Deadspin’s Masked Man has a farewell to Randy Savage. Fantastic:

The “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy” of the average Savage interview functionally defined the paranoid style in American pro wrestling.

The video clips in the piece are great, too.

Scott Horton isn’t the world’s most careful journalist. But that doesn’t seem to bother the American Society of Magazine Editors, who gave him the National Magazine Award for Reporting this year. (I know, right?)

The story for which Horton won the award seems to be in line with his usual work. Over at AdWeek, Alex Koppelman has a brilliant story about Horton’s story. Not to be missed:

In fact, Horton’s story, which the judges for the award—administered by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) and regarded as the Pulitzer for magazines—found so compelling, was actually a well-shopped one, familiar to some of the most experienced investigative journalists in the business. These included The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh as well as teams from CBS News’ 60 Minutes and ABC News’ Brian Ross Investigative Unit that had looked into the alleged killings and the accounts provided by the men who became Horton’s key sources, and found more flight of fancy than fact. (Horton acknowledges in his story that his source had been in contact with ABC News.) . . .

Only after the big guys passed was the story shopped to Horton. He won for reporting, but in fact the story fell right into his lap, factual flaws and all.

“We couldn’t really believe it when the piece came out,” one of the reporters who looked into the story says. “I can’t believe Harper’s, I really can’t.”

There’s more. Lots and lots more. Koppelman = Awesome.

One of the most unattractive qualities in writers is the impulse to believe you’re the source of all ideas. You see this all the time, especially with bloggers who begin posts by archly noting “As I wrote last month . . .” before linking to something someone else has written that’s vaguely similar.

I try, as best I can, to check that impulse in myself because, the truth is, there’s very little that’s really new under the sun.

All of that said, last year I wrote a story about Barack Obama’s narcissism for The Weekly Standard, “American Narcissus”:

Last night, I came across an add for a book from St. Augustine’s by a fellow named George J. Marlin. It’s called Narcissist Nation:

I’m sure the book is great.

Police try to arrest man for carrying a gun, legally. Threaten to kill him. Are forced to release him after checking on the law.

Man posts an audio recording of the episode on the internet.

District attorney has man arrested for exposing police failure to understand the laws they are supposed to enforce.

You really have to listen to the audio–the police talk like gangsters, while the “perp” talks like a professional. The really damning thing here isn’t that the cops don’t know the laws they’re charged with upholding–it’s that they act not like mistaken professionals (everyone makes mistakes), but like semi-psychotic thugs.

Maybe this conflict of gun-rights with law enforcement will finally convince some conservatives to question their blind support of cops. It’ll be like feminists discovering that abortion is sometimes used to commit gendercide against little girls!

It’s a sad, sad day–Randy Savage has died of (surprise!) a heart attack. He was 58.

The Macho Man probably belongs on the Mt. Rushmore of wrestling–at least of the modern, post-regional era. He was a force of such wild charisma (and physical talent) that he was the only guy in the Hogan-era of the WWF who was capable of pulling the promotion’s center of gravity away from the Hulkster who was, for nearly a decade, the entire WWF franchise.

You could see the foundation of Macho’s act early in his ICW days (check out this fantastic promo) and he made for a great heel when he arrived in the WWF in the mid-’80s. But in 1985 he crushed Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat’s larynx, creating what is, for my money, the gold standard of wrestling feuds. (Go to the 2:50 mark here and watch (1) Savage “crush Ricky Steamboat’s throatal region”; Steamboat sell the move as well as anyone has ever sold; and (3) the crowd go absolutely nuts.) The feud put Savage over as the dominant heel; created a year-long, slow-play drama; told a story with a beginning, middle, and end; and climaxed in such a way as to both give proper moral resolution and continue to elevate Macho. It was epic work from Macho, Steamboat, and the writers and maybe the high-water mark of the ’80s WWF.

By 1987, the Macho Man had so much heat that the WWF simply had to turn him face and it was only once he was side-by-side with Hogan in the “Mega Powers” that Hogan really started to look small. For all the camp about Hulkamania, Hogan knew what he was selling and how to do it well. But when Savage was next to him, suddenly it became clear who the real icon was.

I’ll leave you with a couple of Savage promo montages. Watching him pirouette and pause and point with his pinky should help dull the pain. For my money, there’s only one other wrestler I’ve seen that I would class with Macho as the best there is, the best was, the best there ever will be.

History beckons the Macho Man.

AICN has a picture of Tom Hardy as Bane. It’s not as terrible as you think.

The news earlier this week that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is playing the Holiday Killer is a little bit reassuring, too, because it suggests that Nolan is going to stay away from the ninja-magic part of the Batman universe and stick with crime, tragedy, and human frailty–which are the Caped Crusader’s bread and butter.

Fingers crossed.

Michael Graham ends his column with a line that should get marked down and re-used, a lot:

“Barack Obama is the Nixon the left always wanted.”

You can sub a hyphen for the “is” in the bumper-sticker version.

I have a great deal admiration for Amazon–it’s the one tech company that actually does something interesting in the real world–and makes money, too! Why Amazon is valued only around 10 times more than Twitter? Why is it valued only slightly more than Facebook? Such are the mysteries of Tech Bubble 2.0.

Anyway, one of the many interesting things Amazon has done well is the Kindle, yet unlike Apple–which talks up its products like a tout–Amazon keeps the Kindle in a black box. When is the next Kindle coming, what might it look like? Who knows. But the biggest mystery about the Kindle is how many of them have been sold. Amazon has always refused to say. Today, however, we might have gotten an oblique clue: Amazon announced that Kindle book sales now exceed hardcover and paperback sales combined. If there’s a vague guess at the monthly book sales totals for Amazon out there (and someone in the publishing industry must have an educated idea), then you might be able to plausibly work your way back to an estimate of Kindles.