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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| 'Schmucks with Underwoods' |
| 2019-01-20 |
| The first rule of journalism is, as in screenwriting, "show, don't tell." It's no wonder early Hollywood was populated with ex-newspapermen, who took their fastest-typewriters-in-the-West from New York and Chicago to the actual West and hired themselves out as scenarists and, when the talkies came, screenwriters. As Herman Mankiewicz wrote to Ben Hecht: "millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots." Less appealingly, Jack Warner referred to his hired scribes as "schmucks with Underwoods." Today's journalists are no different in their passion for narrative-spinning. Most of them have forsaken whatever dreams they once had about selling that big spec script for zillions -- and in any case there's almost no market for original specs in Hollywood these days -- but they've found that they can still make stuff up and get paid for it. Of course, they're still schmucks. Case in point is Friday's one-day wonder, the BuzzFeed "scoop" that Trump told his shyster lawyer, Michael Cohen (a schmuck is there ever was one), to lie to Congress about his alleged dealings on a Trump Tower project in Moscow that never happened. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #5 Imo, had they been using Underwoods, Remingtons or even IBM Selectric's, the story may have never been written. "Journalists" used to have to think about what they were writing, the copy then had to be set up, then printed, then delivered to the reader on murdered trees - each step allowed for cooler heads to prevail. Today, however, the release is instantaneous - reptilian brain to reader in the key of now. From people who, at one time, relied upon graffiti readers for real-time validation. But they're still schmucks. |
| Posted by: Anomalous Sources 2019-01-20 21:53 |
| #4 And now the Covington students story and the eager participation of "conservative" "thought leaders" in their crucifixion. |
| Posted by: charger 2019-01-20 19:50 |
| #3 1 - the press in 'free press' is about the technology for the free flow of information. The cultural institution now known as the 'press' did not exist back then. The media is just as active suppressing, corrupting, or manufacturing what they claim is 'news' thus conspiring to destroy the free flow of information. 2 - the 'press' that hammers manufacturers and service providers for inferior or fraudulent products or deliveries should be held to the same standards for their product and punished accordingly. Libel laws need to conform to the equal standing clause of the 14th Amendment. There should be no public or private separation definition. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2019-01-20 16:12 |
| #2 American's have been blessed with a decentralized media through most of their history and a culture that strongly embraces the idea of a truly free press. When competition occurs, truth floats to the top, more often than not. But the press has been centralized under a few corporations. I ask myself, what would Teddy do? |
| Posted by: Fat Bob Glaise8594 2019-01-20 14:41 |
| #1 Washington - Hollyweird for ugly people. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2019-01-20 07:55 |