Posted 6:57 PM by Gene

Given that the Supremes always stick their moistened fingers in the wind, and given that their decisions are as political as any campaign, and given that they seem accountable only to a piece of paper, why not rewrite the Constitution to allow the popular election of the Supremes?

Posted 6:51 PM by Gene

Speaking of horses, I think I know more about cow burps than I want to know.

Posted 6:49 PM by Gene

SHUCKS, the "renaissance" of horse racing Bob Costas talked about will be confined to TV betting. Shucks.

Posted 2:06 PM by Gene

A company that claims to be called "Zenith Electronics" also claims to be selling TVs profitably.

First off, as the article admits, it's just a nameplate for a Korean conglomerate and employs all of 200 people; second, you'd have to be mighty dumb not to make a profit on $4,000 TVs.

Ah, the wonders of the former American consumer elctronics business -- Legendary Welch's greatest triumph.

Posted 1:58 PM by Gene

Another social club in a former church elects a PC Grand Poobah, enabling its members to party with self-righteousness.

Posted 1:34 PM by Gene

Oh goody, the very mentally challenged regime of Myanmar killed seventy people while trying to squelch the dissident Suu Kyi. That's what oil companies pay the big bucks for.

Posted 1:12 PM by Gene

Some of the priceless looted artifacts returned to Iraq's @#$%&* National Museum. This is what Howell lost his job for?

Posted 12:29 PM by Gene

Howell may be gone, but his legacy lives on.

Posted 12:16 PM by Gene

When Reuters says the Saudis have "cracked down on militancy," why do I not believe it?

Posted 6:18 PM by Gene

Oh, and let us not forget, today was D-Day.

Posted 5:51 PM by Gene

Twenty-five years ago, hard to believe, Solzhenitzyn made his Harvard commencement address that the NEWS HACKS promptly made idiotic fun of because he blasted Western decadence, rock music, etc., etc., etc. But a speech with a line like this -- "Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil" -- goes beyond the contemporary menaces of its day, rooted in Soviet communism, to the terrorist menace yet awaiting its biggest hours. The great Russian writer justifiably worried we weren't up to the challenge of battling evil. The alacrity with which we've dispatched its forces after September 11 has only partly put his fears to rest. And consider his concluding lines:

Even if we are spared destruction by war, life will have to change in order not to perish on its own. We cannot avoid reassessing the fundamental definitions of human life and society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man’s life and society’s activities should be ruled by material expansion above all? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our integral spiritual life?

If the world has not approached its end, it has reached a major watershed in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will demand from us a spiritual blaze; we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life, where our physical nature will not be cursed, as in the Middle Ages, but even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon, as in the Modern Era.

In a world ruled by JACQUEASSES and RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!s and Sumners, are we capable of a spiritual blaze? Solzhenitzyn could not have been optimistic even then, but little more than a decade after these words the Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of its lies. Perhaps we have reason to hope.

Posted 5:36 PM by Gene

Oop, those red-country bluenoses are at it again, this time with "women's" magazines. It's stories like this that make you lament Howell isn't around to make an ass of himself again.

Posted 5:32 PM by Gene

Having abortion mills doesn't seem to stop stories like this. Maybe having abortion mills is why we have stories like this.

Posted 5:29 PM by Gene

Land isn't the only thing Mickey D's should unload.

Posted 5:25 PM by Gene

Perhaps "to bemoan the dearth of serious new work on Broadway" is "a hackneyed lament," but to say things are going gangbusters in "off-Broadway," "regional theater," blahblahblah, is an equally hackneyed compliment. How many plays have made the transition from the 100-seat venues, the places where the players know the audience because the same people keep showing up, the land of the eternal navel staring, to the big time? And sorry, Financial Times, a healthy theater once co-existed with a healthy movie business and a healthy radio business. Today all forms of entertainment are equally sick from lack of inspiration (or as the FT hack might say, glutted with "genius"), and sorry, FT, when hardly anybody sees your gangbuster off-Broadway, regional theater, blahblahblah masterpieces, you have an art form without an audience.

Posted 5:17 PM by Gene

Looks like we're stuck with too-up-close and too-personal for a little while longer.

