Eugene David
...The One-Minute Pundit

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THE NEWS HACK'S CREED:
I know more than you.
I make lots more money than you.
I'm smarter than you.
I'm sexier than you.
I appear on TV all the time.
I work ten minutes a day.
I rule the universe.
I'm going to live forever.
You are an idiot.

THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 2:
A lie isn't a lie when it tells THE TRUTH.

THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 3:
I've come to realize that the looseness of the journalistic life, the seeming laxity of the newsroom, is an illusion. Yes, there's informality and there's humor, but beneath the surface lies something deadly serious. It is a code. Sometimes the code is not even written down, but it is deeply believed in. And, when violated, it is enforced with tribal ferocity.
--JOHN "OMERTA" CARROLL.

THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 4:
News isn't news when we don't report it.

PERMALINKS:

THE NEWS HACKS' DICTIONARY

THE EUGENE DAVID GLOSSARY

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Monday, July 21, 2003

Posted 10:21 AM by Gene

Two great things about John Simon: he forces you to think, and he forces you to look up words in dictionaries. (I was pretty close in guessing what "perdurable" means, but I was wrong about "pullulate" [I thought it meant pulsate; it means to germinate]). He may also be one of the very few writers in the news biz (he is certainly no hack) to recognize the rot at our society's heart:

Two-bit movies and TV shows have lately been featuring angels in the hokiest, trashiest patent-medicine-mongering way: snake oil for the mindless mind. A society adrift, without moorings in genuine art, philosophy, history, or even (if you must) religion [Mr. Simon is an atheist] snatches at every nostrum: gurus, tea leaves, astrology, chat rooms, and white-winged guardians protecting you from mishaps.

A society adrift. In three words John Simon has written more than thousands of pundits in thousands of column-inches.

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