Posted 10:00 PM by Gene

The World's Oldest Adolescent is a two-timing, double-dealing, both-sides-of-his-mouth-orating cynic?

Goooooooooooooooooooooooosh!!!!!

Posted 9:41 PM by Gene

David von Drehle, in a very fine article that could NOT have run in Zeitgeist -- we're surprised it ran in PEOPLE NEWSRAG given ER -- was not just writing about the psycho:

A generation ago, the social critic Christopher Lasch diagnosed narcissism as the signal disorder of contemporary American culture. The cult of celebrity, the marketing of instant gratification, skepticism toward moral codes and the politics of victimhood were signs of a society regressing toward the infant stage. You don't have to buy Freud's explanation or Lasch's indictment, however, to see an immediate danger in the way we examine the lives of mass killers. Earnestly and honestly, detectives and journalists dig up apparent clues and weave them into a sort of explanation. In the days after Columbine, for example, Harris and Klebold emerged as alienated misfits in the jock culture of their suburban high school. We learned about their morbid taste in music and their violent video games. Largely missing, though, was the proper frame around the picture: the extreme narcissism that licensed these boys, in their minds, to murder their teachers and classmates.

Something similar is now going on with Cho, whose florid writings and videos were an almanac of gripes. "I'm so lonely," he moped to a teacher, failing to mention that he often refused to answer even when people said hello. Of course he was lonely.

In Holocaust studies, there is a school of thought that says to explain is to forgive. I won't go that far. But we must stop explaining killers on their terms. Minus the clear context of narcissism, the biographical details of these men can begin to look like a plausible chain of cause and effect--especially to other narcissists. And they don't need any more encouragement.

Posted 9:27 PM by Gene

The Newsrag of the Zeitgeist engages in the print equivalent of the brisk rubbing of hands -- we wouldn't expect anything else with the synergistic partner of....well, it makes PEOPLE NEWSRAG look distinguished -- but an earlier "Web exclusive" says it all:

• The Sensitive Art of Marketing After a Tragedy

Sensitive?

P. S. Before that Zeitgeist's vice-president and show-biz publicity chief had this to say -- which we thankfully missed, lest it make us angry:

If you were looking to build a case for the sheer pointlessness of 24-hour cable-news networks, Monday afternoon’s coverage of the mass shooting at Virginia Tech would’ve been a great place to start.

And how pray tell, Devin, did the rest of your biz avoid pointlessness? Or did it?

It’s a sly commentary on the surreality of movie violence—but viewed from another, more alarmist, perspective, one could just as easily bash it for glorifying bloodshed.

Editor-pleasin' DEVIN wins a NEUHARTHISM OF THE MONTH AWARD -- and is an instant finalist for our annual honors! Go for it! We know you have adjectives and Machiavellianism to spare!

Posted 5:57 PM by Gene

Eenie weenie teeny tiny:

British Airways cut a cameo by Richard Branson from its in-flight version of the latest James Bond film and blurred out the tail fin of a Virgin Atlantic plane seen in the movie.

We couldn't care less about Richard Branson, or British Airways, or James Bond, so why does this strike us as so typical of the little eenie-weenie-teeny-tiny vendettas big businessmen have that make them so popular with their customers?

Posted 5:54 PM by Gene

I feel pretty, oh so pretty....

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration said Friday it had stopped construction on a new execution chamber at San Quentin State Prison, a project whose secrecy angered Democratic lawmakers when they learned of it just last week.

Why do we harbor the suspicion Ah-NULT would not execute even the most deserving thug just to look good for the media?

Schwarzenegger Lets MTV 'Pimp' His Ride

We can only hope Jo-NAH runs no more elbow thrusts for Ah-NULT for president.

Posted 4:15 PM by Gene

RUN, DON'T WALK, TO THE LOCAL CINEPLEX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[MOVIES ARE BETTER THAN EVER!!!!! overemphasis added]

You wonder whether we'd better served by rumor than by the mix of bromides, salesmanship and flat-out BS that makes up the news biz. We can't do enough to put these frauds like GanNETt out of business.

Posted 1:46 PM by Gene

Rice is an executive disaster waiting to happen at State. Taking bets here: Next big "scandal" comes from State. Anybody?

Why not? It's as good a place as any.

Posted 1:41 PM by Gene

An afternoon ride on a swamp buggy could cost one man tens of thousands of dollars after it caught fire -- and set off a blaze that has charred more than 38,000 acres of drought-parched Everglades since Monday.

At what point does setting an example become bureaucratic overkill?

Posted 1:38 PM by Gene

Microsoft Wants To Double The Number Of PCs In The World By 2015

And then maybe BUGMEISTER can donate His foundation money to the League of Nations to clean up the mess.

He'll get it coming AND going!

Posted 1:22 PM by Gene

Was the emoting of the ANDERSONS and the BRIANS acting? We must ask. These jerks never lose an opportunity to show they can pull one on the public, and besides, their adrenalin rush comes from one-upmanship, from beating the competition for no better reason than beating the competition. We all know only ratings and money matter to the jerks, but they can't show their private ego because -- well, it would be unseemly. So when these golden opportunities for tin platitudes come along they copiously cry the crocodile tears, which should never prevent us from viewing them all as the coldest-blooded of reptiles.

And besides -- they're members of AN ACTORS' UNION.

Posted 12:28 PM by Gene

We wonder why The New Yorker's geniuses haven't yet said something pretentious about the massacre. Maybe they figure they've been beaten to it -- in spades. But never underestimate the power of li-te-ra-ry EXCELLENCE.

