A few weeks ago, I wrote a column for the National Post arguing that readers will miss the mainstream media when we’re gone. Oh sure, bloggers have a lot of spicy opinions. But when it comes to investigating important stories, they don’t hold a candle to big, deep-pocketed, old-fashioned newspaper writers and broadcast media outlets.
Against the backdrop of politics and the Olympic medal competition between the Chinese and the United States, both countries are in clear agreement on one thing –the value of image over reality for televised events. During the opening ceremonies, the Chinese unapologetically resorted to deception in pursuit of more compelling television, first by digitally enhancing the impressive opening fireworks ceremonies and then by having a cute nine-year-old girl lip synch for the seven year old actually singing, who had a better voice but crooked teeth.
Is the United States a perfect country? Nope. Is it the best country in the world? To a large degree, the 2008 election may be a referendum on that question.
Last month I read a report that stated that the good old US government had paid out more than ninety two million of our hard earned dollars to Medicare fraud. It seems so called medical suppliers have been billing the government for wheelchairs and other pieces of home equipment for people who had already died. Not only had the patients died, but so had a large number of doctors who had originally prescribed whatever was needed.
DreamWorks Studios has given in to this officious prig–a self-appointed, self-righteous spokesman for the mentally disabled who got her feelings hurt when Ben Stiller & co. used the word “retard” in their new comedy, “Tropic Thunder.”
Some friends of ours planned a day a Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, formerly Marine World, in Vallejo, California recently, but cut it short when they found themselves surrounded by thousands of robed and veiled Muslims.
One of the “endearing” qualities of liberals is their uncanny ability to promote totalitarianism as “concern.” Such is the nature of the LA City Council’s ban on new fast food restaurants in an “impoverished area” of the city with “above average rates of obesity.” Translation: poor people are too stupid to make the right food choices for themselves, so we’re going to do it for them.
I went to see Mamma Mia yesterday, a mediocre production that wastes the talents of excellent performers in a puzzling way. It’s as if the filmmakers had never seen the glorious choreography of the great MGM musicals or even the originality of later disco musicals like Saturday Night Fever or Bollywood’s Monsoon Wedding. Instead, the chorus line does a lot of high octane posing, running and jumping into the sea - very boring substitutes for dance. The entire film is based on songs by ABBA, the mega successful Swedish group of the seventies, and one of the better numbers is Take A Chance on Me. As I watched it, I thought that the song and the movie are perfect emblems of the Obama campaign.
It has been said by those who know him that Bill Clinton is obsessed with his legacy. Not to worry, Mr. President. If the statistics of 2007 study published in the “Journal of Adolescent Health” are accurate, America’s youth will never forget you: 70% of teens between the ages of 14 and 19 don’t consider oral sex to be sex.
Since the 1970’s, female athletes have made remarkable progress in realizing gender equity with their male counterparts, the notable exception being financial compensation at the professional level. In virtually every sport, women playing professional sports have never earned close to what men do. In terms of earning power, equal opportunity for women in sports has been like climbing Mount Everest - a long, difficult struggle to reach the top and once there, those successful find nothing but snow and ice.
With the recent and sad passing of the great Sidney Pollack, I was minded that David Zucker would often cite his interactions with Sidney Pollack as a good examples of a comedy “Logic Nazi.”Every project or room ought to have one, comedy or drama.
One of the names being mentioned as a possible replacement for Tim Russert on “Meet the Press” is “Hardball” host Chris Matthews. Matthews is one of the biggest horse’s patooties on television, if not the biggest, a man so enamored of his own grating voice that he can barely stop talking long enough to let a guest get a word in.
Two of the most important television comedians of the 1960’s and 1970’s died last week. Completely different in their styles, they entertained a generation with different approaches to comedy – one presaging a new era in television, the other recalling an older and perhaps dying tradition - both funny in their own way.
Nearly everyone who was politically conscious when the images of 12-year-old Mohammad al-Dura’s murder at the hands of the Israelis hit the airwaves can vividly recall the incident.
In the end of HBO’s movie Recount, a film reliving the 2000 election recount in Florida, a tearful Ron Klain speaks on the phone with Al Gore, who is nobly stepping aside after the Supreme Court ruling that ended the recount. “I’m sorry, sir,” says Klain, “I just couldn’t get ‘em counted.” He’s one step away from Oskar Schindler in Schindler’s List.
