Posted
4/17/2004 11:52:19 PM
by Edward Driscoll
I'M DREAMING OF AN NFL CHRISTMAS: AP reports that "the NFL schedule, released Wednesday, has two Christmas games--Oakland at Kansas City and Denver at Tennessee. They will begin at 5 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. EST, respectively."
If one's a snow game, so much the better. I'm dreaming of a white Christmas--on TV at least!
Oh, and on Christmas Eve, the Vikes play the Packers. Since it will be in Minneapolis's Metrodome, not much chance of snow on that field.
(If you're as antsy as I am for the season to begin, be sure and check out my essay on the back page of this month's Electronic House magazine.)
Posted
4/17/2004 11:40:51 PM
by Edward Driscoll
SEN. ZELL MILLER LOOKS AT THE 9/11 HEARINGS, and does not like what he sees.
Posted
4/17/2004 11:10:35 PM
by Edward Driscoll
FOLLOW THE MONEY: Remember when Jim McDermott and David Bonior spoke in Saddam Hussein's Baghdad in late September of 2002 against President Bush? Orrin Judd links to an AP article which says:
Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington has returned a $5,000 contribution made to his legal defense fund by an Iraqi-American businessman who has acknowledged financial ties with Saddam Hussein's regime.In a post titled, "The Money's Just A Bonus", Orrin writes, "Does anyone really think Mr. McDermott betrayed his country for the money?" What about the other half of the Democratic duo? Back on March 15th, we posted:
In The Journal today, Robert L. Pollock looks at "Saddam's Useful Idiots", and asks, "Did any Iraqi money filter back to American war critics?" [Scott] Ritter is prominently mentioned, along with Democratic congressman David Bonior as having ties with Shakir al-Khafaji, a Detroit-area businessman whose name was included in a recently published list of individuals receiving oil money from Saddam Hussein.And of course Saddam sent ten big ones to this former Democratic congressional staffer as well. And then there are the boys in the UN...
Posted
4/17/2004 09:52:48 PM
by Edward Driscoll
PATRIOTISM: Pejman Yousefzadeh (by way of Inigo Montoya) says that John Kerry, the old Winter Soldier himself, keeps getting its definition wrong.
Pejman also notes that Kerry has dusted off the old chickenhawk sophism, to boot.
Posted
4/17/2004 09:33:30 PM
by Edward Driscoll
PASS THE DUCHY ON THE LEFT ONE TIME: I'll have whatever Hillary's smoking.
Posted
4/17/2004 05:46:18 PM
by Edward Driscoll
AT EDDRISCOLL.COM, NEVER LET IT BE SAID THAT WE'RE SEXIST: We believe that many jobs can be performed equally well by men or women. As proof, here's an article about a man who's looking forward to "seeing that bouquet of flowers on my desk" on Monday, National Secretary's Day.
Posted
4/17/2004 05:08:55 PM
by Edward Driscoll
HOW VERY 1970s: I used to see lots of articles with lines like this one has; they seemed to have died down a bit recently. But over time, you sort of get used to seeing sentences such as, "Just because someone's -- gasp! -- a Republican doesn't mean he doesn't belong on the planet".
Insert black/Muslim/Indian/Polish/Jewish/Catholic, etc., and see how well it plays. Political correctness for thee, but not for me.
(Via "The Corner".)
Posted
4/17/2004 03:55:20 PM
by Edward Driscoll
SURE--THEY'RE FOR WHEN THE RAIDERS PLAY THE BRONCOS:
Dozens of federal, state and local law enforcement agents searched a warehouse near Oakland International Airport Saturday for weapons including rocket launchers, officials said. The exact nature of the raid, which began around 6 a.m. Friday and continued Saturday, was unclear because the federal search warrant was under seal. But U.S. Magistrate Edward Chen told The San Francisco Chronicle: "The warrant was for a bunch of devices for rockets that could be launched from military vehicles and (for) some M-16s," semiautomatic assault rifles used by the U.S. military. Federal agents denied that the search was part of a counterterrorism operation.(Emphasis mine. Found via Ruminations.)
