"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
The makers of the new movie Atlas Shrugged: Part I have invited me to an exclusive screening today in Washington, D.C. Here’s the trailer:
They’ve taken a huge gamble, producing this ambitious film under a tight deadline and on a tight budget.
During the CPAC blogger bash at FreedomWorks, they previewed four scenes from the movie. Clearly, they’re hoping to generate major buzz before the film’s theatrical release on April 15.
Yeah: Tax Day. Pretty clever.
Obama’s decision to dump the Defense of Marriage Act exposes the bogusness of his mythical “move to the center”:
It also is increasingly clear that Mr. Obama has learned nothing from the “shellacking” his party took in the midterm elections, despite all the talk to the contrary from his sycophants in the media about his “moving to the center.”
The pretense of a move to the center is, and always was, just that — pretense — his window-dressing appointment of William Daley as chief of staff and a supposed rapprochement with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce notwithstanding. . . .
Why else would he make the calculated decision not to defend DOMA, a law duly enacted by Congress and signed into law by a fellow Democratic president? Mr. Obama variously claims to be against gay marriage, even as he says his views on the subject are “evolving,” but this decision rips the mask off that charade. He knows his opposition to DOMA, while it might send a thrill up the collective leg of the editorial board of The New York Times, is contrary to the expressed wishes of the electorate: Thirty states have voted on gay marriage, and all 30 have voted against it. What part of “no” does Mr. Obama not understand? . . .
Megan McArdle at the (soon-to-be-Sully-free) Atlantic linked and excerpted an interview that Xconomy.com did with a venture capitalist, Ken Kinsella.
The World’s Tallest Female Blogger admits that her excerpting — more than a third of a 2,100-word article — was way over the “fair use” line and, while she included a link to the article, she named neither the source site nor the writer who conducted the interview.
Bad Megan! Bad, bad Megan!
However, it subsequently became apparent that Xconomy is a site run by obnoxious douchebags:
I won’t disclose the contents of our correspondence, since the editor who emailed me has requested that they remain confidential. I think I may disclose that they are very upset about what they see as an egregious fair use violation. I attempted to rectify the situation by trimming down the excerpts, and naming the site from which they were drawn, but this seems to have somehow only made them madder — perhaps because this is so rare in my ten years of experience blogging that I was mystified rather than sufficiently apologetic. But of course I support their right to control lengthy dissemination of their work, so I have taken down the offending post.
Look: Nothing wrong with a publisher enforcing his intellectual property rights, but it isn’t good business for a publisher to act like a complete douchebag toward bloggers.
In point of fact, my excerpt of Megan’s post amounts to more than a third of its content, so if her editors at the Atlantic wanted to be total douchebags, they could start filling my inbox with huffy e-mails threatening me with legal action. But they don’t do that because, even though their traffic is way bigger than mine, getting linked by bloggers is good for their business.
Megan McArdle is a nice person who has good-naturedly put up with a lot of joshing from me over the years and seldom complained, not even when — after her engagement to Peter Suderman — I dubbed her “my favorite acromegalic bride-to-be.” Megan knew that I was just trying to needle her enough to get a link and, imperious giantess that she is, she refused to lash out in anger.
That would be beneath her — as, of course, most things are beneath someone who’s nine feet tall.
Perhaps I exaggerate. Still, it is a mark of her graciousness that Megan hasn’t crushed me beneath one of her enormous feet, and anyone who is mean to her is therefore my enemy.
Xconomy.com now has a spot on my (very short) no-link list.
Jack Shafer of Slate attempts to make sense of New York Times columnist Frank Rich’s departure for New York magazine:
Let me see if I’ve got this straight: Frank Rich is leaving a weekly column at the nation’s most important daily newspaper for a monthly column at the second best weekly in the country.
If Rich’s move is about wanting to spend more time with his family, gain greater distance from Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal, free himself to pursue his HBO projects more aggressively, or to work once again with New York Editor Adam Moss, with whom he has a mind-meld, I understand. But unless the deal came with Bloombergian bags of cash, it makes no sense. . . .
One of the charms of working weekly—or daily, for that matter—is that your readers know where and when to find you. But with Rich going monthly for a much less prominent publication, he’ll get lost. In this new venue, there will be no obvious cues—Sunday morning bagels and coffee, for example—that it’s Rich time. He’ll just be floating out there in the journalistic ether.
