Encouraging news that the Harry Potter flick, one of the most pedestrian I have sat through in ages, saw its audience drop 36 percent in its second weekend. It’s still breaking every record in sight, but American movie-goers’ tastes haven’t gone completely wacko. I haven’t read the books which many, many people have told me are excellent (so please save your emails in that regard). But the movie was a terrible waste of time. The main protagonists were bad child actors, which is almost but not entirely a superfluous phrase. The rest was special effects and absurd little cameo performances by some great British stage stars. There was no plot; no structure; no memorable dialogue; no-one you could even vaguely care about. I can see why some kids would like it. But the night I saw it, grown women were shrieking “Harry! Harry!” as the movie started. I don’t know how to explain this phenomenon. Are they just desperate for relief? Or have they lost their minds? Maybe you can help.
WHAT HUMAN CLONING?: I’m a little confused about all the stories on human cloning in the press. For all the fuss, no-one has been cloned; even an embryo hasn’t been cloned; the experiments were not a success; the company that conducted them has run out of money. This is a story? The prize for not buying this savvy piece of media-manipulation goes to the New York Times, which runs a good piece today on the limits of the non-breakthrough. For the record, I’m against human cloning. But I’m also against media hype.
LETTERS: They’re back! Two Buddhists for war; a marine writes; why Powell’s military acumen is over-rated, etc.
ASBESTOS: Several of you have taken me to task for posting a piece on a rabidly anti-enviro website (check the Letters for an excellent rebuttal). I take the point. I’m not pro-asbestos. It kills people. I’m also not anti-environment. I was just passing on a reasonably interesting observation about the WTC. There’s always a danger on a site like this of linking to stuff you can’t completely vet or that might merely give some people more traffic than they deserve. The same argument goes for the usqueers.com site mentioned below. But my web philosophy is not to be risk averse, and to link to stuff that raises difficult or interesting questions, even when I disagree. Just keep me on my toes, will you?
THE RFK CONNECTION: A reader alerts me to an interesting quote buried deep in the Wall Street Journal’s Monday edition. It’s a wiretapped quote from the blind Sheik Omar who was discussing whether Islamic law would allow a bombing of the F.B.I.’s New York offices. “Slow down; slow down a bit,” the spiritual leader says. “The one who killed Kennedy was trained for three years.” Hmmm. Which Kennedy? Trained by whom?
The Dish 