MSNBC bosses have caved to the Clintonistas over the David Shuster/Chelsa Clinton/”pimping out” flap. Shuster apologized this morning, which was probably the smart thing to do, but what he said wasn’t wrong. At all.

Chelsea Clinton; David Shuster; Howard Wolfson; Bishop Don Magic Juan, self-proclaimed “king of the pimps”

The hoo-hah exploded Thursday when Shuster, guest-hosting an MSNBC news program, suggested that the Clinton campaign had “pimped out” the 27 year-old Chelsea by having her make calls to three of the four cohosts of The View (Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg and Sherri Shepherd) and also call Democratic Party super-delegates on her mom’s behalf.
Yesterday Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson blasted Shuster for using the term “pimped out,” calling the comment “beneath contempt” and disgusting. Only an odious and disingenuous blowhard would say such a thing. Jumping through angry hoops and putting on the bluster because (I’ll bet $100 bucks here and now) Chelsea’s mom blew a gasket.
Wolfson knew exactly what Shuster was saying, which was that the Clinton campaign, looking to attract support from the View girls and a smattering of super-delegates, either prompted or at least approved of Chelsea using her fame and youthful charm and first-daughter aura to try and engage their support. Coarse as it may sound, this strategy was not all that different from a smart pimp telling his girls to strut down the street in front of a salesmen’s convention. Shuster chose an off-color expression, yes, but TV demands the use of simple colloquialisms and everyone got it without having a hiccup or a hissy fit.
The top-dog representative of a campaign that’s been run as connivingly, desperately and avariciously as Hillary Clinton’s calling Shuster’s comment “beneath contempt” and “disgusting” is pretty funny. It’s all the more offensive to me considering that Wolfson’s thug tactic (saying yesterday that “I, at this point, can’t envision a scenario where we would continue to engage in debates on that network”) worked. This morning on NBC’s Morning Joe, Shuster apologized, regretting that some saw it as “pejorative.” All it was was candid and colorful.
This, ladies and gents, is the Hillary Clinton machine in action — snarling, slashing, harumphing, threatening. It’ll be a dark day in Mudville if she wins the Democratic nomination. If only there was some way to vote for John McCain.

In a friendly 2.7.08 profile of producer Mark Johnson (Ballast, The Chronicles of Narnia), Variety‘s Anne Thompson notes that Johnson “may have offended some people” by “openly expressing his outrage at the films omitted this year” by the Academy’s foreign-language committee, which Johnson co-chairs.

Mark Johnson

Johnson may have offended…? The retirement-village philistines who scratched 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days off the short list have offended God, culture, history, civilization…and made the Academy’s committee into an international joke. I’m not exaggerating. They will live in infamy for the rest of their lives.
“I’m not trying to impose my taste on the committee [and] I don’t want to denigrate the movies nominated,” says Johnson. “But some of the films undeniably among the best movies of the year didn’t make the short list of nine. I feel the committee doesn’t reflect the Academy at large and I have to do something to effect that. We can change things so we can incorporate some different voices.”
“After the Oscars, Johnson expects reform discussions to get under way,” Thompson reports. “An invitation-only committee more similar to the music and documentary branches (which also generate their share of controversy) may come into play.”

A 2.8.08 N.Y. Times article by Michael Ceiply asserts that screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis (Shutter Island, Alexander), who is also a co-founder of the pro-WGA United Hollywood, was the “unlikely peacemaker” who provided a go-between connection between WGA negotiator David J. Young and Fox Newscorp. president Peter A. Chernin.

Laeta Kalogridis

Did Kalogridis operate as a kind of diplomatic translator, Henry Kissinger-like Paris Peace Talks facilitator, soother or parish priest…? Ceiply’s account is too spare and dry. Let’s put it this way: as a result of Kalogridis offering counsel and (I’m winging it here, but at least I’m trying harder than Ceiply) serving both men metaphorical cups of chamomile tea, they “finally shifted ground, most importantly on the issue of new-media compensation,” which “cleared the way to a deal that will be reviewed by writers in meetings here and in New York on Saturday.”
WGA member John Aboud, posting last night on United Hollywood, wrote that “while it’s flattering that the New York Times would try to bestow such importance on Ms. Kalogridis and — ahem — ‘her friends,’ Michael Cieply‘s breathless account misses something obvious. A strike does not come to a possible (repeat, ‘possible’) ending thanks to one person or even one website, no matter how awesome the website.
“The outcome of a strike is determined by the strikers. By the sacrifice of thousands who march and pour their emotion and time into the fight. When the strike ends, it will be because the union as a whole decided to end it. This struggle is about the sacrifices of many, not the phone calls of a few.” Stirringly spoken.

