Posted 5:23 PM by Gene

See because FRANKLIN made his site so hard to navigate and read we had to learn from TINA that Brooksy has turned definitively into DAVID GURGLE JR.

As if we didn't know.

Posted 5:16 PM by Gene

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is selling bloggers for $36 a year. In other news news MNI went back below $2 and GCI below $9, meaning penny-stock maniacs and short squeezes can only do the press so much good.

(First link via the usual Romy)

Posted 5:02 PM by Gene

Jo-NAH is WORRIED because someone with the DEMOCRAT PARTY in Illinois is trying to steal the official con-SER-va-tives' holiday (9/11) from them -- and make it politically tone-deaf in the exact opposite way. Not to worry though, JO:

2147485501 people have signed up to attend this event.

Whatever THAT means.

Posted 4:52 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



Here's a house built from Legos. Considering how much Legos cost the owner can never sell it at a profit.

Unless the TWXSTERS feature it in their LEGO MOVIE.

Posted 10:04 AM by Gene

Why the Stock Market Looks Bullish for Autumn

Perfect timing!

Posted 9:58 AM by Gene

Wal-Mart's favorite supplier has lost $800 BILLION on Treasurys? OUCH!

Something tells me alas this depr -- ECONOMY has a ways to go yet.

(Via Seeking Alpha)

Posted 9:25 AM by Gene

If SUPERADAM!!!!!!!!!! is correct expanding the Os-CAR® field with MORE AHT-house flicks may not help the ratings after all. GOOD!

Posted 9:21 AM by Gene

Now -- for ESPNCORP to become PEOPLE WARNER what it should REALLY do now is BUY PEOPLE INC.

Posted 5:50 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



You know, you didn't have to put the fence that high up.

Posted 5:20 PM by Gene

If we endured a garden-variety recession we would not hear of "lifestyle" changes. The Depression That Dare Not Speak Its Name will not be overcome by sloganeering. The worthless useless mindless spending that brought it on suggest the virtue of modesty by comparison. But how long can we volunteer for depression?

Posted 5:15 PM by Gene

This is a trap. Either kids get bored reading "masterworks" or they read junk. Both ways they may see reading as less than a pleasure. While perhaps some put too much stock in not boring people a great many masterworks are dull. But no amount of cheerleading can elevate junk, though some may try. In any case reading is once again being put to the service of churning out Dilberts, the last thing we need. The resigned sound of “We just need to preserve book habits among the kids as much as we possibly can” speaks volumes.

Posted 3:50 PM by Gene

Either 1. ST. WARREN should get new software for THE SLATEST or 2. Put the whole blasted contraption out of business.

Posted 12:53 PM by Gene

Someone should remind Marc Ambinder that time can cut both ways. When he died Warren Harding was a revered leader. We would not guess how time will unheal Teddy, but there is no one to guard the facts anymore.

Posted 12:53 PM by Gene

The recorded...SOUND biz can sell it in supermarkets, dentist's offices and whorehouses, but no one will buy it when it still costs too much.

Posted 9:42 PM by Gene

Michigan football program broke rules, players say

WINNING ISN'T EVERYTHING....oh wait. He coached for someone else.

Posted 8:47 PM by Gene

We just learned about this: Stanley H. Kaplan, the founder of Kaplan, Inc. and savior of KAPLAN, INC., the man who made the SAT teachable, thus turning it into a zillion-dollar obsession, died this week. All the slanting typists at THE DAILY KAPLAN and ZEITGEIST should kneel at their beds every night and pray to his memory; but for him and the patience of ST. WARREN they'd be out of the jobs they deserve to lose.

Posted 6:57 PM by Gene

What are you mad about? I got MINE!

Posted 6:55 PM by Gene

British Government raises prospect of holding talks with the Taliban

Is there oil in Afghanistan too?

P. S. at 7:24 p. m. As it happens -- YES.

Posted 2:12 PM by Gene

RENDELLISM is about to develop a new tentacle called "basic research." If we just invest enough in "basic research" it will create jobs. And how many false leads will the Bunsen Honeydews pursue in the interim? And all the easy inventions are accounted for -- what remains is things like teleportation and gray goo, and electronics in the brain. These will create jobs? Please, BizWeek, sell yourself at once!

Posted 1:19 PM by Gene

Another bullet epidemic, in Georgia.

Posted 12:59 PM by Gene

The cover for the TWXSTERS' putative flagship is not that flattering. Perhaps it's just as well.

Posted 8:18 PM by Gene

Someone must have complained to the TWXSTERS.

Look, we know you can't make that big a thing out of it; it would make you look like cheap partisans. But you can't ignore it either as most hacks have done. It was, after all, the reason HE WAS DOOMED NEVER TO BE PRESIDENT.

Posted 7:19 PM by Gene

Two more reasons the world needed SOB to found USAOKAY!!!!!: for rock mu-SICK cri-TICS to ooh and ahh over those expensive new Beatles sets they're getting for free; and for a comprehensive 773-WORD investigative report on His Omnipotence's golf game.



A NEUHARTHISM OF ALL TIME AWARD TO GANNETT AND USAOKAY!!!!!

P. S. We now learn the picture was taken by the great portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh, the man who pulled the cigar from Churchill's mouth. What did Karsh do to get him to grimace like that? Say his profit margin would go down to 90 percent?

One other odd thing: What do the original NEUHARTH and Dennis Kookcinich have in common? (See page 14 of this .pdf file.) Oddly also GanNETt's personal papers are housed at Cornell, in what Freepers must always call THE CITY OF EVIL. The irony is sublime.

(Edited 11/17/2009 to reflect that the hacks got more than one set, no doubt)

Posted 5:16 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



The Hungarian exhibit at this Shanghai expo -- OR: COMMUNISM IS BACK!!!!!

Hungary inveiled the design for their pavillion for next year’s Shanghai World Expo, designed by Tamás Lévai. Gömböc, as a hungarian invention, is the central element of the exhibition, a two meter high solid plexiglass moving object.

What is Gömböc (pronounced as ‘goemboets‘)? [How about gumbo for honorary Cajun country? --ED] ‘Gömböc’ is the first known homogenous object with one stable and one unstable equilibrium point, thus with two equilibria altogether on a horizontal surface. It can be proven that no object with less than two equilibria exists. The discovery of the inaccessible path has led to the idea of GÖMBÖC. The pavilion as wood is intended to represent this path, and since it is of immaterial nature [unless one of those sticks falls down vertically], we are trying to evoke it with non materials: empty space, light and sounds.

TRANSLATION: COMMUNISM IS BACK!!!!!

Posted 2:27 PM by Gene

“Unless the government is doing something we don’t know about to raise the price of gasoline, we don’t think there’s going to be a lot of demand for small cars,” said John Wolkonowicz, a Global Insight analyst in Lexington, Massachusetts.

BWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

(Via Seeking Alpha)

Posted 1:27 PM by Gene

Speaking of hacks, when a political gofer like Steve lobbies for Mr. Tank to replace Teddy in the Senate, somewhere, Mr. Tank's lobbying.

Posted 1:25 PM by Gene

Sounds as though Florida's governor has chosen one hack to replace another!

Posted 1:09 PM by Gene

I LOVE jernalists: Our intrepid typist Lesley seeks to "oust...Miley Cyrus from her mystifying position as The World's Most Famous Teenage Girl" (emphasis added) with another mystifying one. JERNALISTS ARE NEVER WRONG!

Posted 11:08 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Penny-stock obsessives have ended the dep -- RECESSION.

Posted 10:24 AM by Gene

More marketers use social networking to reach customers

When do news orgs like USAOKAY!!!!! use it to DETERMINE THEIR CONTENTS -- or are they ALREADY DOING SO?

