Warren Buffett – OnMedea

October 20, 2014February 6, 2015

Hollywood Studios’ Only Chance For Long-Term Survival

Manka Bros., Khan Manka, Manka Bros. Studios, The World's Largest Media Company, Newt Gingrich, Callista Gingrich, Jackie Battley, Marianne Ginther, Jeff Weiner, Ben Silverman, Rob Johnson, Sonny Perdue, Rick Tyler, Hermain Cain, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Michele Bachman, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Joseph Smith, Thomas S. Monson, Elder Cook, Elder Nelson, Elder Holland, Elder Perry, Elder Bednar, George Romney, Ann Romney, Brigham Young, Sean Hannity, Bob Dole, Ann Coulter, James Grisham, Eric Stanger, Allen & Company retreat, Anne Mulcahy, Ari Emanuel, Barry Diller, Ben Silverman, Bob Iger, Bobby Kotick, Carol Bartz, Charlie Rose, Cory Booker, DumbDumb, Electus, Eric Schmidt, Erin Burnett, Gina Bianchini, Harvey Weinstein, Herb Allen, Herb Allen Sun Valley Conference, Herbert Allen, Jean-Bernard Levy, Jeff Bewkes, Jeff Weiner, Jeff Zucker, Jeffrey Immelt, Jerry Yang, John Donahue, Ken Auletta, Khan Manka, Lachlan Murdoch, Lady Gaga, Leslie Moonves, Lionel Barber, Lloyd Grohl, Manka Bros., Marc Andreessen, Marissa Mayer, Mark Pincus, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Sorrell, Mathias Dopfner, Mike Bloomberg, Niall FitzGerald, Peter Chernin, Phillippe Dauman, Reid Hoffman, Richard Parsons, Ricky Van Veen, Rob Wiesenthal, Robert L. Johnson, Ron Meyer, Rupert Murdoch, Sergey Brin, Sheryl Sandberg, Steve Jobs, Sun Valley Retreat, Sun Valley Retreat 2010, Terry Semel, Tom Freston, Tom Friedman, Ursula Burns, Vivi Nevo, Warren Buffett, World's Largest Media Company, Rupert Murdoch, Jose Maria Aznar, natalie Bancroft, Peter Barnes, Chase Carey, Kenneth Cowley, David DeVoe, Viet Dinh, Rod Eddington, Joel Klein, Andrew S.B. Knight, James Murdoch, Lachlan Murdoch, Thomas Perkins, Arthur Siskind, John Thornton, Stanley Shuman, Rebekah Brooks, Les Hinton, Teri Everett, jack Horner, Julie Henderson, Reed Nolte, Roger Ailes, Janet Nova, John Nallen, Beryl Cook, Michael Regan, Genie Gavenchak, Brian Lewis, Irena Briganti, Dan Berger, Rosabel Tao, Steven Rubenstein, Suzanne Halpin, Elisabeth Murdoch, Sarah Palin

GO PRIVATE.

There will never – ever – be enough growth and margin improvement to satisfy Wall Street.

Maybe short-term the studios will get a bump by telling investors they are going to make 100 comic book movies over the next 5 years – but after that flattens out – there’s nothing left to grow on top of that.

And it’s all Wall Street’s fault. You can’t blame studio executives. They have to appease Wall Street or they’re out.

I mean, my company, Manka Bros. just announced a trilogy of films based on the board game CHECKERS!

Wall Street’s insistence for high margin growth in such a mature business is destroying creativity (again, note all the sequels and re-makes and re-hashes and re-dos) and in it, ruining any realist opportunity for growth.

To grow the way Wall Street would like, 21st Century Fox (for instance) would need to have an “Avatar” one year (and double the amount of TV production); two “Avatars” the next year (and double again the doubled amount of TV shows); four “Avatars” the following year – and so on and so on. And they would all have to preform as good or better than the first!

And the market is saturated already.

There are too many choices and studios don’t have the monopoly on content creation that they once did.

And the moguls long for those days.

Sorry, fellas, they are not coming back.

It won’t be cheap to go private – billions and billions – but there is plenty of private equity out there that would love an asset that consistently pumps out up to $1 billion in pure profit.

Without the need to top profits year after year, the content produced can be more experimental, and thus, much more interesting and exciting for the consumer.

It would even allow for the occasional down year when things just didn’t work out. Hollywood IS a cyclical business, after all.

