The Weasels Go Pop

You have to read ten paragraphs into yesterday's Times story about the collapse of CD sales before getting to the heart of the matter, namely the suck-suck-suckiness of Pop music today:

Even as the industry tries to branch out, though, there is no promise of an answer to a potentially more profound predicament: a creative drought and a corresponding lack of artists who ignite consumers’ interest in buying music. Sales of rap, which had provided the industry with a lifeboat in recent years, fell far more than the overall market last year with a drop of almost 21 percent, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Not that the writer spent a lot of time examining this aspect of the decline, because, well, it was a business story. Seems download sales aren't so hot either. How big media enterprises evolved to manage free expression and smother creativity, co-opt and trivialize, and how bright, talented people lent themselves to such activities, for a chance for money and fame, is a story as large and shining as the sun in these parts, has been for years.

That the mobility is finally growing tired of it (and YES, I am using the collapse of CD sales as indicative of wider concerns) says a lot about our times. The country has been soul starved for years. For me, the true tragedy of America is how little real culture, which is a higher order of social self-knowledge, our affluence has bought us over the last sixty-odd years. Our politics is as bad as our pop music (Nashville, I am looking at you), and both reflect a creative bankruptcy that bleeds into the moral realm.

Rump Tower

If I was one of those busy once-a-day, or more, bloggers, I'd have probably gotten around to voicing my feeling about the white elephant Donald Trump is building in downtown Chicago. Alas, this morning the Tribune has confirmed my suspicion mightily, so I really can't brag about how prescient I remain.

I did, though, have the wit last March to write:

I've drifted, as usual, from the point I was first leading to, which is how the old-guard media react to unanticipated events. Exhibit one this morn is an article from the current Chicago Tribune expressing gob smacked surprise over a dramatic drop in local home sales. The said confounded analysts in the piece have very likely not spent the last year wandering around Chicago, noting all the signs on all the empty condos and storefronts, and all the condo buildings still going up because the financing for them came through two years ago.

Read today's story and you will hear how those signs have not only not gone away, but will soon be joined by thousands more units coming online, including the Donald's vulgar, window-washer's wet dream in two years.

Now I know next to nothing about the details of high-end real estate, but my feeling has been that even if the Trump fiasco now arising comes in full-up sold, all its retail space accounted for, it could in this market only soak up customers from other buildings, which would then be left ever more hollow and dusty as the weeks tick into months and years.

No, times are not good and Don's news conference today will not improve them, or his fortunes, which have, since he avoided bankruptcy ten twelve years ago, mainly depended on other people's money anyway. Donny is not a billionaire, he only played one on TV, and that gig just ran out too. A lot of old brands are going tits up this season and next, and it looks like Trump is one of them.

Before we get on with our days, let's note this delectable morsel quoted from a guy at the Fed:

"With the market in upheaval, price discovery is difficult," said William Testa, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. "Developers are reluctant to lower prices but buyers have expectations that prices will fall."

Ah yes, those buyers are just waiting to discover the bargains before they pounce like locusts (if, that is, locusts pounce at all.) What Mr. Head does not mention, and maybe the reporter does not ask, is what it means if those "bargains" go unsold (undiscovered?) for a year or longer.

Bugging Out

Josh Marshall wonders why the tide has again turned against Al Gonzales, and decides, correctly I think, it was James Comey's testimony of the Gonzo/Card hospital visit to the doped up Ashcroft. Though in chalking it up to the power of narrative, it shows the outsized importance granted to stories told as gripping first-person narratives , Josh writes, it misses what may be the real point.

It has gone unsaid throughout that the extraordinary powers granted to the administration would be used against political enemies as well as whatever terrorists who might blunder into their net. Believe me, if the New York Police Department was conducting nationwide surveillance on, oh, Quakers leading up to the Republican convention, you can bet some desk at the NSA, or a handy institutional substitute, was dedicated to the DNC.

An easy charge to make, and impossible to prove, but I am interested in the force of events, not the particulars, and if you don't think the Rove Company was treating Democrats as the enemies of America under the new powers stolen by the dumb executive, go read some other blog, greenhorn.

Now, eveyone, Ds & Rs, assumed this was so and probably acted accordingly. Congressional Dems weren't pleased, of course, and the Hill Repubs, in their bottomless sense of grievance, probably thought the situation was proper turnabout. Life went on.

