Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 10:16 PM by Gene

More Kinsleyesque cuteness from Slate: Timothy Noah says "most Iraqi households own at least one gun." How does he know? The New York Times said so ("in passing"). How does The New York Times know? Well, it has a reporter in Iraq. How can we trust a reporter in Iraq when Iraq controls the flow of information?

The Michael Bellesiles fiasco shows how easy it is to make up facts to prove your points. I'm no friend of the NRA -- they're generally no friend of police officers -- but Timmy sure has whetted my appetite, and I sure would like to find out how many people own guns in Iraq -- right now. A Google search turned up the usual pro-gun tirades and an article from the crackpot Lew Rockwell site, and nothing else. Perhaps Timmy ran this piece knowing he couldn't be refuted because a good statistic would be so hard to track down. If so, he ought to rename himself Michael Kinsley.

Posted 7:29 PM by Gene

News hacks are making something that The Pugilist who Delivered a Left Hook Below the Belt with His Big Fat Mouth has lost a "party post," and some Freepers are suspicious, as they might be, given who runs the news biz and what happened to the fool Trent. But if Democrats can punish members who say stupid things, it might help their credibility just a little.

Posted 4:29 PM by Gene

The ground is starting to crumble under the Dixie Chicks' feet. They could have avoided this whole sad episode with a little thinking. But thinking and show-biz don't mix.

Posted 2:32 PM by Gene

An excuse for having government set up agencies to grease the skids for movie makers is that it's a cash cow. Needless to say a lot of that cow goes to feed the bull.

Posted 11:38 AM by Gene

Teachers can protest Dubya's perfidy as long as they please, but they should keep in mind something this Albuquerque PTA boss said:

We're not at school to make political statements. We're here to learn.

Posted 11:25 AM by Gene

That 'n' ten cents'll getcha a cuppa latte at Starbucks.

Posted 11:08 AM by Gene

Martin Scorsese's acceptance speech:

Ladies and gentlemen, I've just received a phone call from Roman Polanski. I told Roman he waged a great campaign and am sorry only one of us could win an Oscar®. We all wish him the best of luck and I would certainly invite him to join me as we endeavor to win future Oscars®. Academy® Members, my fellow Americans, tonight is a victory for GREAT MOVIEMAKING!!!!! And I want to assure you, as I accept this high honor, this noble statuette, that I intend to keep on fighting for the right to WIN OSCARS®!!!!! And I also want to say, I couldn't have done it without the help of Harvey! Together we can keep on keeping on, working for the common good of all mankind, as we pursue the grand goal of WINNING MORE OSCARS®!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 10:53 AM by Gene

Dr. Wiretap would like to eliminate the CIA.

I can see why. It hones in on his territory.

Posted 10:44 AM by Gene

ELECT SCORSESE FOR BEST DIRECTOR!

(Paid for by Citizens to Elect Scorsese, Harvey Weinstein, Chairman.)

Posted 10:30 AM by Gene

Like, WOW.

Posted 10:28 AM by Gene

So much for stuffing the classrooms with teachers.

Posted 10:24 AM by Gene

Chicago's Trib has dropped an op-ed columnist who attempted to print this masterpiece:

Adolf Hitler justified the Nazi invasion and occupation of parts of Europe as a benign move to protect them from Britain's imperial tyranny. The Nazis called it Lebensraum. We call it `pre-emptive self-defense.'

His first name is Salim. You'd think with an insight like this his name would become Aaron McGruder.

Posted 10:11 AM by Gene

One reason so many people hate show-biz is that it's always trying to reinvent itself without its fans' consent. Take TNN. Originally it was The Nashville Network, a country-music channel. Then The Brow bought it and decided he needed to draw teenage boys to complement his movie biz, so he called it The Pro-Wrestling Network. Now it's airing Viacom Network shows and is The Repurposing Network. (I hate that word. Like "branding." I'd like to brand the people who invented them.) Its ratings, needless to say, are in flux. These geniuses aren't half the Einsteins they think they are. Meanwhile network ratings plummet, audiences fragment, and the public gets more impatient. Sounds like Brow wants to turn the TV biz into the record biz. Go to it, Brow!

