Eugene David
...The One-Minute Pundit

Saturday, May 17, 2003


I can believe that Rummy's guys may have told a tall tale about Pvt. Lynch, but this is according to the Beeb, which is still mad ITS SIDE LOST.


Another thing I luuuuuuuuuuuuuve about the media: A Yankee leftfielder made two errors and got booed. A bad day, and he admitted it. But in the wind tunnel of New York newspapers and radio and TV, everything is amplified and magnified and pounded and pummeled until you'd think the poor guy committed mass murder. I suspect it's happening to him now.

More exemplary actions in the name of the First Amendment.


JOKE OF THE MONTH: The editor of BLUNDER, which drooled over THE BLAME GAME and has introduced America's hottest new press agent, passes the wind on Lord Koppel of Eisner's Nightgas that "'a credibility problem' [is] dogging the press."

NOT OUR CREDIBILITY PROBLEM, MARK!


Morocco's king says he'll punish the holy cockroaches "without mercy," something PC American jurisprudence bends over back to give.


John Hancock's CEO gets a bad-performance raise of over 150 percent, to $21.7 million, and some bobblehead board member says he deserves it. Meantime Meg "Pronounced Mug" Whitman earns a scarce $990,000, ignoring that she owns umpteeen zillion in eBay stock, which the sales -- er, analysts have been pump -- er, discussing again.




NAME THE THREE STOOGES!


Here he goes again: Wal-Mart's employed how many slaves in its beloved China over the years, so what does Howell scream about? "Red Country," "censoring," "homogenizing," blahblahblah -- the usual code words of cultural totalitarians.

This is why L'Affaire Blair will have NO impact on the Times. By blaming it essentially on a lone gunman, Howell has convinced himself his system worked perfectly, and he worked perfectly, and he can go on hectoring us as before.


"Mamma Mia!," the insanely popular ABBA musical, has finally made it to San Jose. This shamelessly silly tribute to those Lycra-clad '70s Swedish pop icons has become one of the most successful musicals of all time. One critic even predicted the show would put Prozac out of business. For its legions of fans, it's a habit-forming guilty pleasure.

It never ceases to amaze me how news hacks ALWAYS put the very best possible face on something very BAAAAAAAAD. Esepcially when it's SHOW-BIZ. (Oddly enough, the rest of the review following this blurb is not altogether favorable.)


GASP! The same high holy muckamuck chanters who scarcely a fortnight ago were pouring virtriol on the scorpions of Israel and calling for the destruction of every last living thing in every Satanic nation supporting the hydra-headed force of evil in Greater Palestine, are condemning the Riyadh bombings?!?!? GASP!!!!!!!!!!!!


When one terrorism egghead says the holy cockroaches number 3,000, and another says 18,000, we should throw both out the window.


High price of beauty: Venezuela can't afford a pageant queen

Wait a second! Miss Universe is Donald Trump's contest! Can't HE donate the $80,000?

Another less-than-inquiring news hack at KNIGHTRIDDER. Pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft!


Here's something else from the same primordial fog of ignorance as the ya-yas (albeit in a gentler tone): the Indian dowry.


The Shi'ites should be "wary" about the future, for if they start an Islamic state with sharia and the beheadings and the hand-loppings and the veils and the holy cockroaches and the bans on music and love and happiness, we'll be there to stop them.


I don't think I'd want to be where Ceausescu's last prime minister is going.

Let's put it this way: they'll need each other's company.


LALA's chief ad-blurb copywriter is excited about movies from before the Production Code because Hollywood was able to do all sorts of the usual neat things. Problem is, those films pale next to today's in all the desirable features -- and worse, Kenneth, despite your blurbing and selling, movies were better in those days. They had to be. THEY HAD PLOTS.

This is why the public is gravely disserved when we have one conservative writing about film -- the ninnyish Michael Medved -- against the usual sieg heil ad-blurb-copywriting philistines.

Meantime, PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARTYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!

I HATE NEWS HACKS!!!!!!!!!!


The holy cockroaches car-bombed Casablanca. Does this mean Saudi Arabia's declared war on Morocco?

After all, IT WAS THEIR IDEA.

Friday, May 16, 2003


Another bunch of holy cockroaches gets its jollies.

