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
AMERICA'S MOST UNINTENTIONALLY FUNNY WEB SITE!
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Saturday, December 20, 2003
In the event any of my four readers have trouble understanding me, I hereby introduce THE EUGENE DAVID GLOSSARY, which I hope will explain (though it may not excuse) some of the loopy nicknames I give people and organizations:
MICKEYMOUSE NIXON: Michael Eisner. So called because in recent years he's frequently been likened to Nixon, given his penchant for micromanagement and credit-hogging.
BUTTMAN INSTITUTE: The Cato Institute, the home of glibertarianism. The producer of Buttman videos is a "major" benefactor.
THE BROW: Sumner Redstone, after the arch-nemesis of Dick Tracy, and also because he lost his in a hotel fire.
PRESIDENT DAMN!: Howard Dean, given his vituperous history and the fact that news hacks have annointed him our President-Elect.
PRESIDENT McCLELLAN: Wesley Clark, given his superficial resemblances to another Democratic general who ran for president, George McClellan. With PRESIDENT DAMN'S surge in the press's estimation I have demoted McClellan to general.
THE ZON: Mel Karmazin, the broadcast tyrant who makes a big thing about the correct pronunciation of his name: it's KarmaZON, NOT KarmaZIN.
THE GLIBERAL: Frank Rich. Self-explanatory, I hope.
ASWIA: The fictitious American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers, which isn't so fictitious; it's called the Association of National Advertisers and it's made a big PR stink about its "support" for "family-friendly programming" even as it's grown ever more indiscriminate in its sponsorships.
THE CLUNKER BROTHERS: GM and Ford, and honorary member DaimlerCorp (i.e., DaimlerChrysler), again for obvious reasons; and while I know The Big Two have made considerable quality strides, they always manage to undercut them one way or another, mainly through their bad PR and excessive advertising.
BUZZ T. NEWHOUSE: Jeff Jarvis, former TV Guide "critic" and founder of the unreadable Time Warner rag Entertainment Weekly, and proprietor of BuzzMachine.com, who earned this name being a TWXster (qv), and also because he now works for Newhouse in "new media," and who has a decided aversion to knocking people in big media, unless they make idiotic statements about blogging.
RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!: Any property run by News Corporation automatically gets at least twenty exclamation points after (or within) the name given the founder's penchant for banging people on the head with them (hence FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!News, THE NEW YORK POST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, etc.)
TWXSTER: Anyone employed by Time Warner (TWX is its NYSE ticker symbol).
BILL THE ENTOMOLOGIST: The head wizard of Microsoft, after his company's penchant for creating some very ingenious software bugs.
PILLHEAD: Rush Limbaugh, after an unsolicited compliment on his radio show.
LOWSY MAYS: Lowry Mays, the swaggering founder and chairman of Clear Channel Communications (which I call CHEAP CHANNEL after the fashion).
SUPERHOOPER: Ibrahim Hooper, the tyrannical spokespoop for CAIR, who never met a Muslim he didn't like.
NEWS HACK: I know I have what amounts to an obsession in using this term, but as I explained in one of my earliest posts,
I'm not calling them "journalists." That's like calling a garbageman a sanitation engineer (God knows they're in the same business). Besides, am I going to endow an AP drone with the same term as Boswell, Dickens, Hemingway and Orwell? Not on your life! Well how about "reporter," then? Because not all news hacks report; some are incoherent columnists, some are movie-ad-blurb copywriters, some are senior-citizen groupies, some are millionaire toadies, and so forth. No, the dictionary defines "news" as "new information of any kind" (never mind that most "news" writing is old as the hilburns), and "hack" as "a writer hired to produce routine or commercial writing." Hackwork is worse on a deadline. Hence -- NEWS HACKS.
GE BANCORP: General Electric, because it seems increasingly to want to be a bank (and in similar financial scams like show-biz) and to uninvolve itself in grimy businesses like manufacturing.
ALTRIA MOTIVE: The former Philip Morris Companies, or as it must call itself now, Altria, the pronunciation of whose name suggests a double entendre -- and if the firm didn't provide it by sticking with its NYSE ticker symbol MO. (ALTRIA MOTIVE FOODS is Kraft Inc., 85-percent owned by ALTRIA MOTIVE.)
MOVIE-AD-BLURB COPYWRITERS: Again, I will not call them movie "critics" for the same reason I will not call NEWS HACKS "journalists." In a "notorious" column Variety's fawner-in-chief Peter Bart suggested calling them the same thing. All they write are ad blurbs for movies, seasoned with a big dollop of pretension.
DOW 36,000: Jim Glassman, the smug glibertarian columnist and head of Tech Central Station, who confidently predicted at the height of the stock-market bubble in 2000 -- in a BOOK -- that's where the Dow Jones Industrial Average would go.
SNIDELY WHIPLASH: House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, for his comically villainous demeanor, and also because he'd look like Snidely if you gave him a handlebar moustache and stove-pipe hat.
