Posted 11:34 AM by Gene

"I will say in very categoric terms that Pakistan is not involved in these gory incidents."

I like your language, Mr. Defense Minister -- not despicable, not detestable, not condemnable, but gory. We hope no Pakistanis have been smiling these last few days, but your choice of words does not rule out the possibility.

Posted 11:07 AM by Gene

Those who think the comedian and Mr. Potato Head look-alike Chris can't win in Pennsylvania should remember two words: Al Franken.

Posted 11:01 AM by Gene

Victor Davis Hanson, the original Mr. Mission Accomplished, whines that The One is instituting a Trojan Horse government. This is very much possible with the screamers in his party. Of course one could say the Republicans did the same thing by bringing in all sorts of their own miscreants under the banner of God. If The One is as brilliant as his defenders say he is he won't be so Machiavellian -- he has little enough time to be unblemished.

Posted 10:58 AM by Gene

In the ever smaller world in which people are willing to call a spade a spade, a few have acquired the guts to call the Indian forces' response to the attacks by its rightful name: sheer, unmitigated incompetence.

Posted 10:34 AM by Gene

In obsessing whether they should speak of TERRORISTS, MILITANTS, EXTREMISTS OR GUNMEN the ever reliable HACKS seem not to have informed us whether anyone in this bold, brave operation survived. (And when they speak of boldness and braveness among scum they give the whole show away.)

P. S. at 11:48 a. m. One, it says here.

By the way, Col., please explain the URL. "Shooting"? Aren't we REALLY going as bit too far being nonjudgmental?

Posted 6:22 PM by Gene

This makes us fume: the SONS of LEGENDARY WELCH, who destroyed every last manufacturing job in America so they could earn 2,000 times their average demoralized help -- now they're thinking of adding manufacturing jobs here?!?

Hey guys! Why don't you scout for factories -- in your corporate jets? Be sure to charge it to us while you're at it -- and the factories too.

Posted 6:18 PM by Gene

Is there actually a chance that JUG EARS, the man who was a savior long before Barack, is having SUMNER trouble? Is there a chance he could actually go broke?

Why are we hoping so?

Posted 6:11 PM by Gene

We must confess our president-elect has defied many expectations and has proved a bit more malleable than we'd have expected from a man of his party, with its table pounders and its appetite for revenge. We surely hope he can be tough and competent. We can also hope the loudmouths keep theirs shut for a while, knowing nonetheless that is beyond their capacity.

Posted 6:09 PM by Gene

And now the Pakistanis rushrushrush to help, which they might not do if, whatever their protestations, they weren't de-facto implicated too.

Posted 6:02 PM by Gene

Now that it appears residents of DI-land have been implicated in the Mumbai attacks, the British authorities can go back to sticking their heads up their behinds when it comes to fighting the rot within their 98-pound-weakling nation's ranks.

Posted 9:58 AM by Gene

Baby Jonny Hairshirt once again proves he's like the guest for a party who shows up two days late.

Posted 9:57 AM by Gene

Ed Sullivan died in 1974. Please Rosie, let him rest.

Caveat: Brian Lowry.

Posted 9:51 AM by Gene

To be a devoted follower of a colyumnist means being a self-deluding masochist. I gave up on Anonymous well before his best-selling non-fiction novel, but many people haven't in the forlorn hope that a discredited scribbler can somehow render himself at least a little less discredited. Yesterday's pundit is no better than yesterday's leftovers left out of the refrigerator too long.

(Via Contentions)

Posted 9:41 AM by Gene

Okay, you want "epics" back. I want "classic" movies back. We're not getting classic movies back because the business forgot how to make a good picture eons ago, and making "big" pictures means making big bad pictures. We have enough of the small kind.

I hate when publicists decide they must think in their papers.

Posted 9:35 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Experts again flaunt their hopeless ignorance. The Indians are not yet a first-rate power and we shouldn't expect them to know everything, the way we do.

Posted 3:49 PM by Gene

And the thing is the holy cockroaches were supposedly out to kill evil Westerners, but if accounts thus far are to be believed they seem to have killed mostly Indians.

The only hopeful note is that even as they kill innocents holy cockroaches ultimately kill off themselves.

Posted 3:37 PM by Gene

The soap opera has outlived its usefulness, but one cannot guess what would replace it. Perhaps broadcasters should simply auction the space for infomercials, as they would anyway. Or maybe they could start making local programming, an impossibility as they never met a local show that wasn't a PROFIT CENTER (read, a video police blotter) they ever liked.

