Posted 8:04 PM by Peter Fallow
HIGH-TECH MOONING YIELDS MORE THAN 2,500 HITS: Earlier today, I posted a gag photo of myself bending over a la Dawn Olsen in an attempt to show off my, uh, assets and garner more hits. And I'll be damned if it didn't work. Some bloggers, including Glenn Reynolds (who steered the vast majority of those hits my way), questioned whether this stunt was going to damage my credibility. (Being an anonymous blogger, I have next to none of that anyway, according to a lot of people out there.)

I think they're missing the point I was trying to make.

What I was trying to do was tweak Dawn's nose over the suggestion that male bloggers harbor some sort of sexist bias against female bloggers, and also to remind her and other bloggers not to take themselves and their blogs so seriously. Allow me to explain.

One of Dawn's complaints was that the big-time male bloggers didn't link to her and drive more traffic in her direction. I found the charge doubly ironic considering 1) she posts nude and semi-nude photos of herself regularly on her site, virtually GUARANTEEING that people who aren't linked to her are going to stop by and look on a regular basis and 2) her statement that her blog averages something like 600 hits a day WITHOUT the benefit of an Instapundit link. By way of comparison, I'm linked on Instapundit and only average about 200 hits per day. I think the main reason I'm not getting more hits is because I'm not posting as much as I was when I started this thing back in January, and I quit blogging for a while back in April. In fact, I nearly gave up blogging.

That's where the "don't take yourself too seriously" part comes in.

I ceased blogging because I was burned out on it. From January to April, I posted 7 days a week. Lots of long essays and such. I enjoyed it, but I came to realize that it felt too much like a job -- and my regular job is stressful enough. So I quit. I posted an announcement to that effect, put together a "best of" post, and went back to living.

But then something wonderful happened. After a couple of days away from blogging, I got a ton of supportive e-mails from fellow bloggers saying, "Come back." Glenn Reynolds wrote, basically saying "Don't give up yet; I've just added you to my blogroll!" I rescinded my blogging resignation, but I decided to post less material, and to post less often. Now, I post just a couple of items a day, and I only blog 5 days a week -- Monday through Friday.

I'm glad I stepped away from life-or-death blogging. Yeah, I still check my hits a few times a day, but I've come to realize that blogging is just a hobby -- nothing more. Sharp political and social commentary is wonderful, and I've enjoyed all the great writing I've read over the past year, but you can't take yourself too seriously. Hence, a couple of beers with the Amazing Techie Girlfriend and a discussion of Dawn's outburst led to some high jinks with a cheap-ass digital camera and the plumber's-buttcrack shot that graces the post below.

And that's all I have to say about that. Regular blogging resumes tomorrow, a somber anniversary of one of America's darkest days. Go forth and blog appropriately, but remember -- on Thursday, life returns to what now passes for normal. Blog accordingly.

Or not.

Posted 8:21 AM by Peter Fallow
SHORTEN YOUR REPUTATION-SAVING LETTER, PLEASE: The "Weekly Standard" has an excellent, in-depth piece on the New York Times' coverage of anthrax "person of interest" Stephen Hatfill. David Tell looked through some of the documents Hatfill's lawyers have to back up their client's claim of innocence. Besides time cards proving Hatfill was working in Northern Virginia on the days the anthrax letters are believed to have been sent from New Jersey, the most interesting documents are the letters to the Times' editorial department. Hatfill's lawyers tried repeatedly to get column inches to rebut the accusations of Nicholas Kristof, only to be met with silly pronouncements to the effect that "sorry, we don't allow letters to the editor to exceed 150 words."

Amazing. Here's a guy accused of a heinous, unprecedented crime that had the entire nation on edge last fall, yet his efforts to refute those charges are treated in the same manner as a crank who is complaining that they took "Apartment 3-G" out of the funny pages.

Posted 8:04 AM by Peter Fallow
'ASS' THEORY PROVEN CORRECT: I was right. If you post a picture of your ass on your blog, you can get linked to the Instapundit and your hits will go through the roof. Thanks for the inspiration, Dawn! Now it's your turn. More ass shots, please!

Posted 9:22 PM by Peter Fallow
EQUAL BLOGGING OPPORTUNITY: In light of today's recent debates regarding sexism in the Blogosphere, I felt it only necessary to provide a little balance in the coverage -- or uncoverage, if you will.

Yo, Dawn! Puffy ain't never had any of this either.

Posted 7:18 AM by Peter Fallow
BRAVE JOURNALISTS: I know it's not something you hear about every day, but Deroy Murdock honors the brave men and women who ran toward the World Trade Center disaster to report it to the world. It's a good piece; check it out.

Posted 6:42 AM by Peter Fallow
FUGITIVE UPDATE: "Editor & Publisher" plays catch-up on the story of the controversy that engulfed the Philadelphia "Daily News" after it published photos of fugitives wanted for murder and all of those wanted turned out to be minorities.The new angle: a "Daily News" columnist criticized the paper for twice apologizing for reporting the truth:

In an ironic turn, the Philadelphia paper received criticism from one of its own columnists -- not for running the photos but for apologizing. Michael A. Smerconish wrote, "The capitulation of the Daily News does nothing but prove that, as a society, we remain unwilling to broach any subject that involves substantive dialogue about race." Smerconish also called the resulting discussions and protests over the photos "a bogus debate" because it ignores the issue of why so many of the fugitives were black.

And why are we unwilling to talk honestly about tough issues such as race? Because it is exceedingly unpleasant to be called a racist, and calling people racists while avoiding painful solutions seems to be the main thrust of the modern civil rights movement. This echoes a Stanley Crouch column that I blogged way back in February. In a piece published in the "Los Angeles Times," (sorry, link has expired) Crouch wrote:

Between 1994 and 1999, 45,000 black men and women were murdered in this country. Do we ever hear the civil-rights establishment address this? Hardly. What we hear about is "warehousing" young black men in the penal system, the racist nature of our courts, "stigmatizing black youth" or "the stereotyping our young" by mass media. This suggests that the only lost black lives important to our professional protesters are those taken at the hands of white cops or white racists.

Amen to that.

Posted 6:18 AM by Peter Fallow
A ROUGH YEAR: The "American Journalism Review" looks at the amazing roller-coaster ride of "The Wall Street Journal" over the past year. The paper's headquarters, located across from the World Trade Center, was so heavily damaged that the staff were forced to work in temporary offices for months. Then came the murder of Daniel Pearl. Then came a wave of corporate scandals.

It's time for a vacation.

Posted 6:54 AM by Peter Fallow
GREAT POWERS: I'm swamped with duties today, including tending to an ailing car, so I've got just one item. As usual for Friday, it's William Powers' "National Journal" column on the media. This week, he looks at the "Sept. 11 fatigue" that seems to be gripping many journalists, and he tells them to get over it:

Skepticism isn't just a personality quirk of journalists; it's a core value, the wellspring of all our best work. But there's smart skepticism and dumb skepticism, and as we near the fateful date, let's try to keep them straight. In one sense, we media people have an unusually clear understanding of the coverage -- it's our stuff, after all -- and are uniquely qualified to condemn it. We know all too well the motivations, including competitive and monetary ones, that lie just beneath the surface of everything we do. Let's face it, for us, Sept. 11 is more than a historic event. It's one of those rare, world-changing stories that can make a career -- a potential source of rich prizes, book and movie contracts, and all the other goodies that add up to media fame and fortune. In short, it's a professional opportunity. This crass reality is no secret, but we're more aware of it than most people, because we live with it every day. And it colors how we view our own work. When hundreds of people are crawling over each other to sell their Sept. 11 product, as they are now, a little jaundice is healthy.

But just a little. The problem with much of the Sept. 11 queasiness is that it's based on a false model. I refer to the O.J.-JonBenét-Princess Diana Theorem, which says that the greater the mass appeal of a story, the more likely it is journalists will cover it to excess. A corollary holds that all such stories inevitably become larger than they deserved to be.

This model holds up pretty well when you're talking O.J. and JonBenét, but Sept. 11 is an entirely different kind of story. Some news events are so enormous, so rich in authentic human significance, that it's actually not possible to exhaust them. They include all the great wars and revolutions, some natural disasters, and a handful of other events in which good and evil seem to be vying in various guises, with the fate of huge numbers of people, even entire civilizations, hanging on the outcome. Why, after all these years, do people still snap up books and watch movies about the Civil War and the Holocaust? A first-class story always remains a first-class story, no matter how many times you come back to it.

Y'all have a good day. And pray that I don't need a new alternator.

Posted 8:03 AM by Peter Fallow
SOUTHERN HYPER-LIBS: I've been following Andrew Sullivan's discussion of Howell Raines as an example of a Southerner who tries to be "more left than left" to fit in with his northern colleagues. I don't know if that's necessarily the dynamic here.

