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!
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Saturday, May 15, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
With melodrama worthy of a certain TheAtlantic.com blogger somebody named Algie Vitalis or something emotes that Hef is "the most influential figure that American popular culture has produced blahblahblah", ignoring that much of America had a sexual awakening in France after the Armistice; that the Roaring Twenties were full of liberation talk; that Ziegfeld (whom we mentioned yesterday) made public female nudity respectable; that burlesque queens got tossed in the clink long before this miracle knew how to read; that jazz was called the devil's music; that much of the ferment that made this titan possible came later from the Beats and academe, who had little truck with this the most important man of all time. Crying such gigantic crocodile tears only makes a pygmy huge in the mirror. In the end we must recall ST. EDWARD OF MURROW's favorite Shakespearean line: "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves."
Given the emoting and the clumsy ambivalent cop-out tone at the end we'd say this has that pop-culture phreak JPOD's grimy revision marks all over it.
P. S.
He holds degrees from Dartmouth College, Trinity College, Cambridge, and the University of Chicago, where Saul Bellow was his doctoral dissertation adviser in the Committee on Social Thought.
After all that big thick head scratching he might not need Vitalis.
Given the emoting and the clumsy ambivalent cop-out tone at the end we'd say this has that pop-culture phreak JPOD's grimy revision marks all over it.
P. S.
He holds degrees from Dartmouth College, Trinity College, Cambridge, and the University of Chicago, where Saul Bellow was his doctoral dissertation adviser in the Committee on Social Thought.
After all that big thick head scratching he might not need Vitalis.
We know the feeling: ESPNCORP was going to build a Mickey Mouse Zone (or whatever they called it) on our low-grade Market Street East; it left a RAT HOLE which was paved over with a parking lot. Now the RAT has pulled the same gag in Hartford, blithely promising to fill what looks less like a RAT than a huge white elephant built in part on the promise; we suspect several years hence it will be as empty as the RAT HOLE on Market, except for that parking lot.
It strikes us as...ironic that THE HILARIOUS RED SKELTON OF OUR TIME has just sold a series to...his mortal enemies at GE BANCORP NETWORK, confirming on both sides the alleged wisdom of the Shuberts that he may be an SOB but he's OUR SOB, an easy thing to say as in this biz everybody's one.
Our age conflates honesty and AAAAAAAAAAAAATTITUDE; hence idiocies like this can happen.
THE ABSURDITY OF THE WALL STREET CASINO: Here TiVo's chugging along for months, doing mostly nothing, then all of a sudden it goes WAY UP. Then it chugs along at its new elevated price and all of a sudden it goes WAY DOWN. Here in the proverbial nutshell is why WALL STREET can start PANICS, and why a few computers and brainiacs have the power to bring down economies.
P. S. at 10:35 p. m. It went up and then down thanks to two rulings in a patent-infringement suit against DirecTV. It still looks ludicrous.
Yes, I think we can officially say we're getting tired of this topic too. First off, no one need tell us old people can cuss; and second the hacks and their publicity machinery are almost justifiably treating this old person as some sort of eccentric, a circus freak (though her AGENTS must take the bulk of the blame), and this is highly condescending to old people, as if news hacks can't condescend.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Lane: Does Arlen Specter have any principles? [Home-page link]
We would not begin to calculate how long we could spend dreaming up punchlines for that one.
We would not begin to calculate how long we could spend dreaming up punchlines for that one.
We were drawn by this picture posted today on this blog partly because of this other comely lass with the hourglass figure, not to mention the folks around her; and it too must exert the same melancholy, for it too reminds us whatever the past's ills us we yet manage to live in the wrong age.
Playbill has run an incredibly long obit on Doris Eaton Travis, most likely one of the last of Florenz Ziegfeld's girls (or as SUPERNIKKI!!!!! would call him, "Zeigfield"), and while it may seem perhaps too long it isn't, for the reach of America's greatest showman will influence showbiz forever, though in this never-ending bad-taste age you might not know it, for he combined lavish spectacle with an extraordinary eye for female beauty, and tentpoles and PR0N are but the rotten permutations of his ethos; and though he was supposedly indifferent to music only he could have produced the masterpiece Show Boat, whose aura may seem nonexistent in this day of Branson East and its AudioAnimatronics but resounds in anyone who ever owned a cast album. Ziegfeld's girls seem to have come in two groups: those who married millionaires and those who didn't. Mrs. Travis was among the latter (though some of those who married millionaires didn't do too well either); whatever their marriages many vanished because they could do one thing and one thing only: be pretty. (Or two, like Ann Pennington.) But clearly Mrs. Travis maintained her looks well into old age, and she was smart and vigorous enough to have been a success in business and to have "graduated from the University of Oklahoma at the age of 88". Because the name Ziegfeld still exerts a spell (unlike Maxim, which emits a smell), so do his names, and his girls.