He won’t be the only one. Howard Kurtz, one of the iron men of journalism, has been floating in the ether ever since leaving the Washington Post for the Daily Beast last fall. He’s writing prolifically about the media and other topics for the Beast, as he did for decades at the Post. But Kurtz’s copy used to be hand-delivered to my front door step
I agree with Shafer that it’s hard to make sense of Rich’s move, except for the possibility that New York will let him run rampant online as a blogger, which would be amusing. Rich’s columns in the Sunday Times, which he had all week to compile, were generally target-rich environments, full of tendentious and predictable liberal nonsense. On the other hand — and I certainly wouldn’t rule this out — perhaps Rich is going to a monthly so as to free up his time to compile a book.
On the other hand, I don’t think Kurtz’s work has suffered by his transfer to the online Daily Beast, except for the fact that he now has a smaller footprint in D.C. Being a prominent contributor to the Washington Post — where Kurtz’s articles were most often placed on the “Style” section front — has a cachet.
Speaking of “journalistic ether,” how much ether did Tina Brown huff before hiring Andrew Sullivan? And what was she smoking when she wrote this?
I am thrilled to share the news that Andrew Sullivan is bringing his trailblazing journalism to The Daily Beast. Andrew almost single-handedly defined the political blog and has been refining it as a form of journalism in real time nearly every day for the past decade. . . .
Scrolling down Andrew’s blog helps to give orientation in the world, to get the smartest possible fix on the news at any given moment. . . .
It is said that “a fool and his money are soon parted.” In publishing, a fool and his money sooner or later hire Tina Brown, so that in a few short years, he becomes a fool with much less money.
Via Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit; more at Michelle Malkin and Hot Air:
If this is what “civility” is supposed to look like . . .
TOP NEWS
House Passes Spending Bill, Avoiding Shutdown
Stopgap spending bill passes 355-91, includes $4 billion in spending cuts
Gaddafi Defiant As West Flexes Military Muscle
USS Kearsarge and Ponce redeploy to the Med; US, NATO discussing no-fly zone
Khadafy Musters Show Of Strength In Tripoli
UN Suspends Libya From Human Rights Council
Crisis in Libya Accelerates Tunisian Problems
POLITICS
Wisconsin Governor Proposes Austerity Measures To Balance Budgets
Proposed budget includes $1 billion in cuts to public schools, University of Wisconsin, local government aid
Chicago Police Superintendent Weis Quits; Former Top Cop Hillard To Be Interim Replacement
Guru’s Trial Over Sweat Lodge Deaths Begins
Western Governors Fume Over President’s Plan For Wilderness Areas
Bipartisan Embrace Of New GAO Report On Waste, Duplication In Federal Government
THE ECONOMY, STUPID
US Stocks Close Lower As Oil Fears Persist
Bernanke: Fed Would Act If Oil Ignites Inflation
Asian Stocks Fall As Oil Surges On Continuing Mideast Crisis; Silver Hits 31-year High
Budget Airlines Force Big Rivals To Scale Back Fare Increases
IPad Already Obsolete: 10 Technologies That Render It Outdated
World’s First Eye-Controlled Laptop Arrives
SPORTS
Magic Still A Factor Despite Shifts In The East
Nelson leads Orlando to victory over reinforced Knicks, 110-106
Judge Rules NFL Owners Can’t Use TV Cash In Work Stoppage
Timbermutts Salute Strib Writer/Lakers Fixture Sid Hartman
Brigham Young’s Davies Dismissed From Team For Honor Code Violation
Barry Bonds’ Trainer Still Won’t Testify, May Return To Prison
FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Oscar Co-Hosts Grew To Loathe Each Other
“She had to provide all the energy — he was just phoning it in.”
Stars Dis Oscar Hosts, But Only Off The Record
Robert Pattinson: The Vanity Fair Interview
Les Moonves Breaks His Silence On Charlie Sheen
Christina Aguilera & BF Busted
Melissa Gilbert, Bruce Boxleitner Split Up
Katie Holmes Sues Star Magazine Publishers For $50 Million
Lindsay Lohan – Surveillance Tape Backs Her Story
FOREIGNERS
Libyan Rebels March West
South Yemen Politician Seeks Referendum On Secession
Iranian Protesters Clash With Police
German Defense Minister Resigns In Plagiarism Scandal
ROK Activists To Continue Leafleting Norks
Irish Election Results Biggest Shakeup Since Civil War; Fianna Fail Crushed, Finishes Third Behind Fine Gael, Labor
BLOGS & STUFF
David Weigel: Huckabee Is Not A Birther
Michelle Malkin: Unhinged Crowd Corners Wisconsin Republican Senator (Videos)
NRO: Bernanke – Budget Cuts Won’t Harm Growth
Sister Toldjah: Holder Dodges, Fumes, Talks About “My People” In Committee Hearing
Legal Insurrection: PPP Using Skewed Samples In “Do Over” Poll
Protein Wisdom: “A Union Education”
Jawa Report: Assange – Da Joooos Sent Fembots And Reporters To Smear My Name
Newsbusters: Pro-Union Thugs Assault FNC’s Mike Tobin
Lonely Conservative: Reich To Rich – Redistribute Wealth Or Face Angry Mobs
Maggie’s Notebook: AWOL Wisconsin Dems Unhappy; One Broke, One Pregnant – Dissension In The Ranks Ahead?
