Posted 9:29 PM by Gene

PIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAD:

A Downbeat Obama Can Send Spending Down

Somebody tell The One's TelePrompTer -- put on a happy face! :))

Although this news cheers me up:

Another indicator that bad news drives down spending have been ratings for financial-news network CNBC, which have been highly inversely correlated to consumer spending, Mr. Donato said. In other words, the more people watch CNBC, the less they buy....

So why do people advertise on the BIG C?

Caveat: NIELSEN.

Posted 9:07 PM by Gene

Who needs Free Republic when we have Amazon.com -- and threads like this:

I REFUSE TO ACKNOWLEDGE COUNTRY AS A FORM OF MUSIC. (Overemphasis added)

Such things make the Web good for a laugh -- even as they dumb you down.

Posted 6:04 PM by Gene

People in Vermont wouldn't gouge on maple syrup, would they? Naaaaaaaaaaah.

When it's your state's industry, it's not gouging.

Posted 5:25 PM by Gene

I like this: London has been turned into a "fortress" so France can throw a tantrum, other world "leaders" can point fingers, The One does history's biggest HI MOM!, and nothing gets done, which is as it probably must be.

Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

SPIKE JONES!

Posted 3:22 PM by Gene

The Seniles, on one of those infernal party-line votes, passed a piece of...legislation on credit-card "reform." Two good guesses here: The Democrats voted for it because they didn't see bankers using the opportunity as an excuse to really ratchet down consumer lending and stick it to ordinary people. The Republicans voted against it because they think the credit-card industry would be right in doing so.

I HATE KNEE JERKS OF EVERY STRIPE!

P. S. at 5:33 p. m. America's "bankers" issue a statement:

Credit cards provide access to credit for millions of Americans and small businesses every day. Making this credit available is a very risky business and the committee’s action today will unfortunately make it harder -- not easier -- for banks to continue doing so.

Credit card lenders of all sizes will likely have to pull back on providing reasonably priced credit to a wide range of consumers and small businesses. It is hard to see how that makes good policy sense.

TRANSLATION: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! We'll get back at you customers!!!!!

Also, one Democrat voted against. Still annoying.

Posted 2:05 PM by Gene

HOW THE NEW, IMPROVED IE8 WORKS: It freezes up -- and when you try to close a tab and it won't close (even though all the other tabs will) and you summon Task Manager to shut it off, you get multiple lines in Processes for iexplore.exe! (I gather it's one line in Task Manager for each tab open. Brilliant, Bugmeisters!)

Posted 1:55 PM by Gene

Get out the Kleenex -- another news hack (this one an ad-blurbist) feels sorry for himself:

[I]n wanting to make a timely movie, an honest movie, Wright also made a film about the death of newspapering.

Images of pages rolling off presses, of delivery men tossing copies on doorsteps, of the tactile pleasure and permanence of "print" are contrasted with reporters and editors packing their belongings into boxes, marriages failing, of the "buyout" recital that managers give to journalists they're laying off.

Lopez is a star, a name columnist, "layoff-proof" it is suggested in the film. For now. But others (Stephen Root, Catherine Keener) are facing the ax in that same office (crowded at the beginning of the film, not so much by the end). An industry, one the film suggests fills a vital function in civic life, sputters its death rattle. That the film is still an elegy and not a eulogy seems weirdly optimistic.

Whatever is going on in the economy at large, we print people (especially we print movie reviewers) are all staring down the barrel of a gun and don't need to be reminded of that by a movie. The only thing that could have made this film more timely is the vast increase in workload--the social networking, Twittering and blogging, frantic efforts to expand our reach and our "branding" as the business model for our business scrambles for anything that hints of "reinvention."And [SIC!!!!!] that notion of "print" vanishes.

These are the things that stand between us and the polished, considered writing that so many of of [SIC!!!!!] us got into this industry to do, something the movie Steve Lopez does on legal pads, scraps of paper, wherever, just to get it into print. That's what is being lost.

It's enough to make you want to sit in the car, listen to Beethoven and have a good cry.

And then we remember all the things that got us rooting for the demise of your biz in the first place. When we get home, we'll listen to Spike Jones and have a good LAUGH.

(Via the usual Romy, whom this left in tears, no doubt)

Posted 1:45 PM by Gene

No! NO!! An affront to art! An affront to HISTORY!!! AN AFFRONT TO CIVILIZATION!!!!!

Jimi Hendrix childhood home torn down

The man who REINVENTED "THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER"!!!!!

LET US BOYCOTT SEATTLE PERMANENTLY!!!!!!!!!!

(Via Bloomberg)

Posted 11:32 AM by Gene

NBC Universal says going green saves $2 million

Which is what percent of all the money you lost by going "green" in the FINANCE UNIT, Little Jeffy?

(Via IWantMedia)

Posted 11:26 AM by Gene

Now Michael Wolff, he who understands SLIME so well, says He'll make a "play" for that annoying fad Twitter, which assumes His empire sells for $658 a share, not $6.58.

(Via MediaBistro, which had to screw up the link by adding an h to "http")

Posted 11:07 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Israel has a politically incorrect government. So what? It will just cause leftists and news hacks to engage in more onanistic fuse-blowing.

Posted 10:57 AM by Gene

REALLY IMPORTANT NEWS FROM THE TWXSTERS:

Michelle Obama Denies Pregnancy Rumors

And how many rumors that maybe we should know about have you blithely ignored, o rare one-for-three-reverse-split TWXSTERS?

Posted 10:42 AM by Gene

“When I am there working I pay whatever, you know, my rate is based on income for that day in New York,” Limbaugh said. “And I try to go as little as possible. If it weren't for hurricanes down here (his regular studio in Florida), I would never go up there!!

“So I'll tell you what I'm going to do,” Limbaugh continued. “I'M GOING TO LOOK FOR AN ALTERNATIVE STUDIO SOMEWHERE OUTSIDE NEW YORK, PERHAPS TEXAS -- ANOTHER NO-INCOME-TAX STATE -- AND I'M GOING TO GET THE HELL OVER THERE, WHEN A HURRICANE STARTS COMING OUR WAY, 'CAUSE I TOLD MAYOR BLOOMBERG: I'LL BE THE FIRST TO LEAD THE WAY!!!!!“ [Taxing overemphasis added]

P. S. Sorry -- wrong link!

P. P. S. Well -- there was ONE good thing about that article.

Posted 9:50 AM by Gene

How apt: A penthouse "apartment" for sale at PEOPLE WARNER CENTER has gone down from $65 million to $49 million. A bargain! (It was owned by someone the limp-rag SEC charged with insider trading, the con-SER-va-tive's badge of honor.) This story ran on the first day of the TWXSTERS' one-for-three reverse split after its spinoff and distribution of PEOPLE WARNER CABLE to try to hide it. The stock still went down.

Posted 9:39 AM by Gene

If something isn't trustworthy, and Gallup does a poll in which "the public" says it's trustworthy, does that make it trustworthy?

Posted 9:06 AM by Gene

And how does the WAX top herself this morning? With this:

'ACCESS HOLLYWOOD' CHIEF: 'ET' LIES, ERRS, GROVELS (WALTER WINCHELL!!!!!!!!!!-like SIC!!!!!)

You should know the old saying, Wax: That's the press release calling the advertorial a lie.

YOU ESPECIALLY.

Posted 9:01 AM by Gene

I was about to say New York's guvnor is on his way to being a one-termer, but never underestimate the power of incumbency -- and apathy.

Posted 8:50 AM by Gene

This will make friends with the Slashdot crowd: Ericsson has a new computer chip that will disable your netbook if you haven't paid your wireless bills. (And if we know the BUGMIESTER BIZ it will work even when you've paid them.) Yes, this may supplant the MAFIAA for sure.

P. S. at 1:27 p. m. That didn't take long -- this is now being claimed as an "anti-theft" device, with the provision for a remote shut-off defeatable by the user. We should never place TOO much stock in ASSPress.