(First link via the usual AHTSJournal. We do note, by the way, that Will Rogers did call his discoverer and friend "Ziegfield", but then he wasn't a columnist who ran showbiz.)
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
ARCHDaily!
Hip army barracks!
Vertical zeppelins!
A hip prison!
This fine old French building just had a square bowel movement!
Does this remind you of lizards mating?
Hip army barracks!
Vertical zeppelins!
A hip prison!
This fine old French building just had a square bowel movement!
Does this remind you of lizards mating?
The DUHB, admirer of RON PAUL!!!!!!!!!!, throws a snit because His Omnipotence wants to make it "easier" for the Feds to hire. It strikes us that for once Om is using some sense. Why should hiring be restricted by arbitrary rules that have nothing to do with merit? Yes DUHB, it might mean MORE WORKERS IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, but it could merely mean more GOOD workers.
More SOULful news from THE WORLD'S GREATEST ECONOMY!!!!!:
Before his arrest on corruption charges, Wang Yi was not only a powerful financial official in the Communist party but also one of China’s most celebrated modern classical music composers.
But since his detention and arrest last year, Mr Wang’s magnum opus – a symphony called Ode to China – has been dropped as a repertoire staple of the China National Symphony Orchestra and his compositions derided by formerly adoring media commentators and critics.
Mr Wang is described now as someone who has trouble reading music, had no formal training and was reliant on ghost writers to produce what was once hailed by state media as “China’s answer to Mozart” and “music for rejuvenation of the nation”.
Official reports suggest that most of the millions of renminbi spent on tickets to see Mr Wang’s works came from businesspeople and officials hoping to curry favour with him.
Before his arrest on corruption charges, Wang Yi was not only a powerful financial official in the Communist party but also one of China’s most celebrated modern classical music composers.
But since his detention and arrest last year, Mr Wang’s magnum opus – a symphony called Ode to China – has been dropped as a repertoire staple of the China National Symphony Orchestra and his compositions derided by formerly adoring media commentators and critics.
Mr Wang is described now as someone who has trouble reading music, had no formal training and was reliant on ghost writers to produce what was once hailed by state media as “China’s answer to Mozart” and “music for rejuvenation of the nation”.
Official reports suggest that most of the millions of renminbi spent on tickets to see Mr Wang’s works came from businesspeople and officials hoping to curry favour with him.
This should be FUN:
6.15pm: Sky News has been running snippets from the televised leaders' debate which showed Cameron and Clegg pitted against each other. It offers what I imagine is the unprecedented situation of having a public display of vehement disagreements between two senior members of the same team, simply because they were bitter opponents at the time. Cameron has already had to eat humble pie earlier (see 2.43pm) about an old comment in which he said his favourite joke was "Nick Clegg".
Clegg, meanwhile, had described the Tories' colleagues in Europe as "a bunch of nutters, antisemites, people who deny climate change exists, homophobes" during one of the debates - something that has been seized upon by Edward McMillan-Scott, a former Tory MEP, in light of the coalition deal.
McMillan-Scott, who joined the Lib Dems earlier this year after being expelled in a row over Cameron's EU strategy, is in the unenviable position of having the party he joined now linked to the party he left.
6.15pm: Sky News has been running snippets from the televised leaders' debate which showed Cameron and Clegg pitted against each other. It offers what I imagine is the unprecedented situation of having a public display of vehement disagreements between two senior members of the same team, simply because they were bitter opponents at the time. Cameron has already had to eat humble pie earlier (see 2.43pm) about an old comment in which he said his favourite joke was "Nick Clegg".
Clegg, meanwhile, had described the Tories' colleagues in Europe as "a bunch of nutters, antisemites, people who deny climate change exists, homophobes" during one of the debates - something that has been seized upon by Edward McMillan-Scott, a former Tory MEP, in light of the coalition deal.
