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 Stunning outcome
5/20/06 19:53:25
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Finland wins Eurovision by entering the most blatant copy of Gwar known to man, yet there’s a beauty in this. All those awful maudlin ballads; those caterwauling Celine wannabees, and that awful choreography, was flushed down the toilet. Sweden’s entry was such a blatant ABBA ripoff that I wouldn’t be surprise if Benny and Bjorn are drafting up legal papers right now...but enough of this down talk. Yet again, Europe has demonstrated that its strength lies in dipping into the well of the last century for inspiration; specifically, the eighties if you’re a male band, the seventies if you’re mixed and the nineties if you’re a solo act. It’s all rubbish, of course, but congrats all around to the Finns anyway. May you frighten many an audience member during your rule.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Again, the reports of my bloggie death are greatly exaggerated
5/10/06 20:50:42
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Server issues. Back now.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Not so funny indeed
5/6/06 21:42:58
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Those of you who’ve been reading this blog on a regular basis have probably figured out that I have a pretty low opinion of Richard Cohen, one of the most pompous, talentless and insufferable of WaPo’s columnists, a man whose excessive use of the first person pronoun is particularly irritating. So consider my reaction when I read the following opening paragraph of a recent column, in which Cohen harrumphed about Stephen Colbert’s performance at the Correspondent’s Dinner:
First, let me state my credentials: I am a funny guy. This is well known in certain circles, which is why, even back in elementary school, I was sometimes asked by the teacher to "say something funny" -- as if the deed could be done on demand. This, anyway, is my standing for stating that Stephen Colbert was not funny at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. All the rest is commentary.
With God as my witness, I swear that I have never read, seen or heard of Richard Cohen ever writing, doing or saying anything remotely funny. But while he may not be amusing, you have to admit that modesty is certainly his strong suit.
On the subject of what is and is not funny and/or acceptable comedy at the dinner, I remember 2002’s "entertainment" consisted of Drew Carey making jokes about foreigners working at 7-11s, cashiers making minimum wage who hadn’t quite mastered their jobs and other such hilarious observations about the working poor. To say he didn’t bring down the house is an understatement. I suppose Carey assumed that because he was in a room full of millionaires he could get away with this sort of material, but found out rather quickly that even the rich folk tend to clear their throats and look at their shoes when other rich people start in with the "aren’t poor people pathetic" line.
No, Richard, the reason Colbert’s performance was deemed "not funny" by attendees is that he drew blood. Instead of making nice and making a few little jokes about Miss Beazely and Katie Couric going to CBS and and brush cutting other safe insider tiddle taddle, he went for the jugular. And that’s simply not allowed, you see.
And Richard, you are not now, nor have you ever been funny.
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Sue happy
5/6/06 21:22:37
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It’s always amused me that all those tort reform enthusiasts were conspicously silent on the subject of Larry Klayman, the then-head of the gadfly organization Judicial Watch, whose subpoena-happy reign of terror during the Clinton years yielded exactly nothing (as in zero) of value, politically or legally speaking. About the only things that Klayman’s organization accomplished was wasting a lot of time, making a lot of D.C. defense attorneys happy and organizing ghastly cruises. Things got even more amusing when the world discovered that Larry Klayman was the kind of guy who would literally sue his own mother.
Now, having left Judicial Watch, the organization he created with his bare hands, Klayman has been left with no choice but to, of course, sue:
In the suit, filed in federal court here last week, Klayman, now practicing law in Florida, said Judicial Watch had been "threatening the media" so it would "no longer refer to" him as the organization’s former founder and chairman, which would result in the media’s no longer calling on him "to comment on political and legal affairs."
And now, the icing:
(Judicial Watch president Tom) Fitton declined to respond to "specific allegations," but said, "generally, it’s a ridiculous lawsuit full of lies and distortions, which Judicial Watch will address vigorously in court. It’s a tactical maneuver to distract attention from the fact that he owes us more than a quarter-million dollars. It’s a smear job."
Sorry, need to step away from the keyboard. My irony meter just exploded.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Silliness on the Hill
5/5/06 13:44:49
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For those of you who thought Cynthia McKinney’s recent Naomi Cambellesque behavior was some sort of aberration, please remember that the Hill is a funny place, where the some of the distinguished members occasionally do odd things. To refresh your memory, let’s look back at the utterly bizarre case of the Sun Myung Moon crowning ceremony:
More than a dozen lawmakers attended a congressional reception this year honoring the Rev. Sun Myung Moon in which Moon declared himself the Messiah and said his teachings have helped Hitler and Stalin be "reborn as new persons."
