Old Skool screed scribbler bashes new media pundit

James Camp of mediaite holds forth on Leon Weiseltier's Sullivan Smackdown. Is Leon a tad anti-Semantic

What is striking about all this is how it inverts our expectations of conduct in old and new media. Typically – stereotypically – one goes online to read rants, raves, the gung-ho and the bozo of the opinion-makers. Whereas one looks to the old media – magazines, journals, newspapers – for understatement, decorum, moderation. Rickety as it may be, the general assumption is that print journalism is more accountable than its online cousins. Yet in this instance, the opposite holds. The man in print is the mudslinger, the paranoiac, the screed-scribbler; while the blogger ends up looking not only right but restrained, old-fashioned, even. And we are able to judge this easily enough for ourselves — we don’t have to take it on authority — precisely because of that most bewitching novelty of the net, the hyperlink.

John Cleese on anti-Semitism

The erstwhile Minister of Silly Walks has mastered the art of keeping his tongue firmly in cheek mid-rant and bluster. This irascible and brilliant performer sure hits his targets when he launches into his schtick after being asked whether Monty Python is anti-Semitic.

Harvey Morris, a veteran foreign correspondent, advises new arrivals to Israel that all the insights a journalist needs to cover the Arab-Israeli conflict are in the film "The Life of Brian". When that DVD was spotted on the desk of a Palestinian official, it became clear that Morris really knows his stuff. He's soon off to cover the United Nations for London's Financial Times.

(cross-posted from israelity bites