Eugene David
...The One-Minute Pundit

Saturday, October 18, 2003


In its instant politics the Web is not SUPERDEMOCRACY but the song in Fiddler on the Roof called "The Rumor" where a story of Yente the Matchmaker's assumes five successive different meanings. The presence of gleaming Intel processors and batteries of memory doesn't make gossip mongering and rumor pushing any more noble.

I'm thinking this because THE PROFESSOR (one of whose co-productions helped fire Gregg -- well look at this way buddy, you can boast of it to Mickey Mouse Michael when you peddle your next screenplay) was gloating over DEMOCRACY AT WORK when he and his crew claimed to take down Trent Lott. Trent is a buffoon, and an appeaser, and a compromiser in the worst sense, but you must entertain these tiny doubts that he exactly deserved what happened to him. And what happened to Gregg is just Trent REDUX. AND HE DIDN'T DESERVE IT.

I fear that in slaying one electronic monster -- and it does not appear that its skin has even been pricked, though it is suffering convulsions, which may be an act -- we're creating a new one, faster, more efficient, and deadlier. Be careful of what you wish for....

P. S. "The Rumor" is probably the only song in Fiddler that isn't well known for the simple reason that though it was recorded for the original cast album it wasn't issued until the first CD version in the mid-80s.

P. P. S. SUPERFAST WALTER WINCHELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! hasn't even posted the story yet. That lummox is the single most overrated figure on the Web.

P. P. P. S. Sorry Buzz, this IS about SYNERGY. Or as you say, "It always it." (Nice thing about being a SuperBlogger -- you don't have to rewrite yourself, right Buzz?)


Here's another reason to get mad at BIG MEDIA: One of Viacon's TV stations is boasting that it found NEFARIOUS doings in the evacuation of that Chicago government office building. Increasingly people must tune out stories like this, first because government is always an easy target, and second, by targeting government news hacks are able to turn the spotlight away from THEM -- and increasingly big media MAKE news, they don't just report it. How does truth prosper when suspicions at the nominal truth tellers flourish?


Right now I'm feeling exactly as Thoreau did. He blasted news hacks long before somebody invented the word Internet. But he also devoured newspapers. Really, I'd like to take a long vacation from this meaningless blog, from typing words only I read, from upsetting myself at things beyond my control. But I can't remain isolated from life, and I do have a computer, and I'm still paying the TWXsters. What to do? Oh well....


I'm suspecting Perv planted that story about the novel he wanted to sell as a way of trying to perk up interest in his latest movie. If so, it failed miserably.

We'll still look for that book, though -- somewhere between the Stephen King and the Dean Koontz.

"It-Makes-You-Go-Hmmm" moment: his publicist "denied he was in financial trouble. She said he was at work on a new film." Who's your twenty-something sex interest this time, Perv?


The $64,000 Question: How many athletes take steroids?


I can think of a few reasons "they" don't make movies like The Adventures of Robin Hood anymore: Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, Eugene Pallette, Alan Hale and Olivia de Havilland. Also knee-jerk pundits (like those who may hang around The American Enterprise or UnReason or the like) who call BRAVEHEART (or whatever the Flavor of the Month is) A CONSERVATIVE MOVIE. Also MOVIE AD-BLURB COPYWRITERS.


GOP chief will lead project to aid poor

HUH?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?


News hacks will never be satisfied with anything less than TOTAL VICTORY. In this case, TOTAL VICTORY means Gregg Easterbrook must resign his job, and never blog again. When NEWS HACKS achieve TOTAL VICTORY, the rest of America loses.

And to you HACKS who just conveniently discovered anti-Semitism, why did it take an attack on YOUR SIAMESE TWINS to get you to yelp? WHY HAVEN'T YOU DEFENDED JEWS THESE LAST TWO YEARS?

"WE -- THE MEDIA...."

