Posted 9:44 PM by Gene

When the roman numerals and the buncombe pile up at this time every year, I think, God, I miss Mike Royko.

Posted 8:50 PM by Gene

Also on Friday, GanNETt took great pains to pat itself on the back for having turned the SUPER BORE's commercial breaks into an inescapable marketing tool. We've said it till our face turns green from turning blue, what news hacks don't spin they sell, and USAOKAY!!!!!'s signature table pounding with a story it created almost single-handed has played a big part in the unholy matrimony of carnival barking and fake piety that surrounds these pulp piles nowadays. But then SOB started USAOKAY!!!!! as a tool to SELL the news, to sell it with color and gimmicks, and that it succeeded beyond all imagining explains the press's larger failure since.

Posted 8:41 PM by Gene

A former editorial-page editor at the Miami Herald named "Jim" Hampton has died -- and his obit tells a very interesting story:

In 1980, Hampton and the board wanted to endorse incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter for president, but then-Executive Editor John McMullan favored Republican challenger Ronald Reagan. The two newsmen compromised -- and endorsed the independent third-party candidate John Anderson.

Four years later, a majority of the Editorial Board wanted to recommend Democratic challenger Walter Mondale. But publisher Richard Capen insisted the paper should endorse Reagan.

''In protest, I handed Dick a letter of resignation,'' Hampton recalled in a 1998 commentary. ``He tore it up and persuaded me to accept an unprecedented (some would say infamous) compromise.''

The Herald's editorial endorsed Reagan, but alongside it ran a column by Hampton with the headline: ``Most of us preferred Mondale.''

Hampton minced no words.

''In behalf of the substantial majority of this newspaper's Editorial Board, I respectfully but strenuously dissent from today's recommendation of Ronald Reagan for president,'' he wrote.

Hampton persuaded Capen's successor, Lawrence, to allow the paper to forgo presidential endorsements in 1992 and 1996.

On Friday, McClatchy, which purchased the Herald's owner Knight Ridder two years ago, closed at $11.09, near its lowest level since it went public 20 years ago. It took more than the DO-NOT-CALL LAW to pull that one off.

Posted 6:27 PM by Gene

DAMMIT, the scribblers are ready to settle, and it's back to genius as usual.

And now I'd guess their partners in megalomania the Screen Ac-TORS Guild will settle first.

Posted 6:17 PM by Gene

Norm Thomas's grandson wrote Zeitgeist's cover puff on Boobs McKeating, so maybe he is a liberal.

If McCain does not suffer fools lightly, that is because they are doing foolish things to the national interest...

So that's why he'll be a good lib...president.

I must not get into the eeny-weeny thinking of con-SER-va-tives, but the news hacks' mutual love affair with Boobs is a big fat STEEEEEEEEEERIKE ONE.

Posted 11:47 AM by Gene

And further on the subject of His Holiness, the disaster befalling the American Red Cross reminds us that in many ways the worst thing that can happen to a charity is money.

Posted 11:29 AM by Gene

We don't know what St. Warren's cherubim are up to here. We do note, however, that today His site's home page carries no major-name ads -- or ads of any kind. Indeed we submit His site has been ad-deficient ever since the Reagan debacle, where the desire to throw a tantrum overwhelmed virtually nil common sense. (Its former owner the BUGMEISTER sold it shortly afterwards.) Aside from being stupid, this typing is counterproductive -- we found out what this "shocking" video is about (I HATE PR WORDS!) by Googling it. Do the St.'s angels think His peons are THAT stupid?

Posted 10:58 AM by Gene

A "blaze of publicity" -- and mass indifference snuffs it out. This is inevitable for any show-biz act driven by publicity. The fate dogged BRITNEY, it will dog HANNAH!!!!!, and it will meet up with any "performer" whose chief attribute is an army of flacks.

