Posted 6:52 PM by Gene

I've got an idea -- why not call it LAYOFF FINANCIAL STADIUM?

Posted 6:43 PM by Gene

Thumb-twiddling educrats in Michigan decide to discriminate against religion majors in college.

I wouldn't put it past the Nine Fingers in the Wind to pull one of their Profiles in Courage again.

Posted 4:43 PM by Gene

Where do people get the idea Howard Dean's a liberal?

Where do people get the idea The Wall Street Journals are conservative?

Posted 4:40 PM by Gene

MORE HISTORIC GOLF: At the International tournament, Alejandro Larrazabal shot 32 UNDER on his first two rounds! Unfortunately, that's by the Modified Stableford scoring system. In reality, he had six bogies and twelve doubles! (And they pick up their balls after the doubles, so there's no telling how low he could have gone!)

Posted 4:20 PM by Gene

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Friday confirmed a Newsday report of a secret meeting between Pentagon officials and an Iranian arms dealer in 2001 but said the exchange "went nowhere."

Think we can hunt down some conspiracies with this one? (Any way to try to screw up Iraq.)

Posted 4:13 PM by Gene

Another Google search: "Schwarzenegger" and "surprise" yield 23,500 hits.

It's times like these when I feel I'm doing the electronic equivalent of banging my head against a wall.

Posted 4:08 PM by Gene

American media should be more like the BBC

All they'd need do is speak with British accents.

Lord KNOWS Pee-TAH's tried.

Posted 9:10 AM by Gene

Speaking of stench, I was scrolling through our stinky local Inky's site complete with the usual rhapsodic buncombe about The Boss (KnightRidder, why should I read a paid press release?), when I scrolled down and spotted a Dowdian column called "Unconventional Wisdom." So I looked the term up in Google. 51,100 hits without quotation marks, 13,300 hits with. A lot of people have unconventional wisdom -- especially among the ossifed CW news hacks.

P. S. It gets worse: the MORONS at KnightRidder Philly Broadsheet Edition put Bruce on the front page of their Saturday AND Sunday editions, which go on sale together. Why didn't they go for the trifecta and put him on KnightRidder Philly Tabloid Edition (aka the Daily News) as well? This is just the reverse side of Tony Auth's Pulitzer winning cartoon about Jews. It's also a way for the staff to boast of its free tickets. What news hacks don't spin, they sell.

Posted 8:41 AM by Gene

Even Hearst can be embarrassed (however little). This talk of the "surprise" element is a joke. David probably screamed the ploy over the phone to some AP hack, thinking any publicity is good publicity -- especially for an obsolete men's mag that got crushed in succession by Playboy and GQ and the airhead-laddie books. Sorry David, you may be free of Jayson's taint, but your rag still stinks.

Posted 8:26 AM by Gene

GM doesn't want this lemon!

That's what you get when you're in the market for used auto makers.

Posted 8:16 AM by Gene

This Auletta says "NBC needs the ability to compete and act more like Viacom and News Corp.'s Fox Entertainment Group-with its own television production company, film studio and stable of major cable networks."

Four for four. HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT COMPETITION, ROBERT J.?

Posted 7:11 PM by Gene

FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! has censors?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Posted 7:06 PM by Gene

Hey Dickie V, gotta ask again, ya think Scandal City's gonna hang over the season?

Posted 6:07 PM by Gene

WE WANT OUR PAC-MAN!

Posted 5:35 PM by Gene

Which vacuum cleaner sucks the most? [Front-page head]

I don't know, but I can be pretty sure whose SOFTWARE does.

Posted 5:19 PM by Gene

Which reminds me, about a week ago Jeff (who got off a pretty fair logrolling of the Professor himself) got in a violent tiz over the dumbing-down of pedestrian traffic lights. "Why?" screamed Jeff. "Because we're all illiterate (well, the way the schools are going...)?" Uh, if I recall, Jeff, your employer has a rather exemplary record of dumbing down people too. How soon we forget that the Terror Twins, Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, developed Timespeak, an exquisite mangling of English so offensive to some that Wolcott Gibbs seared it in a famous New Yorker parody that's still funny if you know the history. "Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind!" Timespeak disappeared, but the rag's propensity to lie for power and profit didn't. Who discourages literacy more: the well-meaning bureaucrat substituting pictograms for words, or a venal liar like ADVERTISEMENT (who's no doubt a close friend of Jeff's)?

