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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Posted
10:32 PM
by Gene
A man.
TRANSLATION: The REUT says, if CURLEY'S (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!) STOOGES can run something STUPID -- we can RUN SOMETHING STUPIDER!
Posted
7:14 PM
by Gene
And we declare THE CORNER POLITICALLY OBTUSE.
OR:
ON A HAPPIER TOPIC THAN INTERNET MANIACS... [John Podhoretz]
...I really have to commend to you the very, very fine new movie In Her Shoes, with Cameron Diaz and Shirley MacLaine. It's about sisters, one a gorgeous aging party girl and the other a frumpy but successful lawyer -- and it takes all kinds of unexpected twists and turns into their pasts, complete with the surfacing of an unknown grandmother dealing with her own grief in a hilariously rendered "retirement community for active seniors" in Florida. Go go go. You'll laugh. You'll cry. As the president might say, trust me.
Posted at 04:39 PM
Trust YOU?
P. S. ANOTHER B. O. BOMB -- and PRODUCED BY....
No, we wouldn't TRUST YOU any more than we can TRUST RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted
5:43 PM
by Gene
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced Saturday that Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, had accepted her invitation to spend Friday, Saturday and Sunday in her home state, Alabama, for "an important diplomatic weekend," as an aide described it.
They will perform the pregame coin flip when the University of Alabama football team faces Tennessee in Tuscaloosa, and then stay to watch the game, said Jim Wilkinson, her senior adviser. Their other activities will include a visit to Brunetta C. Hill Elementary School in Birmingham, which Ms. Rice attended.
For once Dubya's team has a good idea!
P. S. That's AMERICAN football, of course.
Posted
5:37 PM
by Gene
DKT is suing the U.S. Agency for International Development and its administrator, accusing them of violating free speech by requiring AIDS non-profit groups receiving U.S. government funding to sign a pledge opposing prostitution and sex trafficking.
Hacks, why do you suppose people are so uptight about these things? Why can't they be as open-minded as YOU?
Gosh, here's something the GLIBERAL could salute, if he were still alive.
Posted
4:40 PM
by Gene
Posted
4:30 PM
by Gene
P. S. Trouble in St. Murrow City: ROSIE'S NEPHEW'S MASTERWORK did $4,350 per theater at 11 theaters Thursday. It did $4,783 at each of 69 THEATERS FRIDAY. Ordinarily we wouldn't pay the slightest mind to these numerical shenanigans but with the HACKS GENUFLECTING AND SPEAKING IN TONGUES IN THEIR LUXURY NEWS SUITES we can't help it. (Updated at 7:30 p.m. Where WERE you, Box Office Mojo?)
Posted
1:07 PM
by Gene
Roker peddles dog reality TV program
NEW YORK - Al Roker is going to the dogs for inspiration. The production company of the NBC "Today" show weatherman is making what it calls the first-ever dog reality television show.
Roker is teamed with Tamar Geller, who's built a living training celebrities' dogs. Each show will have hidden cameras that catch dogs acting like, well, animals. Geller then swoops in with obedience training.
He hasn't sold the show to a network yet.
"A former Israeli intelligence officer, Tamar will show us how to make the most of our loving relationship with dogs," Roker said. "And if you do not watch the show, she knows 17 different ways to kill you with a paper clip. That's television!"
ON THE NET
http://www.roker.com/main.cfm
I'm all for cute little spice-of-life stories now and then, but multiply this by a million and you have a wire service's equivalent of hardening of the arteries.
And where is all this ANGRY REPORTING we were supposed to get? Mollified by your large paychecks?
Posted
12:42 PM
by Gene
Posted
12:38 PM
by Gene
This may be the first time the hacks have mentioned Hitler since the 2003 protest rallies against the Iraq war invoked his name. Through those and all the repated invocations since we never heard of him. We hear of him now when it suits CURLEY'S (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!) STOOGES' purposes.
Posted
12:35 PM
by Gene
TRANSLATION: GUESS WHO pays.
Posted
12:13 PM
by Gene
Posted
11:12 AM
by Gene
Posted
9:17 AM
by Gene
GET A LIFE!!!!!
Posted
9:09 AM
by Gene
Posted
9:04 AM
by Gene
With SUVs that's about, oh, six hours' worth of gas.
Posted
9:01 AM
by Gene
Posted
8:52 AM
by Gene
And how did TCG (which stands for Theater Communications Group, by the way) come up with its numbers? Did it count high-school and college productions? Did it count street theater? Did it count people four times? Given the total uninterest outside highly urban America this sounds like a typical we-need-federal-funds exaggeration. Theater consists mostly of the tourist traps of Broadway and the bus-'n'-truck companies, and the navel starings everywhere else. 32 million is over ten percent of the population. Over ten percent of the population does not go to the theater, let alone the "non-profit" kind.
