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Media
April 21, 2006
Does Shooting Dogs Lie?
Early this week, a Reuters published an article that states that many Rwandans are unhappy with the portrayal in recent movies of the genocide that took place in their country 12 years ago. In the article, survivors fault the films Sometimes in April and Hotel Rwanda for omitting important details about the origins of the tragedy and overstating the role of particular individuals. But it is in the criticism of a new movie yet to be released in the United States that the most damning claim is made.
Sports
April 18, 2006
Can't Win the Close Ones
The Phoenix Suns haven't played a meaningful game in over a week, having wrapped up their playoff position as the second seed in the West. The Portland Trailblazers have blazed a trail to the worst record in the NBA (yep, their record is even more execrable than that of the New York Knicks, despite playing in a division that's almost as bad). Yet Wednesday's season finale between Portland and Phoenix's second string will be must-see TV, because, according to SportsCenter, the Suns will have their last shot to avoid making ignominious history: Becoming the first team to go an entire season without winning a game decided by three points or less.
Sports
April 18, 2006
Stephen A. Smith Gets Self-Reflective
Stephen A. Smith, the ESPN talk-show host who manages to sound dismissive and angry even when he's admitting he doesn't know the answer to a question, is apparently tired of himself. Sure, he's ostensibly writing about Jesse Jackson butting into the Duke lacrosse scandal, but Gelf isn't fooled.
Media
April 11, 2006
Tiger's Verbal Bogey
Tiger Woods's comment that he played like a "spaz"— a derisive word derived from the condition of being "spastic"—after collapsing in the final round of the Masters tournament created a furor in the UK; but just a yawn, and even some cover-ups, stateside. Since the story brings together two of Gelf's favorite recurring themes—international perspectives on current events, and the media's treatment of potentially profane or offensive language—we're compelled to take a closer look.
Media
April 10, 2006
Quite Frankly a Cliché
Blame ESPN shouter Stephen A. Smith; or pin it on our age of ubiquitous dissembling, when a mere "frankly" doesn't cut it; or say Gelf is just late to notice it, but quite frankly, "quite frankly" is everywhere. As clichéd phrases go, it's especially annoying and meaningless. Here are some recent instances:
Media
April 5, 2006
Odd Timing
Humanity's less than a century old, according to New York Times tech columnist David Pogue. He blogged Tuesday morning: "Late tonight—specifically, 123 seconds after 1:00 a.m.—the time and date, for the first time in all of humanity, will be 01:02:03 04/05/06. And it will never happen again." But as a reader later pointed out to Pogue, '06 comes up every century. Maybe he knows something about global warming that the rest of us don't.
Full article » | by Jody Shenn
Media
April 3, 2006
Spring-Break Trendwatching
Spring break has arrived! It's time for the beach, beer, and bulimia! Sex, Mexico, and anorexia! Wait, what? Lumping eating disorders in with the much-maligned annual migration ritual of college students is trite and misleading? Tell that to the New York Times.
Media
April 3, 2006
NYT on the Bubble
Now that the NCAA tournament is finishing up, some coaches are hoping to add even more teams to the field next year. Syracuse's Jim Boeheim—perhaps sensing the dark post-G-Mac days awaiting his program—made his case for expanding the bubble to the Associated Press last Thursday. If that sort of expansion strikes you as greedy and unnecessary, though, consider what the New York Times did with the story itself.
Politics
March 28, 2006
Daughter Grows Older at Usual Rate, Shocking Mayor
With more than 21 months left in his term, Gary, Indiana, mayor Scott L. King resigned. His stated reason: His daughter is a high-school senior and he needs to return to the private sector—he used to have a private law practice—to earn more than the $107,000 mayoral salary to pay for her college education. "This child is so focused on getting into the best university in the country," King said at a press conference, according to the Northwest Indiana News. The paper sympathetically added, "King also has two other children in college, one about to graduate and another a freshman."
Politics
March 27, 2006
The Insurgency, Oh How 'He Surged'
You'd have to read deep into two New York Times articles on Iraq to find two interesting tidbits. The first, from a dispatch about a successful hostage rescue mission and a concurrent spate of car bombings, revealed that Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a US military spokesman, has sidestepped the controversy about the numerical strength of the insurgency (Daily Kos) by reducing it to the pronoun "he."
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