Posted 7:34 PM by Gene

Two from Page Six: First, from a bio:

On the set of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," despite his reputation as Hollywood's most faithful husband, Levy relates, Newman had an affair for a year and a half with a journalist who was writing a puff piece on the movie: " 'I finally said to myself, 'I can do better than this,' she remembered. 'I told him, 'You're always drunk, and you can't even make love.' I ended it."

SECOND:

DORIS Day is alive and well in California, despite a tabloid report headlined: "Doris Day Tragedy: She's losing her memory & voice." In a note to Parade.com's Jeanne Wolf, the movie legend, 87, wrote, "Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! I'm fine. No, I'm great." Day guesses the story was based on the annual Monterey radio show she did earlier this month with call-ins from Tony Bennett, Charles Osgood, Chris Botti and Lesley Stahl. "I had a frog in my throat," Day admits. "My message is just be kind to your animals . . . and don't worry about me. Oh, yes, don't buy the tabloids either! With love always."

Somehow, I think they go together.

Posted 7:22 PM by Gene

$1.5 billion, 22-4. I think that's a fair trade.

Pfffffffffffffffffffffffft!

Cleveland scored 14 times all told in the [2nd] – the worst inning in the Yankees' 106-year history....

Couldn'ta done it without $1.5 BILLION!

Posted 7:16 PM by Gene

Okay Dana, you've taken it from both sides; but don't suppose this makes you more trustworthy than a weathervane; it may merely mean you can write stupidly one day to inflame the right, and write stupidly another day to inflame the left. What remains after we subtract left from right, or right from left?

Posted 7:01 PM by Gene

This week's JonBoy-Says-We-Can-Win-With-1.2-Million Zeitgeist idea -- The Rehabilitation of ELIOT -- as first endorsed by GRATE.COM -- which, like The New Econowiz, is owned by...

A COMPANY THAT'S STILL WORTH $566 a SHARE LESS THAN OVER FOUR YEARS AGO.

Posted 4:43 PM by Gene

One discouraging thing about blogging for over six years to no notice is how many fads have passed me by, not least in blogging. It marks The Paper of Re-CORD's increasing impotence that it gave so much space to this story (and The One beaming) on its print front page; strangely, had I not seen a copy I would not have found it on the home page. (The tag says B1 of the New York edition, but take my word -- it was on A1 of the national edition.) Not one of these fads will inspire a successful second act. It's not clear they're even that successful; 100,000 copies would not buy John Grisham's lunch. What is worse, they leave nothing behind except bad jokes.

Moreover I mentioned a few weeks back that a story on a leading news organization's Web site not only vanished from the site, but for my quote it vanished from the Web.* God knows how much of our Internet morgue no longer exists. Certain it is that untold dead links have rendered too many of my posts incomprehensible. It isn't just the Web's problem of course; vast quantities of our media history are lost, owing to shriveled nitrate stock (silent movies) or smashed transcription discs (network radio) or trashed kinescopes and erased video tapes (network television) On the Web we have lost far more collectively and far less of worth. This does not make it any less dismaying that not only will our age come to be remembered for nothings, but there will be so little of the nothings to remember it by -- assuming anyone would want to remember it.

*As it happens I was wrong; I posted a generic URL. That story, by Michael S. Malone, is here, and still worth reading, though time has contradicted its conclusion.

P. S. See also THIS UNPRECEDENTED IDIOCY FROM THE TWXSTERS. (A definitive comment here.)

Posted 2:31 PM by Gene

Meantime Nukeman and his Swampmen proclaim:

"Iran's armed forces are the guarantor of security in the region."

Especially so after it...never mind.

Posted 2:20 PM by Gene

The way forward for Pawlenty--and the GOP--lies in demonstrating that his party is not an irrelevant, balkanized [sic] rump.

What's it to you? People on your side should want an irrelevant, Balkanized rump -- for your side to stay in power forever. Before you think that, however, think MEXICO. Think CUBA.

By seating Franken, Pawlenty could do just that.

