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!
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Saturday, January 17, 2004
Pinch and the boys at Viacon Network News try to influence another election with a "POLL," just as they influenced 2000 version 1.0, although you wonder how truthful something is bearing the date "January 17, 2003."
How interesting: the Times buries the excellent news. Howie! We need your hair shirt!
How interesting: the Times buries the excellent news. Howie! We need your hair shirt!
OH oh, EisnerCorp's new animated feature went OUCH!!!!! This is perhaps the biggest bomb ever from the company in wide release (at least in the MICKEYMOUSE NIXON era), and certainly its first flat-out animated bomb. The characters straight from the pages of Forbes didn't help. Perhaps it's too much to expect, but I wonder if EisnerCorp's stellar reputation is finally catching up with the "family-film" audiences. Certainly if the company continues this kind of performance it may have to lay off ALL its animators. If I were Steve Jobs I'd be licking my high-tech chops. Roy can't be too unhappy either.
What's bad news for EisnerCorp is good news for America.
P. S. Of course the ad-blurb copywriters praised it.
What's bad news for EisnerCorp is good news for America.
P. S. Of course the ad-blurb copywriters praised it.
27 years after casino gambling and Atlantic City still has eyesores. Who'da thunk?
Which goes to prove, again, that AC is a 50-carat cubic-zirconia diamond on a pile of doggie doo.
Which goes to prove, again, that AC is a 50-carat cubic-zirconia diamond on a pile of doggie doo.
Anybody who thinks Cheap Channel has a monopoly on flipping the bird to the public hasn't seen GanNETt's "Game Plan." Pleasing the shareholders is first; using THE FIRST AMENDMENT for business gain is up there; putting out a readable, responsible product is...I dunno.
That's why you have SCANDALS, GanNETt.
That's why you have SCANDALS, GanNETt.
I see the American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers now boasts 337 members -- a veritable rogues' gallery of big business. Just the list is proof that advertising (and especially advertising on TV) is an addiction without a cure.
Jackson Dances on SUV After Innocent Plea
OR:
"Mr. Jackson, you have started out on the wrong foot here," the judge said. "I want to advise you that I will not put up with that. It's an insult to the court."
Insult? He was moonwalking!
OR:
"Mr. Jackson, you have started out on the wrong foot here," the judge said. "I want to advise you that I will not put up with that. It's an insult to the court."
Insult? He was moonwalking!
LALA goes sniffing for an EEEEEEEEEEEEVIL REPUBLICAN conflict of interest. Here's a case where news hacks can't smell the sewer plant for the skunks. (Awkward, I know, but there ARE lots of SKUNKS in the Beltway -- and the press.)
Our local Three A's are absconding with 350 jobs to Delaware thanks to a taxpayer-financed bribe. While I ponder what the Three A's do -- er, towing? -- I think of another corporate hero who headed AtlanticRichfield's (DilbertSpell) chemical unit, who pledged his undying fealty to this city. Soon after the outfit packed its bags and moved to the burbs. Happy ending: ARCO sold its chemical biz and the acquiring company ditched the offices. (The parent company is now just a trademark within BP.) Businesspoops think they can get away with anything. The people's job is to see they get away with NOTHING.
Speaking of sports, is it possible one reason people may not be following it as avidly is because you can't tell where the teams play -- dictated by "lifeless" CORPORATE names like the new Bank of America Center?
Now once we get that national fee collector -- BANK, does that mean half the sports arenas in America will be named for the same fee collector?
P. S. "The building where the Boston Bruins play and where Britney Spears lip-syncs...." Definitely not the GAH-den.
P. P. S. This particular fee collector is happily wasting $100 million on naming rights for a stadium in Charlotte, the day after it announced it was happily flushing at least $174 million down the toilet on the Italian consumer products quagmire Parmalat. Happily it can finance both strokes of business genius by RAISING FEES.
Now once we get that national fee collector -- BANK, does that mean half the sports arenas in America will be named for the same fee collector?