And a profound comment from the deanette [sic] of the biz:

I think that to represent life, in all its varieties, one needs various age groups.

Much obliged, Agnes Nixon. Try telling that to people who would exterminate everyone over 49.

Posted 12:54 PM by Gene

The good news is the credit malaise has dried up financing for the movees.

The bad news is...gosh, we can't think of any bad news.

But look at it this way: with "5,000 films submitted to Sundance last year" there'll be a tremendous need for video preservation. Pffffffffffffffffffffffft!

(Via the usual AhtsJournal)

Posted 12:23 PM by Gene

We hate to harp on something that means zilch to most people -- in this case, BRANSON EAST -- but it occurred to us today that there are three types of what used to be called "theater": the first is the hundred-seat in-the-round where ac-TORS scream of their alienation, or that hosts intimate revues of why women can't get laid, usually featuring women who can't for a reason. Well-meaning types who think they are supporting AHT sell out the joints and lavish them with bird-cage-liner-bound raves. The second are the garages, the 1500-seaters in the big cities, many of which were movie houses, elaborately reinforced and wired and featuring the latest hydraulic lifts to service the never ending traffic jam of the buses and trucks unloading Legally Blonde or WICKED for the five-thousandth time for blue-rinse types who think by being indiscriminate they're being discriminating. And then there's BRANSON EAST. Not one tier has much to do with any other except to confirm the notion of theater being a means to justify spending $50 on valet parking.

We mention this because of the upcoming Spider-Man theme park. We'd argue one of the many reasons KERNGERSHWIN HAMMERSTEIN's masterpiece failed (aside from the obvious one that it smelled like Pepe LePew in heat) was that it played in too small of a park. Oh yes, it was said the HHilton was a barn; but perhaps today's theaters aren't barn-like enough -- seat 3,000 and ELVIS! Sillerman wouldn't have had to lift his leg and ask for $450. Since BRANSON EAST no longer has any connection to art why not build bigger theme parks? We can't imagine where the Real-TORS called Shuberts would find the room but since they're staging glorified rock concerts without the concert they can always justify it. Heck we're sure in this downturn HONORARY MAYOR MIKE could easily find them the money. And BRANSON EAST is all about money; God knows actually entertaining people went out the window long ago.

Posted 12:18 PM by Gene

Yes, I think these people who couldn't report on a terr...mili...GUNMAN's act if it happened to them would be better off live-blogging Thanksgiving.

Posted 12:04 PM by Gene

At the top of their game news hacks will spend more time splitting hairs than telling facts. The events in India have forced us again to confront their industry's tap dance around the word "terrorist." We know of how some hacks say one man's terrorist blahblahblah, but in their insistence not to "cause offense" (and usually only to their friends) they have turned MILITANT into exactly the same kind of code-term they insist TERRORIST is, and in so doing have shielded themselves further from having to tell the truth. Why can't these morons relay the news in a way that transcends their obsession for playing favorites?

A new "solution" may be "gunmen"; but that doesn't work either as it turns these thugs into apolitical Al Capones who just like to play with their toys. When did this invisible brick wall come down between news hacks and the truth?

Posted 5:31 PM by Gene

We see the Senior Clunker Brother may ditch Pontiac and Saturn. As we said before, having five divisions make the same car may have been good marketing for 1958 but surely it was absurd even then. We further note Buick seems off the table, if so rather shrewd given its relative aura of quality and some of Pontiac's big hits like the Aztek. Face it, Pontiac is still the marque of the Firebird, which was merely its Camaro, which was a very sporty low-riding version of the Chevy Vega. Saturn is another and more melancholy thing: Clunker launched it as a "whole new car company" and merely created a second Oldsmobile. As for Saab -- what would prompt Clunker top buy a third-rate automaker that was destined to stay there?

Posted 5:27 PM by Gene

We keep hearing that the holy cockroaches are "decimated", and then something like this pops up. Recognizing that this may be another manifestation of the love affair between India and Pakistan it is nonetheless foolhardy ever to let your defenses down, in more than one sense.

Closer to home Brian assures us the FBI's source was "reliable", which usually means nothing would have happened (and he all but confirms this in the fifth graf). A very strong ditto, however.

Posted 10:24 AM by Gene

US banks will incur about $44 billion in write-downs and loss provisions in the fourth quarter, offsetting most of the money being pumped into banks from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, a well-known analyst said.

Capital injections from the government through TARP will not spur meaningful growth for the industry, Oppenheimer analyst Meredith Whitney said in a note titled, "Gobble Gobble."

