EdDriscoll.com

Posted 5/1/2004 11:10:33 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE VEEP STAKES: Jesse Jackson is, not surprisingly, urging Kerry to pick a black vice presidential candidate. Betsy Newmark says, "The only reasonable choice I could come up with from Kerry's point of view is Harold Ford of Tennessee. Ford is a real up-and-comer in Democratic politics and would have a chance of bring Tennessee into Kerry's camp". In contrast, Robert Novak writes that others are urging Sen. John Kerry to consider everybody's favorite plagiarist, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware.

Posted 4/30/2004 09:38:44 PM by Edward Driscoll
IS THIS WHAT TINA BROWN MEANT when she said that she favors a more metrosexual approach to foreign relations?

"You can't ever make serious progress against terrorism unless you deal with Israel. We are not dealing with Israel. We've backed away. We're afraid of the political consequences." Pat Buchanan talking? No, in fact it was former New York governor Mario Cuomo. Furthermore, said Cuomo in an interview with the New Haven Register, the U.S. should tell Israel: "Up until now it was just you and the Palestinians killing one another - now you are killing us. Now there are people out there who are taking Israel as the provocation to terrorize us all over the globe - in the United States and elsewhere." And Cuomo suggested that Israeli leaders be told that "you have a responsibility to all of us (and) we are going to be more assertive in dealing with you.... So let's sit down and talk." Forty-eight hours after his words appeared in print, a backpedaling Cuomo called the Register to "clarify" his comments. "We have to be more assertive as to both sides, to force them together, not just the Israelis," he said, although he did not retract any of his earlier statements. More surprising than the harsh tone of Cuomo's remarks was that no New York newspaper, or any media outlet, for that matter, reported them. Then again, given Cuomo's status as a Democratic Party hero -- and in light of the relatively positive press coverage he received during a 12-year tenure as governor that was long on rhetorical flourishes and short on tangible accomplishment -- the silence of New York's media lambs was to be expected.

Ace of Spades writes:

Bias by commission occurs when the media report a story in a slanted fashion. Bias by omission occurs, most dramatically, when the media simply refuse to report a story whatsoever. The media is constantly offering us what are claimed to be objective and neutral rules which, they imply, more or less dictate that they report a story in a certain way, or don't report a story at all. Trouble is, the "rules" established for, say, giving anti-Jew remarks by a Republican the full-court press suddenly seem inoperative, and not quite "rules" at all, when a Democrat makes similar remarks.

With tongue probably in cheek, Jeff Goldstein simply says:

I used to tell the story about how Mario Cuomo once complimented my mother's kishkes. "These are great kishkes," he said. "Fabulous. Best I've ever had!" But f*** him if I'll tell that story anymore.

Can't say I blame him.

Posted 4/30/2004 04:56:57 PM by Edward Driscoll
WATCHED CHARADE LAST NIGHT: I would have loved to have visited the pretty, romantic Paris depicted in that film (and having Audrey Hepburn as a tour guide wouldn't have been too shabby, either). But that France is long, long gone.

Posted 4/30/2004 04:45:15 PM by Edward Driscoll
FROM THE HOME OFFICE IN TIKRIT: David Letterman lists "Top Ten Ways Saddam Hussein Celebrated His 67th Birthday".

Posted 4/30/2004 04:14:11 PM by Edward Driscoll
I GUESS WE SHOULD HAVE DONE NOTHING AFTER 9/11: The recent attacks on President Bush by two of Sports Illustrated's writers after Pat Tillman's death in Afghanistan, and the vicious piece by University of Massachusetts student journalist Rene Gonzalez have a curious tone to them. I thought the general consensus of the left was, "Sure, go after Al Qaida. Afghanistan makes sense. But don't invade Iraq." But SI's Rick Reilly is "furious that these wars keep taking them". And Gonzalez describes Tillman's involvement in the war in Afghanistan as, "defending or serving his all-powerful country from a seventh-rate, Third World nation". So in their minds, I guess we should have done nothing after 9/11. But we did nothing after the WTC bombing in '93, and the attack on the Coles in 2000, when Bill Clinton was still president. And the result was 9/11. Nearly three years later, terror attacks are at their lowest level in 30 years. But that wouldn't have happened if we had followed their advice. Compare the outbursts by Reilly and Gonzalez with how the left banded together when President Clinton deployed our troops in Kosovo, and cruise missiles against Iraq. As I wrote in February of 2003:

