Compendium
A load of funch from Slate.com about Good Night and Good Luck, alleging that the movie denies the existence of other critics of McCarthy before Edward Murrow. Quick, here's a note from some personal correspondence: "I've seen the movie, so I can help you out with point #1. Murrow does, in the movie, read written criticisms from newspapers just as the real Murrow did on See It Now." Still, if you're going after a movie for fudging historical facts, what kind of obligation are you under to accurately report the content of the movie? That's right - none whatsoever.
Point of fact, the Slate article's main thrust seems to be that Clooney should have made a movie about every single person who criticized McCarthy ever, which coupled with an article from Neal Gabler that seems to imply that Clooney is guilty of ignoring everything that happened in news media after Murrow makes you wonder: what kind of movie do these people want? One that covers the entire history of Western civilisation just to put one man's news broadcast into context? Or is this merely a case of hacks trying to cover their blushes at a movie which makes the modern press look exactly as bad as it is? I don't think I even need to answer that one, do I?
On a lighter note, selected highlights from this week's better-than-usual PopBitch before we get back to journalistic criticism. In which James Mullord's suicide is hastened by another couple of weeks, the Darkness threaten to be interesting and a little bit of Roger's libido dies horribly.
>> In it for the crack <<
Babyshambles manager: not a catch
Why does Pete Doherty get so much press? If
you want to see a REAL out-of-control drug pig
idiot, then you should be checking out Pete's
old manager James Mullord.
James is currently hiding in Prague, now that
the news has leaked out that it was him
who sold out kate moss to the tabloids.
Now other rumours are flying around. Which do
you think are true?
1. Enjoys underage groupies.
2. Beat up an ex-girlfriend on the band's tour
bus, causing the drummer to quit.
3. Threatened the ex-drummer (from a wealthy
family) unless she gave him money for drugs.
4. Smuggled drugs to Pete Doherty when he
was in rehab.
5. Left label, 1234 records, and partner Sean
McLuskey, in a parlous state thanks to his
expensive habits.
-----------------------------------------------------
Adam Rickitt is slated to be a Conservative Party
parliamentary candidate at the next election.
-----------------------------------------------------
>> What have we done to deserve this? <<
David Walliams (hearts) Tennant and Lowe
Through the early 90's the Pet Shop Boys were
supported by a mad-keen fan. This tall, rather
camp chap was always at the front of the
audience wherever they were playing.
When performing the single "Liberation" on
Top Of The Pops in 1993, Tennant and Lowe
started chatting to him, and he can be seen
on the show happily singing along. The Pet
Shop Boys noticed him and over the years
got quite friendly with this fan, who
always remembered to send them Valentines cards.
The name of the superfan? David Walliams.
-----------------------------------------------------
Latest celebrity pregnancy rumour - Sandra Bullock.
-----------------------------------------------------
>> My heart belongs to daddy <<
Jessica Simpson suffers for sins of father
Why is it suddenly open season on Nick
Lachey and Jessica Simpson in the media?
Blame daddy. It's bad enough that Joe Simpson
practically prostituted his daughter to Nick
for money and a TV show, now he's really
messed up Jessica's life.
By doing a two-bit $250,000 deal with struggling
OK! USA, which meant Jessica would be off
limits to every other magazine, he's irritated
every other magazine now denied access. So almost
every US celebrity magazine is taking pleasure
in twisting the knife, detailing every
unsavoury detail of their sham marriage and
both partners' cheating.
Joe makes Beyonce Knowles' Dad Matthew look like
a great father and a good business man. Matthew.
of course, only lost Sanctuary Music $10m and
got a sexual harassment charge from one
of Beyonce's dancers.
-----------------------------------------------------
Christopher Walken breeds Abyssinian cats.
-----------------------------------------------------
>> I believe in a thing called drug <<
The Darkness head for 'difficult' second album
For their second album, The Darkness are moving
from "funny - amusing" to "funny - peculiar".
Fuelled by gigantic quantities of nose whiskey,
Justin Hawkins has ditched their singalong
metal sound in favour of a synth-drenched
homage to Queen.
An insider at the label says that the producer
played one version of the album to the band,
but delivered a more commercial version to
the label, to keep both parties happy.
