Tuesday, April 30, 2002
'MANUFACTURING DISSENT': That's the great headline on this piece from "Boston Phoenix" media critic Dan Kennedy. It seems a "Boston Globe" reporter asked a resident angered by the razing of an old synagogue to gather up some protesters for a photo-op. Again, I'm reminded of Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities" and that hilarious description of a made-for-TV protest.
'THE J-SCHOOL BLUES': Ana Mantica, a student at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, is questioning the value of her expensive education:
After three years, one thing I still haven't figured out is why people in the business who meet me and find I attend Medill first widen their eyes, then follow with a snide comment, smirk, or just a simple "Why?"
It's possible, Ana, that the snide, smirking people have worked with j-school grads who behave as if their "prestigious" degrees should grant them automatic access to the higher levels of journalism. Possibly, they're journalists who've slugged their way up through the ranks for several years, then had to watch as some snot-nosed kid with a j-school degree prances into a job it took the experienced journalist several years of hard work and shitty pay to reach. Then, when said snot-nosed kid falls flat on his or her unblemished face because they have zero real-world experience, said experienced journalist is pressed into action to serve as a "mentor" to this cretin. Then, said experienced journalist wonders, "where was MY mentor when I was working for $11,000 a year at that shit-hole afternoon paper in a dead-end town? Why isn't this 22-year-old asshole in a Saab down there learning the craft the RIGHT way?"
In some warped netherworld, there are high-school students who have come to the conclusion that they can become journalists simply by attending a prestigious j-school.
Well, Ana...THAT'S BECAUSE THEY CAN!!! I've seen it over and over again! Got a j-school degree from Chapel Hill? Chose the "right" internships as an undergrad? Well, hello, "Charlotte Observer." Sure, it may be one of their less-than-prestigious bureau jobs, but it's a sight better than dipping a toe at, say, the "Hickory Daily Record."
After getting out of the classroom and working in the "real world" a few times at various internships, I realize that many of you are probably laughing because you already know that you don't need a j-school degree to be a good journalist. Now I know it's true. Sure, it'll open a few doors along the way that might otherwise have been locked, but it takes more than just a "big-name school" to become a well-respected journalist. It requires putting into action every skill we've learned in class -- and "backing up" the degree. And it takes more work than any Medill class ever required.
I salute Ana for realizing that a j-school degree is just the beginning of a career in newspapers, and I'm sure she'll make a fine reporter. But I think the real problem is the way newspapers over a circulation of about 50,000 genuflect before journalism schools. They hire kids straight out of these prestigious institutions, and far too many of them fail - miserably. It's a real problem, and the fact that big daily papers serve as "internship farms" for colleges doesn't help.
I have a modest proposal. I think j-school grads should be required to put in a year at the 12,000-25,000-circulation level before making the jump to a bigger paper. (Heck, I spent more than four years at that level, and I turned out OK.) Small papers are often the object of scorn, and most of it is deserved. Pick up any "community" newspaper in the USA and you'll see the entire panorama of journalistic sins. But that's how you learn to do your craft. You screw up, get chewed out by one of the paper's old-timers, and then go out the next day and do a better job. After a year or so, you don't screw up as often.
After three years, one thing I still haven't figured out is why people in the business who meet me and find I attend Medill first widen their eyes, then follow with a snide comment, smirk, or just a simple "Why?"
It's possible, Ana, that the snide, smirking people have worked with j-school grads who behave as if their "prestigious" degrees should grant them automatic access to the higher levels of journalism. Possibly, they're journalists who've slugged their way up through the ranks for several years, then had to watch as some snot-nosed kid with a j-school degree prances into a job it took the experienced journalist several years of hard work and shitty pay to reach. Then, when said snot-nosed kid falls flat on his or her unblemished face because they have zero real-world experience, said experienced journalist is pressed into action to serve as a "mentor" to this cretin. Then, said experienced journalist wonders, "where was MY mentor when I was working for $11,000 a year at that shit-hole afternoon paper in a dead-end town? Why isn't this 22-year-old asshole in a Saab down there learning the craft the RIGHT way?"
In some warped netherworld, there are high-school students who have come to the conclusion that they can become journalists simply by attending a prestigious j-school.
Well, Ana...THAT'S BECAUSE THEY CAN!!! I've seen it over and over again! Got a j-school degree from Chapel Hill? Chose the "right" internships as an undergrad? Well, hello, "Charlotte Observer." Sure, it may be one of their less-than-prestigious bureau jobs, but it's a sight better than dipping a toe at, say, the "Hickory Daily Record."
After getting out of the classroom and working in the "real world" a few times at various internships, I realize that many of you are probably laughing because you already know that you don't need a j-school degree to be a good journalist. Now I know it's true. Sure, it'll open a few doors along the way that might otherwise have been locked, but it takes more than just a "big-name school" to become a well-respected journalist. It requires putting into action every skill we've learned in class -- and "backing up" the degree. And it takes more work than any Medill class ever required.
I salute Ana for realizing that a j-school degree is just the beginning of a career in newspapers, and I'm sure she'll make a fine reporter. But I think the real problem is the way newspapers over a circulation of about 50,000 genuflect before journalism schools. They hire kids straight out of these prestigious institutions, and far too many of them fail - miserably. It's a real problem, and the fact that big daily papers serve as "internship farms" for colleges doesn't help.
I have a modest proposal. I think j-school grads should be required to put in a year at the 12,000-25,000-circulation level before making the jump to a bigger paper. (Heck, I spent more than four years at that level, and I turned out OK.) Small papers are often the object of scorn, and most of it is deserved. Pick up any "community" newspaper in the USA and you'll see the entire panorama of journalistic sins. But that's how you learn to do your craft. You screw up, get chewed out by one of the paper's old-timers, and then go out the next day and do a better job. After a year or so, you don't screw up as often.
READ THE PAPER: Tunku Varadarajan of the "Wall Street Journal" has a wonderful piece today on why newspapers remain important. Among the reasons listed:
You meet some of the best contemporary writing and thinking in newspapers. You also meet some of the cleverest wordsmithery. "Headless Body in Topless Bar"--a famous New York Post headline--has endured far longer than anything Paula Zahn has said, or Bill O'Reilly.
Truer words have never been written.
You meet some of the best contemporary writing and thinking in newspapers. You also meet some of the cleverest wordsmithery. "Headless Body in Topless Bar"--a famous New York Post headline--has endured far longer than anything Paula Zahn has said, or Bill O'Reilly.
Truer words have never been written.
THE 'FREE PILE': The amount of free crap that marketing departments send to newspapers is truly amazing. (James Lileks did a riff on this the other day. Go check it out.) Over the past two years, I've probably added 30 decent CDs and 10-20 books to my collection just from perusing the "free pile" over in the corner of the newsroom. (Best CD find in the past 12 months: Jon Mayer's "Room For Squares." I got it last August, and it's finally getting a lot of positive radio play.) But I just scored my greatest piece of "swag" yet: a bobbing-head George Washington doll, courtesy of The History Channel. It's a promotional item for the upcoming "Founding Brothers" series. This is going in the rear window of the Corolla tonight, much to the horror of the Amazing Techie Girlfriend.
Monday, April 29, 2002
JOURNALISTS SELL SOULS FOR DOUGHNUTS: The "Minneapolis Star-Tribune" has a piece on the fawning coverage the Krispy Kreme doughnut franchise has received while setting up shop in the Twin Cities. It includes this quote:
Cops get stereotyped as having a doughnut jones. But we now know journalists can be had for 39 cents' worth of dough and glazed sugar.
I'm kind of ashamed to admit it, but it's the truth. Especially when it comes to Krispy Kreme and journalists who've had little exposure to this delightful confection. I grew up in a Southern city that had several KK's, so they never seemed that special to me. But now that I live where there's only something like two Krispy Kremes, I really appreciate how vastly superior they are to Dunkin Doughnuts, which are located on virtually every corner around here. People really seem to go nuts over KK, and journalistic objectivity vanishes. On the rare occasions that someone has brought a couple dozen Krispy Kremes to work, the scene is always reminiscent of that spot-on description of "The City Light" newsroom from Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities":
Rows of diode-light computer terminals in putty-gray "2001" sci-fi casings lent the city room of "The City Light" a gloss of order and modernity. It never survived a second glance. The desks were covered in the usual litter of paper, plastic cups, books, manuals, almanacs, magazines and sooty ashtrays. The usual shell-backed young men and women sat at the keyboards. A numb dull clattering - thuk thuk thuk thuk thuk thuk thuk thuk thuk - rose from the keyboards, as if an immense mah-jongg tournament was in progress. The reporters, rewrite men, and copy editors were hunched over in the age-old way of journalists. Every few seconds a head would straighten up, as if coming up for air, and yell out something about slugs, headline counts, or story lengths. But not even the excitement of deadline pressure could survive for long. A rear door opened, and a Greek wearing a white uniform came staggering in carrying a prodigious tray full of coffee and soda containers, boxes of doughnuts, cheese Danishes, onion rolls, crullers, every variety of muck and lard known to the takeout food business, and half the room deserted the computer consoles and descended upon him, rooting about the tray like starving weevils.
Cops get stereotyped as having a doughnut jones. But we now know journalists can be had for 39 cents' worth of dough and glazed sugar.
I'm kind of ashamed to admit it, but it's the truth. Especially when it comes to Krispy Kreme and journalists who've had little exposure to this delightful confection. I grew up in a Southern city that had several KK's, so they never seemed that special to me. But now that I live where there's only something like two Krispy Kremes, I really appreciate how vastly superior they are to Dunkin Doughnuts, which are located on virtually every corner around here. People really seem to go nuts over KK, and journalistic objectivity vanishes. On the rare occasions that someone has brought a couple dozen Krispy Kremes to work, the scene is always reminiscent of that spot-on description of "The City Light" newsroom from Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities":
Rows of diode-light computer terminals in putty-gray "2001" sci-fi casings lent the city room of "The City Light" a gloss of order and modernity. It never survived a second glance. The desks were covered in the usual litter of paper, plastic cups, books, manuals, almanacs, magazines and sooty ashtrays. The usual shell-backed young men and women sat at the keyboards. A numb dull clattering - thuk thuk thuk thuk thuk thuk thuk thuk thuk - rose from the keyboards, as if an immense mah-jongg tournament was in progress. The reporters, rewrite men, and copy editors were hunched over in the age-old way of journalists. Every few seconds a head would straighten up, as if coming up for air, and yell out something about slugs, headline counts, or story lengths. But not even the excitement of deadline pressure could survive for long. A rear door opened, and a Greek wearing a white uniform came staggering in carrying a prodigious tray full of coffee and soda containers, boxes of doughnuts, cheese Danishes, onion rolls, crullers, every variety of muck and lard known to the takeout food business, and half the room deserted the computer consoles and descended upon him, rooting about the tray like starving weevils.
