BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis

May 18, 2005

Fight! Fight!

: Denton v. Roshan.
: UPDATE: The full Denton report.

It's a joke

: NY Times critic Alessandra Stanley gets all PC about Two and a Half Men, a sitcom I happen to like. If she were merely unamused, that'd be one matter. But she's offended in a way that's laughable in itself: It's funny when people get all PC and haughty about jokes. She calls it not merely unfunny, in her view, but "hateful" and "ghastly" and why? Because Charlie Sheen shtupps:

But actually, the show is alarmingly anachronistic: it has been decades since a libidinous cad seemed harmless or endearing; in the age of H.I.V. and S.T.D.'s, Charlie's heedless promiscuity seems like a health risk, not a hobby.

Get rid of drunks, fat people, and the stupid in sitcoms; they're not allowed to be funny and we're not allowed to laugh at them. We're supposed to disapprove instead. And if the women aren't all role models -- if there's a mom, as there is in this show, who's screwed up and screwed up her sons, that' is "misogynistic."

It's a sitcom. It's a joke. Sorry you don't think it's funny. I do. But don't be making me into a hateful, ghastly, STD-spreading, mysogynist if I laugh.

LINK | Comments (9)

Free pays

: The Wall Street Journal has appointed Carl Bialik -- aka the Numbers Guy who does a great job tearing down funny math in media -- to a new post as the free-content editor. For months now, WSJ.com, under nice-guy Bill Grueskin, has been sending links to freed-up content to bloggers and it has worked so well they've now instituted it as a job.

LINK | Comments (1)

Where is the outrage?

: Tom Friedman asks the right question and brings the right perspective to the Newsweek nonstory story: If that could cause riots and deaths and condemnations and fatwas, then why are we not seeing such outrage over Muslim killing Muslim in Iraq?

That said, though, in the same newspapers one can read the latest reports from Iraq, where Baathist and jihadist suicide bombers have killed 400 Iraqi Muslims in the past month - most of them Shiite and Kurdish civilians shopping in markets, walking in funerals, going to mosques or volunteering to join the police.

Yet these mass murders - this desecration and dismemberment of real Muslims by other Muslims - have not prompted a single protest march anywhere in the Muslim world. And I have not read of a single fatwa issued by any Muslim cleric outside Iraq condemning these indiscriminate mass murders of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds by these jihadist suicide bombers, many of whom, according to a Washington Post report, are coming from Saudi Arabia....

The best way to honor the Koran is to live by the values of mercy and compassion that it propagates.

: LATER: This is what gives me hope: Saudi Jeans says Friedman is right.

LINK | Comments (29)

Dan Rather dodges bullet

: When he left his anchor chair -- or rather was pushed overboard -- CBS said that Dan Rather would continue as correspondent for 60 Minutes Wednesday. Now that's canceled. Is Dan canceled? Nope. He'll contribute to 60 Minutes Sunday.

LINK | Comments (0)

Whereabouts

: Sorry I've been away, friends. Been crazed in meetings all day. Big changes on the horizon; more as soon as possible. Back blogging as soon as possible.

LINK | Comments (2)