This year, Sundance got shoved back toward its mid-‘80s roots as a small nowheresville festival in an ugly ski town showcasing bad independent films nobody wants to buy or see.

(more…)

From the moment Georgia launched its invasion against the breakaway region of South Ossetia this past August, sparking a wider war with neighboring Russia, the New York Times’s news coverage depicted Georgia as an innocent victim of Russia’s neo-imperialist evil. In doing so, the Times engaged in the sort of media malpractice that it promised its readers wouldn’t happen again after its disastrous coverage of the lead-up to the Iraq War. (more…)

Today’s Defendant: White America

Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: Today we write in praise of White America. It’s long overdue, says Frank Rich, the New York Times columnist. He wrote a recent article called “In Defense of White America” in which he argues that we’ve all misjudged the Caucasian Category in this country and owe it a big apology. The media, in particular, has tagged White America as racist and therefore unlikely to vote for a black man. But now that Barack Obama is up in the polls, we see how wrong we’ve been. Look how free of prejudice White America is! A teeming mass of tolerance, that’s White America for you, says Frank Rich.
(more…)

You may not have noticed it, but a couple of weeks ago, the New York Times slipped in a story that completely contradicted a narrative that it had been building up for two straight months, one that was leading America into another war–a so-called “New Cold War.” The article exposed the awful authoritarian reality of Georgia’s so-called democracy, painting a dark picture of President Mikhail Saakashvili’s rule that repudiated the fairy tale that the Times and everyone else in the major media had been pushing ever since war broke out in South Ossetia in early August. That fairy tale went like this: Russia (evil) invaded Georgia (good) for no reason whatsoever except that Georgia was free. Putin hates freedom, and Saakashvili is the “democratically elected leader” of a “small, democratic country.”

Yes, it was only a month ago that we were stupid and crazy enough to think that the United States had no choice but to launch a costly new cold war against a nuclear power, even though we still haven’t closed the deal on a couple of mini-wars against Division-III opponents, and we were on the verge of bankruptcy. Ah, to be blissfully naïve–and bloodthirsty at the same time–wasn’t it wonderful? (more…)

According to Pulitzer Prize-seeking reporter Clifford Levy of the New York Times, Russia still turns off its hot water to apartments for a month every summer. It’s the kind of scoop that has made Levy a star (more…)

His name was Pobornik.

He had never read The New York Times. He would never be able to recognize a classic “pyramid lead.” His hours were occupied by other pursuits: grazing, sleeping standing up for long stretches, swatting away insects with his long, swishy tail, crunching mounds of hay in that big conical face of his. And then there was that other thing…. Pobornik had probably never known any other kind of life, and so he probably thought that his day job at Moscow’s Horse Farm #1 was part of the natural biological mission of the adult males of his species.

Strange-looking men would come to his stable during the daytime, and begin massaging him in strange places. One would be tugging at a strap tied to his mouth, and pulling him this way and that, back and forth, and all the while that strange stroking would continue, and the air would be filled with strange smells, and he would feel a tickling at his ears as his huge body convulsed with volcanic tremors…. (more…)