Posted 8:26 AM by Gene

Michael "I Understand Rupert" Wolff starts with an interesting notion -- one I've broached before -- that PILLHEAD did his little contretemps because his business model was in trouble; but then he degenerates into the scientist trying to understand this wacky bug called conservative under the microscope, and then cheerleading for a Web which is "YOUNG AND LIBERAL!!!!!" And stupid. (He also uses that blithering idiot MICHAEL OF TALKERS's unverifiable stats.) Please Mike, go back to parsing SLIME.

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 7:22 PM by Gene

Elsewhere in the world of consumer goods:



You're soaking in it.

I wouldn't. There is no smell more difficult to remove than green Palmolive Dishwashing Liquid. It seems to find every last pore of your skin and resolutely lodges there; ten minutes rinsing won't evict it. I don't mind the smell; but too much of anything is not a good thing.

Posted 7:13 PM by Gene

BRILLIANCE IN PACKAGING: The Big G has come up with a fancy abode for some Green Giant peas -- because they steam in the microwave! Good enough; I'm all for such cute gimmicks. But after they've cooked to open their pod you have to grab it by both ends -- and contrary to the illustrations you should not do it without gloves -- which makes it more difficult to open the thing. Then once you've opened it -- provided you haven't spilled half the peas in a sudden burst -- you have to spoon out the contents a little at a time, and only after a while can you work the pouch upside down to empty the rest, and that requires a little dexterity. In the end, the peas emerged as peas. It wasn't expensive -- I got it on sale at my local Dark Shadows (more on that later), but it was...exasperating.

Posted 6:46 PM by Gene

Three guesses who this is: we'll start below the hed:

I just love stories like this. T. S. Eliot rejected Orwell's Animal Farm.

Now we go to the hed:

And Batman Never Returned Spiderman's Lawnmower

Give up? Here's a hint -- don't click -- HE'S THE NEW FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!NEWS STAR!!!!!

One more hint:

[SIC!!!!!!!!!!]

Give up? Well, here's the link. But don't say we didn't provide enough help!

Posted 6:31 PM by Gene

More bad news for TheEconomistAtlanticNewYorkerII: This story is but a variation on the why-are-our-teens-having-so-much-sex article. Such articles are by their length and breadth mea culpa (being mostly published by SHOW-BIZ COMPANIES) and come to the conclusion that nothing can be done, which in the end makes the owner smile, and the reader grimace and tear the rag in shreds (much easier nowadays). This author (with help) alleges that girls are making themselves up at an alarming rate. Say they're having sex at an alarming rate and it's the same infernal thing. Aside from the prospect of beholding girls with faces like traffic lights or Tide bottles we don't see the crisis, except one that's manufactured, and which ultimately soothes the mind of any media mogul. JonBoy, you do not become erudite with such guff!

Or is this a veiled call for more beauty ads? Maybe St. Warren's in the wrong part of the publishing biz.

Posted 6:14 PM by Gene

Perhaps the depr -- ECONOMY is showing signs of life -- CEOs are willing to show off their logos behind home plate to get into their coveted luxury boxes and harass their help for months on end. One problem, though -- articles like this (and like clockwork) quote a whole lot of people with "vice-president sales" in their titles, meaning they're as likely to be as full of it as THE WRAP.

We might note too that Rance has had to lay people off at AdAge, and there is word of Nielsen (itself rather big on hooey) merging its media trade titles, making such bullhockey even more necessary from a publisher's point of view, which is definitely not ours.

Posted 6:06 PM by Gene

This we want to see: The publisher of those inferior cleaning rags called Metro is eliminating its pulp's ASSPress fiber. Does that mean it now runs more ads for escort services and PR0N auditions to fill in the blanks?

Posted 5:56 PM by Gene

Those who've followed the depr -- ECONOMY will find nothing new in Simon Johnson's article. And yet it is very much worth reading because it tells how SUPERMEN got us into the debacle, and how the same SUPERMEN probably can't get us out. He says America has an "oligarchy" (Mr. Johnson's very apt term) -- any country with Jim Bakers and CEOs will know how true that is -- and the only way really cleaning this mess is to get them out of control, and prevent new "oligarchies" from replacing them. But people clamor for a strong leader, and the bankers have strength precisely because they have the heft and can blackmail us with impunity; so much of what they've done in the crisis has that smell. We're no economist but we can't see how we can solve our deep funk without a good dose of the kind of economic ruination Andrew Mellon once gloated about -- and the bankers will find a way to pay themselves huge bonuses for that. We hope this is not so. One thing is clear: The BIG C!!!! notwithstanding, the day of financial types as clairvoyants is over.

(Via Dr. Krugman's glum column -- oddly he doesn't link to it -- via Seeking Alpha. Whoever thought he'd stop being a comedian?)

Posted 11:03 AM by Gene

Well, one good thing about living in CHICKENLAND: it's cheaper!

Posted 10:44 AM by Gene

Oh God yes, I'll do anything, ANYTHING to help our industry in this economy. If you need me to run a press release for a movie I'm all for it! What's good for Jeffrey Immelt is good for America!



A NEUHARTHISM OF THE MONTH AWARD TO WAX!

I'm SICK and TIRED of posting THAT SOB'S FACE!

And I'm SICK and TIRED of reading all the people who worship Him!

P. S. at 11:17 a. m. Lot of good your help did, Wax; GE BANCORP just broke $10 again.

Posted 10:18 AM by Gene

Invoking Hitler and Stalin would be idiotic hyperbole, but there must be a lesser equivalent.

Posted 10:12 AM by Gene

WHAT IS COMMIE PBS DOING ADVERTISING ON NRO??????????

I wouldn't know. Ask Jo-NAH. Or G000,000,000GLE.

Posted 9:57 AM by Gene

Here people have been speaking GM and bankruptcy in the same breath for months and NOW the Wall Street Casino gets excited?

Posted 9:42 AM by Gene

Could the film industry be indestructible?

Scott and PAUL DRECK say YES!!!!!

And I know one other thing that's indestructible: USAOKAY!!!!!'s desire to help out.



A NEWSPAPER-INDUSTRY-DESTROYING NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD TO SCOTT!

Oh by the way -- GCI at $2.31. That may NOT be indestructible.

Posted 9:06 AM by Gene

It is nice to dream of CEO-pay reform, just as it is nice to dream of streets of gold, and fields of cotton candy; but extreme pay is now an entitlement, just as incompetence has become the CEO's rule. We can dream, though, can't we?

Posted 6:38 PM by Gene

Good God, we can understand fads like hula-hoops. But our age must turn out a new fad every damned day.

Which raises the question: Should Al Roker look like a monk?

Posted 6:22 PM by Gene

Oooooh, I think con-SER-va-tives will be furious: One's going to run the company!

We want to see him not screw up. Somehow, he'll screw up.

Who will be his VEEP THROTTLEBOTTOM OF AUTOS?

Posted 5:16 PM by Gene

ER...one good @#$%^& deserves another!

SAME TO YOU, PRIVATE!

Somehow, someday, I don't think anyone will make a film called ZELL.

Another thing: I want to know who was laughing and applauding for him. Are they some of the same people who'd use the same language to PVT. ZELL behind his back?

Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

Speaking of synergy, we see PVT. ZELL's devoted a good chunk of his home page to the demise of ER, which reminds us it's produced by...well, you don't want to know, which was affiliated with -- do we really have to say these things in public?



A NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD TO THE PVT.!

Posted 4:52 PM by Gene

Rick Wagoner, who helped drive GM into a ditch -- and from the air! is resigning, a reward richly deserved. (Revised 5:00 p. m.; initially posted from BIG C!!!!! hed)

P. S. at 5:06 p. m. He's not the only one: Peugeot has fired its CEO for a steel company executive. Where's the synergy? Except cars need steel, that is.

Posted 4:40 PM by Gene

When President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. meet for their standing Friday lunch engagement, Mr. Obama always picks the cuisine — a subtle break from previous administrations in which the president and the vice president typically ordered off a menu, and a reminder, if any was needed, about who is in charge.