Posted 12:20 PM by Gene

An odd juxtaposition from ASSPress:

Head of China's State-Backed Church Dies

...followed by:

Fidel Castro Meets With Chinese Official

Posted 12:11 PM by Gene

Now Dubya has formed a commission.

Will someone tell these bozos all these result in are reports nobody reads?

Posted 7:56 PM by Gene

And the House COMMIES are up to more no-good:

Democrats Target Tax Break for ConocoPhillips, Tyson

This "tax break for producing alternative energy" (peeeee-U!) was manufactured by Roy "The Gay Divorcée" Blunt, so obviously petulant Dems want to get back at him. But we should remember whenever Congresspoops pass pieces of -- legislation that give tax breaks for dubious causes they're merely getting back at the people.

Posted 6:45 PM by Gene

PRESS RELEASE OF THE WEEK:

The New York Times is Featured on ``Jeopardy!'' Week of April 23!!!!! [PINCHIAN overemphasis added]

We would pose our own JEOPARDY!!!!!!!!!!-style question but PINCH has all the answers.

(Via -- who else? Romy)

Posted 6:42 PM by Gene

FDR -- er, JOE BIDEN SPEAKS:

"I would argue, since 1994 with the Gingrich revolution, just take a look at Iraq, Venezuela, Katrina, what's gone down at Virginia Tech, Darfur, Imus. Take a look. This didn't happen accidentally, all these things," he said.

ASK NOT -- oh. That's Obama's line.

(Via Hotline On Call)

Posted 6:30 PM by Gene

OH oh, The Big V says The Big 3 (Spidey, that is) is "stuck in a rut" and "giv[es] off the faint odor of running on fumes."

Heck THE CONSPIRACY's been flying for decades without fuel.

Not to worry; we suspect we'll be hearing from those press ag -- REPORTERS flying on their own fumes quoting PAUL DRECK and citing ALL-TIME RECORD...you get the idea.

Posted 6:19 PM by Gene

We have a hunch the MASSACRE RALLY (up 350 points for the week) will last a long, long time, and the longer it gets the most embarrassed Wall Street should get.

There's just one problem: Wall Street does not get embarrassed.

Posted 6:17 PM by Gene

The family of the evil gunman deserves compassion, too, for they were also among his victims.

Posted 1:59 PM by Gene

Con-SER-va-tives go back to the fetal position: Now the COMMIE House has passed Barney's idea that shareholders should have a say in the CEO's salaries!

This has to be the WORST day for FREE EN-TER-PRISE since DICK GRASSO was persecuted!

Posted 1:57 PM by Gene

• On the Scene: Time for us to leave [Home-page hed]

Better still if you hadn't arrived.

Posted 10:11 AM by Gene

Especially when abortion is involved, I fully expect biased articles in places like the New York Times. But I’m still surprised to find how widespread the bias is.

This article by Jess Bravin in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal is a prime example....

The Wall Street Journal’s readers are entitled to better than this.

Considering you have two knee-jerk papers which think they can sell for $500 a year online, and which flaunt and scorn their P-Ulitzers depending on their respective party lines, I believe their readers aren't.

Posted 10:02 AM by Gene

One aspect that clearly irritated many of NBC’s competitors was the impression of the logo “NBC News,” which the network burned into every image from the material.

Something does get news hacks mad!

(Via the usual Romy)

P. S. CNN's idiots have "banned" the video, no doubt because it's yesterday's news, and besides, there's the LOGO.

Posted 9:36 AM by Gene

BULLETIN DOW INDUSTRIALS SURGE BY TRIPLE DIGITS TO TOP 12,900 FOR FIRST TIME

THE MASSACRE RALLY CONTINUES!!!!!

Frauds.

Posted 9:34 AM by Gene

Rules should have barred weapon purchase

Woulda, shoulda, coulda -- yes, I believe we've found another reason the hacks should shut up.

Posted 9:19 AM by Gene

What can be said about the Virginia Tech massacre? Very little. What should be said? Even less.

Ordinarily this would be laugh-out-loud colyumnist-self-parody funny but the more we encounter zillionaire pundits writing like this the less likely we are to laugh.

Posted 8:43 AM by Gene

The latest excuse is, if we don't do it, someone else will.

Look at it this way: If you don't lose circulation and ratings and revenues, someone else will.

Posted 8:39 AM by Gene

'President Obama? Meet Secretary Zakaria'

President Obama? Meet Press Secretary Friedman!

When does Jonny Hairshirt graduate to the grand position of blather his mentor Howie Hairshirt occupies?

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 7:55 PM by Gene

Just how well is Vista doing?

Dell is bringing XP back.

(Via Slashdot)

Posted 7:28 PM by Gene

Virginia's governor has appointed a commission starring Der Homeland's first boss Der Tom Ridge, and which will do as much good as a certain other commission -- or most other commissions.

Meantime the people seem to be letting news hacks all over America have it over their new hero, which means we're stuck with BRIAN's and CAPUT's images, which will define the obscenity forever, but whose blatant overexposure, with justice, will dig more ground from underneath the news biz. (It must be serious when GREG co-authors it.)

Or as BRIAN and CAPUT said, GIVE ME FIVE!!!!!

Posted 5:40 PM by Gene

It's official: the sanctimonious Dalai Lamas of Mountain View are becoming the BUGMEISTERS of search, and with any luck they'll extend the @#$%&* MASSACRE RALLY tomorrow.

OBSESSIVELY TRADING MORONS.

Posted 5:27 PM by Gene

One of Old Rotgut's reluctantly former friends tells us:

Josh Tyrangiel, the with-it whiz kid who is going to save Time from dead tree hell, tells me that we will soon (-ish) be adding video to the Swamp.