Posted 10:02 AM by Gene

When I typed yesterday that the Elizabeth Smart case had been "solved" my first impulse was to refer to her as a runaway. I'm sorry now I didn't. Indeed I was about to type something like, "Fifteen-year-olds are at that age...." James Thurber once wrote in a letter to a friend that the teenage girl has the body of a woman and the mind of a poodle-puppy. While the news hacks are speculating on brainwashing, I can only think, if this was a kidnapping it wasn't a cut-and-dried one.

Posted 8:35 PM by Gene

Let's hope al Qaeda's in disarray. One could argue it's been in disarray since our first bomb exploded in Afghanistan. Good going, guys.

Posted 7:24 PM by Gene

I suppose we should congratulate the Ueck on making it into the Hall, but when I think of him I think of Miller Lite and the hundreds of commercials he did with the high-blood-alcohol-content Mick and his partner in blotto Billy Martin (who died with a friend in a self-administered drunk-driving accident). So forgive me if I clap to you Ueck with one hand. CLAP.

Posted 6:52 PM by Gene

I don't think Saddam and the Iraqis organized 9/11, but I do think in giving the requisite support they are at least complicit. We have that from James Woolsey.

Yes, yes, I know, it's NewsMax. It's also one of Slick's CIA directors.

Posted 3:52 PM by Gene

I have long believed digital-over-the-air radio was a broadcast-industry-invented excuse for the Lowsy Mayses to keep their hammerlocks on the medium while denying any chance to such upstarts as the pay-satellite services. Now, with high-fidelity coming to AM, the FCC has a chance to free up that part of the dial to the music the Lowsys and the P&Gs have obliterated in their obsession to blanket the whole world with advertising: classical, jazz, folk, anything that doesn't fit into Lowsy's and P&G's world view. Of course General Jr.'s favorite music is Foreground Muzak.

Posted 3:39 PM by Gene

Remember when the UK had that nervous breakdown over Di's death?

Isn't it embarrassing now?

Posted 3:24 PM by Gene

For some time -- and I've been shopping there for about two years -- I've felt eBay was full of itself and has deserved a big comedown. With luck it could be the Mickey D's of the Web. It already is in a way: it's The Company You Love to Hate. And the stock never declines; it's selling at a twelve-month high now and its PE is 96. Evidently Meg (pronounced "mug") Whitman thinks this is still the spring of 2000. The Forbes writer uses the word "hubris." I wouldn't want to bet against eBay; as with Mickey-Mouse Michael (under whom Meg-Pronounced-Mug once labored), too many good things have happened to these bad people. But we can hope.

Posted 2:37 PM by Gene

Here is the exact wording of a link to a story on Lycos:

Agency Cleared Couple Before Murders

BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) -- Three months before a destitute man and women [sic] were charged with beheading their children, ... Associated Press

Nuf said.

Posted 2:00 PM by Gene

Here's the e-mail I sent to P&G, a lot of good it'll do:

Re your cancellation of an ad on Michael Savage's MSNBC program, and your moratorium on advertising following the start of hostilities in Iraq:

(On the Savage cancellation [stupid me should have added these words]), if companies like yours adhered to a strict policy of never advertising on talk shows or other political TV programs, I wouldn't object. What troubles me is that it looks as though you caved for PC reasons. Perhaps the cancellation was only a coincidence, but I doubt it, as the only times you clowns cancel advertising is after complaints from PC special interest groups, and very bad news. Which brings me to your Iraq moratorium. I can understand that you don't want cheery toothpaste ads amidst bloodshed; but during WWII America's advertisers at least filled magazines with patriotic corporate ads. Your refusal to advertise period after hostilities begin smacks of a "statement."

Let me cut to the chase: I have no faith in your company to do right. To this day I think you morons have taken a kind of perverse pride in having been criticized by John Leo for sponsoring Jenny Jones; but I was more than angered when I learned you idiots were financing Hezbollah TV. And when I did complain about it an e-mail, one of your servers responded that the reason you withdrew from Hezbollah was NOT that it was morally repugnant to sponsor a TV channel run by a terrorist organization, probably in violation of U. S. law, but because "you found other outlets"! The Hezbollah outrage proves that consumer-products firms will sponsor ANYTHING and EVERYTHING, no matter how repulsive (politically-incorrect programming and anything following very bad news excepted). And the worst thing is, IT'S OUR MONEY.