Posted 11:34 AM by Gene

LIKE I SAID, they're not goin' down without a lawsuit, baby!

Posted 8:40 AM by Gene

Well, the pols are "reforming" Medicare to include prescription drugs, and both sides are celebrating: the liberals, because they get socialized prescription drugs, the conservatives, because they get a socialized prescription drug industry.

It will be interesting to see the corruption in this reform.

Posted 6:51 AM by Gene

OOOOooooh, we get to learn how much Richard "Shakedown" Grasso makes! Does this mean the NYSE will have to stop trading for several hours?

Posted 6:28 AM by Gene

EPA: Few fined for polluting water

Sounds like Republican justice at work.

By the way, when Sen. Profile in Courage is identified as "(I-VT)", does that mean Idiot?

Posted 6:24 AM by Gene

Some countries just love being pariahs.

Posted 6:23 AM by Gene

ABC's Arledge proved 'TV genius' is not an oxymoron

This is, very strictly speaking, true. Whenever news hacks really really like somebody, they call him a genius. Thus rappers are geniuses, fifty-something rock "legends" are geniuses, PC hack pols are geniuses, third-rate filmmakers are geniuses, certain especially rapacious businessmen are geniuses (LEGENDARY Welch, for instance), fifth-rate novelists are geniuses, and anyone in the news business is a genius. Under this definition, then, Roone Arledge was a genius. That doesn't mean he was that smart, and in the treacherous news trade, it doesn't mean he was good.

Posted 5:57 PM by Gene

Ridge: Terror alerts need work [front-page headline]

That's putting it mildly.

Posted 5:54 PM by Gene

Is it my computer or have some of the folks who subject us to pop-up ads made them more difficult to close?

Posted 5:52 PM by Gene

Considering how many famous professional college sports scandals have involved gambling, you wonder that more people haven't taken the plunge.

Posted 5:40 PM by Gene

Whatever happened to HAITI?

Posted 5:33 PM by Gene

The idea of allowing an employee to choose between overtime and comp time sounds good. But KNOWING REPUBLICANS -- and KNOWING THAT OUR FAVORITE BUSINESSMEN ARE ALMOST ALL REPUBLICANS -- and KNOWING THAT THEIR FAVORITE BUSINESSMEN ARE ALL REPUBLICANS -- businesses would make comp time mandatory. Republicans just don't like the little guys.

Posted 5:28 PM by Gene

Just what we need -- more power for John Ashcroft.

Posted 5:25 PM by Gene

It is said that King Richard's empire would be worth umpteen gazillion broken up. But with the company's failure to sell its book biz, and the talk that they'd have to give the record biz away, and with the cable division finding its profits from rate hikes, and with the ISP biz undergoing malign neglect, is it really?

Posted 5:17 PM by Gene

I'm willing to believe Sammy. Now may we all SHUT UP?

Posted 5:11 PM by Gene

Well, well! For once conniving executives don't get to keep their ill-gotten gains.

Posted 5:10 PM by Gene

I really thought Howell would tough it out. He might have, too, had Jayson been a garden-variety plagiarist and not a Guinness Book-setting sociopath. But face it, Jayson was Howell's teacher's pet, and all because of his race, and that was a cause; and then the Braggart threw his tantrum, a kind of regal rug-tugging from under Howell's feet. And let us not underestimate the impact of some of Howell's pet projects, like The @#$%&* Iraqi MUSEUM Project, and especially The AUGUSTA Project, which became one of the news business's all-time greatest self-parodies and a symbol of what went wrong with the Times under Howell -- the world changing, the obsessions, the favorites-playing, the pounding of the table, the banging on his reporters. Howell might have been a great editor -- in the war years. But in this prune-shriveled age, with news at the speed of light and opinions seemingly faster, he was doomed. And Andy S., just because you had opinions doesn't mean you amount to diddly-squat.

Posted 6:48 AM by Gene

Sumner also loves cruelty to animals -- if it'll get him the big P. AS I SAID....

This is precisely whom GENERAL JR. was trying to help. No wonder so many are so mad.

Posted 6:41 AM by Gene

After years of often fabricated information under Saddam Hussein, many in the country will believe almost anything about the U.S.

