While the Newsweek/Daily Beast merger was expected to be wrapped up by late November or early December, it has been delayed and is not closing until later this month. . . .
That means Tina Brown, the Daily Beast editor-in-chief and former editor of The New Yorker and the much-hyped failure Talk Magazine, will have longer to wait before she can put her stamp on the newsweekly when she takes over the combined operations. . . .
One insider said the longer it takes for the NewsBeast deal to close, the greater the attrition among demoralized Newsweek staffers, who increasingly regard the deal not so much as a merger of equals but as a takeover. “Morale at Newsweek? There is no morale because there is no one left,” said one source. “The purge is complete.”
Tina Brown wants staffers whose only loyalty is to her. Embittered veterans of Newsweek don’t fit that category.
Of course, I’m a Protestant and have no stake in defending Catholicism against Andrew Sullivan’s efforts to discredit that faith, but couldn’t some influential Catholic say a word to the Pope and get Sully officially ex-communicated?
Being pro-life is different than merely saying you’re pro-life. Pundette has an excellent post pointing out the Baby Boom generation’s failure to reproduce. The embrace of the Contraceptive Culture is more seriously implicated in that failure — a sinful disobedience to the commandment, “Be fruitful and multiply” — than such alternative lifestyles as practiced by Sully. Neverthless, pills and condoms sometimes fail to prevent conception, resulting in “happy accidents,” whereas no child has ever been conceived by sodomy.
The “I can’t carry to term then allow someone else to raise the baby” notion is a fundamentally flawed bit of moral reasoning–one that flourishes because, in this age of moral relativism we are discouraged from teaching sound moral reasoning. The dictatorship of relativism must be defeated.
It is not merely relativism, but also narcissism that’s involved: What young woman wants to get fat, sustain stretch-marks, possibly a C-section scar, etc., and then not have something to show for all that damage to her physique?
I was 14 years old when I conceived my son. I was in a relationship with a 16 year old guy who had already had one son who he didn’t see much. I figured since he already had a child, he was mature.
(Hello? 16-year-old baby daddies are presumed “mature”?)
It turned out he was very controlling and abusive, so I decided to leave him. Two days after my 15th birthday, I found out I was pregnant. I was so scared and confused but he said he’d be there and take care of everything.
Just three weeks later, he told me he wanted nothing to do with me and I haven’t seen him since. . . .
(How do boys like this expect to get away with such behavior? Why isn’t this boy locked up in juvenile hall? Never mind: The girl’s sister drove her to the abortion clinic, but the girl decided against it.)
On November 3rd, I had my beautiful baby boy via c-section and am living with my dad with his support, and returning to school next year. I am so in love with my baby. I cry at the thought of ever even thinking about ending his life. I thank God everyday for helping me see the light through the darkness.
Well, OK. That’s good. But don’t we see in this story how disastrously far astray our culture has gone? Here’s a boy, 16 years old, having already fathered and abandoned one child, now getting a 14-year-old girl pregnant — and he’s not behind bars? He’s “abusive,” and yet seemingly has no fear that the girl’s male relatives will seek to avenge her?
Just as being pro-life is more than being anti-abortion, traditional values is more than being anti-fornication. Here is an excellent example of a traditional values response when somebody is “abusive” to your sister:
A man who fought to get the Vietnam Veterans Memorial built and served in two Bush administrations was murdered, Delaware police say. John P. Wheeler III, 66, was found dead in a Delaware landfill, and his death has been ruled a homicide by Newark, Del., police. They are asking the public for leads in the case.
Wheeler’s body was found in Wilmington on Friday after a disposal truck containing his body made pickups in Newark.
Wheeler, who lived in New Castle, was chairman of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund during the Ronald Reagan era. He also held many high-profile government positions after graduating from West Point in 1966.
No reason to speculate about this crime. Just let the police do their work. Nevertheless, we can expect that conspiracy theorists will offer all kinds of arcane explanations.
Friends and neighbors were shocked to learn Wheeler had been murdered.
“This is just not the kind of guy who gets murdered,” said Bayard Marin, a Wilmington attorney who represented Wheeler. “This is not the kind of guy you find in a landfill.”
Wheeler worked in Washington, D.C. and investigators have determined he was on an Amtrak train from Washington to Wilmington on Tuesday, said Newark police Lt. Mark Farrall. “The last place they can put him is getting off the Amtrak train in Wilmington,” Farrall said.
Our “Full Metal Jacket Reach-Around” (Rule 2) is named in honor of a memorable remark by the Marine drill instructor in the 1987 Kubrick classic. An actual Marine, R. Lee Ermey, was perfectly cast in that role. At a Toys for Tots event last month, Ermey spoke out against the Obama administration:
“The economy really sucks. Now, I hate to point fingers at anybody, but the present administration probably has a lot to do with that. And the way I see it, they’re not going to quit doing it until they bring this country to its knees. So I think we should all rise up, and we should stop this administration from what they’re doing, because they’re destroying this country. They’re driving us into bankruptcy so they can impose socialism on us. That’s exactly what they’re doing and I’m sick and damned tired of it, and I know you are, too.”