TRANSLATION: ER's adding more bells and whistles, and with any luck the site will be so noisy with bells and whistles you won't hear the content.

Look at it this way, Gawk: when PEOPLE NEWSRAG folds it'll save a few forests.

P. S. I would like to know why I'm not as good as these TWXSTER millionaires. If I churned out as much CW as they I should have negative hits.

Posted 5:21 PM by Gene

We would like to think we can write, and we'd like to think we have a good blog. We labor under no illusions, however; most of what hits we've gotten since March 1st have been from Next Blog, and we doubt if anybody has bookmarked us, or has been kind enough to link to us in a way that would get us some more hits. We hope someday somebody notices us, and likes us, but after over four years the indifference can still be excruciating.

Posted 5:19 PM by Gene

Marvel is turning Spider-Man into a Branson East theme park.

That the folks at Marvel seem to think this is something new is the mark of a rank amateur.

Posted 2:57 PM by Gene

Another of the RED-STATE SCORPION's lackeys is about to twist slowly, slowly in the wind!

Posted 2:39 PM by Gene

So much for THAT ratings ploy.

When does GE BANCORP AND REALTY pay?

Time for that SPINOFF, Little Jeffy?

(Via the ethically debating Romy)

Posted 12:24 PM by Gene

Psychiatrist: Showing Video Is 'Social Catastrophe'

If he'd realized CHARLIE (CHARLES) GIBSON'S NUMBER ONE in the RATINGS....

Posted 12:14 PM by Gene

Va. Tech Awarding Degrees to Victims

It's the least (or perhaps we should say the most) it can do.

Posted 11:57 AM by Gene

Con-SER-va-tives assume the fetal position: the loony-left Senate has given the FDA power to REGULATE DRUG ADS!

Well who told SLEAZEBALL GUMBO's employers to turn America into a chemical fountain of youth?

Posted 9:47 AM by Gene

We figured it wouldn't be long: the news schmucks are now talking
ETHICS.

Posted 9:36 AM by Gene

After THE MASSACRE RALLY Wall Street's frauds deserve a comeuppance.

Posted 9:29 AM by Gene

Given this piece too I'm starting to wonder if the rudiments of a revolt against knee-jerk partisanship may be assembling -- but then we thought the same thing after 9/11. There is, nonetheless, a limit to how many times hyperpartisans can call us stupid.

Posted 9:14 AM by Gene

From an extraordinary piece by Sacha Zimmerman on TNR.com:

Suddenly, the utilitarian approach to gun control supersedes reality. Yet it is too easy to blame external elements--elements we could perhaps change. Not that gun control isn't a worthy issue, but 32 innocents didn't die only because there are too many guns in the world; they died because Cho decided to kill them. And if the cause wasn't too many guns, then there were plenty of other influences--and plenty of other sources for reporters to harangue: the violence-in-media people, the psychoanalysts, the criminal profilers, and the pharmaceutical companies (Cho was taking an antidepressant). But these are just aspects of this melancholy crisis; they're quite different than the cruel ambition to kill. It is that wicked impulse we should be trying to figure out.

Just one problem: only God knows who has that wicked impulse -- and who has a direct line with God?

Posted 8:40 AM by Gene

Public protests against the sharia brigade? In Turkey -- and Pakistan?

Maybe the Muslim world has more common sense than we ordinarily think.

Posted 8:29 AM by Gene

As the story fades to yet another memory of ANDERSON remuneratively crying the hacks' obsession with their hero's ethnicity will persevere. WHY? If he'd been green with yellow polkadots and chartreuse stripes or an inhabitant of Neptune he would have been evil. Do we ascribe evil to every race or ethnic group because of a psycho's background?

Yes, the hacks must shut up, and keep up for the future dreaming of this week's profits.

They'll need it. (Link via the usual Romy)

Posted 8:27 AM by Gene

All the Big Three networks had primetime newsmagazine specials focused on the Virginia Tech shootings last night, and collectively they drew 24.7 million viewers across two timeslots.

1. Don't some people know how to get their news? 2. 24.7 million may be a lot, but considering our population's 300 million you have to wonder how many deliberately tuned out because they'd already heard the story -- and because they knew how the TV do's would overplay it.

Posted 8:12 AM by Gene

Now that the story is over and we can go back to being hermetically sealed we can concentrate on the more important things -- like SKNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNX being astonished:

Some said the "jokes" were just part of his exaggerated way of speaking, so they didn't take them seriously. Others said they found him a savvy, insightful interviewer, and they appreciated the time he gave them to express their thoughts. And some were honest enough to say that they valued his big audience, especially when they were promoting their books.

These are weak excuses for journalists' participation in this continuing offense to civility. Jokes are not jokes when they wound and humiliate. The claim that Imus's slanders were the price they had to pay in return for his providing a forum for their ideas doesn't wash. Big-name newspaper, magazine and TV journalists have no trouble finding places where they can voice their thoughts.

WwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwWELL! Considering that's it's been umpteen years since Howie Hairshirt and the CLODS at The Newsrag of the Zeitgeist started blabbing with Old Scotch Fumes it does seem odd that The Great Bloviator should only now be harrumphing about it. Amazing how this schlemiel finds the truth after all the rest of America has found it.

And for this they pay the big bucks, and lay off people.