Friday, October 17, 2003


The same news hacks who keep smirking that PORN IS THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE (a neat way of excusing their social hard-leftism) will probably not see the irony in the likely demise of Penthouse. As an "industry source" put it, "The magazine is no longer a workable franchise....Penthouse was less an editorial product than a picture book [emphasis added]. It's very possible that there will be no life left for the magazine after its sale." Given how they've dolled themselves up with photos and graphics while skimping on words, one can hope most publications go this way.


[Roger] Ebert...remarks that "those who defend [The Texas Chainsaw Massacre] will have to dance through mental hoops of their own devising, defining its meanness and despair as 'style' or 'vision' or 'a commentary on our world.'" No such defense is included in any of today's reviews.

You ad-blurb copywriters gave us ripping horror movies -- and now we can't escape them. You ad-blurb copywriters gave us "hilarious" gross-out comedies -- and now we can't escape them. You ad-blurb copywriters gave us artistic slasher movies -- and now we can't escape them. Time for flame-mail in a blog:

YOU AD-BLURB COPYWRITING IMBECILES GAVE US ALL MANNER OF BAD MOVIES USING EXCUSES LIKE IRONY AND POST-MODERN AND EDGY AND ON AND ON AND ON, AND NOW ALL WE GET ARE BAD MOVIES. YOU IDIOT SCRIBBLERS ARE AT LEAST AS RESPONSIBLE FOR TODAY'S SURFEIT OF CINEMATIC VOMIT AS ANYONE ELSE.


"WE -- THE MEDIA...."



Charles Krauthammer can cut to the quick -- and then he writes these twentieth-rate pop-culture columns. He almost single-handedly made people see Steve Spielberg's dose of castor oil about World War II because -- you had to. And thanks to Chuck everybody came out of the theaters thinking they'd seen such greatness they almost talked down the sick feeling in their stomachs. Now he passes the wind that baseball's better than ever. Chuck, stick with what you know.




Architects say the Taipei 101's design is based on a bamboo shoot.

I thought it was based on a stack of wastebaskets.

If that cityscape isn't a thing out of a bad fantasy videogame I don't know what is.


U.S. 'Peace Toll' in Iraq Passes 100 Combat Deaths

HOORAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!!

"WE -- THE MEDIA...."


I think people might accept copy-protection schemes if show-biz made better PRODUCT (to use its word), but with the biz disgorging junk at an accelerating rate and run by folks with the cuddly warmth of Frankenstein's monster and the ethics of a Mafia don, they figure, why shouldn't I copy? It will take JACK-style strongarming to get the public in line, but I don't underestimate the public's will. I don't underestimate JACK's venality, either.


Really, I'd rather have a good table pounding from a HOWELL type about how superior he his to his unwashed readers than have all these rich contemptuous types engage in their phony catharsis. Pull the curtain back, Gerald, and there's still a foot-thick Plexiglas wall between you and your readers.


I must confess that all the malarkey about this sudden blossoming of baseball "genius" has gotten on my nerves too. This is why the news biz has become intolerable: tens of thousands of six- and seven-digit hacks ooh and aah at the brilliant raiment of the emperor of the moment -- and there's not one brave little boy or girl to say he's wearing no clothes! That's why I still feel the loss of Mike Royko keenly, and why I was upset when Mike Kelly needlessly died. And here is why bloggers can only lose against the scribblers' onslaught: we only talk to ourselves. News hacks talk to themselves millions at a time.


A man is 90% right, and he's forced to apologize. Yes yes yes, we'll concede (as he did) that Gregg Easterbrook used "clumsy" language -- but I really think people got "mad" because he ATTACKED POP CULTURE, and in a world of MR. MARKS that's a HERESY.


[W]hat would [MR. MARK] do if, say, the government said that the dead bodies of both bin Laden and Hussein were found on the same day...

...and on the same day BENNIFER GOT MARRIED?

I think WE KNOW what the editor of BLUNDER would do!

This silly interview confirms that MR. MARK'S RAG is America's second most risible publication after the Times.

