creates specifically for the purpose of going viral on social media. The thirty-something California resident, often unlovingly called "K-Mart," has been the source of many widespread weather hoaxes in the past year, including false prophecies of doom last winter and one steaming pile of Facebook virality in August that threatened the entire Gulf Coast with a non-existent major hurricane. The latter hoax spread so far and wide that even The Weather Channel had to call him out on it.

A hoax about the weather is markedly different from a hoax about a celebrity death or one of those awful ripoffs of The Onion that uses deceitful headlines to trick you into thinking something horrible happened. False weather forecasts do real harm to the public as they degrade trust in trained meteorologists who produce valid, accurate forecasts. When the public sees a hoax about a major hurricane or catastrophic blizzard that doesn't exist, the vast majority of readers don't think to corroborate it with other sources and check the validity of the article in question. They take the hoax for face value, blame real meteorologists when it doesn't pan out, and their trust in scientific forecasts drops. Kevin Martin is at the forefront of the hoaxer movement, and his actions are single-handedly responsible for hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people receiving false weather information on numerous occasions.

Over the years, Martin has created a slew of websites on which he issues dubious forecasts that he claims are better than those produced by the National Weather Service. Martin uses his self-taught knowledge of meteorology (such as it is) to arrive at the grandiose proclamations of doom and destruction that so often spread like wildfire. He also claims to fall somewhere along the autism spectrum, which he uses to explain his superior knowledge of meteorology (cough) and defend his terrible behavior, the latter of which has been derided as complete bull by anyone with autism or even a passing knowledge of the developmental disorder.

In addition to the websites that are often taken offline—including such classics as The Weather Space, Weather Alert Central, Southern California Weather Authority, Northeast U.S. Weather, Triforce Weather, and his most recent creation, National Weather Force—he runs a series of websites that claim to keep track of the "chemtrails" (which don't exist) and "HAARP waves" (which don't exist in that capacity) that conspiracy theorists swear are used by the government to control the weather. There's the source of that superior scientific forecasting for you.

Martin is also infamous for spoofing official products issued by the National Weather Service, going so far as to copy their exact product formatting in order to trick people into thinking his forecasts and severe weather warnings are valid and produced by the government agency. The agency's headquarters in Washington had to issue a statement back in 2011 specifically calling Martin out for this tactic while distancing themselves from his faulty prognostications.

Kevin and his twin brother Brian are perhaps most notorious for the unbelievable lengths to which they'll threaten and harass anyone whom they perceive as slighting their name or their work. The threats and intimidation are so bad that there was a point in the not-too-distant past when even wildly popular meteorologists were afraid to call him and his products out for what they are.

Martin's biggest target over the years has been the National Weather Service, and it looks like his violent rhetoric is finally coming home to roost. It should come as no surprise that Kevin Martin is now under local and federal investigation for using social media to threaten the National Weather Service's office in San Diego. As recently as last month, Martin used a variety of dummy accounts on Facebook to threaten the building and its employees, going so far as to draw crosshairs on satellite snapshots of the office, accompanied by the ominous message "endanger the public and I endanger you."

During the height of the situation in December, employees at NWS San Diego were informed that management had increased security at the building, and that local and federal authorities were actively investigating his threats against the agency.

A few weeks ago, Martin used a dummy YouTube account to post a video of his interaction with two agents from the FBI after they showed up at his home to interview him. Martin subsequently posted the YouTube video and his account of the interaction to an "alternative" news website called Before It's News.

Martin has since deleted both the video and the post from their original sources, but nothing ever goes away on the internet.

Regarding the video, Martin said in his post:

The National Weather Service sent FBI agents to a weather forecaster of NationalWeatherForce.com and SouthernCaliforniaWeatherForce.com, attempting to scare him into not talking smack on the National Weather Service on their Facebook Pages when they deserve it.

[...]

