[VIDEO] ‘I Dig a Pony’ – Annie Clark’s Fretboard Prowess: New Album Release
Posted: February 26, 2014 Filed under: Art & Culture, Entertainment | Tags: David Byrne, Kate Bush, Love This Giant, New York Observer, PJ Harvey, St Vincent, Tori Amos Leave a commentThis week, Annie Clark, better known to the world as St. Vincent, celebrates the release of her fourth album, simply titled St. Vincent. (The album count doesn’t include Love This Giant, her superb 2012 collaboration with David Byrne.) Eight years into Ms. Clark’s career as a solo artist, general critical opinion of her seems to have solidified around one core concept: She’s another left-field, kinda arty, kinda wacky rock chick. NPR’s First Listen blog compared the new album favorably to Tori Amos’s From the Choirgirl Hotel, and the names of PJ Harvey, Björk and Kate Bush get tossed into the mix a lot too.
[Order Annie Clark’s “St. Vincent” from Amazon]
[Order “From the Choirgirl Hotel” from Amazon]
Our Adolescent Media
Posted: February 7, 2014 Filed under: Mediasphere, U.S. News | Tags: Andrew Rosenthal, Eighth Avenue, Ken Kurson, Matthew Continetti, New York Observer, New York Times, Rosenthal, Washington Free Beacon 3 Comments
(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
Fast Times at Eighth Avenue High
Matthew Continetti writes: You are an accomplished adult, at the top of your field, working in the heart of the greatest city in the world. Important people answer your emails and phone calls. Yet there is one person in the office who bugs you, whose demeanor you find obnoxious. You want to take a stand, to let this individual know his behavior is uncalled for, imperious, despotic even. And so you do the only thing a mature and levelheaded man in your position can do: You refuse to sit with him at lunch.
Such is the case of an unnamed reporter at the New York Times, who is so upset at editorial and op-ed page editor Andrew Rosenthal that “he will literally not allow Mr. Rosenthal to join their lunch table in the cafeteria.”
I learned of this amazing passive-aggressive episode in an article by Ken Kurson, “The Tyranny and Lethargy of the Times Editorial Page,” which appeared this week in the New York Observer. Kurson interviewed “more than two-dozen current and former Times staffers,” who heaped insult atop insult on Rosenthal and his columnist Thomas L. Friedman, accusing them of laziness, pettiness, arrogance, belligerence, nosiness, unoriginality, and ineptitude. I suppose it takes one to know one.
Grey Lady Down: New York Times Reporters Embarrassed by the Paper’s Editorial Pages
Posted: February 4, 2014 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Andrew Rosenthal, Editorial, George H.W. Bush, Maureen Dowd, New York Observer, New York Times, Thomas Friedman 3 Comments
The New York Times’ editorial page is not exactly beloved by staffers, according to a New York Observer report. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
Charles Hoskinson reports: Reporters in The New York Times newsroom deeply resent the paper’s editorial page, and the dissent has “reached the boiling point,” the New York Observer reports Tuesday.
“As for the columnists, Friedman is the worst. He hasn’t had an original thought in 20 years; he’s an embarrassment. He’s perceived as an idiot who has been wrong about every major issue for 20 years…”

(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
It’s not an ideological dispute, the Observer says, but rather the sense that the paper’s editorials and columns are boring, ineffectual, poorly written and poorly read. The story was based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former Times staffers, mostly on condition of anonymity out of fear of editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal.
Rosenthal was described as a petty tyrant, and lazy in his supervision of an opinion staff that is widely seen outside the newsroom as the voice of the Left-wing establishment.
“Then there’s Maureen Dowd, who has been writing the same column since George H. W. Bush was president…”
[See Gray Lady Down: What the Decline and Fall of the New York Times Means for America at Amazon]
[VIDEO] Takei Reads ‘Star Trek’ Erotica
Posted: October 25, 2013 Filed under: Art & Culture, Entertainment, Humor, Reading Room | Tags: AARP, Andy Cohen, Bryan Cranston, George Takei, New York Observer, Star Trek, Trekkie, YouTube Leave a commentAfter some minor prodding by Andy Cohen and a very porno soundtrack, actor George Takei read his favorite bit of Star Trek erotica on last night’s Watch What Happens Live. We guess Bryan Cranston has started a trend?