Posted 5:10 PM by Gene

Another Professor coproduction, Volokh, gets exercised that a Kinsley.com entomologist uses the word "fascist" lightly. The problem is, liberals used words like "fascist" to describe the Dirty Harry movies -- and those are immortal favorites of the knee-jerk right. When somebody writes like this I cannot escape the notion that he writes covertly.

Posted 5:02 PM by Gene

[A] CNN reporter working on the [Kobe] Bryant case phoned the Lakers' publicity office and asked to speak to legendary Lakers announcer Chick Hearn, who died a year ago.

NEWS HACKS ARE IDIOTS!

Posted 4:59 PM by Gene

Braggart's going to write Pvt. Lynch's "memoirs" (memoirs at 19! Oiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!), which guarantees they'll be heavily-upholstered fiction.

Posted 4:53 PM by Gene

I said Ah-NULT was no Reagan almost a week before Rush did, and I don't earn $800 million a year and have 50 million uncritical fans.

By the way, I don't listen to talk radio. (I picked the link up from WALTER WINCHELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) I don't like knee-jerks of any stripe, which is all you get from the media; and besides, I'd like to believe I can think for myself.

Posted 3:26 PM by Gene

SORRY, Robert J. "Competition" Samuelson, some people who are FED UP with the media are SERIOUS.

P. S. Upon further examination, I see its board of advisors includes someone from the hard-core knee-jerk leftist group FAIR (sighhhhhhhhhhhh) and the hard-core knee-jerk leftist polemicist Barbara Ehrenreich (sighhhhhhhhhhh), but in its FAQ it disclaims partisanship. I'll give this group the benefit of the doubt -- for now.

Posted 7:32 AM by Gene

The latest excuses from Registered-Trademark Bloggers (at least judging from this critical TNR piece) will be that Ah-NULT campaigned for a California ballot proposition (this is management experience?), and he has Pete Wilson's advisers. Do Californians really want Pete Wilson's advisers running their state?

Posted 7:05 AM by Gene

After Mel Brooks stretched the boundaries of musical taste with ``Springtime for Hitler,'' now it is time for ``An Evening with Joe -- Stalin The Musical.''

Sing along to ``The Gulag Rag'' and ``Mrs Stalin Regrets.'' Enjoy a high-kicking, Moulin Rouge-style funeral for the Soviet dictator with a rousing chorus of ``Sweet Stalin I'm In Love Again.''

Cambridge student James Stevens, who wrote and directed the show now appearing at the Edinburgh FRINGE Festival....

OIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 7:00 AM by Gene

What is the difference between a libertarian and a liberal?

Practically speaking, none -- except the liberal can be intolerably self-righteous, and the libertarian intolerably smug.

Posted 6:58 AM by Gene

There is hope: Howard Rosenberg, predictable TV tantrum thrower, is retiring from the LALATimes -- but you can't read about it outside LALA because Trib has put it off limits.

Now if Robert "Over the" Hilburn could just hang up his geetar.

Posted 5:33 PM by Gene

I go out on a limb again. Anyone want to bet Gray Davis resigns? That would hand the seat over to a fellow Democrat -- and a Latino. There's the way to go.

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

I just realized something: Yesterday was August 6 -- the 58th anniversary of the atom-bombing of Hiroshima -- and we didn't get lectured! Heads will roll.

Posted 2:06 PM by Gene

Sighhhhhhhh, Forbes.com is at it again:

"A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say."

-Italo Calvino

A classic is a book everybody's read but nobody reads.

Posted 2:00 PM by Gene

If GENERAL JR.'s kind of monopoly is so hunky-dory, Robert J. "Competition" Samuelson, why are six hundred TV stations (under the inapt acronym of NASA) taking the FCC to court?

Posted 12:10 PM by Gene

Now I know the California race is a joke. Gary Coleman's running.

At least Peter Ueberroth has credentials.