NUF SAID.

Posted 8:47 AM by Gene

We must comment on "The Chairman" because our favorite Branson East columnist does so. Reading between the lines it is obvious he wasn't a warm and fuzzy guy. You couldn't be running an organization with Shubert in its name. And the Shuberts weren't warm and fuzzy guys. Back when the play biz was producing O'Neills and Gerswhins it didn't matter; they ran the trains on time. Now their heirs are real-estate men, SUMNERS without so much goodwill, and they've gone from being terrors to mere anachronisms much as Branson East serves no purpose but to give people a weekend off. Bringing back tyrants will not bring show-biz back -- SLIME proves that notion. But something is missing. Maybe the tyrants knew something.

Posted 6:55 PM by Gene

Lieberman: Obama 'about perfect' in Cabinet picks

WHEW! I can be a Democrat again.

Posted 6:18 PM by Gene

It is bad enough when Forbeslist makes another list. It is worse when it makes another list about SHOW-BIZ. It is worse still when the SHOW-BIZ subject is something barely worth writing about. It is WORST when an ANONYMOUS writer INSISTS on using DISINTERESTED-MEANING-UNINTERESTED.

LITTLE MALCOLM! BONO! SELL TO THE RUSSIANS! They'll give such language abuse what it deserves!

Posted 6:09 PM by Gene

Several years ago Jonathan Yardley, a writer we trust, said MM would go away. Today she and some FBI memos make The Daily Kaplan's home page, and she'll remain in the public consciousness long after certain professional nudists spend their days doing to their brown spots what THE MAN does to his biceps.

Posted 6:00 PM by Gene

We shouldn't give this the proverbial time of day, but some downscale British rag has leased itself to some actress engaged in a publicity stunt for a noble cause (complete with stupid pun), and The Gahhhhdian ooohs and aaahs over the stunt (complete with picture), both forgetting that it doesn't take much talent to doff your clothes, even if you've worked for PEOPLE WARNER.

Posted 5:52 PM by Gene

Who knew David Gurgle Jr. could repeat himself?

Posted 5:47 PM by Gene

LIFE INSURERS!!!!!

When someone writes the history of this dreadful time he will have to credit Dubya and the idiot in Treasury as having abandoned all continence, just to appear to be solving a panic that may be unsolvable.

TRILLIONS IN BONDS!!!!! [Overemphasis added]

ONE! YOUR TURN!

Posted 5:38 PM by Gene

When The Daily Kaplan broke the Hillary news we didn't realize we were going straight CW. We called her "strong", neglectful of her very chameleon-like nature -- or rather a nature crossing a chameleon with a Cheshire cat. We were thinking more of Maggie, who was a Hillary of the right minus a lecherous husband. Chris, who tries a little too hard sometimes to be the iconoclast, does make a good case against her, for what she was; but unless your name is Henry the K or Gen. Fogbound a secretary of state may not have that much latitude to be devious.

Posted 5:35 PM by Gene

Speaking of TheCuteLittlePinkPaper.com, here's another rag that does the PEOPLE INC. with cover subjects when it has to.

Posted 5:32 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Lord Koppel is very very sorry he ever gave up NIGHTLIGHT.

We would advise against hiring him, Littler Jeffy, unless you want to put your audience to sleep. Then again, it might not be so bad as some of them have made You and Your stock littler lately.

Posted 5:27 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Most recent presidents are semi-literates (or worse) who have to read a book to show off, and then bring the author unmerited fame.

(Via the usual ArtsJournal)

Posted 5:17 PM by Gene

AdAge churns up some consultants and makes a disaster out of what should be a PR molehill. We suspect most people ordinarily couldn't care less, but big biz wouldn't find itself in perpetual crisis mode if it weren't for CEOs' desire to show off. That desire, we suggest, is also at the heart of the unrolling financial calamity; what Court Jester Prince wouldn't want to show off his ill-gotten profits -- especially if it could get his MARKETING plastered all over a BALLPARK?

Posted 1:49 PM by Gene

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR: Last year's Os-CARS® tanked because it was a battle of two extremely self-indulgent AHTHOUSE flicks. This year's Os-CARS® may tank because everybody claims to know the winner.

And our favorite PR man ROG calls it "a merely good film", which qualifies it inordinately.

Posted 1:44 PM by Gene

Obama Pledges to Find, Slash Wasteful Spending

Have we heard this one -- before?

Posted 8:27 AM by Gene

No! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! SUMNER may have to sell His popcorn restaurants -- and that "may not be enough"!

