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Ted Baxter Versus Murphy Brown
By Ed Driscoll · February 28, 2007 10:15 PM · Oh, That Liberal Media!
The Anchoress read a trivial-sounding blog post with Katie Couric's name on it, and responds, "I never thought I would say it, but I miss Dan Rather. I may not have agreed with him much of the time toward the end, but he had a curious mind, a willingness to ask questions and he possessed a voice and presence that conveyed…oh…gravitas." Well, with the exception of his occasional "what's the frequency" freakouts, Rather did a pretty good of projecting the requisite gravitas on camera until he finally unraveled near the end, but Katie and Captain Dan are virtually identical in one respect: they're essentially actors who gets paid to put a dramatic intonation on dialogue that someone else has written for them. In Team America: World Police, the Janeane Garofolo wooden puppet (sorry for the redundancies) breathlessly shouts, "As actors, it is our responsibility to read the newspapers, and then say what we read on television like it's our own opinion" Ironically, that's also a perfect description of the superstar anchorman or woman, as as Tom Wolfe noted in 1980: Within the television news operations there’s such a premium put on not being a reporter. Everyone aspires to the man who never has to leave the building, the anchor man, who is a performer. The reporters are called researchers and are usually young women, and the correspondent on television is a substar, a supporting actor who prides himself on the fact that he doesn’t have to prepare the story. You talk to these guys and they’ll say, “Well, they sent me from Beirut to Teheran, and I had forty-five minutes to get briefed on the situation.” What they should say is, “I read the AP copy.” The idea is that as a performer you can pull together this news operation anywhere you go and the whole status structure is set up in such a way that you’re not going to get good reporters. Just try to think of the last major scoop, to use that old term, that was broken on television. I’m sure there have been some. But what story during Watergate? During Watergate there were new stories coming out every day. None were on television, except when television simply broadcast the hearings. The can do a set event. And that’s what television is actually best at. In fact, it’d be a service to the country if television news operations were shut down totally and they only broadcast hearings, press conferences and hockey games. That would be television news. At least the public would not have the false impression that it’s getting news coverage.As television writer Burt Prelutsky wrote in 2005 as Dan was heading into the sunset, "Now, I’m not saying we should kill the messengers. I’m just suggesting it’s time we stopped canonizing them". Holding Out For A Hero
Found via Power Line, Mark Moyar, author of Triumph Forsaken, which Scott Johnson dubs a "revisionist Vietnam war history", is looking for war heroes in the New York Sun. Or to be more specific, he's looking to read about them in papers other than the New York Sun: Neil Sheehan began his Pulitzer-Prize winning book "A Bright Shining Lie" by pronouncing the Vietnam War "a war without heroes." In the rest of the book, the Americans in Vietnam largely came across as fools, liars, criminals, or a combination thereof, with the exception of Mr. Sheehan and his fellow journalists, who were depicted as brave unmaskers of ineptitude and absurdity. Sheehan ignored the real heroism of many brave Americans — such as Marvin Shields, Carlos McAfee, Antonio Smaldone, and Steven L. Bennett, to name but a few — and many military victories, for American triumphs did not square with his claims about the war. He badly distorted press involvement in the war so that he and his colleagues, particularly David Halberstam and Stanley Karnow, could dodge the blame they deserved for promoting the disastrous coup against the South Vietnamese government in November 1963.The Sun's prominent Manhattan competitor inadvertently beclowned themselves when they wrote this on the same topic in 2005. Update: Very much related thoughts from Daniel Henninger. Gaia Is My Co-Pilot
By Ed Driscoll · February 28, 2007 02:08 PM · Bobos In Paradise · Hollywood, Interrupted · Oh, That Liberal Media!
Rejoice, sinner! "Carbon atonement is no longer the exclusive preserve of the Malibu set -- with the Iowahawk EcoPals Network!" Related (and less satiric) thoughts here. Meanwhile, Don Surber writes: After reading the Editorialist’s coverage at the Washington Post of Al Gore’s overuse of electricity, I don’t want to hear about Republican hypocrisy ever again.As the Professor responds, "Well, look at the kind of people who own newspapers . . ." Elsewhere, a look at crushing of dissent. Early Implosion Spotted?
