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"Well Done!"
As Kathy Shaidle writes, "Establishment baffled, shocked, outraged", by the winner of a Canadian history magazine's poll of the Worst Canadians in History. Here's one part-time resident of the Great White North who won't be too surprised, though. A Bridge Too Far
By Ed Driscoll · July 31, 2007 11:07 PM · The Perfect Storm
Pretty amazing color footage of "Galloping Gertie", the Narrows Tacoma Bridge disaster of 1940: It makes a dramatic companion piece to these more placid color still photos from the first half of the 20th century. And Murdoch Derangement Syndrome Goes Into Hyperdrive
By Ed Driscoll · July 31, 2007 07:03 PM · Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal
Reuters: "News Corp board OKs deal to buy Dow Jones: source": News Corp's (NWSa.N) board of directors has approved a deal to buy Dow Jones & Co Inc (DJ.N) for $5 billion, a source familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.Or as the Journal itself puts it: A century of Bancroft-family ownership at Dow Jones & Co. is over.Maybe that explains why this synergistic partnership is being formed concurrently in the lefthand side of the news world. Update: And away we go! Though many journalists impose their views regularly in biased political coverage, and last year the New York Times publisher made clear his left-wing world view, on Tuesday night the broadcast networks framed Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of the Wall Street Journal around what agenda the “controversial” Murdoch will “impose.” That matches the “fear” expressed in online journalism forums and media magazines about Murdoch's “conservative” agenda. Leading into pro and con soundbites, CBS's Kelly Wallace described Murdoch as “a conservative who put his imprint on the New York Post and brought topless women to the Sun in London. His critics say he may not impose tabloid on the Journal, but will impose his point of view.”No word yet though on whether or not Maria Bartiromo will be the newspaper's first Page Three girl (in traditional Journal woodcut illustration style, of course). More: The Journal itself weighs in, via its editorial page: Editorial independence enhances the prospects for business success. The more credible a publication is, especially one that specializes in financial and economic reporting, the more readers and advertisers it is likely to have. We like to think our readers buy the Journal because of the credibility built over a century, and we believe this is the heart of the "value proposition" that Mr. Murdoch is willing to pay $5 billion to purchase. No sane businessman pays a premium of 67% over the market price for an asset he intends to ruin. Oprah Channels Michael Corleone
By Ed Driscoll · July 31, 2007 05:51 PM · Oh, That Liberal Media!
In early 2006, we linked to Daniel Henninger's piece on James Frey: Oprah Winfrey has thrown her support behind memoirist James Frey, whose Number One bestseller, "A Million Little Pieces"--a vivid recollection of his drug and alcohol addictions, crimes against humanity and recovery--turns out on a sliding scale to run from false to faulty. Mr. Frey's literally incredible life was exposed recently by a Web site, the Smoking Gun. Respondeth Oprah, and legions of Mr. Frey's readers: Who cares?Eventually, Oprah very publicly tossed Frey overboard on her show, which Nan Talese, his publisher at Doubleday, describes here, and in a clip that's currently being highlighted by Matt Drudge: "And at the end of it she pulled James aside and said, 'I know it was rough, but it's just business.'" If It Bleeds, It Leads
Jeff Jarvis reminds television news departments that car chases are not news: Let’s hope that one result of the crash of two news helicopters chasing the cops chasing a bad guy is that local TV — and cable — news give up their addiction to this nonstory. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.I grew up watching WPVI, Philadelphia's ABC affiliate; their daily Action News broadcasts were amongst the first of the local news shows to adopt the policy of "If It Bleeds, It Leeds", and they've spent the last 35 years or so opening their nightly news broadcasts with lurid murders, muggings and car chases. (They even had their own helicopter crash last year.) If you type "WPVI" into YouTube's search engine and poke around, you'll see that a popular past-time amongst the more tech savvy WPVI fans in Philly is parodying the Action News opening theme by mashing it up and splicing in even more grotesque shots of car crashes, hit and runs, and other video horrors. At least it's more honest than the real Action News intro, which shows Philadelphia at its finest, in contrast to the daily debauchery actually reported in the body of the show. There's another reason why television news should abandon their helicopters: if TV news anchors are going to preach the evils of, as Tim Blair calls it, glowball worming, shouldn't they begin to phase out their own gas-guzzling--not to mention potentially lethal--helicopters? If jetting out to a vacation amongst hundreds of fellow tourists in a single plane equals "binge flying" then what's the purpose of TV news 'copters, other than to generate ratings? As Jarvis writes above, it's the opposite of news. Update: Further thoughts from Michael Mannske, who compares the way the elite media covers the outside world, versus how it circles the wagons when a story involves one of their own. Shaped Like An Ostrich, No Doubt
By Ed Driscoll · July 31, 2007 12:59 PM · War And Anti-War
Dean Barnett introduces "the Nancy Boyda Award". Besides Boyda herself, here are two prime candidates for her namesake trophy. Update: More from Michael Barone. Che Guevara: From Murderous Thug To T-Shirt Icon
By Ed Driscoll · July 31, 2007 12:13 PM · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Gulag Archipelago · The Return of the Primitive
More from the memory hole, as Michael Chapman of CNSNews.com interviews Humberto Fontova, author of Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him: Cybercast News Service: What do you consider to be some of Guevara's greatest crimes or offenses that people today should know about?And Hollywood can't stop making movies idolizing him, which helps to place this recent essay by Jonah Goldberg into context. "The Nazi Of New Caanan"
James Panero of The New Criterion and Benjamin Ivry of Commentary use the occasion of Philip Johnson's Glass House in New Cannan being opened to the public to remind us what a piece of work the late architect was. Amongst his links, Panero includes Hilton Kramer's essay on Johnson from the September 1995 Commentary. Here's but a sample: I was reminded of a conversation I had with Marga Barr in the last year of her life. I was then working with her on the preparation of a "Chronicle" of Alfred Barr's career [as art historian and the first director of the Museum of Modern Art] for publication in the New Criterion. (It was published under the title, "Our Campaigns," in a special issue of the magazine in the summer of 1987.)If you're unfamiliar with the endless twists and turns contained within the background of the man who brought modern architecture to America, definitely read the whole thing. Anne Applebaum's piece on Johnson's decade spent flirting with National Socialism--even as it was kicking his favorite achitects out the door--is also well worth your time. Update: Video added; the articles in the above hyperlinks make for quite an interesting counterpoint. I'm From The Government, And I'm Here To Help
By Ed Driscoll · July 31, 2007 11:31 AM · Democracy In America
As Ronald Reagan liked to say, those are the scariest words in the English language. Thomas Sowell writes that Bob Novak would agree: Parents who want to counteract politically correct commencement speeches — often after four years of politically correct indoctrination on campus — might include among the things they give their graduate a new book titled The Prince of Darkness by columnist Robert Novak.As Sowell writes, you can get "a lot of enlightenment from a prince of darkness." Stroll On
By Ed Driscoll · July 31, 2007 10:41 AM · Hollywood, Interrupted
John Podhoretz writes: Only hours after Ingmar Bergman's death was announced, his fellow existentialist filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni died. Kind of like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson dying on the same day, if you think bummer movie directors are analogous to the Founding Fathers.Antonioni's Blowup was one of the touchstone films of the 1960s zeitgeist (Andrew Sarris dubbed it 1966's "movie of the year"). Its proto-postmodern ending paved the way for the "what is reality" movies of the late 1990s (The Matrix, Dark City, and eXistenZ). The film boosted the career of the Yardbirds during the brief period when both Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck were in the band, and made David Hemmings, cast as the film's photographer protagonist, a sixties superstar--not to mention inspiring Austin Powers' civilian identity. Academy Exposed
