[source]
[New York Times] Editor’s Note: Feb. 27, 2004, Friday
An article in The Arts yesterday about Hollywood’s reaction to Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion of the Christ” cited an executive close to David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, principals of DreamWorks, saying that the two men had privately expressed anger over the film.
The Times should have checked directly with both men and given them an opportunity to comment on the executive’s statement.
Mr. Geffen said yesterday: “Neither Jeffrey or I have seen the movie or have formed an opinion about it.”
They’ve brought back Jayson Blair as a free lancer?
Of the long discussion of conversion from left to right, the best quote was
P.J. O’Rourke is the gateway drug of conservatism.
All the proof [Massachusetts] state Board of Education member Roberta Schaefer needed to OK controversial new charter schools were the letters before her from public school students.
Schaefer ridiculed the letters against a proposed school in Marlboro for their missing punctuation and sloppy spelling - including a misspelling of the word “school” in one missive.
“If I didn’t think a charter school was necessary, these letters have convinced me the high school was not doing an adequate job in teaching English language arts,” Schaefer said.
The letters were not written spontaneously, but at the behest of the teachers of the students, which seems abusive on the face of it to me. It is probably also the case that it never occurred to the teachers that the students had bad language skills or that the teachers might be judged on that fact.