Judging by the Richie Manic-style cuts on his
arms, Justin is find all this rather trying.
-----------------------------------------------------
The Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court
in Turkey is called Mustafa Bumin.
-----------------------------------------------------
I bought the theguardian for the first time in many weeks yesterday, and immediately regretted it. For a start, the release of correspondent Rory Carroll allows the theguardian to talk at painful length about its favourite subject - itself. Not since whenever the last issue of Vanity Fair was out has one media outlet bigged itself up so relentlessly, complete with adoring quotes from people representing every single Muslim in the world ever saying that they love the theguardian almost as much as it does. Actually, ever since the theguardian's repeated contributions from a man placed on the UN's list of individuals connected to Osama bin Laden, I have found them utterly impossible to trust on any Islamic issues whatsoever. They're just as wrong as the Daily Mail, just in another direction. Not that wrongness is a quantifiable substance, but the amount of vomit I produced while researching this paragraph sure as hell is.
The sense that the paper is parodying itself resurfaces with a reprint of a 1919 interview with Lenin about "his cold, clear brain". Particularly cold these days, I would think. But not all of the theguardian's rubbishness is confined to the political arena, as this interview with Steve Coogan proves. The prodigiously talented Coogan can often come off as a bit prickly and difficult in interviews; faced with Sam Wollaston, the shittiest TV critic in history and a pretty God-awful interviewer to boot, such standoffishness looks like a vital survival mechanism in the face of overwhelming idiocy.
In fact, Coogan makes an excellent point when, tired of being interrogated over whether he really got Courtney Love up the duff, he notes that "The Guardian [sic] tends to have its cake and eat it. It waits for the tabloids to dish the dirt and then it talks about the tabloids dishing the dirt while enjoying it themselves." That was certainly a central feature of the old paper The Guardian, with its sneering at tabloids usually serving as an excuse to reprint all their stories with added "ironic" commentary, and it's also a feature of the new theguardian, though it has been partly superseded by a fascination with the world of blogging, possibly based on a rapturous joy at finding that there are, in fact, journalists who work for less money than their own freelancers.
Two questions to close with: why hasn't Alan Rusbridger been fired yet? And is John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi the first illustration of the concept the CIA refer to as "blowback"? Both things need to be pondered, I think.
Point of fact, the Slate article's main thrust seems to be that Clooney should have made a movie about every single person who criticized McCarthy ever, which coupled with an article from Neal Gabler that seems to imply that Clooney is guilty of ignoring everything that happened in news media after Murrow makes you wonder: what kind of movie do these people want? One that covers the entire history of Western civilisation just to put one man's news broadcast into context? Or is this merely a case of hacks trying to cover their blushes at a movie which makes the modern press look exactly as bad as it is? I don't think I even need to answer that one, do I?
On a lighter note, selected highlights from this week's better-than-usual PopBitch before we get back to journalistic criticism. In which James Mullord's suicide is hastened by another couple of weeks, the Darkness threaten to be interesting and a little bit of Roger's libido dies horribly.
>> In it for the crack <<
Babyshambles manager: not a catch
Why does Pete Doherty get so much press? If
you want to see a REAL out-of-control drug pig
idiot, then you should be checking out Pete's
old manager James Mullord.
James is currently hiding in Prague, now that
the news has leaked out that it was him
who sold out kate moss to the tabloids.
Now other rumours are flying around. Which do
you think are true?
1. Enjoys underage groupies.
2. Beat up an ex-girlfriend on the band's tour
bus, causing the drummer to quit.
3. Threatened the ex-drummer (from a wealthy
family) unless she gave him money for drugs.
4. Smuggled drugs to Pete Doherty when he
was in rehab.
5. Left label, 1234 records, and partner Sean
McLuskey, in a parlous state thanks to his
expensive habits.
-----------------------------------------------------
Adam Rickitt is slated to be a Conservative Party
parliamentary candidate at the next election.
-----------------------------------------------------
>> What have we done to deserve this? <<
David Walliams (hearts) Tennant and Lowe
Through the early 90's the Pet Shop Boys were
supported by a mad-keen fan. This tall, rather
camp chap was always at the front of the
audience wherever they were playing.