THEY PULL ME BACK IN: Jeez. I declare my semi-retirement, and all of a sudden I'm perma-linked on the Instapundit and my hits are going through the roof. What the heck is going on here? Is this some kind of Blogger Anonymous "intervention"? Well, it's working. I'm returning to semi-regular posting - no more than one or two items a day. So there. You people happy now?
Tuesday, April 23, 2002
BLOGGING OFF: I'm sad to say it, but I'm sick of blogging. Not the medium itself, just my daily constitutional of right-wing media criticism that so many people are already doing as well or better than I can. It feels too much like a job, so therefore, I'm quitting. As of today, the Media Minder is offline, for good. I've got too much personal shit to deal with in my life right now, anyway. Please visit the folks on the right side of this page, though. Most of them are good, decent people.
I'd like to thank the 12,000 visitors who've stopped by since this humble operation was launched back in mid-January. A few of you have seen fit to send me some very gracious e-mails praising my work; even fewer have sent hate mail. Either way, I thank you all. And I'd especially like to thank author Jerry Bledsoe for his words of encouragement and support. The same goes for Jonathan V. Last, online editor of "The Weekly Standard." And last but not least, thank you to the inimitable James Lileks, whose simple plug became the motto of this site a couple of weeks ago.
I'm going to keep this site active, because I may change my mind someday. There are still a whole lot of personal experiences in journalism that I'd like to put into writing. But for now, I'm outta here. Y'all take care. Keep fact-checking their asses.
I'd like to thank the 12,000 visitors who've stopped by since this humble operation was launched back in mid-January. A few of you have seen fit to send me some very gracious e-mails praising my work; even fewer have sent hate mail. Either way, I thank you all. And I'd especially like to thank author Jerry Bledsoe for his words of encouragement and support. The same goes for Jonathan V. Last, online editor of "The Weekly Standard." And last but not least, thank you to the inimitable James Lileks, whose simple plug became the motto of this site a couple of weeks ago.
I'm going to keep this site active, because I may change my mind someday. There are still a whole lot of personal experiences in journalism that I'd like to put into writing. But for now, I'm outta here. Y'all take care. Keep fact-checking their asses.
Monday, April 22, 2002
HERE COMES THE 'SUN': Michael Wolff, the media critic for "New York" magazine, thinks the recently launched "New York Sun" will be a success. In light of recent changes at the "New York Times" and "Wall Street Journal," he may be on to something:
Still, both organizations are deeply insecure about the choices they've made, embarrassed to be publishers in a mogul world, envious of electronic scalability and ubiquity, tempted by media deal-making culture (the Times and the Journal have, on many occasions, tried to diversify but have almost always failed). What's more, they both fear, as much as anyone, for the future of newspapers. In some sense, what they are trying to do with their redesigns and new sections and dreams of national upscale monopolies is to imitate the media big-boy approach -- to expand their franchises, extend their brands, follow their audiences, achieve scale and ubiquity, reinvent themselves. It is not unlikely, however, because they are newspaper people, and, by long tradition, terrible business people, that they are exactly missing the point of what's going on. That a newspaper, with an identifiable and loyal audience, is smart stuff. That locality, and specificity, and personality, are soon to be all the rage. That a simple media company is better and more valuable than a complicated one. Which is why, unlikely as it seems, Seth Lipsky may be onto something.
Still, both organizations are deeply insecure about the choices they've made, embarrassed to be publishers in a mogul world, envious of electronic scalability and ubiquity, tempted by media deal-making culture (the Times and the Journal have, on many occasions, tried to diversify but have almost always failed). What's more, they both fear, as much as anyone, for the future of newspapers. In some sense, what they are trying to do with their redesigns and new sections and dreams of national upscale monopolies is to imitate the media big-boy approach -- to expand their franchises, extend their brands, follow their audiences, achieve scale and ubiquity, reinvent themselves. It is not unlikely, however, because they are newspaper people, and, by long tradition, terrible business people, that they are exactly missing the point of what's going on. That a newspaper, with an identifiable and loyal audience, is smart stuff. That locality, and specificity, and personality, are soon to be all the rage. That a simple media company is better and more valuable than a complicated one. Which is why, unlikely as it seems, Seth Lipsky may be onto something.
HOWIE GOES TO BLOGISTAN: Howie Kurtz finally pens his blogging column, and it's generally positive. The usual suspects (Instapundit, Virginia Postrel, Mickey Kaus, Andrew Sullivan, Joshua Micah Marshall) are featured, but there's also Asparagirl, Amy Welborn (whose site sends me a ton of traffic), Susanna Cornett of Cut On the Bias, and several others. Give it a look. Here's the book-jacket blurb:
The arena has produced fresh, clever, idiosyncratic, real-time musings by all kinds of people whose voices would otherwise be heard only at the local Starbucks.
The arena has produced fresh, clever, idiosyncratic, real-time musings by all kinds of people whose voices would otherwise be heard only at the local Starbucks.
Sunday, April 21, 2002
BIAS DEBATE, PART 763: Henry Hanks alerted me to some debunking that's been going on in regards to Geoffrey Nunberg's much-touted "study" that "proved" media bias was a myth. Here's one, and here's another. Yep. I thought Nunberg's study was a little shaky, too.
UPDATE: Nunberg offers a lame rebuttal to his critics (link via Instapundit). He makes the outrageous claim that the Sierra Club and Planned Parenthood aren't really liberal groups, and offers up this amazing quote: "To insist that the press describe these groups as liberal amounts to demanding that it adopt the lexicon of the right on a wholesale basis, like a baseball manager demanding that the team's own fans should determine the strike zone. Everyone knows it's ludicrous, but the bleachers eat it up anyway." In other words, the majority of Americans who would more than likely consider these groups to be left-leaning are the same as the yahoos who heckle umpires from the cheap seats. They're being manipulated by the ideologues, and are ignoring the unbiased research of a simple linguistics professor. Jeez.
UPDATE: Nunberg offers a lame rebuttal to his critics (link via Instapundit). He makes the outrageous claim that the Sierra Club and Planned Parenthood aren't really liberal groups, and offers up this amazing quote: "To insist that the press describe these groups as liberal amounts to demanding that it adopt the lexicon of the right on a wholesale basis, like a baseball manager demanding that the team's own fans should determine the strike zone. Everyone knows it's ludicrous, but the bleachers eat it up anyway." In other words, the majority of Americans who would more than likely consider these groups to be left-leaning are the same as the yahoos who heckle umpires from the cheap seats. They're being manipulated by the ideologues, and are ignoring the unbiased research of a simple linguistics professor. Jeez.
BACK HOME AGAIN: I just made it through a marathon tour of six southern states and a whole bunch of relatives. I put more than 2,000 miles on the Corolla, ate a lot of good food (catfish, barbecue, boiled peanuts, collards) and even managed to squeeze in a minor-league baseball game. Regular posting will resume tomorrow, but thanks to everybody who kept checking in during the week.
Friday, April 12, 2002
HOT OFF THE 'PRESS': The "New York Press" Billboard has a couple of notable items today:
Students are stealing newspapers on college campuses again, and John Strausbaugh is pissed off about it:
On Monday, black students at Purdue held a press conference to protest an Oliphant cartoon that ran in the campus paper, The Exponent. The issue, predictably, was identity politics and the perception that the paper had "disrespected" black students by running the cartoon, blah blah blah. In a rare show of balls from the usually mild-mannered editorial cartoonist, Oliphant’s strip makes rather wicked fun of both the slavery reparations movement and this year’s Academy Awards for Denzel Washington and Halle Berry—both surely fair and open targets for an editorial cartoonist. Two of these kids are sophomores, the other a junior. Maybe Purdue doesn’t get around to teaching the Constitution, and specifically the First Amendment, until senior year. I’ve got news for that Black Student Union president: In a democracy, the free and open expression of political and social opinions in a newspaper is not only "acceptable," it’s fucking essential. Only fascists, old-school commissars and college students have the power to demand that everyone else in the world "respect" them no matter how silly they act, or get to live in a world where the only opinions they hear on important topics of the day are ones they agree with. And as for the editor who apologized for having the temerity to publish a paper that upsets someone: you’ve got a job waiting for you at nytimes.com when you graduate, you scheming careerist you.
Then, check out William S. Repsher's take on the state of indie record stores:
Generally, when I walk into an indie store, there's some snobbish dweeb behind the counter wearing his limited taste in music like a STOP sign and snickering at any customer who doesn't buy CDs meeting his archaic "cool" criteria. Frankly, if your average indie-store worker suggested an album to me, I'd be prone to cracking open the jewel case and flinging the CD at his head like a frisbee. It's a rare record-store employer who sees the big picture musically—usually just the store owner, the rock of sanity in his ever-shifting sea of minimum-wage loser employees.
The article's best quote is from Mike Phillips, owner of six Schoolkids Records shops in North Carolina for more than 20 years: "We haven't gone the bong-and-belt-buckle route, but I will if that's how I'm going to pay my bills."
Buddy, we may all have to go that route, sooner or later, no matter what our line of work. I've already picked out a stars-and-bars belt buckle the size of a Doberman's head from the local Señor Frog, have this huge blue bong Mayor Bloomberg gave me on the subway this morning and got a VW van with a Molly Hatchet album cover painted on the side. Worst of all, I've figured out how to dub my old Ted Nugent and Uriah Heep eight-tracks to MP3. Woe unto the stiff suits of the music industry!
Students are stealing newspapers on college campuses again, and John Strausbaugh is pissed off about it:
On Monday, black students at Purdue held a press conference to protest an Oliphant cartoon that ran in the campus paper, The Exponent. The issue, predictably, was identity politics and the perception that the paper had "disrespected" black students by running the cartoon, blah blah blah. In a rare show of balls from the usually mild-mannered editorial cartoonist, Oliphant’s strip makes rather wicked fun of both the slavery reparations movement and this year’s Academy Awards for Denzel Washington and Halle Berry—both surely fair and open targets for an editorial cartoonist. Two of these kids are sophomores, the other a junior. Maybe Purdue doesn’t get around to teaching the Constitution, and specifically the First Amendment, until senior year. I’ve got news for that Black Student Union president: In a democracy, the free and open expression of political and social opinions in a newspaper is not only "acceptable," it’s fucking essential. Only fascists, old-school commissars and college students have the power to demand that everyone else in the world "respect" them no matter how silly they act, or get to live in a world where the only opinions they hear on important topics of the day are ones they agree with. And as for the editor who apologized for having the temerity to publish a paper that upsets someone: you’ve got a job waiting for you at nytimes.com when you graduate, you scheming careerist you.