Most liberal Southerners (and I was one of them for many years, as was my mother) tend to overcompensate in one specific area: race. Given the shameful history of the region, it's understandable, but it can be cringe-making to observe.

The best response I've seen to Sullivan came from Geitner Simmons, proprietor of the excellent Regions of Mind blog. (I'll be adding it to the blogroll momentarily.) In this post, he brings up an important point: The presence of Raines and others could also be attributed to a long and honorable history of crusading Southern journalists. He cites Hodding Carter, Ralph McGill and Jonathan Daniels. To that list, I would add a name that is generally associated with just one influential book: W.J. Cash, author of "The Mind of the South." Beginning in 1935, Cash worked for several years at the "Charlotte News." In the introduction to the 1991 Vintage edition of "South," Bertram Wyatt-Brown writes:

The Charlotte News was one of the South's most liberal-minded papers. Cash's lively articles exposed the depravity of lynchings, the appalling record of poor policing, homicide, and poor health conditions in Charlotte's African-American slums...Moreover, he favorably reviewed the fiction and poetry of authors associated with the Harlem Renaissance as a way of challenging white notions of black intellectual inferiority...Recognizing his talent, the owners of the News promoted him to associate editor in 1937.

For more on the Southern-lib newspaper tradition, I recommend Albert Murray's excellent "South to a Very Old Place." It's a delightful, stream-of-consciousness travelogue through the American South circa 1970. During his journey, Murray swings by Greensboro, N.C., to talk about Jonathan Daniels with Edwin Yoder (who later moved on to the "New York Times" and greater fame). He goes on to visit journalists in Atlanta, where Ralph McGill crusaded for desegregation. Later, he visits Greenville, Miss., to meet Hodding Carter. It's an immensely enjoyable book, all the more so because Murray, a black man, joyously embraces the universality of his Southern heritage, a heritage he rightly views as mulatto rather than strictly segregated despite a history rife with violence and injustice.That aspect of Southern life -- the cultural miscegenation that went on for years, and continues to this day -- gets lost when the focus is solely on the horrors of slavery and discrimination, but it's very humanizing, and it should be remembered and celebrated.

Posted 6:44 AM by Peter Fallow
RIPPING THE 'TIMES': Michael Ledeen blasts the "New York Times" for clueless reporting on the fragile political situation in Iran.Check it out.

It should not be necessary to remind our leaders, in government and in the media, that Iran is the mother of modern terrorism, the creator of Hezbollah, the protector of al Qaeda, the engine of Islamic Jihad, and the supporter of Hamas. The president has given three magnificent statements about the evil of the Iranian regime and the bravery of the Iranian people. Both as a matter of national strategy and as a question of national honor, we should be helping the Iranians battle their oppressors, just as we supported the Yugoslavs against Milosevic and the Poles against the Kremlin.

Failure to do so will cost us heavily in the coming war. In the past few days, an additional 200 al Qaeda terrorists entered Iran via Zabol. The Iranians are providing them with false passports, with which they will travel to Lebanon to join their comrades. Their intentions are not known, but they will swell the growing ranks of a terrorist army in Lebanon that can be deployed against American armed forces, or against Israel. The Iranians have provided their new ally, Saddam Hussein, with a substantial number of missiles, and they have recently opened a new front company in Dubai to lease about two dozen Bell helicopters which, when cannibalized, will provide spare parts for more than a hundred Iranian helicopters that have been grounded for years.

Yet the American government contents itself with occasional speeches from the president, and the New York Times regales us with fairy tales about a make-believe Iranian pol.

Faster, please.

Posted 6:37 AM by Peter Fallow
BREAKING THE LAW: The "Boston Globe" has a follow-up to one of yesterday's most interesting news stories: the smuggling of weapons onto airplanes by reporters from New York's "Daily News." There's some tut-tutting from airline representatives (big surprise there) and a journalism-ethics-type person (who cares).

Personally, I think this is a great story. Obviously, surreptitious newsgathering should only be done in extraordinary circumstances, but after Sept. 11, we should all realize the danger that hijacked jumbo jets can pose. Here's what "Daily News" editor-in-chief Edward Kosner said:

''There's a compelling national interest in doing this,'' he said. ''Technically, you're breaking the law, but there's no intent to break a law. This is a serious issue and a serious moment, and, all things considered, this is the right thing to do.''

Obviously, different people will have different ideas about what a "compelling national interest" is. But the weapons-smuggling story, in my opinion, fulfills the media's watchdog function. By forcing the airline industry to be accountable for their security issues, it could lead to safer flying in the future. And that's good journalism.

Posted 6:17 AM by Peter Fallow
THEY WERE THERE: "Editor & Publisher" has first-person interviews with journalists who were in close proximity to the World Trade Center attacks last year. It's a powerful testimony to the horrors of that day.

Posted 7:52 AM by Peter Fallow
A NEW BLOG: Welcome the Sabertooth Journal. Check it out.

Posted 6:59 AM by Peter Fallow
WE'VE GOT PAGES TO FILL -- FIND THAT BACKLASH! The "Wall Street Journal" has a piece on the media's obsession with the mythical "Arab backlash" that is expected to break out any day now. And he points to a far-too-typical double standard that has surfaced:

Soon after Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were identified as the culprits in Oklahoma City, they were linked with the far-right militia movement. And that in turn sent the press baying after conservatives, religious fundamentalists, anti-big-government libertarians, Rush Limbaugh and anybody else with whom they disagreed. ...The media can claim that they were only doing its job after Oklahoma City by investigating the possibility that the bombing may have had a broader social significance. Just three of America's leading newspapers, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, have run at least 400 articles chronicling the militia movement since that attack, according to one quick search of the Lexis/Nexis database.

But would the Times, or any other paper, turn the ... formula around to ask what they might have missed by focusing so intently on the "nuts" during the past eight years? It has been no secret, for example, that many Arab-American groups were maintaining close ties with Palestinian and Muslim terror groups, yet not much was written about it. And you might think last week's indictments would trigger some sharp questions about how four young Arabs could operate so freely in America, much less inside the secure area of a major metropolitan airport....Yet on the same day the indictments were announced, one Detroit daily gave equal play to a story headlined "Metro Arabs Question Charges," quoting an array of local Arab-American leaders who worried that the grand jury's action "wrongly fuels hostility against Arabs," in the paper's words...But if four members of the militia movement had been indicted for plotting attacks on innocent civilians, it's unlikely their friends would have been able to find space anywhere in the American media to lament the "discrimination" against them. The right wing, as well all know, is paranoid. All others are potential victims of plots to take away their civil rights.

Posted 6:43 AM by Peter Fallow
THE REAL BEVERLY HILLBILLIES: Here's a story I missed the other day. It seems CBS is planning to create a reality-TV version of "The Beverly Hillbillies." Rod Dreher of the "National Review" heaps some well-deserved (and deliciously politically incorrect) invective on the idea:

How charming. Ship the toothless poor white trash in from Appalachia, set them down amid immense luxury, and watch the dopes make inadvertent fools of themselves in front of the rich and beautiful. The Real Beverly Hillbillies they're calling it. Some fun that'll be. Yes sir, southern white people — the kind who tend to own guns, believe in God, love their country and vote Republican — are Hollywood's niggers.

As a Southerner working in a northern environment, it continually amazes me how prevalent these attitudes still are. When I first started my job, I had several co-workers comment on my accent or come over and ask me really silly questions. For example, they assumed I was an expert on country music (I'm not; I like it more than I used to, but don't know a whole lot about it) or that I was intimately familiar with huntin' & fishin' & shootin' (I've never been hunting, and I've only been fishing once or twice in my life; I don't own a gun, and can count the number of times I've fired one on my right hand). When I'd tell them that I grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in a large Southern city, they seemed disappointed rather than surprised. It's not as if they aren't aware that such places exist. Instead, it's almost like they were hoping I'd have been raised in the kind of colorful small town they've read about in novels. Sorry, folks; I'm more "Brady Bunch" than "Dukes of Hazzard."

Posted 6:45 AM by Peter Fallow
WE'RE SORRY WE REPORTED THE TRUTH PART II: Here's a story I missed the other day before I started my long weekend. Remember last week's story on the "Philadelphia Daily News" apologizing for reporting the unfortunate fact that all of the city's current fugitives wanted for murder are minorities? Well, the paper has done it again. This time, it came in the form of a formal apology from managing editor Ellen Foley that appeared in the paper's news pages. (It was published amid pressure from something called the Coalition for Fair News Coverage.) Check out this surreal passage:

The front page photos from last Thursday sent the message to some readers that only black men commit murder. That was a mistake.

In addition, the stories didn't address a key question: Why are there no white suspects on the loose? That also was a mistake.

Our first story should have looked harder at this question. The Daily News apologizes for the error.

