Posted 6:20 PM by Gene

The idea of the NPCAA's Division III -- where the athletes might actually be amateurs -- has proved so compelling the NPCAA may have to form a Division IV.

Posted 2:10 PM by Gene

A CORRECTION: That photo I posted yesterday is of an African civet cat. The animal said to have helped spread SARS is the masked palm civet. It resembles a ferret with a long rat-like tail and it has light brown fur. I'm looking diligently for a good picture, but the only ones I can find are small ones.

Oh well, I'm still glad I posted it.

Posted 1:49 PM by Gene

A new GoogleBlogger innovation: When you click "View web page," you only get to see a fraction of your page!

'Ray, GOOGLE!

Posted 1:43 PM by Gene

We're paying Baghdad's workers -- with bills bearing Saddam Hussein's likeness.

What's wrong with good old George?

Posted 1:33 PM by Gene

From the hacks who gave us FREEDOM FIGHTERS:

SORENSTAM'S QUEST IS SHOT IN ARM FOR GOLF INDUSTRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

by

Larry Fine

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Annika Sorenstam has passed her personal test by competing on the men's PGA Tour, but the world's top-ranked woman golfer may also prove to be the biggest boost to the $24 billion golf industry since Tiger Woods burst on the scene....

LARRY! MEET CURLEY!! NYUK! NYUK! NYUK!

Posted 1:22 PM by Gene

Apparently they don't like Rick at the Times either. When embellishing a story is called "Bragging," and his troubles have "resulted in a certain amount of grim satisfaction" among the staff, something isn't kosher in the Kremlin.

Posted 8:58 AM by Gene

Let Uday twist slowly, slowly in the desert wind.

Posted 8:56 AM by Gene

With one writer fired and a second tainted, Howell uses his time to engage in DEEP THINKING.

Posted 8:54 AM by Gene

Where's the prenuptial agreement?

Posted 8:50 AM by Gene

Line of the Week (from Dave Barry):

It's time for an update on the British art world, which, as far as I can tell, exists mainly to provide me with material.

Posted 8:46 AM by Gene

Awwwwwwwww, the po iddle biddy poopoos know it could happen to them.

Posted 8:39 AM by Gene

Regardless of score, Sorenstam's attempt a success

Sorenstam misses [SIC] cut, but earns respect

Missing [SIC] Cut, Sorenstam Wins

The jackbooted lockstepping thoughtthugs don't want to admit the truth: Their heroine (pardon, can't be racistsexisthomophobic -- HERO) finished in the bottom fifth of the field, at a non-Tiger tournament. What made this story so incredibly irksome (aside from its sheer megatonnage) was that you knew, you KNEW, this was just another ideological hammer which the news hacks would beat us on the head with. But a business that produced BLUNDERS and QUAGMIRES and BLAME GAMES, and topped them off with a sociopathic liar, should beat itself on the head first.

Posted 6:30 PM by Gene

One of the most odious songs of all time is "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught." Oscar Hammerstein II, whose name should be revered for as long as people sing his lyrics -- which, with any justice, will be forever -- was a very earnest liberal, and in a show that touched more than peripherally on race prejudice he had to make a point -- a valid point in its day, a point that got South Pacific in trouble when it played the water-fountain-segregating South. One could call it Broadway's first protest song. In time, however, more and more very earnest people -- the longhairs of Tom Lehrer's Folk Song Army come to mind -- got the notion to preach equally very earnest thoughts, and in time preachments crowded out the simple pleasures of a love song (of which Hammerstein was a master). One reason the jaysonists forever blurb the GENIUS of rap is that it's ALL protest. I wouldn't say Hammerstein helped ruin popular music -- a man who can write "You Are Love" I will not accuse of ruining anything -- but his very earnest liberalism didn't help it.