Then Comey opens his mouth. And the gist of his comments made clear at last that this new surveillance apparatus was not only being used against terrorists, and dissenters, and Democrats, but against other Republicans as well. That, me thinks, is why the congressional panties are in a bunch.

What we see, as in a smokey terrarium, is a colony of bugs turning against itself, with one faction of bugs, the most ruthless but also the stupidest, using every means it has to hold on to power. As it became clear that their control of the country was slipping away, I think the Junta did what it could to keep its dumb grip on the party, and now we get to watch that peel apart too.

Towards Another Day

If the misunderstood leadership of the Democrats seems a little at sea this morning, maybe it is because they are attempting something unique in the history of the Republic, which is a drastic institutional re-evaluation of an ongoing institutional disaster. Strange, uncharted waters for Mrs. Pelosi and crew to navigate, no question about it.

Though I submit that it is not the Dem leadership at sea, so much as those political and media pros trying to make sense of what is, in fact, an utterly new landscape through the lenses of old assumptions. When has the Congress moved so against a war? When? If their efforts seem stuttering and doomed to failure, I would suggest that those fatal characteristics are also endemic to the problem at hand, and under the circumstances, all ways forward will, to put it bluntly, be covered in blood and shit.

These are serious days, brought to us over the course of six years by largely unserious people (and here I salute Jon Stewart's very cogent observation to Bill Moyers a few weeks back regarding the opposite nature of his staff to that of the president's.*) To prevail in this fucking nightmare, congressional Democrats need only to speak and act more seriously than the administration and its GOP enablers.

If you think that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid walked into the White House last week serene in the idea that that squalid little man was going to bargain in good faith, if you don't think they had several fallback options in mind, you should give up the study of politics for romance novels. What they were looking for was some idea of the psychology inside the bunker, and I bet what they saw made them sad.

The senate vote on the war (though really a procedural ballot regarding a proposed vote on the war) was instructive largely in how it showed that heartland Democrats cannot yet bring themselves to move in a forthright way to begin to end the Iraq project. Sadly lacking such clarity, they will have to be brought step by step by anti-war Dems to a greater understanding of the war's costs and consequences, an awareness which really needs to be culture-wide anyway.

No legislation is going to make things right. No Democrat is going to come in and save the day. There is no way out. The day is lost. We can only get a new day. From here on out, every war bill that stupid creep gets sent, even if it has everything he wants in it, will have one thing he does not, a big fat acknowledgement of the stupendous and obscene ongoing cost of his and his party's vanity and mendacity. He might not understand it, but I think most everyone else will.

What do I have in mind exactly? Gee, I dunno. Ninety-day appropriations? Regular up-or-down votes? GAO reports on where the $2b a week is going? How about corporate tax increases to begin paying for the whole thing? That veto would be hard indeed.

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* Hmm. In reading the transcript I didn't find Stewart's remark, which was to the effect that his staff are serious people doing unserious work, while the Administration has it the other way.

Okay, Mets Fans

Let's go back to last October, shall we? And Willie Randolph's cool-as-a-cucumber demeanor in the face of all kinds of second guessing regarding starting John Maine and Oliver Perez in crucial games against the Cards. He simply said they were his guys. Maine had pitched exceptionally well in several starts, melted down in a couple too many others. Perez was widely thought of as a head case with a 95 mph fastball, too screwed up to start ballgames.

I thought at the time, and may even had said so here (I'll have to check) that Willie was managing as much for this season as the NLCS. Both pitchers came through with brilliant, career-defining performances, and the manager got two young starters who would walk through fire for him for the rest of their professional lives.

If I'm going to be wrong in print, I'm glad it's when I predicted a slow start for the Mets this season. But, really, who'd have thought otherwise? A lousy spring training record (their worst, I believe), a bunch of new relievers no one knew much about, and more than a few veterans on the squad, including one P. Martinez whom no one expected to see before July 4. I thought they'd do well this season, but saw a hit-and-miss beginning. To have them fly from the blocks as they have is a testament to their organization and the acute baseball skills of the manager, for whom Maine and Perez have been paying off so far like three-bar slot machines.

First, all props to the old guys. Glavine has pitched beautifully in nearly all his starts. Nothing riles him. Man on third, no outs? With Glavine, I will bet you even money the guy won't score. Julio Franco, who might really be as old as I am, Moisie Alou, whom I have admired for simply yonks, and Shawn Green have been terrific, and could be said to have carried the team through April.

