That's Entertainment!

The Calendar section of the LAT presumably is mostly about arts and entertainment. Long, long ago it was called the 'entertainment' section. Well, I guess to a degree this above the fold first page of the section fable article on George Soros is rather entertaining, opening paragraph

GEORGE SOROS, the Hungarian Holocaust survivor whose fortune is matched only by his philanthropy, pioneered a kind of self-styled approach to global reform that made him, in the words of the Carnegie Endowment's Morton Abramowitz, "the only private citizen who had his own foreign policy."

But wait, there's more

Now, Soros has raised eyebrows with his most recent sally into American political culture by drawing comparisons in his new book between the Bush administration and communist and Nazi governments.

In "The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror," Soros recalls that when he "heard President Bush say, 'Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists,' " in the wake of 9/11, "I was reminded of Nazi propaganda.

"Indeed, the Bush Administration has been able to improve on the techniques used by the Nazi and the Communist propaganda machines by drawing on the innovations of the advertising and marketing industries."

On a recent day, Soros was not quite backing down.

"You don't have a Karl Marx, you only have a Karl Rove who has been successful in creating a coalition of fundamentalists," he began, sitting in a conference room high above Manhattan, framed by a view of New York's Central Park, in a striped blue cotton shirt and khakis, his manner affable and relaxed.

So, socialism is dead, noone is still trying to revive the dessicated corpse of Marxian rhetoric, but oh, by the way, social conservatives are pretty much all nazis.

Thank God the spirit of Gaia that watches over this wretched planet and one day will cleanse the globe of all these evil fundamentalist, that we have an unbiased media to balance the propaganda spewed by the current regime.

If it wasn't for George Soros' generosity, the reeducation camps would already be in full swing, and there'd be a Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib in every congressional district in the United States of AmeriKKKa.

Luckily nobody actually reads the LAT anymore (graph via radioblogger, for more follow link)


A few things to note about this graph, lack of competition in the paper industry seems to be a bad thing, the drop off started a few years after the Herald Examiner folded (a bump in the overall downturn can be seen right around 1989, but the decline picks up full steam throughout the Clinton years, until Lewinksy broke, then a slight rise, and since 2001, back to freefall). Big cities need more than one major paper that serves the entire area (LAT still gets competition from semi-local papers, but nobody challenges them throughout the city). Also it's not a language thing, La Opinion, LA's major Spanish language paper, hasn't seen any increase in their circulation during this time either.

Even a NYPost style tabloid would be welcome here, especially one willing to spread juicy gossip and attack the dream factory (something the LATimes is loathe to do), Mickey Kaus has been saying this for awhile, and he's right. A paper with any sense of what might grab people's attention would have ran with what Drudge has blaring in large type at the moment, "MAD MEL IN MALIBU: 'F*@KING JEW'" Put that on your cover, even on a Saturday morning, and you'll move plenty of extra units that day.

Mr. Murdoch, if you get around to reading this, I'm available to be Editor, if you're willing to throw $500M in start-up money my way. You won't be sorry, I promise you'll see a profit within 6 years (maybe even 4 if we're lucky). I'll even co-edit with one of your kids, come on, what could go wrong?