This has been a long ongoing battle and this shows you how to assert yourself, video the situation, and send the FBI back with their tails between their legs in less than two minutes. Heck no one had to answer questions but to show you how to handle the feds in two minutes this is how you do it and send them packing.

[...]

No Feds will tell us how to forecast weather and silence us against the inaccurate forecasts at NOAA.

Threats against the National Weather Service aside, the list of people the Martin twins have threatened grows longer by the week. One of the worst instances occurred back in January 2014, when Kevin wrote a thoroughly libelous article on his website falsely accusing an Oklahoma City meteorologist of being a child molester after he took to his Facebook page to call Martin a "nut job."

Last September, I wrote an article about Martin's one-man protest against Facebook after the social media behemoth banned him for abuses of the website's terms of service. After catching wind of the article, Martin copied my post and republished it word-for-word (links back to The Vane and all) to his website. Then, in some cartoonish attempt to get me fired for criticizing him, he contacted Gawker Media's legal department and claimed that I plagiarized my critical article of him from him.

After legal told Martin to cut it out, he lost it and left the following voicemail on the phone of the company's lawyers:

You're such a fucking bitch, uh, fucking cunt. I don't even know, I could call you every fucking name in the book. Yeah, this is Kevin again. Uh, I did hide the material just so that I could see it and I am going to be using that, um, so it is behind a wall where only the admin can see it. Of course, that's me, nothing you can fucking do about it you little fucking cunt.

Um, but I'm gonna let you know that what you sent, that says you're not in any way, any way, in any facts, no, you guys will fucking remove "scam," you'll fucking remove "fraud," and you'll fucking remove the "hoax" bullshit. You will fucking remove that shit or you're gonna have me on your fucking ass, you got me?

All of the site's articles about Martin remain online, unchanged.

Just one month earlier, again reacting to criticism against his tactics, the prolific threatmonger took to his site's Twitter account to issue a death threat against the hosts of a popular weekly web show called WeatherBrains, including legendary Alabama meteorologist James Spann.

Early in 2014, Kevin's twin brother Brian sent me a more subtle death threat on Facebook after I wrote a pointed article about the former after his "enormous blizzard threatens hundreds of millions" fiasco. Regular readers may remember this exchange as containing the amazing "clock sucker" insult.

I mention the Martins' threats and harassment against me and Gawker because they are typical examples of the lengths to which they'll go to stifle any criticism of Kevin or his practices. There are countless more examples out there ranging from television meteorologists to run-of-the-mill social media users who ran afoul of the Wrath of K-Mart. Just the simple mention of his name will result in a threatening message in many cases, and actively attempting to correct the harm done by his inaccurate posts will result in much worse, as seen by the threats leveled at the National Weather Service and others.

Charges have yet to be filed against Martin on the local or the federal level, but given the ugliness of the threats and relentless manner in which he pursues the targets of his aggression, it's only a matter of time before he's forced to take responsibility for his actions. The Vane will have more coverage of the situation if investigators decide there's enough evidence to ask for an indictment.

[Images: YouTube, Twitter, Facebook]

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Right now, a 30-year-old engineer is on trial for founding and operating an enormous online black market—the Amazon of drugs. The outcome of his trial could change the way we use the internet.

In 2011, it was possible to buy pretty much any illegal drug you desired on a single website—The Silk Road. Today (right now!), the United States is trying to put away Ross Ulbricht, the man they say ran the operation. This is more than just the trial of an alleged drug dealer: The outcome of this case will shape how the public looks at emerging technologies like bitcoin, online privacy, and the role of the federal government in policing the web. Motherboard put it well:

The case will address many issues that have never before been argued in a US court, and many believe it will set precedents for privacy and the extent to which the government holds people responsible for content on their sites and servers.

As the internet uneasily settles into its new role as as a global commerce hub and powerful driver of immense economies, governments have become increasingly aggressive in ensuring their interests are represented—even, and maybe especially, when it means betraying ideals of anonymity and freedom held dearly by the web's early adopters.

