War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
Highlights the desperate plight of news gathering: Editor&Publisher, an authentic cornerstone of journalism will cease publication at the end of this year. The announcement was made Thursday on its online site. An interview today with Greg Mitchell, E&P‘s editor since 2002, on the demise of the newspaper-trade industry/journo-icon can be found at Columbia Journalism Review.…
“The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is that you really want to say.” — Mark Twain’s Notebook, 1902-1903 Writing in this modern age is still the same as in Twain’s day, only quicker…
Instead of George Jr.’s arrogant rant: “I want justice,” he said after a meeting at the Pentagon, where 188 people were killed last Tuesday when an airliner crashed into the building. “And there’s an old poster out West that says, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive.’ “ We should follow Andy Borowitz’s reporting: In a bold new…
Nearly 50 years have passed since that fateful day in Dallas when JFK was assassinated, and now some new insights have surfaced into those few precious moments in the abrupt transition of presidential power — and it ain’t macho. In a new book on the November 1963 event, The Kennedy Assassination–24 Hours After: Lyndon B.…
A life-long favorite is no more: Soupy Sales dead at 83. Even with all his funny shenanigans, Soupy Sales appeared as a really nice guy. His show was one of my favorites as a kid and I loved all the characters he created, including the never-seen ‘naked girl,’ and he seemed to have great fun…
There’s little doubt we’re alive in one of the most-interesting periods in world history as all kinds of nefarious enterprises are starting to come to real-bad fruition — unlike other past-historical upheavals, however (there’s a shitload of these chaos-in-civilization scenarios), we’ll be able to practically watch it unfold right before our collective eyeballs — and…
Journalists covering the White House, especially those from TV, sometimes tend to think of themselves as above the crowd, as better than the average asshole reporter digging for stories down in the trenches. As Nadia Bilbassy, White House correspondent for the Dubai-based satellite TV network MBC, told Think Progress last month: I found that I think…
Friday morning shocker: President Obama has has won the Nobel Peace Prize — “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.†And the Nobel Committee added: “He has created a new international climate.” (Illustration found here). This will indeed piss-way-off the GOP and all wingnuts as the award comes much, much early…
Announced quietly last week was the death of Jody Powell, 65, press secretary to Jimmy Carter, ‘A leader for a change,’ whose presidency inadvertently was the last apparently in Americana’s more sane and serene view of itself as an entity of ideal. On the cover of the Rolling Stone (left), at the height of glory…
“They stuff people’s heads down the toilet the first day at Stonewall,” he told Harry. “Want to come upstairs and practice?” “No, thanks,” said Harry. “The poor toilet’s never had anything as horrible as your head down it — it might be sick.” — Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone According to Juan Cole’s most-essential…