Posted
9:48 PM
by Gene
NBC informed NASCAR just more than a week ago that the network felt NASCAR's asking price for rights to Nextel Cup and Busch Series races was higher than the value of the package, a source told the Observer.
Don't these clowns realize they'll always have their SUGAR DADDIES to finance their dreams of world domination?
Posted
7:49 PM
by Gene
This will get the con-SER-va-tive PC types mad, as that means he's PC. And it doesn't look that good for a biz that's always screaming CENSORSHIP!!!!!!!!!! But we must remember the movies did a mighty job in selling tobacco in the first place.
And Licence to Kill was BROUGHT TO YOU BY LARK CIGARETTES!
Posted
5:02 PM
by Gene
Bill Richardson?
Richardson has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2008, but he said his trip had nothing to do with politics.
Didn't this guy once do stand-up comedy?
Posted
3:04 PM
by Gene
Posted
2:54 PM
by Gene
How can we read the dispatches of all the cry-babies in that day-care center and not go crazy?
Posted
2:41 PM
by Gene
P. S. A post from last year on e-voting. (I corrected a typo.)
Posted
2:17 PM
by Gene
HEAVEN FORFEND!!!!!!!!!!
Posted
1:29 PM
by Gene
Pffffffffffffffft!
Posted
1:25 PM
by Gene
Posted
12:36 PM
by Gene
COMMISSION REPORT: A blueprint for rearranging the rubble.
Posted
12:07 PM
by Gene
And since it mentions Hyundai, we note the company just got over $28 million in free money from Gov. Granholm of Michigan! Wise "investing", Gov! (Yep, we can see Hyundai putting more in the SHREDDER.)
Posted
11:59 AM
by Gene
Howie HAIRshirt! Look BEHIND you! Your JOBS are in jeopardy!
Posted
11:44 AM
by Gene
Posted
11:12 AM
by Gene
THE HOLOGRAPH COMES BACK!
Posted
11:04 AM
by Gene
AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!! THERE GOES THE CORNER NEIGHBORHOOD!!!!!
Posted
10:48 AM
by Gene
One millennium, two millennia....
Posted
10:13 AM
by Gene
Nikki Finke should take up professional blogging. She writes too much also.
Posted
9:01 AM
by Gene
Posted
8:52 AM
by Gene
I still believe what I said earlier this year about this and similarly designed legislation, namely:
We're moving toward a system under which only the folks who are deemed to be professionals will be granted the status of journalists, and thereby more rights than the rest of us. This is pernicious in every way.
I do not know WHY the professional bloggers are worried; they're JERNALISTS too, and given their hasty CW, often MORE SO. The PROFESSOR's head must almost come off his shoulders for all his TV GUEST-STAR SPOTS; we'd guess he now makes more as a BIG MEDIA MAVEN than from his full-time job. SHUT UP, Dan. You and the other professional bloggers don't give a damn about the peons, and don't pretend otherwise.
Posted
6:42 AM
by Gene
It's not just Apple, and it's ALWAYS the Supreme Soviet.
Posted
6:32 AM
by Gene
When I read NEWS HACKS on poverty I hold my nose. It's the usual thing: with conservatives it's too many poor people. With liberals it's not enough money. And the hacks make WAY too much money to be a disinterested party. The divide becomes worse with dissembling scribblers like E.J., the sort of knee-jerk ideologues who will NEVER concede there are bad ideas on BOTH sides, just so long as they can prop their feet up on the desk and expel another expensive column. Occasionally they may put on the thinking cap, but their heads feel better with it off.
Posted
6:30 AM
by Gene
Did He ever leave?
Posted
6:03 PM
by Gene
A vivid example of the smashing of the news-entertainment barrier occurred this month when Hardball host Chris Matthews appeared on an episode of NBC’s The West Wing and “interviewed” Alan Alda, the actor who portrayed "Hawkeye" Pierce on M*A*S*H and now plays a presidential candidate....Anyone who tuned in for a few moments halfway through the Oct. 9 episode may have been momentarily duped into believing Hawkeye was running for the White House for real.
More than a half-century ago the sainted C-uh-B-uh-S did a TV "mockumentary" series called YOU ARE THERE. HHHWWWALTER CRRRONKITE appeared on it. So did ST. MICHAEL of WALLACE.