I'll never forget the conversation I had back around 1999 with an attorney who was an acquaintance of my wife, while we had dinner at a Los Gatos restaurant with another couple and her. A sixty-something hyper-liberal, after she had brought up (God knows how we got on the subject) the importance of liberating Kosovo, I casually mentioned that I didn't see why it was in our national interest to get involved there. She erupted like a volcano with, "We've got to liberate those poor people suffering under Slobodan Milosevic!!!! Don't you understand!!???", Well, no. But I'll bet any amount of money she's against liberating the equally suffering people of Iraq, largely--if not entirely--because of who will get the credit for it.

On the other hand, as Radley Balko wrote earlier this year, doing nothing has become the left's answer to just about everything.

Posted 4/30/2004 03:08:56 PM by Edward Driscoll
TED KOPPEL'S NIGHTLINE RATINGS STUNT is put into perspective by these two Instapundit links. And it's nice to see that John McCain's respect for the First Amendment continues to flourish. UPDATE: John Hawkins and Joe Mariani have some thoughts on Koppel's "tribute". And Glenn Reynolds has a list of items that he hopes Koppel also reads, "Just in the name of balance, you know".

Posted 4/29/2004 03:51:09 PM by Edward Driscoll
RADICAL CHIC GOES THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: The peasants are revolting--and worse, they're talking out of turn at Manhattan dinner parties! And--heaven forbid--upsetting Tina Brown! For more on Brown--who "favors a more metrosexual approach to foreign relations" (yes, she actually wrote that), click here. And also here, to read of the "neocons of the '30s [who] bitterly reviled FDR as 'that man''"--40 years before neoconservatives came into existence. Last year, Mickey Kaus coined the term "the liberal cocoon", and Mark Steyn ran with it. The New York Times, and to a lesser extent, The Washington Post, which runs Brown's column, exist to keep everyone happy within the cocoon. But sometimes reality intrudes, no matter how carefully one plans the cocktail parties. UPDATE: Brown's article has given us...the Ultimate Kerry Bumpersticker!

Posted 4/29/2004 02:11:06 PM by Edward Driscoll
SPEAKING OF THE COMMISSION, Michelle Malkin is not very happy about Bob Kerrey's shenanigans both behind the scenes--and in front of them:

Catapulted back into the limelight thanks to the mass murder of 3,000 innocent men, women, and children, Kerrey took advantage of his terrorist-induced celebrity to appear on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Now, it would be one thing if Kerrey used his privileged position to inform Stewart's younger audience of the gravity of the 9/11 panel's task. But instead, Kerrey yukked it up. First, he dished with Stewart about President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney's upcoming private meeting with the commission. When Stewart mocked the president's "buddy system," Kerrey guffawed: "He is bringing his buddy, that's exactly right, for safety." Emboldened by audience applause, Kerrey riffed that it was more like "Screw you, buddy." Asked by Stewart whether people were really blaming each other over the terrorist attacks during closed hearings, Kerrey snorted: "Oh, Jee-zus, yeah." More audience approval. (Taking the Lord's name in vain is always good for a few cheap laughs.) Next, echoing a profanity uttered earlier in the show, Kerrey blurted out with a clownish grin: "Life is [expletive bleeped]." When Stewart proposed that Kerrey ask the vice president, "What the [expletive bleeped] is wrong with you people?" Kerrey cracked up and promised to use the question. And when Stewart called Attorney General John Ashcroft a "big [expletive bleeped]," Kerrey chortled some more. After nearly ten minutes of knee-slapping hilarity, it was time for Kerrey to wrap things up. Instead of paying lip service to those who died in the terrorist attacks, Kerrey used his last moments on the program to suck up to Stewart. The Daily Show, Kerrey cooed, was one of the few shows he TiVo'ed. The other, he joked, was [the PBS kids' show] Boohbah. Ho-ho-ho. House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R., Mo.) was spot on Tuesday in his reaction to Kerrey's performance: "His appearance on a program designed to satirize current events proves that Kerrey lacks the seriousness of purpose that this Commission requires and the American people deserve. This is not a laughing matter."

