THE NEWS HACK'S CREED:
I know more than you.
I make lots more money than you.
I'm smarter than you.
I'm sexier than you.
I appear on TV all the time.
I work ten minutes a day.
I rule the universe.
I'm going to live forever.
You are an idiot.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 2:
A lie isn't a lie when it tells THE TRUTH.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 3:
I've come to realize that the looseness of the journalistic life, the seeming laxity of the newsroom, is an illusion. Yes, there's informality and there's humor, but beneath the surface lies something deadly serious. It is a code. Sometimes the code is not even written down, but it is deeply believed in. And, when violated, it is enforced with tribal ferocity.
--JOHN "OMERTA" CARROLL.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 4:
News isn't news when we don't report it.
PERMALINKS:
THE NEWS HACKS' DICTIONARY
THE EUGENE DAVID GLOSSARY
AMERICA'S MOST UNINTENTIONALLY FUNNY WEB SITE!
Blogroll Me!
![[Powered by Blogger]](http://buttons.blogger.com/bloggerbutton1.gif){kind=small}
Saturday, October 04, 2003
Edward Kennedy to receive Bush Award for public service
This Bush (Papa) did the right thing by letting Saddam off the hook, so he'll gladly accept it.
This Bush (Papa) did the right thing by letting Saddam off the hook, so he'll gladly accept it.
Here's why most of the free dishrags -- er, newspapers will fail: they're indistinguishable from the (hold your nose) alternative weeklies whose graffiti-enhanced boxes pockmark our cities (in several senses) and whose contents are frequently strewn all over streets, or mixed with a bagman's belongings. They're also so easy a read you can finish them in five seconds. But the beauty part is they drag down regular newspapers too: people figure, if this is all we can expect from a newspaper, why should we pay for one? And they won't attract the YOUNG audience as most are semi-literate at best anyway. But if the freebies are what it takes to put the millionaire pundits and ad-blurb copywriters and high-mucky-muck vacuum-sealed editorialists out to pasture, I say, bring them on!
Shucks, I guess sometimes pandering isn't enough.
I really thought this guy had a chance, and he might have, had he run as the Anti-Democrat. Instead he became a carbon copy of a carbon copy of the Democrats' worst. If you want the real pander, vote for Race-Card Al, or Congressman Cowface Flipflop.
I really thought this guy had a chance, and he might have, had he run as the Anti-Democrat. Instead he became a carbon copy of a carbon copy of the Democrats' worst. If you want the real pander, vote for Race-Card Al, or Congressman Cowface Flipflop.
Good news on the Iraq front: Two Iraqi scientists shot after aiding U.S.
Besides, it's all about POLITICS.
Besides, it's all about POLITICS.
OH oh, is RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! sneaking away from his "base"?
Conservatism as partisan sport--the opposite of principled, ideological debate--has become major entertainment and helped debase much right-aisle political debate into an undifferentiated noise of team-rooting.
And both teams are out to clobber the opposition -- but only the public gets clobbered.
Conservatism as partisan sport--the opposite of principled, ideological debate--has become major entertainment and helped debase much right-aisle political debate into an undifferentiated noise of team-rooting.
And both teams are out to clobber the opposition -- but only the public gets clobbered.
Here's another instance of RENAISSANCE: the depressed city of Asheville, N.C. attracts upscale BARS, and now it's REVIVED -- which means it has no downtown department stores or sizable retailers of any kind, no big office employers, no industry, lots of poverty -- but it does have tons of "hip" BARS.
Meantime, not far from this RENAISSANCE, real people have trouble making ends meet.
Meantime, not far from this RENAISSANCE, real people have trouble making ends meet.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Unemployed former soldiers in Saddam Hussein's disbanded army...
...can be useful idiots.
...can be useful idiots.
Are More People Cheating?
Guess whose name does not appear in this story. The Times should be slightly careful when it eructates these grand statements about ethics.
