British Tabloids: Amy Winehouse Better Than Britney
Ms. Winehouse’s acclaim could not have come at a better time for the sultry, beehived songstress, whose husband Blake Fielder-Civil received on the same day a twenty-seven month prison sentence for his June, 2006 conviction on dual charges of beating a Hoxton pub landlord and attempting to smoke a wicker chair.
While worldwide support for Ms. Winehouse has ebbed and flowed — depending upon her daily batshit-crazy antics — the devotion of her UK media fan base reflects traditional British values of loyalty, perseverance, and clinging tenaciously to lost causes.
Obama: New Yorker Cover Real After All
“The Senator’s outrage was entirely understandable,” said Mr. Obama’s communications director Bill Burton. “He simply didn’t expect anything like that to come from such a normally left-leaning source. Then he talked to Mrs. Obama and they agreed The New Yorker pretty much nailed it.”
“However,” Mr. Burton continued, “at no time or under any circumstance has Senator Obama ever consumed a human infant. He is not a baby-eater.”
Proof print media is far from dead.
John Hendrix did a piece in the NYT Op-Ed that is just gorgeous. I am sorry I missed it until today (my usual Sunday NYT’s routine had been disrupted this weekend). Just compare the below picture with its online (red-headed, step-) brother.*
(click to enlarge)
*Apologies to red heads and step-brothers everywhere.
Rush Limbaugh Turns Down Obama VP Job
Denver, CO — Radio talk-show pundit Rush Limbaugh became the latest notable public figure to remove his or her own name from consideration as Democratic Senator Barack Obama’s vice presidential running mate.
Mr. Limbaugh’s announcement followed recent similar rejections by Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, U.S. Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, and supermodel Christie Brinkley.
Smears & Straight Talk
This season’s political blockbuster brings us a mediated brawl fought with logos, banners, websites, email spam, online videos and doctored images. Amused by the strivings of the righteous and desperate, we already know the campaign catchphrase will be something akin to, “It’s the YouTube video, stupid.” We also know that no one will ever know for sure whether or not anyone else knows for sure about anything.
Barack Obama said something or stood too close to someone else who said something. He wore something or didn’t wear something. He went somewhere or didn’t go somewhere else. His wife also said something. She might also have gone somewhere.
John McCain said something and then said something different. He stood apart from someone and then stood next to someone. He is this old or else he is that old. He called his wife something. She might also have called him something.
Who has time to triple-check the counter-claims? It’s far more expedient to be political fans the way we’re sports fans—mindless, rabid—and we have the logos and T-shirts to prove it.
Full essay at Voice.
Here’s one for Michael Grant-Smith
AP Stylebook No Longer “Mentally Retarded”
via Gawker
Journo-nerds rejoice: the AP Stylebook has been updated! It’s the Bible of all that is considered acceptable in middle American newsrooms, and, like middle America itself, is consistently several years behind the times. So what changes can you look forward to in tomorrow’s edition of the Mattoon Journal Gazette? More text messaging, less malarkey, and no more retarded people!
McCain Offers $300M Award for New Campaign Staff
“Most of my existing team receives great compensation from the various corporations for which they lobby,” said Mr. McCain, “but they still can’t keep my White House bid off the guardrails. I’ll miss them at first but I think I’ll get over it.”
Things are NOT fine and they’re getting worse, in case you’re wondering
Everything seemingly is spinning out of control:
Is everything spinning out of control? Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism.
Horatio Alger, twist in your grave.
The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country’s sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance.
Like Kottke, I first thought this was an Onion headline. Then I realized it wasn’t. Then I realized it must not be very hard to get a job as an AP beat writer.
(via reddit)
The Associated Press vs. Everybody Else
Additionally, the AP made clear to all and sundry it would charge fees every time its copyrighted material is excerpted, alluded to, or dreamed about.
Bloggers around the world expressed their outrage about the AP’s action by using strong words, street-smart wisdom, and merciless quoting.
fair and balanced
Fox News refers to Michelle Obama as Obama’s baby mama.
This is who we are
Thanks for posting the link to this, Kathy.
FOX Ambushes Bill Moyers; Journalists Ambush FOX
Moyers disputes FOX’s “facts” for the record and asks to interview someone at The O’Reilly Factor about Rupert Murdoch and the show’s coverage during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. The journalist crowd then reacts, chasing down Barry and intentionally giving him a dose of FOX-style bullying reportage.
Words in the News, Words You Can Use
Tuesday’s New York Times included a story featuring one of those words.
This week the Indianapolis Museum of Art plans to announce that it has acquired a trove of work and correspondence by Weegee, the crepuscular, stogie-smoking New York photographer.
111 Nations Approve clusterflock Treaty
Dublin, Ireland — A controversial agreement limiting the deployment of clusterflock was reached Friday.
