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November 2, 2006
WB: The Joke’s On Us

Billmon:

I do wonder how deeply into the doo doo the empire is going to have to sink before someone decides that leaving the allocation of power to a zoned-out mob of reality TV addicts and cable news carnie barkers isn’t such a great idea after all.

The Joke’s On Us

Posted by b on November 2, 2006 at 20:52 UTC | Permalink
Comments

Meanwhile the commander of the imperial bodyguard, the elderly and deceptively frail-looking Armenian eunuch named Narses [no disrepect intended to Armenian transgendered persons — billmon] had stationed his men at the principal exits
How can you so disrespect elderly, frail-looking military men? Why do you hate our troops? Shame!

Posted by: nihil obstet | Nov 2 2006 21:22 utc | 1

Shame!
billmon is just going thru a little disrespectful ‘phase’. hopefully it will subside after the pressure of the election. for the sake of us all, for the sake of the nation.

Posted by: annie | Nov 2 2006 21:30 utc | 2

They Gay story could well be a Rove “ruse” when the kernings are checked on his ***hole.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 2 2006 21:51 utc | 3

I have a gay friend… /snark…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 2 2006 22:40 utc | 4

I noticed that Billmon didn’t say he intended no disrespect to fundamentalist preachers. Apparently, his new found PC only goes so far.

Posted by: Anonymous | Nov 2 2006 22:40 utc | 5

Fox News (as well as CNN) ratings are down:
http://www.medialifemagazine.com/artman/publish/article_8294.asp
Maybe people are tired of the ideocracy.

Posted by: Mike | Nov 2 2006 23:00 utc | 6

It’s also because in a commercial industry like journalism, any program or story — whatever the subject — ultimately has to be about entertaining the reader or the viewer.

That’s a tough one. You’re not overtly commercial but you sure do entertain albeit inform also. Are you giving away some of your secrets? Are you a journalist masquerading as an entertainer or an entertainer masquerading as a journalist? I hope RAW gets to witness this one.

Posted by: Juannie | Nov 2 2006 23:26 utc | 7

Billmon has been fookin’ brilliant, as always, but so welcome.
Howard Kurtz spent 49 paragraphs on the Kerry Kerfuffle? Not surprising, as he’s been working under The Halperin Rules since the Clinton administration.
I will never forget an appearance he made on Tweety’s show, where the two of them were trying to outdo one another in bashing Clinton during the Lewinsky Cable Freak Show. At one point, Tweety made some criticism of Clinton which had Kurtz leaning forward, his hands clenched into fists, his neck veins bulging, his face contorted as he said, “And that’s why I’m out to get him.”
It was stunning–I wish so much I’d been taping it so that it could live on You Tube or somewhere on the web. It is still amazingly vivid in my memory.
So, indeed, Howie Kurtz has been following The Halperin Rules for a long, long time.

Posted by: jawbone | Nov 2 2006 23:31 utc | 8

Are you a journalist masquerading as an entertainer or an entertainer masquerading as a journalist?
hmm

I apologize for my preachy tone. It’s the voice of a spirit of transuniversal ecumenism, a spirit that takes the reins of my passion and goads it to the top of some kind of Sinai. It’s a voice ill-suited to entertainment journalism. My editor at The Times Sunday Magazine started calling me Dr. Evangelical and Mr. Hyde. This, to him, was the cleverest thing he was ever apt to say, and he was probably right. “And here’s where you turn into Dr. Evangelical,” he would say, indicating a particular paragraph in one of my articles, as if I didn’t know. And I would point out, smart-ass that I was, that it was Dr. Jekkyl who turned into Mr. Hyde. “Yeah, well,” he once said, clearly, in his off-hours, having given some thought to a rejoinder, “Mr. Hyde had to turn into Dr. Jekkyl, too. It’s a two-way street. And how do you think Mr. Hyde’s friends feel – they’re just out having a good, crude old time – when exalted Dr. Jekkyl shows up in place of their drinking buddy to take them to task for their low behavior? Do you think they find that entertaining?” I pointed out that I was an entertainment journalist, not a journalistic entertainer. “Every journalist is an entertainer,” he said, “or he oughta be.”

Posted by: annie | Nov 2 2006 23:59 utc | 9

fundamentalist preachers do not deserve respect unless they earn it by walking the walk. I don’t know of one that does, and NONE of the political ones do.
in fact, they are part of what is so wrong in American now.
in fact, they have been part of what’s wrong in America for decades.

Posted by: fauxreal | Nov 3 2006 0:11 utc | 10

@annie
check you inbox… ;-p

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 3 2006 0:13 utc | 11

That, Billmon, was hilarious.

Posted by: garyb50 | Nov 3 2006 0:15 utc | 12

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