Among many great political resources from the left, right and center, one always high quality read is The American Thinker. Ever a source of insightful, varied commentary and analysis, the Thinker combines the talents of many writers, including the always provocative Rick Moran of Right Wing Nuthouse. Now The American Thinker is working on expansions to the services they provide and are asking for the help of readers to do so.
American Thinker today launches its first-ever appeal to readers for financial support. We want to explain to readers why we are doing this at this particular moment.
AT began almost four and a half years ago with the mission of providing a platform for smart and knowledgeable thinkers to reach an audience of people concerned with the future of America and of American concepts of liberty and constitutional representative democracy. We knew from our life experience that the most brilliant minds and deepest expertise were often found outside the ranks of established journalists, professors, and other public figures who already enjoyed access to prominent publications.
Please consider stopping by at the link above if you would like to help keep this type of independent thinking nipping at the heels of gatekeepers in the commercial media.
April 30th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
This is another Guest Book Review by fiction writer Jessica Schneider who also writes for Cosmoetica, is Book Editor for Monsters and Critics and is the only contributor to her own blog.
Book Review: Everyman Library: Irene Nemirovsky
by Jessica Schneider
Generally I find it a good rule of thumb that if one is searching for book reviews regarding a literary “classic” writer or even a “rediscovered classic” writer like Irene Nemirovsky, one can pretty much forget finding any reasonable criticism. Why? Because people have it so ingrained into their heads that if a writer lived a long time ago and has maintained his or her name in print, then the public just assumes that writer is great.
Not all, mind you, but many of the reviews on Amazon, for example, will even rave about an incomprehensible mess Read the rest of this entry »
Last week it emerged that one of Norman Mailer’s mistresses, former actress and model Carole Mallory, sold her personal papers to Harvard’s Houghton Library. On Friday they gave the UK’s Times OnLine an exclusive preview.
Harvard? Why Harvard?
Leslie Morris, the Harvard library’s curator, said the main reason the university had been interested in so seemingly unacademic an archive was that Mailer’s hand-written amendments appeared on several manuscripts.
“The edits to me were the important things,” said Morris, who lost the biggest Mailer prize when the author sold his manuscripts to the University of Texas for $2.5m three years ago. “We don’t have that kind of money,” she said.
She declined to reveal how much Mallory was paid, but Mailer scholars may conclude it was worth every penny to read some of Norman’s amendments.
If you’re not going to clickthrough to read the lurid and steamy details, the headline claim is that Mallory “suspected him of having an affair with a male friend, was worried that he might contract Aids and refused to indulge his fantasy of three-way sex with a gay man.”
As the craze for Obama spreads across the French countryside, the concern of Democrats Abroad is growing, as fear that Hillary could be doing irreparable harm to the Party’s likely standard-bearer in November starts to take hold.
“She’s playing the Bush card and the politics of fear. It’s because of her that we have the shameful racial bias that has been introduced into the country! It makes me crazy!”
“This election concerns the entire planet … it’s important to us … we are attentive to the emergence of this candidate bearing hope and who is open to the world.” Read the rest of this entry »
As a charter member of what has been called the Church of Liebling, I have good news for fellow worshippers (hat tip to Holly in the next pew).
Liebling’s coverage of World War II for the New Yorker has now been gathered into a volume of 1089 pages by the Library of America. Like everything else he wrote, by reporting what he saw and heard, Liebling conveyed more about his subject than all the TV cameras and embedded journalists have told us about Iraq.
I have had the temerity to borrow his name for my URL, but it’s likely Liebling would have been ambivalent about blogs. As a press critic, he was a premature blogger himself, looking behind the news and picking apart the work of those who delivered it, making connections between the motives and methods of the messengers and the frequent unreliability of the message.
But a reporter at heart, Liebling hated experts. He mistrusted anyone who claimed “to have access to some occult source or science not available to reporter or reader…the big picture.”
Crimes against humanity come large now–wars, holocausts, ethnic cleansing–but sometimes a small horror rises from the past and pierces the heart. Such is the case of a man convicted last week of grave robbing–harvesting and selling body parts, including those of the most civilized man I ever knew.
For several generations of Americans, Alistair Cooke was the Englishman who loved America, writing about life here for the Manchester Guardian, doing “Letter From America” radio broadcasts that were heard around the world and finally sitting in an armchair in front of Public TV cameras as the cultivated host of “Masterpiece Theater.”
In the Search for Truth, book and magazine publishers are running into a few problems. Herewith two new trends in the reality business:
The continuing hoo-ha over the latest publishing fraud, the Valley girl who posed as a druggie gang member, brings up the question of where to draw the line between writers with vivid imaginations and out-and-out liars.
