Busy, caffeinated, wrapped in dreary, overcast skies. This past weekend was a movie weekend - Star Trek: First Contact, Patton, and Citizen Kane. The first two I've seen before (and enjoy, though the antiheroism in Patton wore me out this time around), so I'll try to put together a film amateur's review of Citizen Kane this evening or tomorrow. Bravo, Mr. Welles. Until then, let Jay Nordlinger add a little levity to your day:
Said the AP in a lead, "The economy is improving for the super rich." Way to go, AP! You too can work for a Democratic presidential candidate!
Just think: from the 1950s to the late 1980s, that sort of partisan sloganeering was considered objective, mainstream journalism for the newspaper, radio and television. Yesterday afternoon I read that England's Daily Mirror began as the socialist-enabler Labor paper, as in "their paper." How many people keep that in mind when dropping the Mirror's finest into proper context? In the 19th Century, the proud partisanship of American newspapers was their primary attraction to one audience or another. Then came "objectivity," may it rest in peace. Today's mainstream vogue is a variety of perspectives, and Fox News deserves some credit for maintaining a healthy complement of articulate leftists as a foil to its rightward cast. Do we really need the veneer of absolute neutrality paraded around any longer, like that fellow at NPR who claimed in the last days of 2001 that he worked for "history"? Clocks work for history, buddy.
Nordlinger's all over the peanut gallery/Weekly World News style of Democrat red meat speeches; the Patriot Act as scapegoat; Muzak; and much, much more.