Ken Felatta mourns. We smile.

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 6:56 PM by Gene

Dubya, in his last magnanimous act before receding into obscurity for good, has pardoned fourteen, including this one:

_Daniel [SIC] Figh Pue III of Conroe, Texas, convicted of illegal treatment, storage and disposal of a hazardous waste without a permit.

We figure with that name and that crime there must be a familial connection to Dubya somewhere.

Posted 6:46 PM by Gene

Flash! Forbeslist.com's just put out a listicle of "The Worst States for Business"...and it ranks ALASKA 48th -- and LOUSIANA 49th! (Forbeslist says not their fault. Suuuuuuuuure!)

This looks like a job for BUTTMEN!

Posted 6:39 PM by Gene

No! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! The Senior Clunker Brother, home of Rick "Fly Me" Wagoner, is DUMPING THE GOLFING MACHINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can hear con-SER-va-tives now, saying how He'll get a foreign car maker blahblahblah. Before TGM gets a new sponsor the new sponsor should know how He helped sell BUICKS.

Thank GOD that OUR money will still support BANK SPORTS SPONSORSHIPS! AMEN!!!!!

Posted 6:37 PM by Gene

Report: Wall Street puts 225,000 NY jobs at risk

And how many of them are necessary?

Posted 6:14 PM by Gene

There are two kinds of intellectual experts: (a) overeducated fools, and (b) experts who agree with me.

And I found an overeducated fool who agrees with me (i.e., a BUTTMAN INSTITUTE wonk who says ACORN and PO' PEOPLE caused the credit disaster).

Add a third kind of intellectual expert: a would-be intellectual expert who is a fool educated or otherwise.

The most effective and appropriate form of business regulation is regulation by profit and loss.

As we saw when Lehman went broke.

P. S. from Joe Queenan:

The dark side of flattery, according to P. J. O’Rourke, is attracting a fan base you may not want. Once described as “the funniest writer in America” by Time and The Wall Street Journal, O’Rourke suspects that this raised his profile among libertarians, who for some reason think of themselves as a pack of wild cutups.

“There’s a nutty side to libertarians, starting with the Big Girl, Ayn Rand, and going straight through Alan Greenspan,” O’Rourke told me over the phone. “When I go to Cato Institute functions, there’s always a group of guys who look like they cut their own hair and get their mothers to dress them, with lots of buttons about legalizing heroin and demanding a return to the gold standard. The institute has tried to weed them out over the years, but they still turn up at the bigger events. As soon as I see them coming toward me, my heart sinks.” [Emphasis added]

(VIA NRO)

Posted 3:43 PM by Gene

Say! If the Wall Street Casino's going great guns now, think of how high it can go when Uncle Sucker pays off MORE mismanaged banks!

Posted 9:40 AM by Gene

Another hero of SUPERADAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! seems to be biting the dust, and not a moment too soon:

This has not been an easy couple of months for Hammerstein. In October, the club narrowly avoided losing its liquor license after objections from members of Community Board 3. The collapse of Wall Street has certainly had an effect on his business; as much as Hammerstein likes to say that The Box is not made for bankers, there is only a certain number of New Yorkers willing to put down $1,000 just to sit at a table. The Box is losing another kind of customer, too; just last week, Moby, an investor in The Box and the kind of client Hammerstein very much likes to say the place is for, said in an interview that he no longer goes often, because the acts have gotten too much even for him. And most worrisome to Hammerstein, perhaps, are the recent allegations against him by two former employees of drug use and sexual misconduct.

Posted 9:27 AM by Gene

Richardson Would be Bold at Commerce

TRANSLATION: Hey Bill! You need a spokesman?

Posted 9:15 AM by Gene

HA HA HA! The BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH comes to the POPCORN RESTAURANTS! HA HA HA!!!!!

And the best part is, the owners think their teenage USHERS can handle it! HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 8:46 AM by Gene

The U.S. government is prepared to lend more than $7.4 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers, or half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, to rescue the financial system since the credit markets seized up 15 months ago....

The money that’s been pledged is equivalent to $24,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. It’s nine times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Office figures. It could pay off more than half the country’s mortgages.

More, MORE, they're still not SATISFIED!

Posted 7:55 PM by Gene

And speaking of show-biz, reading the ninth graf of this review we think producers should take a very prominent place in the joke about screwing in a light bulb.

Posted 7:37 PM by Gene

Gee whiz aw shucks, I guess The One's cabinet won't be as bipartisan as the HACKS said it would be.

