The Sound of the Crowd

Here’s the best take I’ve seen yet on the creation of a National Intelligence Director.

…by Amy Sullivan, guest blogger for The Washington Monthly. Here she talks about politicians (specifically Kerry) who bring the God stuff.

If The Raw Story is correct, then the mainstream media should be breaking the “news” that George W. Bush is a confirmed deserter from the US military sometime in the next week or two.

Though my first, hopeful reaction is to think this will hurt Mr. Bush in the election–and it certainly should–my second, more cynical one is to think that it won’t make one damn bit of difference. Bush conservatives aren’t going to believe this even if it comes independently from the top five newspapers in the land. They’ll just dismiss it as more of that “liberal media” I mentioned not long ago.

Nevertheless, it’s always interesting to watch the frogs’ leg kick when you apply the electrodes…

Even to some who share my generations cynicism about the news media, Ted Koppel is generally considered to be one of the smart, truly “fair & balanced” ones. Not by me. I stopped trusting Nightline for a few reasons. For one thing, on their broadcast following the death of Charles Schulz, they inexplicably gave air time to the pets.com sock puppet (I am not making this up. They used it as a talking head). For another, they also make use of Rush Limbaugh as though he were a credible spokesman (for anything).

Yet, I have to feel a little sorry for Mr. Koppel. It can’t be easy to be 64 years old, to have worked most of your life in one profession and risen to a position that most people would feel is pretty good…and find that the true heir to Edward R. Murrow in the year 2004 is a satirical comedian.

Presumably that’s why, according to this article, Koppel wants no truck with Jon Stewart or The Daily Show.

Buck up, Ted. As Jim Ignatowski once said to a hapless TV executive (played by Martin Short) in an episode of Taxi…”If you could do your job, you would.”

So I’ve noticed that how much of a “bounce” Kerry/Edwards got coming out of the convention seems to depend a lot on what you read. I’ve seen Newsweek saying they got a small boost, ABC saying they got a larger one, and CBS saying they got no bounce at all.

Fortunately, Eric Alterman pointed out this morning, most of these polls were taken during the convention. As in, before it was over. Meaning, since Kerry’s speech closed the convention…before most Americans had any chance to hear Kerry speak.

It’s a good thing the media’s so liberal, isn’t it?

I think so.

Is this racist, just stupid, or both? You be the judge: It seems that the Bush campaign insists on knowing the race of newspaper staffers assigned to cover them.

The makers of the remake of The Manchurian Candidate, that is, but I’m afraid it still falls into the category with such films as Psycho 2: Films that are probably as good as they could be, considering they never should have been made.

Psycho 2 referring to the 1980′s sequel with Anthony Perkins, which was actually kind of fun, not to the 1990′s remake by Gus Van Sant, which remains indefensible.

I saw the original Manchurian Candidate when it was theatrically re-released in the late ’80s, following a 25 year embargo imposed by star and producer Frank Sinatra after the Kennedy assination. It’s a classic for a reason.

This one is certainly well acted–Liev Schreiber did the best job, IMO–and it does what a remake should do, try to find some new ways of telling the story, a new ambience. But I was rarely or never fully engaged, and my mind kept wandering to other stories I was thinking up in my head.

Good try, though.

“For really showing us the way.
We’d like to thank you, Herbert Hoover.
You made us what we are today.”

–George W. Bush addresses his apparent role model.

Actually, I have no idea if “admitted history geek” Amy Sullivan is pretty or not, but I needed a headline for this link to her closing comments on the convention. So let’s assume she is. Even if she isn’t, she writes a heck of a piece.