I could go into the fact that Pepsi Max’s claim that it is the first diet soda for men heavily suggests that, until now, dieting has been a woman’s work. But men should be the ones really insulted by this ad. The gender marketing is obviously a gimmick but instead of claiming that the beverage will appeal to the intelligence and/or fine taste buds of their target audience, the ad portrays them as clumsy buffoons whose only talent is recovering from self (and buddy) inflicted injures. Maybe “if you can survive electrocution, you’ll be able to make it through this drink!” isn’t the implication they were going for.

Maureen Dowd wrote one of the most logically sound columns of her career (and that’s a low bar to jump) over the weekend. It seemed too good to be true and was, considering the two paragraphs Dowd stole nearly verbatim from Josh Marshall of TPM. The sections compared:

The Republican Party has become so farcical over the past year that it would seem like performance art if there was some intelligence hiding behind it. Mike Huckabee, who was in the top three of the doomed Republican presidential race, has stepped forward to show his intellectual depth by weighing in on the “what Pelosi knew when” debate — via poem.