An irrelevant, Balkanized rump, seating a Democrat -- WE CAN'T LOSE!

We are dangerously close to accusing the editors of TNR of living in their own "gated community" but will not do so, out of respect for its long and distinguished reputation.

Posted 2:04 PM by Gene

We are sorry to learn that Stephen A. Smith, who showed such DEAFENING promise as a FRED FLINTSTONE OF SPORT and all-around megalomaniac, has essentially been shown the door by ESPNCORP, meaning in this depr -- economy perhaps even the big boys who scream a lot may have their salaries trimmed.

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 1:42 PM by Gene

Look Dick, he was trying to do what you true believers would have wanted him to do, but if he'd punished the EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL miscreants he might have gotten bad press -- and how would it have played with The One beaming at Hugo from every computer?



And in fairness to The One, their encounter was "very short", but then this is the ASSPRESS, which can play with the clock when it wants to.

Posted 7:31 PM by Gene

Yet another of our Congress's Laws of Good Unintended Consequences:

Paper companies may claim about $6.6 billion from a U.S. tax break meant to discourage use of fossil fuels, and they’ll burn more diesel to get it.

Posted 6:06 PM by Gene

Obama Says Dodd Deserves His Help In Re-election Bid

If Sandy "ANGELO" Dodd deserves it, anyone deserves it!

Posted 5:20 PM by Gene

How reassuring: The NEW BULL-MARKET RALLY!!!!!!!!!! is possibly being driven by the same computers and algorithms that drove the market way up, then drove the market way down. I like when computers take investment decisions out of the hands of people. The only downside is that people ultimately have to take the investment decisions away from computers.

Posted 4:57 PM by Gene

Speaking of torture...I don't like masticating a subject everyone else has already digested. Torture makes us look like a third-world republic. But the seventies teach us the consequences of turning out the lights, locking the door and throwing away the key on national security, especially in the name of "morals". The villainous Henry Luce was once quoted as saying (or once quoted someone to the effect that) the hardest of heads guides the softest of hearts. Of course he had a hard heart too. He was still right.

And con-SER-va-tives who delude themselves into thinking this is Jimmy Carter Redux had better steel themselves up for a good dose of Nixon. And this Nixon may not need an enemies list to manifest the same effect.

Posted 3:34 PM by Gene

Romy has a sense of humor -- well, what passes for a sense of humor with him:

Why there aren't as many slasher-movie ads in the paper [Romy's link]

I don't believe Mogul's Friend would have written that, for his business is always right, even when it does wrong. (Or especially.)

Posted 3:29 PM by Gene

Keith Olbermann put it eloquently last night when he warned....

Rush Limbaugh put it eloquently today when he warned....

What is the difference? There is no difference. It's a hack telling me to buzz off. He's going to dictate the truth and if it isn't the truth -- to hell with the truth. It's a sentence designed to make the discerning reader stop reading. As it happens Dahlia is very liberal, just as anyone writing that second sentence would have to be very conservative. I will repeat: I grow ever more exasperated with the Web's gated communities and their vacuum-sealed thinking. And I take their increasing insults personally.

Posted 11:50 AM by Gene

I keep complaining how news hacks keep running satire -- or rather stories that are supposed to be satire, that seem on the surface like satire but lack a point or the wit. Here is another example. John, stick to your young-adult novels, or better still, when you feel like saying nothing, just say nothing.

(Via Amspec, which proves a bad story can hurt the linker and the linked)

Posted 10:18 AM by Gene

Based on the thirteen photos Frisco's Chronicle has seen fit to distribute we hope its city's authorities deem fit to make the pictures of John Henry Mentz available on the Web. These are truly fascinating things. We start with this one. The Earthquake of 1906 was an epochal disaster in no small way because most of the city's buildings were made of wood, and the streets (and many houses) were lit with gas. What strikes us is that the people here seem to be taking an almost casual attitude to the calamity -- or possibly it isn't so much casual as an understandable daze. (Indeed we'd say the lady to the right, standing between the man and the boy, was taking a picture.) They may have had no choice; likely their own houses were damaged, and the only means of mass communication of that day were the telephone and telegraph, both no doubt rendered useless. I doubt that many of the houses had electricity, even in 1906. That wouldn't have functioned either. No photograph could convey what was surely the most dreadful misery.