Though we reluctantly credit Contentions for the link, remember stories like this. Keep them in mind with laser-guided precision when considering the source. For here is one of the purest, most crystal-clear displays of front-page BS in The Paper of Re-CORD since Walter Duranty, or at least Herbert L. Matthews (caveat: scalp-scratchin' Jonny Alter). Somebody's trying to make Vice-President Throttlebottom feel good, but you have to read between the lines (and that bald first graf spares some of the effort) to get at what one must suspect is the truth -- that Whosit's not only on an invisibly short leash, he has ten layers of duct tape on his mouth. And between the lines he ends up dangerously close to the figure of fun he is. But news hacks elected his boss president because they knew he was God -- and Abe Lincoln.

Poor Jay Carney. Does he sometimes wish he were a TWXSTER again?

Posted 11:34 AM by Gene

You listen, eager for new ideas, but somehow much of what he says seems dispiritingly predictable. Is this the best America can produce? Aren't great crises supposed to bring forth great men? Did President Obama really just compare Timothy Geithner to Alexander Hamilton? We need Roosevelt and Churchill. Even watching Obama at times, it seems that we've elected -- despite their smarts and earnestness -- a government of stumbling technocrats whose solutions either fall short or go too far. It's enough to make you want to pull the covers back over your head. [Emphasis added]

Wait a sec! Didn't you geniuses tell us The One was Roosevelt AND Churchill? Not to mention Lincoln, JFK and God? People in $5 million outhouses....

Posted 11:08 AM by Gene

Back to ARCHDaily.com:



Don't sit in that! You'll be vaporized!



If this were the sexified nuclear cooling tower it looks like no one would get near it within a twenty-mile radius.



Why that angry scowl? You mad someone gave you one horizontal eye?

(Although we don't know what that second slit to the right is -- possibly the end of its alimentary canal -- or that boxy thing to the left, which may be a boarding chamber before the thing lifts off to become a UFO.)



A $5 million outhouse!

Posted 10:44 AM by Gene

SLIME says the rally has legs!

SLIME says we'll be testing new lows!

Will You make up your mind?!?

Posted 10:24 AM by Gene

The CHICKENS of the Iberian peninsula, who get the shakes and turn ashen just to THINK of Islamists and run screaming for the nearest closet, find it safe to "prosecute" Dubya hacks under something called "international law" for war crimes, which reminds us the CHIEF CHICKEN mismanaged his alleged country into a housing bust.

But some American experts said that even if warrants were issued their significance could be more symbolic than practical, and that it was a near certainty that the warrants would not lead to arrests if the officials did not leave the United States.

TRANSLATION: Didn't CHIEF CHICKEN already win reelection?

Posted 10:21 AM by Gene

More scintillating need-to-know news from the ASSPress:

Air traffic controllers: Madonna arrives in Malawi

Perhaps the greatest entertainer of all time didn't use a plane? Or maybe ASSPress didn't use its sense -- as if it has any?

Posted 7:48 PM by Gene

See? JonBoy seems to be saying. We can let OUR guy have it too! There's just one catch:

If you are of the establishment persuasion (and I am), reading Krugman makes you uneasy. You hope he's wrong....

As Norm Thomas's Grandson probably wouldn't be hoping if prez were a REPUBLICAN. This is just another variation on our sock puppet.

Posted 7:40 PM by Gene

DR. FRANKENSTEIN MARCHES ON: Now it's stem cells for bigger breasts. Of course this has an excuse: We're doing it for women who've had lumpectomies. Soon the Bunsen Honeydews will figure out how to eliminate all excuses. We can't imagine this is the last organ related to sex that will benefit from stem cells. ONE!!!!!

Posted 7:35 PM by Gene

More realism: Vice-President -- Who? says The One will not lift the Cuban embargo, despite all the friends it would supposedly make him, like the folks protesting us in London.

Posted 1:49 PM by Gene

We're just surprised more credit-card numbers haven't made it onto G000,000,000GLE.

Posted 1:32 PM by Gene

As we all know by now, the WORRRRULLLLLLD COMMUNITY is very good at symbolism. "Arresting" the president of Sudan was very good symbolism. Now said community is engaging in what will no doubt become an annual WORRRRULLLLLLD HOLIDAY by turning out the lights on its most prominent edifices. Or as ASSPress typist Kristen puts it in the nineteenth of her twenty-one grafs:

Earth Hour organizers say there's no uniform way to measure how much energy is saved worldwide.

Or, for that matter, how much energy is wasted by powering down and powering up.

Of course the League of Nations would very keenly exaggerate any claims of energy saving. Unfortunately this story appeared in FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!NEWS.com and is therefore not credible FOR THAT REASON ONLY. Meantime the world's hacks continue in their long, deep, blissful sleep.

Posted 1:03 PM by Gene

I would wager humans will not mount a successful trip to Mars before the end of the century -- with the emphasis on successful. The work should be on speeding up the propulsion, not so much on whether men can stand a closed environment for months. The former is surely beyond our present technology; the latter may be beyond human nature.

Posted 11:48 AM by Gene

I wonder:

It is poignant to recall that in Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's time there was the serious possibility of Britain's being able to abolish its income tax and pay off its entire national debt. This was not an inconceivable feat--indeed, the U.S. actually retired its national debt during Andrew Jackson's presidency.

Which proved very helpful to us in the long run. But anyway:

During the boom years London's financial center, known as the City, expanded to become the leading such center in the world. But the financial sector--by far the country's biggest industry, both in terms of value and in the numbers of people employed--is contracting fast. There are more unemployed bankers in London than anywhere else on earth.

TRANSLATION: Just as all those bankers nearly allowed Iron Lady to abolish the income tax, so said same bankers have plunged the former United Kingdom into a depression. Any nation where number crunching and asset swapping is the country's biggest industry is a house of cards.

But here, for readers of Forbeslist, is the real killer:

The consumption of champagne in Britain has dropped. Luxury restaurants are closing.

Little Malcolm must have gone on a crying jag when he saw it. (If he saw it.)

Posted 10:25 AM by Gene

Sorry Jonathan, I think it's best we leave the author of The Carpetbaggers buried.

And though it should remain buried too, we puzzle why someone hasn't turned that Grace Metalious mold into a movie again -- or better still, why JUDD APATOW couldn't turn her best-selling gag into a comedy; yes, I believe that bozo could do a whole movee on sex while driving. Amazing: the roots of our junky taste lie in the Ike years. (But not surprising given Hef and tail fins -- and Ike.) Now that would have been an article. Instead, Jonathan went daydreaming. NSG, Jonathan.

OR:

"If I'm a lousy writer, then an awful lot of people have lousy taste."

You said it, Grace.

She died of alcoholism.

P. S. To the extent the numbers mean anything, Harold Robbins's best seller on Amazon.com is #87,150. Peyton Place is #98,738. The books may be gone but their smell lives on.

We do have Franz Waxman, however. Beautiful flowers can grow in sludge.

P. P. S. The story is well known but bears repeating: Toward the end of his stay in office Ike invited Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic to the White House for a concert that included the Rhapsody in Blue. Afterwards Ike exulted to Lenny: "It's got a theme. I like music with a theme -- not all them arias and barcarolles."

Lenny got back at him by naming one of his last works Arias and Barcarolles.

Posted 9:43 PM by Gene

Today I had to tend to a personal task (more of which later, perhaps) that took me to Bala Cynwyd, and nearby City Ave., the strange diagonal mark on the map that is one of our northwestern borders. You notice right away most of the offices and two upscale department stores are on the suburban side, and we are stuck with nonprofits. It was once a serene neighborhood, but the Schuylkill Expressway and the idiot Babbitt desire to lay waste to every last forest and farm have made it one continuous loud traffic jam. Upscale apartments dot the area but I'm not sure I'd want to live there; it combines all the disadvantages of a city with all the disadvantages of the burbs -- think crime and cul-de-sacs. You can see America may have undergone too much construction lately at the Target, which replaced a skyscraper hotel torn down for God knows what reason, one with the peculiar name and logo no one could figure out except to suppose them obscene. Nearby at the intersection with Monument Road are an old glass box and a turret that house two of our city's former mints -- broadcasters. Passing by The Pillbox That Ambassador Walt Built (now owned by a company nominally and mysteriously named for another Walt) you notice that TV stations can become eyesores in ways even beyond the ethereal toilet-flushings; a microwave tower (I believe) juts nastily from its center, as if ready to shoot down enemy media moguls, and out back sprouts an horrendous eyesore of four huge satellite dishes. Looking at those dishes today I became instantly convinced they're dead technology. TV is moving back to its prehistory, to a high-tech successor to the coaxial cable that will render cable obsolete too; we will soon not need such centralized garbage dispersion units as everyone will have his own home electronic waste dump. With that spectacular collision in orbit one must wonder when space junk will render satellites unusable anyway. For better or for worse (I say the latter) the media increasingly belong to the rabble, and if the negative is we cannot blast our way through the accreting sludge of tens of millions of morons even with dynamite the positive is it will dissipate some billionaires and their toys, as it has already.