I mention this song because all week the jaysonists have been singing it at eardrum-rending levels about you-know-who. Her story in another time could have been charming, even inspirational, the triumph of a lone woman in a big man's world, but when today's NEWS HACKS get through with it you want to SCREAM. It started with their usual thoughtpolice gag on Vijay Singh and Nick Price for daring to be politically incorrect, and it has culminated in tidal waves of slobber from unathletes who ordinarily view golf as a conspiracy, who despise the players as zillionaire rednecks (and what is worse, REPUBLICANS), who associate the game with decadence and snobbery and AUGUSTA, all of whom in the presence of the PC sex became INSTANT GOLF EXPERTS, effusing that you-know-who had a BRILLIANT ROUND even though she trailed more than half the field. Well, if there isn't a certain justice in the fact that the GREAT WHITE, er, FEMALE, er, WOMYN HOPE of GOLF, the woman who brought a NOBLE CRUSADE into the cosseted country club, the woman who played one the most HISTORIC, COURAGEOUS, DETERMINED ROUNDS of golf EVER -- in short, A FAVORITE OF THE JAYSONISTS -- has

MISSED THE CUT!!!!!

(In deference to you, HOWELL, we'll say she MSed the cut.)

Posted 6:06 PM by Gene

How could a creature like THIS have spread SARS?

Posted 6:01 PM by Gene

I saw Rick Bragg on C-SPAN2 some time back, and he struck me for some reason as a man very much worthy of his last name -- perhaps I was jealous as a self-alleged writer that he'd hit the big time with his memoirs about a dirt-poor Southern childhood, or perhaps because I figured he was that very smelly creature, the Southern liberal. Whatever the case, Bragg has staked a claim in Howell's rogue's gallery, and it will be entertaining to see how the Greatest Editor of All Time whitewashes (or should I say, covers up; don't want to be racistsexisthomophobic) the problem.

Posted 5:57 PM by Gene

When a central tenet of the Bush=Hitler crowd -- that UN sanctions were a form of genocide -- proves a lie, all the anti-war reasoning flies to pieces like a balsa-wood house in a hurricane.

Posted 5:33 PM by Gene

Morons who hydroplane down rain-slicked highways at 70 mph, morons who cut through pea-soup fogs at 80 mph, morons who think they're Mario at 90 mph -- this is why we have 100-car pile-ups.

Next time you're out on the highway, remember the bell curve.

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

The real scandal in jazz criticism isn't race--it's bad writing.

AMEN, brother. And with the likes of Robert "Over the" Hilburn it's even BETTER in rock.

Posted 5:20 PM by Gene

Well, since that @#$%&* MUSEUM was a bust, let's try archeological sites!

WE WON THE WAR, HOWELL!

Posted 7:00 AM by Gene

There'll always be a Frisco.

Posted 6:51 AM by Gene

Hey SOB, your paper's entertainment jaysonists quote freely from all kinds of bigwigs, and they lie too. They're never anonymous. How can we trust YOU?

Posted 6:41 AM by Gene

Despite casino gambling, or perhaps because of it, Atlantic City remains a 50-carat cubic-zirconia diamond on a pile of doggie doo.

Posted 6:30 AM by Gene

Moroccans Say Al Qaeda Was Behind Casablanca Bombings

Duhhhhhhhhhh....

Posted 6:28 AM by Gene

What is with all the world's most dysfunctional cities bidding on the Olympics?

Posted 6:25 AM by Gene

One of the first of Mickey Mouse Michael's legendary achievements goes bye-bye.

Posted 6:22 AM by Gene

Iran admits holding al Qaeda operatives

Duhhhhhhhhhh....

Posted 7:17 PM by Gene

The perfect match: an ironically unfunny comic and an ironically unreadable Web site.

Posted 7:08 PM by Gene

Speaking of improved education, the educrats have found magnificent new ways of unimproving it.

Gotta agree with ya, Congressman Weathervane, it's a fraud.