By Ed Driscoll · February 28, 2007 01:03 PM · The Making of the President
Roger Simon asks, "Does Dick Morris know?": I find Dick Morris fun to listen to - he's witty and willing to go out on a limb. But is he right when he says that John McCain's campaign has already imploded? The Arizona Senator never even made a dent on the PJM poll, but I thought that might have had to do with the fact our readership doesn't much care for McCain-Feingold. The general public, however, is unlikely to know what McCain-Feingold even is. And yet they seem to be rejecting McCain. This could be in the area of pure instinct. People react to candidates on a primitive level that transcends issues.Mickey Kaus extolls the virtues of last-in=last out accounting in a presidential race: Smart Tony Blankley piece on how the Faster (and Earlier) election process actually hurts challengers, eroding their traditional advantages. (They get stale quickly, for example. And if they show the beef--policy proposals--there's lots and lots of time to pick those policies apart, or for them to be overtaken by events.) ... The obvious solution, Blankley notes--echoing Emailer X--is to jump into the race late. Advantage, Gingrich and Gore. ... Actually, maybe Blankley's logic suggests a solution for McCain: He could let his campaign collapse, drop out, lay low for a few months ... and then jump back in at the end. The Rosie Ruiz Strategy. There's plenty of time for it. ... (True, it didn't work for Gary Hart in 1988. But McCain wouldn't be withdrawing because of a character-questioning scandal. He'd be withdrawing because Giuliani seemed fresher and more appealing--at the moment. By December, if Blankley's right, it would be McCain who seems fresh.) ...It didn't do much for Ross Perot in 1992, as I recall, either. Although his proto-Rosie Ruiz stategy involved a much shorter timeout, and was accompanied by ravings of covert Republican operatives harrassing his daughter in Area 51 or something like that. Meanwhile, Rand Simberg ponders if the Clinton campaign "is unaware of the Internet. Well, they shouldn't be (anyone recall the name Matt Drudge?), but I think they continue to underestimate its power, again, as I've noted in the past". Ted Olsen Calls James Cameron
By Ed Driscoll · February 28, 2007 11:19 AM · Hollywood, Interrupted · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Return of the Primitive
Well, the former solicitor general did call a James Cameron in California: So, tell us about your interest in the historical Jesus.Heh. In a related post, Ed Morrissey writes on "How Discovery Channel Lost Its Groove" by backing Cameron's documentary: Archeology involves a level of speculation, but the true scientists make sure to minimize it as much as possible -- and this documentary amounts to nothing but speculation.I think that actually began to happen when they crafted this channel. "News War": Obvious Narratives Generate Bipartisan Consensus
Last week I linked to Hugh Hewitt and Newsbusters' negative impressions of PBS's "News War" Frontline miniseries; as conservatives, it's not at all surprising that they'd have a beef with a PBS show. But while Jeff Jarvis is much closer to the demographic that PBS targets, he's also not very much impressed with their efforts: I just watched the third part of Frontline’s News War and found it utterly unsurprising and profoundly disappointing. It delivered the obvious narratives it wanted to deliver: a war between mainstream media and the rabble of citizen bloggers, a cultural and quality line between old media and new, and a moral battle between the business and editorial sides of the news business, as illustrated by its lionizing of deposed LA Times editors John Carroll and Dean Baquet and its demonizing of Tribune executive and now LA Times publisher David Hiller. I was part of it, briefly, to fulfill their blogger-v-MSM storyline; here is more of what I said to them. I remain disappointed that they didn’t investigate the future of journalism, the opportunities and possibilities. Instead, they played the themes we have heard again and again, as if on a Top 40 radio station: tsk-tsking the tackiness, fretting about the news that the big guys are sure we need, evil Wall Street, looney citizens. I could sit down and fisk, as we say, all its cheap shots and lazy analysis and incomplete reporting but, frankly, I don’t find it worth the effort.Meanwhile, Bill O'Reilly tells his viewers "journalism in this country is at a low point": And it comes right before one of the most important presidential elections in history.But they won't of course--at least not in numbers that generate any immediate attention from the legacy media, whose reaction to its slow erosion of viewers and readers ranges from surprising sanguinity to utter cluelessness. Which is why I've been wondering what--if anything--will happen as a result of what's been bubbling up for the last six months or so in the Blogosphere. Gandhi Meets The Goracle
By Ed Driscoll · February 27, 2007 11:09 PM · Muggeridge's Law · The Reich Stuff · The Return of the Primitive
