AT&T WSJ full-page count: Seven

(Not including the Apple-paid iPhone ad on the back page of section A.)

Related:

Previously.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 21:14:45 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 39 words, total size 2 kb.

“We wuz had!”

Howard Kurtz:

With all the reporters, sportswriters, paparazzi and celebrity chroniclers chasing after the world's top golfer, how did Tiger Woods keep his extracurricular activities secret for so long?
...
When Woods was driven to the sidelines by the relentless coverage of his tawdry affairs, the multiple mistresses seemed utterly at odds with his squeaky-clean image.  But that image was a carefully crafted construct, since journalists -- and everyone else -- had little access to the player he truly was...
...
Former Washington Post sportswriter Leonard Shapiro writes that he’s

...a little embarrassed that I did not have a clue about Woods’s bizarre double life in what has become one of the most shocking free-falls from grace in the history of sports.

But in a telling admission, Shapiro adds that

...even if I had known about his off-the-course ‘transgressions,’ I’m also not certain what sort of information would have been suitable for publication...

So let’s see: There’s all this stuff going on, but the reporters who were supposed to be on top of things either failed to notice anything happening, or allowed themselves to be steered away.  Or we have reporters who knew what was going on, but chose to keep silent because defying the accepted narrative might not be “suitable.”

And now that the word is out, the press, desperate to preserve what’s left of its credibility, cries “We wuz had!”

Better to be thought a fool than a liar, I guess.


Via Glenn Reynolds, who wonders

How long before we hear “we were all had” about Barack Obama?

Or Anthropogenic Global Warming?

(Hell, I’ve been waiting to hear it about Communism.)

Previously.

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 16:46:03 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 275 words, total size 3 kb.

“First” December 2009 BlogMeet - this Sunday

Rob K recalls an appropriate quote:

“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.  We must be cautious.”

(The December Indy BlogMeet that you ARE looking for appears to be set for January 3^rd(!?!) at Brugge.  Go figure.)

Credits: Arrangements by Roberta, art by Shermlock.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Meta at 18:51:59 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 55 words, total size 2 kb.

Make that SIX full pages...

Previously.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 15:51:42 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 12 words, total size 1 kb.

Buying three consecutive full pages of the Wall Street Journal...

...can be cheaper than fixing your network.




Elsewhere:

Related:

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 23:50:21 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 80 words, total size 3 kb.

Maybe he’s getting a commission from Adobe?

If you’d like your readers to check out your statement, it seems really stupid to send the interested ones to a website that (1) requires Flash to (2) download a PDF document.

But then, what do I know...

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 21:04:51 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 54 words, total size 1 kb.

I say it’s by design, and I say the hell with it.

Roberta watches Today:

...It started out as a fairly straightforward report on the sniping between Albert Gore and Sarah Palin over human-caused warming; she’s skeptical while he, as he has droned on and on and on about, in endless and mind-numbing detail, is convinced right down to his marrow that We Is Killing The Earff... Okayfine, good ol’ he said/she said, with interview clips and file footage, quotes from Twitter and Facebook screencaps.

Then it began to morph; we're told The Sarah “never expressed skepticism about climate change during the campaign,” (not, mind you, AGW) and the story proceeds in that vein; suddenly, the “caused by humans” caveat had dropped out of the narrative, replaced by “ain’t the skeptics ignernt.”

I’m not sure if the reporter or producer even realized it; it seems likely that for them, GW = AGW, no questions asked...

Except that his kind of “confusion” always seems to happen when there’s a progressive agenda to advance or a Democrat to protect. (See coverage- or lack thereof- of The Homeless, medical care for illegal aliens, and Whether Or Not 10% Unemployment Is a Good Thing.)

UPDATE, RELATED 091214 01:18:  CNN reads “Muslim,” says “innocent.”

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 19:17:06 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 211 words, total size 2 kb.

It’s A Travesty, Charlie Brown

Leon Lynn^[1]:

Dear ABC,

How could you?

For years and years I have awaited the network broadcast of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” as the true herald of the holiday season.  I brought my kids up with the same tradition — one which has been made no less special for us by the fact that they happen to be Jewish.

Tonight we sat in horror and watched what you have done to the single greatest cartoon ever made.

