Posted 9:02 PM by Gene

Funny how those propagandistic mistakes in the news pages never get made in a pro-Bush direction, isn't it?

Hilarious.

Posted 8:44 PM by Gene

Tomorrow Paul Dreck will hug himself again, but if these stats show anything its that the movie biz' CGI genius, this sudden revival of the gold of '39, is driving most other product to the sidelines, and most other patrons out of the theaters.

Posted 8:15 PM by Gene

The head of the Reform Jewish Coffee Klatch and Bake Sale Clubs does a very fine imitation of Mr. Magoo attempting a phone call with a machine gun before going out into the wide world and mistaking his social clubs for synagogues, empty seats for congregants, and psychiatry for the word of God, whoever he is.

Posted 5:52 PM by Gene

Building a Better Boom

To build a better bust?

The era of the hot Net I.P.O. is over, and good riddance.

Yeah! We got BETTER bubbles!

Posted 4:46 PM by Gene

Did you know...there's a company called Acme Communications in the TV-station biz -- and all its outlets are WB affiliates?

Has Wile E. Coyote shorted the stock?

P. S. Alas, the outfit was co-founded by the man who inflicted The WB on us, so the name is likely intentional.

Posted 3:00 PM by Gene

If CURLEY'S (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!) STOOGE the TV scribbler Dave can cry 1,637 WORDS over the anniversary of the ASSASSINATION of St. John of Lennon -- EIGHTEEN DAYS before the blessed event -- we must assume AMERICA'S TRUTH TELLERS will be in FULL GOEBBELS MODE.

I think December 8 would be a good day to HIBERNATE.

Posted 2:46 PM by Gene

Oprah Seems to Have Golden Touch

And how many of Your stations run the Lord Goddess, O Royal Midas UB?

Posted 2:38 PM by Gene

Princie is a PRIVATE BLOGGER!

He uses pen and ink. Has he ever thought of starting his own public blog? With phrases like "appalling old waxworks" he'd top Kos -- or SAM LITTLE.

Posted 12:06 PM by Gene

In news of defunct American institutions, a day after P. T. Barnum announced he's moved his beauty pageant to Vegas he tries shaking down his "alumni" to pay for scholarships for future winners.

Can you say CHAPTER XI?

Their new venue has already done so.

Posted 11:43 AM by Gene

Even as Democrats bravely defend the notion of Vietnam II, a sufferer of senile dementia in their ranks auditions for the Nobel Prize in Li-te-rah-teeyure, and here's betting he gets it.

But Vonnegut's latest comments are likely to make many people wonder if old age has finally caught up with a grand old man of American letters.

TRANSLATION: This is a RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, and RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'s "conservative", therefore we needn't pay attention to that line, or this story.

P. S. I wish I'd known SAM LITTLE already posted this, or I wouldn't have bothered, as that definitely means this story will not be taken seriously.

Posted 10:32 AM by Gene

And yes, Jim's son -- we will from now on call you Jimson -- last night's vote was a cheap stunt. But so was the Hawk Chicken's playing to the peanut gallery. The "debate" was not a time for Bartlett's, but I'd rather have a bunch of know-nothings screaming at one another than million-dollar know-nothing NEWS HACKS screaming at US.

Posted 10:28 AM by Gene

Over a glass of Champagne and under the eyes of raging priests on a vast Old Testament tapestry....

Toasting our infinite wisdom again, Robert? Oh wait, he's behind the wall. This is Jim Dickey's son. Well, it's still nice to put one over on the plebeians, but beer opinions at Champagne prices don't cut it anymore, especially when you can get half-baked attitude off the Web these days for free -- as we did with you.

As Sen. John McCain points out in this week’s NEWSWEEK....

You'd soon enough find fault with him too, even though he'd be a GREAT PRESIDENT.

Posted 11:21 PM by Gene

3 AYES, 403 NOES, 6 PRESENT.

So much for THAT immortal exercise in VALOR. I must repeat myself: These peace-pleading frauds don't have the guts to support their lack of guts.

Posted 8:42 PM by Gene

Sorenstam, Creamer at odds LPGA golfers get into two arguments on course, trail Han in West Palm Beach. [Home-page blurb]

Aw, jeez, can't you be friends?

Today there five hundred stories of more import which Curley's [Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!] Stooges underreported so it could gasp on the golf course in almost 1,000 words.

Posted 5:25 PM by Gene

The Richard Burton of our generation "was fined $160 and told to stay out of trouble."

Good luck!

Posted 5:19 PM by Gene

Most Sorrowful Hed of the Week:

Index Mutual Funds Get an A in School, C- in Life

Posted 5:03 PM by Gene

Another reason to hope the news biz collapses: this weekend as so many others it's doing its 1939 routine. We are tired of the hacks' show-biz incest, and they are no better at oppressing us than when they invoke their "What's good for Viacon" gag, and in one voice plug the weekly Movies of the Century that will endure as long as Roger Thumbsup's screenplay-writing career. You know a hack isn't honest when in the same breath he condemns the perfidy of Republicans he extols the genius of Hollywood -- but then we knew news hacks aren't honest long before Janet Cooke.

Posted 4:53 PM by Gene

The news hacks who were giddy over The Hawk Chicken find themselves aheming and harrumphing as Congresspoops will vote on his saggy Profile in Courage. That's the thing about hacks and their friends: they don't have the guts to support their lack of guts.

OR:

"I won't stand for the swift-boating of Jack Murtha," Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, responded Friday. Also a Vietnam veteran, Kerry was dogged during the campaign by a group called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that challenged his war record.

"There is no sterner stuff than the backbone and courage that defines Jack Murtha's character and conscience," Kerry said.

Hardly a ringing endorsement.

Posted 4:53 PM by Gene

Robert Blake? Shake hands with O. J.!

