Posted 5/15/2004 02:49:38 PM by Edward Driscoll
THINGS I NEVER THOUGHT I'D SAY: Gene Simmons of Kiss: anti-idiotarian. (Via "The Corner".)

Posted 5/14/2004 11:09:42 PM by Edward Driscoll
KAFKA.COM: Steven Den Beste writes that Belgium and the Netherlands have proposed launching a website where businesses and citizens can report and complain on the administrative burdens caused by the insane quantities of standard issue EU regulations and red tape. The proposed URL? www.kafka.eu. To coin a phrase...heh.

Posted 5/14/2004 09:12:30 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE REAL PICTURE SHOW: Roger L. Simon says he has a scoop about some of the content that will soon be broadcast on the new Arab-language television network, Alhurra: photographs and videos of Saddam's henchmen in action, torturing--and I mean torturing--"light years beyond what you have seen from our troops in Abu Ghraib", as Simon puts it. Simon has three questions about this material:

I would like to know if any of these torturers is actually in Abu Ghraib right now. Let's hope they were not among those let out. I also would like to know what Senator Kennedy has to say about the moral equivalence of our actions after watching these tapes. And finally, I would like to know why it took so long for these to come out.

All good questions. But don't look for the press to question Ted anytime soon about his recent statements anytime soon.

Posted 5/14/2004 08:55:08 PM by Edward Driscoll
I WAS AGAINST THE WAR BEFORE I WAS AGAINST IT: Power Line Blog notes how John Kerry is subtly rewriting his past.

Posted 5/14/2004 04:44:15 PM by Edward Driscoll
HOME RECORDING UPDATE: If you use the popular Reason program* (as I frequently do) to record software-driven virtual synthesizers, Propellerhead Software has an update that contains a variety of simulated vintage instruments. ...Because guitarists aren't the only musicians who like the sound of old gear. *Not to be confused with the also popular Reason magazine--which has some great words, but is much tougher to dance to.

Posted 5/14/2004 04:05:01 PM by Edward Driscoll
JOHN PODHORETZ ON TIME MAGAZINE:

Take a look at Time magazine's cover this week. It features an artist's rendering of one of the photographs from Abu Ghraib with the line: "Iraq: How Did It Come to This?" "It" didn't come to "this." "It" is a war to liberate 25 million people and rout Islamic extremists, terrorists and those who thirst for the mass murder of Americans. "This" was an aberrancy that was stopped almost five months ago, when the revelations at Abu Ghraib led to investigations, arrests and the wholesale reinvention of the Iraq prison system. Time's cover line is a vile and grotesque slander against every American in uniform in Iraq. It remains the case, more than two weeks after the public exposure of the Abu Ghraib photographs, that not a single digital photo showing mistreatment has emerged from another cellblock at that self-same prison, or from any of the other 24 prisons in Iraq. Indeed, every photograph shown to U.S. senators yesterday is part of the same set of pictures featuring the same eight dirtbags. The scandal isn't widening. If anything, it's contracting. The focus continues to zoom in on the actual people in the pictures and their disgusting conduct in them. And yet Teddy Kennedy, a man who once let a woman die, feels free to speak the following unspeakable words: "We now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management, U.S. management." The United States is, according to the man in whose car Mary Jo Kopechne drowned, no better than the regime of Saddam Hussein. Teddy Kennedy isn't just some outlier. Teddy Kennedy is the chief surrogate of the Democratic candidate for president of the United States and a lionized figure - so lionized that a worshipful profile of him published in Boston magazine won a major journalism award last year. So let's be clear what's going on here. As we speak, 138,000 Americans are serving under dangerous conditions in Iraq. And our forces in Karbala are fighting against the goons and thugs of Muqtada al-Sadr with some success. They're risking their lives for freedom and honor and duty and love of country. And conventional liberal opinion wants them to lose.

Back in December, Charles Johnson wrote:

Am I the only one who thinks it's more than a little weird that TIME Magazine names "The American Soldier" as their "Person of the Year," only days after publishing a story by a TIME reporter who's hangin' out with the mujahideen trying to kill that same "Person of the Year?"

Linking to Johnson's post, I wrote, "Pick a side boys, so the readers know where you stand". Looks like they have.