Then, check out William S. Repsher's take on the state of indie record stores:
Generally, when I walk into an indie store, there's some snobbish dweeb behind the counter wearing his limited taste in music like a STOP sign and snickering at any customer who doesn't buy CDs meeting his archaic "cool" criteria. Frankly, if your average indie-store worker suggested an album to me, I'd be prone to cracking open the jewel case and flinging the CD at his head like a frisbee. It's a rare record-store employer who sees the big picture musically—usually just the store owner, the rock of sanity in his ever-shifting sea of minimum-wage loser employees.
The article's best quote is from Mike Phillips, owner of six Schoolkids Records shops in North Carolina for more than 20 years: "We haven't gone the bong-and-belt-buckle route, but I will if that's how I'm going to pay my bills."
Buddy, we may all have to go that route, sooner or later, no matter what our line of work. I've already picked out a stars-and-bars belt buckle the size of a Doberman's head from the local Señor Frog, have this huge blue bong Mayor Bloomberg gave me on the subway this morning and got a VW van with a Molly Hatchet album cover painted on the side. Worst of all, I've figured out how to dub my old Ted Nugent and Uriah Heep eight-tracks to MP3. Woe unto the stiff suits of the music industry!
COURTING THE BOBOS: William Powers at the "National Journal" writes about what recent changes at the "New York Times" and "Wall Street Journal" really mean:
The changes at The Times and The Journal may appear to be cosmetic and company-specific, but they are the latest emblems of a broad and significant shift in journalism and in society at large....Alas, we are in the realm of that increasingly popular brand of journalism I call "Lifestyle Voyeurism," the rules of which require a certain tantalizing opacity as to the nitty-gritty details of income and net worth. ...Welcome to the New New Journalism, which is all about pulling in the richest slice of American society -- the people who buy $60,000 cars without blinking, cook on Viking ranges, know an Opus One from a Chateau Ausone, and live a kind of good life that's unheard-of in most of the world. Thanks to the unmatched prosperity of the United States, there are now lots of these people, millions of millionaires, so many that they have begun to form a community all their own. ... It's the community that national advertisers are desperate to reach. Which is why our two most elite national papers are scrambling to reach them, too.... While the changes at The Times and The Wall Street Journal serve a number of purposes -- The Journal's renovations opened up more room on its front page for breaking news, for example -- the purpose they share is to keep this golden readership happy.
The changes at The Times and The Journal may appear to be cosmetic and company-specific, but they are the latest emblems of a broad and significant shift in journalism and in society at large....Alas, we are in the realm of that increasingly popular brand of journalism I call "Lifestyle Voyeurism," the rules of which require a certain tantalizing opacity as to the nitty-gritty details of income and net worth. ...Welcome to the New New Journalism, which is all about pulling in the richest slice of American society -- the people who buy $60,000 cars without blinking, cook on Viking ranges, know an Opus One from a Chateau Ausone, and live a kind of good life that's unheard-of in most of the world. Thanks to the unmatched prosperity of the United States, there are now lots of these people, millions of millionaires, so many that they have begun to form a community all their own. ... It's the community that national advertisers are desperate to reach. Which is why our two most elite national papers are scrambling to reach them, too.... While the changes at The Times and The Wall Street Journal serve a number of purposes -- The Journal's renovations opened up more room on its front page for breaking news, for example -- the purpose they share is to keep this golden readership happy.
'VELVET CONSERVATISM' IN PRINT: That's the thrust of this "American Prospect" article on the people behind the soon-to-be-launched "New York Sun." (They're also kind of taking over the "New Republic.") It's a position that Michael Tomasky dubs "velvet conservatism":
If one were to take Hertog, Steinhardt, Peretz, and Lipsky's politics and put them in a centrifuge, the substance that would emerge would be as follows: It would be explicitly neither Democratic nor Republican. It would be right of center, especially on foreign policy (and most especially on Israel). It would be right of center, too, on a good number of domestic questions. But because it would pay some obeisance to the New Deal and even (sometimes) to the Great Society, which neoconservatism refuted thoroughly, and because it would purport to care deeply about poor people of color -- Hertog is messianic on the topic of vouchers and calls urban education "the civil rights issue of this generation" -- it would stand quite apart from, say, the obstreperous conservatism of a Tom DeLay. Indeed, it would claim its roots in a historic pragmatic liberalism that today's wandering liberals, this gang of four would argue, have cashiered out of slavish devotion to quota queens and teachers' unions. So it would fancy itself a truer liberalism.
If one were to take Hertog, Steinhardt, Peretz, and Lipsky's politics and put them in a centrifuge, the substance that would emerge would be as follows: It would be explicitly neither Democratic nor Republican. It would be right of center, especially on foreign policy (and most especially on Israel). It would be right of center, too, on a good number of domestic questions. But because it would pay some obeisance to the New Deal and even (sometimes) to the Great Society, which neoconservatism refuted thoroughly, and because it would purport to care deeply about poor people of color -- Hertog is messianic on the topic of vouchers and calls urban education "the civil rights issue of this generation" -- it would stand quite apart from, say, the obstreperous conservatism of a Tom DeLay. Indeed, it would claim its roots in a historic pragmatic liberalism that today's wandering liberals, this gang of four would argue, have cashiered out of slavish devotion to quota queens and teachers' unions. So it would fancy itself a truer liberalism.
QUICK HITS: Here's a series of links about newspapers, which is the primary area of interest for this blog:
-The "New York Times" is making its content available especially for bloggers. Fascinating story.
-Something called the Readership Institute has found that newspapers lack brand loyalty.
-I wish I had gotten one of these when I was in college (then again, I would have settled for ANY kind of internship). Knight-Ridder is establishing internships for copy editors.
-Steve Outing says newspaper Web sites are repeating their old mistakes.
-The "New York Times" is making its content available especially for bloggers. Fascinating story.
-Something called the Readership Institute has found that newspapers lack brand loyalty.
-I wish I had gotten one of these when I was in college (then again, I would have settled for ANY kind of internship). Knight-Ridder is establishing internships for copy editors.
-Steve Outing says newspaper Web sites are repeating their old mistakes.
WAR & RUMORS OF WAR: I'm always surprised by the people who stumble across my humble blog. The latest is British journalist Brendan O'Neill of the excellent journal "Spiked-Online." (If you're unaware of it, it's one of the Recommended links on Arts and Letters Daily.) He sent me links to a couple of well-researched articles he's written "raising awkward questions about the war on terror," as O'Neill puts it.
The first is titled "When Nation-Building Destroys." Citing more than 40 news sources spanning the time frame of January-March, it points out huge contradictions between America's stated aims in a post-Taliban Afghanistan and the ways those policies are actually being implemented (or not implemented). Here's a relevant quote:
So what is the state of post-Taliban Afghanistan? Is it a human rights triumph where freedoms have been regained, or just a mess? A security nightmare that needs heavy policing, or a state with some non-threatening security issues? One thing is certain: the Bush administration's contradictory statements about Afghanistan over the past two months show that US policy is driven less by concern for democracy and human rights, than by political expediency.
O'Neill places great blame on the U.S. for instituting a government that emphasizes ethnic differences. He also includes this line about one of the most evil regimes the world has seen in recent history:
Whatever else the Taliban did, it at least brought a measure of stability to Afghanistan.
Needless to say, I disagree with most of this. To me, it seems that America's mission in Afghanistan was not nation-building. It was the removal of the Taliban, followed by some assistance in the establishment of an interim government. It's unfortunate that ethnicity seems to be the operating principle of Afghan society, but that's certainly not uncommon in the undeveloped world. It would take decades to implement the kind of change required to de-emphasize ethnicity in Afghanistan; it's been torn by these conflicts for centuries. And what if America did try to force a non-ethnic-based government on Afghanistan? That would surely be prima facie evidence of arrogant cultural imperialism, wouldn't it?
The next article, "The Strange Battle of Shah-i-Kot," again points out contradictions between what the U.S. military reported about Operation Anaconda and what the media reported. Again, O'Neill did his research: he cites 35 sources for his story (and not all from "The Guardian.") And again, I disagree with many of his assertions. It's true the U.S. military is heavily managing the flow of information from Afghanistan, but other reasons for the many contradictory reports on Operation Anaconda could be competing agendas between American forces and their Afghan compatriots( who seem to be largely motivated by tribal prejudices and may be eager to "spin" the news to their advantage) and the general "fog of war," where the initial report is often wrong. One thing is certain: even though it's unclear how many Al-Qaeda were killed in the operation, the fact is that the terrorist network no longer runs Afghanistan. At the very least, they've been forced to go into hiding or flee the country. It may not be a comprehensive victory, but it's better than doing nothing at all. After all, as the Bush administration has stated over and over again, this is going to be a long conflict that may take years to resolve.
I wish I had more time to examine each of the sources O'Neill cites, but I'm preparing to go out of town. Maybe someone out there with more time on their hands can address these stories in more detail.
The first is titled "When Nation-Building Destroys." Citing more than 40 news sources spanning the time frame of January-March, it points out huge contradictions between America's stated aims in a post-Taliban Afghanistan and the ways those policies are actually being implemented (or not implemented). Here's a relevant quote:
So what is the state of post-Taliban Afghanistan? Is it a human rights triumph where freedoms have been regained, or just a mess? A security nightmare that needs heavy policing, or a state with some non-threatening security issues? One thing is certain: the Bush administration's contradictory statements about Afghanistan over the past two months show that US policy is driven less by concern for democracy and human rights, than by political expediency.
O'Neill places great blame on the U.S. for instituting a government that emphasizes ethnic differences. He also includes this line about one of the most evil regimes the world has seen in recent history:
Whatever else the Taliban did, it at least brought a measure of stability to Afghanistan.
Needless to say, I disagree with most of this. To me, it seems that America's mission in Afghanistan was not nation-building. It was the removal of the Taliban, followed by some assistance in the establishment of an interim government. It's unfortunate that ethnicity seems to be the operating principle of Afghan society, but that's certainly not uncommon in the undeveloped world. It would take decades to implement the kind of change required to de-emphasize ethnicity in Afghanistan; it's been torn by these conflicts for centuries. And what if America did try to force a non-ethnic-based government on Afghanistan? That would surely be prima facie evidence of arrogant cultural imperialism, wouldn't it?
