Pre-commercial bumper on Dennis Miller, CNBC, Feb. 25, 2004.*
“‘Paki’ is an extreme racial slur used to refer to people of South Asian origin. It is a South Asian equivalent of the term ‘Jap’ or the ‘N word.’ President Bush apologized after using the word last year at a press conference.”
(From, an open letter from the Asian American Journalists Association, March 4, 2003)
“Paki” is listed in The Racial Slur Database
To do: Send email to Dennis Miller to express your disapproval of racial slurs on television.
*Weird angle and TV screen-within-screen is the style of the bumper, not the screen shot
Author: matt
We interviewed a completely random selection of movie goers exiting the 12PM screening of The Passion of the Christ in Brooklyn to get their opinions on this controversial film.
|
“I didn’t see it. I was here to see Welcome to Mooseport, which, incidentally, is a little anti-Semitic. But I still love Raymond!” |
|
“If I could say just one thing to Mr. Gibson, it would be ‘Can you read my comedy script about a Hasidic Jewish crime fighter?’ What? Someone already made that movie? Well, there goes my last six months.” |
|
“I’m shocked. Disgusted. This place charges $4.50 for a small Diet Coke. I brought my four young children and it cost me $85 dollars. Very offensive. Very.” |
|
“You’d think with everyone in Hollywood studying the Kabbalah, they’d be a little more sensitive. Mel should spend more time with Madonna and Paris Hilton: he might learn some wisdom and compassion. Ha! I’m joking. Some of us have senses of humor, you know.” |
|
“Well, it was a lot less offensive to the Jews than the last Woody Allen film. Anything Else? I called it ‘From Hunger’.” |
|
“Yes, it was extremely anti-Semitic. But what movie is perfect, right?” |
 |
“Critics need to lay off Mel Gibson. This was just one man’s opinion. One man with $25 million to spend on production and another $25 million for promotions to tell it. Like I said, just one man and his opinion.” |
|
“Loved it. Loved, loved, loved it! My name is Self-Hater I. Jewman, by the way.” |
Categories
Talking Pod’s Memo
Johnny on the Spot: 9 PM, via satellite… 11PM, live and in the flesh
Right wing relaxed fit Beltway pundit, John Podhoretz made a comedians-turned-pundits bank shot by appearing on Dennis Miller’s eponymous CNBC show and Comedy Central‘s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night. He managed to trade quips with both men without breaking a sweat or changing his flattering grey suit with matching blue shirt and yellow tie (in honor of the troops?).
What he didn’t manage to do, however, was come up with enough material for both shows. While promoting his new book Bush Country (the title of which is a deliciously naughty mnemonic tautology), he dusted off a few choice chestnuts. Very few.
From, Dennis Miller, 9PM EST, Feb. 24, 2004:
Dennis Miller: Gimme three or four the most crazy liberal ideas about our President.
John Podhoretz: Well, I think I got eight of them in the book. One of them, of course, is that he’s an idiot—which I think that anyone who believes by now is an idiot because he keeps de-pantsing people who underestimate him… The other is that he’s a puppet of his dad, uh, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, the neo-conservatives—no one can decide who he’s a puppet of because he’s not a puppet, he’s his own man… Liberals think that he’s a religious fanatic… [They] say he’s a cowboy… These are some of ways he’s mischaracterized, misrepresented.
From, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, 11PM EST, Feb. 24, 2004:
John Podhoretz: I do believe that a lot of people who criticize the President do criticize him in a reckless and irresponsible and unfair fashion. As you mentioned, I go through the book, eight, what I call ‘Crazy Liberal Ideas About Bush.’ One that’s he’s a moron, one that he’s a puppet, one that he’s a religious fanatic, one that he’s like Hitler, and so on…
Repeat it one more time, and Beetlejuice will appear!
Categories
They Found It At the Movies
Esquire, August 1970
“In his prerelease screenings, Mr. Gibson invited mostly conservative evangelical clergy. They in turn responded by reserving huge blocks of movie tickets for their congregations. When the film opens today, expect theaters around the country to be turned into temporary churches.”
