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• Welcome to the dark side, Mr. Trump: Dick Cheney says he’ll support the billionaire in the general election

  06-05-2016 23:20 via salon.com
  
  Add Dick Cheney to the list of Republicans who will support Donald Trump’s presidential bid. The former vice president and Darth Vader admirer told CNN on Friday that he will support his party’s nominee, as he says he always has.
  Cheney’s announcement comes soon after other Republican elder statesmen, including Mitt Romney, John McCain, and George W. Bush, announced they would not attend the Republican National Convention this summer, highlighting tensi
  
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• Joe Paterno failed even more kids: His legacy is still a staggering refusal to stand up for abuse victims

  06-05-2016 21:43 via salon.com
  
  I don’t know there’s an afterlife, or if we are held accountable in it for our misdeeds on earth, but there sure are days when it’s hard not to hope that there’s some kind of cosmic justice being meted out somewhere for guys like Joe Paterno. Because while his life ended in 2012, apparently the full extent of his moral accountability is still being calculated.
  In new court papers this week in a lawsuit between Penn State and insurance company Pennsylvania Manufa
  
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• Kansas fundamentalist group tied to Duggars tries to force teens to get hitched

  06-05-2016 21:20 via salon.com
  
  Happy news for a Friday: Once in awhile, the good guys win. This time the victory is over a scary fundamentalist cult, usually called “Quiverfull,” that has been making unfortunate inroads in recent years in spreading its alarming message of extreme patriarchy, where women aren’t allowed to use birth control and have no real rights, and are instead expected to live a life of complete submission to male authority. The famous Duggar family, which has seemingly innumerable shows o
  
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• Our awful elites gutted America. Now they dare ring alarms about Trump, Sanders — and cast themselves as saviors

  06-05-2016 21:07 via salon.com
  
  This week, on the night of the Indiana primary, I read one of the most loathsome political screeds it has been my misfortune to encounter.
  It was an alarm bell raised by Andrew Sullivan, arguably the greatest hypocrite of the Bush era, on par with his partner in many crimes Christopher Hitchens (remember “Islamofascism?”). Sullivan proclaims that the election of Trump would be an “extinction-level” event. Well, perhaps it will be.
  But the extinction Sullivan is most worri
  
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• Donald Trump suddenly turns on Joe Scarborough: “Not much power or insight!”

  06-05-2016 20:51 via salon.com
  
  Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to get rid of “Morning Joe” anytime soon. Despite he’s most shameless attempts, host Joe Scarborough does not appear likely to be Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick.
  Much has been written about the more uncomfortably cozy relationship between the MSNBC host and the “presumptive” Republican presidential nominee, on-air and off.
  “Mika and I certainly understand you’re really angry, beca
  
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• London to elect first Muslim mayor of major Western city: Labour’s Sadiq Khan to unseat Conservative

  06-05-2016 20:45 via salon.com
  
  Sadiq Khan is set to become the first Muslim mayor of a major Western city.
  The Labour Party lawmaker won the election by a sizeable margin on Friday.
  Khan, who is of Pakistani descent, will be unseating Conservative mayor Boris Johnson, who has ruled for eight years.
  London could see a change of politics in the upcoming years. Johnson is notorious for his libertarian, pro-corporate views, whereas Khan sits firmly at the center-left, on the social democratic wing of the Labour Party.
  Khan is to
  
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• Louis CK gets off the grid: The comedian says he’s quitting the internet for his kids

  06-05-2016 20:38 via salon.com
  
  Louis CK has told us before how much hates Twitter, but now he’s taking his stance on technology a step further. In an appearance on TBS’s Conan on Thursday, the comic told Conan O’Brien that he’s quit the internet, “for now.”
  He explained that he did it for his daughter, who “dies inside” every time he interrupts his time with her to look at his phone. “It’s a horrible abandonment,” he joked.
  Louis says he had
  
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• Atlanta mayor’s pro-Hillary op-ed was written by lobbyist and edited by her Super PAC, report says