Posted 11:56 AM by Gene

I had to post this: They're staging opera again at the baths of Caracalla. If the sight awes us now, imagine what it was like brand new. I repeat, our culture can't do things like this anymore.

P. S. If I had comments I'd probably hear it about slave labor, the corrupt Roman caesars, etc., etc., ETC. What I meant is, the kind of noble inspiration that radiated through Rome's culture -- that inspired the Founding Fathers, among others -- is missing today. We'll see it at Ground Zero, where the ugliest white elephants will remind us of our aesthetic impotence.

Posted 11:46 AM by Gene

[I]s the flash mob nothing more than this era's obnoxious public fad, like streaking, or running onto a baseball field during the game?

Here's something else that gets the Professor excited. You keep it up and I'll lump you with Bob-o Thompson and Noam Chomsky.

Posted 11:39 AM by Gene

If ASWIA members didn't support the "nearly-naked" rags they'd be out of business.

Posted 10:50 AM by Gene

Hmmm, maybe some Republicans aren't as enamored of Ah-NULT as I thought.

I still believe he can win, solely on name recognition. By rights, he shouldn't be in the race. And remember, before anyone mentions the wonderful Jesse, he had a honeymoon, and he had a severe falling-out with the public, and he ultimately failed in office. And before anyone mentions Ronald Reagan, he had the backing of Walt Disney and Jack Wrather (the Lone Ranger producer). He didn't strike out on an ego-driven whim.

Meantime Andy S. thinks Ah-NULT's gay, and the Professor cites him approvingly, which makes them both asses.

And speaking of the MasterBlogger, he quotes his coproduction "Lileks":

Will he win? Well, he’ll bring new voters to the polls - we saw this in Minnesota with Jesse. People who never voted will find it cool to vote for Arnie, and even though they might not be the most sophisticated participant [sic] in the process, they’ll probably intuit that a vote isn’t just a thumbs-up statement. It means something.

Yeah, it means they'll vote for somebody with name recognition who bombs, so they'll figure, you can't vote for anybody, so they'll stop voting. Honest, the big-name bloggers stop thinking when they start typing.

UPDATE: In some places Ah-NULT is distinctly unenamored (caveat: it's a NewsMax).

Posted 6:57 AM by Gene

Here's a word that gets the show-biz news hack's blood rushing, like "edgy" or "hip": "fringe," an excuse for public nudism and Marcel Marceau. We're supposed to get excited that all this wonderful "theater" is playing all over big cities like New York and Philadelphia and every other town that thinks Ed Rendell is its salvation. Problem is, even by the Times' admission, only 48,000 showed up for the last of these festivals, which by my calculation equals all of a sell-out month for one show on Broadway; and in the 1927-28 season there were 264 shows, and most of them didn't play in lofts or converted houses. And we get all this PR babble about "fringe" because show-biz news hacks refuse to admit our culture's gotten worse.

Posted 6:44 AM by Gene

WE WANT SADDAM!

Posted 6:31 AM by Gene

The Tea Time Club decides not to steep its bags too long.

Posted 6:27 AM by Gene

I predicted Ah-NULT would run last Friday. (Alas, I don't get a billion hits every ten minutes like the Professor.) Now to see if the rest of my prediction holds.

Posted 6:24 AM by Gene

Why is this holy cockroach smiling? Because he's going to get 72 virgins!

May they all look like Helen Thomas.

Posted 7:03 PM by Gene

I don't think this story will make Muslims and non-Westerners like us either.

Posted 5:42 PM by Gene

Kobe Bryant case tests media restraint [front-page head]

RESTRAINT?!?!?!?!?

Posted 5:27 PM by Gene

Finally, a hack who hates "irony." (Big caveat: he was a press agent for Kerngershwin Hammerstein.)

Posted 5:19 PM by Gene

''Celebrity news, it's important to remember, is generally as reliable as a horoscope. Much of it is completely speculative or made up -- not necessarily by reporters, tabloid or otherwise, but by their sources. We have no way of knowing if a given celebrity romance has been contrived by publicists to give their clients a visibility boost timed with a movie or record release. Celebrity coverage is often quasi-fiction that just happens to feature characters who are real.''

This quote appears -- at the bottom of a story, well beyond the jump -- in USA Okay, which runs more show-biz drivel than any other newspaper, so we can count this opinion as DEFINITIVE.

Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

Wonder what Dubya's saying behind Colin's back.

We know what Colin says behind Dubya's back thanks to the Sieve of Fogbound.

Posted 5:06 PM by Gene

I guess this great populist didn't run because of BAD POLL NUMBERS.

Back to midget transvestites, and gawdawful operas, or whatever.

Posted 2:37 PM by Gene

Robert J. Samuelson's idiotic paean to the diversity of un-Big Media, having already been run by Buffett ElectronicMedia through a joint venture of GE Bancorp and Bill the Entomologist, and all but plagiarized by the Trib Company, now runs in Buffett PrintMedia. Ain't competition between little guys wonderful?

Posted 2:08 PM by Gene

Something tells me as "courageous" and "historic" as our local Tea Time Club's action was -- that's news-hack speak for, WE LIKE IT! -- it may not help the US, because people overseas will figure it's just one more proof we're decadent. And they wouldn't be far from wrong, either.

Posted 10:04 AM by Gene

An ever bigger name in show-biz and a partner with AOL cribs from Robert J. Samuelson in trying to do what news hacks think they know best -- hoodwinking the people.

Sorry Trib, we know WHO OWNS WHAT.

Has this become the party line of Big Media?

Posted 8:33 AM by Gene

Bombing linked to terrorist group

Surprise, surprise.

Posted 8:26 AM by Gene

Shucks, Raquel's separating from her fourth husband.

This airhead's not for marrying.

On second thought: Miss Welch, I understand you're a book fancier. If I could somehow entice you to get me an agent, not only would I expunge the two "airhead" references to you (you are still, after all, quite comely), I might even propose marriage. You game?

Posted 8:19 AM by Gene

When news hacks aren't doing favors for someone, they're doing favors for themselves. Here's a classic example of both. The Greatest Show of All Time has brought back The Greatest Comedians of All Time for a ninety-day run, and you know it's sold out already, and boy we wanted to get our tickets, so this cretin ran an ad on the front page of THE NEW YORK POST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The truth is no doubt more sinister: Kerngershwin Hammerstein, alarmed at his steadily declining royalties, pleaded with Nathan and Broderick, then screamed at Harvey Whiner and Lowsy Mays, and gave a ticket or two to a pliable hack, and more to his craven editors, and VOILA! Instant sell-out. Well, he'll get his sellout, but who wants to bet after the stunt is over the show goes back into free fall -- and God knows Kerngershwin and his clan have already angered many theatregoers with their $10,000 seats -- possibly a reason the show was in free-fall, along with its vastly enduring excellence. Another demonstration, Andy S. (thankfully on vacation), of why RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! is such a danger to all of us.

Posted 8:12 AM by Gene

By the way, does it not occur to anyone that the terrorizing head-chopping hand-lopping wife-beating honor-killing full-body-veiling extremist Muslims and the platitude-spouting guitar-strumming non-judgmentalizing turn-the-other-cheeking finger-in-the-winding Tea Time Clubbers are opposite extremes?

Posted 7:07 AM by Gene

Beady-Eyed Stinkers

Sure you aren't referring to yourselves, O New York Times?

Posted 6:59 AM by Gene

Does the British Vicarage and Tea Time Club really have seventy million members? I've seen numbers that America has anywhere from two to ten million Muslims, although the estimate usually depends on whom the reporter is sleeping with. How does anybody know? This number most likely comes from the news hack's favorite source: whole cloth. I'd bet the number of active club members is a fraction of that, and the number of members who think they're attending a church a fraction of that fraction.

Posted 6:26 AM by Gene

There is a God -- and His name is Pinch.

Now back to trying to screw up Iraq!

Posted 5:25 PM by Gene

U.S. Says Liberia Mission Wouldn't Be Another Somalia

Sounds a mite defensive, guys.

Posted 5:20 PM by Gene

How Robots Will Steal Your Job

If only LEGENDARY WELCH could have implemented THIS!

Let's see, robots doing clerical work, Indians engineering and writing code -- who's going to work here?

Or as LEGENDARY might have said, "NOT MY PROBLEM!"