Mentz worked for the transit system, and he must have taken quite a few pictures of the reconstruction. In time San Francisco was back and running. That city, which has lived through two cataclysms in a century, and shown the nation its fortitude, should teach the slothful New Yorkers a lesson of their own, and they work within far smaller footprint, though at a far greater cost.

Posted 9:18 AM by Gene

The NEW!!!!! Zeitgeist will have "more white space and bolder photographs." We aren't taking any chances, are we, JonBoy.

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 9:10 AM by Gene

That may be The One's secret: He proclaims he lives in a glass house -- and he frequently makes himself invisible.

Posted 9:05 AM by Gene

Leon Wieseltier:

Intimacy cannot be achieved except by time. Knowledge of another individual must be gradual, or it is not knowledge at all--it is only information, which is what remains when you subtract time from knowledge. A person cannot be grasped by information. But the Internet, which reduces everything it contains to the status of information, will not tolerate any another pace. It believes above all in acceleration. And so it accelerates the experience of human encounter beyond the powers of the heart, into an impatient universe of recreational articulateness in which surfaces are advertised and trivialities are aggregated, and self-display precedes acquaintance, and strangers are "friends." It is a new kind of loneliness, defined paradoxically by the surfeit of possibility. In sum, it is a glass house, raised upon the denial that opacity is an element of dignity.

Posted 8:59 AM by Gene

A reason stories like this are egregious is that we know most people have no taste, or worse, they fall back on what other people with no taste can do. This is just a variant on those Titanic-is-the-worst-movie-ever stories hacks commission when they think they need to fill a space in their news hole. But pray tell, isn't the problem that the news hole is getting smaller, and we need more crusading reporting to fill it? So the hacks crusadingly tell us that most people have no taste. No, the problem with hacks is more than the Web and do-not-call laws.

(Via the usual AhtsJournal, which frequently has no taste either, despite its putative beat)

Posted 8:47 AM by Gene

A Hooverville denizen likens The One to George III.

As other hacks have noted before, such hyperbole does con-SER-va-tives no good. Even in the best instance it would do not good because the hacks are putting a thick coat of Teflon on the guy. Despite the hyperbole, if a leader isn't doing his job, the people will soon learn, and the Teflon will flake off, regardless of biased reporting and slanted opinion polls.

Posted 8:39 AM by Gene

And GE BANCORP joins the crowd and says -- DOWN is the new UP!

P. S. at 9:20 a. m. GE BANCORP: Official Contractor to the WORLD!

Just keep those cards and tax dollars coming!

Posted 8:28 AM by Gene

Banks are enjoying a fresh wave of profits from the government’s efforts to nurse the industry back to life.

Money that, we can rest assured, we will never see again, or which will translate itself into new scams and obsessions.

But if that's what needed to bring back the economy....

Posted 6:11 PM by Gene

Hmmm, PEOPLE WARNER CABLE may be backing off bandwidth caps. You wouldn't suppose it's because it's a bad idea, would you?

Posted 6:03 PM by Gene

Oops! The One backs off another promise and won't send certain waterboarders to DUNGEONS.

Posted 5:55 PM by Gene

One thing knee-jerk con-SER-va-tives can tizz about soon is high-speed rail. We will need it someday if we're to avoid a parking lot in the sky. But mention AMTRAK and though the con-SER-va-tives' opposition is less than totally principled, it still has a cause.

Posted 5:34 PM by Gene

Apparently G000,000,000GLE did good but not good enough to launch it into permanent-growth-stock-$1,000-a-share-$1-trillion-market-cap territory again.

That's good enough for ME.

And gasp! Even G000,000,000GLE's revenues can fall in a depr -- recess -- NEW BULL MARKET.

