Wowee, clunker of an interview last night on The Daily Show - Hitch must not be too worried about getting laid, because he did a good job of vitiating pretty much all of Jon Stewart's attempts to make the damn thing funny. During the interview, I had the same feeling I had while reading his now-infamous Vanity Fair article: Dum-de-dum, I'm sorta bored. Is this over soon? Honestly, I say this as a person who is extremely interested in religion and matters of faith (cf. this, ish) — but where it could have been a lively interchange between Jon and Hitchens about religion and politics and faith instead Hitch seemed more interested in dismissing any arguments that religion might have a purpose rather than, you know, discussing them. Agree? Disagree? Here's the vid.
Also, it's hard to take a guy seriously when he can't even get his facts straight - his assertion that religion hates "the birth canal" was sort of off, even though we knew what he meant (the current term of art is "va-jay-jay," we believe. That's what the kids are saying). Still, last we checked, religion didn't have any problem with babies or how they are born; while it's true that chastity and virginity get high marks in religion across the board, the premium seems to be placed on how babies are conceived more than how they are born. That is to say, not what comes out of the, er, canal in question that is at issue, but what might happen to go in.** Though we do agree with him that Leviticus 15:19 is a crock. That and the entire Niddah tractate of the Talmud. But wait, we're just silly girls, don't listen to us!
Points for the dry observation that the more secular society, the tastier its snacks; that, as many of us discovered recently on Passover, is true. Interesting point that where wine is outlawed in the Koran, whiskey is a-ok. But we seriously did not get where you were going with the chimpanzee stuff. But, thank you for clarifying what the word "penis" refers to.
And for the record, our immediate answer to "What is the most overrated virtue?" was totally chastity. Rawr! Bring on that fabled sense of humor, Hitch! But still, good luck tonight at the Ellies - this is the writing we can get behind.
Citizen Hitch [Radar]
MemoPad: No Barbs Held [WWD]
Christopher Hitchens: Va. Tech Shootings A 'Non-Story' [FishbowlNY]
Related:
Christopher Hitchens: God Is Not Great (Pretty In Pink Version) [ETP]
*We admit, we may be biased.
**Yes, we are religious scholars.
TMZ
Because of the sinking feeling that none of them might ever have the chance to report on the virgin birth of an actual Messiah, the media continues to cover the logistics of Dannielyn Smith-Birkhead as if her every move augured the downfall of Western civilization. Click here if you want to see video of MSNBC wasting time they will never--not ever!--get back, no matter how much they might beg and plead on their deathbed.
It's times like this that one realizes that if the moon landing were covered with this sort of rapaciousness, there wouldn't be scads of tin-foil clad shut-ins who have based their Life and Work around the theory that it happened on a Downey, California soundstage in between porno shoots.
Anyway, here's hoping that Dannielyn finds a way to harness the power of the Earth's yellow sun to develop super-strength and heat vision so she can go on to defeat terrorists and Magneto. Otherwise, the alien race that picks through our ruins might conclude that we wasted huge, yawning chunks of our lives.
Eric Alterman
From the Agonist: On Friedman Units. Isn't stuff like this a pretty good argument for blogs? Why trust Friedman again? (Now the bad news. The other night Gore, out of nowhere, started talking about how terrific Friedman was and how much he relied on his analysis. When you combine Tommy with Marty, it's almost enough, well ...)
Read the whole Altercation here.
NBC News
The media world is slowly continuing its dialogue on NBC News' decision to air the submitted materials of Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui, following a pattern that savvy web-readers are sure to recognize: hype, followed by backlash, followed by a backlash to the backlash. Hey! It's just like the way the rock press covers The Strokes, only without any concomitant national tragedy (the poor production on Room On Fire nothwithstanding).