Were it not for the CRETINS, the FRAUDS, the CYNICS in your advertising and marketing departments, I'd have the highest respect for P&G. You put out consistently high-quality products in every category you compete in. The problem is their quality is more than overshadowed by your obsessive need to advertise. If I ran your company I'd stop all TV advertising immediately. Not only do I suspect it wouldn't hurt sales, it might actually HELP them because consumers would believe a big impersonal firm is finally respecting their intelligence. But no, you must finance sex, you must finance violence, you must finance sleaze, you must advertise advertise advertise until hell freezes over. WHY?

I hope some human being will answer my missive, in a manner not too disrespectful of my intelligence. You have a lot to answer for.

I know this missive may seem a bit too angry, but a company that has advertised blithely on Hezbollah TV does have a lot to answer for.

P. S. After send this I realized I made four errors I didn't spot because their e-mail function forces you to type type type, and it has a teeny-tiny window you can't expand; oh well, they get worse from the bozos who still think P&G promotes satanism.

P. P. S. Do I come across as a mere idiot, or as a blithering babbling bumbling blubbering idiot? Don't tell me. Eh, you can't anyway.

Posted 1:35 PM by Gene

New York's Daily News says the holy cockroaches may have a nuclear lab.

Where? In a mud hut?

Meantime, the zonks in the Big Apple's city council have ordered Dubya not to go to war. It can't happen here.

Posted 11:53 AM by Gene

Saddam's representative in Congress thinks she can stop a war with a non-binding resolution.

Not only do these lefties lack the courage of their convictions, even their convictions lack conviction.

Posted 11:43 AM by Gene

Oh, goody! The India-Pakistan conflict goes online with dueling hackers.

Well, at least it isn't dueling nukes.

Posted 11:41 AM by Gene

Peter Bart's going to move his schmoozing act in front of a camera. Just be careful with those tantrums.

By the way, wasn't AMC the name of a company that made really junky cars?

Posted 11:35 AM by Gene

And this time it won't be vetoed.

Posted 11:31 AM by Gene

Oh joy! The fuddy-duddy Washington Post "gets down" with young readers who won't read it under any circumstances.

Posted 11:29 AM by Gene

This makes sense: Columbia may have been done in by corrosion from sea-air while parked at the launch site.

Posted 11:08 AM by Gene

The PC pressure group GLAAD is boasting of "statements" made by companies that aren't sponsoring Michael Savage on the Mess. Most of them are suitably non-committal, just simple declarations that a company won't advertise on the show. The problem is, when big companies do something like this, they look as though they're caving. Every big consumer-products company should have an bold and clear policy saying it will not advertise on ANY program of an explicitly political nature (with the only exception a show like Meet the Press, and then only for corporate ads), and that such policy will be enforced without fear or favor. What makes me mad is not any "caving" (the P&G and Altria MOtive ads were -- we'll take their word for it -- accidental, and one was a local cable spot) but that these companies will sponsor anything and everything else that's offensive, that companies will withdraw ads only after PC protests or horrible news stories, and that P&G financed Hezbollah TV. I'm writing my own e-mail today and will post it for the edification of those who may not care, as well as any form responses I may get (haha!).

Posted 11:00 AM by Gene

Oh, now we can dismiss the revelations against Roman as one of Harvey's smear campaigns (in this instance, we can suppose, designed to boost Martin.)

Roman had sex with a thirteen-year-old, Marty directed John Hinckley's favorite movie. Six of one....

Aren't the Oscars® heart-warmingly Middle-American?

Posted 10:54 AM by Gene

Another argument against Walt Mossberg's "professionalism": a very PC dispatch from AP showing us how wonderfully "diverse" unmarried couples are.

You don't scream when you read a newspaper, do you Walter. Didn't think so. With the Journals you can scream both ways.

Posted 10:50 AM by Gene

Which Web site goes bl-bl-bl-bl-bl-bl-bl-bl-bl-bl-bl-bl-bl-bl-bl-bl-bl-bl-bl-bl?

Blogger.

Posted 10:20 AM by Gene

Yes, it may be true, Walter, that bloggers "aren't bound by traditional journalistic standards, or necessarily trained in the craft," they also aren't bound to CW, PC, groupthink, typing for profits, schmoozing, etc., etc., ad infinitum, AD NAUSEAM.

(Which isn't to say there's no groupthink among bloggers; witness the InstaPundit Army. But that's preferable to TWO! (clack) TWO! (clack) TWO NEWSPAPERS IN ONE, each hewing to its own deadly demagoguery. Of course in the news trade we call that "professionalism." Right, Walter?)