So now we must have affirmative action for murder suspects so that minorities don't get their feelings hurt. And once again, the message is clear: Never underestimate the power of white guilt. For the umpteenth time, take it away, Bill McGowan.

Posted 8:11 AM by Peter Fallow
GREAT POWERS: Once again, William Powers of the "National Journal" has an excellent column. This week, he looks at the disconnect between columnists at big-time papers and their counterparts at smaller outfits. At the smaller dailies, editorialists view the coming conflict with Iraq very seriously -- regardless if they're for it or against it. On the other hand, columnists at the big-time papers regard the whole thing as a game, part of the never-ending whirl of politics and commentary.

Posted 8:03 AM by Peter Fallow
MORE ON LEFTY-RIGHTY: Jack Shafer has an excellent follow-up to that piece I cited yesterday on the comparison between "The Nation" and "The Weekly Standard." It's a look at left-leaning journalists who are envious of the fun their right-wing counterparts are having:

The image of Powers tapping covetously on the window of the right-wing funhouse is a thing of wonderment. But he isn't the only envy case out there. The Nation's Christopher Hitchens, whom Powers applauds in his piece as one of the few "memorable" Nation writers (along with Alexander Cockburn and John Leonard), consummated his right-wing envy in the '90s by switching sides on a few key issues. The left-talking, right-hitting Hitchens infuriates the left rank-and-file by excoriating Bill Clinton as "corrupt," opposing abortion, and supporting war against "Islamic fascism."

Go read the whole thing. It's great. And while you're at it, check out this link from John Rosenberg, proprietor of the excellent Discriminations blog. He used to work for "The Nation," and he discusses his experiences there. And check out the passage he slipped by the editors in 1991. It's downright subversive, John.

Posted 7:32 AM by Peter Fallow
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO 'JANE'? "The National Review" rips an amazingly biased article in "Jane" magazine on Women of Faith, a Christian women's organization. Kathryn Jean Lopez cites this damning passage from the "Jane" article:

Last year, 375,000 women coughed up $67 a pop to take part, and Women of Faith attendees — including folks like WTC widow Lisa Beamer, who was there last fall — now outnumber Promise Keepers. This year's guest speakers are the missionary team of Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry, who even the Taliban couldn't stand. The soul-saving business, even in a suck-ass economy, is booming. Hallelujah.

Mercer and Curry, you may remember, were the Christian missionaries who were captured by the Taliban and would have been executed had international pressure not resulted in their release. It was one of the few good-news stories in those grim days after 9-11. Here's Lopez's conclusion:

There you have it: Christian American women are worse than the Taliban.

The bulk of the article is devoted to making fun of the simple women the Jane writer sat next to at lunch (people who attend schools like Ozark Christian College and Baylor) and the all-female Christian-pop group Point of Grace, whose members have never used drugs or alcohol and were virgins until they married.

Worse than terrorists, beyond a doubt.

Posted 7:18 AM by Peter Fallow
AGAINST THE 'POST': "The Weekly Standard" blasts "The Washington Post" for "burying" a story on the sheltering of Al-Qaeda operatives in Iran. Christopher Caldwell makes some good points (the Post's story has some fascinating information that could cast doubt on Iran's degree of cooperation in the war on terror), but I believe he doth protest too much. For one thing, I'm not terribly surprised by this news. After all, we know bin Laden's cronies are operating freely in areas of Pakistan, and they're probably doing the same in other countries, too. That's not to say we shouldn't be pressuring Iran to be more cooperative, but it's a pretty thin reason to bash the Post. Here's why:

But none of these is the big shocker of the Post story. The big shocker is that it ran in the middle of the front page, below a story about how Washington, D.C.'s bid for the 2012 Olympics had failed. You cannot get more parochial than this. The Post gets the scoop of the year and buries it under a human-interest story that wouldn't make page one if it had occurred in Jefferson City, Missouri ("Show-Me State's Olympic Dreams Dashed"). Did anyone seriously think D.C. had a chance?

I haven't seen the front-page configuration of the paper, but I think that's still pretty prominent front-page play. Shoving it inside would be burying the story. And the Olympics? Heck, I thought D.C. had a hell of a chance to get the Games. Either way, that's a huge story for the Post's core readership.

Posted 6:46 AM by Peter Fallow
TIMES-BASHING: Cynthia Cotts of the the "Village Voice" claims conservative charges that the "New York Times" is using its influence to turn public opinion against a U.S. attack on Iraq are unfounded. Basically, she says, "So what?" and "Bravo." She also claims that conservatives are doing a little spinning regarding Henry Kissinger's recent comments in which he appeared to be coming out against attacking Iraq. (Did the Times commit an "error" when it compared Kissinger's position to Brent Scowcroft's? Or was it doing its own spinning? I dunno. I don't have time to look into it today.) Check it out.

UPDATE: "The American Prospect" has a longer look at the Kissinger controversy.

Posted 6:30 AM by Peter Fallow
A 'NATION' CHALLENGED: Via Romenesko comes this link from "L.A. Weekly" that compares left-wing rag "The Nation" to right-wing rag "The Weekly Standard." The winner? "The Weekly Standard."

In his embarrassing new book about Stalinism (he discovered it was murderous), Martin Amis shrewdly observes that the fall of communism liberated his pal Hitchens' writing by ending its ritual genuflections and obligatory defensiveness. The Nation itself enjoyed no such liberation. And so, rather than rethink the possibilities of a "progressive left" (to use one of its prize terms), the editors have remained content to belabor what its readers already know (e.g., Bush is a bum) while avoiding tough-minded journalistic coverage of the left. It settles for easy analysis, like suggesting that Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney lost her renomination bid simply because of the Jewish money sent to defeat her. Is this really true? The left would be better served if the magazine investigated such claims rather than merely assuming their truth, although this would involve actually going to Georgia.

Just go read the whole thing.

Posted 6:16 AM by Peter Fallow
BILL IS DUE: I'd like to welcome a new blog with an awesome name. It's Bill's Content (get it?), and it's the product of Bill Dennis, a veteran journalist. Check it out.

Posted 8:18 AM by Peter Fallow
SIGNORILE WATCH: Michelangelo Signorile takes on Mickey Kaus and bloggers in his latest screed. It's another example of the dishonesty and hypocrisy that characterizes so much of his work.

First, he praises Media Whores Online (!?) as a place to find truthful political commentary:

As irreverent and provocative as MWO is, however, everything on the site is accurate, if coming from a clearly and admittedly liberal perspective. It doesn’t traffic in the broad distortions for which the vast right-wing conspiracy is famous. I suppose that might be considered a matter of opinion, one that should be taken with a grain of salt coming from someone left of center (so check it out and make up your own mind). But one thing that is absolutely true of MWO is that you won’t find anything even remotely close, in terms of an incitement to violence, to the rants of Ann Coulter and her legions.

Henry Hanks was all over this yesterday, and there's not a whole lot more I can add the excellent research he's done to refute Signorile.

Siggy then takes aim at bloggers, specifically Mickey Kaus for a recent post that suggested we may see a rise in political violence from the left because of the conservative tack the country has taken in the wake of 9-11. Kaus based his post on some outrageous comments he saw on left-leaning message boards. Here's what Siggy wrote:

Kaus’ downward progression, however, should be a lesson to all bloggers. He is an example of the lazy, self-indulgent and arrogant whirl that bloggers can spin themselves into over time, pressured to continually pump out quick, cuter-than-cute and/or inflammatory copy, in the hopes that something, anything will stick in a Web world in which what you wrote yesterday–or a few hours ago–is already at the bottom of the page or maybe even archived in the bowels of the site....If that kind of guilt by association is the standard we’re all to use, then what are we to say about Slate and Mickey Kaus himself?

"Lazy, self-indulgent and arrogant...quick, cuter-than-cute and/or inflammatory...in the hopes that something, anything will stick...guilt by association." As we'll see, the parts highlighted in bold more accurately describe Signorile's own work over the past few months.

For example, he suggested that John Walker, the "American Taliban," was driven to hate his homosexual father -- and into the arms of the Taliban -- by "the ingrained, religion-based hatred of homosexuality in American society." Apparently it wasn't possible that the far more ingrained, much more deadly religion-based hatred of homosexuality that manifests itself in radical Islam was what undermined Walker's liberal, Marin County upbringing. (Indeed, almost every column Signorile writes serves to tar conservative Americans -- roughly half the population -- through guilt by association with the worst fringe elements of the religious right.)

Another example: Signorile claimed that because Gary Bauer and other right-leaning pundits are on TV at all, the entire case against liberal media bias is a myth.

Yet another example: In a tour de force regarding the "arrogance" of the Bush administration, Signorile claimed Judge Charles Pickering was "an extremist who cannot be trusted to uphold civil rights" when even the liberal "Washington Post" editorial page was claiming such criticisms were beyond the pale. In the same piece, he called the use of nuclear weapons the Pentagon's "secret wet dream" and dubbed the brave fighters of the Northern Alliance "human shields" that the U.S. "used" in a cowardly manner to overthrow the Taliban.

