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Media
July 11, 2008
Robin Hood in Reverse
TMZ, the celebrity gossip blog, has been copying stories from Courthouse News Service and passing them off as TMZ exclusives. This is disgusting, but not surprising—TMZ is not exactly known to be a paragon of journalistic ethics. Somewhat more disturbing, however, is that TMZ is owned by Time Warner, publisher of such venerable magazines as Time and Sports Illustrated.
Media
July 11, 2008
Threatdown Dictionary
The economy is tanking, oil prices are soaring, and nearly all indicators show things are going to get worse before they get better. With so much to worry about, how will Americans keep track of all our various threats and concerns? Luckily, the press and cable news folks have devised clever alliterative mnemonics to help us out. Below, Gelf presents the Threat Down dictionary.
Media
July 11, 2008
Rupert Murdoch: Hipster?
Gawker recently noted a new sort-of predilection amongst the super-rich—including Bruce Wasserstein, Rupert Murdoch, and George Soros—for young Asian women. While this could well be, well, nothing, Gelf couldn't help but notice that a nominally anti-corporate group always seemed to have an Asian fetish: white hipsters.
Internet
July 10, 2008
A Word of Mouse Virus
Marketing something over the internet, are you? (We are, kind of, we suppose. Say, buy a T-shirt.) Good news, then—you're participating in a new trend! No, really, you are, even though we're pretty sure the internet was used for marketing from the moment Al Gore invented it. But now, of course, it's different, because everything is 2.0 (we're currently taking bets on when the web goes 3.0), so you're using word of mouse.
Media
July 9, 2008
Securing Their Future
Evolution can be a funny thing, and not only if you’re a religious fanatic. Despite how self-evident natural selection might seem, the adaptations it gives rise to can leave us scratching our heads, not unlike our conspicuously hirsute forbearers. Take, for example, the traditional news publishing model. Competence in identifying misplaced participles no longer guarantees a hungry young grad a seat at the editorial table—but willingness to take a bullet just might.
Full article » | by Adam Rosen
Media
July 8, 2008
Drinking the Staycation Haterade
This is the summer of the staycation, or so much of the media seems to think. High fuel prices are making people forgo that road trip or thousand-mile flight and instead spend some time at home, or visiting local attractions. That sounds perfectly okay to us—there's plenty of stuff in our hometown that haven't gotten around to checking out—but can we please do away with word "staycation"?
Media
July 8, 2008
A Good Op-Ed is Hard to Find
Finding the right man is so difficult. And if the most-emailed New York Times stories are any indication—okay, they're probably not, but bear with us—the ladies out there are still, as ever, searching for that bit of magical advice that will help them land Mr. Right. That people are searching for relationship advice is no big surprise; it seems odd to us, though, that a paper known for hard news coverage generates greater online buzz when it morphs into Cosmo for people who read.
Media
July 7, 2008
Be Patriotic: Buy a Japanese Car
Americans celebrate the Fourth of July in all sorts of interesting ways—watching fireworks, playing softball, eating fifty-nine hot dogs in ten minutes. Some are even commemorating two hundred and thirty-two years of independence from overseas oppression by purchasing cars from foreign automakers. Toyota of Manhattan and other dealers in the Tri-State area (and beyond), have launched Independence Day sales throughout the month of July. And they appear to be working, sort of.
Politics
July 3, 2008
I am Hussein
A recent New York Times piece on an internet-based micro-trend amongst Barack Obama supporters got us thinking got us thinking about the linguistic ploy of saying "I am [insert person, place, or thing that you actually don't have anything to do with here]." See (yes, we're bringing back see, see, we're a corrupt, cigar-chomping Chicagoan now, like Al Capone or Hinky Dink Kenna), some Obama supporters are trying to express solidarity with the candidate by adding his much-maligned middle name to their own in their Facebook profiles. This is an familiar idea, of course—the Obama supporters profiled by the Times say they were inspired the films Spartacus ("I am Spartacus") and In & Out ("I am gay.")
Arts
July 1, 2008
Please Stop Saying 'Mariska Hargitay'
I have no intention of seeing the critically-panned film The Love Guru, in which Mike Meyers plays Guru Pitka, an obnoxious aspiring spiritual leader who…well, I haven't seen it, so I don't know. But I do know that the movie's would-be catch phrase (used repeatedly in the film as a mystical greeting) is "Mariska Hargitay" and that several reviewers found it so painful they were forced to keep track of the number of times it was uttered. Let's count along with A.O. Scott and the rest of the gang.
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