rangelife

The 102nd Dumbest Moment in Business

Let us now gather to mourn Business 2.0, a terminal patient who lived way beyond all professional predictions before meeting her inevitable end.

Usually when you see your magazine wrapped in paper that says "This is your last issue," it's because you failed to pay the bill, whether by negligence or apathy. In this case, B2.0 obviously failed to pay their bills.

--

This is your last issue of Business 2.0 magazine.

We're writing to inform you that Business 2.0 magazine will no longer be published in print form.

--

And on it goes. Since Time Warner had assumed publication of B2.0 following the dot-bomb apocalypse, we'll be getting an issue of Fortune for every 2 issues of B2.0 left on our subscriptions, which is ass-backwards since Fortune is a bi-weekly. But whatcha gonna do?

Survivors of the Web 1.0 Bubble remember B2.0 as one of the great purveyors of dot-com bullshit. Each issue was packed with visual explanations of profitless business models, vivid descriptions of serial or concurrent entrepreneurship with six-month exit strategies, unaccountable projections and speculative charts, and columnists who declared that the whole Fortune 500 of 1998 would be dead and gone by 2005. In other words, it was essential reading. And it was fucking great.

Oy, and the ads! At its late-'90s peak, B2.0 would literally crash your inbox with 400+ pages of four-color ads for web services. It was like Modern Bride for nerds with VC funding.

The magazine had some good issues after the Time Warner revival, but it had lost its way the past few years, with fluffy repeating cover features like "The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business," which primarily consisted of random criminality and Fark like a kindergarten teacher moonlighting as a stripper. In 2005, B2.0 also ran a cover feature on "The CEOs' secret handbook," which actually turned out to be pure plagiarism of a book published in 1944. More recently, B2.0 celebrated domain-parking and spam-blogging as great businesses to get in on.

So it was clearly time for B2.0 to go. And perhaps nothing said it better than the cover of their anorexic final issue, now available on newsstands and my upstairs bathroom. (Click below to see it.)

Have Freepers Taken Over The Onion?

The Onion, of course, is a neverending gift of post-postmodern thrills. And for the past few months, it's included an editorial cartoon that shaves so close to its target, it makes Colbert look like a 1970s MAD magazine feature.

To wit:

At first glance, it appears that the Freepers have stormed The Onion's headquarters with their pitchforks and flags and beautiful, beautiful guns. Now that's great satire.

Via the essential Comics Curmudgeon, the LA Times blew the freaking door off this mockery of the op-ed cartoon. The hateful reactionary cartoonist "Kelly" is really Village Voice liberal Ward Sutton:

Ward Sutton's "Kelly" cartoons for The Onion are 24-carat fool's gold. Their wheels-within-wheels-within-wheels layers of lampoon and self-reference make it nearly impossible to tell the dancer from the dance.

And I have to wonder whether the "Kelly" toons have made the rounds of right-wingers' email inboxes.

***

From A.O. Scott's intensely nauseated review of last January's action flick Smokin' Aces:

“F.B.I.! F.B.I.!” Blam blam blam blam. “[Expletive]. [Expletive].” Blam blam blam. Spurt of blood. Plot twist. “F.B.I.! F.B.I.!” “[Expletive].” Blam blam blam blam blam. “[Expletive].” “F.B.I.!” “Hotel Security!” Blam. Exploding skull. Guy sits on a chain saw. Montage. [Expletive]. Plot twist. Roll credits.

From the television ad for the Smokin' Aces DVD release:

The New York Times had the following to say about Smokin' Aces: “F.B.I.! F.B.I.!” Blam blam blam blam. “[Expletive].” Blam blam blam. Plot twist. Blam. Plot twist. Roll credits.

Also from Scott's review:

Watching it is like being smacked in the face for a hundred minutes with a raw sirloin steak.

Also from the TV ad:

Buy it on DVD next Tuesday.

Dirty Sanchez

With loved ones, co-workers, and friends still shocked by the heroism of James Kim and the tragedy of his miscalculations, CNN is doing the only thing it can to honor his memory -- sending Rick Sanchez to survive in the mountains.