The next article, "The Strange Battle of Shah-i-Kot," again points out contradictions between what the U.S. military reported about Operation Anaconda and what the media reported. Again, O'Neill did his research: he cites 35 sources for his story (and not all from "The Guardian.") And again, I disagree with many of his assertions. It's true the U.S. military is heavily managing the flow of information from Afghanistan, but other reasons for the many contradictory reports on Operation Anaconda could be competing agendas between American forces and their Afghan compatriots( who seem to be largely motivated by tribal prejudices and may be eager to "spin" the news to their advantage) and the general "fog of war," where the initial report is often wrong. One thing is certain: even though it's unclear how many Al-Qaeda were killed in the operation, the fact is that the terrorist network no longer runs Afghanistan. At the very least, they've been forced to go into hiding or flee the country. It may not be a comprehensive victory, but it's better than doing nothing at all. After all, as the Bush administration has stated over and over again, this is going to be a long conflict that may take years to resolve.
I wish I had more time to examine each of the sources O'Neill cites, but I'm preparing to go out of town. Maybe someone out there with more time on their hands can address these stories in more detail.
Thursday, April 11, 2002
AT LONG LAST: The spring issue of the invaluable "City Journal" is online. Just go read the whole thing. It is always excellent fodder for blogging.
DIVERSITY UBER ALLES: Ahh, spring. Time for the print media to bash itself for not being more "diverse." The American Society of Newspaper Editors has released the latest study on newsroom diversity. As you might expect, the utopia of proportional minority representation has not been met:
Last year, the industry had a net increase nationwide of four minority journalists. Only because payrolls shrank in the recession, with more white journalists taking buyouts, did the percentage of minorities in newsrooms increase to 12 percent, compared with 31 percent of the US population. Nearly half of the nation's newspapers employ no minority reporters, editors, artists, or photographers.
First of all, it's not entirely clear that the nation is 31 percent minority. The Census states that White Persons make up 75.1 percent of the U.S. population in 2000. But because of the multiple racial entries available on the latest form, it also reports that White Persons not of Hispanic/Latino origin were at 69.1 percent. There were also these two fudge categories: Reporting some other race, 5.5 percent; and Persons reporting two or more races, 2.4 percent. By choosing the higher minority percentage, the situation may appear to be artificially worse than it actually is. But never mind that. Check this slanted passage out:
Editors offer many reasons why they cannot achieve diversity, but not all of those reasons stand up to scrutiny. For one thing, they say, size matters. It's harder for smaller papers with fewer resources to attract good minority journalists. Other editors say the opposite, that larger, more respected newspapers have less staff turnover and need to hire more experienced journalists, so they have fewer opportunities to diversify.
We'll give those reasons a little "scrutiny" later. Let's just say that there's a huge disconnect between this passage and the things that I and many others have observed. In my experience, the truth is this: Small papers simply cannot attract good minority journalists because the minute they graduate from UNC or Indiana or Columbia, they are hired by larger, more respected papers such as the "Charlotte Observer" or the "Indianapolis Star" or "Newsday." If you're black and have a degree from a J-school, you can pretty much write your own ticket. Hell, even if you don't have a J-school degree, big newspapers will call you. I've seen it happen. About 10 years ago, a black co-worker of mine at a very small daily paper put in one year of work before a 350,000-circulation daily contacted him out of the blue. He got the kind of job that I was told I might be ready for in four or five years.
''I think that increasing diversity is within the control of the editor,'' said Tim J. McGuire, president of the editors association and the editor of McClatchy's Minneapolis paper, the Star Tribune, which is at 89 percent of parity. ''We did it by sheer will.'' It doesn't hurt, he said, that 5 to 10 percent of his annual bonus is based on diversity. That's enough, he said, for a weekend in Las Vegas.
So it is clearly in the financial best interest of editors to achieve diversity. How come they're not making it happen? In typical fashion, the Globe buries the reasons in the 26th graph:
Many editors cite two systemic problems that make it difficult to meet diversity goals: retention and a lack of qualified minority journalists. Most editors can cite good minority journalists who have been raided by a larger newspaper or TV network, or who fled journalism for higher pay, opportunity for advancement, or a climate where their views are heard. Editors also refer to what they call the ''pipeline'' problem, saying that there are not enough minority journalists coming out of smaller newspapers and journalism schools. Indeed, the nation's newspapers would need to double the number of minority journalists, and distribute them much more evenly, for every paper to reach parity with its community.
After reading the opening paragraphs of the story, which not so subtly conjure up the image of racist newsroom managers conspiring to force the next William Raspberry into a job at McDonald's, you find the truth way down in the story. But there's an attempt to refute even these simple and reasonable explanations:
But it's also true that there are plenty of minority college students studying journalism and mass communications: 27 percent of students in those majors are minorities, or enough to double the number of minority journalists in about five years, according to the latest US study by the Grady College of Journalism at the University of Georgia. And journalism has never been a job that requires a major in a particular field. But not enough minorities are choosing print journalism, and instead are choosing broadcasting or public relations.
I can't find the University of Georgia study cited. But the fact that 27 percent of the current journalism and mass communication majors are minorities means next to nothing, fantasies of a five-year pogrom of white journalists notwithstanding. First of all, far fewer minorities currently enrolled in college will graduate than their white counterparts. In fact, at a lot of colleges, as few as one-third of minorities currently enrolled will actually graduate. That's true no matter what the major. Second, no mention is made of how many of those who make it through school actually choose to go into journalism. It's a notoriously low-paying field, and selling insurance for $30,000 a year can look infinitely more appealing than covering American Legion baseball for $18,000 a year. And finally, the Globe's story itself provides an entirely reasonable explanation in the 29th graph of a 32-graph story: More minorities are choosing the more lucrative fields of broadcasting or public relations.
Despite this, you can bet that this report will lead to more sophisticated diversity mau-mauing of media companies. And, if you believe William McGowan, there will be a corresponding decline in skeptical reporting about important issues that affect Americans of all racial groups.
Last year, the industry had a net increase nationwide of four minority journalists. Only because payrolls shrank in the recession, with more white journalists taking buyouts, did the percentage of minorities in newsrooms increase to 12 percent, compared with 31 percent of the US population. Nearly half of the nation's newspapers employ no minority reporters, editors, artists, or photographers.
First of all, it's not entirely clear that the nation is 31 percent minority. The Census states that White Persons make up 75.1 percent of the U.S. population in 2000. But because of the multiple racial entries available on the latest form, it also reports that White Persons not of Hispanic/Latino origin were at 69.1 percent. There were also these two fudge categories: Reporting some other race, 5.5 percent; and Persons reporting two or more races, 2.4 percent. By choosing the higher minority percentage, the situation may appear to be artificially worse than it actually is. But never mind that. Check this slanted passage out:
Editors offer many reasons why they cannot achieve diversity, but not all of those reasons stand up to scrutiny. For one thing, they say, size matters. It's harder for smaller papers with fewer resources to attract good minority journalists. Other editors say the opposite, that larger, more respected newspapers have less staff turnover and need to hire more experienced journalists, so they have fewer opportunities to diversify.
We'll give those reasons a little "scrutiny" later. Let's just say that there's a huge disconnect between this passage and the things that I and many others have observed. In my experience, the truth is this: Small papers simply cannot attract good minority journalists because the minute they graduate from UNC or Indiana or Columbia, they are hired by larger, more respected papers such as the "Charlotte Observer" or the "Indianapolis Star" or "Newsday." If you're black and have a degree from a J-school, you can pretty much write your own ticket. Hell, even if you don't have a J-school degree, big newspapers will call you. I've seen it happen. About 10 years ago, a black co-worker of mine at a very small daily paper put in one year of work before a 350,000-circulation daily contacted him out of the blue. He got the kind of job that I was told I might be ready for in four or five years.
''I think that increasing diversity is within the control of the editor,'' said Tim J. McGuire, president of the editors association and the editor of McClatchy's Minneapolis paper, the Star Tribune, which is at 89 percent of parity. ''We did it by sheer will.'' It doesn't hurt, he said, that 5 to 10 percent of his annual bonus is based on diversity. That's enough, he said, for a weekend in Las Vegas.
So it is clearly in the financial best interest of editors to achieve diversity. How come they're not making it happen? In typical fashion, the Globe buries the reasons in the 26th graph:
Many editors cite two systemic problems that make it difficult to meet diversity goals: retention and a lack of qualified minority journalists. Most editors can cite good minority journalists who have been raided by a larger newspaper or TV network, or who fled journalism for higher pay, opportunity for advancement, or a climate where their views are heard. Editors also refer to what they call the ''pipeline'' problem, saying that there are not enough minority journalists coming out of smaller newspapers and journalism schools. Indeed, the nation's newspapers would need to double the number of minority journalists, and distribute them much more evenly, for every paper to reach parity with its community.
After reading the opening paragraphs of the story, which not so subtly conjure up the image of racist newsroom managers conspiring to force the next William Raspberry into a job at McDonald's, you find the truth way down in the story. But there's an attempt to refute even these simple and reasonable explanations:
But it's also true that there are plenty of minority college students studying journalism and mass communications: 27 percent of students in those majors are minorities, or enough to double the number of minority journalists in about five years, according to the latest US study by the Grady College of Journalism at the University of Georgia. And journalism has never been a job that requires a major in a particular field. But not enough minorities are choosing print journalism, and instead are choosing broadcasting or public relations.
I can't find the University of Georgia study cited. But the fact that 27 percent of the current journalism and mass communication majors are minorities means next to nothing, fantasies of a five-year pogrom of white journalists notwithstanding. First of all, far fewer minorities currently enrolled in college will graduate than their white counterparts. In fact, at a lot of colleges, as few as one-third of minorities currently enrolled will actually graduate. That's true no matter what the major. Second, no mention is made of how many of those who make it through school actually choose to go into journalism. It's a notoriously low-paying field, and selling insurance for $30,000 a year can look infinitely more appealing than covering American Legion baseball for $18,000 a year. And finally, the Globe's story itself provides an entirely reasonable explanation in the 29th graph of a 32-graph story: More minorities are choosing the more lucrative fields of broadcasting or public relations.
Despite this, you can bet that this report will lead to more sophisticated diversity mau-mauing of media companies. And, if you believe William McGowan, there will be a corresponding decline in skeptical reporting about important issues that affect Americans of all racial groups.
