How many words does it take to call Zev Chavets' 8,000-word Rush Limbaugh profile in the New York Times Magazine "too long"? 631. That's the length of Hendrik Hertzberg's blog entry on the subject, where Chavets gets derided for misusing his extraordinary access to Limbaugh — the first reporter allowed in his home! — into pages and pages of nothingness. CONTINUED »
Chris Matthews, who in the past 18 months has gone from MSNBC's golden brand boy to its whipping post, has earned his latest reputation as a woman-hater by criticizing Hillary Clinton with every free programming minute.
But how did we get from a guy who was once a Swaziland Peace Corps. volunteer and D.C. policeman – yep – to an election talking point?
Let's visit with Hendrik Hertzberg, who edited Matthews when he filed a few pieces for The New Republic: "In that perch, he was one of the half-dozen most important opposition voices during those years, translating ameliorative liberalism into the lunch-bucket political language he calls “American” (and introducing O’Neill to a new world in which television, not afternoon newspapers, ruled the hours after lunchtime). The next thing I knew, he was a TV star." CONTINUED »
See if you can get to the end of this sentence without getting winded:
In the great American tradition of Washington’s teeth, Lincoln’s Adam’s apple, T.R.’s pince-nez, Nixon’s five-o’-clock shadow, Ike’s grin, Reagan’s pompadour, and—more recently, less nostalgically—Gore’s sigh, Dean’s scream, and W.’s smirk, the small (but, thanks to the Internet, bigger than ever) universe of people who professionally or semi-professionally obsess about Presidential campaigns has been agog over Hillary Clinton’s laugh.
Apparently Hendrik Hertzberg latest rhetorical technique is to make his readers too lightheaded to disagree with him.
• Donna Martin graduates…to a coveted spot on still-running ABC trainwreck, Dancing With The Stars.
• Even without a hottie ombudsman, ABC news admits it kind of effed up by interviewing Allawi lobbyist, Phillip Zelikow
• Yankees clubhouse accidentally-on-purpose promotes gang violence.
• Rumor (still) has it that Jake Gyllenhaal's been doing a lot of "rehearsing" for Brokeback Mountain 2. You know, when he's not going on shirtless bike ride with his totally heterosexual friends.
• Hendrik Hertzberg loses his blogging v-card. As expected, the first time could best be described as "awkward and underwhelming."
• Crazy old lady celebrates her 100th birthday by lighting up her 170,000th cigarette.
Editorial Director