Posted 7:03 PM by Gene

I think The Scotsman's way too pessimistic over classical music's future. We must remember no music has the glory of old, and that CD sales declines have hit hard at other genres, too -- witness the collapse in the news hack's favorite genre, rap. (Actually, these jaysonist morons listen to The Boss all the damn day, but that's another story.) Moreover a lot of the problems in the live performance end are due to a weak economy. Improved education would help, but we won't get improved education. Perhaps a better place to look is on the Web, where, despite the chain bookstores and mass semi-literacy, high art and literature have established significant beachheads. Besides, there will always be people who will strive for something beyond the moment, something enduring in the arts. That MS of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony wouldn't have fetched $3.5 million if the work didn't still speak to us.

Posted 6:53 PM by Gene

Do the Dems want to get to the truth -- or do they want to get to the Dubya?

Posted 6:48 PM by Gene

The Center for Public Integrity has created a potentially very useful database compiling media ownership. We've never had anything close to this, and if it doesn't demonstrate the unhealthy symbiosis among media, and between media and politics, I don't know what does. One problem, though: click to determine who owns, say, radio stations in a given city, and you get pie charts that would seem to indicate most ownership is "independent." But these charts would surely be very different if determined by audience size or ad revenues, where the Usual Gang of Monopolists would prevail and "independents" would get a very meager slice of the pie. I hope the Center can improve on this.

Posted 6:39 PM by Gene

As Ed Murrow would say, this school district "may be right" in not observing Memorial Day. So many holidays have become meaningless, excuses for consumerism or paid days off. I firmly believe the total number of Federal holidays should be six: Presidents' Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's, with employers perhaps mandated by law to allow for flexible vacation time in place of former holidays. In a 24-hour-a-day society it makes sense.

Posted 6:35 PM by Gene

Who says Christie will run as a Republican?

Posted 5:44 PM by Gene

I don't think Lebron did it for the GLO-ry, Dickie V!

There goes professional college basketball. On to the high schools.

Posted 5:30 PM by Gene

Another conservative "hero" bites the dust, for doing what conservatives are supposed to do best -- get rich.

Posted 6:48 AM by Gene

Sen. Kleagle's mad because he can't give every West Virginian a half-million-dollar platinum-plated outhouse.

At what point, however, do the jaysonists turn the incoherent ramblings of this friend of Cicero's (and the founders of the Klan) into a J'ACCUSE?

Posted 6:38 AM by Gene

MILLIONS DIED IN IRAQI BOMBINGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A professor of womyn's studies at....

Hey "Scientists", go back to killing kids with your healing powers.

Who does more damage: a news hack who lies to see if he can get away with it, or a news hack who lies to CHANGE THE WORLD?

Posted 6:34 AM by Gene

Hmmm, Mortimer's U. S. News rag doesn't just employ hacks.

Posted 6:29 AM by Gene

THE FORCES OF REACTION TRIUMPH IN TEXAS!!!!! (or, doctors must tell women an abortion might lead to breast cancer.)

Posted 6:26 AM by Gene

The aficionados of rock with a southern accent aren't ready to forgive just yet.

Posted 6:02 PM by Gene

Sounds like the Unabomber has a friend.

Quick! Who does more damage: Jayson telling fibs, or some anonymous typist screaming, BOMB DAMAGES YALE LAW SCHOOL!!!!!

Quicker! Was it a "mail room" or a "library"?

One last comment: This AP dispatch reminds us that ten years ago the Unabomber struck David Gelernter. It is a great tribute to that man that the calamity didn't get him down.

Posted 5:52 PM by Gene

If 9-11 put the Saudis into such ecstasy, think of the reaction if it happened there -- by some of their own!

My guess is the interior minister would have been overjoyed too. And if people maybe didn't like it, imagine all the hook-nosed blood-drinking Zionists we could blame!

Posted 5:31 PM by Gene

Pee-TAH, who never met a Palestinian he didn't like, is accusing conservatives of being "militant." Sort of like al-Qaeda, wouldn't you say, Pee-TAH?

And a great big THANK YOU to J. Freedom du Lac for making it impossible to find the quote I found on Romenesko. J. Freedom du Lac, you're a big fat hack!

