As I briefly wrote here five years ago, I've long thought the airport in Oakland was amongst the most antiquated looking of the airports on the west coast I've flown through. Its main terminal seems not to have been updated since about 1973.
Which makes sense: neither has the mindset of the people who work in it.
The lamps already went off in Sydney earlier this year for an hour; San Francisco and Los Angeles will be joining them soon. Recently, Variey described this L.A. incident, which foreshadows the event rather nicely:
Some 300 people gathered on Tuesday night at the Brentwood home of CAA's David O'Connor and his wife, Lona Williams, anxious to see the guest of honor, Bill Clinton.At least this hour of darkness will be predictible, on oh, so many levels.Then the power went out --- in the entire neighborhood --- putting this Hillary Clinton fund-raiser into near total darkness.
The only light came from candles and some battery operated lanterns, which were shined on Clinton when he spoke in the backyard pool area. That helped, but it was still hard to see guests. And with no electricity, and therefore no microphone, it wasn't always easy to hear, according to a guest.
"There are a lot of great things about the modern world," Clinton said, according to the guest. "Predictable electricity may not be one of them."
Jack D. Lail uses my "Atlas Mugged" article as a jumping off point to explore the future of blogs actually run by newpapers, including a great quote from this Gawker article:
Nearly all newspaper websites mistakenly segregate their blogs off with the other blogs. They're organizing by form, not by content. (The Times does a better job, both promoting blog posts on the front page and integrating each blog's content into existing sections.)Indeed. Here's how to do it right, which, needless to say, has everything to do with the blog's editor than the paper itself, though it would require some work to translate some of the blog's elements to one that was devoted to more serious topics, such as a blog covering the police or fire beat, which would seem a natural for the medium.Readers just don't come to a newspaper's website looking for a messy passel of blogs. They come looking for sports, or fashion, no matter what "form" it's in. Old newspaper editors may think blogs are some crazy different variety of publication; readers don't.
9/11 has made us stupid. I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day. But...And thus, the Copperhead Conjunction rears its ugly head yet again.
Update: I'm absolutely certain that Andrew Rosenthal couldn't tell you what Thomas Friedman's politics are, either.
As always, Ace explains all:
Breaking a big story takes work. And a lot of luck. And even with both you might never manage it.And don't worry--as long as he knows your politics are somewhere on the left, your editor will never ask you what your ideology is.There's an easier rout, of course. If you can't be good at your job, at least you can become a superstar, at least among those who count, by being an unabashed partisan.
Profiling Bernie Goldberg In 2003, I wrote:
Another strange thing has started happening as well -- in the past, media elites denounced any claims of a liberal bias in the news with a shrug and a "who, us? We're not liberals. We're not leftwing. We're objective and neutral. No biases here!" More and more, as we'll shortly see, the media are going on the record (Brock, Gore and Franken, notwithstanding) that it leans pretty heavily towards the left.Four years later, we're witnessing the ongoing fallout of that change from in attitude that's a hangover from the early days of the 20th century.