And a look at the program of the conference MR. MARK is leading confirms it's as airheaded as he.


Also at the Organization of the Islamic Demagogues, another Arab "moderate" says his country (guess which country) will never never NEVER build a nuclear bomb.

Tell that to the mad mullahs.


News hacks all over America begin the shout: WE WANT HIM OUT! WE WANT HIM OUT!

But you don't want Maureen Dowd out? She says silly things in every column.

Thursday, October 16, 2003




THE PICTURE WHICH SHAMES US ARMY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Translation:
BRING BACK THE TALIBAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This Osama Channel Update brought to you by PONTIAC® -- FUEL FOR THE SOUL!®


Before the Greeks prove that they are entirely incapable of staging an Olympics, maybe the IOC will do them the favor of banning most of the athletes for taking steroids.


You'd think this fraud would have known better -- and been more respectful of his fellow employees, especially since he worked for a company that lost dozens in the WTC.


"We -- the media -- are increasingly disconnected from what people are talking about."

Translation: we make six and seven digits because we're the smartest people on the planet, spend all the livelong day in hermetically-sealed luxury news suites engaging in intellectual masturbation, are never EVER wrong, think our readers are yahoos at best, and put on these occasional acts of false contrition that fool no one but do make us feel very good again. In short, THE PUBLIC BE DAMNED!




A stinkweed is a stinkweed is a stinkweed.

P. S. More news hack excellence: the logo is just the line at the top. I sort of like it better AdAge's way -- the UNHOLY TRINITY.



You may recall when the INFAMOUS Steve Ross (I figure if we can call THAT FAN infamous, ditto with Steve Ross) created TWX Version 1.0, he came up with the screwy logo on the left for the whole company and spent millions selling it, including a prime-time special on ABC (starring Robin Williams, among Steve's other friends) boasting of his organization's PC. (STEVE WAS AHEAD OF THE CURVE!) But I guess the "TIME INC.ERS," still ticked that an OUTSIDER took over THEIR BUSINESS, mightily complained, and the eye-ear was ditched, and the fiction of Time Inc. continuing as an independent entity began. All that artwork for nothing.


And if blogging IS CB, it will be because the PROFESSOR and his CO-PRODUCTIONS have abused their audiences with pretentious claptrap like this. Adam Smith probably DID NOT have Dem Cubbies' Fans in mind when he wrote that.


Oooooooh, NOW the PROFESSOR will go on the WARPATH! A TIMESman says BLOGGING IS CB RADIO!!!!!

By that standard, the Times is nothing more than overpriced newsprint -- as it strives to show every day.

But then given that he's "pessimestic," bloggers may have nothing to worry about.


IT'S OFFICIAL! IT'S TIME TO PLAY
TWX
AGAIN!


Another one of those silly Forbes.com pop-ups:

"Experience is a private, very largely speechless affair."

--James Baldwin


Where have these clowns been these last several media eons?


I guess Pat O'Brien figures, Ah-NULT did dumb movies, I did sporting events! That's good enough for me!

Only in America. Or South Dakota.


I think I know what it is with lgf. Every time he uncovers another story/cartoon/picture he hyperventilates like a Beltway direct-mail fundraiser. His superaccurate reporting on the death of Yasser Arafat didn't help. Calm down, calm down little, and let the facts speak for themselves.


QUAGMIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! now turns to Stars and Stripes. Gee wiz golly gosh, what could be more PATRIOTIC than that?


The PLUMBERS (who also work for Dem Tribbies) get into a snit because the general looking for the Big O is -- a Christian. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!


The leader of the "moderate" Malaysians works the Organization of the Islamic Kleptocrats into a holy lather, screaming, "DEATH TO JEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Fortunately, we're told, he's "outgoing." Don't want to guess who's incoming.


I guess we're supposed to feel SAD SAD SAD that Dem Cubbies didn't win, but my personal sadness is lessened by the fact that Dem Cubbies make dem millions and work for Dem Tribbies, for whom I feel not the least bit of sympathy; and what's more, if Dem Cubbies had won the Series, as I've said before, there would probably have been unprecedented rioting, and that would have been the REAL Curse of the Cubs -- on their own fans.