  06-05-2016 20:20 via salon.com
  
  Pro-Hillary Clinton Super PAC, Correct the Record, has a documented history of operating in campaign regulatory grey areas. A key aspect of its strategy during the 2016 Democratic primary battle has been (social) media manipulation, so recent revelations that the PAC ghostwrote a pro-Hillary Op-Ed for Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed for CNN.com are less surprising than frustrating.
  According to a report from The Intercept, emails released by the mayor’s office and ad
  
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• Paul Ryan’s anti-Trump ploy: The speaker’s positioning himself to profit from a Trump collapse

  06-05-2016 19:22 via salon.com
  
  House Speaker Paul Ryan made big news yesterday on CNN when he said that he was not quite ready to support his party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump. There is virtue, of course, in refusing to back a manifestly unqualified and bigoted jabberwock like Trump, but Ryan made clear that his endorsement was merely withheld, not denied. “I hope” to endorse Trump, Ryan said, “and I want to,” but Trump had to meet some of the Speaker’s terms first.
  Per
  
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• “This is not a reality show”: President Obama scolds the media to get serious about Donald Trump

  06-05-2016 19:06 via salon.com
  
  President Obama thinks America can’t afford to withstand the spectacle of a Donald Trump presidential candidacy without strong journalists providing voters the facts in the face of the former reality TV star’s rampant lies.
  “I just want to emphasize the degree to which we are in serious times and this is a really serious job,” the president said on Friday during remarks on the economy in the White House press briefing room.
  “I think it’s important for us to ta
  
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• The glory of the beard: It’s the one bandwagon politicians can’t jump on

  06-05-2016 18:40 via salon.com
  
  The beard has been a major pop culture signifier for a while now – at least since the rise of facial hair on Brooklyn hipsters and Hollywood actors. There are all kinds of delineations – from Crisis Beards to Charity Beards to Off-Season Beards. A few months back, the delineation between Retirement Beards and Achievement Beards became a topic worthy of tea-leaf reading.
  But the most noticeable rift in American life now is that while the beard has become prominent on all kinds of
  
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• Radiohead releases surprise Paul Thomas Anderson-directed music video and announces drop date for new album

  06-05-2016 18:32 via salon.com
  
  After the surprise release of the new song “Burn the Witch” earlier this week, Radiohead further delighted fans Friday with the announcement of a release date for their new album and a new Paul Thomas Anderson-directed music video titled “Daydreaming.”
  The release of “Daydreaming” came with an announcement that the band’s long-awaited ninth studio album will be released digitally on Sunday, May 8th at 2:00 PM ET.
  Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood compo
  
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• Donald Trump turns President Obama’s mockery into an actual talking point about dealing with Putin: “I had a major event in Russia … Miss Universe contest”

  06-05-2016 18:01 via salon.com
  
  Donald Trump pulled off a very rare move over the weekend. He dodged an event full of cameras and celebrities for a chance to sit out the spotlight.
  Shocking, I know. The professional ham turned actual major party presidential “presumptive” nominee is hardly one to shy away from attention, but as he painfully learned in 2011: When the cameras on you, but President Obama has the microphone — it’s bound to be a rough ride. Of course, his rare avoidance of Saturday’s a
  
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• There’s no Trump without Palin: Meghan McCain scolds conservatives for backing Trump — forgets this is the party her dad helped create

  06-05-2016 17:58 via salon.com
  
  John McCain, Sarah Palin (Credit: Reuters/Matt Sullivan)
  Donald Trump’s coronation as the GOP nominee will present plenty of opportunities for Republican amnesia and short-sightedness. The easiest thing to do, if you’re a conservative Republican, is to dismiss Trump as an aberration, as if his candidacy emerged out of a whirlwind. But that’s the work of revisionist historians, not honest observers of the last decade of Republican politics.
  Consider this recent tweet by Meghan M
  
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• “This is why Ann Coulter has said that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote”: Sexist sports fans troll Seattle female politicians after NBA team denial

