Why The News Media Is Like A Game Of Twister

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

Apparently there’s no story too marginal, too convoluted, or too small for the news media to pursue these days.

Exhibit Umpteen, via The Daily Caller:

Majid-Majidi-e1363582246774Iranian filmmaker behind new Mohammed biopic also worked on 2008 film with Warren’s son-in-law

An Iranian filmmaker who has worked with Elizabeth Warren’s producer son-in-law is currently making a pro-Mohammed biopic that will portray the Muslim prophet, but not show his face.

The filmmaker, Majid Majidi, has been working since October on the $30 million film about the life of the prophet Mohammed, whom he has long praised. Majidi’s public statements hyping the film have included strong criticisms of Western nations and the state of Israel, and comparisons between the American media and the Nazi propaganda machine.

Ooooo-kay. And we need to know this why?

Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s son-in-law Sushil Tyagi produced a 2008 film by Majidi, entitled “The Song of Sparrows,” during Tyagi’s tenure as president of Algorithmic Productions. That film, which was set in Tehran, was nominated for an American Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It did not contain anti-Western sentiments, and Majidi had not publicly voiced any intense disdain for Israel or the West during or before its production.

Yes, but then there’s this: “Prior to 2008, however, Majidi had expressed opposition to critical depictions of Mohammed.”

So, to recap: The son-in-law of Elizabeth worked on a film five years ago with this guy Majid Majidi who hadn’t criticized Israel or the U.S. but did want to safeguard the image of Mohammed.

Huh?

This is news only in a media universe where information is valuable largely as a weapon.

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Why The New York Times Is A Great Newspaper (GNC Jack3d Edition)

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

From Sunday’s New York Times Business section:

17-GNC-articleLargeIs the Seller to Blame?

Workout Supplement Challenged After Death of Soldier

EVERY morning as she gets dressed for her accounting job, Leanne Sparling hangs her son’s military dog tags and a photograph of him in uniform around her neck. She wears the tags on the outside of her clothes, hoping to prompt strangers to ask about him. “When I do tell them what happened,” she says, “they are in total disbelief.”

Her son, Michael Lee Sparling, was a 22-year-old Army private when he died. But he wasn’t killed by a roadside bomb or an ambush in Afghanistan. He collapsed while running in formation for about 10 minutes with his unit at Fort Bliss, Tex., went into cardiac arrest and died later that day, on June 1, 2011.

Private Sparling had recently graduated from basic training and was in excellent physical condition. Before the exercise, he had taken the recommended dose of a workout supplement called Jack3d, bought at a GNC store on the base, according to legal filings.

Leanne Sparling and her husband, Michael, blame Jack3d for their son’s death, the Times report says. “It is the only way, they say, they can make sense of a healthy young man dying from cardiac arrest. Last month, they filed a wrongful-death lawsuitagainst USPlabs, the maker of the supplement, and GNC. They argue that the companies sold a defective product and failed to warn about its risks . . . ”

Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Four-Daily Town.

 

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That’s Just So Mean! (Pamela Geller Edition)

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

Let’s stipulate (as they say on Law & Order) that Pamela Geller, New York’s anti-Islam jihadist, is a certified moron.

Still, this photo on BuzzFeed is totally mean.

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Story:

Pamela Geller: CPAC’s Muslim Board Member Is ‘Worse Than Al-Awlaki’

Another year, another attack on Suhail Khan

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — A prominent conservative activist Saturday accused of Muslim conservative of waging a “stealth Jihad” against the movement, warning his position as a board member of the influential American Conservative Union is more dangerous than the American-born al Qaeda leader killed in a US drone strike.

“Am I saying that Suhail Kahn is as bad as [Anwar] Al-Alwaki? He’s worse,” conservative blogger Pam Geller said at a CPAC panel. ACU puts on the annual gathering of conservatives.

“Listen to me. He’s worse because look what he’s done to this conference. Look at the influence that they have had on this conference…It’s Stealth Jihad.”