CURLEY'S (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!) STOOGES: AP hacks, affectionately named for their boss, Tom Curley, former editor of USA OKAY, who once insisted with a straight face most of the people who run the news biz are conservative. Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!
THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS: The United Nations, like its forerunner, a wimpish, appeasing irrelevance.
KINSLEY.COM: Slate.com, because it was founded and edited by Michael Kinsley, whose snide, smirky, smarmy presence radiates in every piece.
THE NINE FINGERS IN THE WIND: The Supreme Court of the United States, whose members frequently seem to rule that way.
GLIBERTARIANISM: Libertarianism. It combines (to quote from another post) "the worst of the knee-jerk liberal (laissez-faire morals) with the worst of the knee-jerk conservative (laissez-faire capitalism), mixed with a healthy dose of conceit."
JACK: Jack Valenti, former dishonest flack for LBJ, since 1966 head of THE CONSPIRACY: The Motion Picture Association of America. The man has done more to ruin movies than anyone else, far more than the most-often-named culprit, Lucas Spielberg.
JACK'S ALPHABET SOUP: "CARA," the MPAA's ratings system, an absolute disgrace, a big reason movie stink, and a problem no one seems of a mind to do anything about, for all the occasional REFORMING noises among news hacks. One suspects a reason the hacks are content just to make noises on the subject is that any positive change to mass media is a NEGATIVE CHANGE TO THEM. Hence the constant wave of denials of press bias, and the only recent grudging admission that something called the Web exists.
SLEAZEBALL GUMBO: Billy Tauzin, the corrupt Louisiana congressman and JACK's heir apparent.
THOMPSONISM: the womyn's studies and black studies movement of our time, "pop-culture studies," the incontinent praising of show-biz junk with multi-syllable words for the purpose of establishing tuition- and taxpayer-financed fiefdoms, named after "Prof." Robert Thompson of Syracuse, who's set Guinness Book records the last three years for getting his name in Nexus.
LITTLE JEFFREY: Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of GE BANCORP, whom I call such because he will forever work under the shadow of the LEGENDARY (see the NEWS HACKS' DICTIONARY) JACK WELCH, the most overhyped and overrated CEO who ever lived.
BLUNDER RAG: Newsweek, so named after its hyperventilating Harvard graduate and superpatriotic columnist Jonathan Alter made fun of Vice-President Cheney for saying the Iraqis would cheer us. ("AN ARROGANT BLUNDER FOR THE AGES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!") The magazine tries to make up for being second to its competition by outzeitgeisting the zeitgeist, often with nauseating (or unintentionally funny) results. BLUNDER was home of the Hitler Diaries, to this day one of its finest achievements.
MICKEYMOUSE NIXON: Michael Eisner. So called because in recent years he's frequently been likened to Nixon, given his penchant for micromanagement and credit-hogging.
BUTTMAN INSTITUTE: The Cato Institute, the home of glibertarianism. The producer of Buttman videos is a "major" benefactor.
THE BROW: Sumner Redstone, after the arch-nemesis of Dick Tracy, and also because he lost his in a hotel fire.
PRESIDENT DAMN!: Howard Dean, given his vituperous history and the fact that news hacks have annointed him our President-Elect.
PRESIDENT McCLELLAN: Wesley Clark, given his superficial resemblances to another Democratic general who ran for president, George McClellan. With PRESIDENT DAMN'S surge in the press's estimation I have demoted McClellan to general.
THE ZON: Mel Karmazin, the broadcast tyrant who makes a big thing about the correct pronunciation of his name: it's KarmaZON, NOT KarmaZIN.
THE GLIBERAL: Frank Rich. Self-explanatory, I hope.
ASWIA: The fictitious American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers, which isn't so fictitious; it's called the Association of National Advertisers and it's made a big PR stink about its "support" for "family-friendly programming" even as it's grown ever more indiscriminate in its sponsorships.
THE CLUNKER BROTHERS: GM and Ford, and honorary member DaimlerCorp (i.e., DaimlerChrysler), again for obvious reasons; and while I know The Big Two have made considerable quality strides, they always manage to undercut them one way or another, mainly through their bad PR and excessive advertising.
BUZZ T. NEWHOUSE: Jeff Jarvis, former TV Guide "critic" and founder of the unreadable Time Warner rag Entertainment Weekly, and proprietor of BuzzMachine.com, who earned this name being a TWXster (qv), and also because he now works for Newhouse in "new media," and who has a decided aversion to knocking people in big media, unless they make idiotic statements about blogging.
RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!: Any property run by News Corporation automatically gets at least twenty exclamation points after (or within) the name given the founder's penchant for banging people on the head with them (hence FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!News, THE NEW YORK POST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, etc.)
TWXSTER: Anyone employed by Time Warner (TWX is its NYSE ticker symbol).
BILL THE ENTOMOLOGIST: The head wizard of Microsoft, after his company's penchant for creating some very ingenious software bugs.