  06-05-2016 17:25 via salon.com
  
  Ann Coulter (Credit: Jeff Malet, maletphoto.com/AP/Elaine Thompson)
  As consistent as the changing of the seasons, as enduring as Oprah’s love for bread, you can always count on the baby humans of the Internet to pitch a tantrum when they feel their toys are in jeopardy — and, whenever possible, to direct that rage at women. Whether it’s their guns, their games, their book clubs, or their sporting arenas, nothing says “masculinity so fragile” like turning a building
  
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• “I’m thinking maybe we need a new Speaker”: Sean Hannity and Newt Gingrich throw a temper tantrum after Paul Ryan refuses to endorse Donald Trump

  06-05-2016 16:45 via salon.com
  
  (Credit: Fox News)
  Conservatives are cracking apart.
  While Erick Erickson is demanding that Republicans apologize for impeaching Bill Clinton 20 years ago for lying about his philandering only to nominate a “a pathological liar and womanizer,” Fox News’ Sean Hannity has vowed to lead a revolt to “stop the circular firing squad” aimed at his preferred presidential candidate, Donald Trump, accusing Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan of leading the assault against
  
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• Paul Ryan’s bold — but transparent — shot across Trump’s bow: It’s a good idea even though it won’t work

  06-05-2016 16:35 via salon.com
  
  Paul Ryan (Credit: AP/Andrew Harnik)
  Donald Trump is the face of the Republican Party now. The nominee is the standard-bearer – that’s the way it’s always been. One of the more fascinating storylines in the coming months will be how Republicans, at every level, reconcile themselves to this fact. Much of it will vary according to district and region. A GOP candidate’s degree of support for Trump will depend upon the politics of his or her region. In contested district
  
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• Captain America’s a douchey libertarian now: Why did Marvel have to ruin Steve Rogers?

  06-05-2016 16:23 via salon.com
  
  Chris Evans in "Captain America: Civil War" (Credit: Marvel)
  The Captain America movies have been the crown jewels of the robust Marvel cinematic universe for a lot of reasons — great casting, fun action, and a strong sense of genre — but for me, one of the most satisfying aspects is how much the movies really get Steve Rogers, aka Captain America.
  Most corporate blockbuster movies would cave into the temptation to make the character some kind of generic, apolitical “patri
  
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• Fox News host claims Trump’s racist “taco bowl” gaffe was neither racist nor a gaffe, but “an olive branch”

  06-05-2016 16:14 via salon.com
  
  Donald Trump, Taco Bowl (Credit: Twitter)
  Most members of the media were rightly embarrassed by Donald Trump’s attempt to pander to “Hispanics” — which aren’t even the group he wanted to pander to, but that’s another argument entirely — but Fox Business News’ Neil Cavuto was undeterred, calling the Republican nominee’s tweet “an olive branch” to the people of Mexico.
  The United States is not, of course, at war with Mexico —
  
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• Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson says Paul Ryan unqualified as Speaker of the House if he does not back Trump

  06-05-2016 15:34 via salon.com
  
  (Credit: CNN)
  Donald Trump plans to bully his way to party unity now that he has all but clinched the Republican Party presidential nomination.
  His short-lived promises to pivot to a more presidential candidate in recent weeks have only been outpaced by the whiplashing speed by which his campaign has already abandon plans to the unite the Republican party after vanquishing his final competitors in Indiana on Tuesday. The “presumptive” nominee, as RNC chairman Reince Priebus referred
  
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• Behind the scenes on “Star Wars”: The strange but mostly true stories of “Elstree 1976″

  06-05-2016 15:33 via salon.com
  
  English actor David Prowse’s greatest role, in his own estimation, was playing Green Cross Code Man, the inspirational figure in a series of instructional road-safety videos made for British children. (If he’d been American, he’d probably have been called Crosswalk Man.) Prowse is admittedly slightly more famous for another performance, one that has made him lots of money over the years but left him strangely embittered. Yes, I see you in the back of the class, and I know you k
  