But perhaps the ugliest example came in mid-May, when Signorile, writing about the assassination of Dutch right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn, ignored the Nazis' mass murder of homosexuals in order to score political points against American conservatives:

In much of Northern Europe, where homosexuality has been far more accepted for far longer and has been met with little political resistance, you can even be gay and be a right-wing fascist (just like Ernst Rohm, Hitler’s SA chief in the Nazi Party, was). So trotting out Fortuyn’s homosexuality as proof of anything is relatively meaningless.

Absolutely unbelievable. As I pointed out in my post on the subject:

Ernst Rohm may indeed have been homosexual, and it's rumored that others in Hitler's inner circle may have been deeply closeted gays. But even high school students know the Nazis sent thousands of European homosexuals to their deaths in concentration camps. Indeed, they were among the first groups rounded up when Hitler assumed power. Has Signorile forgotten that the little pink triangle he might wear as a source of "pride" is the symbol the Nazis forced homosexuals to wear in the death camps? It was the equivalent to the yellow Star of David that Jews were forced to wear. It's amazing that a writer so interested in the gay experience could have forgotten about that.

Signorile also claimed David Brock's "Blinded By the Right" is above reproach in a piece where he called Matt Drudge a "nasty faggot" and completely ignored overwhelming evidence that Brock had been a pathological liar since at least his college days.

Signorile obviously has a right to say whatever he pleases, but when he starts criticizing people for excessive political rhetoric, it's important to remember that he's one of the very worst offenders, a shrill propagandist who engages in nasty Stalinist tactics and does little to elevate political discourse in this country.

Posted 6:41 AM by Peter Fallow
BATTLING BIAS: Romenesko links today to a piece from "Philadelphia Weekly" about Herb Denenberg, a gadfly who has been pestering the "Philadelphia Enquirer" about what he sees as the paper's anti-Israeli bias. It's a pretty good read, but it has some problems. Denenberg is presented as a bit of a loon and a loose cannon affiliated with a right-wing Jewish organization (the Zionist Organization of America). Meanwhile, the opposing view is offered by the Palestine Media Watch, which is presented as a highly professional organization that's just trying to set the record straight.

Apparently, groups like this aren't worth contacting for a story about media bias and the Middle East. Just let one zealot spouting conspiracy theories speak in their place.

Posted 8:01 AM by Peter Fallow
STUPID STUFF I'VE OVERHEARD AT WORK: Here's Part II of my series. (Check out Part I here.)

THE SCENE: A midsized newspaper in the American South a couple of years ago.
THE SETTING: A hard-working copy editor (me) is laying out Page 1 on a Mac. The constantly meddling, Michigan-raised executive editor is, as usual, hanging over the copy editor's shoulder like impending death, observing every keystroke. He's oblivious to the "Dilbert" comic strip taped to the monitor that depicts the Pointy-Haired Boss screaming "Click it! Click it now!" as he hangs over Dilbert's shoulder. But this guy is irony-proof and charm-free, so what can you do?

ME: (typing word "preconceived" in headline)
EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Hoo! Say, don't you think that's kind of a big word? I mean, you might could use a word like that if we were a little further up Nor...
ME: (prudently nonchalant, but with slightly raised eyebrows) I'm sorry?
EXECUTIVE EDITOR: (ass-covering, backpedaling tone in voice) I mean, I just don't know if that word is, uh, appropriate for our core readership.
ME: (a native Southerner trying to control rage, doing a pretty damn good job) Well, I don't think it's that big a word...
EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Well...
ME: (trying humorous approach) I mean, we get all those letters from those retired English professors who wish we used more "sophisticated" language in the paper. Ha. Ha. Ha.
EXECUTIVE EDITOR: OK, I guess. We'll let it go. Yeah, let it go.
ME: Alrightee then!

The moral of the story: A diversity-obsessed news executive who made his commitment to social justice clear -- over and over and over again -- apparently believed the average reader of his own newspaper was too stupid to know what "preconceived" means.

Progressive journalism: It's a beautiful thing, isn't it?

Posted 6:29 AM by Peter Fallow
MORE ON POLICE-MINORITY RELATIONS: I received an e-mail from the mysterious Strib Watcher yesterday with more information on that melee in Minneapolis after the police accidentally shot a young boy. I'll reprint the e-mail in full:

You might want to compare an aspect of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's coverage of the riot (or, if you like, "melee") to the St Paul Pioneer Press'.

The Pioneer Press reported the allegations of Don and Sondra Samuels, residents of the north Minneapolis Jordan neighborhood:

Don and Sondra Samuels, who have lived in the neighborhood for four years and have picketed against drug dealers in the house where the warrant was executed, went to 26th and Knox as soon as they heard about the problems.

"The raid (by police) was absolutely legitimate," Sondra Samuels said.

The Samuelses, who are black, were upset that they heard "a lot of race rhetoric. This was a race riot," Sondra Samuels said.

"There was a comfort level in the crowd with the violence that was taking place," said Don Samuels.

"It was a little bit scary the way the police withdrew," Don Samuels said. "If I were a law-abiding white resident and the police withdrew like that I would feel abandoned."

"I heard some scary language," Don Samuels said. "Clearly this was not my community talking. Those people giving voice to the community were totally anathema to the life I want to live."

(Here's the link to that story.)

While the Star-Tribune did publish a picture of Samuels, they did not report this claim. But that doesn't mean at least one Strib columnist didn't interview him:


Doug Grow: Seeking easy answers again

Don Samuels, a black toy designer who lives in Jordan with his wife and two children, says my theory is superficial.

Samuels is an activist, one of those who wanted the house that police raided closed down. He doesn't like thugs of any color. He supports the police.

(Here's the link to that story.)

Interesting. But not what the Pioneer Press reported, either.

The media should give people like Don and Sondra Samuels more coverage. If the police begin neglecting certain parts of American cities in order to placate "activists," the victims will be people like them.

Posted 6:14 AM by Peter Fallow
COMMENTS RETURN -- FOR NOW: I've signed up with Haloscan, and it was pretty painless. We'll see how long it holds up.

Posted 9:12 AM by Peter Fallow
BYE BYE, COMMENTS: My experiment with blog comments is over for the moment. I had a service up and running the other day, but then started getting the "comments temporarily unavailable" thingee on my posts. Well, I visited the company's Web site, and it's gone. Maybe I'll try another service later.

Posted 9:03 AM by Peter Fallow
WATCHING THE 'WASHINGTON POST': That's the job of Postwatch, and he's all over it with this entry comparing the fawning, dishonest coverage given to an anti-white slavery reparations rally the other week to the no-holds-barred, honest reporting of an equally racist neo-Nazi rally. Good work, Postwatcher.

Posted 7:33 AM by Peter Fallow
WELCOME TO DISCRIMINATIONS: Here's a blog I highly recommend. It's Discriminations, and it deals with many subjects that crop up frequently on this blog. Welcome, John and Jessie.

Posted 7:30 AM by Peter Fallow
SOMEBODY LOVES COPY EDITORS: It's Dr. Ink of the Poynter Institute. In a short piece, he makes some excellent points about the importance of copy editors to newspapers. But the funniest comment came from a poster in the reader's forum:

I've been in the biz since 1987 and have yet to see a sexy copy editor. They're hunchbacked mutes who live at home with their widowed mothers and eat an early supper at the same diner every day and order the same thing every day.

Ouch. I have to admit that I see a bit of myself in this comment. Not the hunchback, living-at-home part, but the eating-an-early-supper-every-day part. In my former job, I was forced to eat dinner at like 4:30 or 5 p.m. every day, and I had a rotation of three or four diners that I frequented. Some of my co-workers thought this was quite funny. I was just trying to do what I had to do to get the paper out.

It's not like that nowadays, though. No sirree. Yep, I eat at my desk every day, because I'm that slammed.

Posted 6:53 AM by Peter Fallow
BEATEN JOURNALISTS SPEAK: Romenesko has a couple of follow-ups to the story of the reporter who was covering last week's race riot in Minneapolis and caught a beating. This story features a couple of talking heads dispensing shibboleths of liberal racism:

Tim Gleason, dean of the University of Oregon's school of journalism and mass communication, offered two explanations for why journalists become targets. "One can't ignore the simpler answer which is these reporters just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," Gleason said. But he suggested race can play a role in such incidents. "White reporters can easily become a symbol of the white establishment," Gleason said. Thursday's incident involved mostly white journalists entering a mostly black community. "Does the minority community view these papers and TV stations as part of the community or as not representing their communities?"