P. S. "The building where the Boston Bruins play and where Britney Spears lip-syncs...." Definitely not the GAH-den.
P. P. S. This particular fee collector is happily wasting $100 million on naming rights for a stadium in Charlotte, the day after it announced it was happily flushing at least $174 million down the toilet on the Italian consumer products quagmire Parmalat. Happily it can finance both strokes of business genius by RAISING FEES.
Zelig sells his team at the top of the market, after getting suckers to pay part of their sales tax so he could build a Taj Mahal for CEOs and make a $16.1 million profit, no doubt financed entirely by the sales tax increase, and meantime subjecting his fans to bad baseball. High profits for a lousy product that costs taxpayers: that's the big business way.
Smile: The head of the Writers Guild West is in trouble because he may have faked some credentials. Why the fuss? Members of the Writers Guild fake screenplays.
Gheetar Man's settled, but the Harrison estate's making a boo-boo: it's trashing something that's worth at least $100 million on eBay.
"George Harrison's music spoke to the heart and soul of my generation," said the judge, who probably wept as he spoke. What an ass. He could get a job as an editor at GanNETt.
Will the gheetar be cremated? Or will it pop up somewhere else in a few years?
"George Harrison's music spoke to the heart and soul of my generation," said the judge, who probably wept as he spoke. What an ass. He could get a job as an editor at GanNETt.
Will the gheetar be cremated? Or will it pop up somewhere else in a few years?
Friday, January 16, 2004
Bypassing Congress, Bush Installs Judge on Federal Appeals Court
Oh oh! News hacks and Democrats are going to have a TANTRUM!!!!!!!!!!!! Do I hear our honorable FIRST AMENDMENT DEFENDERS and their POLITICAL HACK CLONES using words like COURT PACKING?!?!?!?!?
It was your fault. YOU BORKED FIRST.
Oh oh! News hacks and Democrats are going to have a TANTRUM!!!!!!!!!!!! Do I hear our honorable FIRST AMENDMENT DEFENDERS and their POLITICAL HACK CLONES using words like COURT PACKING?!?!?!?!?
It was your fault. YOU BORKED FIRST.
PROF said ANDY S.'s site may have been "JACKED"!!!!! Turned out his server conked out.
HEH®.
Have you two companies thought of merging?
HEH®.
Have you two companies thought of merging?
Broken record broken record broken record....
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers said on Friday the Pentagon's inspector general had told them it was investigating possible criminal violations in connection with oil service company Halliburton's fuel imports to Iraq.
The three Democratic lawmakers....
BIAS? WHAT BIAS?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers said on Friday the Pentagon's inspector general had told them it was investigating possible criminal violations in connection with oil service company Halliburton's fuel imports to Iraq.
The three Democratic lawmakers....
BIAS? WHAT BIAS?
The movie-ad-blurb copywriters are trashing another grossout flick grossout flick grossout flick after praising the genre to high heaven high heaven high heaven they're being hypocritical hypocritical hypocritical I'm sounding like a broken record broken record broken record....
If we really want to improve circuses, let's get rid of the clowns.
A circus without animal acts has one advantage, though.
A circus without animal acts has one advantage, though.
Forbes.com again:
"A wide screen just makes a bad film twice as bad."
-Samuel Goldwyn
I wonder what he'd have said about Dolby®.
"A wide screen just makes a bad film twice as bad."
-Samuel Goldwyn
I wonder what he'd have said about Dolby®.
U.N. sides with U.S. on voting in Iraq
I think we need Mr. Peabody's wayback machine to figure out the last time something like this happened.
I think we need Mr. Peabody's wayback machine to figure out the last time something like this happened.
HEY SOB! You're the LAST PERSON to lecture us about press ethics! You started USA OKAY so you could skirt them -- especially with your endless show-biz hype. Things like your paper's current mess are inevitable when your overriding priority is SELLSELLSELL. SHUT UP, SOB.
Thursday, January 15, 2004
History repeats itself: TWX is getting into the video-game biz, presumably to inspire screenplays.
Does anyone remember Atari?
Does anyone remember Atari?
The left is in permanent protest mode. One wonders if we may someday have a second Civil War as a result -- a terrific irony given how hard the likes of MLK worked to rid us of the awful racial legacy of the first.