Two hopeful signs: Morocco's news agency calls the bombings "criminal," and they've hit enough targets -- Jewish, Belgian, and Spanish -- to make everybody mad.


There are mixed messages as to whether the public is finally disavowing the media's messages. CD sales are way down -- but as Saddam's Hachette's Sound and Media cheerleading rag notes, sales of DVDs and video games are up substantially. On the other hand, bookstore sales declined over 11 percent in March, and with the book biz' torrent of gar-BAGE that's only good tidings.


And on the same week that news hacks put on their phony-baloney self-centered act of contrition and shame, they're celebrating themselves again in press releases.

I HATE NEWS HACKS!!!!!!!!!!!!


One of Jayson's victims shrugs his shoulders and says, "It ain't worth getting upset about. With most reporters, I thought everything got spun around a little bit."

This is but a variation of "You can't fight city hall." Up against a force of nature like the news hacks' verbiage, truth and democracy lose.


We should be more than a little vigilant of our culture when a distinguished historian like David McCullough says our schools are under attack from thoughtpolice.

He also says K-12 history textbooks are rotten. I don't doubt that one second.


Saudis are Shaken as Jihad Erupts at Their Front Door

Hey Saudis, why aren't you dancing in the streets like on 9-11? IT WAS YOUR IDEA IN THE FIRST PLACE.


MIMI BREAKS HER SILENCE

I hope she shuts up again.


Zee fact zat a third of ourrr peepul supported Zaddam -- EET EES OHWL ZEE COWBOYZ' FOLT!


A CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO TOP AOL TIME WARNER MAGAZINES EXECUTIVES, PART QUATRE:



--What was the worst day of your life?

--When mom said I couldn't rule the universe.

--What was the best day of your life?

--When I discovered that I can.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!

Thursday, May 15, 2003


I am sorry to learn that June Carter Cash has died. She must have been talented to have caught Elia Kazan's eye, to have been offered a job writing for Woody Allen (she declined) and to have written a song with Frank Loesser. Not that she did bad by Johnny, either.


I don't see the error in this sentence. Besides, Dr. Johnson said it was okay to break a few grammatical rules in the name of clarity, and so did Orwell, and I stick by them. The gist of the sentence, though, is another story.


This isn't a clean-cut story -- the bishop took two salaries -- but the Boston Archdiocese has yet to clear its house of the reek of buggery.


The next time John Ashcroft and the Gov yell, "THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!", remember this story.

No question, many civil rights abuses and much pork-barrel spending are going on in the all-encompassing name of "terrorism."


I'm no fan of Monty Python -- whimsical grossouts aren't my cup of tea -- but I did find this ShowBizData squib amusing, and must post it in full:

Former Monty Python star Eric Idle is due to direct and co-star in Remains of the Piano, which he also wrote, Screen International reported today (Thursday). The British trade publication said that the spoof of costume drama Remains of the Day, which starred Anthony Hopkins, will star Geoffrey Rush in the lead role of Hopkins, a British aristocrat. The cast list is provocative in itself: Orlando Bloom is playing a character named Daniel Day Lewis. Patrick Stewart will appear as Obie Ben Kingsley. Alfred Molina will play Mussolini. Anjelica Huston's character is Countess Von Kunst and Idle himself plays Frank the Mover.

What is the word for it? Droll.


Kill 'em! KILL 'EM!!!!!

The call from the two big B's of China: Beijing -- and Bentonville.


Great. We indict two holy cockroaches in the Cole attack. They escaped last month through a hole in a bathroom wall of their jail. Great going, Feds.


The British news hacks have prejudices as strong as any American's, and worse, given their known and frequent graft. Suggesting as one very British hack does that the FBI's harrassment of the great composer Aaron Copland was the same Prokofiev's or Shostakovich's or Weill's torments is to commit a typical news hack outrage. Prokofiev was banned by the Soviets for "decadent" art in 1948, and he died a broken man five years later. Shostakovich was a hounded man who attempted to appease the authorities with hackwork, and by staying cowardly mute with each new Soviet affront. Weill was run out of Nazi Germany because he was a "cabaret composer" -- and because he was Jewish. Aaron Copland merely acquired an FBI file. Only to a news hack does this amount to the same thing.