Posted 10:12 AM by Gene

It's a 7-year-old boy's dream team -- Steven Spielberg, Michael Crichton and David Koepp moving on from rampaging dinosaurs to marauding pirates.

TRANSLATION: The movee biz is run by seven-year-old boys -- one of whom is named SPIELBERG.

Posted 10:05 AM by Gene

The good news: Network TV's audience is dying off.

The bad news: Cable TV's audience is increasingly yet to be born.

Posted 10:00 AM by Gene

Also found on LARRY's Web site:



I'd say he already did.

Posted 8:53 AM by Gene

Further on magazines, the fact that HISTORY'S GREATEST EDITOR has chosen a 26-year-old managing editor suggests that the rag biz may not be rocket science. She may be extremely talented, but to succeed amidst JonBoys you need only know how to be trendy and politically intransigent, so pardon us if we're not that impressed.

(Via MediaBistro and HENRY HONEST)

Posted 8:51 AM by Gene

"You're going to find the most powerful story coming from the witness, the victim - you wait. If you take this a step at a time, you're going to fall over backwards and in the end, you're going to find the most powerful heart-warming story."

HEY EFFETE EDELSTEIN! DICK "SYNERGY" CORLISS! A. O.! HERE'S A NEW COLLEAGUE!

Posted 8:42 AM by Gene

Little Malcolm must have called out an ABANDON SHIP! because His site has run a lot of junk lately -- like this. What does this sentence mean, Little Malc?

Larry Platt knows something about the business: He was appointed Philadelphia's editor in chief in September 2002, and went on to win 16 city and regional magazine awards for the storied title.

I know what it means: a lot of insulting puffball articles with ATTITUDE, a lot of showoffy "lifestyle" features, a lot of toadying to advertisers. (Maybe THAT explains why his rags aren't folding.) The moment we stop trusting magazines -- whether it's Larry Platt's empire or Little Malc's -- is the moment they should go out of business -- although by that measure they should have vanished a long time ago.

P. S. We just went on one of Larry's Web sites and this is the hard-hitting stuff we found:

SURVIVAL OF THE AFFORDABLE Big-ticket Savona changes with the times.

THE SECOND ANNUAL COTE CARNIVAL On Sunday, August 23, 2009, Riley Cote of the Philadelphia Flyers hosted the second-annual Cote Carnival for The Multiple Sclerosis Association of America.

SEARCH FIVE YEARS OF PHILLY'S BEST! Search the last five years of Best of Philly, including this year's 299 winners in restaurants, shopping, service and more.

BEST OF PHILLY SNEAK PEAK: RESTAURANTS We’ve got about 90 food and drink winners in BOP this year. Here’s the first glimpse at 10 of them.

ON THE HOMEFRONT: WHALE WATCHING Home editor Lauren McCutcheon fills us in on what she's shopping for right now.

EAT SMART: HEALTHY RECIPES FOR LABOR DAY PICNICS Whip up these smart and simple dishes that’ll satisfy guests without adding pounds [SIC]

TALK TO US: WHAT ARE YOUR BIG-DAY GLAMOUR PLANS? Check out the work of these six talented local hair and makeup artists to get the inspiration rolling.

CLOSE TO THE CHEST Home editor Lauren McCutcheon has got her eye on a special bedroom piece from a local eco-friendly designer.

Hey Larry! Since you have this thing against the surely-overpaid head of Philly's public-TV station (nothing about public TV on the home page), we'd like to ask, given these crusading stories, what are you paid? Which gives us a sneaky suggestion: Why couldn't a band of marauding practical jokers invade the local newsstands and take every last blow-in card out of your rags and send them in -- and then cancel their subs? Didn't think you'd like that.



A NEUHARTHISM OF THE MONTH AWARD TO DIRK!

Posted 5:16 PM by Gene

How long before this has to be torn down because no one wants to live in condos in "dark, two-block-long floors"?

Just because something is old and on the National Register of Historic Places doesn't mean it's that good looking. (See, it's not just starchitects.)



Hint hint?

Posted 5:13 PM by Gene

"Based on our estimates, we're at about almost $67 million in Michael Jackson product!!!!!" (Estimated overemphasis added)

And how much of that is returns?

Posted 5:07 PM by Gene

Next time, JPOD, write the rave in your OWN name.

Posted 5:00 PM by Gene

More "proof" the economy is COMING BACK!!!!!:

Financial Times launches luxury magazine

Posted 4:59 PM by Gene

I guess the economy is COMING BACK!!!!; CEO pay is still an entitlement.

Posted 5:09 PM by Gene

Look who made 483 MILLION SMACKERS for Mr. MorganChase!

“[I] suspect that J.P. Morgan Chase’s shareholders now wish that [Madoff] put his deposits in a competitor’s bank,” Mr. Wilson wrote.

Knowing Mr. MorganChase's shareholders they're thinking he didn't deposit enough.

Posted 5:05 PM by Gene

How apt. We could speak of how news hacks and their peons live in different worlds but really, this is enough.

(Via GRATE.com. Currently it's not, but three of the top five search terms are -- never mind.)

P. S. at 5:20 p. m. This leads us to reckon that as with the PROFIT CENTER, lots of bad-taste jokes are sprouting on the Web. What the ANDERSONS fail to realize is that the more they detach their coverage from reality, the more bad-taste jokes may spring up.

Posted 4:58 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



The other day we mentioned synagogues that weren't built thanks to the Great Depression, and how they looked like anything. This -- building could be a what? A factory? A library? A research lab? It's a school, actually. Part if the problem with starchitecture is that starchitects are so enamored of themselves they leave no sense of place, and their buildings could be anything.

Posted 4:53 PM by Gene

“It didn’t affect me because there’s, like, a Hong Kong action movie? called Purple Storm and they work in a whole big thing in the plot that they blow up a skyscraper, duhhhhhhhhhh." [AHTISTIC last syllable added]

A spiritual disciple of Karl-HEINNNNTTTTZ wins the BEST PIC-TYURE OS-CAR®!

Well, actually Karl-HEINNNNTTTTZ at least thought it a WUHK of AHT.

Posted 2:57 PM by Gene

Can We Please Give Sam Zell A Break?

No we will not. PVT. ZELL didn't buy Dem Cubbies; that was earlier management. Had he bought the team it would have looked like an act of business genius (although even then it mightn't have qualified because it was a mere act of SELIGISM, before Bud took over). Now PVT. must sell a valuable franchise because he didn't know his ledger books from a hole in the ground. PVT. ZELL burned money. Even an arsonist wouldn't give him a break.

(Via Media Bistro)

Posted 10:23 AM by Gene

More Hollywood ge-NIUS: The TWXSTERS are making a movie of SOUL TRAIN.

Posted 9:35 AM by Gene

It may seem hypercritical of us but Our Orator-in-Chief's flatfooted tribute to "the greatest United States Senator of our time" reminded us of Henry Adams's line about "Presidents, Senators, Congressmen, and such things...swarming in every street." Whatever you thought of Ted Kennedy, he wasn't a thing.

Posted 9:12 AM by Gene

For once The Paper of Re-CORD gets something right by calling Ted Kennedy a "Senate stalwart" -- exactly the term to use -- and not CRONKITING him with the "Liberal Lion" phrase, which is proof the favorite piece of news-hack furniture will always be the CRUTCH.

And I wouldn't use the term too often as PILLHEADS and GLENNS will use it as a PUN, accentuating it with drinking songs and car-crash sound effects. Stay classy, PILLHEADS!

Posted 9:00 AM by Gene

SLIME got far by thinking His customers RETARDS. But He is the very definition of RETARD if He thinks He'll get His turnips to pay for RETARDED junk like THIS.