Posted 5:29 PM by Gene

MB2 has made decent clothing into a con-SER-va-tive cause. Of course most of America looks like SLOBS in jeans. Hideous clothes have the same effect on us as the proverbial pestilence of broken windows. But once a hard-core Kudlowist con-SER-va-tive latches on to a cause it's as good as dead, for its adoption gets the screaming meemie knee-jerk left to dismiss it for nothing more than the source. I have said don't consider the who, consider the why and the wherefore -- and though I can't stand MB2, and though the very action of a hard-core con-SER-va-tive endorsing decent clothing makes it moot, I endorse it.

Posted 10:44 AM by Gene

No! Mr. BOOM-BOOM of the NFL has RETIRED!

What will his fans do without their WHAAAAAPPPPPPS!!!!!?

(A more useful link from MESS.com)

Posted 10:18 AM by Gene

He built his own traditionalist Catholic church in L.A. – How will faith affect his divorce? [Home-page squib]

Not at all. Mel has already shown he's bigger than God.

Posted 9:55 AM by Gene

Henry "TRUST ME" Blodget's site says Facebook is worth $5 BILLION!!!!!, which soon enough means it will be worth $100 BILLION, which means get ready for another load of stock-market BS. The talk of a bottom is but a prelude.

Posted 9:51 AM by Gene

Er, Rick, I think you folks tried secession once. It didn't seem to work.

Posted 9:49 AM by Gene

What's the #1 mistake investors make in difficult times like this? "I think it's fairly simple: they listen to people on CNBC and panic," Squawk Box regular Mario Gabelli says. [Seeking Alpha home-page squib]

What's the number-one mistake investors make at any time? Watching the BIG C -- PERIOD.

Posted 9:36 AM by Gene

Mike Royko would have a field day with all the damfools in today's public commons. Unfortunately, people like Dana think a damfool isn't a damfool when he's your damfool, so if left-wing damfools did what he says the right-wing damfools did yesterday -- well, we'll put it this way: KAPLAN, INC. probably would be even less likely to see $1,000 A SHARE again.

REMEMBER THE POOR, UNEDUCATED, EASILY LED...oh. That was somebody else.

Posted 9:24 AM by Gene

Companies like General Growth were predicated on Kudlowism -- the notion that the economy was in permanent "Goldilocks" mode and stocks were thus poised for permanent prosperity. That so many companies went debt crazy as a result shows that the financial markets are mostly a fairy tale.

Posted 9:07 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: 1. VERY LITTLER JEFFY is worried about not getting more Fed handouts. 2. I thought the MESS's yapping jackassery counterbalanced the BIG C's!

Meantime GE BANCORP NETWORK's leading in morning plug shows, in late-night plug shows, in the nightly denture-adhesive and constipation-cure shows, in the Sunday morning Beltway-spin shows -- VERY LITTLER JEFFY! You have it made!

P. S. at 9:59 a. m.

"We don't see a need where we would have to raise external capital," said Chief Financial Officer Keith Sherin during the investor meeting. He noted GE can still raise debt at the parent level, largely through a federal-government program that guarantees banks' bonds, and can cut costs further or sell assets if need be. [Emphasis added]

VERY LITTLER JEFFY IS worried about not getting more Fed handouts!

Posted 8:30 AM by Gene

Well now that's you've "BEAT ESTIMATES!!!!!", Mr. Morgan Chase, that gives you an excuse to pull a few more of your banker's stripes gags -- like cutting millions of credit lines and increasing interest rates. Go for it!

Posted 7:15 PM by Gene

Salma Hayek Denies Plans for $2 Million Wedding

Hey Salma! Have PEOPLE take the pictures and you'll get it for FREE!

Posted 7:06 PM by Gene

A last word on one of those seemingly endless shticks:

In arguably the most unusual example of kissing up to the big boss, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is highlighting his agency's connections to Bo the Dog, the new First Pup....

"Turns out that young Bo has ties that lead right here to DOT and a similarly energetic but more mature Portuguese Water Dog named Pooka, owned by DOT's own Janet Forsgren." She's the chief financial officer for the office of the secretary, according to DOT spokeswoman Jill Zuckman.