Yes yes, we KNOW, Richard "ADVERTISEMENT" Corliss, millions and millions and millions of teens didn't shoot anyone after seeing your damned craven employer's masterpiece, but a shameful story like this about unruly teens trashing two upper-class houses, combined with the hazing in Chicago and the boys at the strip club in New York, suggests something has snapped in the American psyche, and SORRY, Richard "ADVERTISEMENT" Corliss, your damned craven employers and their friends hold no small measure of blame.


The Freeper-inspired Hollywood Idiots site is claiming that Mickey Mouse Michael's secretary has told somebody that Disney, er Disney Arthouse Pictures, er, MIRAMAX, will not be bankrolling Michael "The Fat Fearless Hypocrite" Moore's tirade that 9-11 was a Dubya plot. Whether this is true or not, the lunkheads should know, we're starting to realize who runs things in your business, Mickey Mouse, and when you say you're not responsible for the Hypocrite's project, you're disingenuous and political at best, and hiding behind a wall of "no comments" won't do anymore.

Hey Hypocrite! I got an idea! Get RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! to do it! He published your book, and besides, you can always says it's an AUSTRALIAN company!


And now that our troubles are over, Howell, think we can make a J'ACCUSE out of this one?


The Times' massive show of contrition will be a blip on the public radar because people will think it was an act -- and as I've quoted the pompous ass R. W. Apple Jr. before, people can't tell the Times from Disney.


And in more GLORY news, wanna bet we're headed to Lawsuit City, Dickie? Wouldn't that be GLORIOUS for professional college sport!


Hey Dickie V! I think these glory guys were thinking about the moolah-moolah a little OIly!

UPDATE: I can't believe news outfits have ignored this. The Journal-Constitution broke the Masters story. Incredible.


A CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO TOP AOL TIME WARNER MAGAZINES EXECUTIVES, PART TROIS:



--Name three things a news organization should stand for.

--Profit, profit and profit! haha.

Wednesday, May 14, 2003


"Gender, firearms and ethnicity issues" could not prompt UMass into dropping the Minuteman as its mascot.

One should not be surprised if the next Jayson comes from UMass. He's already learned how to mangle English.


If Bill's bug-spawning idiots can't make up their minds if iLoo was a hoax -- apparently it wasn't, despite earlier accounts -- how can we trust their @#$%&* bug-infested software?!?!?


It's scarcely a surprise that news hacks will do a synergistic turning the other way at all the underage GEEKS about to see guess what after Disney News runs this article accusing many teens' favorite rags of bombarding them with alcohol ads.

And while I don't doubt this for a second, the egghead authors of this survey cite Reader's Digest and Blunder as among the teens' favorites. Neither do they do themselves a favor with a co-author from UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine (?!?).


Can the thought police be far behind?

They're HERE: in show-biz, academe, and most especially, in newsrooms.

Typical Christian Science Quackspeak, though: the writer probably believes John Ashcroft is the top cop.


AOL and Bill the Entomologist have collaborated on a new pop-up ad for guess what that, when you hit the "Close" button, OPENS!

KING RICHARD!! One more trick like that and I switch to AT&T!!!!! (Can't do much about your insect breeding, Bill.)

The only solace: a teaser head reading, "We waited four years for this?"


Tiger knows how to butter the news hacks' bread. No knock on Tiger, but if everybody did that the press would be dishonest all the time, as opposed to nearly all the time.


Here's why L'Affaire Blair will never resonate with the public: Already the news hacks have produced thousands of thumb-suckers like this one, and "ordinary" readers rightly figure all the thumb-sucking provides is self-justification and more than a whiff of self-esteem.


You got it right, Houston Chronicle, "geeks." Hear that? GEEKS!


The Saudis proved themselves obstinate again, just like after Khobar Towers.

Why worry about security when such good things happen to infidels?


Some people believe the only way to revive the dead horse called jazz is to start a racial controversy over a music that, for decades, saw whites and blacks making several kinds of harmony. So Stanley Crouch (who I thought had more sense than this) decided to throw a tantrum against whitey jazz players, and JazzTimes did the wrong (i.e., the right) thing and fired him. Of course the Crouches don't help because they further segregate jazz from people who've largely segregated it out of mind for many other reasons (not the least of which is the music pretty well stinks anymore, like all music), and they just make it one more thing not to enjoy for PC reasons.


Saudis top violators of religious rights

DINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDING YOU WIN!!!!!


A CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO TOP AOL TIME WARNER MAGAZINE EXECUTIVES, PART DEUX:



--Don't you feel sorry for that poor kid Jayson Blair? haha.

--Yeah, we've done worse, haha.

Tuesday, May 13, 2003


Surprise, surprise.

Now which comes first: the apprehension of the cockroaches by the Saudis -- or the cockroaches' next bombing? Don't hold your breath.


Ill. Lawmakers Consider Forked Tongue Ban (front page headline only)

Watch it! That would make Disney News illegal.


And one other thing: Do we or do we not count the holy cockroaches?


I'm disappointed that the new $20 looks like Clinton Funny Money, but evidently Colombia's leading industry (after drugs) is counterfeiting.


The good news: The more money the Valentiites spend on "the wow factor" (i.e., the usual CGI effects) the less of a rise they get from the blind moviegoers, which means they'll spend more money, which means -- maybe the movie biz isn't in such great shape after all, Dick and Claudia notwithstanding.


SHUCKS! McDonald's ends its losing streak. Now back to financing junk TV.


That so many news hacks fell for the iLoo hoax should remind us what troubles the press isn't the falsehood, the omission, the plagiarism -- the things that are getting professional hairshirts like Little Howie Kurtz upset about L'Affaire Blair -- but its utter credulity, and more to the point, its utter credulity for every sales pitch that comes down the pike. That the casualty count for the Saudi bombing has ranged from 10 to 91 tells us we can't trust news hacks for even the most elementary things.


Anarchy! AAAAAAAAAAAANARCHYYYYYYY!!!!!

We all know how SuperRummy, like Harry S Truman, "gets the big things right and the little things wrong," and this was one of the "little" things, but we'll have it under control in time. I'd be more worried about the Koo-koomeinis.




Isn't death wonderful, Saudis?

At least when it happens to someone else.


RAH! RAH! RAH! SIS! BOOM! BAH!

CLAUDIA!!!!! WILL YOU STOP PRINTING YOUR @#$%&* RESUMES?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?


A CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO TOP AOL TIME WARNER MAGAZINES EXECUTIVES:



--Barry and Al told me Dick's ad was worth at least $50 million, haha.

--Yeah, screw the public. Synergy WORKS, haha.


The Saudis must have awakened this morning feeling even more smug and self-satisfied than usual. Now on to to beat more wives, and kill more infidels.

Monday, May 12, 2003


Cell phones allowed at NYSE

Now if every trader gets called at the same time, and every trader's cell phone has a musical ring, we could have the world's biggest symphony!


Now the scientists say the HIV virus jumped to humans around 1940 -- well before the first polio vaccines, which had been implicated. There was already an AIDS epidemic in central Africa in the 1960s.

So much about AIDS defies understanding.


Dow Closes Up 122 Despite No Little News

WHAT DOES THIS HEADLINE MEAN?!?!?

It means CURLEY's up to no good again! NYUK! NYUK! NYUK!


Hmm, we may have to call Dubya a "Tax-and-Spend" Republican.

I thought only Democrats taxed and spent. Well Republicans don't. They cut taxes -- and spend.


You're a DEMOCRAT -- and YOU'RE UNDER ARREST!!

And it's all Tom "Snidely Whiplash" DeLay's fault.

Try that in DC, jerks!


See? I told ya! But being a news hack means jumping to conclusions -- often the wrong ones.


Here's yet another excuse for charitable donations from the American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers: TV ratings for the big-4 sports declined 18 percent betweeen 1997 and 2001.

The answer? Money. MONEY! MORE OF OUR MONEY!!!!!

Or maybe not.

And a special tip of the hat to the Bloomies for making this story extremely difficult to find with no search function.


HOOOOWELLL!! We have another CAUSE for you! It's Vijay Singh! He's RACISTSEXISTHOMOPHOBIC because he doesn't want a woman on the PGA TOUR! NICK PRICE, too! What are you going to DO about it? Give 'em an AUGUSTA?!?


In yet another AOL-generated mea culpa, the company says Ted quit because nobody told him about the new head of CNN, even though he didn't own or run the network anymore, and surely didn't have to be told.

Ted, we wouldn't have told you either.


"You've got some really great races this year," said League of American Theaters and Producers chief Jed Bernstein...."You have Nine versus Gypsy, and Hairspray versus Movin' Out....
[G]reat races."