Frontline, which bills itself as "India's National Magazine" has a piece that Drudge is currently linking to, titled "Dangerous denial", with the following subtitle: If all the people of the world had the same living style as the average American, the holocaust would have already visited us.Of course, when it came to the real Holocaust, the world's most celebrated Indian was the very personification of "Dangerous denial", as Richard Grenier wrote in Commentary in 1983 as a mammoth rebuttal to the even-more-mammoth biopic then making the rounds: Since the movie's Madeleine Slade specifically invites us to revere the "way out of madness" that Gandhi offered the world at the time of World War II, I am under the embarrassing obligation of recording exactly what courses of action the Great Soul recommended to the various parties involved in that crisis. For Gandhi was never stinting in his advice. Indeed, the less he knew about a subject, the less he stinted.America's would-be modern day Gandhi has a long record of using ridiculously exaggerated Holocaust metaphors (a trait that has since been acquired by his acolytes) to breathlessly describe his pet cause, as Jonah Goldberg noted last year: In his 1992 book “Earth in the Balance,” [Gore] wrote that “today the evidence of an ecological Kristallnacht is as clear as the sound of glass shattering in Berlin.” He repeatedly refers to the unfolding ecological holocaust” and invokes Martin Niemoller’s famous quote (“When the Nazis came for the Communists, I remained silent; I was not a Communist. ... When they came for the Jews, I did not speak out; I was not a Jew. ...”) to label himself and other environmentalists “the new resistance.”And yet, as Betsy Newmark wrote when she linked to Jonah's post, "if addressing the crisis of global warming demands the same diligence and dedication that fighting the Nazis demanded, why isn't Gore proposing similar sacrifices today to fight global warming?" For a start, they should be out there denouncing the movie Cars for glorifying the weapons of mass destruction that cars are in this global crisis. They should be campaigning against NASCAR. But, of course, they won't be doing these things because it would be political suicide. So, now we know where they draw the line. They'll talk a good game, but they won't actually propose anything or say anything that would offend potential voters. As Goldberg writes:Coulter was right about Gore's Edwardian digs:Once you compare a problem to the Holocaust — even remotely — you’ve lost your moral wiggle room. No politician, indeed no responsible person in this country, would endorse a comedic cartoon about genocide, never mind take their children to it. Give PETA credit. While it repugnantly compares the raising of chickens and cattle to Auschwitz, the organization at least has the courage of its convictions, and protests virtually everything that treats animals as anything less than people. “I kind of respect him more, it shows he is not stupid enough to believe all this global warming nonsense. He’s trying to get us to believe. Okay, fine, he may be a hypocrite but at least he’s not a moron.”It's an "Inconvenient Hypocrisy" as Bill Hobbs writes, via Glenn Reynolds. Update: Perhaps the Goracle isn't Gandhi, but another icon immortalized on the big screen: It’s great that he’s using solar panels and all that, but notice he’s not disputing how huge his electric bill still is. What the hell is he doing in there? Is he a Terminator from the future and requires constant recharging? (That would explain pretty much everything.)I blame Cyberdyne Systems. "Hoplophobia, Homophobia And Political Correctness"
Dr. Helen asks, "Have you noticed how differently those who criticize non-PC issues such as gun rights are treated by the media as opposed to those who dare to make a PC blunder such as saying something politically incorrect about a minority?" I'd say it's a variation on Amon's Law. The McNewspaper Of Record
Tammy Bruce writes, "USA Today Declares Republicans Not Part of 'the Country'". I guess this is what David Weston of ABC meant in November of 2004 when he said that the media needed to send more foreign correspondents into the Red States. "The Big Three Could Be The Big Two By Memorial Day"
By Ed Driscoll · February 27, 2007 01:12 PM · The Making of the President
Hugh Hewitt writes: The GOP base has a trust issue with McCain, one that flows from the 2000 campaign, McCain-Feingold, the Gang of 14, the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill, the September 2006 derailing of the Republican end-game strategy. McCain is fading, and not because of his age or energy level, but because the GOP electorate has to absolutely believe that the next president will be as committed to victory as Bush has been. Senator McCain's avoidance of new media has been reinforcing the impression that he is unwilling to provide the assurances he needs to in order to regain the trust he has repeatedly broken with the GOP electorate over the years. There is time to turn that around, but Senator McCain is not making the effort, an effort that would begin by a relentless courting of the base rather than the Hardball/Meet The Press audience. Every week that Senator McCain delays launching that effort is a week in which the mayor and the governor gather more pledges and momentum. The big three could be the big two by Memorial Day.No. There is another... Meanwhile, Clay Waters looks at the New York Times' bad timing in light of today's assassination attempt on Cheney: "Today's NY Times Asks Why Is Cheney's Trip So Secretive?" Update: John Hawkins shares his thoughts on the Democrats' current Big Three. 14 Years Ago: Ground Zero, Round One