Truman Capote, who invented the non-fiction novel, was not always the most fact-checkable of journalists. He had a storyteller’s way with the truth. His writing and even his casual conversation abounded in astonishments, wondrous coincidences and weird juxtapositions.
But Capote was a novelist at heart, and his talent earned him some leeway as a fabulist in matters of little moment. In fact, the writing of “In Cold Blood” was, in part, a challenge he set himself to tell a journalistically pure story that would have the richness of his fiction. He knew the difference.
Today’s fake memoirists either don’t know or don’t care.
In an era of fake memoirs, Esquire now gives us a new variation on masturbatory journalism–the fictional diary.
For “a conceivable chronicle of Heath Ledger’s final days,” the editors explain, “writer Lisa Taddeo visited the actor’s neighborhood, talked to the store owners and bartenders who may have seen him during his last week, and read as many accounts and rumors about the events surrounding his death as possible. She filled in the rest with her imagination. The result is what we call reported fiction.”
February 25th, 2008 by SHAUN MULLEN, TMV Columnist
MARCH 1962 TIME MAGAZINE COVER PORTRAIT BY BERNARD SAFRAN
It would have been a damned shame if Tennessee Williams couldn’t write, because I can’t think of any man of letters whose family and friends provided so much rich material.
Williams, who was a gifted playwright and a not bad short story writer, drew long and hard from the deep well of tormented and eccentric souls who populated his life from childhood on and appear in various guises in his best known works, including The Glass Menagerie (1945), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) and The Night of the Iguana (1961).
Then there is A Streetcar Named Desire (1948), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was a Broadway hit with Marlon Brando, who played the immortal Stanley Kowalski, and Kim Hunter, Jessica Tandy and Karl Malden. Two years later, Streetcar was remade more or less intact for the big screen with Vivian Leigh replacing Tandy.
I don’t think I was ever in the same place (which is to say probably a restaurant or bar) with Williams, although our paths might have crossed in Key West in the 1970s without me realizing it.
My appreciation for him was based solely on the movie versions of Cat, Iguana and Streetcar until I began working with scholars who visit the rare book and manuscript library where I work. They come to study our fine collection of Williams typescripts, most of them heavily annotated by the man himself, who was notorious for repeatedly rewriting big chunks of his plays, in the case of Streetcar right up to the night of its Broadway opening.
These typescripts are extraordinary windows into his creative mind.
If you peruse this list of policy initiatives provided by The White House in relation to President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address last night (transcript is here; C-SPAN video is here), you may notice that two topics concern science and technology, two topics concern education and no topics concern the arts.
[NB: The final topic on that list, about worldwide compassion, stands out to me because I recently read about Compassion, which is a faith-based initiative that will use word of mouth blog power in Uganda next month. (If you’re interested in how non-profits are trying to leverage blogs and blogging and bloggers’ enthusiasm, you might want to follow Beth Kanter’s blog and read about How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media; she is one of the top experts in this area.) But I digress.]
So, while it’s nice that President Bush leaves us with his thoughts on science-related issues and makes sure to mention education (given No Child Left Behind’s continued existence, it’s unlikely we could forget Bush’s role there), some groups are demanding (or trying to demand) that the presidential candidates pay attention to their specific issues: Science Debate 2008, Ed in ‘08 and Arts Vote 2008 are three examples. Read the rest of this entry »
January 3rd, 2008 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
I come from a long line of old country storytellers; the Magyarok and the meztisos call us, taltos or cantadoras…
In our ethnic family, there’s an old, old story told by our grandmothers about the old bullfrog who tries to fool others into thinking he is naive instead of cunning and deliberate…
“Once there was a large old bullfrog, all spotted with bald forehead and bags under his eyes. This bullfrog really liked to eat mice most of all. But, most mice were too smart to come near him, with his big mouth and long tongue, and all.
“Thus, the old bullfrog had to be discontent to spend his days snapping bugs out of the air, and casting his mouth-net for minnows.
“But, one day, a furry fat mouse with little black eyes and thin white paws found its way to the water’s edge. As soon as the old bullfrog spied him, he said in a voice of innocence and whine…
“”Ah dear mouse, I have heard there is across this deep water, a feast of honor and endless treats awaiting both mice and bullfrogs, if only I can bring a mouse across with me. Consider the waiting feast, dear mouse, for surely if we remain as we are, we must both languish in poverty, eating whatever small dry things we can find.”
