Bernard Weinraub of the New York Times tells us that he's learned an important lesson, and that is, not to trust anyone in Hollywood, as if we didn't know. He forgets to mention a lesson for the rest of us, and that is, not to trust anyone, or hardly anyone, at the New York Times.
Weinraub was the Times' man in Hollywood for more than a decade. So, from 1991 until right about now, this was the reporter we trusted to give us the scoop from Tinsel Town.
Trouble is, in the middle of it all, he married a studio boss, Amy Pascal, now head of Sony Pictures.
Conflict of interest? He admits so himself in a recent article mentioning his departure. But did anyone at the paper take him aside and say, "Hey, you can't have the best of both possible worlds"? You can't be objective on the one hand and be married to a Hollywood tycoon on the other hand.
No, the Times brushed that aside. So he stayed on. What about journalistic distance and integrity? Well, there it is. Or rather, there it isn't.
If you can't trust the paper of record, whom can you trust? Let's try CNN. Ironically, it was in a New York Times op-ed that CNN's chief news executive, Eason Jordan, confided that he played footsie with Saddam Hussein - and surely other Arab tyrants, like Yasser Arafat - to keep his correspondents safe as they covered the Middle East. But covered it with a slant against the United States and Israel. (Jordan resigned just the other day over yet a separate outbreak of journalistic mad cow disease.)
I'm tempted to call all that false journalism, which it is, or false advertising, but I prefer false packaging, like the man from QVC who told me how he failed with a certain product until he changed the package. Indeed, you can put lipstick on a pig and call it Miss America.
Those Palestinian Arab elections, in which Mahmoud Abbas won Best in Show, were plainly farcical and absurd. Arabs, those with membership in the Palestinian Authority, said so themselves and many resigned after complaining about rigged electioneering. This did not make news.
But headline writers here and around the world have been swooning and dancing at this wedding between Ariel Sharon and Abu Mazen.
Another bride, another groom, another season, another reason, for making whoopee. Yes, over in Egypt, Sharon reached across the table to shake hands with Abu Mazen. Then he reached over again, this time to shake hands with Mahmoud Abbas. Same man, but he has two different names, so he gets double; double of everything.
Abu Mazen gets Judea. Mahmoud Abbas gets Samaria.
I wasn't invited to this wedding, so maybe that's why I'm not dancing. Or maybe I'm remembering Jacob imploring Joseph: "Bury me not in Egypt."
Call me skeptical, or call me a pessimist, but let's remember that pessimists are correct 98.2 percent of the time. Kassam rockets are already raining on this parade.
Of course, what do I know? I make far less money than the man who holds that umbrella over Michael Jackson's head.
Here's the good news. Surveys show that most people don't believe what they read in the (mainstream) papers. That's why circulation figures keep plunging for newspapers like the Philadelphia Inquirer, which delivers the same news every day, or rather, the world according to Trudy Rubin. Instead, we're blogging to find some truth.
Along with the rest of our culture, what's to believe when there's so much deception going around, inside and outside our news media?
Take this, for example. A new book has just come out and it's called Kafka on the Shore. This novel, by one Haruki Murakam,i is getting fawning reviews all over the place, but is it about my main man Franz Kafka? No, it's about "a runaway boy calling himself Kafka." Maybe that's not cheating on the part of the author, but it is cheap. J. D. Salinger already saw this coming - phony people in a phony world.
Amy Holden Jones wrote the screenplay from my novel Indecent Proposal. Before she got started, I checked her out and learned that she wrote a movie called Beethoven. Wow! My favorite composer. What can be better? "Ode to Joy", that's what I said. So we rented the movie from our local Blockbuster and who is this Beethoven? It's a dog; a dog named Beethoven.
There is something manipulative, rotten and corrupt about all this.
For some reason I'm remembering Frank Rich on a well-known morning radio show. Rich is now a cultural commentator for the New York Times. He used to be the paper's chief drama critic, better known as "The Butcher of Broadway". Who knows how many plays he doomed?
So, on this particular program, he tells the moderator that maybe he was wrong. Many of those plays that he blasted and made stillborn were, on second thought, actually good. But as he is saying this, he's in stitches, laughing, as is the moderator. Angels who saw their millions go down the drain, actors, directors, producers and stage hands who were sent packing, their careers mangled - are they laughing?
As we note with sorrow Arthur Miller's passing this past Friday -- how many playwrights never got beyond "a smile and a shoeshine" because of Frank Rich's hasty thumbs down?
Sorry to be picking on the New York Times when there are so many others who tell us that bitter is sweet, sweet is bitter, day is night, night is day. (As from Isaiah.)
But here we are with the Muhammad Al-Dura caper back in the news - way back. Recall, please, that this September 2000 incident in Gaza sparked the intifada. Banners flared. Headlines inflamed. But that entire incident is now being revealed as a hoax. Time for some journalistic atonement, you'd think.
As CAMERA's Andrea Levin points out, the hoax part of the story was indeed reported in the Times, but on Page Six, Section C.
A generation ago, the same New York Times hid the entire Holocaust on Page Six, Section C.