RTWT. Add this to Harkin and Lautenberg's coordinated chickhawk outbursts, and John Kerry's meltdown this week on Good Morning America, and you have to ask--just what's happened to the party of Roosevelt, Truman and John Kennedy??

Posted 4/29/2004 01:56:25 PM by Edward Driscoll
WHEN YOU ADD THE GORELICK CONTROVERSY TO THIS, it's hard to escape the conclusion that the 9/11 commission are now officially a partisan self-parody: sound and fury signifying nothing, except how far the left has fallen. "People out to stay out of our business" was the unbelievably arrogant quote that commission chairman Thomas Kean barked when asked about Gorelick. But just what is your business? (And yes, I know Kean is--or was--a Republican. I wonder if he knows how he's being used?)

Posted 4/29/2004 12:59:29 PM by Edward Driscoll
END OF AN ERA: Oldsmobile, the nation's oldest line of cars, has died at age 106.

Posted 4/29/2004 12:43:59 PM by Edward Driscoll
THOMAS SOWELL LOOKS AT the greatest singer of the 20th century, Der Bingle. For decades, Crosby has been my father's favorite singer, and he owns darn near every LP--and 78(!) that Crosby ever made. He's also contributed a few odds and ends to some earlier biographies of Bing. Crosby's hiring of this fellow as his guitarist, who would go on to greatly influence Jimmy Page, allowed my dad and I to sort of bridge the gap between our respective tastes in music, and gave me an entry into my father's music when I was a teenager.

Posted 4/29/2004 12:20:56 PM by Edward Driscoll
BECAUSE I AM SO HIP: My review copies of the sublime Charade, starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, and Robert Altman's 3 Women, a very strange (even by Altman standards) mid-'70s film that starred Sissy Spacek and Shelly Duvall, arrived today on DVD from the Criterion Collection. Expect a review on Blogcritics in the not too distant future. UPDATE: Speaking of hip, my copy of Craig Anderton's Sonar 3: Mixing and Mastering arrived from Amazon this afternoon. Expect a review of it as well, similar to my review of Izotope's mastering software from earlier this month.

Posted 4/28/2004 09:52:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
IMPORTANT SAFETY TIP: Playing Keith Richards-style barre chords in open-G tuning on your Fender Telecaster can lead to blisters above the joints of your index finger, until you build up calluses there. Especially if you haven't used that tuning in quite a long time. Take proper precautions.

Posted 4/28/2004 09:08:56 PM by Edward Driscoll
WHAT WILL RICK ATKINSON COVER NOW? A Washington Post Iraq war reporter had admitted that he was "against the war before, during and after it". Will The Post continue to allow him to cover the war now that he's gone on the record and admitted he's biased against it and the Bush administration?

Posted 4/28/2004 07:40:08 PM by Edward Driscoll
DEMOCRATIC SENATORS DEPLOY THE CHICKENHAWK SLUR: Both Tom Harkin and Frank Lautenberg used the sophism in attacking Dick Cheney. But don't question the left's patriotism! UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt writes, "Reprehensible enough for you? Hypocritical in the extreme considering Lautenberg's support for Bill Clinton? Historically asinine given FDR's role as war time leader of greatness?"

How to explain the Lautenberg melt-down? Well, many, many callers and e-mailers who heard me play the speech think he was drunk. I don't. I think he is acting in concert with a desperate Kerry campaign. But Lautenberg, like Kerry, has zero understanding of the American people. They have breathed deep the MoveOn.org swamp gas, and they have become as unbalanced as Dean.