SO DID ST. EDWARD OF MURROW.
Posted
5:31 PM
by Gene
Yep, I guess they're not so warm and fuzzy anymore.
Posted
5:11 PM
by Gene
An inflatable porn figure says a publisher named Smog Breath Press or whatever is touting said figure for writing a book said figure had nothing to do with, which doesn't surprise us as we doubt inflatable porn figures can read; and
Eric Clapton, who lived half his life in a smog of his own, is making $4 million for a book he almost certainly won't write.
I NOMINATE SUMNER FOR THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LI-TE-RAH-TEEYURE! He wouldn't be any worse than the COMMIES.
Posted
5:09 PM
by Gene
You don't suppose this has anything to do with the time a would-be P-Ulitzer winner put words in a soldier's mouth? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Posted
2:38 PM
by Gene
Having recently been in the market for memory boards why am I not surprised?
Posted
2:19 PM
by Gene
HALF-A-DOZEN OF THE OTHER: SAM LITTLE WAS ON THE CASE.
Posted
12:04 PM
by Gene
P. S.
WORD HISTORY Being called a prude is rarely considered a compliment, but if we dig into the history of the word prude, we find that it has a noble past. The change for the worse took place in French. French prude first had a good sense, “wise woman,” but apparently a woman could be too wise or, in the eyes of some, too observant of decorum and propriety. Thus prude took on the sense in French that was brought into English along with the word, first recorded in 1704. The French word prude was a shortened form of prude femme (earlier in Old French prode femme), a word modeled on earlier preudomme, “a man of experience and integrity.” The second part of this word is, of course, homme, “man.” Old French prod, meaning “wise, prudent,” is from Vulgar Latin pr?dis with the same sense. Pr?dis in turn comes from Late Latin pr?de, “advantageous,” derived from the verb pr?desse, “to be good.” Despite this history filled with usefulness, profit, wisdom, and integrity, prude has become a term of reproach.
This will happen, sadly, with some words. "Liberal" is another.
Posted
11:58 AM
by Gene
Someone tell the social directors to lay off the caffeine. It makes them nervous.
Posted
11:42 AM
by Gene
We know Al: survival of the fittest, and HE WITH THE MOST TOYS WINS.
Well, that second one's not from Darwin. That's the motto of THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF WILLFULLY IGNORANT ADVERTISERS.
Posted
11:33 AM
by Gene
Stop JAYSONING!
Posted
11:31 AM
by Gene
TAKE THAT, AMERICA!!!!!
The academy's announcement came on Yom Kippur, Judaism's most important holiday.
1. TAKE THAT, AMERICA!!!!! 2. I thought Europe hated Jews.
Posted
8:04 AM
by Gene
We should not wonder. That was about some exceptional miscreant. This is about -- THE WORLD. This is about -- US.
Did it ruin your day to learn that, ROMY? Think of ROSIE'S NEPHEW, and feel better.
Posted
6:49 AM
by Gene
John Roberts: President Rove did it.
Harriet Miers: DUBYA did it.
I can hear Dubya deciding now: "Harriet, weren't you Ozzie's wife or something?"
Posted
6:39 AM
by Gene
ROOOOOOOOOOOOOSIE'S NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEW!!!!!
Good news for con-SER-va-tives:
He is a graduate of Oral Roberts University who holds an MBA from Harvard and first gained notoriety in the late 1990s when he befriended "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone and helped them develop the popular, raunchy cartoon for Comedy Central.
He's PC!
Posted
6:31 AM
by Gene
Sounds like our gal isn't the only one cheerleading! A NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD to ANDY!
Posted
6:21 AM
by Gene
ST. WARREN's a little calmer after the electronic jump -- the hottest year ON RECORD. TRANSLATION: If we can play politics with the weather, we WILL.
Posted
12:31 AM
by Gene
TRANSLATION: Maybe NOT the greatest invention since the wheel?
Posted
11:56 PM
by Gene
IS NOT!!!!!
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!
Linking to Howard "CW" Fineman and "POP-UP" Hind-raker -- what a choice.
Posted
11:52 PM
by Gene
Clever joke: the rumors didn't help GOOG, or the TWXSTERS, or their fellow partner in crime CONCAST.
Posted
5:33 PM
by Gene
THIS is why FREE-EN-TER-PRISE CON-SER-VA-TIVES exasperate me: they have a FAITH in THE MARKET as COMMUNISTS have a FAITH in the CONTROL ECONOMY. This is why I always say they want a ONE-COMPANY STATE: with their luscious creed of LAISSEZ FAIRE and CAVEAT EMPTOR, THAT'S WHAT WE'D GET.