Posted 8:35 AM by Gene

Guvment is financing a green factory project in Michigan that will end up no doubt employing a fraction of the 4,300 some professional daydreamers have claimed (the plant once on the site employed 5,000 so that's as good a number as any), and that wouldn't get built without the incentives, and which is based on the dubious notion green technology is self-sustaining technology.

Posted 8:20 AM by Gene

You have to wonder -- does this give the Dems the excuse to ram through health-care "reform" under his name?

We may safely assume a hack will be appointed in the Bay State; thus has it always been with its politics.

By the way, state press, the fact that you'll do the Soviet-Party-Chairman-Has-Died routine makes it all the more likely PILLHEADS and GLENNS and their self-publicizing ilk can spew out their noxious gases.

Posted 8:11 AM by Gene

Ted Kennedy could have been a great leader. He had the dynamism, the zeal, and sometimes the hints of that great Kennedy eloquence. But Kennedy, like Nixon, was deeply flawed. With Tricky Dick it was his overarching paranoia; with Teddy it was the belief that his name was an entitlement. He was, like his father, above the law. Part of it also was the awful burden of two assassinations, but he had it in him to fight back, to overcome it. But the ease of being a Kennedy wouldn't permit it. That the state press will ignore en masse THE ACCIDENT does not negate its centrality to Teddy's tragedy. But even if it had not happened, would he have been a great president? The train wreck with Roger Mudd suggests a mental muddle. The irony is as he died there was a leader in the essentials just like him -- and we are now seeing the rotten fruits of a superliberal presidency. But the essentials were there, which makes the story of Ted Kennedy that much more dismaying for its wasted promise.

Posted 5:03 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



The visa section of the Swiss Embassy in Beijing? The automotive section of a Kmart!

Posted 1:50 PM by Gene

Wikipedia testing new method to curb false info

How about obsessively excessive info?

Posted 1:26 PM by Gene

Jo-NAH says someone named "Will Wilkinson asks a very useful question":

Here is a good debate proposition: It ought to be less embarrassing to have been influenced by Ayn Rand than by Karl Marx.

Given some that Ayn Rand's influenced, I wonder.

Posted 1:22 PM by Gene

What is with this sudden rush to make every news and opinion Web site look alike and harder to use, Franklin?

Posted 1:12 PM by Gene

Oh, so the Machiavellian lunkhead Gordy was "REPULSED"!!!!! by the big greeting!

Repulsed enough to give up the oil perks -- or his JOB?

Posted 9:40 AM by Gene

The decision to retain Bernanke as Fed chief sends a message: The president doesn't think the crisis is over.

But isn't it good news anyway?

Posted 8:59 AM by Gene

So if the Attorney General's new management role in intelligence is "circumscribed", what's the point of it?

But while Holder's move in choosing John Durham to probe agency abuses has roiled the intelligence community and infuriated Republicans on Capitol Hill....

Why is it the hacks' stabs at the truth are almost always unintentional?

Posted 8:30 AM by Gene

The United States and Japan believe United Nations sanctions against North Korea over its recent nuclear test are having a "great impact" on the regime, officials said Aug. 25 after talks between the allies.... [First graf]

Officials did not detail the effects of the sanctions on the regime. [Fifth graf]

NUF SAID.

Posted 6:49 PM by Gene

I guess it's too much to expect people to think Glenn Beck is a table-pounding foot-stomping opportunistic zillionaire crackpot who'll say anything conservative-PC to get ratings, AND that this self-appointed hero Jim is the type of PC liberal who'd turn a pretentious cheek if the same offenses occurred in the name of his tiny-minded political demagoguery.

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 5:25 PM by Gene

In other toothless Wolffery, Mike believes His Omnipotence got the Brits to do a deal, which put the onus on them, which will lead to more oil for us, which will lead to peace in the Middle East, which will....

Isn't it time to give your supersharp brain a rest there, Mike?

Posted 5:19 PM by Gene

HILARIOUS, FREEP! HILARIOUS, MIKE!



A NEUHARTHISM OF THE MONTH AWARD TO SUPERGANNETTOID TIM!

AND NEED WE SAY THE SITE'S HILARIOUS TOO! Now we know why we hate movie ad-blurbists.

Posted 5:01 PM by Gene

Surprise: U.S. Sitting On A Big Citigroup Profit

Well! THAT makes up for AIG, Obamamotors, Fannie and Freddie, etc., etc., ETC.

Posted 4:57 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



Keeping in mind this is optimally photographed, we'll admit not EVERYTHING from the starchitect crowd has to be a practical joke.

Posted 4:54 PM by Gene

I guess we'll convict the scape -- KILLER, but really who cares anymore outside the foamingly rabid cable nuisances?

Posted 4:49 PM by Gene

God knows Meteorite.com or whatever it's called has quickly become a tiresome fizzle, and we've done enough favors for our Sophia-seeking friends that we won't post the photo, but if the tale of the plus-side model says something it's not only that beauty can lie outside the anorexic province of the Anna Wintours, it's that in time every man must have his mate, and I say that not having one.

Posted 3:43 PM by Gene

Okay, let's MOBILIZE the young acolytes, who will then mobilize the geezers, who will then mobilize an age war.

Who knew The Great Uniter had this in him?

Posted 3:36 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: The Attorney General of God runs our intelligence agencies.

Posted 9:32 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: GRATE.COM does The Cheat Sheet one better!

What is the point of Grate.com?

Posted 8:44 AM by Gene

Some people are dense. If we're going to grant an anti-trust exemption to one "troubled" industry why not grant it to every troubled industry? And the news biz was swimming in cash for eons. What did the extremely profitable biz do while it swam in cash after the war? It bought up TV stations and cable systems. What did the extremely profitable biz create while it swam in cash in 1982? USAOKAY!!!!! Who would ever accuse IT of quality jernalism? What is the principal product of the last two decades of intensive reporting? Celebrity gush and the election of several false gods. The biz had all this time to create a good product, and it never did, and now that the supports are falling out from under it a media cri-TIC screams for protection like any tycoon. You made your bed....

(Via the usual Romy, who shook his head so violently you could hear it in Antarctica)

Posted 6:02 PM by Gene

To every show-biz publicist who used a pun to celebrate this week's fantastic news --



A NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD!

P. S. To my two surfers who aren't here looking for PR0N pictures or pictures of sexy fat women in bikinis, this is Frank GanNETt. As in AL. We were getting tired of searching for unflattering pictures of SOB, and besides, looking at this guy, we can truly behold he was his REAL inspiration. We can see him now, his face matching the end of his cigar, his voice graveling gravel, and yelling:

WHAT? You didn't run a show-biz blurb on the front page today? YOU'RE FIRED!

WHAT? Our profit margin's only fifty percent?!? YOU'RE FIRED!

WHAT? You offended a Realtor? YOU'RE FIRED!

WHAT? You TOLD THE TRUTH?!?!? YOU'RE FIRED!

Now maybe Frank was a nice, sweet guy, but usually nice, sweet guys don't look like someone who's had fifty people for breakfast. So we will still celebrate NEUHARTHISMS OF THE WEEK -- with THE ORIGINAL NEUHARTH.

P. S. He ran for president as a Republican. NUF SAID.

P. P. S. We wonder when con-SER-va-tives claim him as one of their own. After all, he ran against the DEMOCRAT candidate Wendell Willkie. Also, Henry Luce invented the "accent on NET" line (but flubbed the dub using two T's). From one tyrannical media mogul to another....

Posted 6:00 PM by Gene

Somebody please tell Em Bob Novak is dead -- unless he wants to put a permanent black border on his site.

