Daniel Wattenberg
Articles by Daniel Wattenberg
Hello, goodbye: Late relief help from Paul McCartney can’t save gun background checks in Senate
Hard to believe, but Jay Mohr's tweet rescinding the Second Amendment wasn't enough to clinch victory for gun control advocates in Wednesday's Senate vote on a measure to expand background checks on gun buyers. So Paul McCartney on Wednesday became a late addition to an anti-gun campaign spearheaded by crooner Tony Bennett. That wasn't enough either: Faster than you can say "Hello, Goodbye" the Senate rejected the new background checks late Wednesday afternoon. Published April 17, 2013
Merry Tax Day! From the Palm
Normal people don’t think of Tax Day as cause for celebration. But things are different here in the Nation’s Capital. For one thing, we have a better baseball team than you do. For another, here in Washington, where the Palm’s walls are crowded with fond caricatures of politicos and the eatery’s coffers are propped up by lobbyists on expense accounts, Tax Day is indeed occasion to celebrate. Published April 15, 2013
(UPDATE) Tarantino’s ‘Django Unchained’: China spiking, none speaking (and we called it here)
Baffled industry observers are at a loss to explain why the Chinese authorities would rescind approval for a film that had already met the exacting demands of state censors. In the absence of a better explanation, I can’t help wondering if — don’t laugh — my own speculations about “Django’s” potential cultural impact in China — posted here on the eve of “Django’s” Chinese release — somehow tripped an alarm, triggering last minute jitters somewhere in the upper echelons of the state film bureaucracy. Published April 11, 2013
Blood sacrifice: Quentin Tarantino declaws ‘Django Unchained’ in bow to Chinese censors
On his best behavior for his Chinese distributors, Hollywood bad boy Quentin Tarantino has consented to attenuate his opulent jets of onscreen blood in “Django Unchained” for the sake of his slave revolt tale's Chinese release. Published April 10, 2013
Roger Ebert on ‘The Iron Lady’: Margaret Thatcher lacked feelings
By many accounts, "The Iron Lady" credits Mrs. Thatcher as a kind of objective feminist who overcame long odds through force of will and personality in rising to the top of a male-dominated political arena. That wasn't enough for Mr. Ebert. "Was she a monster? A heroine?" he demanded. "The movie has no opinion." Guess which one she was in the critic's opinion. Published April 8, 2013
Online backlash grows against Victoria’s Secret’s racy Bright Young Things collection for teens
A petition calling on Victoria’s Secret to drop Bright Young Things, a marketing campaign it says “targets teens and tweens with the same type of sexy and sexualized products sold in their adult line,” has gathered over 11,000 signatures at Change.org, a popular web platform for social activism. Published March 28, 2013
‘Olympus Has Fallen’ box office: Hollywood fooled again
Biblical drama isn’t the only entertainment genre with a stealth market invisible to Hollywood. Here’e another: patriotic action thriller. “Olympus Has Fallen,” an unapologetically flag-waving action spectacle centered around a North Korean plot to seize the White House and take the president hostage, took in $30.5 million at the box office over the weekend, beating consensus prerelease expectations in Hollywood by about 50 percent. Published March 25, 2013
This just in: MSNBC is a liberal opinion network
At the prime-time home of Al Sharpton, Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, Kirk O’Donnell and outgoing Ed Schultz/incoming Chris Hayes, “Opinion dominates reporting,” the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism has learned. Published March 18, 2013
UPDATE - Sacred mystery: Latest blockbuster ratings for ‘The Bible’ continue to confound Hollywood
According to the latest Nielsens, released Tuesday, Sunday night’s telecast of “The Bible,” produced by husband-and-wife team Mark Burnett and Roma Downey for basic cable’s History channel, managed to attract more viewers than anything on two of the “Big 4” broadcast networks — NBC and ABC — during the entire week. Published March 14, 2013
Position wanted: ‘Big star’ Soledad O’Brien seeks to produce ‘in-depth, serious journalism’
Amid reports that former CNN morning anchor Soledad O'Brien — having already lost her morning anchor slot to twinkly Erin Burnett — would be the next to leave the network in an ongoing purge of high-visibility talent under new boss Jeff Zucker, anonymous, proactive "sources" have reached out to the New York Post's Page Six with some preemptive, Soledad-positive spin. Published February 20, 2013
Gun control at the box office, part 2: Willis blows away Stallone and Schwarzenegger
Perhaps there is a Lover’s Day lesson to be gleaned from Bruce Willis’ weekend box office triumph: Love your base, and your base will love you. Opening on Valentine’s Day, “A Good Day to Die Hard,” the fifth installment in the star’s signature action movie franchise, finished number one at the box office for President’s Day weekend, with a three-day gross of $25 million. Published February 18, 2013
Righting the ship: Fox News welcomes Herman Cain aboard as contributor
Asteroid 2012DA14 missed earth, water’s not flowing uphill — and on Friday Fox News Channel announced that former GOP presidential contender and populist conservative darling Herman Cain is joining its stable of contributors. Published February 15, 2013
Gun control at the box office: Do stances of Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Willis affect movie sales?
The ex-Governator and the suspiciously ripped Rambo sold out the Second Amendment — despite the fame and fortune each has won wreaking bloody havoc on the big screen. After their comments, both of their new star vehicles promptly tanked at the box office. Coincidence? Published February 14, 2013
Willis wants it known he’s not — repeat not — ready to join GOP
Maybe Bruce Willis is the man to unite divided Republicans. Published February 12, 2013
False alarm: No zombie attack in Montana. This time.
Hackers briefly broke into the Emergency Alert System (EAS) to interrupt local television programming in Montana Monday evening with a fake warning of a zombie uprising. Published February 12, 2013
Bruce Willis channels his ‘Die Hard’ character to blast French Socialists’ ‘millionaires tax’
As rising GOP stars prepare to deliver competing, stereophonic versions of the fissile party’s response to President Obama’s State of the Union message Tuesday night, Bruce Willis continues to speak out in mono, on message, in a language common to all Republicans. Published February 11, 2013
Winnie Mandela takes star turn in granddaughters’ new reality series for U.S. TV
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the controversial ex-wife of anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, is featured as a doting and beloved grandmother and materfamilias in “Being Mandela,” a new reality series chronicling the fashion-forward lives of sisters Zaziwe Dlamini-Manaway and Swati Dlamini, the granddaughters of Mr. Mandela, 94, and Madikizela-Mandela, 76. Published February 8, 2013
After prosecutors slam ‘sloppy’ Richmond PD, judge orders new records in Chris Brown case
A Los Angeles judge on Wednesday ordered additional records to prove that Chris Brown actually completed a community service sentence imposed after he pleaded guilty in the 2009 beating of then-girlfriend Rihanna. The order comes after Los Angeles County prosecutors slammed the Richmond Police Department for “at best sloppy documentation and at worst fraudulent reporting” in monitoring and substantiating Brown’s compliance. Published February 6, 2013
Roots of Glover’s 2nd Amendment interpretation lie in eccentric historical claims of 9/11 truther
Speaking to students Thursday at Texas A&M, Danny Glover left his young Aggie hosts little reason to suspect that his confident dissent from mainstream scholarly understanding of the "genesis" of the Second Amendment might be founded on nothing more than an article by a talk radio host and 9/11 "truther" posted within the previous two days at a left-wing website proudly specializing in provocation. But such now appears to be the case. Published January 22, 2013