Michelle Cottle takes a look at the rise of Betsy "Death Panels" McCaughey - No Exit: The never-ending lunacy of Betsy McCaughey: Since her earliest days in the spotlight, McCaughey has presented herself as a just-the-facts-please, above-the-fray political outsider. In reality, she has proved devastatingly adept at manipulating charts and stats to suit her ideological (and personal) ambitions. [more inside]
posted by IvoShandor on Oct 7, 2009 - 48 comments

Matt Taibbi vs. David Ray Griffin Taibbi, to whose writing Metafilter frequently links, and who is currently on retainer at Rolling Stone, takes on Griffin, who is perhaps the most prominent member of the so-called "9/11 Truth Movement," in a knock-down, drag-out multiple-round bout (in three parts). Part II. Part III.
posted by Hat Maui on Oct 6, 2008 - 99 comments

Kim Neely has enjoyed a very rich professional life already. A writer for Rolling Stone for fifteen years, she also penned the Pearl Jam biography. These days find Kim involved in an entirely different pursuit. Lampworking is a type of glass work that uses a gas fueled torch to melt rods and tubes of clear and colored glass. At her mom's unused workshop Kim created Bluff Road Art Glass. [more inside]
posted by netbros on May 15, 2008 - 7 comments

She is intelligent enough to understand what the world wanted of her: that she was created as a virgin to be deflowered before us, for our amusement and titillation. She is not ashamed of her new persona — she wants us to know what we did to her.
posted by dhammond on Feb 26, 2008 - 147 comments

How America lost the War on Drugs. An article by Ben Wallace-Wells in Rolling Stone.
posted by lupus_yonderboy on Dec 1, 2007 - 40 comments

Happy 40th Birthday Rolling Stone. On this day in 1967, the first issue of Rolling Stone Magazine was published, and it came with a roach clip. It was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J. Gleason It embraced and reported on the hippy counterculture during the late 1960s and 1970s, and its rise to fame was synchronous with such bands and artists as the Grateful Dead, Beatles, Doors, Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. It is the magazine that trashed Eric Clapton, broke up Cream and ripped every album Led Zeppelin ever made!"
posted by psmealey on Nov 9, 2007 - 53 comments

Devolution: Nature's U-Turn is a new music video concept by rock band KoRn for their single Evolution. The premise? Mankind isn't evolving, it's devolving... getting dumber by the day. Wait. Haven't we seen this before? We have, and Devo's Gerald V. Casale isn't happy. "We denounce this as impostors playing with fire." he says of Korn on the Club Devo website. He elaborates in a new interview with Rolling Stone, including a possibility of their first new record in 20 years. Devo's also put out a new song, "Watch Us Work It", which appears in a commercial for Dell laptops [youtube link], with a official music video and single release to come.
posted by SansPoint on Jul 26, 2007 - 59 comments

On his deathbed, the former CIA spymaster E. Howard Hunt made a startling confession. Or so says his son, Saint...Maybe the Zapruder film can tell us if there was a second gunman on the grassy knoll. Or was that a hoax too?
posted by nasreddin on Apr 15, 2007 - 40 comments

Pork's Dirty Secret is a Rolling Stone expose on Smithfield Foods, the world's top pork processor. via
posted by Burhanistan on Jan 20, 2007 - 56 comments

Pitchfork has unveiled their Top 50 Albums of 2006 (don't also miss their Top 100 Tracks of 2006). Rolling Stone's Top 50. Prefix's Top 50. Stylus's Top 50. For those who love these lists, the deluge has only begun...
posted by Mach3avelli on Dec 20, 2006 - 176 comments

In a rare interview out of character, Sacha Baron Cohen discusses his reaction to the controversy over Borat:

And the reason we chose Kazakhstan was because it was a country that no one had heard anything about, so we could essentially play on stereotypes they might have about this ex-Soviet backwater. The joke is not on Kazakhstan. I think the joke is on people who can believe that the Kazakhstan that I describe can exist -- who believe that there's a country where homosexuals wear blue hats and the women live in cages and they drink fermented horse urine and the age of consent has been raised to nine years old."

Maybe this Kazakhstan doesn't exist--but Borat's antics sometimes aren't far off the mark from other parts of the world where gang-rape and stoning are meted out as punishment. Is it so silly to appreciate Borat as a comical icon from these dark corners of the world? Who is ignorant of what is really happening in the world--Cohen or his unwitting interviewees?
posted by Brian James on Nov 16, 2006 - 150 comments

Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.
posted by EarBucket on Jun 1, 2006 - 171 comments

England's literary crackhead rockstar.
posted by Tlogmer on Apr 22, 2006 - 46 comments

Rolling Stone One of America's foremost historians assesses George W. Bush with the cover story: The Worst President in History? Check out the respectful cover illustration.
posted by spock on Apr 20, 2006 - 163 comments

Scientology has a plausible explanation for everything they do -- that's the genius of it," says Sara. "But make no mistakes: Scientology is brainwashing." [Previous MeFi Scientology Threads]
posted by nuclear_soup on Mar 1, 2006 - 105 comments