To witness how dramatically a culture and its elite media can change in 40 years, and how a grown-up culture can vanish over those decades, compare how Newsweek described the Beatles to its readers when they first arrived on our shores with how the magazine reports on a topic that would have been inconceivable to the middlebrow overculture of 1964. First, Newsweek’s February 24, 1964 cover story on the Fab Four:
Visually they are a nightmare: tight, dandified, Edwardian-Beatnik suits and great pudding bowls of hair. Musically they are a near-disaster: guitars and drums slamming out a merciless beat that does away with secondary rhythms, harmony, and melody. Their lyrics (punctuated by nutty shouts of "yeah, yeah, yeah!") are a catastrophe, a preposterous farrago of Valentine-card romantic sentiments."As Bryce Zabel of the Instant History blog, which collects classic Time and Newsweek cover stories and highlights their accompanying stories correctly notes:
It's hard to believe, isn't it? The Beatles generation became so mainstream that nobody can imagine that people felt that way, but Newsweek wasn't just being stuffy, they were representing the overwhelming feelings of the vast majority of people over, say, twenty.And at least forty years ago, Newsweek’s writers had the courage to stakeout an opinion and stick with it. Flash-forward 43 years. Here’s how Newsweek’s Sarah Kliff covers the loony the Vegan dating scene:
It might sound counterintuitive; after all, neither group eats meat. But for many vegans—who also eschew animal products like the dairy and eggs eaten by vegetarians—love may not be enough to conquer ideology. “I’m in a relationship with a murderer,” bemoans Carl, one of many vegans who wrote in to the “Vegan Freak” podcast for romantic advice. Carl, who didn’t give his last name, says his girlfriend is a regular vegetarian, and their differences are becoming a major source of tension. In the vegan world that’s not an uncommon dilemma. Bob Torres, one of the show’s hosts, says that dating and relationships are two of the most popular topics on the podcast, which deals with all things vegan.Check out the photo of Torres that accompanies the article—it’s a posed shot in which he clearly chose to be photographed wearing a black t-shirt that highlights both of his arms festooned with tattoos. He may believe that meat is “murder” (a stolen concept if there ever was one, unless Fido and Elsie the cow are actually reading your copy of Newsweek), but he’s certainly not above mutilating his own body.
And note that with the exception of the quotation marks around “murder” only in the article’s subhead, which very likely was written not by the author, but her editor, Newsweek comments not a jot of opinion of their own on any of these topics in the actual body of the article, unlike its circa-1964 writers. Presumably they're either in agreement on their interviewees, or they risk offending the delicate sensibilities of their remaining readers. But then, as I noted recently, Newsweek asked Diana West, "Are Adults Acting More Like Teenagers?"on their Website, as if there's some doubt about this trend.
As for my opinion on all this? I’d be happy to share it with you next time we meet here. In the meantime, one video is worth thousands of Newsweek’s increasingly addle-minded words.
In 2002, Charles Krauthammer famously wrote, "To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil." You'll find no better follow up to the second half of Krauthammer's dictum than to read Harry Stein's review in City Journal of Bob Shrum's new autobiography:
No Excuses, the memoir by veteran Democratic operative Bob Shrum, is one of the best books about politics ever written—by the worst person in the business today. In the course of its nearly 500 pages, Shrum is brutally, entertainingly honest about the behind-the-scenes behavior of many of the most important political figures of the past two generations, at least on the Democratic side. He also reveals himself as manipulative and petty, egomaniacal and deeply insecure.For numerous additional examples of politics as a religious crusade, read the whole thing.But what is ultimately most alarming about Shrum is that, as this era’s leading Democratic guru, he has had such influence over all these years in shaping—make that distorting—the public discourse. For if there was any doubt, his own unapologetic testimony makes manifest his contempt and loathing for those who fail to embrace his own paleo-liberal worldview. This is a man who credits his ideological foes with not the slightest decency, but rather sees them as an evil to be purged from public life. And in service of this noble mission, no behavior seems beyond the pale.
John Hinderaker asks if Hillary is the second coming of George McGovern, and explores Democrats and demogrants.
AP sports headline: “Jason, John Garrett coach against brother Judd when Cowboys meet Rams”
Wow, this could be one interesting game! To be fair, the Brothers Judd run a helluva Website, but I'm not sure how we'll they'll stand up against the Cowboys' high-powered offense on Sunday...
National Review Online is all Treked-up this weekend to boldly go where no conservative Website has gone before. K'plah!
For the debut episode of PJM Political yesterday on XM, I spoke with Michael Barone about the various initiatives floating around to change the Electoral College in time for the 2008 election. Barone was pretty dubious about most of these efforts becoming law by next year. Bill Bradley, PJM Political's host, writes that the effort by the California GOP, one of the potentially biggest reforms, given CA's 55 electoral votes is quickly losing steam.