How many minutes did you cut out of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” so you could run more commercials?

Gone was Sally’s materialistic letter to Santa, which finally sends Charlie screaming from the room when she says she will settle for 10s and 20s.

Gone was Schroeder’s miraculous multiple renditions of “Jingle Bells” from a toy piano, including the one that sounds distinctly like a church organ.

Gone was Linus using his blanket as an improvised slingshot to knock a can off the fence no one else can hit, complete with ricochet sound effect.

Gone were the kids catching snowflakes on their tongues and commenting on their flavor.

Gone even was poor Shermy’s only line.  He thought he had it bad because he was always tasked to play a shepherd.  He had no idea.

And why were all these classic scenes cut?  To plug more ads into the show, of course.  To sell burgers and greeting cards — and to relentlessly plug the insipid-looking new Disney “soon to be a classic” show immediately following.  (I didn’t watch the new show, by the way.  I was laid far too low by what had just happened.)

Cramming all of these ads into the 30-minute broadcast of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” required major edits to a cartoon that has spent 44 years now trying to remind us that Christmas is supposed to transcend crass commercialism.

Do you have no sense of irony?

A couple of weeks ago I noted that you can now buy a plastic replica of the pathetic little real-wood Christmas tree Charlie Brown brings home from the tree lot otherwise monopolized by shiny fake trees.  I thought we had sunk as low as we could.

Obviously I was wrong.

Oh, and by the way:  The sound was half a second behind the picture: They were not synched properly.  I thought this was pretty sloppy for a major TV network, but I was willing to look past it.

What I cannot look past is the chopping to bits of a genuine classic, not just to pump more ads at us, but in direct conflict with the message that has made it a classic.

When I was a kid, the annual broadcast of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was a holiday unto itself.  It was the only time we ever saw ads for Dolly Madison snack cakes, for one thing.  But more importantly, it actually framed the coming holiday for me in a meaningful way.

The shepherds in their fields had no corporate sponsors.  Nobody had bought the naming rights for the manger.  The infant Jesus did not have an endorsement deal lined up with a particular line of swaddling clothes.

Instead he came, the story goes, to preach universal love, and the abandonment of false ideals like the acquisition of gross material wealth in favor of something far more valuable.

You have not just lost sight of this, or turned your backs on it.  You have stomped it into the mud.

You should be ashamed of yourselves.

But I bet you aren’t.  I bet you’re way past that.

Count my family out for next year.

Sincerely,
Leon Lynn

Yet another reason to eagerly await the demise of the Legacy Media.

But then I remember when “Christmas Holiday Specials” weren’t broadcast until a couple of days before Christmas.  How naïve we must have been then!


(via Armchair Commentary, via Instapundit.  Title credit: “Brookdalepark”)
-----

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 18:38:29 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 669 words, total size 6 kb.

Clipfile - December 8, 2009

“California, over the years, has had a knack for taking reasonable ideas and making them unreasonable, or worse.” - Charles G. Hill

Posted by: Old Grouch in Clipfile at 00:14:43 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 27 words, total size 1 kb.

Coming up next on VH1...

Canadian Press:

Bride doused by sister-in-law with black spray paint is still haunted by attack

HALIFAX, N.S. - It was supposed to be a quick bathroom break at the local Tim Hortons before the bride-to-be walked down the aisle.

But Nancy Rose knew her big day was about to turn ugly when she spotted an enraged woman in a tube top racing toward her, a can of spray-paint in her hand.

As members of the wedding party watched in disbelief, her sister-in-law began dousing the young bride with black paint, soiling her beaded gown and veil with sooty stains.
...
Rose’s limousine driver jumped in to help, pinning Michelle King against the car as the wedding party of cousins and a sister looked on.

When the driver tried to restrain her, King’s tube top fell down, exposing her breasts but giving her a chance to flee.

King, who is married to Rose’s brother, was given a conditional discharge Tuesday after pleading guilty to mischief charges stemming from the incident in July 2008.

Crown lawyer Jennifer MacLellan wouldn’t comment on the sentence, but said she hasn’t seen a case quite like this before.

Ya think...?

Via: ++undead

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 18:53:06 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 203 words, total size 2 kb.