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• Jon Stewart and David Letterman emerge from retirement to skewer Donald Trump at USO event

  06-05-2016 15:00 via salon.com
  
  Jon Stewart (Credit: Live Satellite News)
  Comedians and beloved national icons Jon Stewart and David Letterman emerged from their respective retirements to honor the USO at its 75th birthday party in Maryland on Thursday. Although the event was not meant to be political, the former Daily Show host just couldn’t help himself as he introduced Vice President Joe Biden.
  “He’s always a guy, you know, we had a lot of fun with,” he said of Biden. “He’s a guy that&rsq
  
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• WATCH: Rachel Maddow transforms GOP anguish over Donald Trump’s victory into glorious, glorious poetry

  06-05-2016 14:40 via salon.com
  
  Rachel Maddow (Credit: MSNBC)
  On the Thursday edition of her MSNBC program, Rachel Maddow decided to “honor the concerns” of Republicans aghast at the fact that Donald Trump will be their party’s presidential nominee in the most sensible way possible — by transforming those concerns into beat poetry.
  Accompanied by a man in black playing a bongo, Maddow read the howls of aggrieved Republicans as if they were written on the road in 1957. “Donald Trump is a proto-fasc
  
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• David Brooks slams Hillary Clinton for lacking imagination: “This country’s seriously off course — a little imagination is in order”

  06-05-2016 14:16 via salon.com
  
  (Credit: C-Span)
  In his Friday New York Times column, David Brooks argued that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton “sounds like a normal Democratic candidate in the noble tradition of Edmund Muskie and Hubert Humphrey, but she doesn’t sound like an imaginative candidate who is responding with fresh eyes to situations today.”
  He was referring to a speech she gave in West Virginia in which she promised coal miners job retraining and tax credits to compensa
  
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• Paul Krugman: Donald Trump and his supporters are, essentially, dangerous flat-earthers

  06-05-2016 14:03 via salon.com
  
  Paul Krugman (Credit: AP/Lai Seng Sin)
  In his Friday New York Times column, Paul Krugman preemptively argued against those who would equate Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump by claiming they are both basically on the center-right.
  “[O]ne candidate is engaged in wildly irresponsible fantasy while the other is being quite careful with her numbers,” he wrote about their respective tax plans. “But beware of news analyses that, in the name of ‘balance,’ downplay this cont
  
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• Sympathy for Sheldon Silver: We can’t solve problems by putting people in cages

  06-05-2016 14:00 via salon.com
  
  FILE- In this Jan. 22, 2015 file photo, New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver leaves a federal courthouse in New York. (AP Photo/) (Credit: AP/Seth Wenig, File)
  It’s hard not to enjoy a corrupt politician in handcuffs, the refreshing spectacle of the mighty brought low in a country whose rampant unfairness is nowhere more pronounced than in the criminal justice system. It’s entertaining too. And so my first thought, after disgraced former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Si
  
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• Support for Palestinians growing among young, progressive Americans, Pew report finds

  06-05-2016 13:59 via salon.com
  Support for Palestinians is growing among Americans, and particularly among progressive and the youth, according to a new report.
  The number of Americans sympathizing with Palestinians has risen by 5 percent since July 2014, when Israel was waging a destructive war with militant groups in the Gaza Strip, a study by leading polling agency Pew reveals.
  Liberal Democrats and supporters of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders are more likely to support the Palestinians than Israel, Pew found.
  Suppo
  
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• “No one has been more angry with Bill Clinton than me”: This is how Hillary picks up anti-Trump Republicans

  06-05-2016 13:15 via salon.com
  
  “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert last night offered some advice for Hillary Clinton, who, barring an impossible set of circumstances, will soon face Donald Trump’s hyper-focused wrath in a general election.
  “(Hillary has) been busy courting anti-Trump Republicans, also known as the U.S. Congress,” Colbert began. “She figures she can pick up some votes because no GOP candidate has been so reviled by the establishment since their 1884 nominee, Tub of Beef Tallow
  