Guess whose name does not appear in this story. The Times should be slightly careful when it eructates these grand statements about ethics.
Do we really need a Zagat music guide? Do we really want to know, from the people who brought us restaurant ratings, how "people like us" rank the top 1,000 albums?
In an age of marketing, marketing and marketing, yes.
Judging from what I can glean this is the official music-listening list of news hacks. These morons listen to 90-percent rock and little else because it's "boring" or "depressing." (But they will give room for Kind of Blue [sighhhhhhhhhh] because it's a MASTERPIECE.) And the stuff's piped in like Muzak no doubt in most of the luxury news suites. No doubt either these are fitness phreaks who MUST get their bodies in perfect shape and see nothing discordant in pouring musical CRAP into their ears while doing it. Bad music begets bad writing, which begets bad papers.
In an age of marketing, marketing and marketing, yes.
Judging from what I can glean this is the official music-listening list of news hacks. These morons listen to 90-percent rock and little else because it's "boring" or "depressing." (But they will give room for Kind of Blue [sighhhhhhhhhh] because it's a MASTERPIECE.) And the stuff's piped in like Muzak no doubt in most of the luxury news suites. No doubt either these are fitness phreaks who MUST get their bodies in perfect shape and see nothing discordant in pouring musical CRAP into their ears while doing it. Bad music begets bad writing, which begets bad papers.
Not only is Freely Fraleigh's favorite way of reaching the great Arab street anti-American and anti-Jew, judging from today's event, it's WRONG.
As if that would stop news hacks of any stripe.
P. S. I just learned Freely came from PEPSICO, which sponsored Hezbollah TV. IDIOTS!
As if that would stop news hacks of any stripe.
P. S. I just learned Freely came from PEPSICO, which sponsored Hezbollah TV. IDIOTS!
Hree's the next thing news hacks can turn their backs on: the wacko Scientologists. What with so many sexy show biz stars being a part (and Slick making all those sympathetic noises when he was president) I would not be surprised if a significant number of the six- and seven-digits are trying to get their thoroughly cloudy foggy brains in the "clear."
I have decided every time there's a suicide bombing in Israel the news hacks react with a certain smug contentedness, much as they do when things go badly for us in Iraq.
NEWS HACKS ARE NEVER WRONG.
NEWS HACKS ARE NEVER WRONG.
Friday, October 03, 2003
Please, pretty please, Mr. Kofi? With sugar on it? With milk on it?
Oh, and I have a suggestion, GENERAL: Maybe you can help pay for the noble cause by having YOUR SON fork over a few million grand from his new job at Viacon.
Oh, and I have a suggestion, GENERAL: Maybe you can help pay for the noble cause by having YOUR SON fork over a few million grand from his new job at Viacon.
Recognizing that Kinsley.com specializes in not-very-sincere devil's advocacy, that such a political tantrum thrower can run this article defending Rush so soon after "the incident" confirms that PC speech-code enforcement may not be as easy as it used to be.
It cost Kmart only $138 million to pay for the leeche -- er, LAWYERS who took it in and out of bankruptcy.
What if it had been WAL-MART?
I think we can call this a Blue Ambulance Light Special.
What if it had been WAL-MART?
I think we can call this a Blue Ambulance Light Special.
WE WIN!!!!! WE WIN!!!!!
You news hacks may gloat now, but as more of you try tabloid formats and free newspapers, you may not gloat later.
Gotta say it again, in a different way: every column inch devoted to PC speech-code enforcement is one less to expose corrupt politicians [this MAY NOT include politicians who merely LEAK], one less to expose church sexual abuse, one less to expose business chicanery, one less to expose supporters of terrorism, one less to expose squalor in schools, one less to...
You news hacks may gloat now, but as more of you try tabloid formats and free newspapers, you may not gloat later.