Posted 2:05 PM by Gene

The dimwits at Sinclair Broadcasting slanted the news overtly. We see no difference between this and slanting the news covertly. They're just doing what BLOWHARDS like the AMBASSADOR did. If there's one constant to the history of the news biz, it's that as it's progressively tilted left, the slanting has acquired more finesse.

Although we wonder if the left is starting to slant the news overtly as well, as is indicated here. (It helps that we quote Perfesser Crispy-Crunchy, a John Bircher of the left.) If there's one thing left-wing HACKS and right-wing HACKS share it's a CONTEMPT for their AUDIENCE.

SI really ought to stick to His fashion-plate airheads.

Posted 1:57 PM by Gene

"I'd been with Louis Armstrong and seen that quizzical look on his face, which nobody had ever caught in a painting before. They always showed him singing or playing trumpet or smiling with those teeth. But having worked with him and having made a film with him and having sat in his dressing room and listened to him complain about society, this painting was the Louis Armstrong I knew so well."

Yep, I think Oliver Johnson got the guy pretty comprehensively.

Posted 1:47 PM by Gene

"General Mills, Georgia-Pacific, Unilever and McDonald's" get RELIGION!!!!!

We can hear the MARKETING VICE-PRESIDENTS now:

Look I haven't read the goddam book but it's Disney and you know Disney has this name in Red Country and it's going to be one of these crappy holy-rolling movies but dammit you can't ignore a third of your audience even if they're the DUMBEST third. And it's a CGI movie so Blue Country will think it's good. Are you kidding? We only vet pictures with production stills.

TRANSLATION: This is a "SUBDUED" version of AUDREY'S MONSTER.

Posted 1:23 PM by Gene

CURLEY'S (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!) STOOGES offer up this excuse:

Al-Zarqawi said the bomber who detonated his explosives in the Radisson SAS hotel on Nov. 9 was targeting a hall where he claimed Israeli and American intelligence officials were meeting.

That bomb caused part of the roof to fall in the wedding hall.

"We didn't target them. Our target was halls being used by Zionist intelligence who were meeting there at the time," he said. "Our brothers knew their targets with great precision."

Rather like the great precision we expect from CURLEY'S (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!) STOOGES.

Posted 11:33 AM by Gene

The U.N. nuclear watchdog said in a confidential report on Friday it had found an Iranian document which one European diplomat described as a "cookbook" for a nuclear weapon.

Dishing up a cuisine of PEACEFUL uses for it, no doubt.

Posted 11:19 AM by Gene

And here's a FLIP side, though it doesn't appear in His paper. It's a story written in code words: "[A] widely respected Republican senator from Nebraska," "A decorated marine veteran and ranking Democrat on the House defence appropriations subcommittee" -- this is the sort of insidious language Hank Luce used to elect presidents, and it stinks whatever side you're on. One possible explanation is that this came after a brain transplant using the organ of the late Robert "Beat Me" Fisk, but only a quarter of the brain worked.

Posted 11:17 AM by Gene

I see RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! likes to inflict private tragedies on His readers too. My guess is that's one reason He's now a MEGATYRANT, but it's way too late to kick Him back to the dung heap He came from.

Posted 10:26 AM by Gene

There are chicken HAWKS --

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told colleagues at a closed meeting yesterday morning that she, too, would advocate an immediate troop withdrawal, according to several who attended. But by day's end, Pelosi -- a liberal who has sharply criticized Bush's handling of the war -- chose merely to praise Murtha and say he deserved to have "his day."

And there are CHICKEN CHICKENS.

Posted 10:09 AM by Gene

News outlets shouldn't investigate themselves, says prof

For OBVIOUS reasons.

Posted 10:02 AM by Gene

Belgian wins plagiarism suit against Madonna: lawyer

How could they tell?

Posted 9:28 AM by Gene

A prediction: Before next year is out Ub Iger will replace Nightlight with THE EDWARD R. MURROW OF COMEDY -- at A HIGHER SALARY than LENO or LETTERMAN, and with a BIGGER PRODUCTION BUDGET -- and it will BOMB.

Posted 6:42 AM by Gene

CD woes may have had roots in merger

What did I say three days ago?

We are sorry to see the likes of Lady Day, Ol' Blue, Flatt and Scruggs and Satch got implicated too, through beginners' greatest-hits anthologies for people who don't know better -- like the folks who bought these CDs. As for most of the other "artistes" -- they deserved it.

Posted 6:41 AM by Gene

I guess some losses are beyond screaming, but we know better with Bobby Bluestreak.

Posted 6:30 AM by Gene

Everyone's entitled to an opinion. The problem with news hacks is they have the same uninformed opinions as most of us, mostly on one side of a fence -- and they make zillions, and they have tremendous media-backed reps, and instant media outlets, and that makes them think they're smarter than us, and their uninformed opinions thus carry far more weight than OURS.

Mark our words: the LORD will spend the rest of His days screaming over the PERFIDY of the EXTREME RIGHT (i.e., conservatives), and make a TAXPAYER-FINANCED FORTUNE doing so, atop the fortune He has already.

P. S. Does Henry the K's BEHIND still taste good?

Posted 8:15 PM by Gene

We should be aghast because one TV ad-blurbist engaged in plagiarism? The entire ad-blurbing business is about plagiarism; it's a wholesale peering-over-the-shoulder and swapping and copying of CW opinions, which in its loathsome totality forms a kind of intellectual quagmire. If news hacks are going to fight plagiarism in ad-blurbing they have but one recourse -- to GET RID OF AD-BLURBING ALTOGETHER.

Posted 6:14 PM by Gene

What ancient cretins came up with that moral oxymoron the "honor" killing?

Posted 6:03 PM by Gene

Rummaging through past DOW 36,000 links provoked a question: Whatever happened to Carlos Gutierrez?

Is he no longer GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREAT?

I think we have an answer: Apparently he's been making speeches in Central America.

T-H-R-O-T-T-L-E-B-O-T-T-O-M.