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• GOP’s draft women gambit backfires: Seth Meyers on the “O. Henry strategy” of Duncan Hunter

  06-05-2016 13:07 via salon.com
  
  “Late Night” host Seth Meyers last night took a “Closer Look” at a new House bill that would make require women to register for the draft just the same as men. The bill’s author, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), doesn’t even support the bill, and said he conceived the bill in order to paint a gruesome picture of war and its effects on families.
  Welp, a majority of the Armed Services Committee disagreed and voted to pass the bill along to a floor vote,
  
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• Donald Trump’s flip-flops: He’s banking on bigotry and ditching right-wing economic orthodoxy

  06-05-2016 11:59 via salon.com
  
  Donald Trump, Donald Trump (Credit: AP/Carlos Osorio)
  Donald Trump became the presumptive Republican presidential nominee on Tuesday night, and he wasted literally no time in shedding some of the policy positions he laid out in the primary. He hasn’t exactly been the picture of consistency to date, and he’s built an entire political persona around erratic and unpredictable behavior, but the issues that Trump is flip-flopping on give some indication of how he views his own base and th
  
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• The overwhelming reason why Hillary should make Bernie her running mate (even though she never, ever will)

  06-05-2016 11:58 via salon.com
  
  Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders (Credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder/Photo montage by Salon)
  Now that we have a clear sense of the players in the forthcoming general election, and one of those two players is Donald Trump, I suppose it’s germane to have a serious conversation about vice presidential running-mates.
  The so-called “veepstakes” is among the most obsessively observed events in all of American politics. Americans love the concept of mashups, and the pairing of
  
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• The sad spectacle of “Morning Joe’s” Trump denial: How Rob Reiner laid bare the brazen failures of MSNBC’s morning crew

  06-05-2016 11:57 via salon.com
  
  Rob Reiner (Credit: MSNBC)
  Among the many, many, many, many reasons I never watch MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” the big one is that I can hear a more informed conversation about politics and culture by eavesdropping on the group of middle-aged and elderly patrons who gather at my neighborhood Starbucks every morning. (It is no coincidence that “Morning Joe” once had a sponsorship deal and its own branded coffee from Starbucks.) However, if for some insane reason I am
  
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• Missouri’s racist rape trolls: State GOP introduces horrendous anti-choice bill — complete with an unforgivable affront to rape victims

  06-05-2016 11:57 via salon.com
  
  Mike Moon (Credit: house.mo.gov)
  A month after threatening to imprison a Planned Parenthood official for not handing over a list of women who’ve gotten abortions, Missouri Republicans are at it again. The majority of the Missouri state house voted for a bill that would define fertilized eggs as “persons” that “have a natural right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and the enjoyment of the gains of their own industry.”
  The bill and the debate around it is a
  
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• Republicans are officially in last-resort mode: They’re considering a third-party candidate to sabotage Trump — and that will blow up in their faces, too

  06-05-2016 11:56 via salon.com
  
  Donald Trump (Credit: AP/Gerald Herbert)
  The Republican establishment has run out of options. They’ve tried, repeatedly, to thwart Trump’s march to the nomination. First it was Jeb Bush; then it was Scott Walker; then Marco Rubio; and finally they were down to Ted Cruz and John Kasich. Nothing has worked. The Republican primary voters have spoken: They want Donald Trump. After his crushing victory in Indiana this week, Trump is now the face of the party and its presumptive nominee.
  T
  
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• Why every parent should read to their kids

  06-05-2016 10:45 via salon.com
  
  If you are a parent or a teacher, you most probably read stories to young children. Together, you laugh and point at the pictures. You engage them with a few simple questions. And they respond. So what happens to children when they participate in shared reading? Does it make a difference to their learning? If so, what aspects of their learning are affected?
  Shared reading for language development
  British researcher Don Holdaway was the first to point out the benefits of shared reading. He n
  