Posted 9:53 AM by Gene

Pragmatism is another word reduced to rubble, like compromise. Both have come to mean giving in to your opponents. It's an apt term for someone like Ike, whose stone silence to the Hungarians (to give one example) was the perfect pragmatic statement -- and it condemned a generation of East Europeans to Communism. Yes, there was probably nothing he could do about it, but Ike did nothing about it almost proudly.

TRANSLATION: Gerald Ford Republicans still live. So what?

Posted 7:47 PM by Gene

Forgive us for not feeling sorry for all the CEOs who've lost huge chunks of their paper wealth lately; many of them had to fire an awful lot of innocent people to get rich in the first place.

Posted 7:21 PM by Gene

Ga. House passes resolution calling for NCAA football playoff

And we can certainly add STATE LEGISLATURES to the long list of outfits that have outlived their usefulness -- if they had any to begin with.

Posted 6:42 PM by Gene

The other day Ben "Producers" Brantley went bonkers over that Jerry Springer "opera", and this relatively damning review -- that is to say, damning next to Ben's -- suggests we should expand our campaign against ad-blurbists to include all genres. Ben was clearly excited because the masterwork struck all his chords about the EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL that is America, but this writer hints at something far worse -- it's DATED. This is a fatal sin in "opera", which can't rely on the deep navel staring or jet-engine screaming of its "music" and so must rely on being fashionable. It might have been fashionable for a teeny tiny British clique to do to Christians what it would NEVER do to -- well, you know the religion, but alas, we've heard that old America-stinks rag a million times, and really, who in his right mind paid attention to this loudmouth outside his fans? But there are press agents to be stroked, and prejudices to be confirmed, and so another piece of -- brilliance goes down the rat hole, and any hopes that opera can be more than a faddish political diatribe get further atomized.

Posted 5:37 PM by Gene

"Celebrities", we are told, modeled some dresses for a fundraiser the other night, but with four or five exceptions I never heard of them. Am I not HIP enough -- or are celebrities not worth knowing?

Posted 5:34 PM by Gene

Teens Who Attend Most Movies Also Consume Most Media

Could this help explain why "media" are so bad? Naaaaaaaaaah.

Posted 5:16 PM by Gene

At his worst, or even merely approaching his worst, Chuck Krauthammer hugs himself. He tells us today that Ronald Reagan presided over HISTORIC TIMES. Contending as we do (not an original contention) that The Me Decade is now in its thirty-eighth year, we say history hasn't made much of a dent in it. Ronald Reagan may have done HISTORIC things (another word that long passed the threshold of overuse), but his decade was as sleazy and tawdry and marketing-driven as ours. Indeed partisan hacks invented the word "sleaze" to describe Reagan. And much of the era's HIS-TORY has joined the historical ash heap, notably in Russia; and how soon we forget Reagan "assumed responsibilty" for the Beirut bombing, which did not stop terrorists from assuming things of their own. He is also to blame for making huge budget deficits easy -- but this coming from a tone-deaf Tom Lehrer impersonator we cannot take his valid point seriously.

Posted 5:13 PM by Gene

YOU-KNOW-WHO wasn't in the car, so the caption tells us, but one look at this photo and you have the meaning of "incorrigible".

Posted 1:47 PM by Gene

Dr. Dobson: I WILL NEVER VOTE FOR McCAIN!!!!!!!!!! [Holy overemphasis added]

That's okay, Doc; we'll never watch your favorite movie.

Posted 1:38 PM by Gene

Peter, not of the people:

In today’s New York Times Richard Land, pictured sitting behind a microphone, is quoted as saying this:

When I hear Rush Limbaugh say that a McCain nomination would destroy the Republican Party, what I want to say to Rush is, “You need to get out of the studio more and talk to real people. [Punctuation and lack-of-italics SIC]

That strikes me as an odd criticism from Dr. Land, whom I know and like. Dr. Land may disagree with Rush, but he should acknowledge the obvious: For almost 20 years, Rush Limbaugh has been talking to more “real people” than I suspect Richard Land ever will. Rush’s weekly audience is between 13 and 20 million people – all of whom are “real.”