Posted 5:44 PM by Gene

Ub Iger starts off His regime with this EXCELLENT NEWS:

Disney's net income down 26 percent

Posted 5:35 PM by Gene

More happy news for Islamist psychotics:

Bride's mother dies from bombing injuries

Posted 5:06 PM by Gene

More of the Same Old Tired Laments at the National Book Awards

Maybe because you snobs always inflict us with the same old tired "BOOKS."

To be sure, there were lots of zingers at this event: like the one from Mr. Prairie Home Companion:

“Most of us have stood in Barnes & Noble,” he said, “and opened a Harry Potter book and thought, ‘I could have done that. Why didn’t I do that?’ ”

Unfortunately, Garrison, most of you HAVE done that.

Imagining a time when the awards ceremony over which he presided last night would be called “The National Text Awards,” or “The National Content Awards,” Keillor declared himself proud to be a member of a generation known as “authors, rather than content-providers,” a joke that was first circulated at least five years ago.

You mean before THE EDWARD R. MURROW OF COMEDY and his 500 WRITERS issued their PICTURE BOOK?

And then, not on the program, there was this INSULT OF THE WEEK:

[A]s the crowd squeezed on to the narrow escalators in the Marriott Marquis, one silver-haired gentleman said to another, “Mailer? Only history majors read Mailer now.”

No comment regarding a man hoping for new "Dreiser[s] and Melville[s]."

Posted 5:02 PM by Gene

I'd love to see Frisco, even IF it's filled with loonies and vagrants.

Posted 4:54 PM by Gene

At AccountingWEB we mark it personally. And we are giving our readers the chance to do the same.

Beginning on Thursday, November 17, 2005, AccountingWEB members can write and sign an electronic postcard, the Goodbye Greenspan Card, which will be printed and personally delivered to Alan Greenspan by AccountingWEB Publisher, Rob Nance in January 2006.

I'm sure we'll all join in sending OUR condolences.

Posted 4:53 PM by Gene

Cindy Sheehan Found Guilty of Misdemeanor

INSTANT MARTYRDOM!!!!!

Was the judge JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOISH?

Posted 2:57 PM by Gene

There's one thing that scares the NPCPCAA more than politically incorrect mascots:

Not getting money from ANHEUSER-BUSCH.

Posted 12:06 PM by Gene

Where Will It Stop? Tribune Cuts Also Hit Allentown, Virginia

We might feel sorry for individual cases, but so long as NEWS HACKS TELL US HOW TO THINK we will not feel sorry for their EMPLOYERS.

We don't want a weakened newspaper industry. We DO want a weakened newspaper industry if it CONTINUES AS IT HAS.

Posted 11:37 AM by Gene

A hawk turns CHICKEN.

He must have had a good cluck with the MOTHER HEN.

And Rod Dreher (whoever he is) is SCARED!

Just like they were scared during the GOLDEN AGE of BILL "Bach B-Minor Mass" BUCKLEY, no doubt.

Posted 9:31 AM by Gene

The latest con-ser-va-tive CW is that the ADL has become a hotbed of hotheads over Christian fundamentalism.

To us the ADL is another demonstration of Parkinson's Law applied to the Beltway: Lobbies expand so as to spend the money needed for their fundraising. And face it, con-ser-va-tives had had an ambiguous relationship with Jews over the years. That said, we too wish those guys would realize the real threat to their world does not come from Christians with Bibles.

Posted 9:00 AM by Gene

A one-hit wonder convicted of owning child porn wants to live in Vietnam so he can be with his 15-year-old girlfriend.

Maybe it's time to pull the plug on his hit in the stadiums again.

Posted 8:48 AM by Gene

Keith Olbermann Lobbying for Bill O'Reilly's Firing?

Why not Mr. NO-SPIN-SPIN-SPIN-SPIN-SPIN-SPIN ZONE lobbying for HHHHWWWWALTER CRRRRONKITE JR.'S firing? Why not if BOTH got fired? We could HOPE. There'd be a lot less STRESS in this world.

Posted 8:20 AM by Gene

Okay, THIS is why the ROMYs are angry: the TERMITEY WOOD of WOODSTEIN may have gnawed through the case against VICE-PRESIDENT BIGOIL -- er, his AIDE. But after months of he-said-she-said can we be forgiven for NOT CARING ONE WAY OR THE OTHER?

OR:

A confidential internal memo board at The Post lighted up yesterday with comments that Mr. Woodward's withholding of information would hurt the credibility of other Post reporters.

"This is the logical and perhaps inevitable outcome when an institution permits an individual to become larger than the institution itself," read one of those confidential postings, written by Jonathan Yardley, a veteran staff writer.

And the INSTITUTION is already TOO BIG FOR ITS BRITCHES.

Posted 6:46 AM by Gene

How to be sure a story is at least somewhat dubious: when it has the word MARKETING in it.

Posted 6:31 AM by Gene

In one of the most intellectually incoherent major speeches ever delivered by a minor president....

The feet-on-the-desk pundits are working hard to make themselves obsolete. Dick Crybaby may think he made a TOUCHE for the AGES with this bald line -- and we're the first to admit Dubya more resembles the Pygmies than the Amazons -- but why does such a BRILLIANT rhetorical fluorish make all that follows any more wise? It's just a variation of Mencken's "Dr. Coolidge", and Mencken was a better writer. (We recall how he went WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!! over FDR after he made nasty fun of him at a Gridiron Club dinner; such is the maturity of colyumnists.) That's the problem with these thinking typists of all stripes: they use cheap rhetorical gags when decent writing could help with their tantrums, and they too often use temper for reason. The last decent line we recall from out of a colyumnist was when George "My Business is My Business" Will spoke of the "ideological pretzel of liberalism," and that's so long ago we've had ample time to give up on colyumnists.

Posted 6:38 PM by Gene

An adoption, not an abortion.