Hollywood Studios are sacred treasures in this country (and around the world) and should not be allowed to just fade away because Wall Street wasn’t happy with the growth prospects.

We must do what we can to save these institutions and going private is the best way.

Jill Kennedy – OnMedea

July 15, 2014July 17, 2014

Another Genius Move By Marvel

And that is not sarcastic.

Today, on “The View“ it was announced that the Marvel character “Thor” will now be a woman in the comic books.

This is NOT the real God that people actually worshiped a thousand years ago or so (Manka Bros. is a producing an event series based on his life).

This doesn’t necessarily mean that the movie character of Thor will change to a woman – but it is an absolutely genius move on Marvel’s part being that it was announced one week before Comic-Con.

Marvel now has stolen a bit of thunder from others who are seeking publicity. This will be the number one subject discussed (most likely in a negative way based on early message boards posts I’ve read).

DC Comics will now have to answer questions about which characters they may change to a woman – or what do they think of Marvel’s move. It’s just a no win for them as they get things rolling with several comic book properties that are about to launch (5 TV shows in the fall).

The Internet is already blowing up with this story and it’s all pretty silly.

The only people who should actually care if Thor is a male or female are those who still worship the Norse Gods (and you gotta love those Norse Pagans hanging on to a dream) as their Gods. In the actual religion, Thor is most likely a guy.

In a comic book, you could even change the gender of Jesus and Mohammed and no one should care.

IT’S A COMIC BOOK!

(Though I would probably hesitate to do that Mohammed if I were a publisher who wanted to stay alive.)

So, congratulations Marvel.

For better or worse, you own Comic-Con 2014.

Jill Kennedy – OnMedea

P.S. – And now you’ve announced that “Captain America” will be black – another master stroke!