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 8:07 PM by Gene

Someday the world will know in its full flavor the strange and incredible story of Kitty Carlisle Hart. The granddaughter of Shreveport's first Jewish mayor (!), she was born to -- to put it politely -- a scheming social climber of a mother, and after her physician-husband named Conn died when Kitty was ten she squired her to Europe to marry royalty and spend most of the time in singing lessons. With the Crash it was back to the states for an expedient in show-biz; Kitty looked through a phone directory and found her stage name Carlisle -- as did her mother. Several Broadway shows followed, and soon Kitty was off to Paramount opposite Bing Crosby and introducing "June in January" and "Love in Bloom", and then to MGM with the Marx Brothers and the unlikely A Night at the Opera. A decade of marking time followed -- radio, nightclubs, one last bad movie, and who knows what had she not made her great catch: the brilliant (and bisexual) playwright and director (and psychiatrists' slave) Moss Hart, whom she married in 1946 not for love but because it seemed a good thing at the time. (Among other hobbies Hart liked having nude swimming parties with his "friends." They stopped after the wedding. She was aghast at having to share his bed.) It worked: the couple begat four children and were inseparable until Hart's untimely death at all of 57 in 1961. Most important, it gave her entrée into the great New York social scene, where the natural grace and poise and charm that somehow came from all that time puppy-dogging an imperious mother found a tremendous outlet, and part of it she displayed most famously as a panelist on To Tell the Truth. A life like Mrs. Hart's is unthinkable now, least in part for the opportunites she wouldn't have -- she saw Caruso, and knew Toscanini and his daughters, and dated George Gershwin, and was close to such society bigwigs as Phyllis (Mrs. Bennett) Cerf and Irene (Mrs David O.) Selznick and Dorothy (Mrs. Richard) Rodgers, forces of nature in their own right. You do not rub against all that stardust without a little of it sparkling you, and if her public persona was the real thing -- and we don't doubt it -- Kitty Carlisle Hart had it in galaxies. Here is another reminder of what we have lost, which is far more than we can ever hope to reclaim.

P. S. Most of these facts came from Steven Bach's bio of Hart, a not-bad source for such information.

(First posted at 5:37 p.m.; I moved it several times for obvious reasons, and also corrected Moss Hart's age; grammatically corrected 2/16/2008)

Posted 8:02 PM by Gene

And as the hacks tell the truth with one eye on the Nielsens they seem to have missed this significant little bit of headline: the Dems have all but abandoned a date-certain for Iraqi withdrawal. We can assume it wasn't the goodness of the hearts but the lack of their votes that propelled it.

(Via WeeklyStandard.com)

Posted 7:42 PM by Gene

The ASSPress is CONCERNED because the NRA has portrayed Honorary Mayor Mike as an OCTOPUS -- which the ASSPress, with its long tradition of public service, reminds us is -- ANTI-SEMITIC!!!!!

From Our Town fakery to goosing our ratings to telling the public how to think. Yep, the news biz is back to normal. It never left it.

Posted 7:02 PM by Gene

[W]e are sensitive to how this will be seen by those affected and we know we are in effect airing the words of a murderer here tonight....

If ol' LEGENDARY WELCH were still running GE BANCORP they'd have to hospitalize him for laughing.

N'est-ce pas?

Posted 6:33 PM by Gene

Well, not all of the news from BIGMEDIA is bad: the recorded -- sound biz is having what Variety likens to "a stock-market crash." What we cannot understand is why public media abandonment is only in recorded -- sound and newspapers. Why hasn't the public abandoned television? Or the movies? When will the rest of BIGMEDIA finally see a groundswell of our anger? That the floor is collapsing under the weight of all those golden chains is nonetheless not good news for our superiors, however unjustly the agony is spread.

Posted 6:32 PM by Gene

SIGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH:

"Yet, in writing he could communicate. You've seen the plays. They're not good writing. But they are at least a form of communication. And in his responses to the other students' plays, he could be quite articulate. If writing is the only way you can communicate with the wider world, then I guess being an English major makes sense."

Majoring in firearms would have made just as much sense.

This seems to be the only story to report the hideous agony of the victims.

P. S. In fairness, the hacks who edit the front pages did not give our psycho all the publicity that was coming to him, but we must remember this was only the first day.

Posted 5:31 PM by Gene

One of the world's great news organizations gets AN EXCLUSIVE!!!!!!!!!!

This psycho will NEVER be out of our sight! Every appearance is like a reward for him! As the fool megazillionaire Brian asks, WHY?????

P. S.



This is how the news biz makes up for all the grand exposure it gives a psycho.

Posted 10:46 AM by Gene

We must confess we could not stifle a smile at all those CEOs and other high-mucky mucks acting like walking cartoons or colicky two-year-olds, furiously banging on their Blackberrys to get them to work, jumping up and down and screaming, and never questioning why they need such superior technology in the first place.

Posted 10:33 AM by Gene

We're surprised that self-serving tub thumper John Lott hasn't made himself a nuisance these last few days, but we can think of one reason not to allow concealed weapons on campuses:

Posted 10:28 AM by Gene

Which again raises the question: why are so many anti-abortionists against gun control -- and why are so many gun-control supporters FOR ABORTION?

Posted 10:24 AM by Gene

No! NO!!!!! Reactionary Nazi Nine Fingers have ruled the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban is CONSTITUTIONAL!!!!!!!!!!

We MUST elect DEMOCRATS who'll make sure these BIGOTED, FASCIST -- er, you had too much coffee?

Posted 9:40 AM by Gene

Now, given all of that, it's easy to come back and say that cable channels over-hype and sensationalize everything about the tragedy, that the coverage is excessive and unfiltered and shoddy. The answer to that is simple: Well of course. That's the nature of this particular beast. Always has been. And if you look at it from strictly a business perspective, what would you change? Flooding the zone, as they say, is what everybody does. If you're not in that game, then your ratings are down. And if your ratings are down, you're out of a job. So there's little incentive for news directors at these cable channels to reinvent the wheel.