Gotta say it again, in a different way: every column inch devoted to PC speech-code enforcement is one less to expose corrupt politicians [this MAY NOT include politicians who merely LEAK], one less to expose church sexual abuse, one less to expose business chicanery, one less to expose supporters of terrorism, one less to expose squalor in schools, one less to...
"Slime and Defend"
Paul "Aren't Numbers Fun?" Krugman (or more likely his editors, the Nobel winner of statistical legerdemain not being that original) has chosen the perfect title: slime your enemies and defend yourself. In three words he underlines why so many columnists right and left are UNREADABLE.
And no, I didn't read this one either.
Paul "Aren't Numbers Fun?" Krugman (or more likely his editors, the Nobel winner of statistical legerdemain not being that original) has chosen the perfect title: slime your enemies and defend yourself. In three words he underlines why so many columnists right and left are UNREADABLE.
And no, I didn't read this one either.
Westerns, RIP; musicals, RIP; weepies, RIP; war movies, RIP; short subjects, RIP; documentaries, RIP; foreign films, RIP -- what's left after JACK and the Conspiracy (and the copywriters, and the hard-core fans) destroyed the industry?
Go ahead, leader of the inferiors to our north, take a toke! It can't addle your brain more than it is.
I now know the news hacks are overdoing it with the Bob Novak CIA story because here comes the inevitable tsunami of useless thumbsuckers.
Gosh, when Howie "The Hair-Shirted Annoying Imus Sidekick" Kurtz concedes that maybe possibly there's a media-bias problem, maybe possibly there's a problem.
Just one thing: NEWS HACKS ARE NEVER WRONG.
I wonder if when Shakespeare wrote "A plague o' both your houses!" he had all these whining crybabies right and left in mind.
Just one thing: NEWS HACKS ARE NEVER WRONG.
I wonder if when Shakespeare wrote "A plague o' both your houses!" he had all these whining crybabies right and left in mind.
President McClellan is popular with news hacks for one reason: they both dodged war.
This morning I turn to E. J. Dionne's column and stop reading after three words. I know what he thinks, sighhhhhhhhhh. This was after going to TownHall.com and scanning the Today's Opinion contents. I know what they think, sighhhhhhhhhh. When you can guess what pundits will think without reading their columns, doesn't that mean they're pretty well NOT WORTH READING?
OUT OF TIME IS A SOLID THRILLER!!!!!
--Jami Bernard, New York Daily News
MYSTIC RIVER IS A SOLID THRILLER!!!!!
--Jami Bernard, New York Daily News
JAMI, don't you know when you write ad copy you're not supposed to use the same words twice?
--Jami Bernard, New York Daily News
MYSTIC RIVER IS A SOLID THRILLER!!!!!
--Jami Bernard, New York Daily News
JAMI, don't you know when you write ad copy you're not supposed to use the same words twice?
GENERAL JR.'s expectedly puny fine could be seen as a warning shot across greedy broadcasters' bows -- or it could be seen as a favor awaiting a reply. Knowing GENERAL JR. and the Beltway, we're sure what to think.
Thursday, October 02, 2003
I can recall on the old Huntley-Brinkley Report the daily casualty count in Vietnam, on both sides -- in the hundreds. Apparently our commander in Iraq never saw Chet and David, because he handed the "zero-defect boys" a solid-gold rhetorical gift to up their demands we leave.
Pakistanis kills 12 al-Qaida suspects
Good! Twelve more holy cockroaches meets with their 72 Helen Thomases.
News hacks is never wrong -- even in their grammar.
Good! Twelve more holy cockroaches meets with their 72 Helen Thomases.
News hacks is never wrong -- even in their grammar.
Dark, Handsome and Short
Well, short anyway.
That's our Times: what's white is black (pardon -- African-American) and what's red is...there is no red.
President Damn! takes over the lead in fundraising!
Isn't it great to have so many excellent Democratic presidents! Pffh-hh-hh!
Isn't it great to have so many excellent Democratic presidents! Pffh-hh-hh!
Democrats Block Vote On EPA Chief
I got news for you, President McClellan....