Posted 1:21 PM by Gene

In a magazine we'd never heard of until we happened on this piece about Leonard Bernstein -- is TNR starting to use others as crutches? -- Diana Muir Appelbaum offers a testimony to the catastrophe the Great Depression proved for our culture, not least in architecture. The Temple Israel in Boston would have been a fine addition to any city. We wonder indeed that builders don't dust off old plans rather than paying the HIP! hacks who get themselves posted in ARCHDaily! for buildings that leak, or rot, and that rot in any case.



But look at these designs for the Union Temple in Brooklyn. By including these our author unintentionally highlights what's wrong with current Judaism. Doesn't the picture on the left suggest a bank of the era? And the one on the right a downtown train station? Come to think of it that other building could have been a fine university library. Banks, train stations, libraries -- a synagogue can be anything, and perhaps that's the problem with Judaism.

Posted 9:57 AM by Gene

David J. Rothkopf is currently CEO of Intellibridge. He joined Intellibridge following two years (1996-1998) as Managing Director of Kissinger Associates, Inc. Rothkopf was also "co-founder and president of The Newmarket Company LLC. He has served as an adjunct professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service." [1]

"Immediately prior to joining Kissinger Associates, Rothkopf served as Acting Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, where he led the U.S. Department of Commerce's International Trade Administration. While at Commerce, he developed and chaired the Administration's Big Emerging Markets Initiative, a program cited by President William Jefferson Clinton as among the U.S. government's most important foreign policy priorities. The program focused Commerce Department and other U.S. government resources on developing and enhancing trading relationships with ten of the fastest growing markets in the world (including China, India, ASEAN, South Korea, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Poland and Turkey)." [2]

"Rothkopf has written extensively on international trade and prior to joining the government, held a variety of senior positions in the private sector, including chairman and ceo of International Media Partners. His book, The Price of Peace: Emergency Economic Intervention and U.S. Foreign Policy, was published by the Carnegie Endowment in May 1998."[3]

"Rothkopf holds a B.A. from Columbia College and attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism."[4]

"David J. Rothkopf, is chairman and ceo of The Rothkopf Group, which specializes in providing high-level advisory and consulting services on international themes for corporations and governments worldwide. Additionally, Mr. Rothkopf serves as President and CEO of Garten Rothkopf, LLC, an international advisory firm specializing in emerging markets investing and risk management related services. The special focus of the company is enhancing market value of a select group of companies the firm has identified as the rising stars of the emerging world.

Mr. Rothkopf has had a distinguished career in business, government and the media and is well-known as an expert on international affairs, international economics and international security issues. He is the co-founder and former ceo of two companies: International Media Partners (publishers of CEO Magazine and Emerging Markets Newspapers, of which he was also editor) and Intellibridge Corporation (pioneer in the field of open-source intelligence gathering and analysis).

"Mr. Rothkopf is also a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where he has recently completed his most recent book, entitled Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power, a behind-the-scenes history of how foreign policy is made in the White House. He has now begun work on his next book, The Superclass, due out in 2008 from Farrar, Straus & Giroux, which will look at global elites and how they are shaping globalization and being shaped by it. Additionally, at Carnegie, Mr. Rothkopf chairs the Carnegie Economic Strategy Roundtable as well as studies focusing on America's role in the world. He also serves as he has for the past 3 years as chairman of the National Strategic Investment Dialogue, an organization of leading institutional investors from across the US. He is also an adjunct professor of international affairs at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.

"Mr. Rothkopf served as Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce of the U.S. for International Trade during the first Clinton Administration and concluded his term in the government with an extended period serving as Acting Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade where he directed the activities of the International Trade Administration. Subsequently, he served in the private sector as Managing Director of Kissinger Associates, the consulting firm chaired by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger. After Kissinger and Associates, Mr. Rothkopf was chairman, ceo and co-founder of Intellibridge Corporation, a leading provider of international analysis and open-source intelligence for the U.S. national security community and selected corporations.

"Mr. Rothkopf is the author of over 150 articles on international economic and security themes and is the author, co-author or editor of five books. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the International Herald Tribune, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the Miami Herald, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Economy, Blueprint, and many other publications. He has taught or lectured at over a dozen universities. He has also appeared often as a commentator on international issues on both television and radio.

"Mr. Rothkopf also speaks worldwide and is well-known as an event moderator and conductor of scenario exercises. He is a member of the Chairman's Advisory Council at the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Health Advisory Board of the Johns Hopkins/Bloomberg School of Public Health, and of the Center for Global Development. He was educated at Columbia College of Columbia University." [5]

Multiply this by hundreds and you can gather why our foreign policy is so screwed up. Doc-TOR Rothkopf has added to his résumé with an article saying that Hillary is a GREAT secretary of state -- but he's careful not to say how, except that she's appointed all the right people. With CV padding like this on all sides incompetence at State is a given.

Posted 6:55 PM by Gene

The bumbling nincompoop Gordy arranged it, and thankfully in a week it will all be forgotten except for the thank-yous from BP and Shell, and no one will have to resign.

“Does anybody seriously believe that Qaddafi or any of his people have any influence with the Queen?”

Yes, when we need our OIL.

P. S. "DEAR MUAMMAR...."

Posted 5:53 PM by Gene

This eyeball-rolling thing is from February 11, 2008 -- and it's number two on LALA's most-viewed list and number one on most e-mailed. Oughtn't there to be a statute of limitations to stories?

Posted 5:33 PM by Gene

Glen, we appreciate your respect for His Omnipotence and Teddy, but we waste too much time tracking down news, and we'd rather not read one more puff piece of any kind. Mind, we don't want a hatchet job but some stories serve no useful purpose, and this is one of them.

And I had to link twice to this story as in most places the ASSPress hid its distinguished correspondent's byline behind a wall.

Posted 11:40 AM by Gene

As we might have expected con-SER-va-tives are gloating because bankers are taking advantage of credit-card "reform". Republicans back caveat emptor; Democrats back market strangulation. Six of one....

Posted 11:36 AM by Gene

The same YOUNUHVERSUHTEES who plaster their arenas with beer ads are complaining because INBEV's stealing their school colors.

Puh-LEASE! Haven't you heard of licensing? We thought so.

Posted 10:02 PM by Gene

Meantime PEOPLE WARNER reports the news vital to all of us:

Murdered Model Identified by Breast Implants

Posted 9:59 PM by Gene

And the Swiss can grovel with the best of them too!

Posted 9:46 PM by Gene

BP!

Ka-CHINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG!!!!!!!!!!

SHELL!

Ka-CHINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG!!!!!!!!!!

MARKS AND SPARKS!

Ka-CHINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG!!!!!!!!!!

AND THE REST!

Ka-CHINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 9:37 PM by Gene

FDIC FRIDAY!

DOW -- or whatever they'll call it -- 20,000!!!!!

Posted 5:59 PM by Gene

It's official: Chicago Cubs to sell to Ricketts family

PVT. ZELL doesn't want the credit?

Or in another demonstration of SELIGISM at its finest:

While Tribune Co. has been criticized for its failure to put a championship team on the field, it's hard to argue with its success off the field. The transaction's $845 million value is more than 40 times what Tribune Co. paid nearly 30 years ago.

The Cubs attract more than 3 million fans a year to watch a mediocre team in an aging ballpark that lacks most of the amenities of modern stadiums.

If we are to keep the Greater Fool Theory alive we MUST get the greater fools the taxpayers to...hint hint? Maybe the Permanent Mayor can budget it into THE GAMES! WHAT? No SELIGISM in THE GAMES? We'll think of a sport!

