BREAKING: Murdoch Purchases Wall Street Journal

Rupert Murdoch’s bid for The Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co. has won enough support from the company’s controlling shareholders to ensure its acceptance, the newspaper reported Tuesday. The Journal said, quoting unnamed people familiar with the situation, that Bancroft family members representing 32 percent of the company’s vote had agreed to the deal. A family spokesman declined to comment. NPR: Reportedly His First Plan For Manipulating The Journalism Of His New Toy Is To Dial Back The Rightward Tilt Of The Editorial Page So That It At Least Confirms With The Dictates Of Observable Reality. Just Kidding. […]

NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t

FRESH AIR Paul Rudd, who co-starred in Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin, produced and stars in the new independent film The Ten — a series of irreverent vignettes that reinterpret the Ten Commandments for a modern audience. Rudd [pictured with Sharon Pinkenson at the opening night of the Philadelphia Film Festival] also stars in the upcoming movie I Could Never Be Your Woman, with Michelle Pfeiffer. His other films include Clueless, Anchorman and The Cider House Rules, and he’s been seen on TV’s Friends and Reno 911! RADIO TIMES Hour 1 According to Pulitzer-prize winning reporter TIM […]

THE BREAKDOWN: Let Us Praise The Common Man

BY M. EMANUEL It’s been a wet-firecracker of a summer for hip-hop. Gone are the days when summer was the season to expect a heavy rotation of full-lengths from your favorite MCs — things have changed. Record sales are in the toilet, digital downloads are either destroying or saving the industry (depends on who you ask and what day you ask them) and cautious record labels are releasing albums at a snail’s pace, and only after they are assured that there is enough radio-friendly material to justify the six-figure palm-greasing required to make them hits. In the midst of this […]

JUNK SCIENCE: Made In The Shade

BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR In 1978, the FDA established a labeling system for sun block that measures how well the product protects the skin from the ultraviolet B rays of the sun. This is the Skin Protection Factor, or SPF rating. UVB rays cause sun burn, skin wrinkling and cancer. The FDA said they’d get right back to us and establish a rating system for the other deadly rays, ultraviolet A, which penetrate the skin even deeper and also cause cancer and skin aging. Twenty-nine years later, we are still waiting. Yes, shocking but true, the SPF rating only […]

FROM PROVIDENCE: It’s The ‘Essentializing’, Stupid!

EDITOR’S NOTE: So, it turns out Mr. Terror Dentist /Wilco’s Pet has got himself a woman these days. Saints be praised. And not just any woman, but a cultural anthropologist who, get this, just got back from India after 16 months spent studying the everyday lives of policemen in Uttar Pradesh. Apparently pecking out lengthy observational dispatches on the biomechanics of ethnicity and identity politics is their idea of fun during a romantic getaway to Rhode Island, which is where my letter found Anand. Her name is Beatrice Jauregui and she makes a lot of good points, and many that […]

HOT DOC: House Dems Move To Impeach Gonzales

A group of House Democrats will introduce a resolution calling on the Judiciary Committee to begin impeachment proceedings against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) will sponsor the measure. It will be dropped in the hopper tomorrow. Here’s the text of resolution… RESOLUTION Directing the Committee on the Judiciary to investigate whether Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States, should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors. 1 Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary shall 2 investigate fully whether sufficient grounds exist for the 3 House of Representatives to impeach Alberto R. Gonzales, 4 Attorney […]

SGT. BYKO: Fire Up A Coupla Colortinis, I’m Gonna Tell Ya The Tale Of Tom Terrific And The Plate Of Bisghetti

The five years he spent in Philly (he lived in Society Hill) were among his happiest. He was hired to report for the 6 p.m. news, but management sensed star quality and also had him co-anchor the noon news with local star Marciarose Shestack, known professionally by her first name alone. They became the nation’s first “Eyewitness News” team. They had more chemistry than DuPont. And MR, as friends call her, became a forever friend. MR hadn’t been in touch with Tom Terrific for several months, but told me his spirits seemed good then, as he battled leukemia. We talked […]

BREAKING: Chief Justice Hospitalized After Seizure

WASHINGTON — Chief Justice John Roberts suffered a seizure at his summer home in Maine on Monday, causing a fall that resulted in minor scrapes, Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said. He will remain in a hospital in Maine overnight. Doctors called Monday’s incident “a benign idiopathic seizure,” Arberg said. The White House described the January 1993 episode as an “isolated, idiosyncratic seizure.” Both descriptions indicate that doctors could not determine the seizure’s cause or link it to another medical condition. For example, doctors would have quickly ruled out simple explanations such as dehydration or low blood sugar. Roberts, who […]

THE TAO OF EVA: Taiwan In The Hizzhouse!

EDITOR’S NOTE: In the wake of Eva Liao‘s protracted radio silence since reporting live and direct from Bonnaroo, Phawker has been inundated with questions about her whereabouts — although something tells me these might be coming from the 347 horny bastards that searched the site for “Bonnaroo Tits.” And no, she didn’t go back to rehab. She went someplace even better: Taiwan, the land from whence her parents came. Eva will be providing semi-regular reports from her trip to the Pacific Rim (Ha, I said rim), which god willing, will include a side trip to the People’s Republic Of China. […]

NPR FOR THE METH: We Hear It Even When You Sniff

FRESH AIR Gonzo journalist Frank Owen, author of Clubland: The Fabulous Rise and Murderous Fall of Club Culture, has turned his attention to the history of the drug methamphetamine ? and he went on a four-day meth binge as part of his reporting. The book is titled No Speed Limit: The Highs and Lows of Meth. Forbes magazine writer Robyn Meredith talks about the economic realities behind her new book: The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us. Previously, Meredith wrote for The New York Times and USA Today. […]