Posted
4/17/2004 03:35:38 PM
by Edward Driscoll
THE IGNOS: "The Invasion of the Duh People" was a very, very funny Florence King essay. ("What did you say your name was?" "King." "How do you spell that?") She followed it up with "The Invasion of the Ignos", who are basically "duh people" with a college degree:
There's nothing wrong with their gray matter, it's just that it remains virgin soil. They sow it not, and neither do they reap it. It just lies there undisturbed, as fallow as the day it was born, until at last, like other overdue virginities, it loses all capacity for response and you can't do a thing with it. Ignos are the chief crop of Diversity Ed, what sprouts when Western Civ's Dead White Males are eliminated from college curricula and replaced with African oral historians, Aztec vivisectionists, and the diaries of Ana?s Nin. Columnists have made hay with dumbed-down curricula. I've written my share of polemics, but I made the mistake of confining myself to arguments against multiculturalism per se. The narrower but more intriguing subject of Igno psychology is one that I left unexplored until two recent incidents convinced me that we are witnessing the spread of a new kind of stupidity that developed nations have never before had to deal with. The first incident came about when I had to correct a public record involving my Social Security number. I dealt with an administrative assistant, a cordial, seemingly competent woman in her early thirties. She assured me that my problem was all straightened out, but given my natural pessimism, I automatically said, "I can see the handwriting on the wall." That's when she looked at the wall. Turned around and gave it the old up-and-down once-over. Looked back at me with eyes as big as saucers. "It's just a figure of speech," I mumbled.If you've ever felt like there was a forcefield when you spoke to someone you thought should have been a like-minded peer, read the whole thing. UPDATE: Cassandra has an encounter with ignos armed with PhDs.
Posted
4/17/2004 01:25:02 PM
by Edward Driscoll
PETER ROBINSON writes, "A democracy in Iraq would be splendid, of course. But since in all history the Arab world has seen exactly one democracy, that of Lebanon, which lasted only from the 1940s to the 1970s, it would represent a high achievement if we could merely ensure that Iraq proved, on the whole, peaceable and prosperous, becoming, as Mark Steyn has put it, 'the least badly–governed Arab country.'"
Posted
4/17/2004 12:04:56 PM
by Edward Driscoll
PICARD TO ENTERPRISE: A Next Generation style communicator which clips onto lapels is being tested in hospitals.
Hopefully warp drive and the transporter will be next...
Posted
4/17/2004 12:16:32 AM
by Edward Driscoll
THE AIDS LIE: James Glassman of Tech Central Station looks at how President Bush is fighting AIDS in Africa, and how his critics are (surprise, surprise) distorting his record and policies there.
Posted
4/16/2004 02:12:35 PM
by Edward Driscoll
SPEAKING OF PERNOD AND GAULOISES, Denis Boyles writes that France could use a good pub or twenty for the growing number of English expatriates taking up residence there.
Posted
4/16/2004 01:30:51 PM
by Edward Driscoll
THE ABSOLUTE INTELLECTUAL: Brian C. Anderson looks at Jean-Paul Sartre and sees an early idiotarian:
What Sartre actually offers us is a paradigmatic example of the leftist mind, in all its dodgy enthusiasms. Sartre’s early existentialism presents a nihilistic conception of human freedom that still informs some forms of liberal thought; his later political writings seethe with the pathologies of the far left, including an admiration for bloodletting, so long as it targets democrats and capitalists and Westerners generally. Sartre may indeed have been “the absolute intellectual,” but only in a negative sense: His oeuvre stands as an absolute warning about the wrong turns that moral and political thought can take when untethered from nature or any sense of reality. Were Sartre alive today, he doubtless would place the blame for September 11 and Palestinian suicide bombings on their victims — defending, as he frequently did, the indefensible.Read the whole thing; the Pernod and Gauloise are optional.
Posted
4/16/2004 01:16:21 PM
by Edward Driscoll
BIG APPLE LOOPHOLES: Heather Mac Donald looks at how New York City evades welfare reform.
Posted
4/16/2004 12:35:40 PM
by Edward Driscoll
IKEA-STYLE DEMOCRACY: Eric Gibson looks at how Ikea is bringing modernism to the masses, "for those of us who did not grow up with Mies van der Rohe or Alvar Aalto in the family".
Posted
4/16/2004 11:48:33 AM
by Edward Driscoll
MID-CENTURY MODERN: In some places, it wasn't very modern at all. Raymond Loewy was one of the great designers of the 20th century (with a career ranging from the Pennsylvania Railroad's magnificent GG-1 locomotive to Air Force One to Skylab.) So the photos that Virginia Postrel posts are a tough thing to swallow.
