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}
I believe in God (though I must confess I haven't been inside a church since my days in a college choir); but I also believe religion is an intensely private matter. I think of the story of how CBS's "legendary" co-founder Bill Paley (remember him?) tried to keep Groucho Marx and You Bet Your Life in his stable. The two huddled in the bathroom at Gummo Marx' house and Paley said, "We Jews should stick together. You can't afford to go to NBC." It was a spectacularly lame-brained remark; NBC was owned by RCA, which was run by a Jew, the "legendary" "Gen." David Sarnoff. (Remember him?) And it was a cheap appeal to Jewish "clannishness," deeply offending the Grouch, who was a free thinker if ever there was one. He went to NBC; the rest is broadcast history.
Religion has its good side, its very good side, in the untold millions who find peace through it. It has its bad side, its very bad side, in the Crusades and the Troubles and the Middle East and 9/11. I'm all for preaching the word, but you'd better be sure who's doing the preaching: William Penn (one of the truly great men of history), or a movie ass. And if it's a movie ass, you'd better be sure he's not picking your pockets. And that sin dates from at least the Bible.
P. S. Anyone following my blog (that's a laugh!) may think I'm turning liberal (that's a laugh too). My leanings are inherently conservative; I am pro-life, anti-PC, and supported our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with equal fervor. But I also believe the Biblical injunction that "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God," and I don't think there's a politico alive who's managed to pass a bill to ban sin yet, nor a news hack who could will it away with his scribbling. And forgive me, but I am suspicious of a religious pleading that comes from Hollywood, where believers in Ron outnumber believers in God, and that is embraced by a political movement that lived a good stretch of its life endorsing the tenets of anti-Semitism.