Local Man

Oh, brother.

I mean, props to Ben Affleck. It's a good article and he's using his celebrity to focus attention on a big problem. But as a symbol of what's happening in journalism today, this is just calamitous.

Sean Penn (and props to you for your Iraq trips), what hath you wrought?

Now the last sentence — describing with magical fluency and eerie exactitude what it is like for a human being to pass from life to death — will never be written.