For those familiar with Sanchez's histrionics in the '80s and '90s on Miami's Fox and NBC affiliates, seeing his mug on CNN ("The Most Trusted Name in News") is a brutal shock to the nervous system. Imagine being from Cleveland and seeing Carl Monday named editor of Harpers. Or being from L.A. and seeing Mark Fuhrman nominated to be Ambassador to the United Nations. Or being from

That's what seeing Sanchez on CNN is like. It's a taint on the institution. And by "taint," I don't just mean "stain" or "moral defect," I mean the "smelly ridge of skin just south of the genitals." And Sanchez has been exactly the tapdancing fool that CNN ordered up, with a body of work that includes trying to escape from a sinking car and taking an on-air tasering.

I have one Rick Sanchez memory that I'd like to add to the Internet, since my Google searches for it have been unfulfilled. During his tenure anchoring the prime newscasts on Miami's Channel 7, Sanchez dominated the Miami New Times "Least Credible TV News Personality" category in its annual Best of Miami issue. After Sanchez ran off a Jordan-esqe dynasty of victories in the category, the New Times staff restored parity in the most appropriate way -- by disqualifying him and naming the award after him. I'm not sure how long they actually stuck with it, but in all honesty, it's hard to imagine anyone deserving of a "Rick Sanchez Award" besides the Ricker himself. Maybe Geraldo Rivera, but he's a Hall-of-Famer.

Now Sanchez is heading for the hills -- albeit the Rockies, not the coastal Sierras -- in order to experience the conditions that killed James Kim. How tasteful. I'm rooting for a bear.

Satire, RIP

2000 was the Year of Satire. The only thing anyone remembers from the Bush-Gore debates was when Bush said "Strategery." Except Will Ferrell said it. More and more college kids discovered The Daily Show. And a poll showed that a disturbing number of American adults considered comedy and talk shows to be primary news sources.

And 2006 will be the Year Satire Died.

How do I know? Watch this man in a necktie sing a parody of U2's "One," with the lyrics changed to celebrate the merger of America's biggest bank and biggest credit card issuer:

Now, I'm not being mean to Jim DuBois, the rock star above. He's probably a decent, hard-working guy with a 529 college fund for his kids. Yes, he should have ditched the necktie, and he could have chosen a more appropriate sing to lampoon. (It's not as bad as, say, Mervyn's hammering its name into "My Sharona," but a more hopeful and celebratory song would have been less reminiscent of David Brent.)

Anyway, this work of art posted to YouTube on Nov. 8. And then this happened last Saturday, just ten days later:

That's David Cross providing the literal read of the B-of-A/MBNA merger song. It's obviously pointless to parody a parody song, but you can ironically cover a parody song and still get your point across. And when David Cross can transform a corporate event video on YouTube into a stage performance in just one week, satire no longer becomes necessary -- a word-for-word re-creation suffices.

And isn't satire dying anyway? The Daily Show often devolves into an anti-Bush polemic and has lost its funniest correspondents (exceptions: Hodgman, Jones). There's nary a clever sketch comedy show on television anymore; even the "sketches" on Studio 60 are preachy and unamusing. The major targets for satire -- politicians, celebrities, corporations -- are so cartoonish, it's hardly of any use to make fun.

Need some more evidence that satire is on a feeding tube? Fox "News" is launching a right-leaning version of The Daily Show. Problem: Irony is like Sanskrit to conservatives. This has the same prospects for success as an action-adventure show produced by Rob Reiner. Oh, wait:

The half-hour show is executive produced by "24's" Joel Surnow and Manny Cota.

And we all know that if there's one thing that sets 24 apart, it's its sense of humor. "WHERE IS HASSAN HIDING THE NERVE GAS?!? DAMNIT!"

"It's not going to hit you over the head with partisan politics," Surnow said. "It'll hit anything that deserves to be hit."

Fair and balanced, like the rest of Fox "News."

The title "This Just In" was scrapped after producers found out the name was being used by an HBO-AOL production.

Also, it used to be the title of the second segment on The Daily Show.

At least it wouldn't take much to make the Fox version's cast more racially diverse than Comedy Central's. Now wouldn't that be ironic?

Abortion Kidnap Rap

A little closer...

Right now, you're asking yourself: "Abortion kidnap rap"? I didn't know the Geto Boyz were still recording.

Here's the article. The real headline: "Lawyer: Alleged abortion kidnap plan a 'family tragedy'."