In 1976, Bob Dole, serving as Gerald Ford's vice president, was widely attacked by the press for churlishly referring to the 20th century's four "Democrat Wars"--the two World Wars, Korea and Vietnam--because our involvement in each war was initiated by a Democratic President. Watch Lautenberg and Harkin's remarks to go virtually uncommented on by the traditional chattering classes.

Posted 4/28/2004 07:16:19 PM by Edward Driscoll
CALL IN THE SECRET SERVICE? A 15 year old boy draws sketches that show "a man in what appeared to be Middle Eastern-style clothing, holding a rifle"--along with President Bush's head on a pike. The Secret Service are called in to investigate. An interesting discussion ensues on Joanne Jacobs' Weblog.

Posted 4/28/2004 05:00:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
LIES AND THE LYING LIARS WHO TELL THEM: Steven Den Beste (by way of Opus of Berke Breathed) speaks truth to power.

Posted 4/28/2004 04:54:25 PM by Edward Driscoll
KINSLEY TO HEAD LA TIMES OP-ED SECTION: Hence, the title of this blog.

Posted 4/28/2004 04:33:51 PM by Edward Driscoll
INTEGRATING ISLAM INTO LIBERAL SOCIETIES: Canada is allowing Islamic courts to decide disputes. The British government is allowing Muslim women to be exempt from ID card photos. And in the US, as Charles Johnson writes:

Muslim groups in Hamtramck, Michigan, who want a special exemption from noise ordinances to blare the Islamic call to worship over loudspeakers five times a day, are going to get their wish.

(Shouldn't the ACLU be all over that last one?) When did multiculturalism triumph over the rule of law in the West?

Posted 4/28/2004 03:47:48 PM by Edward Driscoll
IMAGES OF KERRY: Keith Burgess-Jackson writes, "The flap about John Kerry�s medals is much ado about nothing. But those images!":

Look: This country is still divided about Vietnam. It will be divided for as long as anyone who lived through it is alive. John Kerry may have fought valiantly for his country, but he turned against his fellow soldiers when he came home. Night after night, we see images of John Kerry with long, scraggly hair, wearing military fatigues on the streets of the nation�s capital, in the company of other scruffy protesters, causing trouble. These images are being seared into the nation�s consciousness. Don�t say Kerry was in the right. That�s irrelevant. Many people think the war was right and that those who protested it gave aid and comfort to the enemy. Images don�t lie. We see how Kerry behaved thirty-odd years ago. We see the crowd he ran with. We see the tension he sought to generate. I�m afraid this election is over, folks. Journalists will do everything they can to make it a horse race (for their own selfish reasons), but it�s over.

Kerry has had numerous opportunities to say, "I was young and stupid. Everybody does stupid, irrational things in their 20s." But he can't ever seem to admit to being wrong, and given the number of flip-flops throughout his career--virtually his entire adult life--some of those positions and statements have to be wrong. Bill Clinton could make contradictory statements such as his famous riff about smoking pot but not inhaling, because they were usually about minor issues, and there was little photographic evidence of his youth (in between the photo of young Bill with President Kennedy (the original and still best JFK) and his becoming governor of Arkansas. The photographic evidence of Kerry's youth is overwhelming, and damning.

Posted 4/28/2004 03:10:45 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE POPULATION BOMBS: Will the 21st century turn out to be an era of population decline? Time to dump those shares of Soylent Green.

Posted 4/28/2004 02:45:34 PM by Edward Driscoll
"STRAIGHT TALK OF SAVAGERY": A newspaper editor who gets it.

Posted 4/28/2004 02:29:11 PM by Edward Driscoll
MUTUAL OF PYONGYANG PRESENTS "Seasonal Moonbat IMF Migration", deep in the whichy thickets of Washington DC. (Via Charles Johnson.) UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein places it all into perfect perspective.

Posted 4/28/2004 01:38:59 PM by Edward Driscoll
KERRY AFTER VIETNAM: His 1984 campaign for Senate memo promised cut after cut in defense programs--many of which are in use right now, to liberate Iraq.

