A Titan is dead.

I first saw "Ben Hur" downtown in Nashville, I think around Christmas of '60 or '61. I can't be sure of the year. I have seen it several times since then. It is an inspiring movie, beautifully filmed with a script to match. It made Heston a star, and he deserved it.

If a man is known by the enemies he has made, then Charlton Heston stands at the top of the mountain looking down on the likes of George Clooney and Michael Moore. Neither are known for doing much beyond complaining when complaining carries no penalties.

Their nasty comments are mindful of a small poodle, barking with no reason beyond the feel good of the bark, and the hopeful approval of other poodles.

Heston told us about the giants of the world while demonstrating for civil rights at a time when such a position carried with it not only threats of lost employment, but physical harm.

One his best comments was: "Political correctness is tyranny with manners."

Like John Wayne before him, he cannot be replaced.

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Rube Goldberg??

Gizmodo

"Awesome, pointless, engineering fun. We love it."

Al-Jazeera and Dave Marrash

This comes from an interview between Dave Marash and the Columbia Journalism Review. Marash supposedly is telling us why he first went to work forf Al Jazeera and why he left.

”Now, as anchor, I was in position to vouch for at least half of the material that went on air because I got to speak it and I could edit it on the fly if I felt that there were any inaccuracies or imbalances in it. But when the proposal was made that I leave the anchor chair [he was informed of this in December and his last day as anchor was March 13] and become a sort of heavy correspondent, I knew that I would never be able to have the kind of editorial input or control that would put me in a position to honestly vouch for anything.”

Plainer. They wanted a stooge and to his credit, Marash wouldn’t be one. And when they removed him from being anchor, he quit.
My problem with Marash is that he couldn’t figure that out before he went to work for them. So now he has to dither and back and forth as if he didn’t know that it was a Muslim network and as such would toe the line. You know what? He probably didn’t. That alone says a lot about journalists in general. In their self appointed desire to change the world…To be the deciders of what is to be done…. they exhibit a remarkable lack of plain old common sense.
He concludes with this.

So if you watched and every piece seemed tendentious and pissed you off, and I don’t think that would be the case, but even if worst case the channel turned shrill and shallow, you would still want to watch them on the principle that millions—tens of millions—of people watch them every day and you need to know what’s going on in their brains.

Note to “Journalists.” Quit calling yourselves “journalists.” You are “reporters.” Report the facts and quit worrying about what is going on in people’s minds. That is what your reader is supposed to do when you have reported the facts.


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