It’s been interesting that, in all of the many, fawning pieces about Ezra Klein written in the last few months, I haven’t seen anyone ask him about the second thing he’s famous for: JournoList. The RCP guys finally brought it up during their drivecast with Klein, but since it’s video and not print, I suspect it didn’t get the attention it deserved, because his answers didn’t exactly close out the topic. Breitbart went to the trouble of making a transcript of the exchange:

They ask Klein about JournoList, the email group Klein ran several years ago that often served to coordinate coverage among left-leaning members of the media. Does such a group still exists, Cannon wonders?

Klein evades the question throughout. His first response is to rebuke Cannon for believing in “conspiracy theories”–never mind that the original JournoList was, in fact, the rare case of a conspiracy theory being true.

Then he says, “I’m not involved anymore, and if there’s–I think there still might be–there are a shit-ton of email listservs around this town,” before contending, bizarrely, that JournoList never coordinated anything.

“I hated JournoList by the end,” he adds, “I hated it so much. I spent all my time moderating flame wars on the list.” Klein mocks the idea that journalists, who want to be the first to break a story, would coordinate stories.

Cannon retorts: “You underestimate how partisan some of our colleagues are.” Klein disagrees: journalists are “cynical.”

Cannon tries once more: does JournoList still exist?

Klein: “Oh–I don’t run anything like that.”

Anthony Lane has a very good essay about him and, funnily enough, fixates on the PSH performance which most struck me, too.

One final note: When I said that Hoffman might be my favorite actor of my generation, I didn’t mean “best.” That’s a separate question and Hoffman probably ranks somewhere on any such list, too.  But I really meant my personal favorite. Like most people, I have a little list of actors who give me enormous pleasure whenever they show up–I like to think of them as actors whose VORPs are just totally off the scale. For me, anyway.

And uses it as an occasion to obsess about the Republican brand and racial optics. Which is pretty hysterical, since Harold’s political identity has pretty much nothing to do with that stuff and her campaign is actually based on the idea that the incumbent never had to face GOP primary voters.

But the most hysterical part in Todd Frankel’s piece is when he describes Harold thusly “She is anti-abortion rights . . ”

That’s right–Harold isn’t against abortion, she’s against the God-given right to abortion.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen that locution used by a non-activist.

I wrote about Harold’s insurgent campaign here, in case you missed it.

I guess that to really despise Friedman, you have to work near him:

One current Times staffer told The Observer, “Tom Friedman is an embarrassment. I mean there are multiple blogs and Tumblrs and Twitter feeds that exist solely to make fun of his sort of blowhardy bullshit.” . . .

Another Times reporter brought up Mr. Friedman, unsolicited, toward the end of a conversation that was generally positive about the editorial page: “I never got a note from Andy or anything like that. But I will say, regarding Friedman, there’s the sense that he’s on cruise control now that he’s his own brand. And no one is saying, ‘Hey, did you see the latest Friedman column?’ in the way they’ll talk about ‘Hey, Gail [Collins] was really funny today.’”

Asked if this stirring resentment toward the editorial page might not just be garden variety news vs. edit stuff or even the leanings of a conservative news reporter toward a liberal editorial page, one current Times staffer said, “It really isn’t about politics, because I land more to the left than I do to the right. I just find it …”

He paused for a long time before continuing and then, unprompted, returned to Mr. Friedman. “I just think it’s bad, and nobody is acknowledging that they suck, but everybody in the newsroom knows it, and we really are embarrassed by what goes on with Friedman. I mean anybody who knows anything about most of what he’s writing about understands that he’s, like, literally mailing it in from wherever he is on the globe. He’s a travel reporter. A joke. The guy gets $75,000 for speeches and probably charges the paper for his first-class airfare.”

Another former Times writer, someone who has gone on to great success elsewhere, expressed similar contempt (and even used the word “embarrass”) and says it’s longstanding.

“I think the editorials are viewed by most reporters as largely irrelevant, and there’s not a lot of respect for the editorial page. The editorials are dull, and that’s a cardinal sin. They aren’t getting any less dull. As for the columnists, Friedman is the worst. He hasn’t had an original thought in 20 years; he’s an embarrassment. He’s perceived as an idiot who has been wrong about every major issue for 20 years, from favoring the invasion of Iraq to the notion that green energy is the most important topic in the world even as the financial markets were imploding. Then there’s Maureen Dowd, who has been writing the same column since George H. W. Bush was president.”

Of course, I suspect that in response Friedman would just point to this and say, “Scoreboard.”