Posted 10:14 AM by Gene

How surprising to learn that Enron was something of a financial Potemkin village.

Posted 10:10 AM by Gene

The greatest work of art in the history of mankind has suspended production. Whatsoever shall King Richard do?

Posted 9:36 PM by Gene

Here's a pretzel for you (brought to you by ASWIA): The popular "country" act (recognizing that most country music these days is rock with a southern accent) The Dixie Chicks suffered a cerebral hemorrhage over Dubya. They're on a tour "presented" by Lipton Tea. Lipton is owned by Unilever. Unilever has dual headquarters: in the Netherlands and the UK.

I don't know what side the Netherlands is taking on the Iraq dispute, but I think we can be sure what side the British are on.

But like the good members of ASWIA that they are, you can bet the American Lipton execs in Jersey don't have a CLUE.

Will news hacks report on this story? Do toasters fly?

One thing's clear: if the die-hard country fans know about this, and they turn out to see the Chicks, get ready for a lot of unmusical noises.

P. S. The Netherlands is supporting us too. That's more than we can say for Lipton Tea.

P.P.S. The Chicks record for Sony. Japan supports us too.
Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....

Posted 7:46 PM by Gene

Music must get cheaper. Yes, perhaps this new Sony-Philips technology will further facilitate pirating; but if the sound quality is comparable to CDs, the music biz could head it off by putting huge chunks of its catalogues on such discs at little cost. Why not put the complete works of classical composers on one disc? Or all of Duke, or Satchmo, or Sinatra? Or a history of doo-wop? Such technology could make the commonest listener a well-rounded music lover. One may ask whether anyone will want a disc with a 100-hour capacity (listening to two or three albums running can be wearying); but in this biz it's not how much music but whether the price is right.

The only downside is that liner notes will disappear, probably onto the discs themselves, but most are so badly written people won't notice.

Posted 7:22 PM by Gene

The movies stink but the food sure is good.

Posted 7:18 PM by Gene

Like I care.

Sesame Street got almost as many nominations. LIKE I CARE.

Posted 6:48 PM by Gene

A story like this is good news, but I'm not sure I care much, I think because this was a high-visibility case out of dozens and dozens of low-visibility ones, with reporting and publicity little more than the luck of the draw, rather like deciding which unemployed insurance executive to help find work; and also because stories like this, about incidents beyond anyone's control, take the news hacks away from topics which are in someone's control -- the war in Iraq, for instance. A lot of people want a daily soap opera with their news, and a lot of the hacks oblige because they think people won't pay attention otherwise. Soap operas help account for why so few of us knew of Osama before 9/11. News hacks go on their merry way.

Posted 5:41 PM by Gene

The low-voltage TV-blurbist Virginia Heffernan, winner of a Poseur Alert honor from Andy S., is reluctant to knock down Peter Biskind's notion that movies of the seventies were better than ever, a motivating factor in so much modern movie-ad-blurbing (and central to the status-quo I mentioned in the last post), in part because Slate has advanced the thesis so many times, most recently through USA Okay's fatuous Washington pundit Walter Shapiro. So she engages in the patented Slate kind of cutesy-pie-ironic Kinsleyesque devil's-advocate fence-straddling that gives me the willies practically every time I encounter it.

Posted 5:28 PM by Gene

I cringe at stories like this, because they expose how helpless we can be before big media. There's no denying Jack's Alphabet Soup is a HUGE reason many people can't stand the movie biz. But too many news hacks (the ad-blurb copywriters and the Aulettas in particular) support the status quo in the name of a funhouse-mirror-distorted notion of freedom of expression. And it's not going to change anyway until Jack keels over, if he does. And it may not change then.

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

Really, sometimes Dubya's minions must shut their mouths.

This is probably the first time NewsMax has been linked on Romenesko.

Posted 5:05 PM by Gene

I don't know why people have to take things like turning Pennsylvania Avenue into Checkpoint Charlie lying down. The same bit of business happened here in Philadelphia, on Chestnut Street before Independence Hall, which has been closed and barricaded for months. A huge petition drive convinced Mayor Street to reopen it to cars. I think I can just understand why a thoroughfare in front of the White House must be closed to vehicles, but the symbolism of walling off everything with guardboxes and Jersey barricades and ugly flower pots is so offensive the feds should seek every alternative before creating their no-people zones and intolerable traffic jams. Yes, a psycho or a holy cockroach can happen at any time -- and so can an asteroid. Is it worth it?