By Ed Driscoll · February 27, 2007 12:08 PM · From Bauhaus To Our House · The Future and its Enemies · War And Anti-War
As Michelle Malkin writes, "We always hear 'Never forget.' But how many still remember anymore?" Lawhawk notes that yesterday was "the 14th anniversary of the first WTC bombing attack, which killed six and wounded more than 1,000 people". He has an update on where construction efforts to rebuild the WTC stand: "The Battle for Ground Zero, Part 219". "He May Be A Hypocrite But At Least He’s Not A Moron"
By Ed Driscoll · February 27, 2007 10:50 AM · Hollywood, Interrupted · The New Puritans · The Return of the Primitive
So says Ann Coulter about Al "Elmer Gantry" Gore. Glenn Reynolds writes: Moralists are especially vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy -- ask any backsliding fundamentalist preacher. If Gore were less moralistic in his approach -- as he gains weight, he's even starting to look a bit like a younger Jerry Falwell -- the charges of hypocrisy would have less bite.Roger L. Simon adds, "there's a deeper question beneath all this. Does hypocrisy count?" Does it matter than Hollywood stars parade around in Priuses while keeping private planes and multiple homes that burn up who-knows-how much energy (in many cases enough to dwarf Al's)? Is it just that these people mouth off that raises our eyebrows or should they actually practice what they preach ?Meanwhile, Tim Blair looks at a Hollywood celebrity who really does qualify for the latter half of Ann's equation. (Even if she did cause The Manolo to obtain the orgasm of the celebratory.) Update: Welcome Tim Blair readers! Click here for even more Gore goring, as Al meets Gandhi, Jonah Goldberg, and even the Terminator. "The Unspeakable Toast The Unwatchable"
By Ed Driscoll · February 26, 2007 10:05 AM · Hollywood, Interrupted
Regarding the Oscars, Orrin Judd writes, "When we were kids everyone used to watch them--they used to celebrate the movies. Know anyone who still does now that they celebrate Hollywood's politics?" Drudge has the early ratings: ABC PULLS 27.4 RATING/42 SHARE IN EARLY OVERNIGHTS AT 'OSCARS'... MORE... IF NUMBERS HOLD, WOULD BE 3RD LEAST- WATCHED OSCARS, JOINING LOW 2006, 2003... MORE...In 2006, Hollywood switched from a mass industry serving the public to a niche market for blue/green activists. It invented a strategy that junks the Red States. But every year flyover country gets to remind Hollywood that the loss is reciprocal, at least for one Sunday. If the Drudge numbers are correct, at some point in the future, just as C-SPAN covers the bulk of national political conventions, watch for the Oscars to move up the dial, out of the over-the-air networks and into the realm of cable. Maybe E! or HBO could host them. Or Current TV. Related: Survey shows high ticket prices and poor film selections causing some to think twice about heading out to catch the latest blockbuster.Do tell! A theater owner in Spain has one solution; its arrival seems inevitable in the US. Update: Outside The Beltway agrees: Gore joins a growing line of liberal political activists to win major awards in recent years: The Dixie Chicks, Michael Moore, and Hillary Clinton come readily to mind in the “arts.” Then there’s Jimmy Carter and virtually every other recent winner of the Nobel Peace prize.Exactly. (Via Jules Crittenden.) Meanwhile, Libertas notes an inconvenient omission. "I Bear The Scars Of Oscars"
By Ed Driscoll · February 26, 2007 02:33 AM · Hollywood, Interrupted
Nikki Finke: "In summary, it was the night that the Academy finally killed off what used to be its show-stopper of a movie awards": By my calculations, Gore needs to reimburse the Academy and ABC for close to $3 million for this night's free and over-the-top political advertising. Just send the check directly to Obama, Al, since I know you and Tipper can't stand Bill and Hillary. By trying not to be controversial, Ellen delivered a truly forgettable performance. And that's far worse than being Chris Rock- or Jon Stewart-type awful.Like I said... The Patron Saint Of Quality Footwear
By Ed Driscoll · February 26, 2007 01:05 AM · Ed On The 'Net · Podcasts · The New, New Journalism · The Substance of Style
In addition to Your Humble Narrator's interviews with Austin Bay and Adam Bellow, this week's Blog Week In Review podcast has hidden within it breaking news--The Manolo's first publication is due in March from Pamphleteer Press. It's Hard Out Here For A Songwriter
When William Goldman said,"Every Oscar night you look back and realize that last year was the worst year in the history of Hollywood", he probably had screenwriting on his mind, but Hollywood's songwriting isn't exactly going great guns either these days, as Mark Steyn notes: What do these five songs have in common?Norma Desmond didn't know the half of it. Do Corporate Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?