On the intersecting Belmont Ave. and behind the bus stop that connected me home (across the street from a building that housed a bank that no more exists; it was part of the pile of bad assets Wells Fargo had to buy at federal gunpoint but still bears its initials: GSB) there's a huge reservoir, part of our city's water works, and a couple of ducks were swimming or cleaning themselves peacefully, oblivious to the mad nonsensical rush around them. They, at least, had a good idea.

Posted 5:54 PM by Gene

HERE'S A RESOLUTION FROM THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES CALLING FOR THE CREATION OF A PARTISAN COMMISSION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Resolute overemphasis added)

Congresspoop Con-yers has introduced the same piece of -- legislation regularly since 1989. NUF SAID.

Posted 4:55 PM by Gene

We suspect from this post housing will not recover soon because there's more to a house than just buying it. You have to feed it.

And some of those monsters can eat.

Posted 4:36 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: GE BANCORP got into solar because it's PC. So what happens? The economy tanks so bad the BANCORP has to lay off dozens from its solar unit.

We ask of the envirostompers: Isn't this depr -- economy a GOOD THING because it means less of all that gunk in the air? I mean you want to slow down growth in the name of hypotheticals, and now it's happening! And if it puts people out of work, well...that puts less gunk in the air!

Posted 4:34 PM by Gene

If "One World Trade Center" were just another office building, okay. It is not just another office building.

Posted 4:29 PM by Gene

Meantime the right praises the president for toughing it out in Afghanistan. We join in. Here this president throws money into the incinerator, and then the next day he realizes we can't throw Afghanistan there. We only wish he threw less money into the incinerator.

Posted 3:54 PM by Gene

OH oh, I think Pete of Hooverville just made the Swing Era con-SER-va-tive.

We should never take this sort of thing lying down. Great art transcends politics, and the swing era was great art. The only time the names he mentions crossed over into politics was when Satch blasted Perpetually Underrated Ike for his stupidity on civil rights.

Although Glenn Miller and Satch each recorded a scabrous tune called "W. P. A."; Glenn never released his version, apparently under pressure from John Hammond and the then-powerful Musicians' Union. Then again we wonder if con-SER-va-tives would call Glenn a COMMIE for having recorded an Irving Berlin tune celebrating FDR's birthday. (It was a fundraiser for the March of Dimes.) As we said, who cares? These were great musicians in any language and beyond politics. Moreover Glenn gave his life for his country, which is a big reason this music lover reverences his name, and that's more than most conservative pundits can claim.

(Via the usual Corner)

Posted 3:46 PM by Gene

One word comes to mind for Irving R. Levine: sober. That is a compliment -- espcially now, when everyone in the news biz is drunk.

Posted 9:31 AM by Gene

Powerless and irrelevant, the musical star of the Senate Mr. Hatch decides to take it in his own hands: he's going to FIX THE BCS!!!!!

Orrin, why not just help add trillions to the national debt the way you're supposed to.

Posted 9:30 AM by Gene

SUMNER'S HAVING A SALE!

(Via IWantMedia, which linked to a non-free URL)

Posted 9:00 AM by Gene

Here I follow the Ranceoids religiously and I missed this story that PEOPLE INC. turned itself into a whorehouse for DreamWorks. And the delicious irony (if this story is to be believed) is it didn't work for DreamWorks. PEOPLE WARNER would perform a noble public service by shutting down every one of its rags except People, which it could spin off in an IPO.



We'll do it early: A NEUHARTHISM OF THE YEAR AWARD TO PEOPLE INC. AND JOHN "RHYMES WITH HOOEY" HUEY!

Posted 8:47 AM by Gene

Does New York's new junior senator stand for anything?

(Via CuteLittlePinkPaper.com)

Posted 8:42 AM by Gene

How, after all its Babbitting, does China, on the verge of being the world's leading nation (and almost rightly so, given our enormous attempts to wean ourselves from that title), still have a Communist Party? Why isn't it a fascist state, with a free-market hero like a Gen. Pinochet?

Posted 8:39 AM by Gene

I would like someone to tell me the so-called United Kingdom isn't in a depression -- and not just spiritual.

Posted 8:30 AM by Gene

If Facebook is so capital-intensive why doesn't it prepare an IPO?

Or find a big-media sugar daddy?

Pffffffffffffffffffffffffft!

Posted 8:28 AM by Gene

Though this be Page Six here's another proof THE BIG C is not about business, or much of anything except egomaniacs and screaming.

Posted 6:46 PM by Gene

Nearly five years ago, in a post that has totally vanished from the Web (save for my citation)*, somebody at ESPNCORP NETWORK NEWS wrote this:

Frankly, there are few things in this world more dreary to me than the endless musings, gushing and reminiscences of a teenaged girl. I had certain, er, motivations to listen when I was 15. I have none now. As the guy-saying goes: "Hey, if I cared I'd be a chick." Or, as my son said as he scrolled through the thousands of words and dozens of entries of one girl's blog, "Blah, blah, blah. She hates her life. Blah, blah. Shut up."

Today, given the great "success" of Facebook and Twitter, the whole world's a 15-year-old girl.

And sometimes she's someone else. (Sorry to link to THE WAX! twice.)

* P. S. on 4/18/2009 at 5:12 p. m. I was wrong; the linked story is here. (See also this post.)

Posted 6:42 PM by Gene

THERE'LL ALWAYS BE A HOLLYWOOD:

Really, this is no place to experience a depression. No matter what bleak news you hear on NPR, L.A. sedates the crisis. Your 401K turns into a 201K but you spot Jessica Alba at the Farmer's Market. Unemployment hits record highs but the next joyously dumb license plate you see reads FLM EXEC. You ask a bunch of your friends if they'd take $50,000 to see "He's Just Not That Into You" and they all decline, no hesitation.

Everything seems pretty fine.

Posted 6:34 PM by Gene

Given how Einsteins screwed up the economy and the salaries they will make someday it is difficult to field sympathy for their close allies in the law business, even at the bottom rung.

Posted 6:04 PM by Gene

And in its equal and opposite number, the home of MR. JOURNOLIST:

VERMONT GOVERNOR: FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS ARE A LUXURY WE CAN'T AFFORD. [SIC!!!!!]

Posted 6:02 PM by Gene

STOP THE PRESSES!!!!!

Conservative Leaders Oppose Obama Budget

Posted 6:00 PM by Gene

Fed's Plosser: Economic outlook "pretty ugly"

If the Wall Street Casino keeps going he'll have to call it ugly pretty.

Posted 5:54 PM by Gene

Seeing how AHT dealers engage in figurative fraud it's strange more of them aren't caught doing the literal kind.

Posted 5:45 PM by Gene

We'd like to like The One, but there are too many Barneys and Jim Carvilles where he comes from -- and some of them have his number, as he has theirs.

Posted 5:41 PM by Gene

Remember when crude oil prices were going way up how a confederacy of the smug like John "The Knee-Jerk-Liberal Conservative" Stossel insisted speculators weren't bad guys?

How then to explain this?

Posted 5:36 PM by Gene

I don't know which is worse: The Party of No or The Party of Maybe.

Posted 5:35 PM by Gene

Sammy! Sammy Glick...man! You can come out of hiding now! You got a tax break in LALALand!