The cool part about having old guys around is what they can show the kids, and, noting that Maine has a good change-up and Wagner struck out that dimwit Giambi last night with a 80 mph slider, I wonder if they aren't looking at Glavine's steady progress towards win number 300, and noting what an off-speed pitch or two can do for one's long-term earning potential.

Then they're the young guys, like En-D CHA-vez, whom we'll see lot's more of as the season progresses, and Joe Smith, and, the young king, Jose Reyes. Willie tends to talk about him in terms of general awe, to the effect that he's still growing into the game. The other old guys, like Rickey Henderson, a Met hitting coach, and Franco have apparently found him an eager student, which is refreshing in a world, and not just MLB, where huge egos get wrapped around precocious skill sets very quickly.

Yessiree, Bob (or should I say Slob?) Mets are cooking along about as well as anyone could hope right now - #1 in hitting, #4 in pitching and in second place, behind two clubs tied, in fielding percentage. Maybe after this weekend (cough-sweep-cough) they'll replace that dumb soap opera as the main baseball story in town.

It Tolls! It Tolls!

"Any man's death diminishes me." However, sometimes I feel better after taking off a little weight.

Copyright Infringement Theater Presents. . .

Miles and Coltrane, that's what.

Lame Duck And Cover

It can, I believe, be safely asserted that events in D.C. are now moving so fast as to frustrate anyone who tries to keep ahead of them. The White House visit of the Concerned Eleven, so breathlessly conveyed to the rest of us so shortly after, was followed by the completely surprising up-or-down House vote on the Iraq project, which immediately preceded passage of the House funding measure that's certs for the veto.

Related events include the apparatchik AG, standing, well, NOT standing tall so much as squatting like a cornered horned toad, GOP leaders going after two members of that intervention group who talked to the press about it. The White House picked a fight it can't win with storm wracked Kansas' Democratic Gov. Sebelius, basically telling her to shut the fuck up about the state's National Guard resources, which should firmly settle bloody Kansas into the blue column for next year.

Gee, what else?

How about the House GOP replacing one crook with another on the appropriations committee? Something which has sparked the ire of, in a refreshing change, other Republicans. LaHood of IL, whom we noted here last Sunday and one of the guys who was happy to talk about the White House Iraq Intervention Group, seems to be leading that charge too.

Annnd?

Well, let's see, Wolfowitz is about to be pried, weeping, from the World Bank and, since stories about Iraq never mention the price of gas, we should note that it is historically high, and going higher. $4 a gallon is now being confidently predicted in the papers, a level that six months ago was broadly considered by the financial pages to be something, like a moon colony, for the distant future. Perhaps bound to this development, Wal-Mart posted a dramatic fall-off in sales last month, though not nearly so bad as other retailers to the middle class. Oh yeah, and there's the housing market.

Anyone with a brain can see that the Justice Dept. scandal is going to end up with criminal charges of, let's see, lying under oath, obstruction of justice and flagrant disregard of those laws which expressly forbid the subversion of the civil service for electoral ends, for starters. The shitheads in power have managed to piss off one or two generations of prosecutors, an entire class of men and women who until a month or so ago could be counted as being on their side.

In the face of having to go nowhere, and showing not a drop of remorse, Alberto Gonzales has become universally loathed. As I mentioned in an earlier post, replacing him with a competent outsider would spell the immediate end of the Rove machine, and the Junta will hold off that mighty day as long as they can.

The whole GOP plan even one Friedman ago was to game the next two years, leave a mess and blame for others, mainly Democrats, to soak up. But, as I've said earlier, that plan depended on things not getting worse.

And things are getting worse.

What's next? The MSM would have you believe that it is the Democrats in disarray, but if you ask me it seems that the madame Speaker and Majority Leader are the ones keeping the coolest heads which, when things go all chaotic and unpredictable, is the best survival tactic you can have. Allowing the Out Now Dems their up or down vote may not have meant much in the swing of things, but it was a clarifying moment which Mrs. Pelosi handled with some skill. Note that a similar opposing measure regarding an open-ended commitment was not brought forward, and another up or down vote in, say, October would be very interesting.

The GOP sticking with no timelines, while every fucking one of them is talking about September, is a measure of the disconnect. They stopped making good decisions a loooong time ago, and it says a lot about the strengths and weakness of the system that they have gone on doing so badly for so long. But it is failing now. And no one enjoys the spectacle as much as, and colors it better than, Mr. Wolcott.