Of course, after the news hacks are through with it, what was once right now becomes partisan.
I got news for you, President McClellan....
Of course, after the news hacks are through with it, what was once right now becomes partisan.
Now the Orbiting Jalopy won't fly until a year from now.
For the umpteenth time, let's ditch that rattletrap and think of something else!
For the umpteenth time, let's ditch that rattletrap and think of something else!
An "enigmatic" writer who "shuns the spotlight" has joined Pearl S. Buck and Jean-Paul Sartre in winning the Nobel prize for literature. On to immortal fame!
I have no pity for Rush the eight thousand million zillion dollar opinion machine, and we could ignore this story as just another exceedingly tiresome publicity stunt run amok, but the way the hacks must report it it has WE WIN!!!!! all over it, and what should be just an easily forgotten irritant becomes yet another reminder that news hacks are never wrong.
Happily, Rush being a junkie justifies it all.
Happily, Rush being a junkie justifies it all.
Is it a coincidence that as the news hacks practice insider baseball as never before, their employers are scrambling with new gimmicks like tabloid formats and free papers? The hacks may think their huge salaries and incalculable perks may never run out, but people aren't blindly reading their trash the way they used to, in part because reporting has become so much a game of politics and control. And whatever shape it's in, fish wrap is still fish wrap.
Wednesday, October 01, 2003
THE OSAMA CHANNEL SAYS ISRAEL PRACTICES APARTHEID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
One of these days I'm going to link to one of these sub-human stories with the comment, BROUGHT TO YOU BY CHEVROLET! I'm still not convinced the imbeciles of ASWIA have wtihdrawn their support.
One of these days I'm going to link to one of these sub-human stories with the comment, BROUGHT TO YOU BY CHEVROLET! I'm still not convinced the imbeciles of ASWIA have wtihdrawn their support.
Before becoming the Freedom Fighter Fighter's Friend™, Reuters was known for its business news. Now, judging from these two stories, it can't even do that right.
Students learned arithmetic by adding 4 + 28 because April 28 is Mr. Hussein's birthday (an occasion once celebrated with cakes and dancing during four-hour-long parties at schools). They learned their multiplication tables by computing the casualty count of shooting down four American planes with three crew members each.
And STILL we shouldn't have invaded Iraq.
And STILL we shouldn't have invaded Iraq.
Elmuh's empwoyer's pwaying TWX again! Thankfully Adage's hack wore his gas mask. Didn't TWX Internet Service (or whatever they used to call it) get into trouble with the Feds for these kind of shenanigans? How does a company make money by selling to itself? Aren't TWX's shareholders tired of accounting TWX?
BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Palestinian militant group Hamas said on Wednesday an Arab state had foiled an Israeli plot to assassinate several of its political leaders abroad.
Reuters passing out candy?
Reuters passing out candy?
Somebody wants us to spend hundreds of millions counteracting The Osama Channel. Great idea. Maybe we can use SLOGANS.
Oooh goody, another no-name might win the Nobel literature prize this year! Can't wait to find out!
Are these clowns campaigning?
Are these clowns campaigning?
The Clunker Brothers can't sell cars without rebates. PERIOD.
That's what you get for building lousy cars and spending your customers' fortunes telling them what wonderful cars they are. ($1.7 GM billion on ads, Freely Fraleigh?)
That's what you get for building lousy cars and spending your customers' fortunes telling them what wonderful cars they are. ($1.7 GM billion on ads, Freely Fraleigh?)
Hey ASWIA members! Here's another great reason to spend kazillions financing junky TV and rotten rags! PEOPLE CAN'T REMEMBER YOUR SLOGANS!
FORBES.COM POPS UP -- AGAIN!
"The righteous one has no sense of humor."
--Bertolt Brecht
You were a Commie, Bertolt, so you knew.
(This is the second time in recent memory they've quoted from Bertolt Brecht. Aren't there any other playwrights or ex-Commies?)