“Some say Jack overacts — but they are the critics who always made the mistake of seeing him as a Method-based naturalist. Like Brando, he is a romantic and a wild risk-taker. For in Jack’s mind, The Shining is every bit as real as Ironweed or Five Easy Pieces. Jack believes in being taken over by spirits, and in not being a dull boy.

“And if you were to say to him that Hollywood acting is really a pretty stupid thing for a grown-up to be doing, he’d likely agree and say that was the curse that overtook Marlon: Brando lost belief. But no one’s taking it from Jack.” — from David Thomson‘s 2.8.08 Guardian piece, which begins with a statement that Nicholson is “at an age at which the critic begins to move over for the obituarist” and that “he knows he’s living on the margin of extra time. Call it sudden death — I suspect that’s all he’d ask for.”

A teaser for Uncle Festus and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will be viewable in theatres on Friday, 2.14, attached to prints of The Spiderwick Chronicles. The spot will be online “shortly thereafter,” says Variety. If no one leaks it prior to 2.14, it will be pretty much essential to troop down to the Grove or the Arclight for the first Spiderwick show that day.
Just like Star Wars fans and journalists did, come to think, when the first teaser for The Phantom Menace played in front of Ed Zwick‘s The Siege on that film’s opening day — 11.6.98. (Or was it later in the run? Memory fails.)
I was there at Mann’s Village along with everyone else. The crowd was yelling “Siege! Siege! Siege!” like they were being directed by Anthony Mann doing a crowd scene for El Cid. Free Enterprise director Rob Burnett was there. Drew McWeeny was there. I spoke briefly to Paul Thomas Anderson in the lobby. Every hip person in the known Los Angeles universe with any interest or investment in film-geek culture was there.
And then the trailer hit the screen — cheers and whoo-woos (little did they know!) — and then it was over, and almost the entire crowd was gone ten minutes later.

“I wish I could bet on things like ‘Hillary will cry, nearly cry, or talk about crying between 10am and 3pm on Monday, March 3′” — Jason, a Politico reader referring to the day before the Ohio Democratic primary — posted today at 4:19 pm.

Do I look like I’m negotiating, friendo? I’m already pregnant so what kind of milkshake-slurping could I get into? Except for ruining the love life of my older sister and her lower-class boyfriend by bearing false witness? I am Sheba, the reincarnation of Shirley Booth!

During an interview today with Hardball‘s Chris Matthews, former Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said the science hasn’t been proven on global warming and that it’s “arrogant” to say that climate chance is “man-made.” He also said there could be absolutely no circumstance that could justify the restriction of the availability of certain firearms. Seconds later my stomach was swimming in acid and doing somersaults. Some people are flat-out evil.

One definition of a good movie-reappraisal piece is that it makes you want to see the film in question again, even though your own aesthetic determinations for the last couple of decades have steered you away from this. Mark Harris‘s 2.5 Slate article about the 40th anniversary DVD of In The Heat of the Night is such a piece of writing.

Norman Jewison‘s 1967 police thriller put me to sleep with I first saw it, and I’d be hugely surprised if it didn’t have the same effect again. But thanks to Harris, I’ll be giving it a go. Despite Rod Steiger‘s cracker accent, which is pretty close to chalk on a blackboard. Despite the stacked-deck plot. Despite the rectitude of Sidney Poitier, which can be difficult to take. I would actually love to see it remade as a ’60s period comedy costarring Will Ferrell as Police Chief Bill Gillespie and Chris Rock as Det. Virgil Tibbs.

I haven’t read any credible columnist, pundit or statistic suggesting much less asserting that Hillary Clinton is more electable than Barack Obama against John McCain in the general election. N.Y. Times columnist Nicholas Kristof made the Obama-is-more-electable case is a column posted this morning (or last night). I’d like to read an argument that says otherwise, just for fun.