The Italian Lesson

My late father spent the Second World War as a lieutenant (before making captain) in a forward recon unit of the 1st Armored Division-North Africa, Italy, Austria-not a job especially conducive to coming home in one piece and starting a family, but he was a lucky bloke, my Pop, and a Silver Star winner to boot.

He, like any soldier who saw terrible things, did not talk much about those four years, and I mention him now only to bring up one story he did tell me. As the son of Sicilian immigrants, seeing the old country for the first time with the latest invading army, Dad was conversant in Italian as well as the Sicilian dialect, a pretty handy guy to have around when invading and occupying Italy.

(And here I'll note the remarkable statistic, found in Peter Robb's essential Midnight in Sicily, that 15% of the American Army in Italy were either Sicilian immigrants, or the sons thereof. Fifteen percent!-and that is not counting the numbers of Calabrese, Salernitani, or Napolitani also in the ranks. This should give some pause when considering what effect that might have had on American success in southern Europe, and, after that, how many Arabic speakers are currently in uniform, and what that pitiful number has always boded for the chances of the Iraq project, in which, sadly, my father's old outfit, the 1st Armored, has taken more than its share of casualties.)

Anyway, as the first ranking officer not in a German uniform seen in a lot of these Italian towns, Dad got to do a bit of talking with local authorities. "WE were not fascists," he said they would tell him. "Now those people," indicating the next town over, "they, they are fascists."

Yeah, sure, was Dad's comment to me.

I bring up this colorful anecdote not to illustrate the low regard most Italians have for those fellow countrymen outside of, say, cannon range, or the universal human trait of personal denial in the face of stern reckoning. Rather it is to prepare my progressive friends for the coming wave of testimonies over the next two years from our Republican, and a few Democratic, friends, neighbors, business acquaintances, media tools, and strangers in bars -- how they never, never supported an invasion of Iraq.

And rather than spend the time and effort scolding them into admitting the truth, I suggest you let them pass. They will admire you greatly for it, and be reliable enough political allies for the rest of their demi-lives. There are bigger fish to put in the pan.

The Prints Of An Enormous Hound

If you are, like me, of a certain age, and spent, like me, one's young years in New York City in those dead Disco, Punk and post-Punk days, then it is very likely that, on Saturday afternoons 'tween 3 and 6, you tuned into WFMU, depending-that is-on the strength of your receiver, which part of town you lived in and how the wind was blowing, to listen to the Hound.

The Hound's show was a cavalcade of trash rock, rockabilly, R&B, weird country, and sick soul, presented with a healthy overdose of Lower East Side attitude, by the Hound, aka Jim Marshall, and his pals. Though I was wildly uncool, I did have a lot of cool friends and several of them were also buddies with the Hound. On any given Saturday I might hear about what they'd done the night before or where they were going to be drinking, heavily, that evening. It was a show broadcast for, maybe, a hundred people who lived downtown, though overheard by two or three thousand.

Through a miracle of digital technology and the efforts of one of the Hound's more grownup friends, a rather staggering archive of his shows began appearing on the web about two years ago, hundreds of hours of crashing lo-fi passion, weirdness, and bored wit, a time capsule of not only the underside of outsider American recorded song, ca. 1930-66, but of those particular years in New York when the forces of Capital and the Plague began clamping down for good on the loose and ragged spirit that had animated the city for two, maybe four, generations.

Yeah, the scene was going away even as the Hound stood and waved the flag for the rest of us. And you can hear it in all the hungover particulars on every show, which stopped airing in '95, not long after I'd moved to the heartland.

Why bring it up now? Only to direct your attention to the new podcast feed for the shows, with, I'm happy to report, a brief contemporary introduction for each show from Jim himself.

It is great hearing his voice again. We have not propped up the same bar in over 12 years, and he'd probably have to be reminded who I am. But that's okay. It was a group effort anyway, and I know I am held somewhere in the hearts of many, as I hold them still in mine. Mikey's a dad and lives out in Canarsie now, Jack's still the super, Roscoe's been playing for Steve Earle for years, Christa went back to Switzerland to teach dance, Lillian, Mikey tells me, is still Lillian. I wonder if anyone's heard from Father Bruce.