Hmm. Mr. Gleason sounds like he's coming dangerously close to suggesting that beating up reporters is the best way to influence media coverage of "neglected" communities. (He certainly doesn't seem too upset about it.) Robert Mugabe would understand. But an actual working journalist had a nice rejoinder to this:

Scott Libin, KSTP-TV news director, on Friday voiced frustration in finding a balance. "Had we not covered the shooting of this child, would that have shown more respect for the community? We're there to tell the story of what happened."

Another academic from the Poynter Institute offers this classic apology for violence:

Angry people don't split hairs about journalistic objectivity. "I think that in a moment of indiscriminate violence, people default to the least common denominator. And that would be race," said Keith Woods, who teaches coverage of race relations at the Poynter Institute, a St. Petersburg, Fla., school for journalists. "It wouldn't have mattered at that point what those folks were doing. (The assailants') idea of what it means to be a journalist could include everything from Jerry Springer to … National Enquirer," Woods said. "They don't see the champion of the little people. Their idea of what a journalist is is so diffuse. It's not enough to stop a brick."

It's hard to imagine Mr. Woods so casually dismissing the beating of a black reporter by a mob of white racists. I think what he's actually saying is this: Black Americans are little more than children. They are a defective people because of the pervasive racism of this society, so we can't expect them to behave in any other way. Indeed, we should understand it and accept it, not judge it. Albert Murray described this attitude in his excellent "The Omni-Americans."

"So barbarous is the anthropologial value system to which contemporary American social science seems to be geared that so far as the technicians who survey Negro communities are concerned, people without affluence and power are only creature-like beings whose humanity is measured in terms of their potential to accumulate material goods and exercise force with arrogance...It demonstrates again that other Americans, including most American social scientists, don't mind one bit what unfounded conclusions you draw about U.S. Negroes, or how flimsy and questionable your statistics, or how wild your conjectures, so long as they reflect degradation."

In a related story, here's a piece on a female reporter in Minneapolis who received a savage beating 10 years ago in a situation very similar to the recent riot. In the 17th graf, we discover this little nugget:

Franklin Powell, then 17, was convicted of assault and served prison time for the May 1992 attack on Sandidge. In an odd twist, it was Powell's dog that was shot and killed by police Thursday and his cousin, Julius, 11, who was injured.

There are a lot of unanswered (or unasked) questions here. Was it Powell who released the pit bull on the police officer, causing him to shoot the dog and leading to the ricocheting bullet that hurt a young child? Seems like an important aspect of the story to me.

Posted 12:51 PM by Peter Fallow
WE'RE SORRY WE REPORTED THE TRUTH: Pathetic. A day after running a front-page story on fugitives wanted for murder in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia "Daily News" is apologizing. Why? Because all 27 fugitives in the story were either black, Hispanic or Asian, and that didn't sit well with many minorities in the city.

Attorney Sharif Street, the mayor's eldest son, said yesterday's front page would make life tougher for every young, African-American male in Philadelphia. "I'm not so much focused on the text of the story but more on the imagery of the front cover," said Street, 28. "It damages the quality of life for the average male my age because it portrays us as the enemy of society."

He's got it wrong. Murderers like those pictured in the newspaper damage the "quality of life" for poor black people far more than the police and media do. The Daily News should be applauded for going to extraordinary lengths to identify these killers, and this story should be hailed as an example of great public-service journalism. But that won't happen. Instead, it's possible the Daily News will back away from tougher crime coverage out of fear that they'll offend the same minority communities that disproportionately suffer at the hands of black and brown criminals.

Take it away, Bill McGowan.

Posted 11:01 AM by Peter Fallow
'JESUS FUCKING WEPT': Editors and writers often have a testy relationship. It's part of the business. Reporters will complain that some minor change to their oh-so-perfect prose ruined the entire piece. Editors will point out that said passage didn't make any sense, and making sense is Job 1 in the news business. Generally, things end well. But sometimes they don't. Here's an example.

A journalist by the name of Giles Coren wrote a book review for the "Guardian" that included the following sentence:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Very clever. All 26 letters of the alphabet in a 35-letter sentence.

But an editor changed it to "The quick brown fox jumps over A lazy dog," making it a into a 33-letter sentence. Here's Mr. Coren's response to the crime. (Thanks to Tim Blair.)

Posted 7:57 AM by Peter Fallow
TURN TO PAGE: The excellent (and vastly underappreciated) Last Page has some good stuff today on blogging. She's looking for folks to tell her why they blog. Go give her some feedback.

I also liked the post after that. Much like her boyfriend, I've found myself struggling to find blogging inspiration many days. And much like her boyfriend, I've locked my keys in a running car before.

Posted 7:40 AM by Peter Fallow
REPORTER ATTACKED: A reporter for the "Minneapolis Star Tribune" was attacked in a melee following the accidental wounding of a 10-year-old boy by police raiding a drug house. (The boy was hit by a ricocheting bullet, and was treated and released.)

Later in the story, you read that residents of this same neighborhood protested the shooting of a gang member the other week. This short piece doesn't give us the whole story about the relationship between poor blacks and the Minneapolis police, but still, you have to wonder -- have some segments of the black community completely lost their minds? Here are two cases where the police were trying to remove a serious threat to a poor black neighborhood, and the cops get mini-riots as the thanks for their efforts. A member of the goddamned Crips got wounded and that caused people to march? I'm sorry, but that's insane. Despite the rhetoric flowing from the so-called civil rights establishment, it should be obvious to everyone watching that it's not the police who make life in the ghetto intolerable, it's violent criminals. Stopping those parasites is a civic duty of the highest order. You'd think it would be met with gratitude, not a brick through the windshield.

Posted 7:19 AM by Peter Fallow
REPORTER COMMITS SUICIDE: I was saddened to read about the death of Allen Myerson, the "New York Times" reporter who jumped to his death from the roof of the Times building in Manhattan. The "New York Post" is reporting that he was having marriage and financial problems.

Posted 6:45 AM by Peter Fallow
RON ROSENBAUM GOES TO J-SCHOOL: And he doesn't like what he sees:

But I do think much of the debate I’ve seen has been on the wrong question. You have the snobby litterateur types who say, in effect, "I’m so smart and talented that I never needed anything as plebeian as journalism school." And then you’ve got the reverse snobbery
of "I came up from copy boy to coffee runner at the police shack, and the only real school for real journalists is Experience."

My feeling from my experience at J-schools is that what most needs to be examined is not the existence of J-schools per se, but the kind of unexamined assumptions about nonfiction writing, about truth and "objectivity," that one can find deeply embedded in what is taught about journalism....I’m not the only person to observe it: Recently a friend of mine, a very successful and gifted editor who often interviews and works with J-school graduates, summed it up quite eloquently when he said, "They beat the voice out of them."

If you're interested in this sort of thing, read the whole piece. It's worth your time.

Posted 6:33 AM by Peter Fallow
'ALL THE NEWS THAT IS FIXED TO PRINT': That's the great closing line from this "National Review" piece, which piles on the "New York Times" for its slanted coverage of a possible Iraq attack. But deeper in the story is an interesting (and new) angle on the Times' bias regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

On July 30, the editors ran an op-ed by Peter Hansen, the director-general of the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA). The piece was an unusually open and quite craven plea for money, Hansen arguing that UNRWA is the best vehicle for relieving the humanitarian suffering of innocent Palestinians. Hansen made several claims in the piece — the standard UNRWA party line — most of which were patently false.

But most readers could not have been expected to detect Hansen's mendacity, again for reasons of short memories and wholly understandable information deficits. Specifically, they could not have been expected to know that Hansen led all cheerleaders in mid-April in the campaign to invent a "massacre" myth over Israeli military operations in Jenin. This is what he said in an official UNRWA press release, dated April 18: "I had hoped that the horror stories of Jenin were exaggerated and influenced by emotions engaged but I am afraid these were not exaggerated and that Jenin camp residents lived through a human catastrophe that have few parallels in recent history." In other words, Hansen tried to persuade the world that, even after there was time for early reports to be vetted, a "human catastrophe" with "few parallels in recent history" had occurred in Jenin.

Knowledge of Mr. Hansen's activities regarding Jenin would have given New York Times readers some background against which to judge his op-ed contention that UNRWA "is committed to ensuring that its installations remain free of militant activity." I offered this background to the Times in a letter to the editor. I thought it the least I could and should do; for some unexplained reason, however, my letter was not published.

Of course, in the liberal universe that is the Times newsroom, the U.N is always a force for good in the world, so its causes should be promoted unquestionably.