An Open Letter to Larry the Cable Guy by David Cross
posted by farishta on Dec 3, 2005 - 122 comments

Music nerds love nothing better than lists, and the end of the year is an excellent excuse to make one. Here are Rolling Stone's, Pitchfork's, and Boomkat's lists of the best albums of 2004. What albums did you enjoy in 2004?
posted by myeviltwin on Jan 1, 2005 - 120 comments

Bush Like Me: Ten weeks undercover in the grass roots of the Republican Party:
As a professional misanthrope, I believe that if you are going to hate a person, you ought to do it properly. You should go and live in his shoes for a while and see at the end of it how much you hate yourself. This was what I was doing down in Florida. The real challenge wasn't just trying to understand these Republicans. It was to become the best Republican I could be.
posted by GriffX on Oct 15, 2004 - 44 comments

Downloaders Pay Back Wilco Just-launched Justafan.org allows fans who downloaded copies of the new Wilco album to donate to the band-selected charity Doctors Without Borders. In less than a day online, with nothing more than word-of-mouth publicity, donations exceeded $1,500.
posted by methree on Apr 2, 2004 - 15 comments

DJ Danger Mouse has been making waves recently with his Grey Album that cross-pollinates the music of The Beatles' classic White Album with the lyrics and delivery of Jay-Z's recent swan song, the Black Album. The results? "One of the more interesting pirate mashups ever done." (Pitchfork). "Most ambitious remix." (Village Voice). "As fun as it is daring." (Boston Globe). "Ultimate remix record." (Rolling Stone). Not surprisingly, EMI is far from amused by the unsanctioned and unapproved project and the limited release will no longer be distributed. So, download it now (or check out these Real Player samples).
posted by boost ventilator on Feb 18, 2004 - 92 comments

Rolling Stone's 500 greatest albums. Not a bad list at all, but I'm sure that some of us will find something they missed ...
posted by pyramid termite on Nov 21, 2003 - 67 comments

The story of Mister, uh, Big
Initially I was going to post about this with a tongue-in-cheek tone. But when I got to the end of the piece, I was disturbed to find that an act of child abuse - an act of what I see as an act of pedophilia - has been reported matter-of-factly by Rolling Stone, without so much as the blink of an eye. It's not the central part of the story, not the reason for telling it, but still. Why? is it because perhaps the perpetrator is a woman and it's not seen as a crime? Or is it her age? Am I making a mountain out of a molehill?

Warning - might not be safe for work, especially if the link offsite at the bottom of the page is working...
posted by tomcosgrave on Jun 4, 2003 - 72 comments

Andrew Sullivan rips apart a Rolling Stone Story that claims that 1/4 of new HIV infections among gay men are sought out by people both looking to infect others and looking to become infected. "Bug chasing" may have been around for a while, but according to Sullivan and this Newsweek article also debunking the shoddy Rolling Stone piece, it's nowhere near the numbers being exaggerated. This brings up so many issues: the speed with which false information is spread over the Internet; the decreasing responsibility of the media to actually report facts; how trustworthy are our news sources?; will Drudge, who also reported the RS story without any hint of its falsehood, ever be revealed as the sensationalistic closet case he is? (Okay, that last bit was a wee troll, so ignore!).
posted by archimago on Jan 24, 2003 - 20 comments

DOH! the Rollingstone Simpsons quiz!: doh!
posted by DailyBread on Nov 8, 2002 - 14 comments

Covered with moss: I've been a continuous subscriber to Rolling Stone ever since I bought my first issue off the newsstand in October 1975 ("Patty Hearst: The Inside Story"), back when the magazine was still published on newsprint in SF and at least seemed to be a product of the counterculture. Today it's a glossy celebrity rag published in NY and has almost no relevance to anything except the most superficial aspects of pop culture. Publisher Jann Wenner is bringing in a new editor in hopes of appealing to a younger demographic; this piece asks: Why not just pull the plug instead?
posted by nathanstack on Jul 2, 2002 - 28 comments

Well hung at the Grammys. A minute-by-minute lambasting of pop music's biggest night. It just made me laugh.
posted by lostbyanecho on Mar 1, 2002 - 13 comments

"If I don't do this, who can?" Courtney Love, a unionist? She may be the only one to put the Music Industry to task, and challenge practices that enslave struggling artists, turning shining stars into short-lived comets. That is, provided she doesn't just settle out of court. D'ya think she can do it? Or is this just more smoke & mirrors?
posted by ZachsMind on Jun 8, 2001 - 22 comments

More nasty facts about what goes into our food. Do a search on the page for 'dead cats'. (My apologies for posting something old. I'm so shocked I couldn't help it).
posted by u.n. owen on Mar 15, 2001 - 11 comments

Clinton tells Rolling Stone: 'I probably would have run again'

Excerpt: "Does he think he'd have been a three-time winner? "Yes. I do. But it's hard to say, because it's entirely academic," Clinton said."
posted by owillis on Dec 7, 2000 - 14 comments