He also makes zillions and lives in a Palm Beach mansion, unlike any given 13 to 20 million people. NUF SAID.

Posted 11:50 AM by Gene

Go ahead, try to think of something, anything, memorable from a telecast in the last, say, five years. The witty host's monologue? The moving acceptance speeches? The outfits? Sure, you can remember that such staples existed, along with a cute joke or moving moment or two. But considering the length of the show, those tidbits don't convert to a very high on-base percentage. And considering the anticipation and hype that precede the show every year, this is one pretty awful excuse for A-list entertainment.

The SUPE -- oh, he's talking about the OS-CARS®.

Six of one.

Posted 9:16 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: The SUPER BORE and its environs are a public-free rich folk's zone.

And as to this dust-up between the dueling DAILY NOOZ egos, it's clear they ache to be in with the in-crowd, proof yet again your modern day news hack wants to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted.

Posted 9:03 AM by Gene

A BANNER DAY FOR FREE EN-TER-PRISE:

Exxon Mobil Posts Record Profits

Posted 8:57 AM by Gene

As the strike enters its 89th day today, there's been no date set for the start of formal bargaining. That, combined with strike fatigue and SAG's recent militancy, has darkened the town's already gloomy mood. Some worry that after the June 30 expiration of its contract, SAG will join the writers in striking and that both guilds will stay out at least into the fall.

We beg of you -- DO IT! Our sanity DEMANDS it!

Posted 8:55 AM by Gene

Female suicide bombing is widely believed to be a tool increasingly used by al-Qaida in Iraq.

Another very good reason for us to RUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!

In both bombings, the attackers were wearing suicide vests, according to Qasim Atta, a spokesman for the Baghdad security plan.

Atta told state TV that both women were mentally disabled and their explosives were remotely detonated.

Anyone who wants us out of Iraq effectively defends such barbarism.

Posted 8:51 AM by Gene

The Bugmeisters are wasting their money!

Posted 6:33 PM by Gene

Senator McCain's 96-year old mother Roberta says the republican [SIC] base will ultimately accept her son, the frontrunner.

"I think holding their nose they're going to have to take him," she told C-SPAN recently.

What an INSPIRING choice.

Posted 6:27 PM by Gene

Wonderful:

A Harris Interactive survey for Zillow.com in December found that 36% of homeowners thought their homes had increased in value over the past year, vs. 23% who thought they had decreased. That willful optimism translates directly into the record overhang of unsold existing homes: more than 4 million.

And we know where all that increase will go.

Posted 6:03 PM by Gene

Ah-NULT: John, I'dt be glahhht to be yourrr VIZZZZZZZZE-PRREZIDENT!

Boobs: Happy to oblige Arnold, but, uh....

Posted 6:01 PM by Gene

Elsewhere in The Big Double-A Scribble, we learn YUM! Brands is showing off:

KFC Corp. has cooked up a tasty bit of ambush marketing for the Super Bowl, but what if the players turn out to be too chicken to play along?

The Louisville, Ky.-based chicken chain on Jan. 17 said it would make a charitable donation of $260,000 to "Colonel's Scholars" in the name of the first player or entertainment performer who does the wing-flapping part of the wedding perennial "chicken dance" for three seconds in the end zone.

The campaign is designed to promote KFC's hot wings....

This is ambush marketing (we had to correct our post), meaning the NFL got a little mad, and there are no luxury suites to defend.

Posted 5:58 PM by Gene

Should a company called CLOROX criticize the ingredients of its rivals' beauty potions?

All RIGHT, we had an excuse.

Posted 5:49 PM by Gene

The StinkyInky's ah-chi-tect-tyuh cri-TIC proposes a veritable rebuild of the Quonset Hut Mausoleum on Broad, meaning hundreds of millions and no guarantee the Hut becomes any more inviting. Multiply this by dozens and you have all the billions squandered on AHT projects, Pruitt-Igoes for rich people.