Posted
4/16/2004 11:31:41 AM
by Edward Driscoll
PATRIOT GAMES, PART DEUX: Jeff Goldstein writes:
Kerry had his potential Sista Souljah moment teed up for him and he struck out. Worse, he was fanned looking. Which hardly inspires confidence that he'll be able to get the bat off his shoulders when it really matters -- when, say, North Korea decides to posture with nukes, or when a drunk Teddy Kennedy asks to borrow the town car so he can give a ride home to a young staffer.For some background, follow the links here.
Posted
4/16/2004 10:56:47 AM
by Edward Driscoll
NOW THIS IS A CORRECTION! England's Grauniad Guardian displays its vast knowledge of American libertarians and their leading lights:
In our report, Life after Living Marxism, page 10, July 8, we referred to the Reason Foundation and said its "leading writer, the syndicated columnist Sandra Postrel, is author of the libertarian book The Enemies Of Freedom and frequently talks at the Hudson Institute". The Reason Foundation points out that no one of that name works at the Foundation or for Reason Magazine. The editor-at-large and former editor of the magazine is called Virginia Postrel. She is a columnist for Forbes and the New York Times but not a "syndicated" columnist. Her book is not called The Enemies Of Freedom. It is called The Future And Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise and Progress (Free Press). The Reason Foundation says Ms Postrel has never been to the Hudson Institute and has no connection with the organisation.(Via Samizdata.net.)
Posted
4/16/2004 10:29:14 AM
by Edward Driscoll
ADVANTAGE TARANTO! James Taranto called this one almost a year ago.
Posted
4/16/2004 02:32:45 AM
by Edward Driscoll
WE'RE GONNA TURN IT ON, WE'RE GONNA BRING YOU THE POWER: Chuck Simmins charts electricity and phone service in Iraq.
Posted
4/16/2004 02:25:17 AM
by Edward Driscoll
THE FOOD MULLAHS: Nick Gillespie is calling for show trials and forced fitness regimens for Mayor McCheese, Grimace, and all the other McDonaldland characters.
Posted
4/16/2004 12:11:50 AM
by Edward Driscoll
AFTER THE MUSIC'S MIXED, THE MASTERING BEGINS*: I have a review of Izotope's Ozone music mastering plug-in for PC-based hard disk recording programs, online at Blogcritics.
(*If that title sounds even vaguely familiar to you, you were probably once as hardcore a Woody Allen fan as I was.)
Posted
4/15/2004 09:19:08 PM
by Edward Driscoll
FRED OLIVI, the co-pilot of Bocks Car, the B-29 that dropped the second atom bomb on Japan that helped end World War II, died at 82 in the Chicago suburb of Lemont.
Mudville Gazette has his obituary, and a question.
Posted
4/15/2004 05:26:13 PM
by Edward Driscoll
PATRIOT GAMES: On his MSNBC page, The Professor writes that Senator Kerry has a problem with a lack of patriotism in his base.
Like this fellow.
UPDATE: Ed Cone (no relation) has some thoughts as well.
ANOTHER UPDATE: If this ad is real, Kerry's patriotism problems aren't just with his base of voters.
Posted
4/15/2004 03:25:41 PM
by Edward Driscoll
YOUR TUITION DOLLARS AT WORK: They won't be paying for leading gay rights and gay marriage proponent Andrew Sullivan to speak at Brown University, because...Sullivan is "renowned for his sexist, transgender-phobic/transphobic, and anti-inclusionary writings, statements, and public sentiments".
I don't even know where to begin to parse this one out. At some point, idiocy becomes so compact, its molecules so dense, that it's impossible to begin to separate them.
UPDATE: Hey, maybe they could get Oliver Stone. Or Fidel could phone in a speech. Err, on second thought...
Posted
4/15/2004 02:30:48 PM
by Edward Driscoll
ABOUT TIME: The New York Times reports that "The Transportation Security Administration plans to begin testing techniques for improving passenger rail security at a station in New Carrollton, Md., that is served by Amtrak and commuter trains".
Back in March, I blogged about the laxity of Amtrak's security in the densely populated, and heavily traveled Northeast Corridor.
Reading between the lines though, it seems like the TSA's efforts in New Carrollton are far more for show than to actually get a working system in place that might actually prevent trains from being bombed.