When do these IDIOTS REHABILITATE HENRY FORD? And he STARTED OFF GOOD.
Posted
5:14 PM
by Gene
Given the GENIUS of pop music would that more songs went unheard.
Posted
5:11 PM
by Gene
Prima-donnas on the field? Screaming angry fans in the seats? Fred Flintstones on the air? Not bloody likely.
Posted
4:52 PM
by Gene
They said it at $90 a share. They'll say it at $1000 a share. They'll say it when it splits 10-for-1.
But let us keep in mind the parable of AOL tells us good things cannot last forever.
Posted
2:09 PM
by Gene
Bye, Gerhard. Watch the door of your Mercedes on your way out.
In an apparent reference to Hurricane Katrina, Schroeder castigated Washington for liberal, hands-off policies that left it exposed in times of crisis.
LIBERAL?!?!?!?
Posted
2:05 PM
by Gene
And don't forget to BRING YOUR CAMERAMEN!
Posted
1:55 PM
by Gene
Do I want to be Jeff Zucker ANYTIME?
Posted
1:47 PM
by Gene
Among the things which the feelings of the Muslim populace who love and support you will never find palatable - also- are the scenes of slaughtering the hostages. You shouldn't be deceived by the praise of some of the zealous young men and their description of you as the shaykh of the slaughterers, etc. They do not express the general view of the admirer and the supporter of the resistance in Iraq, and of you in particular by the favor and blessing of God.
And your response, while true, might be: Why shouldn't we sow terror in the hearts of the Crusaders and their helpers? And isn't the destruction of the villages and the cities on the heads of their inhabitants more cruel than slaughtering? And aren't the cluster bombs and the seven ton bombs and the depleted uranium bombs crueler than slaughtering? And isn't killing by torture crueler than slaughtering? And isn't violating the honor of men and women more painful and more destructive than slaughtering?
Nah. Abu Ghraib was MUCH worse.
Posted
11:53 AM
by Gene
The Quills include 19 categories, ranging from history and general fiction to sports, cooking and business. In monthlong voting that ended Sept. 19, fans picked their favorites by visiting the Quills Web site, quillsvote.com, and filling out e-ballots.
But despite promotion on NBC and at bookstores, the Quills have apparently failed to connect so far with their intended audience. According to comScore Networks Inc., which tracks the Internet, the Quills site attracted so little Web traffic during the voting period, fewer than the threshold of 25,000 unique visits per week, that it can't offer an exact number.
Next year we have to promote it!
Posted
11:49 AM
by Gene
I know: PRESIDENT ROVE WAS BEHIND IT! HE CALLED SOMEBODY IN IRAQ AND PROMISED HIM $500,000 A YEAR IF HE COULD -- oh, never mind.
Posted
10:12 AM
by Gene
Posted
8:16 AM
by Gene
Newsprint comes from mills located mainly in Canada and the South. It seems counterintuitive that newsprint prices would rise as average national newspaper circulation has fallen over the past 18 years, but consolidation in the newsprint industry has led large manufacturers, such as South Carolina's Bowater Inc., to reduce newsprint manufacturing capacity, switching some plants from producing less-profitable newsprint to higher-profit, higher-grade paper. Therefore, though papers are using less newsprint, there is also less newsprint being manufactured, said newspaper industry analyst John Morton.
"The era of cheap newsprint for the newspaper business is over," Morton said. "And we can count on fairly regular price increases. At $625 per ton, [manufacturers] are just edging on profitability."
Where are the Larry Kudlows to gloat at how THE MARKETPLACE WORKS? These clowns forget business is ALWAYS a win-lose proposition.
Posted
8:10 AM
by Gene
Despite all the safe sex messages, there has been little progress in stemming the spread of sexually transmitted diseases in the United States.
I think what we need is -- MORE SEX EDUCATION!
Um, like, haven't we had enough of it?
Posted
6:45 AM
by Gene
I've counted three times thus far. I wonder how many more it's happened.
Posted
6:39 AM
by Gene
Posted
6:37 AM
by Gene
A question for VNU: how many TV shows are "watched" by COMMERCIAL-AVOIDANCE DEVICES like TIVO?
Posted
6:26 AM
by Gene
[A]cross prime-time TV, the number of ads and promos has increased sharply over the years. A typical "one-hour" prime-time series clocks in at less than 42 minutes, down from 44 minutes several years ago and nearly 48 minutes in the 1980s....