P. S.

[I]t's worth asking ourselves how things went so wrong at the Kimmel. It was the first of six major civic buildings (Independence Visitors' Center, the two new stadiums, etc.) started during the Rendell administration. All suffer to varying degrees from the same off-putting feeling on their ground floors.

Why? Because EDDIE wouldn't catch himself DEAD on the GROUND FLOOR!

Posted 5:33 PM by Gene

Speaking of America's Center of Pointless Oneupmanship, its denizens have been engaged in a vigorous debate all day over Boobs McKeating's graduation rank in the Naval Academy. You'd think the Web site of a rag founded by Bill "Bach B-Minor Mass" Buckley, who said he'd rather be governed by the first 200 (or 2,000, depending on the source) names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty, would have instantly recognized the debate's irrelevance, but there is no telling people who work so hard at being themselves irrelevant.

Posted 1:54 PM by Gene

Perhaps the entire CORNER agglomeration and other obsessive fans of THE GREATEST ANIMATED SERIES OF ALL TIME, voice of skepticism and reason and wit, can explain THIS ONE.

That SLIME is running this endorses His supreme belief that any publicity is good publicity, the history of His company notwithstanding.

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 10:53 AM by Gene

UHHHH....

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. narrowed its loss in the fourth quarter as surging sales of its anti- clotting pill Plavix partially offset charges for costs that include investments backed by subprime securities.

Who ELSE owns this scrap paper?

Posted 10:37 AM by Gene

DIMWITS:

Some analysts are predicting that Super Bowl XLII may break a record of 94.1 million viewers, set in 1996, because of the possibility that the Patriots will finish the N.F.L. season undefeated.

Oh, no, Madison Avenue frets. What if the game proves more interesting than the commercials?

Remember, MORONS, programming is mere FILLER for your ADS.

Posted 9:40 AM by Gene

What a ride it has been, literally. I’ve worked for some of the biggest and best newspapers in the country – the L.A. Times, the Detroit Free-Press, USA Today – and among them, they have sent me to Borneo, Thailand, North Africa, the Amazon, throughout Europe and from Costa Rica to Alaska on this continent.

I got certified as a SCUBA diver to report on the underwater scenes in the Bahamas with Tom Hanks and Darryl Hannah for Ron Howard’s “Splash!” I’ve sung (not well) with Rod Steiger in a restaurant in Durango, Mexico, played golf (not well, either) with Clint Eastwood on the Monterrey Peninsula, and spent a total of six months of spring on the French Riviera covering the Cannes Film Festival.

With these two grafs, Jack has conclusively shown why the sooner newspapers rid themselves of their movie ad-blurbists, the better.

Posted 9:22 AM by Gene

Now Mark Steyn wants to make himself irrelevant.

What IS with these con-SER-va-tives and their worship of Corporate America? "Undoubtedly there are 'greedy people on Wall Street'. Why should he and his chums be the ones who decide whether they need to be 'punished'?" Well, Guinness Book Record Holder for Most Columns Written in an Hour, if his chums include, say, the Attorney General, or the FBI director, or the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, they may have a reason. Mind you, just may.

Also, there's rumor of some EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL document Teddy and his chums may use to persecute con-SER-va-tives' heroes. It's called The Federal Register.

Posted 8:49 AM by Gene

Is there any position Hillary has not taken?

Posted 8:47 AM by Gene

The Kurt Cobain of Fillum was a druggie.

Can his name now fade into oblivion?

Posted 8:39 AM by Gene

The only other difference between whorehouses and these upscale properties in Washington is that the johns can pretend they're doing the pee-PUL's business.

Also, the whores have the tact to stay in the house.

Posted 8:36 AM by Gene

Is there any escaping Chinese quality control?

It couldn't have happened to a nicer company, however.

Posted 8:23 AM by Gene

Proud members of the American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers intend to raise prices to spend on advertising so they can hoodwink the public into thinking it's getting something for the money -- but:

[A]nalysts don't expect a quick fix. "Irene & Co. are confronting long-term problems that will take some time to solve," Wachovia analyst Jonathan Feeney said in a report. "For example, the problem in the cheese business isn't so much costs, it is that brand equity and product differentiation are well below average -- not something that can be fixed overnight."

