Posted 9:31 PM by Gene

Now we know why International S.T.A.L.I.N.I.S.T.S. luuuuuuuuves Saddam! He has a "Stalinist security structure"!

Posted 9:04 PM by Gene

100 MILES FROM BAGHDAD!! GET 'EM!!

Posted 8:28 PM by Gene

Oop! ZON goes through a time-out without airing three more minutes of commericals? I think I know why. They went over the forty-minute limit. Forty minutes an hour. I'm sending a Valentine to the NPCAA tomorrow.

The roots of evil: MPAA...RIAA...NPCAA...but not AAA.

Posted 7:08 PM by Gene

And I'm starting to get angry with the professional Democrats now. I can understand that they still might not like what Dubya did -- but some of them won't even support our TROOPS! Sorry, you pros can't say "The Republicans made us do it." Love of country should come naturally to every American regardless of party and creed. Instead, you're hair-splittingly legalistic. JERKS.

Posted 6:11 PM by Gene

I see some holy cockroaches may have hit at one of our bases in Kuwait. This can't have been completely unexpected given recent terrorist murders. It sounds bad, but apparently only a few soldiers (six) were gravely hurt, and this is a pinprick to the operations (not to be insensitive to the wounded), and the general tenor of the war is still good. But we must redouble our vigilance.

Now speculation that this was an Iraqi special ops production. Again we must expect these things. So long as the whole action's going okay we shouldn't panic.

The one thing that worries me about the story is the psychological angle. No matter how well things are going -- and they are going well -- news hacks will harp and harp on this, not only for its news value. They will play up the worst angles without noting that the forces lost sixteen soldiers in two helicopter accidents, and that only two of our soldiers have died thus far in combat. News hacks will give the jerks every reason to celebrate if they don't show perspective here.

Now it is coming out that this may be an attempted homicide by a soldier. Well, Timothy McVeigh was a Gulf War vet.

An American black Muslim, it now appears, and arrested. Geez. Time for another CAIR package, Ibrahim?

Had I not been watching the NPCAA (the P means Professional) Advertising Festival I probably wouldn't have heard this till tomorrow, and turned away. This story is now of virtually no importance in the larger scheme of the war, except as a sensational crime for news hacks to promote, and we wasted all this time and all this worry over nothing.

Posted 4:54 PM by Gene

150 miles into Iraq, and counting.

Posted 4:13 PM by Gene

The more I think of the antiwar protestors, the angrier I get. Deconstructed in the cold, clear light of day, their argument makes no sense at best, and it's anti-Semitic, pro-Saddam, and inhumane at worst. But they keep it up because they know they have news hacks, Hollywood, academe, and much of the Democratic Party in their vice grip. If they keep it up long enough, with the first sign of bad news, they win. The real test of this war is whether our government can sufficiently ignore these jerks and triumph. To paraphrase an old song, they did it before (in Gulf War I) and they can do it again.

Posted 3:57 PM by Gene

The Mess (or is that NBC News on Cable?) has reported that some crackpot Iraqi soldier may have carried anthrax spores and definitely had instructions to use them.

I guess we're still in the wrong here.

Posted 2:49 PM by Gene

KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! The LALA Times KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! says opinion on the Iraq war KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! in Hollywood KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! is not so KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! uniform KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! after all! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH!

Posted 2:34 PM by Gene

Am I the only one to notice The Mess is now referring to itself on its Web sites as NBC News on Cable?

I suspect this may be the next big thing: for each network-news division to put out a 24-hour feed that also goes out on the Web. FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! of course has its cable news network, and ABC just started an online video service. You have this "asset"; you may as well monetize it.

Posted 1:11 PM by Gene

Reuters (snicker snicker) says Iraq TV (tee hee hee) is saying Saddam (chuckle chuckle) is pleased with the war's progress (pffh-hh-hh-hh-hh) and it has the no pictures to prove it! (HARDY HAR HAR!!!!!)

Posted 1:04 PM by Gene

I think Howell created that special section to cover anti-war rallies.

Posted 10:54 AM by Gene

How the perfesser of womyn's studies determines how many civilians have died in Iraq: He takes a story like this from a "credible" source (and People's Daily is obviously that); he then takes the number of civilians injured and multiplies that by .9 for likely dead (you figure those smart bombs must have done a lot of collateral damage), he multiplies that figure by three (non-Western news sources are better), and out of 207 injured he gets 558.9 dead (rounded up to the nearest 5,000 equals 5,000), and there you have the perfidy of George W. Bush.

Posted 8:35 AM by Gene

Speaking of Howell, here's a "duh" headline The Tantrum has enlisted to prove his point. It only proves news hacks can be stupid when they're not lying.

Posted 8:20 AM by Gene

Accusing the news hack of bias is an argument the layman just cannot win (the link is an A-1 example): He shoots back with Foggy Bottom diplomatic verbiage about objectivity. Accuse him again and he shoots back with Reuters-style twaddle that "your terrorist is someone else's freedom fighter." Accuse him yet again and he shoots back with First Amendment blather though his sidekicks and his employers usually aren't its best defenders. The layman walks away disgusted, and the news hack breaks out a knowing smirk -- HE has the power.

