THE NEWS HACK'S CREED:
I know more than you.
I make lots more money than you.
I'm smarter than you.
I'm sexier than you.
I appear on TV all the time.
I work ten minutes a day.
I rule the universe.
I'm going to live forever.
You are an idiot.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 2:
A lie isn't a lie when it tells THE TRUTH.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 3:
I've come to realize that the looseness of the journalistic life, the seeming laxity of the newsroom, is an illusion. Yes, there's informality and there's humor, but beneath the surface lies something deadly serious. It is a code. Sometimes the code is not even written down, but it is deeply believed in. And, when violated, it is enforced with tribal ferocity.
--JOHN "OMERTA" CARROLL.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 4:
News isn't news when we don't report it.
PERMALINKS:
THE NEWS HACKS' DICTIONARY
THE EUGENE DAVID GLOSSARY
AMERICA'S MOST UNINTENTIONALLY FUNNY WEB SITE!
Blogroll Me!
![[Powered by Blogger]](http://buttons.blogger.com/bloggerbutton1.gif){kind=small}
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Speaking of technology, part of me resents having to buy a new computer. The simple tasks I ask of it should require a simple box; but simple tasks require arduous feats of code-writing strength, and the technology grows ever more demanding and musclebound, and keeping up with the Joneses you fall behind. Steve's Tablet From On High will become as musclebound as anything, however simple It putatively is to use, because It has to connect to so many things, and be used in so many conflicting ways, that the Acolytes will inevitably demand bigger and better Tablets, and the Lord will always oblige, as His Tithes will always increase. Why can't someone devise a computing way that strips out all the excess, all the energy-wasting complexity, and above all the inevitability of a big fat push-button mistake lying just behind every corner?
We overstate the popularity and influence of movees because the hacks who publicize them are part of the small national clique alongside stupid teenagers and hopelessly naive parents who form their core audience. The sighs of disappointment over the latest tentpole underline this. Who but the mentally -- challenged who must witness this extrusion and the hacks who must rub their hands in idiot expectation over the grosses really cares? And even the teens may be growing brain cells as witness the empty seats on midnight Thursday.
That the industry is irrelevant is beyond question, however high-decibel its publicity shrieks; the FCC's decision to allow the movee extruders to pipe their sewage direct into homes seals it. Moveegoing as a social activity was doomed from the day someone thought teevee up, but then movees started becoming teevee a long time ago, when the studios got into series production, and especially when they tried their closed-circuit experiments in the sixties; moreover because movees are now biggest-screen teevee, not least in their production and dissemination, the distinction is just as irrelevant as the industry, however much Mr. THUMBS-UP!!!!! may gabble otherwise.
That the industry is irrelevant is beyond question, however high-decibel its publicity shrieks; the FCC's decision to allow the movee extruders to pipe their sewage direct into homes seals it. Moveegoing as a social activity was doomed from the day someone thought teevee up, but then movees started becoming teevee a long time ago, when the studios got into series production, and especially when they tried their closed-circuit experiments in the sixties; moreover because movees are now biggest-screen teevee, not least in their production and dissemination, the distinction is just as irrelevant as the industry, however much Mr. THUMBS-UP!!!!! may gabble otherwise.
Thursday, May 06, 2010
It's official: High-IQ IDIOTS can cause a depression!
Sources tell CNBC the erroneous trade may have been made at Citigroup....
YOUR TAX DOLLARS....
Sources tell CNBC the erroneous trade may have been made at Citigroup....
YOUR TAX DOLLARS....
HAPPENING NOW:
Henry Paulson: "I was never able to explain to the American people.. [sic] why these rescues were for their benefit, not for Wall Street"
No Hank, you never will.
Henry Paulson: "I was never able to explain to the American people.. [sic] why these rescues were for their benefit, not for Wall Street"
No Hank, you never will.
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
The news biz began its death spiral in 1975. In that year the business showed it could usurp democracy by almost unilaterally dictating public policy. That was also the year, more fatefully, that two newsrags ran their cover ads for THE BOSS!!!!! right next door to each other. That said there really wasn't a dime's worth of difference among most news publications. The harder they claimed to compete the more alike they were. And here were Tweedledee and Tweedledum in print. Actually the rot set in the year before, when People started. That very crime against brain cells said the prime motivator for the news biz was advertising -- selling ad pages and selling ads among the ad pages. Combined with its newfound dictatorial powers no wonder the press began to die; it had grown not merely apart from its audience, but superior to it, and with the wherewithal to avoid the scornful's questions. Outfits like Zeitgeist might stand a chance with real talent and fully exercising the notion JonBoy imperfectly expressed of wanting to dazzle the readers with a weekly AHA! moment, but decades of conformity primed by power and advertising ended that hope before it could be born. Indeed we are struck that Poynter's goody-goodies conceded game, set and match by calling The New ECONOWIZ "an uncomfortable mix of the abstruse and glib, mostly an expendable read both in print and online." That is what the whole news biz has become, and barring a sudden surge of Menckens it is doomed to spiral ever downward, whatever its profits or its editors' egos.