TRANSLATION: How different are brands of prepackaged cheese slices -- or instant coffee?

Posted 8:07 PM by Gene

We understand why con-SER-va-tives don't trust Boobs McKeating, but if we get a president who wears it on his sleeve that he works with Democrats they can blame their Congressional heroes' MALFEASANCE, which promises to keep the GOP from control for a long time.

Posted 7:10 PM by Gene

In more outstanding news of FREE EN-TER-PRISE at work:

Eli Lilly and federal prosecutors are discussing a settlement of a civil and criminal investigation into the company’s marketing of the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa that could result in Lilly’s paying more than $1 billion to federal and state governments.

Let's see, what could con-SER-va-tives say? Shakedown, extortion, socialism -- but Big Pharma sorta got in this fix when it let MadAve portray its every drug as a cure for cancer and bad sex.

And all that talk about the billions Big Pharma selflessly spends seems more than a little hollow these days.

Posted 7:07 PM by Gene

OH oh, now the hard-core TEDDY haters will REALLY be mad:

Schwarzenegger to back McCain for president

Posted 5:11 PM by Gene

Somebody named Suderman says Lame Duck's "stimulus" package is ineffective and possibly unnecessary, something one can agree with given the excellence of the Sausage Factory on the Potomac; but then perhaps hoping his readers wouldn't click on the link he suggests for an alternative a Republican House plan which includes:

2) Significant Reduction in the Top Corporate Tax Rate.

3) End the Capital Gains Tax on Inflation.

4) Simplify the Capital Gains Rate Structure.

In short, gifts for Richie Rich, which would probably lead to all sorts of Richie Rich-style things like forcing ordinary people to pay more taxes, while vastly helping .001 percent of the population, the percent that needs no help. Paying small "rebates" to poor and middle-class people is a practical irrelevance, as money with these classes goes too fast and buys too little; but giving out more lavish Tiffany-boxed candy treats to people who spell their names with dollar signs hearkens to why the Republican Congress had an infestation of RED-STATE SCORPIONS.

"1)" is "Full, Immediate Expensing" [sic], and we have no idea what this means, but since the House GOP hacks say "this provision would encourage the purchase of assets with which to grow a business" we presume this means a new generation of LEGENDARY WELCHES and THREE-HEADED DOGS buybuybuying -- and the old one was enough.

At any rate this is sheer cheap posturing, as Scott and his gang of majority-seekers knew this was about as likely to pass as Speaker Babs is to endorse Ron Paul.

Posted 2:16 PM by Gene

THE SKY IS RISING! THE SKY IS RISING!

Posted 1:52 PM by Gene

Does all this snow in China get rid of the smog?

Are they sure it's snow that's falling?

Posted 1:49 PM by Gene

A pilot nearly goes to see God, and the Tele-GRAWF is careful not to tell us whose God.

Should it matter? It's the Devil in disguise any way.

Posted 1:44 PM by Gene

And here's a new way for the hacks to excuse themselves: by blasting their empty coverage of all the media events they're too eager to cover.

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 1:39 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: To justify sending our CEO and top executives to the SUPER BORE (but isn't PepsiCo run by this ultra-PC Indian? Does she know what football is? Well, no better way to find out), instead of selling one empty-calorie soft drink, we're selling five. Will the viewers who hang on every ad know the difference?

Posted 11:08 AM by Gene

Please, "actors", strike! Strike long, hard and painfully! Strike so long the movie biz replaces you with pixels even as it replaces its "writers" with computer programs!

Posted 10:48 AM by Gene

And now the ad biz is engaged in an equally infuriating form of pretentious head banging because people may not remember who pays for all those SUPER BORE ads that allow the companies' CEOs to sit in 50-yard luxury boxes and scream for months thereafter, "I WAS AT THE SUPER BOWL AND YOU WEREN'T!!!!!"