Posted 5:27 PM by Gene

MY TAX CUT'S MORE RIGHTEOUS THAN YOUR TAX CUT!

Posted 5:23 PM by Gene

Is this opportunism or SURRENDER?

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

Given all the talk at ASWIA of "edgy" Brent "The WWF Kills" Bozell's news that TV sleaze has gone down is puzzling. My guess is it's a fluke, or the stupid way Brent measures these things. When the social scientists try to quantify media sleaze they're attempting the self-serving, or the impossible.

Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

The news hacks' definition of what a Republican should be (not counting Sen. Profile in Courage) is quitting EPA, to a thunderous ovation of silence.

Posted 5:06 PM by Gene

Without charitable contributions from the American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers, network TV would not survive. This much is plain from the Viacom Network's overhyped Hitler docudrama, which will lose millions. A footnote: now that ChevronTexaco (classic Dilbert spell) is pulling out of the Met after 63 years (not unexpected), will it pull out of junk television too? (A prediction of who will take over as the sponsor: Altria MOtive. It's based in New York, and it has a GIANT PR problem.)

Posted 7:04 AM by Gene

JUNIOR, formerly of Seagram's, having already milked two sets of shareholders dry, aims for a third.

These guys just won't quit, will they.

Posted 6:34 AM by Gene

Well let's see, it's this or teenage orgies, so I guess we gotta get "strict" (shucks).

Posted 6:32 AM by Gene

Get high on heroin and you could really get high.

Posted 6:30 AM by Gene

Paris Announces Bid for 2012 Olympic Games

Will the organizers festoon the stadiums with swastikas? eh eh. I can see the mascot now: Adolphe the Friendly Nazi, eh eh. When American athletes win do they play our national anthem or "Hit the Road, Jack?" eh eh.

Paris is just Havana with the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. And a nicer-sounding tongue.

Posted 9:06 PM by Gene

Lieberman: Dems Should Speak on Mideast

And then they should SHUT UP.

Posted 8:57 PM by Gene

So who was more dishonest: the reporter who laughed at his editors, or the blurbist who laughed at his readers?

Posted 8:07 PM by Gene

And someone wants to pay billions for this piece of junk?

How true, Roger. Lie down with dogs....

Posted 8:03 PM by Gene

If the NFL can spend $10 million "studying" whether to locate a stadium south of LALA, think how big the SHAKEDOWN could be!

Posted 5:43 PM by Gene

There is a certain justice in the producer of the greatest film of all time not making a profit on it.

The same company made -- The Adventures of Pluto Nash (pffh-hh-hh-hh).

Posted 5:23 PM by Gene

In the wake of L'Affaire Blair, Mr. Sharon Stone accuses his compatriots of "narcissism."

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

When are you getting your face lifted?

Posted 5:13 PM by Gene

Another long-running charm from GoogleBlogger:

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80004005'

[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][TCP/IP Sockets]General network error. Check your network documentation.

/blog_view.pyra, line 93

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?!?!?!?!?

Posted 5:12 PM by Gene

If the jaysonists know what they're doing here, with one mad cow in Alberta they can create a national paralysis, as they've attempted without success with SARS.

Posted 5:09 PM by Gene

Is GENERAL JR.'s big prep for a seven-digit career in lobbying starting to acquire (as they say in the trade) a CRITICAL MASS of opposition, despite Big Media's best efforts to squelch any mention of it? Unfortunately the issue has become a Democratic-vs.-Republican thing, with Democrats opposing consolidation because they hate RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (or rather FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!News), and Republicans supporting it because they LUUUUHVE (hold your nose here) FREE ENTERPRISE (aka caveat emptor), with Sen. McCain the designated Demo er, skeptic. I made up my mind long ago: It's no coincidence the bigger media have become, the worse they have become. It's hard to imagine them getting worse; but as I said a while back, I don't think Rupert or Sumner or Mr. Mickey Mouse or any of the Masters of the Universe would flinch at restaging the ancient Roman gladiatorial games, complete with death, and at the very least our popular culture has lost its regenerative power (or as Dan Ackman wrote yesterday, "five sequels and a comic book"). It should say something that the business end of show-biz is suffering from the same arthritis and arteriosclerosis as the "creative" end. Perhaps holding back the Vulgarians will be, in the end, a gesture of futility, like so many of government's ill-fated schemes to halt media abuses; but giving the store away to a few overly powerful charlatans isn't the answer either.