Posted 8:15 AM by Gene

More smooth going to Baghdad.

Posted 10:01 PM by Gene

It was not enough for France to be mendacious before the war; now it must be irrelevant after the war.

Talk about cutting off your Gallic nose to spite your face.

Posted 9:51 PM by Gene

Quelle surprise! The holy cockroaches may have planted the ricin in Paris.

Posted 6:59 PM by Gene

Sorry Robert! Your side's losing.

Posted 6:41 PM by Gene

The folks at Altria MOtive lost a big one in court: $10.1 billion because they marketed "light" cigarettes as "safer."

I don't know if they're safer, but when I encounter them in a restaurant they sure are stinkier.

Posted 6:22 PM by Gene

Saddam has been absconding with the food money for years and now the relief organizations are worried?

Posted 5:22 PM by Gene

The diverse, peaceful, non-violent, wouldn't-hurt-a-fly anti-war protestors in Frisco had something up their backpacks: Molotov cocktails.

SKOAL!

Posted 5:16 PM by Gene

Send up the white flag: Bob Garfield, the CW commercial reviewer at AdAge, says the press trots out the same old quotemakers over and over and over. And he interviewed two of the worst: Norm Ornstein and Bob Thompson. I don't want to hear these names again. Which means we will.

Posted 5:12 PM by Gene

That perfesser of womyn's studies in New Hampshire who said we killed 100,000 in Afghanistan is at it again. Only I didn't think International S.T.A.L.I.N.I.S.T.S. had so much money. This is almost as slick as Willie.

Posted 2:06 PM by Gene

Mostly leftists (I presume; this is Reuters) throw an electronic tantrum.

Posted 12:12 PM by Gene

Things bloggers do to make themselves unreadable:

1. Post copy and backgrounds of almost identical colors (i.e., light-green copy on a moderate-green background);

2. Use no breaks, so the reader must wade through endless paragraphs;

3. Use narrow columns so you have to scroll all the way down the page to complete the blogger's thought;

4. Use double-spaced lines that take up the width of the browser window, so the reader has to scroll and scroll and scroll;

5. Clutter up their pages with boxes, insets, photos, emoticons, etc. etc.

6. Link to other sites (usually blogs) with lots of photos, thereby requiring a long wait, and if the reader scrolls too soon the page goes herky-jerky and all over the place;

7. Use invisible scroll bars, so you have to guess how to scroll down the page.

I'm sure there are more, but these are the first that come to mind.

Posted 11:21 AM by Gene

At least somebody likes us.

Posted 10:48 AM by Gene

The ruins of Elizabeth Taylor oppose the war in Iraq.

Posted 10:16 AM by Gene

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!

Let's put International S.T.A.L.I.N.I.S.T.S. on the case.

Posted 9:34 AM by Gene

Forbes.com runs a "survey" of war blogs which, more than its previous surveys, suggests spin the bottle or pin the tail on the donkey. Perhaps the five sites some editor chose are more "representative" than "best"; still, it is very disheartening to know that the attention a weblog needs depends almost solely on luck, and these five are very lucky. I can't vouch for their "quality" except to say they all manage to sound alike despite differing opinions, and they're all wordy. I'll say this again, too: How many people have limitless time for bloggers?

P. S. Back in 1925, when it was just starting out, The New Yorker ran a joke:

Johnny: What is an optimist, pop?

Pop: A man who thinks he can make it in par.

It's hardly a joke; what's more, someone transposed the lines, foreshadowing Jeopardy but without the nerds. Every year until his death the magazine's neurotic, obsessive founding editor Harold Ross ran the transposed joke in the anniversary issue, perhaps as a reminder of how bad The New Yorker was in the early days (and by many accounts it was bad indeed).

I go out of my way with this anecdote because The Number One War Blogger wrote this. He may yet be right; but if events go on as presently, I may occasionally post this as a prime example of the blogger's infinite wisdom -- and I will always give due credit to Forbes.com for unearthing it.

What is a pessimist, pop?

Posted 9:14 AM by Gene

Take heart, Canadiens fans: when your country's teams visit us, we'll return the favor.

Am I the only person who notices a resemblance between the half-mouthed quarter-witted PM "Mr." Chretien and William Talman, Raymond Burr's DA nemesis on Perry Mason? The DA always lost because Perry was a good guy. "Mr." Chretien lost it from the beginning.

But then Canada is a hopelessly PC US stuck in a seventies time warp.

Posted 9:04 AM by Gene

Hoping against hope, praying with all their secular might, ad-blurb copywriters still know in their hearts of hearts MOVIES ARE BETTER THAN EVER!!!!!

Posted 9:01 AM by Gene

Everything goes smoothly in Iraq. A Marine was KIA, and there was that bad helicopter crash (an accident, it appears), but other than that our caissons are rolling along. Plus, we may have nailed Saddam. (That news ran all of yesterday but now it's acquired the air of fact.)

