Scrapbook
Scrapbook The Prune of Miss Jane Brody With remarkably little fanfare, the New York Times appears to have adopted new ethics policies requiring unprecedented personal disclosures by its most...
...Limbaugh...
...It's "something new: journalistic and relevant, but unencumbered by old conventions...
...Barely Aloft Full details having yet to be revealed, THE SCRAPBOOK has decided to withhold all comment on an emerging scandal involving massive financial improprieties at the Al Franken-head-lined liberal talk-radio network Air America...
...Scrapbook The Prune of Miss Jane Brody With remarkably little fanfare, the New York Times appears to have adopted new ethics policies requiring unprecedented personal disclosures by its most prominent and popular columnists...
...good question" was the more or less standard joke...
...It's "the first national network created by, for, and with an 18-34 year-old audience...
...It was only after an "astute physician" at the campus health clinic prescribed "bowel-stimulating fiber" and advised her to "establish a time each day to use the bathroom" that Ms...
...Really, we mean it...
...The network reaches only some 20 million households...
...Besides, after reading all the press clippings, we kinda already feel like we've watched it...
...That spring 2004 scheme by which the network's then-top executive appears to have diverted nearly $900,000 in New York city-funded social service grants from a Bronx-based charity to Air America's own desperately underfunded bank accounts...
...It's just that the channel isn't distributed by any local cable provider here in Washington, and there's no bar with a satellite hookup in walking distance that's quiet enough to hear the TV, and . . . well . . . you get the idea...
...He knew perfectly well who he was and why he was here...
...the bulk of them—14.5 million, to be exact—sub-scribe to DirectTV, the satellite cable network...
...Is this a news network...
...Now that it's possible to compare ratings for this spring to last year's start-up," the Philadelphia Inquirer's Beth Gillin reports, "it's clear that [Air America] has yet to climb out of the cellar...
...But a man's conscience was to be higher than any law...
...asks one of the "Frequently Asked Questions" on the channel's website...
...For uttering such a peculiarly cos-mological remark during a nationally televised debate in 1992, then-vice presidential candidate James Bond Stockdale got himself roundly mocked...
...Brody routinely "suffered from bloating and cramps after days of no eliminations...
...Instead Current is "non-fiction...
...In a fit of pique, or simply desperate to give him something to do, the editors of Broadcasting & Cable magazine had summer intern Rob Biederman watch Current's first day on the air and provide play-by-play commentary on the magazine's blog...
...The paper appears simply to be proceeding through its ranks in alphabetical order, which would make the putatively "regular" columnists David Brooks and Maureen Dowd next in line...
...All joking aside, THE SCRAPBOOK shouldn't jump to conclusions...
...Brody's pathbreaking piece revealed...
...And by the time she reached college, "things got so bad" that Ms...
...In particular, Franken's decision to schedule his show in direct competition with conservative talk-radio superstar Rush Limbaugh "was not such a good idea," it turns out...
...Brody cautioned, "are a last resort and should be used only occasionally...
...Every so often, a host tells viewers what people are searching for on the Internet...
...In politics the Stoic would love his country and hold himself ready to die at any time to avert its disgrace or his own," Stockdale would later explain...
...Meantime, though, we figure there's nothing wrong with noting the latest listenership data from Arbitron...
...Brody was able "to form soft, bulky stools that are easy to pass...
...Nevertheless, "Stockdale resolved to make himself a symbol of resistance regardless of personal sacrifice," and he "deliberately inflicted a near-mortal wound to his person in order to convince his captors of his willingness to give up his life rather than capitulate," and to prevent them from photographing him for propaganda purposes...
...As the seniormost U.S...
...Good question...
...In philadelphia, moreover, Arbi-tron reports that the network has "fallen off the charts...
...What's going on here...
...It's "the TV equivalent of an iPod shuffle...
...But enemas, Ms...
...You will learn, for example, "Canada's Top Searches of 2004," the "Top 10 Disease Searches," and so forth...
...Her parents, "like many people" of their generation, were badly "misinformed" about gastroenterological science, and wished their daughter to evacuate her lower intestine "on a predictable daily basis...
...Brody's status as the first Times feature writer called upon to fully divulge her excretory history is thought to be largely arbitrary...
...2:30 pm: . .. Google Current...
...has squashed Franken like a bug...
...Ms...
...Education 2:33 pm: Repeat of real estate segment from earlier...
...Hosts include a former contestant on Donny osmond's Pyramid gameshow, a former castmem-ber of MTV's Real World: Hawaii, a walk-on from Austin Powers: Goldmem-ber, two recent graduates of the University of Miami, and the former host of the TV reality series Love Cruise...
...Gore TV On August 1, former vice president and college journalism professor Al Gore—having ditched his wild-eyed, bearded, Bush-bashing man-of-the-mountains look for a clean-shaven face and a closet full of all-black suits— launched his 24-hour cable TV network, Current, from an office building in San Francisco...
...Even, and especially, and characteristically, to Admiral Stockdale himself, who may have been one of the greatest military heroes in American history, but who thought of himself instead, first and foremost, as a philosopher...
...A man has a right to be responsible, self-ruling, autonomous...
...Like being watchable...
...Here's an excerpt: 2:30 pm: A jazzed-up version of Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" accompanies a stream of hip graphics introducing...
...James Bond Stockdale, a great, brave man to the very end, passed away at the age of 81 on July 5, 2005...
...Top management at the paper has yet to comment on the matter publicly, but the nature and extent of the change became unmistakable, most outside media analysts seem to agree, with the publication last Tuesday of a landmark essay on constipation by Times "personal health" correspondent Jane E. Brody...
...In Memoriam "Who am I? Why am I here...
...officer at Hanoi's infamous Hoa Lo prison, his Medal of Honor citation reminds us, Stockdale was specially "singled out for interrogation and attendant torture...
...That the joke wasn't actually funny —that its object was a Medal of Honor winner who'd flown more than 100 Naval air missions over Vietnam and then survived a legendary seven years of torture in a Hanoi POW dungeon— seemed not to matter at the time...
...Brody, however, vigorously rebelled against this pressure—in a classic overreaction pattern once familiar to psychiatrists as the so-called Retentive Personality...
...Mum's the word...
...Exercise, too, she found, can help counteract "poor muscle action in the colon...
...At its flagship station in New York, Air America's audience is down 14 percent...
...This segment is called Google Current...
...Brody's August 2 story, "Looking Beyond Fiber to Stay 'Regular,'" is believed to represent the first time in the history of American journalism that a nationally syndicated writer has offered readers detailed information, dating back to infancy, about the frequency and quality of her own bowel movements...
...Truth is, we haven't seen Current...
...meaning there were too few listeners to measure during the second quarter of this year...
...As the first cable channel for the Ritalin generation, Current breaks up its programming into hundreds of five to ten minute "pods," which recycle endlessly throughout the day...
...I've had a lifelong problem maintaining regular bowel habits," Ms...
...It's not that we didn't try to...
...The answer: "Not exactly...
...other people's laughter meant nothing to him...
...How many will tune in is an open question—one of many unanswered questions about Gore's new venture...
...But the world is unwonderful when a graphic reads: Top Education Searches #1...
Vol. 10 • August 2005 • No. 45