Posted 4:52 PM by Gene

But we won't live if we're not allowed in the playoffs!

Can't you take it like men -- instead of like the spoiled brats who dominate Vitaleball?

Posted 2:58 PM by Gene

But Dave, if rock music "criticism" weren't about "pretense and convolution," you'd be spending all day going "mummummummummummummummum...."

Posted 1:27 PM by Gene

It's time for celebration! Mickey D's, proud sponsor of Roman's Oscar®, has gone a full year without a sales increase, and its sales for February declined almost five percent year-to-year!

They can't blame it on the weather; in Europe sales declined four percent.

Let's all yell after me: HOW-ard JOHN-son's (boom, boom, boom-boom-boom!) HOW-ard JOHN-son's (boom, boom, boom-boom-boom!)

Posted 1:22 PM by Gene

GE Bancorp's stock declined by 39 percent last year -- and Little Jeffrey's salary went up ten percent!

Sounds fair to me. I know it does to Little Jeffrey.

I see Jeff has to fly corporate jets for "security reasons" even for personal travel. That sounds fair to him too.

Posted 10:28 AM by Gene

Whatever happened to Anna Nicole Smith?

Posted 10:03 AM by Gene

AOL's accounting mess gets messier and messier. (Oh wait, he was with another firm.)

Posted 9:57 AM by Gene

Only Wall Street would believe "Iranian Radio."

Posted 9:50 AM by Gene

Let's see the American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers get up close and personal with this guy.

Between him and the Bush=Hitler talk Chevy Chase Syndrome should be at a fever pitch at the Oscars®. And willful ignorance.

Hey Washington Mutual! I'm sure "Middle America" would love having that letch near its daughters! What does your CEO have to say about it? (I can imagine: "I'll be vacationing for a month to attend the Oscars® and therefore no comment!!")

UPDATE: Roman's about to win an Oscar® for Best Performance with a Thirteen-Year-Old Girl, and the actors are about to scream out a four-and-a-half-hour tantrum, and the American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers is worried about offending -- foreign sensibilities!!!!!

Posted 9:42 AM by Gene

At least this won't start a world war. I think.

Posted 7:04 PM by Gene

Looks as if our stalwart Tony may be chickening out. One wonders if Dubya's painted himself into the proverbial corner. Then again, a lot of people would like to see us fail. In time, the joke's on them. (Although the French have proved they can live under Nazis.)

Posted 6:30 PM by Gene

Having come across another insufferable LALA Times ad (why don't the imbeciles at Tribune give the paper away if they're going to keep running ads?!?!?) I think back to earlier today when I encountered a photo anthology of several Cole Porter grand tours taken by the Hollywood lenswoman Jean Howard, a raging beauty in her youth (I CANNOT find pictures of her, of course) who started in the Ziegfeld Follies. Long after the subject of this hour-long thirty-second spot in newsprint is dead and buried people will have a few pictures of this glorious starlet to cherish, reminders that the great Ziegfeld's judgment in beauty was flawless, that the girls he chose were real women, and that, however hard flacks may try to justify their Madison Avenue pumping, today's show-biz can't make faces like the Ziegfeld Girls' anymore.

Posted 5:57 PM by Gene

Lowsy Mays says, "Here at Cheap Chaynnel we know people luuuuuuuhve ayour vaypeed six-sahong playleists aynd ayour twenta-meinute commercial breaks!" And how do you know, Lousy? "We relah ohn Arbitrohn!" Just one problem: Arbitron relies on horse-and-buggy diaries to collect its numbers, and people don't seem to want to fill them out any more. The bad thing for those of us who luuuuuuuhve Cheap Channel is, this unwillingess may be a reason various surveys state radio listenership is down. Then again, maybe fewer people want to fill out the diaries because fewer people want to listen to the radio. Thanks again, Lowsy, for your enduring contributions to Corporate America!

Posted 5:46 PM by Gene

My Andy Rooney moment: The problem with Hershey's Kisses is, where do you put all the wrappers and the paper doohickeys?

