Posted 8:27 PM by Gene

As GENERAL JR. unleashes MEGASUPERMONOPOLY MEDIA on America, a couple of overly ambitious jaysonists lick the muddy boots of its greatest hero, THE ZON. (Mmmmmmmmmmmm MMM! Does that taste GOOD!) Of course he'd rather be at Viacon than ExxonMobil or Wal-Mart; where else can you push people around 300 million at a time?

Posted 6:13 PM by Gene

Netscape what?

Posted 5:55 PM by Gene

This story about Democrats bloviating is filled with such good quotes I can't keep my fingers off it:

"Sen. Kerry, we don't want Dean Lite, either."

But it is less filling.

"The one thing this country doesn't need is a second Republican Party."

No, but we could use a second Green Party.

"What we need in this party is not just people who talk about backbone, but people who have it."

The last I heard jellyfish didn't make it that far up the evolutionary chain.

"When I was in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1968, I learned what it was to work with an aircraft carrier for real."

Unfortunately, the noise from all those fighters forced me to wear a hair helmet to protect my ears, but it worked so well I've worn it to this day.

"[M]y goal to restore the 2.7 million jobs lost during the Bush administration within my first 500 days in the White House."

And all of them will be in the Federal government! (That was a Do line. He didn't deliver it. I think I know why.)

Posted 5:29 PM by Gene

Surprise, surprise. Dr. Kildare's gay.

When I first saw MESS.com's head I thought, WILT? But then I remembered. He was too busy to be gay. Besides, it would be pretty hard to speak of him in the present tense. (I'm what blogs these days.)

This is sort of up there with Rock, er, Doris Day being the world's oldest virgin.

Posted 5:22 PM by Gene

OOOOoooh, one of Marilyn Manson's heroes's followers is -- a political prisoner! Of Gray Davis!

Will Amnesty swallow that?

Posted 4:14 PM by Gene

In the first round of the Memorial (memorial to what?), somebody named Alejandro Larrazabal (try pronouncing that with marbles in your mouth) shot 16 OVER PAR -- including two birdies!

Perhaps some of the men ought to play the women's tour.

Posted 4:07 PM by Gene

The Times, home of that @#$%&* MUSEUM plunder, is admitting there may be "hundreds" of mass graves in Iraq.

Posted 4:00 PM by Gene

Keeping in mind this is ELEANOR, and she writes for BLUNDER rag, and she's JOHN's token woman, and she is a KNEE-JERK, whenever Republicans think they're doing themselves a favor their J. P. Moneybags worship shines and stinks through again.

Does anybody take the Beltway's tax bills seriously anymore? If so, I think we've got an issue here.

Posted 3:41 PM by Gene

It is a tribute to the thoroughness of the holy cockroaches that 1,300 families are still waiting for remains 21 months after the WTC, er, event.

I suspect where the cockroaches are they have plenty of time to hone their incineration skills.

Posted 3:36 PM by Gene

Maybe if enough local governments had the backbone to do this (but remember, this is LALA's city council, which spent days debating our calumny in Iraq), maybe the GENERAL JR.s and Sumners and Ruperts and King Richards wouldn't fantasize of ONE BIG MEDIA COMPANY.

Posted 3:26 PM by Gene

Hard-Line Realist Seeking To Dream

John Kerry -- a "realist"? With THAT do?

I will concede this, though: all that hair spray probably does cause him to hallucinate.

Posted 3:08 PM by Gene

I've got an idea, confederacy of dunces (aka America's college presidents): since GENERAL JR. is so hot to have ONE BIG MEDIA COMPANY, why not just follow his example and form ONE BIG ATHLETIC CONFERENCE? It would save a lot of trouble.

Posted 2:49 PM by Gene

God knows how many ghosts, variations, revisions, consultants, tantrums, marketers and focus groups THE MAN's "literary" "debut" will have been through. Remainder bins, here we come!

Posted 9:35 AM by Gene

There seems no end to the perfidy the holy exalted yayas have financed. Now Iran must pay up (fat chance) for the '83 bombing of our marine barracks in Lebanon.

They're NOT on our side -- yet.

Posted 9:33 AM by Gene

Women in a Hurry at French Open

Is this headline supposed to have a double meaning?

Posted 9:30 AM by Gene

And speaking of great leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, why would the Pope want to give Mr. Bernard Law the time of day?

Posted 9:27 AM by Gene

Two days and counting to...

Posted 9:25 AM by Gene

A modern-day Pius XII in Cuba emits this sewer gas: ''The church's mission is not to be on the side of the opposition. In the same way, you cannot ask the church to support the government.'' So that means we'll support...nobody.

Posted 9:23 AM by Gene

I hope we've finally righted the wrong of the Olympic Park bombing, but if law-enforcement types have any favorite scenic route, it's the cul-de-sac.

Posted 5:38 PM by Gene

FREE ENTERPRISE AT ITS FINEST: Here's something to make Dick "Barney Fag" Armey and the Buttman, er, Cato Institute drool: CIGNA, a big fat rich insurance company -- and boy isn't that a great business to fleece, er, make money in! -- is setting a poor city, Philadelphia, against a poorer city, Camden, in a huge shakedown battle to house the company's HQ. Only two things are certain: the taxpayers of two states lose, and one of the two cities loses. I HATE BIG BUSINESS!

Posted 5:28 PM by Gene

When will hack pols and their friends learn when they break the passive-voice wind of "Mistakes were made," they're denying THEY made them?

Posted 5:24 PM by Gene

Why is it knee-jerk-lock-step-hard-core conservatives are all for media megamonopolies -- as the late, great Texas Mafioso Dick "Shut the Hell Up" Armey would say, "The bigger the monopoly, the better" -- except when they're LIBERAL?

"More money and a wider reach will create more stars, more self-indulgence, and more errors. Get used to the new Times; it is fated to become bigger, richer, and worse." Why is it not true for anyone else? Why is GENERAL JR. better than Pinch? WHY IS IT, NR?

Posted 5:21 PM by Gene

GM's admitting it made clunkers. But if every ASWIA member tried the hair-shirt mea culpa approach people wouldn't believe them any more than they believe them now. Big business exhausted its capital of goodwill long ago, and by turning to a form of communication despised by the masses, it can only make a bad situation worse.

Posted 5:07 PM by Gene

It's up, it's down, it's up, it'd down, it's up, it's down, it's....

Posted 6:52 AM by Gene

"It's just so American," says one shop assistant, "the fake tan, the chemical face lift."

"You can tell he uses Viagra as well," says a second, to a chorus of giggles.

"That's America for you."

"It's just so French," says one shop assistant, "the Saddam worship, Jerry Lewis in the windows."

"You can tell he hates Jews," says a second, to a chorus of giggles.

"That's France for you."

Posted 6:39 AM by Gene

News hacks must rave the latest greatest things of show biz because, as Shaw wrote in his Maxims for Revolutionists, "No age or condition is without its heroes....[T]he least commonplace poet [is] its Shakespear." Hence rappers become Byrons and hack movie directors get plunked next to Ibsen, with dire consequences for our culture. Well, THE GREATEST MUSICAL OF ALL TIME (so BEN BRANTLEY said), The Producers, has opened in LALALand, and despite having Mr. Kerngershwin Hammerstein write a plug for the piece in the LALA Times HIMSELF, if it doesn't get walloped by its theater writer, who rather thoroughly dessicates one of the ravists' lines that the show is "[the] most fearlessly irreverent thing ever seen on stage" (while it does sound like the idiot John Heilpern, who cover-plugged the show for Disney's late Talk magazine -- Harvey Whiner was a co-producer -- in fact, it was a jaysonist for USA Okay). "[T]o borrow an old joke," he concludes, "The Producers' future may already be behind it." Yes, you may borrow an old joke; the show's full of 'em. Imagine, two years old and already a period piece.

Posted 5:58 PM by Gene

The obitu -- excuse me, birthday greetings for Bob Hope have a somber tinge. Perhaps it's because he ceased as an active entertainer years ago -- unlike George Burns, who kept going until just months before he died -- and he is reported to be deaf and blind. Perhaps it's because so many of those he worked with -- Der Bingle, Dorothy Lamour, Jerry Colonna, just to mention his sidekicks -- are long gone. So is the entertainment industry he worked in, replaced by "media" and its streamlined synergized junk machine. There is also the kind of uninformed condescension from news hacks that marked the centenary of another show-biz survivor, Irving Berlin, a gung-ho Birchite Republican who wrote sappy patriotic tunes (he also wrote Top Hat and Annie Get Your Gun and some very unRepublican bawdy lyrics besides). And what news story is complete without the instant cliche -- that Hope was a "radical," a Lenny Bruce for the heartland. It is true Hope specialized in topical jokes, which led Andrew Ferguson to write an article for The Weekly Standard (on a Library of Congress tribute) blasting him for his corporate comedy -- his prepared jokes were always safe, formulaic, and unfunny. This we must expect from the man who played for Ike and "Whoops! Pardon" Ford and Gen. Patton and for the whole of bigwig society, who performed for the troops for so long (for too long) one of his touring company, the long-ago-beauteous airhead Raquel Welch, sneered that what the soldiers needed were prostitutes, and who invented the joke-writing assembly line, whose practitioners included Groucho Marx' singularly unfunny son Arthur, who wrote a score-evening "tell-all" of the man. And yet, no denying it, from my too little exposure to him in his prime, he was probably one of the funniest comedians who ever lived -- a man with a zinging delivery, perfect timing, and what is more, a way with ad libs, which his detractors never noticed and which he himself used too seldom. He was handsome, and suave, with more than a little of the roue in him -- he was allegedly a notorious womanizer. He could sing -- certainly not like Bing, but very pleasing, and he was as meant to sing Burke and Van Heusen as their mutual crony Bing. He starred in many popular movies, was an enduring hit on radio and television, and lived a thoroughly charmed life. Let us not say happy birthday to Bob Hope -- that would be like saying happy birthday to Ronald Reagan -- but let us remember him at his best, and mourn that the several generations of show-business giants he represents will not pass our way again.