Posted
4/15/2004 01:50:35 PM
by Edward Driscoll
WHICH KEAN COMES CLEAN? Check out these two quotes by 9/11 commission chairman (and former New Jersey governor, who used to say "New Jersey and you--perfect together" in TV ads with a New England accent thicker than Teddy Kennedy's) Thomas Kean:
"We made a conscious decision, and part of it was under strong pressure from the [victims'] families, to make this commission as transparent and as visible as possible."--9/11 commission chairman Thomas Kean on commission members' repeated TV appearances, quoted in the New York Times, April 15 "People ought to stay out of our business."--Kean, on allegations that commissioner Jamie Gorelick has a conflict of interest, quoted in the Washington Post, April 15(From James Taranto's "Best of the Web Today".)
Posted
4/15/2004 01:33:43 PM
by Edward Driscoll
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: Nick Gillespie looks at why your house costs so much, "if you're lucky enough to live in a progressive area with 'inclusionary zoning' ordinances".
A.K.A.--the Bay Area.
Posted
4/15/2004 12:44:18 PM
by Edward Driscoll
BRESLIN UPDATE: Back on Wednesday of last week, we had some thoughts on Jimmy Breslin's alleged faked quotes in his latest essay. It takes him until the last paragraph to say so, but the editor of Newsday writes:
The April 7 Breslin column should have indicated that it was based on a conversation that took place in 1992. And the column did not adhere to Newsday's standard of publishing only direct quotations that are accurate and precise.Maureen Dowd could not be reached for comment.
Posted
4/15/2004 11:39:50 AM
by Edward Driscoll
TERESA'S TAXES: She's trying to keep them private; Drudge compares her situation to the "ghost of Ferraro", who campaigned to be Walter Mondale in '84.
Meanwhile, in Tech Central Station, Kevin Hassett looks at the loophole that her husband would introduce to reduce the taxes of companies that are organized in a particular way....like the HJ Heinz Company.
Actually, it's great to see Senator Kerry come out in favor of cutting corporate taxes. As Hassett writes:
Most other countries have reduced their corporate tax rates sharply in recent years. The U.S. has not, and the result is that we are now one of the highest tax countries on earth.But Kerry's had almost 20 years in the US Senate. Why has he waited until now to even jawbone some (minor) tax cutting?
Posted
4/15/2004 11:20:10 AM
by Edward Driscoll
OLIVER STONE, IDIOTARIAN: His interviewer just demolishes him over his lack of knowledge of Castro, whom he's just made a (thoroughly whitewashed) documentary on.
And this is the guy who was going to get to the bottom of the Kennedy assassination!?
UPDATE: David Cohen adds, "This interview serves as an important reminder that sometimes there's no conspiracy. Sometimes, at bottom, there is just an ignorant idiot."
ANOTHER UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan writes, "Just when you think Stone couldnt get more morally depraved...The man is laughing - laughing - at a gulag".
Posted
4/15/2004 01:43:33 AM
by Edward Driscoll
MIDEAST BREAKTHROUGH: John Podhoretz writes, "George W. Bush outlined a path for peace between Israel and the Palestinians that has the distinct advantage of being based in reality".
President Bush's plan pretty much leaves Yasser Arafat in the dust. But then, Orrin Judd adds, Bush "wrote off Arafat two years ago. When he called for new Palestinian leadership he made it crystal clear that they had to be prepared to cut a deal with Israel. The Palestinians failed to produce such leaders, so he's moving on."
Posted
4/15/2004 01:29:22 AM
by Edward Driscoll
THERE'S GOT TO BE A MORNING AFTER: I'm not sure if I buy all the arguments that Kay S. Hymowitz makes in this City Journal piece, but it's got a great thesis:
If you listen carefully, you can hear something shifting deep beneath the manic surface of American culture. Rap stars have taken to wearing designer suits. Miranda Hobbs, Sex and the City’s redhead, has abandoned hooking up and a Manhattan co-op for a husband and a Brooklyn fixer-upper, where she helps tend her baby and ailing mother-in-law; even nympho Samantha has found a “meaningful relationship.” Madonna is writing children’s books. Gloria Steinem is an old married lady. Yessiree, family values are hot! Capitalism is cool! Seven-grain bread is so yesterday, and red meat is back!Read the whole thing. (Via Joanne Jacobs, who sums it as "Bourgeois is back!")
Posted
4/14/2004 05:18:27 PM
by Edward Driscoll
MY MACHINE SHE'S A DUD, STUCK IN THE MUD: Air America hits turbulence, bounces check, gets taken off the air in Chicago and Los Angeles.