By Ed Driscoll · February 25, 2007 11:51 PM · Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal · Muggeridge's Law · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Long Tail
CBS does, as Reuters notes: CBS Corp. will invest in virtual world content developer Electric Sheep Co., the U.S. television broadcaster said on Monday. hoping to expand its reach beyond the living room.Of course. How could they not be? "A Bore And A Horror"
In between unctuous praise of "larger than life" Al Gore (and given his industry's collective backing of the man and his religious convictions, how could he do otherwise?) Tom Shales, The Washington Post's longtime liberal TV critic, absolutely buries this year's Oscars. Rather ironic, considering that Shales has the exact politics that the film industry aims its product towards. Update: Bipartisan consensus reached. The Democrats' Lonely Man
"I appeal to my colleagues in Congress to step back and think carefully about what to do next". God's Lonely Man
27 years too late, but Martin Scorsese finally cops an Oscar for best director and best picture, and Thelma Schoonmaker for best editor. When I clicked on the IMDB page for Scorsese's next project, I thought jokingly, "Of course! He'll get Leonardo DiCaprio to star as the title subject". Once again, Muggeridge's Law comes through, and I'm sure the actual picture will be a hoot. Incidentally, the choice of a director's alter ego speaks volumes: Hitchcock had Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart. Scorsese has Leonardo DiCaprio, and seems as wedded to him these days as he was to Robert De Niro in both men's glory days. Suicide Is Painless--And Slow
By Ed Driscoll · February 25, 2007 09:04 PM · Hollywood, Interrupted
"8:47 - At least Altman went quick unlike his films". Gee, I don't know--he died annually at the box office since about 1971. Oscar Cliff Notes
By Ed Driscoll · February 25, 2007 08:19 PM · Hollywood, Interrupted
The Internet Movie Database is keeping a running tally of who's winning what on its homepage, if you're skipping the show like most Americans. I'm Shocked, Shocked!
This just in: CBS cooks the books at Sixty Minutes. That's never happened before! Hopefully Reuters, The New York Times, CNN, Newsweek, and Associated Press will combine forces to launch a full investigation. At The Mall
By Ed Driscoll · February 25, 2007 06:26 PM · War And Anti-War
As I said earlier today, I bet they’ve gone back to sleep in New York. I bet they’re back to sleep all across America. Leveling The Playing Field
By Ed Driscoll · February 25, 2007 06:22 PM · All You Need Is Ears · An Army Of Davids · Hollywood, Interrupted
Reuters has an interesting piece on Esmee Denters, an 18-year old resident of Oosterbeck, who's become the Dutch "It Girl" of YouTube: Nearly 20,000 fans have subscribed to her YouTube channel to receive automatic updates, with about 200 added a day, putting her at No. 22 on the all-time most-popular list.As Reuters notes, "The obvious logical next step, then, is a record label deal, right? Not so fast": "We may decide not to get together with a label," Denters said via phone, waiting for a flight from Los Angeles to New York for another round of meetings and recording sessions. "We may try new stuff. I've already accomplished so much on my own, we'd like to see what we can do with that."In a TCS Daily piece back in 2003, I explored the war between Hollywood and Silicon Valley, particularly in the music industry, where so much can be done by a talented DIY-artist. These days, all of the technology visible here in Peter Gabriel's 1980-era studio easily fits into a PC with a good high-end sound card. Because it's so much harder to achieve great visuals rather than great sounds, it will be a while before things level out in the movie industry. But fortunately, Hollywood's doing an excellent job of lowering their own standards, while technology on the grass roots level continues to become more and more powerful. Update: NRO's Peter Suderman looks at American Film Renaissance, one attempt to level the playing field. It's a very good piece, but I'm not sure if I entirely agree with him when he writes: Hollywood rarely markets its movies as explicitly “liberal films,” and, as the pageantry of the Oscars shows, the films themselves can be almost an afterthought. No, the movie industry may consistently pull the lever for the bluest of the blue state candidates, but the color it cares for most is green.But only to a certain point. Live Blogging The Oscars