By Ed Driscoll · July 31, 2007 10:29 AM · God And Man At Dupont University · Radical Chic · The Return of the Primitive
In the New York Post, David French writes: For more than 25 years, conservative writers have been telling anyone who would listen that our higher education system was broken - that indoctrination was trumping education and our kids were throwing away their tuition dollars propping up vicious relics of the '60s and supporting universities that were increasingly repressive. These words, coming from such luminaries as Allan Bloom, Dinesh D'Souza, Alan Charles Kors and David Horowitz, persuaded much of the conservative chattering class that something was wrong. But mainstream Americans seemed unconcerned, with their own (often fond) college memories drowning out even the most eloquent cries for reform.French writes that Churchill was "the tipping point": That will be Ward Churchill's lasting legacy. He was the tipping point. Now, it's not just leading conservatives who view the academy as an out-of-control, disconnected bastion of petulant entitlement. In a recent Zogby poll, 58 percent of Americans reported that they now believe that political bias of professors is a "serious problem." Even more, 65 percent, viewed non-tenured professors as more motivated to do a good job in the classroom.Related thoughts from Stanley Kurtz. Wonkette's Weekly Wipe Out
In a post titled, "An Ideology of Hate", John Hinderaker writes: Chief Justice John Roberts, in my view the most extravagantly qualified Supreme Court nominee in my lifetime, had a "benign idiopathic seizure" today. He's fine, but might be placed on anti-seizure medication since he also had one in 1993. This is how the prominent liberal web site Wonkette covered the news:And that's hot on the heels of this laugh-riot Wonkette moment from last week.Chief Justice John Roberts has died in his summer home in Maine. No, not really, but we know you have your fingers crossed. “Ron Paul Brings Back A Wacky Post-9/11 Bill”
By Ed Driscoll · July 30, 2007 05:41 PM · Muggeridge's Law · The Making of the President · War And Anti-War
Where have you gone Boba Fett? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you! Bias At Publishers Weekly?
David Harsanyi of the Denver Post, who has a new book due out this fall called Nanny State, writes: Nanny State recently received a short review from the trade publication Publishers Weekly. It was unfriendly. I came away with the feeling that the reviewer hadn’t actually read the book. (I won’t bore you with the specifics.) But then again, who knows, perhaps the review was deserved.Read on. (Via Dr. Helen.) Like Lileks On Acid
By Ed Driscoll · July 30, 2007 03:45 PM · The Substance of Style
"Old Creepy Ads" definitely lives up to its name. And speaking of Lileks on acid, it sounds like James could use some antacid, after his recent trip to Alaska: On a cruise ship you’re either heading towards cake or coming from cake. I did not know it was possible to eat so much. There were meals between meals. There were meals in the middle of meals. You could pass out in the main cafeteria with a room-service menu on your chest and they’d wake you at daybreak, pry open your mouth and pour a rich, nutritious slurry of eggs and French toast down your throat. By the end of the cruise you had to grease the doorframe of your cabin to get out. Every so often you tottered to the window to see whales, and you usually did, although most of the time it was your reflection.More reflections at Bleat HQ. Spreading "The Bacteria Of Paranoid Stupidity"
By Ed Driscoll · July 30, 2007 03:03 PM · Bobos In Paradise · The Making of the President · The Return of the Primitive · War And Anti-War
Building on our recent Tech Central Station article, several concurrent posts here (such as this one) have attempted to document the birth of the paranoid style (to coin a phrase) on the left. Dr. Sanity takes things into the present day, such as this recent quote uttered by one of the leading candidates in the presidential race. Meanwhile, as Barbara Boxer finds Gaia in the mists of Greenland, Mark Steyn reprints a 2002 article that asks when will this trend will conclude? Update: Related thoughts on "John Edwards' Paranoid Solipsism" from Betsy Newmark. And Dean Barnett's thoughts on the American left and Iraq dovetail remarkably well with the above posts. And Speaking Of Shopworn Media Narratives...