If you missed the links from Glenn Reynolds and James Lileks, the podcast version of PJM Political on XM satellite radio is now available online at Pajamas HQ.
Sid Blumenthal believes that RatherGate was a Karl Rove operation.
The amazing thing is that he's more right than even he can imagine!
The New York Daily News:
One ardent Obama supporter (who declined to give his name because he works in politics) says he'll attend both the rally and the after-party, and he doesn't expect to be going home alone.Fair enough. Of course, the flipside, as John Derbyshire noted a while back, is that "Water will find its level, physical states return to equilibrium sooner or later, and all lefty women, whatever attributes they may have started out with, revert to type at last."He's confident for a reason.
"Let's face it: Leftie girls are easy," he says.
Why yes, that is me on XM Satellite Radio, interviewing Michael Barone and Jonah Goldberg, on Pajamas' new hour-long show, PJM Political, in-between producing the show. It's been an absolutely insane month assembling all of the elements of the show but needless to say, I hope you'll tune-in each week, on XM's channel #130, the POTUS '08 network. This week, we feature:
Update: The XM show and yours truly is mentioned briefly at about 5:50 into the above interview with Roger and Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters and Blog Talk Radio, which will be one of the sources of content for the XM show.
The New York Post notes:
In his most detailed comments on the Iraq war, Mayor Bloomberg last night suggested the United States was in the same difficult position as the British in the Revolutionary War - facing a determined band of insurgents.Which dovetails absolutely perfectly with comments that Michael Moore and NBC's Brian Williams have previously made.Bloomberg said the comparison occurred to him when he visited his mother recently and was driving through Lexington, Mass., where a scrubby group of farmers rose up against a well-trained militia more than 200 years ago.
"We're the British," the mayor said during an interview with Tom Brokaw at Cooper Union, part of a series featuring potential presidential contenders hosted by former Gov. Mario Cuomo.
After reading all that, I need to hit the hookah bar.
Thank you for smoking, Matt Lewis writes:
But what about the growing Hookah Parlor Gap?
I didn't watch the Dem debate last night. But, as Marc Ambinder reports, every candidate except Hillary and Obama said they would favor a national ban on smoking ...
Hey, if Reuters' Adnan Hajj can rework the Beirut cityscape for a more dramatic photo, why can't a Reuters reporter insert himself into his own story? Besides, didn't Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe do that same sort of stuff all the time in 1960s Esquire articles? Of course, they were writing features, not hard news, but, hey, why quibble when you work for the one-time "Rolls-Royce of news agencies".
This line by veteran CIA man Mark Lowenthal sounds like something that M*A*S*H's favorite bumbling spy would utter:
Last night, Hugh had longtime CIA employee and George Tenet advisor Mark Lowenthal on as a guest. At the end of the interview, Lowenthal provided an unintentionally hilarious (albeit chilling) summation of the CIA’s pathos. While discussing Iran’s path to nuclear weapons, Lowenthal posited that the Mullahs remain seven years from “mission accomplished”. Hugh asked if we could afford to take the chance that the CIA’s “guess” on this matter was correct. Lowenthal bristled, reminding Hugh that at “the CIA we don’t guess. We estimate.”As Dean Barnett asks, "Does the 'I' Really Stand for Intelligence?"I feel so much better! Because there’s such an enormous difference between guessing and estimating. And, let’s face it, the CIA’s track record on recent estimations is rock solid. Oh sure, they severely underestimated Saddam’s proximity to nuclear weaponry in the early 1990’s. And the Agency over-estimated Iraq’s WMD capabilities in the run-up to the Iraq War. And regarding Al Qaeda’s plans and abilities, the Agency was effectively clueless. But I’m sure the Agency has made some estimates in the past few decades that haven’t completely stunk.
Lowenthal’s insistence on highlighting the meaningless distinction between “guessing” and “estimating” is revealing. The CIA actually believes its own bull-hockey. Even though they’ve collectively blown every big one for the past 15 years, they still believe they have insight that no one else has.