Obviously the Iraqi military was so depleted by Gulf War I and Saddam's dreams of being a terrorist powerhouse there was little left in the tank. We still have Baghdad to conquer, but given pictures of rows and rows of Iraqi troops surrendering things would seem unlikely to change.

Posted 9:18 PM by Gene

Here's Mr. Broken Record again: Some clowns at a media consulting firm (which probably does lots of business with the American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertsiers) did a survey about ads during war coverage. No surprise; people said ads were okay. What makes me type is this platitude from one of the consultants:

The mix of programming [advertisers] select needs to be very sensitive to what consumers are saying will be relevant and meaningful to them.

I've said it once, and I'll say it a thousand times: Advertising is placed solely by computers, solely on statistics. NOTHING ELSE MATTERS. The only time advertisers will NOT sponsor is after PC pressure groups complain, or following a disaster. Advertising is the number-one reason people can't stand corporate America, and corporate America knows nothing but to advertise. THIS WILL NEVER CHANGE.

P. S. Here's how the company that did this survey describes itself:

MediaVest is one of the industry's leading independent media services companies. The company provides world-premiere brands with innovative media leadership and execution across a full spectrum of media vehicles to ensure our clients' marketing messages are impactful, delivered strategically and efficiently and generate business results. The success of MediaVest’s focus on objective-driven marketing solutions is evidenced by our long-term client partnerships and strong growth of the company.

A classic Dilbert Mission Statement, translatable as follows: We rob corporate America to finance junk television and worthless reports.

Posted 8:23 PM by Gene

Michael "Airhead" Jordan, the man who destroyed Westinghouse and made Twilight ZON Co-Master of the Universe, is being asked to run the failing computer consulting firm EDS.

Lotsa luck, Airhead!

Posted 7:00 PM by Gene

CNN says Dubya's going to Camp David this weekend. That's confidence.

Posted 6:53 PM by Gene

A very touching story (and I wish I'd known of it earlier, despite the source): the Iraqis are coming out of their Saddam-built reinforced-concrete cocoon. They know what we're there for, even if many dolts don't.

We must not let the Iraqis down again.

Posted 6:32 PM by Gene

I completely ignored this: even before the war we already controlled the skies north of the 36th parallel (the Northern No-Fly Zone) and south of the 33rd parallel (the Southern No-Fly Zone). That's about two-thirds of Iraq. Up above, at least, Saddam doesn't stand a chance. Judging from TV he's virtually given up with triple-A so I'd say he thinks the same thing.

Posted 5:27 PM by Gene

A parade of several hundred International S.T.A.L.I.N.I.S.T.S. marched down Walnut Street this afternoon, trying to tie up traffic perhaps not knowing Center City can do it well enough, thank you. It rained dogs (I own a cat) and I imagine it was the first shower many of them had in weeks. They chanted something unintelligible although the evil word "Bush" broke out every now and then. A photographer led the way but no ENGs, odd in America's most competitive market for dumbed-down local news. Police guided their path, and someone handed out leaflets (a form of germ warfare), and they left. But for commanding the media and academe by the throat their time ended long ago.

Posted 1:59 PM by Gene

The man on the right is Saddam Hussein. The man on the left may be a double played by Groucho Marx.

Posted 12:16 PM by Gene

A delicious story: Miller Brewing, once owned by Altria MOtive, now owned by some South African brewer, and whose market share has been in an inexorable decline for many years, has decided to way-up the sex in its ads. (The agency is Ogilvy and Mather, which hides these ads on its site, maybe because some of its clients -- what are you worried about? They only shrink from PC and disasters.) Says a suitably anonymous "executive": "It's tough to be clever when no one pays attention to you....We have to fight dirty to keep what's ours." Here's the fun part: many of the ads in this campaign will debut during the NCAA tournament -- which is sure to get jostled about by the war (the Viacom Network has already agreed to assign some games to the Disney Sports Cable Channel in case). Who wants to think beer with war so heavy in the air? A brilliant marketing ploy worthy of the American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers.

Wanna bet these guys try to bring back Opie and Anthony?

Posted 11:36 AM by Gene

If we turn war news over to the government, we get propaganda. If we turn it over to news hacks, we get propaganda. We can't win either way.

Posted 11:32 AM by Gene

Saddam has no strategy if he's setting fire to oil wells.

Posted 10:35 AM by Gene

The last time we used the Patriots the brass said they worked. It turned out they didn't work. Hope they're not exaggerating again.

Posted 10:27 AM by Gene

The Catholic Church, which did such a wonderful job protecting Jews during the Holocaust (and more recently the virginity of teenage boys), has lashed out against the war. So has nearly every other church. Had that kind of mindset found a place earlier in history today we'd be saluting swastikas or the hammer-and-sickle.