Posted 5:36 PM by Gene

Another casino goes broke...



...in the GHEEEE-TOOOOOOOOOO....

(Via NJ.com via Bloomberg)

Posted 5:32 PM by Gene

What would Charles Dow and Edward Jones think?

The WSJ is reporting that News Corp. is considering selling its stock market indexing business, which includes the iconic Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Charles Dow and Edward Jones might think SLIME is flailing.

P. S. SLIME bought Dow Jones at the top of the market. Is this another contrary indicator?

Posted 5:29 PM by Gene

Obama to hike 10-year deficit to $9 trillion

Obama would trade healthcare for second term

Related?

Posted 2:38 PM by Gene

I think the ASSPress means to impress us:

A survey performed for EA by the University of Oregon's Sports Marketing Center found that "Madden NFL" players were considerably more knowledgeable about the sport than other fans. For example, 67 percent of "Madden" players could correctly identify specific passing routes, compared with 48 percent of non-gamers.

"Fans aren't given enough credit," Madden says. "They know a lot more than fans 25 years ago."

And what do they know less about?

Posted 12:24 PM by Gene

S&P 3,000!!!!!

(Via Seeking Alpha)

Posted 10:59 AM by Gene

The Foreign Secretary warned Libya earlier today that its international reputation was at stake as the world watched its handling of al-Megrahi's return home.

As opposed to the UK, which is getting close to an infinitely negative reputation.

Posted 10:10 AM by Gene

Ben, I wouldn't take too much credit for "fixing" what so many of your friends broke.

Even if the DOW goes up 5,000 POINTS!!!!! today.

Posted 9:03 AM by Gene

Libya? EMBARRASSED?!?

It should be.

Posted 8:36 AM by Gene

Interesting juxtaposition at PaperofRecord.com's home page:

Rise of the Super-Rich Hits a Sobering Wall

A-List Stars Flailing at the Box Office

I would say the super-rich and a-list stars deserved it, but that would be ungenerous, don'tya think?

Posted 7:45 PM by Gene

I think we can safely say from this scribble that PVT. ZELL's empire doesn't have any.



A NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD TO MARGIE!

Posted 6:56 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: A NEW! IMPROVED!! version of vanity publishing.

Posted 6:42 PM by Gene

What goes around....

Calipari is now the first head coach to have vacated Final Four appearances with two different schools. His 1996 Massachusetts team met the same fate because of NCAA rules violations, even though Calipari was not implicated in that instance, either. Memphis also suffered the same fate in 1985, when it was stripped of its NCAA tournament appearance then because of rules violations.

P. S. at 10:10 p. m. I'm wondering if I wasn't wrong about sports columnists.

Posted 5:50 PM by Gene

Another argument against sports colyumnists: How many of them would justify any manner of unlawful behavior because "the guy can play"? Yes, Plexi -- PLAXICO is stupid and only aimed the gun at himself, but by your sports hack's reasoning what should prevent any player from getting a second chance? And as even this typist admits when he's finally eligible again he may be too old to play. We're all for second chances but why must the hacks scream the loudest for their friends'?

Posted 5:30 PM by Gene

Henry the K could have organized the Lockerbie "justice" -- cynical "realism" in the name of trade, cynical espousal of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". Of course justice would never be served; too many people had their grimy paws on the balance. And His Omnipotence proved a realist too; he shrugged his shoulders in the name of "can't we all be friends". And PC had to rear its ugly head too. And if the "humanitarian" aspect was vaguely justifiable, it died amidst the cheers of Libyans. When what we must call Western "civilization" acts as a doormat we should expect people to walk over us, and wipe their feet on us in the bargain.

Posted 2:45 PM by Gene

Surprise: Not working.

Posted 2:21 PM by Gene

SOMEBODY CALLED DA POST!!!!! TO LAUNCH AN AD CAMPAIGN.

HEY SLIME! YOU REALLY THINK WE'LL PAY FOR YOUR ADS?



A NEUHARTHISM OF THE MONTH AWARD TO ROCKET!!!!! YOU'RE GOING TO THE MOON, ROCKET! BANG! ZOOM!

Oh and SLIME, do You intend to inflict Your paying customers with as many POP-UP ADS as You do now?

Posted 9:28 AM by Gene

SLIME is shutting down a free newsrag in London, leading us to dream of a life without Metro.

The problem of what to do about the discarded copies of the free papers that littered the streets of central London soon became an issue, leading to rows with London councils, particularly Westminster, which demanded that both companies pay some of the costs of cleaning up the mess.

As we've said before, free papers make jobs only for sanitation workers.

Posted 8:13 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Ted Kennedy is not returning to the Senate. If he cares about his constituents' well-being he would resign his seat. Doing what Chief Justice Rehnquist did, keeping his office as a kind of placeholder, does no one good, least of all the seat warmer.

And naturally Pinch's Glob speaks of this almost euphemistically, meaning the hacks don't want to face reality either.

Posted 5:13 PM by Gene

SI's Vanity...Fair has run a piece on Italy's Hef, and given the pictures we must say his taste in women isn't that great (but then the real Hef won't countenance any woman with an age over 21 or an IQ over 60); nonetheless he landed a few doozies, starting with this one:



Eleonora Gaggioli is certainly not bad for a nominee for the European Parliament. Can our Congress claim such a pin-up? (Then again maybe it's the apt choice as the Parliament is mostly full of figureheads, no pun intended.)



This one -- an actress named Francesca Dellera -- we MUST post with SI's caption, which we don't think was entirely intentional. Or as Lucky Strike said long ago, so round, so firm, so fully packed.... (Forgive us.)



This one named Aida (!) Yespica, from Venezuela, has posed for Maxim, but say, what red-blooded Italian Hef could turn down this dame?



This one, a starlet named Barbara Matera, is perhaps the best of all, but we must ask, if Silvio weren't a high, er, mucky-muck what would she think? (Assuming, and we must say it alas, she can.)



And then there's the cad's wife, Veronica Lario, perhaps a little over the hill now, but if a woman with her face (and attributes) woke up tomorrow morning in our bed we could hardly chase her off.

And if we know this -- rhymes with mucky-muck he's probably all talk and no action, which might not be so bad in a politician except that's all he's known for -- especially being an Italian politician.

This post seems to have brought out the worst in us.

Posted 5:04 PM by Gene

Another relic of star jernalism is Don Hewitt's 60 Minutes. It was the perfect example of the burgeoning hack ethos of its day -- an almost even mix of investigative pieces whose subjects were guilty and never to be proved innocent (think ALAR and the AUDI 5000 -- or DUBYA*) and the most fawning obsequious celebrity puff pieces. Its stars like the nose-in-the-air Morley Safer rode in Rolls Royces and chauffeured limousines. In 1968 the news biz still engendered trust. Now, thanks to shows like 60 Minutes, among a great many it has no trust.

*He was persecuted on 60 Minutes the Second, the show INVENTED by HORACE -- STORM, who took infinity, er infinite credit for it! Some idea, Horton.

Posted 2:06 PM by Gene

When we read words like "thoughtful" and "reflective" used with JERNALISM we know someone's pulling something on us. Why does the world need sports columnists with 5000 sports channels? Why do we need more analysis with every event broadcast and every play replayed 10,000 times? And look what thoughtful, reflective commentary brought the Keyboard Thrower -- a rep as a sappy writer and Oprah boytoy. No, we don't need thoughtful, reflective typing and all the puffery and clichés that implies -- we just need good sports writing. And how do we get that with the whole industry going goose-eggs?

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 1:49 PM by Gene

“Can the brand be stopped? Never. In 3009 there will be Beatles starships.”

Like the Beatles?



