Eugene David ...The One-Minute Pundit |
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! Blogroll Me! |
Saturday, February 08, 2003
Posted
10:31 PM
by Gene
Kate Winslet's body transplant has come back to haunt her.
Posted
10:14 PM
by Gene
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10:07 PM
by Gene
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9:36 PM
by Gene
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9:17 PM
by Gene
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8:51 PM
by Gene
Britain and America are drawing up plans to give Saddam Hussein as little as 48 hours to flee Baghdad or face war, if UN weapons inspectors report this week that the Iraqi dictator is still refusing to disarm fully. That's a few qualifiers, if you ask me. Please guys, don't pull a Hearst on us. No wonder Sulzberger the Junior impersonated Rodney Dangerfield at KU.
Posted
8:36 PM
by Gene
It used to be possible to create great art despite politics. Aaron Copland was an unregenerate leftist, and he took Leonard Bernstein under his wing (in more ways than one, I'm afraid), and both produced glories. But that was when art commanded more respect, and artists had more self-respect. It's just not possible now. Sloganeering always defeats the muse. And speaking of sloganeering, anyone who can write "Jews who learned their comportment from storm troopers/ act out the nightmares that woke their grandmothers" is a candidate for an editorial job at a new Der Sturmer.
Posted
7:59 PM
by Gene
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6:52 PM
by Gene
The first thing you could do, Art, is to give Howell some Valium.
Posted
6:41 PM
by Gene
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2:54 PM
by Gene
Having just won a big victory over the public in the name of perpetual copyright you'd think these morons would try to get some value out of their older properties. But no, advertisers have their ears, and that means age discrimination in the name of profits. Hey Your Royal Highness, who's going to show all these old movies if you don't -- and if you keep your deathlock on their copyrights?
Posted
2:13 PM
by Gene
Five or ten years down the road, we may have to reform the country again.
Posted
1:16 PM
by Gene
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12:57 PM
by Gene
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12:50 PM
by Gene
As Evan Eisenberg wrote in his marvellous book The Recording Angel: "[I]n its urgent solipsism, its perfectionism, its mad bricolage, Spector's work was perhaps the first fully self-conscious phonography in the popular field." Hence Peter Bart makes fun of movie-ad-blurb copywriters; they write this way. Too many news hacks write this way. They call it eloquence.
Posted
2:20 AM
by Gene
That's David with a "G."
Posted
1:13 AM
by Gene
Friday, February 07, 2003
Posted
11:18 PM
by Gene
Posted
6:51 PM
by Gene
Posted
6:13 PM
by Gene
The Daily News reported last week that intelligence authorities were monitoring Iraqi spies crossing the Canadian border to stir up anti-war protests. I didn't see that one. We shouldn't wonder: The anti-war forces have Stalin and Saddam on their side.
Posted
4:35 PM
by Gene
Which is another way of saying, they speak with two tongues from both sides of their mouth.
Posted
4:08 PM
by Gene
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3:28 PM
by Gene
I'd say it isn't long for this world, but they probably said the same thing about Alfred E. Neuman.
Posted
3:16 PM
by Gene
His life? His paycheck.
Posted
3:06 PM
by Gene
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2:59 PM
by Gene
Posted
2:54 PM
by Gene
Here's a link to the Islam study, from the American Textbook Council (note: a .pdf file).
Posted
2:43 PM
by Gene
Thursday, February 06, 2003
Posted
10:04 PM
by Gene
Posted
9:55 PM
by Gene
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8:58 PM
by Gene
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7:47 PM
by Gene
Posted
6:55 PM
by Gene
The IDIOTS in the advertising departments know they can get away with this because they know their CEO bosses watch only golf, football, the Sunday-morning gabfests, and Nightline. They know they're too busy hunched over spreadsheets to see their ads cuddled up to Michael mewing, "I sleep with little boys." Woe be unto the unlucky soul who ever tells a CEO to his face what he's financing. Corporate America does not know what it sponsors, and it doesn't care, and it's set itself up so it won't have to care. (That these same morons went in a panic withdrawing ads after Columbia fell to earth means nothing; they just bent their deaf ears to equally sense-challenged public-affairs types in red-alert cave mode. Disasters and complaints from politically-correct special interest groups are the only causes for incontinent advertisers to cease their pitches.)
Posted
6:32 PM
by Gene
Such are the travails of a charter member of the American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers, and a former supporter of Hezbollah TV.
Posted
4:32 PM
by Gene
Posted
4:11 PM
by Gene
"Chances are...."
Posted
3:45 PM
by Gene
Thank you, Little Malcolm!
Posted
3:30 PM
by Gene
You can say this: Sly was a pioneer at it. Embarrassment of the week: One of Sly's videos was co-produced by Merv Griffin.