By Ed Driscoll · July 30, 2007 01:23 PM · Bobos In Paradise · God And Man At Dupont University · Muggeridge's Law · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Substance of Style
This just in from the New York Times: Nerd culture discovered; Asians, other minorities hardest hit. Update: The International Herald-Tribune, a spin-off of the New York Times, undertakes their own Noam Chomsky-style research on nerd linguistical patterns. More: Jerome J. Schmitt adds: "In sum, I believe that this article and study reveal a lot more about the racial bigotry and monomania of the NY Times and swaths of the liberal arts and social sciences than it does about nerds." San Francisco 49ers' Bill Walsh Died
By Ed Driscoll · July 30, 2007 12:49 PM · Run To Daylight
The cliché is that famous deaths come in threes, but usually not this quickly: Bill Walsh, the groundbreaking football coach who won three Super Bowls and perfected the ingenious schemes that became known as the West Coast offense during a Hall of Fame career with the San Francisco 49ers, has died. He was 75.Michael Lewis' recent book, The Blind Side documents the revolution in professional football that occurred in the 1980s, as Walsh's West Coast Offense dramatically changed the passing game, and the dominance of Lawrence Taylor had a similar impact on defense. While "L.T." was blessed with once-in-a-lifetime athletic brilliance, Walsh's strategies systematized the NFL offensive game, which is why so many of his protégés have had terrific careers themselves. Pop Quiz
By Ed Driscoll · July 30, 2007 12:37 PM · The Future and its Enemies · The Return of the Primitive · War And Anti-War
Michelle Malkin has "A pictorial pop quiz for you. Which of these is a hate crime in America?" Meanwhile, Christopher Hitchens and Ace of Spades have some very much related thoughts. "The Details Change, The Narrative Remains"
"Unfortunately, disagreeing with a narrative often seems like a waste of time, because disagreeing with it doesn't make it go away." Even if the narrative is wrong, and the facts keep changing, to paraphrase Evan Thomas. Ingmar Bergman Dies
By Ed Driscoll · July 30, 2007 11:35 AM · Hollywood, Interrupted
"The only genius in cinema today", Bergman's American champion Woody Allen famously said in 1979's Manhattan, was 89. (Via Maggie's Farm.) Update: Jason Apuzzo of Libertas writes, "The chess game is over now. Bergman won it a long time ago." Broadcaster Tom Snyder Dies at 71
Back in the 1970s, when television meant three network channels, three or four UHF channels, and PBS, I spent more than few late night hours watching Tom Synder, who sadly died yesterday of complications associated with leukemia, according to AP. Here's Tom in better days, interviewing a struggling, up and coming rock band, still searching for that elusive big break after years on the cabaret circuit: And here's the late Cathy Seipp's reminiscing about meeting Tom when he was still searching for his own elusive big break--but already a legend, if only his own mind. Back, And To The Left
Late in James Piereson's Camelot and the Cultural Revolution, Piereson writes: The activities of the radical right, which were prominent in the years leading up to [Kennedy’s] assassination, were soon pushed into the background by the antics of the radical left. By the late 1960s, the far right’s fascination with plots concerning fluoridated water, federal aid to education, or even communism seemed quaint in comparison with the fevered doctrines put forth by the denizens of the New Left.Charles Johnson tracks the arc of a modern day conspiracy as it's being born. Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting
By Ed Driscoll · July 29, 2007 02:35 PM · Bobos In Paradise · The Future and its Enemies · The Return of the Primitive
"'Hoodie hugging' and the decline of British youth culture". Related: In America, "cities sue gangs in bid to stop violence". The Anti-Steyn
Paging Mark Steyn: your next demographics-related article awaits; Amy Alkon writes that there's a new book out in--shocker!--France, by an economist/psychoanalyst and, as Amy notes, mother named Corinne Maier that's titled, No Kid: 40 Reasons Not to Have Children. Something tells me that this book will not be widely disseminated in France's burgeoning immigrant community. A Uniter, Not A Divider!