And this is where we jaysonists can step in and make the Iraqis think the U.S. is BAD! We've done it before.

Posted 6:39 AM by Gene

OOOOooooh, somebody spoiled Sumner's surprise, so he's suing the AP.

You think HE'D know any publicity is good publicity.

Then again, Sen. Rodham IS running for president, and he/she needs the money.

Posted 6:04 PM by Gene

And...THEY'RE OFF!

Posted 6:01 PM by Gene

And in more fun news from the wonderful world of corporate America, another former CEO gets indicted for playing fast and loose with numbers.

Posted 5:45 PM by Gene

Er, SuperRummy, better pay attention to Afghanistan.

Posted 5:30 PM by Gene

And speaking of sports, looks like Hootie's doing us another favor next year -- and I suspect he won't have to worry about MS. Burk OR Howell. Good going, Hootie!

Posted 5:28 PM by Gene

And speaking of TV ratings, do you suppose the day will ever come when professional sports leagues have to pay to get on TV?

Posted 5:27 PM by Gene

Even before GENERAL JR. gave the store away, people were becoming so fed up with his dear seven-digit-paying friends of the future as to initiate some pretty steep declines in newspaper and magazine circulation, and TV ratings.

Posted 5:21 PM by Gene

GENERAL JR.'s giveaway won't be an election issue -- it's too arcane for that -- but it is more proof that Republicans will find any excuse to let big business help itself to the cookie jar.

Posted 5:15 PM by Gene

...the new Palestinian leader renounced all terrorism against Israel....

IN ENGLISH?

Posted 5:11 PM by Gene

Shucks, Sen. Hair-Helmet Heinz can't use his wife's goodies to finance his presidential Dippity-Do.

Posted 5:10 PM by Gene

Wherever Mr. Bernard Law went, priestly buggery followed. He didn't initiate it, but he sure condoned a lot of it.

Posted 7:01 AM by Gene

This takes the cake: The Hummer H2 gets 10 mpg and its "[m]isaimed headlights...prompted obscene gestures from motorists driving in front of [it]."

Support Osama! Buy a Hummer!

Posted 6:51 AM by Gene

Now Phil Spector says his former significant other "kissed the gun."

I wish I could think of a good song title, but as when this story broke, I can't.

Posted 6:48 AM by Gene

I'm not sure at this stage of his life that anything can improve Barry Manilow's looks.

Posted 6:38 AM by Gene

These news hacks. What does Sammy Sosa have to do with the Warren Commission?

Posted 6:37 AM by Gene

AOL's lost over a million subscribers!

Does "We're taking a lot of money out of network costs" mean we're letting the system go to pot?

Posted 6:31 AM by Gene

In a pre-release sales pitch, the AP says Sen. Rodham was upset at her husband, but not enough to lower her infinite self-esteem.

Posted 6:17 PM by Gene

And since we seem to have a thing for Yahoo!'s photos, here's our Picture of the Week, from the French Open:



I think Martin has seen God! (He won, by the way.)

Posted 6:04 PM by Gene

I think I would be much more impressed if several dozen Playboy Playmates had shown. So would Yahoo!'s surfers: after 5,193 votes this ranks only a 3.18.

[To the three people who come across this blog accidentally: Sorry if you're offended, but with me, as the song goes, it's been a long, long time.]

Posted 6:00 PM by Gene

Arab Leaders Back Road Map [front-page headline]

Hope they don't take the wheel.

Posted 5:55 PM by Gene

Watch out, Sen. Rodham: AOL Time Warner Publishing is withdrawing a book due to plagiarism.

Posted 5:53 PM by Gene

Potential crow-eating alert: lots of folks "right and left" have blasted GENERAL JR.'s giveaway. Given that, say, news hacks almost unanimously opposed war in Iraq, could this mean these folks are wrong too?

What? GENERAL JR. RIGHT?!?!?

Posted 5:47 PM by Gene

Whorevis Communications once again proves that the Saudis are wasting their money on it.

I'd like to see this outfit merge with Dick Wiley's law firm. Talk about a marriage made in hell.

Posted 5:41 PM by Gene

People at Trib and Scripps are mumbling and grumbling about making people pay online. Okay, go ahead guys, try it -- if you want to see people spend $1,000 a month for Web browsing. And before you cite The Wall Street Journals, ask yourselves, how many of its subscribers already get the paper?