WHEW! WE DON'T HAVE TO CHANGE A THING!

Most important is the notion that all the reporters and anchors on camera should be better schooled in crises reporting. Don't sensationalize or speculate. Don't talk about things you don't know because then you're just talking in circles on air. And even though channels employ the "news wheel" philosophy of constant updates, use discretion. Walking us through the story from the start every 10 minutes doesn't help anything. In short, don't waste airtime talking about nothing if you know nothing. Get someone on the street or in the studio. And if the story stalls -- as they all do, even temporarily -- then don't resist the urge to cut away to something different (even though that goes against your gut, history and self-preservation instincts). You can always come back.

Having just had a hack tell them their MO is perfect, we can be sure the cable news jerks will take this very seriously -- and then do things THE EXACT OPPOSITE WAY AS ALWAYS.

Posted 9:30 AM by Gene

Perhaps the reason the national conversations always sputter out is that they start off too ambitious. Rather than tackling America's fundamental problems, we could start by talking about how we should talk.

Jo-NAH successfully invents another reason why we do not need newspaper colyumnists.

Posted 8:57 AM by Gene

A LAUGH: SUMNER's going to replace Jack Daniel's Fog with the plagiarist Mike Barnicle!

These nappy-headed -- I DIDN'T SAY IT!

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 8:37 AM by Gene

Viewer interest in the ongoing story was high. Fox News averaged 2.7 million viewers in primetime Monday night, a 44% increase over its first-quarter average in primetime. CNN had 2.4 million viewers, a 182% increase, and MSNBC had 796,000, a 46% increase over its first-quarter average, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Don't some people know how to get their news?

Posted 8:34 AM by Gene

Jack Shafer is becoming to JERNALISM what Mary was to typhoid.

Posted 8:31 AM by Gene

Honorary Mayor Mike will become the first presidential candidate to campaign on gun control. Just one problem: gun control will have the same effect on psychos as barricades and ID cards. This is why it will never pass, not just the despicable NRA.

Posted 8:28 AM by Gene

And as we ready to worship death again, officials in HYER EHDYUKAYSHUN prepare to install more barricades and make better ID cards, never ready for the threat within.

Posted 8:14 AM by Gene

Here is why (for me at least) the Continuing Saga of Virginia Tech has so quickly become such an extreme vexation: the reek of the most hypocritical sanctimony. Editoralists and Dubyas stand like talking wax dolls emitting their platitudes as if in a coma. This awful tragedy blahblahblah...the sanctity of life blahblahblah....Like hell! Death is a national religion. Don't want a baby? Abort it! Hate somebody? Shoot him! We all know death is funny in the popcorn restaurants. These brave students blahblahblah...then why are the hacks spending two thirds of the news hole detailing what the killer had for breakfasts? This infernal politicospeak is a rotted fig leaf for our national rot. Either we're for death or we're not. And if we're against death, we surely haven't proved it.

Soon enough we'll forget this story too, and it will be safe to worship death again.

Posted 5:30 PM by Gene

One reason I've avoided SUPERDUPERMEGAGIGABLOGGERS for awhile:

LOTS OF PEOPLE WANT ME TO SAY MORE about the Virginia Tech shootings, but I don't have a lot more to say at the moment, particularly as it's still unclear exactly what happened.. [SIC]

So why the hell do you BLOG?

Plus many of his entries have to do with GUN CONTROL (predictably GLIBERTARIAN, we'd guess), so there's less than zero reason to follow him.

Posted 2:42 PM by Gene

OH oh, Romy's shaking at his superexpensive computer -- the peons are complaining the hacks are overdoing it!

The problem may be demonstrated with an equation:

[(H/I) / D] * C = T

in which H is the horror factor, I is the amount of information available, D is the likelihood of future developments, C (for GUESS WHICH CABLE NEWS NETWORK) is the amount of air time and column inches available (this being close to infinity and getting closer), and T is the tedium factor. Yesterday's obscenity had a very high horror quotient and a very low information quotient, a quotient rendered lower because of so few firsthand accounts and those (student e-mails, mainly) demonstrating that most collegians just cannot write, dousing the interest. With the almost infinite airtime available the hacks were duly sworn to have to ANDERSONIZE the thing, and so the tedium quotient must approach a record. Repeating a story might be justified IF further developments were available, but they weren't, and especially as the very few remaining further developments were already quite obvious (the "loner" factor for one) there was little news, and even greater tedium.

This extremely high tedium (and irritation) factor compounds itself as the biz still thinks we all get our news by shlumpfing into a cozy chair and reading the evening paper. It is now possible to be informed anytime, but the ANDERSONIZERS assume some people are totally oblivious to the news, which seems an increasingly dubious assumption (heck, that famous question, "Where were you on December 7, 1941?" assumes the news spread pretty fast even then, so this notion has probably been obsolete for at least six decades); plus the nightly-news geriatrics are deigned somehow holy despite being less than ten percent of us. This justifies the whack-on-the-brain repetition as much as need to obsessively fill an excessive news hole. That the dolt "Prime-Time" Fahri uses "SYMBOLISM" as an excuse all but confirms THE NEWS BIZ IS BROKE AND IT WON'T CHANGE BECAUSE IT'S TOO FAT AND UGLY AND PROFITABLE.

I hate to discuss such an awful story so clinically, but dammit these reporting idiots have brains harder than reinforced concrete -- and IQs to MATCH.

One other thing: is it possible so many of these fired reporters Romy & Company always cry over are the JERNALISTIC equivalent of unneeded middle managers turning out too many unneeded reports?

P. S. Has anyone noticed Stale.com has hardly done a thing on this? Doesn't it lend itself to snarky devil's-advocate irony?