Posted 5:31 PM by Gene

A fire strikes Professor InstaPundit's server -- and the world survived!!!!!

We wondered where you went to.

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

The jaysonists want Slick to run again.

Don't worry, you'll get your way -- when Sen. Rodham wins.

Posted 5:24 PM by Gene

The Tweedledee and Tweedledum of Internet evil settle a suit.

Ka-CHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 5:19 PM by Gene

Saudis mount intense drive against terror

The terror of Jews?

Posted 5:17 PM by Gene

I am not surprised that Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein was in cahoots cahoots chaoots with a collaborator collaborator collaborator during the war war war.

How did that poem of hers go? "A Nazi is a Nazi is a...." Never mind.

Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

His guys knew better than our guys. Fortunately, his guys missed. Barely.

Posted 6:47 AM by Gene

Unregulated media might be better, except that the unregulated media will form regulations of their own: the rules of cabals, the rules of the monopoly, the rules of the jungle, and above all, the iron-fisted rule against quality.

Posted 6:30 AM by Gene

What is the difference between the latest horrible threat of al-Qaeda and the shrieks of the boy who cried wolf?

I guess Gov doesn't have a monopoly on opening his mouth too much.

Posted 6:29 AM by Gene

I've come up with another excuse for running stories that upset people for no good reason: they "shame" the miscreants who did the rotten deed. But I'd guess in most cases there's nothing to shame (the usual defense of said miscreants is, Duh, I dunno), and thousands of newspaper buyers get up to their cups of coffee, read a story that upsets them for no reason, throw the newspaper in the trash, and still have a bad day. WHAT IS THE POINT OF THESE STORIES? You won't get rid of the jaysonism just by getting rid of the Jayson.

Posted 7:36 PM by Gene

QUAGMIRE didn't work, and the @#$%&* MUSEUM didn't work, so now we're scraping the bottom of the barrel and believing the Beeb. As I said before, I wouldn't put it past Rummy's guys to exaggerate about Pvt. Lynch, but THE BEEB'S SIDE STILL LOST.

Posted 5:31 PM by Gene

Wow! Friscans who thought Bush=Hitler cost almost as much as the war.

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

OOOOOOOOooooooooh, the Braggart has started a civil war at the Times!

Like the furor over Jayson, this battle of the halfwits will sail over the public's heads because, a la Seinfeld, it's about nothing. (Actually, Seinfeld wasn't about nothing. It was about Seinfeld.)

Posted 5:24 PM by Gene

Rush, if every broadcaster who reads or comments on the news led off every story with a disclaimer you'd be reading nothing but disclaimers.

Posted 5:20 PM by Gene

Jaysonists may learn to spell their profanities correctly, and who knows, they may even get the facts straight, but so long as they keep running stories whose only purpose is to upset people they aren't getting any better.

Posted 5:14 PM by Gene

In a love-in with "Lollipop" Lou Dobbs, GENERAL JR. says "it's our responsibility not to govern by polls and surveys."

No, it's your responsibility to govern by bribes and junkets.

Posted 5:11 PM by Gene

I'm sure this drug kingpin of Medellin shared a few furtive love notes with Osama.

Posted 5:06 PM by Gene

I thought action-based video games improved your ability to kill people.

Posted 5:03 PM by Gene

A sales, er, analyst is charged with selling Tyco under the influence -- of the Jimmy Durante impersonator and umbrella-stand fetishist Dennis Kozlowski.

Phua to youa!

Posted 5:00 PM by Gene

Tower Records is for sale.

Next stop: bankruptcy. You can't keep selling $18 CDs and hope to make a profit.

Posted 7:01 AM by Gene

Another piece of doggie doo that occurs when a jaysonist's hands are allowed to work unassisted:

The [ad campaign starring a porno "actress"] caught the attention of Bill O'Reilly of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, who accused Pony of hiring "quasi-prostitutes to market its products." The remarks led to a public back-and-forth with [the "actress"], who said Mr. O'Reilly should know the difference between a porn star and a hooker.

Aside from the cameras, what is the difference?

Posted 6:53 AM by Gene

The inspiration of plagiarists everywhere wants to run for PRESIDENT?

I know one thing: if he takes the oath of office it will be to the tune of six different inaugural addresses.

Posted 6:51 AM by Gene

As GENERAL JR., the future Gucci Gulch seven-digit lobbyist, prepares to give the store away, another survey shows people love the Masters of the Universe he wants so desperately to help.

Posted 6:32 AM by Gene

Here's the problem: conservatives say global warming is hooey; groups that say global warming is hooey are backed by corporate villains like ExxonMobil; the New York Times discredits people who believe global warming is hooey because they're backed by corporate villains like ExxonMobil, etc., etc., ETC.

Where's the truth?

Posted 6:27 AM by Gene

Howell may correct the correction!

Meantime it emerges Braggart's writing a novel. He has the experience.

Posted 5:59 PM by Gene

There's a case for leaving the world's highest burial ground and garbage dump alone a while.

Posted 5:55 PM by Gene

For years the docs told women to take their hormones. Why? Cause they "kept their minds sharp." Now the docs say the hormones can lead to Alzheimer's.

Talk about the need for second opinions.

Posted 5:50 PM by Gene

We've found a place for you, Saddam -- Buenos Aires! They'd love you down there! Can you learn to speak Spanish in a hurry?

Hmm, come to think of it, wasn't Argentina Adolf Eichmann's favorite country?

Posted 5:37 PM by Gene

WELL! Judging from today's Romenesko, the news biz is in a TIZ. A food writer gets fired for plagiarism in two columns that never ran, the Washington Post is kicking itself over anonymous sources, yadayadayada, but of course, it's the wrong kind of tiz. So long they reduce the industry's woes to mere factual errors or copying or sourcing or byline stealing -- the strictly mechanical stuff -- news hacks don't have to face the real problems that threaten to destroy them: bias, salesmanship, and of course, their ever-lovin' ATTITUDE.

Posted 5:28 PM by Gene

People would just as soon watch curling as hockey! Even the ASWIA's favorite demo won't tune in.

It's such fun to see professional sports fall flat on its overpriced face.

Posted 5:22 PM by Gene

Okay Wall Street Journals Conservative Edition, we don't get our news just from the big three anymore. We get it from 300 different sources -- owned by five companies.

Posted 5:15 PM by Gene

The Osama Channel fired its CEO, but says it wasn't because Saddam turned it into a second spying, er, information ministry!

FIRED? He should have been given an extra 72 virgins.

Posted 5:11 PM by Gene

More hard-core-conservative FREE ENTERPRISE at work: the chairman of Tenet Healthcare earned $111 million in 2002! He did such a terrific job he resigned just today!

KaCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHINGCHING!!!!!

Posted 5:09 PM by Gene

When will more retailers realize that locating in urban areas, whatever its difficulties, is at least good PR?

Posted 5:00 PM by Gene

Somehow I'm not surprised that in Massachusetts so many bilingual teachers no speaka de English. So how did they get hired in the first place?

Posted 7:06 AM by Gene

I KNOW LACI'S KILLER

Friend of yours?

Posted 7:03 AM by Gene

I think Andy S. ought to comment on sports regularly. Then he'd have to put himself in Poseur Alert.

Posted 7:01 AM by Gene

Greens may back Democrats in 2004

This is like saying, "'Fruit juice drinkers, pacifists, hygienists, Quakers, feminists, nudists, sex maniacs, Nature Cure quacks, vegetarians, and contraception advocates' may back Democrats in 2004."

Posted 6:55 AM by Gene

Although AOL, the Internet unit of the company, remains a large and profitable part of AOL Time Warner, senior executives have said they might consider selling or spinning off AOL if it does not resume growth, as forecast.

Since you still have us turnips to squeeze with your rotten service, why spin it off, King Richard?

Posted 6:52 AM by Gene

The Braggart says, "I quit!"

Is HOWELL next?