Posted
2:05 PM
by Gene
Assuming we're still judgmental on these things, that is.
Posted
2:02 PM
by Gene
Is your face an honorary member?
Posted
1:55 PM
by Gene
Didn't Exxon stations (in the Esso-Humble days) have a slogan -- "Happy Motoring"? Here's one for you: Happy Terrorism!
Posted
1:22 PM
by Gene
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1:11 PM
by Gene
Posted
1:08 PM
by Gene
Or perhaps I should say, why isn't the surgically-modified android confined to his hyperbolic chamber?
Posted
12:59 PM
by Gene
One wonders why we exchanged trains for flying aluminum bombs. Trains were slow, but they were civilized. Now we have long lines, searches, delays, box cutters, peanuts, and air rage. Life has gotten better in some ways. In some ways, it hasn't. Wednesday, February 05, 2003
Posted
7:07 PM
by Gene
Posted
6:50 PM
by Gene
And now the franchise is in doo-doo-doo-doo-deeeeeep-doo-doo.... That's Sheila Jackson Lee's theme song, by the way.
Posted
5:17 PM
by Gene
Posted
5:10 PM
by Gene
I'll bet one reason the staff's ticked is that someone yanked Al Hunt's editorial page from the back of the A section to make room for display ads. And now I know not to read the news equivalent of Certs: The Journals' staffers want Ken Auletta to do an expose of Peter Kann. Expose? He'll write a VALENTINE! You want DRUDGE!
Posted
3:02 PM
by Gene
An irony: Two of the biggest educational book publishers are McGraw-Hill, owner of the S&P indexes and Business Week; and Pearson, half-owner of The Economist, the self-styled "iconoclastic" (and very conventionally wise) news rag (and once the owner of the TV production company that churned out the very politically correct The Price is Right and Baywatch). We should not be surprised.
Posted
1:31 PM
by Gene
Bleeding, leading, rip 'n' reading!
Posted
1:26 PM
by Gene
Aaron! You could have banged your head against a wall for free.
Posted
12:56 PM
by Gene
UPDATE: I wasn't aware of the Hummer, or the entourage, or the two cell phones, or the $1,000 suit. The sports hacks have come down hard on LeBron, but while the kid may have shown poor judgment, he won't be paid millions for his judgment, and the fault lies less with the young Mr. James than with the leeches who created the whole problem with professional college (and high-school) sports in the first place.
Posted
12:41 PM
by Gene
Posted
12:38 PM
by Gene
Tuesday, February 04, 2003
Posted
8:22 PM
by Gene
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5:20 PM
by Gene
Posted
2:37 PM
by Gene
We've already given up on the Nobel Appeasement Prize.
Posted
1:49 PM
by Gene
Posted
1:09 PM
by Gene
Sigggghhhhhhhhhhhh, it wasn't the Muslims, it was a British government body. Here's its press release. (I must read before I post.)
Posted
12:35 PM
by Gene
IS? Don't you mean has been, Mr. Simon?
Posted
12:29 PM
by Gene
Posted
12:21 PM
by Gene
These guys are A-1 SAPS.
Posted
12:17 PM
by Gene
--The mogul-friendly Patrick Goldstein of the LA Times, writing in the LA Times. We can never hope for cultural change so long as news hacks' principal activity is backscratching. Monday, February 03, 2003
Posted
9:54 PM
by Gene
Posted
8:17 PM
by Gene
Posted
6:42 PM
by Gene
Can't wait for it! How 'bout you, PepsiCo? P&G? Kraft Foods? You game for more Arab TV? All RIIIIIIIIIGHT!!!!!
Posted
6:36 PM
by Gene
Posted
6:32 PM
by Gene
Hasn't the career triumph of Ken Auletta taught these clowns the dangers of schmoozing? Which prompts me to this: Here's what a well-informed cable subscriber might ask of King Richard: "Mr. Parsons, I've been a Time Warner Cable customer for ten years, and every year I've seen my rates go up and up and up, and every year you have excuses: first you were going to upgrade your 'infrastructure,' then it was improve your customer service, then add channels, then add Internet service, then add broadband, then you had to pay for rate increases from, say, ESPN. I've already ditched HBO because I couldn't afford it, and, to be honest, I did like what I saw, and I didn't want my kids to see it. Mr. Parsons, how do I know you won't use America Online and your shareholders' resentment as two more excuses to hike my rates?" Here's what a well-informed Internet subscriber might ask: "Mr. Parsons, I've been hooked up to America Online for two years, and it's one problem after another. I get disconnected no less than four or five times a day. Recently I had trouble with the hookup and I called customer service, and they thought I was speaking Greek. I'm paying $23.95 a month for a service that's worth half that, and that ranked at the bottom of Consumer Reports' ratings. And now there's talk of you folks spinning off America Online. I'm seriously thinking of going to another ISP. How do I know that you haven't given up on America Online, that you'll just let the service languish, or get worse and worse?" Now, here's what Ken Auletta would ask: "Dick, what does the recent slowed growth in America Online do to synergy, and how will it affect your strategy of cross-platform promotions, particularly with franchise pictures, which, as I needn't tell you, have formed much of the growth in the entertainment side lately? And what sort of opportunities will you have in putting some of your magazine content behind the wall and selling to AOL's captive audience?" It's this sort of nonsense that has led to complaints about news hacks' disconnects with their audience, most recently with the Columbia reporting. Si, time to give Ken his gold watch, a big bonus and a kiss from Tina in absentia, and send him off to Capri for a well-deserved, permanent retirement. The man is a walking cliche, the bad news hack personified.