When performing the single "Liberation" on
Top Of The Pops in 1993, Tennant and Lowe
started chatting to him, and he can be seen
on the show happily singing along. The Pet
Shop Boys noticed him and over the years
got quite friendly with this fan, who
always remembered to send them Valentines cards.
The name of the superfan? David Walliams.
-----------------------------------------------------
Latest celebrity pregnancy rumour - Sandra Bullock.
-----------------------------------------------------
>> My heart belongs to daddy <<
Jessica Simpson suffers for sins of father
Why is it suddenly open season on Nick
Lachey and Jessica Simpson in the media?
Blame daddy. It's bad enough that Joe Simpson
practically prostituted his daughter to Nick
for money and a TV show, now he's really
messed up Jessica's life.
By doing a two-bit $250,000 deal with struggling
OK! USA, which meant Jessica would be off
limits to every other magazine, he's irritated
every other magazine now denied access. So almost
every US celebrity magazine is taking pleasure
in twisting the knife, detailing every
unsavoury detail of their sham marriage and
both partners' cheating.
Joe makes Beyonce Knowles' Dad Matthew look like
a great father and a good business man. Matthew.
of course, only lost Sanctuary Music $10m and
got a sexual harassment charge from one
of Beyonce's dancers.
-----------------------------------------------------
Christopher Walken breeds Abyssinian cats.
-----------------------------------------------------
>> I believe in a thing called drug <<
The Darkness head for 'difficult' second album
For their second album, The Darkness are moving
from "funny - amusing" to "funny - peculiar".
Fuelled by gigantic quantities of nose whiskey,
Justin Hawkins has ditched their singalong
metal sound in favour of a synth-drenched
homage to Queen.
An insider at the label says that the producer
played one version of the album to the band,
but delivered a more commercial version to
the label, to keep both parties happy.
Judging by the Richie Manic-style cuts on his
arms, Justin is find all this rather trying.
-----------------------------------------------------
The Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court
in Turkey is called Mustafa Bumin.
-----------------------------------------------------
I bought the theguardian for the first time in many weeks yesterday, and immediately regretted it. For a start, the release of correspondent Rory Carroll allows the theguardian to talk at painful length about its favourite subject - itself. Not since whenever the last issue of Vanity Fair was out has one media outlet bigged itself up so relentlessly, complete with adoring quotes from people representing every single Muslim in the world ever saying that they love the theguardian almost as much as it does. Actually, ever since the theguardian's repeated contributions from a man placed on the UN's list of individuals connected to Osama bin Laden, I have found them utterly impossible to trust on any Islamic issues whatsoever. They're just as wrong as the Daily Mail, just in another direction. Not that wrongness is a quantifiable substance, but the amount of vomit I produced while researching this paragraph sure as hell is.
The sense that the paper is parodying itself resurfaces with a reprint of a 1919 interview with Lenin about "his cold, clear brain". Particularly cold these days, I would think. But not all of the theguardian's rubbishness is confined to the political arena, as this interview with Steve Coogan proves. The prodigiously talented Coogan can often come off as a bit prickly and difficult in interviews; faced with Sam Wollaston, the shittiest TV critic in history and a pretty God-awful interviewer to boot, such standoffishness looks like a vital survival mechanism in the face of overwhelming idiocy.
In fact, Coogan makes an excellent point when, tired of being interrogated over whether he really got Courtney Love up the duff, he notes that "The Guardian [sic] tends to have its cake and eat it. It waits for the tabloids to dish the dirt and then it talks about the tabloids dishing the dirt while enjoying it themselves." That was certainly a central feature of the old paper The Guardian, with its sneering at tabloids usually serving as an excuse to reprint all their stories with added "ironic" commentary, and it's also a feature of the new theguardian, though it has been partly superseded by a fascination with the world of blogging, possibly based on a rapturous joy at finding that there are, in fact, journalists who work for less money than their own freelancers.
Two questions to close with: why hasn't Alan Rusbridger been fired yet? And is John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi the first illustration of the concept the CIA refer to as "blowback"? Both things need to be pondered, I think.