UPDATE: "Note to George Soros: Next time, buy the stations. Then they have to play what you tell them to play."
ONLY TANGENTIALLY RELATED UPDATE: Speaking of cash flow problems, Courtney Love "owes millions" according to this Reuters piece.
Posted
4/14/2004 04:51:25 PM
by Edward Driscoll
THE BEST OF TIMES, THE WORST OF TIMES: Matt Welch looks at the state of journalism, both in the US and abroad.
Glenn Reynolds also has some related links.
Posted
4/14/2004 01:10:08 AM
by Edward Driscoll
WE WERE SOLDIERS ONCE...AND YOUNG: Charles Johnson reprints an astonishingly powerful 1945 letter by future CBS News president Fred Friendly. It was written when he was an army master sergeant with the unit that liberated the Nazis' Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.
Posted
4/13/2004 05:36:28 PM
by Edward Driscoll
PRESIDENT BUSH'S PRESS CONFERENCE IS ON RIGHT NOW. But the Washington Post already has it written up in the past tense!
(Via Instapundit, who writes, "It's like they've already decided on the storyline or something. . . .")
Posted
4/13/2004 04:57:37 PM
by Edward Driscoll
HOUSEHOLD HINTS FROM LILEKS: Sick of Heloise? James Lileks has got Hints from Heckoise!
Posted
4/13/2004 04:35:51 PM
by Edward Driscoll
LOST IN TRANSLATION: Got a hot-looking Japanese tattoo? Chances are it doesn't say what you think it does!
(On the other hand, you'll still be hipper than this fellow.)
(Via H.D. Miller.)
Posted
4/13/2004 04:25:43 PM
by Edward Driscoll
OUTSIDE THE WALL: John Ashcroft slamming of Jamie Gorelick is the subject of this
Instapundit post. Glenn also has links to lots of other material about Gorelick and her Chinese wall.
Posted
4/13/2004 03:57:32 PM
by Edward Driscoll
STOCK UP ON HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE MEDICATION, if you're a conservative planning to go to the movies this fall.
Click here and here for some of our thoughts on Hollywood's recent efforts.
UPDATE: On the other hand, keep these figures in mind: in spite of all of the press coverage it received, Michael Moore's Bowling For Columbine grossed $21,244,913. In contrast, Mel Gibson's The Passion grossed $26.5 million.
On its first day.
As Brian Doherty of Reason wrote when Bowling first hit the theaters, "Grander socialist dreams died with the Soviet Union. All the progressive left has are laments, tears, and tragedies. That suffices to sell movie tickets—moviegoers have always loved tragedy. It isn't enough for a lively and effective political movement."
Posted
4/13/2004 03:47:55 PM
by Edward Driscoll
THE APPARENT LINK BETWEEN SADDAM AND SCOTT RITTER seems to be getting a little closer.
Posted
4/13/2004 03:14:00 PM
by Edward Driscoll
FRANKENFEST: Andrew Sullivan tunes into liberal talk radio.
Posted
4/13/2004 03:03:03 PM
by Edward Driscoll
TO EVERYTHING, BID, BID, BID: Roger McGuinn of The Byrds' 1966 Rickenbacker 12-string electric guitar is up for auction on eBay, and can be yours if this price is right--the opening bid starts at a cool $99K.
Posted
4/13/2004 02:34:39 PM
by Edward Driscoll
IRAQ IS JUST LIKE VIETNAM, writes Ramesh Ponnuru:
Except that we've captured Ho Chi Minh, we've taken Hanoi, there's no draft, and the boat people have mostly come back. Not all of the comparisons are, however, to our advantage: It took nine years for the Democrats to be willing to cut off funding for the military then. It took seven months this time.I recently read The New Dealers' War by Thomas Fleming, who is surprisingly negative about how FDR's administration handled World War II. But at no point that I can remember in Fleming's book, other than possibly a fear of nerve gas, did FDR's men try to compare the second great war to the first. Nor do I recall many of President Clinton's military efforts being compared with Vietnam. As Alvin Toffler wrote in War and Anti-War, the American military's tactics were radically changed after the debacle of Vietnam. Maybe Senators Kennedy and Kerry and the rest of the left never got the memo.