I'm tired of always talking about the Forbes Top 10 Blogs, but Andy S. is so exercised about Dubya's space dreams he posts the same comments twice, in two slightly different versions. Heck that's like printing the same story twice on Page One. And Andy is always jabbering about the Beeb's use of words. If I did that I'd be laughed at. I don't care who Andy S. is, it's amateur-hour.
Before violence erupted in 2000, about 100,000 Palestinians from Gaza worked in Israel, providing the main source of income for the territory. Now only 15,000 workers and another 4,000 merchants -- in addition to the workers at the industrial park -- have permits to cross into Israel.
But you have to admit, suicide bombing is like a good cry -- it sure does feel good!
Also Thursday, the Palestinian parliament approved a $1.69 billion budget for the year -- more than twice projected revenues -- in hopes foreign aid will make up the difference.
Nothing a few Euros from the Jew-hating French can't solve.
Donor countries, who have propped up the Palestinian budget during more than three years of Mideast fighting, are demanding financial reform in the Palestinian Authority.
Pffh-hh-hh-ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But you have to admit, suicide bombing is like a good cry -- it sure does feel good!
Also Thursday, the Palestinian parliament approved a $1.69 billion budget for the year -- more than twice projected revenues -- in hopes foreign aid will make up the difference.
Nothing a few Euros from the Jew-hating French can't solve.
Donor countries, who have propped up the Palestinian budget during more than three years of Mideast fighting, are demanding financial reform in the Palestinian Authority.
Pffh-hh-hh-ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Fearing their son may have died needlessly in Iraq, Massachusetts residents Brian and Alma Hart want some honest answers from President Bush.
And you've come to just the RIGHT EXPERT in needless deaths.
And you've come to just the RIGHT EXPERT in needless deaths.
I got an idea! If I went HEH® like Glenny could I get fifty million hits a post too?
If this blog were televised
: Low Culture asks, if your blog were a TV channel, which channel would it be?
On the basis of your previous post, I'd say EVERY CHANNEL TIME WARNER, EISNERCORP, VIACON AND RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OWN.
: Low Culture asks, if your blog were a TV channel, which channel would it be?
On the basis of your previous post, I'd say EVERY CHANNEL TIME WARNER, EISNERCORP, VIACON AND RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OWN.
NEWS HACKS have been going PFFH-HH-HH over GENERAL JR.'s idea of raising fines on broadcasters for airing smut. Just one problem: they engage in vigorous censorship of their own, often of the PC kind; witness the twisting twirling knots GanNETt tied itself into over the N-word. SHUT UP, hacks. If you can censor so can GENERAL JR.; at least he in theory represents the people. YOU DON'T.
Pentagon auditors ask for further investigation of Cheney's former firm
During the college bowl season (bowls? What are bowls?) NEWS HACKS go out of their way to obscure the real names of the games; thus the FedEx Bowl becomes the Orange Bowl, the Tostitos Bowl the Fiesta Bowl. Every time these idiots do a story on Halliburton you'd think Dick Cheney FOUNDED the damn thing. Why not just rename it CheneyCorp, idiots, and be done with it?
During the college bowl season (bowls? What are bowls?) NEWS HACKS go out of their way to obscure the real names of the games; thus the FedEx Bowl becomes the Orange Bowl, the Tostitos Bowl the Fiesta Bowl. Every time these idiots do a story on Halliburton you'd think Dick Cheney FOUNDED the damn thing. Why not just rename it CheneyCorp, idiots, and be done with it?
What this country needs is a good $499 Internet alarm clock!
What this country needs is all the people who purchase it acquiring holes in their heads.
What this country needs is all the people who purchase it acquiring holes in their heads.
SHUCKS, the former Senator from Illinois is quitting the race.
I was hoping at least one candidate would stand for honest graft.
Now we have an all-male race. What do you intend to do about it, NEWS HACKS?
I was hoping at least one candidate would stand for honest graft.
Now we have an all-male race. What do you intend to do about it, NEWS HACKS?
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
Maybe today wasn't so bad a day for Buzz -- the LITTLE GUY had lunch with TINA. I'd say between HER New Yorker and HIS EWWWWWWWWW! they have a lot in common.
