Monday Morning Media Quarterback

Perhaps prodded by Salon’s Glenn Greenwald, the press is finally taking a healthy dose of skepticism to the FBI’s claims to have “closed” the anthrax murder investigation with the conviction  death of Dr. Bruce Ivins.

In documents released Wednesday, prosecutors suggested several possible motives, none of them particularly convincing — from concern that the vaccine program Ivins worked in was in trouble to his dislike of Catholic senators who favor abortion rights.

Then there was his financial motive for developing an anthrax vaccine, Ivins as a homicidal maniac, and the catch-all ‘mental illness made him do it.’

The more motives the merrier–and the less credible.

The anthrax killer case is closed, says the FBI.  They got their (dead) man after only 7 years of investigation and ruining the reputation of another scientist they were equally sure was the killer.

Why do you need a jury of your peers to determine your guilt or innocence, when we have the FBI?  And why pay attention to the whining of a defense lawyer:

Ivins’ attorney, Paul Kemp, said the government was “taking a weird guy and convicting him of mass murder” without real evidence.

Since scientist Bruce Ivins has been anointed the killer and is conveniently dead, he is also certainly guilty of the following crimes, with many local police departments are now ‘clearing’ their cold case files due to Ivins’ posthumous conviction by the FBI:

• Chandra Levy: She was found dead in a Washington park in 2001–just before Ivins launched the anthrax attacks as a cover up.
• Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls–Based in Maryland, Ivins clearly took the side of the East Coast in this gang war.
• Nicole Simpson–Obsessed with sorority blondes, Ivins is the suspect the LAPD inexplicably missed.
• D.B. Cooper–The 1971 airline hijacker was just as white, nerdy and financially obsessed as Ivins.  Where was Ivins when Cooper jumped out of the plane?

I’m no conspiracy theorist, but the FBI’s clumsy attempt to hamhandledy nail Ivins makes Lee Harvey Oswald  look like a piker.

Movies have long been advertised  with short blurbs from critics “It’ll make your hair stand on end,” “You’ll thrill to this special love story,” etc. 

But the producers of Gossip Girl have the best blurb of all, from the conservative Parents Television Council.  Their mission impossible: “protecting children against sex, violence, and profanity in entertainment.”

I saw the Gossip Girl ad on a billboard on Ventura Boulevard in Encino, where thousands of Valley Girls see it as they drive by:

Parents Television Council: “Mind-blowingly Inappropriate”

The story no one wants to read (except everyone) about the politician with the brave cancer-stricken wife and departed son cheating with documentary film maker Rielle Hunter.  

As an alumni of the National Enquirer, I have to hand it to them, running the stakeout in the wee hours of the morning at the Beverly Hilton, and actually having the cojones to confront Edwards. 

“Senior NATIONAL ENQUIRER Reporter Alexander Hitchen asked Edwards why he was visiting Rielle and whether he was ready to confirm that he was the father of  her baby.

Shocked to see a reporter, and without saying anything, Edwards ran up the stairs leading from the hotel basement to the lobby. But, spotting a photographer, he doubled back into the basement. As he emerged from the stairwell, reporter Butterfield questioned him about his hookup with Rielle.
    
Edwards did not answer and then ran  into a nearby restroom. He stayed inside for about 15 minutes, refusing to answer questions from the NATIONAL ENQUIRER about what he was doing in the hotel.”

I’ll bet that one or both of the reporters is a graduate of the esteemed Fleet Street school of journalism, where the qualifications are simple: rat-like cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability.  Or as I like to say, “If you really want some shit, get a Brit.” 

Is it news? Oh G-d, who knows–but the LA Times has covered it, even if they pooh-pooh it in their Opinion Blog. The Enquirer staked out Gary Hart 20 years ago and caught him making hanky-panky.  Republican Senator David Vitter was named in a prostitution scandal, and of course ‘wide stance’ Idaho Senator Larry Craig.  (This one more than most is news, as he pled guilt to a crime.)  And yes, the Kennedys did it and everyone kept their mouths shut.

Is this story relevant only to Edwards, his wife and alleged mistress? Possibly (see above) but everyone will have an opinion about how awful it is (either the story or the alleged infidelity.) Gawker says cheating on your sick wife is a hallowed political tradition, practiced by John McCain and Newt Gingrich.

Should it impact Obama’s choice of a running mate?  If true, it probably will; another depressing sign of America’s political immaturity and hypocrisy.  French PM Mitterand’s mistress and wife both attended his funeral; Sarkozy divorced his wife and remarried his girlfriend in office.

Is it true?  Sorry, Senator; my money’s on the National Enquirer.  They don’t cover politics but they cover celebrities, and they wouldn’t throw resources at this story if they didn’t think they had something.

If you were reading a review of a new Jaguar, what is the first piece of information you would look for?

That’s right, the price.  Portfolio.com flunks this simple test (what editors have always called the wastebasket test; “A press release without a price goes in the wastebasket”), and misses so many other details anyone would want: size of the engine (V-8 is not sufficient; is it a 4.6, 5.0, etc?), 0-60 speed, rear seat comfort, etc.  If Mercedes and BMW are target competitors, you might want to price those guys for comparison.

And when you talk about your “conquest” buyers–people switching from another brand–well, you might want to talk to one or two of them.

I hope their investing advice is better–although raking the ashes at Countrywide isn’t very ahead-of-the-curve.

In an ugly case of police entrapment, justice has finally been done, if late:

“The undercover Manatee County Sheriff’s Office detective on the street corner that afternoon in November took 30 steps to go chat with Milio… The woman opened his passenger side door and leaned inside….”Do you want to party tonight?” the woman asked Milio.

