First it was 60 Minutes two weeks back. Today NPR’s All Things Considered has made the Dixie Chicks out to be martyrs because of lead singer Natalie Maines’s comment on a London stage in 2003, just before the Iraq war,…
Michael Novak on National Review Online perpetuates the false claim that The Da Vinci Code is the product of secularists. But people who want to reinterpret Christ aren’t secular; they want to believe, and find meaning in their lives, but…
Let’s talk about the neoconservative network, and make a few connections, then a theoretical leap. Start at the top. Lately Vanity Fair has reported that Vice President Dick Cheney travels everywhere with a biological and chemical suit. No more specifics…
I’m confused. One of my favorite ads is the series promoting sexual tourism in Las Vegas—”What Happens in Las Vegas Stays in Las Vegas.” Some of these are clever. Like the group of bridesmaids who start rolling their eyes and…
Last Sunday the Times’ public editor, Byron Calame, described how a canard had made it on to the front page: a report in April that the new Airbus jumbos would carry more than 800 passengers by having them stand up,…
The American Prospect—Greg Sargent—has a good item on the bogusness of those horrifying reports that Jews and other religious minorities in Iran would have to wear colored badges identifying them as infidels. One of the original reports on this canard,…
We’re pathetic. Brian Williams is in Africa for NBC Nightly News to report on the AIDS crisis and the focus of his piece is Bono of U2, his visit. What a great man he is, what an investment he’s made…
What hath Annie (Proulx) wrought? The gay Vito subplot on The Sopranos, now concluded with his beating death, seems an homage to Proulx’s landmark New Yorker story of 1997—and the Ang Lee movie that was based on it. How many…
In a lot of media outfits, when a big guy retires they put together some sort of festschrift, a fake front page, a book of testimonials, and give it to the guy at his retirement dinner. On 60 Minutes they…