Posted 6:16 AM by Peter Fallow
MINDING CHICAGO'S MEDIA: Via Romenesko comes this column, a critique of Chicagoland media by "Chicago" magazine. The first item is the real grabber. It's about how two newspapers, presented with the exact same Census information, reached dramatically different conclusions:

Sun-Times headlines:
“Boom Shared By All Races in Chicago”
“Unlike in New York, Economic Surge Here Benefitted All, New Figures Show”
“Lincoln Park Becomes Wealthiest Community”
“Prosperity Spread Across City in 1990s”
“All Racial Groups Took a Piece of the Pie”

Tribune headlines:
“Rich ’90s Failed to Lift All”
“Income Disparity Between Races Widened Greatly, Census Analysis Shows”
“Not All Shared in Boom Decade”

Sun-Times lead:
“Lincoln Park is the city’s wealthiest neighborhood, while development on Chicago’s south and west sides more than doubled income levels there, new census reports show.”

Tribune lead:
“The economic boom of the 1990s bypassed poor minority communities in the city, as many predominantly black neighborhoods on the South and West Sides remained mired in poverty as deeply entrenched as a decade earlier, according to 2000 census data released Tuesday.”

Very interesting...

Posted 11:49 AM by Peter Fallow
SIGNORILE WATCH: Michelangelo Signorile is again smearing Christians. Only this time, he's got his facts a little twisted.

In a screed about a Kentucky couple who are unable to have children and are seeking to have a cloned child, Signorile makes flimsy charges of hypocrisy against Christian conservatives. Exhibit A:

The news of the attempted cloning is ironic because the loudest and most hysterical arguments against cloning are the religious "family values" ones: it threatens the sanctity of human life, demeans conception between a man and a woman and, most egregiously, attacks the supposedly natural propagation of the traditional family as the Creator intended it. But now we have a couple who say they are in fact religious Christians in a loving, albeit unhappily barren, marriage. They aren’t into cloning because of some Dr. Evil-like attempt to create a Mini-Me, at least not as they describe it. No, they’re making a copy of Kathy, they say, because they’ve not been able to conceive a child on their own, have tried everything and believe divine destiny is guiding them. They want very much to be a part of that sacred traditional family, and they claim that adopting one of the many underprivileged (read: brown or black) kids out there who need homes just won’t do: they say they must have a genetic offspring, just like other red-blooded white Christian Americans.

There's a rational critique to be made of this couple's views, but the bit in bold is just complete slander. First of all, here's what the couple said when the question of adoption was presented to them (read the entire CNN transcript here):

GUILLEN: Why not just adopt?

KATHY: Well, we have thought about that. You can adopt a baby overseas, and then in a lot of countries, what happens is by the time you get the baby, they've been so messed up in the orphanage where they are that you are taking on a health hazard.

GUILLEN: But isn't that an argument for all the more wanting to adopt a child like that, to show them some love and kindness?

KATHY: Yes, you're right. You're right about that.

BILL: But there is also nothing wrong with wanting your own, and having that right.

It's difficult to find a racist sentiment in this exchange, but that didn't stop Signorile from suggesting that one existed. It seems to me that a couple who have spent years searching out adoption options might know a tad more about the issue than a radical gay leftist who parachutes in to smear conservatives after watching one interview on CNN. Here's a link from the National Association of Ethical Adoption Professionals on the problems surrounding the adoption of children from foreign countries, and here's a pertinent quote:

Dr. Patrick Mason of Atlanta, a pediatric endocrinologist at Marcus International Adoption Center for Health and Development, which is affiliated with Emory and Johns Hopkins universities, estimates that 50 percent to 85 percent of internationally adopted kids will be developmentally delayed when they arrive in their new homes, but will get better. That leaves a lot who won't. "It could be genetics, lack of prenatal care, early exposure to alcohol and drugs, birth-related traumas, postnatal infections --- most of which we'll never be able to figure out," Mason says. In a lot of countries, only special-needs children are available for adoption, says Patrick Purtill, president of the Washington-based National Council for Adoption. And parents overseas usually give up for adoption children who have abnormalities or are expected to develop them. Physicians in those countries sometimes minimize the risks, realizing that dire diagnoses would eliminate prospective adoptees from consideration, Purtill says.

But Signorile is even further off base in suggesting that it is white conservative Christians who are at the forefront of opposition to interracial adoption. Anyone who has been paying attention for the past 30 years knows it is minority-run organizations -- and specifically the National Association of Black Social Workers -- that is vehemently opposed to interracial adoption. A segment on "60 Minutes" covered this issue as early as the 1980s, and it has been the subject of several TV dramas and at least one feature-length film ("Losing Isaiah"). Laws have even been passed in some states. Read this, and then this:

The National Association of Black Social Workers says only African-American parents can teach their children how to handle racism. A California law, which took effect in January 1990, requires agencies to spend 90 days trying to match children ethnically before allowing transcultural placement. Michael Allen says the new law means "children will be struck in foster care longer. It just forces kids to wait another 90 days."

The rest of Signorile's piece consists of conflating the bizarre views of one couple with the everyday views of the millions of Americans who profess Christianity. The irony is, it's not even clear that these people are among the "fundies" Signorile so thoroughly hates (and so completely misunderstands). After all, the couple claim they would have no problem having an abortion if the cloned child were deformed. That's a pretty big no-no among Falwell and company. Indeed, these folks sound like (gasp!) independent-thinking Christians, something that must be completely alien to Signorile. Here's the relevant passage from the CNN transcripts:

GUILLEN: When you said the word "abort," you know, lots of people are going think, oh my gosh, you're piling one abomination on top of another.

KATHY: Well, at least they'll have stem cells to possibly help improve someone's life who is having a problem.

GUILLEN: So you would harvest stem cells from the aborted fetus for purposes of research? But you know how controversial that is, too.

KATHY: Well, I'm a controversial person. I'm not politically correct. I never have been. I never will be.

And as for Christian groups being "silent" on cloning in the light of this CNN interview, Signorile himself points out that Christian groups have been railing against cloning for quite a while. Their "silence" on this particular interview with an anonymous couple isn't that surprising when you consider that Zavos announced as early as January of 2001 that he had couples lined up for cloning!

Again, there's a critique to be made of this couple's reasons for cloning, and I have to admit that the idea of having an exact clone of your wife as your child is pretty creepy. But Signorile is simply creating an issue with which to smear conservative Christians as hypocrites, and it just doesn't hold water.

Posted 7:52 AM by Peter Fallow
FANTASY IDEOLOGY AND 9/11: The terrorists of 9/11 weren't fueled by abject poverty or other material causes. They were carrying out a grandiose public-relations campaign, aimed at the Arab street, to showcase the righteousness of their cause. Because of that, we must seriously re-evaluate our goals in the war on terror. That's the fascinating thesis behind this long essay from "Policy Review." Some highlights:

The terror attack of 9-11 was not designed to make us alter our policy, but was crafted for its effect on the terrorists themselves: It was a spectacular piece of theater. The targets were chosen by al Qaeda not through military calculation — in contrast, for example, to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor — but entirely because they stood as symbols of American power universally recognized by the Arab street. They were gigantic props in a grandiose spectacle in which the collective fantasy of radical Islam was brought vividly to life: A mere handful of Muslims, men whose will was absolutely pure, as proven by their martyrdom, brought down the haughty towers erected by the Great Satan. What better proof could there possibly be that God was on the side of radical Islam and that the end of the reign of the Great Satan was at hand?

And this:

Let there be no doubt about it. The fantasy ideologies of the twentieth century were plagues, killing millions and millions of innocent men, women, and children. The only difference was that the victims and targets of such fantasy ideologies so frequently refused to see them for what they were, interpreting them as something quite different — as normal politics, as reasonable aspirations, as merely variations on the well-known theme of realpolitik, behaving — tragically enough — no differently from Montezuma when he attempted to decipher the inexplicable enigma posed by the appearance of the Spanish conquistadors. Nor did the fact that his response was entirely human make his fate any less terrible.

Just go read the whole thing. (Link via Arts & Letters Daily.)

Posted 7:25 AM by Peter Fallow
FAKING THE NEWS FOR FUN & PROFIT: Here's an entertaining story. It's about the old "New York Sun" (not these folks), which in 1835 invented a "news" story about life on the moon. The hoax gave the paper's circulation a tremendous boost. It also launched a new era in American newspapering:

Readers didn't hold a grudge. The Sun's circulation surged, even without fake headlines. Daily sales hit 30,000 in 1836. By the next year, there were a dozen more penny papers in New York, geared for the average reader rather than the elite. The hoax had given birth to a new industry. But old habits die hard. In 1897, the Sun ran an editorial entitled, "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus." It never retracted that piece either.

Posted 7:11 AM by Peter Fallow
WHO'LL STOP THE RAINES: Howard Kurtz has a good column today on conservative criticism of the anti-war slant of recent coverage in the "New York Times."

Conservatives have declared war on the war coverage of the New York Times. The charge is being led by the Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and columnist Charles Krauthammer, who argue that the Times is using its front page to mobilize opposition to a U.S. attack on Iraq. And some on the right have put Executive Editor Howell Raines in the bull's-eye, saying that the former head of the paper's liberal editorial page is behind the slanted coverage.