IMBECILES!

Posted 10:30 AM by Gene

Another excuse for the FILLUM biz:

Oscar-nominated films are often small, dark and unintended for mass audiences; they're about art, after all, not commerce.

Which CERTAINLY explains such small, dark, unintended-for-mass-audience best picture Os-CAR® nominees as 42nd Street, Little Women, The Private Life of Henry VIII, The Gay Divorcée, The Thin Man, David Copperfield, Top Hat, San Francisco, The Awful Truth, Captains Courageous, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Jezebel, Pygmalion, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, Wuthering Heights -- and that's just the thirties! And I haven't even mentioned the winners!

Which has NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, to do with the fact that now a big-city daily is without a full-time movie ad-blurbist. In truth THE CONSPIRACY can't make a decent movie to save its life, and all but cedes the fall season to the ad-blurbists, who engage in a CIRCLE JERK over the small, dark, unintended-for-mass-audience films the biz makes because the ad-blurbists encourage the film extruders to mistake them for quality. Given how these IDIOTS have helped bring down the film biz we DO NOT NEED THEM, and as for the pictures it goes without saying.

And that our excuser quotes PAUL DRECK means a NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD TO CHRISTY!

Posted 9:38 AM by Gene

Shucks, on the Democrats' side it's now a two-coiffure race (hint-hint).

Posted 8:26 AM by Gene

HED OF THE DAY:

Florida Tells Rudy: You’ll Always Be America’s Mayor!

Posted 8:19 AM by Gene

One of America's great FRED FLINTSTONES OF SPORT, our formerly own Steverino, has officially lost his print job, which means in two years ESPNCORP will quadruple his salary.

Posted 5:51 PM by Gene

Speaking of money, what will the Feds do with all the dough they plan to make on spectrum sales?

What they do best -- SPEND IT.

Posted 5:46 PM by Gene

GM exec: Car prices could jump

This sounds like a hope, and there's reason to believe it could happen -- but we would like to see it happen in a biz so intensely competitive and that, however gutted out our domestic biz is, still is in the economic driver's seat.

And if Wal-Mart's nascent effort to sell hybrids becomes more than a token gesture you can throw this notion completely out the window.

Posted 5:44 PM by Gene

Speaker Babs for President Oprah's Secretary of Defense!

Posted 5:37 PM by Gene

Accounting fraud? Subprimes? A connection?

Call us surprised.

Posted 5:33 PM by Gene

Viacom Chief Says Company Is `Recession-Resistant'

The possibility of a recession led Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to reduce profit estimates for media companies including Viacom and Disney. Goldman said Jan. 9 that Viacom's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization may gain 6 percent this year, down from a previous prediction of 8 percent.

Overall, traditional advertising sales in the U.S. will decline 3 percent to 5 percent this year, Goldman estimates. [Eighth and ninth grafs]

NUF SAID.

(Via IWantMedia)

Posted 5:29 PM by Gene

Call us starved for a woman, but really, the snidemasters should lay off Keely. Yes, she should lose some weight, and yes, maybe she shouldn't have worn a bikini within sight of a paparazzo, but she's not that bad for a 43-year-old.

Posted 5:25 PM by Gene

An...interesting juxtaposition on the Big Double-A-Scribble's site:

Primary Tally So Far: 160,000 TV Spots and $141M in Spending

In Politics, Web Surpasses TV for Under-30 Voters

Posted 1:47 PM by Gene

Margaret Truman Daniel, who was famous for the letter her father sent to a music critic, and later wrote a slew of ghosted mysteries in her name, has died. RIP.

Posted 11:58 AM by Gene

The only difference between Hillary v. JFK Lincoln and John the Don v. The Former Jesus Christ is that neither media mafioso ever claimed to be holy.

Posted 11:51 AM by Gene

What do VMware and "HANNAH!!!!!" have in common?

More than a whiff of F-A-D?