If Ulbricht—a name to a face—goes down for the Silk Road—a drug market for the faceless—it'll discourage a lot of would-be imitators who want a narcotics free-for-all, and represent the most high-profile way the internet's promise of true anonymity has been undermined by the state. But if "Dread Pirate Roberts" eludes the FBI once again, it'll make the darker corners of the internet a whole lot more confident to do what they please in the shadows.

Silk Road

Before Gawker's Adrian Chen revealed it to the world, hardly anyone had ever heard of the Silk Road, and it flourished. You could browse the site pretty much like you'd browse any other e-commerce destination—so long as you were accessing it via an anonymous connection—buying as much or as little of your preferred narcotic from a wide variety of pseudonymous vendors. It wasn't the prettiest website (screenshot below), but it was functional and straightforward.

What allowed the Silk Road to work was anonymity. It could be accessed only through Tor, a piece of software that allows encrypted, anonymous access to hidden websites around the world—perfect for both a foreign dissident and a drug dealer.

Silk Road was also quite possibly what popularized bitcoin, so perfectly suited for illicit transactions.

"Dread Pirate Roberts": Silk Road's Mastermind

Because of the collective anonymity of the site's participants, it was impossible to tell who was in charge. The site's administrator went by "Dread Pirate Roberts." Feds say the man behind "Dread Pirate Roberts" is Ross Ulbricht.

Details gleaned after his arrest show a surprisingly ordinary man; certainly not someone who screams INTERNATIONAL DRUG MASTERMIND:

Browsing Ulbricht's social media accounts show a pretty normal, nerdy guy. Ulbricht graduated from the University of Texas in 2006 with a degree in Physics and went to the Pennsylvania State University for grad school, where he studied engineering and wrote a master's thesis on "Growth of EuO Thin Films by Molecular Beam Epitaxy." According to property records, he owned a home in State College, PA, which he sold in 2010 for $187,0000. Curiously, the indictment misidentifies his grad school as the University of Pennsylvania.

He's got a Facebook page full of beer pong pics and, of course, was a vocal supporter of Ron Paul, donating $200 to his campaign in 2007. "He doesn't compromise his integrity as a politician and he fights quite diligently to restore the principles that our country was founded on," Ulbricht told the Penn State student newspaper in 2008.

Nonetheless, police accuse him of making an enormous amount of money on the Silk Road:

According to the indictment, Silk Road was bigger than anyone had suspected: It boasted over $1.6 billion in sales from 2011-2013, which resulted in $80 million in commissions. (Researchers had previously estimated that Silk Road was doing about $22 million in total sales per year.) According to the indictment, which claims that FBI agents obtained a mirror of the server that housed Silk Road's business from law enforcement in an unidentified foreign country, Ulbricht "alone has controlled the massive profits generated from the operation of the business." He used some of the profits to pay a team of administrators as much as $2,000 a week each. And yet, he only paid $1,000 a month in rent for his San Francisco apartment, according to the indictment.

The Investigation

According to a detailed Wired account of the investigation, a DHS informant in Baltimore told the feds about Silk Road. Cops managed to identify site moderators and administrators, and started making arrests to get closer to Dread Pirate Roberts.

How did they pull that off? As Wired puts it, the "FBI's Story of Finding Silk Road's Server Sounds a Lot Like Hacking":

As bureau agent Christopher Tarbell describes it, he and another agent discovered the Silk Road's IP address in June of 2013. According to Tarbell's somewhat cryptic account, the two agents entered "miscellaneous" data into its login page and found that its CAPTCHA—the garbled collection of letters and numbers used to filter out spam bots—was loading from an address not connected to any Tor "node," the computers that bounce data through the anonymity software's network to hide its source. Instead, they say that a software misconfiguration meant the CAPTCHA data was coming directly from a data center in Iceland, the true location of the server hosting the Silk Road.