Posted 7:46 PM by Gene

The NBA has the best of two worlds: prima-donna players and prima-donna coaches. Sometimes the worlds shake hands and create that symbiosis called champions, as with the Lakers. Sometimes they merely collide. I don't know that much about professional basketball, especially in these days of its descent into mortal dullness, but I do know Larry Brown, who I suspect like most top-rung coaches is a giant in his own mind, had trouble with His Royal Pain in the Highness Allan Iverson, and in the NBA, when the irresistible force meets the immovable object, the lesser-paid force or object gets it.

I want to see him coach Sneaker Man. He does, too.

Posted 7:30 PM by Gene

If serious music is going down the tubes, here's why: tone-deaf composers on foundation grants writing PC "operas" about the thing of the moment -- disasters even the music-critic nose-in-the-airs can't swallow.

Peter G. Davis, a very good critic, also came out against our generation's musical UBERMEISTER, Herr Sondheim, which prompted Herr Sondheim to snap back in a letter just how good he is. You can't win with these New York Times readers.

Posted 6:36 PM by Gene

As predicted, THE GREATEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME had a sixty-percent dropoff, and "overseas" audiences apparently hate it. Dick "ADVERTISEMENT" Corliss is crying all the way to his investment banker.

Posted 6:14 PM by Gene

Some radio deejays will do almost anything to stand out from the crowd. But not everyone is laughing as hoaxes and stunts backfire.

Which reminds us, GENERAL JR., what are you going to do about Opie and Anthony? MY guess: he wants to give the Zon the usual ten-grand fine, partly as a political favor (forgetting who's publishing Sen. Rodham's "MEMOIRS", GENERAL JR.?), partly as a rehearsal for a career as a seven-digit suck-up, but if he does that he alienates Dubya's -- CORE, especially the -- CATHOLICS. Between this and giving the store away to Big Media GENERAL JR.'s mental calculator is near meltdown these days.

P. S. Opie and Anthony are "looking for work in television these days." I would say "good luck" with a sneer, but knowing the American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers, they may get it.

Posted 5:43 PM by Gene

Given that The Gliberal was supposed to be writing about "the arts," he's been screaming an awful lot about the EEEEEEVIL Dubya, the EEEEEEVIL Republicans, the EEEEEEVIL conservatives, etc., etc., ETC.

No one will ever accuse The Gliberal of plagiarism -- unless you count copying yourself, and that's merely onanism.

Posted 2:00 PM by Gene

Those high-school hazers have been "expelled," but they get to graduate, so they really weren't expelled.

Posted 1:47 PM by Gene

We can't be that far off when we seize Saddam's brother-in-law.

Posted 8:38 AM by Gene

800 Don Groucho Glasses to Set Record

I thought they already set it at the Times's headquarters.

Posted 8:31 AM by Gene

The NEW YORK POST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'s ad-blurb copywriter Lou "10-Watt" Lumenick joins the America Needs R Movies Brigade -- and gets bonus points from RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 8:24 AM by Gene

I don't know if Sen. Kleagle was into nooses, but otherwise, it sounds like his game.

Posted 8:17 AM by Gene

In the race between a "party pooper" and a social butterfly, the party pooper wins.

Posted 8:15 AM by Gene

Speaking of professional sports, the shakedowns never stop. Now it's MOLD at Coca-Cola Minute Maid Fruit Juices Park in Houston. Guess who eventually gets stuck with the tab. D'you suppose the Astros put it there on purpose?

Posted 8:10 AM by Gene

Yeah, right. Fine spammers $500 per spam. Let's see you enforce this one.

I'll bet the twelve who voted against were -- REPUBLICANS. Let's spam 'em.

Posted 8:04 AM by Gene

An excellent idea: the college industry is already in professional sports, and now JoePa's nominal boss Dr. Spanier (I'm thinking Muggsy or dog) wants to get into the recording business. What's next, Arfarf? Movies? Bars? Strip joints?

Posted 7:43 PM by Gene

One last word on history's greatest golfer: today Kenny Perry won that @#$%&* tournament at -19. In her two rounds history's greatest golfer shot +5. Were there no cut and she played at the same level her last two rounds, she would have lost by 29 strokes. I suspect the next time we hear from garden-variety jaysonists about golf it will be over AUGUSTA NATIONAL's injustice, and when last we complained, we were beaten by something more than 29 strokes.

Posted 12:32 PM by Gene

Gosh, even the HEALERS have to admit things are going better in Iraq.

Posted 12:22 PM by Gene

BLUNDER rag, in an authorized press release, says DISNEY'S RIP-ROARING AGAIN!

Posted 9:33 AM by Gene

The perfect wedding photo.

Posted 9:27 AM by Gene

Iran: Serious about fighting al-Qaida; Foreign minister denies support for bin Laden’s network

TEHRAN, May 25 — Iran’s Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi called Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network a “dangerous organization” on Sunday and said his country was serious about combating it.

PFFH-hh-hh-hh-HH-HH-HH ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!

Posted 9:21 AM by Gene

"Wahhabism is an extremist dialogue" -- "at least for the moment."

Posted 8:24 AM by Gene

The next time the likes of Devin the Press Agent turns a whole issue of BLUNDER into an ad, or Dick "ADVERTISEMENT" Corliss wants to engage in some SYNERGY at AOL Time Warner rag, maybe we should use this newfound phrase for the movies, courtesy the New York Daily News's blurbwriter: summer reruns.

Posted 8:17 AM by Gene

GASP! One of the tens of thousands of jackbooted goosestepping sieg-heiling jaysonists says -- "many of the 2004 Democratic presidential contenders are advancing much larger spending programs than Al Gore was willing to risk as the party's 2000 nominee"?!?!?

FIRE THE MAN!!!!!

Posted 8:08 AM by Gene

Crowds pelt Algeria's president

I can think of a few public countenances I'd like to pelt with old vegetables. Perhaps that the Algerians can do it -- against a strongman -- is a sign they want democracy too. On the other hand, it is a stronghold of holy cockroaches.

Posted 8:00 AM by Gene

Sorenstam leads -- in accolades

The party that Devin "The Press Agent" Gordon started New Year's at BLUNDER magazine continues today on the golf course. This is why so many fool pols look over their shoulders. This is why the Supremes want to do "the right thing." They all want to live "for the ages" -- in a medium that most throw out the next day, or that's used as bird-cage liner, or a training ground for puppies. They all want in on that "first rough draft of history," even if in their cowardice they're revised out of it. They want to be flattered by -- LARRY and CURLEY.

You've got to be taught to hate and fear....

Posted 7:57 AM by Gene

You don't have to be ashamed, Braggart. It's The New York Times.

Posted 6:20 PM by Gene

The idea of the NPCAA's Division III -- where the athletes might actually be amateurs -- has proved so compelling the NPCAA may have to form a Division IV.

Posted 2:10 PM by Gene

A CORRECTION: That photo I posted yesterday is of an African civet cat. The animal said to have helped spread SARS is the masked palm civet. It resembles a ferret with a long rat-like tail and it has light brown fur. I'm looking diligently for a good picture, but the only ones I can find are small ones.

Oh well, I'm still glad I posted it.

Posted 1:49 PM by Gene

A new GoogleBlogger innovation: When you click "View web page," you only get to see a fraction of your page!

'Ray, GOOGLE!

Posted 1:43 PM by Gene

We're paying Baghdad's workers -- with bills bearing Saddam Hussein's likeness.

What's wrong with good old George?

Posted 1:33 PM by Gene

From the hacks who gave us FREEDOM FIGHTERS:

SORENSTAM'S QUEST IS SHOT IN ARM FOR GOLF INDUSTRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

by

Larry Fine

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Annika Sorenstam has passed her personal test by competing on the men's PGA Tour, but the world's top-ranked woman golfer may also prove to be the biggest boost to the $24 billion golf industry since Tiger Woods burst on the scene....

LARRY! MEET CURLEY!! NYUK! NYUK! NYUK!

Posted 1:22 PM by Gene

Apparently they don't like Rick at the Times either. When embellishing a story is called "Bragging," and his troubles have "resulted in a certain amount of grim satisfaction" among the staff, something isn't kosher in the Kremlin.

Posted 8:58 AM by Gene

Let Uday twist slowly, slowly in the desert wind.

Posted 8:56 AM by Gene

With one writer fired and a second tainted, Howell uses his time to engage in DEEP THINKING.

Posted 8:54 AM by Gene

Where's the prenuptial agreement?

Posted 8:50 AM by Gene

Line of the Week (from Dave Barry):

It's time for an update on the British art world, which, as far as I can tell, exists mainly to provide me with material.

Posted 8:46 AM by Gene

Awwwwwwwww, the po iddle biddy poopoos know it could happen to them.

Posted 8:39 AM by Gene

Regardless of score, Sorenstam's attempt a success

Sorenstam misses [SIC] cut, but earns respect

Missing [SIC] Cut, Sorenstam Wins

The jackbooted lockstepping thoughtthugs don't want to admit the truth: Their heroine (pardon, can't be racistsexisthomophobic -- HERO) finished in the bottom fifth of the field, at a non-Tiger tournament. What made this story so incredibly irksome (aside from its sheer megatonnage) was that you knew, you KNEW, this was just another ideological hammer which the news hacks would beat us on the head with. But a business that produced BLUNDERS and QUAGMIRES and BLAME GAMES, and topped them off with a sociopathic liar, should beat itself on the head first.