Wednesday, October 15, 2003


Mickey's come up with a good term: "architectural malpractice."

And we shouldn't limit it to atriums in university libraries.


Ho hum, the Big G, a leading member of the American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers, is facing an SEC probe. Yawwwwwwwwwwwn.


The Osama Channel says, we didn't do it!


I've discovered a synonym for NEWS HACK: "Gutless careerist." It comes from a Timesman.

Caveat: it also comes from The Wall Street Journals Conservative Edition.


Another advance in the art of truth telling from BLOGS! WorldNetDaily (a milder version of NewsMax) spread the word FAR and WIDE (through lots of crusading bloggers like The PROFESSOR and ANDY S.) that Ed Asner was nostalgic for Stalin. UNFORTUNATELY, it turned out our WND columnist misquoted Mr. Asner. To his credit, PROF noted the error -- but SORRY, SuperBlogger, the No-Spin Spin Zone was right -- you CAN wreck a person's rep on the Web.


I think I might post things on YOU-KNOW-WHO's trial under the simple rubric of OH, SHUT UP.


We don't need unanimity -- just enough Democrats willing to admit we must help the Iraqis, just as we helped the Western Europeans. Anything less is an invitation to disaster.


Adam Lipson cannot decide which of the many gadgets he bought in the last couple of years proved most useless.

Perhaps it was the microscope that hooked up to his computer. Then again, maybe Mr. Lipson, 42, would choose the universal remote control that came with a manual as thick as a Russian novel. But that would be shortchanging the Webcam — a video camera that transfers images over the Internet — that he used once, stashed in a closet and finally threw away.


Keep buyin' those electronic widgets -- and keep sellin' 'em on eBay!


And again speaking of the PROFESSOR, he posts a blandly-done Webtoon (it's from October 14) in which BLOGGERS SMITE Jonathan "SUPERPATRIOT" Alter. Fat chance. Most blogging (to repeat myself) is talking to yourself at the water cooler, and Jonathan makes millions reaching millions. I'd like to see that fatuous fraud get his, but for now, he wins in a landslide.


And speaking of CONFORMISM, if I'm to judge by PROFESSOR's links, the whole Web is up in arms over Gregg Easterbrook's blog hit on EisnerCorp because he -- ATTACKS JEWS. A few major-league louts with big positions in show-biz can besmirch Jews, especially given the love for them internationally -- and unless you're a news hack, you have to call Mickey Mouse Michael irresponsible. Sorry, it's no more anti-Semitism to point this out than anti-black or Hispanic or Martian to point out the flaws in people of other ethnic groups. And I'm sure Mr. Easterbrook is no anti-Semite. (And the further irony is, the louts are probably all Jewish in name only.) When we start disallowing criticism on ethnic grounds, we invite the worst kind of self-censorship.

I think a lot of whatever "anger" there is over this (and I suspect few have even read it) stems from the lockstep sub-literate gamer mentality of too many on the Web, who'll worship every piece of high-tech junk that comes roaring down the pike, the bloodier the better, and Michael's hack is their guy, and Mr. Easterbrook threw them, shall we say, a bone.

And SHUT UP, MR. YASSER IS DEAD; you didn't do anything about that Foggy Bottom map except caterwaul -- and the map is far worse.


I have not been following Seligism lately, in part because it's well past my bedtime, but after the crushing media persecution of THAT FAN (even I know what he did now) we can add intolerance to the long list of reasons sports is bad for America (counting extortion, greed, worship of cretins and crooks, etc. etc. etc.)


As I strongly suspected would happen, the Chinese did not air the liftoff of their spy -- er, ASTRONAUT live.

NOW TAKE CARE OF THE IMPERIALIST...good flying!

Tuesday, October 14, 2003


Who says a people who love ANIME are literate?