“The mouse was wary, but the bullfrog assured he would give the mouse a ride across the deep water ’so the mouse would be safe.’ “I am a strong and tested swimmer,” bragged the old bullfrog…
“”Just to make sure you are safe dear mouse,” the bullfrog continued, “I will tie one of your legs to my legs ’so you wont ‘go astray, or ‘get lost.’”
“And thus, the naive mouse assented to be taken across the water. And the old bullfrog bound one of the mouse’s slender legs to his fatter green leg.
“However, once in the water, the old bullfrog in all his cunning, dove down deep, dragging the mouse with him. The mouse struggled, then drowned.
“The old bullfrog was content to have bagged his prey.
“Thus, he surfaced with the now dead mouse still attached to his leg.
“But for all the bullfrog’s years in the swamp, he still did not realize that there is always a greater consciousness, a greater eye watching… from overhead… one who is wiser, one who sees every small motive and movement.
“So now, from the sky, a black shadow dove and raced across the green water, and suddenly Read the rest of this entry »
November 23rd, 2007 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
NOTE: This is a Guest Voice Post by skippy the bush kangaroo (who writes in lower case and who originated the word “blogtopia”).
Hollywood Writers Strike: All Hollywood Writers Are NOT Millionaires
by skippy the bush kangaroo
hi everyone, skippy the bush kangaroo here, and i’m very honored to be writing for the moderate voice today, about something very close to my heart — the wga writers strike.
i’m not in the writers guild, but i am in the screen actors guild, and our contract is up for re-negotiation next year. most actors i’ve talked with agree, that the advances or rollbacks that the writers obtain during this current labor action will set the precedent for what happens to us in june.
i have many close friends in the writers guild, and believe me, they all wish they didn’t have to go out on strike. but there are two points that they would like to achieve.
these two points are explained in this video by tim kazurinsky (you may remember his as sweetchuck in the police academy films, or as a member of saturday nite live in the 80’s).
that’s right, the writers have only been making 4 cents per dvd sold. and they were only asking for a mere 4 cents more per dvd sale, for a total of 8 cents. considering that a dvd sells for about $29.95, it doesn’t seem like much.
and, i have to report that at this point, the writers have taken the demand for another 4 cents off the table (right before they went out on strike). mediachannel.org:
the wga’s repeatedly referred to four cents as the usual residual writers receive per dvd sale. on the last day of contract talks, guild negotiators took the dvd proposal — seeking to double that rate — off the table but were infuriated by what they saw as a lack of movement by the companies and have hinted since then that it might be back on the table. the wga had no comment wednesday about the status of its dvd proposal.
the second point is that currently the writers get absolutely nothing when their work is shown on the internet, even though the networks are getting advertisting dollars for showing episodes of their programs on the web. just try to watch “grey’s anatomy” on your computer without having to sit through that herbal essence commercial…and unlike with tivo, can’t fast-forward it!
however, the networks have cleverly decided to call such internet showings of programs “promotion,” and thusly refuse to pay residuals. this might not seem like such a big problem, but anybody who dealt with the net neutrality issue would surmise that the telecommunication industry has big plans for using the internet as a distribution system in the upcoming years.
internet-distributed television, talk of which dominated the consumer electronics show earlier this month, has large factions of both naysayers and disciples. and allaire has shown a knack for making believers out of key people. armed with $16 million in funding from aol, barry diller’s interactivecorp., hearst and venture-capital group allen & co., brightcove recently added diller to its board of directors. former aol chief executive steve case, whose cable/broadband network lime is powered by brightcove, is an investor as well.
most of my writer and actor friends think so, too. and if the common distribution system for television in the next decade is broadband internet, you can bet the writers (and the actors) don’t want a contract without residuals for usage on the web.
i’m one of the lucky ones in hollywood, i’m making a good living. but that has only been in the last few years. i spent most of my hollywood years just barely getting by, and often i had to have other, non-acting jobs to supplement my income. that’s how i know just how important residuals are to the creative industry worker.
i was a strike captain back in the commercial actors strike in 2000. though the other side was comprised of a different set of suits (that is, we were negotiating with advertising agencies, and not studios and networks), they had the same mindset. and they made no attempt to hide their agenda: the total elimination of all residuals. i am afraid that this labor action is very much about the same thing.
luckily for everyone invovled, the two sides have agreed to get back to the negotiating table, starting next monday. wish us all luck. if you’d like to follow the progress of this strike, united hollywood is a very good “unofficial” blog with daily updates. other blogs that is staying on top of this story include nikki finke’s deadline hollwyood daily and speechless without writers. also the blogs of james gunn and ken levine, who are two very successful writers that are keeping tabs on this labor action.
and of course, over on my blog i’ll be reporting as much inside dope and outside poop as i can find, which to date includes my experiences walking the picket lines at nbc (where i saw the back of john edwards head), at 20th century fox, and in the big hollywood blvd. rally earlier this week.