May 6, 2014July 1, 2014

The Twilight Of The Katzenberg

Manka Bros., Khan Manka, Herb Allen's Sun Valley Conference 2013, Sun Valley Lodge, Bin Tran, Vin Tran, Lee S Ainslie III, Yousef Al Otaiba, Hans-Holger Albrecht, Paul G Allen, James Anderson, Marc Andreessen, Michael Angelakis, Tim Armstrong, Nikesh Arora, Neil M Ashe, Emilio Azcarraga, Manvinder S Banga, Lionel Barber, Craig R Barrett, Willow Bay, Andreas Bechtolsheim, Marc Benioff, Jeffrey Berg, James Berkus, Michael S Berman, Mark Bertolini, Gary Bettman, Jeff Bewkes, Jeffrey P Bezos, Aneel Bhusri, The Right Honorable Tony Blair, Gregory R Blatt, Anthony H Bloom, Michael R Bloomberg, Steven R Boal, Scott A Bommer, Cory A Booker, Jeffrey H Boyd, Sergey Brin, Glenn Britt, Tom Brokaw, Michael J Brown, Howard G Buffett, Susie Buffett, Warren Buffett, John Burbank, Stephen Burke, Erin Burnett, Ursula Burns, John E Bush, Jeanie Buss, John A Canning Jr., Chase Carey, Wences Casares, Mark Casey, Kenneth Chenault, Peter Chernin, Brian Chesky, Richard Chilton, Chris Christie, Lewis Cime, Adriana Cisneros, Gustavo Cisneros, Vittorio Colao, Timothy Collins, Patrick Collison, Timothy Cook, Anderson Cooper, David Corkins, Delos Cosgrove, Dick Costolo, Cristian Croitoru, Henry Crumpton, Jose Luis Cutrale, Will Danoff, Philippe Dauman, Christopher Davis, Alfonso de Angoitia, John DeGioia, Diego Della Valle, Brian Demain, Andre Desmarais, David DeVoe, Feroz Dewan, William DeWitt, Barry Diller, Daniel Doctoroff, Jonathan Dolgen, John Donahoe, Jack Dorsey, Michael Duke, Mathias Dopfner, David Ebersman, Wesley Edens, Marvin Edwards, Eric Eisner, Michael Eisner, John Elkann, Thomas Evans, Randel Falco, Jose Antonio Fernandez, Michael Ferror, Niall W. A. FitzGerald, Thomas Friedman, Michael Fries, Tommy Frist, Daniel Fulton, Michael Fux, Mala Gaonkar, Whitfield Gardner, William Gates, Melinda Gates, Julius Genachowski, Daniel Gilbert, Thomas Giovine, David Goldberg, Roger Goodell, Bing Gordon, Donald Graham, Brian Grazer, Brad Grey, John Griffin, Andreas Halvorsen, Reed Hastings, General Michael Hayden USAF, James Heavener, John Hendricks, John Henry, John Heyman, Kazuo Hirai, John Hock, Reid Hoffman, Won Pyo Hong, Lisa Hook, Ben Horowitz, Drew Houston, Robert Iger, David Ignatius, Martin Indyk, Phillip Jackson, Eli Jacobs, Paul Jacobs, Robert Johnson, Salar Kamanger, Peter Karmanos, Alexander Karp, Michael Karsch, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Michael Keating, Brian Kelly, Muhtar Kent, Joseph Robert Kerrey, Dara Khosrowshahi, Seth Klaman, Joel Klein, Peter Klein, Philip H Knight, Victor Koo, Robert Kotick, Robert Kraft, Henry Kravis, Ynon Kreiz, Blake Krikorian, Ananda Krishnan, Stan Kroenke, Daniel Lamarre, Michael Larson, Martin Lau, Michael Leavitt, Jay Lee, Eric Lefkofsky, Theordore Leonsis, Max Levchin, David Levin, Phil Libin, Martin Lipton, Bryan Lourd, Kenneth W Lowe, Michael Lowenstein, Dan Lufkin, Dennis P LYnch, Michael Lynton, Maurice Levy, John Malone, Robert Marcus, Morris Mark, Donald Mattrick, Kathleen A McCarragher, General Stanley A McChrystal, Andrew McKenna, General Montgomery C Meigs, Lorenzo Mendoza, Ron Meyer, Roberto Mignone, Hiroshi Mikitani, Bill Miller, Kenneth Miranda, Thomas Monahan, Leslie Moonves, Luis Alberto Moreno, Dan Moskovitz, Craig Mundle, James Murdoch, Rupert Mudoch, Lachlan Murdoch, Nathan Myhrvold, Michael Neidorff, Jonathan M Nelson, Vivi Nevo, Sam Nunn, Michael E O'Hanlon, Daniel J O'Keefe, Don O'Neal, Ronald L Olson, Evan Osnos, CL Butch Otter, Michael Ovitz, Larry Page, Stephen G Pagliuca, Saul Pannell, Mark Papa, William Pappendick, MIchael Pausic, Minxin Pei, Francois-Henry Pinault, Mark Pincus, Laurene Powell, Lawrence F Probst, Rebecca Quick, Thomas Rabe, Jay Rasulo, Jerry Reinsdorf, Danny Rimer, Richard Riordan, Ambassador Charles H Rivkin, Brian Roberts, James Robinson IIi, James Robinson IV, Fernando Rodes Vila, Brian Rogers, Congressman Mike Rogers, Charlie Rose, Daniel Rose, Wilbur L Ross, Haim Saban, Karim Sadjadpour, Sheryl Sandberg, Ricky Sandler, Ted Sarandos, Fayez Sarofim, Nassef Sawiris, Eric Schmidt, John Schneider, Christopher Schroeder, John Scully, Allan Selig, Nicole Seligman, Eric Semler, William Siegel, Herbert Siegel, Ben Silbermann, Christopher Silbermann, Louis Simpson, Eduardo Sirotsky Melzer, Andrew Sorkin, Sir Martin Sorrell, Thomas Staggs, Cristina Stenbeck, David Stern, Michael Stone, Sir Howard Stringer, Robert Swan, Peter Thiel, Mark Thompson, Sebastian Thrun, Thomas Tull, Peter Ueberroth, Joseph Vacanti, Jeffrey Van Harte, Owen Van Natta, Martin Varsavsky, Leftie Vaughn, Michelangelo Volpi, Alexandre Von Furstenberg, Dian von Furstenberg, Casey Wasserman, David Weinberg, Judd Weinberg, Jeff Weiner, Harvey Weinstein, Wallace R Weitz, Robert Werbel, Michael White, Meg Whitman, Jim Wiatt, James Williams, Fred Wilpon, Jeffrey Wilpon, Fred Wilson, David J Winters, Nicholas Woodman, Major General Amos Yadlin, Jerry Yang, Jed York, David Zaslav, Dirk E Ziff, Gianfranco Zoppas, Mark Zuckerberg

It’s going to be a long summer for Jeffrey Katzenberg and DreamWorks Animation. It may just be the last summer those two names are associated with each other.