Is Ross Ulbricht "Dread Pirate Roberts"?

Ulbricht doesn't deny creating the Silk Road—just using it to sell drugs. On the first day of Ulbricht's trial, Motherboard reports his attorney did not deny that his client founded the site:

However, while Ulbricht's attorney Joshua Dratel admitted for the first time in court Tuesday that Ulbricht did create Silk Road as an "economic experiment," he claims thedefendant passed the site to other administrators when running it became "too stressful" after just a few months in 2011.

But feds have a lot of evidence linking Ulbricht to the Dread Pirate Roberts drug baron identity.

Over at the Daily Dot, you can view a rough outline of what the FBI is trotting out against Ulbricht in court. Vast chat transcripts, screenshots from Ulbricht's laptop, and internal Silk Road communiques are at the ready. Photos like this one, which law enforcement says was on Ulbricht's laptop screen (the "mastermind" controls for Silk Road) when he was arrested in San Francisco:

Or this one (his strangely ample collection of fake IDs)—

—could go a long way in convincing a jury that he was indeed responsible for a criminal conspiracy to traffic narcotics around the globe and throughout the United States.

But it's important to note that Ulbricht's criminal defense doesn't hinge on distancing himself completely from the Silk Road—simply showing that some other person (or persons) could have been operating the Dread Pirate Roberts persona, acting as the drug market's chief administrator and leader. Proving that a single person is the sole operator of a pseudonymous internet account based on pseudonymous software channels will not be easy for the feds.

The Trial

Bitcoin is still so new, complex, and untested that it's tough to explain what it is to a layman, let alone prove that it was instrumental in Dread Pirate Roberts' global drug ring. To how many people could you stop on the sidewalk and easily explain the functionality of Tor? Even if the prosecution can provide a convincing argument that Dread Pirate Roberts and Ross Ulbricht are one in the same, can they prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this in itself was a crime, and not just an internet screen name?

But the verdict could change the way we use the internet—and the way the government regards it, too. The Silk Road trial is a simple drug trafficking case in some ways, but it's also going to make us confront the difficult reality that just because certain online activities have managed to skirt or challenge established law so far doesn't mean that the internet will forever remain a Wild West. As Woodrow Hartzog, an associate professor of law at Samford University and scholar at the Stanford's Center for Internet and Society, put it:

Online black markets are likely to continue to be created and shut down. Yet this trial has also reminded us of the limits of technology. When the Internet was in its infancy, many thought online activity was also beyond the reach of the law. We've seen time and time again this is just not true. Bitcoin is a very powerful and interesting technology, but it is important not to overestimate innovation. It's equally important not to underestimate how our offline actions can make us vulnerable online. Perhaps the most significant impact of this trial is to serve as a reminder not to be overly confident in online anonymity, particularly in the face of substantial resources.

Australian security consultant and fervent Silk Road analyst Nik Cubrilovic told me he thinks the trial has already altered the net, verdict aside:

Consequences of the Ulbricht trial are already being felt. They are good or bad depending on your viewpoint. First thing is that many vendors, users and market administrators who are less confident in their ability to shield themselves from federal law enforcement have given up. The administrators of Agora [another darknet market] are considered the most technically and security adept and they spent the 2 weeks [after November '14 darknet raids by police]…in a complete state of panic.

Even having hidden markets like Silk Road raided—let alone prosecuted—has been enough to push copycats deeper underground, says Cubrilovic:

Gone are the days where starting a market was as simple as Googling 'how to setup a tor hidden service' and then installing some off-the-shelf market software. Those guys have all been arrested, and anybody with that lower level of skill has been scared away.

The End of Anonymous Browsing?

