Media Monument
D.C. Newseum indulges self-worship.
Posted: Sunday, April 13, 2008
By their nature, as the Newseum should make clear, the media are outsiders, belonging to the unrespectable world of the gossip and the guttersnipe. Now they want to join -- indeed, to become -- the official culture. They want to celebrate the ethos of the media, which is now pretty much all scandal, all the time, while simultaneously becoming respectable.  [Full Story]

The Wrong Stuff

Posted: Wednesday, February 13, 2008
The other week, Barack Obama came up with what he doubtless saw as a snappy comeback in answer to Hillary Clinton's oft-repeated boast that she would have the experience to be ready to govern "on Day One" by saying that "it is important to be right on Day One." That he has not been laughed off the national stage for such foolish presumption is one measure of the eagerness in his party to welcome a political savior.  [Full Story]

Mildly Mendacious Media
The real truth is how they spin the candidates.
Posted: Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Today, less than a month into the primary season, we seem at the point of pronouncing the political obituaries of the two candidates who were the strong favorites to win their parties' nominations only a few short weeks ago. Rudy Giuliani is trailing badly in the polls in Florida, where he has to win or come close to winning today to remain a viable candidate.  [Full Story]

Charlie Wilson's War

Posted: Tuesday, January 8, 2008
In spite of Hollywood's best efforts, American audiences still like to see movies in which American forces are the good guys and they defeat America's enemies, who are the bad guys. By that measure, Charlie Wilson's War should do well.  [Full Story]

The Fame Factor

Posted: Wednesday, December 12, 2007
"Now I'll be famous," wrote 19-year-old Robert Hawkins the other day before murdering eight people at the Westroads shopping mall in Omaha and then killing himself. Now that, two days later, the New York Times is reporting on those who are "searching for clues to a young killer's motivations," you've got to wonder why anyone would need more "clues" than that?  [Full Story]

So Long, Tony
Even 'the greatest soap opera ever' must come to an end.
Posted: Thursday, July 5, 2007
Tony Soprano's was the only ending possible for an American hero for more than half-a-century. Like the last of the cowboys riding into the sunset, he must not die but just fade away. And for the same reason: His world is past.   [Full Story]

Unborn in the USA

Posted: Tuesday, July 3, 2007
This documentary's rather banal point is that feelings run high on both sides of the abortion debate. And, as several incidents in the film illustrate, feelings rather than dispassionate moral reasoning are inevitably what the documentary camera -- like all cameras -- seeks out.   [Full Story]

A Mighty Heart

Posted: Thursday, June 28, 2007
Historically, the expression "a mighty heart" carries the connotation of courage and intrepidity in battle of the bravest soldiers and would be expected to refer to Daniel Pearl. In this film, however, the expression seems instead to refer to the large capacity for feeling and suffering of his wife. There is a huge cultural shift behind this apparent continuity of heroic language.  [Full Story]

Getting It Right
David Halberstam and the media's ethos of irresponsibility.
Posted: Wednesday, June 20, 2007
In the media's reporting of war, honor and glory have become at least as invisible as the ghastly flow of blood and viscera once were to their predecessors. Nowadays, any journalist who wants to succeed knows he is in the business not of celebrating honor or trust or heroism but of exposing whatever sordid realities may be found (or invented) beneath the appearances of those things.  [Full Story]

The American Movie Hero

Posted: Monday, May 21, 2007
EPPC Resident Scholar James Bowman, film critic of The American Spectator and The New York Sun and author of Honor: A History, will host a summer film series with commentary by Leon and Amy Kass of the University of Chicago.  [Full Story]