Posted 10/18/2003 06:48:46 PM by Edward Driscoll
AN APOLOGY: Back on September 30th, I unloaded a couple of barrels of buckshot against Matt Rowe, who runs the very enjoyable MusicTap Website, which announces upcoming new CD and DVD-Audio titles. Rowe emailed me a very, very polite letter stating that he had read my post, and that he was simply trying to express his admiration of John Lennon in his original article (which I linked to). As I said in the original post, there's a lot about Lennon and the Beatles that I also admire greatly, and I apologize for dumping on Matt. We try to maintain some decorum and civility around here, and definitely failed that time.

Posted 10/17/2003 11:33:47 AM by Edward Driscoll
AXIS OF EVIL, POP WARNER LEAGUE: Check out the quotes in this USA Today story:

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Thursday told a summit of Islamic leaders that "Jews rule the world by proxy" and the world's 1.3 billion Muslims should unite, using nonviolent means for a "final victory." * * * "The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million, but today the Jews rule the world by proxy," Mahathir said, opening the meeting of Islamic leaders from 57 nations. "They get others to fight and die for them."

When I spoke to Alvin Toffler shortly after 9/11, one of the most surprising things he said was that:

Islam is not a middle-eastern religion, even though it originated there. It is an Asian religion. There are more Muslims, just in Indonesia, than all the Arabs in the world put together, from North Africa all the way over to the other side of the Mediterranean. And there is, as we know, not only in Pakistan, but of course in India as well. So if you put these together, not to mention the smaller population of Afghanistan, you’ve got the majority of Muslims not living in the Middle East. And most of them want to go about their daily lives. They want to feed their kids, they want to go to prayer, but they’re not eager to take up arms. And many in Asia, for example, expressed more than once, the wish that the Arab-Israeli conflict would simply go away and not bother them, and so on.

Tough to do so, when you've got leaders like Malaysia's prime minister billowing hate-filled rhetoric, which Israel has quite rightly condemned. UPDATE: Daniel Drezner's post on Mahathir is well worth reading. UPDATE: Not surprisingly, Charles Johnson is all over this story:

[Mahathir] also ranted that Muslims are humiliated and wrongly depicted as terrorists, while at the same time calling on the Islamic world to arm themselves with “guns and rockets, bombs and warplanes, tanks and warships.” That’s using the old noggin, Maha baby.

In the same post, Johnson describes AP's version of Mahathir's speech (which I linked to above, via Drudge), as "a blatant whitewash", and in another post, notes how French President Jacques Chirac "actually blocked a statement condemning the antisemitic speech by Mahathir Mohamad."

Posted 10/16/2003 02:39:11 PM by Edward Driscoll
THIS SHOULD BE INTERESTING: Apple is opening its iTunes music service for Windows.

Posted 10/14/2003 04:45:56 PM by Edward Driscoll
THESE KIDS WERE MORE THAN ALRIGHT: My review of the Who's 1979 midnight movie, The Kids Are Alright (sic) is online at Blogcritics.

Posted 10/14/2003 10:37:38 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE L.A. TIMES IN A NUTSHELL: Orrin Judd writes, "So one of the leading figures in the most important industry in Los Angeles was outed as a serial sexual harasser thirty months ago, but the hometown paper only got around to the story when it became obvious he'd be the Republican governor of CA--this is supposed to be their defense of their editorial judgment? Suppose the same stories were circulating about Ken Lay, a leading figure in another important business to CA--would they wait until he announced for office to look into them?"

Posted 10/14/2003 10:33:39 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE NEW YORK TIMES IN A NUTSHELL: Jonah Goldberg explains why the New York Times editorially endorsed the Boston Red Sox over the New York Yankees--and never bothered to explain the conflict of interest behind their endorsement.

Posted 10/13/2003 04:04:29 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING! THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING!! Err, that is unless it reflects badly on "peaceful" protestors, in which case they'll beat up the cameramen recording them. Of course, Evan Coyne Maloney's example is far from the first example of this occurring. On the Thursday in March during the week that war in Iraq first broke out, I posted:

I'M WITH STOOOPID: KTVU just mentioned that a protestor took a swipe at one of their cameramen. Err, guys, TV is on your side--they live for those images! You don't want to upset them. UPDATE (3:30 PM): Ken Wayne of KTVU just mentioned some looting occurred today, possibly connected with the protesting. There's a shock! Wayne also mentioned that a number of the protestors are "upset with the type of coverage they're receiving". They certainly shouldn't be upset with the quantity of coverage they're receiving, however.

And yet, apparently they are.

Posted 10/12/2003 09:52:45 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE LOU GRANT EFFECT: Back in January, William Whittle made quite a splash in the Blogosphere with his essay on anti-war celebrities. (Here are my thoughts on it from back then.) Whittle had a terrific paragraph about celebrities such as Woody Harrelson, whom Whittle described as embodying "one of the great ironies of the America-bashing glitteratiÂ…he is one of those actors who became beloved by playing someone who, for all intents and purposes, is his polar opposite."

I call this the Lou Grant effect. The talented Ed Asner, the actor who played Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, is politically to the left of Mao. Put Ed Asner and Lou Grant in a steel cage, let them talk politics for five minutes, and Lou Grant would kick Ed Asner’s ass. Even Murray Slaughter would be handing up folding chairs: “Hit the bastard again Lou, he’s still talking about income redistribution!” Dana Scully is a brilliant, courageous, skeptical physician who is handy with an automatic; Gillian Anderson is deep into crystals and has trouble with her shoelaces. Jack Ryan crawls through the bowels of a stolen Russian submarine fighting a dirty shadow war to keep America free, and Alec Baldwin…doesn’t. He seems to find the whole idea of a Jack Ryan deeply embarrassing. This list, sadly, goes on too.

Whittle's phrase, "The Lou Grant Effect", is particularly apropos, because I used to love watching Asner as Lou--and could easily have pictured myself knocking back a few Scotches and discussing the good old days of journalism with the man. Of course, that's not possible: Lou is fictional, and the real Ed Asner is a very, very different fellow from the all-American character he played in the 1970s, as Andrew Sullivan demonstrates. Sullivan's post about Asner is titled, "Lefties and Tyrants". Sadly, as we noted around the time of Whittle's post, Asner isn't the only Hollywood celebrity who worships them. UPDATE: The author of the piece that Sullivan quoted has since retracted Asner's quotes--apparently he transcribed them incorrectly, or worked from an inaccurate transcription.