UPDATE: The Mugger weighs in on Raines and the Times. It's typically scathing. Give it a look.

Posted 7:29 AM by Peter Fallow
THE READING ROOM: I've been reading Dinesh D'Souza's excellent "What's So Great About America," and I stumbled across a quote I'd like to share with you:

The phrase that captures this unique aspect of America is the "pursuit of happiness." Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul analyzes the concept in this way: "It is an elastic idea; it fits all men. It implies a certain kind of society, a certain kind of awakened spirit. So much is contained in it; the idea of the individual, responsibility, choice, the life of the intellect, the idea of vocation and perfectibility and achievement. It is an immense human idea. It cannot be reduced to a fixed system. It cannot generate fanaticism. But it is known to exist; and because of that, other more rigid systems in the end blow away."

So simple, and yet so deep.

Posted 7:27 AM by Peter Fallow
REFORMING THE LEFT: Camille Paglia pens a scathing column on the Left's loss of moral capital:

The language of leftism is out of date. It desperately needs reconstruction and revitalisation, if the Left is ever to regain its proper status as a voice of ethical critique of materialistic modern society.

So true. As much as I hate to admit it, we DO need a Left that can provide that critique, as long as it comes within the framework of our American political heritage of individual (as opposed to group) rights. From where I sit, a serious Left can check the worst excesses of the Right, and vice versa. Unfortunately, as Paglia's piece points out, the Left seems to have lost its way since the moral triumphs of the civil rights movement.

Posted 7:03 AM by Peter Fallow
MISSING-CHILD MANIA: Slate has a story today on the media frenzy in England that surrounded the story of two missing children. It seems it was a bit much for even the over-the-top English papers, which have produced some hand-wringing analysis pieces.

Posted 7:45 AM by Peter Fallow
TEARING INTO THE 'TIMES': Charles Krauthammer rips the "New York Times" for its heavily slanted coverage regarding a possible U.S. attack on Iraq:

Not since William Randolph Hearst famously cabled his correspondent in Cuba, "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war," has a newspaper so blatantly devoted its front pages to editorializing about a coming American war as has Howell Raines's New York Times.

Posted 7:28 AM by Peter Fallow
REPARATIONS FOLLIES: A lot of folks in Blogtown noticed the news reports from the "Millions for Reparations" march in Washington, D.C., over the weekend. Needless to say, the march drew hundreds, not thousands or millions, and the anti-white sentiments of Brooklyn Councilman Charles Barron and others could prove to be an embarrassment to the reparations movement. It's fairly strong evidence that, despite the rhetoric, reparations isn't fueled by a desire for justice; it's driven by hatred of America and its white majority. I think those pushing for reparations should consider the words of Orlando Patterson, a left-leaning black Harvard sociologist who, while still highly critical of this country, nonetheless had this to say about the United States. (This is from Arthur Schlessinger's excellent "The Disuniting of America."):

"The sociological truths are that America, while still flawed in its race relations... is now the least racist white-majority society in the world; has a better record of legal protection of minorities than any other society, white or black; offers more opportunities to a greater numer of black persons than any other society, including all those of Africa; and has gone through a dramatic change in its attitude toward miscegenation over the past 25 years."

Speaking of reparations, those of you unfortunate enough to have "USA Weekend" as the insert in your Sunday paper instead of the far superior "Parade" were treated to a love letter to slavery reparations this week. The supplement featured a cover story by Charles Ogletree, the Harvard professor who is a leading figure in the reparations movement, and two sidebars -- one a brief overview of the Atlantic slave trade, the other a profile of Frederick Douglass IV, who travels the country doing a one-man show portraying his great-great-grandfather.

That's it. No dissenting view is offered for what could be the most divisive domestic issue since slavery itself. I know that "USA Weekend" is just a revenue-generating rag, but that's simply irresponsible. Newspapers are supposed to enhance our democracy by airing all viewpoints on controversial subjects, but when it comes to race, they fall down on the job far too often.

I'm reminded of Jim Sleeper's great closing line from his positive review of William McGowan's "Coloring The News":

This country's vast race industry of activists, consultants, foundation officers, civil rights lawyers and government monitors enhances its funding, job lines and moral cachet by playing up bad racial news and discounting the good. Whatever his mistakes, McGowan is right to argue that journalists should be investigating the race industry, not working for it.

Amen to that.

Posted 6:44 AM by Peter Fallow
NEW LINKS AND MY DOPPLEGANGER: I'd like to welcome Clay Waters to the permalinks. He's got a fine blog, plus he posts pictures of Manhattan's bartending babes. Check it out.

And after my self-revealing post of the other day, I received an e-mail from Dean Esmay, proprietor of a blog of the same name. Here's what Dean wrote:

Dude! You sound like my long lost brother! (Spiritually.)

Just read your self-description. I used to be a Reagan-hating liberal. I used to be a pot-smoker who dabbled in other drugs. I love Bass Ale and other British beers. I drive a Toyota with over 100,000 miles on it. I dig country more than I used to, but am still basically a rock 'n' roll/R&B/jazz kind of guy. I'm 36. I run a weblog. Are you sure you aren't me?

I'm pretty sure, Dean. But welcome.

Posted 7:51 AM by Peter Fallow
LEARNING FROM THE 'TIMES': Here's an interesting story. The "New York Times" and NPR are joining forces to propagandize the students. (I'm sorry. That was a typo. The Web site actually says it will be "engaging high school students in informed political discourse.") Here's the press release:

NYTimes.com and National Public Radio on Wednesday announced the launch of Justice Learning, a civics education Web site for high school students and teachers based on NPR's radio program, "Justice Talking."

The Web site will use content from "Justice Talking" and related lesson plans and articles from The New York Times Learning Network, a free service for teachers, parents, and students in grades 3-12.

Justice Learning is designed around eight distinct civics issues that are updated twice a year. Current issues include affirmative action, civil liberties, death penalty, gun control, juvenile justice, and Web censorship.

Sounds all well and good until you visit the Justice Learning Web site and click around a little bit. Soon, you discover that the "lesson plans" are astoundingly one-sided. They're supported by editorials and news stories from the "Times," which provide a gloss of high-minded objectivity to the whole affair. (Not to mention a mighty nifty product placement with a captive audience.)

This might be a valuable program if there were more dissenting voices brought into the debate. But there aren't. Instead, it seems that students will be encouraged to regurgitate the left-liberal positions they've been spoon-fed. So much for newspapers being disinterested observers of the American scene.

Posted 6:24 AM by Peter Fallow
THE SPORTSWRITER & THE CONGRESSMAN: Remember the story about the "L.A. Times" reporter who was fired for sending an e-mail to a Republican congressman? The "New York Press" has its take on the story. Check it out.

Posted 8:52 AM by Peter Fallow
ANONYMOUS BLOGGING: Susanna Cornett over at Cut On The Bias has a post today about bloggers who post anonymously, and she heaps praise upon this humble operation. Thanks, Susanna. But I'm still not telling you my name. Hee hee!

Why do I blog anonymously? Simple. It's safer that way. Seriously. I work for a media company that would take a dim view of what I'm doing, especially since I've been critical of its policies in the past (see the "Profiles in Discourage" at the right side of this blog). I don't know if I'd lose my job over it, but it's a definite danger. Some of my co-workers have been fired for reasons A LOT more trivial than running a blog, and I've heard horror stories of journalists getting canned for "unauthorized" Internet use.

But for those of you who are curious about me, let me tell you a little bit more about myself.

I'm 36 years old. I was born in South Carolina but grew up in North Carolina. I've been working in newspapers since 1989. I have a wonderful girlfriend (the Amazing Techie Girlfriend) that I am "shacked up" with.

Politically, I consider myself a centrist Republican with libertarian leanings. (I used to be a flaming liberal. Read "The Nation" and "In These Times" regularly in college. DESPISED Reagan. I was also extremely liberal on racial issues, a veritable fount of white guilt. My experiences with "diversity" journalism beat that out of me, though.)

I attended a medium-sized college that you've probably only heard of if you follow I-AA football. I majored in communications, NOT journalism.

I'm 5-foot-9, with semi-curly brown (now partially gray) hair and brown eyes. I'm not fat, but I could lose a few pounds. I'm digging country music more than I did when I was growing up, but I'm still a rock 'n' roll/R&B/jazz kind of guy. I like to go hiking, and I used to be into cycling. Not the Lance Armstrong kind of 150-miles-per-day cycling, but the 12-miles-up-steep-hills-every-day-for-fitness-on-an-old-mountain-bike kind of cycling. I played soccer growing up, but I'm not a "soccer weenie." In other words, I don't value it over our American sports. I like beer (Bass especially). I also like Citron and tonics when I'm feeling swanky.

My mother died of breast cancer in 1991. It was the saddest day of my life. She's buried in her hometown in Alabama. I visit her grave every year when I visit my grandmother.

