Media
Next Entries »Ghost Writing Ethics 2.0: PR Firm Caught with Pants Down, Public Outraged, Politics as Usual?
Wednesday, December 26th, 2007Why do people need ghost writers? (It must not be obvious, or people would not be so shocked over the practice.) The answer is:
Ghost writers are necessary because most people suck at writing.
That’s a no-brainer. The bigger issue is this: sophisticated PR programs deliver their messages through surrogates, whose affiliations are deliberately disguised in order [...]
Toll Bros. CEO Wins Our “B.S. of the Month” Award (and it sure don’t mean “Best Spin!”)
Thursday, November 29th, 2007It was a hard call. Right at the end of the month, Karl Rove swooped in with a jaw-droppingly, gob-smackingly, stupendously enormous load of B.S. – letting loose with veritable torrent of lumpy smelly booboo, all over poor Charlie Rose. (Newsweek readers beware, you’re next!)
Rove, the poster boy for a rhetorical disease we can only [...]
The Kite Runner: Colossally Dishonest, But Well Written
Saturday, September 29th, 2007IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK, THIS POST MIGHT BE A “SPOILER.” IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW A KEY PLOT ELEMENT, THEN STOP HERE.
Much will be made of the new film The Kite Runner, as much was made of the book. And it deserves praise, from the perspective of pure prose and sense [...]
The Case of the “Intifada” T-shirt: Don’t Be Niggardly with That Gay Swastika!
Monday, August 13th, 2007When I was a kid, in Boston in the early 1970s, bumper stickers of the “England Get Out of Ireland” variety were not uncommon. And my mother, an Irish ex-pat, while never overtly militant, very much enjoyed playing the spirited and nationalistic records of groups like the Wolftones. We sang with pride about the IRA [...]
Rudy & The Race Card: NY Times Punts the Story, Lands in the Lap of “Sources”
Thursday, August 2nd, 2007I know that “piling on” is generally a cheap shot, and piling on the NY Times is seldom necessary as there are so many other more worthy targets out there. But there can be no better example of what’s wrong with journalism today than two recent articles on Rudy Giuliani – a NY Times piece [...]
A White Guy’s View of the “Hot Ghetto Mess” Mess
Sunday, July 29th, 2007(I refuse to give credentials in order to speak, though I got plenty. And to those of you who discount anything any white person says, no credential will ever be enough. So you really just ought to click the “back” button and read something else.)
I’ll start off by paraphrasing a sermon I heard at Watch [...]