TRANSLATION: Ray is The One's version of Carlos "GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREAT!!!!!" Gutierrez.

P. S.

On February 21, 2009, the Wall Street Journal reported that Gutierrez remained unemployed, along with a significant majority of George W. Bush's 3,000 political appointees who are seeking full-time employment. According to the article, 25% to 30% of those officials have found new jobs, a statistic notably lower than when Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton left the White House. The article notes that "at least half those presidents' senior staffers landed employment within a month after the administration ended." Gutierrez, who was profiled in the article, commented that "This is not a great time for anyone to be job hunting, including numerous former political appointees." He added that he hopes to run a company like Kellogg again because "I have a lot of energy."^[7]

Posted 6:47 PM by Gene

I've said it before, I'll say it again: if PILLHEAD and ED MURROW are "ideological crutches for people who can't think", so are FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!NEWS and the MESS. Hacks like Roger Ailes and Phil Griffin became powerful turning TV news into professional wrestling, with 24-hour-a-day matches and the truth buried in the pile. SLIME lacks the morals and VERY LITTLER JEFFY lacks the sense to see what the constant screaming is doing to us. But then who in his right mind watches cable "news" for the "news"? It's as worthless as the network "news", and even more profitable.

If we took BO and TEABAGS out of the news mix today there'd be sweet silence.

Posted 6:44 PM by Gene

Nukeman wouldn't be out to use stem-cell research to create superhumans, would he? Naaaaaah.

Posted 3:41 PM by Gene

Fiat CEO reportedly sees Chrysler deal closing

Well, better two pieces of junk together than one piece of junk alone.

Posted 3:35 PM by Gene

OR:

Protesters throw APPARENT tea bags at White House [Apparent overemphasis added]

Let's put BO's feeders on the case! The ASSPress is already a case.

Posted 2:26 PM by Gene

Armey, who the tax returns show was paid $400,000 by FreedomWorks in 2007, also is registered as a lobbyist for the firm DLA Piper, and has listed corporate clients there including Verizon, Raytheon, liquor maker Diageo, CarMax and drug company Sanofi Pasteur.

1. Who would have thought that capo of the House P. O. P. would be a...lobbyist? 2. Any more fanny-saving dispatches on BO?

Posted 1:49 PM by Gene

Great news...

About the best we can say is that, after 15+ years of overvaluation, stocks are finally priced to produce average returns over the next decade (9%-10% a year or so). Compared to the rate of return on cash, that's great news. (Emphasis added)

...from MR. AMAZON.COM AT $400!

Posted 12:52 PM by Gene

Obliquely answering the hundreds of "tea bag" protests around the country on tax day, President Barack Obama said Wednesday....

That son of a revolutionary the SUPERDUPERMEGAGIGABLOGGING PROFESSOR must be hugging himself!

Posted 10:56 AM by Gene

How many hacks will follow BO around on his daily walks?

Posted 10:47 AM by Gene

Another typically cheap modern stunt: A clothing company looking for free exposure vs. WOODSTER THE PERV.

May both pay through the nose in lawyer bills.

P. S. It is somewhat ironical that a company based in LALA would complain about WOOD's sex life, considering that among the intelligentsia (of which LALA hosts more than its share) it is a badge of honor, and among Hellywoodians it's the reason he's worthy of making ever more cinematic onanisms.

Posted 10:26 AM by Gene

Here's another definition of BLITHERING IDIOT.

SUMNER! They can use YOU! Why not organize their legal-defense fund?

Posted 10:20 AM by Gene

More from THE DAILY BO and its appurtenances: Of the "five reasons" The One "sounds optimistic" only one has to do with the economy; the other four we can spin or obscure with new bulletins about BO'S DIET.

Posted 9:17 AM by Gene

Speaking of luck industries, we cannot imagine how the investment-instrument ratings kleptocrats can be reformed. Having the rated pay for their ratings is untenable. Having government do it merely means drones will do it, with their own flaws.