Sure, they’ve got “How To Train Your Dragon 2” coming out. And, sure, it’ll do $500 million worldwide and make a decent profit.

But not enough to convince anyone that DWA isn’t a dead-company-walking.

By early next year, something will have to happen – maybe a sale, maybe a shutdown – but business as usual is not an option.

This failure seemed to happen in slow motion – nearly 10 years with a terrible, unsustainable business model.

I seriously doubt the Company Mission was this: “We’re going to produce two animated movies a year – and one of them will fail. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.”

In baseball, getting a hit fifty percent of the time would be superhuman.

In Hollywood, fifty percent sucks.

When your job is to produce animated feature films, and over half of your movies bomb, there is something wrong with you. It means, you are incompetent and, deep down, you really don’t know what you’re doing.

Big Hollywood animated feature films is the ultimate fish-in-a-barrel/low-hanging-fruit type entertainment. Kids of a certain age will see almost anything. And parents need these diversions to pass the time on a hot summer afternoon or a miserable cold winter day.

But I suppose over the half time, parents would rather be miserable than go see a DreamWorks Animation film.

I’m not saying everything has to be “Frozen” – but nothing should ever be “Turbo” or “Mr. Peabody & Sherman.”

From the beginning, I never understood the Animation unit IPO.

If the reason was just to get enough cash to pay-off Paul Allen at the expense of giving up your dream of building a giant entertainment conglomerate on par with the other majors, then that was truly short-sighted and weak.

Taking the whole company public was really the only option – a piece of it was just too small. I’m sure there was a reason – but it was mistake nonetheless.

Seriously, you went from producing content like this:

To content like this:

AwesomenessTV and OTT, in general, is not going to be enough to save the company – though it will be a nice asset for someone to pick up on the cheap – after the whole OTT bubble bursts (any moment now).

So, I’m sorry, Jeffrey, it’s time for you to just enjoy your money and your philanthropic work (cocktail parties, clambakes at Geffen’s house, etc.). You do many great things for the world – producing movies isn’t one of those things.

Sorry.

It is very possible that Khan Manka, Jr. – as he wrote himself – is the Last Hollywood Mogul.

Good luck to you.

Jill Kennedy – OnMedea

March 10, 2014March 10, 2014

The Verisimilitude Of Sarah Palin

Even though Sarah Palin probably doesn’t know what “verisimilitude” means – she knows exactly what it is because she is the living embodiment of the word.

Sarah Palin is living (and profiting) from the character of Sarah Palin that has been created for her by the various puppet masters in her life even though, deep down, the actual Sarah Palin could give a shit what the character Sarah Palin actually says.

The real Sarah Palin just wants to look good and have nice stuff.

And there is nothing wrong with that – unless, of course, because you are faking this hate-filled persona to get nice stuff you actually hurt real people.

Everyone knows Sarah Palin isn’t bright enough to be a force on the Right.

As much as I dislike the Tea Party and hard core Conservatives, they are not stupid people.

Sarah Palin is a stupid person. Full stop.

And I don’t say that to be mean. No female, outside of models and actresses, has done so much with so little brains as Sarah Palin.

She is living the American Dream for those with low IQs.

If you are an attractive, photogenic person and choose a polarizing political view, you can go far in this country – and she has proven that thesis correct.

The idiots at CPAC even gave her a standing ovation for her inane 3rd grade quality rewrite of “Green Eggs And Ham” slamming the Affordable Care Act.

If only that were the real Sarah Palin.

Deep down, I believe the real Sarah Palin doesn’t care much about anything.

I don’t believe she gives a rat’s ass about gay marriage. She would never admit it because that would destroy the fake Sarah Palin, but I can tell she doesn’t care if a man marries a man or a woman marries a woman.

She doesn’t live in a world where she has to give it much thought.

The same goes for immigration reform, Obamacare – she just doesn’t care about these things because she doesn’t have deep thoughts.

She wants to be famous. That’s it. And it has been working for over 10 years.

People love Sarah Palin and people hate Sarah Palin – but no one hates Sarah Palin as much as the real Sarah Palin – because she is living a lie.

Or maybe she’s not even smart enough to know that.

