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Former President Jimmy Carter tells Big Think that even as the fight over Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell continues, he believes Americans are ready for their first gay president (that we know of–I think we’ve all heard the rumors about “life-long bachelor” James Buchanan).

Carter says the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have done a lot to melt the resistance to non-straight-white-guys in the White House:

The thing about long-time New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin is that even though he represents the very best of what we are arguably losing in the demise of old media, you get the sense that had he been born into the 2.0 era he would have done just fine.

We’ve noticed the parallels between Mad Men and journalism before, and took the opportunity to compare our favorite characters from the AMC drama to the personalities on Morning Joe. But according to classic journo Gay Talese, in a new video from Big Think, when it came to “smoking, drinking, writing, womanizing, smoking, drinking…,” the glory days Gray Lady had ‘em beat.

•Now, realtors are backing out of newspaper advertising. Curse you, Craig Newmark! (RQ)

•Just want to mention the brilliance of the category tag for this post – “Scott La-Rocked” (CH)

•Mad magazine’s grotesque cartoonist and illustrator Basil Wolverton moves from magazine cover to gallery this august: “The images in pen and ink — Wolverton worked almost exclusively in this medium — were a virtuoso exercise in bad taste, made all the weirder for being so meticulously executed.” (ZT)