Posted 10:07 AM by Gene

The big-name bloggers seem to spend all day typing, and they expect me to spend all day reading. Finding good new information on the Web is already a needle-in-the-haystack operation, only the haystack's the size of the Milky Way, and these bloggers add to the chore of searching with their endless verbiage. (Some of the worst offenders, I've a hunch, are the much-vaunted war bloggers, as they're already deathless wonks.) Just because USA Okay is bad doesn't mean its guiding principle isn't good: a blogger's presentation should be short, swift, and pungent. Anything else and you have The New York Times.

Posted 9:52 AM by Gene

The broadcast news types should cede the war coverage to the Web. There's so much of hurry-up-and-wait to this conflict it doesn't make sense to go with a 24-hour feed. All we get are talking heads and Baghdad in the dark through green sunglasses. We had enough of that in Gulf War I, and it was exciting then only because it was the first cable war. We now have other ways of getting our news.

Posted 9:43 AM by Gene

Monica's found her life's calling: as emcee of a reality special on FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 9:40 AM by Gene

Disney flagship and world-renowned criminal-justice expert Roger "Thumbs" Ebert pouts that no movie-ad-blurb copywriter's won a Pulitzer since 1975 (he).

It's easy to see why. They work above the title.

Note the kind of hacks he wants to see win: the blurb staff at the Times, a Paulette at the Trib -- exactly the kind of scribbler that makes you think "effete snob" when you're not thinking "sycophant."

Posted 9:35 AM by Gene

It was worth trying, anyway.

Posted 9:13 AM by Gene

If we are to protect the rights of celebrities to pontificate on a world stage on subjects of which they know between nada and nil, if actresses are to continue proving through their choice of evening clothes that their profession was once a cousin of prostitution, if movie-ad-blurb copywriters are to continue to have a platform for their best and most impassioned adjectives of toadying, if corporate America's most pompous CEOs are to have a good round of humiliating subordinates, for the sake of wasting money as only corporate America can, for all that's just and right, "SHELVE THE OSCARS®"!!!!!

Some of the pontificators may be listening.

Posted 9:02 AM by Gene

And in more Mafia- (and Bill Carter-) related news, Twilight ZON gets to torment The Brow a little while longer.

Posted 8:56 AM by Gene

Shower with Ivory in the morning, launch a terrorist attack in the afternoon.

Better not do that, says Dubya. (The latter, that is. Can't stop these former P&G clients from using Ivory.)

Posted 8:47 AM by Gene

I don't see why Saddam had to fire missiles at Kuwait, unless it was for old time's sake.

Posted 10:15 PM by Gene

And now the questions are: 1) When will it end? 2) Will we get Saddam? 3) How much air space and how many column inches will the hacks give over to A.N.S.W.E.R., its affiliates and subsidiaries? 4) Will the protestors, the Germans and the French ever apologize?

I think the answers are 1) Soon, we all hope; 2) Yes, we all hope; 3) Lots, and 4), No.

Posted 7:53 PM by Gene

Someone should explain to Justice Scalia that one reason we don't like judges is that they sit on their high chairs all day, in wood-panelled courtrooms like glorified cedar chests, dispensing torrents of densest gobbledygook justifying political decisions, and the moment someone asks them a pertient question they scream back to the hermetic safety of their chambers. Walling yourself off like this to accept a free-speech award (even if only to TV) isn't a good idea, Antonin.

Posted 7:41 PM by Gene

Apple Computer's honoring Al Gore's invention of the 'Net by appointing him to its board.

I think we can count on this as a permanent joke.

Posted 6:30 PM by Gene

Regardless of the news from Iraq, I suppose the European press will be spending the whole rest of the week chortling in banner headlines about this spying on the EU. A FRENCH newspaper says (in so many words) WE did it. I don't know about the morality of spying on our putative friends, but given the way some of them have acted lately we could say it was self-defense.

Posted 6:23 PM by Gene

A man with eighty-five palaces (or however many it is) is bound to keep them heated with Swiss bank accounts.

You could call it money to burn.

Posted 6:10 PM by Gene

Blogger's been working well for the last four or five days. I knew it was too good to last.

They must be "fixing their software" again.

Posted 6:07 PM by Gene

Too often good things happen to bad people. Mickey Mouse Michael held his latest shareholders' meeting in Denver in a big snowstorm with 100 people in attendance. The louse was probably singing "Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow" as he left Colorado, not a moment too soon.

Posted 4:18 PM by Gene

Ordinarily I pay little attention to these internecine squabbles of political factions, for they are as interesting to me as reading bloggers chewing over a hundred different policy options on Iraq, and just as inducive to sleep, but I will pay attention here (and I fear I give away too much just by typing this): In the latest issue of a leading opinion magazine (in an article posted on its Web site; no link for obvious reasons) a well known conservative writer says one of the leaders of the hate-America antiwar ultraconservative movement (I was scarcely aware of such a movement until I remembered Pat Buchanan) is a professor at my beloved alma mater who's bitter because he was denied a comfy post at a prestigious university and who responded to an unflattering professional assessment of his teaching by exploding on LewRockwell.com. Usnewsitis, an edifice complex and a reactionary professor! Sounds like three strikes to me!