Posted 6:15 PM by Gene

"Publicly, we say one thing," he told aides. "Actually, we do another."

WHAT'S THE DIFF BETWEEN TRICKY DICK AND NEWS HACKS?

Posted 5:41 PM by Gene

The Waltons move John "The Con-ser-va-tive Knee-Jerk Liberal" Stossel's levers, and get this Charlie McCarthy to belch some very LOUD ventriloquism:

Wal-Mart's critics act as if economic competition were a "zero-sum game" -- if one person gets richer, someone else must be getting poorer. If Wal-Mart's owners profit, we lose. But the reality is exactly what our ordinary language tells us: We make money. We produce wealth.

Tell that wealth-creation business to the thousands of small-town businesses the WAL paved over. Tell that to the tens of thousands of garment workers it helped put out of work by becoming a subsidiary of the PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA. Tell that to the thousands of Wal employees who have family members on MEDICAID. But then Sinclair Lewis put it better (and we can quote in full because it's PD, sighhhhhhhhhhhhhh):

”And business! The roofing business! Roofs for cowsheds! Oh, I don’t mean I haven’t had a lot of fun out of the Game; out of putting it over on the labor unions, and seeing a big check coming in, and the business increasing. But what’s the use of it? You know, my business isn’t distributing roofing—it’s principally keeping my competitors from distributing roofing. Same with you. All we do is cut each other’s throats and make the public pay for it!”

True in 1922; true today.

Posted 5:32 PM by Gene

We absolutely CANNOT figure out what's gotten the hacks in an UPROAR over the WOOD in WOODSTEIN. Apparently he said something or learned something or did something he shouldn't have. But the only difference we discern between the run-of-the-mill NEWS HACK and WOODSTEIN is that WOOD is a sex symbol who saved the world, unlike the rank-and-file, who are merely trying. And given the last two or three months the hacks have been VERY trying.

Posted 5:09 PM by Gene

We are all growing old: Ralph Edwards, the creator of This is Your Life, Truth or Consequences and The People's Court, has died at 92. From what little we saw of him on television he seemed a plastic character, but I guess being from the first generation of TV game-show plastic he deserves some credit, and he brought along Bob Barker, who was in the second wave, and we like him even though the plastic has warped, and he says everybody liked Ralph Edwards (except maybe Lowell Thomas, who is all but forgotten) and we'll leave it go at that.

Posted 5:02 PM by Gene

Sen. BABS has "written" a BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD "novel", but we will not deceive ourselves that politics won't trump art and a certain knee-jerk liberal specializing in a screw-you one-upsmanship won't call it great. Of course we know how honesty gets drawn and quartered in politics, but judging from the political novels of the last few decades we could say it gets HACKED too.

Posted 3:45 PM by Gene

This SOUNDS like good news:

Big Three Net Revs Down 21.5%

...but it doesn't include RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, and it doesn't include the other CONSPIRACY-related EENIE-WEENIEs, and it doesn't include the previous year's great advertiser money-waster the GE BANCORP GAMES.

Still, it's better than the spending going WAY up -- but you know the American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers' MONEY is burning a HOLE in its POCKET, which it will use to burn a HOLE in our HEADS.

Posted 3:31 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: The less money BIGNEWS makes, the more it lays off people, meaning the more NEWS HACKS SCREAM, meaning BIGNEWS makes less money, meaning it lays off people, meaning MORE NEWS HACKS SCREAM, meaning....

Posted 3:04 PM by Gene

A prehistoric emission of swamp gas from Foggy Bottom:

In the memo, Sisco urged Secretary of State William Rogers to try to curb Israel's ambitions before it was too late.

"If this process continues, and it becomes generally assumed that Israel has the bomb, it will have far-reaching and even dangerous implications for the U.S.," Sisko wrote.

Among those dangers: "Israel's possession of nuclear weapons would do nothing to deter Arab guerrilla warfare or reduce Arab irrationality; on the contrary it would add a dangerous new element to Arab-Israeli hostility with added risk of confrontation between the U.S. and U.S.S.R."

Sisco said a nuclear-armed Israel would draw Arab states even closer to Moscow and perhaps under a "nuclear umbrella" extended by the Soviets.

And of course of all these things came true EXACTLY AS PREDICTED, just as all of what the news hacks write in ANALYSES comes true. Question: given this ANALYSIS are the JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOS to blame for 9/11?

Posted 12:15 PM by Gene

If MICKEY D's "managers" are credulous enough to subject employees to strip searches and sex acts on the command of a fake police officer over the phone, they'll do ANYTHING bad.

And this happened 17 TIMES. We're dealing with IDIOTS here.

Posted 12:08 PM by Gene

DOW 36,000! LARRY "GREED IS GOOD" KUDLOW! HERE'S GREAT NEWS for YOU: Shares in AMEX got HALTED after its CEO said its earnings will be much lower due in part to ALL THOSE LAST-MINUTE BANKRUPTCY FILINGS!

Wasn't this the LAW that would IMPROVE AMERICA by keeping unfortun -- AVARICIOUS TYPES from CLOGGING THE SYSTEM with UNNEEDED BANKRUPTCIES? Well THAT'S WHAT THEY DID! Weren't we supposed to be helping the CREDIT-CARD LOBBY? The best laid plans of MICE and REPUBLICANS....Give yourselves a PAT ON THE BACK, guys -- and wrench something out in the process.

Posted 11:24 AM by Gene

NICK DORKEN becomes a DIVISION OF YAHOO!

Yes, we are in the MONETIZING phase. One would hope that as blogs go MSM they'll lose THEIR audience as they lose their little INNOCENCE.

Posted 10:39 AM by Gene

"Islam is the solution."

Problem is, Islamism is the problem.

Posted 10:21 AM by Gene

IT'S PILL POPPER VS. DUNG HEAP!!!!!

MAY THE LOUDER, STINKIER MOUTH WIN!!!!!

