Intermarkets' Privacy Policy Support
Donate to Ace of Spades HQ! Recent Entries
In the Democrats' Latest Masculinity Pageant, Democrat Missouri Senate Candidate Lucas Kunce Plays GunBuddies With Noted Heterosexual Adam Kinzinger... and Shoots a Reporter Due to Complete Lack of Safety Training
Pro-Transgenderism-for-Children Partisans Receive $10 Million from Federal Government to Prove Puberty Blockers Help 11-Year-Old Children. But Now That the Data Show Children Aren't Helped -- and May Be Hurt -- They Refuse to Pubish the Results. Kamala Harris: Trump Is So Old He's "Exhausted" and Cancelling Events Also Kamala Harris: I'm So Tired of Working a Job for the First Time in My Life I'm Taking Two Consecutive Days Off Just to Memorize Fake Answers in a Fake CNN "Interview" Do I Really Have to Talk About This Bullshit? Whistleblower: The Harris-Biden Administration is Paying NGOs to Fly Unaccompanied Minor Children Around, Knowing They're Being Sexually Trafficked Wednesday Morning Rant Mid-Morning Art Thread Early Morning Open Thread Daily Tech News 23 October 2024 Tuesday Overnight Open Thread (10/22/24) Absent Friends
Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024 Captain Hate 2023 moon_over_vermont 2023 westminsterdogshow 2023 Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022 Dave In Texas 2022 Jesse in D.C. 2022 OregonMuse 2022 redc1c4 2021 Tami 2021 Chavez the Hugo 2020 Ibguy 2020 Rickl 2019 Joffen 2014 AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published.
Contact OrangeEnt for info:
maildrop62 at proton dot me Cutting The Cord And Email Security
Moron Meet-Ups
|
« Domino's Wins Temporary Injunction Against Birth-Control Mandate on Religious Conscience Grounds |
Main
| Looper/Primer Reviews »
January 02, 2013
Tina Brown Tries Again, FailsAnother post swiped from @benk84. No one wishes ill for Mrs. Clinton, but this is Tina Brown at her most insipid. The idea of losing Hillary has seemed especially unbearable at this political moment. It’s as if she has become, literally, the ship of state. She stands for maturity, tenacity, and self-discipline at a time when everyone else in Washington seems to be, in more senses than one, going off a cliff—a parade of bickering, blustering, small-balled hacks bollixing up the nation’s business. She’s a caring executive too, and that takes its own emotional toll. What a disgrace that John Bolton and his goaty Republican ilk accused Her Magnificence of inventing a concussion to get out of testifying at the Benghazi hearings. Bolton is not fit to wipe her floor with his mustache. I should note that that final elipsis (...) is in the original. That's how she ends her article, dot dot dot. Like, portentously. Like, the question mark at the end of a suspense film. Like, she's trying to hard and we can see the flop sweat. This squeaking fart of a piece reminded me of this pre-Christmas article about Newsweek publishing its last print edition, and Tina Brown's desperate attempts to find "the zeitgeist." It's a key word for her-- she seems to think her metier is to sense the zeitgeist, or at least fake up an argument about what the zeitgeist is that will be discussed by other people. She's been failing at this a great deal. I guess many would say she always failed, but earlier in her career she had least had the cachet to get her burblings talked about by other idiots. Now the other idiots seem to have caught on. Betrayed by the Zeitgeist she once channeled, Tina Brown invokes it one last time The author suggests that with the flood of opinion and context and viral videos, "finding the zeitgeist" is a game open to millions, and, confronted with competition, (this is my gloss) Tina Brown turned out to be not particularly good at it. In other words, there's no need for a Newsweek to explain What It All Means (serious capital letters included), when so many of us are doing so constantly and fluidly online. And what is the Zeitgeist, after all? It's just a faux-elevated version of the desperate magazine writer's go-to fake story, the Trend Story, in which two incidents of the same thing happening Define an Era (for this week; two more incidents will Define the Era next week, as deadline approaches). But then, Newsweek was always this way: [I]t's worth remembering that as far back as 1969, Esquire's Chris Welles compared the magazine to its closest competitor, Time, and concluded that "Newsweek is much more anxious to make broad pronouncements about the significance of the week's events, to practice the art of the 'hype,' by which the routine is blown up into the incredible and the sensational. It is filled with 'crises,' turning points' and 'watersheds,' especially in the 'Violin,' Newsweek's slang for the lead story in the magazine." Ah, there's the word: Hype. Audaciously drawing grand (and almost completely unsupportable) conclusions from small things. Carnival barking in print form. Everything's the Most Important, the Latest, the Best. News You Can Use; Is Your Hair-Dryer Giving You Brain Cancer? Tune in next paragraph to find out. There's a lot of that on the internet (and look, there's a lot of that here). I guess it turned out that Tina Brown didn't have a skill so much as she had an inclination, and it turned out many thousands of other people had the same inclination, and the same level of skill. Her One Great Big Trick -- making splashy but daffy claims about What It All Means -- turned out to be a pretty small trick, easily duplicated. I suppose glibness -- making superficial connections and writing about them, superficially -- is a type of skill, but it's not a particularly difficult skill, and it's not particularly useful. Maureen Dowd does this too, of course. She was once the Reigning Queen of Soft, Superficial Zeitgeist pieces. People stopped reading her a dozen years ago, though. If Tina Brown's main gig were as a writer, rather than as an editor/executive, people would have stopped reading her 12 years ago, too. Maybe we all kind of hated Tina Brown, but no one ever asked us about it. Who's Editing Tina Brown -- Meghan McCain? A commenter underlines this, which I completely missed: It’s as if she has become, literally, the ship of state. She's got the ballast for it, I guess. | Recent Comments
steevy:
"349 Broke even in 1973 according to IMDB. Budget w ..."