McMillan-Scott, who joined the Lib Dems earlier this year after being expelled in a row over Cameron's EU strategy, is in the unenviable position of having the party he joined now linked to the party he left.
Whatever shriveled ghost Cannes has become we can be sure people like Melina Mercouri (here with Jules Dassin) were not airheads.
(We thought Tina ran this before; note the URL. Oh well, one good turn deserves another.)
Orrin's deserving of retirement too, as was Rep. Mollohan, because at some point these permanent Congresspoops start thinking themselves indispensable, and if there's one thing Congress has too many of it's the indispensable.
Face it: We can't stand the Beltway's guts. That's okay; the Beltway can't stand ours back.
P. S. Mollohan was part of the Stupidak -- Stupak Coalition.
Face it: We can't stand the Beltway's guts. That's okay; the Beltway can't stand ours back.
P. S. Mollohan was part of the Stupidak -- Stupak Coalition.
The news biz is increasingly edited by idiots, for idiots. We expect idiocy from Mort Zuck -- after all, he turned Useless News from a weekly to a college annual -- but he seems intent on trying to put the Daily Nooz out of biz; maybe it's the tax breaks. True this ad has been widely distributed; why didn't JANN!!!!!!!!!! try to buy out those UK midgets of soft-core? But Mort seems to take a little extra happiness in twisting the knife in his readers' backs. (It doesn't help that this soft-core's "editor" has a way with words like PAUL DRECK!!!!!!!!!! and is thus a certifiable ass.) We will confess to a certain jealousy at those who can squire such women but then we realize most of these either "sing" technocrap or are flat-out high-maintenance airheads, and then, as though remembering our favorite things, we don't feel so bad.
P. S. A special demerit to ALPHA MEDIA GROUP for the Harley-Davidson ad you can shut off only after frantically playing with an Adobe Flash pop-up menu -- and with that gal's voice you want to shut it off -- but we should expect things like this from a company that's had five CEOs in 33 months.
(Corrected at 6:53 p. m. Those UK midgets sold their American version of Maxim three years back, and folded the British edition thereafter; the CEO revolving door is responsible for the ad, and the online ad too.)
P. S. A special demerit to ALPHA MEDIA GROUP for the Harley-Davidson ad you can shut off only after frantically playing with an Adobe Flash pop-up menu -- and with that gal's voice you want to shut it off -- but we should expect things like this from a company that's had five CEOs in 33 months.
(Corrected at 6:53 p. m. Those UK midgets sold their American version of Maxim three years back, and folded the British edition thereafter; the CEO revolving door is responsible for the ad, and the online ad too.)
Monday, May 10, 2010
Ted seems to have religiously read Peter Biskind (pre-Warren Beatty); Matt seems to have religiously read David Denby. When this is the keenest our great movee minds can think up lambasting the business no wonder its films are bludgeons.
(Second link -- which linked to the first -- via NRO, where Matts are considered profound)
(Second link -- which linked to the first -- via NRO, where Matts are considered profound)
His Omnipotence unleashes a stealth Nine Finger -- so what does He get?
Elena Kagan: Confirmation Hearings 'Vapid and Hollow Charade'
NO COMMENT.
Elena Kagan: Confirmation Hearings 'Vapid and Hollow Charade'
NO COMMENT.
The E.U. has created $1T package to save the euro, but where's the money really going to come from? [Front-page squib]
Who cares as long as WE'RE IN IT!!!!!
Who cares as long as WE'RE IN IT!!!!!
"If they had done this back in January, it probably wouldn't have cost half as much. But at least they've done it and it's going down particularly well with the markets."
TRANSLATION: It's better that they're doing it now because government can spend more money propping up capitalists!!!!!
TRANSLATION: It's better that they're doing it now because government can spend more money propping up capitalists!!!!!
That the hacks have gotten out their automatic verbiage referring to Lena Horne as "legendary" means they don't understand her either. She was an enigma, as befitting a black performer who passed for white, but she was also an extraordinarily beautiful and magnetic woman with a seductive appeal, and she could have been of any race and that would have been true, and she arrived at precisely the right time, good for her and in time for us.
Sunday, May 09, 2010
This ad reminds us that it was said of BRITISH news hacks that they don't have to be bribed, an attitude they passed easily across the Atlantic, but that seems to have returned with a vengeance to the land that invented it.