Posted 8:41 AM by Gene

DEMOCRATS will RETAKE the HOUSE by PROVIDING -- BROADBAND in EVERY HOME!

Given that Congresswomyn BABS appears here she probably first heard of broadband a week ago.

Posted 8:28 AM by Gene

It is now clear the HACKS are in an obsessive-compulsive wad over JUDY because she did the wrong thing -- POLITICALLY, not that she compromised her standards, but that she compromised her standards FOR A CAUSE. We can now see why morons like ROMY think her FAR WORSE than JAYSON -- all JAYSON did was plagiarize and fabricate. But isn't taking up CAUSES what what news hacks do every day -- with public-opinion polls and ANALYSES? What's the difference except we take the RIGHT side?

Posted 8:16 AM by Gene

We'll forgive this plug for Harold Lloyd DVDs because Lloyd died in 1971, and he's a relic. That his rep has come down to a stereotype should give pause to those who think the dog leavings of our time will last. Lloyd was one of the biggest film stars of his day, an era of riches we cannot begin to know about as silent movies are almost beyond our comprehension (and face it, much silent comedy STINKS), and in this case all we can conjure is a nerd in thick round-rimmed glasses hanging from clocks on skyscrapers. Harold Lloyd was more than that, but to get to think silent movies were good requires the kind of change in worldview comparable to getting movie ad-blurbists to write pans.

Posted 8:03 AM by Gene

Christians, home-schooled -- and they may as well have been raised lock, stock and barrel by RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! or SUMNER. The SYNERGIZERS who insist we have NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT from our culture forget that it's like a toxic ooze, that it will seep in any crack and through any hole, and always where it is least expected. Given that the two principals subscribed to infantile message boards shows their membership in our mediacentric death-worshipping religion of nothing.

And I just searched for their Web pages myself, and I feel like dirt.

Posted 6:48 AM by Gene

"Analysis" is merely a different kind of dishonest opinion. You prop your feet on the desk, ask a couple of friends from think tanks for pompous authoritative sound-bites, making sure the first one you quote is a Democrat, sit back, watch C-SPAN, and relax. This sort of thing explains as much as anything why newspapers are in trouble: so much of their typing presumes people can't think for themselves -- and most of it a reader could devise for himself in his sleep.

Posted 6:29 AM by Gene

Stories centered around public opinion polls and quotes from professors and our favorite politicians are extremely irritating as they represent attempts by news hacks to express an opinion without doing so. If the hacks wish to express an opinion -- and by gum they're so much better than us it WOULD be for our good -- why don't they come out and express it? When in God's name will they realize their fake objectivity and their denial of bias are in no small meaure behind the EEEEEEEEEEVIL resurgence of acquisition talk in this business, as investors tire of this industry's we'll-do-as-we-please contentedness?

Posted 6:43 PM by Gene

We did not pay the Sony BMG rootkit business much mind, figuring at first it was just a bunch of geeks playing with their toys, but now that it's a PR disaster to the nth magnitude we must ask, who did it? Probably some senior VPs in a lab somewhere who didn't know what the hell they were doing, or more likely some MARKETING honchos who figured they'd get some tech on the cheap from an outfit no one ever heard of before. We doubt that LORD STRINGER or his opposite incompetent at Bertelsmann knew about this until several days ago, nor even anyone at the top of Sony BMG, except in the usual plausibly deniable memos. We are certain, however, this was a direct result of merging and merging, and of limited talents that became more limited with all the merging. Sony is in the consumer electronics biz, and Bertelsmann's in the book biz, and neither company knew how to sell CDs; recordings were a glorified legacy operation they somehow stumbled into for reasons no longer known. Both companies came up with this SHOTGUN WEDDING under the notion that misery loves company. Their record labels were spun off of firms that failed with synergies before. They hoped their cost-shaving and "rationalization" will make for more profits. All it's resulted in is a company with turf fights and losses and a total cluelessness on how to harvest their unparalleled catalogs. Under the circumstances, and given the industry's psychosis over copying, perhaps it was inevitable that the company would rush some cockamamie anti-piracy scheme to market, testing be damned. In this self-inflicted game of tag Sony BMG was IT.

We must also blame the geeks. Given how they've always screamed about the EEEEEVIL record biz and claimed unlimited copying is a RIGHT you'd think they'd have noticed at the very minimum the logos and legal warnings on the tray liners. Even the supergeek who uncovered this technological marvel all but admitted he just blithely popped the disc right into his computer. Moreover most of the titles implicated are the usual junk (although a few lesser '60s jazz reissues got caught), and we must confess to a certain glee over the payback so many of the recorded-SOUND biz' customers are getting from just putting ANYTHING in their HARDWARE. Thus do the howls emanating from Amazon.com sound like the sniveling of CROCODILE TEARS.

We say both sides got the shaft -- and they can only blame themselves.

Posted 5:40 PM by Gene

MORE BRILLIANT THINKING from DOW 36,000'S GANG:

[P]eople who are upset that oil companies are making lots of money are angry with the wrong people. The oil companies are precisely the people producing oil. The high prices are not due to their actions but are due, instead, to the effects of hurricanes combined with the fact that there aren't more people in the business. It would make more sense, though only slightly more, if politicians got mad at people who are not in the oil business. If they were in the oil business, we would have more oil and prices would be lower.

If we could bring the Marx Brothers back we'd have them do a play about running a think tank -- or a Web site like DOW 36,000'S.

Posted 5:37 PM by Gene

The FUN'S BEGUN in LOUUUUUUUUUUUUSIANA:

La. Lawmaker's Kin Won Katrina Contracts

Posted 5:25 PM by Gene

A SAM LITTLE of the AIR gets a NEW JOB.

We're of two minds. We know SAM LITTLE. We also know SUPERHOOPER!!!!! Six of one, sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....