The talks were boycotted by the governments of Russia, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and the United States.
“We can’t take a chance that an innocent person could stumble upon an unopened post or link,” said Norwegian representative Hans Lars-Erik Olof.
An unnamed clusterflock bomblet producer did not reply to emails pertaining to the treaty.
Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan
Jake Adelstein is the first American to write for a Japanese newspaper in Japanese. He was a crime reporter for Japan’s largest newspaper until writing about the yakuza, the Japanese mafia, endangered his life and the lives of his family.
Most Americans think of Japan as a law-abiding and peaceful place, as well as our staunch ally, but reporting on the underworld gave me a different perspective. Mobs are legal entities here. Their fan magazines and comic books are sold in convenience stores, and bosses socialize with prime ministers and politicians. And as far as the United States is concerned, Japan may be refueling U.S. warships at sea, but it’s not helping us fight our own battles against organized crime — a realization that led to my biggest scoop.
(via marginal revolution)
The September 11 Television Archive
The September 11 Television Archive is a fascinating collection of news reports from the day (and the days following) the 2001 terrorist attacks on America.
Starting with an introductory video . . . showing how the attacks were reported in the US and around the world, it also offers the moment-by-moment coverage that the US TV networks and the BBC conducted at the time.
Life in These United States
Ah, Florida. Inspired by Deron’s post about the Land O’ Lakes (Florida) substitute teacher accused of wizardry, I pursued links that led me to coverage of the story by WLTX (Columbia, South Carolina). There I learned the Florida school district’s side of the story: the alleged wizard’s crimes were also said to have included “not following lesson plans” and allowing students to play on unapproved computers (circumstantial evidence, at the very least, of dabbling in the black arts).
And then I scrolled on down to “Today’s Top Stories” from WLTX, and that’s when I said to myself, “Ah, these here United States.”
• Deputies Search for Two Armed, Dangerous Men
• Man Arrested For Shooting, Killing Victim
• Teens Drown on Senior Skip Day
• 10-Year-Old Rape Victim Gives Birth
• Hulk Hogan’s Son Sentenced to 8 Months in Jail
• $5 Million Lottery Winner Killed; Ex-Boyfriend Charged
• Slight Risk of Severe Weather This Afternoon
The New York Prophetic Times
(via kottke)
Pumpkins and High School Sports
From part two of Roger Ebert’s Newspaper Days:
These rules have saved me half a career’s worth of time, and gained me a reputation as the fastest writer in town. I’m not faster. I just spend less time not writing. But on one Friday night, this particular Friday night, a Great Lead was clearly called for, because, yes, the Urbana Tigers were defeated and their hopes of a perfect season destroyed.
Here is the opening paragraph I wrote, which I still have by heart:
“The glass slipper was shattered and broken, the royal coach turned into a pumpkin, and the Cinderella Urbana Tigers stumbled and fumbled and fell.”
Holding Back a River With Our Hands
The Iraqi government has dismissed about 1,300 soldiers and policemen who deserted or refused to fight during last month’s offensive against Shiite militias and criminal gangs in Basra, officials said Sunday.
And where will those people go now? Over to the side we are paying to resist those who won’t do what the Iraqi/American government tells them to do. See story here.
a tribute to fox news
ever feel like punching yourself in the face?
A transcript of Chris Matthews and David Shuster on Hardball discussing Obama’s diner problem.
SHUSTER: Well, here’s the other thing that we saw on the tape, Chris, is that, when Obama went in, he was offered coffee, and he said, “I’ll have orange juice.”
MATTHEWS: No.
…
When Matthews said “No” in response to Shuster’s revelation that Obama ordered orange juice in a diner, he sounded as though he had just been told that Obama had punched a nun in the face.
(thanks, Katherine)
number of times mentioned in media in last 30 days
“Yoo and torture” — 102
“Mukasey and 9/11″ — 73
“Yoo and Fourth Amendment” — 16
“Obama and bowling” — 1,043
“Obama and Wright” — More than 3,000 (too many to be counted)
“Obama and patriotism” — 1,607
“Clinton and Lewinsky” — 1,079
Cable News Reporters
reportercaps.com is a collection of screen-captures of cable news reporters. Sabrina has collected over 170,000 images of our beloved cable news reporters, with hundreds more submitted to the message boards.
Big Phat Liar
Last week the LA Times reported a breakthrough in the murder of Tupac Shakur. Turns out the evidence they received was based on fake FBI reports conjured by a young Walter Middy.
The con man, James Sabatino, 31, has long sought to insinuate himself, after the fact, in a series of important hip-hop events, from Shakur’s shooting to the murder of The Notorious B.I.G.. In fact, however, Sabatino was little more than a rap devotee, a wildly impulsive, overweight white kid from Florida whose own father once described him in a letter to a federal judge as “a disturbed young man who needed attention like a drug.”