By Ed Driscoll · February 25, 2007 04:35 PM · Bobos In Paradise · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Return of the Primitive
As Allahpundit writes: Tonight’s the night Hollywood takes a break from disclaiming responsibility for any of the culture’s ills to congratulate itself for having so much influence over the culture.At 5:30 PM PST, the Libertas film blog will commence live blogging the Oscars; Hot Air has already launched their Oscars open thread, as has Tim Blair. And I can certainly sympathize with Allah who notes, "I haven’t seen a single movie on the long list of nominees so I couldn’t care less who wins". Neither have I; and as recently as five years ago, I never thought I'd be saying that. That's always the risk of progressive politics: sometimes you progress so far in your search for Heaven-on-Earth, you alienate all of those you've left behind. How bad has it become? Even Newsweek is complaining about the sucktacular level of Tinseltown's current product, but that should come as no surprise to our regular readers. (Oh, and speaking of sucktacular, here's an oldie-but-a-goodie that has to be seen to be believed. Or not.) So no live blogging here, but watch for updates from time to time, particularly if and when beclowning and becrowning occur to this prominent religious figure. Update: Anytime--say hi to Mannix for me! (Scroll to 5:47.) Will James Cameron Be John Edwards' Official Blogger?
Gee, what a shock--Tim McGirk, the Jerusalem bureau chief for Time magazine writes: Brace yourself. James Cameron, the man who brought you ‘The Titanic’ is back with another blockbuster. This time, the ship he’s sinking is Christianity.As the Anchoress wrote this week, "We must be getting close to Easter" for these types of stories to start appearing. Salman Rushdie could not be reached for comment. Update: Much more from Bryan Preston. Another Update: "So much for claiming there’s no war on Christianity. It’s been declared. War rages on". Too bad newspapers won't explore the subject. They'd actually boost sales if they awoke from their Victorian slumber and quoted some of the players. "Ugly Betty" Quips U.S. Won't Be "Free" Until Bush Gone
By Ed Driscoll · February 25, 2007 01:11 PM · Hollywood, Interrupted · Muggeridge's Law · The Return of the Primitive
Most people believe the truth. But one fourth of the population is retarded. If they wanna believe we control everything with intricate plans, why not let them? Now Who's Being Naive, Kay?
By Ed Driscoll · February 25, 2007 06:23 AM · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Future and its Enemies · The Gulag Archipelago · The Return of the Primitive
"Fidel I love you. We both have the same initials. We are both powerful men. And we both use our power for good."--Francis Ford Coppola. Actually, they both use their power to substantially increase their own personal net worths. Except Coppola makes his by putting guns in his actors' hands, not in your back. And of course, Coppola is far from the only person in Hollywood who loves Fidel. (Via Maggie's Farm.) Asleep At The Wheel
In his Sunday Chicago Sun-Times column, Mark Steyn compares the zeitgeist of 9/19/1881 to five and a half years after 9/11/2001: It's now accepted that Garfield died simply because of the amount of poking and prodding the doctors did with unsterilized instruments and grubby hands. Joseph Lister's ideas on antisepsis had become standard in Britain but not yet in the United States. Within three years of Garfield's death, Dr. William S. Hallsted opened America's first modern operating room at Bellevue: Today, if you suffered the president's wounds, you'd be home in three days. The metal detectors developed by Bell's successors are being used by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and air conditioning is a transformative technology: Look at the fastest growing region of the United States -- the so-called Sun Belt -- and imagine its growth without the cooled buildings that keep the sun at bay.To paraphrase just slightly an expatriate American saloon keeper at the start of December 1941, I bet they’ve gone back to sleep in New York. I bet they’re back to sleep all across America. But What Happens If Hal Loses It?
By Ed Driscoll · February 24, 2007 02:11 PM · The Final Frontier
"Duct-Tape, Tranquilizers Part Of NASA's Plan For Mentally Unstable Astronauts In Space". "Who Wazwaz That Masked Man?"