Posted 5:17 PM by Gene

We weren't too popular with our high-school classmates either. Somehow we learned you cannot stay adolescent forever.

Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

The more we think of ChosenFew.com the more we think of elitism, and closed-mindedness -- and IPOs.

That's a snazzy name ya got there, guys. OSM -- almost as memorable as Podunk Times-Examiner and Prevaricator.

Whoops -- there's a personnel agency in LALA by that name. How about Uneffetesnobs.com?

Posted 2:39 PM by Gene

Pension Agency Reports $22.8B Shortfall

HEY UNCLE SUCKER! HERES ANOTHER PENSION PLAN! CATCH!

PHHHLUMPPPHH!!!!!

Posted 2:21 PM by Gene

11 top Jordanian officials resign

Scapegoats or insiders?

Posted 2:07 PM by Gene

Forty Senators are for our cutting and running from Iraq.

When do they make the REBELS' victory official?

And the resolution was NON-BINDING, meaning a STRONG SKUNK ODOR is wafting in to all corners from the BELTWAY.

Which is just as well -- we're staying until AT LEAST JANUARY 20, 2009, unless Moveon.org stages a coup.

Posted 2:03 PM by Gene

And in other KNIGHTRIDDER NEWS:

According to recently disclosed earnings, pic advertising plummeted 68%, among the highest drops in any ad sector at the chain. [Emphasis added.]

Does that mean we'll see MORE PRESS RELEASES?

Posted 2:00 PM by Gene

Hopeful news in the CELL-PHONE BIZ:

Vodafone's Profitability, Growth to Fall; Shares Sink

Posted 1:45 PM by Gene

If I could I'd challenge anyone in the news biz to DARE tell me the difference between the PIECE OF JUNK I linked with in the last post and a PRESS RELEASE. Sure there's a marginal attempt to be skeptical, but for nine-tenths of its length it's SELL SELL SELL. Some of the WORST PR appears in trade Web sites. You'd think people in the biz would demand not to be larded over with such nonsense. But no -- they dispense it themselves.

On the strength of this BILGEWATER I may soon start a new blog dedicated solely to NEUHARTHISMS. To be sure that would be zero divided by two; but at least with this I'd have a chance to connect with some of the holier-than-thou types among the scribblers, and maybe get them to tone down their act -- slightly.

Posted 12:47 PM by Gene

IDIOT:

“HE IS AS IMPORTANT IN SHAPING OPINIONS TODAY AS WALTER CRONKITE WAS IN THE '70S AND HUNTLEY AND BRINKLEY WERE IN THE '50S AND '60S!!!!!!!!!!” says Seth Siegel, co-founder of The Beanstalk Group, a BRANDING consulting firm. [And part of OMNICOM, an idiotically huge ad agency. I like cute names, don't you? --ED]

THE EDWARD R. MURROW OF COMEDY has an audience of 1.4 MILLION. How big do you suppose Walter's, Chet's, and David's audience was COMBINED? YOU DON'T KNOW? That's okay -- you're SUPPOSED to SPOUT OFF your IGNORANCE.

AND WHAT MARKETING PRESS RELEASE IS COMPLETE WITHOUT A BUZZWORD?

“IT'S WHAT CABLE NEEDS MORE OF--ORIGINAL, APPOINTMENT-VIEWING PROGRAMMING!!!!!!!!!!” says Andy Donchin, senior vice president of national broadcast at media buying giant Carat USA.

And now THE EDWARD R. MURROW OF COMEDY IS A PROFIT CENTER FOR SUMNER!!!!!

A NEUHARTHISM OF THE MONTH AWARD TO MATT "FLIM" FLAMM! FLIM! CALL VIACON!! MAKE THIS JOB PERMANENT!!!!!

P. S.

The Huntley-Brinkley Report's audience was estimated at 20 million, and in 1965, a consumer research company found that, as a result of their hugely successful news program, both Huntley and Brinkley were more recognizable to American adults than such famous stars as Cary Grant, James Stewart or the Beatles.

We can guess UNCLE HHHWWWWALT's audience was just as big. 1.4 MILLION?!?!?

P. P. S. Hey Donchin! You're quite an Einstein! You used the same brilliant words almost a year ago to plug another show! The third time you're in Bartlett's! KEEP IT UP!

Posted 12:22 PM by Gene

AN EXTREMELY SENSIBLE DOUBLE-MURDER: He did it because the girl's parents thought him too old, and he got mad.

Whatever happened to elopements?

Posted 12:07 PM by Gene

ROMY at it AGAIN:

Keller is suffering from "a serious case of Judy Miller fatigue"

AREN'T WE ALL!

Posted 10:06 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: WE'RE BIGMEDIA NOW!!!!!

"You're sitting four feet away from THE GUY WHO ENDED DAN RATHER'S CAREER!!!!!!!!!!"

Where's your corrections page?

Posted 8:30 AM by Gene

And speaking of nightly news and blogs -- another new fad! We believe the fad's sincere but would point out most of the over-80s who watch the Three Stooges for denture-cleanser recommendations probably don't own a computer. And as with any corporate communication we can't be sure who writes these blogs; the networks have no doubt assigned dozens of interns just to writing blogs. And these little gestures of humanization do not address the wide, deep misanthropic streak behind broadcast entertainment, or that for over fifty years network news organizations believed they could get along without the public, a notion we suspect has not been entirely vanished from those luxury news suites.

Posted 8:11 AM by Gene

Today's a BIG day for ROMY! First he tells us Lew "Logorrhea" Lapham is retiring, perhaps inspired by how he lost the Roman Polanski case for Vanity Fair. Next the voice of Dilbert, Aaaaaaaaaaaaron Brrooooooooown, is saying "ME! ME! ME! I want to be an anchor person! ME! ME! ME!" Good luck! And last, LORD KOPPEL continues on His Farewell Tour of America's luxury news suites, and why do we entertain this sneaky notion that in the back of His head He's hoping Nightwatch fails without Him?

