Nisha Chittal

love this interview with Hairpin editor Edith Zimmerman

Very good instincts. So what was the very first meeting like with Choire and Alex?
I didn’t meet with them until the whole thing was set in stone. It was mostly [former Awl publisher] David Cho I was dealing with. I was friends with Alex from before, and I was email friends with Choire. And then it got started, and then finally I did have a sit-down with Alex about the site, because I was freaking out because this all happened to incredibly fast. I was just afraid of embarrassing myself. I was like “What do I do? How do I do this? Oh my God!” And they gave me few pointers, but for the most part they didn’t give me any help, which at first was incredibly scary, but now I’m really grateful for that. Because if I had been waiting for everyone’s approval on everything, I would have never have become confident in my ability to put it together.

….

So the chief danger in this line of work is getting burned out from the grind.
Yeah, it got pretty grim. Relatively grim. Jesus Christ!

You can say “grim,” it’s okay.
It was tricky, because it was such an adrenaline rush and so exciting at the beginning, because it was like this could be the worst and it could be really professionally embarrassing for me if this just sucks. For the first few months it was like really, really long days but not because I felt I had to, but just because there was no other option. That was the only way to do it. I was just compelled to do that. And there was just not very much sleep, and there were a couple spots where I was feeling really tired. And it was just coming out in my writing, I could hear it, and I was annoying myself. I didn’t like anything, which is a drag when you’re supposed to be writing 10-15 things a day and making people interested in things that you find interesting, and I just didn’t give a shit about anything, and I was tired.

How many items were you doing a day at Vulture?
At Vulture, I was writing about between 10 and 20 little posts a day. So it would be like a YouTube clip with a title and one-liner. Totally doable. But then I was trying to write longer stuff for The Hairpin.

And it’s all you — it’s not just the faceless blogger and the news cycle bullshit.
And editing other people’s stuff. So I got kind of burned out, but now everything is perfect because Jane and I both do it. That was life-changing. I have to remember what other things I do — I finished at 3 and I have no idea what else to do with myself.

Well, now you administrate, you supervise.
I go to the gym, I have hobbies and stuff. I have no idea.

(Source: Blackbook)

Maria Popova on her reading & writing routine

MJ: Do you get tired? How do you push yourself to sustain your routine on a bad day?

MP: Hah! Beats me! I just do it. That’s how I am. I have bad days. Sometimes I have a lot of bad days. By and large, I think most people fall into a bad mood because they’re able to ruminate on whatever the problem at hand is, and that makes it worse. But when you intercept the rumination process with something that requires your full attention—that’s stimulating and absorbing, that places a demand on your intellectual focus—you don’t get to ruminate. In a way, it’s a mental health aid to be able to do that so much. My routine, what I do, it just feels like home. It’s my comfort food.

(Source: Mother Jones)

Rebecca Traister on Obama and Paternalism

Today also isn’t the first time he’s used references to members of his family to make a larger offensive point about women. Back in 2009, when charges that his officially female-friendly administration included some boys’ club tendencies hit the front of the New York Times, Obama dismissed the claims as “bunk.” Reporter Mark Leibovich noted at the time that the president “often points out that he is surrounded by strong females at home,” an argument that not only mimics an old saw about how being henpecked by women is equivalent to respecting them, but reflects a dynamic as old as patriarchal power itself and sidesteps the question of how strong females are treated at work. In 2010, while appearing on “The View,” Obama made a creaky Take-My-Wife-Please joke about how he wanted to appear on “a show that Michelle actually watched” as opposed to the news shows she usually flips past. The joke being that his missus, the one he met when she mentored him at a high-powered law firm, just doesn’t have a head for news delivered by anyone other than Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

It should no longer come as a surprise that the president of the United States is, on perhaps an unconscious level, an old-school patriarch. What’s startling is the degree to which Obama seems not to have learned from any of his past gaffes, how no one seems to have told him – or told him in a way that he’s absorbed – that the best way to address a question of women’s health and rights is probably not by making it about his role as a father.

This might be an especially valuable chat to have with the president as he moves into 2012 and toward an election in which he is going to be relying on the support of people he has just managed to anger, offend and speak down to — women. The least he could do is learn to address them with respect.

—Obama’s Phony Paternalism