DRUNKEN JOURNALIST R.I.P.: Andrew Sullivan has a wonderful link today to an obit for British journalist Graham Mason, who died recently at the age of 59. Not to make light of alcoholism, but this guy sounds like someone I would have loved to get smashed with:
Graham Edward Mason was born on July 19 1942 in Cape Town, South Africa. He had been conceived on a sand dune, and to this, as a devotee of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, he sometimes attributed his abrasive character...Mason was a fearsome sight at his most drunkenly irascible. Seated at the bar, his thin shanks wrapped around the legs of a high stool, he would swivel his reptilian stare round behind him to any unfortunate stranger attempting to be served, and snap: "Who the f-- are you?" Sometimes this prompted a reaction, and on one occasion a powerful blow to the head sent Mason flying, with his stool, across the carpet. Painfully clawing himself upright, he set the stool in its place, reseated himself and, twisting his head round again, growled: "Don't you ever do that again."
Just go read the whole thing. It's wonderful.
Graham Edward Mason was born on July 19 1942 in Cape Town, South Africa. He had been conceived on a sand dune, and to this, as a devotee of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, he sometimes attributed his abrasive character...Mason was a fearsome sight at his most drunkenly irascible. Seated at the bar, his thin shanks wrapped around the legs of a high stool, he would swivel his reptilian stare round behind him to any unfortunate stranger attempting to be served, and snap: "Who the f-- are you?" Sometimes this prompted a reaction, and on one occasion a powerful blow to the head sent Mason flying, with his stool, across the carpet. Painfully clawing himself upright, he set the stool in its place, reseated himself and, twisting his head round again, growled: "Don't you ever do that again."
Just go read the whole thing. It's wonderful.
Wednesday, April 10, 2002
'NEW YORK PRESS' ROUNDUP: Let's see what's new in the "New York Press." First, the Mugger has a wide-ranging column that leads off with strong words about the Middle East conflict:
The coddling of Arafat in the liberal media is astonishing. Any day, I expect a Times editorial to suggest that a delegation of Jimmy Carter, Janet Reno, both Clintons, Jesse Jackson, Jerry Ford, Madeleine Albright and Katie Couric be dispatched to wherever Osama bin Laden’s hiding out, and through dialogue and process and soul-searching, attempt to find common ground with this resilient warrior. This isn’t completely facetious: there’s no moral difference between OBL and Arafat, or, for that matter, our back-stabbing "allies" in Saudi Arabia. Yet Arafat, who’s proved 100 times he can’t be trusted, is given the unspoken status of most-favored-dictator.
Then, bellow out an angry "gimme a break" after reading Michelangelo Signorile's column on George Bush and his "born-again" foreign policy:
Mary McGrory in The Washington Post got it right last week when she observed that Bush has been "putty in [Ariel Sharon’s] hand." I’d go one better: Bush is putty in the hands of anyone–the faith-based cultists, the military hawks, the anti-environmentalists, the tax-cutters, the corporate interests–who can frame an issue to him in the language of Christian evangelism, as a struggle of "good" over "evil." (And you better believe that’s how Sharon described the Arab-Israeli conflict to him back in 1998, when then-Gov. Bush visited Israel and Sharon was his personal escort.)
The fact that the bit in parentheses is presented with absolutely no evidence whatsoever is telling. But it's important to note that while President Bush does indeed hold strong religious convictions, it seems to me that his beliefs are a couple of degrees removed from "evangelical" Christianity. He's a Methodist, for God's sake! The "evangelical" label is far too often a shorthand for the twisted religious fanaticism of the Jerry Falwell-Pat Robertson camp. Signorile admits as much later in the piece:
Talk to people in the rank and file of the Christian right–as opposed to its more calculated and powermongering leaders–and you often find simple, frightened people who see the world around them as an unstable place prone to depravity and injustice; many are struggling with their own or larger societal demons, whether they be economic problems or more personal ones, such as sexual issues (for example, feeling homosexual urges that they have been taught to believe are wrong), alcoholism, drug addiction, or some other problem. For many of these individuals passion of any kind is a sign of weakness and can trigger fears of being out of control. The only thing they feel they have a license to be truly passionate about is their faith itself. And that seems to describe Bush. Only when he can channel politics through his faith does he even remotely seem to have a passion for politics.
What an amazingly mean-spirited passage. It's painfully obvious that Signorile hasn't talked to a whole lot of these people. (I have, because a lot of them are my relatives. As much as I disagree with them on a whole host of issues, the reasons for their beliefs are a lot more complex than what Signorile lays out.) The traits he ascribes to the "rank and file of the Christian right" could just as easily describe the demons that dog hard-core left-wing activists. Or deranged taxi drivers. Or soccer moms. Or any human being grappling with the problems of life anywhere, for that matter. Once he makes it clear that people who hold strong religious beliefs are perverse, emotionally tortured hypocrites, it's easy to paint Bush's policies as being driven by the same irrational beliefs. And it's also dishonest.
I never have held the hard-core Christian right in high regard, and I often wish they'd start their own political party and get out of mine. But this simplistic stereotyping of a huge swath of American society would be roundly criticized if Signorile were writing about blacks or Hispanics or homosexuals.
The coddling of Arafat in the liberal media is astonishing. Any day, I expect a Times editorial to suggest that a delegation of Jimmy Carter, Janet Reno, both Clintons, Jesse Jackson, Jerry Ford, Madeleine Albright and Katie Couric be dispatched to wherever Osama bin Laden’s hiding out, and through dialogue and process and soul-searching, attempt to find common ground with this resilient warrior. This isn’t completely facetious: there’s no moral difference between OBL and Arafat, or, for that matter, our back-stabbing "allies" in Saudi Arabia. Yet Arafat, who’s proved 100 times he can’t be trusted, is given the unspoken status of most-favored-dictator.
Then, bellow out an angry "gimme a break" after reading Michelangelo Signorile's column on George Bush and his "born-again" foreign policy:
Mary McGrory in The Washington Post got it right last week when she observed that Bush has been "putty in [Ariel Sharon’s] hand." I’d go one better: Bush is putty in the hands of anyone–the faith-based cultists, the military hawks, the anti-environmentalists, the tax-cutters, the corporate interests–who can frame an issue to him in the language of Christian evangelism, as a struggle of "good" over "evil." (And you better believe that’s how Sharon described the Arab-Israeli conflict to him back in 1998, when then-Gov. Bush visited Israel and Sharon was his personal escort.)
The fact that the bit in parentheses is presented with absolutely no evidence whatsoever is telling. But it's important to note that while President Bush does indeed hold strong religious convictions, it seems to me that his beliefs are a couple of degrees removed from "evangelical" Christianity. He's a Methodist, for God's sake! The "evangelical" label is far too often a shorthand for the twisted religious fanaticism of the Jerry Falwell-Pat Robertson camp. Signorile admits as much later in the piece:
Talk to people in the rank and file of the Christian right–as opposed to its more calculated and powermongering leaders–and you often find simple, frightened people who see the world around them as an unstable place prone to depravity and injustice; many are struggling with their own or larger societal demons, whether they be economic problems or more personal ones, such as sexual issues (for example, feeling homosexual urges that they have been taught to believe are wrong), alcoholism, drug addiction, or some other problem. For many of these individuals passion of any kind is a sign of weakness and can trigger fears of being out of control. The only thing they feel they have a license to be truly passionate about is their faith itself. And that seems to describe Bush. Only when he can channel politics through his faith does he even remotely seem to have a passion for politics.
What an amazingly mean-spirited passage. It's painfully obvious that Signorile hasn't talked to a whole lot of these people. (I have, because a lot of them are my relatives. As much as I disagree with them on a whole host of issues, the reasons for their beliefs are a lot more complex than what Signorile lays out.) The traits he ascribes to the "rank and file of the Christian right" could just as easily describe the demons that dog hard-core left-wing activists. Or deranged taxi drivers. Or soccer moms. Or any human being grappling with the problems of life anywhere, for that matter. Once he makes it clear that people who hold strong religious beliefs are perverse, emotionally tortured hypocrites, it's easy to paint Bush's policies as being driven by the same irrational beliefs. And it's also dishonest.
I never have held the hard-core Christian right in high regard, and I often wish they'd start their own political party and get out of mine. But this simplistic stereotyping of a huge swath of American society would be roundly criticized if Signorile were writing about blacks or Hispanics or homosexuals.
LINKAGE: An excellent piece today in the "New Republic" that makes the connection between Islamic fanaticism and other forms of totalitarianism:
Comparing now and then, uncanny similarities abound. And this, as the Marxists used to say, is no accident. The new ideology of "jihadism" consists, partly, of the detritus of the worst European ideologies. Jihadism, like fascism and communism, has itself arisen in response to powerful currents--of modernization then, and globalization now. When I say "jihadism," I do not mean to denigrate the "jihad of the spirit," which is a profound concept in Islamic law and theology. And I'm not calling, God forbid, for civilizational war. Rather, I mean to give a name to a specific configuration of old beliefs and new ideologies arising in today's Middle East--a configuration that is not without precedent. Indeed, by glancing backward at the historical antecedents to our present predicament, we can focus on our long-term policy objectives and devise the best ways to achieve them.
Comparing now and then, uncanny similarities abound. And this, as the Marxists used to say, is no accident. The new ideology of "jihadism" consists, partly, of the detritus of the worst European ideologies. Jihadism, like fascism and communism, has itself arisen in response to powerful currents--of modernization then, and globalization now. When I say "jihadism," I do not mean to denigrate the "jihad of the spirit," which is a profound concept in Islamic law and theology. And I'm not calling, God forbid, for civilizational war. Rather, I mean to give a name to a specific configuration of old beliefs and new ideologies arising in today's Middle East--a configuration that is not without precedent. Indeed, by glancing backward at the historical antecedents to our present predicament, we can focus on our long-term policy objectives and devise the best ways to achieve them.
ANTI-ISRAEL BIAS: I found this down on The Corner. Dave Kopel writes a column on media bias for the "Rocky Mountain News." Here's his take on the blatantly slanted reporting about the situation in the Middle East.
Missing witnesses, bogus experts and speculation presented as fact -- a characterization of detective work conducted by the Inspector Clouseau? No, it's a description of too many of the terrorism and foreign policy stories from The New York Times and Associated Press that have appeared in both The Denver Post and The Rocky Mountain News.
Check it out.
Missing witnesses, bogus experts and speculation presented as fact -- a characterization of detective work conducted by the Inspector Clouseau? No, it's a description of too many of the terrorism and foreign policy stories from The New York Times and Associated Press that have appeared in both The Denver Post and The Rocky Mountain News.
Check it out.