Will you stop talking about CONVERSATIONS, Buzz? The only person you want to talk to is YOURSELF.
(PLUS one of his intrepid readers introduces me to a blog that follows big blogs. I can find them myself, THANK you.)
Will you stop talking about CONVERSATIONS, Buzz? The only person you want to talk to is YOURSELF.
(PLUS one of his intrepid readers introduces me to a blog that follows big blogs. I can find them myself, THANK you.)
WE -- ER, OSAMA DIDN'T DO IT!!! 'RAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I found this through (ahem) NEWSMAX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I found this through (ahem) NEWSMAX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Onward to a national fee collector -- er, BANK!
OR:
William Harrison, the chief of J.P. Morgan, has been criticized for the Chase's acquisition of J.P. Morgan and the lackluster results and huge layoffs that have followed.
Translation: One good merger deserves another!
OR:
William Harrison, the chief of J.P. Morgan, has been criticized for the Chase's acquisition of J.P. Morgan and the lackluster results and huge layoffs that have followed.
Translation: One good merger deserves another!
Well at least not everybody in our latest martyr's family is an idiot (see eighth graf).
I wonder how many people at the Reut would volunteer to be martyrs. The number is not zero.
I wonder how many people at the Reut would volunteer to be martyrs. The number is not zero.
Buzz T. Newhouse is certainly being a grumpy old man today.
Maybe he remembered his TWX options again. A few more days like this and he'll invent a new cliche: "I blogged from the wrong side of bed this morning."
Maybe he remembered his TWX options again. A few more days like this and he'll invent a new cliche: "I blogged from the wrong side of bed this morning."
Some may complain that USA Okay is being pickypickypicky in its handling of its former star reporter. I say, maybe IF NEWS HACKS HADN'T STOPPED A WAR AND DITCHED A PREZ we wouldn't be in this fine mess.
PROF has a new gag: to link without comment -- in this case, using his registered-trademark catchphrase "HEH®" -- and in addition to it taking forever to download I'd already seen it on Free Republic. If you're going to waste your surfers' time, PROF, go back to the 3,000-word thumbsuckers.
Bush Plans $1.5 Billion Drive for Promotion of Marriage
Can't Dubya do anything without spending money?
Can't Dubya do anything without spending money?
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
David Tyner, a graduate student at Queen's University, looks over an ice fort some fellow students had constructed along the shoreline of Lake Ontario in Kingston, Ont., Tues., Jan. 13, 2004. (AP PHOTO/Michael Lea)
Who says you don't learn anything in college? You can learn to be an Eskimo.
"WE DON'T KNOW WHAT THE MOTIVATION WAS!!!!!!!! WE JUST DON'T KNOW!!!!!!!!!!! WE'VE SPENT $180 BILLION ON IT, WE'VE LOST 480 AMERICANS, WE'VE GOT 2,500 WITH LIFE-CHANGING INJURIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!''
Translation: "If the GOVERNOR thinks he can outpander me HE'S GOT ANOTHER THINK COMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Translation: "If the GOVERNOR thinks he can outpander me HE'S GOT ANOTHER THINK COMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Hey GLENNY! A death-row inmate has a BLOG -- and he's been using it to get back at the family of his VICTIM!
Here's a blogger who doesn't need newspapers, Vir-GIN-ia. And we're still blubbering of "rights," another indication 9/11 was a psychic pinprick.
Here's a blogger who doesn't need newspapers, Vir-GIN-ia. And we're still blubbering of "rights," another indication 9/11 was a psychic pinprick.
This commentary underlines another problem with sports: the hard-core fans work themselves into a tizz, and if their team loses they fall with a crash and nurse their bruises for weeks. How many spouses and children have been on the blunt end of a championship loss? If ever there was a time to kick our sports habit, or at least look on the games more disinterestedly, it's now, when they reek with greed and are manned by mercenaries.
"HOLLYWOOD'S GREATEST FEAR BECAME A REALITY" AS SOMEONE PIRATED A SCREENER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Our greatest fears become reality every time Hollywood makes a movie or TV show.
Our greatest fears become reality every time Hollywood makes a movie or TV show.
