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Media
July 18, 2006
Cut the Crap. Leave the Shit
George Bush casually snacked on a roll while chatting with Tony Blair. He talked trash about Kofi Annan, displayed a terrifyingly unnuanced view of world politics, and, yes, expressed his opinion that Syria should tell Hezbollah fighters to "stop doing this shit." It's the expletive that has garnered most media attention. In a departure from their usual circumlocutions, almost every major media outlet in the U.S. and abroad carried the offending Bush quote in full, though some in the US felt compelled to asterisk the "i" in "shit" or to let the readers fill in the blanks after the initial "s."
Media
July 12, 2006
Sports Illustrated Buttheads
Sports Illustrated columnists don't demonstrate much compassion for Marco Materazzi. In his column excusing French captain Zinedine Zidane for his infamous World Cup chest header against Materazzi, Dr. Z—who seems to think violence is an acceptable form of backlash—doesn't even bother to learn Materazzi's name (or that of any other player besides Zidane, for that matter). Phil Taylor claims that Materazzi deserves equal scorn for his actions, since whatever he said to make the Great Man go off must have been really terrible.
Media
July 12, 2006
Quoting Nick Denton
Over at Slate, media critic Jack Shafer compiles a long list of reasons why the press loves to quote Gawker Media boss Nick Denton. Shafer hypothesizes that many reporters wish they were as free as Denton and his bloggers to write whatever they wish, and thus they write about the Gawker empire instead. He also claims that Denton uses the press to hype his product, and that Denton uses his many negative statements about the blogging business to build credibility with reporters. One idea that Shafer only glances upon, though, is that Denton plays the blog skeptic to the press in order to discourage competitors.
Sports
July 10, 2006
What Materazzi Really Said
Zinedine Zidane would have been remembered as one of the greatest players ever to have played the game. He could have gone out as the MVP of his last tournament (okay, he still did) with a second world cup championship trophy and a lifetime of lucrative endorsements and fawning French fans. Instead, he's going to be remembered as a goat for his obviously premeditated and vicious head butt (YouTube) that seemed to concave the chest of Italian defender Marco Materazzi. But, most importantly, what did Materazzi say to provoke the attack?
Media
July 7, 2006
'A Deliriously Stupid Romantic Time-Travel Drama'
In this week's edition of Blurb Racket—the Gelf feature in which we take a close look at those critic blurbs that are a fixture of ads for movies—see breakdowns of blurbs for Superman Returns, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Cars, and more. This week's Bogus Blurb of the Week comes in an ad for The Devil Wears Prada:
Sports
June 29, 2006
Rolando and Renaldo
The NBA draft is over, and now it's time for every columnist worth his salt to make fun of the Knicks and Isiah Thomas. In particular, many writers have criticized the drafting of Renaldo Balkman, a relatively unknown forward from South Carolina who impressed scouts during workouts. But Balkman was projected in most mock drafts as a second-round pick at best, so when Thomas selected him with the Knicks' first pick (of two) in the first round, he was basically chumming the editorial waters. But what to write?
Media
June 25, 2006
Homophobic Managers and "Gutless" Media
When news breaks that contains profanity, it's always interesting to see how different media outlets cover it. (For example, Gelf compared how news outlets dealt with Robert Novak's outburst on CNN's Inside Politics, certain censored-by-TV Rolling Stones lyrics, and the title of an Ibsen-themed show.) So when Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen called Jay Mariotti, a Chicago Sun-Times columnist and a regular on ESPN's Around the Horn, "a piece of shit" and a "fucking fag" after Mariotti wrote a column questioning Guillen's sanity, Gelf decided to check out how some popular news sites handled it.
Internet
June 23, 2006
Net Neutrality Rocks. "Net Neutrality" Sucks
Has anyone, aside from the Swiss, ever stood up for his or her neutrality? No one ever says, "I feel very strongly about neutrality," because, well, neutrality is inherently neutral and is not something people tend to get worked up about. Perhaps that's why, even though Google, Microsoft, the Christian Coalition, and MoveOn.org have all spoken out in favor of "network neutrality," most people still don't have a clue, let alone a care, that—courtesy of some bills making their way through Congress—the beloved internet may soon undergo some drastic and terrible changes. Language is a powerful tool.
Media
June 23, 2006
Let's Not Forget Meetro's Name
Metro, Top 10 on Gelf's list of free daily New York newspapers, ran an article last week about the late Army Spec. Marlon Bustamante, killed in Iraq, on the occasion of a street corner in Queens being named in his honor. (The New York Daily News also covered the story.) The Metro article, entitled "Let's not forget his name," spelled Mr. Bustamante's name, at various times, "Bustamante," "Bastamante," "Busamante," and "Bustamonte," the last in this quote from the late soldier's brother, Carlos: "Let's not forget his name—Marlon Bustamonte. He didn't have to die, but he died for this country."
Sports
June 21, 2006
Are Montenegrins Into S&M?
For Serbia & Montenegro's soccer team, the embarrassing 3-2 loss to the Ivory Coast (after leading 2-0) was the exclamation point to a disastrous World Cup performance in which they lost every game and were outscored by eight goals. Even before the final game, the players were complaining that the national anthem (a communist-era tune entitled 'Hey Slavs!') used to introduce the team only made them depressed (AP) and the coach had promised to quit (BBC). Worst, though, was an observation made in the New York Times that suggested that many Montenegrins were actively rooting against the squad.
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