What John Stossel Reads
As part of The Atlantic's "What I Read" series, our favorite weekly TV news show-haver (and reason.com columnist) gives a nice shout-out to the rabble, while revealing a perhaps-surprising fondness for the art of violence:
When I first wake up, I turn on Fox & Friends or Imus in the Morning. On my BlackBerry, I start with The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. For the subway ride, I read on my Kindle so I don't have to elbow people turning the pages. At work, I always read CATO @Liberty and Reason's Hit and Run. I don't always look at the bylines but Reason's Matt Welch really expands my brain and I like Katherine Mangu-Ward, Jacob Sullum and Shikha Dalmia too. I also read The New Republic, The Week, Forbes and National Review. I stopped reading Newsweek and Time because I couldn't find anything that wasn't banal or liberal pap—though I will say Newsweek has gotten better since Tina Brown took over. I like Howard Kurtz. The Nation has gotten too stupid for me: the same dreary stuff over and over. I read The Atlantic only once a month but I probably wouldn't if Scott weren't there. (Those long articles take a lot of time.) I also read Mediaite for media gossip, the Bleacher Report for mixed martial arts and Intrade.com, where people bet on world events and politics (I find it much more accurate than what political commentators predict).
On TV, I watch Modern Family, NCIS, and Ultimate Fighting. I was a high school wrestler and I've always been fascinated with which martial art is superior. You have to be good at all of them. For awhile, the jujitsu specialists clobbered everyone. Then people found out defenses. Then the boxers won and people figured out how to get around punches. Then the wrestlers won for awhile.
Read the whole thing, including some digs at libertarian-baiter Jonathan Chait, here. Then re-read Stossel's classic 2004 Reason cover story, "Confessions of a Welfare Queen."