This story is too drowning in stereotypes to be completely true. Two racist real estate developers from Maine -- named Kampf!!! -- allegedly abducted and bound their own 19-year-old daughter for an interstate abortion run because they didn't like that her baby-daddy was black. And the baby-daddy "last week began serving a 6-month sentence for theft at the Androscoggin County Jail in Auburn, Maine. He also has previous felony convictions for burglary and receiving stolen property."

Why does this sound familiar?

Oh, and that burning smell? That's your hope for the progress of humankind.

Content-free News Network

I'm enrolled in CNN's Breaking News Alerts, a practice I do not recommend. Here are the last two I received:

-- Suspected killer William Morva is in custody, a law enforcement official says. No further details were immediately available.

Who needs details? I feel safer just knowing a suspected killer is in custody.

-- A source involved in returning John Mark Karr to the United States says the man accused of killing JonBenet Ramsey made unsolicited statements to law enforcement officers while being taken to L.A. County Jail.

Wow! He made statements? This is why God created email alerts -- to disseminate important, timely information.

CNN: Hire me to write your alerts! Here's my audition reel:

-- Person led police on 12-mile vehicle chase in western United States.
-- Reports: President Bush sent statement to Iran.
-- Two NBA teams have traded players and draft picks. No details available.

***

I'm checking my dignity and spending the rest of the week in sticky Washington, DC. Posting may be sporadic. Lucky you.

A Picture is Worth 1,000 Tons of Bullshit

What does the Israeli assault on Hizbollah in Lebanon have to do with OJ Simpson? They were guilty, and they were framed.

As with everything else surrounding the perma-conflict in the Middle East, your opinion of the recent Israel-Hizbollah war seems predetermined by the opinions you already held about Israel, Arabs, Islam, Zionism, or terrorism. So it is that the pro-Israel world jumped all over the revelations that some photographers and editors were staging and even altering pictures to make the damage in Lebanon look more severe. One of the photogs, Adnan Hajj, enhanced the smoke over Beirut (see above) in such a hackneyed way that a color-blind orangutan should have been able to spot the Photoshop chicanery. (Seriously, the Daily Show has better Photoshops than that crap.) And now the right-wingers who think the world media is universally comprised of anti-Western, pro-Islam leftists get to trot this out as evidence for their paranoia.

The fact remains that even if unscrupulously scummy photogs, journalists and editors are staging and doctoring the war's visuals, Israel still bombed the shit out of Lebanon and killed a lot of people, albeit in the pursuit of their own survival. But just as the Los Angeles DA and LAPD let OJ escape whatever justice he deserved by unethically padding an already airtight case, anti-Israel elements of the media have cast doubt on whatever case they were trying to make to the world. CBS News was guilty of this, too; the righteous scandal about false documents overshadowed the fact that President Bush still never reported for Guard duty during Vietnam. They were guilty, and they were framed.

(I'm not really comparing Israel to OJ. The analogy would only be fair if Nicole had been slipping ground glass into his oatmeal and dropping her Sony Watchman into the hot tub when he was taking a schvitz.)

Amid all the hubbub, CNET ran a wicked photo gallery of famous doctored pictures, from OJ's darkened Time cover to John Kerry's non-appearance with Hanoi Jane. But of all of them, I think this one is still my all-time favorite:

Can you guess which person on the cover of Wisconsin's 2001-2002 application booklet was not at Camp Randall that day?

Cable News: Keeping Us Dumb

On Saturday night, after a long, delightful day at the ballpark and a friend's birthday, I plopped down on the couch to catch up on the latest developments of World War III. Here's what the cable "news" networks had to offer during the 10pm hour:

CNN Headline News: They pretty much gave up on reporting when they hired the Angel of Death to work in prime time. Last Saturday night, as the wide Middle East war escalated ominously, CNNHN featured Glenn Beck. He was ranting about how rated R movies have too much sex in them.

MSNBC: Hour-long investigative report about DNA evidence in murder cases.

Fox "News": Ah! Finally some analysis! Israel, it turns out, is showing great restraint because they haven't launched a nuke at Gaza yet. Case closed!

CNBC: Which companies are making money in China, and how can you profit?

But CNN, the Most Trusted Name in News, they must be all over this right? Nobody watches CNN until crisis time, but when the doodoo hits the fan, everyone tunes in.

Of course, I'm not a professional journalist, editor, wonk, or network programmer, but there must have been some excellent reason why CNN was showing a rerun of Larry King's interview with Dan Rather.

Ahem:

DOESN'T ANYBODY CARE ABOUT WORLD WAR III?

