Josh Chafetz has left the building.

It seems Rachel Nichols, almost formerly of The Inside, may replace Beniffer 2.0 on Alias.

Seriously, everyone Tim Minear touches turns to gold.

On a totally non-related note, did you catch the snippet during the commentary track on Arrested Development where it was made clear that Bateman, Hurwitz, and Arnett are TV Without Pity readers? Pretty excellent, no?

Christine Rosen’s high-minded and engaging indictment of videogames in the New Atlantis is, as usual, great reading. In addition to being a wonderful writer, Rosen may also be the premier techno-scold of our time. Now, if I could only convince her to write about blogging . . .

In defense of videogames, however, I will say that the aspect I most enjoy about them is what Rosen sees as their biggest problem: It’s a playground of the self. For example, had I been born in slightly different circumstances (ie someplace where I was surrounded at an early age by car people), I could easily have fallen into the tuner culture. As it is, I’m fascinated by it–just not fascinated enough to spend thousands of hours and dollars pimping out my own ride. But a game such as Need for Speed: Underground gives me enough of that world to sate my appetite.

That can’t always be a bad thing. Unless you’re over 30 and have a real job and real responsiblities. Oh. Wait.

Never mind.

Don’t miss Dean Barnett’s truly excellent piece on the new relationship between left-wing blogs and Democratic candidates. Fantastic stuff.

This earnest story about the Denver Fire Department’s quest to hire people who reflect the diversity of the area is pretty chilling. Leading this charge–amazingly–is the chief of the Department, Larry Trujillo.

Trujillo recently demanded that the area’s Civil Service Commission stop its testing of candidates because he believes that the current regime of testing is racially biased. Also, he wants to do away with the Department’s current policy of disqualifying candidates with felony or drug convictions. His reasoning: “It sickens me that they’re penalizing people for what they did in their past.”

It’s an amazing example of the utter and complete victory of the diversity movement in American culture.

On Mischa Barton:

She would probably be considered really hot as just another sorority girl at a college somewhere, but she’s on the OC with girls like Olivia Wilde, and that has to be pretty humbling. It’s like how being Aqua-Man would be pretty cool. Unless you’re hanging out with Superman. And then you just kind of feel like a dork in his underwear.

It’s time for a visit with an old friend. You may recall Jason Apuzzo from our previous encounter with him–he’s the big-C Conservative “filmmaker” who has trouble reading bylines accurately and correcting his mistakes honestly.

Yesterday Apuzzo published a column at Townhall.com decrying the rise of “terrorism chic” in Hollywood. Apuzzo warned readers that “Hollywood has finally come around to contributing what it can in the War on Terror: namely, glossy, star-studded movies that sympathize with the enemy.”

Apuzzo then went on to list 10 films in various stages of production which he asserts are part of Hollywood’s attempt to, well, sympathize with the enemy.

Normally it’s not worth talking back to places like Townhall.com–really, one might as well shout at the sea–but Apuzzo’s cri du coeur seems to have taken in my good friend John Hinderaker. You see, Apuzzo, never one to let facts get in the way of a good Conservative argument, may be overstating matters a bit. Here are some of the films he warns readers about:

“V For Vendetta.” From Warner Brothers and the creators of “The Matrix” comes this film about a futuristic Great Britain that’s become a ‘fascist state.’ A masked ‘freedom fighter’ named V uses terror tactics (including bombing the London Underground) to undermine the government – leading to a climax in which the British Parliament is blown up. Natalie Portman stars as a skinhead who turns to ‘the revolution’ after doing time as a Guantanamo-style prisoner.

“Munich.” Steven Spielberg directs this film about the aftermath of the 1972 Olympic terror attacks that killed eleven Israeli athletes. “Munich”‘s screenplay is written by playwrite [sic -JVL] Tony Kushner (“Angels in America”), who has been quoted as saying: “I think the founding of the state of Israel was for the Jewish people a historical, moral, political calamity … I wish modern Israel hadn’t been born.” The film focuses on the crisis of conscience undergone by Israeli commandos tasked with killing PLO terrorists – rather than on the barbarity of the terrorists themselves.

“Syriana.” Starring George Clooney and Matt Damon, this Warner Brothers film – set during the first Bush administration – features a plot by American oil companies and the U.S. government to redraw Middle East borders for greater oil profiteering. The film even depicts a handsome, ‘tragic’ suicide bomber driven to jihad after being fired by an American oil company! The film’s climax comes with the jihadist launching an explosive device into an oil tanker as American oil barons and Saudi officials look on.

Sounds pretty dreadful, doesn’t it? And it would be, if Apuzzo’s descriptions were on the level. But it isn’t clear that they are.