Aren't these the same Japanese who crowd grocery store shelves with products named BAKED SWEAT or something?

Note: that word "literate" only appears on the front-page teaser. I think BILL must be working on some software again.


Turn That PC Into a Supercomputer

Now we'll NEVER stop hearing it from the gamers. GET A LIFE, DOUBLE!


Study: Use of tanning salons significantly increases skin cancer risk

Not to mention your risk of looking like a piece of overcooked bacon.


Saudi police fire on demonstration

WaitwaitwaitwaitwaitWAIT A SECOND. IT WAS A HUMAN-RIGHTS RALLY. You're NOT supposed to be for human rights!


Did Pain Killer Abuse Cause Rush Limbaugh’s Hearing Loss?

Did pain killer abuse cause Rush Limbaugh to sound stoned on the radio?


In a not entirely unexpected move, considering the show’s pulseless ratings, NBC has decided to yank “Coupling” for the November sweeps....

ASWIA, you may recall, gave this piece of doggie doo the HIGHEST AD RATES FOR ANY NEW SHOW THIS SEASON. Yet again, the Freely Fraleighs prove they don't know their demographics from a hole in the ground.


Shucks, we capture ANOTHER leading holy cockroach.

QUAGMIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! isn't supposed to go like this!


Rummy's doing the right thing by wanting to close all these unneeded bases -- but for all his Beltway wiles Congress in its greed might cut him down to size.


Looks like Kellogg's chairman isn't the only one with a serious case of Chevy Chase Syndrome:

Who'll clean up the mess in the upcoming Cat in the Hat movie? P&G won't be in the film, but the entire P&G home care products unit will spend up to $30 million to tie in to the film with TV ads featuring the Cat in the Hat using Mr. Clean cleanser, Swiffer mops, Febreze deodorizer, Dawn dish soap and Cascade dishwasher detergent.

Translation: P&G's paying millions to help produce the Cat through licensing deals. It's IN THE FILM.

AND:

P&G recently added a "fair trade" line to its upscale Millstone brand — a program that aims to give coffee growers a living wage.

Translation: P&G is P&C. THIS is PRECISELY why LOWSY MAYS made nice on Dixie Chicks and the troop rallies. P&G is one of CHEAP CHANNEL'S BIGGEST SUPPORTERS.

Here's another company with GREAT PRODUCTS AND AN ADVERTISING-CREATED LOUSY REPUTATION.

P. S. "HIP" appears in this press release twice.


Who wants to bet many of TWX Internet Service's current dial-up customers switch to TWX Lite?

There goes that cash cow.


Here's predicting the Nine Fingers in the Wind pull a PROFILE IN COURAGE and ban the Pledge. Like the kids from Fame, they think they're gonna live forever -- in the pages of The New York Times.


The guys who are building the means to nuke ZIONIST-OCCUPIED PALESTINE have a bodyguard around Osama's son.

What do you intend to do about IRAN, President Damn? PRESIDENT MCCLELLAN?!?


Looks like President McClellan's OUR MAN.

You see, we have to pull one on our readers, and they sorta kinda resent it that we're squooshy on national defense, and well the General's served in the military, and....

"You can fool some of the people all of the time...." That's what your biz believes. Right, SOB?


ANOTHER VARIATION OF QUAGMIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This one is called ALIENATION.

NEWS HACKS ARE NEVER WRONG.


I'm not surprised. American businessmen have always been willing to commit treason for a price. I suspect this treason wasn't very broad or deep, but having lived in a town where an "upright" executive was convicted of selling goodies to Iran, as I say, I'm not surprised.


Which is the "stickiest" medium now?

Time to waste ever more zillions on junk television.

Monday, October 13, 2003


CURLEY's (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!) Stooges run a correction about Popeye's "metal plate," which will have ZERO IMPACT because CURLEY'S (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!) Stooges have repeated the story a billion times already, as have their proxies.

PROVING ONCE AGAIN, NEWS HACKS ARE NEVER WRONG.