Babbington Revisited

I'm not familiar with the AP's Charles Babbington, so I can't say if his dispatch from two day ago, GOP Lawmakers: Loyalty to Bush May Hurt, is an utterly braindead review of political realities that have been clear to SOME of us for months, or if he was indulging in the keenest of mockery. Maybe you, dear Reader, can help me decide.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Republicans in Congress are increasingly worried that their stalwart support of President Bush's Iraq war policy may cost them dearly in next year's elections. Should their solidarity crack, it could boost Democrats' efforts to start troop withdrawals.

Note the above toothless use of the aimless conditional. Here I'll point out that should their solidarity not crack, dem Dem's efforts will still be boosted by tiny things, like that squalid little man's 25-28% approval rating.

many Republicans say it's too late to uncouple their party's near-term fate from the war's outcome.

As though it dawned on any of them to try, oh, a year ago.

A question increasingly asked in the Capitol is: how big a price might the party pay if the war continues to claim U.S. casualties without quelling the anti-American insurgency?

How big a price WILL the party pay? Regular readers here know my answer to that is The Biggest.

But among GOP House members, he said, "there are discussions on the floor: 'Hey, 30 members lost their seats last year, and a lot of them lost because of the war.'"

It might not matter, said Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio. "As a party, we are locked into being the party of the war in Iraq - right, wrong or indifferent," he said. "The only salvation for us is that it works."

Hey, by now I'm doubled over laughing. Salvation, that's rich.

"Many Republican colleagues are simply waiting until September,"

Do you think cattle are this apathetic on the way to slaughter houses?

"There's a lot of nervousness," said Rep. Ray H. LaHood, R-Ill., who has backed Bush's war policies. He said a fellow House member recently recounted visiting a coffee shop full of Republicans in his home district and finding "none of them supports what we're doing over there."

Make that ex-Republicans. Then there's this nugget which is as clear a sign of catastrophic GOP renal failure as I've seen yet:

Some Republican leaders say their stand on Iraq is a matter of principle, not politics, and they suggest they will accept electoral setbacks if that is the cost.

"When you think about what Iraq means to our nation, and what failure in Iraq will mean to our nation, it's really far more important than any election," House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio told reporters Thursday. He later added that he expects to lose no GOP seats over the issue in 2008, because "I'm planning on victory in Iraq."

When, when, oh, when was the last time these fools EVER put principle ahead of politics?? I'll tell you, 1964. Ha-ha.

The story then finishes with a frosting of Texan denial.

Some Republicans, especially those from strongly conservative House districts, say pollsters and commentators are overstating the party's political peril.

"We're not in despair. We're not in isolation," said Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas.

While many Americans clearly want to withdraw from Iraq promptly, "the far vaster group of people think Congress had better not stand up our guys" in uniform, Sessions said.

And here is the very interesting point that's dawned on me lately. From the get-go the war mongers have used the Support the Troops mantra as cover for their purposes, to them a dire, unspoken warning against criticizing the conduct of the war. Well, Jack Murtha pretty well deepened the meaning of Support the Troops last year, a climate change reinforced by the disgrace at Walter Reed. Now about 65% of the electorate think supporting the troops means getting them the fuck out of there.

It is rare in politics when the understood meaning of a slogan shifts so quickly, and it is a lesson on how the American people are a far more serious body than most politicians and the entire electronic media give it credit for being. I'll tell you who knows, though. Speaker Pelosi. Have you noticed how the GOP and the Washington press keep swinging for her head and missing? The woman has poise like those slobs can only dream about. She will make them pay dearly for their contempt too.

Comportment? Compartment!

I guess you can toss this into the circling of the (w)agons meme we're pushing here at H&J, but have you noticed how gosh-darn popular compartmentalizing has become for the GOP minions? Of course, most would have never gone Republican in the first place if not for a deep psychological need for external verities, but hard times have worked to bring out the last resorts. Problem with security in a Baghdad nabe? Put a wall around it! (Can you smell the Freedom people? Hoo-yeah!) Sick of the jab jab jabs from the Daily Show? Well, conservatives are funny too, aren't they? AREN'T they?? Is the Wikipedia too, uhm, open-ended for you? Open one just for believers. YouTube giving you the blues, Mr. Goofy? Well, hey, start a new one for the frightened faithful.