Posted 4/28/2004 01:34:08 PM by Edward Driscoll
KERRY, BUSH AND VIETNAM: James Taranto and Jonah Goldberg each have some thoughts. UPDATE: As does Chas Rich, who also adds Bob Dole and Dan Quayle into the mix.

Posted 4/28/2004 12:59:54 PM by Edward Driscoll
MEMO TO THE GOP: Where are you?

Posted 4/28/2004 11:02:25 AM by Edward Driscoll
UNSCAM (AKA KOFIGATE) IN A NUTSHELL: This chart explains all, although the Seattle Times may have added reason for not printing anything about it.

Posted 4/28/2004 10:47:54 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE RELIGIOUS LEFT: I was kicking around ways of writing about Al Gore's support of the new film The Day After Tomorrow when I first read the story on Drudge last night. But Steve Green has it nailed:

It's The Passion of the Christ for the anti-globalization crowd.

Read the whole thing.

Posted 4/28/2004 01:35:09 AM by Edward Driscoll
THOMAS SOWELL TAKES AN UP CLOSE LOOK AT bait-and-switch media.

Posted 4/27/2004 05:16:02 PM by Edward Driscoll
ATLAS BLANCHED: Coming soon: Ayn Rand on black velvet?

Posted 4/27/2004 02:34:06 PM by Edward Driscoll
MORE BIAS AT SI: As a follow-up to yesterday's post, a reader sent me a subscriber-only story on Sports Illustrated's Website by Rick Reilly, which ends:

Athletes are soldiers and soldiers are athletes. Uniformed, fit and trained, they fight for one cause, one team. They take ground and they defend it. Both are carried off on their teammates' shoulders, athletes when they win and soldiers when they die. Pat Tillman and Todd Bates were athletes and soldiers. Tillman wanted to be anonymous and became the face of this war. Bates wanted to be somebody and died faceless to most of the nation. Both did their duty for their country, but I wonder if their country did its duty for them. Tillman died in Afghanistan, a war with no end in sight and not enough troops to finish the job. Bates died in Iraq, a war that began with no just cause and continues with no just reason. Be proud that sports produce men like this. But I, for one, am furious that these wars keep taking them.

Iraq had "no just cause and continues with no just reason"? I guess Reilly would prefer Saddam was back in power. Of course, so would the folks who worked for another part of the Time-Warner conglomerate. My reader added, "Sports writers/journalists try to give themselves intellectual credibility by inundating us with politically correct commentary and asides. My feeling is that they believe this insulates them from the criticism that they are lightweights that 'only write about sports'." Exactly. And it's probably why Paul Zimmerman of SI has a similar story on Tillman which begins with this ee cummings quote:

Buffalo Bill's defunct who used to ride a watersmooth-silver stallion and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjust like that Jesus he was a handsome man and what I want to know is how do you like your blueeyed boy Mister Death

Zimmerman's last paragraph begins:

It's impossible, the whole thing is impossible, the whole crazy world and the fact that young men such as Pat Tillman have to go out and do what they think is right and find death at 27 years old.

Does Zimmerman feel that volunteering for the Army and defending your country isn't right? That's certainly what's implied by his sentence. And check out "Mister Death" in the cummings quote, which Zimmerman uses as a thinly-veiled reference to the president. Of course, as the man said, "You're making a powerful assumption, young man. You're assuming that you represent the public. I don't accept that". Zimmerman and Reilly represent the public that orbits the SI offices at 1271 Avenue Of The Americas. It's a safe bet they doesn't represent the infinitely larger public who inhabit the blank area of that famous New Yorker cartoon between there and Los Angeles. SOMEWHAT RELATED UPDATE: Over at Tech Central Station, Keith Burgess-Jackson, a self-professed liberal himself, has an article titled, "Explaining Liberal Anger".

Posted 4/27/2004 02:05:40 PM by Edward Driscoll
CALIBRATING YOUR HOME THEATER: My latest newsletter for Electronic House is online. Speaking of food, the Stay-Puft Marshmellow Man puts in a brief cameo appearance.