Posted 5/14/2004 11:04:17 AM by Edward Driscoll
SEX APPEAL: Roger L. Simon looks at two scandals--one with world-changing implications, and one that's pretty minor in the scope of history, and compares and contrasts the coverage each is receiving:

Drudge (linking Media Life Magazine) is telling us the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times are locked in mortal combat to see who will own the suddenly important Graydon Carter Story. Vanity Fair editor Carter, whose magazine features movieland coverage, has evidently been profiteering off his cozy Hollywood ties, even to the tune of an alleged hundred grand 'consulting fee' from Universal. Creepy, I guess, and unethical... but these same papers don't seem too concerned that the Wall Street Journal and the 'lowly' tabloid New York Post own the UN Oil-for-Food Scandal. Why is that, one wonders, when surely the latter story is vastly more important to the current world situation and to how the international community could conceivably go forward? Yet they seem content to be Missing-in-Action on that. It would be interesting to know how many reporters the two papers have assigned to both stories and hear an explanation of why.

I suspect that Simon knows exactly why the Graydon Carter story is getting more ink: it's got more sex appeal. And it involves "killing their own". As Woody Allen once said, "intellectuals are just like the Mafia--they only kill their own". The media works much the same way: they love to see one of their peers take a fall. Most importantly, Hollywood and journalistic corruption is nothing new. But if you're a liberal journalist, to believe that the UN is corrupt is to change a worldview you may have held since childhood that the UN is a benign organization full of wonderful humanitarians that helps keep the peace and keeps the "evil" United States in check. And if that's no longer true, then all of those bad things that conservatives have been saying about the UN...may be true! And that can't be possible. Maybe Stefan Sharkansky is right--this is the week the media jumped the shark. UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds reminds us that UNSCAM isn't the only scandal in town among global elites.

Posted 5/14/2004 10:13:55 AM by Edward Driscoll
WAS THIS THE WEEK that the mainstream media as we know it jumped the shark? UPDATE: This certainly lends a bit of credence to that theory. ANOTHER UPDATE: As does this.

Posted 5/13/2004 08:52:53 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE DEFINITIVE INSTAPUNDIT INTERVIEW: Read the whole thing. All I can add is...heh.

Posted 5/13/2004 02:11:50 PM by Edward Driscoll
"BOSTON GLOBE PUBLISHES ANTI-AMERICAN PORN": James Taranto has a pretty good link-filled rundown on the duping of the Globe. And Glenn Reynolds has some thoughts on, as he puts it, the Globe's "rather lame" apology for blowing it, big time. As Glenn writes, "Note that it doesn't say, anywhere, that the images were actually fraudulent, though they were. Is this an adequate apology for running explicitly pornographic images that were falsely labeled as representing atrocities by American troops?"

Posted 5/13/2004 12:38:12 PM by Edward Driscoll
BUSTIN' MAKES ME FEEL GOOD: There's a surprisingly authentic looking complete Ghostbusters' suit for sale on eBay.

Posted 5/13/2004 11:13:06 AM by Edward Driscoll
HOME AUTOMATION AND HOME THEATER: My latest Electronic House newsletter is online. UPDATE: My monthly "Ideas For Every Room" piece is online as well. We look at the high tech--well, really medium tech--kitchen this month.

Posted 5/13/2004 11:10:14 AM by Edward Driscoll
WHAT WE WEREN'T TOLD: Shell of Across the Atlantic wants to know why the press hasn't reported that Nicholas Berg was Jewish:

It doesn't matter what the killers knew. They could put in the story, "Berg was Jewish, and it is uncertain whether his killers knew that." Simple as that. No bias one way or the other. To excuse the *media* for not knowing he was Jewish is ridiculous though. They're reporters. It's their job to find things out. How hard is it to find out someone's religion? Obituary writers do it all the time. The media's theme for this story has been "revenge for Abu Graihb". If they report that he was Jewish, then the theme might become "racists terrorists brutally murder Jewish American". Is that the media's motivation for not reporting something as important as someone's religious identity? I don't know. And I'll say that.

Questioning the media's motivation is always a good thing. In a link-filled post titled, "Why The Big Media Continue To Lose Their Audience", Glenn Reynolds writes, "big media leaders seem almost desperate to keep the story on Abu Ghraib" But on the Internet, "where users set the agenda, not Big Media editors and producers, it's different". And Nick Berg is the story, as well it should be.