Posted 6:30 PM by Gene

One of the most odious songs of all time is "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught." Oscar Hammerstein II, whose name should be revered for as long as people sing his lyrics -- which, with any justice, will be forever -- was a very earnest liberal, and in a show that touched more than peripherally on race prejudice he had to make a point -- a valid point in its day, a point that got South Pacific in trouble when it played the water-fountain-segregating South. One could call it Broadway's first protest song. In time, however, more and more very earnest people -- the longhairs of Tom Lehrer's Folk Song Army come to mind -- got the notion to preach equally very earnest thoughts, and in time preachments crowded out the simple pleasures of a love song (of which Hammerstein was a master). One reason the jaysonists forever blurb the GENIUS of rap is that it's ALL protest. I wouldn't say Hammerstein helped ruin popular music -- a man who can write "You Are Love" I will not accuse of ruining anything -- but his very earnest liberalism didn't help it.

I mention this song because all week the jaysonists have been singing it at eardrum-rending levels about you-know-who. Her story in another time could have been charming, even inspirational, the triumph of a lone woman in a big man's world, but when today's NEWS HACKS get through with it you want to SCREAM. It started with their usual thoughtpolice gag on Vijay Singh and Nick Price for daring to be politically incorrect, and it has culminated in tidal waves of slobber from unathletes who ordinarily view golf as a conspiracy, who despise the players as zillionaire rednecks (and what is worse, REPUBLICANS), who associate the game with decadence and snobbery and AUGUSTA, all of whom in the presence of the PC sex became INSTANT GOLF EXPERTS, effusing that you-know-who had a BRILLIANT ROUND even though she trailed more than half the field. Well, if there isn't a certain justice in the fact that the GREAT WHITE, er, FEMALE, er, WOMYN HOPE of GOLF, the woman who brought a NOBLE CRUSADE into the cosseted country club, the woman who played one the most HISTORIC, COURAGEOUS, DETERMINED ROUNDS of golf EVER -- in short, A FAVORITE OF THE JAYSONISTS -- has

MISSED THE CUT!!!!!

(In deference to you, HOWELL, we'll say she MSed the cut.)

Posted 6:06 PM by Gene

How could a creature like THIS have spread SARS?

Posted 6:01 PM by Gene

I saw Rick Bragg on C-SPAN2 some time back, and he struck me for some reason as a man very much worthy of his last name -- perhaps I was jealous as a self-alleged writer that he'd hit the big time with his memoirs about a dirt-poor Southern childhood, or perhaps because I figured he was that very smelly creature, the Southern liberal. Whatever the case, Bragg has staked a claim in Howell's rogue's gallery, and it will be entertaining to see how the Greatest Editor of All Time whitewashes (or should I say, covers up; don't want to be racistsexisthomophobic) the problem.

Posted 5:57 PM by Gene

When a central tenet of the Bush=Hitler crowd -- that UN sanctions were a form of genocide -- proves a lie, all the anti-war reasoning flies to pieces like a balsa-wood house in a hurricane.

Posted 5:33 PM by Gene

Morons who hydroplane down rain-slicked highways at 70 mph, morons who cut through pea-soup fogs at 80 mph, morons who think they're Mario at 90 mph -- this is why we have 100-car pile-ups.

Next time you're out on the highway, remember the bell curve.

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

The real scandal in jazz criticism isn't race--it's bad writing.

AMEN, brother. And with the likes of Robert "Over the" Hilburn it's even BETTER in rock.

Posted 5:20 PM by Gene

Well, since that @#$%&* MUSEUM was a bust, let's try archeological sites!

WE WON THE WAR, HOWELL!

Posted 7:00 AM by Gene

There'll always be a Frisco.

Posted 6:51 AM by Gene

Hey SOB, your paper's entertainment jaysonists quote freely from all kinds of bigwigs, and they lie too. They're never anonymous. How can we trust YOU?

Posted 6:41 AM by Gene

Despite casino gambling, or perhaps because of it, Atlantic City remains a 50-carat cubic-zirconia diamond on a pile of doggie doo.

Posted 6:30 AM by Gene

Moroccans Say Al Qaeda Was Behind Casablanca Bombings

Duhhhhhhhhhh....

Posted 6:28 AM by Gene

What is with all the world's most dysfunctional cities bidding on the Olympics?

Posted 6:25 AM by Gene

One of the first of Mickey Mouse Michael's legendary achievements goes bye-bye.

Posted 6:22 AM by Gene

Iran admits holding al Qaeda operatives

Duhhhhhhhhhh....

Posted 7:17 PM by Gene

The perfect match: an ironically unfunny comic and an ironically unreadable Web site.

Posted 7:08 PM by Gene

Speaking of improved education, the educrats have found magnificent new ways of unimproving it.

Gotta agree with ya, Congressman Weathervane, it's a fraud.

Posted 7:03 PM by Gene

I think The Scotsman's way too pessimistic over classical music's future. We must remember no music has the glory of old, and that CD sales declines have hit hard at other genres, too -- witness the collapse in the news hack's favorite genre, rap. (Actually, these jaysonist morons listen to The Boss all the damn day, but that's another story.) Moreover a lot of the problems in the live performance end are due to a weak economy. Improved education would help, but we won't get improved education. Perhaps a better place to look is on the Web, where, despite the chain bookstores and mass semi-literacy, high art and literature have established significant beachheads. Besides, there will always be people who will strive for something beyond the moment, something enduring in the arts. That MS of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony wouldn't have fetched $3.5 million if the work didn't still speak to us.

Posted 6:53 PM by Gene

Do the Dems want to get to the truth -- or do they want to get to the Dubya?

Posted 6:48 PM by Gene

The Center for Public Integrity has created a potentially very useful database compiling media ownership. We've never had anything close to this, and if it doesn't demonstrate the unhealthy symbiosis among media, and between media and politics, I don't know what does. One problem, though: click to determine who owns, say, radio stations in a given city, and you get pie charts that would seem to indicate most ownership is "independent." But these charts would surely be very different if determined by audience size or ad revenues, where the Usual Gang of Monopolists would prevail and "independents" would get a very meager slice of the pie. I hope the Center can improve on this.

Posted 6:39 PM by Gene

As Ed Murrow would say, this school district "may be right" in not observing Memorial Day. So many holidays have become meaningless, excuses for consumerism or paid days off. I firmly believe the total number of Federal holidays should be six: Presidents' Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's, with employers perhaps mandated by law to allow for flexible vacation time in place of former holidays. In a 24-hour-a-day society it makes sense.

Posted 6:35 PM by Gene

Who says Christie will run as a Republican?

Posted 5:44 PM by Gene

I don't think Lebron did it for the GLO-ry, Dickie V!

There goes professional college basketball. On to the high schools.

Posted 5:30 PM by Gene

Another conservative "hero" bites the dust, for doing what conservatives are supposed to do best -- get rich.

Posted 6:48 AM by Gene

Sen. Kleagle's mad because he can't give every West Virginian a half-million-dollar platinum-plated outhouse.

At what point, however, do the jaysonists turn the incoherent ramblings of this friend of Cicero's (and the founders of the Klan) into a J'ACCUSE?

Posted 6:38 AM by Gene

MILLIONS DIED IN IRAQI BOMBINGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A professor of womyn's studies at....

Hey "Scientists", go back to killing kids with your healing powers.

Who does more damage: a news hack who lies to see if he can get away with it, or a news hack who lies to CHANGE THE WORLD?

Posted 6:34 AM by Gene

Hmmm, Mortimer's U. S. News rag doesn't just employ hacks.

Posted 6:29 AM by Gene

THE FORCES OF REACTION TRIUMPH IN TEXAS!!!!! (or, doctors must tell women an abortion might lead to breast cancer.)

Posted 6:26 AM by Gene

The aficionados of rock with a southern accent aren't ready to forgive just yet.

Posted 6:02 PM by Gene

Sounds like the Unabomber has a friend.

Quick! Who does more damage: Jayson telling fibs, or some anonymous typist screaming, BOMB DAMAGES YALE LAW SCHOOL!!!!!

Quicker! Was it a "mail room" or a "library"?

One last comment: This AP dispatch reminds us that ten years ago the Unabomber struck David Gelernter. It is a great tribute to that man that the calamity didn't get him down.

Posted 5:52 PM by Gene

If 9-11 put the Saudis into such ecstasy, think of the reaction if it happened there -- by some of their own!

My guess is the interior minister would have been overjoyed too. And if people maybe didn't like it, imagine all the hook-nosed blood-drinking Zionists we could blame!

Posted 5:31 PM by Gene

Pee-TAH, who never met a Palestinian he didn't like, is accusing conservatives of being "militant." Sort of like al-Qaeda, wouldn't you say, Pee-TAH?

And a great big THANK YOU to J. Freedom du Lac for making it impossible to find the quote I found on Romenesko. J. Freedom du Lac, you're a big fat hack!