You said it, Jed! Broadway's bustin' out all over! Hits all over the place! A twenty-one-year-old show versus a forty-four-year-old show! A future dinner-theater staple versus oooooh-wah a-ooooh-wah a-ooooooooooooooooooooooh-WAH! I CAN'T WAIT FOR THE TONY AWARDS!!!!!! I'LL BE SITTING AT THE EDGE OF the rear of my seat.


Skeptics Say Shuttle Worn Out, Obsolete

It's about time they said it.




What are these two AOL Time Warner Magazines Division executives smiling about? All the fast ones they can yet pull on their stupid -- er, readership.

Or as they call it at AOL Time Warner Magazines Division, casting Pearlstine before swine.


More QUAGMIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We'll always find something to QUAGMIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! about. If people stand in line for groceries for ten minutes, why, we'll make that QUAGMIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! too.

This is why I suspect L'Affaire Blair will be almost totally ignored by ordinary people. They already know not to trust news hacks.


Recognizing that cigarettes are the drug of choice among conservatives, it appears that Honorary Mayor Mike has pulled another economic miracle.


SYRIA FEELING VULNERABLE

I'd feel vulnerable too knowing my tyrannical dictatorship could be the next to go Ka-BOOM!


If Howell resigned over L'Affaire Blair -- he won't -- Howellism would still flourish, as in this masterpiece from LALA which required weeks of thought, but fortunately only requires seconds to dump in the trash.

Sunday, May 11, 2003


Every time we find a "suspected" weapons lab in Iraq, or an "alleged" cache of WMD chemicals or agents, doubts pop up. Saddam's henchmen clearly knew how to hide their trail.

Let us hope, finally, that this is the real thing.


The same Congo that uses old Soviet airplanes as its Interstates is on the "brink of genocide."

And guess who wants to stop it? The League of Nations. Hardy-har-har!


How surprising: Many big companies, which play tricks with their customers, that employ all manner of legal and accounting gimmicks, that turn our cities into ghost towns and our highways into parking lots, that finance junk television, that engage in racist policies and cart out the PC pablum to justify them, that are anti-social at every possible turn, hold their shareholders' meetings as far as possible from HQ.

I didn't know Wilmington, Delaware was such a nice place! Not far from here. Although Disney had a thing for Denver its last meeting -- and snow.


This latest ploy by J-school deans to "improve" the news (in this instance, the execrable TV end) reminds me of an article Mencken wrote (which I read when I still respected him) where he let the reformer-novelist Upton Sinclair have it for a particularly lame-brained scheme to improve newspapers. Just how did he propose to improve papers? Simple: by having professors be their reporters and editors. Surely professors would have respect for truth and objectivity. Imagine someone trying that act today! Well, we can. Just read the papers. The more things change....


I don't know what to make of this story. It could be QUAGMIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, Part 23875632, or it could be the Kissinger realist-clone at work, or it could be Foggy Bottom fog (God, do the GENERAL and Company love to leak), but no one said making a new country of Iraq would be easy.


Wife arrested in aroma assault

And I thought my smells were bad.


Awwwwwwww. For what it's worth moms, Happy Mother's Day. (kiss)


I've a hunch a lot of news hacks think with the Times publishing its mea culpa it's ended L'Affaire Blair for it and them. But I can't recall a time when so many press miscreants have been caught plagiarizing or fabricating, or accepting favors. Nor can we have faith the business is catching all of them; it took YEARS to discover the fictions of Jayson Blair. And as I said yesterday, some of the most dishonest reporting is, strictly speaking, "ETHICAL." The last I saw scandal mongering was still "ETHICAL." Politically-motivated hatchet jobs are "ETHICAL." Slanting the news for a higher "truth" is "ETHICAL." Invasions of privacy (particularly of private citizens) are "ETHICAL." Goading of panics is "ETHICAL." Using your position to print resumes is "ETHICAL." And, of course, advertising (especially for show-biz) is EXTREMELY "ETHICAL"; a jackass like Richard "ADVERTISEMENT" Corliss lies as much to his readers as Blair, for as with any ADVERTISING EXECUTIVE, his copy is part lie and part exaggeration, and it's worse because he does it not for himself but for craven corporate bosses, and I submit he should follow Blair to the unemployment line.

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