I firmly agree with John Leo that we should treat miscreants as miscreants. But before being moved to sound the tocsin, we should consider that most of Mr. Leo's miscreants have one very defining trait in common. Let's see:

Miscreant no. 1 now works in TV news.
Miscreant no. 2 was a news hack.
Miscreant no. 3 was a news hack.
Miscreant no. 4 is in show-biz.
Miscreant no. 5 is in show-biz.
Miscreant no. 6 is in show-biz.
Miscreant no. 8 is a news hack.

And the last scot-free miscreant, Rev. Race-Card, should also be counted with the seven miscreants above as he's a favorite of news hacks.

In short, what most of the miscreants John Leo mentions have in common are MEDIA, and most people these days consider MEDIA a moral and ethical cesspool. Judgmentalism isn't quite dead yet.


Reason No. 34861 I HATE NEWS HACKS is their penchant for breathless crisis reporting. Here's an example from USA OKAY: A Crisis a Day™. THERE'S AN OBESITY EPIDEMIC AMONG THE YOUNG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Crisis reporting cannot be taken seriously because often it derives from surveys or from anecdotes, which news hacks combine with the bromides of self-serving experts to solidify their panics, or from special-interest pleadings, which in the end are always about fleecing the taxpayer. Second, it's a manifestation of the biz' ol' Crusading Clark Kent gag, of wanting to do good even where there's no good to be done. Third, QUAGMIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! has thoroughly vitiated it. As I've said ad nauseam, the news hacks have knocked the war effort since day minus-500, and they're doing it for the selfish glee of initiating another foreign policy disaster. QUAGMIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! is just crisis reporting writ large. Finally, you can be sure where there's crisis reporting, THERE ARE SHOW-BIZ PRESS RELEASES.

ANY WONDER PEOPLE HATE NEWS HACKS, SOB?


Well, if the O of the ID wants to call him out of retirement, maybe our army can track him down for them.


Saudi Arabia to hold first elections

Yeah. I can imagine. The Kill-Your-Wives Party vs. the Kill-The-Jews Party. May the best man (that goes without saying) win.


Some of the same WELCHES who fire people right and left and send jobs to Inja and pay themselves a zillion bucks don't know a PC from a hole in the ground.

What's not embarrassing is that you don't know a PC from a hole in the ground. What's embarrassing is that you run companies.


If news hacks ran Hollywood they'd do the same thing Hollywood's doing now -- tying itself into knots over how to "ethically" win an Oscar®.

News hacks, entertainers, "millionaires and bums taste about alike to me" -- when they're all millionaire bums.


WE NOW HAVE ANOTHER VARIATION ON QUAGMIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Some EEEEEEEEEEEVILDOERS are signing form letters about how hunky-dory all is in Iraq! That means everything's going badly, Vietnam, huge casualties, the people hate us, blahblahblah....

You were saying the other day, SOB, fewer people read papers, and golly it's a tragedy of unprecedented proportions that fewer people read papers, but you'd never EVER blame yourself, or your friends in the business. No, it's always the NON-READERS' FAULT.


If Congressman Cowface Flipflop has just now launched his campaign, what's he been doing these last few months? Staring in the mirror?

Probably.