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• There is life after porn: Bree Olson doesn’t have to be a cautionary tale

  06-05-2016 10:30 via salon.com
  
  Bree Olson(Credit: flipchip/LasVegasVegas via Wikimedia Commons)A little over a month ago, former adult film star Bree Olson released a video interview detailing the difficulties she has encountered because of her past in porn. She discusses the hardships of transitioning from the porn industry to the mainstream scene and the harassment she has endured, and she ends the video with a warning: “I send a very strong message to young girls: Don’t do porn… You’re just going
  
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• Saudi Arabia faces collapse: America’s Middle Eastern ally may not survive this latest oil crisis

  06-05-2016 10:15 via salon.com
  
  Saudi Arabia is in serious trouble. The Binladin Group, the kingdom’s largest construction company, has terminated the employment of fifty thousand foreign workers. They have been issued exit visas, which they have refused to honor. These workers will not leave without being paid back wages. Angry with their employer, some of the workers set fire to seven of the company’s buses.
  Unrest is on the cards in the Kingdom. In April, King Salman fired the water and electricity minister Abdu
  
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• 7 ways Trump is about to turn the GOP into a national freakshow

  06-05-2016 10:00 via salon.com
  
  Donald Trump (Credit: Reuters/Darren Hauck)
  Republicans across the country are swallowing hard and wondering what Donald Trump is going to be like as their presidential candidate—as if the answers are not clear enough.
  Some are hoping he will dial down his vulgar mouth and start acting presidential, as if magically transformed by what mainstream media had been calling an “aura of inevitability.” You saw hints of that in his speech Tuesday night, where, in his typical swing of t
  
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• What was so good about “The Good Wife”: After it ends this Sunday, there will never be a show like it again

  06-05-2016 00:59 via salon.com
  
  Julianna Margulies in "The Good Wife" (Credit: CBS)
  In 2014, when “The Good Wife” was coming off of its best season ever, CBS sent out mailers to Emmy voters with a cheeky little dig at other marquee dramas. The postcard had a little infographic on it, comparing the number of episodes “The Good Wife” produced for its fifth season compared to Emmy favorites like the final season of “Breaking Bad” and the penultimate season of “Mad Men.” Seeing it in
  
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• How “Purple Rain” found its anthem: “We both knew we needed to find just the right song”

  06-05-2016 00:58 via salon.com
  
  Albert Magnoli was the director, co-writer and editor of “Purple Rain,” the 1984 hit movie that launched Prince into super-stardom. In tribute to Prince, Albert agreed to share with Salon some of his memories of that special experience. (This interview was lightly edited for clarity.)
  Albert, let me begin in a non-traditional manner by opening up the floor here and handing you the microphone to say anything whatsoever.
  I’m sorry. I have no words to say. The magnitude of the los
  
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• Whit Stillman returns: “Sometimes it’s good to blow through all your deadlines”

  06-05-2016 00:57 via salon.com
  
  Chloë Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale in "Love & Friendship" (Credit: Amazon Studios)
  Whit Stillman is the director still best known for “Metropolitan,” the 1990 film about young members of what one of the film’s characters called “the urban haute bourgeoisie.” The ghost of Jane Austen has hovered over nearly all of Stillman’s work, so it seems appropriate that he has finally paid direct homage to her with not one but two new projects.
  The first is a movi
  
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• 6 times famous performers told Donald Trump, “Stop Using Our Music!”

  06-05-2016 00:57 via salon.com
  
  R.E.M. performs on NBC's "Today" in New York's Rockefeller Plaza, Tuesday, April 1, 2008.(Credit: AP/Jason DeCrow)Choosing the playlist for political campaign rallies is a tricky business. First and foremost, candidates need to make sure their musical picks inspire feelings of patriotism, optimism and positivity. They also need to make sure the artist behind the song doesn’t disavow their campaign entirely.
  During the long history of presidential campaign songs—and particularly since
  
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