Posted
4/13/2004 02:00:25 PM
by Edward Driscoll
PEJMAN POWER: Pejman Yousefzadeh has some thoughts on how the Blogosphere has handled the recent Daily Kos scandal, in Tech Central Station.
Posted
4/13/2004 01:30:36 PM
by Edward Driscoll
NOTHING CAN STOP THE ARMY AIR CORPS: American inventors may have invented powered flight, but it was a long and surprisingly shaky path towards our becoming the world's preeminent air power. Daniel Ford looks at how it happened.
Posted
4/13/2004 01:12:31 PM
by Edward Driscoll
"DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL", Wonkette writes, "but the little dog sort of screams it".
Posted
4/13/2004 12:42:05 PM
by Edward Driscoll
KERREY CLARIFIES: Dennis Prager writes:
This is how Bob Kerrey, a member of the 9-11 Commission and former Democratic senator from Nebraska, opened his questioning of Condoleezza Rice before the Commission last week: "Thank you, Dr. Rice. Let me say at the beginning I'm very impressed, and indeed I'd go as far as to say moved by your story, the story of your life and what you've accomplished. It's quite extraordinary."Prager adds, "Like many people of his political persuasion and in his political party, [Kerrey] saw her as an extraordinary black and female well before he saw her as an extraordinary individual". Read the whole thing. UPDATE: Kerrey's racism is remarkably subtle in comparison with the blatant stuff that Charles Johnson looks at here. In contrast, there was a remarkable sentence that President Bush uttered tonight:
"People want to be free. Some people think that if you're Muslim, or if you have brown skin, you somehow don't want to be free. I reject that."God, I love that line.
Posted
4/13/2004 12:27:16 PM
by Edward Driscoll
...OR MAYBE IT ISN'T: Matt Drudge writes that Florida Democrats have placed an ad threatening to attack Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. "We should put this S.O.B. up against a wall", the reasoned, nuanced copy reads, "and say 'This is one of our bad days,' and pull the trigger".
This equally reasoned and nuanced fellow would probably agree.
UPDATE: Damian Penny agrees:
The world is splitting into two groups: those who want the Americans to win in Iraq, and those who want the Ba'athists and Islamofascists to win. At least we know which side these guys are on.
Posted
4/13/2004 08:52:53 AM
by Edward Driscoll
TIMING IS EVERYTHING: Powerline Blog writes, "The New York Times assigns two reporters to chew over the really important issue -- the possible impact of [Bill Clinton's] memoirs on the Kerry campaign, of course"
Posted
4/13/2004 08:48:21 AM
by Edward Driscoll
FOR YOUR THIGHS ONLY: Mark Steyn is able to look beyond--far beyond--conventional wisdom, for his take on who made the best James Bond.
Posted
4/13/2004 08:27:35 AM
by Edward Driscoll
WE COULD HAVE WON: Mackubin Thomas Owens writes that the conventional wisdom concerning Vietnam is deficient.
See also Orrin Judd's review of Lewis Sorley's A Better War, which Owens quotes from.
It's not too hard to tie the War on Terrorism to Vietnam. Had we won the latter, it's not that huge a stretch to say that we may not have had to fight the former.
Posted
4/13/2004 08:09:25 AM
by Edward Driscoll
GANGS OF L.A.: Joanne Jacobs writes that gangs control enrollment at Los Angeles high schools, according to the LA Times. "The district must transfer students out of their neighborhoods to alleviate overcrowding. But a 'blue' (Crips) student can't be sent to a 'red' (Bloods) campus".
When did we let the inmates run the asylum?
Posted
4/12/2004 05:31:02 PM
by Edward Driscoll
HEY, LOOK WHO'S ON THE COVER OF FRANCE TODAY! As Orrin Judd writes, "We kid you not".