No, the future of the Web isn't subscriptions, it's ADVERTISING -- if the American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers will stop sponsoring anti-social TV content in favor of ads that can actually work.

Posted 5:36 PM by Gene

What-ifs will do no good for the Columbia crew, unless, of course, NASA is thinking about the next crew -- which it seems all too intent on thinking about.

Posted 5:31 PM by Gene

Meantime, in Geneva, some of Congressman Cowface Flipflop's friends have a PAR-TYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!

Posted 5:25 PM by Gene

JAYSONIST ALERT: The man who made expensive suits de rigueur among show-biz flacks, Ken Auletta, is ticked because RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! is "cheapening" and "coarsening" the "discourse" in America!

Hey moron! You helped turn Sumner into a national treasure! SHUT UP!

Posted 5:17 PM by Gene

I think The Clunker Brothers have been to the rebate well a bit too often.

Posted 5:12 PM by Gene

I couldn't care less about Martha Stewart's troubles, which means, knowing the jaysonists, we'll never hear the end of them.

Posted 5:05 PM by Gene

Congressman Cowface Flipflop, still mad his side lost, has found a platform for his presidential campaign: the Defense Department should be a wholly owned subsidiary -- of the BEEB!

Posted 5:02 PM by Gene

Roll your eyeballs: the world doesn't like us -- so the PE-EW FOUNDATION says -- with a POLL. My guess is WWII and the Civil War wouldn't have rated too high popularity-wise either. And the street still loves Osama blahblahblah (they seem not to know their continued impassioned affair with him will mean Ka-BOOM to them too). Another piece of jaysonism for the landfill.

Posted 7:06 AM by Gene

I wonder if linking the Riyadh bombings to the Osama Gang is a good thing. By doing that we let the Saudis off the hook because the Saudis can now say "outsiders" did it, and because "outsiders" did it there is no terrorism in Saudi Arabia, and because there is no terrorism in Saudi Arabia they can go on screaming about sharia and jihad and blood-drinking Jews and infidels and lopping off hands and beating women and...you get my drift?

Posted 6:42 AM by Gene

Apparently there are limits (however slight) to GENERAL JR.'s cravenness: he won't let Cheap Channel grow any further. Now it'll have to merge with six other companies like everyone else.

Posted 6:28 AM by Gene

Is free TV "free"? Just as we pay outrageous stipends to cable totalitarians for many channels we'll never watch, so we pay a tithe in practically every consumer good for TV shows we don't watch, or that offend our sensibilities. Perhaps we should let "free" TV "die a natural death," but I fear this mangy alley cat hasn't even gone through its first life yet.

Posted 6:24 AM by Gene

It's a good thing Billy Tauzin's daughter is a broadcast lobbyist (and by extension, him too), otherwise he might be accountable to the public.

Posted 7:07 PM by Gene

And the GoogleBlogger of ISPs leaks subscribers all over the place.

Posted 6:55 PM by Gene

It may be true, NewsMax, that "you shouldn't pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel," but it's also true, NewsMax, that in show-biz, any publicity is good publicity.

Posted 6:39 PM by Gene

The American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers is just intent on financing more junk television with our money, and absolutely nothing -- not a bad economy, not complaints of TV quality, not bad PR over sponsorships of outfits like Hezbollah TV and The Osama Channel -- NOTHING will stop it. This is corporate sociopathy at its worst.

P. S. Sorry for the following digression, but I stand by the use of the word "sociopathy." Here is one definition:

Sociopathy is chiefly characterized by something wrong with the person's conscience. They either don't have one, it's full of holes like Swiss cheese, or they are somehow able to completely neutralize or negate any sense of conscience or future time perspective. Sociopaths only care about fulfilling their own needs and desires - selfishness and egocentricity to the extreme. Everything and everybody else is mentally twisted around in their minds as objects to be used in fulfilling their own needs and desires. They often believe they are doing something good for society, or at least nothing that bad. The term "sociopath" is frequently used by psychologists and sociologists alike in referring to persons whose unsocialized character is due primarily to parental failures (usually fatherlessness) rather than inherent features of temperament. However, this may only describe the "common sociopath", as there are at least four (4) different subtypes -- common, alienated, aggressive, and dyssocial. Commons are characterized mostly by their lack of conscience; the alienated by their inability to love or be loved; aggressives by a consistent sadistic streak; and dyssocials by an ability to abide by gang rules, as long as those rules are the wrong rules. Some common sociopathic traits include:

