When The New York Times Magazine issued a new “redesign”…

a publication within a publication, I may add, that has had some reasonably in-depth articles addressing this and that issue that you’re hard-pressed to see in the “regular” newspaper of the New York Times.  Long Form Journalism and all that…

… as well as our blog-o-listo-thingy of the moment trend …

But be that as it may… the query.  Expressed in In These Times here.

The Editor’s Letter gushed about new typefaces and heavier paper stock, and boasted, “You will also find, I am pleased to say, more pages of advertising than in any issue since October 2007” (a line that has since been changed in the online version).

Who are they trying to impress by pointing out that they have a whole whole whole lot of advertisements?  Because you know… generally speaking, those things are at best necessary evil and …

… unless they’re trying to impress potential advertisers.  Wait.

The Long National Nightmare is over.  Vladimir Putin suddenly re-appeared after an eleven day absence.  He was off on Russia’s version of the Appalachia Trail — around Krasnoyarsk, I suppose — and is back.

Not A Coup.  Or maybe it is in the sense that he was working out some matters with the inner chambers of power.

I saw a curious news commentary about Putin’s disappearing, claiming that the great amount of on the edge of their seat wondering in Russia about “Where’s Putin” shows how much the man has become a dictator and “indispensable” gnabbing power.  Without saying anything about Putin one way or another, I find this example ludicrous.  Imagine Obama disappeared for eleven days… the result in America would be… roughly the same.  I mean, remember that governor and the Appalachian Trail…

Ah, the Perils of Reality Programming.

Mr. Durst was acquitted in the Texas killing, and was never arrested in the disappearance of his wife or the death of his friend. But on Saturday, he found himself in custody once again, arrested on a charge of murder as he walked into a New Orleans hotel he had checked into under a false name.
On Sunday night, in the final moments of the final episode of a six-part HBO documentary about him, “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” Mr. Durst seemed to veer toward a confession that could lift the shroud of mystery that surrounds the deaths of three people over the course of three decades.
“What the hell did I do?” Mr. Durst whispers to himself in an unguarded moment caught on a microphone he wore during filming. “Killed them all, of course.”

He does have a good alibi, of sorts.  Nobody believes anything on Reality Programming is “Real”, and everybody who does these shows always goes into “acting” mode, acting for the cameras.  If you remember, Jim Carey on the Truman Show veered into camera-mode when he knew everything about him was being staged.

So he can make his situation similar to the hip hop artist who talked of doing big bad things.  Or go the OJ Simpson route and suggest they missed a caveat of “IF” or a hypothetical before “Kill them all, of course” or “I Did It”.

Why is he having HBO follow him around for a long in-depth show?  Is that Just Narcissism?

This actually is pretty hilarious.

The Wall Street Journal is positing that the Justice Department of Democratic President Barack Obama has siced Democratic Senator Robert Menendez his disagreements on Iran.  Just look at the timing.

So too says Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

Curious.  Logic dictates that the fall of a DEMOCRAT on corruption can only harm the political standing of other politicos on Team DEMOCRAT.  But nay.

Wait.  They’re defending a liberal (in their eyes)?  I suppose they might have done the same with Lieberman, hypothetically.

At least we have some odd sense of policy over party politics in this conspiracy mongering.

And I imagine that Chris Christie is either defending Menendez covertly  or loving that it disinfects him somehow — it’s either Just another case of New Jersey politics or someone that shines greater than he to shade back into “corrupt” moonlight.

Hm.

Before he was busted for inventing war stories, “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams had pitched NBC and CBS about making him the next Jay Leno or David Letterman.

He didn’t try for a new talk show on Fox?

  As so happens this article in the National Review isn’t too bad… in terms of carrying on about the proliferation of the word “slut” as some show of, oh, “taking back the word and concept” or whatever.  Bits and pieces of it I’d gather some feminist critics of “slut walk”agree with in some manner.

But it is a kind of “hm”.  “The Roots of Female Rage” as your cover trope.  It would only make sense if I knew of a “Roots of Male Rage” polemic.  What were the titles with “Roots of [blank] Rage”?  I google.  See a 1990 Atlantic article “Roots of Muslim Rage”, and the D’Souza book “Roots of Obama’s Rage”.

So.  It is whatever it is.

Benjamin Netanyahu speaks before a joint Congress, to pre-empt anything Obama is dealing with with the Iranian government…

… the, er, chief ally in the war in Iraq against ISIS…

… and runs for the Republican Party nomination in 2016.

causing a little bit of a hedging with Powers going up to reiterate the sames issues as Netanyahu, and Netanyahu playing the same game…

In case you’re curious of the names of the 60 Congress-critters who didn’t show up… well, here you go.  It was the biggest ticket in town, with a lot of Congress critters having to turn down ticket-askers.  I suppose the 60 Congress critters could’ve handed their tickets to their fellow foes to hand out.

I’m trying to recall this movie serial, which was shown a whole bunch of times on the low watt Fox affiliate, starring Leonard Nimoy.

Was it Zombies of the Stratosphere?

The invaders come to Earth to create an H-bomb to blast Earth out of orbit so that Mars can take its place.

Yeah.  That was it.

Every other chapter ending seemed to cheat, with an explosion showing the hero’s life ending, and the next chapter beginning by back-tracking  hero jumping out of the way before the explosion.

Well.  Rest in Peace, Leonard Nimoy.  I’ll always remember you for your role as … um… Narab.

The “hot water” that Bill O’Reilly is in versus the “hot water” of Brian Williams.

And, there is one thing you can give Bill O’Reilly.  He is in the interest of pontification.  If he wants to make up broad stories about watching war horrors that never happened, it hurts his credibility that he never had in the first place.  Brian Williams is a glorified news reader, who wants to relay more harrowing war anecdotes than he has.

It is curious, the way memory works, that I do wonder if Williams was mis-remembering … flattering himself in memory, embellishing because the funny thing about a lot of experiences (even broadly understood as dramatic experiences) is… there’s sometimes less than there is in there.  Of course, the problem with Williams is you need to keep your memory centered as part of the “objectivity” aspect of the job duty.

The strange history of Bill O’Reilly in combat goes us back to an incident … The Radio Factor (Fox News Talk), 18 January 2005 … Roger from Portland would later be a guest on the Al Franken Show in a show replayed twice over the weekend, one curious problem of liberal radio — they kept talking about conservative radio.

Roger from Portland 
You just said you’ve been in combat, but you’ve never been in the military, have you?

Bill O’Reilly
No, I have not.

Roger from Portland
Then why do you say you’ve been in combat?

Bill O’Reilly
Why do I say that, Roger? Because I was in the middle of a couple of firefights in South and Central America.

Roger from Portland
But you were a media guy.

Bill O’Reilly
Yeah. A media guy with a pen, not a gun. And people were shooting at me, Roger.

Hillary Clinton … Bosnian Snipers… What did this one mean?

“I did make a mistake in talking about it, you know, the last time and recently,” Clinton told reporters in Pennsylvania where she was campaigning before the state’s April 22 primary. She said she had a “different memory” about the landing.
“So I made a mistake. That happens. It proves I’m human, which, you know, for some people, is a revelation.”
“This is really about what policy experience we have and who’s ready to be commander in chief. And I’m happy to put my experience up against Senator Obama’s any day.”

Bill O’Reilly and Fox News’s tact is that he’s being “targeted” by his “enemies”.  Which he is.  And good for them for exposing that.  Of course, O’Reilly would be the first to “target” Clinton on the Bosnian Sniper story, or anything candidate Clinton comes out with in 2016 by way of it all.