"The righteous one has no sense of humor."
--Bertolt Brecht
You were a Commie, Bertolt, so you knew.
(This is the second time in recent memory they've quoted from Bertolt Brecht. Aren't there any other playwrights or ex-Commies?)
Somebody's making the Bible HIP, or as Tricky Dick used to say, "The end justifies the means."
Now that our friends at The Osama Channel have all but admitted they have two different Web sites (wonder if MEMRI should translate the Arab one?), I'm reminded of one of the media's favorite First-Amendment-if-you-don't-like-it-you-can-turn-it-off excuses. "We're making lots of enemies," this old chestnut goes, "so we must be doing something right!" Yes frauds, you are doing something right. You're making lots of enemies.
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Microsoft's Media Center Targets Living Rooms
Hey Mr. Bug! Wanna cure population growth? Target bedrooms.
Hey Mr. Bug! Wanna cure population growth? Target bedrooms.
I think Philip Pullman is right to say we're testing the joy out of literature for kids. In academe reading becomes something mechanical, something you have to do for grades, something enervating. Slogging through the passive phrases and muddy thoughts of textbooks, glazing the eyeballs over "classics" whose relation to life grows more tenuous by the day, that don't have even one memorable scene or witty phrase, and people end up reading only when they have to. Hence the increasing irrelevance of newspapers, which already demand to be read as an obligation, not for the fun of it.
It won't do to get women in women's jeans. Let's get women in women's clothes!
Does THE MAN have a political run in his future? Maybe Senator from -- no! NO!! TWO MEN in the SENATE from NEW YORK?!?!?
Fifth columnist number three.
Don't these guys swear some sort of oath when they take their jobs, or is it just words?
Don't these guys swear some sort of oath when they take their jobs, or is it just words?
Serves 'em right! Da Bears got MAULED at the opening of the Ugly Bowl.
Or as I'm SURE BOOM BOOM said last night, "Well I gotta tell ya Al, this new Soldier Field is really a BEAUTIFUL stadium."
WHAP!
P. S. The man who helped HOWELL (remember him?) lobby for THE TINKERTOYS loves it. Now we know it stinks. Haven't you heard of THE INTERNET, Herb?
Or as I'm SURE BOOM BOOM said last night, "Well I gotta tell ya Al, this new Soldier Field is really a BEAUTIFUL stadium."
WHAP!
P. S. The man who helped HOWELL (remember him?) lobby for THE TINKERTOYS loves it. Now we know it stinks. Haven't you heard of THE INTERNET, Herb?
Monday, September 29, 2003
Blues is the Siamese twin of jazz, and if jazz is dead, how can the other be alive?
And people blame the collapse of CD sales on piracy.
And people blame the collapse of CD sales on piracy.
Continuing on the subject of self-referential media coverage: read any article in MediaWeek and you'll find lots of high MadAve muckymucks who spend lots of ad dollars financing lots of junk on the tube blathering incessantly about this program and that and this demo and that share and this time slot and that strategy who together probably don't watch more than ONE HOUR A WEEK. This is precisely the kind of intentional disconnect, the aggressively willful ignorance, that allows big business to sponsor any TV program without fear of failure.
RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! takes both sides again. People who do this only muddy up the truth, not that the RUPE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ever respected it. Maybe Elia Kazan was no saint, but neither are the legions, the hordes of NEWSCORPIONS, who would just as easily sell out if it advanced their cause, and their careers.
Anthrax Mailer May Not Have Intended Harm
Translation: the Fumblers, Bumblers and Incompetents are clueless as usual.
Translation: the Fumblers, Bumblers and Incompetents are clueless as usual.
A day when two baseball managers are canned makes us understand why the French invented the guillotine.
AP! AP!! I need someone to promote my lousy rock act. CAN YOU DO IT?
CURLEY (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!), conservatives may own the media, but CRETINS RUN THE AP.