Indeed, a look back at the modern American presidency reflects a pattern of tokenism when it comes to appointing members of the opposite party.

And nearly always those appointed have either been on the outs with their own party or tapped for second-tier posts.

And how many of those who wrote otherwise were born yesterday?

Posted 7:28 PM by Gene

Open up the incinerator again! Here comes more tax money -- marked CITIGROUP!

Posted 7:27 PM by Gene

Amanpour to Lead Daily Show on CNN

We COULD say something but will merely let The Paper of Re-CORD's hed writers speak for themselves.

Posted 7:25 PM by Gene

No! NOOOOOOOOOOOO! KERNGERSHWIN HAMMERSTEIN'S MONSTROUS MASTERPIECE IS CLOSING without even 500 PERFS on the books!

Best stay in hiding for a while, KERN. We know your BOX OFFICE STATS were.

And remember KERN -- blame the economy. It's always easier than blaming yourself.

Posted 7:21 PM by Gene

The TWXSTERS posit that if employment doesn't come back after the current whatchamacallit it will be because of "something called misallocation of human capital. It's a fancy term for the idea that in the past few decades the U.S. may have been producing too many MBAs and not enough RNs."

Aw that can't be, GEKKO KUDLOW, after all the money we made?!?

Posted 7:06 PM by Gene

If it's Sunday it must be Big Double-A-Scribble Time, and boy is it full of it today:

1. Rance is trying to start a controversy by saying The Aquatic Geek is selling the wrong product, being a big Mickey D fan. Hey Rance, if someone handed you $10 million (or whatever it would cost to take Crain Communications off your hands), would you turn it down?

Of course, Crain's worth more than $10 million. PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!

2. And the company being based in Chicago it has to break wind yet again about the Wonders of The One. This time Rance must tell us he'll send professional college football and the Olympics to heaven. Rancey Boy, do even your readers believe this?

3. Next Rancey tells us "In-store Displays Are More Effective Than Price Cuts", but then his readers don't get a commission on price cuts.

4. And finally, we are supposed to mourn all the magazines that went out of biz this year, in what threatens to be a continuing feature. All we can say, Rance, is that not one of these titles was necessary, and no one will miss them -- not even, we dare say, the salary drones who produced them.

Posted 1:17 PM by Gene

There is no keeping liberals' mouths shut: they want a WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL in one form or another, and by God (or rather, by Obama) they'll get it.

Posted 11:17 AM by Gene

We have just learned, from not clicking on a link in the great PR machine Yahoo! (we thought "HUMAN RIGHTS" YANG left!), that the KEITH ZERO of the right (or is that the NO-SPIN SPIN SPIN etc. ZONE of the right -- who can tell?) went nuclear over underdressed women and video-game marketing. We suspect a SLIME profit center is the last who should speak on the matter -- especially one who said HE WAS NOT CORPORATELY RELATED TO OJ'S BOOK!!!!!!!!!! (And God knows how often the ad ran in SLIMEDOM -- possibly almost as many times as the NO-SPINMEISTER makes in DOLLARS.) Keep talking, SPIN, and the date for your movement's revival (assuming you're more than a POTEMKIN CONSERVATIVE, that is) recedes further into the future.

Posted 11:07 AM by Gene

Speaking of which, we are sorry RENDELLISM's inventor got passed over for the Commerce job -- he'd have been a natural touting trade advantages that don't exist -- but his Western counterpart is an unequaled fount of HI MOM! moments, and if this photo is typical he intends to have a lot of fun doing nothing.

Posted 11:02 AM by Gene

One reason we can't shake RENDELLISM is its PR-laden addiction to movees. Several years back some BIIIIIIG movee star promised to build a studio in South Philadelphia which would bring in much-need jobs for janitors and waiters and the like, and naturally we haven't heard of it since. Such success does not prevent struggling towns like Plymouth, Mass. from engaging in pipe dreams and wasting untold TAX moneys on municipal preening. We would like to return to Plymouth in, say, five years, when half the officials proposing this boondoggle get kicked out and the resulting white elephants rot in the Plymouth sun. Best to stick with fake Pilgrims.

Posted 10:38 AM by Gene

Con-SER-va-tives will insist to their dying days they had nothing to do with the mortgage catastrophe, but the movement's one traditional hallmark -- prudence -- got swept away in their desire to help the hyperrich and stick it to the government. So regulators became palsy-walsies of the regulated, and looked the other way as the Mozilos cleaned out the government kitties. The devotion to big business and the superwealthy is why the con-SER-va-tives' climb back will be a long and painful one.