Greg Gutfeld's not afraid to fight for his woman:
So in today's New York Times, a paper I enjoy reading while having my problem areas tweezed and sculpted into a topiary, I was shocked to find that Maureen Dowd had mentioned me in her column about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. She took issue with me calling him a foul-smelling fruitbat - a description I know is factual, since I have confirmation from insiders that he smells, and is a fruitbat. She called my reaction, "small-minded," and "heavy-handed," which in my mind means I have both a tiny brain, and big hands. Hey Maureen... you know what they say about men with tiny brains and big hands.If only we could get Greg to work his magic charm on Christiane Amanpour as well.She then uses President Reagan as a shining example of how to deal with our adversaries - an odd thing considering Dowd and her paper always saw Reagan as a big joke. She fails to mention that Reagan managed to scare the pants off the Commies, because they knew he meant business.
How I hate that Dowd and I have gotten off on the wrong foot. I dreamt of the day that she would finally notice me. But instead of calling me up to go hot-tubbing with Frank Rich, she chastizes me for making fun of an Iranian madman. Maureen, what does he have that I don't? Is it the hair? The Jacket? The desired destruction of the Jews? It's his degree in traffic management, isn't it?
I can change Maureen. Don't write me off just yet. Just tell me what to do. PICK ME, MAUREEN! CHOOSE ME! Mahmoud will chew you up and spit you out. HE'S GOT HOES IN DIFFERENT AREA CODES, MAUREEN! And he treats them so badly. They don't even get basic cable. Quite frankly Maureen, he's just not that into you.
BUT I AM. I'll wait. When he's done with you, just call me, and I'll be there. We'll have margaritas. I'll even wear the jacket. I won't like it, but I'll do it. For you.
Mike Gravel sticks it to The Man:
Another element of the talkathon that marks the candidates' vulnerability in the general election is the candidates' conformity on the desirability of public schools educating eight-year-olds on homosexual relationships. At one point last night -- was it during the discussion of Social Security? -- one of the candidates referred to the unreality of the talkathon, but bankruptcy seemed to me the more appropriate metaphor. Senator Gravel found a way to salute himelf for his personal and business bankruptcies:Video of Gravel first staring down the credit card companies and then casting off his debts for the empowerment of the American people, here.“Well, first off, if you want to make a judgment of who can be the greediest people in the world when they get to public office, you can just look at the people up here,” Gravel said in a nod to his fellow candidates.Byron York salutes Gravel:“Now, you say the condo business,” he continued. “I will tell you, Donald Trump has been bankrupt 100 times. So I went bankrupt once in business. And the other – who did I bankrupt? I stuck the credit card companies with $90,000 worth of bills, and they deserved it – “
“They deserved it,” Gravel repeated, “and I used the money to finance the empowerment of the American people with a national initiative.”
Gravel’s answer was unprecedented in the history of these debates, and, if nothing else, it seemed guaranteed to win him at least a share of the insolvent vote, even among those who have stuck credit card companies for debts far more prosaic than empowering the American people with national initiatives.But York misses Gravel's magnanimity. He went bankrupt for us! It seemed to me an emblematic moment.
Well over a year away from the election, here are two rather divergent predictions for November '08's outcome to choose from:
Frankly, my money right now is on the former scenario. By next fall, the past few weeks' events could likely be ancient history, tossed far down the collective memory hole by a legacy media whose chief player gives sweetheart ad deals to Moveon.
Allahpundit explores the boffo box office--which a different kind of PC industry, politically correct Hollywood, would kill for--of Microsoft's Halo 3, which ties in with an apt comment Glenn Reynolds made a while back:
It occurs to me that the media sectors that are doing badly -- movies, music, newspapers, TV women's shows -- seem to be the most highly politicized, while the sectors that are doing well, like games, aren't. I'd be interested to see more analysis on that subject.Meanwhile, James Lileks has online video of the haves and have-nots of the videogame world as Halo 3's launch approached.