Posted 5/12/2004 08:51:53 PM by Edward Driscoll
"STARK RAVING MAD": Joel Mowbray has more on "Pete" Stark's freakout answering machine message last week to a constituent who's a military veteran.

Posted 5/12/2004 06:24:38 PM by Edward Driscoll
INCIDENTALLY, sorry for the recent lack of posts--I've been in crunch mode, with several articles due simultaneously.

Posted 5/12/2004 06:13:08 PM by Edward Driscoll
FLY ME TO THE MOON: Howard Bart only wrote one hit song in his lifetime. As Mark Steyn writes, it was the only one that he needed:

In 1969, Buzz Aldrin took a portable tape player up there with him, and “Fly Me To The Moon” became the first moon song to get to the moon itself. “The first music played on the moon,” said Quincy Jones [who arranged Sinatra's definitive version]. “I freaked.”

Steyn adds:

Had any other nation beaten NASA to it, they’d have marked the occasion with the “Ode To Joy” or Also Sprach Zarathustra, something grand and formal. But there’s something very American about Buzz Aldrin standing on the surface of the moon with his cassette machine.

Exactly.

Posted 5/12/2004 12:15:44 PM by Edward Driscoll
OUR MEDIA, IN DAMAGE OVERDRIVE: Brent Bozell makes a great point in the middle of his weekly media column, which was probably written before video of Nicholas Berg's beheading surfaced:

Does America have the "right to know," to see every image of smiling American morons at Abu Ghraib? To see every image of the horrors of the war? Contrary to what they might say on the chat-show circuit, the media themselves do not have an absolute position on that. Look no further than March 31, when a vicious mob shot four American contractors, mutilated them, burned their corpses, dragged them through the streets, and hung body parts from bridges. Like the prisoner-abuse story, this was the ugliness, the horror of war. But in this case, most in the media determined the public did not have a right to see the pictures. Notice the great irony behind the Abu Ghraib pictures. Because they are less graphic and disturbing, since the prisoners are being humiliated, and not killed, they are more acceptable for airing, and then more acceptable for complete over-airing. The end result is that Americans are inundated with visuals of injustices committed by Americans, and lost is the reality of far graver and more frequent atrocities committed against Americans. Reality gives way to the perception of reality, all in the name of "news." [Emphasis mine--Ed] Now, the media elite are showing us the most remembered gloomy images of Vietnam, the war America lost when Americans lost heart. By putting those Iraq pictures next to these, the media are vying for similar results. If not, why make all the comparisons? Why are our media taking sexual humiliation and comparing it to the Kent State shootings, or more outrageously, the mass murder at My Lai? Do they have no ability to distinguish between these, or do the ends justify the means, with one image just as good as the next one?

It certainly fits the profile of why they justified running footage of Fallujah in March, but not of the 9/11 attacks by Al Qaida on our own soil. Or as Glenn Reynolds writes, the media's viewpoint is that "Publishing images that might inflame Arabs against Americans is responsible journalism. So is not publishing images that might inflame Americans against Arabs." Nicholas Berg's killers directly cited the images from Abu Ghraib as their justification for beheading them. I wonder if the media feels complicit. Well, actually, I don't. UPDATE: Speaking of damage overdrive, one of Steve Green's readers emailed to tell him:

The Berg family was sandbagged in their grief by an AP reporter who told them for the first time that their family member had been decapitated and the video of the murder was online. An AP photographer was on hand to record the family's response. The father collapsed on the sidewalk in tears.

Green has contact info for AP, for those who like to discuss this example of fine quality journalism with them.

Posted 5/12/2004 10:34:39 AM by Edward Driscoll
I'M MORE OF A MIES VAN DER ROHE AND CORBUSIER GUY MYSELF, but I can think of one or two people who wouldn't mind decorating their digs with Middle Earth Furniture.

Posted 5/11/2004 08:57:15 PM by Edward Driscoll
PLACING IRAQ INTO PERSPECTIVE: Something maybe Teddy Kennedy should consider. UPDATE: James Lileks does a little perspective-izing himself.

Posted 5/11/2004 04:54:08 PM by Edward Driscoll
ABU WAFFLE: "He was in favor of politicizing the Abu Ghraib issue before he was against it". Heh.