Egocentricity; Callousness; Impulsivity; Conscience defect; Exaggerated sexuality; Excessive boasting; Risk taking; Inability to resist temptation; Antagonistic, deprecating attitude toward the opposite sex; Lack of interest in bonding with a mate

I don't know how Corporate America is toward the opposite sex, but it sure has a conscience defect.

Posted 6:29 PM by Gene

In still more pre-GENERAL JR. MAKES A WINDFALL media news, the oh-so-PC Minneapolis Star-Tribune may drop its ban on Indian sports nicknames! Will the world survive it?

Posted 6:24 PM by Gene

In more pre-GENERAL JR. MAKES A WINDFALL media news, the cartoonist Stan Lee and a certain heavily-implanted dimbulb "actress" think naming a cartoon character "Stripperella" is somehow original. Almost four decades ago Jules Feiffer had a big-boobed cartoon character called "Passionella" who worked her way into the Bock-and-Harnick musical The Apple Tree. I doubt though that she'd have consented to appear on SPIKE TV. (ARF! ARF!)

Posted 6:02 PM by Gene

No, pornography is not an uncrime, and it's not "victimless" either.

Posted 6:00 PM by Gene

I guess Sumner and The ZON decided this sort of bankruptcy wasn't worth it -- that or they'll be so busy BUYING BUYING BUYING they won't have the money.

Posted 5:57 PM by Gene

Our forests breathe a sigh of relief: In nearly two years 150 mortifyingly dull trade rags have shut down. Good for them.

Posted 5:55 PM by Gene

U.S. Report Says Sept. 11 Detentions 'Unduly Harsh'

U.S. Citizens Say Sept. 11 Attacks Unduly Deadly.

Posted 5:49 PM by Gene

A CAVALCADE OF GOOGLEBLOGGER ERROR MESSAGES:

Provider error '80004005'

Unspecified error

//functions/doAutoLogin.inc, line 65

* * * *

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80004005'

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

//global.asa, line 15

* * * *

Blogger Pro is undergoing some quick maintenance. Please check back in a few minutes. Sorry for the inconvenience.

* * * *

Please stand by... Blogger will be back in a moment.

* * * *

What made that third one such a laff riot is I'M NOT ON BLOGGER PRO!!!!!

More of this kind of excellent technology and I take my blog somewhere else.

Posted 5:46 PM by Gene

Some hack castigates the GoogleBlogger of ISPs, but then he says its magazines "have gotten hipper and edgier and smarter and more self-aware," which I guess means they're running more of what the hack likes to read -- more PLUGS.

Posted 5:45 PM by Gene

Remember when the business news hacks puffed that IBM was such a terrific comeback kid? Seems some of that comeback may have been fueled with a hearty meal of cooked books.

Posted 5:44 PM by Gene

Are the Supremes backtracking on their ruling re the Jack Valenti Memorial Disney Protection Act?

Posted 5:43 PM by Gene

GENERAL JR. SAYS



In all fairness (I want to be fair to a future seven-digit Gucci Gulch lobbyist?), media probably won't be better or worse for the GENERAL JR.'s machinations; on the other hand, when a big media company that shares a name with an oil company whose logo is a dinosaur decides one centralized newscast is good enough for 62 stations, you suspect the worst. And of course GENERAL JR. had enormous help from such highly-polished solid-gold shysters as a former FCC chairman -- who got his job under TRICKY DICK -- and whose name is WILEY.

Posted 6:49 AM by Gene

If the alleged Lousiana serial killer's race is fair game, so is the alleged Olympic Park bomber's religion. I just hope the Post isn't running this as yet another expression of its longstanding religious, er, beliefs (you know, "poor, uneducated, and easy to command").