Here's why the powers that be don't get asked tougher questions, Trude: 1. Most Beltway NEWS HACKS are six- and seven-digit fawners and thus not willing to embarrass their fellow tax bracket, or the fellow fawners at the many Beltway soirees, and 2. These idiots instinctively know that people will nail them for asking tough questions ONLY of conservatives and Republicans. Why bother with interviews indeed?
Within hours, the NEWS HACKS will paste this very happy story over every ceiling, wall, and piece of furniture they can find, proof, on this day of USA Okay's depthless TRAGEDY, of their infinite rightness -- and proof also that even megavillains like RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! can grow.
When NEWS HACKS flatter show-biz they flatter themselves.
When NEWS HACKS flatter show-biz they flatter themselves.
News everywhere: picked up this news in the elevator
: Spalding Gray missing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [Emphasis added.]
WOW!!!!! That's big news to be picking it up in an ELEVATOR, Buzz!!!!! Meantime Americans outside the Big Media and Bigger Bloggers Zone wonder, Spalding Who?
: Spalding Gray missing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [Emphasis added.]
WOW!!!!! That's big news to be picking it up in an ELEVATOR, Buzz!!!!! Meantime Americans outside the Big Media and Bigger Bloggers Zone wonder, Spalding Who?
Ho-hum, just another Columbine plot.
Hey Dick ADVERTISEMENT Corliss! No one ever got hurt watching your favorite movie!
Hey Dick ADVERTISEMENT Corliss! No one ever got hurt watching your favorite movie!
Van Morrison is a jerk to his wife and collaborators, according to a new biography. Ryan Adams is often a drunken lout on stage. This got the Globe's Renee Graham wondering, can one fully admire a musician who's an irrepressible creep?
Free tickets say the answer is yes.
Free tickets say the answer is yes.
WOW! PROF quotes from that future Democratic veep candidate about "red meat" -- four days after he used a similar line which I linked to! HEY PROF! You're getting better ALL THE TIME!!!!!
Two hits today.
Two hits today.
YOU want to be president, Ben? What would be your first order of business? To turn the White House into a sound stage so you could make all sorts of annoying commercials?
P. J. O'Rourke has written a piece on the oratory of our presidential candidates for The Atlantic Monthly, and so overpowering is their foolishness and lame-brainedness that P. J. has lost his sense of humor. Faced with a man like Hair Helmet suggesting that the triple amputee Max Cleland should have "stood up" to his tormenters, it is best to crawl into the nearest cave.
I'm surprised the news hacks haven't started calling Israel's security fence THE BERLIN WALL. That's coming, of course. Just one problem: the security fence, however brutal its symbolism, is designed to keep people out. The Berlin Wall was designed to keep people IN.
And speaking of a bad start to the day, Dr. Death is dead, and while it will deny his victims' families justice, at least he got tried by the big Malpractice Board in the Sky.
How's Dr. Mengele doing?
How's Dr. Mengele doing?
U.S. chopper is downed west of Baghdad
But its two crew members are safe, shucks. What a bad way for news hacks to start the day.
But its two crew members are safe, shucks. What a bad way for news hacks to start the day.
Monday, January 12, 2004
Please, let ME decide if credit-card debt is "scary." If I recall the Japanese were always praised for their frugality -- and look where it got them.