The funniest aspect of these attempted remedies is how these twits think they are getting it, when they really, really don't. Stuck on forms, they miss the animating ideas. Never mind that they also think they have the numbers to make such brain dead projects pay for themselves, but spending money while wishing and hoping is all that those idiots have ever done anyway.

A big part of the inevitable GOP decline is how the true believers (apparently some 20-25% of the electorate, though that may be an exaggeration) are killing the wider party by demanding fealty to the strangest, most disconnected, and poisonous elements of the old platform that the rest of the body politic has seen fit to drop, if indeed they were ever truly held, years ago. Part of this problem has to be how disconnected from reality, how compartmentalized, that toxic 20% has been made by a steady diet of comforting disinformation ladeled out by the dependable blowhards. Far from advancing and making strong the GOP agenda, FOX has mainly walled-off the faithful from the animating effects of the wider world and made them stupid. I'm almost positive that is not what Rupe and Roger Ailes intended, at least not so much, but then everybody there thought the Iraq project was a winning hand too.

A Circling Of Agons

Damn, the action never stops, does it? We have Buckley and the Wind in the Will both coming around to my assessment of September last that the GOP is effectively done for. Nice to have you aboard, fellahs, but remember I count the silverware after every party.

Then there is the richness of that other bespecticaled windbag, Bobo complaining that the Repub problem is that the party is not flexible, open to new ideas, accepting of outsiders, or capable of independent thinking, in short, that they are not like Democrats. The GOP dilemma for Boobo is gradually, quietly coming into focus: Oh. My. God. Re-pub-li-cans... are... Conservative!!!

Holy Fuck, they ARE doomed. . .

Now old Bill is a cat whom I hold in the same general regard as Vidal, Mailer, Moynahan, and Baldwin, the intellectual boy-brawlers of my youth, big-time public figures who gave as good as they got and were mainly more interested in light than heat, though providing plenty of both, in their very public exchanges. I never liked Bill as much as the others, but, really, where would they have been without his foil?

The dishonest thing about Buckley, if such a lapse can be called dishonest, is that for all his lofty ideals of governance he rarely admitted to the dirty realities of the people necessary to administer them. (Though he famously called Ronnie a Rebel Without A Clue.) This has always given him an intellectual emergency exit. An independently wealthy Catholic, Buckley never had to consider the social needs of his working-class co-religionists (who are legion.) Nor was the Papist Buckley ever exactly a peer of the WASP establishment, something he may have felt most strongly before graduating Yale. Icon he is, nevertheless, and, like the Pope, he provides shade when he agrees with you and can be safely ignored when he does not. (Going back 20 or so years, I swear I saw a Firing Line debate featuring the young Marxist Hitchens, where Chris got Bill to concede without fuss that socialist-leaning organized labor allowed for many social improvements early in the 20th. Wow, thought I, was that so hard?)

I wax nostalgic for the lists of yore, mainly because the current contests are such a fucking drag. Imagine such a debate happening today between a sober Hitch and, oh, Windy Will. Even if WW agreed, he'd find some way to say it without conceding merit. Mainly now we have knaves needling each other, which is really nothing so much as another sign of decline tricked out as a style point.

For the most recent sign of decline is the very interesting story from yesterday regarding Rupe's designs on the Wall Street Journal. Now I know that most of my comrades on the left are in a panic here, but let's think about this.

Murdoch's reviled N.Y. Post, that organ of Gossip, Sports and Looney Right Wing Nonsense lost $70 million last year. If he was so fucking mighty and smart, this would not be the case. Another under-reported gem is that the Dow Jones Co., home of the WSJ and Barron's, is another money-losing proposition. Shareholders have been pissed for years, which makes the Murdoch bid such a humdinger. He is offering a 50% premium, cash I do believe, for outstanding shares, an offer I would grab in a New York minute were I a part owner.

The generosity of the offer gives it the faint whiff of desperation to me, a circling of the wagons in a declining industry that now operates under aspects of scarcity. Now, of course, the Biz press will not - cannot - describe it as such, and people love to think about all the money Fox MUST be generating for that jerk. But consider also that networks have been hit as hard by the YouTube lesson as papers were blindsided by the Craigslist phenomenon. There are now two holes punched in the bottom of the Dirty Digger's yacht and I don't think he quite knows what to do about it. Buying the poorly-run Dow Jones Co. may make a certain short-term sense, but it is a fatal act all the same.

Copyright Infringement Theater Presents. . .

Man, do I miss Joe Strummer. . .