second floor

“socialists win spanish election, retaining power”:

Mr. Zapatero both won and lost voters over his ambitious social and political agenda that has ushered in such changes as the legalization of gay marriage, fast-track divorce, recognition for the victims of the fascist Franco dictatorship and more autonomy for some of Spain’s 17 regions.

“Zapatero has given us more rights than any leader to the people of Spain: the old, the young, gays, men, women,” said Santiago Cruz, 69, a retired plumber who lives in the working-class Madrid suburb of Vallecas, which has a large immigrant population. “I grew up under Franco with no rights. I grew up having to sing Franco’s anthem so that his fascist supporters would throw me scraps of cabbage.”

Other voters claimed that Mr. Zapatero’s social changes were destroying Spain’s value system.

“Zapatero is breaking with the traditional Christian values that we have espoused our whole lives,” said Miguel María Santos de Quevedo, a 76-year old retired notary in Tomares, a town in Andalucía, who voted for the Popular Party. “He wants to impose his relativist values on everyone, to claim that there is no such thing as good and bad.”

nytimes photo

nytimes article about matt yglesias’s blogging “flophouse”:

This was an election night party and a blogger party at what residents and friends call the Flophouse, a creaky row house with sea-foam-color floors, where Mr. Yglesias lives with four other roommates, all young bloggers.

Group living in the nation’s capital is nothing new. In Washington, the work-life balance often seems less balance and more all-consuming overlap. After all, it is well known that even senators like Charles E. Schumer share housing with other politicians.

In that sense, the presence of a blogger house reflects the increasing number of online pundits in the capital. The Flophouse bloggers may not be part of the traditional mainstream news media, but they are certainly part of the mainstream blogosphere that is helping drive discourse in the city and the country. Mr. Yglesias said his site attracted about two million page views last month.

“Groups of similar-minded people congregating together and publishing their thoughts used to be called a magazine,” Andrew Sullivan, the former editor of The New Republic who now blogs for The Atlantic, wrote in an e-mail message. “This is just a 21st-century version of an 18th-century innovation.”

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sasha frere-jones:

A friend just sent me a link to the video for Santogold’s “L.E.S. Artistes,” with the question, “WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?” (I saw Santogold open for Björk last September, and still feel very positively about “Creator.”) These are my guesses as to what this video is about:

1. The traumatic switch from black-and-white to color in the movies, a long shift in preference that did not tip heavily in favor of color until the 1960s. It was hard to choose. They are both nice.

2. Artists being forced out of their lofts on the Lower East Side (even though there are more lofts in Williamsburg and SoHo).

3. A directorial decision to make the performers wear gray and act out clichés of movie violence while substituting brightly colored foodstuffs for traditional red squibs and gore.

4. Santi White’s frustration at not being able to ride a horse.