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 […]

“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: […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Straight Up’s staff of thousands interrupts Big Apple Portraits to bring you this news: author/journalist David Ehrenstein has listed his 10 must-read blogs in the current issue of The Advocate. Among them, he includes Straight Up. The pleasure of being listed is that he puts us in such great company. The other nine blogs are: […]

And now we come to “Inwood,” Bill Osborne’s video impressions of the largely Hispanic, upper Manhattan neighborhood where he lived on his recent stay in New York. The images convey a very different city from both the glamorous hustle of Times Square at night, in Part 1, and the austere presence of the art deco […]

Since I’m away, my staff of thousands has come up with a brilliant idea to amuse you and me together: Videos by the composer Bill Osborne, which he made on the fly while he was in New York not long ago. He thinks of them as improvised Big Apple portraits, which he’s edited to fit […]

Since I’m away from the Big Apple, Straight Up’s staff of thousands has had a brilliant idea to amuse you and me together. It will be posting a series of short videos made on the fly by my friend, the composer Bill Osborne, while he was in New York not long ago. He thinks of […]

Given Tom DeLay’s pious horseshit, Bill Frist’s equally pious participation in an upcoming church-sponsored telecast to portray the Democratic “opposition to certain judicial nominees” as an assault on “people of faith” — not to mention the election of the new pope Benedict XVI — my staff of thousands thought it useful to post “God’s Total […]

We interrupt holiday in the Pacific — “we,” as in Straight Up’s staff of thousands — to ask what happened to the KCRW report by David D’Arcy on “the effort to recover the art stolen by the Nazi and the complications involved in that,” which was to air on April 5? Some of you may […]

Goin’ to an island in the Pacific. Goin’ without my laptop. Back later. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Word comes from David D’Arcy that he’ll be back on the air, though not at National Public Radio. The top-notch arts reporter axed by, after Ronald Lauder’s minions at the Museum of Modern Art complained about an exposé of his they didn’t like, is to host a show on Los Angeles radio station KCRW on […]