NUKES AND THE MEDIA: The American Enterprise Hot Flash has a piece today on how the press allows itself to be manipulated by questionable scientific findings:
From the “America as Nuclear Rogue” editorial in the Times that followed the leak of the Pentagon's Nuclear Defense Posture Review, to the political battles over Yucca mountain's fate as a nuclear waste repository, Americans have been treated to a crash course on how the media mishandles issues involving science. The problem is reporters do not speak the language of science, says Columbia University astrophysicist David Helfand. “Radiation is one of the most misunderstood words around,” he said in a recent interview.
From the “America as Nuclear Rogue” editorial in the Times that followed the leak of the Pentagon's Nuclear Defense Posture Review, to the political battles over Yucca mountain's fate as a nuclear waste repository, Americans have been treated to a crash course on how the media mishandles issues involving science. The problem is reporters do not speak the language of science, says Columbia University astrophysicist David Helfand. “Radiation is one of the most misunderstood words around,” he said in a recent interview.
PULITZER BACKLASH: Andrea Peyser of the "New York Post" blasts the Pulitzer committee for its snub of that dramatic photo of firefighters raising the American flag over the wreckage of the World Trade Center (that seemed like a no-brainer to me, too). Here's some of what Peyser had to say (she also has the photos in question so you can decide for yourself):
The Pulitzer committee yesterday told the City of New York, our selfless firefighters, 3,000 victims of this nation's bloodiest terror attack, and the American flag to go to hell. Nice work. It isn't often that a photograph perfectly captures the courage and pain of a historic event. The Pulitzer-winning image of a fireman cradling a baby mortally wounded in the Oklahoma City bombing comes to mind...Was it the American flag that spooked the current gaggle of Pulitzer committee members? Or was it that the firemen were all white guys?
The Pulitzer committee yesterday told the City of New York, our selfless firefighters, 3,000 victims of this nation's bloodiest terror attack, and the American flag to go to hell. Nice work. It isn't often that a photograph perfectly captures the courage and pain of a historic event. The Pulitzer-winning image of a fireman cradling a baby mortally wounded in the Oklahoma City bombing comes to mind...Was it the American flag that spooked the current gaggle of Pulitzer committee members? Or was it that the firemen were all white guys?
ATHEISTS ON PARADE: Media critic Dan Kennedy of the "Boston Phoenix" recently attended a convention of American atheists. Here's some highlights from a piece that is just barely as critical as it could have been:
There is something incongruously amusing about listening in on several hundred atheists who have gathered to wallow in the exaggerated sense of grievance and persecution that is the hallmark of identity politics. Atheists, after all, think of themselves as superior beings, as rationalists who have succeeded in rising above the superstition and prejudice that so blight the lives of their fellow citizens. Shouldn’t such virtue be its own reward?
So maybe what surprised me more than anything about the atheists I met during the weekend was not that they don’t believe in God (well, duh), but that they are so upfront and in-your-face about it. After all, what percentage is there in giving offense to the righteous? During the convention, I heard atheists complain not just about prayer in the schools and public invocations of the Ten Commandments, but about crèches on government property, about prayers at public gatherings, even about the inscription IN GOD WE TRUST on money.
Identity politics can be dreary and smug and self-satisfied in its embrace of victimhood, but it has its uses. I’m unconvinced that the atheists are as persecuted as they think they are. Nor have they succeeded in making reality their exclusive franchise. But it’s not a bad thing that they’re here to blow away the hypocrisy and the icky piety of what passes all too often for religious discourse in this country.
There is something incongruously amusing about listening in on several hundred atheists who have gathered to wallow in the exaggerated sense of grievance and persecution that is the hallmark of identity politics. Atheists, after all, think of themselves as superior beings, as rationalists who have succeeded in rising above the superstition and prejudice that so blight the lives of their fellow citizens. Shouldn’t such virtue be its own reward?
So maybe what surprised me more than anything about the atheists I met during the weekend was not that they don’t believe in God (well, duh), but that they are so upfront and in-your-face about it. After all, what percentage is there in giving offense to the righteous? During the convention, I heard atheists complain not just about prayer in the schools and public invocations of the Ten Commandments, but about crèches on government property, about prayers at public gatherings, even about the inscription IN GOD WE TRUST on money.
Identity politics can be dreary and smug and self-satisfied in its embrace of victimhood, but it has its uses. I’m unconvinced that the atheists are as persecuted as they think they are. Nor have they succeeded in making reality their exclusive franchise. But it’s not a bad thing that they’re here to blow away the hypocrisy and the icky piety of what passes all too often for religious discourse in this country.
OFF THE RECORD: The Off the Record column in the "New York Observer" has a couple of good items today. The first is about the dominance of the Pulitizers by huge newspapers. (Just six papers won the 14 awards, only one of which was not among the top-10-circulating papers in the country.)
Dean Baquet, the managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, former New York Times national editor and a Pulitzer juror this year, agreed that the New York Times entries warranted awards, but said he saw a danger in concentrating so many awards in just a few papers. “This was the year of the big papers. The only papers that could compete on Sept. 11 were the biggest papers,” Mr. Baquet said, fully aware that the top-10 L.A. Times isn’t exactly the Nantucket Beacon. “The troublesome thing is the dominance of a handful of big papers. I think it’s probably an aberration, but we should be worried.”
Off the Record also has a piece about the recent redesign of the "Wall Street Journal."
Invariably, some will consider the new-look Journal the newspaper equivalent of Jennifer Grey, post–nose job: Sure, now it looks more like everyone else, but dang, there was something sexy about the original.
I like what I've seen of the updated Journal. It retains the same classic look, just with a touch of color. Very nicely done.
There's reaction in the industry, of course. Here's Al Neuharth taking credit for the idea.
Dean Baquet, the managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, former New York Times national editor and a Pulitzer juror this year, agreed that the New York Times entries warranted awards, but said he saw a danger in concentrating so many awards in just a few papers. “This was the year of the big papers. The only papers that could compete on Sept. 11 were the biggest papers,” Mr. Baquet said, fully aware that the top-10 L.A. Times isn’t exactly the Nantucket Beacon. “The troublesome thing is the dominance of a handful of big papers. I think it’s probably an aberration, but we should be worried.”
Off the Record also has a piece about the recent redesign of the "Wall Street Journal."
Invariably, some will consider the new-look Journal the newspaper equivalent of Jennifer Grey, post–nose job: Sure, now it looks more like everyone else, but dang, there was something sexy about the original.
I like what I've seen of the updated Journal. It retains the same classic look, just with a touch of color. Very nicely done.
There's reaction in the industry, of course. Here's Al Neuharth taking credit for the idea.
SAFIRE/SHARON CONNECTION BLASTED: This is bizarre. "Boston Globe" columnist Mark Jurkowitz is accusing William Safire of the "New York Times" of serving as Ariel Sharon's "press secretary" and "stenographer." (Link via Romenesko.) In other words, Jurkowitz is unhappy that an opinion columnist holds an opinion:
Safire is clearly serving as an unabashed propaganda outlet for the hard-line Israeli leader. The more intriguing question is whether he's also presenting a sanitized - and more palatable - version of Sharon to the American public.
Countless media outlets present a sanitized version of Yassir Arafat's corrupt regime every day in regular news stories. But one conservative opinion columnist at the Times supporting Sharon, well, that's dangerous. In fact, one of Safire's sins appears to be his very failure to follow the party line at the Times:
When asked how his opinions match those of the Times' editorial page - which is considerably harder on Sharon - Safire says, ''I wouldn't go as far as to say diametrical. But we differ.'' Still, a Times editorial April 7 pointedly noted that Sharon ''recently told our colleague William Safire that he dreams of ending his political career as a statesman and peacemaker.''
William Safire is virtually the only voice on the highly influential editorial page of the Times expressing support for Sharon. How this is somehow dangerous is beyond me.
Safire is clearly serving as an unabashed propaganda outlet for the hard-line Israeli leader. The more intriguing question is whether he's also presenting a sanitized - and more palatable - version of Sharon to the American public.
Countless media outlets present a sanitized version of Yassir Arafat's corrupt regime every day in regular news stories. But one conservative opinion columnist at the Times supporting Sharon, well, that's dangerous. In fact, one of Safire's sins appears to be his very failure to follow the party line at the Times:
When asked how his opinions match those of the Times' editorial page - which is considerably harder on Sharon - Safire says, ''I wouldn't go as far as to say diametrical. But we differ.'' Still, a Times editorial April 7 pointedly noted that Sharon ''recently told our colleague William Safire that he dreams of ending his political career as a statesman and peacemaker.''
William Safire is virtually the only voice on the highly influential editorial page of the Times expressing support for Sharon. How this is somehow dangerous is beyond me.
Tuesday, April 09, 2002
PAPER STEALING CATCHES ON: At colleges, it's usually been the leftists who snatch a press run when there's a story they don't like. This time, it was fans of a track coach. Interesting. (Link via Romenesko.)
9/11 DENIAL: In reference to that stupid French book that declares the attack on the Pentagon a fraud, James S. Robbins, who witnessed the attack, writes a piece today for the "National Review" equating 9/11 denial with Holocaust denial:
In both cases, the premises of their originators are indefensible, which forces them into a position where they have to throw the facts overboard to sustain their arguments. But notions like this are kept alive by people who have a predisposition to believe them, those who have pre-existing grudges and will engage in whatever reality-denying behavior justifies their baseline prejudices.
And after describing the horrific crash, Robbins says this:
So, of course, I take it personally when a half-wit like Meyssan comes along saying it did not happen. And he is so evidently at war with reality that one is tempted not to waste time with him...It would be easy to ignore him. But that would be a mistake. This is another front in what President Bush called "the war to save civilization itself." ... When such ideas are allowed to stand, they take root among the impressionable or those predisposed to think the worst. And especially now that communications technology has made it possible to give global reach to the bizarre and archive it forever, it is essential for men and women of reason resolutely to counter the delusions of the fringe element.
In both cases, the premises of their originators are indefensible, which forces them into a position where they have to throw the facts overboard to sustain their arguments. But notions like this are kept alive by people who have a predisposition to believe them, those who have pre-existing grudges and will engage in whatever reality-denying behavior justifies their baseline prejudices.
And after describing the horrific crash, Robbins says this:
So, of course, I take it personally when a half-wit like Meyssan comes along saying it did not happen. And he is so evidently at war with reality that one is tempted not to waste time with him...It would be easy to ignore him. But that would be a mistake. This is another front in what President Bush called "the war to save civilization itself." ... When such ideas are allowed to stand, they take root among the impressionable or those predisposed to think the worst. And especially now that communications technology has made it possible to give global reach to the bizarre and archive it forever, it is essential for men and women of reason resolutely to counter the delusions of the fringe element.