A NEUHARTHISM OF THE MONTH AWARD TO NIC!

(The man on the left is Bob Johnson, founder of Boogie Everynight Television; the man on the right is Don Keough, who in so many words admitted NEW COKE wasn't the most brilliant idea. Yep Al, you deserved the company.)

Posted 1:44 PM by Gene

WHAAAAAT? TOM SHERAK NEW AMPAS PREZ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

What an AWFUL decision!!!!! Because Tom Sherak has been responsible of late for many of the worst decisions by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences!!!!!!! Heck, this guy helped run Revolution Studios into the ground!!!!!!!!!! Now he's going to do the same thing with AMPAS!!!!!!!!!!!! What a tool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What a moronic Board Of Governors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (AWFUL overemphasis added)

Shucks if he can drive the ratings lower this would be a GREAT decision!

She also goes ALL-CAPS ballistic over giving Jerry Lewis that award. Don't you have better things to plug with your time, SUPERNIKKI!!!!!?

Posted 11:27 AM by Gene

Midst the clanking of the machinery to erect the pay walls that the armies of free-news seekers will still breach:

(Antitrust concerns, while a convenient excuse, actually are not an issue, as there are many ways publishers can act in concert without unlawfully colluding.)

NUF SAID.

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 9:50 AM by Gene

In another needless PROMOTION:

Dan Brown's latest conspiracy thriller looks to be 'big, big'

Somebody should do a conspiracy thriller about S. O. B. -- and how he conspired with the nation's hacks to EVISCERATE OUR BRAINS.



A NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD TO BOB!

Posted 9:43 AM by Gene

Statement of the Day, from Paramount Pete:

Can the man who restructured Krispy Kreme and Enron save Leo the Lion?

The only good thing is when the TWXSTERS pay too much for that mangy cat they can finally restore the proper logo to MGM's movies.

Posted 9:38 AM by Gene

Oh, the AGONY of working the tourist traps of Branson East:

While many performers suffer real injuries during some of the more grueling shows, producers say they suspect drinking, partying and general carousing are often the real culprits.

"Musicals employ a lot of kids," one producer says. "They're in New York, they're making money, they're having fun. You have to stay on top of them."

Another, speaking of buff chorus boys, says: "Some of them are more loyal to their gym than they are to their show."

Posted 9:36 AM by Gene

ED MURROW SUPPORTS JOE McCARTHY!!!!! Well, not quite, but some people can turn on a dime, especially when they work for SUMNER.

Posted 9:32 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: His Omnipotence made a commitment to Hosni the Thug, but because he's on the outs with...Jews (especially after honoring Mrs. Durban) he sends Mr. Snicker out to deny it.

Posted 9:21 AM by Gene

Stephenie Meyer Outs Herself As an Indie-Rock Enthusiast

If you would've asked us before today what kind of music we thought Stephenie Meyer listened to, we probably would've said something like Evanescence, Lifehouse, or maybe even early-period Donnie & Marie Osmond. However, we would've been totally wrong! Her iPod playlist includes the likes of Animal Collective, the Silversun Pickups, and the Dead Weather. Oh, and the Fray. Maybe we weren't so off in the first place. [Flavorwire]

Could someone please translate this into English?

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

Imaging and printing revenue fell 20% to $5.7 billion....

You mean HP is NOT the Gillette of printers? You mean people might be tired of feeding their constantly hungry machines cartridges? Especially in a depr -- an ECONOMY?

Posted 5:13 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



We know some people love their cars but isn't this going a bit too far?

And why isn't the Maserati watching television?

Posted 5:03 PM by Gene

Which is not to say the situation is totally awful; we're seeing the end of STAR JERNALISM. Perhaps once Bob Novak was a go-getting reporter, but most people know him as an overbearing TV loudmouth who put his foot in it. As Lord Koppel especially showed in his senile phase we are not served by Oracles on the Mount, for they preach the gospel of the Golden Calf, and it is full of bull.

Posted 4:55 PM by Gene

We know what Mike was trying to say but because he's The Moguls' Courtier it comes out as BS. Plainly put we don't have stars anymore. We don't have stars because we don't have larger-than-life figures, only manufactured little ones, like THE MAN WITH THE PLATINUM ARMS and his fellow (!) sluts. The great stars aspired upward, today's aspire downward; Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler come across as their archetypes -- total slobs. Worst of all, they're not interesting. I'd rather meet Miley Cyrus's publicists. To the last person they won't last. Nothing could change this but there is no helping the situation when Mike's industry is so proud of itself.

Posted 9:22 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Lord Stringer is a bean counter who is willing to sacrifice market share in the name of profits for what is clearly a superb technology.

(Via Seeking Alpha)

Posted 9:19 AM by Gene

A hack for that media-insider Web site with the stupid name defends the MEGAHYPERCOVERAGE of THE SECOND GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT, meaning even if we the people could kill off this ogre called BIGMEDIA the corpse would continue to twitch forever.

Posted 9:01 AM by Gene

Commercial real estate? What's that? The depr -- econo -- RECESSION IS OVER!!!!!

Posted 8:25 AM by Gene

40 Percent of Top DoD Appointments Unfilled

See, but it's not about education, or the environment, or...oh, never mind.

Posted 8:23 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: A non-event, except to the extent we hacks can use it to make conservatives look like PSYCHOS!!!!!!!!!! But of course we should worry for the President's safety in any case.

Posted 8:18 AM by Gene

AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!! FAKE!!!!!

And this was another of those pictures that caused partisans and news hacks to fall in love with themselves, until they found a new romance in THE NAPALM GIRL.

(Via the usual AhtsJournal)

Posted 8:38 PM by Gene

Sorry, con-SER-va-tives, AARP will lose more members from natural causes.

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

Alone in his dark, gloomy office, the Once Conscience of Jernalism ponders what might have been -- but for a superscript.

Posted 5:07 PM by Gene

Haven't gone there yet, but let me guess -- at least THREE home-page mentions of THE SECOND GREATEST ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT IN THE LAST QUARTER CENTURY in Grate.com!
FIVE!

Unfortunately KAPLAN, INC. has come up from the low-300s, but fortunately it was down $13.05 today.

Posted 4:57 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Three years from now Claudia will be cheering whoever's running GOODTHINGS ENTERTAINMENT (and GE BANCORP) for record profits, vision, the whole nine yards of toxic effluent. But for now, we can at least appear to be good reporters.

Posted 4:52 PM by Gene

Someday "a $595K Bahamas oceanfront acre" at $84,000 will be a steal. Not now.

Posted 4:50 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: BB really couldn't sing, but she was extremely beautiful. WOODSTER THE PERV's ex-girlfriend isn't nearly that attractive, and she probably can't sing either, but likening her to BB -- well, the career advancement you save may be your own.



A NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD TO LIZZY!

Posted 2:57 PM by Gene

Already 4% Of Tweets Are Spam

IS THAT ALL?

Posted 11:10 AM by Gene

SUPERADAM!!!!! is very upset that Annie Leibovitz is broke. Our pity is somewhat tempered because such super-people manage to get into our noses a lot with their work and frequently (although not in this case) they do so with a fierce smell.

Posted 11:02 AM by Gene

It is not surprising to learn (even if from The Mogul's Friend) how virulent "plugola" (his for-once apt term) has become on television -- but what grates is that it is also a revenue stream for THE SECOND GREATEST ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT OF THE LAST QUARTER CENTURY.

Posted 10:49 AM by Gene

How much would it cost to renovate a dozen fine old Detroit office buildings? Wouldn't the muscle-flexing of a showoffy philanthropist like BUGMEISTER or ST. WARREN be better put to use trying to reclaim a once-glorious city?