Most importantly, the FBI will be free to use the same, possibly illegal methods it employed to take down the Silk Road on future targets:

The FBI has also done a good job of keeping their methods and techniques close to their chest. There has been a level of cooperation here from the justice system and the presiding judge—what usually happens is that to convict someone or to grant them a fair trial the methods used in the arrest would have to be scrutinized. The pre-trial in Ross' case concluded that the FBI didn't have to reveal their server uncovery method - and even if it was hacking it would still be ok. This means law enforcement are free to apply the same methods again, they didn't have to 'burn' their techniques.

This would be a huge win for any government apparatus that wants to decrypt the channels we've been assuming are safe—it wasn't so long ago that Edward Snowden relied on Tor to protect his whistleblowing activity.

Security expert and CloudFlare researcher Marc Rogers sees two courses depending on the jury's decision. If the FBI manages to convict Ulbricht, Rogers "suspect that the primary long term effect of this is that we will see further prosecutions of hidden Tor services."

This means further attempts to de-cloak services which violate US law and that may lead to collateral damage as not all hidden services are illegal drug markets. Undermining one category of hidden services potentially undermines them all.

A not guilty verdict, however, "carries the most risk."

Prosecutors and law enforcement are under immense pressure to "do something" about the underground drug markets. Failure to successful prosecute the single largest and longest running of these will almost certainly add fuel to the call for more and stronger laws to arm the justice department.

It was only a matter of weeks before Congress capitalized on the Sony hack to give the odious CISPA legislation another go. If the FBI can't pry the darknet's drug baron out of hiding, there's every reason to expect it'll just ask for scarier tools.

Illustration by Jim Cooke

"I've never been a fan of global conferences to solve problems," writes floating mustache Thomas Friedman in his newspaper column today. Really?

"I've never been a fan of global conferences to solve problems," writes Thomas Friedman—right there in the very first sentence! Right there in the paper of record. Can we confirm that?

"Time For Plan B," by Thomas Friedman, 8-4-2006: "I think we need to try a last-ditch Bosnia-like peace conference that would bring together all of Iraq's factions and neighbors."

"Iraq Through China's Lens," by Thomas Friedman, 9-12-2007: "I heard China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, address an international conference here in Dalian..."

"Losing Weight in the Gulf," by Thomas Friedman, 12-12-2007: "I've been at a security conference in the tiny Gulf state of Bahrain..."

"It's Too Late For Later, by Thomas Friedman, 12-16-2007: "The negotiators at the United Nations climate conference here in Bali came from almost 200 countries and spoke almost as many languages..."

"Yes, They Could. So They Did," by Thomas Friedman, 2-14-2009: "So I am attending the Energy and Resources Institute climate conference in New Delhi..."

"Invent, Invent, Invent," by Thomas Friedman, 6-27-2009: "I was at a conference in St. Petersburg, Russia, a few weeks ago..."

"Never Heard That Before," by Thomas Friedman, 1-30-2010: "As a political barometer, the Davos World Economic Forum usually offers up some revealing indicators of the global mood, and this year is no exception."

"Facebook Meets Brick-and-Mortar Politics," by Thomas Friedman, 6-9-2012: "I had just finished a panel discussion on Turkey and the Arab Spring at a regional conference here..."

"India Ink Is Taking Your Questions for Thomas Friedman," 1-30-2013: "This week, Mr. Friedman... will be a keynote speaker at the Sustainable Development conference in New Delhi on Friday."

"The Professors' Big Stage," by Thomas Friedman, 3-5-2013: "I just spent the last two days at a great conference convened by M.I.T. and Harvard on 'Online Learning and the Future of Residential Education.'"

"The Man With Pink Hair," by Thomas Friedman, 9-17-2013: "I was at a conference in Bern, Switzerland, last week and struggling with my column."

"Let's Make a Deal," by Thomas Friedman, 11-19-2013: "I attended a Gulf security conference here in Abu Dhabi that included officials and experts from all over the Arab/Muslim world."

****Thomas Friedman also hosts his own annual conference.****

Thomas Friedman loves conferences even more than he loves being hyperconnected.