Avi: "This is just like how they withheld the results fr ..." Weasel: "At least it wasn't $50 million! ..." Aetius451AD Work Laptop: "Is that the Village People, Queen or the London Bo ..." Duncanthrax: "[i]This sounds serious. That means there will be c ..." Commissar of Plenty and Lysenkoism in Solidarity with the Struggle : "Boeing-made satellite explodes in space after expe ..." Stateless: "333 I can pretend to be Cleofuckingpatra and ..." Aetius451AD Work Laptop: "That is a very short range. ..." Common Tater: "I talked to an old hippie I hadn’t seen in a ..." steevy: "This from IMDB , ah the good old days A group o ..." Tim "Born to Kill" Walz: "I am living proof Puberty Blockers really work !!! ..." The Central Scrutinizer: "343 My neighbor is a new grandma and her granddaug ..." Recent Entries
In the Democrats' Latest Masculinity Pageant, Democrat Missouri Senate Candidate Lucas Kunce Plays GunBuddies With Noted Heterosexual Adam Kinzinger... and Shoots a Reporter Due to Complete Lack of Safety Training
Pro-Transgenderism-for-Children Partisans Receive $10 Million from Federal Government to Prove Puberty Blockers Help 11-Year-Old Children. But Now That the Data Show Children Aren't Helped -- and May Be Hurt -- They Refuse to Pubish the Results. Kamala Harris: Trump Is So Old He's "Exhausted" and Cancelling Events Also Kamala Harris: I'm So Tired of Working a Job for the First Time in My Life I'm Taking Two Consecutive Days Off Just to Memorize Fake Answers in a Fake CNN "Interview" Do I Really Have to Talk About This Bullshit? Whistleblower: The Harris-Biden Administration is Paying NGOs to Fly Unaccompanied Minor Children Around, Knowing They're Being Sexually Trafficked Wednesday Morning Rant Mid-Morning Art Thread Early Morning Open Thread Daily Tech News 23 October 2024 Tuesday Overnight Open Thread (10/22/24) Search
Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Primary Document: The Audio
Paul Anka Haiku Contest Announcement Integrity SAT's: Entrance Exam for Paul Anka's Band AllahPundit's Paul Anka 45's Collection AnkaPundit: Paul Anka Takes Over the Site for a Weekend (Continues through to Monday's postings) George Bush Slices Don Rumsfeld Like an F*ckin' Hammer Top Top Tens
Democratic Forays into Erotica New Shows On Gore's DNC/MTV Network Nicknames for Potatoes, By People Who Really Hate Potatoes Star Wars Euphemisms for Self-Abuse Signs You're at an Iraqi "Wedding Party" Signs Your Clown Has Gone Bad Signs That You, Geroge Michael, Should Probably Just Give It Up Signs of Hip-Hop Influence on John Kerry NYT Headlines Spinning Bush's Jobs Boom Things People Are More Likely to Say Than "Did You Hear What Al Franken Said Yesterday?" Signs that Paul Krugman Has Lost His Frickin' Mind All-Time Best NBA Players, According to Senator Robert Byrd Other Bad Things About the Jews, According to the Koran Signs That David Letterman Just Doesn't Care Anymore Examples of Bob Kerrey's Insufferable Racial Jackassery Signs Andy Rooney Is Going Senile Other Judgments Dick Clarke Made About Condi Rice Based on Her Appearance Collective Names for Groups of People John Kerry's Other Vietnam Super-Pets Cool Things About the XM8 Assault Rifle Media-Approved Facts About the Democrat Spy Changes to Make Christianity More "Inclusive" Secret John Kerry Senatorial Accomplishments John Edwards Campaign Excuses John Kerry Pick-Up Lines Changes Liberal Senator George Michell Will Make at Disney Torments in Dog-Hell Greatest Hitjobs
The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny More Margaret Cho Abuse Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed" Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means Wonkette's Stand-Up Act Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report! Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet The House of Love: Paul Krugman A Michael Moore Mystery (TM) The Dowd-O-Matic! Liberal Consistency and Other Myths Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate "Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long) The Donkey ("The Raven" parody) |