Jill Kennedy – OnMedea

September 9, 2013

Marissa Mayer Needs To Get Her Voice Back

Allen & Company retreat, Anne Mulcahy, Ari Emanuel, Barry Diller, Ben Silverman, Bob Iger, Bobby Kotick, Carol Bartz, Charlie Rose, Cory Booker, DumbDumb, Electus, Eric Schmidt, Erin Burnett, Gina Bianchini, Harvey Weinstein, Herb Allen, Herb Allen Sun Valley Conference, Herbert Allen, Jean-Bernard Levy, Jeff Bewkes, Jeff Weiner, Jeff Zucker, Jeffrey Immelt, Jerry Yang, John Donahue, Ken Auletta, Khan Manka, Lachlan Murdoch, Lady Gaga, Leslie Moonves, Lionel Barber, Lloyd Grohl, Manka Bros., Marc Andreessen, Marissa Mayer, Mark Pincus, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Sorrell, Mathias Dopfner, Mike Bloomberg, Niall FitzGerald, Peter Chernin, Phillippe Dauman, Reid Hoffman, Richard Parsons, Ricky Van Veen, Rob Wiesenthal, Robert L. Johnson, Ron Meyer, Rupert Murdoch, Sergey Brin, Sheryl Sandberg, Steve Jobs, Sun Valley Retreat, Sun Valley Retreat 2010, Terry Semel, Tom Freston, Tom Friedman, Ursula Burns, Vivi Nevo, Warren Buffett, World's Largest Media Company, Rupert Murdoch, Jose Maria Aznar, natalie Bancroft, Peter Barnes, Chase Carey, Kenneth Cowley, David DeVoe, Viet Dinh, Rod Eddington, Joel Klein, Andrew S.B. Knight, James Murdoch, Lachlan Murdoch, Thomas Perkins, Arthur Siskind, John Thornton, Stanley Shuman, Rebekah Brooks, Les Hinton, Teri Everett, jack Horner, Julie Henderson, Reed Nolte, Roger Ailes, Janet Nova, John Nallen, Beryl Cook, Michael Regan, Genie Gavenchak, Brian Lewis, Irena Briganti, Dan Berger, Rosabel Tao, Steven Rubenstein, Suzanne Halpin, Elisabeth Murdoch, Carol Bartz, Roy Bostock, Patti Hart, Sue James, Vyomesh Joshi, David Kenny, Arthur Kern, Brad Smith, Gary Wilson, Jerry Yang, Blake Irving, Ross Levinsohn, Rose Tsou, Rich Riley, Tim Morse, Michael J. Callahan, David Dibble, David Filo, Dr. Prabhakar Roghavan, Jeff Russakow, Elisa Steele, David Windley, Scott Thompson

The title is not some abstract reference for reconnecting with a global vision…

She LITERALLY needs to get her voice back.

I’m not sure I can listen to another interview with that raspy, unhealthy voice.

And here’s one of the more recent interviews…

Seriously, Marissa, the company (and your baby) will be just fine if you just don’t talk for a few weeks.

You must rest your voice or you will be talking like Harvey Fierstein before too long.

Jill Kennedy – OnMedea

September 6, 2013

I’m Back

The first draft of my book is finished (more on that in the coming weeks) and I am back on the job here at OnMedea.

It was an excellent summer with lots of quiet and lots of work.

Other than the entire media spectrum going to Hell in a handbasket, there really is nothing much going on.

Movie studios are imploding and on their current tract will produce fewer and fewer quality films while continuing to bore audiences around the world with sequel after sequel after sequel. Don’t the studio bosses know that the Tentpole Is Dead?!

My parent company, Manka Bros., is apparently abandoning original films altogether.

That’s one sure-fire way to kill your business (with all due respect).

Broadcast networks continue on their painfully slow journey to complete irrelevance. (Thank God for football, huh?)

I declared them dead a couple of years ago but they are still on life support – though brain dead.

Oh, yeah, and we’re about to go to war. The world is, frankly, in chaos. My colleague Lester Aldrich wrote a thoughtful piece on the prospect of going to war from his own perspective as an 88-year-old man who has been through two wars.

But I digress… happy to be back. Have a great weekend.

Jill Kennedy – OnMedea

May 30, 2013May 30, 2013

The Death Of The Tentpole Film

Hollywood doesn’t need to panic yet – but the powers that be should seriously start thinking about changing film slate strategies.