Yet another potentially hot story that the Victorian Gentleman won't be digging into anytime soon. Digital Maoism
Jaron Lanier writes: My Wikipedia entry identifies me (at least this week) as a film director. It is true I made one experimental short film about a decade and a half ago. The concept was awful: I tried to imagine what Maya Deren would have done with morphing. It was shown once at a film festival and was never distributed and I would be most comfortable if no one ever sees it again.At least what Lanier is going through with Wikipedia is better than the off-and-on update that Beach Boy Mike Love's Wiki page seems to be undergoing at the moment. (After writing this post, I've checked Love's Wikipedia profile a few times this week. The A-word seems to appear and disappear quite frequently.) (Via Charles Johnson, who spots further examples of what Lanier calls "Digital Maoism".) The Man Can't Bust Our Podcast!
It's Radio Free Ed! I'm turning the tables and hosting Blog Week In Review this week, interviewing Austin Bay and Adam Bellow. Tune in here. Well, The Center Is A Moving Target, I Suppose
As I wrote last month: Remember when Arnold Schwarzenegger seemed like the opposite of Gray Davis? That was a long, long time ago. As was his speech at the 2004 GOP presidential convention, in which he claimed that in 1968 he was listening to Hubert Humphrey's Great Society-style proposals shortly after arriving in the US:A recent post on the Politico.com site describes the Governator thusly:Everything about America seemed so big to me, so open, so possible. Schwarzenegger, a Republican who favors abortion rights, stem-cell research, gay rights and gun control, will give a speech at the National Press Club on Monday stressing the importance of centrism in American politics.The irony is, Arnold's positions on most issues would be to the left of so many of the '68-era Humphrey. The Genteel Victorian Matron As Newspaper Editor
Mark Steyn is spot-on, as always: If you want to know why American newspapers are dying, plough through this Boston Globe snoozefest on political blogging until you get to this paragraph:Last year, I dusted off Tom Wolfe's Victorian Gentleman analogy to describe today's newspapers, so needless to say, other than the choice of analogical gender, I concur with Steyn's bleak assessment of modern American newspapers.Meanwhile, most presidential campaigns have hired consultants to promote their candidates to bloggers. One candidate, former North Carolina Senator John Edwards, came under attack for allegedly insensitive statements that had been made by two bloggers he hired. They eventually resigned."Allegedly insensitive"? You’re referring to two foul-mouthed gals who call Christians "Godbags" and do semen gags about the Virgin Mary and sneer at stillbirths, and all you can say about it is "came under attack for allegedly insensitive statements"? That’s not the story, that’s the sound of the genteel Victorian matron discreetly draping chintz over the provocative piano legs of the story***. And for the very reasons the above story on Edwards' bloggers was diluted down to meaningless treacle, I wouldn't expect much coverage of this news item either, despite--maybe because of--its potential blockbuster implications. That Was The Future That Was
Remember this 1993 AT&T commercial narrated by Tom Selleck? Pretty amusing to watch it again today and realize that all of the gee-whiz technology in the ad is either here now already, or particularly in the case of the clunky looking PDA/tablet computer with an AM-style telescoping antenna sending (oooooh) faxes from the beach in the last shot, already obsolete: (Not sure which, if any, of these technologies were actually brought to us exclusively by AT&T itself, but still, it was a stylish look at the minor wonders of the near future.) Shifting Priorities
By Ed Driscoll · February 23, 2007 11:15 AM · Democracy In America
The proverbial picture that's worth a thousand words--and a trillion or so dollars. Transcending The Usual Roadkill Metaphors
In other news from the world of pop culture flotsam and jetsam, Kathleen Parker has an interesting take on last week's stereo trainwrecks. "Between hourly updates on the decomposing body of Anna Nicole Smith and the balding of Britney Spears, we can confidently declare that the Jerry Springerization of America is complete". (Indeed, when you add to them this element of the triptych): At the same time we might recoil from these prurient displays, we're also involuntarily mesmerized. The human wrecks of Britney and Anna Nicole transcend the usual roadkill metaphor, however, because we're participants -- not just spectators, but also instigators.As William Conrad once stentorianly exclaimed over the images of Iron Eyes Cody, the great wooden non-Indian, "People start pollution; people can stop it". We project our cultural obsession with human disaster zones such as Britney and Anna Nicole infinitely into the future, but that doesn't have to be the case. |