Posted 8:30 AM by Gene

Long ago International Paper ran a series of magazine ads giving instruction on how to read. One bit of very sage advice (I wish I could remember who gave it) was to read the last paragraph first. Thus it is with the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of newsrags; there's no reason to slog through a whole article when the last graf sums it all up. Take PEOPLE NEWSRAG, for instance:

As usual, Iran's intentions are not yet clear, but one thing is. Its true aims are probably not going to be revealed in the fire-and-brimstone speeches of President Ahmadinejad.

So the spin is, Iran's not such a bad guy; and if you go back a graf you'd see that the bad guy actually wants to negotiate. Remembering that Strobe Talbott's a PEOPLE NEWSRAG alumnus we'd guess this is the first inkling of the HEIN-TZZZ administration's foreign policy. Indeed we get another in the rag's proposal of economic sanctions, and we know how well those have worked before.

Now Mr. Mark's rag, it has a way of writing enigmatic closings whose whole purpose is to confuse you -- the better to get the official spin in your head. This week we MUST put the Duke lacrosse controversy on the cover (we've had a lot of slow news weeks lately, haven't we, Mr. Mark?), and it ends like this:

At the Church of Apostolic Revival International, Bishop John Bennett worried about civil unrest "if people don't think the victim is treated fairly." He gestured outside his East Durham church to the hardscrabble neighborhood outside. "This area is the area they need to be praying about." As town and gown collide, this much is certain: amid the confusion, there is plenty of cause for prayer, from the fringes of Durham to the heart of Duke.

We're guessing this is one of those inevitable our-side-is-right cases, and that Mr. Mark flaunts the R-CARD, but we really don't want to have to endure seven pages of SPIN to find out -- and we think we know enough of how Rashomon turns out to want to ignore it. (Indeed we suspect the WaPost may be closer to the truth here with six words of a column hed: "At Duke, Just Pick Your Facts.")

Meantime his lead BLURBIST reviews A CON-SER-VA-TIVE MOVIE, and while he loves the action something held him back from a total rave, he doesn't quite say what -- politics, perhaps? We no longer trust ad-blurbists for hundreds of reasons, and politics always seem to come to the smelly fore. One thing's sure: they'll be ANGRY at THE FREEP today.

Elsewhere Mr. Mark sells -- excerpts his dear friend Jonny's FDR book, and other than contract polio and go pro-choice we don't know what Dubya could do to please Jonny. Then again to say Dubya doesn't hold a candle to Franklin D. assumes there's a candle to hold. Besides, hasn't he already aped him with his budgets?