Posted 2:22 PM by Gene

Well so long as it looks better than Clinton Funny Money.

Posted 2:08 PM by Gene

Someone's put up a fan page for HANS BLIX?!?!?!?!?

"Everybody loves somebody sometime...."

P. S. There's a fan club for Saddam Hussein. But that's satirical. I think.

Posted 1:56 PM by Gene

Tariq Aziz is alive, well, and living to defend himself in a war-crimes tribunal.

Posted 1:46 PM by Gene

Just as people too often slander those they disagree with politically as Nazis, so we tend to denigrate old folks we disagree with politically as senile. It's not fair, and it's not right.

Nonetheless there's no denying, whatever his age, HWWalter Crrronkite is an ass.

Posted 1:42 PM by Gene

Before Mickey Mouse Michael gets excited about another Best-Picture Oscar® (whoops! Not his company), he should look into this story. That default favorite Chicago with its memorable score (hardy har har) will win because there's nothing to counter it, but to think Singin' in the Rain got two nominations and zero awards? The sense of injustice is palpable. Dan Ackman's put together a pretty good list of movies the Academy® snubbed, but in fairness, it used to be the Best-Picture winners weren't too shabby either. (Fortunately he doesn't detract from his point with Peter Biskind's odious movies-were-better-than-ever-in-the-seventies thesis.)

At any rate, we'll be too busy with war to notice this coronation.

Quick! Which movie won the first Best-Picture Oscar®? Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....

Posted 12:05 PM by Gene

The more Tiny Tom bangs and screams and cries he wants his bottle, the more the Dems should be concerned about 2004.

Posted 12:01 PM by Gene

Oop, now it's really getting serious: No Baba Wawa before the Oscars®.

What if they held an awards ceremony and nobody watched?

I repeat: The American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers does it again!

Posted 11:58 AM by Gene

Just as Rupert muddies the waters by endorsing war in Iraq, so Cheap Channel fouls the air by sponsoring pro-war rallies. I figure if one can be "patriotic for peace," one can also be patriotic and against Cheap Channel.

Posted 11:55 AM by Gene

What is the man Laura Landro called "The Second Coming of Christ" up to?

Posted 11:40 AM by Gene

Don't worry, Bill. You'll be discharged from the hospital immediately. Just make sure you stay on the medications.

Posted 11:18 AM by Gene

How appropriate: "odd shapes and sizes" to go along with odd delivery times.

Posted 9:30 AM by Gene

The notion that bloggers have discerned "seven camps that opinion leaders have fallen into regarding the war" confirms that many of the most prominent are ultrawonks so focused on policy minutiae as to suffer cataracts. This kind of superthinking is the intellectual equivalent of the parlor games played by news hacks over the Oscars® or the memory overload sports fans suffer rummaging through their what-ifs. It's unnecessary and a big time waster, and it's respected in the news biz.

Posted 9:00 AM by Gene

Reaching out to "Middle America" isn't so much fun when they roll up the red carpet.

The American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers does it again!

Somehow I have trouble believing this story in light of the above. Then again, it's highly unlikely the ASWIA members would object.

Posted 8:58 AM by Gene

How the news biz works on the Web: The Mess (MSNBC) "reports" the loudmouthed Iraqi Minister Tariq "You're from Israel So I Won't Speak to You" Aziz has been "shot." Freepers post it as gospel. Then further word comes that he's escaped. One member says the Mess is "backpeddling" (sic). Now apparently the Mess says he's "missing."

Do not rely for all your news on reporters with one-word names.

Posted 8:48 AM by Gene

Our troops enter the DMZ surrounding Kuwait. One could say the war started months ago. One could say it started in 1990. This latest action is as good a benchmark as any.

Posted 8:29 PM by Gene

What a sad story. UAL was a double-barreled victim of the holy cockroaches on 9/11, but it's also the victim of a business that cannot make money consistently, and probably never will.

Posted 7:50 PM by Gene

On my first post here (have I been flailing away at this for sixty days?) I mentioned I've written a never-to-be-published satire -- of my college youth (I didn't mention). Yesterday I got the alumni magazine (from a nominally-church-related small college in a mid-Atlantic state), and boy if the old alma mater's still satirical. Too humble when I attended, the college now not only has a very swelled head (an advanced case of usnewsitis, brought on by over-arching presidents) but an edifice complex; it's replaced a perfectly fine cafeteria with a vastly-expanded multi-building student center with 22 restaurants (partly to justify naming one of the buildings for a whoopdedoo newspaper mogul), and it's spending $12 million rebuilding the science complex because otherwise it would look like (to quote a turn of phrase from me) "a bad day in Legoland."

The graduates are just as trying. In its next-to-most-recent rag the school boasted of four recent alums at ESPN. While one (an Emmy winner!!!!!!!!!!) seemed perfectly normal and decent (even posed within the R.U.R. plant at Bristol), two others looked like the kind of cranially-underdeveloped male who spends his whole life playing fantasy baseball, and the fourth looked like a stand-in for John Belushi on the set of Animal House. I suspect I wasn't the only one who noticed.