Manatee County Judge George K. Brown Jr. ruled…”This particular 93-year-old man was encouraged and/or enticed to proceed with the police officer’s direction of conversation,” Brown wrote.

Now Milio, 94, can be admitted to the assisted-living home.  He suffers from dementia and apparently they didn’t want to take him if he was guilty.

The entrapment here is disturbing.

But what if he did actually solicit a prostitute?   Honestly, why is it a crime to want to feel a sexual response at his (or any) age and be willing to pay someone to achieve it?

Photo courtesy of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune

I looked at a hybrid car this week, but was immediately turned off by the “Dealer Options” white sticker.  It wasn’t like the dealer was over-pricing a kick-ass stereo or even Lojack.  This one read “Market Price Adjustment: $3000,” which helped bring a $28,000 car to $38,000, along with the rims, the navigation system and the sunroof.

Don’t call it gouging, just call it a response to the laws of supply and demand.  Or the law of the jungle.  Unfortunately, not all of us have Larry David f-you money to fuel our vehicles with self-righteousness.

On July 11’s “Which Way LA?” host Warren Olney invited Amiri Baraka as one of the talking heads to comment on Jesse Jackson’s ‘cut his nuts off’ comments about Barack Obama. 

Olney identified Baraka (formerly Leroi Jones) as a ‘poet and playwright.’  He failed to identify Baraka as one of America’s most outspoken anti-Semites who in fact lost his title as Poet Laureate of New Jersey over his poem which claimed Jews were warned about the attack on the World Trade Center.

The irony of such a man being invited being invited to comment on the odious comments of Jackson, another anti-Semite boggles the mind–and unfortunately fuels the suspicions of what many think is the ‘liberal media.’

If the opening ’spread’ for your magazine is not a woman at all, but an ad for a game for a Sony PlayStation Portable (the handheld game favored by twitchy teenagers), what does that say about Playboy? 

As usual, what Playboy says about men (or perhaps about its own irrelevance) is far more interesting than how it shows women, overloaded on top and shaved for action, or with tiny, non-threatening ‘landing strips’ down there that perfectly match the ‘coffee tea or me’ ambiance of the Brazilian stewardess spread.

Month after month, Hugh Hefner is surrounded with the usual ‘bevy’ of beauties.

The girls remain 20 and pneumatic, but the hair of three of the writers featured, like that of Robert Stone and Pat Jordan, has gone from gray to white.  The third isn’t even alive (Kurt Vonnegut.) In the schizophrenic world of Playboy, 2008, those ‘real writers’ bookend a scolding lecture by Susan Jacoby about how America doesn’t read anymore–plopped dead center in the midst of a stroke book.

And I swear I saw the punch lines for the cartoons and the laugh-a-century Playboy Party Jokes 30 years ago.

In the current issue, she’s supposed to be a MILF [Mothers I'd Love to Fuck], but the thought of winning a date with siliconed, dyed and war-painted 42-year old Cindy Margolis is downright scary:

OK, I know that Kevin Bacon and I aren’t the right demographic for Playboy anymore–but who is?  Videogames, MILFs, bewhiskered authors and an 81-year old figurehead; the Playboy lifestyle is looking pretty incoherent these days.

Philip K. Dick led a Hollywood life and life after death.  “Dick had five failed marriages, wrote most of his novels while gobbling amphetamines and in the grips of  paranoia or religious visions, felt always the outsider” before his death at 53.

The troubled visionary thing is very romantic. It’s convenient for his legend and the PhD. student-like acolytes that Dick is dead, gone more than 25 years now. One of the greatest writers America has ever produced, Ray Bradbury, is still around and kicking, even outliving his favorite bookstores, but he’s not appreciated in the same cultish way as Dick.

A hack science fiction writer, Dick is best known as the author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which became the film Bladerunner just after his death in 1982. Hollywood loves Dick, “His ideas turned out to be pitch-perfect for a Digital Age that wanted science fiction not just about aliens but also about the alienated.”

So Dick has had a Hollywood resurrection, with Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, Paul Verhoeven’s (and hilariously, Arnold Schwartzenneger’s) Total Recall, John Woo’s Paycheck, the crummy Nicholas Cage movie Next, the equally crummy Screamers and one of the best, A Scanner Darkly, the unhinged and drug-addled rotoscope masterpiece by Richard Linklater, starring Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Winona Ryder and Woody Harrelson.

Kurt Vonnegut was probably Dick’s true contemporar.  Both for years were struggling sci-fi writers hacking out story after story. Vonnegut, who died only last year, (no cult for him, then) suffered from a problem opposite to that of Dick. Vonnegut’s books were critically acclaimed and mainstream successes, but the films made from them have left little impact.

A debate rages about the quality of Dick’s writing and the depth of his ideas. John Brunner, writing in 1966(!), said Dick’s ideas included “The empty world; the use of power; illusion substituting for reality; the malleability of externals under the influence of psychosis or drugs; the conflict between chance and determinism.” To which I would add “What is consciousness?” and of course “What is human?”

I’ve been reading Dick’s collected stories. Many are memorable, often with a visceral twist worthy of O.Henry. But the characters are often just stereotypes, particularly the women (at least they’re usually big-or conical-breasted).

Even the memorable Roy Batty only really came to life in the movies, thanks to Rutger Hauer and Ridley Scott.  So Dick would probably have been the first to appreciate the irony of his posthumous popularity in an era when the “average 15- to 24-year old…reads 8 minutes a day.”