Which comes first: the sale of Zeitgeist -- or the folding?
Econowiz II didn't work.
(Via HENRY HONEST!!!!!)
Econowiz II didn't work.
(Via HENRY HONEST!!!!!)
Obama biggest recipient of BP cash
This means nothing; there's no warm body the likes of corporations can't heat up to.
This means nothing; there's no warm body the likes of corporations can't heat up to.
But for our continued bad mood over the Human Rights Stalwarts of Mountain View playing mind games with our hits we'd have posted yesterday about Ernie Harwell. We listened to some of his broadcasts, and the man had a dignity and authority about him behind the mike -- plus by all accounts he was a truly grand guy. We have forlornly counted all the top-notch baseball announcers no longer with us, and now it is down to Vin, and such is the loss that even he can't stop us from giving a big who cares to that sport of zillionaires and mercenaries called SELIGISM, which like an alien life form took over baseball's ghost of a shadow of itself. But once it was baseball, and once it was folks like Ernie Harwell. How much we have lost.
Monday, May 03, 2010
Florida's Crist got push from Schwarzenegger before leaving GOP
Awwww, why couldn't they have left together?
Awwww, why couldn't they have left together?
Book: Obama Dressed Down Pentagon Brass
Why am I thinking they haven't grown too touchy-feely since?
(Sorry for the NewsMAX!!!!!)
Why am I thinking they haven't grown too touchy-feely since?
(Sorry for the NewsMAX!!!!!)
ARCHDaily!
Ladies and gentlemen, Space Rocket X2050, which took off three weeks ago from its specially-built launch pad in Michigan...
...has just landed in Austria....
Ladies and gentlemen, Space Rocket X2050, which took off three weeks ago from its specially-built launch pad in Michigan...
...has just landed in Austria....
This came as a link through AHTSJournal, and it sounds anecdotal to us, but why shouldn't people give up their cable? All they're getting is junk TV they could get for free. The BRIAN ROBBERS and UB IGERS will make it more difficult to cut the cord by trying to hog everything, but not IMPOSSIBLE.
Indeed it would seem these preeners will NEVER stop talking about that damned dinner. I guess last year was an anomaly for bigmedia, alas.
Likewise the GRAHAMS and their boss GOD can't stop showing off THEIR friends. Was ever there any greater proof these clowns could not care less for the average Joe?
Bob Albritton (here with his wife, Dr. Elena) shows off his friends, and we are supposed to be impressed. I am not; many are figures of fun (WOLF!), or have coasted on reputations earned long ago (Christiane) or not deserved (Charlie "LARRY KING!!!!!" Rose), or make millions doing things they don't deserve millions for doing (KATIE!!!!!). The only person missing was JACK VALENTI, and I'm sure Bob and his friends would have been PROUD to have him.
Sunday, May 02, 2010
And speaking of FREE EN-TER-PRISE, if it's Sunday it must be Big Double-A-Scribble Time:
1. Once again the CRAINIACS obsess that too many CEOs spend too much of their advertising budgets on Hollywood schmoozing. If that's so why are the CEOs burning their money again, with the same old fervor (if not so much fervor as before The Depression That Wasn't)?
2. And apparently a few CEOs are so embarrassed by this talk of a TV AD BOOM!!!!! they're making statements saying they're not burning their companies' money -- even if, as we suspect, they ARE.
1. Once again the CRAINIACS obsess that too many CEOs spend too much of their advertising budgets on Hollywood schmoozing. If that's so why are the CEOs burning their money again, with the same old fervor (if not so much fervor as before The Depression That Wasn't)?
2. And apparently a few CEOs are so embarrassed by this talk of a TV AD BOOM!!!!! they're making statements saying they're not burning their companies' money -- even if, as we suspect, they ARE.
And here's a new con-SER-va-tive tack: blasting government workers for outlandish salaries. I work for government and I will not defend the six-digit salaries too many people get just for showing up; at its worst such pay is as intolerable as New York's notorious rubber rooms. All public servants must soon sacrifice for the whole. But I have made fun of the titles some people in cherished FREE EN-TER-PRISE have -- and what do they do, in essence, but show up?
A con-SER-va-tive confesses PILLHEAD can be INCOHERENT?!?!?!?!? In OR out of context?!?!?!?!?
And somehow we're not surprised to learn THE PERFESSER agrees the oil rig disaster may have been SABOTAGE. I suppose that's possible -- although it would be so dangerous and cost so much even GEORGE SOROS!!!!! might shirk at it. I know nothing of oil drilling -- but NEITHER DO THE PERFESSER AND PILLHEAD, whose professions are the law and gassing for zillions, and even if they're left totally unguarded oil rigs are such complex things, and oil drilling is not sticking a straw in the ground, that it makes sabotage extremely unlikely -- but not to people whose first love is the sound of their own voices.