P. S. Lew Logorrhea's "under contract to write a book about President William Howard Taft." Let's see, he weighed over 300 pounds; Lew writes sentences of over 300 words. EXzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzCITING.

P. P. S.

Nightline “began going live in the old days because there was nobody to update the country on what had happened between 7:30 and 11:30 p.m. Now there are a ton of options.”

TRANSLATION: LORD KOPPEL admits Nightlight's become obsolete.

Posted 6:28 AM by Gene

With speculation rising about 2006, Republicans need to realize where they come from.

And where is that?

Posted 9:00 PM by Gene

Alito argued against abortion rights, quotas

BORK HIM!!!!!!!!!!

Beltway pharmacies are going to make a LOT of money off the Dems.

Posted 8:57 PM by Gene

"Her education is limited."

HEY STUPID! YOU WOULDN'T HAVE FELT A THING!

Posted 8:52 PM by Gene

Speaking thereof, we can imagine St. JoePa's nominal boss Graham "Muggsy" Spanier is annoyed that his pay is only in the mid-range among his peers. A mutual-fund president deserves more than mid-range, right DOW 36,000?

Posted 8:51 PM by Gene

Another of Dow 36,000's daydreamers says holding corporate America to a higher standard than profits is a COMMIE PLOT.

How's your Enron stock doing?

Posted 5:11 PM by Gene

We must wonder why Terry Teachout has gotten into such a high dudgeon over that Frankie Valli lounge act in Branson East. He didn't like the music, for one thing. We can think of worse. (The Bee Gees, among the mickey-mouse-falsetto gang.) We doubly scratched our heads because in a rare fit of idiocy Mr. Teachout earlier proclaimed HERR DOKTOR SONDHEIM'S CANNIBALFEST a BETTER SHOW than MY FAIR LADY. We doubly support the lounge act. Frankie Valli came from an age of aggressively mediocre pop music, but at least mediocre with fun. We highly doubt the doo-woppers and the Brill Building types who specialized in that peculiar and charming Japanese-flavored pentatonic shuffle music ever thought of writing for POSTERITY. Moreover they came from the ghettos and the Little Italys, and their progress to the top, though not always wholesome, at least affirms the American Dream. By contrast HERR DOKTOR was born comfortable, and wanted to be an ah-TEESTE long before his weird mother introduced him to OCKIE, and he studied with Milton Babbitt, a serialist and winner of the P-Ulitzer in music, an artistic double-whammy.* If the Loco-Motion writers relied too much on being loud and on overdubbing, they made their hits with speed and sweat. By contrast we can picture HERR DOKTOR writing his masterworks, using a stereo reel deck, pondering, then assuming the Thinker pose while banging out the right hand, then rewinding the tape, then pondering some more and assuming the Thinker pose while banging out the left hand. Recognizing that most of the Valli act's fans have no taste, and further recognizing that they surely count among the MAMMA MIA! androids who loutishly applaud with their hands over their heads, at least they're showing real emotion, unlike the SONDHEIMANIACS, who go home from the theater to THINK.

*We recognize the undisputed King of Lounge, Burt Bacharach, studied with the high-toned member of Les Six Darius Milhaud. Try humming a SONDHEIM tune. No contest.

Posted 5:07 PM by Gene

Movies for Adults
Why Hollywood won't make them anytime soon.

Because PAUL DRECKS and their ilks INSIST the only way to fill the POPCORN RESTAURANTS is to make movies for ARRESTED ADOLESCENTS -- and to ADVERTISE THEM TILL HELL FREEZES OVER.

But haven't the last few years demonstrated even the RETARDS in the audience might be getting tired of having their brains and their senses handed to them in a Dolby-Digitalized can?

Posted 2:07 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: 750-word reviews with 375 adjectives are still bunk, even if they are about ROCK. (Another ArtsJournal.com link, natch.)

Posted 12:13 PM by Gene

Some really screwy crimes have happened in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania over the years. I wonder -- is it all the manure in the air?

Posted 11:52 AM by Gene

As of today we can throw all this GARBAGE about the INDEPENDENCE of SUEPRDUPERMEGAGIGABLOGGERS out the WINDOW. We'd thrown it out ourselves a long time ago. It's only a matter of time before the PROFESSOR is part of the MESS's site, and STERNO's part of nytimes.com, and the BLOGGERS OF THE MILLENNIUM and the BIG-GUY BLOGGER for the LITTLE GUY work for RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, and the idiot NICK DORKEN's empire's part of SI's, and so on. And so on and so on. And so on and so on and so on. As this happens bloggers will divide into two camps: BIGMEDIA types and the failures.

Our only consolation is knowing that BIGMEDIA BLOGGERS are doing just what BIGMEDIA are doing: FLAILING, like the DINOSAURS after that alleged ASTEROID.

Or aren't BIGMEDIA DINOSAURS when we WORK FOR THEM?

At least there are a few writers like Chris Hitchens and Mark Steyn who will never blog, and arguably have more influence than the WHOLE GAGGLE OF BLOGGERS.

Posted 11:26 AM by Gene

ANDY S. BECOMES A TWXSTER!

After moi, le DELUGE.

Posted 11:07 AM by Gene

Ah-NULT for president of CHINA!

Posted 11:07 AM by Gene

Advertisers are astonished to learn most TV shows aren't worth watching more than once!

Advertisers were born yesterday!

Posted 9:09 AM by Gene

Stories like this allow the HACKS to have it both ways. If we detain holy cockroaches they can accuse our side of TORTURE. If we let them go they can accuse our side of INCOMPETENCE. NEWS HACKS can't lose!

Posted 8:49 AM by Gene

Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaain for saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaale,
One slightly unappetizing newspaper chain for saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaale....

Posted 8:32 AM by Gene

What is with the PAPER OF RE-CORD? First a movie RAG, now a sports RAG. Why is the Lord God Pinch getting into the RAG TRADE?