Posted 2:38 PM by Gene

...a loner....

We really, really, REALLY need one million news hacks to report this.

Posted 12:31 PM by Gene

`Radical' Frank Calms Corporate Fears as He Pushes House Agenda

TRANSLATION: He knows on which side his money is buttered.

Posted 12:21 PM by Gene

And as a further reward for a job badly done:

Campaign ads could cost $3 bln

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 12:08 PM by Gene

Hey look, ma!

D.C. Area Man Was Va. Tech Shooter

Gunman, a legal resident, came to U.S. through Detroit

Who else wants to take credit?

News hacks are a thug's best friend!

Posted 12:02 PM by Gene

Now EVERY news organization is plastering the psycho's mug on its Web site, confirming for al time news hacks are a thug's best friend.

Posted 11:27 AM by Gene

Another reason we need 800,000 reporters covering this:

● Campus caught by surprise (Home-page hed)

Posted 10:40 AM by Gene

Dubya has decided we should cry figuratively until sundown Sunday.

I hate symbolism. I still cringe at how America's Greatest Ex-President had only the star lit on the National Christmas Tree for two consecutive Christmases while our hostages festered in Iran. He may as well have run a white flag up America's flagpoles. Such symbolism does not express solidarity, it expresses defeat. Yellow ribbons express defeat. Flowers express defeat. While the psychoses behind such calamities may be unsolvable the last thing we should succumb to is sappy sentimentality.

Posted 9:31 AM by Gene

ESPNCORP NETWORK NEWS discloses -- the KILLER! And it further discloses -- he was ANGRY!

This is why we need half a million reporters covering this.

And it appears for now the university's president will not be the necessary scapegoat, disappointing the armies in the satellite-dish cities.

Posted 9:21 AM by Gene

I respectfully suggest the word HEALING be expunged from the language as it serves nothing but the malevolent purposes of psychobabble and evasion.

Posted 8:33 AM by Gene

The WP's Paul Farhi wants to know:

"Just how big does a story have to be these days to get the broadcast networks to pay attention during their most watched hours?!?!?!?!?!?" [Overemphasis added]

1. The networks had "expanded editions." 2. We have SIXTEEN CABLE NEWS CHANNELS and at least 30,000 WEB NEWS SITES. 3. 200,000 reporters are there. 4. Anyone who thinks we need MORE NEWS COVERAGE should have, to put it politely, his head examined.

Posted 6:54 AM by Gene

"I wish I could say this has been a good day. It hasn't."

DAMMIT Charlie -- Charles, it was a good day, when your reporting hordes could use this story to beat upon our essential hopelessness, and fill the void with your nonstop superiority, and your expense accounts. It was a day when you could say YOU WERE THERE, to cover HISTORY, even if the history consisted largely of marking time blathering shop talk with your fellow hacks. It was a time when you could pretend your allegiance with the people, of whom you have nothing to do other than limousine drivers and maybe an occasional waitress, and wallow in the BATHOS you idiots mistake for philosophy and compassion. It was your time to crow. SHUT UP, CHARLIE -- CHARLES GIBSON.

And it is a measure of your biz' professional excellence, its reportorial perspicacity, the legions of truth gatherers swarming in their satellite-dish cities, that we hardly know anything more now than we did at NOON YESTERDAY.

Posted 6:42 AM by Gene

And then the vult -- PARTISANS must swoop in:

Until yesterday, Virginia Tech was A GUN-FREE ZONE!!!!!!!!!! [Why-we-must-be-armed-to-the-teeth overemphasis added]

• Some rip U.S. ‘GUN CULTURE!!!!!!!!!!’ [Why-we-must-be-disarmed-to-the-gums overemphasis added]

Not only must we say SHUT UP! to the hacks, but to their appendages, and enablers, and all the would-bes who would add their billions of words to the sea of verbiage that would drown us all.

Posted 6:42 AM by Gene

Even a "media reporter" admits to his biz' obsolescence:

In the race to a story, they can't beat citizen journalists who don't have to book a flight or arrange satellite time. By the dinner-time newscast, the day's news is old news.

There remains a role for traditional media, but, increasingly, the news is speaking for itself.

Yes, the news does speak for itself, and so do our imaginations, and as we imagine the news, and imagine how "armies" of news hacks cover the news, and imagine how batallions of "citizen-journalists" with cell-phones get three-second out of focus grainy snapshots, we can increasingly imagine the news, and are fed up even more totally with it.

Posted 6:35 AM by Gene

HUBRIS:

Could it happen here? Yes.

University police chiefs in San Diego County said they plan and prepare regularly for every possible crisis, including a rampaging gunman.

Except, of course, the crises they miss.

Posted 6:58 PM by Gene

Brian Williams, Charles Gibson, Katie Couric, John King, Greta Van Susteren, Geraldo Rivera, Shepard Smith, Matt Lauer, Meredith Vieira, Tiki Barber, Harry Smith, Robin Roberts, Chris Cuomo, John Roberts, Kiran Chetry...

THE YAKKETY-YAK-YAKKING YAK-YAKKERS ARE ALL THERE!

AND AMERICA'S LEAD -- NEWSRAG OF THE ZEITGEIST YAKKETY-YAK SPECULATES TOO!

ALREADY UNTOLD THOUSANDS OF YAKKETY-YAK YAKKING NEWS HACKS ARE ON THE SCENE BELCHING BILLIONS OF YAKKETY-YAK-YAKKING WORDS WHILE COPYING EACH OTHER'S NOTES OVER SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED HOURS AGO, TO WHICH BLESSED FEW WERE EYEWITNESSES, AND THAT THEY DON'T OTHERWISE KNOW A YAKKETY-YAK-YAKKING DAMNED THING ABOUT!

