The Myth of Fox News' Ratings Spike
The breathless claim that Fox News' ratings recently spiked thanks to the White House's public critique is bogus hype.
The breathless claim that Fox News' ratings recently spiked thanks to the White House's public critique is bogus hype.
Michael Wolff | Posted 10.23.2009 | Media
The most popular news medium became, over the last 10 years, the computer, effectively putting newspapers out of business and changing the nature of t...
Michael Wolff | Posted 10.20.2009 | Media
The Fox audience is, tops, only 2 million people, and yet, because of its flamboyance and success, it manages to convince the rest of the media that conservatism is the national mood.
Michael Wolff | Posted 10.19.2009 | Media
The boy in the balloon or, as it were, the boy not in the balloon, is a publicity stunt which has many people outraged, questioning the sanity of the ...
Michael Wolff | Posted 10.15.2009 | Media
Rush Limbaugh's effort -- aborted by his fellow investors, it seems -- to buy the St. Louis Rams has given me the insight. I think people have a natural instinct to want to declaim, to inveigh, denounce, opine, and show-off.
Michael Wolff | Posted 10.08.2009 | World
It could be that in the years ahead every Italian alive in the strange years of Silvio Berlusconi, as both his nation's leading media mogul and domina...
Michael Wolff | Posted 10.01.2009 | Politics
The soda tax is being tried out as a potential wedge issue, a populist theme. Super groovy cool self-satisfied yuppie people don't drink soda. But gross fat compulsive lacking-all-self-control normal Americans do.
Michael Wolff | Posted 09.29.2009 | Politics
There are only two political stars in the country. One is president, the other is Sarah Palin.
Michael Wolff | Posted 09.28.2009 | Entertainment
There is nothing inevitable about catching a famous person who has not been in hiding after 31 years. Indeed, he didn't just riskily or mistakenly show up in Switzerland; he owned a house there.
Michael Wolff | Posted 09.25.2009 | Entertainment
As it happens, whenever we follow an incest story at Newser it becomes the biggest story. The Phillips story is even bigger because it's not just an incest story but also a disputed incest story.
Michael Wolff | Posted 09.23.2009 | Politics
It seems pretty clear that the Obama foreign policy is being run in all important aspects by the president himself. On this subject, he fancies himself the smartest boy in the class. He's the decider and he's decisive.
Michael Wolff | Posted 09.19.2009 | Media
The president is not going on Fox News, and the network and many Republicans are spitting mad about this.
Michael Wolff | Posted 09.17.2009 | Politics
How is it that racism has been so successfully rejected as a description, precisely by the people it is meant to describe? How can they so stubbornly deny their obvious feelings, and why would they want to?
Michael Wolff | Posted 09.16.2009 | Politics
Apologizing has become some formal social, political, and media condition. It's a ritual and nicety like a thank you; it's part of a political process, like a campaign; it's a media event like a season finale.
Michael Wolff | Posted 09.15.2009 | Politics
The president needs the Dow to get to 11,000 over the next year to keep from being routed in the mid-term election.
Michael Wolff | Posted 11.14.2009 | Politics
the Democrats are always scrambling against a rhetoric that they can't parry and don't ever seem to have anticipated. Now it's the czars.
Michael Wolff | Posted 11.10.2009 | Entertainment
Is America a nation of dumped and unrequited women? Is the common experience the failed relationship? The recalcitrant man? Yes, obviously.
Michael Wolff | Posted 11.08.2009 | Politics
If we assume that Podesta represents certain powers that be in the Democratic Party, are those powers writing off the president?
Michael Wolff | Posted 10.19.2009 | Politics
There is a great morbid curiosity about Jaycee Dugard and her imprisonment, but nobody is drawing any conclusions about what this might say about the American character.
Michael Wolff | Posted 10.18.2009 | Politics
What are they going to do about Afghanistan? And how much time do they have left to do it? I figure a month.
Michael Wolff | Posted 10.16.2009 | Media
There is something excruciatingly little-boyish about Rupert Murdoch's 37-year-old son, James, who runs his father's companies in Europe and Asia. Seldom have I seen an adult so intently trying to mimic his father.
Michael Wolff | Posted 09.28.2009 | Politics
So what is our policy on torture? What's allowed?
Michael Wolff | Posted 09.27.2009 | Politics
While it's the right wing that now seems to have a penchant for seeing Nazi ghosts, the left has often been just as guilty.
Michael Wolff | Posted 09.26.2009 | Politics
Few living people have been as famous for as long as Teddy Kennedy. Still, after so long, I can't say I have much of a clear sense of the man.
Michael Wolff | Posted 09.25.2009 | Media
Just as so many save-our-business types are castigating news aggregators as pirates, Slate takes up the aggregating craft.
Eric Boehlert | Posted 11.04.2009 | Media