We know how college has evolved into Club Med for the young (not my line), so it has to have been a very long time since someone at my old alma mater actually learned something. I managed, despite the painful lack of a mentor or a truly close friend. Midst the flashing lights and the creature comforts I'm not sure how others can.

Posted 6:55 PM by Gene

This business of death-penalty moratoriums seems to be gathering speed. I won't argue that the penalty itself isn't quixotically administered, and perhaps many death-row inmates deserve no worse than life without parole, but one suspects there's the same kind of smirk behind these efforts as with the anti-war protests, an underhanded liberal malice, a desire to do something bad solely to confirm your power. Je$$e's ubiquitous presence (not to mention possible Nobel laureate and prison inmate George Ryan's) underlines it.

I believe the death penalty should be limited to multiple murders, political assassinations, and treason. That said, these moratoriums are part of a larger movement to wiggle around the people's support of the death penalty and their duly-elected representatives, and it's still government by egghead, and for those reasons alone, it's dishonest.

Posted 6:34 PM by Gene

P&G bought control of Wella, the German hair-care company.

I don't know, given this ASWIA member's past support of Hezbollah TV it would have been better off buying L'Oreal.

Posted 2:56 PM by Gene

Ted volunteers to report on the Iraq war for CNN, and he's turned down -- as UNQUALIFIED?!?!?

SHAME on AOL!

Posted 1:52 PM by Gene

Roger does his country proud.

Posted 11:12 AM by Gene

Well, I guess it beats being on the OTHER side.

Posted 11:01 AM by Gene

Kayla, even animals wear fur.

Posted 10:46 AM by Gene

South Korea's ex-president is under investigation for buying the Nobel Appeasement Prize -- and nobody's listening!

Back to usual with "foreign" news coverage.

Posted 10:41 AM by Gene

In Africa, I'm afraid, they call this "redistribution of wealth."

Posted 10:38 AM by Gene

Two junior wimps join a loony leftist minister out Tony's door. Or as Howell would say, THIS GOVERNMENT HAS NO CREDIBILITY!!!!! Sorta like "The Ballad of Kiesling the Quisling."

Posted 10:34 AM by Gene

You may know the card game. But do you know the 'selling-to-kids game'?

I don't, but I think I know the Americans-Go-Unaccountably-Nuts-Over-Japanese-Anime-Characters-With-Adolescent-Faces-Big-Hair-Beady-Eyes-Pug-Noses-and-Microscopic-Lips Game.

Posted 10:29 AM by Gene

Peter Arnett to Dodge Bombs in Baghdad -- AGAIN!

I don't know, Petey. From what I hear that may be like dodging raindrops.

Posted 10:24 AM by Gene

It appears Roman's Harveyesque "smearing" was self-induced. And in more dubious news from The Scoop, Billy Joel's drinking again (ooooooooooooh-wah a-ooooooooooooh-wah a-oooooooooooooooooooooooooooh-WAH!) By the way, am I the only person to whom Russell Crowe suggests Richard Burton -- minus the looks and the larger-than-life persona?

Posted 10:19 AM by Gene

Doot doo doo doo doot doo dooooo doo doo doot! FLASH! WORLD PEACE COUNCIL RUNS ANTI-WAR PROTESTS!! PRESS GOES INTO DE NILE!!! Doot doo doo doo doot doo dooooo doo doo doot!

Posted 10:13 AM by Gene

Could there be any doubt, with that puffy, bureaucratic, uninteresting, dead face, that Hans Blix would "join Neville Chamberlain in history’s procession of great buffoons"?

Posted 10:05 AM by Gene

Since when is knocking The Osama Channel off the air a bad thing? (It's a very bad thing if you're the boss of Lewis "Iron-Poor Tired Blood" Lapham. Lewis! Take Geritol and FEEL STRONGER FAST!)

Posted 10:01 AM by Gene

Another big stupid: amateur drag racing. When I lived in Lancaster, Pa. two high-school or college-age girls were killed sleeping on what they thought was an unopened stretch of new highway. They were killed by drag racers. These crooks have even less intelligence than motorcyclists, who think sporting a Harley logo gives them class. (Of course, they think tattoos are classy too.)

Posted 9:51 AM by Gene

The next big Legendary Welching: Firing domestic workers and replacing them with Indians -- as in the Subcontinent. They already do most of Corporate America's customer service, in India. Hey, that's even better than incorporating in Bermuda, the immortal act of management genius committed by Dennis "Little Welch the Crooked Jimmy Durante Impersonator" Kozlowski.

Posted 9:44 AM by Gene

A hack named Vinegar begs for a movie job. His prone position assures he'll get it. (Sometimes relying on ArtsJournal.com for these links is like a bad cup of coffee in the morning, or turning on your ISP connection and seeing a rotten headline. Could we choose better, folks?)