Posted 5:31 PM by Gene

I guess not soon enough to prevent The Paper of Re-CORD from cutting salaries.

Posted 5:29 PM by Gene

Okay hacks, when do we start belching about the OBAMA RALLY!!!!!!!!!!?

Posted 9:59 AM by Gene

It is heartening to know somewhere someone is using law enforcement to attack the scourge of AHT -- graffiti.

Posted 9:30 AM by Gene

We should have mentioned this yesterday, but obviously Sammy Glick...man thinks his is an IMPORTANT business -- important enough to downplay "RECORD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" returns (i.e., PAUL DRECK's definition thereof) so he can get tax dollars. Really Sammy, we can think of businesses that are much more important than yours. Then again, we can't think of too many businesses less deserving of OUR largesse than yours.

Posted 9:23 AM by Gene

Heaven forfend: Kim Kardashian got retouched?

And she sees nothing wrong with it?

See, we're not total wonks.

Posted 9:08 AM by Gene

Speaking of IWantMedia links, yesterday we mentioned Rasmussen's spectacularly stupid poll. Well, just as a dog sinks its teeth into readers, the TWXSTERS (sorry Bew-KES, it bought you, you pay for it) are saying THE COMEDY CENTRAL NEWSHOUR is "REPLACING OLD NEWS GUYS!!!!!"

Is PEOPLE WARNER replacing its staff with too many interns?

Posted 9:03 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Even technoweenies are becoming "the tools of their tools."

(Via Yahoo! via IWantMedia)

Posted 9:00 AM by Gene

In current dollar terms (not adjusted for price changes), GDP fell 5.8% to an annual rate of $14.2 trillion. It was the largest percentage drop in nominal GDP since 1958.

Other aspects of the report were very negative. Corporate profits before taxes fell a record $250 billion, or 16.5% at a quarterly rate. It was the largest percentage decline in profits since 1953. Domestic profits of financial corporations dropped $178 billion, while domestic profits of nonfinancial companies dropped $89 billion.

The government's estimates of profits from current operations do not include the writing down of bad assets.

For all of 2008, profits fell 10.1%, the most since 1970.

Consumer spending fell at a 4.3% pace in the fourth quarter, the worst since 1980. Spending on durable goods plunged 22.1%, the worst since 1987. Spending on nondurable goods fell a record 9.4%. Spending on services rose 1.5%.

Business investment dropped 21.7% in the quarter, the worst since the 1975 recession. Investments in equipment and software fell an eye-popping 28.1%, the worst since the 1958 recession. Spending on structures fell 9.4%, the first decline in more than three years.

Residential investment fell 22.8% in the fourth quarter, the 12th consecutive decline in the sector where it all began.

Let me guess...DOW UP ANOTHER 500!

Posted 8:55 AM by Gene

ILFC, which leases jets to airlines, was thought to be one of the New York-based insurer's jewels. But like many of AIG's business units....

It turned out to be taxpayer-paid costume jewelry.

Posted 6:07 PM by Gene

And in one other MediaBistro link, we learn that, though perhaps one percent of Americans watch THE COMEDY CENTRAL NEWSHOUR, thirty-nine percent of "Americans" think it is better informing people, which shows we can't dump polls into the nearest sewer fast enough.

Posted 6:05 PM by Gene

We should have mentioned this before but we are very sorry to learn that WALTER WINCHELL!!!!!!!!!! has lost his chief ghostwriter, who now appears to be obsessing over the notion that awful movies become great when they're CONSERVATIVE. We do hope Walt can make lots of errors and run tons of unsubstantiated rumors and show-biz advertising without him.

Posted 5:45 PM by Gene

Actually I'd rather talk about Valerie's figure.

This is not in GOOP territory but it must have taken a lot of physical excruciation to get there; and that is why, great though her figure is, it cannot be for us men an unalloyed pleasure.

Nevertheless the sight of Valerie in her bikini -- we hope reasonably truthful -- rather comprehensively takes care of that scene in Tennessee Williams's tony mellerdrammer A Streetcar Named Desire in which one of the slobs subjects his girlfriend or whatever to a harsh light, as though at a police interrrogation, and finds every last crow's foot on her face -- even though the woman is only, what, 30? To which we say, a baby under a harsh light would look bad, and there is nothing wrong with middle-aged women trying to look good, and there is no reason a middle-aged woman can't look reasonably sexy -- indeed we'd say too many folks look like such slobs that this sort of self-improvement should be richly encouraged.

(Via Yahoo!; originally posted 5:28 p. m.)

Posted 5:39 PM by Gene

And after this spin do we still call Jake a pretty good guy?

The hacks have fired a warning shot across our bow: they intend to be sound asleep during the whole budget debate, and hope to wake up to a revivified economy -- much the way Pinch went to sleep hoping Chas would go away.

And though it links from NRO (sigh), we learn that as an IMF functionary Timmy helped destroy the Indonesian economy. Let us hope this does not have fool me once written all over it.

Although I have pretty well learned to read any story about the economy with my eyes instantly glazing over without any further help.

Posted 5:22 PM by Gene

How exasperating to have to read sinister nuances into EVERY article regardless of how pure they are. This guy from the former home of Anonymous says The One should speak boldly to the public, which is true enough; and that Dubya hid under the Oval Office desk, also true enough; but Slick shows the danger of letting your mouth run the White House, and though The One may not be overexposed now he sets up the chance he may be so later; and given how effusive SUPERADAM!!!!!!!!!! was to the First Lady (or should that be the Other One), and given this rag's history of obsequious political hacks, it is hard not to try to spot the wrong in a piece even when it's right.

Posted 5:05 PM by Gene

More from con-SER-va-tives:

Not-So-Silent Barack

The boss points out that Obama seemed to channel Calvin Coolidge last night when touting the "philosophy of persistence".

Posted by John McCormack at 03:55 PM
| E-mail the author | E-mail article

Doesn't that make him a good guy?

Posted 2:59 PM by Gene

Is this THE GREATEST COMIC DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER OF ALL TIME -- or just another megalomaniacal fraud?

Posted 12:05 PM by Gene

Shucks! No leaky roofs in Brooklyn!

(Via the usual AhtsJournal)

Posted 11:58 AM by Gene

And how many "overhauls" of the tax code would this make?

Posted 11:25 AM by Gene

We'd learned this before, but this post was too good to pass up:

Bummer [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

There will be no Senator Kudlow.

03/25 10:49 AMShare

Bummer indeed! No chance to hear GEKKO defend his friends GOLDILOCKS and Dick "A Billion Dollars Wouldn't Be Too Much for Him" Grasso. Yes, a bummer we were spared prime comedy!

With friends like these the P. O. P. doesn't need enemies.

P. S. at 11:52 a. m. The DUHB gets exercised over a two-year-old story. The comedy continues!

Posted 10:33 AM by Gene

The hacks got briefly excited that the Hallmark Channel is putting on 35 new "original" dramas. Let's do a little math: If they're all two hours long that's 70 hours. A year has 8,760 hours. Four hours of prime-time a night and you get 1,460 hours. We would say, for all the revuers' hosannahs, there is still not enough "original programming" for one cable network.

And unless the reverse Robin Hoods have suddenly talked themselves into believing the depr -- ECONOMY is over, they'll all be made on the cheap, as is nearly all of cable's "original programming" (except for sports, where often you can't see the money), meaning more glorified filler.

I still submit there is no more original entertainment programming on all of TV than during the 1950s, and no more original programming than on radio in the 1940s.

Posted 10:26 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: If we get this correct, while unit housing sales were up in February, dollar volume was considerably down, meaning there's still a housing glut.

Which won't keep the GEKKOS from running stocks up another 500 points!

Are the GEKKOS buying now for the same reason they sold in October?

Posted 10:16 AM by Gene

With the TWXSTERS' DC Comics Pictures unit making nothing but tentpoles, it figures it should back an online videogame outlet, presumably to help provide it more tentpoles. But if videogames are movees and you can get your videogames online, who needs movees or the popcorn restaurants?