I drive a 1995 Toyota Corolla with 120,000 miles on it. I'm not getting a new car until this one completely conks out. My other cars: A 1979 Pontiac Grand Prix (hand-me-down from Dad when it hit 180,000 miles), a 1990 Beretta (another hand-me-down) and a 1970 Corolla (my first car in high school).

Yes, I work with a lot of liberals at my newspaper, but it's not a soul-sapping exercise to sit among them. I get along well with almost every one of them. I just disagree with a lot of what they say.

I've had a few "brushes with greatness." During my sports days, I interviewed Sam Perkins and J.R. Reid. Whoohoo! I sat next to Ralph Sampson while covering a college basketball game. I met Bobby Bonilla once in Atlanta when some friends were managing a chain of bar/restaurants in the area, and I also met a few of the early-90s Atlanta Braves through those friends. (Ron Gant, Brian Hunter, etc. Gant was especially nice. We actually had a conversation for about 10 minutes.) One time in Charlotte, N.C., I saw John Cusack at a bar. He looked like shit -- unshaven, hair all stringy, his slender frame wrapped in a crumpled, ratty-looking trench coat. It was weird. What the hell was he doing in Charlotte, N.C., of all places? I also saw Dennis Rodman in Charlotte in 1990. This was before the freak show began. He was out at a club after a game against the Hornets, having a good time. He seemed like an extremely fun, gregarious, yet basically normal kind of guy. Why did he seem to change? I blame the media.

Little-known facts I'm not really proud of: I've been arrested three times. Alcohol was a factor in all three arrests. One was a DWI in 1992, one was a drunk & disorderly in 1993, and the other was an open-container violation in Myrtle Beach, S.C., in 1985. Those days are behind me now, I hope.

I used to smoke a lot of marijuana. From eighth grade through college, I was pretty much a pothead. I also was a big fan of mushrooms in college, and I've dropped acid a few times. Coke, qualudes, Valiums. I tried 'em all in my youth. A lot of my friends from high school still smoke a lot of weed, but I don't. It just doesn't interest me anymore. Drugs in general don't interest me anymore, but I think many of them should be legalized.

Anyway, there's a lot more. But I've got to get ready for work. I just wanted you folks to know that there's a real person behind this anonymous blog.

Posted 7:26 AM by Peter Fallow
THE DEATH OF NEWSPAPERS: Via Poynter comes this interesting piece on the future of your daily rag in the Internet age. Check it out.

Posted 8:32 AM by Peter Fallow
WESTERN MEDIA -- TERRORIST DUPES? "National Review" has a piece about how the Western media has been too quick to accept the Palestinian version of Mideast history. It's a bit longish, but it provides a lot of historical background on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Check it out.

Posted 8:16 AM by Peter Fallow
BLAME THE NEWSROOM: A departing "Philadelphia Inquirer" editor lays the smack down regarding the marketing-driven crises affecting newsrooms today:

"From a leadership perspective, the Inquirer of 20 years ago was building a culture that the leadership of today is seeking to dismantle," he says. "Back then, reporters came in thinking big--they were trusted by the leadership and allowed to try and fail if that's what it took to get good stories.

"A lot of thought went into the journalism instead of the ancillary issues of money and circulation. Twenty years ago the management protected the staff from that. Today the newsroom has been made to feel responsible for circulation problems, and it is my belief that is not the newsroom's fault."

Just go read the whole thing.

Posted 8:10 AM by Peter Fallow
'FOG OF NEWSPAPERING': Jack Shafer explores the various angles of why Iraq attack plans have been "leaked" to the "New York Times" recently. Here's the summary:

If ... the leaked Iraq invasion plans are part of an aggressive Bush disinformation campaign, who among us would have any sympathy for the Times? "Times Duped by the Pentagon" is both a wonderful and horrible prospect to imagine.

Posted 7:27 AM by Peter Fallow
WEIGH-IN SWITCHES SCALES: Justin Sodano has moved to Blogfodder. Adjust bookmarks accordingly.

Posted 6:44 AM by Peter Fallow
SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: I hate to rip off Andrew Sullivan's creation, but here goes. It seems Susan Sontag is up for her award again after her most recent outburst. After watching three traditional Iranian plays at Lincoln Center, here's what she had to say:

The plays concerned child martyrdom—indeed, one ended with the bloody beheading of a ten-year-old—and during a post-production symposium Sontag congratulated the festival director for importing the dramas to the U.S. “You’ve done something incredible,” she burbled. “To view these works was a privilege and a duty for us who don’t live by the contemptible rhetoric of the Bush administration. The last thing in the world we want to do is cooperate with the jihadist mentality of this administration.”

She might have used the favored pejoratives of the Left: “Eurocentric,” “exclusionary,” or even “crusader-like,” but that would not have been good enough for Sontag. Thus her use of “jihadist,” deriving, of course, from the Arabic word for “holy war or spiritual struggle against infidels.” Manifestly, Sontag did not intend to imply that George W. Bush had converted to Islam. She meant that the present U.S. government was as zealous and vengeful as . . . but the lady preferred not to connect the dots. Nor did acolytes who applauded her tirade during a post-production symposium.

Posted 6:11 AM by Peter Fallow
DON'T MESS WITH...DELAWARE? Fritz Schranck, proprietor of the excellent Sneaking Suspicions, fact-checks Jonathan Chait's ass regarding a story about Delaware and the state's income from gas taxes and tolls. The usually excellent Mr. Chait got a couple of facts stunningly wrong. Fritz works for the Diamond State (never knew it was called that) and knows his stuff on this particular issue. Check it out.

Posted 7:36 AM by Peter Fallow
'BUTTERFLY MEETS BAZOOKA': Here's an interesting story. It seems that an "L.A. Times" sports writer got fired for dashing off an angry political diatribe to a Republican congressman. The guy's mistake was sending the e-mail from his workplace e-mail address.

The Times' policy, as written in the employee handbook, is that the company e-mail system is not to be used for personal reasons. (That's nice, but it's hard to imagine that Times employees don't e-mail friends and spouses, or occasionally book airline fares online. Doesn't everybody?) My phone message seeking comment from editor John Carroll eventually made it to Times spokesman David Garcia, who said he cannot discuss personnel-related issues. You can't blame them for ducking on this one.

I think the "L.A. Weekly" folks missed part of the handbook. Ours includes the bit about not using the company e-mail for personal reasons, and yes, it is abused widely and regularly. But our handbook also includes a policy against using the company's electronic communication system for political or business purposes, which I think most newspapers would consider a much bigger no-no. Granted, the "L.A. Times" overreacted, and probably should have disciplined the guy in some other, less drastic manner. (Heck, the guy covers prep sports in a bureau. It's not exactly the same kind of conflict of interest it would have been if he reported on government or politics.) And the congressman should have eased up. I'm sure he gets hundreds of angry e-mails a day. But our sportswriter should have known better than to send his diatribe from work.

Posted 7:14 AM by Peter Fallow
STATS NEWS TO ME: I missed this update of the excellent Web site of the Statistical Assessment Service, but go check it out. It's one of the most valuable (and apparently underappreciated) sources of criticism about the ways the media screw up statistics. Check it out.

Posted 6:27 AM by Peter Fallow
THE MEDIA AND MURDERS: Here's an excellent response to the charge that the media only care about murdered children when the victims are white:

On the face of it, the claim that the media lavish a disproportionate amount of attention on abducted or murdered white kids might seem to have merit. The problem is that it's possible to make any theory about media bias seem plausible if one is willing to ignore enough anomalous data. Anomalous data like the case of 8-year-old Kevin Shifflett of Alexandria, Va. In April 2000, Kevin was killed in his frontyard by a stranger who shouted racist epithets before slitting the boy's throat and running away. Kevin's slaying had all the ingredients that would normally propel a case into national headlines: a brutal stranger-slaying, a racist killer, a suspect on the loose. But there was one wrinkle; Kevin was white, and his alleged killer, Gregory Murphy, who had penned a note before the killing in which he pledged to "kill them racist white kids," was black. The national media were nearly silent about this case (and even the Virginia media downplayed it). Compare this with the example of young Sherrice Iverson, the 7-year-old, "unwealthy" African American girl killed in the bathroom of a Nevada casino in 1997 by 18-year-old white kid Jeremy Strohmeyer. The Iverson case made national headlines (and is still talked about in the press).

And then this excellent summary:

The news business is, by nature, fickle and arbitrary. Newspaper pages have to be filled; hourlong news shows can't have dead air. There will always be inconsistencies and inequities in coverage. Sometimes these inequities will appear to favor whites; sometimes they will appear to favor minorities. A media critic should examine all of the available evidence before charging other journalists with the serious offense of allowing racial favoritism to influence the very difficult choices they are forced to make each day.