Read TMV’s previous posts on the strike HERE and HERE.
November 21st, 2007 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
What’s it like to be on the front-lines of the Hollywood Writers’ strike? What did a day on the picket lines look like? How many people showed up for a day earmarked as a show of support?
What celebrities were out in force to give their support to the writers who give them the words that showcase their enormous talent so they can become rich and famous and artistically satisfied?
To find out the answers CLICK HERE where writer/screenwriter blogger skippy the bush kangaroo (who writes all in lower case but has a high class progressive blog that was once mentioned by Jon
Stewart) gives you the details. That includes pictures…and some embedded videos of celebrities.
Meanwhile, there’s a NEW IMPACT of the strike: it may cause the next Democratic debate to be scuttled:
First the writers silenced Jay Leno and David Letterman.
Now the writers may silence Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards and company.
In the case of the late-night comics, it’s the Hollywood writers’ strike that has cast the television entertainment world into reruns.
In the case of the Democratic candidates for president, it’s the threat of a news-writers’ strike that could imperil the final party debate before the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3.
The Democrats today pledged not to cross the picket line, if CBS News writers strike before the planned Dec. 10 Democratic debate in California, the last in a long-running series of debates before the first presidential nominating caucuses in January.
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) issued a statement about the Los Angeles debate that CBS plans in conjunction with the Democratic National Committe: ““It is my hope that both sides will reach an agreement that results in a secure contract for the workers at CBS News, but let me be clear: I will honor the picket line if the workers at CBS News decide to strike,”\
Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina made the same pledge in a conference call with reporters. And spokesmen for Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut said they too will not participate in that debate.
So now the strike is having an impact not just on the better known, wealthy writers, and the larger number of modest-income middle-class writers — but on a network that plans to hold a debate and the candidates that in reality sorely need one.
The number of impacts can only increase if the strike drags on……….
November 21st, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
Former Press Secretary Scott McClellan has penned a book called What Happened (due April 08).
The book’s highly-regarded publisher, Public Affairs, released a brief excerpt today, one that may pour substantial salt into old wounds…
Scott McClellan writes,
“The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.
“There was one problem. It was not true.
“I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the president himself.”
McClellan Quit Speaking for Others; Why He May Finally Be Speaking For Himself Now
Though the title of the book could be misconstrued to be asking, “What happened?” as a person suffering from being slipped a Mickey might ask when suddenly awakening again, the title is meant as “Here’s exactly what occurred.”
And, this excerpt sheds some light on McClellan’s seeming hasty bowing-out from his position at the White House. It may also resurrect the spooky Bermuda Triangle of missing vessels once sailed by Rove, Rumsfeld, Bush, Andrew Card/ Cheney/ Libby/ Novak/ Miller, et al.
To many at the time, Mr. McClellan’s was a puzzling leave-taking. I thought he seemed suddenly and unduly tired. He spoke in arid, terse tones usually associated with carrying a hidden broken heart, or having been personally disrespected in a substantial way, and wanting to keep it private.
His book is many months away from bookstore lay-down. It would be promo-suicide to begin to tout a book this far out without risking the book losing all momentum … yet the release of the excerpt might be a teaser, but it could also at the same time represent an altruistic turn in timing, a desire by Mr. McClellan himself to stand a certain way in written history
What McClellan’s Excerpt and Book May Really Set Afire; A New Blaze Altogether
Regardless, Mr. McClellan’s excerpt may touch new flame on a straw– to the dry tinder of another issue entirely
– certainly, the credibility of data being passed from/by the White House to the public…
– but more so, the credibility, or if I might put it more pointedly, the seeming lack of incredulity…. of some in the White House Press Corps in gathering and weighing and delving for the “news underneath the news” …in order to pass facts and situations in-depth to us, the public, the clear ’supposed to be’ inheritors of the work of ‘the fourth estate.’
Journalists who make errors, and more pointedly, omissions, regarding mining for content and veracity of the White House briefings, take the huge risk of enabling such half-news or ‘non-news posing as truth’ to flow into the larger print papers of record. The fake-notations are taken up by the regionals, and flow thence into the local papers and other mediums.