Posted 5:12 PM by Gene

A PR BONANZA! A stupid company that spent kazillions for stadium naming rights is laying off hundreds -- and there's NO RELATION!!!!!

I think "The LINC" got ENRONNED!

Posted 5:01 PM by Gene

Remember, no cheering! Only the news hacks can do that.

Posted 5:00 PM by Gene

One consolation: if the future of newspaper Web sites is AP headlines, so is the future of newspapers.

Posted 2:23 PM by Gene

Steve "Mogul" Jobs has an $84 million corporate plane! WOWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!

Norfolk Southern's CEO has one too. Can't he take a train?

And Arby's CEO, who spent $1.1 million in flight time in 2001, hasn't let up since. Must be taste-testing lots of roast-beef sandwiches.

And all because of -- SEPTEMBER 11 pffh-hh-hh-hh-hh-hh!!!!!

Guess that's some CEO's sibling's birthday.

LET THEM EAT JET FUEL!

Posted 11:54 AM by Gene

Really, I think Casablanca is a great movie too. BUT...

Both Warner Bros. and Warner Home Video are divisions of AOL Time Warner, which owns CNN. Aside from writing columns for The Hollywood Reporter, Robert Osborne is the host of Turner Classic Movies, another division of AOL Time Warner.

you know the movie biz isn't making great films anymore when its owners produce disclaimers longer than movies.

Posted 9:34 AM by Gene

I see the clowns at Trib LALA Edition have put their entertainment section off-limits. While little there is worth reading -- the world can do without the eructations of Robert "Over the" Hilburn -- the Trib gang did it without notice. I think the dream in the back of too many news hacks' tiny brains is to turn all their sites paid, and maybe throw a bone of AP headlines to those who can't or won't pay. If they want to make the Internet useless -- and they seem to want to do it -- this is the way to go.

Posted 7:00 AM by Gene

Why am I thinking Little Jeffrey will have a major-league problem when the Feds finally discover GE Bancorp is a bank?

Posted 6:51 AM by Gene

Saudi Arabia, jolted by al Qaeda bombings and U.S. criticism, is experimenting with tentative political reform as a weapon against Muslim "extremism."

In the latest move, the kingdom's de facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah announced the formation of a center for dialogue to combat "racism and extremism" and address political and religious differences.

The scope and influence of the "King Abdul Aziz Center for National Dialogue" were not defined in Sunday's announcement....

Pffhh-hh-hh-HH-HH-HH-HH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 6:33 AM by Gene

Peaceful!

I guess General will complain about this too.

Posted 6:30 AM by Gene

The movie companies would be better off throwing their money in the street. At least some folks would invest it wisely.

On top of that, Butt and Butthead appear to have another flop on their hands.

Posted 6:24 AM by Gene

How many more holy cockroaches continue to scurry here?

Posted 6:21 AM by Gene

Another press release that should never have seen the light of day sees the light of day, complete with built-in disclaimer:

The magazine admits the photos were retouched, but no details are given on what was adjusted.

Posted 6:17 AM by Gene

Wonder how many of the natives are smiling today.

Posted 7:38 PM by Gene

Vir-GIN-ia, at the end of a LONG column on Ann vs. Michael:

Could we now go back to talking about something more interesting?

There's too much of yakety-yak on the Web, and it's only compounded by the vast hordes of navel-staring bloggers. THIS is why I try to limit myself to two or three sentences.

Posted 7:28 PM by Gene

Another story that should never have seen the light of day sees the light of day.

Have news hacks decided, well, people don't trust us anyway, so we'll run any old story we want?

Posted 5:42 PM by Gene

I wouldn't put it past someone at Fogbound to have put out the news of General's "departure" as a sort of feeler. Fogbound is the sieve of the Beltway when it comes to leaking.

The Post hasn't taken down its story, despite Colin's pretentious denial.

Posted 5:31 PM by Gene

A cell phone as a primary phone makes some sense, even if it means 1) paying three times the rate of landline phone service, 2) all those ugly cellphone retransmitters on buildings, and 3) listening to a total stranger's love life. Sort of.

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

Foghorn Leghorn retires!

Posted 5:05 PM by Gene

I HAD A HUNCH THIS WOULD HAPPEN (the delay, that is).