Posted 5:07 PM by Gene

Tarzan-yelling social-Darwinism alert: About a week ago I criticized The Wall Street Journals for running a front-page want ad for an ex-insurance exec who took to the streets with a sign, looking for work. (I was wrong about his age; he was not in his fifties, he was 62.) Now a Boston Herald columnist has chimed in, and if the Freepers aren't saying the man deserved his fate. The Journals' story didn't pass the smell test. Neither do some of those Freepers. (And as I've said, I'm one too, sniff sniff.)

Posted 3:07 PM by Gene

The Libyans have agreed to settle on the Lockerbie bombing with sixty percent of the payments essentially contingent on their good behavior.

Chuckle chuckle.

Posted 2:50 PM by Gene

You folks really think your mickey-mousing -- pardon, your two-bit ideas will get America Online customers excited, don't you!

Posted 2:36 PM by Gene

When calling french fries "freedom fries" we should remember that the Arabs have suddenly taken a liking to Mecca Cola, Jihad Cola, Sharia Cola, Osama Cola...I'm not too fond of the French either now but in the end we look every bit as childish as they, and the only ones we truly spite are ourselves.

Posted 2:31 PM by Gene

Our extension of the deadline gives the French more time to posture.

Posted 2:28 PM by Gene

More holy cockroaches...TRAPPED!

Hooraaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!!

Posted 2:20 PM by Gene

Jim M'ran isn't gonna apologize, he's nevah gonna apologize. Jim M'ran's still mad that they renamed the ehpoht outside Washington for Rownald Reagan, because ROWNALD REAGAN WAS A SON-OF-A-...man. He was a son of a man, a meah mohtal, not like Geowge Washington, and...oh Jeesus Chr...If you ask me again if I'm gonna apologize I'll punch ya in the nose!

Posted 2:11 PM by Gene

When Andy praised the Post for its wonderful editorials he didn't anticipate this marvelous press release.

As I said, when our side starts with its -- civil disobedience, it'll be ready. Pulitzer Prizes, here we come!

Posted 11:30 AM by Gene

I might feel sad for these twenty-somethings laid off from media jobs, but I can't feel too sad, because the survivors will become Eisners, Sumners, Ruperts, Masters of the Universe, world-straddling cynics, galaxy-conquering lice, people whose every waking moment is animated with anger and contempt, and besides, there's noting that bad about having a mere job, even if it's at Starbucks.

Posted 10:41 AM by Gene

The Broadway musicians' strike has ended. Now we can go back to enjoying endless revivals.

Posted 10:25 AM by Gene

Another Arab ululator wails about his people's powerlessness, and he demands the destruction of Israel, and his fans go to sleep to his lullaby dreaming of September 11.

The Arabs want to stay permanent victims. It's a living.

Posted 10:19 AM by Gene

Years ago here in Philadelphia, the then mayor His Excellency Ed "Fred Flintstone" Rendell decreed a chicken in every pot and four upscale restaurants on every block, knowing that by opening more restaurants the city could employ more dishwashers, waiters, janitors, and other essential high-tech personnel.

Yesterday the bad news came: one of the most la-de-da of the restaurant owners declared bankruptcy. I needn't mention that the restaurant biz is full of failures anyway.

The best-laid plans of mice and future governors....

Posted 10:02 AM by Gene

Merrill Lynch throws a tantrum at the Big C.

And I can recall when FNN aired informercials in the afternoon.

Posted 9:59 AM by Gene

A maker of ephedra supplements has marketing deals with eighteen colleges.

Ka-CHING!

Posted 9:49 AM by Gene

News from the American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers: Gay-rights groups got on the horn with Howell after P&G and Altria MOtive Foods aired several of their commercials on Michael Savage's TV show by accident. Whatever you think of Savage (and I tend to think little of any talk radio host, right or left), you can't deny neither company's cancelled advertising in ages. God knows what kind of gore they sponsor in prime-time. And of course P&G produces lurid soaps. This sort of embarrassment would be prevented by sponsors issuing an unequivocal blanket ban on sponsoring talk-shows period. But then this is ASWIA.

Speaking of P&G, the company has announced a TV advertising moratorium for 48 hours after the start of hostilities in Iraq. Supposedly half the advertising staff threatened suicide because it would keep them from schmoozing in Hollywood.

Posted 9:31 AM by Gene

Sure we should send medicines to North Korea. Good idea. We send them to North Korea, they sell them on the black market for hard currency to support the army and the nuclear weapons program. Excellent idea. Gotta talk to The Cleaning Lady about this.