Posted
4/12/2004 05:24:50 PM
by Edward Driscoll
SILLY HEADLINES: There's a headline on the Internet Movie Database's "Studio Briefing" page today which I find almost laughable:
The Alamo fell for a second time over the weekend, and this time, the scope of the defeat, although bloodless, was no less staggering than the original. The $100-million Disney movie took in just $9.2 million, tying for third place with the $12-million urban comedy Johnson Family Vacation, which played in only about half the number of theaters. (Some box-office trackers were predicting that when the final numbers are released later today, The Alamo will finish fourth.) "I'm shocked, quite honestly, at the number," Disney distribution chief Chuck Viane told USA Today. Analysts had predicted a relatively low figure, but had not anticipated the utter debacle that transpired. They also had not anticipated that Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ would be resurrected in first place again four weeks after dropping out of that position. "That's unprecedented. I've never seen that before," Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, told the Associated Press. "The Passion is just rewriting box-office history." (However, Dan Marks of the rival Nielsen EDI told the Los Angeles Times that almost the same thing happened in 1996 when Jerry Maguire returned to No. 1 after dropping out for three weeks.) Passion has now earned a total of $354.8 million and ranks eighth on the all-time domestic box-office list. Other new films also tanked at the box office. The Whole Ten Yards with Bruce Willis and Matthew Perry, debuted with just $6.7 million. The girls' flick Ella Enchanted drew a less-than-enchanting $6.1 million, just ahead of The Girl Next Door, which earned $6 million. And in yet another dose of bad news for Disney, the studio's The Ladykillers, starring Tom Hanks, dropped out of the top 10 after just two weeks.Given that the film was originally promoted as a Christmas release, and was then pulled back for four months of additional cutting and possibly reshoots after it bombed in previews, Disney had to know that things did not bode well for their revisionist epic. Also, given the backlash that CBS's attempted smear job of The Reagans received, and Pearl Harbor (another piece of revisionist Disney history) more and more Americans are becoming aware that Hollywood has an increasingly warped view of America and its history, at least when compared to those in the Red States. So when Disney distribution chief Chuck Viane tells USA Today, "I'm shocked, quite honestly, at the number," how honest is he being about being shocked? (Probably about has shocked as Claude Rains was to discover that there was gambling going on at Rick's cafe.)
Posted
4/12/2004 03:18:06 PM
by Edward Driscoll
MODERNISTS, MARK YOUR CALENDARS: After three years of remodeling, New York's Museum of Modern Art (AKA "MoMA") is scheduled to reopen its 11 West 53rd Street location on November 20th. Some of my favorite days in New York have involved visiting MoMA and then wandering over to the nearby (and equally modernist) Four Seasons for lunch or dinner.
Posted
4/12/2004 12:46:12 PM
by Edward Driscoll
THIS SHOULD MAKE PETA VERY HAPPY: Beef: It's what's for dinner! Except in Cuba, where killing cattle by citizens was made illegal by Castro's communist state, because their cattle are so rare (pun not intended).
Matt Welch writes:
When I visited Cuba in 1998, a favorite way of getting beyond the grim, mostly meatless food rations was to raise a pig -- illegally, of course -- in your apartment. The only problem was the squealing, so Cubans would simply cut the little porkers' vocal cords.Workers' Paradise, indeed.
Posted
4/12/2004 10:51:37 AM
by Edward Driscoll
"ATTACH ORBITER HERE. NOTE: BLACK SIDE DOWN": Terrrific photos of the 2003 Edwards Air Force Base Air Show, found via Stephen Green.
Posted
4/12/2004 10:33:39 AM
by Edward Driscoll
SPEAKING OF DISNEY'S VERSION of The Alamo, John Fund looks at Davy Crockett, libertarian.
UPDATE: Steve Antler of Econopundit looks at some of the film's critics, including the Times' Elvis Mitchell, who screedily describes the fun, innocent Disney Davy Crockett Fess Parker film series of the 1950s as "poisonously intoxicating".
Posted
4/11/2004 08:17:17 PM
by Edward Driscoll
NFL BROADCASTER PAT SUMMERALL RECEIVES LIVER TRANSPLANT: Summerall, 73, was a very heavy drinker in his heyday, but has been on the wagon since 1992. By the then, though, the damage had been done to his liver. It finally gave out earlier this year.
Posted
4/11/2004 06:33:32 PM
by Edward Driscoll
BLOWBACK: Glenn Reynolds has some thoughts on the results of the partisan 9/11 hearings.
Posted
4/11/2004 05:58:10 PM
by Edward Driscoll
CAPT. PIKE'S BEARD: In 2002, Kathleen Parker may have had the first "what if" article that speculated on what the results would have been, had President agressively proactively pursued terrorism prior to 9/11.
Considering how contentious Bush's election was, none of this stuff sounds too far fetched.
Posted
4/11/2004 04:04:34 PM
by Edward Driscoll
POP CULTURE, INTERRUPTED: Kids today are listening to their parents' music in large numbers, according to Jeff Brokaw. And as Jonah Goldberg wrote a while back, they're still watching many of their parents' TV shows as well. (After watching Ice Cube's Barbershop last night on Showtime, I ended up watching a couple episodes of the Cheers first season DVD and an episode of The Cosby Show on Nick at Nite. Those shows both debuted over 20 years ago!)