Posted 6:57 AM by Gene

ALL HAIL THE JUNKMEISTERS!!!!!

Yet another six-digit jaysonist assumes the position.

Posted 6:48 AM by Gene

Did I say lawsuits, Dickie V?

Posted 6:40 AM by Gene

RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! pulls a Jayson!

Posted 6:33 AM by Gene

LALA's at it again: it deems fit to report on a Michael Eisner e-mail not sent by the Michael Eisner, and it gives face time to the psuedo-intellectual Cornel and his deeper meaning. Trib, your paper can be STUUUUUUUUUUUUUUPIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIID.

Posted 6:22 AM by Gene

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Posted 7:38 PM by Gene

What do you suppose a) stupid, indulgent parents, b) stupid, indulgent schools and c) a stupid, indulgent pop culture had to do with this?

Posted 5:51 PM by Gene

Dog too demanding? Allergic to cats? Then how about coming home to a lovable, giant cockroach?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO thank you. I'll keep my cat.

They don't seem to mind handling and some cockroach owners even say their animal hisses softly when stroked.

My cat hisses just to look at me. (WRONG! But then I don't think I'll ever call a cockroach "Sweetie.")

Posted 5:41 PM by Gene

BOMBS AWAY!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 5:41 PM by Gene

Another jaysonist favorite -- lovable, lovable Jack.

Posted 5:39 PM by Gene

Line of the Week -- from the Cannes Can't, from a movie-ad-blurb copywriter (heck, even they can be right occasionally):

"The Matrix" aside, many films thus far have felt like movies made for festivals.

Posted 5:28 PM by Gene

Book editors aren't quite sure how to deal with Glass's novel [Romenesko headline]

Call it NON-FICTION.

Posted 5:24 PM by Gene

Sen. Kerry needs a trademark issue

Didn't he register his hair in the U. S. Patent Office?

Posted 5:23 PM by Gene

Obsessive-compulsive disorder comes to hockey sticks.

The neat thing is, they're more expensive than wood but break more easily. So they're neurotic too.

Posted 5:20 PM by Gene

What if the hurricanes take the week off?

Posted 5:19 PM by Gene

A motorist plays a stupid prank -- brought to you by RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bet this isn't on FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!News. (Or maybe it is, so they can boast.)

Posted 5:17 PM by Gene

The two-handed sieg heil.

Posted 5:14 PM by Gene

Can't Pearlstine Before Swine leave a great dead magazine in the grave?

Posted 5:12 PM by Gene

In a remarkable story, Dan Ackman says in so many words that NEWS HACKS ARE AT LEAST PARTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE STATE OF TODAY'S MOVIES with their incessant SELL SELL SELL SELL SELL. Thanks AT LEAST PARTLY to these JERKS, "[l]ast year, the top ten included five sequels and one comic book."

Congratulations, IDIOTS, on helping ruin our culture -- and making big money doing it.

Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

Next job for Ari: seven-digit Beltway-fixer press agent.

Good luck, Ari. Watch the door on the way out.

Posted 5:03 PM by Gene

The editor of JazzTimes didn't fire Stanley "Honkies Can't Play It" Crouch for saying honkies can't play it. He fired him for being "tedious."

Same thing.

Posted 7:10 AM by Gene

What is happening to some of the jaysonists? Somebody has the temerity to say separate minority graduation ceremonies at colleges are "a manifestation of self-segregation"?!?!?

CALL OUT THE THOUGHTPOLICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 7:00 AM by Gene

Earth to Bill O'Reilly: tell THE MAN he can stay there.