Somewhere I’ve read that we have a government ‘Of the people, by the people and FOR the people’. However I am beginning to believe that some of those IN the government believe it should be. ‘Of the people, by the people and for US.’
Thirty-eight years ago this week, Paul McCartney sent his bandmates in the Beatles a strident letter listing certain demands. Lawsuits and public recriminations soon followed that effectively disbanded the world’s most popular group. If the millions who worshipped them, idolized them or merely enjoyed their music were asked, “Was the quest for fame worth it? If they had it to do over again, would the four young men pursue unimagined success to escape their lower middle class Liverpool neighborhood?” the questions would appear ridiculous. But with the benefit of a half a lifetime’s perspective, considering how their lives turned out, perhaps not so farfetched.
Smart People, the latest offering in the epidemic of movies that find pregnancy a good solution for awkward pairings, got two stellar reviews from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The plot concerns a widowed English professor who has milked his grief and literary rejection to the exclusion of everything around him until a December/May romance awakens him to success, fertility and a most unlikely family arrangement. Everything about these characters rings false. A telling detail is the listing of Fairie Queen by Edmund Spenser on the blackboard of this professor of Victorian poetry. The correct spelling is Faerie but any scholar who believes that he can pay his daughter’s tuition at Stanford through the sale of his book on critical theory might not have noticed this error either. The young doctor who rescues the professor from terminal malaise has correctly identified his pomposity and narcissism and has been verbally lacerated by his jealous daughter yet has no second thoughts about going through with an unplanned pregnancy that will land her squarely in the center of this complicated family. The adoptive brother, a perennial work-dodger and mooch is portrayed as charming, insightful and prophetic. Anyone who has had a broke relative stay on past the three day limit of fish and guests, knows just how endearing such people tend to be.
I wonder if I was the only one who almost fell off her couch last night during American Idol when Ryan Seacrest, the Perpetually Groomed One, introduced a Christian praise song at the end of the show. (more…)
NBC announced today that it is bring back the Texas football themed drama Friday Night Lights, a show rich in insightful writing and masterful acting, but poor in viewers. Centered around high school football coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) and his wife Tami (Connie Britton), the series has the best portrayal of a marriage on TV.
I have been a huge music fan since the third grade. From the dulcet tones of the McGuire Sisters to the crooning of Perry Como and the antics of David Seville and the Chipmunks, I have heard it all. I believe there have been culturally changing masters that have influenced ourtles-elvis- music world beginning with Big Bands in the 40’s, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis in the 50’s, Bob Dylan and the British Invasion in the 60’s, the Eagles, Chicago and Queen in the 70’s and, of course, the synthesizer in the 80’s when music died. Of course, the three biggest names in music that ROCKED our sensibilities were Sinatra, Elvis and the Beatles. Only the Stones have come close and only because they continue to play for hundreds of years. But now, a fourth person has snuck up on all us and is in position to top them all in terms of #1 hits. Her name is Mariah Carey. Will someone hit me over the head with a Fender guitar, please!
This is my third year of watching, “American Idol.” I have two observations. The first is that I believe the musical talent of the current contestants is superior to previous years. The second insight is that I have never seen such immature and arrogant behavior displayed by this year’s crop of crybabies. If they are indicative of our future generations in the 21st Century then we need to seriously pray for a giant meteor…
My journalism chops pale compared to Dennis Byrne’s. It can be argued, in fact, that in trading in my reporter’s hat for a talk show career, I obliterated my J-school cred completely.
On its website Tuesday, ABC News posted a story titled, “Common Misunderstandings About Muslims,” which did its level best to carry water for the radical Islamist, and jihadist, movement in America, going so far as to cite America’s most notorious radical front group, the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as the source to define the concept of “jihad.”Take this incredibly problematic passage:
Not much to comment on about the Oscars Sunday night. Without question, Cate Blanchett should have won the supporting actress award for playing Bob Dylan in I’m Not There.
Neil MacFarquhar’s latest paean to radical Islam appeared in Thursday’s New York Times, “For Muslim Students, a Debate on Inclusion,” in which he praises a known radical leader of the Muslim Students’ Association as some kind of moderate. MacFarquhar begins the story with a sweet vignette about Mertaban’s alleged moderate bona fides:
With the recent and sad passing of the great Sidney Pollack, I was minded that David Zucker would often cite his interactions with Sidney Pollack as a good examples of a comedy “Logic Nazi.”Every project or room ought to have one, comedy or drama.
So Nick Denton