Jim Rittenhouse's semidaily journal of news, commentary and reports
Michael Jackson commissioned fantasy art about himself that defies description; one of the pieces resembles a Communist Chinese propaganda poster with Comrade Michael leading the oppressed children of the world…just check out the pieces and imagine how much he spent on this stuff. I’m thinking of a Botticelli-like painting like that first one with Bernie [...]
http://bit.ly/6bT2Os (from the Newseum, possibly not good after tonight – front page of today’s Daily Herald) IL_DH (pdf of the page – big center layout of photos of the girls)
http://www.newsweek.com/id/225492/page/1 The Power of Two: http://www.newsweek.com/id/225098 Photo gallery of the kids, etc. The Intro picture is particularly stunning. This has been in the works since spring. Newsweek came in with a Pulitzer-award winning photographer who was fresh from covering the White House and Obama and Bush to do the shots. The interviews mostly were around [...]
Discussion about a bailout bill for newspapers if they reorganize as 501c3 not-for-profits; the President had this to say about it: Obama said that good journalism is “critical to the health of our democracy,” but expressed concern toward growing tends in reporting — especially on political blogs, from which a groundswell of support for his [...]
The inspector general of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reports that five SEC exams and investigations of Bernie Madoff were incompetently done. I can believe one screwup happened, but five? Five is agency policy to not look too hard. Both Markopolos and an SEC staff accountant testified that it was clear the Boston office’s [...]
John Ensign has decided that he’s not resigning his seat, he’s running for re-election and he’s expecting the voters to forget it as soon after Britney Spears is killed in a love-suicide pact with Lindsey Lohan and CNN spends a week of coverage on the aftermath as possible. Well, whatever keeps his dad’s and the [...]
New Zealander taekwondo champ trying to open a whorehouse in his home country to support his bid to go to the London Olympics in 2012. Well, it’s not as nice as a Wheaties box…
I am singularly uninterested in the Jackson story. I’ve seen enough oddball celebrity circuses, and the really interesting and truly weird stuff will not come out for a while for most people. I expect more news circuses repeated endlessly on the news, and I will ignore them all. Finally, someone sems to be doing something [...]
I absolutely refuse to watch the train wreck of Jon and Kate Plus Eight – haven’t for a while, and I did catch about 10 minutes of the start-of-season one before I got nauseated. I’m hearing stories about their ratings falling apart, and I’m just as glad. First off, while some find the whole thing [...]
Meredith has developed over the last year a taste for certain ‘reality’ shows that probe into private lives – as in poking inside a family household to see how it works. I have some real reservations on all of this, which I’ll go into in a minute. In each of these cases, the family has [...]
…not talking about OJ. Susan and her mom are watching this, but I’m very quickly getting sick of it. The man’s an abusive psycho who consorts with losers and sycophants because that’s his level, and regardless of who really owned that stuff in the room, if I think someone’s ripped me off, I don’t go [...]
Friday night, Susan said, a little of the ‘old Jim’ came up and out on the stage as I sang and joked with Mandy Patinkin…No joke. Actually happened, for real. First, some explanation. I’m very fond of many different forms of music, including Broadway show tunes, and Susan and I are fans of his acting gigs and [...]