Posted 7:34 PM by Gene

We're not figure skating fans but we say this is sweet too.

Posted 7:32 PM by Gene

After the State of the Union

On the north end of the Capitol, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) will give a YouTube response here after the Democrats are done with their response.

...and then a Democrat will give his YouTube response to the YouTube response, then a Republican will give his YouTube response to the YouTube response to the Democrats' response, then....

Don't these @#$%^& campaigns ever end?

Posted 6:31 PM by Gene

"This year more than most, the real winner of the Super Bowl will be the advertisers," sez the Big Double-A Scribble, neglecting to mention that every year the CEOs are winners:

Consider fourth-quarter spots, which have long been considered rolls of the dice....This year, the risk is much smaller than that potential reward because of the Patriots' pursuit of an unprecedented 19-0 record, which is expected to keep viewers glued to the game's closing moments.

In an earlier interview, Bob Lachky [pronounced lackey or latchkey?], exec VP-global industry and creative development at Anheuser-Busch, the game's heaviest advertiser, said interest in seeing the Patriots make -- or fail to make -- history figures to bolster fourth-quarter viewership regardless of the score. (A-B has one ad scheduled for the fourth quarter.)

Even if the JINTS win in a blowout?

Which we rather hope to spite your faces in the luxury boxes.

P. S. Sorry for that aside, but dammit so many CEOs and their enablers want to shake us upside-down by the ankles to finance their daydreams.

Posted 6:28 PM by Gene

Unlocked iPhones generate 50 percent less revenue and as much as 75 percent less profit than those tethered to service contracts, Sacconaghi said. If 30 percent of the 10 million iPhones Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs plans to sell this year are unlocked, Apple's earnings may be lower by about 37 cents a share in each of the next two years, Sacconaghi said.

TRANSLATION: Geeks do not like being dictated to, even by the Lord God Steve.

Posted 5:58 PM by Gene

An in yet another example of the hold RENDELLISM has on our mu-ni-CI-pal types, the Windy City just expelled a big fat gust of hot air with big-shouldered margins to prove its "music" making is a money-making activity!

An industry employing 53,000 people in any metropolitan area is large enough to merit at least some attention from policymakers. But more workers are employed by many other industries in and around Chicago. Why should policymakers care about this small subset of the city’s total employment?

Because you can't go around boasting that YOU know the owner of a clothing factory!

(Via one of America's leading recorded...SOUND flacks via the annoying ArtsJournal)

Posted 5:53 PM by Gene

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, on Monday signalled his desire for change at SocGen, saying: “In a system of high rewards . . . no one can escape responsibility.”

Which isn't the way it usually works out.

Posted 5:48 PM by Gene

Our favorite press-agent Rog again:

But what do these prognostications really mean? I recently read a two-week-old issue of Entertainment Weekly that used the predictions of a half dozen of those professional Oscar bloggers. No one got anything right! It was very funny. If all that energy was used to solve the Earth’s real problems …

It would be on a collision course with the sun.

Posted 5:46 PM by Gene

Don't tell me -- let me guess -- OUR money's going to fix the worm-eaten bond-rating agencies!

Posted 5:39 PM by Gene

Say, if the real-estate hucksters could take care of Branson East, why can't they create an all-new Branson West?

Who wants to guess those beautiful theaters end up being wards of the state -- if they find any bookings at all?

Some question whether Broadway needs a face-lift. UCLA law professor Gary Blasi noted that the Latino-oriented businesses have stood the test of time.

"Unless you have a different vision, aesthetically and ethnically, then why?" Blasi said.

Ask EDDIE!

Posted 5:36 PM by Gene

Spears Has `mental [SIC] Issues,' Friend Says

We say Spears has overexposure "issues", which led to every "issue" that followed, not least the "ISSUE" of news hacks wallpapering their properties with her every blasted minute.

Posted 5:31 PM by Gene

Speaking of tired blood, tonight government by Chinese-restaurant menu will fight with constraining earmarks, and we can all guess which will lose.

