[via BRENDAN CALLING] PHILADELPHIA – The publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer is defending his decision to make former football player Michael Vick a regular columnist who will write about breeding and raising dogs. Vick was the “the key figure” of an extensive unlawful interstate dogfighting ring operating over a period of five years that critics call cruelty to animals. One critic of the Inquirer’s Vick columns says it’s like having O.J. Simpson write about the criminal justice system. Inquirer Publisher Brian Tierney says that’s a silly comparison. He says Simpson has been found liable for wrongful death of a human […]
TONITE: Look! Up In The Sky! It’s A Bird! It’s A Plane!
No, It’s…Minotaur! An Air Force Minotaur 1 rocket will be launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Tuesday, May 19th, between 735PM and 1130PM. This rocket may be visible by residents in the Eastern United States as a bright light heading to the southeast from the mid-Atlantic coast. Given the weather forecast calls for clear skies; NASA believes it may be possible for this event to be seen from Philadelphia. [via CITY OF PHILADELPHIA ALERT SYSTEM]
ST. VINCENT: Actor Out Of Work
At First Unitarian Thursday with Pattern Is Movement.
HOT DOC: Disbarment Complaint Against John Yoo
NEW YORK TIMES: A coalition of left-wing advocacy groups filed legal ethics complaints on Monday against 12 former Bush administration lawyers, including three United States attorneys general, whom the groups accuse of helping to justify torture. The coalition, called Velvet Revolution, asked the bar associations in four states and the District of Columbia to disbar the lawyers, saying their actions violated the rules of professional responsibility by approving interrogation methods, including waterboarding, that constituted illegal torture. By writing or approving legal opinions justifying such methods, the advocates say, the Bush administration lawyers violated the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture […]
THIS JUST IN: Fiery Furnaces At Kung Fu Necktie 6/10
Picture unrelated.
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Best known for creating the TV series Nip/Tuck, writer, director and producer Ryan Murphy turns his attention to high school in Glee, his upcoming comedy series for Fox. The series features a high school choir director and his ragtag group of singers. In addition to his television work, Murphy has penned screenplays for Running With Scissors as well as Eat, Pray, Love, based on Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling memoir. RADIO TIMES Hour One State Rep Mark Cohen has authored a bill to make the use of medical marijuana legal in Pennsylvania. To date, 13 states have legalized medicinal cannabis. […]
COURTS: American Apparel Settles With Woody Allen
NEW YORK TIMES: So much for the trial of the century: a lawsuit filed by Woody Allen against American Apparel was quickly settled on Monday morning for $5 million, Reuters reported. Mr. Allen was suing the clothing maker for using without permission an image of him from “Annie Hall,” in which he was dressed as a Hasidic Jew, on billboards that appeared in New York and Los Angeles and in online advertisements. The weeks leading up to Monday’s brief courtroom action had been tense. In a deposition in December, Mr. Allen said the ads were “sleazy” and “infantile,” according to […]
CONCERT REVIEW: As Nasty As She Wants To Be
[Painting by WILHELM SASNAL] BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER If Peaches never existed, she would have surely invented herself. In fact, that’s exactly how Merrill Beth Nisker, a 41-year-old former drama teacher from Ontario, transformed into Peaches, electroclash’s preeminent erotic provocateur/party animal. For the last 10 years, she’s been transgressing the boundaries of good taste and common decency with album titles like Impeach My Bush and trashy retrofitted 80s dance music that advocates fornication as the palliative cure for the pain and boredom of modern existence. In the process, she has built a swelling cult of gender freaks, hipster […]
YOO HOOEY: Inky’s Harold Jackson And Daily News’ Will Bunch Trade Blows Over ‘Torture Guy’ Editorialist
HAROLD JACKSON: Paris. Yes, the one in France. That’s the farthest point from which The Inquirer received e-mails protesting our contract with John Yoo to write a monthly column, which mostly centers on legal topics. The hundreds of e-mails received are a testament to the power of the blogosphere, and of its superiority to newspapers in getting the word out about, well, about anything. But I’ll save my whining about the murky future of my preferred vehicle of employment for a later date. Obviously, people would prefer that I talk about Yoo, the former Bush Justice Department official who penned memos […]
WHERE’S THE BEEF: Inquirer Puff Piece On Glenn Beck Long On Froth, Short On Questioning All The Hateful Moronic Things He Has Said Over The Years
UPDATE: Glenn Beck Puff Piece Author John Timpane Is Live Chatting With Readers RIGHT NOW! INQUIRER PUFF PIECE ABOUT GLENN BECK: Glenn Beck is dressed to kill. His show on Fox News hits in about an hour, and he’s ready in black suit, pink shirt, maroon tie — and black Converse Chuck Taylor high-top sneakers, no laces. The Chucks, like Beck himself, are upmarket with a dash of irreverence.Depending on who’s talking, Beck, 45, is a hero, maniac, lightning rod. He calls himself “a guy on the radio bus.” That bumpy ride took him through Philadelphia and WPHT-AM (1210), where […]
I, GAMER: I Walked With A Zombie
BY ADAM BONANNI There’s a special place in hell reserved for Popcap Games. They’ve been addicting droves of casual gamers with Bejeweled and Peggle for years, and now they’re back to pick up the rest with Plants vs. Zombies. Well played, Popcap. I have friends who need to be in Peggle rehab, and now we to deal with this. Plants vs. Zombies belongs to the tower defense genre. The objective behind these games is to build a series of auto-attacking defensive towers along a path that a horde of enemies traverses. If any enemies reach the end of the path, […]
‘The Past Isn’t Dead, It Isn’t Even Past’
NEW YORK TIMES: TO paraphrase Al Pacino in “Godfather III,” just when we thought we were out, the Bush mob keeps pulling us back in. And will keep doing so. No matter how hard President Obama tries to turn the page on the previous administration, he can’t. Until there is true transparency and true accountability, revelations of that unresolved eight-year nightmare will keep raining down drip by drip, disrupting the new administration’s high ambitions. That’s why the president’s flip-flop on the release of detainee abuse photos — whatever his motivation — is a fool’s errand. The pictures will eventually emerge […]
WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS: POTUS On First
ASSOCIATED PRESS: The Philadelphia Phillies are set to visit the White House to celebrate their World Series victory. The Phillies are scheduled to meet with President Obama on Friday. A planned April visit was called off due to the death of the Phillies’ Hall of Fame announcer Harry Kalas. Spokeswoman Bonnie Clark says the Phillies plan to present a special gift to President Obama, but want the president to be the first to know what that gift will be. The Phillies are opening a three-day, four-game series with the Washington Nationals. MORE BBC: Civil liberties groups have reacted angrily to […]