"Michael Vick has done something no politician in Washington ever accomplished", Brent Bozell writes. "The star quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons has united nearly everyone against him, indicted for being at the center of a gruesome spectacle of dog-fighting and gambling." To be fair though, I'm not sure if Yahoo's Dan Wetzel would entirely agree with Bozell on the unanimity of Vick's detractors, though. "A New Kind of 'Chickenhawk'"
By Ed Driscoll · July 28, 2007 06:56 PM · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The New, New Journalism · War And Anti-War
![]() Baldilocks notes that Columbia Journalism Review's Paul McLeary, in his attempt to both defend the New Republic's Scott Thomas Beauchamp and denigrate his attackers (which are now legion) apparently doesn't realize that the word "milblogger" is a portmanteau that combines of the words blogger and military: Apparently McLeary's Ivy-honed intellect didn't help him to deduce that milbloggers=military bloggers. Nor did that "superior intellect" lead him to discover that all military officers have an undergraduate degree, at minimum, and that half of enlisted men/women have obtained the same.Sounds reminiscent of the Boston Globe's Alex Beam being taken in by libertarian Bjorn Staerk 's 2002 April Fools' Day Stalin parody. Too bad that McLeary didn't stop for a moment to read Baldilock's bio page. Update: Here's a somewhat related item regarding a veteran journalist who's definitely on the other side of the aisle from the CJR: "So That's Why Novak Hates Blogs!" More: Dan Riehl compares CJR's coverage of Beauchamp with their thoughts on Scooter Libby: It seems, according to CJR, what Beauchamp himself published on the web should be left alone and kept private. In the Libby case, third party letters are fair game, mock away, it would seem. Given the particulars, this goes beyond simple hypocrisy, or a double standard. It's just plain biased.Huh--go figure. "Democrats As Victims?"
In his new book, conservative author James Piereson speculated that the ideology of President Kennedy's assassin caused a form of cognitive dissonance amongst many members of the left that led to an increasing reliance on conspiracy theories. Liberal reporter Jake Tapper of ABC provides bipartisan confirmation of a sort, as he notes that this trend is, if anything, merely accelerating. Objectivity? That's So 1996, Dude!
By Ed Driscoll · July 27, 2007 04:45 PM · Bobos In Paradise · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Return of the Primitive
The Movie & TV News section of the Internet Movie Database notes "That's Infotainment!" at ABC ABC News executive producer David Sloan has indicated that the network will be continuing to move toward the convergence of news and entertainment -- or "infotainment" as the controversial move has been branded. "My definition [of news] is limitless," he told Chicago Tribune TV writer Phil Rosenthal as he plugged next Monday's news special, Six Degrees of Martina McBride in which a group of six singers will try to connect with the country star in six steps or less. "It's a hybrid," Sloan said. "Look, ABC News is looking for new ways of interacting and engaging with the viewer. This represents that effort." A different sort of "hybrid," he noted, will be evident in the forthcoming six-week run of iCaught, using amateur videos posted on the Internet.Since truth is relative according to liberal postmodernism, "Storytelling" really seems to be the flavor of week. “I've Seen Things You People Wouldn't Believe…”
By Ed Driscoll · July 27, 2007 04:35 PM · Hollywood, Interrupted
Finally: Just in time for Christmas, 2019 arrives. Money To Burn
"Gay artist burns $60,000 Koran to protest homophobic hate". I'm withholding judgment until I read Newsweek's take. Update: James Taranto writes: There's an obvious point to be made here about the incoherence of political correctness, which demands both affirmation of homosexuality and indulgence of Islamic fundamentalism, which anathematizes homosexuality.Indeed.TM MSM Sets Baseline Quality Standard For Video Blogging
By Ed Driscoll · July 27, 2007 12:14 PM · Hollywood, Interrupted · Muggeridge's Law · Oh, That Liberal Media!
Back in late 2001, Glenn Reynolds wrote: Any time you start to doubt yourself, and wonder if you're fit for the big leagues of American thought and opinion, you can just read The Times and be thankful that the standards of the big leagues aren't so high.Flashforward six years; technologies change but the song remains the same: the baseline quality control standards for acceptable video punditry has now been set by NBC...err ABC... But Which Candidate Is Kay Adams?