At the March 23 ceremony in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) wore white gloves and carried a pillow holding an ornate crown that was placed on Moon’s head. The Korean-born businessman and religious leader then delivered a long speech saying he was "sent to Earth . . . to save the world’s six billion people. . . . Emperors, kings and presidents . . . have declared to all Heaven and Earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity’s Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent." ....
Among the more than 300 (!) people who attended all or part of the March ceremony was Sen. Mark Dayton (D-Minn.), who now says he simply was honoring a constituent receiving a peace award and did not know Moon would be there. "We fell victim to it; we were duped," Dayton spokeswoman Chris Lisi said yesterday.
But a key organizer -- Archbishop George A. Stallings Jr., pastor of the Imani Temple, an independent African American Catholic congregation in Northeast Washington -- said Moon’s prominent role should have surprised no one. He said a March 8 invitation faxed to all lawmakers stated that the "primary program sponsor" would be the "Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace (IIFWP), founded by Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Sun Myung Moon, who will also be recognized that evening for their lifelong work to promote interfaith cooperation and reconciliation." The invitation was signed by Davis and the Rev. Michael Jenkins, as co-chairmen of the IIFWP (USA).
The event’s co-sponsors were the Washington Times Foundation, the United Press International Foundation, the American Family Coalition, the American Clergy Leadership Conference and the Women’s Federation for World Peace, according to the invitation. Stallings, a former Roman Catholic priest who was married in Moon’s church, said Moon’s association with those organizations is well known.
"You’d have to be deaf, dumb and blind to not know that any event that is sponsored by the Washington Times . . . could involve the influence, or the potential presence, of the Reverend Moon," he said.
More on the crowning here. More on George Stallings here.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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More on J.T.
5/5/06 12:32:26
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It took me a while to warm up to the J.T. LeRoy story, which seemed to me to be of interest chiefly to the publishing world; idiot celebrities; Gawker; and a particularly disturbing personality type, the AIDS groupie. But I admit that this latest investigation on vanityfair.com of the hoax had me riveted. There’s way too much to unpack here, so I’ll let you all pick through this dense work, but the following paragraphs just grabbed my attention:
"My secrets I can share with him. I trust him and feel safe with him. I tell him things I probably don’t tell anybody else. He pours his heart out to me. So warm and understanding," Liv Tyler told Vanity Fair’s U.K. edition in 2003. Winona Ryder gushed: "He’s one of those guys you can lay in bed with and watch movies with and cuddle with and feel safe doing that. He is so true, such a poet."
Hollywood actresses weren’t the only ones to melt in J.T.’s presence. Italians, too: "We were very touched by whoever that person was," says Thomas Fazi, the Rome-based publisher who hosted J.T. in 2002 and again last year. "It was a magnetic, very powerful, charismatic person, even if he didn’t say much, or even do much. It was like being next to a fallen angel, someone who had obviously been through a lot but retained something pure. I felt like I wanted to cuddle with him."
Non-famous people who had themselves been abused or were H.I.V.-positive or transgendered or were just moved by his story—or morbidly fascinated—began flocking to J.T.’s events. "Laura understood the kind of prurient part of the American psyche that wants to know, ’Oh, this boy really did get fucked in the butt, he really did bleed,’" says Patti Sullivan, a screenwriter who adapted Sarah for Gus Van Sant and worked closely, she thought, with J.T. "People looked at him - and I was at his readings - like some kind of fucking stigmata. It was astonishing. You had these really damaged people, and it was like these fundamentalists going to church to hear the word. These people were probably victims of child abuse, and all kinds of things growing up. And Laura was telling their story on some level. These hundreds and hundreds of people would just be swooning, almost. It was like they were hearing something being told back to them that, on some level, rang true."
That’s it in a nutshell, people.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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There’s something about Domnick
5/5/06 12:18:06
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Ah, but what is it, exactly? What is it about Dominick Dunne that gets under the skin, that chafes and irritates? The reasons are many.
There is, of course, his obsession with the stories of dowagers and emaciated rich women the world over, stories that are of interest to an extremely limited audience (I mean honestly, how many of Vanity Fair’s readers actually give a damn about Lily Safra?). There’s something so very late ’80s and early ’90s about his obsessions, namely, women who have married into the tycoon class or the travails of the spoiled scions of old money. Oh, and the Kennedys.
