I'm trying to figure out how NBC could possibly become more of a joke. I'm trying, but I can't say anything's coming to me.
In case all of its well-documentedfailures in the past weren't enough to convince you that the network, particularly its news department, is being run by monkeys, there's this: This morning, rather than go with the 9/11 moment of silence at 8:46AM, the Today show -- seriously the biggest punchline within the larger farce that is NBC -- decided to continue airing an interview with Kris Jenner in which she discussed the new season of the case of cultural Ebola that is Keeping Up with the Kardashians and her breast implants.
And no, I'm not making any of this up.
I wish I could come up with something clever or funny to say about choosing Kris Jenner over the 9/11 moment of silence, but really all I've got is -- fuck you, NBC. Just fuck you.
Why am I choosing to go with the image of CNN getting it wrong and stating on-air that the individual mandate portion of the ACA had been struck down, and not Fox News, who did the same thing? Because from Fox News it's expected that they'd giddily jump to the anti-Obama conclusion, pounce without reading the entire ruling and not mind deliberately misleading their audience of aging, resentful reactionaries. CNN should've done better.
On the plus side, given CNN's ratings lately there's a pretty good chance no one saw this screw-up.
Adding: Great quote on this from Mother Jones: "CNN has its 'Dewey defeats Truman' moment. Fox News just has a moment."
And now as a service to you, the moviegoing public, Deus Ex Malcontent is pleased to provide a few select excerpts from various reviews of the new M. Night Shyamalan masterpiece, The Last Airbender.
Please, you enjoy:
"Not since Kyle MacLachlan's whispered voice-overs about the worm and the spice and the worm IS the spice in Dune has a fantasy franchise tripped all over itself trying, simply, to please a fan base while creating a new one."
-- Michael Phillips, The Chicago Tribune
"With (his) formula having reached the point of diminishing returns several movies ago -- certainly by the ludicrous "Lady in the Water," if not all the way back to "Unbreakable" -- Shyamalan has now sought therapy for his addiction, in the form of making the most thoroughly predictable story you can imagine... the results are clunky even by his recent standards.
-- Andrew O'Hehir, Salon
"The Last Airbender is like a Care Bears movie that got waylaid in the fourth dimension. It’s insufferably silly."
-- Peter Rainer, The Christian Science Monitor
"Please, Hollywood, if there's to be another Airbender movie, hand the job to some efficient hack, and not to a once mesmerizing artist who's lost his way."
-- Richard Corliss, Time Magazine
"M. Night Shyamalan's big-screen live-action version of the popular Nickelodeon animated TV series constitutes a form of Chinese water torture."
-- Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal
"MacGruber and Jonah Hex can relax. This is without doubt the summer's movie nadir, the grossest waste of somebody's money to create (and people to view) that we'll endure."
-- Steve Persall, The St. Petersburg Times
"If you thought it was bad when writer-director M. Night Shyamalan was channeling Rod Serling, wait till you see him try to be George Lucas."
-- Joe Neumaier, The New York Daily News
"This is bad filmmaking and bad storytelling. It also sounds what should be the death knell to M. Night Shyamalan's career."
-- James Berardinelli, Reelviews
"From the opening moments, you know you are fucking doomed."
-- Brian Prisco, Pajiba
And my personal favorite:
"The current national priorities should be as follows: reduce carbon emissions and stop funding the films of M. Night Shyamalan."
And lest we forget where my love affair with M. Night first started -- at what point I first looked into those big, brown eyes and thought, "Jesus, what a raging douche.":
I remember one day, early in my career, when I ordered a graphic for a story we were doing about the death of actor Bob Crane. I asked for it to read "Crane Murder Mystery" -- with the words superimposed over an image of Crane's face. The finished product, however -- created by the teenagers in the art department and which ultimately wound up accidentally making it on-air -- featured the aforementioned cutline over a picture of a large construction crane.
According to a University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll, nearly a third of all Texans believe that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time, 38% believe that God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago, and a full 51% don't think that we evolved from earlier species of animals.
(Update, 7:50pm: I have no doubt that other industries work in much the same way, but I can say from experience that in the morally bankrupt world of television a public vote of confidence is meaningless; you're always the most important person at the network right up until the minute you're escorted out of the building by security. EW: NBC Denies Leno/Conan Shake-Up/1.7.10)
(Update, 8:20pm: The New York Times is reporting that the new line-up would put Leno on for a half-hour beginning at 11:35pm and Conan at 12:05am for a full hour; Jimmy "I'm painfully unfunny but my house band rules" Fallon would then start his show at 1:05am. The New York Times: Leno/Conan Update/1.7.10. So to recap, by the time this whole thing is over, NBC will have strangled its prime time lineup to death, screwed over one of its marquee talents, infuriated an entire country of affiliates, and squeezed a show that failed at an hour down to a confusing half-hour thereby making a mess of its late-night schedule, all to keep Jay Leno happy and stop him from going to the competition. Oh yeah, and Jeff Zucker somehow still has a job. Anybody remember when NBC used to be a great network -- not a good network, a great network? Looks like Time magazine was right: Jay Leno is the "future of television," because the future of television -- at least at the broadcast network level -- is epic fail.)
I figure by now I've sufficiently delved into the enormity of George W. Bush's failure as president of the United States and therefore the significance of today, his last day in any sort of position to further fuck this country without Vaseline.
Still, maybe it's worth reminding everyone a final time (God, how that has a nice ring to it) of one of Bush's more endearing or irritating qualities, depending on your political perspective. And so, my good friend Steve Bunche -- talented artist, insightful social critic, and general pop culture ronin -- has compiled a list of the best examples of George W. Bush's affinity for murdering the English language.
It was so reassuring last week when, as our entire economy was collapsing under the weight of years of deregulation and unforgivable incompetence, Pennsylvania Avenue Phil stuck his head out of the White House a couple of times, saw his shadow, and quickly ran back inside -- guaranteeing 700 billion more dollars worth of taxpayer debt for the rest of us.
This puts the Bush "plan" into context quite nicely:
