over at the InstaNewsRoom, writing about the NYT smear about McCain, and Bill Keller's defense thereof:

It's a ludicrous argument. It would mean that editors could purvey all sorts of trash as long as it is [was] embedded in a larger story. And when we get outraged, they could look down their noses and insult us about our poor reading comprehension.

Well, that is exactly what is being suggested: the affair thing was parenthetical. An aside. Shame on the American people, and our filthy dirty-Tom minds, for even noticing the allegation of a sexual affair. The real news lay elsewhere—in the fact that McCain was friends with a lobbyist.

I'm embarrassed. For myself. For my fellow conservatives. For America.

I feel, in fact, like a dirty, dirty whore.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:18 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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. . . vs. the Gray Lady.

She makes it look so fun! Thanks, MKH; you're as smart and funny as you are beautiful.

Via Hackbarth.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 01:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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How does it feel to have the credibility of your reporting disparaged by, ahem, The New Republic?

Good question.

But they may be too busy scrambling for readers to come up with much of an answer to that.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:08 PM | Comments (44) | Add Comment
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Holding my breath; starting to turn blue . . .

(Via Memeorandum.)

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:39 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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. . . the Al-Qaeda-led "resistance" at the New York Times.

Via Insty.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:40 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Iowahawk pwns The New Republic.

Facing the difficulties of verifying the piece, but wanting to ensure its plausibility before publication, we sent the piece to a correspondent for a major newspaper who had spent many tours embedded in Iraq. Had he noticed the US Army in Iraq? Check. Did they have Bradley Fighting Vehicles? Check. Had he seen dogs? Check. So far, the story seemed to be plausible. But what of the disfigured woman of the Cleveland Steamer episode? This became the focal point of our fact-checking. We asked Reeve to push Beauchamp for corroboration of this woman's existence. In an e-mail, she relayed his answer (throughout this story, we've withheld the names of soldiers who never gave us permission to use them):

OK, now I am talking to Scott on the phone. Now he is asking all of the other soldiers in the Army if they had seen the her. Now I am hearing the other soldiers shout yeah. The other soldiers are now shouting that all of the facts that Scott wrote about are true. They are now shouting that don't call us or the Army again, or we will have to deny this conversation because we will get into trouble, and if we deny anything it is really a secret signal that we are actually verifying that the story is true. Now more soldiers are shouting something. What's that? The New Republic is their favorite magazine? But that they think the fact-checkers are underpaid? I am now telling Scott to tell all the other soldiers that I will pass on this information.

And there's this moment:

Did we have a Jayson Blair on our hands—or, closer to home, another Stephen Glass, the fabulist who did so much to tarnish this magazine's reputation ten years ago? Or perhaps another Ruth Shalit, whose plagiarism at this magazine did somewhat less tarnishing two years earlier? Or could he be another Lee Siegel, whose 2007 sock puppeting at this magazine resulted another tarnishing, albeit only around 40 on the Glass Tarnish Quotient? One fact was clear: painful experience has taught us at The New Republic to be on the lookout for tarnishings, so Beauchamp should know better than to "pull a fast one" on us.

We published an online statement pledging an investigation. That weekend, members of the editorial staff assembled at my house to divide up the task of re-reporting his stories. It would be a long an arduous task, with the possibility of uncomfortable conclusions. Ted, the new intern from Columbia Journalism School, brought along Pictionary.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:11 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Karl at Protein Wisdom just ran a nice little update on the fact-checking scandal at The New Republic in the wake of their "Baghdad Diaries" farce. The New Republic is now a new-media laughingstock on an almost Ratherian scale. That takes some doing, but Franklin Foer was up to the task.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 03:16 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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But I love this 9/11 memorial ad by the folks at Budweiser.

I always mean to watch the Super Bowl, because of the ads, but I always forget. Also, I'd probably have to watch it on my own television: my husband hates having me around when there's football on TV. I always forget to check whether there is a play going on before I talk.

If I had TiVo, could I set it to record the Super Bowl, but only play the commercials? I mean, they are the best of the best—they almost always win the Clios. (And, no: I haven't been to the Clio Awards since I broke up with the guy from Rhythm & Hues. But I loved going to 'em, back in the day. I've been kissing up to all my friends who work at ad agencies, so it's just a matter of time.)

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:38 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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It's what's for dinner.

Via Insty.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:46 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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. . . the reaper.

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Very clumsy, folks. A city attorney should be able to do better.

When, oh when, will people learn that these "cease and desist" letters will always get posted, and will always bring bad publicity to those who wrote them, unless there is a damned good reason for sending them? (That is, a reason other than intimidation/suppression of First Amendment rights?)

But it's a beautiful thing. Please note the exquisite details:

• web-site
• "publication" [With scare quotes!]
• "blogs" [This one features scare quotes and the usual idiot's confusion of a blog with a blog entry—these are, presumably, the same people who confuse "faxes" with fax machines, and "CDs" with CD players.]

Mmmm. I love the smell of 20th-century modalities in the morning. It smells like . . . well, yeah. I'll say it: Victory.

It just makes me want to "libel" someone.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:27 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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He pretty much nails it:

Only in America: a team of champions who think they're victims, an old white fool who talks like a gangsta rapper, and multi-millionaires grown rich on race-baiting who promote themselves as guardians of civility. Good thing there are no real problems to worry about.

Yeah: to me, the galling thing was the Reverends Jackson and Sharpton being consulted. Both of those guys are bigots par excellence. A friend of mine said Oprah shouldn't have weighed in, because she's so rich.

"Oprah can say whatever she likes," I told him. "Having money should not exclude one from speaking on the issues of the day. But given how freaking anti-Semitic Jackson and Sharpton are, they are acting like total hypocrites."

Like Steyn, I don't know much about Imus' work, but I do live with a comic. There's really no way of guessing what these guys might say next, and sometimes it's outrageous stuff. But 95% percent of it is ironic, and 99% is really funny.

In a sane universe, Imus would have apologized and the MSM would have moved on.

Of course, if a "botched joke" is a firing offense, it would seem that John Kerry's career should be over. No?

No. Big Media don't see it that way, because soldiers, airmen and Marines can never be victims in the sense that champion basketball players can.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:50 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1 Great article! You are right on target. The hypocrisy of this is unbelievable. It's maddening to watch it discussed on television as though it makes sense. Logic has just been thrown out the window. I linked over here to this, but your trackbacks aren't on

Posted by: beth at April 16, 2007 11:16 AM (u79qt)

2 BTW - that team lost the championship. It doesn't really matter - but I've noticed that people keep talking about this ruining their big moment. They were beat by the team from Tennessee.

Posted by: beth at April 16, 2007 11:17 AM (u79qt)

3 Had it been me that Imus attacked I would have told Sharpton and Jackson to take a dmaned hike. That these women were so eager to take on the roll of victim pissed me off. There's plenty of ways they could have fired back at Imus with strength and integrity. Instead they were happy to let the media and race baiters paint them as victims - of THREE LOUSY WORDS! Give me a freaking break. A more productive lesson from these "future leaders" would have been how to gracefully endure and overcome the verbal slings and arrows of idiots like Imus.

Posted by: Janette at April 16, 2007 04:53 PM (5R+zg)

4 Kerry should have been thrown in jail for his meetings with North Korean government officials in Paris in the early 70's, which should have made him ineligible for serving in the US Government, per the Constitution. Imus made the mistake of denegrating with an off the cuff remark members of the class of people that the Democrats pander too, so, regardless of how much he has done for Liberals, he had to be sacrificed.

Posted by: William Teach at April 16, 2007 06:26 PM (doAuV)

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Dear Jim Ladd:

First of all, I love you. I love you because I love rock 'n' roll, and I love radio. I believe in what you've done for both the art of music and the medium of broadcast radio over the years.

And your voice is as lovely as ever; it's a mystery to me how a guy can live a rich, full life in the Los Angeles counterculture and yet preserve those dulcet tones that make the long-legged ponies swoon.

And I love to listen to your shows on KLOS. Mostly. More on that in a moment.

There are a lot of us—both here in L.A. and across the nation—who are deeply saddened by what's happened to commercial radio, and wonder how it could possibly have drifted as far from its original mission as it has. We believe that there is an audience for free-form rock 'n' roll, if only the corporate powers would seek it out. We don't believe in playlists, in computer-generated "radio stations" that use idiot tests to determine what will sell.

You're the real deal, Jim. You're an amazing man and a force for creativity over the airwaves.

And I listen to you whenever I can. I listen to you until you start to insult me so much that I have to turn the radio off.