Semper Fi, Sarge. John Nolte at Big Hollywood predicts this will result in efforts to blacklist Ermey, who is currently starring in a funny GEICO commercial.
Let’s hope not. And now, for the Best Motivational Speech Evah!
Izabella St. James (real name, Izabella Katarina Kasprzyk) might be best known for her role as “Jimmie’s Girlfriend” in the 2008 cinema classic Ninja Cheerleaders, except that she once played the role of Hugh Hefner’s girlfriend.
For Izabella, the Playboy Mansion was far from the glamorous pleasure palace she had imagined. ‘Each bedroom had mismatched, random pieces of furniture . . . It was as if someone had gone to a charity shop and bought the basics for each room.
‘Although we all did our best to decorate our rooms and make them homely, the mattresses on our beds were disgusting — old, worn and stained. The sheets were past their best, too. . . .
‘Hef was used to dirty carpets. The one in his bedroom had not been changed for years, and things became significantly worse when Holly Madison moved into his room with him as Girlfriend No. 1 soon after I moved in, bringing her two dogs.
‘They weren’t house-trained and would just do their business on the bedroom carpet. Late at night, or in the early hours of the morning — if any of us visited Hef’s bedroom — we’d almost always end up standing in dog mess. . . .
(The girls got $1,000 weekly allowance and free plastic surgery.)
Freedom of a kind came on Wednesdays and Fridays, the official nights out, which were the prelude to the twice-weekly sex parties in Hefner’s bedroom.
The girls travelled with Hefner in a white limousine which had a leopard-skin interior, with Playboy bunny logos sewn onto the seats. As they left the mansion, they drank Dom Perignon champagne and downed Quaaludes, a prescription-only sedative drug popularised in the Seventies and now handed out by Hefner. . . .
At around midnight, according to St James, Hef would take his Viagra. ‘After that, he would constantly check his watch to make sure we left at the right time because if we didn’t, or the timing got messed up, he wouldn’t be able to perform later. . . .
‘I wanted to see if this experienced King of Sexdom knew anything the rest of us did not,’ she recalls. ‘But he just lay there like a dead fish.
‘We often wondered why he did it at all. He must know deep down that it is just a show. But he is trying to live out this fantasy he has been selling to people since 1954. He wants to live up to the Playboy image he created and the expectations people have of him.’
Shabby furniture, dirty beds, dog poop on the floor, bad sex with a Viagra-gobbling geezer — c’mon, ladies, who can resist that?
Austerity is the theme of Republican John A. Boehner’s installation as House speaker this week, placing the start of this new Congress in stark contrast to the more lavish festivities that marked Democrat Nancy Pelosi’s swearing-in four years ago.
On Wednesday, following a bipartisan prayer service at St. Peter’s Catholic Church, Boehner will recite the oath and take the gavel from Pelosi with the attendant pomp and no more – except, perhaps, a few tears.
Then the 61-year-old Ohioan will deliver his maiden speech to the new House, which includes a huge cadre of freshmen lawmakers. Many of them are rambunctious Republicans who sailed into Washington with the tea party winds and are determined to use their new majority to undo much of President Obama’s legislative record.
John Boehner would have a sizeable crowd in Washington Wednesday to watch him be sworn in as the 61st Speaker of the House if it were only his blood relatives coming.
Boehner is the second oldest of the 12 children of the late Earl and Mary Ann Boehner of Reading; and 10 of his siblings and their families are going to Washington for the swearing-in.
But hundreds of others are coming as well, by plane, automobile and buses – cousins, family friends, campaign volunteers, Republican Party officials from all over Ohio, and tea party activists who supported the West Chester congressman’s “Pledge to America” campaign that led to the GOP taking over the House in the November election.
“There are a whole lot of us here who want to pay tribute to John’s accomplishments,” said David Kern, a Liberty Township trustee who is chairman of the Butler County Republican Party.
“It’s something we are very proud of – that the speaker of the House comes from Butler County, Ohio,” said Kern, who will fly to Washington Tuesday for the Boehner swearing-in and festivities. “That’s something to celebrate.”
BTW, I’d like to go down to Washington to cover Wednesday’s ceremonies opening the 112th Congress, checking in with some of our favorites like Ann Marie Buerkle and Allen West. So if you want to hit the tip jar for $10 or $20 to help with expenses — gas, parking, bribes for Maryland State Troopers who clock me doing 91 mph in a 65-mph zone — that would be appreciated.