CURLEY (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!), conservatives may own the media, but CRETINS RUN THE AP.
LABOUR HEROES BLAST ZIONIST OCCUPIERS OF "ISRAEL"!
FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!
FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!
More self-important, self-referential media coverage: the vastly overrated A&E channel used to make 40-percent margins. Now it's 35 percent. Plus it isn't drawing the young-and-stupid DEMOGRAPHIC the Freely Fraleighs need to cut their market shares. So the partners are talking of selling. They should be worried. You take the cable-subscriber annuity out of the picture and this godawful network doesn't exist. MTV, Comedy Central, USA, every bad TV channel wouldn't exist without us. It's time for a change in the menu to A LA CARTE.
Sighhhhhhhhhhhh, news hacks are bored, so they've invented the umpteen-kazillionth version of QUAGMIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, CIA division.
Didn't summer end about a week ago?
Didn't summer end about a week ago?
I'm glad to see some people have already been amputated under the sharia in Nigeria, and that a man is scheduled to be stoned for sodomy. Nice too that sharia seems to apply only to the poor. Does the political correctness of Islam hold people back from complaining?
A leading Palestinian issues a media-like mea culpa for all the violence his side has caused. Which raises two questions: the first being the usual, was it in English? and the second, why now?
Sunday, September 28, 2003
I must confess to being unfamiliar with the works of Elia Kazan (that is, his work; many of the masterpieces he directed for the stage are familiar to all), but anyone who's seriously studied our culture must know the price he (and another landmark artist, Jerome Robbins) paid for "ratting" on Communists. Indeed one could say the ratters paid a heavier price than the rats, for the rats could drape themselves in the sanctity of their cause, and could always present themselves as "victims," never mind that the cause was promoting Stalin, and Communism, and evil, and death, and that Communism's victims were far more numerous than a few well-paid scenarists. The ratters would always have somebody talking behind their backs, or laughing, or whispering. Ratting involved a moral decision, and not a clean-cut one, but in the end, it was informing on Communists -- or living under Communism. And art, if it is good art, requires and defines moral considerations, whether we like it or not.
Coming across this picture on Lycos News, I thought to myself, how much better it would be if models could sing, and dance, and act; if they weren't the Ah-NULTs of T & A (very often with neither T nor A), if they didn't speak in numbing monotones, if their formal education weren't limited to poses, if their IQs weren't somewhere between room temperature and a freezer compartment; if they didn't have such blank, vapid stares; in short, if they were prettier, sexier, livelier, and more intelligent than we have a constitutional right to expect models to be.
There's my excuse for putting cheesecake on this blog today.
The Times gushes over the same video movie that just days ago its called a full-length commercial!
FLIP...FLOP!
Chapter MMMLXXXVII of A Reporter Looking for Work: Some idiot sells a movie by likening George Clooney to Gable and Grant.
Put this clown on the list for JACK's job!
Put this clown on the list for JACK's job!
Robert J. "Competition" Samuelson justifies his love affair with GENERAL JR. and his CRANK NOSTRUMS by saying aw, shucks, we're not that powerful.
I think your reader may have been right: at times like these, "the best thing you could say is nothing at all."
I think your reader may have been right: at times like these, "the best thing you could say is nothing at all."
Buzz is in a tiz because some "has-been" (a handy term when you disagree with somebody) says blogs are essentially onanistic. The has-been's right. Who's reading my blog? Who reads blogs period? Most are worthless public diaries (no, I'm not interested in your sex life), and the few that aren't work up a froth for the publicity. And yes, the highest end of the bloggers are looking for work in the news biz. I'd love to get a column out of this blog myself (fat chance). And once the bloggers get their six-digit salaries, out go the blogs. We already saw that with the ESPN sports phreak who became a Jimmy Kimmel writer. Blogging will not die in two years -- it's no fad -- but it is dependent upon the attentions of news hacks in ways many practitioners don't want to admit.