Posted 6:40 AM by Gene

More partying: the jaysonists say a big part their masterpiece's audience was unaccompanied minors.

You will note I'm calling news hacks jaysonists. I thought about it during a sleepless last night and I figured, even at their best, so many of the hacks have the nascent Jayson within them, and so much of the business is de facto Jayson, so for now, they're jaysonists.

Posted 6:35 AM by Gene

Another long-running hack work closes on Broadway, and given its distant progenitor is The Black Crook I would not want to bet it will prove revivable.

Posted 6:32 AM by Gene

Question of the day (which the jaysonists won't answer): How many people in China die from other serious diseases compared to SARS?

Two dead per day in a population of over a billion is microscopic.

Posted 4:50 PM by Gene

I just came from a Rong-Aid to buy a fan for my office demi-cubicle and some CONAgra canned spaghetti, when some uh, clerk asked for ID. (The reason they asked for ID, some "manager" said later, was because of local fraud. Don't the credit card companies have databases?) Anyway, I got a little upset as I'd been there the day before to buy subway tokens. Didn't someone see me? The girl kept saying I needed ID, and then (remembering how No-CVS manhandled me in the same situation) I lost my temper. Then the uh, clerk laughed at me. Then I got madder, and two other uh, clerks joined in the hilarity. I stomped out, walked eight blocks to get my ID, got my items (the uh, clerks claimed they reshelved them so I had to get them all over), left, and will never return to that Rong-Aid again.

I told the "manager" of a time (in Lancaster) I'd been to a McDonald's to buy two Big Macs on sale, and the store ran out of the thousand-island "special sauce," and I got mad, and the clerks laughed at me. Such patented franchise-tested-and-approved service is why Mickey D's is in trouble, and all the chain drug stores share the same predicament. As it happens this particular Rong-Aid has employed a girl with purple hair (she later had it undyed), and a girl with shocking-pink hair. (The store also introduced me to the accused pedophile who can flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy and is playing a radio station on its loudspeakers in violation of the law.) The clowns who run these stores don't give a damn. Rong-Aid of course got into huge trouble for cooking its books and it hasn't fully recovered. No-CVS makes its money by skimping on store maintenance so that to buy anything you have to wade through aisles of trash and plastic buckets. Even without accountants and Pig Pens when I think of chain drug stores I remember the Washington Post's heartrending account of the Rong-Aid in Virginia (I think) that dispensed the wrong medication to a young girl who died as a result, or the Walgreen's pharmacist who tried to get a customer arrested for improperly securing a prescription painkiller when it turned out she had a malignant brain tumor. These stories provoked much laughter and backslapping in Illinois, and Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. Customers like me don't find this nationwide joke funny.

I'm debating whether to send a letter of appreciation to Rong-Aid's chairman. Lot of good that will do. In the in-box and out the out-box. If I do, it will close with my variation of Rong-Aid's imbecilic Dilbert-written motto: WITH ME, IT'S PERSONAL.

Posted 3:23 PM by Gene

I just looked at the leaderboard of the Byron Nelson tournament (not important as Tiger's not there), and guess who was in the lead? THE SEXIST TWO! VIJAY AND NICK! BOOOOOOOO! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Posted 3:11 PM by Gene

I'm beginning to wonder whether the time will come when WE send OUR troops into THE WEST BANK.

Posted 2:51 PM by Gene

Festooned over the hall where the news hacks held their grand shindig of the year (you know, the one where Mark and Norm were dancing cheek-to-cheek, and Dick and Devin were handing out party favors) were banners reading $150,000,000 OR BUST. The hangover is, this is probably another sixty-percenter, and NO, PAUL DRECK, WE DON'T WANT MORE R MOVIES.