Larry Kudlow has a long lost brother, and he writes for the glibertarian UnReason that MEDIA ARE BETTER THAN EVER! In the manner typical of Kudlow he cites Cheap Channel as a shining star of media diversity. "ON A NATIONAL BASIS," yells our intrepid writer, "IT OWNS LESS THAN 12 PERCENT OF ALL COMMERCIAL STATIONS!!!!!" And how much of market share? Can't answer that -- inconvenient. "SOME OF THE MOST BIASED NEWSPAPERS IN 20TH-CENTURY HISTORY -- MCCORMICK'S CHICAGO TRIBUNE, ANNENBERG'S PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, LOEB'S MANCHESTER UNION-LEADER -- WERE THE CREATIONS OF LOCAL OWNERSHIP!!!!!" Whoops -- weren't they all...CONSERVATIVE? (Oh, I forgot. Glibertarians aren't conservative.) This comes several paragraphs after, "HEARST['S] NEWSPAPER CHAIN CONTROLLED MORE LOCAL CIRCULATION [IN 1947] THAN ANY NEWSPAPER COMPANY DOES TODAY!!!!!" Ignoring that he probably controlled less of a percentage of circulation than GanNETT, wasn't he biased -- on a national scale? What about the continent-straddling Henry Luce? Whoops -- guess they're inconvenient too. Our hack uses arcane economic tools (the "Herfindahl-Hirschmann Index" sounds like something Groucho could have made up) when many of the most obvious behaviors of corporate concentration defy numbers, like the lockstep thinking of most NEWS HACKS and show-biz types. With their surpassing smugness, glibertarians defy REASON. Here is a solid-gold example.
There is nothing that gets the hard-core knee-jerk conservative angrier than an injustice done an INNOCENT MAN -- especially one who's earned HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS IN OPTIONS AND BONUSES.
Christie Whitman, returning from the dead, warns: Nazis are taking over our party!
And our Nazis are worse than theirs!
And our Nazis are worse than theirs!
Last night I groaned because our IGGLES' MONUMENTAL VICTORY would be called "classic" and "legendary." Well, here's an ittle bitty ditty about THE GREATEST SPORTS WRITER OF ALL TIME, FRANK DEFORD:
Deford frequently uses breathtaking overstatement to portray athletes and their accomplishments -- such as forever, never, greatest ever, most unique and one of a kind.
Sports? He could have reviewed The Producers.
Deford frequently uses breathtaking overstatement to portray athletes and their accomplishments -- such as forever, never, greatest ever, most unique and one of a kind.
Sports? He could have reviewed The Producers.
I'm puzzled why a rag that believes graffiti is art doesn't whine about rappers making "nice." Isn't being nasty "authentic"?
"There is no question that we had security and blast constraints, and a new level of technology that defined the whole exterior wall," Mr. Gwathmey said.
"At the same time, how do you make a building in Manhattan, across from the United Nations, to be democratic, open and representative of what America stands for?"
You don't, which is why our government's building a 22-story bunker.
"At the same time, how do you make a building in Manhattan, across from the United Nations, to be democratic, open and representative of what America stands for?"
You don't, which is why our government's building a 22-story bunker.
"I WILL TAKE A BACK SEAT TO NO ONE IN MY COMMITMENT TO CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!!!!!!!!!!"
Translation: "I CAN PANDER JUST AS WELL AS YOU CAN!!!!!!!!!!"
Translation: "I CAN PANDER JUST AS WELL AS YOU CAN!!!!!!!!!!"
The greatest theater ad-blurb copywriter of our time re-blurbs THE GREATEST MUSICAL OF ALL TIME, and there's the haunting note of elegy, the faint realization (which the greatest theater ad-blurb copywriter of our time is too dense or dishonest with himself to acknowledge) that maybe THE GREATEST MUSICAL OF ALL TIME isn't so great after all.
According to this statistic, one of every hundred stockbrokers was fired for cause in 2003.
They must have been doing their jobs right.
They must have been doing their jobs right.
Sunday, January 11, 2004
I just learned -- from forcing myself to read The Gliberal, Trendy E. (for Elitist) Bushbash -- that the flack sheet Variety ran a piece headlined, "Hollywood Asks: Has Pop Culture Pooped Out?" What bugs me is when the leading CW outlet of show-biz runs something like this, it's surely as contrary an indicator as a newsrag cover, and we can be sure this time next year these same scribblers will be acclaiming a golden age even if things got worse; but perhaps the realization is finally sinking into the media boneheads (as it does not with The Gliberal) that there's a gaping hole in our culture, and all the noise and explosions and CGI and publicity stunts can't fill it in. And in contemplating this I'm in a doubly vitriolic mood as the locals are celebrating our TREMENDOUS VICTORY in the NFL playoffs as though Christ had come again, though they need be in a drunken stupor to convince themselves of it, and the usual idiot belches like "classic" and "legendary" are at this moment running off the presses -- just another form of show-biz hype. I've spoken once too often of the moral and ethical ghost town that is professional sport; but then sport is just another means of filling in our cultural gaping hole, and with our mavens of New York and LaLaLand failing us so miserably instead of great books and great movies and great music, all we have are highlight reels and "You had to be there." The future will not look kindly on our age for its dross.