And con-SER-va-tives would do well to stop likening this to Katrina in order to mock the Chief Nose-in-the-Air. Competent people would have seen Katrina coming.
And somehow we're not surprised to learn THE PERFESSER agrees the oil rig disaster may have been SABOTAGE. I suppose that's possible -- although it would be so dangerous and cost so much even GEORGE SOROS!!!!! might shirk at it. I know nothing of oil drilling -- but NEITHER DO THE PERFESSER AND PILLHEAD, whose professions are the law and gassing for zillions, and even if they're left totally unguarded oil rigs are such complex things, and oil drilling is not sticking a straw in the ground, that it makes sabotage extremely unlikely -- but not to people whose first love is the sound of their own voices.
And con-SER-va-tives would do well to stop likening this to Katrina in order to mock the Chief Nose-in-the-Air. Competent people would have seen Katrina coming.
How must it feel to be those PR MEN today?
SUMNER needn't worry, however; he'll live FOREVER.
This near-disaster highlights our damned-if-you-do situation: We're damned if we stand up to terrorists, and we're damned if we act as SUMNER and the PR MEN did, and "CAVE". This terrorist scum has us over a barrel, and it knows it. NO, CHICKEN ZAKARIA, you and your fellow cretins do NOT look better today.
SUMNER needn't worry, however; he'll live FOREVER.
This near-disaster highlights our damned-if-you-do situation: We're damned if we stand up to terrorists, and we're damned if we act as SUMNER and the PR MEN did, and "CAVE". This terrorist scum has us over a barrel, and it knows it. NO, CHICKEN ZAKARIA, you and your fellow cretins do NOT look better today.
Horror films often fall off quickly on their second day at the box office, but the drop for "Nightmare" was particularly sizable, as the movie collected 33% less in gross receipts on Saturday than Friday. That's one of the largest-ever Friday-Saturday drops at the box office and is particularly significant given that Saturday wasn't a holiday and "Nightmare" didn't sell a huge number of tickets to midnight shows late Thursday night that threw off the comparison.
The last film to drop more on its second day without those factors was the Sacha Baron Cohen comedy "Bruno," which declined 39% on its second day. "Bruno" ticket sales went on to plummet 73% on the movie's second weekend, and "A Nightmare on Elm Street" is likely headed toward a similar freefall next weekend, particularly given that it will face enormous competition from "Iron Man 2."
Another people-pleasin' excretion from the MOVEE BIZ!
MORE 3-D! NOW!!!!! (Caveat: Mr. THUMBS-WAAAAAAAAAAY-UP!!!!!)
The last film to drop more on its second day without those factors was the Sacha Baron Cohen comedy "Bruno," which declined 39% on its second day. "Bruno" ticket sales went on to plummet 73% on the movie's second weekend, and "A Nightmare on Elm Street" is likely headed toward a similar freefall next weekend, particularly given that it will face enormous competition from "Iron Man 2."
Another people-pleasin' excretion from the MOVEE BIZ!
MORE 3-D! NOW!!!!! (Caveat: Mr. THUMBS-WAAAAAAAAAAY-UP!!!!!)
Speaking of God -- or rather Gods who are better than Gods -- how did it get into so many of our superiors' heads that every big event must resemble the phony-baloney of Groundhog Day? The Lord God of Omaha, for instance, had to bless His believers, and pronounce His kingdom good and Holy, and even praise that other Lord, proving that His Revival Meeting and that banquet could be safely ditched and many would be quite happy. And the insiders who attend that wingding in Washington wonder why the peons hate their superiors bordering on the illegal?
And if -- GOD FORBID -- that bomb in Times Square HAD gone off we can be sure His Omnipotence and all the assorted phonies would have assumed the most comically self-serious phony posture (funnier than the jokes, no doubt) and flailed about like a bunch of SUPER CHICKENS with their heads cut off, spouting raging bromides despite the lack of heads, and not being able to do a damn thing. Thankfully it didn't go off. Let's keep our fingers crossed there isn't a next time.
And in news that surely was not important to the assorted suckers-up the Europeans have provisionally bailed out the spendthrift Greeks, which raises the question who will have to be NEXT.
We're betting Spain, because it's led by SUPER CHICKEN!
We're betting Spain, because it's led by SUPER CHICKEN!
Rather than oooh and aaah all the fanny kissers who showed up for THE GREATEST BUNCH OF GOOD GUYS IN THE WORLD DINNER, I'd like to know who had the sense not to show up.
If GOD HIMSELF had been there they assorted phonies would have oohed and aahed HIM.
If GOD HIMSELF had been there they assorted phonies would have oohed and aahed HIM.