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Media
August 15, 2007
Lies, Damned Lies, and ...
One hundred years ago, Mark Twain mentioned the now-famous phrase "Lies, damn Lies, and statistics" in Chapters from My Autobiography. He attributes the phrase to former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disreali, but several folks can lay claim to starting what has become an extremely well-used aphorism. While the field of statistics still gets its fair share of abuse, nowadays the best way to question the validity of something is to precede it with "Lies, damned lies"—particularly if you're writing for a UK newspaper.
Media
August 13, 2007
Getting the Call Up
"Hello! And welcome to Boston," Ken Tremendous writes to Beantown's newest stars in the most recent issue of Sports Illustrated. "Allow me to congratulate you on the six straight championships your teams are about to win." With that, Tremendous makes the leap from anonymous writer ranting on the stripped-down media-criticism blog FireJoeMorgan.com to anonymous writer ranting in the pages of a national magazine. So how did a blogger for a niche site dedicated to ridding the world of a Sabermetricsphobic announcer end up getting the same amount of real estate in SI as Rick Reilly?
Media
August 13, 2007
Second Acts, Take Two
Of the many straw men that journalists routinely knock down, the flimsiest may be a vague F. Scott Fitzgerald quotation. "There are no second acts in American lives," he supposedly wrote, much to the glee of scribes seeking to show how their comeback kid du jour has bucked that supposed trend. But as Frank Hayes pointed out in a letter to Romenesko, using this quotation as a lead for such stories is not only cliché at this point, it's also likely wrong.
Media
August 3, 2007
Anti-PC Ts
Possibly the only thing more American than a deep-fried Snickers bar is a silly charge of political incorrectness. So Latinos in the US should consider the outrage at a new Macy's T-shirt bearing the phrase "Brown is the New White" as a sign that they, too, can join the hand-wringing fiesta. (You've come a long way, bebé.) Macy's has since recalled the tee, but the suggestion that Americans of Hispanic origin have finally achieved the status of whites has upset some Latinos, such as Fox's "Hispanic marketing expert" Dr. Ed Rincon. (Of course, other Latinos, including those at Gawker-esque Latino gossip site Guanabee, are reveling in their heretofore unexercised right to a cheesy ironic T-shirt.) In the spirit of righteous indignation, we hereby offer our own mini-catalog of controversial shirts.
Full article » | by Adam Rosen
Media
July 30, 2007
Grading the Box Office
Of the goofy things that many media outlets regularly report on, Hollywood box-office numbers are perhaps the silliest. There's little connection between these numbers and the quality of the films (duh) or even how much profit the films will end up making. (As Slate's David Edelstein points out, the high cost of advertising means that most films lose money at the box office.) Even if we're to give some sort of merit to these numbers, the fact that these receipts are measured only in non-adjusted dollar amounts means that we today's numbers have a major built-in advantage to those of previous years.
Arts
July 26, 2007
Reviewers on 'The Simpsons Movie': 'The Lesson Is, Never Try'
The Simpsons Movie is about to open, which means that the world's newspapers are now flooded with reviews packed to the gills with our favorite Simpsonisms. (Or at least the ones that translate relatively unawkwardly to headlines; so far, we haven't come across any reviews titled, "This Movie Smells Like Cat Food.") But as Slate points out today, reviewers have already tapped into characters like Mr. Burns for inspiration, even if they can't seem to agree on whether the movie was any good or not:
Media
July 16, 2007
Spreading Satire on CNN
For the past week or so, Michael Moore has been very upset with CNN. He claims that a "Fact Check" segment on The Situation Room intentionally misled viewers into believing he was monkeying around with healthcare numbers in Sicko. This weekend, Moore again demanded an apology from the network and declared, "I'm about to become your worst nightmare." And yet the network may be in for more Moore ridicule if he hasn't yet spotted a more-recent—and more-obviously ridiculous—claim made about him on the channel.
Media
July 3, 2007
(Hot) Dog Without His Bite
This past week, Japanese competitive-eating star Takeru Kobayashi, most famous for his one-time world record for eating 53¾ hot dogs in 12 minutes, announced that he has been diagnosed with jaw arthritis, which may hamper his performance at the upcoming Nathan's Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest, the Super Bowl of eating competitions. A slew of food and jaw-related headlines were plastered on news outlet all over the internet. Here are some of Gelf's favorites for you to chew on:
Media
June 29, 2007
The Da Vinci Phone
Like Dan Brown before them, the folks at Apple have created a product shrouded in controversy and apocryphal religious symbolism. Consider that June 29 marks not only the release of the iPhone, but also a major event in the Christian calendar: the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul. Then there's the fervor with which devoted fans have prophesied the iPhone to be fit for the Lord and Savior. While there may not be quite enough evidence to allege a conspiracy of Robert Langdon proportions, the zeal with which religious parlance has been employed in the media's and blogosphere's coverage of Apple's newest product is certainly suspicious. Earlier, Gelf chronicled the use of the term "Jesus phone." Now, let's get into the rest of the religious imagery:
Full article » | by Adam Rosen
Media
June 28, 2007
Lady Justice Wears the Pants
This week, District of Columbia judge Roy Pearson lost his $54 million lawsuit against a dry-cleaning company for losing a pair of his pants. The ensuing news coverage proved that media outlets are no slacks when it comes to fabricating jokes on the fly. After the jump are some of Gelf's favorite corny headlines sporting pants-related puns.
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