This is great news for filmmakers, terrible news for Hollywood’s bottom line.

Tentpole movies, when they work, print money for years and years and years – through sequels and licensing, etc. etc.

But, like what happens with obesity, if you give someone a double-quarter pounder meal with super-sized fries every once in a while – it probably won’t make you fat.

If you give someone that meal every freakin’ day for the rest of their lives – they’ll be fat and die much sooner than is necessary.

Hollywood studios have booked a tentpole movie practically every weekend for the next five years.

This is unsustainable and only a matter time before audiences yell bullshit, back away from the Big Mac and change their diet.

This is not to say that these movies are going away completely. There is always an appetite for a great event film spectacle. When they hit, it’s the greatest experience. And I hope that never goes away.

But everything can’t be a tentpole.

Yesterday, I saw the Deadline.com story on Disney’s announced animation slate (see picture).

Personally, I CANNOT WAIT for “Untitled Disney Animation Movie 2017!” And I really can’t wait for the Untitled Toy that my daughter will want.

Studios, especially on the live-action side, have no idea which movies are going to rise up from the pile to get a greenlight five years in advance.

They just know that they have to make 5-6 tentpole movies a year to hit their revenue and profit targets. You can’t make a decent budget projection if you have slated “Silver Linings Playbook 2” or the next film from Alexander Payne.

Tentpoles are necessary for financial planning. But it’s become so much of a science and so NOT much of a creative endeavor that I fear they are suffocating the goose that’s been laying the golden eggs for the past 10 years.

And, seriously, audiences just can’t take it anymore.

They aren’t crying for “Marvel Character #1,000” to finally have his or her own movie!

“Remember that character that cleaned the floors in ‘The Amazing Spider-man Comics #43’? He totally needs his own movie!”

But Hollywood thinks it can do it and that audiences will keep lapping it up.

And this summer, they will – “Man Of Steel” and “Pacific Rim” both look fantastic and I’ll be seeing them both on opening weekends with millions of others.

Again, Hollywood doesn’t need to panic yet.

I wrote a couple of years ago that audiences will never tire of super heroes – that the characters who are shoved quickly into movies should not be blamed for the failures of mortal film executives and writers to tell their stories well.

But there is only so much heavy lifting these characters can do – they’re superheroes, they’re not God.

It’s time for Hollywood to take more risks, be more experimental, have more fun. Don’t be afraid to fail.

Film production IS McDonalds these days. The food looks and tastes exactly the same every time (and, sure, there is some comfort in that). But when was the last time you heard an employee at McDonalds say their job was fun and totally creative?

Jill Kennedy – OnMedea

April 16, 2013April 16, 2013

The New York Post Gets It Wrong… Again

Seriously, what is their problem?

Just because some guy says 12 are dead – doesn’t mean you post it. Even Rupert Murdoch should know that (maybe not).

Jill Kennedy – OnMedea

April 15, 2013April 15, 2013

The Integrity Of Golf?

Manka Bros., Khan Manka, OnMedea, Jill Kennedy, The Masters, Augusta National Golf Club, Tiger Woods, Bobby Jones, Alister MacKenzie, Nick Price, Greg Norman, Condoleezza Rice, Darla Moore, Herbert Warren Wind, Mezz Mezzrow, Richard Moore, Andy Razaf, Mildred Bailey, Arnold Palmer, Ken Venturi, Byron Nelson, Clifford Xavier Roberts, Dwight Eisenhower, Franke Broyles, Warren Buffett, Pete Coors, Bill Gates, Pat haden, Lou Holtz, Hugh McColl, Sam Nunn, Sam Palmisano, T Boone PIckens, Harold Poling, James Robinson III, Carl Sanders, Kevin Bloomfield, Condoleezza Rice, Lynn Swann, William Lane, Hord Hardin, Jackson Stephens, Hootie Johnson, Billy Payne, Christine Brennan, Martha Burk, Thomas Wyman, John Snow, SAm Snead, Gary Player, Kelly Tilghman, Arnold Palmer, Fuzzey Zoeller, Gretchen Zoeller, Rory McIlroy, Caroline Wozniacki, Ben Crenshaw

The PGA and professional golf, in general, is an absolute joke.

How many times during The Masters did we hear that Tiger Woods should withdraw himself from the tournament in order to protect the ‘integrity of golf’?

This is such bullshit.