Joanne Jacobs: Spend Smarter On Teachers
— compiled by Wombat-socho
Borrowing Jimmie Bise’s term for “Stuff I Really Meant to Blog About Today, But Didn’t Get Around to Actually Blogging”:
As Mika said, this isn’t likely to end well. Get help, Charlie.
UPDATE: Charlie’s Twitter account got more than 300,000 followers in a matter of hours. Among the 10 people he’s following? Alyssa Milano.
Alyssa: Please, please try to talk Charlie into getting help. He’ll listen to you.
UPDATE II: More “winning” for Charlie:
Police have removed Charlie Sheen’s children from his Los Angeles mansion under instruction from a judge who ordered they must be returned to his soon-to-be ex-wife Brooke Mueller, RadarOnline.com has exclusively learned.
“My fangs are dripping tiger blood,” a furious Sheen told RadarOnline.com exclusively as cops were taking twins Bob and Max from his home.
The situation is reaching the not-funny-any-more stage, as I explain at The American Spectator:
Los Angeles Times media critic James Rainey said TV news networks are “aiding and abetting” Sheen’s “epic meltdown,” a spectacle he called “nauseating.” It is certainly no longer a laughing matter. Sheen’s popularity helped him amass nearly a half-million Twitter followers within hours of joining the microblogging site Tuesday afternoon. But if Sheen’s downward spiral into madness continues much further, all those people may soon be following a corpse.
Seriously.
UPDATE III: Tweeted this:
The link is to a Los Angeles Times article:
Psychologist Deborah Serani, writing at Psychology Today, joined the camp that thinks he might have bipolar disorder. (Last week, celebrity-addiction celebrity Dr. Drew Pinsky suggested that Sheen was “clearly manic.”) A lengthy analysis of Sheen’s recent comments on Time Magazine’s Healthland blog made a similar suggestion.
“His recent ranting behavior has led viewers to question whether the actor was still on drugs and denying addiction. Or whether he was exhibiting manic symptoms of bipolar disorder. Or some combination of the two. Sheen’s negative drug test suggests that addiction is unlikely to be his only problem,” wrote Maia Szalavitz.
I submit that no experienced psychologist who watched Sheen’s recent interviews could dispute that he is exhibiting multiple symptoms of manic-phase bipolar disorder. But the symptoms of a dude on the deep end 0f a long cocaine binge are quite similar, so until they can get Sheen into a secure in-patient facility and ascertain that he’s not coked out, a diagnosis of his underlying mental health will have to wait.
Y’know something? My buddy Joe at Valley of the Shadow has been bugging me to start rattling the tip jar for a trip to cover the California GOP convention March 18-20. If we can make that trip happen, and Charlie’s meltdown hasn’t put him in jail, the hospital or the grave by then, I might cruise over to “Sober Valley Lodge” and see if I can help Charlie chill out a bit.
“What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. . . . If the right forces us all to either defend [Rev. Jeremiah] Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”
— Spencer Ackerman, from “JournoList,” April 2008
That tasty reminder of how our tolerant liberal media friends conceive their jobs was recalled by Ed Driscoll in linking to this astonishing exclusive at Ace of Spades HQ:
Obama Reportedly Suggested Tea Partiers
Are Partially Motivated By Race
Kenneth T. Walsh, in a “Special Report” for US News Weekly (2/26) titled, “Race in the Era of Obama,” writes that in May 2010, President Obama “told guests at a private White House dinner that race was probably a key component in the rising opposition to his presidency from conservatives, especially right-wing activists in the anti-incumbent ‘Tea Party’ movement. … A guest suggested that when Tea Party activists said they wanted to ‘take back’ their country, their real motivation was to stir up anger and anxiety at having a black president, and Obama didn’t dispute the idea. He agreed that there was a ‘subterranean agenda’ in the anti-Obama movement — a racially biased one.”
Astonishing, as I say, that the President of the United States himself would resort to such Ackermanism. But isn’t this really the same thing Obama was saying in April 2008 when he told his rich San Francisco donors that middle-class voters “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations”?
As Ace says, we can no longer pretend that these “racist teabagger” smears are ginned up by liberal political operatives and reporters, “and that our post-racial president has nothing, nothing at all to do with them.”
Obama now owns all five A’s in “raaaaacism.”