Posted 9:41 AM by Gene

Let's come right down to it: An industry like theater that puts out nothing but revivals deserves eviscerated orchestras.

Posted 9:38 AM by Gene

Good job, morons! You've defaced an international landmark (with red paint), cost someone hundreds of thousands to clean up your mess, and have inspired psychos to do things on tops of buildings -- all so you could throw your tantrum against Dubya. (Obviously the news hacks approved; an AOL typist chuckles it's a "wartime paint job," and another for an unidentified news service calls it "daring." Let's see somebody do an unauthorized paint job on your car. Or better yet, let's see someone do the same thing at CNN Center. It might improve the looks of that Lego fortress.)

Posted 8:17 PM by Gene

I don't know who wrote his speech, but Dubya said what he had to say. I know his foes, though, will harp as always on his pronunciation of "nucular."

Posted 7:12 PM by Gene

This article on Chicago's Graffiti Blasters project should remind us once and for all that graffiti isn't about art. It's about gangs. It's about anarchists. It's about crime.

Posted 6:02 PM by Gene

Graydon concedes war in Iraq may be more important.

By the way, do movies nowadays give people "a respite"?

Posted 5:50 PM by Gene

ING, the company that plasters all those cute orange ads over the Web, that promises spectacular yields of about two percent, that opened a financial cafe in my town (!), has announced a $14 billion writedown from insurance operations. Figures.

Posted 5:25 PM by Gene

A typically modern tragedy in which there are no heroes: Yesterday a young American "peace activist" died as she attempted to stop an Israeli bulldozer from knocking down a house in the Gaza Strip. Soon afterward pictures appeared of her burning a child's representation of an American flag. Through all this Freepers danced on her grave though she hadn't been buried yet. How typical of our debased age. No heroes.

Posted 12:21 PM by Gene

Morons like this who think they're being immortal with their "iconoclasm" should ponder what's happened to Mencken's rep. Let's just say it went down when it came out that he regarded Hitler as an inconvenience rather than a pestilence, that his nastiness was a mere personal blemish, that in the end he was on the right side of history. Who wants to read Mencken anymore? And I was once a fan of his. At least he could write on occasion; he didn't merely string together adjectives and hates.

Posted 12:02 PM by Gene

A popular art form is in its death throes when its creators start mumbo-jumboing about "high purpose." Thus the musical theater died when Stephen Sondheim turned it into a platform for his neuroses, and comic books went belly up when they became "relevant."

Posted 11:19 AM by Gene

I wish I could remember the name of that Marxist painting from the twenties or thereabouts that's actually a favorite of hard-core conservatives. You've seen it: The one where top-hats and gowns are dancing madly on a ballroom floor while crunched underneath it are the shabby working oppressed. It's a favorite of hard-core conservatives because they identify with the ballroom dancers.

That the screaming polemicist Susan Faludi made her career with alleged suicides at Safeway notwithstanding, only the hard-core conservative would laugh at the plight of the former employees of Enron. More than a few of the conservatives' number have sneered, "Nobody held a gun to their heads and said they had to buy Enron stock for their pension plans." True, but the future must have looked golden then, and Enron, like GE Bancorp or Microsoft, was forever.

Posted 10:28 AM by Gene

Further proof that members of the American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers will sponsor anything: Founding member and former Hezbollah TV supporter P&G has done "research" saying people recall TV ads even after fast-forwarding through them with TiVo. As someone was quoted in the story, "What does that [research] say about the agencies and their copy?"

Posted 9:53 AM by Gene

Third item down in Howie's column (to mitigate it?): A news hack was a little too honest in his opinion, and he used the imprimatur of his employer, and he got sacked. My guess is, he isn't the only person with such an attitude.

I got this from a link via the Professor. He posts again for the first time in three days!!!!! Where WERE you, 'Pundit?!?!? The world STOPPED without you.

Posted 9:47 AM by Gene

If "The Great Man" wants to help his people, he'll go into exile. Problem is, I think he's serious.

Posted 9:44 AM by Gene

God I admire you, Phil Sands, former news hack. You look up at that picture of "The Great Man" and you say to yourself, "That's the reason I came here."

Cherish the time, Phil. I wouldn't count on being there tooooo much longer.

Posted 9:36 AM by Gene

Bill Carter sues for peace.

Posted 9:30 AM by Gene

Once again, David Shaw goes against the grain (hardy har har), saying the news biz devotes too much time to celebrities' platitudes. Hey Dave, do you think maybe it's because a) so many news outfits are owned by firms in show biz, a la the T------ Company; and b) so many news hacks want a job in show-biz? Naaaaaaaaaah.

Posted 9:24 AM by Gene

I'm surprised that bastion of modern faux-excellence and unredeemed overratedness in literateeeyure, The New Yorker, is for war in Iraq in any way. Liberal snobbishness and Midtown Manhattan aren't necessarily contributing factors to a pro-war stance. (I'd love to know the attitude of the windbag-chameleon Joe Klein, who helped bring on this war [and lots of other things] by appointing Clinton.) Poor Pauline Kael, she who didn't know anyone who voted for Nixon, must be rolling over in her grave.