Posted 5:25 PM by Gene

He is a leader who refuses to be trapped in the patterns of the past; he is a leader who sees the world clearly without being cynical. He is a fighter who believes passionately in the causes he believes in without demonizing those who hold a different view.

For that "one brief shining moment" we can believe Sen. Fatso Glub Glub was sincere. Make no mistake: as a public speaker he remains miles ahead of the competition, because of the Kennedy blood in his veins; but he has served long enough to know every trick in the book (which explains the talk of his considering retirement after he's dictated his memoirs because he doesn't want to be yoked to a walker and an IV on the Senate floor); he is too much the Kennedy to see beyond the past, and he is too much the cynic to believe there isn't a place in politics for demonizing. Make no mistake here too: after six months of President Oprah and all the loonies he'll place in every branch of government he may start complaining of demonizing on his own accord.

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

We wonder if our beloved GUVNOR is lending his ideas to other nations, for the idea of a Titanic white elephant (based on the movie, we can be sure) is the ultimate expression of Rendellism, where industry is replaced by mass dishwashing, and bustle is replaced by museums, all in the name of the patented buncombe of the "tourist economy."

Posted 12:02 PM by Gene

No longer a saint, as in ST. WARREN:

Still, there is no doubt that the Lampert luster has faded; comparisons to Mr. Buffett have quieted in recent months.

“He did really well on Autozone,” said Bruce Greenwald, a professor of finance and economics at Columbia University. “Most of his stocks are retail stocks, and he has done really well with them. So he decided he was a genius at retail, and it didn’t occur to him he could be wrong about it. He believed his own press.” [Emphasis added; LAST TWO GRAFS OF A FOUR-PAGE STORY]

Posted 5:36 PM by Gene

US Offers Condolences on Suharto Death

Sure we shouldn't have asked for some of our money back?

Posted 5:17 PM by Gene

Does JFK Lincoln intend to govern by nostalgia?

Posted 11:45 AM by Gene

The fool King of Commentary JPod links to an "amateur" video by the extremely busy Internet consultant B. S. DEFENDER of David Gurgle "boogieing" at Davos and vaguely channeling the Casanova CFO.

One may laugh -- I cringed -- but would Harry Truman have boogied? Or FDR? Or Lincoln? Or Washington? Or maybe their cabinet members, like Gen. Marshall? Or Henry Stimson? Or Edwin M. Stanton? I believe any of these men would have thrown David Gurgle out of a third-story window. But then we could easily have thrown the whole Davos contingent off the Dofourspitze and the world would have breathed much easier.

Heck we don't think Jeff or Alexander Hamilton would have boogied either, for what that's worth.

Posted 10:48 AM by Gene

"Governor Romney is not critical of companies that have to reduce their workforce in order to remain competitive. He is critical of Washington politicians who throw up their hands in despair and say there's nothing we can do about it," said Eric Fehrnstrom, a campaign spokesman.

TRANSLATION: NOT ME!!!!!

Posted 9:53 AM by Gene

S. Carolina Democrats give Obama a big hug

Do these clowns have to remind us of Oprah?

Posted 9:49 AM by Gene

Pro-life MPs seek free embryo vote

There are such creatures in Europe? We thought they were outlawed.

Posted 9:28 AM by Gene

When a city is out of control its putative leaders feel beholden to do something, anything, to bring it into a semblance of what they call control, even if their idea of control is like grasping onto the rotor of an airborne helicopter.

And Gov. Fruitandnut and Mayor Angry and their simpering cohorts do not have one atom of leadership to share.

Posted 9:24 AM by Gene

THE MUSIC BIZ has always traded in outlandish superlatives - every popular album is proclaimed a "classic," every decent songsmith a "genius."

You don't suppose this would be possible without the press agents up front, heh? Noooo.

Posted 9:22 AM by Gene

Hasn't the time finally arrived to stop teaching a corpse how to dance?

Posted 9:14 AM by Gene

Suharto has died, and he is perhaps learning somewhere you can't take it with you.