Posted 9:13 AM by Gene

Once America had manufacturing and could provide the masses with decent jobs. Now that America's principal businesses are luck industries (i. e., finance, gamb -- GAMING and "the entertainment industry") decent jobs are harder to find. The people who decided America could subsist on luck industries never figured they might go in the tank. And while we sympathize with those trying to break in to show-biz, we have no sympathy for those already BROKEN IN.

Posted 8:56 AM by Gene

Hey STEVEN BRILL!!!!!, do you think THE DAILY BO can charge for its press releases?

You tried that gag before anyway. Remember?

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 8:51 AM by Gene

And of course NEWS HACKS have codes of ethics, which don't prevent them from turning their rags into THE DAILY BO.

Posted 8:49 AM by Gene

Well, Bank of America has a code of ethics, but it doesn't seem to apply when it raises credit-card fees.

Posted 8:44 AM by Gene

A code of ethics is an easily misplaced piece of paper that reminds an organization of what it would rather not do.

The more corruptible an organization the more convoluted its code of ethics.

I am surprised to learn the American Bankers Association does not have a code of ethics. But then America's ruling governing body does not need a code of ethics.

Besides, it's -- REGULATED. Pfffffffffffffffft!

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

"I know there is a criticism out there that my administration has somehow been spending with reckless abandon, pushing a liberal social agenda while mortgaging our children's future," Obama said.

AND IT'S ALL DUBYA'S FAULT!

(Well, sort of.)

Posted 2:58 PM by Gene

“These days the classiest fall releases often don’t use an announcer at all.”

Think about it: Don LaFontaine was the voice of BAAAAAAAAAAAD film. But then trailers are mere synopses of BAAAAAAAAAAAD movees. If movees were good they wouldn't need announcers -- or trailers. If Hellywood knew what it was doing (which it always does) it would have actors sell their own work -- no hyperkinetic clips, no idiot announcers, just themselves. They'd probably do a better job than trailers -- and certainly a better job than trailer announcers. Thankfully Hellywood knows what it's doing. Keep up the BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD work!

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

Posted 11:48 AM by Gene

GE Capital, the world's largest non-bank finance company....

GE BANCORP, the world's largest non-bank BANK....

Posted 11:22 AM by Gene

Surprising this sort of thing hasn't become a tiresome partisan political struggle: Smaller cars save energy. They're also less safe. Can we get by the liberals' support for gas sniffers and conservatives' support for road hogs and get cars that are economical and safe? It shouldn't be that hard.

Posted 10:03 AM by Gene

More profound ground-sniffing shoe-leather reporting -- from The New CW:

POLITICO44: The Whiteboard

Biden beats Obama to the office

POTUS arrives in the Oval around 9:30 this morning.

Posted 9:38 AM by Gene

When is a greedy taxpayer-chiseling bonus not greedy and taxpayer-chiseling?

When OUR guy does it!

Posted 9:34 AM by Gene

Happily, OKAY!!!!! reminds us how many "myths" after the fact a GREAT NEWSPAPER can spread.

Posted 9:29 AM by Gene

Report: U.N. spent U.S. funds on shoddy projects

Uh, OKAY!!!!!, isn't it time to run another 500 dispatches on Bo? Or a thousand show-biz advertorials? What will people think if you start running NEWS -- especially politically-incorrect news?

Posted 9:25 AM by Gene

Well here we thought Dr. Krugman was writing sensible columns that burst past ideology and now he remembers who his BOSS is and throws a tantrum. Face it Doc, if you and your BOSS could, you'd make America a one-party state. It hasn't been for not trying. Certainly your party has enough wisdom we'd never need two parties again. I mean, look at the great one-party states: Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, Italy, China, North Korea, MEXICO....

If you're going to pull that gag you should expect others to pull that gag on YOU.

Posted 9:03 AM by Gene

Those holy cockroaches in the Afghan mountains do know a good unfunny joke -- but why must it always involve killing people?