Posted 9:50 AM by Gene

Maybe the economy is starting to come back -- the auto makers are financing junk TV again!

Pfffffffffffffffffffffffft!

(Via TV Week)

Posted 8:43 AM by Gene

Heck, even the ASSPress admits he's having problems getting his own party to burn all that money.

We don't want to ditch on a prez just to ditch on him, but hacks are totally incapable of self-reflection -- unless it's in the mirror.

Posted 8:38 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: The One looks good, therefore he is good.

Too many hacks think the problem with their business is the economic model, or too many zombies before their computers, or all those evil Einsteins zapping the stock market. The TWXSTERS' former flagship was losing weight fast long before anyone heard of Lehman Brothers. But the nice thing about being a hack is it's NEVER your fault. Especially when you can engage yet again in the kind of surface coverage you always complain about at seminars.

Posted 6:30 PM by Gene

How is a prime time presidential news conference like a Vegas casino? The odds are stacked for the House.

The Obama team knows this. They understand that taking a few tough questions is a small price to pay for a prime time audience.

They called the press conference tonight because they know they have enough good news to fill the first 10 minutes, when the audience is paying the most attention.

Journolist and your party line loading the dice, George?

Posted 6:16 PM by Gene

Well, at least SABMiller chose the right part of Sudan to start a brewery.

Posted 6:05 PM by Gene

Joe, I don't think you're headed for stand-up.

Then again, with your fierce wit, maybe you are.

Posted 5:43 PM by Gene

You can be sure that for every jerk who undermines business with his compromised ethics, there are 99 decent, hard-working people who wake up every day determined to do right.

Unfortunately jerks have a way of getting business magazines to call them LEGENDARY.

GE BANCORP still over 82 PERCENT off its all-time shady-finance-inflated high.

P. S.

You can be sure that this summer there will be a new song on the radio that is so catchy and fun you can't get it out of your head.

One of the first things LEGENDARY did after He bought RCA (RCA what?) was to sell its records unit. The following year He sold NBC's radio network and stations. I don't want to guess LEGENDARY's musical tastes (aside from the sound of His voice, that is).

You can be completely and absolutely sure that the first hotdog you eat at the ballpark on Opening Day is going to be as good as it gets, and the second one won't be bad either.



WILL YOU BUY THE @#$%&* SOX ALREADY?

Posted 5:33 PM by Gene

And further on the question, "How can we put junk TV on the Web?", marketers think that product placements will be their salvation -- the same as with the movees.

Posted 5:01 PM by Gene

Brilliant thinking: From the home of mumblecore and beautiful perpetually nude actresses (ugh) our intrepid AdAge correspondent tells us what interactive entertainment must do to strike it rich with marketing types, in seven simple truisms:

1. Vision delivers ROI.

TRANSLATION: For every Jeff Bezos there are fifty pets.coms. Even eBay isn't what it was. Hasn't anyone learned from the bust? "Vision" - luck = ZERO.

2. Marketing and customer experience are the same thing.

TRANSLATION: If we can talk people into thinking GEORGE WASHINGTON HILL-SPIT-ON-THE-DESK ADS in YouTube and Hulu and whatnot are the bee's knees we've got it made.

3. Avoid stupid, stupid.

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the...oh, never mind.

4. You can make money from 'free' stuff.

HuffPo and seattlepi.com will show you how! So will BitTorrent!

5. Participation will be ubiquitous.

Just because people are crazy for high-tech MAHJONG now....

6. Dad is the new Mom.

1. Listen, haven't we tried social engineering before? 2. I guess someone told these investment bankers of MadAve to stop insulting men.

7. Low overhead is the new currency. Especially for start-ups.

See 4. -- and also see 1.

Posted 2:48 PM by Gene

Pelosi's role diminishes under Obama

Hmmm, have The One's famed acolytes been on the phone with the LALATimes?

Posted 11:27 AM by Gene

It is not enough to have zillionaire talking heads -- no, we must have Ranceoids act as amplifiers for zillionaire talking heads who must say things so they can get their consulting fees in the press.

And if what they say is self-serving nonsense, so much the better!

Posted 10:35 AM by Gene

When we write a full-throttle intelligence-insulting advertorial full of snark does that make it less of an advertorial?



A NEUHARTHISM OF THE MONTH AWARD TO BENNETT!

Posted 10:33 AM by Gene

Renovating downtown Detroit hotels may not have been a profitable thing, alas, but it was the right thing.

Posted 9:27 AM by Gene

His Holiness also thinks he can get out the word by preaching to the converted.

He might be better off sending a thunderbolt to CO-PRESIDENT BABS.

Posted 9:07 AM by Gene

The One writes an "editorial", and China bellows that it wants a currency to replace the dollar as the world standard. And we thought only Americans didn't listen to our "leaders".

Posted 9:03 AM by Gene

If Republicans had to shut up every member of their party who should shut up the P. O. P. would never open its mouth.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Posted 9:00 AM by Gene

GASP! Maj. Rupert Bowes's contestants -- LIP-SYNC?!?!?

How much of our time must PVT. ZELL and his cohorts waste with junk like this?

And the EOnline story was three days old to boot.

Posted 8:49 AM by Gene

LIAR LIAR BROCK'S ON FIRE! gets his puppet. Now every time one of the BIG C's mouths idiotically screams that the stock market is going through the roof all Liar has to do is pull the cord and the Doctor will idiotically scream about how half of America lives in poverty. Great job, Liar!

Posted 8:07 PM by Gene

If you want to be angry about something, get pissed at a media culture that goes beserk [SIC] about bonuses one week and forgets all about them the next. And be worried, quite worried, about a society for whom anger is a form of entertainment.

Why couldn't someone other than Anonymous have written this?

And now that he got it off his chest he can go back to entertaining himself with the perfidy of neocons, and go "beserk" over the infamy of Israel.

Posted 8:01 PM by Gene

Now we know what SUMNER does with His free time. He must have thousands working to goose the press. God -- er, SUMNER knows how many helped on this scheme. You'd think with all His success doing cheap PR, culminating with the brilliant wardrobe "malfunction" gag, that VIAB would be worth a lot more than $18 a share (counting today's Timmy premium), and this God wouldn't have to dart about like a cartoon character renegotiating His loans.

P. S. on 3/24 at 2:55 p. m. Slashdot's geeks say SUMNER's analyst is a longtime NASA fan. I say it's a shtick, and I say look Who rules over VIACON.

Posted 5:27 PM by Gene

And the heart of CW says The One is now on a path of greatness to rival Lincoln!!!!!

You cannot believe ONE word of reporting these days because everybody's infected with the PAUL DRECK virus -- they MUST HYPE.

Posted 5:17 PM by Gene

Say -- if that extremely annoying 140-character FAD can start a rumor about The New Yorker -- yes, The New Yorker -- going bi-weekly, maybe it can start a few rumors about BANKS! and STOCKS!

How 'bout it, SHORTS?

(Revised 3/25 at 9:33 p. m. Did I use "word" for "character"? Yes indeed.

Posted 5:14 PM by Gene

Despite the ENTHUSIASM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! for our salvation through TIMMY!!!!!!!!!!! it appears a lot of people -- right AND LEFT -- don't like it.

Here's what scary: everybody's SURE it will or won't work. Yet we're about to go perhaps an extra $1 TRILLION in debt on nothing but a wing and a prayer. Is this any way to fix an economy?

Posted 4:51 PM by Gene

"IF THE TEA LEAVES ALL START TO LINE TOGETHER I THINK THIS WILL BE THE BEGINNING OF A MAJOR BULL MARKET!!!!!" [BIG BIG C overemphasis added]

JIM! JIM BOOM BOOM CRAMER!! YOU ARE FORGIVEN! THE DEPR -- ECONOMY IS DEFINITELY OVER!



Even ED MURROW will forgive you!

I said 500 -- up 497! BIG C! You should hire me!