To prevent channel surfing, networks increasingly avoid airing commercials between shows. Instead, they save several minutes of more substantial scenes for a show's ending and then move "seamlessly" into the next program. The upshot is that more ads and promos air within programs.
But not to worry: they'll still donate the money:
Advertisers tolerate the excess bunching of commercials for the sake of reaching 25 million viewers in TV's biggest hits.
Housewives is among a handful of shows "where there's tremendous attention, passion and a halo effect where your commercial might actually resonate," says Initiative Media's top ad buyer Tim Spengler. "Up to a certain point, (they) look the other way."
Of course they would. Advertisers are the blind with blinders.
By the way, that was a nice closing touch there, Gary, from the rag that PIONEERED PLUGGING THE SUPER BOWL ADS.
Posted
8:02 PM
by Gene
And you have plenty of people here who'll be GLAD to help.
Posted
6:24 PM
by Gene
Those are four good reasons to end agricultural subsidies.
Posted
5:28 PM
by Gene
Yes, and his name is KOS!!!!!!!! Er, Chairman YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGGGGGHHH!!!!!!!!!!! Er, oh DAMN, why must you ask these tough questions, Tim?
Posted
5:15 PM
by Gene
As if you didn’t know this was coming. . . . Rumor has it that Kate Moss has been approached by publishers including Bertelsmann, the German parent of Random House, and Simon & Schuster, who are said to be offering Moss millions of dollars for her rehab diaries, according to www.femalefirst.co.uk. While no sources connected to either publisher are quoted, a "friend of the model" confirms that Moss is indeed writing about her efforts to kick her drug habit.
While this may be entirely Kate selling something, it may also be SUMNER & CO. BUYING something.
Posted
5:01 PM
by Gene
In real estate,
There's none so live as we!
If there's one thing to watch out for with NEWS HACKS as much as bias and show-biz puffery, it's when they get into their ZENITH CHAMBER OF COMMERCE civic booster mode; in that mode they're usually rooting for your wallet. Our InkyDinkyDooDoo was a MOVING force behind our convention center, and if it isn't a white elephant it sure had to be fed a lot of peanuts. Their latest gag is that all sorts of younguns will quadruple our downtown's population -- and raise rents. That's music to the ears of our real-estate advertisers -- and Craigslist. It's also a sign that somebody could have phoned in the story and taken the rest of the month off -- or invited a FRIEND to fill the space with ADVERTISING, which in any event he did.
Posted
1:40 PM
by Gene
The NEXT time an ADVERTISER does something STUPID we'll give out the CINGULAR WIRELESS ASWIA ACHIEVEMENT AWARD for STUPIDITY IN ADVERTISING!
Posted
1:26 PM
by Gene
Just like the Nobel Good Intentions Prize; the jurors thought Jimmah was STILL president.
Posted
1:12 PM
by Gene
Posted
11:11 AM
by Gene
Posted
10:44 AM
by Gene
LOOKS THAT WAY!
Posted
10:39 AM
by Gene
Posted
10:30 AM
by Gene
In three words: Megachurches are ugly.
(Photo replaced 9/5/2010; I originally used number eight of the slideshow; this is number seven)
Posted
9:32 AM
by Gene
"Good Night, and Good Luck" exemplifies the Big Thought movie, in which powerful filmmaking masks a pedantry just below the surface. Murrow is the crusading hero, McCarthy the red-baiting villain, and the film a potted history lesson about their showdown. The contemporary resonance is spurred by Mr. Clooney's off-screen remarks as the film's director and co-writer. "I thought it was a good time to raise the idea of using fear to stifle political debate," he said at the New York Film Festival news conference, an idea he echoed in other interviews.
But that comparison ignores the differences between politics then, at the dawn of the media age when both Murrow and McCarthy were just learning how to exploit television's power, and now, when politics is driven by 24/7 media- and image-spinning strategists. When Murrow and his CBS colleagues take on the powerful senator, the event may be emblematic, but that emblem is too simple and nostalgic to apply to reporters reluctant - especially post-9/11 and pre-Katrina - to cross the Bush administration. Wholesale reverence, like the film's toward Murrow, is always the antithesis of complex thought.
And the film's beautiful direction and acting deflects attention from its lack of context. Why did McCarthy and his scare tactics about Communists have such power? What was the sense of the country outside the film's hermetic CBS newsroom?
THIS in the -- GASP! -- PAPER OF RE-CORD?
Posted
8:38 AM
by Gene
Posted
8:33 AM
by Gene
EH? WHAT WAS THAT??? LOUDER! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!!!
Posted
8:17 AM
by Gene
This from THE PAPER OF RE-CORD?!?!?
