This Week’s Writings

At EntertainmentTell, I reviewed “The Great Gatsby.”

For GadgetTell, I write about a new study on airline passengers leaving their phones are.

And at Philly Post, I wrote about Al Gore being “Romney-rich.”

Tony Stark and Frank Luntz

Two new pieces of note this week: I reviewed “Iron Man 3″ for EntertainmentTell, and wrote about the Frank Luntz/Penn controversy for the Philly Post.

Highlights of this Week’s Writings

I had quite a prolific week of new writings.

For the Philly Post, I wrote about the FCC’s correct decision to not pursue fines after David Ortiz cursed on the air before the first post-bombing Red Sox game.

At EntertainmentTell, a ton of stuff: My essay on the Coexist sticker flap- with an Adam Carolla angle to fit the Entertainment part of the site, is here.

I also reviewed Michael Bay’s odious new movie “Pain & Gain,” as well as the documentary “Koch,” and I interviewed the director of the latter film (not, thankfully, the former.)

In addition, I wrote about the renewal of Parenthood, a particularly funny old Facts of Life clip, and the arrival of the complete Saturday Night Live archive on Yahoo.

Thanks for reading, everyone!

No, the Hijacked Mercedes Did Not Have a “Coexist” Sticker

The meme got out there, at some point early on Friday, that the Boston Marathon bombers, during their overnight theft and shooting spree, had hijacked a car with one of those “coexist” stickers. The implication being that the owners of the car were stupid hippie liberals who believe in equality, oppose prejudice, and are generally dismissive of the notion that all Muslims are evil.

The origin seems to be this screen cap, from local news coverage in Boston:

A great story, that seems to validate the right-wing view of things. But it’s not true.

The car the bombers hijacked was a Mercedes SUV. I’m not sure if the car above is a Mercedes, but it’s most assuredly not an SUV. It also doesn’t appear to have any bullet holes. Here’s the actual car, as photographed by ABC News later that day:

It’s very clearly not the same car- it’s taller, the back window appears to have been shot out and- most importantly- there’s no “Coexist” sticker.

Sounds like a lot of conservative leading lights fell for this one, however… 

UPDATE: It sounds like the suspects were driving two separate cars for part of the night, including a Honda. However, according to ABC News, the Honda was the younger brother’s own car, and was not hijacked from some clueless hippie. And once again, we have no idea if the car above was ever driven by either of the brothers.

Last Week’s Leftover Writings

Last week I reviewed two different “mind-bender”-type movies, “Trance” and “To the Wonder.” I also wrote about a local professor who is putting a playable version of Pong on the side of a building, and wrote an essay about just how weird “Wayne’s World” was.

Great Moments in Suburban Multitasking

Last night marked my first, ultimately successful attempt at a two-hour, elliptical machine/Game of Thrones/Mad Men/iPad/Verizon FiOS Live TV streaming app parlay. I even got two loads of laundry done at the same time. Nothing like finishing a long workout to the strains of “Just a Gigolo…”

On “42″

The long-awaited Jackie Robinson movie “42″ is here at last, and I wrote not one but two pieces about it this week. Here’s my review of the movie itself, for EntertainmentTell, and here’s my Philly Post column on the Philly connection.

Movies and Basketball Injuries

This week’s published writings include three movie reviews- of “Room 237,” “Place Beyond the Pines” and “Starbuck,” as well as a Philly Post column on the injuries to basketball players Kevin Ware and Andrew Bynum.

There’s a lot more to come next week, including lots of Jackie Robinson stuff.

Jonah’s First Birthday, Passover and More

My sons have a new blog post, detailing their recent adventures, which you can read here.

Jerry Sandusky, John Ziegler and the Shame of “Today”

This week’s Philly Post column is about the Today Show interview with Jerry Sandusky, brought to the show by the noted bottom feeder/con man John Ziegler. There was quite a bit I had to say that didn’t fit in the column, here’s some of that below:

- Sandusky probably has the least credibility of any man on planet Earth. His word is worth dirt, probably less than dirt. It doesn’t matter what he said. And if that one minute was the best they could come up with from three hours of interviews, I don’t feel too hopeful about the rest of the footage.

- Perhaps NBC’s biggest misstep of all was getting into bed with a hack like Ziegler, who showed, like Andrew Breitbart and his various imitators, that the quickest way to get prominent media coverage is to constantly denounce the media. The media hates John Ziegler so much that they can’t stop inviting him onto their shows.

- The interview uses the words of a man who is definitely lying- Sandusky maintains his innocence, when he is not innocent- in order to impeach the credibility of the witness against him who we have no reason to believe is lying. It’s hard to imagine a single person on the planet watching that interview and coming out of it more sympathetic to Joe Paterno- or Jerry Sandusky, or John Ziegler- than they were at the start.

- The Sandusky interviews are supposedly from an upcoming, feature-length version of “Framing Paterno,” Ziegler’s scummy little YouTube mini-movie, which heavily borrowed both its structure and musical cues from the 9/11 Truth conspiracy genre. I reviewed it here last November; among numerous faults in its argumentation, the biggest was that not a single person interviewed on camera could spare a single word of sympathy for any of the children abused by Sandusky, or acknowledge that maybe this saga has victims who aren’t named Joe Paterno.

- I may not agree with much of what the Paterno family has done in the past year or two, but to their credit, they’ve been out front on the issue of sexual abuse prevention. And, also to their credit, they’ve loudly distanced themselves from Ziegler’s dubious injection of Sandusky into the debate.

- Ziegler, more recently, has taken to defending and advising the football coach in the horrific Steubenville rape case, an old buddy and book subject of his. I can only assume that, in 1988, Ziegler went to see the movie “The Accused” and rooted out loud for the acquittal of Jodie Foster’s assailants.

- More news since I filed: Ziegler named Victim 2 on his site, kept it up for eight hours, claimed he was hacked, and then published perhaps the least sincere non-apology apology in recent history.

And finally, here’s a great piece by Tim Baffoe, that really gets to the heart of Ziegler’s loathsome M.O.:

“He’s a hell of a lot smarter than the people who slobber all over him because he’s their last glimmer of hope twinkling off of Coke-bottle glasses that JoePa Claus is real. In taking an argument concerning a dead guy, he’s found an angle in which he can’t exactly lose, and that’s how many arguments, nefarious as they may be, are “won.” See, logically Paterno deserves blame, but Ziegler’s is an emotional appeal to the slackjaws, and reason always loses to makin’ the willfully ignorant feel good. He knows this, just as any televangelist knows this. Now go on and hand over your money for the Lord… I mean, help fund his documentary, Framing Paterno. The film is in perpetual infancy due to people not forking over money (can’t imagine why), but certainly it will crack open the truth that the bad people are keeping from those who really believe Paterno pooped jellybeans and sunshine.”