Posted 6:40 AM by Gene

The New York Philharmonic's stunning announcement that it's leaving Lincoln Center for Carnegie Hall must be viewed in its own way as yet another repudiation of sixties-style urban renewal. Why not plan to tear down that casino complex and start over?

Posted 8:28 PM by Gene

Yet another reason our culture stinks: Someone's written a musical prequel to The Wizard of Oz that's allegedly headed to Broadway. True, people will never stop adapting the L. Frank Baum work -- we forget there was a hit musical (two if you count Babes in Toyland, which was a kind of sequel), at least five film adaptations, and possibly three radio series before Arthur Freed tried it; and afterwards Liza Minnelli starred in a badly animated feature, and Mouth from the South attempted an animated kiddie TV show for ABC among his too many other line extensions; and of course there was The Wiz. At least Charlie Smalls (who wrote its entertaining score) could say he started from scratch, with an all-black version; less that kind of gimmick the problem with adapting such a classic now is the unmoving shadow of Arlen and Harburg, and, of course, "Over the Rainbow" (which I posit has too many resemblances to a movement in a nearly contemporaneous sonata by the unjustly neglected Russian master Nicolai Medtner to be Arlen's, but that's another story). It is telling that the lengthy press release does not even mention the composer, a sure sign this is a piece of junk, even if a producer has lured Kristin Chenoweth into the lead. Our culture will never get better with copies of copies -- or worse, doomed flailings over insuperable classics.

A footnote: The anonymous composer is Stephen Schwartz, who had three hits in quick succession in the seventies and then disappeared, re-emerging for a series of forgettable Eisners. His most famous tune is the liturgical cliche "Preeeeeeee-eee-eeeeee-paaaaaaaare Yeeeeee thuuuuh Way ooooooooof the Loooooooooord," the anthem of millions of bad Catholic guitar players. If Wicked is anything like the most recent Broadway show with his music, a misbegotten reworking of Studs Terkel's Working, we're talking flop big-time.

Posted 6:20 PM by Gene

Typographical Freudian slip of the week:

"Newspaper-owed [SIC] television stations program more and better news and public affairs than any other stations," said John Sturm, president of the Newspaper Association of America.

Yep, they do owe.

Remember, one day and counting to....

Posted 11:52 AM by Gene

Another sign Iraq's getting back to normal.

Posted 11:00 AM by Gene

Bill the Entomologist's evil twin (sic) wants a tax break.

The only good news in this story is he has taken some baths lately. The bad news is, they don't seem to have hurt him much.

Posted 10:33 AM by Gene

Jeb Bush Blasts Clinton as 'Most Self Absorbed Person' in U.S.

Jeb, you never met me. Of course, I was never president.

Posted 10:12 AM by Gene

So long as BLUNDER assigns Devin the Flack to do press releases of has-been metal bands, we should be okay. Problem is, Mark doesn't assign the industry's top advertising copywriter to do has-beens.

Why I am thinking Devin's as much an over-the-top me-me-me pill as Jayson?

Posted 10:08 AM by Gene

FORTUNATELY, the idea that fetuses have rights caused a lot of gagging and coughing and wheezing in the luxuriously furnished, hermetically-sealed BLUNDER editorial suites.

Can't make our "pro-choice" owner lose his humble lunch.

Posted 10:01 AM by Gene

Oh, oh: BLUNDER rag (?!?!?!?!?) says RACIAL PROFILING may have SLOWED the hunt for that SERIAL KILLER in Lousiana?

MARK! FIRE PEOPLE!

Posted 9:56 AM by Gene

Bush, Chirac Shake Hands at Summit After Iraq Rift

And they'll spend the whole day washing them.

Posted 9:20 AM by Gene

Gephardt, Kerry Miss the Most Hill Votes

Yeah, but it's all for a good cause.

Posted 8:56 AM by Gene

OPRAH FOR PRESIDENT?

Unfortunately, there are enough sob-sister women, the incorrigible Oprah addicts, who would say YES.

And sorry Oprah, we don't take your denial seriously.

Posted 8:49 AM by Gene

We know all about morality police. The minute you say something un-PC or light up a cigarette fifty thousand news hacks swoop down like vultures.

But seriously, we'd better step up our presence a little more, Mr. Kissingerite.