The woman, 19, and the man, 21, were accused by the militants of immoral acts, and a council of CONSERVATIVE clerics decided.... [CONSERVATIVE overemphasis added]

If we could we'd get that word to flash on and off in many colors. Surely the ASSPRESS would too.

Posted 8:42 AM by Gene

The good news: LALALAND's losing location shoots of rotten movies.

The BAD news: Burning of TAX MONEY is luring them away.

Posted 9:00 PM by Gene

To those of you who've come to see Sophia and the Fat Beauty-Pageant Contestant, I hope a few of you will opt to see me too -- even though they're FAR better looking.

Posted 6:00 PM by Gene

One of the news biz' leading satirical journals proposes the typists stop referring to old TV shows because they're "retro." We might propose ditching the practice because it shows the typists watch too much TV. Regardless here are two ideas: 1. Refer to nothing but whatever's hot with the under-twenty crowd. Want to chase some readers away? 2. Refer to literature -- like Shakespeare for instance. That's retro. You couldn't do it, though, because you can't READ.

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 5:35 PM by Gene

Gov. Bobby Jindal clinches deal to write book about his life, politics

Will it be written the way he speaks? As in -- See Bobby! See Bobby run! Run Bobby, run!

Far away!

(Via The Daily Beast)

Posted 5:28 PM by Gene

The hacks who have gone so far out of their way to cover for His Holy Presidency as to be on another planet even further than the one before have positively gone on a lunatic binge with their puppy, which should remind us one reason they can love this dog is that they're among the mangiest of ankle-biters themselves.

Which is to say nothing against dogs, or this one.

Posted 5:25 PM by Gene

And as we mourn Harry Kalas, let us remember the further sports drift from their fans and toward sugar-daddy CEOs, the more grief they deserve -- the story of SELIGISM in a nutshell.

Posted 5:13 PM by Gene

Please, BIG C, MUST you bring back a sales -- analyst from the past! Hasn't she SOLD enough pipe dreams already?

I was about to say "let sleeping dogs lie" but then sales -- analysts ALWAYS do.

Posted 5:02 PM by Gene

Which brings up another point: I believe most news hacks regard advertising as evil. Not a necessary evil, but EVIL. They view it the way they might a whore's earnings; indeed, they might venture, a whore earns her fee honestly. (They might venture that because so many have mental VD.) Someone should tell these reeking frauds that perhaps the news biz could exist without advertising when papers were a tract writer and a hand-worked press. It has not been that way for a while. Advertising helped the industry grow -- indeed it made it the true psychic burden it became in the last half-century. Without advertising the NAPALM GIRL wouldn't run constantly in their DREAMS. That news hacks speak with such eagerness of bailouts and going non-profit says they want to continue putting one over without having to pay their full freight. In short, they want to be welfare KINGS. I have not paid for a news source in ages -- and I'd rather not have to do it WITH MY TAXES.

Posted 4:59 PM by Gene

In another obituary, we wonder how many furnishers of bird cages will have the GALL to run a tribute on their FRONT PAGES. Any paper that runs such an obituary is MAKING A POINT -- the chiefest point being IT DOESN'T NEED READERS ANYMORE. Given the prominence LALA gave it on it home page (never mind it's four grafs), we predict it winds up on its, which will permanently mark it as a BASTION OF SELF-RIGHTEOUS IDIOTS.

Posted 3:47 PM by Gene

Harry Kalas has died, and now, save for Vin Scully, there is no reason to follow baseball anymore. How many can honestly say they can mimic a sports announcer? Harry was extremely mimicable -- and therefore, inimitable.

Depressing: In the last several years that game has lost four men who helped carry it on their backs: Scooter, Joe Nuxhall, Skip Caray, and Harry. Now -- drones.

Hey G000,000,000,000,000GLE! Where's a picture of him with Whitey?

Posted 1:32 PM by Gene

JonBoy, I think before gloating that the Christian Right is DEAD we should consider this one. The best-laid plans of mice and GODS....