[Photo of Thomas Friedman on stage at a conference: Getty]

Much of the recent media debate around American Sniper concerns the legacy of Chris Kyle, the SEAL in the title, who may be a hero, a cold-blooded killer, a loudmouthed liar, or all three. In fact, Kyle—the real man and the dramatic character—seems to be the latest in a long history of men I call military braggadouches.

Everyone who has worn a uniform knows a braggadouche. Everyone who's worn a uniform has probably been a braggadouche at some point. Being a noted braggadouche isn't necessarily a bad thing. Many of them aren't cowardly, unlikeable, or dangerous at all. Few need to exaggerate the difficult work they've done or the horrible events they've seen.

But it's a natural tendency to enlarge one's exploits in the retelling, whether over a brew at the VFW or in a HarperCollins contract negotiation. And it's an easy step, goaded by self-righteousness and the adoration of uninitiated strangers, to take one's martial braggadoccio to a very douchey place indeed, where the braggart insists on the supremacy of all his opinions and fantasies—social, political, racial, diplomatic.

Here's a brief history of the archetype, one that transcends cultures and politics. Here is the braggadouche in all his fallibly human varieties.

The Spartans

"THIS IS SPARTA." "FINE, THEN WE'LL FIGHT IN THE SHADE." "MOLON LABE." There's no question that these guys were good at every aspect of combat—fit, toned, disciplined. As well you should be when you are raised in a totalitarian slave state where, from age seven to thirty, all the men were trained for battle. That is, the men who were not left to die in infancy for being weak or malformed.

Why are they remembered? Because they won? Not so much: Their most famous campaign, the battle of Thermopylae against Persia immortalized in the snuff-porn fantasy cartoon 300, was a suicidal slaughter of little strategic consequence, and by 371 B.C., Sparta's waning military had been destroyed by neighboring Thebes.

But the Spartans bragged and quipped. A lot. Future philosophers and rulers liked the idea of a stoic culture dedicated to death before dishonor, and Plutarch collected the Spartans' timeless one-liners. Two millennia later, popular armchair war-crimes fetishists like Victor Davis Hanson and Frank Miller pine for the good ol' days of hoplite phalanxes and stabbin' cultures.

Pyrgopolynices, aka "The Braggart Soldier"

Not long after Sparta hit the skids, the playwright Plautus penned this Greco-Roman stage drama that's mostly about a forbidden romance prevented by the foolish, grating Pyrgopolynices, an allegedly great warrior who gets his ass kicked at the end by an old man and a cook. "Take ye care that the lustre of my shield is more bright than the rays of the sun," the loudmouthed captain orders his servant, so that "it may dazzle the eyesight of the enemy."

Though fictional, the bragging captain becomes immortal as a dramatic stock character: the self-aggrandizing soldier who can't live up to all his tall tales. Shakespeare, too, recognizes the resonance this swaggering " ancient pistol" type has with his audiences.

Sir Walter Raleigh

Calling this privateering schemer a soldier is a bit of a stretch. But for a well-to-do ally of Queen Elizabeth, the pugnacious Raleigh sure bitched a lot. He famously composed a long poem, "The Lie," about the many falsities that propped up corrupt noble society. "The truth shall be thy warrant," he wrote. A few short years later, he wrote a braggy load of crap about his explorations titled "The discovery of the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana, with a relation of the great and golden city of Manoa (which the Spaniards call El Dorado)."

In fact, his journey to South America was inauspicious, but Britons back home received him as a triumphant hero with a plan to enrich the Crown with treasures from a nonexistent city of gold. Raleigh's inability to deliver the goods (along with his attacks on Spanish targets) may have contributed to James I's decision to behead the impetuous explorer.

But let's not be too hard on Raleigh. The age of exploration and early colonialism was replete with braggadouches on land and sea. He was just keeping up with the Columbuses and Drakes.