Posted 5:27 PM by Gene

MY TAX CUT'S MORE RIGHTEOUS THAN YOUR TAX CUT!

Posted 5:23 PM by Gene

Is this opportunism or SURRENDER?

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

Given all the talk at ASWIA of "edgy" Brent "The WWF Kills" Bozell's news that TV sleaze has gone down is puzzling. My guess is it's a fluke, or the stupid way Brent measures these things. When the social scientists try to quantify media sleaze they're attempting the self-serving, or the impossible.

Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

The news hacks' definition of what a Republican should be (not counting Sen. Profile in Courage) is quitting EPA, to a thunderous ovation of silence.

Posted 5:06 PM by Gene

Without charitable contributions from the American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers, network TV would not survive. This much is plain from the Viacom Network's overhyped Hitler docudrama, which will lose millions. A footnote: now that ChevronTexaco (classic Dilbert spell) is pulling out of the Met after 63 years (not unexpected), will it pull out of junk television too? (A prediction of who will take over as the sponsor: Altria MOtive. It's based in New York, and it has a GIANT PR problem.)

Posted 7:04 AM by Gene

JUNIOR, formerly of Seagram's, having already milked two sets of shareholders dry, aims for a third.

These guys just won't quit, will they.

Posted 6:34 AM by Gene

Well let's see, it's this or teenage orgies, so I guess we gotta get "strict" (shucks).

Posted 6:32 AM by Gene

Get high on heroin and you could really get high.

Posted 6:30 AM by Gene

Paris Announces Bid for 2012 Olympic Games

Will the organizers festoon the stadiums with swastikas? eh eh. I can see the mascot now: Adolphe the Friendly Nazi, eh eh. When American athletes win do they play our national anthem or "Hit the Road, Jack?" eh eh.

Paris is just Havana with the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. And a nicer-sounding tongue.

Posted 9:06 PM by Gene

Lieberman: Dems Should Speak on Mideast

And then they should SHUT UP.

Posted 8:57 PM by Gene

So who was more dishonest: the reporter who laughed at his editors, or the blurbist who laughed at his readers?

Posted 8:07 PM by Gene

And someone wants to pay billions for this piece of junk?

How true, Roger. Lie down with dogs....

Posted 8:03 PM by Gene

If the NFL can spend $10 million "studying" whether to locate a stadium south of LALA, think how big the SHAKEDOWN could be!

Posted 5:43 PM by Gene

There is a certain justice in the producer of the greatest film of all time not making a profit on it.

The same company made -- The Adventures of Pluto Nash (pffh-hh-hh-hh).

Posted 5:23 PM by Gene

In the wake of L'Affaire Blair, Mr. Sharon Stone accuses his compatriots of "narcissism."

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

When are you getting your face lifted?

Posted 5:13 PM by Gene

Another long-running charm from GoogleBlogger:

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80004005'

[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][TCP/IP Sockets]General network error. Check your network documentation.

/blog_view.pyra, line 93

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?!?!?!?!?

Posted 5:12 PM by Gene

If the jaysonists know what they're doing here, with one mad cow in Alberta they can create a national paralysis, as they've attempted without success with SARS.

Posted 5:09 PM by Gene

Is GENERAL JR.'s big prep for a seven-digit career in lobbying starting to acquire (as they say in the trade) a CRITICAL MASS of opposition, despite Big Media's best efforts to squelch any mention of it? Unfortunately the issue has become a Democratic-vs.-Republican thing, with Democrats opposing consolidation because they hate RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (or rather FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!News), and Republicans supporting it because they LUUUUHVE (hold your nose here) FREE ENTERPRISE (aka caveat emptor), with Sen. McCain the designated Demo er, skeptic. I made up my mind long ago: It's no coincidence the bigger media have become, the worse they have become. It's hard to imagine them getting worse; but as I said a while back, I don't think Rupert or Sumner or Mr. Mickey Mouse or any of the Masters of the Universe would flinch at restaging the ancient Roman gladiatorial games, complete with death, and at the very least our popular culture has lost its regenerative power (or as Dan Ackman wrote yesterday, "five sequels and a comic book"). It should say something that the business end of show-biz is suffering from the same arthritis and arteriosclerosis as the "creative" end. Perhaps holding back the Vulgarians will be, in the end, a gesture of futility, like so many of government's ill-fated schemes to halt media abuses; but giving the store away to a few overly powerful charlatans isn't the answer either.

Posted 6:57 AM by Gene

ALL HAIL THE JUNKMEISTERS!!!!!

Yet another six-digit jaysonist assumes the position.

Posted 6:48 AM by Gene

Did I say lawsuits, Dickie V?

Posted 6:40 AM by Gene

RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! pulls a Jayson!

Posted 6:33 AM by Gene

LALA's at it again: it deems fit to report on a Michael Eisner e-mail not sent by the Michael Eisner, and it gives face time to the psuedo-intellectual Cornel and his deeper meaning. Trib, your paper can be STUUUUUUUUUUUUUUPIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIID.

Posted 6:22 AM by Gene

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Posted 7:38 PM by Gene

What do you suppose a) stupid, indulgent parents, b) stupid, indulgent schools and c) a stupid, indulgent pop culture had to do with this?

Posted 5:51 PM by Gene

Dog too demanding? Allergic to cats? Then how about coming home to a lovable, giant cockroach?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO thank you. I'll keep my cat.

They don't seem to mind handling and some cockroach owners even say their animal hisses softly when stroked.

My cat hisses just to look at me. (WRONG! But then I don't think I'll ever call a cockroach "Sweetie.")

Posted 5:41 PM by Gene

BOMBS AWAY!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 5:41 PM by Gene

Another jaysonist favorite -- lovable, lovable Jack.

Posted 5:39 PM by Gene

Line of the Week -- from the Cannes Can't, from a movie-ad-blurb copywriter (heck, even they can be right occasionally):

"The Matrix" aside, many films thus far have felt like movies made for festivals.

Posted 5:28 PM by Gene

Book editors aren't quite sure how to deal with Glass's novel [Romenesko headline]

Call it NON-FICTION.

Posted 5:24 PM by Gene

Sen. Kerry needs a trademark issue

Didn't he register his hair in the U. S. Patent Office?

Posted 5:23 PM by Gene

Obsessive-compulsive disorder comes to hockey sticks.

The neat thing is, they're more expensive than wood but break more easily. So they're neurotic too.

Posted 5:20 PM by Gene

What if the hurricanes take the week off?

Posted 5:19 PM by Gene

A motorist plays a stupid prank -- brought to you by RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bet this isn't on FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!News. (Or maybe it is, so they can boast.)

Posted 5:17 PM by Gene

The two-handed sieg heil.

Posted 5:14 PM by Gene

Can't Pearlstine Before Swine leave a great dead magazine in the grave?

Posted 5:12 PM by Gene

In a remarkable story, Dan Ackman says in so many words that NEWS HACKS ARE AT LEAST PARTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE STATE OF TODAY'S MOVIES with their incessant SELL SELL SELL SELL SELL. Thanks AT LEAST PARTLY to these JERKS, "[l]ast year, the top ten included five sequels and one comic book."

Congratulations, IDIOTS, on helping ruin our culture -- and making big money doing it.

Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

Next job for Ari: seven-digit Beltway-fixer press agent.

Good luck, Ari. Watch the door on the way out.

Posted 5:03 PM by Gene

The editor of JazzTimes didn't fire Stanley "Honkies Can't Play It" Crouch for saying honkies can't play it. He fired him for being "tedious."

Same thing.

Posted 7:10 AM by Gene

What is happening to some of the jaysonists? Somebody has the temerity to say separate minority graduation ceremonies at colleges are "a manifestation of self-segregation"?!?!?

CALL OUT THE THOUGHTPOLICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 7:00 AM by Gene

Earth to Bill O'Reilly: tell THE MAN he can stay there.

Posted 6:40 AM by Gene

More partying: the jaysonists say a big part their masterpiece's audience was unaccompanied minors.

You will note I'm calling news hacks jaysonists. I thought about it during a sleepless last night and I figured, even at their best, so many of the hacks have the nascent Jayson within them, and so much of the business is de facto Jayson, so for now, they're jaysonists.

Posted 6:35 AM by Gene

Another long-running hack work closes on Broadway, and given its distant progenitor is The Black Crook I would not want to bet it will prove revivable.

Posted 6:32 AM by Gene

Question of the day (which the jaysonists won't answer): How many people in China die from other serious diseases compared to SARS?

Two dead per day in a population of over a billion is microscopic.

Posted 4:50 PM by Gene

I just came from a Rong-Aid to buy a fan for my office demi-cubicle and some CONAgra canned spaghetti, when some uh, clerk asked for ID. (The reason they asked for ID, some "manager" said later, was because of local fraud. Don't the credit card companies have databases?) Anyway, I got a little upset as I'd been there the day before to buy subway tokens. Didn't someone see me? The girl kept saying I needed ID, and then (remembering how No-CVS manhandled me in the same situation) I lost my temper. Then the uh, clerk laughed at me. Then I got madder, and two other uh, clerks joined in the hilarity. I stomped out, walked eight blocks to get my ID, got my items (the uh, clerks claimed they reshelved them so I had to get them all over), left, and will never return to that Rong-Aid again.