Posted 1:23 PM by Gene

The news hacks said we'd be bogged down in Iraq. They were wrong. The news hacks said there'd be hand-to-hand combat. They were wrong. The news hacks said there'd be untold casualties. They were wrong. The news hacks said the Iraqi National Museum was completely looted. They were wrong. Now comes word (from someone Andy S. calls "pro-war," and a RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! clone) that utter anarchy rules the length and breadth of Iraq. Given the extra-added word that Afghanistan's "government" seems to have trouble ruling anything, this is worrisome. I truly think SuperRummy went into both wars not thinking of the peace. We should be concerned; our fight against terrorism is at stake. Nonetheless, after the doom-and-gloom scenarios of the past, and after L'Affaire Blair, how can we be sure these stories are right?

(Even the Washington Post may have its doubts; the Afghan story made it to page A14.)

Posted 11:49 AM by Gene

Well, I've just read BLUNDER's account of L'Affaire Blair, a depthless tragedy. It further reinforces my belief (sorry to repeat this) that publicists like Richard "ADVERTISEMENT" Corliss and Devin "The Plugger" Gordon do at least as much harm as the Jayson Blairs, for while Blair's deceit was a by-product of a disastrous personal life (and thus understandable on at least that level), Corliss's and Gordon's salesmanship is nothing but raw naked greed -- on their part, and their employers'. But this fraud-laden biz will never take care of the Corlisses and the Gordons, for as Nikki Finke has written, they're examples of the industry covering itself (in more ways than one), which thus grants the detestable hackwork an automatic immunity to prosecution. Heck, even Jonathan "What? Me Liberal?" Alter admits his employers engage in selling ("[N]ews often acts as a marketing tool for Hollywood"), but rest assured, with the likes of Devin around, the marketing will continue.

A troubling footnote: In a sidebar ("Data Bank") BLUNDER is credited with two of the twelve cited instances of deception: The Hitler Diaries, and its editor's handling of the hack novelist Joe "The Thinker" Klein. A despicable magazine. (Speaking of Joe Klein, I was not aware the New York rag's gold mine that inspired Saturday Night Fever was a fake, and I'm not surprised.)

Posted 8:51 AM by Gene

Another cute below-the-fold admission, from Howell, on yesterday's Democratic blameathon at AFSCME:

The union audience was sympathetic to the Democrats' contentions, because its members would benefit if, as many Democrats have recommended, spending for security measures such as police, firefighting, rescue squads and medical care were increased more rapidly than the administration has recommended.

Yep, civil-rights violations and pork. That's what "terrorism" is all about.

Posted 8:46 AM by Gene

Maybe, just maybe, the cities can come back -- if the Babbitts and the Je$$es and the hack pols will let them.

Posted 8:39 AM by Gene

Politicians lie, new study shows

Ooooooooooooooooh. I guess that means news hacks tell the truth.

Report asserts that lying is key part of democracy

Yep, I guess that means we can keep on telling the truth as usual.

Posted 8:33 AM by Gene

Here's another example (the 1,538,295,327th by my count) of news hacks wanting it both ways: while partying all week over their damfool movie, they find time to cry copious crocodile tears over victims of urban violence.

To quote from Dubya, you're either for us or against us. WHICH SIDE WILL YOU TAKE??

Posted 8:30 AM by Gene

QUAGMIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! strikes again! Now we hear lots of people died in Baghdad during the battle for the city's control. But conveniently buried in the fifth paragraph (and probably below the fold or broken up by a jump in the print edition) is the admission that "many civilians -- even a rough estimate of the numbers is impossible -- were killed by exploding Iraqi ammunition stored in residential neighborhoods, by falling Iraqi antiaircraft rounds that had been aimed at American warplanes, or by Iraqi fire directed at American troops."

Again, L'Affaire Blair will have NO IMPACT because people expect such shenanigans from news hacks.

Posted 8:25 AM by Gene

This 6,735th thumbsucker about L'Affaire Blair -- oh, woe is us, the late-night comedians are mocking the Times -- is proof the outrage will have no permanent impact. Just some jokes, and more handwringing, and more platitudes from uberhacks like Mark Whitaker, and Howell will be (as he is now) battling Pearlstine Before Swine to see who can rule more universes, and the public will finish dead last as always.