Posted 3:48 PM by Gene

Given that Forbes overestimated Bob Hope's wealth by at least $85 million (far more adjusted for inflation) we should not take its estimates of other celebrities' wealth seriously.

My favorite number: Terry Keenan, formerly a pretty face for "Lollipop" Lou Dobbs, now gassing on FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!News, said he was worth $1 billion. How typical of FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NEWS HACKS STRIKE AGAIN!

Posted 1:35 PM by Gene

In Jordan, wives still enjoy the right to be killed by their husbands.

Posted 12:13 PM by Gene

What do these two stories (both linked on the invaluable IWantMedia.com) have in common:

NBC Says Its Profit Will Increase Sharply; and

WTUR [A CHEAP CHANNEL Disney Network affiliate in Utica, New York] Ends Local Newscasts?

Posted 11:04 AM by Gene

If the Jeff "Zucks" Zuckers of this world really want to chase viewers away from the tube, they'll incorporate more product placements in their shows, and they'll incorporate them more aggressively.

Posted 10:57 AM by Gene

America's three operative mottoes are:

If it feels good, do it;

The end justifies the means; and

NOT ME!

Posted 9:40 AM by Gene

More afflicting the afflicted. Why must I know about this?

And yes, anointing a new Lunt and Fontanne and afflicting the afflicted are related.

Posted 9:16 AM by Gene

Not content to anoint the greatest musical of all time, one of our generation's greatest press agents anoints "a new Lunt and Fontanne."

You looking for work, Ben?

Posted 9:05 AM by Gene

In still more automatic typing today, a MESS "analyst" says Kobe's losing "the perception battle."

Let's wait until the trial, guys.

Posted 8:21 AM by Gene

Even when writing "requiems" (in this case, over the very dead form called musicals) the blurbists firmly refuse to admit that the problem's with our CULTURE, that the whole CULTURE's exhausted, and that we produce nothing but JUNK. No, gotta talk about irony -- and edginess.

I've been at ArtsJournal.com again grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Posted 8:13 AM by Gene

Someone could write a stemwinder about Muzak; instead, a McCabe-Lokos tests out its computer's new automatic typing function.

Posted 6:54 AM by Gene

I think I see the point. Alas, as GE Bancorp Network spokesperson Bill Carter notes, the mini-movies "will not mean fewer commercials or network promotions." In other words, there'll be more "clutter," which translates into more distractions, which translates into people getting madder at the TV, which translates into another reason viewers should abandon network television.

Posted 6:42 AM by Gene

General, one term is enough.

Will Dubya appoint THE FIXER in his place? (Assuming he wins a second term, that is.)

Posted 6:26 AM by Gene

Another reason to WAR on Liberia: We'll fight child soldiers.

Posted 6:24 AM by Gene

Among the many many bad things JACK and his conspiracy promote is smoking. But judging from the opening of this story about Whoopi Goldberg's new sitcom --

"You know, secondhand smoke kills."

"So do I."

-- she shouldn't worry about anti-smoking zealots. She should worry about her writers.

Posted 8:57 PM by Gene

Sighhhhhhhhhhh, Robert J. Samuelson (a writer for whom I have some respect) seems to have gone off the deep end regarding GENERAL JR. and his "reforms." As he insists on putting it:

In the past 30 years, media power has splintered dramatically; people have more choices than ever. Travel back to 1970. There were only three major TV networks (ABC, CBS, NBC); now, there’s a fourth (Fox). Then, there was virtually no cable TV; now, 68 percent of households have it. Then, FM radio was a backwater; now there are 5,892 FM stations, up from 2,196 in 1970. Then, there was only one national newspaper (The Wall Street Journal); now, there are two more (USA Today and The New York Times).

If you don’t like radio, you can listen to a Walkman or pop a CD in your car player; in 1970, people had only bulky stereo systems. The alternative to TV is the VCR (85 percent of households) or, increasingly, the DVD player. Then there’s the Internet: everything from foreign news sites to chess to pornography.