I told the "manager" of a time (in Lancaster) I'd been to a McDonald's to buy two Big Macs on sale, and the store ran out of the thousand-island "special sauce," and I got mad, and the clerks laughed at me. Such patented franchise-tested-and-approved service is why Mickey D's is in trouble, and all the chain drug stores share the same predicament. As it happens this particular Rong-Aid has employed a girl with purple hair (she later had it undyed), and a girl with shocking-pink hair. (The store also introduced me to the accused pedophile who can flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy and is playing a radio station on its loudspeakers in violation of the law.) The clowns who run these stores don't give a damn. Rong-Aid of course got into huge trouble for cooking its books and it hasn't fully recovered. No-CVS makes its money by skimping on store maintenance so that to buy anything you have to wade through aisles of trash and plastic buckets. Even without accountants and Pig Pens when I think of chain drug stores I remember the Washington Post's heartrending account of the Rong-Aid in Virginia (I think) that dispensed the wrong medication to a young girl who died as a result, or the Walgreen's pharmacist who tried to get a customer arrested for improperly securing a prescription painkiller when it turned out she had a malignant brain tumor. These stories provoked much laughter and backslapping in Illinois, and Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. Customers like me don't find this nationwide joke funny.

I'm debating whether to send a letter of appreciation to Rong-Aid's chairman. Lot of good that will do. In the in-box and out the out-box. If I do, it will close with my variation of Rong-Aid's imbecilic Dilbert-written motto: WITH ME, IT'S PERSONAL.

Posted 3:23 PM by Gene

I just looked at the leaderboard of the Byron Nelson tournament (not important as Tiger's not there), and guess who was in the lead? THE SEXIST TWO! VIJAY AND NICK! BOOOOOOOO! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Posted 3:11 PM by Gene

I'm beginning to wonder whether the time will come when WE send OUR troops into THE WEST BANK.

Posted 2:51 PM by Gene

Festooned over the hall where the news hacks held their grand shindig of the year (you know, the one where Mark and Norm were dancing cheek-to-cheek, and Dick and Devin were handing out party favors) were banners reading $150,000,000 OR BUST. The hangover is, this is probably another sixty-percenter, and NO, PAUL DRECK, WE DON'T WANT MORE R MOVIES.

Posted 1:23 PM by Gene

The news hacks said we'd be bogged down in Iraq. They were wrong. The news hacks said there'd be hand-to-hand combat. They were wrong. The news hacks said there'd be untold casualties. They were wrong. The news hacks said the Iraqi National Museum was completely looted. They were wrong. Now comes word (from someone Andy S. calls "pro-war," and a RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! clone) that utter anarchy rules the length and breadth of Iraq. Given the extra-added word that Afghanistan's "government" seems to have trouble ruling anything, this is worrisome. I truly think SuperRummy went into both wars not thinking of the peace. We should be concerned; our fight against terrorism is at stake. Nonetheless, after the doom-and-gloom scenarios of the past, and after L'Affaire Blair, how can we be sure these stories are right?

(Even the Washington Post may have its doubts; the Afghan story made it to page A14.)

Posted 11:49 AM by Gene

Well, I've just read BLUNDER's account of L'Affaire Blair, a depthless tragedy. It further reinforces my belief (sorry to repeat this) that publicists like Richard "ADVERTISEMENT" Corliss and Devin "The Plugger" Gordon do at least as much harm as the Jayson Blairs, for while Blair's deceit was a by-product of a disastrous personal life (and thus understandable on at least that level), Corliss's and Gordon's salesmanship is nothing but raw naked greed -- on their part, and their employers'. But this fraud-laden biz will never take care of the Corlisses and the Gordons, for as Nikki Finke has written, they're examples of the industry covering itself (in more ways than one), which thus grants the detestable hackwork an automatic immunity to prosecution. Heck, even Jonathan "What? Me Liberal?" Alter admits his employers engage in selling ("[N]ews often acts as a marketing tool for Hollywood"), but rest assured, with the likes of Devin around, the marketing will continue.

A troubling footnote: In a sidebar ("Data Bank") BLUNDER is credited with two of the twelve cited instances of deception: The Hitler Diaries, and its editor's handling of the hack novelist Joe "The Thinker" Klein. A despicable magazine. (Speaking of Joe Klein, I was not aware the New York rag's gold mine that inspired Saturday Night Fever was a fake, and I'm not surprised.)

Posted 8:51 AM by Gene

Another cute below-the-fold admission, from Howell, on yesterday's Democratic blameathon at AFSCME:

The union audience was sympathetic to the Democrats' contentions, because its members would benefit if, as many Democrats have recommended, spending for security measures such as police, firefighting, rescue squads and medical care were increased more rapidly than the administration has recommended.

Yep, civil-rights violations and pork. That's what "terrorism" is all about.

Posted 8:46 AM by Gene

Maybe, just maybe, the cities can come back -- if the Babbitts and the Je$$es and the hack pols will let them.

Posted 8:39 AM by Gene

Politicians lie, new study shows

Ooooooooooooooooh. I guess that means news hacks tell the truth.

Report asserts that lying is key part of democracy

Yep, I guess that means we can keep on telling the truth as usual.

Posted 8:33 AM by Gene

Here's another example (the 1,538,295,327th by my count) of news hacks wanting it both ways: while partying all week over their damfool movie, they find time to cry copious crocodile tears over victims of urban violence.

To quote from Dubya, you're either for us or against us. WHICH SIDE WILL YOU TAKE??

Posted 8:30 AM by Gene

QUAGMIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! strikes again! Now we hear lots of people died in Baghdad during the battle for the city's control. But conveniently buried in the fifth paragraph (and probably below the fold or broken up by a jump in the print edition) is the admission that "many civilians -- even a rough estimate of the numbers is impossible -- were killed by exploding Iraqi ammunition stored in residential neighborhoods, by falling Iraqi antiaircraft rounds that had been aimed at American warplanes, or by Iraqi fire directed at American troops."

Again, L'Affaire Blair will have NO IMPACT because people expect such shenanigans from news hacks.

Posted 8:25 AM by Gene

This 6,735th thumbsucker about L'Affaire Blair -- oh, woe is us, the late-night comedians are mocking the Times -- is proof the outrage will have no permanent impact. Just some jokes, and more handwringing, and more platitudes from uberhacks like Mark Whitaker, and Howell will be (as he is now) battling Pearlstine Before Swine to see who can rule more universes, and the public will finish dead last as always.

Posted 6:11 PM by Gene

I can believe that Rummy's guys may have told a tall tale about Pvt. Lynch, but this is according to the Beeb, which is still mad ITS SIDE LOST.

Posted 6:00 PM by Gene

Another thing I luuuuuuuuuuuuuve about the media: A Yankee leftfielder made two errors and got booed. A bad day, and he admitted it. But in the wind tunnel of New York newspapers and radio and TV, everything is amplified and magnified and pounded and pummeled until you'd think the poor guy committed mass murder. I suspect it's happening to him now.

More exemplary actions in the name of the First Amendment.

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

JOKE OF THE MONTH: The editor of BLUNDER, which drooled over THE BLAME GAME and has introduced America's hottest new press agent, passes the wind on Lord Koppel of Eisner's Nightgas that "'a credibility problem' [is] dogging the press."

NOT OUR CREDIBILITY PROBLEM, MARK!

Posted 5:14 PM by Gene

Morocco's king says he'll punish the holy cockroaches "without mercy," something PC American jurisprudence bends over back to give.

Posted 3:30 PM by Gene

John Hancock's CEO gets a bad-performance raise of over 150 percent, to $21.7 million, and some bobblehead board member says he deserves it. Meantime Meg "Pronounced Mug" Whitman earns a scarce $990,000, ignoring that she owns umpteeen zillion in eBay stock, which the sales -- er, analysts have been pump -- er, discussing again.

Posted 3:14 PM by Gene

NAME THE THREE STOOGES!

Posted 2:56 PM by Gene

Here he goes again: Wal-Mart's employed how many slaves in its beloved China over the years, so what does Howell scream about? "Red Country," "censoring," "homogenizing," blahblahblah -- the usual code words of cultural totalitarians.

This is why L'Affaire Blair will have NO impact on the Times. By blaming it essentially on a lone gunman, Howell has convinced himself his system worked perfectly, and he worked perfectly, and he can go on hectoring us as before.

Posted 11:12 AM by Gene

"Mamma Mia!," the insanely popular ABBA musical, has finally made it to San Jose. This shamelessly silly tribute to those Lycra-clad '70s Swedish pop icons has become one of the most successful musicals of all time. One critic even predicted the show would put Prozac out of business. For its legions of fans, it's a habit-forming guilty pleasure.