Posted 9:54 PM by Gene

The good news about reality TV is (at least as Michael Wolff thinks) it will so diminish the networks they'll virtually cease to exist (one hopes). The bad news is we'll have nothing on TV but sports, reruns and live remotes, but then that's all that's on now anyway.

Posted 5:49 PM by Gene

Ooooooooh, the Fogheads at Foggy Bottom came dangerously close to labeling Saudi Arabia -- intolerant!!!!!

Just think if they didn't have the oil.

Posted 5:24 PM by Gene

Do you get the feeling the college basketball world is collapsing?

No. It won't collapse. It'll always hold itself up with the weight of its money.

Posted 2:18 PM by Gene

SIEG HEIL DUBYA! Michael Moore won an award from the Writers Guild.

Posted 2:06 PM by Gene

You lie down with dogs and you get up with $100-million fleas.

Posted 1:47 PM by Gene

Jim Moran, the Congressschmutz who nearly put his dukes up against an eight-year-old, recently put his foot up and into his mouth again. "If it wuh not for the stronnng suppoht of the Jewish community for this waw with Iraq we would not be doing this!!!!!" yelled the petty tyrant from Virginia. "I need to be moh blunt and moh bold and that's why I'm heah saying what I'm saying!!!!!!!!!!"

That what we want, Jim, more boldness -- if it'll get you unelected.

(Referred through [gulp] the partisan hacks at NewsMax.)

Posted 1:30 PM by Gene

When the war commences there will no doubt be -- er, civil disobedience, and many news hacks already know the plans, and will give it their best "we-stopped-a-war-and-ditched-a-president" treatment.

If the hacks really want to say, "Honest Mr. President, we understand if you think you can get along well enough without us, and so Mr. President, we won't complain if you never, ever, ever hold a press conference again -- and jeez, if you really, really don't want us in the theater of war in Iraq, we'll just slink quietly away," this is the way to go.

Posted 11:00 AM by Gene

Looks like The Brow might still be on the hook for all those asbestos claims, ha ha ha!

Posted 10:29 AM by Gene

The real news to come out of the Slick-Viagraman Wet Noodle Fight is that Andy Rooney's still complaining about coffee cans.

Time to retire, Andy?

Posted 10:26 AM by Gene

The nation that invented The Great Dictator should think before criticizing someone else's "dictators."

Posted 10:21 AM by Gene

It is now becoming clear that the Columbia astronauts knew what was happening to them. It is a dreadful thought, but one that would come out eventually regardless.

Posted 9:58 AM by Gene

Ebert the Disney-Thumb Man gets back at all those hard-core weenies who screamed about Gods and Generals. Yes, political opinions have a place in movie reviews; but most movie reviewers are knee-jerk liberals and automatic Kaels, which mean their reviews are often like one man writing under a thousand bylines. Mr. Thumb should have boned up on that old line about glass houses from the moment he established himself as a criminal-justice expert on the subject of Mumia. He needn't worry though. A thousand angry e-mails mean nothing when your wisdom makes millions.

At any rate, THE MARKETPLACE HAS SPOKEN. Gods and Generals is as dead as the soldiers at Gettysburg.

Posted 9:42 AM by Gene

The more the Paks deny Mr. Lead Holy Cockroach is within their bounds, the more they acknowledge their nation's complicity in his crime wave.

Posted 9:35 AM by Gene

Now the White House news hacks are in a tiz because Prez didn't call on a lot of them at his last press conference.

It never occurs to them that these press conferences are of little value anyway because they're carefully stage-managed -- and because so many of the questions are so stupid.

Posted 9:27 AM by Gene

How many police officers are acting as clerks and chauffeurs?

Posted 9:20 AM by Gene

One of the ad-blurb copywriters has lamented in the Denver Post (in an article whose credibility is undercut by a quote from Paul Dreck) how the movie biz puts out "quality" films only one month of the year. This is generous. December's flicks are not defined so much by quality as by their demographic -- upscale urban professionals and the copywriters. And what they churn out isn't so much quality as pretension. Somebody invented the word "arthouse" for a reason. The rest of the year the idiots excrete movies for the dumb teenage boys and the shareholders. By so severely limiting its audience the movie biz has gone from mass appeal to irrelevance. Jack the Wizened Wizard notwithstanding, far fewer people pay to see far fewer movies than they used to. And I'll bet the few more people who are coming out do so because the entertainment alternatives are even worse. This is a business that needs shutting down.

