Politicians: They’re just like Santa. TMZ hosts its annual “Santa Snapshot Contest” and the results are pretty hilarious. You might even find yourself sifting through hundreds of nominations, most of which involve Santa holding crying babies who want nothing to do with him. Sure, politicians kiss babies, but I can’t imagine they always enjoy the experience of their parents handing them off to a stranger in a red tie. See here.
Anxious writer inhales Xanax and Scotch to relax. The Atlantic‘s Editor Scott Stossel, who actually has one of the funnier Twitter accounts around, has anxiety. Who knew? And he’s not afraid to share about it and his use of drugs and alcohol to battle it in a first-person account this week. His nerves don’t just get jangled at the thought of public speaking. They also got frayed at his wedding and in the delivery room when his children were being born. Office meetings and tennis matches can also be no picnic for him. Yikes. Sweating. Burping. Vertigo. Shaking. Keeling over. His brand of anxiety sounds like a total nightmare. An excerpt: “Yes, I know. My method of dealing with my public-speaking anxiety is not healthy. It’s dangerous. But it works. Only when I am sedated to near-stupefaction by a combination of benzodiazepines and alcohol do I feel (relatively) confident in my ability to speak in public effectively and without torment. As long as I know that I’ll have access to my Xanax and liquor, I’ll suffer only moderate anxiety for days before a speech, rather than sleepless dread for months.” A few poignant lines: “To some people, I may seem calm. But if you could peer beneath the surface, you would see that I’m like a duck—paddling, paddling, paddling.” The good news: Come January 7 he’s got a new book out by Kopf: My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread and the Search for Peace of Mind. Read his whole story here. Find him on Twitter here: @SStossel.
ICYMI: Craig Silverman, of “Regret the Error” fame, has his year-end list of the best and worst media errors and corrections of the year at Poynter. Should bring back a lot of funny memories, such as Slate writing that ex-Rep. and New York mayoral hopeful Anthony Weiner‘s “Carlos Danger Name Generator” name is anything but “Carlos Danger.” See here.
Work for NPR? Watch out. “Tread carefully” says the NPR office rulebook on wading through the Internet and social media. Read here.