Posted 8:22 AM by Gene

Oh c'mon guys, cut this code-of-conduct comedy. You want a piece of product placements just like the producers, and you wouldn't get on your slippery soapbox if you did have it.

You can always tell when someone wants a piece of the spoils: he talks of ETHICS.

Posted 6:39 AM by Gene

I think what we continue to see is the fact that not all the senators had all the information I heard Senator McCain earlier and I you know have tremendous respect for Senator McCain But I think the Democratic Party ought to get over refighting how we got into the war and again continue to press the president on what he hopes to do in terms of how we will finish the job I think there are three or four things we need to focus on One how do we keep the Sunnis involved in the government How do we make sure that they don't feel excluded Two, how do we make sure that as we go through the reconstruction of Iraq that we don't continue to spend 30 cents on every dollar for security for folks like Halliburton and how do we get more Iraqis involved in the reconstruction Three how do we end up making sure that we truly keep that coalition involved Because this is an international issue not just an American issue And four I think we one of the issues that will come out of Iraq and I don't believe we have to set a arbitrary time line because not only in terms of Iraq but Afghanistan and Iran but we've got to make sure we look at this whole question of forced structure Our military is so good at kicking out the command and control of the bad guys but as we see in Iraq or in Afghanistan Somalia Bosnia what do we do afterwards in terms of restoring civil authority Listen I'm not go I don't have all the information of what would have happened at that point I think we ought to focus again how we finish the job not go back and refight how we got there in the first place....

MARK WARNER'S RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT!

Posted 6:28 AM by Gene

OOOH, the PAPER OF RE-CORD lets AMERICA'S MOST OVERRATED BLOGGER HAVE IT -- and even STERNO is ABASHED!

Will the WONDERS of BLOGGING NEVER CEASE!

Posted 6:23 AM by Gene

WOW! I'm IMPRESSED! King Richard's using His synergy to air out -- air "classic" old WB shows on His AOL! Shows like F TROOP! They'll even have COMMERCIALS! WOW!!!!!

That should shut Carl Icahn up but SURE.

Posted 6:04 PM by Gene

I suppose this must count as progress in PINCH'S KINGDOM: the PAPER OF RE-CORD mentions that ERRAMERICA's "on the far end of the AM dial" (meaning Christian stations outdraw it, which is pitiful), it mentions THE LOAN, and it mentions that "Mr. Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are bigger brand names", which is rather like saying that Toyota was a bigger brand name than Yugo. But it is hard not to hear the fervent prayers for this great talk-radio outlet, even though news hacks usually pray for nothing but themselves, and their prayers sound like chants in a coven.

Posted 2:48 PM by Gene

Time picks cloned dog as top invention in 2005

Strange: at PEOPLE WARNER they've been cloning DOGS for DECADES.

Posted 2:32 PM by Gene

The WALL STREET JOURNALS, in a rare sign of generosity after people ignored their recent free shtick, run a piece on ST. WARREN that suggests He is a glorified recluse, although anyone honoring His mammoth contributions would dare not utter the word. The piece goes on further to intimate that because so much of ST. WARREN'S HEAVEN resides in His Brain if He dies It will become a MESS. While we would not doubt the ST.'s ability to take It with Him we would think that even the luck of A GOD cannot last forever, as His recent losing streak suggests.

Posted 1:53 PM by Gene

An Orlando Sentinel scribbler calls "the greatest show of the 20th century" a work of "genius", which means his bosses must be screaming at the TWXSTERS to try to get it, or something. Plus it makes "BILLIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" for RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, which means he hasn't a clue how much it makes -- but hey, if THE PAPER OF RE-CORD could be obligingly deked by THE CONSPIRACY, why not us? No one'll notice.

A NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD to the GENIUS PINSKY! And an HONORARY MENTION to the TRIB for SELLING AN EIGHT-DAY-OLD PROMO!

P. S. That "greatest show" biz was written online by a TWXSTER named Potrzebie, or something, who makes lots of money writing maybe ten or twelve blurbs a year. Nice work if you can get it. But why do such typists always work on US?

Posted 1:06 PM by Gene

Shucks, even in NASCAR there's a penalty for drunk driving.

Posted 1:00 PM by Gene

The bad news: the extremely rich dimwit behind Mamma Mia! threatens a movie.

Worse news: the dimwit CLAIMS 24 million have seen it, meaning we have 24 million androids in our midsts.

[W]e spend millions on marketing, and we're very protective of that.

The eulogy of show-biz.

Posted 12:50 PM by Gene

Another down weekend for the BEEEEEEEEEEEE-OOOOOOOOOOOO -- down about 15 percent. Is it me or have we had seven or eight consecutive slump weeks? We can trust the HACKS not to report that. One slump is enough.

P. S. at 6:40 P..M. But what's this? It's PAUL DRECK yelling, "HEEEEEEEEEEERE I COME TO SAVE THE DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!"

The way YOU could save OUR day is by DUCT-TAPING YOUR MOUTH.

Posted 11:11 AM by Gene

Saudis Pledge $1 Billion to Rebuild Iraq

But remember: NO TERRORISTS!

Posted 9:48 AM by Gene

The Mannequin with the Polyester Hair who ran for vice-president is running for president.

Well I guess now that Moveon.org runs the party you WOULD take "responsibility", would you!

Posted 9:40 AM by Gene

Come ON, MR. MARK, all these BIG BIG MOVIES are coming up and ALL you can do is TORTURE? I guess that means we're the bad guys again. Oh well, the good news is it's BOOBS McKEATING on the cover. If we MUST have a REPUBLICAN...right MR. MARK? HE'D put the GOOD GUYS in their PLACE. Although I wonder Mr. Mark who creates our heds. "Let's Try Baloney" may not be best for an ELEANOR CLIFT column, as GOD KNOWS she LOVES it.