Sir Howard

Howard Stringer conducted a "global search" for a top music industry executive to replace the loathsome Tommy Mottola at Sony Records.......and found his friend Andy Lack, who didn't like his job at NBC because his boss, Bob Wright, hated him. Mr. Lack has no music industry experience and seems ill-suited to the task.

You would think that the business press would be howling at this brazen act of corporate cronyism, but not really. Howard Stringer, after all, is a ranking member of the major media mafia. The New York Times actually refers to Howard Stringer as SIR Howard Stringer. Not once, but repeatedly, in an odd bit of lackey journalism. Lack is dressed up as a "turnaround" specialist. And Jeff Zucker, the NBC executive who gains the most with Lack's departure, is given a big wet kiss for good measure.

Everybody's happy. Call it (crony) journalism.

Day Ten: 229 pounds

Day Nine: 229 pounds

On The First Tee

The 2003 golf season begins today with the first round of play at The Mercedes Championship. Because the tournament is being played in Hawaii, coverage on ESPN will be in prime time (basically from 8pm to 10pm eastern). On all four nights. Tiger Woods is not playing this week, unfortunately. He's still recovering from knee surgery.

Day Eight: 230 pounds

Foneblog!

If Glenn Reynolds finds out about Foneblog, we're talking ceaseless Instapundit.

Dumb and Dumber

From the lead of a Washington Post report on House "ethics" rules:

House Republicans weakened their own ethics rules yesterday, pushing through language that would allow lobbyists to cater meals to members' offices and let charities pay for lawmakers to travel and stay at golf resorts and other locales.

You can read the rest of the dreary details here.

Department of Redundancy

Michael Kelly's column on North Korea is excellent, as ever.

Love Labor Lost

First Al Gore and now Tom Daschle. The second largest vote getter in the nation's history and the nation's most powerful Democrat (legislatively) have both dropped out of the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination campaign. We will never know all the reasons why they chose not to run. And at some level, decisions like this are based on instinct not on check-lists.

But one thing is clear. Labor is for Gephardt. Labor is totally for Gephardt. Gore made a play for AFSCME with his single-payer health plan and the response from that union was: Gephardt. Daschle and his former Clinton Administration advisors cast about for support from Labor and the response was: Gephardt. The fact is Labor didn't want Daschle to run for president. They wanted him to run for re-election. And that's what he's doing.

EDLP

It stands for Every Day Low Prices, which has been the WalMart mantra for as long as anyone can remember. Today, The Financial Times has a long interview with Lee Scott, WalMart's CEO, which is terrific. The only problem is you may need a subscription to FT.com to read it.

Elsewhere in WalMart news, the company announced yesterday that it would begin offering financial services (in the form of money transfers) to its enormous customer base. Adios Western Union. And good riddance.