P. S. at 5:35 p. m. Heck PEOPLE WARNER's moving into a house to report in the city. Yes, we can do better. (Via the usual Romy)

Posted 10:35 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: A three-year degree program would allow colleges to cram the same amount of worthless information and PC in for the price of four -- so yes, three can equal four.

Posted 10:26 AM by Gene

A NATION OF DOPES: If this is true and "up to" ninety percent of all paper currency is contaminated with cocaine it means a lot of people are spending a lot more time getting high than paying their bills. And where do they get the money to be stoned?

(Via Seeking Alpha)

Posted 9:05 AM by Gene

KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! I am SICK of hearing armies of typists drooling over Mad Men. This show has an audience of between 900,000 and 2 MILLION -- and it's run only 32 episodes total, yet all the hacks must bang us over the head with it as though Lucy Ricardo is expecting. After THE GREATEST CULTURAL ACHIEVEMENT OF THE LAST QUARTER CENNNTURY we should be used to the promo artists showing off their lack of taste, but why must it leave our forehead full of WELTS?

And in more proof ad-blurbists do nothing but promote:

When Ratings And Viewers Don't Matter, What Does?

Why of course: YOUR brilliance, YOUR self-esteem, the fact that YOU live in an age of ARTISTIC GREATNESS -- in short, YOU!



A NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD TO ALEX!

P. S. Judging from Jamie -- JAMES'S typing the show is essentially a HIP soap opera. But THE GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT was also something of a soap opera. How did the ad-blurbists get to be such big fans of SOAP OPERAS?

P. P. S. SUPERNIKKI!!!!! sez "women make up 7 of the 9-member writing staff". NUF SAID.

(Audience figure corrected 11:40 a. m. The WIK's article is natch longer than MILLARD FILLMORE'S or JAMES BUCHANAN'S. I don't care how bad they were as presidents -- look when they served. WIKI MORONS.)

Posted 8:39 AM by Gene

PEOPLE WARNER just spun off its cable unit. WHY would CONCAST try to recreate PEOPLE WARNER?

Posted 8:36 AM by Gene

I imagine the con-SER-va-tive answer for this: Banks are not social-service agencies, they must justify their "services" for a profit, they must go where the customers are, blahblahblah. The John Stosselians would probably go one step further and say check cashing agencies are a patriotic expression of FREE EN-TER-PRISE and perform a valuable function in the absence of banks, blahblahblah. Whatever the excuse, this is yet another big-business disgrace.

Posted 9:49 PM by Gene

Okay, we'll give the guy another chance. Let's hope he doesn't prove unworthy of it.

Posted 8:15 PM by Gene

How many people today are HAP-PYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!?

CEOs excepted.

Posted 3:30 PM by Gene

Another thing that's gotten the press agents of the press excited is all the movies with no stars. Since all these movies have no stars (most of whom will remain no-stars) why should people remember the movies?

Posted 2:52 PM by Gene

BACK TO NO FUTURE: A BizWeek scribe with the all-too-apt name of Spielberg giddily tells us Chattanooga is BACK! Why, it replaced a 22-acre GE plant with a PARK!

Such daydreams in print account for why business news deserves to be held in low esteem even as the story unwittingly points to why a day of reckoning may be due for our economy.

Posted 2:06 PM by Gene

Dancing together, Astaire and Rogers expressed many of love’s moods: courtship and seduction, repartee and responsiveness, teasing and challenge, the surprise of newfound harmony, the happy recapture of bygone romance, the giddy exhilaration of high spirits and intense mutual accord, the sense of a perfect balance of power, the tragedy of parting and, not least, the sense of love as role playing....

We need to keep returning to these movies.

Quite true -- and after a weekend where ANOTHER AIN'T-IT-COOL-NEWS production does another Friday-to-Saturday dropoff on the road to oblivion ("ONLY 10 percent", insists a press agent of the soon-to-be dishonorably discharged PVT. ZELL), in a time where we have nothing more than tentpoles and apes on the screen, we need for the movies to return, in some impossible manner, to them.

P. S. USAOKAY!!!!!'s press agent calls Hasbro's toy's 59-percent dropoff "respectable." Yes, most of the newshole IS filled with promotions, and should be stuck in a deep underground hole alongside radioactive waste.

(First link via the usual AhtsJournal)

Posted 10:37 AM by Gene

We hate having to write up the NOT ME gang, but some tantrum thrower named Perlstein says in so many words a good many conservatives should reside in a psycho ward. Well, perhaps. So should a good many liberals. Conspiracy theories and the urge to murder your opponents thrive among all sorts of unhinged types, and a trip to a mental hospital might be a calming thing for all of them. If we're going to prescribe psychiatric wards for political beliefs let's at least be bi-partisan about it. But a psycho isn't a psycho when he's your psycho, and here's guessing when said tantrum thrower goes live on his Q&A on Tuesday he either denies liberals can be psychos or does the yes-BUT routine -- which is a variation of NOT ME.

Posted 7:39 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



Restaurant? How about an ultra-hip funeral parlor?

And this in New York, which has as much of a problem with these unneeded projects as Vegas.

Posted 7:30 PM by Gene

Take THAT, Little Malcolm! JonBoy has invented THE SMART LIST -- a new supercharged version of the LISTICLE, forcing you to click twenty or thirty or fifty times to get at the point. We thought at first from the home-page squib the point was to stick some of our PC in a pile where the turni -- readers wouldn't want to take the time to notice ("ET is almost certainly out there. Bipartisanship is bad. And the environment has never been better"), but the result is such an overwhelming muddle as to make us think JonBoy did it just for the sake of being "new", which may not even impress whatever readers he's leaving behind.

Posted 5:50 PM by Gene

BREAKING NEWS!

'Pointless Babble' Tops Twitter Use

Posted 1:07 PM by Gene

Terry Teachout boasted for months in his blog about the opera he was writing, and it finally premiered three weeks ago -- to unanimous pans. As Vietnam and Wall Street demonstrate credentials will not inoculate people from their incompetence. But then critics may be beyond creative work because their knowledge of nuts and bolts robs them of inspiration. (We do not exclude Shaw, whose plays are often little more than glorified debates.) We further say English is not meant for opera, being a blunt declarative language; the music needs the rolling R's and the luscious L's and the accent graves to pump up the passion. As for the work proper, the most damning comment wasn't about the laughter from the audience greeting Terry's bald lines; it was that Paul Moravec's music was content to lurk in the background, as it often does with modern operas. This is a fate worse than oblivion. As if to underline this adaptation was less than necessary one critic noted that the 1940 Warners production of the Somerset Maugham source matter had music by Max Steiner, who quite ably wrote opera without words.

I'm not sure what "one of the least filled houses in my experience at Santa Fe" means except its author is very capable of being a blogger, and possibly more so of writing in a newspaper. (He freelances for The Daily Kaplan.)

Posted 7:06 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



How many future maintenance problems can you spot?

Posted 5:24 PM by Gene

We have not commented on a certain friend of dogs as his story has similarities to a certain friend of metal poles; that said, the Favorite League of CEOs already has a DUI manslaughter plea facing it, not to mention a vicious murder-suicide, and you wonder how long the isolation of their hermetically sealed luxury boxes can keep the CEOs away from the cretins they help finance.

Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

And in his second installment of "How to Improve the News Biz in 9,116 WORDS" our media cri-TIC says the news biz should go local. That is what local news Web sites without a newspaper sugar daddy do. How can the news biz save its hide doing the same things dozens of other news sites do for free? We must note, especially in light of the last post, that his scorn for movie ad-blurbists and his blistering fusillades on "promotion" should take up such a good chunk of all those words says something about the nature of today's news biz.