Posted 9:18 AM by Gene

I guess these folks aren't among the extremely diverse types of all races, creeds, religions, sexes, orientations, fetishes, etc., etc., etc., who are against war in Iraq.

Posted 9:10 AM by Gene

I feel sorry for perfectly innocent immigrants caught up in the web of government bureaucracy because of their place of origin. I do feel a little less sorry, though, if they're here illegally (and even then, if there are extenuating circumstances, they merit some slack.) Once again, we must remind ourselves, Osama did not come from Iceland, or India, or South Africa, or Mongolia.

Posted 9:01 AM by Gene

Fleeing should come naturally to cowards.

Posted 8:59 AM by Gene

Likewise (I got this from the annoying Arts Journal Daily News too, I admit), several unattractive middle-aged actresses get parts in arthouse movies, and a Carla says there's an explosion of roles for women over 40!!!!!!!!!!! STOP THE PRESSES! Frisco's Gaga's being foolish again!! Or as the parent's corporate motto goes, Hearst Prints the Worst.

Posted 8:55 AM by Gene

A THOUSAND ROCK BANDS PLAY IN ONE SPOT -- all the pretension, all the bad!! All the earplugs!!! They didn't send Robert "Over The" Hilburn out to Austin to cover this surfeit of genius?!? They sent a whatisit named Riemensderfer or something?!?!? Shame on the LALA Times!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 2:34 PM by Gene

NOTE (to whosoever may care): Last week I got myself a job in the real world. Effective in eight days I become one of those government bureaucrats I've railed against -- you know, the folks who yell mantralike, "Sorry can't do that." Well, I'm in the crowd now, and a member of AFSCME to boot. (Actually, I won't be able to say "Sorry can't do that;" that's a job for my supervisors.) I do hope I can continue this blog (as if anyone reads it) but certainly a real job will cut into my literary endeavors, and I'm not about to blog on the job, unless I have soooooo little to do and can get away with it. If I don't post as often, that's why -- but I've learned how to make fifteen comments in an hour, so perhaps this job won't impinge too much on my style, the odd hours for blogging excepted.

Posted 2:28 PM by Gene

Another Mr. Bug contribution to mankind: Every two minutes in my Hotmail box I get spam from me. So far as I know I haven't sent anything to me, and I don't think it makes much sense for me to answer me. It's enough to give me a split personality -- and a splitting headache.

Posted 1:31 PM by Gene

Why newsmagazines are irrelevant: Newsweek runs a big think piece on why we're such a bully. It's scarcely necessary to read a ten-page essay to learn people don't like us. And the solutions for this dislike are maddeningly vague: "[The U. S.] can match its military buildup with diplomatic efforts that demonstrate its interest and engagement in the world’s problems. It can stop oversubsidizing American steelworkers, farmers and textile-mill owners, and open its borders to goods from poorer countries. But above all, it must make the world comfortable with its power by leading through consensus," blahblahblah. Newsmagazines have become good for two things, and two things only: CW and show-biz PR. Running endless pieces on why the world hates us or giving these magazines away won't change that.

Posted 11:13 AM by Gene

Lately Bill the Entomologist has been devising new ways to drive Web surfers nuts: He precedes nearly every story on the New York Times site with an ad for his Tablet PC, and on Slate he's running an especially irksome ad for a new Stephen King movie. I'm willing to tolerate some annoyance if it'll keep Web sites free, but Mr. Bug, you're trying my patience.

Posted 10:31 AM by Gene

Some godforsaken PR type (doesn't Donald Trump have better things to do with his debt?) breathlessly informs us that one Billy Bush, "the host of Let's Make a Deal" and "the east coast correspondent for Access Hollywood," and a Hispanic MTV VJ named Daisy, will be co-emceeing the Miss USA Pageant. It wasn't that long ago that Bob Barker and Helen O'Connell did this. WHO?!?!?

One other thing: Let's Make a Deal is still on?

Yes, this simpleton Billy's related to the president. Reading his bio he sounds like a talentless 'do who's always appeared in the right place at the right time. Like the Bushes or loathe them, that does seem to be their MO.

Posted 10:22 AM by Gene

The Professor of InstaPundit posted ONCE yesterday!!!!! How did the world manage to get along without him?????

Posted 10:19 AM by Gene

Our covert vice-president emerges from his bunker to inform us a decision is imminent, as if we didn't already know.

Posted 10:12 AM by Gene

The Stalinists -- or rather, in news-hack parlance, that wonderfully diverse bunch of all shapes, sizes and ages, of all political persuasions, from all walks of life -- had a mighty fine time in DC, with a crowd of 40,000, 100,000, 200,000, half a million, and it's just a cryin' shame that they won't have their chance to disrupt Hitler's -- I mean, the war in Iraq. Well, a praying man -- forgive me, Stalinists are atheists.

Don't those clowns remember that Stalin and Hitler signed a non-aggression pact?