George Armstrong Custer

In fairness, the Civil War was full of assholes. But Custer really was a cut above. "I challenge the annals of warfare to produce a more brilliant or successful charge of cavalry," he wrote about the assault he led his men on during the battle of Gettysburg—even though the charge cost his unit more men than any other Union brigade in the battle.

And that was years before he criticized President Grant for pursuing peace with the "savage" Indians, then got his entire Seventh Cavalry massacred at Little Big Horn. Seriously, what a tool.

Charles George "Chinese" Gordon

Within a few weeks in December 1883, the British public went from despair over an Islamic fundamentalist takeover of the Sudan to touting an obscure semi-retired general as the possible savior of their empire. Gordon had been little noted before for his control of operations in China and Egypt, but his manipulation of media and politicians persuaded the government to send him to Sudan. "No one was more capable than Gordon, with his facile speech and his free-and-easy manners, of furnishing good copy for a journalist," cheeky biographer Lytton Strachey wrote of the "Eminent Victorian."

Gordon was tasked with evacuating the British soldiers and citizens from Khartoum. But convinced that God had sent him on a mission for glory, he decided instead to fortify the city and "smash up the Mahdi," the rebellious Muslims' leader. A year later, the rebels stormed the city, massacred as many as 10,000 inhabitants, chopped off Gordon's head, and dumped his body down a well. "I am quite happy, thank God!" he wrote his family in a final letter, adding, "I have tried to do my duty." The British government could be forgiven for disagreeing.

Smedley Butler

One of the most decorated Marines in American history, Smedley Butler earned two Medals of Honor. This guy could fight. He could also talk. And talk. There were several occasions of cantankerousness when his distinguished military career was probably saved only by the intervention of his father, a second-generation congressman and chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee.

After retiring and running unsuccessfully for the Senate, Butler went on the talking circuit, arguing that war is a racket. (Sure, now you tell us.) "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers," Butler wrote. "Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints." Which may have been true, but it hadn't troubled him enough to expose the truth while he'd had a career to worry about.

George S. Patton

Even Patton's official homepage calls him "intemperate" and "one of the most complicated military men of all time." Yes, he was good at outflanking and killing Nazis, which he bragged about almost as much as he bragged about slapping shellshocked subordinates and polishing his ivory-handled revolvers.

After breaking through German lines to support encircled Allied troops at Bastogne, Patton declared his actions "the most brilliant operation we have thus far performed, and it is in my opinion the outstanding achievement of the war." Certainly, it was more brilliant than his opinions on "drunk" Russians, African Americans ("a colored soldier cannot think fast enough to fight in armor"), and Jews ("these people do not understand toilets... a lost tribe—lost to all decency").

Douglas MacArthur

It's a testament to American society's post-World War II militarization that an active general could nearly lose the Korean War overnight, then challenge a president's authority, punch holes in the country's global diplomatic efforts, and risk a nuclear conflict with China, and still emerge more insanely popular than the president who ultimately fired him.

MacArthur's squirrely end to his long, accomplished military career—and his subsequent flirtation with conservative politics—laid the groundwork for future generations of Americans to be cowed into complacency on matters of war and peace by military men, even the ones who are myopic insubordinates.

Richard Marcinko

If there's a model for the modern braggadouche, it's Dick Marcinko, founding captain of SEAL Team Six and one of the first special operators to parlay his experience into a series of bestselling books and a conservative talk radio show. His Rogue Warrior series set the standard for swaggering sea stories full of bravado, brags, and diatribes against the weak and the liberal.

He also spent a year and a half in prison for defrauding the government over purchases of hand grenades, and even his own lawyer admits that many SEALs consider Marcinko a profane, self-important, flamboyant "boastful braggart." You can play him in a video game now, because America is great.

Tom Clancy

It's one of life's little ironies that a nearsighted insurance agent who washed out of ROTC has done more than any veteran to profitably perpetuate the modern American mythos of mighty, moral warriors hamstrung by cowardly backbiting politicians and bleeding-heart peaceniks.