First of all, the officials missed the call and it wasn’t until after Woods gave an interview that some caller alerted the Augusta Nationalist (my spelling) Golf Club officials that Woods incriminated himself.

Some caller? I can imagine this was the way the scene played out:

Augusta National Golf Course – 19th Hole

Inside a paneled lounge, several white men with southern drawls are drinking scotch and smoking cigars. There is a general laughter that never seems to die down.

Suddenly, a perspiring office worker bursts into the lounge.

OFFICE WORKER: Gentlemen, someone has just called and said Tiger Woods admitted during an interview to stepping back a yard to take a drop.

An Augusta Member (we’ll call him Scooter) drops his smile.

SCOOTER: Aw, Bubby, can’t ya see we’re having our scotch and smoking our cigars. Tiger’s a good ol’ boy and a surprisingly good golfer.

OFFICE WORKER: But more people are calling in. And they’re Tweeting, too!

Another member (we’ll call him Hootie) puts down his scotch and turns grave.

HOOTIE: Tweetin’? Gentlemen, we had better address this issue. Can someone please get a copy of that videotape or film of this interview and set it up in the Hogan Room anti-chamber for our immediate review? Bring your glasses, gentlemen. I have decided that scotch will be allowed for one time only in the Hogan Room.

Etc etc etc (I could go on forever with these guys).

We all know what happened. Tiger got a retroactive two stroke penalty and basically was removed from the tournament – at least in spirit. Commentators no longer praised his play or got excited when he made a good shot.

Golf Channel analysts called his decision to keep playing a disgrace and an error in judgment that will follow him the rest of his career and taint his legacy.

Oh, really? What would have made the situation right?

Maybe they should have put him in stocks outside of Butler Cabin for the duration of the tournament and he could have been released by the new champion.

Maybe Tiger should have performed hara-kiri like a Japanese samurai on the 18th green because of what he has done to the great game of golf.

Has the great game of golf and its legacy of racism and exclusionary policies really taken a hit here?

You know what hurts the integrity of golf? The Augusta National Golf Club and its past policy of excluding women and minorities and doing VERY LITTLE to correct the problem (adding Lynn Swan and Condoleezza Rice doesn’t really get you there).

You know what hurts the integrity of golf? The hypocrisy of all those who point a finger at Tiger Woods for cheating on his wife when half the field at The Masters is on wife number 2 or 3 or 4 – with countless girlfriends in between (or during).

You know what hurts the integrity of golf? Old white men commenting that the sole black golfer competing in the tournament should quit when you know they wouldn’t ask that of Fred Couples if he committed the same infraction.

You know what hurts the integrity of golf? Playing a tournament at a club that was founded by a man – Cliff Roberts, the first Augusta Chairman – who once said: “As long as I’m alive, all the golfers will be white and all the caddies will be black.”

You know what hurts the integrity of golf? Those crappy looking green jackets that are mythologized to appear as though they were made by the hands of God.

The Masters – ‘a tradition like no other’ – and golf, in general – had better change its ways or it will be going the way of the dinosaur and the Republican party before too long.

Jill Kennedy – OnMedea

November 9, 2012November 9, 2012

Did David Petraeus Have An Affair or “An Affair”?

Seriously, Fox News?

Seriously, Drudge Report (see headline below)?

Seriously, Rupert Murdoch (Tweeted: Petraeus resignation. Timing, everything suspicious)

So General Petraeus had “an affair” (meaning you don’t believe he had an affair) which caused him to leave the CIA in disgrace?

As much as you would like it to happen, something does not become a scandal before the facts are known – not that that has ever stopped you before.

What IS a scandal is that Fox News and Drudge Report keep trying to create scandals that bring down the President.

I’m sorry but using quote marks to illustrate your non-belief of the story before the facts come out is journalism at its crappiest.

Newsflash to Fox News and company – Your Polls Were Wrong, Barack Obama Is President – suck it up, stop whining and move on.

Here are some of the headlines from high profile news sources after today’s surprising announcement that David Petraeus has resigned as CIA Director following an admission to an extramarital affair:

Yes, Fox News, you might be onto something – David Petraeus is obviously saying he cheated on his wife of 37 years and is throwing his long career and future down the toilet just to cover up for the President’s mistakes in Benghazi.

Get Mitt Romney and Karl Rove on the phone – tell them there is still chance! Ohio is back in play!

Jill Kennedy – OnMedea