BuzzFeed’s photo, on the other hand, is Stealth Jihag.

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Rafa! Rafa!!

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

That most estimable tennis player Rafael Nadal is back, last night winning the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells for the third time.

Highlights:

 

The hardrooting staff loves Nadal because he’s never eaten his press clippings. Exhibit A is his post-match interview:

 

Rafa is hands-down the most compelling player on the men’s professional tennis circuit thanks to his roller-coaster career and unlimited potential limited by his roller-coaster physical condition.

But yesterday’s victory was definitely a roller-coaster high.

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Dead Blogging ‘Clybourne Park’ At SpeakEasy Stage Company

Posted on March 17, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

Well the Missus and I trundled down to the South End yesterday to catch the Speakeasy Stage Company production of Clybourne Park, and it was swell.

From their website:

cparkposter9Winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and London’s Olivier Award for Best Play, Clybourne Park is a bold new play about race, real estate and the volatile values of each. Inspired by Lorraine Hansberry’s classic play A Raisin in the Sun, this acclaimed work explodes in two outrageous acts set 50 years apart. Act One takes place in 1959, as nervous community leaders anxiously try to stop the sale of a home in a white community to a black family. Act Two is set in the same house in 2009, as the now predominantly African American neighborhood battles to hold its ground in the face of gentrification.

Our take: An M.C. Escherlike portrait of a neighborhood’s journey from white flight to white fight over the course of five decades.

Excellent performances by all the actors, especially Paula Plum, Marvelyn McFarlane, and Philana Mia.

Catch it if you can.

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C.J. Chivers: Rhymes With Shivers (‘Death Highway’ Edition)

Posted on March 17, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

From our Late to the (Syrian Rebel) Party desk

New York Times war correspondent C.J. Chivers produces boots-on-the-ground reporting as well as any journalist of his generation, and his Friday piece is no exception.

0315-ONE-BATTLE-articleLargeIn Syrian Clash Over ‘Death Highway,’ a Bitterly Personal War

HEESH, Syria — The Islamic fighters peered through rifle scopes and machine-gun sights at the remains of a Syrian military convoy disabled on the highway several hundred yards away. They were peppering President Bashar al-Assad’s soldiers with gunfire, trying to prevent their escape.

“Here are the heroes and mujahedeen of the Shield of Mohammed, peace be upon him,” one fighter said softly as others opened fire.

The Syrian Army answered the rebels’ gunfire. Tanks fired into the village from one direction, artillery from another. The ground shook. Smoke and dust rose. Defenseless against the exploding artillery rounds, the rebels kept firing, and were not driven off.

That’s the text. Here’s the subtext: “It is a bitterly personal war, in which Islamic and more secular fighters share an immediate goal: to protect their own families, an ambition they accuse the West of not adequately supporting.”

Regardless, the rebels fight on:

The battle at Heesh — for one of the few roads in the Idlib region that Mr. Assad’s forces still risk using — is, as one fighter described it, a contest for a “death highway” in which one side has a full conventional arsenal and the other is armed with faith as much as weapons. It captures part of the war in a microcosm . . .

Blast by blast, what is left of Heesh is being cracked into rubble. Its people have moved away.

But “[t]he fighters remain, hoping that by cutting off supplies to the army checkpoints north of Heesh they will cause the soldiers there to run low on ammunition, and ultimately to abandon them.”

And the denouement:

As the two sides traded fire, and explosions shook the town, the Islamic fighters encouraged one another.

Zahir Darwish, Soqour al-Sham’s military commander, was unmistakably pleased. “Do you know why my men smile like this in such a situation?” he asked.

“Out of my experience in 18 months of constant battles and fighting, I have seen that bravery arrives at a specific point in some fighters, for those who are well connected to God,” he said. “They believe in their fates, and that everything comes from God.”