Posted 6:47 PM by Gene

Students bitterly complained that there were no public-address announcements on campus after the first burst of gunfire. Many said the first word they received from the university was an e-mail more than two hours into the rampage — around the time the gunman struck again.

Do I smell a lawsuit?

Posted 5:44 PM by Gene

To borrow a phrase from Liberace, Dubya's muddling all the way to the bank.

Posted 5:42 PM by Gene

The British deVELopMENT seh-creh-TEH-ry (whatever that is) has chosen a fine day to lift his leg and make a stink.

Posted 5:32 PM by Gene

And inevitably some con-SER-va-tives will spitball at liberals over gun control. Why the hell can't some people keep their ammo holstered?

Posted 5:27 PM by Gene

One wonders also if in a certain frenetic corner of the left they're giggling a comparison to Iraq. What's happened there has been dreadful, but at least it's had the relative "sense" (if one can call it that) of people butchering one another over religious doctrine. Stories like this, the hacks love to tell us, have no sense; but in the end they're "senseless" only insofar as we use such stories to deny our own moral sense, and our own sins.

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

Further educated guesses: the gunman will be called a "loner", conveniently absolving anyone else of blame; and he'll be found to have had an arsenal. It takes the mighty logorrhea of America's news hacks to state what we already know in our heads.

If I had a dollar for every damned word they're spewing now -- I'd be even richer than that @#$%&* blithering sap ANDERSON COOPER.

And count on PEOPLE WARNER MAGAZINES' FLAGSHIP to get into the act!

(But not TMZ.com, which is as happily removed from reality as KING RICHARD.)

Posted 5:11 PM by Gene

Where are they piling those symbols of defeat and despair, the flowers and the teddy bears? And how much money will be wasted on flowers and teddy bears that could pay for a scholarship in memory of the dead?

Posted 5:06 PM by Gene

Oh for God's sake Virginia Tech will come back.

News hacks, not content with their verbomania, keep plumbing new depths of the obvious.

Posted 3:20 PM by Gene

The news biz just handed out its pats on the -- P-Ulitzers, and so far as we can tell nothing extraordinarily contentious, but it's still early.

And alas, it appears they did not give an award to THE BOSS, or WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE DYLAN.

P. S. The Wall Street Journals Liberal Edition won two, and there is sulking and whining in the Con-SER-va-tive Edition's luxury suites.

P. P. S. Ornette Coleman won the P-Ulitzer for a record album, and John Coltrane got a "special citation", so presumably the Boss and Bill Shakespeare aren't that far off.

Posted 3:17 PM by Gene

Football goes hyperliberal!!!!!

Well, they paid him to gas on that too. O makes us forget that somewhere buried deep, very deep in that cranium is an intelligent man, but like so many under the spell of the likes of the Great Binge he has become all shtick.

Posted 3:07 PM by Gene

ABC News will broadcast President Bush's remarks at 4:15 p.m. EDT, followed by the officials' news conference at Virginia Tech. Full coverage tonight on "World News with Charles Gibson" at 6:30 p.m. ETD and an extended edition of "Nightline" at 11:35 p.m. EDT [SIC]

TRANSLATION: Dubya will cry, and the TV talkingfaces will go into full national-"healing" bloviation mode.

Posted 1:47 PM by Gene

Before today's disaster we were annoyed by this story. Even such reasonably good reporting is suspect because PEOPLE WARNER's in news and entertainment; when it comes to its own self-interest it can take both sides, and none. We were disgusted at Southern Comfort Haze's STOOGES because they took the same attitude, stating in most righteous indignation that what he said was dis-GUST-ing, but that he sold so many of their damned books he was a good guy. This is why we do not trust one word about show-biz from the press, especially as we learn the killer's movie favorites.

Posted 1:09 PM by Gene

The $64,000 question is was the gunman -- and it appears there was one gunman -- high on something. If he was high on movies it is easy to see how the biz will tap dance its way to "responsibility" on that one, just as it did with so much inward glee after Columbine. But say what you will, and it tested our patience along with the most annoyed of us, the huge idiot-savantry over the Drunken Slob did not happen in a vacuum. Since SUMNER's Great Super Bowl Stunt we've imagined something's wrong with us, but such is our confusion that not only have we no answers, we can't even ask the right questions. One answer, of course, is that we collectively take no responsibility. Another is that our culture is in such a state of decrepitude that it offers no way out. The geniuses who could offer no solace after 9/11 are hardly in shape to ponder a comparatively puny massacre. But then so long as our superiors in BIGMEDIA run the show they won't have to ponder anything; they can beat us black and blue as always, the consequences be damned.

And now, of course, comes the time when we learn evertyhing about the killer, and nothing about the victims.

An apt gesture -- the stock market's way up.

Posted 11:55 AM by Gene

Another catastrophe for which no one is responsible.

How long can we endure massacres with a smile? How long can we say our hideous culture is not to blame?

There is talk of a "second gunman." The knee-jerk talk of terrorism will come faster than the truth, but who knows?

Posted 10:53 AM by Gene

More need-to-know news from the ASSPress:

Nude Photos of Kate Moss to Be Auctioned

Talk about no there there.

Posted 10:30 AM by Gene

OH oh, the National Nanny wants the goods from food companies who market to kids!

Sell a diet of sugar and fattburgers to kids and this will happen to you.

Posted 9:56 AM by Gene

Corporate Dollars Flip to Democrats' Favor

So what? The Beltway Johns always pay for the better-looking sluts.