In media, as in family life, as in ecology, as in religiousity, if the oceanic poisons the rivers, then the streams and creeks are poisoned too. You couldn’t create a better venous system for delivering mind-poison —or anesthesia.
Without deep news, truthful news, the highly valued “public’s right to know” then turns into the “public’s plight from being snowed” — the readers and listeners become the biggest dumbed-down electorate that ever lived. All the while fighting with one another over whose half- or non-truths are most valid.
How to keep an entire electorate functionally illiterate? Feed them half-validities and false faces with lots of lipstick on them to disguise their lack of substance… so citizens can never weigh the actual facts…therefore the citizenry can never create nor vote an initiative with gravitas and wisdom—and peace.
How some in media ever became such colluders in endarkenment of the public, is the media travesty of our times.
When The Egotistic Wins Over the Hard Work of In-Depth Investigation and Reporting
For years now, many have asked, Aren’t some of the White House news correspondents being too chummy with White House Admin, including partying with Read the rest of this entry »
November 19th, 2007 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
If the pen is mightier than the sword, some supporters of the ongoing Hollywood writers’ strike feel that the mailed pencil is mightier than the email. And the pencil underlines the picket line.
skippy the bush kangaroo (who writes in lowercase) is a progressive blogger who has a site chock full of links and often witty posts (Jon Stewart once mentioned him in passing).
He’s also a professional picket-line walking writer and has THIS MUST READ POST which gives full details on a way Americans who watch actors and comedians getting the glory for good entertainment writing can now support the content-providing writers — by sending pencils to key Hollywood entertainment bigwigs. There are a slew of other strike-related links as well.
And the strike? It is going full-blast. Some tidbits:
–The strike has forced producers to halt work on the Tom Hanks movie “Angels and Demons,” a prequel to the worldwide blockbuster “The DaVinci Code.”
–skippy and other writers who are out there on the picket lines have some stellar backing. George Clooney has donated $25,000 to an Actors Fund cash drive aimed at helping Hollywood writers (they are NOT all high-profile millionaires) who are grappling with financial problems due to the ongoing strike.
As week two of the Writers Guild of America strike came to a close, spirits remained high among TV and film writers on picket lines in Hollywood and New York — even as they acknowledged that their fight for Internet payments might drag into 2008.
With the holiday season approaching and no new talks planned between writers and producers, the work stoppage is guaranteed to last at least two months, barring an unexpected development. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers represents the studios.
In the worst-case scenario, the strike wipes out the 2007-’08 season and is joined by the Screen Actors Guild, whose contract with the studios expires in June. If this sobering realization has dampened spirits on the picket lines, the writers aren’t showing it.
“I think everyone feels we have to be doing this,” said Sarah Fain, one half of the writing team behind the ABC series “Women’s Murder Club.” “We’re optimistic we can get the AMPTP back to the table and hopefully get a fair deal.”
NBC has fired its below-the-line production staff on the long running sketch show Saturday Night Live due to the writers’ strike. According to Variety, the show hasn’t produced a new segment since November 3rd.
The number of people affected remains unclear. Some estimate that fifty workers are now out of a job. NBC says that a handful of staff members remain on the payroll. Cast members have been placed on an unpaid hiatus.
Having no show to do this last Saturday night, most of the cast members preformed sketch comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater for twenty dollars a ticket. Proceeds went to the pink-slipped SNL staff members.
Media buyers, in light of the Writers Guild of America strike, say they may be a month away from asking the broadcast networks to renegotiate their upfront packages or to give them cash back.
“The situation may not become a major problem until after the February sweeps, but we have to start thinking about how we are going to deal with things for the remainder of the season now,” said one major media buyer, who did not want to speak for attribution. “In the next three weeks, if there is no settlement in the writers’ strike, and prime-time ratings continue to fall, we will start looking for serious adjustments and even for cash back. That’s going to be awkward and hard for the networks to deal with.”
Broadcast network sales executives, none of whom would speak for attribution, believe that their networks have enough fresh episodes of scripted shows to take them through the February sweeps (along with the liberal dose of repeats that traditionally runs in December and January), and enough reality programming to take them through the rest of the season.
–Some people think the strike will help the web, but others in essence say “not so faaast…”
Among many great political resources from the left, right and center, one always high quality read is The American Thinker. Ever a source of insightful, varied commentary and analysis, the Thinker combines the talents of many writers, including the always provocative Rick Moran of Right Wing Nuthouse. Now The American Thinker is working on expansions to the services they provide and are asking for the help of readers to do so.![[The Telegraph, U.K.]](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00322/Cartoon_322830a.jpg)