Posted 4/27/2004 01:46:57 PM by Edward Driscoll
FOODBLOGGING: Stephen Green's better half certainly sets an amazing birthday dinner!

Posted 4/27/2004 10:42:06 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE $1000 HAIRCUT: I realize it's important for presidential candidates to have Very Important Hair. But how do you purport to fight against "the economy of special privilege" when you fly your hairstylist in before a big TV gig, in your wife's Gulfstream private jet? UPDATE: "If I've lost the Village Voice..."

Posted 4/27/2004 10:31:08 AM by Edward Driscoll
HOT WHEELS: My review of Randy Leffingwell's Hot Wheels: 35 Years of Speed, Power Performance and Attitude is now on Cleveland.com's Weblog section. It originally appeared in Blogcritics, where the comments were quite fascinating--they went from "hey, I had those toys as a kid" to arguments over gender and marketing!

Posted 4/27/2004 09:44:05 AM by Edward Driscoll
YOUR TUITION DOLLARS AT WORK: Big Bird from Sesame Street will be Villanova's commencement speaker this year. Could be worse--it could have been this guy, who spoke in 1999 to Evergreen College in Washington, via satellite.

Posted 4/26/2004 08:45:48 PM by Edward Driscoll
PEARL 2001: Gut wreching emails from a Little Green Footballs regular to his girlfriend written on 9/11 and a few days afterwards.

Posted 4/26/2004 07:48:57 PM by Edward Driscoll
"SOMETHING WHICH THE GREATEST GENERATION DID NOT HAVE TO DO": Robert Alt writes:

There is a temptation to say that Pat Tillman demonstrated a courage and ethic belonging peculiarly to a previous generation�perhaps Tom Brokaw�s Greatest Generation�one in which athletes and movie stars served. But that would be a mistake. This generation should not be underestimated. The young men of today�s military have done something which the Greatest Generation did not have to do: they volunteered to serve after the Brokaws of the world lost faith in the American military. These soldiers have fought valiantly in Afghanistan after the press all but forgot them, and in Iraq after the press, yielding to unfounded accusations, forgot who they were. They have seen recent military victories cast as defeats. They answered the call to higher duty, only to have the elites question it as lower-class service. And despite politicians using the shameful rhetoric of "quagmire," the number of volunteer soldiers is increasing.

Which ties into Glenn Reynolds' post yesterday about who the media represents, and the vignette he linked to:

And the reporter then said: Well, how do you then know, Mr. President, what the public is thinking? And Bush, without missing a beat said: You're making a powerful assumption, young man. You're assuming that you represent the public. I don't accept that.

Posted 4/26/2004 02:19:38 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE RIGHT MAN FOR THE JOB: The New York Post and James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal agree: Rudolph Giuliani should be the US's next ambassador to the U.N. Taranto writes:

Not only would Giuliani be a bully-pulpiteer in the great tradition of Jeane Kirkpatrick and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, but he would bring the penetrating eye of a former prosecutor to the continuing Oil-for-Food scandal--which may well turn out to be the corrupt reason why countries like France and Russia fought so fiercely to keep Saddam Hussein's murderous dictatorship in power in Iraq. To be sure, some of Giuliani's critics, including our colleagues at The Wall Street Journal, are of the view that he was overzealous and unfair in prosecuting white-collar crimes. But that's all the more reason why he's a perfect fit for the U.N., which certainly doesn't suffer from an excess of prosecutorial fervor. Apart from the president himself, it's hard to think of any more powerful spokesman and symbol for America's war on terror than Rudy Giuliani, and not only because of his inspired mayoral leadership after Sept. 11. Giuliani took a stand against terror even when it was unpopular. In 1995 he ordered security to eject Yasser Arafat from Lincoln Center, in an era when the terror boss was being feted at the White House and lavished with Nobel Peace Prizes.

Works for me.

Posted 4/26/2004 01:04:15 PM by Edward Driscoll
BIAS IN THE STRANGEST PLACES: Tim Graham writes:

Sports Illustrated/CNN.com picks winners and losers in the weekend NFL Draft: "The Pats coming away with Miami defensive tackle Vince Wilfork at No. 21 is the NFL equivalent of the Bush tax breaks for the richest Americans. It just doesn't seem fair."