It never ceases to amaze me how news hacks ALWAYS put the very best possible face on something very BAAAAAAAAD. Esepcially when it's SHOW-BIZ. (Oddly enough, the rest of the review following this blurb is not altogether favorable.)

Posted 11:05 AM by Gene

Get rid of doping at the Olympics and you get rid of the Olympics.

Posted 10:57 AM by Gene

GASP! The same high holy muckamuck chanters who scarcely a fortnight ago were pouring virtriol on the scorpions of Israel and calling for the destruction of every last living thing in every Satanic nation supporting the hydra-headed force of evil in Greater Palestine, are condemning the Riyadh bombings?!?!? GASP!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 10:53 AM by Gene

We got the head of the "feared" Republican Guard!

Posted 10:27 AM by Gene

When one terrorism egghead says the holy cockroaches number 3,000, and another says 18,000, we should throw both out the window.

Posted 8:38 AM by Gene

High price of beauty: Venezuela can't afford a pageant queen

Wait a second! Miss Universe is Donald Trump's contest! Can't HE donate the $80,000?

Another less-than-inquiring news hack at KNIGHTRIDDER. Pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft!

Posted 8:11 AM by Gene

SHHHHHH!!!!! It's a MEDIA-POLICE-STATE SECRET!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 8:06 AM by Gene

Here's something else from the same primordial fog of ignorance as the ya-yas (albeit in a gentler tone): the Indian dowry.

Posted 8:02 AM by Gene

I got bad news for you, shareholders -- AND KING RICHARD -- your stock will NEVER sell for $90 AGAIN.

Posted 8:00 AM by Gene

The Shi'ites should be "wary" about the future, for if they start an Islamic state with sharia and the beheadings and the hand-loppings and the veils and the holy cockroaches and the bans on music and love and happiness, we'll be there to stop them.

Posted 7:49 AM by Gene

Let's ask again, Rummy: Think we can do to the Koo-koomeinis in Iran what we did to Saddam in Iraq?

Posted 7:44 AM by Gene

Now if only ALL Valenti-era DVDs would self-destruct.

Posted 7:40 AM by Gene

I don't think I'd want to be where Ceausescu's last prime minister is going.

Let's put it this way: they'll need each other's company.

Posted 7:33 AM by Gene

LALA's chief ad-blurb copywriter is excited about movies from before the Production Code because Hollywood was able to do all sorts of the usual neat things. Problem is, those films pale next to today's in all the desirable features -- and worse, Kenneth, despite your blurbing and selling, movies were better in those days. They had to be. THEY HAD PLOTS.

This is why the public is gravely disserved when we have one conservative writing about film -- the ninnyish Michael Medved -- against the usual sieg heil ad-blurb-copywriting philistines.

Meantime, PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARTYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!

I HATE NEWS HACKS!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 7:20 AM by Gene

The holy cockroaches car-bombed Casablanca. Does this mean Saudi Arabia's declared war on Morocco?

After all, IT WAS THEIR IDEA.

Posted 8:52 PM by Gene

Another bunch of holy cockroaches gets its jollies.

Two hopeful signs: Morocco's news agency calls the bombings "criminal," and they've hit enough targets -- Jewish, Belgian, and Spanish -- to make everybody mad.

Posted 6:27 PM by Gene

Stone puts Cuban dissidents in film pulled by HBO

AHEM!!!!!

Posted 5:46 PM by Gene

There are mixed messages as to whether the public is finally disavowing the media's messages. CD sales are way down -- but as Saddam's Hachette's Sound and Media cheerleading rag notes, sales of DVDs and video games are up substantially. On the other hand, bookstore sales declined over 11 percent in March, and with the book biz' torrent of gar-BAGE that's only good tidings.

Posted 5:42 PM by Gene

And on the same week that news hacks put on their phony-baloney self-centered act of contrition and shame, they're celebrating themselves again in press releases.

I HATE NEWS HACKS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 5:40 PM by Gene

One of Jayson's victims shrugs his shoulders and says, "It ain't worth getting upset about. With most reporters, I thought everything got spun around a little bit."

This is but a variation of "You can't fight city hall." Up against a force of nature like the news hacks' verbiage, truth and democracy lose.

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

Awwwwwwwwwwww, anyone wanna date Vanna?

Posted 6:56 AM by Gene

We should be more than a little vigilant of our culture when a distinguished historian like David McCullough says our schools are under attack from thoughtpolice.

He also says K-12 history textbooks are rotten. I don't doubt that one second.

Posted 6:49 AM by Gene

Saudis are Shaken as Jihad Erupts at Their Front Door

Hey Saudis, why aren't you dancing in the streets like on 9-11? IT WAS YOUR IDEA IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Posted 6:47 AM by Gene

MIMI BREAKS HER SILENCE

I hope she shuts up again.

Posted 6:36 AM by Gene

Sorry, no quatrepeat.

Posted 6:32 AM by Gene

Zee fact zat a third of ourrr peepul supported Zaddam -- EET EES OHWL ZEE COWBOYZ' FOLT!

Posted 6:26 AM by Gene

Hey Dickie V, more glory for professional college sport down in Georgia!

Posted 6:18 AM by Gene

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO TOP AOL TIME WARNER MAGAZINES EXECUTIVES, PART QUATRE:



--What was the worst day of your life?

--When mom said I couldn't rule the universe.

--What was the best day of your life?

--When I discovered that I can.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!

Posted 8:27 PM by Gene

I am sorry to learn that June Carter Cash has died. She must have been talented to have caught Elia Kazan's eye, to have been offered a job writing for Woody Allen (she declined) and to have written a song with Frank Loesser. Not that she did bad by Johnny, either.

Posted 8:24 PM by Gene

Fraud returns to election night: CURLEY (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!) will tally the votes for five TV news organizations through 2008.

Posted 6:26 PM by Gene

The grocery retailing biz smells, but no one will ever get excited over it because its corruption is boooooooooring.

Posted 6:21 PM by Gene

I don't see the error in this sentence. Besides, Dr. Johnson said it was okay to break a few grammatical rules in the name of clarity, and so did Orwell, and I stick by them. The gist of the sentence, though, is another story.

Posted 6:15 PM by Gene

GEEKS! Here's another hobby for you!

Posted 6:12 PM by Gene

This isn't a clean-cut story -- the bishop took two salaries -- but the Boston Archdiocese has yet to clear its house of the reek of buggery.

Posted 6:05 PM by Gene

The next time John Ashcroft and the Gov yell, "THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!", remember this story.

No question, many civil rights abuses and much pork-barrel spending are going on in the all-encompassing name of "terrorism."

Posted 5:57 PM by Gene

I'm no fan of Monty Python -- whimsical grossouts aren't my cup of tea -- but I did find this ShowBizData squib amusing, and must post it in full:

Former Monty Python star Eric Idle is due to direct and co-star in Remains of the Piano, which he also wrote, Screen International reported today (Thursday). The British trade publication said that the spoof of costume drama Remains of the Day, which starred Anthony Hopkins, will star Geoffrey Rush in the lead role of Hopkins, a British aristocrat. The cast list is provocative in itself: Orlando Bloom is playing a character named Daniel Day Lewis. Patrick Stewart will appear as Obie Ben Kingsley. Alfred Molina will play Mussolini. Anjelica Huston's character is Countess Von Kunst and Idle himself plays Frank the Mover.

What is the word for it? Droll.

Posted 5:54 PM by Gene

Kill 'em! KILL 'EM!!!!!

The call from the two big B's of China: Beijing -- and Bentonville.

Posted 5:45 PM by Gene

Great. We indict two holy cockroaches in the Cole attack. They escaped last month through a hole in a bathroom wall of their jail. Great going, Feds.

Posted 5:42 PM by Gene

When the very PC Columbia Journalism Review, keeper of every pompous news hack's gaseous flame, says the Times did wrong, IT DID WRONG.

Posted 5:22 PM by Gene

The British news hacks have prejudices as strong as any American's, and worse, given their known and frequent graft. Suggesting as one very British hack does that the FBI's harrassment of the great composer Aaron Copland was the same Prokofiev's or Shostakovich's or Weill's torments is to commit a typical news hack outrage. Prokofiev was banned by the Soviets for "decadent" art in 1948, and he died a broken man five years later. Shostakovich was a hounded man who attempted to appease the authorities with hackwork, and by staying cowardly mute with each new Soviet affront. Weill was run out of Nazi Germany because he was a "cabaret composer" -- and because he was Jewish. Aaron Copland merely acquired an FBI file. Only to a news hack does this amount to the same thing.

Posted 5:15 PM by Gene

Yes yes, we KNOW, Richard "ADVERTISEMENT" Corliss, millions and millions and millions of teens didn't shoot anyone after seeing your damned craven employer's masterpiece, but a shameful story like this about unruly teens trashing two upper-class houses, combined with the hazing in Chicago and the boys at the strip club in New York, suggests something has snapped in the American psyche, and SORRY, Richard "ADVERTISEMENT" Corliss, your damned craven employers and their friends hold no small measure of blame.