Today, the most critical event in the world is President Bush saying "shit."

SHIT!

(Other note: traffic is way up for searches for Ronald Reagan's open microphone disaster, which wasn't technically an open mic gaffe at all.)

The Improbable Media Monopoly

The Village Voice is a corporation as soulless as Home Depot. You didn't know that? Well then you must have missed last night's spirited panel discussion on the chaotic flux of the newspaper business, titled "The Coming Media Monopoly: Concentration of Press Ownership and Its Effects." Which is unfortunate, because it was a good time.

The discussions of the panel, which included the newspaper union boss, an editor of San Francisco's biggest Spanish-language daily, and the editors of the SF Bay Guardian and East Bay Express, were provocative and fascinating, if more than occasionally misguided. Should we be concerned that one company -- MediaNews -- is trying to consolidate every major daily newspaper in the Bay Area outside the San Francisco city limits? Should we be concerned that Clear Channel's country station in Kansas City is the same as in Atlanta? Should we be concerned that the SF Weekly is pricing ad space so low that the SFBG can barely stay in business?

No, I don't think so.

But first, let's address the topic of "media monopoly." This morning, as I ate my breakfast, I enjoyed an excellent story about oil and gas geopolitics on KQED, a public radio station to which I send a annual donation that my evil corporate employer matches. Then I reluctantly left my apartment, where DirecTV provides me 200-odd channels owned by 120-odd companies. I recently switched to DirecTV from their cable competitor Comcast, and soon telephone companies will be able to pipe television in California. Choices, choices! When am I going to have time for YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo! Video, and Break? Not to mention the nine magazines that come to my door every week or month, published by eight different companies.

So, I walked down to BART and admired the 12 or so newspaper racks. Eight of those 12 are dailies, and most are published within a few miles of that BART station. But I decided to skip the assortment of newspapers, and my stack of magazines, and instead used my short train ride to listen to a podcast of To the Best of Our Knowledge. When I got to work, I checked Yahoo! News, SFGate, and SFist, plus my daily Miami Dolphins e-newsletter from the Miami Herald.

Oh, this dreary media monopoly! Someday soon our only choice will be Pravda!

Cynthia McKinney and Ronald Reagan Grab the Open Mic and Choke Up

CNN's Jeanne Moos has a piece online about politicians getting nicked when they're close to a live mic. The piece itself is a rather meaningless montage of famous private-conversations-gone-public, but really it's about CNN having an excuse to run some hot footage of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, uppity guard puncher, calling her aide Coz Carson a "fool."

After McKinney recognized she'd been busted, she came over to the off-camera segment producer and said, "That was off the record." You can see her smile and try hard -- really, really hard -- not to flip out, but CNN ran it anyway. It's McKinney who plays the fool, again, which fits the current media storyline (and probably reality) on her.

So how does CNN get this tape on the air as news? Well, if they were Fox, they would have just run a "Fox News Alert" and then replayed the footage on Fox & Friends, Dayside, Your World, Big Story, the Factor, and finally Hannity and Warmbody, over and over, until they eventually got to the story of McKinney's poor aide resigning from what must the worst job on earth. Maybe he'll go on Fox to ream her. This is how Republicans run a damn TV network

CNN is like the Democrats, trying to appeal broadly while still losing by not playing dirty. So to contrive this juicy not-really-news clip onto their fiber, they run file footage of other politicians and public persons saying something they shouldn't on the air. Voila, feature! Prince Charles disses a BBC reporter. Britney Spears disses her dancers. Bush & Cheney declare a NY Times reporter a "major-league asshole," and Cheney agrees, "big time."

And then you get Reagan's "We begin bombing in five minutes" joke, which wasn't really an open-mic gaffe as much as a "sound check" joke that got on tape. And then you get Connie Chung's merciless media-rape of Newt Gingrich's smokin' old momma, pretty much the last unsupervised mom-of-politician interview ever to happen. Newt called the First Lady a bitch. That was just between Mama Gingrich and Connie Maury'swife, you see. Courageous.

Eventually, the piece returns to the money shot, Congresswoman McKinney demanding the camera crew not use the footage of her plunging a knife into her top aide's back. The piece doesn't show whether they told the Congresswoman they would use it, sell it, or hold it. It's just McKinney, desperately trying to save her mangled scraps of dignity, serving herself up as media gristle again.