MORE PULITZERS: Howie Kurtz has an excellent column today on journalism's most prestigious awards. He points out the objections that I have to the prizes: that only three or four newspapers seem to be allowed to win them year in and year out:
This is to take nothing away from the New York Times, which geared up its global news machine and did a fabulous job under its new editor, Howell Raines. But if one big, rich paper wins half the prizes – and four big, rich papers win just about everything – then are the Pulitzers getting more like baseball, where smaller clubs can no longer compete? Usually there are a couple of prizes for a Vermont editorial writer or a North Dakota newsroom covering a flood, just for geopolitical balance. Yes, in a year when Sept. 11 dominated the prizes, it helped to have big staffs, lots of dough and plenty of foreign bureaus. But if this is the trend of the future, maybe the Pulitzers should follow the National Magazine Awards and have different prizes for publications in different circulation categories. Otherwise it may be viewed especially by smaller and mid-sized papers – as an eastern elitist exercise.
This is to take nothing away from the New York Times, which geared up its global news machine and did a fabulous job under its new editor, Howell Raines. But if one big, rich paper wins half the prizes – and four big, rich papers win just about everything – then are the Pulitzers getting more like baseball, where smaller clubs can no longer compete? Usually there are a couple of prizes for a Vermont editorial writer or a North Dakota newsroom covering a flood, just for geopolitical balance. Yes, in a year when Sept. 11 dominated the prizes, it helped to have big staffs, lots of dough and plenty of foreign bureaus. But if this is the trend of the future, maybe the Pulitzers should follow the National Magazine Awards and have different prizes for publications in different circulation categories. Otherwise it may be viewed especially by smaller and mid-sized papers – as an eastern elitist exercise.
THE PULITZERS: You're probably aware that the "New York Times" won seven Pulitzer Prizes. Coverage of Sept. 11 dominated the awards. Here's the story.
Monday, April 08, 2002
WE GOOFED: Check out this obituary gaffe from the "Baltimore Sun":
An obituary in Saturday's editions of The Sun reported the death of Ralph D. Chester of Millers Island. Mr. Chester is not dead. Mr. Chester was reported to have died by a family member, who called The Sun to provide material for the obituary. The Sun later determined that the family member who called has been estranged from Mr. Chester for several years. The Sun regrets the error.
Thanks to David Nieporent's fine Jumping to Conclusions blog for this item.
An obituary in Saturday's editions of The Sun reported the death of Ralph D. Chester of Millers Island. Mr. Chester is not dead. Mr. Chester was reported to have died by a family member, who called The Sun to provide material for the obituary. The Sun later determined that the family member who called has been estranged from Mr. Chester for several years. The Sun regrets the error.
Thanks to David Nieporent's fine Jumping to Conclusions blog for this item.
PRIOR RESTRAINT: Remember that story about U.S. soldiers murdering hundreds of civilians during the Korean War? It's still kicking around. One of the AP reporters who wrote the initial Pulitzer Prize-winning story has been trying to halt the publication of a book critical of the AP's findings. It's an interesting piece.
MIDDLE EAST & THE MEDIA: A stunning piece of revisionist history today in the "Chicago Tribune." Columnist Salim Muwakkil blasts the American media for being pro-Israeli. His first "expert witness" is Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, who unleashes this inflammatory quote:
"The Israelis are becoming increasingly like the white supremacist South Africans, viewing the Palestinians as a lower form of life, not hesitating to kill a great many of them and justifying this on the grounds that they are being the objects of terrorism, which is true. But their reactions are all out of proportion . . . "
If I remember correctly, black South Africans didn't blow themselves up in pizza parlors in order to make a statement. They relied on international sympathy for their plight, which resulted in tremendous pressure on South Africa to change. And there are strong arguments that Israel has shown remarkable restraint in light of the outrages that have been visited upon it.
Muwakkil then rehashes Eric Alterman's dubious "I hold in my hand a list with the names of 62 reflexively anti-Israel American columnists" piece to prove that most major opinion writers hold opinions contrary to Muwakkil, an editor for the far-left "In These Times." He even goes on to lay blame for the Intifada on Sharon with these amazing words:
In September 2000, Sharon made a visit to the Temple Mount/Al Aqsa mosque, a venerated Muslim site. This deliberate provocation sparked the so-called Al Aqsa Intifada, dashed the peace talks and added a religious element into what had been largely a secular struggle over land.
I see. Sharon visits Al Aqsa and the Palestinians had no choice but to respond with an unending wave of suicide bombers. (No word on whether Sharon's visit could merely have been a convenient excuse for terrorism.) And before that fateful day, the Palestinian struggle had only been about land. Religious fanaticism never figured into the arguments advanced by Hamas and Hezbollah "activists." Glad we've cleared that up.
UPDATE: Howie Kurtz has a good piece today on the pitfalls for journalists covering the conflict in the Middle East.
"The Israelis are becoming increasingly like the white supremacist South Africans, viewing the Palestinians as a lower form of life, not hesitating to kill a great many of them and justifying this on the grounds that they are being the objects of terrorism, which is true. But their reactions are all out of proportion . . . "
If I remember correctly, black South Africans didn't blow themselves up in pizza parlors in order to make a statement. They relied on international sympathy for their plight, which resulted in tremendous pressure on South Africa to change. And there are strong arguments that Israel has shown remarkable restraint in light of the outrages that have been visited upon it.
Muwakkil then rehashes Eric Alterman's dubious "I hold in my hand a list with the names of 62 reflexively anti-Israel American columnists" piece to prove that most major opinion writers hold opinions contrary to Muwakkil, an editor for the far-left "In These Times." He even goes on to lay blame for the Intifada on Sharon with these amazing words:
In September 2000, Sharon made a visit to the Temple Mount/Al Aqsa mosque, a venerated Muslim site. This deliberate provocation sparked the so-called Al Aqsa Intifada, dashed the peace talks and added a religious element into what had been largely a secular struggle over land.
I see. Sharon visits Al Aqsa and the Palestinians had no choice but to respond with an unending wave of suicide bombers. (No word on whether Sharon's visit could merely have been a convenient excuse for terrorism.) And before that fateful day, the Palestinian struggle had only been about land. Religious fanaticism never figured into the arguments advanced by Hamas and Hezbollah "activists." Glad we've cleared that up.
UPDATE: Howie Kurtz has a good piece today on the pitfalls for journalists covering the conflict in the Middle East.
IDEOLOGY-FREE RAINES? "Editor & Publisher" has a long interview with Howell Raines, executive editor of the "New York Times." (Link via Romenesko.) In it, Raines describes how he guided his newspaper's remarkable coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks. But Raines also supplies a quote that perfectly illustrates how media bias is totally unrecognized by those who practice it:
"I'm aware of perceptions," he says, "but I'm aware of who I am, and I am not a highly ideological person. I've never belonged to any political party as a matter of principle."
Raines not ideological? Now THAT'S news.
"I'm aware of perceptions," he says, "but I'm aware of who I am, and I am not a highly ideological person. I've never belonged to any political party as a matter of principle."
Raines not ideological? Now THAT'S news.
Sunday, April 07, 2002
OFF THE BEAM: It looks like Alex Beam has decided to move into Blogistan. Welcome, Alex. Your new blog rocks! And I'm not just saying that because you linked to me! Honest!
Friday, April 05, 2002
LEFTIST MORAL RELATIVISM WATCH: There's a whole lot going on in this piece from AlterNet. The title, "The Suicide Bombers Lie," is a dead giveaway (pardon the pun). But it's truly a small classic of the genre:
One that I have been hearing more and more frequently is the idea that there is something uniquely horrible about "suicide bombings," that whatever the Palestinians' aims, this tactic must be condemned by all decent people.
The Palestinians' aims are clear: murder as many Jews as possible in as spectacular a manner as possible. It is not a protest, or the cry of the powerless and disenfranchised. It is not about a separate Palestinian state. It is clear what it is about: the murder of innocents. If you can't tell that there's something "uniquely horrible" about that, then any moral argument you make is pointless.
The message is clear: while the Israelis have killed far more people than the Palestinians in the recent conflict, they have done so in a civilized manner, while the Palestinian killing has been barbarous.
Notice how any dead Palestinian, whether a member of a Hamas terrorist cell or not, automatically gets lumped into the "civilian" category. That's convenient. "Activists" were killed, not soldiers in a fanatical army whose sole purpose is murdering civilians.
Whatever one may think of the larger claims advanced by either side, this is sick and dangerous thinking, a way of dehumanizing one side in the conflict. It recalls the dehumanizing of the suicidal, wild-eyed kamikazes, whose barbarous tactics justified the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II, while the properly civilized German-Americans required no such special treatment. Not to mention the American fliers who dropped atomic bombs on Japanese civilian centers. Obviously, far more people -- virtually all of them civilians -- died in Hiroshima than from all the suicide attacks in history, but not even those of us who consider this a war crime think of the bomber pilots as maddened fanatics.
I'm sorry, but the Palestinians choose to dehumanize their own people when they turn them into walking time bombs. And the stupid analogy with kamikaze pilots shows the writer's ignorance of history. The kamikaze pilots were used in the dying stages of World War II; Japanese-Americans were wrongfully interred during the nation's hysteria in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. As for Japan in World War II, its government sought to impose, through military force, an explicitly racist totalitarian regime on the whole of Asia. I think putting a stop to that was a pretty good thing. Furthermore, our rebuilding of Japan and Europe may have been an even better thing. In fact, it's probably without precedent in world history. Flawed as it is, I'll choose a culture that uplifts its defeated foes over one that teaches its children that blowing themselves up in supermarkets and on school buses is a noble calling.
In closing, there's a passage in Patrick Brogan's excellent "The Fighting Never Stopped" that I'd like to cite. It nicely sums up the case against Mr. Wald's argument:
The chief reason for distinguishing between the actions of governments, however reprehensible, and those of self-constituted organizations, is to escape the relativism of the terrorists' apologists who insist that state terrorism is far more serious. They allege that the United State (or Britain, France or Israel) have engaged in state terrorism, and conclude that the terrorists are no more guilty than those governments. It is a transparently dishonest argument, a means of avoiding the issue, and a justification for murder. Governments should be judged by their actions - and so should terrorists...Murder is not justified by sticking a different label on it.
UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg writes about "The Myth of the Suicide Bombers" today at NRO. Excellent column.
One that I have been hearing more and more frequently is the idea that there is something uniquely horrible about "suicide bombings," that whatever the Palestinians' aims, this tactic must be condemned by all decent people.