Hollywood Interrupted paints a damning picture of several bankrupt media--music, film, and television. It could be that because the last two have gone from feeling like they need to entertain (as invited guests, in the case of Steve Allen's phrase about TV), to needing to preach to Middle America, their prospective audiences have decided to tune them out, in surprisingly large numbers.
Couple this with Bernard Goldberg's looks at media bias, and you have three politically correct media (film, TV, and news), as well as pop music, which have each dramatically failed a very big chunk of the very consumers who buy their products.
And in the case of music, there's an interesting paradox: production techniques have never been more slick. But almost in unison, songwriting has gone rapidly backwards. A few times this past week, while I was driving around, Liz Phair's song "Extraordinary" has been on the radio. It's not that great a song--but at least it is a song. It's got verses and choruses (love that refrain--"I'm just your average everyday sane psycho") and a winning performance by its singer. And sadly these days, that alone seems like a remarkable achievement.
Posted
4/11/2004 03:34:40 PM
by Edward Driscoll
NOW IT ALL MAKES SENSE! Scott Ott "reports" that, "Bush Failed to Stop al Qaeda During Clinton Years".
Posted
4/11/2004 03:31:40 PM
by Edward Driscoll
FLASHBACK: The Alamo was finally released this weekend. It's currently number three on the charts, with The Passion, out for almost two months already, earning double its take. For a look at why a film whose trailers ran last Thanksgiving in anticipation of a Christmas release took so long to finally come out, click here.
Posted
4/11/2004 02:48:27 PM
by Edward Driscoll
INSTAPUNDIT HAS A NEW LOOK: It's more of a subtle tweaking of a design that works very well, but I think the new look of having the content on the left, and the links and ads on the right works quite nicely.
Stacy Tabb (aka Sekimori) does good work. I'll have to hire her someday to redesign my site!
Posted
4/11/2004 01:00:38 AM
by Edward Driscoll
THE BLAIR SWITCH PROJECT: As I've written before, Jayson Blair's efforts (to borrow from a phrase of Tom Wolfe's) to cook the books is nothing new. And it happens in the Blogosphere as well.
Posted
4/11/2004 12:36:45 AM
by Edward Driscoll
REDNECK PLANET: In Redneck Nation, Michael Graham wrote that during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the left castigated the South for its obsession with race, and then, rather than moving towards a color-blind society as Martin Luther King had rightly demanded, became race and double-standard-obsessed itself.
In a recent Tech Central Station piece, Lee Harris writes that the philosophy contained in the late Edward Said's Orientalism, a book which became the intellectuals' guidebook on the Middle East, is itself a strain of racism:
Orientalism is sophistry; but one that worked quite well as an ideology, as sophistries so often do. Because the West could not see the East from the East's point of view, it could not judge the actions of Easterners by our own ethical standards. Now there are two ways to take this. One is defensible, and it means that no one in the West has the right to interfere with the ethical standards that the Easterners chose for themselves, when they are on their own lands and around their own hearths. The other is madness, and it means that we are not permitted to judge the actions of the Easterners even when these actions are directed toward us; and even when they are clearly meant to harm us. Does it need to be pointed out that such an ideology dehumanizes the very people whose interests it is supposed to be defending? If we exempt a group of people, like the Palestinians and the Arabs, from normal ethical demands we make on Europeans, Americans, and the Asians, are we respecting their culture, or pitying them for having such a rotten one? To say that we must apply a whole new set of ethical rules to the Arabs implies that they are not fit to be judged by ours. Furthermore, to fail even to bring our ethical standards to their attention, is to imply very strongly that they could not appreciate these standards if we did. Thus Orientalism is racism turned to the advantage of the group that is being discriminated against. You cannot judge us the way you judge yourselves; therefore, you must lower the standards for us -- and continue to lower it until we tell you to stop.As Harris writes, "To refuse to allow others to rise to your standard because you believe that they are inherently inferior to you is simple racism; but to refuse to demand that others rise to your standard for the same reason is also racism -- just a tad less blatant, and far more cruel." (Found via The New Criterion's Stefan Beck. Be sure to read Beck's comments on Harris's article.)
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