Last Wednesday when I arrived early for my focus group, I killed time in the lobby by reading a Sports Illustrated from the week before this year's Super Bowl. There was a section on "Super Bowl Memories from throughout the years", which seemed innocuous enough, with several stories written by veteran sportswriters along the lines of "I watched Hunter S. Thompson do blotter acid at the '72 Super Bowl!" and "Howard Cosell was such a bore when we met him for dinner the night before the '80 Super Bowl". But there were also numerous digs at John Ashcroft, Bush 43, and even Bush 41 scattered throughout by Sports Illustrated's writers. I guess they figure that conservatives don't bother reading SI these days.

Posted 4/26/2004 12:38:41 PM by Edward Driscoll
ACTIVIST JOURNALISM AT THE NEW YORK TIMES: Peter Bart of Variety writes that it didn't end after Howell Raines left:

[The Times] has found its entire experience with Mel Gibson to be a painful one. Prior to its release (and prior to anyone on the paper seeing it), the Times declared "The Passion" an outrage and threat to social harmony. After its release, the Times quoted the predictions of unnamed power brokers in Hollywood that Gibson would be blackballed by the film community, his career ruined. As predictions go, the Times' entire litany could stand major "correction." Despite the fact that Frank Rich compared it to "a porn movie," by the end of its run "The Passion" could rank second only to "Titanic" as the highest-grossing movie ever made. Further, there have been no signs of anti-Semitic outbreaks tied to the film's release -- not even in places like France and Argentina. As for Gibson, there's no indication that his viability as an actor or filmmaker has been compromised. Indeed, Hollywood reveres success, and Gibson's personal take from his film -- somewhere north of $400 million -- will surely be history's biggest. That makes Gibson not an outlaw, but a Hollywood folk hero. It is not my intent here to indulge in Times-bashing. I spent eight very happy years on the Times staff, and I respect that paper's unique role in our journalistic establishment. Still, the Times has vastly stepped up its coverage of pop culture and, in doing so, seems to be bending its normal rules of journalistic fairness. "The Passion" is a prime example.

Bart adds, "There are legitimate disagreements about the film's take on biblical history. What is beyond dispute, however, is that "The Passion" is a true phenomenon in the history of motion pictures. As such, it is "news" and deserving of objective reporting by the media. Even by the Times." "Objective reporting by the media"? Dude, that's so 1950s!

Posted 4/26/2004 11:54:21 AM by Edward Driscoll
WHO IS JAVIER ROBERT? H.D. Miller looks at the UN's Oil For Food debacle, something the mainstream press seems more than a little reluctant to do.

Posted 4/26/2004 11:43:10 AM by Edward Driscoll
INFLATION: While there's little fear of it in the national economy, it does seem to be heating up in Des Moines, where the local press spins Kerry's attendance figures at a local rally from "about a 1000" to "3000 supporters". Maybe even more!

Posted 4/26/2004 11:14:27 AM by Edward Driscoll
LET'S PUT THE PIECES TOGETHER: If you add up all the information about John Kerry--much of it from his own Website and his own words, you see, in 1971, a 27 year old man who threw away not only the medals of men who served in Vietnam but also of those who served in World War II. And then there's his Winter Soldier speech in front of the Senate on April 22, 1971, the birthplace of the 1970s' "'Nam vets are baby killers meme." All of which occurred while he was still in the Naval Reserves. "Strange that they think there's a way to spin this that doesn't make him unfit to lead our nation", writes Orrin Judd. Captain Ed writes that on Good Morning America today, "Even Charlie Gibson wasn't buying Kerry's explanation, and if Kerry loses ABC, things are definitely going downhill". UPDATE: Not surprisingly, Mickey Kaus has lots of thoughts on Kerry GMA, and even "www.johnkerryisadouchebagbutimvotingforhimanyway.com", which is an actual (if not for the faint of heart), working URL!