Many walked upright at the firing line, startling only slightly when tank rounds slammed against buildings, or artillery rounds screamed in and exploded nearby. On this day, the highway here was cut. The army was stopped. “God is the greatest!” the men shouted, again and again, as the shells landed all around.

Damn. If Chivers isn’t the best war correspondent around, he’ll do until someone else (maybe NBC’s Richard Engel) comes along.

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Herald Ambush-Interviews Ex-Early Ed Chief

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

From our Dog with a Bone desk

The Boson Herald absolutely owns the Sherri Killins story, and today our feisty local tabloid adds another chapter to the saga of the Moonlighting Moonbat (our formulation).

Page One (via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages):

MA_BH

Enterprising reporter Matt Stout apparently staked out Killin’s Connecticut (!) home, and caught her for the classic driveway interview . . .

Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.

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Haul Of Mirrors: The New Wave Of ‘Look What I Bought’ Videos

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

haul-640x290First off, the hardtracking staff admits we’re way behind the curve when we have to rely on NPR to keep us up to date.

That said, here’s the latest front in the stealth marketing juggernaut: Haul Videos.

Representative sample (this has 1,713,861 views).

Story via All Things Considered . . .

Read the rest at Sneak Adtack.

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Herald Columnists Double-Team Gabriel Gomez

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

GOP Senate wannabe Gabriel Gomez gets tuned up real good in the Boston Herald today. Two columnists – Howie Carr and Michael Graham –  give Gomez a working-over (the kind of pigpile that’s a specialty at our feisty local tabloid) for the letter he sent to Deval Patrick asking to be appointed to the interim U.S. Senate seat.

Start with Carr’s drive-by:

GomezGabriel Gomez is one of Dem guys

Gabriel Gomez is the Eddie Haskell of the Mass. Republican Party.

Only instead of sucking up to Mrs. Cleaver, in January the Republican candidate for the Senate was currying favor with Gov. Deval Patrick, begging for the interim appointment to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by John F. Kerry.

Actually, given Gomez’s obsession with ethnicity, as shown in his obsequious missive, perhaps he should be referred to as the Eduardo Haskell of the state GOP.

In case you haven’t yet read his letter to Gov. Mini-Me, Gomez makes it clear that he is a “Latino.” A Latino of “Latino background,” he elaborates . . .

You get the idea . . .

Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.

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Dead Blogging ‘Operation Epsilon’ At The Central Square Theater

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

The East End of Central Square is almost entirely MIT-occupied territory, and nowhere is that more apparent than the Central Square Theater, whose Nora Theatre Company happens to specialize in science nonfiction.

Last year the hardtrundling staff noted the Nora’s production of Photograph 51, described at the CST website this way:

cstP51.265x410In 1951, British biophysicist Rosalind Franklin became a research associate at King’s College in London, where her X-ray imaging revealed DNA’s double helix structure, leading to the Nobel Prize for Francis Crick, James Dewey Watson, and Maurice Wilkins. As told with wit and urgency by a chorus of scientists who relive the competitive chase to be the first to map the DNA molecule, Photograph 51 is the story of the fiercely independent spirit of a young, ambitious scientist and her unsung, trailblazing achievements.

Last night the hardworking staff (and the Missus!) trundled over to Central Square to catch the Nora’s latest production, Operation Epsilon.

Again from the CST website:

cstOE.265x417It’s the close of World War II – the dawn of the atomic age. The Allies have captured Germany’s top ten nuclear scientists and sequestered them at Farm Hall– a lavish estate in England – keeping them under surveillance to learn what they know about the American nuclear program and to gauge how close the Nazis are to making an atomic bomb. Nine of these men, including Nobel Prize winners Otto Hahn and Werner Heisenberg, are known as Hitler’s “Uranium Club.” Based on actual transcripts of secretly recorded conversations, playwright Alan Brody illuminates the ethical complexity of pursuing scientific discovery at the risk of wreaking catastrophic consequences.

It’s a terrific production, with smart staging and an estimable cast.

Catch it if you can.

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