Posted 6:53 AM by Gene

The Freeper-inspired Hollywood Idiots site is claiming that Mickey Mouse Michael's secretary has told somebody that Disney, er Disney Arthouse Pictures, er, MIRAMAX, will not be bankrolling Michael "The Fat Fearless Hypocrite" Moore's tirade that 9-11 was a Dubya plot. Whether this is true or not, the lunkheads should know, we're starting to realize who runs things in your business, Mickey Mouse, and when you say you're not responsible for the Hypocrite's project, you're disingenuous and political at best, and hiding behind a wall of "no comments" won't do anymore.

Hey Hypocrite! I got an idea! Get RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! to do it! He published your book, and besides, you can always says it's an AUSTRALIAN company!

Posted 6:39 AM by Gene

And now that our troubles are over, Howell, think we can make a J'ACCUSE out of this one?

Posted 6:32 AM by Gene

The Times' massive show of contrition will be a blip on the public radar because people will think it was an act -- and as I've quoted the pompous ass R. W. Apple Jr. before, people can't tell the Times from Disney.

Posted 6:21 AM by Gene

And in more GLORY news, wanna bet we're headed to Lawsuit City, Dickie? Wouldn't that be GLORIOUS for professional college sport!

Posted 6:11 AM by Gene

Hey Dickie V! I think these glory guys were thinking about the moolah-moolah a little OIly!

UPDATE: I can't believe news outfits have ignored this. The Journal-Constitution broke the Masters story. Incredible.

Posted 6:09 AM by Gene

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO TOP AOL TIME WARNER MAGAZINES EXECUTIVES, PART TROIS:



--Name three things a news organization should stand for.

--Profit, profit and profit! haha.

Posted 7:52 PM by Gene

"Gender, firearms and ethnicity issues" could not prompt UMass into dropping the Minuteman as its mascot.

One should not be surprised if the next Jayson comes from UMass. He's already learned how to mangle English.

Posted 6:12 PM by Gene

If Bill's bug-spawning idiots can't make up their minds if iLoo was a hoax -- apparently it wasn't, despite earlier accounts -- how can we trust their @#$%&* bug-infested software?!?!?

Posted 5:59 PM by Gene

It's scarcely a surprise that news hacks will do a synergistic turning the other way at all the underage GEEKS about to see guess what after Disney News runs this article accusing many teens' favorite rags of bombarding them with alcohol ads.

And while I don't doubt this for a second, the egghead authors of this survey cite Reader's Digest and Blunder as among the teens' favorites. Neither do they do themselves a favor with a co-author from UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine (?!?).

Posted 5:41 PM by Gene

Can the thought police be far behind?

They're HERE: in show-biz, academe, and most especially, in newsrooms.

Typical Christian Science Quackspeak, though: the writer probably believes John Ashcroft is the top cop.

Posted 5:38 PM by Gene

AOL and Bill the Entomologist have collaborated on a new pop-up ad for guess what that, when you hit the "Close" button, OPENS!

KING RICHARD!! One more trick like that and I switch to AT&T!!!!! (Can't do much about your insect breeding, Bill.)

The only solace: a teaser head reading, "We waited four years for this?"

Posted 5:32 PM by Gene

Tiger knows how to butter the news hacks' bread. No knock on Tiger, but if everybody did that the press would be dishonest all the time, as opposed to nearly all the time.

Posted 5:29 PM by Gene

Stunning news: Carlos Menem, the man whom the Times accused (let us hope not wrongly) of a cover-up for profit surrounding the Jewish Community Center bombing, has quit Argentina's presidential race after devastating public-opinion polls.

As I said before, the only question is: 200-percent inflation or 300-percent?

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

Here's why L'Affaire Blair will never resonate with the public: Already the news hacks have produced thousands of thumb-suckers like this one, and "ordinary" readers rightly figure all the thumb-sucking provides is self-justification and more than a whiff of self-esteem.

Posted 5:23 PM by Gene

You got it right, Houston Chronicle, "geeks." Hear that? GEEKS!

Posted 5:14 PM by Gene

The Saudis proved themselves obstinate again, just like after Khobar Towers.

Why worry about security when such good things happen to infidels?

Posted 5:09 PM by Gene

Some people believe the only way to revive the dead horse called jazz is to start a racial controversy over a music that, for decades, saw whites and blacks making several kinds of harmony. So Stanley Crouch (who I thought had more sense than this) decided to throw a tantrum against whitey jazz players, and JazzTimes did the wrong (i.e., the right) thing and fired him. Of course the Crouches don't help because they further segregate jazz from people who've largely segregated it out of mind for many other reasons (not the least of which is the music pretty well stinks anymore, like all music), and they just make it one more thing not to enjoy for PC reasons.

Posted 7:07 AM by Gene

Saudis top violators of religious rights

DINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDING YOU WIN!!!!!

Posted 7:04 AM by Gene

Crime pays -- and I'll bet RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! does the paying.

Posted 7:02 AM by Gene

Another thoughtcrime successfully prosecuted.

Posted 6:56 AM by Gene

It would appear some of Buddy Guy's Legends may be playing under the floor.

Posted 6:53 AM by Gene

Oops! Forgot Andy S. had a plagiarist on his staff, too!

Posted 6:50 AM by Gene

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO TOP AOL TIME WARNER MAGAZINE EXECUTIVES, PART DEUX:



--Don't you feel sorry for that poor kid Jayson Blair? haha.

--Yeah, we've done worse, haha.

Posted 7:28 PM by Gene

Next to Saddam, the thing most Frenchmen like most is a free lunch.

Posted 6:10 PM by Gene

Surprise, surprise.

Now which comes first: the apprehension of the cockroaches by the Saudis -- or the cockroaches' next bombing? Don't hold your breath.

Posted 6:05 PM by Gene

Ill. Lawmakers Consider Forked Tongue Ban (front page headline only)

Watch it! That would make Disney News illegal.

Posted 5:43 PM by Gene

And one other thing: Do we or do we not count the holy cockroaches?

Posted 5:28 PM by Gene

I'm disappointed that the new $20 looks like Clinton Funny Money, but evidently Colombia's leading industry (after drugs) is counterfeiting.

Posted 5:24 PM by Gene

The good news: The more money the Valentiites spend on "the wow factor" (i.e., the usual CGI effects) the less of a rise they get from the blind moviegoers, which means they'll spend more money, which means -- maybe the movie biz isn't in such great shape after all, Dick and Claudia notwithstanding.

Posted 5:19 PM by Gene

SHUCKS! McDonald's ends its losing streak. Now back to financing junk TV.

Posted 5:11 PM by Gene

That so many news hacks fell for the iLoo hoax should remind us what troubles the press isn't the falsehood, the omission, the plagiarism -- the things that are getting professional hairshirts like Little Howie Kurtz upset about L'Affaire Blair -- but its utter credulity, and more to the point, its utter credulity for every sales pitch that comes down the pike. That the casualty count for the Saudi bombing has ranged from 10 to 91 tells us we can't trust news hacks for even the most elementary things.

Posted 6:59 AM by Gene

Anarchy! AAAAAAAAAAAANARCHYYYYYYY!!!!!

We all know how SuperRummy, like Harry S Truman, "gets the big things right and the little things wrong," and this was one of the "little" things, but we'll have it under control in time. I'd be more worried about the Koo-koomeinis.

Posted 6:42 AM by Gene

Isn't death wonderful, Saudis?

At least when it happens to someone else.

Posted 6:38 AM by Gene

Jeannette sneers that some "Bushies" are going to organize an attack on Disney -- and then we learn the Bushies are at Free Republic.

A million pea shooters hit the stone.

Posted 6:33 AM by Gene

RAH! RAH! RAH! SIS! BOOM! BAH!

CLAUDIA!!!!! WILL YOU STOP PRINTING YOUR @#$%&* RESUMES?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Posted 6:28 AM by Gene

D-d-d-does C-C-C-C-Colin st-st-st-st-still w-w-w-w-want p-p-p-p-p-p-p-peace?

Posted 6:20 AM by Gene

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO TOP AOL TIME WARNER MAGAZINES EXECUTIVES:



--Barry and Al told me Dick's ad was worth at least $50 million, haha.

--Yeah, screw the public. Synergy WORKS, haha.

Posted 6:12 AM by Gene

The Saudis must have awakened this morning feeling even more smug and self-satisfied than usual. Now on to to beat more wives, and kill more infidels.

Posted 6:45 PM by Gene

Cell phones allowed at NYSE

Now if every trader gets called at the same time, and every trader's cell phone has a musical ring, we could have the world's biggest symphony!

Posted 6:31 PM by Gene

Now the scientists say the HIV virus jumped to humans around 1940 -- well before the first polio vaccines, which had been implicated. There was already an AIDS epidemic in central Africa in the 1960s.

So much about AIDS defies understanding.

Posted 6:11 PM by Gene

Dow Closes Up 122 Despite No Little News

WHAT DOES THIS HEADLINE MEAN?!?!?

It means CURLEY's up to no good again! NYUK! NYUK! NYUK!

Posted 6:08 PM by Gene

Misery loves company -- and the best news is, this company can inflict MISERY.