Ahh, but what sort of space would be worthy to qualify as the perfect rec room in which to play such an awesomely awesome game? There can be only choice:
This.
MIT's Technology Review looks at the processors of the near future--expect "Massively multicore processors" as their CPUs. And as I wrote earlier this year, boatloads of RAM, as well.
Reuters: "Gore: Bush should follow Reagan's lead on climate".
Bush should propose a compromise with Gore: he'll begin to act more like a conservative president from the 1980s, if Gore will resume acting like the more conservative southern Democrat senator he was during the same time period, before his meltdown occured.
Calvin Ross of the Napa Valley Register checks in on Andrew Keen:
Lately many elite journalists have been attacking blogs, especially politically liberal blogs, as "vitriolic," "rabid" and "crude." Keen went to great pains to offer the "real" journalism of the Wall St. Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post as examples of what blogging is not.Go figure: Keen is assuming that responsible readers won't be able to distinguish between bloggers who produce responsible work, and those who manufacture fake news...on a comedy show hosted by an actor who's producing fake news by sending up the typical network anchorman.He said on the "Colbert Report" last month that "I think we need objective, professional journalists who responsibly collect the news rather than anonymous bloggers often in the pay of corporations and foreign governments.
Update: Related thoughts on the faux news show where Colbert got his start.
Mike Kinsley once noted that a major gaffe only occurs in Washington when someone speaks the truth. Jonah Goldberg notices an curious remark by Katie Couric, speaking yesterday at the National Press Club, which fits that bill rather nicely:
“The whole culture of wearing flags on our lapel and saying ‘we’ when referring to the United States and, even the ‘shock and awe’ of the initial stages, it was just too jubilant and just a little uncomfortable. And I remember feeling, when I was anchoring the ‘Today’ show, this inevitable march towards war and kind of feeling like, ‘Will anybody put the brakes on this?’ And is this really being properly challenged by the right people? And I think, at the time, anyone who questioned the administration was considered unpatriotic and it was a very difficult position to be in.”The Today Show, which Katie anchored for many years, is aired each morning by the National Broadcasting Corporation. I wonder if Katie is aware which nation its business name refers to?
Related thoughts here.
(H/T: I/P)
Update: "Couric doesn't want to call herself an American, but she also doesn't want people to think she's unpatriotic. What exactly are we supposed to think, Katie?"
Dean Barnett illustrates the story of the week with an incredible Photoshop. Given where it's running and the iconic movie it's parodying, it can't help but remind me of one of my own Photoshoppery efforts along similar lines from a couple of years ago.
Two of the recurring themes on our blog is the flattening of history where the modern left seems endlessly trapped in the early 1970s, along with the concurrent return of the Rousseauvian primitive who probably thinks of himself as politically "progressive", and yet would like to see society move far, far backwards in time. Or as Pete Seeger once told the New York Times:
I like to say I'm more conservative than Goldwater. He just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax. I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other.Reading James Lileks' Tuesday Bleat and then Mark Steyn's Maclean's article on Hollywood's, err, new golden age (as he puts it) back to back illustrates--in spades--how little the themes they address have changed amongst the left in nearly forty years. Not to mention Tom Wolfe's "Starting From Zero" motif.
A year ago I wrote, "What is it with colleges in the state I grew up in and The Reich Stuff, anyhow?" It looks like the disease is spreading beyond its incubation on the Garden State's campuses out into its signature farmland.
"My name is Shiri Negari and I would like to speak at Columbia too, but I was murdered when Iran gave money to Hamas to blow up the bus I was on."
The Washington Times' Robert Stacy McCain emailed yesterday to remind us of this post from the early days of our blog, which is also referenced in the above link.
(Via Hot Air.)