Posted 1:52 PM by Gene

UNBELIEVABLE!! THESE GUYS ACTUALLY HAVE NIGHTMARES ABOUT BROADENING PROSPERITY — AND THE ECONOMIC FREEDOM THAT BRINGS IT ABOUT!!!!! (Unbelievable overemphasis added)

Well if enough Indians buy enough Nanos and fuel them with enough gas whatever economic freedom Timmy and those boys leave us will disappear. $500-a-barrel oil, anyone?

Thankfully TaTA!!!!! is only making four to five thousand a month, for now. But hey, Ford had to start someplace.

Posted 1:08 PM by Gene

Conservative Catholics are raising a stink because Notre Dame is giving The One an honorary degree. If it withdrew its favor now it would look like a putz. Besides, the big N may have given up some of its virtue when it decided to be a football factory.

I'd guess someone will give a lecture beforehand as a sort of equal time, but it will be so windily worded as to float into meaninglessness, as intended. The One will answer back by expelling gas too.

P. S. I changed the word honor to favor in the second sentence. Clearly in granting an honorary degree a kolledge hands out a favor hoping to do itself one.

Posted 12:28 PM by Gene

Someone's looking into a hedge fund.

Posted 12:20 PM by Gene

Seeking Alpha linked to some blogger who got justly excited (so excited he posted a bad URL) that our government-enriched friends at CitiField are planting 4 SAIL CHEEP signs before scads of foreclosed houses and leaving a lot of money behind. $1 trillon, $2 trillion, $10 trillion -- who's counting? Not CitiField.

Posted 12:09 PM by Gene

Elsewhere on Tina's site, there's a big fight going on over which Hollywood superinsider can tell the least truth -- or should we say, tell the least truth and get the most rewards for it while seeming not to tell the least truth. If anything unites Paramount Pete, and SUPERNIKKI!!!!!!, and the WAX, and the whole blasted show-biz PR staff at the LALATimes, it's that they don't give two hoots about what kind of doggy-doo their beloved Hollywood voids, so long as they're first with the news -- and the snidely-worded and not-too-heavily-veiled congratulations.

Posted 11:55 AM by Gene

The fusty old GREATEST SATIRIC NOVELIST EVER!!!!! has the flu:

[I]t’s hardly as though the president of the United States lacks for venues, and such appearances have a way of trivializing any issue. Try, if you will, to imagine Dwight Eisenhower or JFK or Lyndon Johnson or, for that matter, Ronald Reagan chin-wagging with Jack Paar or Johnny Carson. Richard Nixon did, famously, go on Laugh In in 1968, but as a candidate; and to his credit, he rued the day and hated every second of it.

And he may have won the election thanks to it.

President Obama came to office proclaiming that he aims to solve problems, not hand them on to our children. Most presidents say that sort of thing. But now we are in very dire straits, and that being the case, he will be held to account. It’s your legacy, sir, and let’s not hear any more about “inheriting the crisis.” You asked for the job. Meanwhile, let us hope that his talent for mastering a sérieux financial crisis are not on a level with the Special Olympians of Wall Street, and Congress.

Achoo!

Must you spread your columns? Obamaman, please get well soon and write another "comic" novel.

Posted 10:04 AM by Gene

And in yet another press release:

Having mastered the Hollywood gossip scene, celebrity site TMZ apparently has set its sights on a new conquest — Capitol Hill.

The site — owned by Time Warner, CNN’s parent company — has started accosting members of Congress, including Illinois Republican Rep. Aaron Schock, as they go about their work in Washington.

You're boasting of it?

Posted 9:24 AM by Gene

Oh, NO! The political hack John says Timmy's doing such a cruddy job he'll prevent The One from passing his umpteen-gazillion-dollar remaking of America!

John, have you thought of retirement lately?

Posted 9:02 AM by Gene

And speaking of press releases, here's one from the ASSPress. The good news: the TWXSTERS are mining their movie vaults. The bad news: it's ON DEMAND, and the pricing reflects it -- $15 for a download, $20 for a DVD. We don't fault George Feltenstein, that very able executive whom we've praised before; he knows there's not exactly a public clamor for Once Upon a Honeymoon. But so many vintage discs now go for single-digits through the online retailers -- we got the TWXSTERS' 10-disc Garbo Collection as a cutout for $25 -- we wonder what this pricing is supposed to prove, except that PEOPLE WARNER is tone deaf as usual.

Posted 8:47 AM by Gene

Timmy pins the tail on the donkey -- and the Dow threatens to go up 500 points.

Just hope that donkey isn't a Democrat.

That he'll pin a debt immemorial on us goes without saying.

Posted 8:31 AM by Gene

I hate posting about DA POST!!!!!'s press releases but it's a wonder we haven't heard more about publicly-subsidized AHT from The One's acolytes. This fills the bill perfectly: public nudity for an audience of three. (It's from Snark's beloved "mumblecore" "movement", whose name appears to be so apt the movee ad-blurbists don't realize it, as though they realize anything.) That these exhibitionists' exhibitions will come and go without a trace says something about moveemaking these days.



NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD WINNING V. A.!!!!!, judging from your beautiful mug I 'd say it's time to retire -- five years ago.

P. S. No, of course it isn't the star of this Ted Mack production; that's Adele Mara, a B-movie actress of the golden age, whom I'd like to think would have given a good hard slap to any mumblecore mumbler. I post it to try to rid myself of the memory of the picture V. A. enclosed with his flack sheet. ("I am extremely fortunate that I have a boyfriend that is supportive. If he wants to close his eyes during those sections, I don't blame him at all." I think she could have slapped your boyfriend too.) Why in God's name can't actresses have faces? Or sense?

One thing though -- why was she seated like that? Not that we care.

Posted 6:52 PM by Gene

Critics rarely take Baldacci's novels seriously. The reviews of his books (when they're reviewed at all) can be nasty: "The Winner," "full of mixed metaphors and malapropisms, often reads like an exercise by someone trying out a language he is not entirely at home with," wrote a New York Times reviewer.

Sort of like...the upcoming Econowiz in American?

Posted 5:06 PM by Gene

If it's Sunday it must be Big Double-A-Scribble Time:

1. The trade group for the reverse Robin Hoods has its doubts about selling in this depr -- ECONOMY:

The Association of National Advertisers, too, seems to view an effort to get people spending as foolhardy. "It's not going to be an advertising campaign that's going to get people to spend or to invest or whatever," said ANA CEO Bob Liodice. "It's going to be the effect of government policies that's going to convince people to spend money or not."

If you're giving up on annoying us now why do you annoy us when the economy's good? Doesn't this line deep-six the notion of advertising as panacea?

For now, it's probably up to individual marketers to show that they can deliver great value for the consumer -- and aren't all about lining the pockets of their senior executives.

We've given up on that notion for some time -- and it didn't take a depr -- ECONOMY to do it.

2. Broadcast TV or Cable, It's All the Same to Consumers

It's all the same to me -- the same bad through two sources which don't seem like two sources, and they're extruded by the same media megalith. I trust this won't keep the reverse Robin Hoods from spending more for more junk; if anything the end of this distinction might give them an excuse to really run roughshod over our psyches.

3. But there is hope -- with newspapers losing their vigor, and perhaps all our TV coming through the computer, and so many shows having the audience the size of public-access cable, media will find themselves so vitiated as to lose a lot of influence. The AIG psychosis says don't bet on it. We'll merely have a new kind of bad.

Posted 11:22 AM by Gene

Rah rah rah! Sis boom bah! Spending spending rah rah rah!

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay TEAM!!!!!

And don't forget the BamaPrompTers!

Posted 10:55 AM by Gene

We understand why the California P. O. P. -- that's the Party of PILLHEAD -- is stiffing these courageous legisla-TORS. Too many believe they do the "courageous" thing by doing what the news hacks say. Thanks to them they have also come to believe inflicting taxes on the peons is courageous. That said there may be a time for taxation -- but in certain P. O. P. precincts there is NO time for it, for taxation might deprive the big PILL of His cigars.

Posted 10:50 AM by Gene

And now we hear from that repository (or is that suppository) of CW Zeitgeist that The One's ethics fixation is driving away "the best and the brightest". Zeitgeist employs many best and brightest. NUF SAID.