Posted 10:08 PM by Gene

Will the hard-core boiling-over activistic true-pink leftists appoint the next Democratic nominee for president?

Posted 9:29 PM by Gene

That certificate in -- welding has cost St. Bonaventure's president his job.

In college basketball, the corruption starts at the top.

Posted 8:56 PM by Gene

Golf's in an uproar because Scott Hoch, worried he might not win another tournament at 47, refused to continue with a playoff in the dark, and drunken fans booed him. There are three solutions: glow-in-the-dark balls (if we want to standardize the balls, start here), lights (they use them in Tom Thumb courses), or not scheduling events on the east coast to end an hour before sunset. Think we could look into this?

I don't see why the fans should boo, either. It was a non-Tiger tournament and therefore doesn't count.

Posted 7:42 PM by Gene

Yet another study links TV violence with the real-life kind. Media violence (along with its brother bugaboo sex) has been effectively neutralized as a topic of concern because social scientists, held in the same widespread high regard as car dealers, use their false science to prove matters of taste. Industry-toadying news hacks have greatly assisted the process by delinking taste from art. The frauds of show-biz completed the process by segregating taste into the realm of "family entertainment," thus equating both with pablum. And so eyeballs roll worldwide with each new link of media violence and aggression. The problem could be solved with a little dignity and common sense, but won't be because the media rule the world with the stainless-steel fist in the titanium glove.

Posted 5:19 PM by Gene

A friend of Willie Brown's owns the company that tows the cars off Frisco's streets.

Multiply that by a thousand cities and you can no longer guess how much money is stolen.

Posted 5:02 PM by Gene

The AP writes about the "success" of blogs -- and no mention of the Professor or Andy! Interesting.

Also interesting is that of Blogger's alleged "million" members, only a fifth are active. Part of it is that blogging doesn't work with people who have nothing to say.

D'you suppose more of those members might be active if Blogger didn't work just when it wanted to?

Posted 4:55 PM by Gene

This headline reminds me of the old, old slogan for Gold Medal Flour: "Eventually. Why not now?" Because if we do what Slick and the Cleaning Lady did and talk to them now they'll build their nukes eventually anyway.

Posted 4:41 PM by Gene

The more we learn of life before birth, the less abortion becomes tenable. Only the hard-core table-banging support of the usual gang of high-visibility megalomaniacal idiots keeps it alive.

Posted 4:26 PM by Gene

Bringing Down the House got shellacked by the movie-ad-blurb copywriters and did $32 million in business. This tells us: a) the copywriters are absolute dorky, or b) the movie audience is. I'm tempted to believe (having not seen the picture, and not wanting to see any picture) the copywriters may know what they're talking about here, but then a stopped clock is right twice too, and there's definitely no denying the movie audience is full of stopped clocks.

Wanna bet this will be yet another of the "fifty-percenters"? Oh for the days when movies played a year at one theater, and did strong business the whole time. But the movies were better, moviegoers more intelligent, and we didn't have Jack Valenti or Paul "Dreck" Dergarabedian.

Posted 4:11 PM by Gene

Der Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is out to destroy the model-rocket business. Yes, I can see where a holy cockroach could "use" one of those, but honest, these guys are going too far.

Posted 4:06 PM by Gene

Holy cockroaches swarm in Pakistan.

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAID!!!!!

Posted 3:59 PM by Gene

300 executions in Tex-as! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeuuuuu!

No executions is going too far. Executions for every murder is going too far.

Posted 10:31 AM by Gene

This dreadful age has a knack for hyperbole. Just as I cringe when I hear the Stalinists equating Bush with Hitler, so this unspoken little doubt pervades my head whenever the Andy S.'s compare Saddam to Hitler. A thug, yes; aiming for regional domination, yes; willing to butcher his enemies, yes; but even in gassing the Kurds he killed no more than a fraction of the millions Hitler exterminated. Also, Hitler had a feared fighting machine, and God knows how many stories we've heard of Saddam's soldiers going AWOL. Does this justify not going after him? No. His chemicals and long-range missiles alone pose a threat. Leave him unchecked and other Saddams will be emboldened to take his place, with more lethal weapons. But Hitler's was a time of giants, good and evil, in all walks of life, and we trample among pygmies. Let's get rid of the guy, but let's not kid ourselves.