What is it with All Things Considered and All This Chugging?
Once again, Weekend ATC had its host (in this case fill-in anchor Audie Cornish) hoist an alcoholic beverage (in this case meatliquor – your eww goes here).
This is really getting abusive.
How about we form a PETA brand extension:
People for the Ethical Treatment of Anchors.
Facebook page here.
As the hardworking staff noted several weeks ago, on June 22 the endlessly outraged Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) served McDonald’s a notice of its intent to sue in several states (including Massachusetts), demanding that “McDonald’s USA, LLC (‘McDonald’s’) immediately stop using toys to market Happy Meals to young children.”
The notice ended with this:
CSPI will postpone filing suit if it can obtain McDonald’s agreement to stop its use of toys to market Happy Meals.
This offer of settlement will remain open for 30 days from the date of this letter, after which it shall be automatically withdrawn and become null and void.
Given McDonald’s contentious response, the hardworking staff anticipated swift legal action by CSPI once the month-long grace period expired last Thursday.
But so far, no UnHappy Meals suit.
Thankfully, CSPI is still active on other litigious fronts.
Lawsuit Over Deceptive Vitaminwater Claims to Proceed
Court Finds Coke in Violation of Various FDA Regs and Denies Its Motion to Dismiss the Lawsuit
CSPI: Can’t Stop Pursuing Indictments.
It’s not often that the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal agree on the day’s top story.
Friday, they did. The unifying figure? Charlie Rangel.
Times headline:
House Panel Will Try Rangel in Ethics Cases
Journal headline:
House to Try Top Democrat
But only one of the pieces contained this:
The investigative panel began its work in September 2008 after The New York Times reported that Mr. Rangel accepted four rent-stabilized apartments from a developer at a price below market value, despite rules forbidding House members from taking gifts worth more than $50.
Time’s up. Put down your pencils.
The Central Square Theater’s production of The Hound of the Baskervilles is a total gas – a wonderfully loopy, funny, funky evening that never flags.
Bravo to Remo Airaldi, Trent Mills, and Bill Mootos for their energetic, inspired performances.
The play runs through August 22. Do yourself a favor and see it.
From a New York Times piece on the Galileo Museum in Florence, Italy (formerly Florence’s history of science museum, which contains – and the Missus and I can attest to this – “a veritable curiosity cabinet of beautifully wrought scientific instruments”):
[In 1992 Pope John Paul] called the Galileo case one in which “a tragic, reciprocal incomprehension was interpreted as the reflection of a fundamental opposition between science and faith.”
Man, I took eight years of Greek and Latin and I still can’t figure out that sentence.
Boston Globe, 7/23/10:
Democrats drop signature climate bill
Kerry vows to keep fighting for passage
Boston Herald, 7/23/10:
The Herald story claimed, “Senator docks new yacht in R.I. – ducks $500G in Mass. taxes.”
There are many sides to Big Jawn, no?
After a weeklong slapfight between The Daily Caller and The New Republic, the so-inside-it-should-be-paying-condo-fees JournoList rumpus has officially gone mainstream now that the inexorable Fred Barnes has broached it in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.
Headline:
The Vast Left-Wing Media Conspiracy
Nut graf:
Not to say there’s a media conspiracy, but at least to note that hundreds of journalists have gotten together, on an online listserv called JournoList, to promote liberalism and liberal politicians at the expense of traditional journalism.
Not to say there’s a lack of consistency, but at least to note that Fred Barnes is trying to have it both ways.
Regardless, the – finally! – NBA connection implicit in the Barnes piece:
As best I can tell, those involved in JournoList considered themselves part of a team. And their goal was to make sure the team won.
So the liberal-media-industrial complex is LeBron James-Dwyane Wade-Chris Bosh.
And conservatives, according to Barnes?
My experience with other conservative journalists is that they are loners. One of the most famous conservative columnists of the past half-century, the late Robert Novak, is a good example. I knew him well for 35 years. He didn’t tell me what stories he was working on nor ask what I was planning to write. He never mentioned how we might promote Republicans or aid the conservative cause, nor did I.
That would make conservatives Michael Jordan-Magic Johnson-Larry Bird.
You heard it here first.
Thursday’s New York Times pretty much ran the gamut of “Mad Men” overkill.
Exhibit A:
Peter Applebome’s Our Towns column headlined:
Decoding the ‘Mad Men,’ Ossining and Cheever Nexus
Your eye-roll goes here.
Exhibit B:
This Banana Republic ad:
Only at Banana Republic
MAD MEN CASTING CALL
Got Mad acting skills? Visit any Banana Republic store and enter to win a walk-on role on AMC’s Emmy Award-winning series “Mad Men”
Your eye makeup goes here.
It started with Weekly Standard editor William Kristol coming out in a recent editorial as a Tea Partier:
We are not now quite at a founding moment, or even a re-founding moment. But we have arrived at a genuine crisis, or a set of crises, and we may well be at a decisive moment for the country.
This sense of crisis is what animates the Tea Parties. I had the pleasure of attending the “Proud to be an American July 4th Tea Party” outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia. It featured patriotic songs and speeches, and expressions of support for our troops and praise for our country. Yet the mood of patriotic gratitude was mixed with expressions of alarm from my fellow Tea Partiers about the administration now in charge of our government.
That’s bad enough. But then we learn this from a New York Times Ad Watch headlined “A Punch and a Counterpunch in Pennsylvania Senate Race.”
This hard-hitting advertisement against Representative Joe Sestak, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, marks the debut of a hawkish, pro-Israel group, the Emergency Committee for Israel, led by William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard. It also serves as a shot across the bow to candidates in other states whom Mr. Kristol and his fellow neoconservatives deem insufficiently supportive of Israel.
So.
Is it really kosher for the editor of a news publication – even a “magazine of opinion” – to actively engage in advocacy? And big-bucks advocacy at that?
Just wondering.
Sarah Barracuda is a lot like Paul the Octopus. She can really pick a winner.
Palin’s latest notch (via the New York Times):
Karen Handel, a former secretary of state who was endorsed by Sarah Palin, came in first in Georgia’s Republican gubernatorial primary Tuesday evening and will face Nathan Deal, a former Congressman, in an Aug. 10 runoff.
Add that to a months-long string of victorianous Palendorsements, and you’ve got what looks like a certified craze on your hands. Via AolNews:
Primary Winners Endorsed by Palin:
Terry Branstad (for Iowa governor)
Rand Paul (for U.S. Senate in Kentucky)
Rob Portman (for U.S. Senate in Ohio)
Rick Perry (for Texas governor)
Susana Martinez (for New Mexico governor)
Adam Kinzinger (for U.S. House of Representatives in Illinois)
Sharron Angle (for U.S. Senate in Nevada)
Carly Fiorina (for U.S. Senate in California)
Nikki Haley (for South Carolina governor)Primary Losers Endorsed by Palin:
Angela McGlowan (for U.S. House of Representatives in Mississippi)
Tim Burns (for U.S. House of Representatives in Pennsylvania)
Vaughn Ward (for U.S. House of Representatives in Idaho)
Cecile Bledsoe (for U.S. House of Representatives in Arkansas)Special Election Loser Endorsed by Palin:
Doug Hoffman (for U.S. House of Representatives in New York)
Pretty good record. Then again, given Palin’s own limitations as a national candidate, how strange would it be if she could get just about anybody elected but herself?
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