Posted 10:39 AM by Gene

One argument against the pee-PUL punishing the Einsteins is we need their help to fix the mess, and also if you punish Einsteins there may not be people to fix it. This does not answer the question of how they became Einsteins in the first place. And if they're such Einsteins why did they blow up our economy? And who can say many of the "mediocrities" below them would be such horrors? As we've seen with sales--ANALYSTS Wall Street can punish people for the most trivial reasons...like telling the truth about a stock. How do we know their replacements will be that bad? The Einsteins have already burned us once.

This also answers the notion that they will get even with their government masters. BERNIE did a pretty good job of getting even with a lot of people too, and he didn't have a government boss.

Posted 10:30 AM by Gene

Not long ago we mentioned the late Mike Royko's superb taste in women. And then on the other end there's A-ROD. The Man, strippers, this...lady....If A has not set himself up as the biggest ASS in professional sport we don't know who is. But the idiot fans will continue to bow the heads and pay the bucks, and there will be more strippers, and prosties, and embarrassing photos -- or we would say embarrassing if A were the embarrassed type.

Posted 10:28 AM by Gene

The catastrophe in Oakland makes us wonder why more scum don't go after the police, and how they manage to survive it. That "thin blue line" separates us from total anarchy, and too many are for anarchy.

Posted 10:16 AM by Gene

When even The Paper of Re-CORD's Nobel laureate is reduced to saying, "What an awful mess", we're in trouble.

The trouble is vastly compounded because so many dire assets were so "sliced and diced" virtually no one owns them.

We'll come out of it, somehow, but it may take the financial equivalent of a ceremonial bonfire just to rid us of these worthless "assets".

Posted 8:14 PM by Gene

Perhaps we'd have found out a little sooner about The One's "crutch", his TelePrompTer, if you clowns hadn't been so busy electing him God.

Posted 7:59 PM by Gene

"Sorry buddy, you've still got the job."

Hey you're not the only one, One.

Posted 7:55 PM by Gene

Some Rich Districts Get Richer as Aid Is Rushed to Schools

See we gotta RUSHRUSHRUSH that money in because as The One says the economy is DYING, EGYPT, DYING -- or is it coming back to life?

Posted 5:27 PM by Gene

I know Michael Wolff is hot, or at least lukewarm, but he really must teach his interns how to write heds, as in:

Deadly Acid Spill Forces 5K to Flee

No one was killed, despite the wording, so a better hed might be:

Spill of Toxic Acid Forces 5K to Flee

Maybe it doesn't sound as good but it would be more accurate -- although I'm not sure Mike would know the difference. P. S. I wound up at this site through a Contentions link because Mike doesn't think The One has a sense of humor either -- or much else that the hacks said he had.

Posted 2:19 PM by Gene

One hates to trundle out Gen. Sarnoff's plumbing line again, but it's obvious the public thinks of the new 3-D movies as a high-speed, high-def, high-tech toilet seat.

Did you know Kiss Me, Kate was shot in 3-D? "[A]n absolute replica of the pronouncements and interviews that came out in 1953." Even Leonard Maltin knows.

(Via the usual Ahts Journal)

Posted 11:00 AM by Gene

Speaking of the PILL, why don't we hear of him any more? This business with bonuses shall also pass. But combined they tell us our elites don't think, they obsess, they obsess like infants missing their bottle, and they threaten to sweep us all up into their laser-focused, hermetically-sealed void.

Posted 10:47 AM by Gene

Meantime PILLHEAD'S ACCENT tells us a BLOGGER OF THE MILLENNIUM, who must live in a perpetual state of anger, believes America is turning into a "banana republic." American Heritage defines it as "a small country that is economically dependent on a single export commodity, such as bananas, and is typically governed by a dictator or the armed forces." If we're going to call The One a dictator, let us do so, but his dictatorship is marked by more flailing than orders. And if we're reduced to a single export commodity, it would have been FINANCE, that grew and grew in the golden age of FREE EN-TER-PRISE REPUBLICANISM, only to be ruined when its masters finally learned they were immortal, which certain BLOGGERS would have insisted was the God Ronald Reagan's truth. And we have exported FINANCE, big-time.

And certainly America isn't a small country, though in many ways it's been acting it.

By the way, BLOGGER, whatever happened to Carlos Gutierrez, the man you said would be GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREAT!!!!! at Commerce (which is why we stopped reading your blog)? Who knows? Who cares?

Posted 10:37 AM by Gene

And on the list of taboos on which only child PRON now appears (although followed, in lighter, tiny type, but a whole manner of PC offenses, including smoking, criticizing Islamists, and being a Republican) some are intent to add bestiality. If some scum thought they deserved their hundreds of millions for ruining the financial system, if the waste matter Bernie had no qualms of robbing people of an alleged $65 billion, why should these be crimes? Why should there be any crimes at all? There is no punishment for murder in our inner cities. It may be more than a matter of an overrated God in the White House losing control.

Posted 10:32 AM by Gene

No-IQs like this are intent on turning life into a bad movee comedy. Unfortunately their jokes must have a punchline, and this one was extremely painful. (We hope the lady fully recovers. We would also not be surprised to learn this man is peeved that he got caught.) One hates to get riled up with talk of morals but given the shenanigans at the "banks" one must wonder if what has snapped in the social realm has now snapped all around -- and if people now have carte blanche to do as they please, civilization be damned. One hopes not -- idiots and bankers are still a minority here -- but one fears the time will yet come when we're taken over by the Chinese, or the Islamists. We will have asked for it.

Posted 10:27 AM by Gene

I hate turning to partisan sources, but I have repeatedly said The One has no sense of humor, and now we are getting firm intimations that we, in all our wisdom, have elected a cross between Tricky Dick and Jimmah. Yes, he's only two months in, with plenty of time to recover, but a man with the leadership skills and calmness the press deceptively imputed to him would have taken charge by now. What is worse, he tries making up for his robotic style with an out-of-control mouth. Even his PC sops (as in closing Gitmo and banning bullets and allowing unlimited abortions for stem-cell research) aren't working. Granted Sen. Keating would not have been much better. But could he have been much worse?

Posted 7:14 PM by Gene

The easy first instinct with a story like this is to make the usual sardonic noise about the Western world going to hell in the usual handbasket, but then you read, "In an interview with Closer Magazine....", and you go on its Web site and discover it's home-paged, among other hot news, "Rihanna sex tape rumours", and you realize ESPNCORP NETWORK NEWS may be in it too.

Posted 7:01 PM by Gene

Why won't Gore let reporters cover his speeches?

You mean suddenly he's not your industry's hero?

And right below that on Romy:

Obama White House bars press from press award ceremony

We'll think of some other excuse to love him.

Posted 6:55 PM by Gene

Phil "I'M JEFFREY IMMELT'S BOSS!!!!!" Griffin's new left-wing mouth-apparent screams:

"If you watched last week, you know I'm OUTRAGED!!!!! with my health care bill," Mr. Schultz said, while guest-anchoring 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on Wednesday. "But I guess I can't do the same story every time I come on this program." [Outraged overemphasis added]

And your ratings will go down if you don't!

Posted 6:50 PM by Gene

Another fee there, Henry?

Posted 6:46 PM by Gene

Post office offering early out, cutting managers

This can mean two things: only the best will take the buyouts, or the Postal Disservice becomes even more inefficient. Either way it sounds like more mail from my neighbors.

Posted 1:50 PM by Gene

Here's a switch: a CNN "producer" has been given the heave-ho after an uncomplimentary mention -- on NRO?!?!?

Posted 1:21 PM by Gene

US deficit forecast to hit $1.8 trillion this year

Spend it any way you like!

Posted 1:15 PM by Gene

Having just reduced the size of a tuna-fish can from six ounces to five (along with the rest of the biz), the makers of Bumble Bee (a "private equity firm") spend money on ADVERTISING to make people try to forget.

Yes, the "anger" at AIG is overdone, but it has its roots, and advertising to make people forget a diminution of a product is one of them.

Posted 1:10 PM by Gene

Obama urges states to use recovery money carefully

ERRRRRRRRRRRRRRR....