Posted 5/11/2004 03:41:52 PM by Edward Driscoll
PETER ARNETT--HE'S EVERYWHERE! I'm doing a product review of an HDTV compatible device. So I plug the unit into my HDTV converter and pull some channels off the air to see what its picture looks like. San Jose's channel #4 is running some sort of 16X9 widescreen high-def demonstration loop, the sort of stuff that looks great in store displays--everything's super sharp, perfectly photographed and lit, mostly outdoors, and just stunning. So far, running in the background, I've seen a woman's BMX race from 2001, some sort of auction of French antiques, and now footage from a US aircraft carrier during the early stages of our war in Afghanistan. Guess who's broadcasting from the flight deck? Peter Arnett! Arnett was fired last year by MSNBC "after the journalist told state-run Iraqi TV that the U.S.-led coalition’s initial war plan had failed and that reports from Baghdad about civilian casualties had helped antiwar protesters undermine the Bush administration’s strategy", according to MSNBC itself. (And he's been fired from numerous other gigs as well.) But I guess he's still your go-to guy when you need narration for a canned HDTV news feed. Because nothing says high-tech like Vietnam-era leftists with six-strand combovers.

Posted 5/10/2004 03:36:23 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE PASSION OF THE DVD: The Digital Bits, whose motto is "We Know DVD!"--and they do--is reporting that The Passion of the Christ will be out on DVD on August 31st:

There will be few (if any) extras, so that the maximum video bit rate can be achieved for the film presentation. The disc will include both anamorphic widescreen and full frame versions, as well as audio in the original Aramaic/Latin in both Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 surround (with English and Spanish subs). Sources are telling us that a more elaborate special edition release is in the works, for a possible Easter 2005 release.

They have links to further news about the DVD, as well as a cover photo of the version to be released in August.

Posted 5/10/2004 12:33:53 PM by Edward Driscoll
ALAN KING PASSED AWAY THIS WEEKEND AT 76: Jeff Goldstein has some thoughts about--and advice for--the great comedian.

Posted 5/9/2004 08:27:27 PM by Edward Driscoll
ABUSE OF PRISONERS: The New York Times is noticing that prisoners are abused in US jails, as well as in Iraq. As Glenn Reynolds (sounds like he's feeling better!) writes:

Bill Lockyer doesn't mind this kind of thing! (Or worse). Neither, apparently, does Eliot Spitzer. This suggests that concern over events in Iraq is overstated, or that concern over prison conditions here is understated. Or maybe both. (Does this mean we should pull out of Pennsylvania?)

Yes. It's been a quagmire since that incident in 1962 at Faber, and it's time we cut our losses and admitted the truth.

Posted 5/9/2004 07:41:16 PM by Edward Driscoll
IS A GENTLEMAN "COOL"? Interesting take by James Bowman on a new book titled The Compleat Gentleman by Brad Miner, a former literary editor of National Review:

In fact, "cool" is the great killer of gentlemanliness. Cool is Frank Sinatra knocking women around or Miles Davis shooting himself up with heroin and self-pity [Miles knocked a few women around as well--Ed] or Marlon Brando's witheringly ironic portrayals of, um, gentlemanliness.

Hadn't really thought of it that way before, but it's a great way of putting it. Sinatra, Miles and Brando were great artists at their peak (although each would descend, at times, into self-parody in the collective sunsets of their careers), but that doesn't necessarily make them gentlemen.

Posted 5/9/2004 07:13:41 PM by Edward Driscoll
BLOGGER PRO DONE CHANGED THE INTERFACE ON ME! Interesting new design, but it's definitely going take time to get used to it. At first glance though, while it's slicker, it also appears a little slower than the old design. Although that could simply be opening day jitters.

Posted 5/9/2004 07:10:26 PM by Edward Driscoll
THIS SEEMS REASONABLE: Greg Cote of The Miami Herald writes that Pat Tillman is a true American hero, but that doesn't mean he deserves to be honored in the NFL Hall of Fame. And he's right--while I could certainly see some sort of memorial to Tillman there (like this virtual tribute), I don't think he deserves a bust in Canton either. Plenty of extremely brave men sacrificed burgeoning NFL careers to serve their country and gave their lives for it in World War II. And if they're not in Canton, then it seems reasonable for the same standard to apply to Tillman.

Posted 5/9/2004 02:22:32 AM by Edward Driscoll

AS THE MAN WOULD SAY--and we hope he gets well soon--Heh.