Robert McHenry, a former editor-in-chief of Encyclopaedia Britannica, makes a terrific observation:
Rod Dreher, an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, has posed an interesting question in this blog post on Beliefnet. He begins by offering a passage from a book about local communities in Chicago in the 1950s in which the author, Alan Ehrenhalt, writes about how history is written. It is a commonplace, and therefore a suspect notion, that “history is written by the winners.” Ehrenhalt suggests that, more often than not, it is written by the dissenters.We also tend to think that there is only One Version of History. As 20th century-style mass media and the overculture it created continues to fracture (which I touched upon in "Atlas Mugged"), expect--for both good and bad--an increasing number of niche groups to have their own take on history as well.This is a much more useful insight and one that fits with other things we know or intuit. By “history,” I take Ehrenhalt to be referring not just to academic tomes or schoolbooks but to the public memories and attitudes that evolve with respect to past times and events. For example, we have all learned to think of the 1950s as a time of materialism and conformity and cultural blandness. This has become our shared historical viewpoint. But who told us that? Wasn’t it precisely those who weren’t, or worked very hard not to seem to be, like that?
(Via Kathy Shaidle.)
Screenwriter William Goldman once provided the birds' eye view of Hollywood's product quality when he quipped, “Every Oscar night you look back and realize that last year was the worst year in the history of Hollywood”.
On the ground level, Libertas reviews an individual film that demonstrates that never-ending downward spiral in action: "It’s never easy to start a review with a mouthful of crow, but I owe Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney an apology: It is possible to make a film worse than The Good German."
"Helicopter Rabies Baiting Program To Begin".
I have absolutely no idea whatsoever what that means. However, I would personally advise not baiting any rabid helicopters. But hey, that's just me.
Hot Air and Pajamas HQ check in on "Mahmoud's Manhattan Moment".
Glenn Reynolds links to a post that contains a quote from 1978 which accurately predicted the death of the printed newspaper as the online world took off.
But long before the dreaded Days of Disco, Arthur C. Clarke made a similar prediction during the Johnson era.
As I wrote in "Atlas Mugged"--and thank you for all of the posts linking to it!--Clarke, Marshall McLuhan and Alvin Toffler had all made predictions as early as the mid-1960s which predicted the demise of the newspaper as a physical medium. And like the quote from the 1970s linked to above, they all went unheeded by the newspaper industry, which is paying the price today.
Or...life imitates Ian Fleming. In the 1964 film version of Goldfinger, James Bond has this exchange with the eponymous Gert Frobe, after he describes his plan to invade Fort Knox to 007:
Bond: You'll kill 60,000 people uselessly.John Stephenson spots Ron Paul uttering a surprisingly similar dismissive quote concerning a real-life terrorist incident that had nothing to do with SPECTRE, SMERSH, or Hollywood:Goldfinger: Hah. American motorists kill that many every two years.
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul contends that the federal government has overreacted by limiting personal freedom in the wake of terrorist attacks six years ago, noting more people die on U.S. highways in less than a month’s time compared to the number who lost their lives on Sept. 11, 2001.With ever-classy Ronfinger, every quote he utters turns to lead, not gold.“We have been told that we have to give up our freedoms in order to be safe because terrorism is such a horrible event,” Paul said today to more than 1,000 supporters who attended a rally at a downtown Chicago hotel ballroom.
“A lot fewer lives died on 9/11 than they do in less than a month on our highways, but once again, who owns the highways? Do we own the highways? No. It’s a government institution you know. …We need to put all this in perspective.”