There’s his relentless namedropping of people and places. Consider a paragraph from one of his recent columns:
I am fascinated by the Matthew Mellons of this world, so as soon as his case hit the papers I got on a flight to England. Nicky Haslam, the London man-about-town, had his driver, Nash, pick me up at Heathrow and take me to Claridge’s, where he waited while I showered and changed so that he could then take me to Annabel’s, probably the most famous, longest-running nightclub for the smart set in the world, where Charles Finch, the agent, producer, and son of the late actor Peter Finch, and his gorgeous wife, Sydney, were giving a party for actors being honored the following night at the BAFTA Awards, the British equivalent of our Academy Awards. Everyone from Anna Wintour to Oscar-nominated Rachel Weisz was there- it was that kind of party.
Amazing, just amazing.
Then there’s his almost jaw-dropping gullibility, which got him in legal trouble not so long ago. Dunne’s willingness to rely on less-than-realiable sources is simply stunning given the prime real estate he occupies in one of the nation’s premiere glossies. And really, you can call his column a "diary" if you want, but the fact remains that he and his publication are ultimately responsible for every word of his that ends up in print. Consider the curious case of Dominick Dunne and the horse whisperer:
Dunne was agitated about a damsel in distress. And he’d been handed the most amazing lead on the disappearance of Chandra Levy, a 24-year-old Washington intern who’d had a murky relationship with the married, 53-year-old Gary Condit and then gone missing.
“It was one of the strangest conversations I’ve ever had,” Dunne told Laura Ingraham, the conservative gadfly, on her radio talk show. Dunne said that Monty Roberts, the oddball equine trainer whose career was the basis of the Horse Whisperer book and movie, sought him out from Hamburg with a tip. Dunne says Roberts claimed to work for a Dubai sheikh who’d seen Dunne on Larry King Live discussing the Condit case. Roberts, according to Dunne, wanted to pass along shocking revelations from the sheikh, who also happened to be a pimp, procuring young prostitutes for Washington power brokers.
“Now, some of this I can’t explain, and I don’t want to get into any trouble,” Dunne told Ingraham, “but according to what the procurer told the horse whisperer who told me, is that Gary Condit was often a guest at some of the Middle Eastern embassies in Washington where all these ladies were, and that he had let it be known that he was in a relationship with a woman that was over, but she was a clinger. He couldn’t get rid of her. And he had made promises to her that he couldn’t keep and apparently she knew things about him and had threatened to go public. And at one point, he said, ‘This woman is driving me crazy,’ or words to that effect. And I wrote all this down at the time. And what the horse whisperer said the procurer said is, by saying that, [Condit] created the environment that led to her disappearance. And she shortly thereafter vanished.”
Now, does anyone in his or her right mind believe that any element of this story is plausible? Not only did this absurd story make it into print, and not only did Dunne flog it at every opportunity (does this man have an editor?), but he also managed to accomplish something even more heinous: He actually made people pity Gary Condit, one of Congress’s most nauseating hypocrites.
Then there’s the biggest problem with Dominick Dunne. He seems to be a Zelig of sorts, always in the right place at the right time, who knows just about every rich and famous person on the planet, but oddly enough what he writes about these people is seldom interesting or revealing; rather, every column focuses on a subject dearest to Dominick Dunne: his own fascinating life. His fabulous lunches, the fabulous parties he attends, the fascinating (read: rich and famous) and the people he’s seated next to at swanky dinner parties (but who never seem to have anything interesting to say, apart from how much they love Dominick Dunne). If only he could get one interesting column out of all this material. But no. All the wives of tycoons he hangs with are lovely, charming, chic and wonderful company. Even when their husbands find themselves in a spot of legal trouble (paging Lynn Wyatt and Barbara Amiel), the maintain their suffering with dignity and class (it’s amazing how sitting on a pile of cash can cushion the blow of your husband being prosecuted for all manner of malfeasance, isn’t it?).
But here’s the thing. Dunne is a bore whose subjects are of interest to an audience that skews a bit on the old side (I hate to bring up Lily Safra again, but Dunne’s obsession with her borders on the creepy. When I see her name mentioned in a column I turn the page, and I suspect many other people do). Come on Graydon - can’t you rid us of this tiresome gossip?
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Happy May
5/1/06 22:30:23
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So...nothing to say about Rush Limbaugh. All wrung out. More later, maybe. But..the Dominick Dunne smackdown is yet to come. Prepare yourselves.
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