Posted 1:30 PM by Gene

No, we will not see fewer auto dealers except by attrition, for the same reason our @#$%&* Congresspoops will never stop financing ETHANOL -- there's too much money in supporting them.

Posted 1:27 PM by Gene

Print is still king: Only 3 percent of newspaper reading happens online

If this is true -- and I see no reason to doubt it -- it means even more people are rejecting BIGNEWS, as the online audience isn't making up for people canceling their subscriptions.

Really I do feel conflicted about our declining papers. On the one hand we need newspapers. On the other hand we don't need today's newspapers.

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 7:40 PM by Gene

Captain's Dramatic Rescue Is 'Going to Make a Great Movie'

With I-------s as villains and heroic Americans -- who'll make it?

Posted 1:58 PM by Gene

And in the exact opposite of bravery, who wishes to bet that when The Golfing Machine and Wrong-Way leave the 18th they don't exchange a handshake, or a smile, or a word, or anything?

Well, probably not, but it would be richly deserved on both ends.

Here's hoping for another exciting finish. Pffffffffffffffffffft!

P. S. at 7:26 p. m. Having a three-man playoff is not the same as exciting. After the Golfing Machine-Wrong-Way machine broke down it still took the crowd away on three wheels. At the end the people applauded as though Vijay won. Perhaps even hectoring CEOs can be bored.

Posted 1:55 PM by Gene

We are very pleased to hear that brave captain has been freed. But this dispatch raises a question: His family, it says here, knew about it "for hours." Where were our intrepid hacks -- hunting down more details on BO?

Posted 1:13 PM by Gene

And in another measure of the hacks' continuing devotion to the public interest, they will tell us more about Bo than they did about the bow.

Bo? It's no jest.

Ah, but it is, Phil -- after all, you made a stupid one -- and we're the butt of it as always.

Posted 11:29 AM by Gene

What is with all these liberal hacks who want to prove that THEY, TOO, ARE CHRISTIANS? Wearing your religion on your sleeve so you can be liberal is almost as offensive as being a Jerry Falwell -- and if E. J. were conservative he'd have kept very quiet too when he died.

Posted 11:13 AM by Gene

THE NEXT PAUL ATTANASIO:

Above all, the film serves as a reminder that telling the truth becomes impossible when the journalist gets too close to the people he's covering.

Like Crowe's flawed reporter, whose friendship with the politician is self-destructive, my ability to write about "State of Play" was compromised from the start. I was paid to be a consultant. Then I became friends with many of the cast and crew. I overheard things that would make for fantastic copy, but I'll never report them. To do so would make me the worst kind of hypocrite.

So why are you writing about it?

OR:

My new, surreal role as a pampered movie consultant is quite agreeable: hanging out with A-list celebrities, traveling first-class, staying near the beach in Santa Monica, fattening up on catered meals. It would be nice to stick around.

It also would be nice to leave with some integrity intact.

Be a movie ad-blurbist or write that screenplay and you wouldn't have to worry.

This A-1 tripe is another argument that the news biz hasn't suffered enough layoffs.

Posted 11:08 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: The New Billy Graham's career is over.

Posted 10:31 AM by Gene

JonBoy's for gun control too!

We don't like mass killings. We don't like when the NRA defends guns for the sake of guns. But when BIGMEDIA types campaign for gun control they're covering their behinds for their own contributions to psychos. In short, the public sees gun control campaigns, however well-intended, as more media frauds and that may help explain why the concept has grown so unpopular. What is more, right or wrong, they're aimed at the little guy -- and BIGMEDIA types aren't little guys. Bleeding policeman blue won't fool us.

1.2 MILLION FOR ZEITGEIST!

Posted 10:21 AM by Gene

ZOIKS:

#23

Zoiks. As of 9:12 pm. Saturday night the hardcover version of LF is #23. The paperback — out in June — is 102. Thank you Glenn Beck.

04/11 09:14 PM Share

TRANSLATION: Enough backscratching among pundits can make them mutually rich. If BIGMEDIA isn't a conspiracy of dunces nothing is.