“I’M JEALOUS OF HIS JOYSTICK:” More on videogame addiction:
I am, you see, a video game widow. While my husband hasn’t moved on to World of Warcraft yet, that’s only because he’s spent the last 13 months playing Command and Conquer. Nightly. For hours each night.
It could be worse. He could be a . . . blogger!
JAMES WEBB’S DISGUST WITH BILL CLINTON seems to have abated.
LAURA LEE DONOHO is resisting the temptation to stay home on election day:
I am one of the so-called “evangelicals” the Democrats and their media minions have been trying hard to convince that the Republican Party is the party of corruption and closeted gays.
Fat chance.
If the Republican Party was composed completely of fat, geeky, short, frumpy, hypocritical, bad dressers, I would still vote for them over the Democrats, as long as they support President Bush and the War on Terror.
Bad dressers? She’ll forgive anything.
A LOOK AT WANNABE PUNDITS AND THE STATE OF PUNDITRY:
Some producers say they are weary of the bickering between the left and right, each parroting talking points emailed from party headquarters. Most news-talk shows have pundits representing only “the four poles — Democrats, Republicans, liberals or conservatives,” says CNN’s Mr. Bohrman. He has an Internet reporter “scouring the blogs,” partly to look for non-partisans who can articulate the middle ground in an engaging way. He says he’d love to find the great American “centrist pundit.”
It’s also interesting to see just how hard some people work at getting on TV.
PATRICK FITZGERALD, CALL YOUR OFFICE: “House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra has suspended a Democratic staff member because of concerns he may have leaked a high-level intelligence assessment to The New York Times last month.”
AMID THE BAD NEWS, SOME GOOD: “A million pilgrims gather in Najaf, without incident.”
DAVID BERNSTEIN: “I’m not sorry the Republicans are poised to lose the House to the Democrats. The Republicans came in under a reformist platform in ’94, and gradually lost their zeal for anything but reelection. By now, I can’t think of a better advertisement for term limits than the Republican majority in the House . . . . I should mention that I’m very disappointed that the Democrats haven’t taken the opportunity to even remotely hint that they’ll behave any better than the Republicans.”
NIDRA POLLER has more on the Al Dura verdict.
BILL MOYERS HITS BLOGGER WITH LAWYERS, over a claim that “When Moyers interviewed me for the documentary last spring, he very candidly told me that he is a liberal Democrat and intended for the documentary to influence the November elections to bring control of Congress back to the Democrats.”
Moyers and his lawyers say it’s false and threaten a libel suit. I think that’s unwise. And underscoring that point, I doubt I ever would have heard of this charge had Moyers not threatened legal action.
UPDATE: Yes, this gives Bill Moyers something in common with Dennis Hastert.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Greg Marquez emails: “The two letters on the site you linked re Bill Moyers contain what have to be to be the two most pretentious lawyer signatures of all time.”
DIFFERENT WORLDS: “Reynolds and Limbaugh are actually, in the parlance of our times, on different Internets.”
UPDATE: There are Reynoldistas? That’s news to me. Apparently Dan Riehl isn’t one.
MORE: “¡Reynoldistas unidos!” Heh.
IMHO, this is a fitting symbol of the GOP’s administration of the federal government. When the Republicans took control of the Congress in 1995, there was talk of abolishing the ATF for its appalling role in the Waco incident. (For background, read this and/or watch this). But the GOP “grew in office” as they say, and steadily expanded the budget of the ATF and then approved the construction of a fancy new headquarters. There is still oversight, mind you. The ATF director wanted a $65,000 conference table and the Bush administration put a stop to that. Bush’s people cracked down and said “You guys have to make do with a $33,000 table!”
Hey, that’s almost a 50% reduction! Follow the link for a picture of the palace, and more information.
MORE BAD NEWS FOR MEDIA COMPANIES in The Wall Street Journal:
When the New York Times Co. bought the Boston Globe in 1993 for $1.1 billion, the family-run New York newspaper said it was betting heavily on the future of the highly educated, affluent Boston market.
But now that brainy, well-heeled populace turns out to be on the leading edge of a digital migration that is pummeling the Boston Globe so badly that it is on track for its first unprofitable year in its recent history, according to people familiar with the company’s finances. . . .
The declines are unprecedented at the Globe, which like most major metro newspapers has been facing declining circulation for years but had managed to keep ad revenues somewhat steady through increasing ad rates. Since the Times acquisition, the Globe’s Sunday circulation has fallen 25% to about 600,000 from 811,000, while the industry’s Sunday circulation has fallen 12% during the same time period. The Globe says some of the circulation falloff was due to cutting out bulk subscriptions. It has expanded home delivery, adding, for example, Westchester County, N.Y., this year as part of efforts to boost circulation.
The Globe has a successful Web site which attracted about 3.1 million unique visitors in September, according to comScore Media Metrix — but that is dwarfed by the 31 million who visited Yahoo News in July. The New York Times was the largest newspaper Web site with about 9.3 million visitors in September.
(Subscriber only, but you get the gist). As I said earlier, no wonder these guys are all so gloomy about the economy.
A LOOK AT IDEOLOGY AND SELF-CENSORSHIP in the German media, at Medienkritik.
ANOTHER RECORD HIGH FOR THE DOW: Business may be bad for The New York Times and NBC, but other outfits seem to be doing well.
HERE’S A REVIEW of what Scott Johnson calls “Jim Geraghty’s awkwardly titled new book.”
Our podcast interview with Geraghty can be found here.
A NEW HIGH IN BLOGGY, er, something: Videoblogging a photo shoot while you’re having your photo shot.
BIG LAYOFFS AT NBC, to the tune of $750 million in cost cuts.
Plus, plunging profits at the New York Times. No wonder the Big Media are acting as if the economy is in dreadful shape. For them, it is.
SHOWCASING THE ENEMY: Blackfive criticizes CNN’s editorial choices.
James Taranto agrees.
JOHN MCCAIN comments on what he’d do if the Democrats took the Senate.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON notes contrasting attitudes regarding American intervention in Iraq, and in Darfur.
IN THE MAIL: The new Robert Heinlein novel — as completed by Spider Robinson — Variable Star.
PUNISHED FOR DENOUNCING A FAKE VIDEO ON FRENCH STATE TV: This is real crushing of dissent.
WILLIAM BANKS EMAILS: “Oh, I hate to have to continually ask this. It’s time for some fall ‘leaf’ photos to give us a break from the dreariness of the current political season and bleak international situation.”
I’ve been pretty lame on the blog-photography front, but I’ll see what I can do. The leaves here are only just starting to turn anyway.
In the meantime, here’s one from a previous year:
THE INSTAWIFE proposes a psychological experiment.
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE CONSERVATIVE-AMERICAN COMMUNITY, from Howard Dean, via IowaHawk: “Frankly, I realize we have not always brought our ‘A Game’ when it comes to the concerns of conservative-Americans. That’s why we would like to take this opportunity to start a dialog with you, the conservative ‘values voter,’ by addressing an issue of vital importance to all of us — the growing Republican homo menace.”
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