Posted
6:54 AM
by Gene
ST. WARREN, here is why we can trust NO political story: we don't know where the truth ends and the wishful thinking begins -- and a paper whose staffers engaged in ELECTION-NIGHT CHEERING for DEMOCRATS is HARDLY NEUTRAL.
Posted
6:38 AM
by Gene
Where do these sites FIND all these GLIBERTARIANS? Under ROCKS?
Posted
6:30 AM
by Gene
Posted
6:26 AM
by Gene
Big caveat: two FORMERS appear in the FIRST FIVE GRAFS.
We don't know what perfidy goes on at Foggy Bottom; but we suggest that even now COLIN'S PART OF IT.
GENERAL, can't you stick to INVESTMENT BANKING, or whatever scam you're in?
Posted
8:30 PM
by Gene
To its credit, it seems prepared to drop the sponsorship. But you can't be sure. The fact that it was willing to sponsor terrorist TV so long says it basically didn't care -- until prodded by outsiders. This is why most TV advertisers don't WANT to know.
Posted
6:39 PM
by Gene
Earlier during the auction, an eBay staffer had pulled the bra from the site after deciding that it violated company policy that bars listings for used underwear. But eBay executives later reversed the decision on grounds that the bra was really a piece of entertainment memorabilia, Durzy said.
This ditz' press agents allege she's sold sixty million albums. If so Ol' Blue must be turning in his grave. If not Ol' Blue's still turning in his grave.
And a big thanks to the REUT for MORE news we needed to know!
P. S. I've started in on Concepts, which I purchased from Mug's gift to mankind. More later.
Posted
6:37 PM
by Gene
The answer is an emphatic yes, even if Honorary Mayor Mike did it.
Posted
4:29 PM
by Gene
Much has already been written -- including about two dozen columns of mine -- about the press and the general failure to challenge in prewar coverage. As I look back at the past five years in this job, that is by far the single most important and most disappointing performance by the press, including The Post. And The Post -- along with the Los Angeles Times and the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service -- was among the best. But it was nowhere near good enough.
The TRUTH TELLERS are caught between a rock and a hard place. If they report THE TRUTH, they lose circulation. If they DON'T report THE TRUTH, then they hold all sorts of seminars about what rotten people they are on their million-dollar salaries, and promise to redouble their efforts to tell THE TRUTH, which will lose them circulation. Meantime to make up they run all sorts of show-biz puff pieces and insulting features which lose them further circulation. They're in a lose-lose situation -- and this news consumer couldn't be happier.
Bye Mike! Looking forward to your reports from PBS -- which does a SUPERB job with the news!
Posted
4:11 PM
by Gene
Posted
1:42 PM
by Gene
Now when A. O. with B. O. raves raves RAVES he won't have to worry about CONFLICTS OF INTEREST -- there's ONE BUILT IN!
Posted
1:23 PM
by Gene
Posted
1:21 PM
by Gene
Nice! From the expert at risky opinion polls.
Posted
1:18 PM
by Gene
Jefferson-Pilot, run by CEO Dennis Glass, 56, sells individual and group life insurance as well as annuities. The company also has a media unit that operates 18 radio stations, three television stations, and produces and syndicates sports programming.
Hoo-RAY for HOL-ly-WOOD!
Posted
1:17 PM
by Gene
Another blithering GLIBERTARIAN, no doubt.
Posted
10:47 AM
by Gene
For decades now, we have been witnessing the slow, ruthless dismantling of the nation's urban infrastructure. The crumbling levees in New Orleans are only the most conspicuous evidence of this decline: it's evident everywhere, from Amtrak's aging track system to New York's decaying public school buildings.
Rather than confront the causes of that deterioration, we are encouraged to overlook it, lost in a cloud of tourist distractions like casinos, convention centers, spruced-up historic quarters and festival marketplaces.
The inadequacy of that vision has now become glaringly obvious. And the problem cannot simply be repaired with reinforcement bars or dabs of cement. Instead, our decision makers will have to face up to what our cities have become, and why....
This represents more than a loss of nerve. It is an outgrowth of the campaign against "big government" that helped propel Ronald Reagan to the presidency 25 years ago. And it was fueled by uglier motives, including a latent fear of cities, a myth of the city as a breeding ground for immorality.
So! The EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL RONALD REAGAN DESTROYED URBAN AMERICA!!!!!