Sunday, October 12, 2003


And speaking of LOWSY'S GREATEST HITS: Kellogg's (no doubt a BIG supporter of the man and his -- MUSIC?) makes some very fine cereals, like Raisin Bran and Frosted Mini-Wheats -- and it's ANOTHER COMPANY FROM HELL. I've mentioned before how it monopolizes on the cookies-and-crackers biz with Altria MOtive Foods, but this to me is worse: The Cat in the Hat is now co-hosting some of the company's cereals. Here is a sure sign a company is wasting MY MONEY to make the CEO and the ad agencies and the TV networks feel good. HERE it means the company provided a large chunk of the production budget for the upcoming movie based on the Dr. Seuss character (from NBC Universal -- they'll get synergy coming out of their ears at 30 Rock AND Battle Creek), AND the CEO made a pest of himself by schmoozing on the set for DAYS, AND when he returned to Battle Creek he pulled a Chevy Chase to end all Chevy Chases on his staff ("I'M GOOD FRIENDS WITH MIKE MYERS AND YOU'RE NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!"), AND the company's about to spend millions and millions and millions in advertising so the CEO can boast of his friendship with MIKE MYERS, and so the company can do what it's done best since it linked up with those animators from Hell, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera -- talk down to the audience. Honestly, if Kellogg's stopped advertising people would think a lot better of it -- and I've a hunch its sales might go UP, because people will realize it's stopped financing junk movies and television, and reward the company for it.

P. S. A click on its corporate site reveals the CEO -- his name is Gutierrez -- has instituted a GLOBAL CODE OF ETHICS. To which I say, a company may be ethical in the bare-minimum or legalistic sense -- obeying the laws because it has to, making sure its employees don't get cheated because it has to -- and still act in a manner that is fundamentally unethical. One mark of this is all the commitments to Je$$e -- er, diversity on the site, always the MO of a company that applies a veneer of PC to itself to stop government intrusions, but still tries to get away with something. In this case, Kellogg's thinks it can get away with selling $10 boxes of sugary cereals to kids, and financing every crappy TV show there is. Besides, if I were a betting man I'd say ENRON had a code of ethics. So did MCI WORLDCOM.

I know I must sound like a raging crackpot, but I DETEST IT when these companies spend MY MONEY on glorified CORPORATE EMPIRE BUILDING. Earlier today Buzz suggested parents confronted with looney-left profs demand tuition refunds. I say, why shouldn't people demand refunds from Kellogg's and Unilever and P&G and Altria MOtive Foods and the whole lot of them for wasting OUR MONEY?


I'd have much prefered it if this paper had given a ghost an op-ed chance for LOWSY MAYS to rebut his critics. But here goes:

1. Before deregulation more than half of the nation's radio stations lost money, Mays said. Deregulation has led to healthier stations and more radio formats and choices for listeners, he said.

Stations are "making money" now because if they're CHEAP CHANNELS they're tied in to legions of sales reps who push the hot buttons of the ad-vice-president Robin Hoods of their huge corporate clients -- more market research, which means more focus groups, which means more demographics, which means more targeting, which means more money. And besides, lots of stations are healthier simply because they're owned by YOU, or the ZON. Firing your news departments and having one announcer work a hundred radio stations does seem to help.

2. "You have to be able to manufacture the products and sell the audience to the advertisers."

LOWSY, you're the JACK!!!!! of radio. Such tone-deaf talk! It's precisely because you're MANUFACTURING a PRODUCT that people can't stand your guts.

3. "How successful do you think I'd be if I chose the music for Sydney, Australia, from this desk? Or the content for a billboard in Hong Kong?" Mays said. "It's kind of a farce because it's physically not possible."

That's why you have ORGANIZATION MEN -- LOTS of ORGANIZATION MEN who'd jump off a cliff to sell your damfool air time (and who should in any case). They're not stupid, LOWSY. To borrow a phrase from the news hacks, it's MY WAY -- OR THE HIGHWAY. (As if their commissions would tell them otherwise.)

LOWSY does say he's sorry about the Dixie Chicks and those troop rallies, which hints in addition to being the JACK!!!!! of radio, he's its URIAH HEEP, an obsequious ass who'll blather anything to cater to the PC sensibilities of many of his biggest customers.

Thanks again, NEWT and JACK "THE FUNERAL DIRECTOR" FIELDS and GENERAL JR., for making LOWSY MAYS one of the LEADING MANUFACTURERS OF AMERICA!