I'm a libertarian, Jim. That means I often vote with the Republican party. That means that despite having some disagreements with him, I voted for George W. Bush twice.

I'm a great believer in liberal democracy, and I think it's under threat from Islamists (not Muslims in general, mind you—radical fundamentalists). The geopolitical chess game that will be required to defeat it or contain it is a complicated one that you disregard in your glib "analyses" of the war in Iraq, which seems to boil down to: "Bush lied; he's a bad guy. Anyone who supports him in any way is an idiot."

I'm not suggesting that you stay away from politics, but for you to reduce very complicated issues down to black-and-white thinking and then insult the beliefs of those who disagree with you is going to lead to a lot of people voting with their radio dials. Your ratings will stay high, of course, but you will have alienated some of the Southland's most independent thinkers.

There has to be a way to express your beliefs without putting down your fans who support the war in Iraq—who did see a legal and moral justification for our military action there.

Please believe me, Jim: there are people in Los Angeles who think the way I do, and we want independent voices on the air. We love music. We may not speak up in media or artistic circles as much as we should, because most of us have already lost jobs because we voted for the President, or because we want to take a hard line against Islamo-fascism. We aren't all "out."

But we are out there. Listening. We want to listen. Please don't make us turn your show off. Be as kind to your audience as you have been to the real talents who undergird the music business over all the years that you've graced the airwaves.

You're the last DJ, Jim. For real. Don't shut us out.

Sincerely,

Joy McCann
Little Miss Attila
http://attila.mu.nu

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:11 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I'd never quite thought of it in those terms, but now Fox Interactive Media has bought Sean Hackbarth's The American Mind, specifically to create a political arena within MySpace. (Why not? Someone ought to do something with it, now that the youngsters have moved on to Facebook.)

The American Mind is an interesting weblog, in that it discusses a lot of the political and pop culture issues the rest of us cover (and, yes—it is a Wisconsin-centered blog, or has been: I don't know to what extent Sean's moving to Iowa will change that). Yet at the same time, Sean's background is in economics, and that comes across: his analyses are more informed by his understanding of how markets work than are those of some of his peers.

And he is, despite the earring and soul patch, a rock-solid conservative.

As for me, I'm having the usual reaction: "wow! Another blogger is going pro! Terrific! A rising tide lifts all boutique blogs, doncha know. On the other hand, why wasn't it me, this time? I'm sooooo willing to sell out, if only someone would buy."

UPDATE: Sean's commenters look at the calendar, and say maybe not.

Hm. It's true that I'm awfully gullible, since I don't do April Fool's Day jokes myself. When I saw that Google was implementing a new "feature" that would have them printing out paper copies of e-mail for archival purposes, I thought, "wouldn't the volume have to be a bit high in order to make that efficient?" So I've been pwned at least once today before breakfast: five or six more to go, depending, before I can have my eggs and bacon.

UPDATE 2: Someone's pointed out that the Red Queen believed impossible things, whereas I'm only believing highly improbable things. In the real world, there may not be much of a difference.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 03:13 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Pro-American Brits make a point.

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. . . on that silly claim by PEER about how the NPS is carrying water for creationists in the Bush Administration.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility has yet to retract its false claim, by the way, even as it waxes hysterical over the sale of an evolutionary account of the Grand Canyon in NPS bookstores. Why not go further?—they should just publicly burn the book. (If you follow the first link, you'll see that the NPS is not responsible for the contents of the bookstores at National Parks and Monuments.)

More: Drunkablog, Tim Blair, and Jim Treacher, who takes the paddle to Doonesbury's Garry Trudeau (who in turn doesn't seem to be aware that he's slowly being supplanted by Chris Muir and Day by Day.)

Posted by: Attila Girl at 02:47 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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. . . from AP.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 01:24 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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. . . over at Malkin's digs.

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He has his own blog now. Huzzah!

He cops to making stuff up for AP, but explains:

They had this girl call and she sounded hot, so we started doing a phone sex thing. She'd say something like, "I want to brush your fanny with the hem of my very modest garments," and then I would reply with, "I saw six burning corpses outside a mosque today, you dirty bitch!"

So you can see how something like that can get started.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:44 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Ace has dug out some fun facts about Jamil Hussein—stuff AP never told us about the guy at all.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 12:26 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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