V for Vendetta, for instance, is based on a 1980s comic book by Alan Moore. The project was set up at Warner Bros.–with Joel Silver producing–by 1994. The Wachowski brothers were, as Variety reported “hot” to adapt Moore’s book, “but then set it aside as they were consumed by their massive Matrix trilogy.” Whatever liberal paranoia V for Vendetta may hold, it long predates the GWOT.

As for Spielberg’s Munich, Tony Kushner is only one of the three writers listed on the project, and based on the credits of the other two (Eric Roth and Charles Randolph), and the leanings of Spielberg that we’ve seen regarding Israel and the plight of Jewry, I’ll be very surprised if this is an anti-Israel movie. Look, for instance, at the long list of Holocaust and WWII projects that he’s produced in recent years. Or consider his ongoing work with the Shoah Foundation. Does this sound like the background of a man who’s been planning to make a movie that sympathizes with terrorists who killed innocent Jews?

And then there’s Syriana. The plot summary Apuzzo gives is radically different from what’s listed on IMDB, which says:

Robert Baer (Clooney), a 21-year veteran of the CIA, spent his entire career investigating terrorists around the globe. As the dangers of terrorism increased, Baer watched as the CIA’s funding was cut, politics overtook judgment, and warning signs were ignored. But the struggle becomes personal when an oil executive (Damon) and his wife (Peet) are faced with a family tragedy…

Again, I haven’t seen a script, but given that the writer/director is Stephen Gaghan (most notable for Traffic), I’d be surprised if what makes it to the screen is closer to Apuzzo’s summary than what’s on IMDB. Don’t forget, Gaghan adapted James Webb’s Rules of Engagement, the closest thing we’ve seen to a Hollywood apologia for America and the military in recent years.

Who knows about the rest of Apuzzo’s list–an Oliver Stone-helmed 9/11 movie sounds like trouble. But surely this is enough to raise questions about Apuzzo’s overarching premise.

There is no doubt some truth to the worry about the sympathies of Hollywood filmmakers–I’m the guy who wrote the story two years ago about their unwillingness to do movies based on the war on terrorism. But Jason Apuzzo isn’t a particularly reliable guide to the industry and his alarmism about a fleet of movies specifically designed to “sympathize” with our enemies seems, at best, overwrought.

It’s no surprise that people have rushed to declare the “end of an era” in the wake of Peter Jennings’s passing, but in at least one important way, it’s true: We have reached the end of the era of the network anchorman.

For two generations Americans have grown accustomed to having their network news anchors act in loco deus–they may have just been newsreaders, but they functioned as the Voice of God: solid, grave, assuring, authoritative.

People who’ve never been on television have a tendency to dismiss the talents required to be a news anchor. On the one hand, yes, anchors are talking heads. They do not, as a rule, possess much reportorial skill. They are, if you can imagine, more pompous than they appear to the naked eye.

But they are not just heads. Reading the evening news on a day-to-day basis may not take much, but anchoring an event–like a presidential election night, or the crashing of a space shuttle, or even a State of the Union night–requires an enormous reserve of charm, stamina, quick-thinking, and above all, gravitas.

Whatever else there is to be said about the recently departed generation of anchors–Brokaw, Rather, and Jennings–they were archetypes of the network anchor.

And they may have been the last of their breed. The same syndrome that David Ansen noticed in our current crop of leading men is true for our news anchors:

There’s a fundamental difference between the big American male stars of Gen X and their predecessors. The icons of the past were men. Paul Newman, Robert Red-ford and Warren Beatty were young and beautiful at the start of their careers, but they were never “boys.” Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Will Smith and Cruise, not to mention Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio, are defined by their boyishness. They began their careers as kids and, even as they move into their 30s and 40s, have never fully lost their dew.

Think, then, about the next generation of anchormen: Matt Lauer, Bill Hemmer, Shep Smith, Brian Williams, John Roberts. Without passing any judgment on their skills as journalists, as anchors they’re of a completely different species–pretty, fluffy, pleasant, boyish. They might do fine reading the news Monday to Friday, but if I were a network executive, I wouldn’t have wanted any of them in the chair on September 11.

As it happens, there are only two thoroughbred anchormen working today–Aaron Brown and Brit Hume. They each evoke, in their own way, the solidity, the seriousness, the manliness that we came to expect from the succession of Cronkite, Brinkley, Rather, Jennings, and the other anchors who made the nightly national news broadcast part of American life. But both of them are confined to cable, where they ply their trade away from the eyes of the diminished, but still significant, crowds who make up the audience for the evening news.

This is neither good nor bad and the change probably carries no larger meaning for the culture. But it is change, nonetheless. And for that reason alone, it’s fitting that we pause for a moment to note what really is the passing of an era.