By Ed Driscoll · July 27, 2007 11:45 AM · The Making of the President
The Great Relearning
As Tom Wolfe famously wrote in Hooking Up: In 1968, in San Francisco, I came across a curious footnote to the hippie movement. At the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, there were doctors treating diseases no living doctor had ever encountered before, diseases that had disappeared so long ago they had never even picked up Latin names, diseases such as the mange, the grunge, the itch, the twitch, the thrush, the scroff, the rot. And how was it that they now returned? It had to do with the fact that thousands of young men and women had migrated to San Francisco to live communally in what I think history will record as one of the most extraordinary religious fevers of all time.Of course, some areas are more zero than others, and thus will need just a bit more of a nudge to start the process. Cinnamon Stillwell dares San Francisco Chronicle readers to boldly go where no hippie has gone before: "Rethinking the Summer of Love". Autumn In Springfield
By Ed Driscoll · July 27, 2007 10:22 AM · The Long Tail
Having not yet seen the new Simpsons movie, Jonah Goldberg has some thoughts on the TV series in general. Here's a sample: I’ve been meaning to write a long essay on the death of “youth culture.” The Simpsons would be a good example of what I’m getting at. I started watching the show when I was in college. It was denounced as an example of cultural rot amongst the young — particularly when Bart, not Homer, was the star of the show. While I’m sure that its viewership skews youngish, it’s not really a show for young people anymore. In much the same way that South Park’s most public fans seem to be middle-aged and Family Guy is aimed at an even older demographic. The Simpsons, on the air for nearly two decades, demonstrates how the once hard-and-fast line between the young and edgy and the conventional and staid has been if not completely erased than largely redrawn.That's actually a topic that Jonah touched upon a few years ago, to very good effect. He noted back in 2003 that The Simpsons and numerous other TV shows which date back to the 1990s are still on the air: But the networks can't let go, because every time they cancel an established show, the viewers, particularly the younger ones, vanish. No one thinks it's worth investing in a new show. The rise in reality shows has been cited by many as a sign of creative exhaustion on the part of Hollywood. But I think a better sign is the absolute explosion in sexuality. I think by now most readers understand I'm not particularly Comstockish about sex, so I hope this won't be taken simply as the lament of a typical culture vulture. But the reliance on sex jokes on TV is really astounding. Because there's still an ever-thinning veneer of taboo to sex, jokes about it still have a chance at working. But the desperation of writers comes across in how deep, i.e. low, they have to dig. It reminds me of a Simpsons episode that takes place in the near future; Marge says to Homer, "Fox turned into a hardcore porn channel so gradually I didn't even notice."That's even more true in music, as Live Earth, the celebrity encomium to America's former vice president demonstrated: Andy Williams didn’t play at Woodstock. He was 41 that summer.These trends demonstrate the enormous transition our media is undergoing. Relics of the days of Mass Media linger on, simply because of the name recognition they built up prior to the Internet's fracturing of the overculture. And examples such as the Simpsons movie and even older chestnuts being endlessly recycled will be occurring for quite sometime, as dinosaur media hope to stave off extinction for another day. Dog Day Afternoon
By Ed Driscoll · July 27, 2007 10:09 AM · Run To Daylight · The Return of the Primitive · War And Anti-War
In "Racial Divide", Dan Wetzel gives us a snapshot of Michael Vick's day from hell: Read More » Tarnished Industry Spikes Column Recommending Improvements
By Ed Driscoll · July 25, 2007 03:16 PM · Oh, That Liberal Media!