PILLHEAD: Rush Limbaugh, after an unsolicited compliment on his radio show.
LOWSY MAYS: Lowry Mays, the swaggering founder and chairman of Clear Channel Communications (which I call CHEAP CHANNEL after the fashion).
SUPERHOOPER: Ibrahim Hooper, the tyrannical spokespoop for CAIR, who never met a Muslim he didn't like.
NEWS HACK: I know I have what amounts to an obsession in using this term, but as I explained in one of my earliest posts,
I'm not calling them "journalists." That's like calling a garbageman a sanitation engineer (God knows they're in the same business). Besides, am I going to endow an AP drone with the same term as Boswell, Dickens, Hemingway and Orwell? Not on your life! Well how about "reporter," then? Because not all news hacks report; some are incoherent columnists, some are movie-ad-blurb copywriters, some are senior-citizen groupies, some are millionaire toadies, and so forth. No, the dictionary defines "news" as "new information of any kind" (never mind that most "news" writing is old as the hilburns), and "hack" as "a writer hired to produce routine or commercial writing." Hackwork is worse on a deadline. Hence -- NEWS HACKS.
GE BANCORP: General Electric, because it seems increasingly to want to be a bank (and in similar financial scams like show-biz) and to uninvolve itself in grimy businesses like manufacturing.
ALTRIA MOTIVE: The former Philip Morris Companies, or as it must call itself now, Altria, the pronunciation of whose name suggests a double entendre -- and if the firm didn't provide it by sticking with its NYSE ticker symbol MO. (ALTRIA MOTIVE FOODS is Kraft Inc., 85-percent owned by ALTRIA MOTIVE.)
MOVIE-AD-BLURB COPYWRITERS: Again, I will not call them movie "critics" for the same reason I will not call NEWS HACKS "journalists." In a "notorious" column Variety's fawner-in-chief Peter Bart suggested calling them the same thing. All they write are ad blurbs for movies, seasoned with a big dollop of pretension.
DOW 36,000: Jim Glassman, the smug glibertarian columnist and head of Tech Central Station, who confidently predicted at the height of the stock-market bubble in 2000 -- in a BOOK -- that's where the Dow Jones Industrial Average would go.
SNIDELY WHIPLASH: House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, for his comically villainous demeanor, and also because he'd look like Snidely if you gave him a handlebar moustache and stove-pipe hat.
CURLEY'S (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!) STOOGES: AP hacks, affectionately named for their boss, Tom Curley, former editor of USA OKAY, who once insisted with a straight face most of the people who run the news biz are conservative. Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!
THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS: The United Nations, like its forerunner, a wimpish, appeasing irrelevance.
KINSLEY.COM: Slate.com, because it was founded and edited by Michael Kinsley, whose snide, smirky, smarmy presence radiates in every piece.
THE NINE FINGERS IN THE WIND: The Supreme Court of the United States, whose members frequently seem to rule that way.
GLIBERTARIANISM: Libertarianism. It combines (to quote from another post) "the worst of the knee-jerk liberal (laissez-faire morals) with the worst of the knee-jerk conservative (laissez-faire capitalism), mixed with a healthy dose of conceit."
JACK: Jack Valenti, former dishonest flack for LBJ, since 1966 head of THE CONSPIRACY: The Motion Picture Association of America. The man has done more to ruin movies than anyone else, far more than the most-often-named culprit, Lucas Spielberg.
JACK'S ALPHABET SOUP: "CARA," the MPAA's ratings system, an absolute disgrace, a big reason movie stink, and a problem no one seems of a mind to do anything about, for all the occasional REFORMING noises among news hacks. One suspects a reason the hacks are content just to make noises on the subject is that any positive change to mass media is a NEGATIVE CHANGE TO THEM. Hence the constant wave of denials of press bias, and the only recent grudging admission that something called the Web exists.
SLEAZEBALL GUMBO: Billy Tauzin, the corrupt Louisiana congressman and JACK's heir apparent.
THOMPSONISM: the womyn's studies and black studies movement of our time, "pop-culture studies," the incontinent praising of show-biz junk with multi-syllable words for the purpose of establishing tuition- and taxpayer-financed fiefdoms, named after "Prof." Robert Thompson of Syracuse, who's set Guinness Book records the last three years for getting his name in Nexus.
LITTLE JEFFREY: Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of GE BANCORP, whom I call such because he will forever work under the shadow of the LEGENDARY (see the NEWS HACKS' DICTIONARY) JACK WELCH, the most overhyped and overrated CEO who ever lived.
BLUNDER RAG: Newsweek, so named after its hyperventilating Harvard graduate and superpatriotic columnist Jonathan Alter made fun of Vice-President Cheney for saying the Iraqis would cheer us. ("AN ARROGANT BLUNDER FOR THE AGES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!") The magazine tries to make up for being second to its competition by outzeitgeisting the zeitgeist, often with nauseating (or unintentionally funny) results. BLUNDER was home of the Hitler Diaries, to this day one of its finest achievements.