Does Greg Palast have influence, or was he simply ahead of the curve as usual? Another possibility: Someone took note of this May 6 item, in which my staff of thousands pointed out that Palast was “pissed off that the American press, unlike the British press, has made so little” of the Downing Street memo […]
CODE RED BARON: LEADERSHIP BRAVES TERROR ‘BLITZ’
Taking care of the nation’s business as usual, our Dear Leader was tooling around on his bicycle at noon yesterday, just back from his globe-trotting photo op, when the terror alert went to Code Red, jets were scrambled, the Capitol was cleared and police told everyone: “Run. Get out. Keep running. … We’re under attack.” […]
IMPERCEPTIBLE LINES OF BROKEN GLASS
City Comforts Blog has picked up on Bill Osborne’s commentary about “the delicate, almost imperceptible line that separates good and evil, life and death, guilt and innocence.” Meanwhile, Osborne offers a reminder that Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, November 9, 1938, was almost a year before the start of World War II — so […]
BERLIN MEMORIAL REVEALS ABYSS, NOT AMBIGUITIES
Regarding the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which opens today in Berlin: “I too was struck by Ourousoff’s article in the Times,” Bill Osborne messages. “It was far above what one usually reads in the paper, but one of the statements you quoted yesterday really bothered me: The memorial’s power lies in its […]
FOR THE MURDERED JEWS OF EUROPE
A tour of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the official name of the Berlin Holocaust memorial designed by Peter Eisenman, draws a powerful review from architecture critic Nicolai Ourousoff, whose reviews have usually left me cold. But not this time.
GUNTER GRASS STILL BEATS THE DRUM 60 YEARS LATER
Speaking of things German, like the Berlin Holocaust Memorial … Nobel laureate Gunter Grass has much to say about democracy, freedom and capitalism in post-World War II Germany on the occasion of the “Reich’s unconditional surrender” 60 years ago tomorrow: [T]he ring of lobbyists with their multifarious interests … constricts and influences the Federal Parliament […]
BERLIN HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL
— NO BRATWURST, PLEASE . . .
Yesterday was Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, observed in places as far flung as Jerusalem (with wailing sirens), Farmington Hills, Mich., (with motorcycle riders) and Los Angeles (with children). On Tuesday of next week, as part of the 60th anniversary celebration of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, the long-awaited Berlin Holocaust […]
SWEET SMELL OF NPR
Scott Sherman has a huge takeout in The Nation about National Public Radio’s transformation from its countercultural beginnings to its current middle-of-the-road conservatism. “Good, Gray NPR” cites much criticism of the network for its increased corporatization (in both funding and influence) and its promotion of conventional punditry on the toll road to respectability. But there’s […]
POSTCARD FROM HOLLYWOOD
David Ehrenstein does another of his delectable commentaries on a story from The New York Times, this one called “The Mystery of Hollywood’s Dead Republican,” starring R. Gregory Stevens (right) and Carrie Fisher. When I first read that story — devoured it, actually — it occurred to me that my life is pretty dull. But […]
THE GUN THAT SMOKES
“Here it is,” Greg Palast writes. “The smoking gun.” He’s referring to the secret Downing Street memo of July 23, 2002, sent to the British Defense Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General and several other top British government officials at the time. It was disclosed earlier this week in The Times of London, which quotes it verbatim: […]
ARTWATCH INTERNATIONAL ON NPR’s D’ARCY AFFAIR
National Public Radio’s latest corporate stupidity — NPR barred “Weekend Edition” host Scott Simon from appearing on the XM Satellite Radio show hosted by Bob Edwards, who was axed from “Morning Edition” last year — has Daniel Schorr wondering, “What’s going to happen next?” Well, Dan, if NPR’s continuing lack of candor about why it […]
PUFFERY OF THE CORPORATE CLASS
Taken from yesterday’s postscripts: Last time I looked, MSNBC.com was still using words — mostly AP’s and Reuters’s, when not tapping into The Washington Post’s and Newsweek’s or Forbes’s and Businessweek’s. To believe Jon Friedman’s puff piece, however, you’d think not. You’d think MSNBC.com had re-invented journalism “by using resources other than mere words and […]
A TABLOID FUTURE
The marketing geniuses hired by print publications to promote their image as an important, lasting medium for advertisers long into the future have come up with an age-old answer to the threat of extinction from the Web — tabloid journalism. How creative! Have a look at the stories featured on the fake Newsweek cover, right, […]
JUST BUSINESS
Consider this from Roger Ebert’s review of “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”: The most shocking material in the film involves the fact that Enron cynically and knowingly created the phony California energy crisis. … If the crisis had been created by Al Qaeda, if terrorists had shut down half of California’s power plants, […]
CATCHING COMMAS, CATCHY RHYMES
The Chicago Reader’s Michael Miner made a great catch for the annals of copyediting. He notes in his Hot Type column: A couple of misplaced commas in an April 20 New York Times editorial transform a solemn tone into a haughty one: “There is no reason to expect any change, of course, for the church […]
BIG APPLE PORTRAITS, PART 5
We come finally to “Greenwich Village” in Bill Osborne’s video impressions of New York. It’s a festival of storefronts and street corners, monuments and sex boutiques, mannequins and, most of all, lovely architectural facades — in all a sweet commentary set to Ravel’s playful “Chants populaires: no 1, Chanson espagnole.” Put on your headphones, click […]
BIG APPLE PORTRAITS, PART 4
Two quick notes from my staff of thousands before it continues posting Big Apple Portraits: 1) Don’t miss this morning’s interview of antiwar activist and historian Howard Zinn on Democracy Now! And 2) check out Forward Command Post, a k a “Barbie’s Dream House,” from the toy section of an old J.C. Penney catalog, (brought […]