On the matter of the Cho materials, we seem to have entered that third stage, and the defense of NBC's position got a boost this week from Kevin Sites of the Columbia Journalism Review, who thoughtfully lays out why "NBC did exactly they right thing." And that's saying something, because as Sites elaborates, he's been on the business end of NBC doing, in his opinion, the wrong thing:
On this issue, I find myself in the strange position of defending a television news network that more than two years ago deftly stepped away from me when I, as a freelance correspondent for NBC, videotaped one of the most controversial scenes of the war -- a U.S. marine shooting a wounded, unarmed insurgent in a Falluja mosque.NBC, like most other American networks that received the footage under a pool agreement, chose not to air the entire shooting; it blacked out the critical portion when the marine raises his M-16, fires point blank into the insurgent's head, then spins on his heels and strides away. It was a decision that, at the time, I not only supported but pushed for. It was the wrong decision.
Thus, it says a lot that Sites is willing to offer his support, and he very concisely rebuts criticism of the airing of the materials and the worry that such images can have an infectious effect. But the money quote, in our opinion, is his articulation of a point that really hadn't occured to us:
For those still not convinced that NBC did the right thing, remember, this is the Internet Age. Cho sent his package to NBC, but he could have easily bypassed the mainstream media and posted his videos to YouTube and his photos to MySpace. With the exception of burning the NBC logo onto every photograph and video image to make it seem the package was the result of its own investigative work, NBC handled the material with a sensitivity that wouldn't have happened had it just been uploaded into cyberspace.
With time, we may find ourselves counting it a lucky thing that these materials ended up in NBC's mailbox.
RELATED:
Why NBC Was Right to Air Cho Package [CJR]
Blogger and Podcaster
Believe it or not, there actually does exist a magazine called Blogger & Podcaster. And yes, the tagline is: "For Aspiring New Media Titans." And yes, you won't even come close to being the first to mock the effort. Nevertheless, Troy McCullough of the Baltimore Sun says "the concept of a blogging trade publication isn't as crazy as some have made it out to be" and insists that the magazine "has shown it has some early potential." We sure hope so, because our eyes get all starry when we think of the properties Blogger & Podcaster might spawn.
Commenter Quarterly
COVER: "Deadspin Commentariat to Kate Lee: 'Hey, Where's Our Book Deals?'"
ALSO:
MP3 Blogger & Downloader
COVER: "Check It Out: I Got That New Arcade Fire Track!"
ALSO:
Modern Lurker
COVER: "You Do Realize I Have Your IP Address, Don't You"
ALSO:
Conde Nast's Blogolalia
COVER: "Sasha Frere-Jones: Fancy!"
ALSO:
Blogger And Gun
COVER: "What, Too Soon?"
ALSO:
"Are Men Funny? No one has a panel on that!" says Susie Essman of Curb Your Enthusiasm as she kicks off the panel, Look Who's Laughing.
A recent Vanity Fair article claimed that women are less funny than men. But these five leading ladies insist they are not an exception to the rule.
"Women can't be raunchy and gross" says Rachel Dratch of Saturday Night...
The New Yorker
In this week's New Yorker, Larissa MacFarquhar has done a goodly bit of fine sifting, identifying the ingredients to Barack Obama's approach to communicating with voters: "He tends to underplay his knowledge, acting less informed than he is. He rarely accuses, preferring to talk about problems in the passive voice, as things that are amiss with us rather than as wrongs that have been perpetrated by them. And the solutions he offers generally sound small and local rather than deep-reaching and systemic." Her conclusion? Obama is "The Conciliator." Matt Taibbi fans will be tickled by how quickly someone pulls out the ol' "Adlai Stevenson" label. We're just tickled that New Yorker readers will have to do something they rarely do: sit through about nine grafs on the ins and outs of ethanol farming.
Elsewhere, in this week's New Yorker:
Love, light, and joy: Christopher Hitchens had some choice words at yesterday's ASME lunch: Virginia Tech was "a non-story;" Anna Nicole Smith was "a fat slut." And as for all those un-funny women, Hitchens has male friends who "would not have a prayer of getting laid without being amusing." Hitchens is in the running for an Ellie at tonight's National Magazine Awards. [FishBowlNY]