It took a lot of people to do it: machine politicians who stuffed every last municipal office with drunks and do-nothings, and built roads to nowhere; black extremists who all but declared crime a right, and their white liberal cronies who cringed approvingly out of guilt; cowardly businesses that ran screaming to the suburbs, and the middle class that ran screaming at the sight of the first black man; educrats who sat on their big fat duffs with their big fat tax revenues persuing every fad and chasing learning out of the classroom; social engineers building Rube Goldbergs like busing and letting vagrants live anywhere, and watching them collapse in a sordid heap; "urban renewal" projects that gutted neighborhoods for lifeless office complexes and welfare traps; RENDELLS with their Babbitt-like touting of condos and restaurants and ballparks and the decayed and taxpayer-dependent arts, and their hastening of the obscene civic divide between rich and poor. Heck if we're going to blame presidents let's blame IKE, who built the Interstates that hastened urban flight. No, it took more than one man to destroy urban America.
This is why no one misses TimesReject's columnists. They say the same thing all the time.
Posted
10:41 AM
by Gene
I don't like the national nannies (to use James Kilpatrick's self-serving term) telling me what to eat, but when con-SER-va-tives do this sort of thing they remind me of why they're in love with VULGAR CARTOON SHOWS and ULTRAVIOLENT FANTASIES.
Posted
10:13 AM
by Gene
When both of you get endless exposure, and one of you has a net worth allegedly more than a few nations, I say -- bring on the jokes!
Posted
10:08 AM
by Gene
Thanks again -- ROMY! (That guy's the HOWIE HAIRSHIRT of BLOGS.)
Posted
9:09 AM
by Gene
Posted
9:07 AM
by Gene
We know some Senators who should have vamoosed the SENILE CHAMBER LONG AGO.
Posted
8:58 AM
by Gene
In an effort to take further advantage of the advertisements for which the Super Bowl has become famous, the National Football League plans assemble a half-hour show consisting solely of Super Bowl XL TV spots for its video-on-demand platform.
YOU did it! You launched the shtick that made the ads as heavily publicized as the game! The least Paul Tagliafool can do is give you a piece of the action. YOU DESERVE IT!
Here's to YOU, SOB!
Posted
8:53 AM
by Gene
As one of the premier fake journalists on the planet....
DAMMIT, Howie, you're DENSE. You're part of show-biz TOO. And from your all-too-visible electronic perch you joined the CW chorus spending the last ten years bloviating about the tremendous impact of the EDWARD R. MURROW OF COMEDY on blahblahblah. HOWIE, thanks to NUMSKULLS like YOU ED became a JERNALIST TOO. One could argue due in no small part to him we're now being LECTURED by ROSIE'S NEPHEW. THANKS a LOT. And while we will not praise those fake JERNALISTS, we must confess that a man who can write 419 columns a year has a little bit of the false front in him as well.
Posted
8:50 AM
by Gene
We're sad too, but you do have your heads in the right place.
Posted
8:49 AM
by Gene
Just call it another stupid exercise in nostalgia.
Posted
8:09 PM
by Gene
Posted
7:56 PM
by Gene
Yesterday, though, I got an email from Craig Seligman, author of the fine Sontag and Kael. Here's what Craig said:
Kael told me the story of that mysterious quotation when it appeared in (I think) The Wall Street Journal several years ago. She never said it, and she was irked by the fact that it was so often attributed to her. Apparently a reporter, or somebody, asked her to comment on Nixon's election, and she replied that she couldn't because she didn't even know anyone who had voted for Nixon. And the story got garbled. I may have garbled the story myself slightly, since some years have passed since she told me, but the point is: she never said it. Which is easy to believe, because I never knew her to make patently stupid statements, and when she joked or was outrageous it was never with the kind of naivete that you would have to assume to make a statement like that.
The upshot is that people who know nothing about her or her work are constantly berating her for saying something she never said and never would have said. [Emphasis added.]
We can see the Gordon Geckos at the CON-SER-VA-TIVE EDITION spreading such half-truths; but even Kael's defender had to admit (and from a possibly faulty memory) the poet laureate of movie reviews didn't know anyone who voted for Nixon. Perhaps she didn't say it as a matter of principle, but to defend her against the charge is mere semantics. Most likely she hardly ever knew conservatives or Republicans -- not out of prejudice, she just never hung around them; they weren't in her movie circle. And she wasn't free from prejudice. I remember one review from the early seventies of some Universal picture about the wives of Vietnam soldiers that made fun of their primness and the fact they didn't have any books in their living rooms. We recognize the aliterate streak in Mid-America, but Pauline Kael was not the most open-minded of people on such days. Let us not forget she made loud fun of The Sound of Music because of its wholesome clientele. No, Pauline Kael never knew anyone who voted for Nixon, figuratively and quite possibly literally; and like Bill Bennett, she should have thought when she opened her mouth.