– Kenneth L. Woodward, Do You Recognize This Jesus?, The New York Times, Feb. 25, 2004
Dogs Constitutionally- recognized as better than cats
No more special treatment for Hershey’s Special Dark Chocolate
Paul made the Constitutionally- recognized best Beatle
Infield Fly Rule unilaterally banned
Lefties to be forced to become righties, or be burned at the stake
Discussions about the weather in elevators no longer protected by First Amendment
Super intelligent robots, should they be invented, never to be endowed with human emotions under penalty of being unplugged
Categories
Co-opting the Friedman
The pissing contest between FOX 411 gossip columnist Roger Friedman and The New York Times‘ Hollywood reporter Sharon Waxman has spilled over into Cynthia Cotts’ Press Clips column in this week’s Village Voice.
To be honest, Friedman’s doing most of the pissing, complaining that Waxman is boosting his exclusives without attribution. He complained to Times Public Editor, Daniel Okrent, who decided that Waxman had done nothing wrong.
Buried at the bottom of Cotts’ story is this nugget:
Sometimes Friedman gets it right. But anyone who starts crowing about inaccurate and unethical reporting will eventually have the spotlight turned on himself. Other scribes express varying degrees of affection and pity for Friedman. One calls him “marginal, with delusions of grandeur”; another says he wants “to be respected.”
[…]
The worst rap on Friedman is that he shills for Miramax, a charge he denies. He edited an Oscar supplement for Talk magazine in 2000, and Miramax backed the 2003 r&b documentary Only the Strong Survive, which Friedman co-produced. Colleagues say his column often repeats Miramax spin.
Reminds me of this passage from Peter Biskind’s Down and Dirty Pictures:
“The most notorious example [of Harvey Weinstein manipulating the press] is Roger Friedman, who often uses his Internet gossip column, 411, to tout (and very occasionally knock) Miramax films. Says [former Miramax publicist Dennis] Higgins, ‘There’s no one in the pocket like Roger. It’s almost, “Whaddya want him to write?” We [even] got him to say The Shipping News is great.'” (p. 410)
Perhaps fittingly, Waxman writes today about factual inaccuracies in Capturing the Friedmans.
Categories
Doll (Private) Parts
“With Karen’s face obscured, it became hard to tell whether she was real or not.”
Disclaimer: The link to this story is absolutely not safe for work! (Especially if you work at a toy store.)
Grant Stoddard, Nerve‘s jolly human guinea pig, makes love to a Real Doll in his “I Did it For Science” column month.
The photos are way disturbing, especially the fact that the doll looks so much like Britney Spears.
Can’t they make a doll whose eyes close when it’s horizontal, like those dolls kids play with?
Categories
Dirty Dancing: Rewrites
A riddle for the ages: How many screenwriters does it take to make a hit?
Apparently eight. Coming this Friday, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, written by:
1. Victoria Arch
2. Ronald Bass (writer of every movie, ever; cf. Tad Friend’s “The Two-Billion Dollar Man,” in Lost in Mongolia)
3. Jonathan Bernstein (former SPIN writer and author)
4. Mark Blackwell (former SPIN editor)
5. Pamela Gray
6. James Greer (former SPIN editor and author)
7. Christina Wayne (writer, Dominique Dunne – An American Tragedy: The E! True Hollywood Story)
8. Boaz Yakin (once promising writer/director of Fresh, more recently, director of Uptown Girls)
Can’t you just see them all in one big room, laptops networked together, ideas flying left and right? Teamwork: it’s a beautiful thing.
Of course, all of them combined couldn’t come up with a line as quotable as “Nobody puts Baby in a corner!”
Categories
Collect ‘Em All!
The New York Post‘s The Passion of The Christ Collector’s Edition Covers:
Related: Coming soon, Mad Max: Fury Road, to be produced by Mel Gibson’s Icon Productions and released by 20th Century Fox.
Categories
Brett Ratner, Character Witness
Brett Ratner talking about Michael Jackson’s underage accuser:
“[The boy] would sit in my director’s chair. When I told him to get up, he’d tell me to go to hell… He used to tell me, ‘Brett, I don’t like the last shot’ while he was watching us make the movie. He’s telling me how to make my movie! He’s more street smart than I was at that age. If someone tried to fondle him, he’d punch them in the face. He’s an adult. I think the jury will see that.” (From Roger Friedman’s FOX 411 column, Feb. 24, 2004)
So the kid thought Ratner couldn’t make a movie? He’s obviously a child prodigy. From this point forth, I believe everything he has to say.