I'm not exactly tap-dancing in the street about this Foggy Bottom map either, lgf, but what did you do about it? I've a sneaky hunch this is yet another example of what I'll call Limbaughling, whose purpose is to call the troops to order and not do anything. Did you write a letter to Foggy Bottom, little? An e-mail? No? I suspect not. Yet you've managed to get up the nerve to tell us five times in the last week that Yasser died, or was getting there. If you're so upset about this map, little -- and you have a right to be upset -- why don't you DO something about it instead of showboating?

By relying on a few prominent practitioners blogging is showing the same sloth of mind as newshackery.


While looking for information on Architectural Digest (amazing how things are so hard to find on the whoop-de-do Web) I came across an article by one W. H. Earle about the revered and long, long gone Niles' Register, the first newsweekly, based in Baltimore of all places. Consider this:

[Hezekiah Niles, its founding editor,] had large ambitions: he intended to be "an honest chronicler" who "registered" events not just for his contemporaries but for posterity as well. Although politics would be covered extensively, the Register would eschew any partisan slant -- "electioneering," as the editor called it [emphasis added]....

Niles' pledge in the first issue of the Register to avoid party politics distinguished the paper from much of the American journalism of the era. Many newspapers in that day represented parties, or factions within parties, or even particular candidates, and political reportage was usually one-sided and strident. The Register, however, ignored the petty disputes between "the ins and the outs." Niles' own politics were clearly and repeatedly stated: he was a Whig of the Henry Clay school, committed to the American System of protective tariff, industrial development, and internal improvements; he was also pro-American and anti-British, pro-republican and anti-royalist, and a rationalist who opposed "superstition" in religion or in public affairs. His own views were always identified as such, however, and he advanced them as logical arguments, not partisan invective. As a result, there is a balanced quality to the Register that gave it an authority no other publication of its time could match.


An editor did this with a newsweekly in the early 19th century. Why can't MR. MARK and the TWXsters do this NOW?


Boston College is now part of the Confederacy, which makes it clear there's no geography in professional college sports.

"A perfect fit," say the hacks who wrote this. Sort of like yankees and slavery.

Charles Sumner must be spinning in his grave.


Shucks, another holy cockroach bites the dust.

Whatever happened to QUAGMIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?


An interesting statement in a Jonathan Yardley review of a book about Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater:

The acclaim that rained down upon the house was carefully engineered, probably with [Edgar] Kaufmann [the house's owner] himself as master puppeteer but with important supporting roles played by Architectural Forum, Henry Luce's Time-Life magazine conglomerate [sic] and the Museum of Modern Art. [Emphasis added. The late Architectural Forum magazine was once part of Time-Life.]

All news hacks need are a few careful stroking words to get them to purr that something's great. We should keep this in mind whenever we consider the hacks' latest favorite: is it great on its merits, like a Fallingwater, or great only because a bunch of craven easily misled scribblers said so?


Well, "Mr. Mowbray" wasn't so taken aback after all. I can't blame him, given his dust up (which I forgot about) with the pea-soup-dense-fogheads at Foggy.


USA is one of the many, MANY cable channels America could do without -- and another great reason for GE Bancorp buying new best buddies for its network.


Village Kiosks Bridge India's Digital Divide

This is excellent news. Now we can send ALL our engineering and customer-service jobs there.


"Lawlessness," "shameful," "disgraceful." Yep, those are words I associate with Seligism.


Now Mr. SUPER-PR of BLUNDER quotes the ubergenius Robert Altman as saying THE FORCES OF RIGHT MAY BOYCOTT THE OSCARS®. GO FOR IT!

This is why I quote from The Official Newsweekly of St. Warren of Buffett™ so much: as the holy grail of conventional wisdom and with its every waking moment devoted to salesmanship, page-for-page, BLUNDER may be America's second most risible publication after the Times.


Forced to choose between Rush (and a heapin' helpin' of gloatin' from Jonathan "SUPERPATRIOT" Alter, once again showing off his Harvard degree and seven-digit salary) and "Healthy Eating," I choose -- neither.

As I've said, without waiting rooms and classrooms, WHO'D READ NEWSWEEKLIES?!?

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