P. S. at 8:00 p.m., October 22: I found the title: it's Limbo, a made-for-TV-style theatrical of 1972, and an early starring vehicle for Kate Jackson. Now to find Ms. Nobody-I-Knew-Voted-for-Nixon's review. (It's possible Penelope Gilliatt, an equally fatuous blurbist and scenarist, wrote it, but I don't think so.)
I should have thought to use IMDB.
Posted
4:23 PM
by Gene
There’s little gravy in attacking Joe McCarthy in 2005, and that’s only a small part of what Clooney is up to. His real intention appears to be to deliver a blow to the patella of a conglomerate-controlled press corps that, until recently, has indulged the Bush Administration’s most extravagant smears and lies. He has completely succeeded.
...he writes not for an audience -- news hacks gave up writing for PEOPLE long ago -- but much as the poor Communist scribbler would type out his reams of rubbish about the proletariat, and the revisionists, and the reactionaries, and all that jazz; but unlike the Kremlin typist not only does he seek ACCEPTANCE from the POLITBURO, but the POLITBURO seeks his GUIDANCE on HOW to not think. It is the perfect symbiosis; both sides achieve total harmony in the mutual process of vacuuming out their brains. This shtick is not unique to liberals; Michael "Ninny" Medved and Hugh "The Superblogger" Hewitt and THE CORNER attest to that; their movie dogmas are as pea-brained as Denby's. But to understand the news biz one must understand its center of hyperconformity, and it lies with people who drone about the GENIUS of FILM.
P. S. I now have second thoughts about buying that Complete New Yorker on DVD -- not because of this brilliant ad-blurbist, but because it has third-rate software, and it was evidently indexed by Indians.
Posted
4:17 PM
by Gene
So all those dozens of bombers didn't exist!
The only thing that might have made it better would have been a color code.
Posted
4:11 PM
by Gene
LET'S DO THE CURLEY SHUFFLE!! NYUK NYUK NYUK BOOM!! NYUK NYUK NYUK BLAM!!
Posted
2:20 PM
by Gene
E-learn your way to a career in computer animation [Home-page tease]
Posted
2:09 PM
by Gene
Do we really care?
Possibly CURLEY'S (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!) STOOGES care. This may be their way of eliciting another of his press releases.
Posted
1:48 PM
by Gene
P. S. Practically every NEWS HACK in creation must have come out for THE KNIGHTING OF ST. EDWARD OF MURROW. We guess there hasn't been so much concentrated agreement (and humorlessness) since the Nuremberg rallies. We'd further guess not ONE person at any of the eleven theaters knew ANYBODY who voted for DUBYA. SIEG HEIL!
Or should I say, "THE FAULT, DEAR BRUTUS...."
No, news hacks HAVE no faults.
P. P. S. Another IMMORTAL movie, this one about one of the GREATEST WRITERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, doubled its outlets and increased its gross by only 27 percent. Hacks, PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO SEE YOUR FAVORITES NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU HUG YOURSELVES.
Posted
11:07 AM
by Gene
In fairness we don't know how we'd have greeted the young Audrey; possibly our cynicism toward THE BIZ would have blinded us to her now immortal charms. But whatever that line about any publicity being good publicity Kingsleyism does would-be stars no good with its D-Day assaults on the senses. We forget someone like MM had time to slowly work into the national consciousness with modeling and bit parts. People want to discover these things on their own. That may explain the fluke success of March of the Penguins -- and why people have lately avoided the sure-fire hits like a Hollywood plague.
Posted
10:59 AM
by Gene
On to the usual sarcasm.
Posted
10:49 AM
by Gene
My heart still aches at this story.
Posted
10:03 AM
by Gene
Car bomb kills child in Iraq's Basra
Posted
9:30 AM
by Gene
Posted
9:19 AM
by Gene
Bill should know better: As the old saw goes, don't EVER start an argument with folks who buy their ink by the BARREL.
Posted
9:11 AM
by Gene
The history of comic strips in the last fifty years has been the creation of enormous holes, until nothing has been left but the vastest of holes, filled in forlornly at the bottom by insufferable cuteness, refrigerator magnets, and ghosted racial and political intolerance.
Posted
9:02 AM
by Gene
Posted
8:57 AM
by Gene
Posted
8:51 AM
by Gene
P. S. This may explain it: the TWXSTERS had an "exclusive." Time to quote THE MASTER -- again: "Sir, there is no setting the point of precedency between a louse and a flea."