Iran Hardliners Bar Liberal Candidates
And sure enough, the people doing the barring are CONSERVATIVES.
And sure enough, the people doing the barring are CONSERVATIVES.
No Newhouse, not all bloggers are "citizens." A few are celebrities -- like you and the Professor and Andy S. and little and Vir-GIN-ia and Mick and the Conspiracy and Mr. Stardate and The Scenarist and Mr. Bleat and....You wouldn't be blogging if you were indistinguishable from me, or some teenage airhead fantasizing a sex life around a would-be boyfriend. I submit someone who gets 100 million hits an hour is a much a citizen as a movie star is a citizen -- a citizen of a parallel planet. Further you heap scorn on one of those clueless print-media types for "wasting our time," oblivious to your own two- or three-thousand-word masterpieces. Please Buzz, you want to make a zillion doing a blog. Cut the comedy.
Recently (speaking of gadgets) I've been wanting to get a new TV, but without much enthusiasm in the getting. Do I buy a good conventional set, knowing it'll be obsolete in a few years, or do I buy an HD set and bankrupt myself? And every time I ponder this I think of how "Gen." David Sarnoff once likened the mechanics of broadcast transmission to plumbing -- only now we can get to see the same old sewage in 1080 lines of resolution. Decisions, decisions.
In general, Americans are poorly informed on specific information about the campaign. Those who regularly learn about the campaigns from entertainment shows were even less informed.
Keep it up with your excellent news coverage (and your more excellent profiteering off campaigns) and we'll be even better informed.
I'm not surprised people who get their news from Leno and the reporters at Comedy Central aren't well informed. They're not well informed either.
Keep it up with your excellent news coverage (and your more excellent profiteering off campaigns) and we'll be even better informed.
I'm not surprised people who get their news from Leno and the reporters at Comedy Central aren't well informed. They're not well informed either.
PRESIDENT DAMN! DOESN'T HAVE CABLE!
How WILL he explain himself to Hollywood?
Oh well, I'm sure he'll get plenty of FREE entertainment in SLEAZEBALL GUMBO's screening room!
(Caveat: it's a NEWSMAX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
How WILL he explain himself to Hollywood?
Oh well, I'm sure he'll get plenty of FREE entertainment in SLEAZEBALL GUMBO's screening room!
(Caveat: it's a NEWSMAX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
A miracle: The Hair Helmet has found three papers outside MASS willing to endorse him. That Dippity-Do must have gone to their heads.
And speaking of BLUNDER, here's another INSTANT CLICHE I'm TIRED of READING. What's so impressive about a woman playing Lon Chaney? Meryl Streep does it. I'd like to see some beautiful women on the screen for once, but the biz merely gives us models while congratulating itself for creating female Lon Chaneys.
Harvard seeks to rule the world again. Not content to sit on its laurels and its mutual fund and pine and sigh over a distant past filled with Roosevelts, Kennedys and JACKs, it wants every president to have a Hahvahd degree, and to be unremittingly pedagogically demagogically LIBERAL. Unfortunately, someone seems to have thought of that before. As the late, great Alan Jay Lerner ('39) wrote,
We're the lonely men of Harvard,
Alone, alas, alack are we!
And that's the curse we share,
It's the cross we've got to bear
For our irrefutable superiority.
We're the lonely men of Harvard,
Alone, alas, alack are we!
And that's the curse we share,
It's the cross we've got to bear
For our irrefutable superiority.
There's lots of funny money floating around the People's Paradise of Eastern Wal-Mart.
This will give our connivers an idea: if China can regularly bail out businesspoops -- and China is more CAPITALISTIC than we -- why not OUR government? Sounds like a good idea.
This will give our connivers an idea: if China can regularly bail out businesspoops -- and China is more CAPITALISTIC than we -- why not OUR government? Sounds like a good idea.