Point 1: In 1970 the three networks were more or less independently owned. Today three of the four are owned by companies in movies, which allows them to be captives of their sister studio operations; witness the Disney Network. And even in cable, all four networks' parents have substantial programming interests, so what they lose in one medium they'll gain in another. (Clever that he forgets the Little Two, UPN and the WB, which are also controlled by companies in the movie biz. Clever also that he forgets in the early fifties there were four networks.)

Point 2: In 1970 cable was still an experimental medium owned by mom-and-pop entrepreneurs. Today it's a huge industry essentially dominated on the hardware end (i.e., cable systems) by a cabal, and on the software end (i.e., cable channels) by a cabal (pun intended). And two companies (AOL and Cablevision) have sizable interests on both ends. Some diversity.

Point 3: In 1970 most radio stations were independently owned, and played a variety of formats. Today two companies dominate the medium, which is run solely for the benefit of big consumer-products firms, promoting national advertising at the expense of localism and diversity.

Point 4: Yes, there are three national newspapers. There are also far fewer locally-owned papers (it escapes the intrepid Dr. Samuelson that USA Okay is owned by Gannett, notorious bane of localism in news); the afternoon edition, once an industry staple, has practically vanished; and except for a few big markets competition is nonexistent. Also, per-capita newspaper readership has declined, meaning the surviving papers are that much more dominant.

Point 5: Pop a CD in your car player and it's most likely made by one of the Big Five, four of which are foreign-owned; there was far more competition (and American ownership) in the record business in 1970. (Let us not point out that America still had a consumer electronics industry back then; that's virtually vanished too.) The same with prerecorded VHS tapes (how quaint) and the DVD; these are dominated by the same companies already dominant in movies and television -- and three of them are in the Big Five. (And the most prominent of their content, theatrical movies, merely migrated from network television, where they got their first TV exposure and played to large audiences.) As to the Internet, an astonishing number of the biggest sites are Big Media's; very few (Yahoo!, for instance) sprung out of nowhere, and Yahoo! didn't want to be an outsider forever; it hired a Big Media CEO. (Neither did AOL when it merged with Time Warner. How soon we forgot all the talk of Internet-Big Media mergers.)

Point 6: Elsewhere in his rant Robert J. pouts, "Popular hostility toward big media stems partly from the growing competition (a.k.a. more 'choice'), which creates winners and losers—and losers complain." Problem is, when the NRA, NOW, the Christian Coalition and Consumers Union can all complain about the same thing, it says with big media -- WE ALL LOSE. (And Bob, if our current un-big media are such an unalloyed wonder, why the quotation marks around "'choice'"?)

I don't think Robert J. Samuelson is a knee-jerk conservative, but his twaddle is a classic example of how the Buttmans and the Armeys view monopoly; simply put, the bigger the monopoly, the better.

Posted 2:28 PM by Gene

I think what George is trying to tell the tantrum throwers of both parties is, "OH, SHUT UP."

Posted 2:23 PM by Gene

I don't know why these fool celebs need to carry guns. All they have to do is open their bad-breath mouths and they slay millions.

Posted 2:10 PM by Gene

I find it hard to grieve for all of Bill's entomologists who got guilt feelings when all their misbegotten code made them rich, and I'm having trouble working up sympathy for northwestern Washington now that the Microsoft bubble has largely burst. I have learned (reluctantly) to live with my own small salary and small savings. But if any of the bug infesters feels really, really bad about their wealth, I'll be happy to take a load of their shoulders.

Posted 1:51 PM by Gene

How bad is Giggly? "People were starting cell phone conversations, and nobody minded."

Posted 1:42 PM by Gene

A man with a facial tattoo deserves to go broke.

Posted 1:29 PM by Gene

While going through the rigamarole to get GoogleBlogger back to normal I installed Alexa's toolbar. Despite the link to its parent Amazon.com I'd recommend it because not only does it have site counts, it has a pop-up ad filter that seems to work well (although pop-under ads do evade it).

Posted 9:32 AM by Gene

Well, well! I found to keep out of LoFi you have to upgrade your Web browser. To learn about this you must sort through a hundred different GoogleBlogger pages. Also, I discovered you can reset your archives just by clicking Edit and then Post & Publish for any entry. No mention of that anywhere in GoogleBlogger. I loooooooove your customer service, GoogleBlogger!