Nobody has wanted to be military as much as Clancy, whose novels are still must reads for aspiring service members and spooks. He got away from his conservative political roots after 9/11, siding with some outspoken ex-generals against the Bush administration and Don Rumsfeld's sunny view of military operations. But that didn't stop Clancy from profiting off terrible ghostwritten patriot-pulp like his Op Center franchise to the very end of his life in 2013.

Ollie North

Some criminal sociopaths go to jail for a long time. Some get TV shows.

Wesley Clark

There aren't many Rhodes Scholars who became four-star generals. Thanks to Wesley Clark, there aren't many who'll be remembered as something other than an ass-covering partisan flack. Clark bumbled his way through the Bosnian and Kosovar military campaigns with one eye in the mirror and another on his resumé. He glanced up briefly to claim victory and investigate his political prospects.

Since his own crash-and-burn as a presidential candidate, he's trotted in front of the TV cameras to lend an air of military legitimacy to the candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, which means we'll probably get to see him say something self-aggrandizing and stupid again between now and November 2016.

Allen West

Oh Jesus, fuck this guy.

Oliver Stone

By all accounts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyFZEw...a decent, quiet soldier who earned a Bronze Star and Purple Heart in Vietnam, Stone's made three fairly bad Vietnam movies since, including the very semi-autobiographical Platoon. He also has become a sort of poster boy for embarrassingly naive causes, from trumpeting JFK assassination conspiracies to lamenting Jewish influence in America to embracing fast-talking, self-loving idiots like Hugo Chavez, Viktor Yanukovich, and Julian Assange. It's enough to make you beg him to shut up and go back to directing, but then you realize you might get another Alexander or Any Given Sunday.

Marcus Luttrell

A SEAL acquaintance of Chris Kyle's and a Sarah Palin groupie, Luttrell's red, white, and blue worldview makes the songbook of Toby Keith seem gently nuanced. His bestselling, fame-making memoir, which is ostensibly about how God saved his life one day on an op (while letting 19 other men perish), includes these pearls, listed by one critic and Afghanistan vet:

...Iraq had WMD's. (This book was published in 2007)

...Iraq had Al Qaeda training camps and Taliban fighters.

...the military upper brass personally called on Luttrell and his fellow SEALs to save Afghanistan from Taliban invaders, in 2005, because Navy SEALs are the greatest, toughest, most skilled war fighters in the entire military. (Seriously, he wrote this.)

...twins can literally read minds. (He's not joking.)

When not arguing that he should have killed some civilian goatherds to avoid giving away his unit's position, Luttrell spends his time hunting, making endorsement deals, and offering Fox News long expositions on the foreign policy failings of Barack Hussein Obummer.

Chris Kyle

Chief Petty Officer Kyle's rifles saved countless Marines and soldiers in Iraq. They also took the lives of anywhere from 160 to 255 Iraqi "military-aged males" and one woman, most of whom were hopefully combatants. But the debate over Kyle's legacy centers less around his actions than the cause he served, which he defended in simplistic, vigorous terms. There is also his low opinion of Iraqis and Muslims, which is shared by many veterans of that conflict.

Kyle's credibility has also taken plenty of hits: He was successfully sued for defamation by fellow military braggadouche Jesse Ventura for the story he tells Bill O'Reilly above, claiming to have punched Ventura for being loudly anti-war at a teammate's wake. Rumors also circulated that he told teammates of killing as many as 30 looters during the hurricane Katrina aftermath, and of killing two alleged carjackers at a Texas gas station. Both stories have been thoroughly debunked.

A teller of simple tall tales about his martial prowess, but an accomplished and conflicted warrior nevertheless: Kyle's legacy seems more complicated, and more common, than either left-wing critics or right-wing champions are willing to grant. Such is the power of the braggadouche.

[Illustration by Jim Cooke]