The great Mollie Hemingway has heroically set forth some tentative social rules for seat reclining on airplanes. I’m in favor of them all.

Reclining your seat in an airplane isn’t the worst breach of etiquette in the traveling worlds. It’s not talking in the Quiet Car or showing up to dinner in jean shorts on the at-sea night. But it’s pretty bad. Just because airplane seats recline, doesn’t mean they should be reclined any time. And there out to be some generally-shared consensus on when it’s polite to do so.

For my own part, I never mind if the person in front of me reclines and they’re really big. Last week on a cross-country flight the guy in the seat in front of me was probably 6’6″. I kept waiting for him to push his seat back and I wouldn’t have held it against him, but he never did. Ditto for red eye flights, when most people are expecting to sleep.

At the other end of the spectrum are the times when a normal-sized person reclines immediately upon take-off, yet jabbers back and forth with their seat-mate for the whole flight. These folks don’t need the extra room and aren’t using it to aid sleep–they’re just taking it, because they can.

I don’t know where this sort of thing fits in the hierarchy of assaults on civilization, but it probably clocks somewhere around talking in movies. [Cue Santino rant in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .]

A terrible shame, as the clichés have it, about Phil Hoffman.

I haven’t thought closely about this, but he might have been my favorite actor of my generation. I like to think that I was on the Hoffman train early–when I was in high school, he stuck out in one of the better Law & Order episodes, along with Billy from from Ally McBeal (Gil Bellows; how funny to have as young guest stars two future leading men; Dick Wolfe’s casting directors have always been money).

Hoffman added to Twister in a meaningless role (looking back today, it’s really something how much acting talent was hanging around the production; I suspect they all bought houses because of it) and blew the screen open during his short scene at the craps table in Sydney (otherwise known as Hard Eight). During the years when movies meant the most to me, Hoffman was a regular treat and the only times I winced were when he occasionally went took Oscar bait in flicks like Love Liza. But even then, I didn’t blame him for it.

That said, my two favorite Hoffman performances were in lesser movies.

The first was in the third Mission: Impossible where Hoffman played the villain. It was a remarkable piece of work because Hoffman’s character had two key aspects which cut against one another. First, he had to be kind of a nobody–remember, in the movie Hoffman isn’t the target, he’s just a mid-level bad guy being used to get to the big fish. But then the movie goes sideways when Hoffman’s character decides to get revenge and suddenly Hoffman has to play the heavy. And boy, does he. It’s not often that Tom Cruise has someone on screen with him who becomes the entire center of gravity on the frame. But Hoffman did just that. It was a neat trick.

But my favorite perf came in the otherwise forgettable Talented Mr. Ripley. Hoffman played Freddie Miles, a dumb, rich bully who becomes the first victim of Matt Damon’s Ripley.

In the scene which seals his fate, Miles is baiting Ripley, taunting him for being a peeping Tom. But suddenly Miles realizes, on an unconscious level, that Tom Ripley isn’t what he seems. There’s a moment when you see this recognition flicker in his eyes and what makes the turn so brilliant is that Freddie Miles doesn’t see through Ripley because he’s clever. So often in life big, stupid bullies seem to come hardwired with a reptilian sense of self-preservation–they can just sense when they’re in real danger. And Hoffman showed exactly that with Freddie Miles: He realizes that he’s in danger, even if he doesn’t quite know why he knows it. It’s a sensational bit of acting, and really the only thing special about the production.

I don’t think we’ve fully grokked all the implications of Disney’s purchase of the Star Wars franchise. For instance, Marvel is now taking over the comic-book properties from Dark Horse.

And for another, J.J. Abrams seems to be bringing a very Disney sensibility to the sequels. (By “Disney sensibility” I don’t mean in terms of aesthetics or morals; I’m referring to the way in which Disney seems to conceive of the re-use of characters in franchise sequels.) Courtesy of Galley Friend B.D., there’s a very smart take over here on the conflict between what audiences want and what they need (the creator’s dilemma made famous by Joss Whedon):

What the audience wants is to see Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo again. The problem is, that’s impossible. Those characters are gone. They are a creation of celluloid well over thirty years ago. Without conducting the requisite thought experiments, though, the audience – and J.J. Abrams – will continue to “want” to see their heroes again, right up until the moment that they do. At which point, I think, a rather horrible collision between wants and needs will take place, right up there on the big screen.

What the audience needs, above all, is to not have their abiding affection for the original trilogy tampered with.

How do you know we’re at a real moment of American progressivism?

This morning on the drive in, I passed a recent vintage Toyota Camry sporting a brand-new Mondale-Ferraro bumper sticker. For reals.