Posted 4:59 PM by Gene

We'd rather not intensify the practically total trend of people coming from Google Images but what struck us about this Daily Mail photo of the supposedly "gorgeous" progeny of the Geritol Rocker and his airhead Former Significant Other was the almost unanimously catty comments. You wonder if there's a parallel here with the health-care riots; people are told to think from above, and they resent it. This promotion contains a typical PEOPLE WARNER-like sell-it analogy, and the folks aren't buying it. We don't know who reads DailyMail.co.uk but obviously they know who Brigitte was. We were moved by those who mentioned her eyes; one said they "look dead, like a drug addict! There's no spark behind them, like the beautiful Brigitte's eyes. That makes all the difference, doesn't it?" Not if you're trying to sell a new Starlet of the Week. Yes, she is attractive, at least in this photo, but given the aping of and aching over BB we may wonder how.

Posted 1:59 PM by Gene

Thanks To Rush [Jonah Goldberg]

I'm hearing he had some very kind words about my book today. Much appreciated.

08/14 01:49 PM Share

It pays to have half your staff on as contributors.

Posted 1:45 PM by Gene

Yep, you guessed it -- today is FDIC FRIDAY...in SPADES!

Posted 10:51 AM by Gene

OOPS:

"The banks will be in charge," one insider said, adding that they are growing impatient with Zell's stewardship. [Emphasis added]

AND:

"This was a textbook case of a leverage buyout gone bad," said Brandt, president of Development Specialists Inc. "These were imbeciles who had no idea what they were doing."

AND:

Tribune debt recently traded for about 7 cents on the dollar, meaning investors think a lottery ticket is just as likely to pay off.

AND:

Brandt said the Tribune deal has become such a "reputational disaster" for Zell that's he's probably not involved much in management other than creditor negotiations.

SO LONG, PVT. ZELL! Hope you get to keep your military pension.

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 10:09 AM by Gene

Whole Foods -- the con-SER-va-tive price-gouging obsessive-compulsive "all-natural" grocery chain!

Posted 9:59 AM by Gene

Jim Webb is visiting Bur -- Myanmar, which raises a question: When does His Omnipotence put it on his most-favored-nation list?

Posted 9:46 AM by Gene

This should be fun: Which Pennsylvania Democratic senatorial candidate can promise more to the loony left? And can anyone do a better job of selling his soul than Arlen?

Posted 9:33 AM by Gene

We can hope this works, but given how American high-tech firms have so thoroughly infiltrated China (and, shall we say, vice versa?) we suspect it can't work that long.

Posted 9:15 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Vice-President Alexander P. Throttlebottom is no longer the administration's sole source of stupid words.

Posted 8:38 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: For SARAH!!!!! to come back she'll have to become part of the establishment. Good thinking, Newt.

Posted 8:28 AM by Gene

There seems to be an annoying forced revisionism over Woodstock, the greatest cultural achievement of man. Part of it may be that people do tire of hearing culture-war stories from boomers; part of it may be the hacks have this vague notion that people are tired of the CW; part of it may be their supersalesmanship of the GENIUS of rock; part of it may be mere idle Kinsleyism. Whatever, it seems a little hypocritical that the industry that finds cancer-curing powers in anything show biz is suddenly beating up on a LEGENDARY forty-year-old.

And the revisionists are saying the movie was "great", meaning they're still on the right side.

Posted 8:17 AM by Gene

A NEW DEFINITION OF ANNOYING: Is it me or are the BUGMEISTERS working for DAILY UPDATES of XP?

Posted 8:12 AM by Gene

Elsewhere from the Bloomy, a senior JPMorganChase (or however they spell it) economist not only says GOLDILOCKS is back, she's STRONGER THAN EVER!

And of COURSE the guy must share a name with DOW 36,000.

Posted 8:10 AM by Gene

Toxic Loans Topping 5% May Push 150 Banks to Point of No Return

DOW 18,000!

Posted 1:16 PM by Gene

The Sport of CEO Kings may get a place in THE GAMES -- but not SELIGISM:

Baseball, which joined the Olympic program in 1992, also was expelled after Beijing, and the sport has not always been a good Olympic fit: It is not a popular game in Europe, where the I.O.C. is headquartered, and Olympic leaders have little interest in keeping another sport with chronic doping issues. (PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!)

Posted 1:02 PM by Gene

Les Paul, the guitar wizard whose true innovation (with Mary Ford) was to bring overdubbing to recorded music, with unfortunate results, has died. RIP.

Posted 1:00 PM by Gene

So if machines are managing investments, what happens when the machines break down?

(Via Seeking Alpha)

Posted 12:57 PM by Gene

Here's one way the recorded...SOUND biz could stop copying: put its...content on DVDs!

Pfffffffffffffffffffffft!

Posted 9:26 AM by Gene

If the Democratic Party's this well organized, think how well-organized health care reform will be!

Posted 9:17 AM by Gene

Word of the Week:

Gibbs-erish

Posted 9:08 AM by Gene

More gen-IUS from Hollywood:

In the film, Heder will play Oliver Vale, an average geek whose uneventful life changes when Buddy Holly [link SIC!!!!!] turns up on every TV channel and declares that Vale is the only one who understands why this is happening -- which causes Vale to be pursued by a mob of disguised aliens.

...who are really stupid movee producers?

By the way, does Buddy sing in this movee or did the rights cost too much?

Posted 9:02 AM by Gene

Much-worse-than-expected retail sales -- even with the clunkers thrown in?

DOW 15,000!!!!!

Posted 9:45 PM by Gene

PVT. ZELL, without warning, has made his LALA.com Web site look like his other Web sites. I'm sure that will make many VERY happy. When does the PVT. get hustled out of the service?

Posted 6:53 PM by Gene

Our media cri-TIC was so busy typing 4,306 WORDS he obscured a few pointed points (and do pardon the verbiage):

[S]ure, an average newspaper did print some serious journalism. But is that most of what they did, or even anything more than a tiny part? Did newspapers crusade from early in the morning to late at night to right wrongs? Did the typical reporter spend the majority of her or her time ferreting out information that the local powers-that-be kept hidden? Did their critics focus a gimlet eye on all manner or art and pop culture, shoot from the hip, provoke dialogs about its meaning and import? Did the papers really afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted? Did each department, each day, have at least one story that took an extra step to find out some information that others didn’t want public, that didn’t come from a press release or a government official, that didn’t merely repeat warmed-over developments that had happened the day before?

No on all counts. My experience lies more with arts and features; I’d guess that the average paper’s coverage of arts and entertainment, for example, runs at least 80-plus percent promotional (meaning that it was “coverage” tied to the release of some product), with the remainder split between the rare other-than-upbeat critical review and some fairly minuscule percentage of actual original reporting.

I once analyzed two weeks of the arts and features sections of a well-known American newspaper and found exactly one feature published over that period that contained original reporting. Even good papers’ arts coverage is largely promotional; look at the cute little features that dot the inside of The Wall Street Journal’s Friday feature section; it offers pages of fluff, each bit of it pegged to some product release. Even a top-tier critic like Joe Morgenstern will fill out his columns with random little plugs for new DVDs—with no information about special features, say, or the quality of the restoration of a classic film. Whose interest, other than that of the home video departments of the movie studios, do those squibs serve? [Emphasis added]

He says newspapers are an ad-delivery device where the news is mere filler and they're failing because the advertisers don't want to pay to cushion the filler. Obviously he hasn't seen papers from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But with technology newspapers were bound to devolve, until they have become ad-delivery devices in more ways than one, and that is why (for an example) the newly resurgent MNI at $2.00 is still at least $1.99 too much.

(Via the usual Romy)