Imagine the outrage if this were RJ Reynolds or General Motors getting a column killed on the state of its industry, instead of the L.A. Times: The bug at the bottom of the Calendar front in today's Los Angeles Times says columnist Patrick Goldstein is on assignment. Not true. His The Big Picture column for Tuesday was killed, apparently by associate editor John Montorio. Goldstein's offense was to propose that the Times follow the lead of the U.K.'s Mail on Sunday (which distributed 2.9 million free Prince CDs) and partner with older artists to give away music in the paper. He argued it could help make the Times website a destination for fans and reduce the need for front page ads (which the editor of the Times himself calls a huge mistake.) Seems reasonable enough for a column, and Goldstein was on the Spring Street Committee that was tasked with coming up with innovative ideas:Read the rest--given the sorry states of both the recording and newspaper industries, Prince's synergistic marketing strategy is certainly worth experimenting with. And if the L.A. Times thinks they they can keep their remaining readers snowed into not believing that their industry is in trouble, that speaks volumes about what their management thinks of their subscribers.It’s time we embraced change instead of always worrying if some brash new idea — like giving away music — would tarnish our sober minded image.Still, the piece was spiked on high after sailing through the desk. The banned column fell into our hands and runs in full after the jump: But then, that shouldn't be entirely surprising at this point. Weird Tales From The Embalmed Art World
By Ed Driscoll · July 25, 2007 01:36 PM · Bobos In Paradise · The Return of the Primitive · The Substance of Style
James Panero's post on the New Criterion's Armavirumque blog brings new meaning to the phrase "Culture of Death": The other day I remarked on hedge-fund manager Steven A. Cohen's loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art--"The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living," Damien Hirst's work featuring a dead shark floating in a formaldehyde vitrine. Rumor has it that MoMA and the Met both went fishing for the shark. Now the Met will have the honor of bestowing unearned respectability on Cohen's costly purchase ($8 million from Charles Saatchi in 2004).In other words, David Lynch meets Thomas Kinkaid. Culture Of Corruption
James Taranto asks us to imagine "if top aides to President Bush ordered the FBI to produce damaging but false information about Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader. Now that would be a scandal: And that is what is happening in New York state, as the New York Post reports:On the other hand, the fawning pre-election coverage of Spitzer and stories such as this don't exactly build confidence in the typical big city MSM newspaper as an "independent" press.Gov. [Eliot] Spitzer suspended a top aide and reassigned another yesterday after Attorney General Andrew Cuomo released a bombshell report concluding they conspired with the State Police to damage Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno by cooking up a plot claiming he misused state aircraft.For what it's worth, Spitzer is a Democrat and Bruno is a Republican. The New York Times, in covering the report, described Spitzer as " a former prosecutor who came into office less than seven months ago with a reputation for integrity and who promised to bring a new ethical climate to Albany." Update: John Podhoretz writes that there's no middle ground: "In the past two days, the governor of New York either a) saved his political career or b) committed political suicide." At the risk of sounding terminally cynical, my money's on the former. Hollywood: Pictures And A Thousand Words
By Ed Driscoll · July 24, 2007 08:53 PM · Bobos In Paradise · God And Man At Dupont University · Hollywood, Interrupted
Power Line quotes a a long email from William Katz, whom they describe as having had "a long and varied career, as an assistant to a U.S. senator; an officer in the CIA; an assistant to Herman Kahn, the nuclear war theorist; an editor at The New York Times Magazine; and a talent coordinator at The Tonight Show". At the Power Line site, he has a marvelous fantasy of Alfred Hitchcock pitching Rear Window to what he calls a modern "fetus in a three-piece suit" studio executive: Now, clearly, that meeting never took place, but it's a slightly overdrawn version of meetings that do take place every day in today's Hollywood. They reflect the problem that I call TMCG –- too many college graduates, of whom, I freely admit, I'm one. The industry dare not speak its name, and it's rarely, if ever, discussed in these terms. But everyone knows the problem: To a large degree, Hollywood, in its executive ranks, has replaced talent with education, and what you get is the scene described above, where all the life, the emotion, the entertainment value of a story is ripped out, replaced with analysis and more analysis.And here's what studio executives are selling them! To be fair though, there's at least one contrarian at Cornell--his take on AMC's new Mad Men mini-series sounds remarkably like my own. |