Back to Weinraub of Hollywood. He writes: "Clearly, I stayed too long at my beat."
The same can be said for so many of them.
Weinraub was the Times' man in Hollywood for more than a decade. So, from 1991 until right about now, this was the reporter we trusted to give us the scoop from Tinsel Town.
Trouble is, in the middle of it all, he married a studio boss, Amy Pascal, now head of Sony Pictures.
Conflict of interest? He admits so himself in a recent article mentioning his departure. But did anyone at the paper take him aside and say, "Hey, you can't have the best of both possible worlds"? You can't be objective on the one hand and be married to a Hollywood tycoon on the other hand.
No, the Times brushed that aside. So he stayed on. What about journalistic distance and integrity? Well, there it is. Or rather, there it isn't.
If you can't trust the paper of record, whom can you trust? Let's try CNN. Ironically, it was in a New York Times op-ed that CNN's chief news executive, Eason Jordan, confided that he played footsie with Saddam Hussein - and surely other Arab tyrants, like Yasser Arafat - to keep his correspondents safe as they covered the Middle East. But covered it with a slant against the United States and Israel. (Jordan resigned just the other day over yet a separate outbreak of journalistic mad cow disease.)
I'm tempted to call all that false journalism, which it is, or false advertising, but I prefer false packaging, like the man from QVC who told me how he failed with a certain product until he changed the package. Indeed, you can put lipstick on a pig and call it Miss America.
Those Palestinian Arab elections, in which Mahmoud Abbas won Best in Show, were plainly farcical and absurd. Arabs, those with membership in the Palestinian Authority, said so themselves and many resigned after complaining about rigged electioneering. This did not make news.
But headline writers here and around the world have been swooning and dancing at this wedding between Ariel Sharon and Abu Mazen.
Another bride, another groom, another season, another reason, for making whoopee. Yes, over in Egypt, Sharon reached across the table to shake hands with Abu Mazen. Then he reached over again, this time to shake hands with Mahmoud Abbas. Same man, but he has two different names, so he gets double; double of everything.
Abu Mazen gets Judea. Mahmoud Abbas gets Samaria.
I wasn't invited to this wedding, so maybe that's why I'm not dancing. Or maybe I'm remembering Jacob imploring Joseph: "Bury me not in Egypt."
Call me skeptical, or call me a pessimist, but let's remember that pessimists are correct 98.2 percent of the time. Kassam rockets are already raining on this parade.
Of course, what do I know? I make far less money than the man who holds that umbrella over Michael Jackson's head.
Here's the good news. Surveys show that most people don't believe what they read in the (mainstream) papers. That's why circulation figures keep plunging for newspapers like the Philadelphia Inquirer, which delivers the same news every day, or rather, the world according to Trudy Rubin. Instead, we're blogging to find some truth.
Along with the rest of our culture, what's to believe when there's so much deception going around, inside and outside our news media?
Take this, for example. A new book has just come out and it's called Kafka on the Shore. This novel, by one Haruki Murakam,i is getting fawning reviews all over the place, but is it about my main man Franz Kafka? No, it's about "a runaway boy calling himself Kafka." Maybe that's not cheating on the part of the author, but it is cheap. J. D. Salinger already saw this coming - phony people in a phony world.
Amy Holden Jones wrote the screenplay from my novel Indecent Proposal. Before she got started, I checked her out and learned that she wrote a movie called Beethoven. Wow! My favorite composer. What can be better? "Ode to Joy", that's what I said. So we rented the movie from our local Blockbuster and who is this Beethoven? It's a dog; a dog named Beethoven.
There is something manipulative, rotten and corrupt about all this.
For some reason I'm remembering Frank Rich on a well-known morning radio show. Rich is now a cultural commentator for the New York Times. He used to be the paper's chief drama critic, better known as "The Butcher of Broadway". Who knows how many plays he doomed?
So, on this particular program, he tells the moderator that maybe he was wrong. Many of those plays that he blasted and made stillborn were, on second thought, actually good. But as he is saying this, he's in stitches, laughing, as is the moderator. Angels who saw their millions go down the drain, actors, directors, producers and stage hands who were sent packing, their careers mangled - are they laughing?
As we note with sorrow Arthur Miller's passing this past Friday -- how many playwrights never got beyond "a smile and a shoeshine" because of Frank Rich's hasty thumbs down?
Sorry to be picking on the New York Times when there are so many others who tell us that bitter is sweet, sweet is bitter, day is night, night is day. (As from Isaiah.)
But here we are with the Muhammad Al-Dura caper back in the news - way back. Recall, please, that this September 2000 incident in Gaza sparked the intifada. Banners flared. Headlines inflamed. But that entire incident is now being revealed as a hoax. Time for some journalistic atonement, you'd think.
As CAMERA's Andrea Levin points out, the hoax part of the story was indeed reported in the Times, but on Page Six, Section C.
A generation ago, the same New York Times hid the entire Holocaust on Page Six, Section C.
Back to Weinraub of Hollywood. He writes: "Clearly, I stayed too long at my beat."
The same can be said for so many of them.