Posted
6:29 PM
by Gene
Posted
6:23 PM
by Gene
Posted
5:58 PM
by Gene
Sure! I'll take moral instruction from France: A country where nearly the whole population joined the Resistance -- and half of them were collaborators.
Posted
5:35 PM
by Gene
[B]ooks suck. Most books are dopier than television or movies or even advertising (many books tend to be just collateral promotions or the lesser offspring of dopey television, movies, and advertising). Even if there are precious exceptions, the overwhelming number of big-money, industry-sustaining books are incontrovertibly dum-dum things. More cynical, more pandering than any other entertainment product. Calling them books may be a substantial part of the problem with the book business—it provides undeserved and unfair dignity (perhaps there should be a way to certify something as an actual book). Working at a magazine where every day random books come flying in by the bushel (along with the calls from sluggish book publicists), you get a sense of the magnitude of the wasteland. Books may be the true lowest-common-denominator medium. No doubt Wolff will get much angry mail, and possibly a bit of retribution; but these clowns should first look at themselves in their mirror-shiny dust jackets.
Posted
5:23 PM
by Gene
The [heat-resistant] tiles are the most important system NASA has ever designed as "safe life." That means there is no back-up for them. If they fail, the shuttle burns on reentry. If enough fall off, the shuttle may become unstable during landing, and thus un-pilotable. The worry runs deep enough that NASA investigated installing a crane assembly in Columbia so the crew could inspect and repair damaged tiles in space. (Verdict: Can't be done. You can hardly do it on the ground.) I would say Mr. Easterbrook foresaw the Columbia disaster. He already foresaw the Challenger's. This is muckraking at its finest -- and no one paid attention.
Posted
5:14 PM
by Gene
First off, morons, it wouldn't be that obvious, second, there's an unlikely doohickey sticking from the "wing," and third, I believe the investigators are looking at damage on the ship's underside, which was almost totally black. A more complete explanation is here.
Posted
5:09 PM
by Gene
I shall be paying very close attention to the FTP log from now on.
Posted
5:09 PM
by Gene
I suppose I could come up with the appropriate song title, but I can't. Maybe one of these days I'll let out with my Johnny Cash-style ballad, "The Story of Legendary Welch." I wonder if Spector's arrest makes Roman Polanski's Oscar® slightly less likely.
Posted
5:07 PM
by Gene
Lady, if there's any right-wing conspirator I'd want on my side, it's you. P. S. I've no doubt your moral principles are -- er, well-founded. But I'll bet you made a lot of young boys' puberty start early with The French Line. Sunday, February 02, 2003
Posted
10:28 PM
by Gene
Posted
8:10 PM
by Gene
Posted
7:58 PM
by Gene
Posted
7:48 PM
by Gene
Posted
7:16 PM
by Gene
All I can glean from this thread is that a) on-board computers may have overcompensated for problems on Columbia's left wing, b) a switch to "environmentally correct" materials may have caused a problem with the insulating foam that fell down the vehicle's left side during liftoff (assuming it was insulation, that is); and c) remains of all the astronauts have been found. The more I read about this disaster, the less I understand. UPDATE: It now appears c) was false, but I expect it's only a matter of time.
Posted
5:07 PM
by Gene
Mr. Mandela has returned the favor in spades. But we should not be surprised that The Conscience of the World has made so many idiotic statements lately. Take Ted Koppel, add communism and pigment, and you have Nelson Mandela. At least his parents took care not to make him look like Alfred E. Neuman.
Posted
3:06 PM
by Gene
Posted
12:58 PM
by Gene
Posted
12:43 PM
by Gene
And according to that LA Times piece, at twenty-two years the shuttles have "been flying for twice as long as its builders first envisioned."
Posted
12:23 PM
by Gene
Posted
12:07 PM
by Gene
Posted
11:54 AM
by Gene
Posted
11:45 AM
by Gene
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