Back in November of 2004, after the horrific brawl in the stands of the NBA's Detroit Pistons game at their home arena (in "New Fallujah", as Rush Limbaugh dubbed the city after watching the incident), I compared it to footage of sporting events from what seems like centuries ago--the mid-1960s:
A few years ago, when NFL Films began running its Inside The Vault series on ESPN, I was struck by how conservative and dignified most mid-'60s fans looked. There was little or no team merchandise available, so fans arrived to stadiums on Sunday looking like they had just come from church (which many no doubt had), rather than wearing rainbow-colored wigs, Darth Vader Helmets, or cheeseheads. No doubt, the games had their share of hecklers, but I'll bet that in general, fans of the past were much more subdued than today's members of Raiders Nation, the Philadelphia Eagles' crazed fans, or...the courtside fans of the NBA's Detroit Pistons.In "The Death of Sportsmanship", Brent Bozell writes that based on the crowds' constant F-bombing of the Navy's football team at a Rutgers home game, that reset button is nowhere to be found.This isn't meant to exclude the players' guilt in Friday's incident: compare atheletes of the past with today's every-millionare-for-himself attitude. (Indiana's Ron Artest, the player who was banned for the rest of the season for being the pointman in the fight, actually asked for time off before the fight--to promote a rap album he was releasing on his recording label!)
But somehow, and without really thinking consciously about it, society has created the notion that sports arenas are a place for fans to go almost literally insane, rather than merely observe the hometown team in person and cheer for them. But the Pistons/Pacers rumble gives sports--and the public that watches them in person--a chance to hit the control/alt/delete keys and reset.
Charles Johnson links to New York Times ombudsman Clark Hoyt's op-ed, which admits that the Times did indeed give a sweetheart rate to Move On.org:
In a weasely attempt to throw some blame back on the people who were outraged by this disgusting advertisment, Clark Hoyt echoes the statements of terror groups like Hamas, who only denounce violence because it hurts their image and gives people an “excuse” to “change the subject.”Does the Times itself count as part of that cottage industry?By the end of last week the ad appeared to have backfired on both MoveOn.org and fellow opponents of the war in Iraq — and on The Times. It gave the Bush administration and its allies an opportunity to change the subject from questions about an unpopular war to defense of a respected general with nine rows of ribbons on his chest, including a Bronze Star with a V for valor. And it gave fresh ammunition to a cottage industry that loves to bash The Times as a bastion of the “liberal media.”
James Caan: "Nobody should give a s*** about an actor's opinion on politics."
Especially when they let themselves go and--gahh!--wind up looking like this.
At Pajamas HQ, Burt Prelutsky writes:
I can see how Rather may have decided that if he can somehow get his case heard in Los Angeles, he just might win his case in a cakewalk.Meanwhile, Roger Simon has some thoughts on the malignant narcissism of "OJ, Dan Rather and now... Lee Bollinger", the latest successor in a surprisingly long line of Columbia presidents who've never met a radical chic mustache they didn't want to kiss.Still, if I were as old and as rich as Dan Rather, I don’t think I’d want to get myself tangled up with a slew of lawyers. Instead, I’d figure that I’ve already had all the revenge on CBS that I ever really needed. And her name is Katie Couric.
It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at Andrew Meyer's shocking predicament:
As I wrote yesterday, souvenir T-shirts are available in the lobby!
Mark your calendars: October 22nd kicks off "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" on campus, which as Sondra K notes, "will feature a series of events designed to bring a message to these academic communities that challenges most of what students are taught about the so-called War on Terror both in the classroom and on the quad."
Don't miss their poster, which will be lucky to survive two nanoseconds on a typical campus's bulletin board. Especially when there far more important topics to protest.
Like Larry Summers.
(Via Five Feet Of Fury.)
Michael Ledeen joins Austin Bay on this week's Blog Week In Review podcast to discuss his new--and remarkably timely--book.
That's the question that Motor Trend asks, in an item found via the Professor.
Having gotten this rental car up to about 105 MPH about three weeks ago out in the boonies near Pahrump, Nevada (no, really!), I can safely say that it's pretty darn bad.
Nice variation on the usual hackneyed leftwing "I was just kidding" routine.
I'd say 90 days of community service behind the counter of a Thomas Kinkade franchise would be suitable punishment for our budding performance artiste.
Show business entertainers frequently work best as a team: George Burns needed Gracie Allen. Batman had Robin. Starsky needed Hutch. And wherever Dan goes, his spinning sidekick is sure to follow.