Posted 9:49 AM by Gene

`Spider-Man 3' Has World Debut in Tokyo

THE INTOLERABLE PLUGGING BEGINS!

Posted 9:38 AM by Gene

We'll say this for the late Thunderbird Guzzler's STOOGES: Once a jerk, always a jerk.

That includes YOU, Sam.

Posted 9:17 AM by Gene

9,000 soldiers against 170 demonstrators. Why doesn't Belly Kisser proclaim himself President for Life and be done with it?

Over the weekend President Putin, who has made no comment about the protests, was attending a freestyle wrestling match between American and Russian competitors in St. Petersburg, Russia's NTV network reported Sunday. Among the guests were ex-Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and movie star Jean Claude Van Damme.

TRANSLATION: He has his admiring stooges too.

Posted 3:54 PM by Gene

Sammy Glickmanism achieves ever higher levels of -- spending:

MOVIE executives routinely refuse to talk about their agreements to insert consumer products into films in exchange for hefty fees from advertisers, although they insist that commercial interests never take priority over artistic integrity.

But with "Sahara," some creative decisions apparently took promotional considerations into account. For example, producer Karen Baldwin demanded script changes to accommodate DaimlerChrysler because the German-American carmaker negotiated to have its Jeep trucks featured in the film. "You can't have the truck get almost stuck," Baldwin wrote in a March 2004 e-mail to "Sahara" executives. "I would bet that Jeep will have a heart attack when they see that. They want to show how well the Jeep handles and responds — not that it will get stuck in a tough situation."

Four months earlier, when director Breck Eisner expressed concern during development of the film about problems with another sequence involving a four-wheel-drive truck, Baldwin wrote in a memo, "Can't cut it. Jeep to pay 3 million."

The automaker entered into a partnership with the film's distributor, Paramount Pictures, for promotional tie-ins and an advertising campaign featuring its Jeep Wrangler Unlimited.

Eisner also suggested eliminating a bar scene featuring tequila because "it doesn't really work anymore." Baldwin again balked: "Need the tequila and beer scenes at some point as it means a lot of dollars (2 million from Souza and 3 from Heineken)."

The bar scenes eventually were cut for creative reasons, according to a person close to the production who spoke on the condition of anonymity. This person said that several companies backed out of product placement commitments in 2004 after "Sahara" novelist Clive Cussler filed a lawsuit against the production company seeking to stop the movie from appearing in theaters.

Plus "[a] $40,688 payment to stop a river improvement project and $23,250 for 'Political/Mayoral support' [that] may have run afoul of U.S. law." Hey just so long as we get the product placements made.

Posted 11:09 AM by Gene

Everybody wanted the biggest and loudest and bravest last word on this.

I'm totally DEAF -- and I'm NOT crawling out of this salt mine!

Posted 11:04 AM by Gene

It's time for our favorite Democratic candidates and their handlers (the ones with the laptops) to do some major-league spin!

Posted 9:48 AM by Gene

Somebody's written a thousand-page bio of Kingsley Amis (grunt!), and an anonymous WaPost intern has made Jonathan Yardley's point for him:

Everything you wanted to know about Kingsley Amis, and more.
Everything you wanted to know about Kingsley Amis, and more.

I think we get the point. I think we get the point. Is somebody still angry about those nappy-headed whatisits?

Posted 9:44 AM by Gene

The billions of fans who made Aqua Teen Whatever a smash hit have come up with another:

NickFitz writes
"Students at UCSC have recreated the first level of Donkey Kong using 6,400 Post-it notes stuck to the windows of the E2 building. It took a team of about 10 people five hours to complete the work, which will remain in place until May 1. There's a time-lapse video of the construction process."

And of course on the video you can hardly see anything.

GET A LIFE!

Posted 9:41 AM by Gene

Words (selectively quoted, but there) for the late Frank Rich's tombstone:

A. Anything he writes is going to make him look pretty bad

and

B. He hasn't written a good column in years....

Aren't you glad YOU read TimesReject?

Posted 9:33 AM by Gene

Elsewhere in the FORMER STOOGE's rag, James Dickeyson wants us OUTOUTOUT of Iraq -- but he does have sensible advice in the LAST GRAF:

Even Steven Simon, who strongly advocates disengagement, says that American and other international forces—once they pull out of Iraq—should be ready to go back in "for humanitarian intervention in the event that violence in Iraq becomes genocidal." The day after in Iraq may look a lot like the day before.

You know that celebrated Web picture of the man who has his head stuck up his...NEVER MIND.

Posted 9:31 AM by Gene

Well horrors:

In the past month, as a new security crackdown in Baghdad began, U.S. forces arrested another 1,000 Iraqis, bringing to 18,000 the number of detainees jailed in two U.S.-run facilities in that country.

And when do they become political prisoners? Maybe if we released them and....just a thought.

P. S. Any ASSPress stringers?

Posted 9:19 AM by Gene

Let me guess -- a pat on the back for a job well done (and we can pat ourselves a little more for having -- SYNERGISTICALLY suffered for it!) -- plus the usual vague ending paragraph about how we must all grow up -- you know, the kind that doesn't say anything when we all know what you're thinking? Sorta like YOU, FORMER STOOGE JonBoy? Now what's elsewhere, once co-star and sidekick?

NOTHING! Are we taking lots of time off internationally, FORMER STOOGE JonBoy? Well, we ARE comforted by this:

Survey: Planning a Vacation?
• In a few weeks, NEWSWEEK International will publish a special report on luxury vacation travel, and we'd like to get your input. Take Our Travel Survey.

Will do, FORMER STOOGE JonBoy -- and we hope it makes its way into your International covers!