The Palestinians' aims are clear: murder as many Jews as possible in as spectacular a manner as possible. It is not a protest, or the cry of the powerless and disenfranchised. It is not about a separate Palestinian state. It is clear what it is about: the murder of innocents. If you can't tell that there's something "uniquely horrible" about that, then any moral argument you make is pointless.
The message is clear: while the Israelis have killed far more people than the Palestinians in the recent conflict, they have done so in a civilized manner, while the Palestinian killing has been barbarous.
Notice how any dead Palestinian, whether a member of a Hamas terrorist cell or not, automatically gets lumped into the "civilian" category. That's convenient. "Activists" were killed, not soldiers in a fanatical army whose sole purpose is murdering civilians.
Whatever one may think of the larger claims advanced by either side, this is sick and dangerous thinking, a way of dehumanizing one side in the conflict. It recalls the dehumanizing of the suicidal, wild-eyed kamikazes, whose barbarous tactics justified the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II, while the properly civilized German-Americans required no such special treatment. Not to mention the American fliers who dropped atomic bombs on Japanese civilian centers. Obviously, far more people -- virtually all of them civilians -- died in Hiroshima than from all the suicide attacks in history, but not even those of us who consider this a war crime think of the bomber pilots as maddened fanatics.
I'm sorry, but the Palestinians choose to dehumanize their own people when they turn them into walking time bombs. And the stupid analogy with kamikaze pilots shows the writer's ignorance of history. The kamikaze pilots were used in the dying stages of World War II; Japanese-Americans were wrongfully interred during the nation's hysteria in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. As for Japan in World War II, its government sought to impose, through military force, an explicitly racist totalitarian regime on the whole of Asia. I think putting a stop to that was a pretty good thing. Furthermore, our rebuilding of Japan and Europe may have been an even better thing. In fact, it's probably without precedent in world history. Flawed as it is, I'll choose a culture that uplifts its defeated foes over one that teaches its children that blowing themselves up in supermarkets and on school buses is a noble calling.
In closing, there's a passage in Patrick Brogan's excellent "The Fighting Never Stopped" that I'd like to cite. It nicely sums up the case against Mr. Wald's argument:
The chief reason for distinguishing between the actions of governments, however reprehensible, and those of self-constituted organizations, is to escape the relativism of the terrorists' apologists who insist that state terrorism is far more serious. They allege that the United State (or Britain, France or Israel) have engaged in state terrorism, and conclude that the terrorists are no more guilty than those governments. It is a transparently dishonest argument, a means of avoiding the issue, and a justification for murder. Governments should be judged by their actions - and so should terrorists...Murder is not justified by sticking a different label on it.
UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg writes about "The Myth of the Suicide Bombers" today at NRO. Excellent column.
DO REPORTERS NEED BLOGS AS JOB SECURITY? The "American Prospect" raises that question in this interesting piece. Just go read it. It would take too long to explain it all.
FACT-CHECKING HIS FAT ASS: A lot of people have already linked to this, but I'm going to do it anyway. Here's Spinsanity's deconstruction of Michael Moore's voluminous lies. Well done.
ARAB PRESS GOES NUTS: The latest crisis in the Middle East is, predictably, producing howls of outrage in the Arab press:
The use of hostile labels and historical parallels to mock the Israeli leader in order to express popular anger at the predicament of Palestinians is not new, but in the current crisis it is feeding a surge of anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment in the Arab world. One cartoon in Al Hayat, the London-based Arabic-language newspaper, yesterday showed Sharon in ancient Roman garb happily setting fire to the foundations of a city as the leaner, fitter President Bush watched from a nearby steep cliff, playing his harp in accompaniment. One of the most shrill critiques of the U.S. president came from Al Hayat columnist Abdul-Wahab Badrakhan, who accused Bush of viewing recent events as just another "episode in America's revenge for September 11." All Bush sees in this crisis are "acts of terror" regardless of the sacrifices of Palestinians, Badrakhan wrote. He charged that Bush had "blessed and encouraged" Sharon's "crimes" against the Palestinians. "The virtuosos of the U.S. administration forget or feign forgetfulness that their criminal of choice, Sharon, is acting according to his own agenda, not theirs," Badrakhan wrote.
This "Washington Post" article also notes competing voices. For example, the "Jerusalem Post" made a wonderful point about the "ideological side of the terrorist infrastructure":
"Imagine that the Ku Klux Klan or the Aryan Nation were suddenly to come into possession of unlimited wealth and used it to establish a network of schools and colleges all over Christendom peddling their brand of Christianity," the piece said. "Wahhabism [the Islamic sect prominent in Saudi Arabia] would have been a lunatic fringe in a marginal country. Because of oil it's become a world force. "None of this could have happened without the consent of the Saudi government and it cannot be reversed without holding that government fully responsible. The cleric who gives his blessing for mass murder is central to the infrastructure of terrorism. The war on terrorism cannot be complete until the regimes that tolerate the funding of such clerics are threatened by the same punishment as those who harbor the terrorists themselves," it added.
The use of hostile labels and historical parallels to mock the Israeli leader in order to express popular anger at the predicament of Palestinians is not new, but in the current crisis it is feeding a surge of anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment in the Arab world. One cartoon in Al Hayat, the London-based Arabic-language newspaper, yesterday showed Sharon in ancient Roman garb happily setting fire to the foundations of a city as the leaner, fitter President Bush watched from a nearby steep cliff, playing his harp in accompaniment. One of the most shrill critiques of the U.S. president came from Al Hayat columnist Abdul-Wahab Badrakhan, who accused Bush of viewing recent events as just another "episode in America's revenge for September 11." All Bush sees in this crisis are "acts of terror" regardless of the sacrifices of Palestinians, Badrakhan wrote. He charged that Bush had "blessed and encouraged" Sharon's "crimes" against the Palestinians. "The virtuosos of the U.S. administration forget or feign forgetfulness that their criminal of choice, Sharon, is acting according to his own agenda, not theirs," Badrakhan wrote.
This "Washington Post" article also notes competing voices. For example, the "Jerusalem Post" made a wonderful point about the "ideological side of the terrorist infrastructure":
"Imagine that the Ku Klux Klan or the Aryan Nation were suddenly to come into possession of unlimited wealth and used it to establish a network of schools and colleges all over Christendom peddling their brand of Christianity," the piece said. "Wahhabism [the Islamic sect prominent in Saudi Arabia] would have been a lunatic fringe in a marginal country. Because of oil it's become a world force. "None of this could have happened without the consent of the Saudi government and it cannot be reversed without holding that government fully responsible. The cleric who gives his blessing for mass murder is central to the infrastructure of terrorism. The war on terrorism cannot be complete until the regimes that tolerate the funding of such clerics are threatened by the same punishment as those who harbor the terrorists themselves," it added.
KEEPING REPORTERS SAFE: David Ignatius raises some important questions about the safety of journalists during the war on terror. It seems the U.S. government was aware of a threat against journalists in Pakistan, but may have failed to alert media organizations:
The rumor is even more specific: The al Qaeda operatives reportedly discussed luring their quarry into a trap with the promise of an interview about terrorism. They planned to videotape the journalist's interrogation and eventual murder -- and then make this gruesome videotape available to the media.
We all know what happened to Daniel Pearl. Ignatius says its a tough call that would involve a compromise of American journalism's values, but the safety of journalists is paramount:
Journalists prize their distance from government, and no American editor would accept the kind of close, confidential briefing arrangements that are typical between the British government and the press there. American newspapers want to be free to publish information their readers need to know, even if the government objects. Part of that deal, inevitably, is that the government won't share everything it knows with the press. But the murder of Danny Pearl and the deaths of eight journalists covering the war in Afghanistan have made the news business think again about its ground rules. Serious news organizations remain committed to covering even the riskiest stories, but they are also working harder to keep their correspondents as safe as possible. What would we do, as editors and government officials, if we knew someone was in danger? In the end, the "professional" answer matters less than the human one: We would try to protect that person's life.
The rumor is even more specific: The al Qaeda operatives reportedly discussed luring their quarry into a trap with the promise of an interview about terrorism. They planned to videotape the journalist's interrogation and eventual murder -- and then make this gruesome videotape available to the media.
We all know what happened to Daniel Pearl. Ignatius says its a tough call that would involve a compromise of American journalism's values, but the safety of journalists is paramount:
Journalists prize their distance from government, and no American editor would accept the kind of close, confidential briefing arrangements that are typical between the British government and the press there. American newspapers want to be free to publish information their readers need to know, even if the government objects. Part of that deal, inevitably, is that the government won't share everything it knows with the press. But the murder of Danny Pearl and the deaths of eight journalists covering the war in Afghanistan have made the news business think again about its ground rules. Serious news organizations remain committed to covering even the riskiest stories, but they are also working harder to keep their correspondents as safe as possible. What would we do, as editors and government officials, if we knew someone was in danger? In the end, the "professional" answer matters less than the human one: We would try to protect that person's life.
MEDIA MINDED MILESTONE: Sometime early this morning, I went over the 10,000-visitor mark. I guess that's fairly significant. Numberwise, I can't really tell, because I set up a Bravenet counter to record visits, but sometimes it seems like it's recording hits. Anyway, I'm pretty pleased. I've been doing this for just under three months, and I've been linked and praised by a lot of great bloggers. I've gotten something like 60 e-mails, almost all positive.
I just want to thank all the readers who've stopped by. Please continue to do so, and I'll keep checking out your blogs, too.
I just want to thank all the readers who've stopped by. Please continue to do so, and I'll keep checking out your blogs, too.
Thursday, April 04, 2002
THEY'RE HIRING AGAIN: Thank God. It looks like newspapers are emerging from the recent economic slump and are starting to fill some long-vacated positions:
Scott Bosley, executive director of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Reston, Va., says newspapers are slowly hiring again, but mostly for entry-level positions, to help daily operations run more smoothly. His organization sponsors journalism job fairs and turnout reflects the market, he says. "More recruiters seem to have come out during the last few fairs. The numbers aren't off the charts, but it's better than it was six months ago," he says.
Please send some of these people our way. We could use the help.
Scott Bosley, executive director of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Reston, Va., says newspapers are slowly hiring again, but mostly for entry-level positions, to help daily operations run more smoothly. His organization sponsors journalism job fairs and turnout reflects the market, he says. "More recruiters seem to have come out during the last few fairs. The numbers aren't off the charts, but it's better than it was six months ago," he says.
Please send some of these people our way. We could use the help.
HITCHENS ON BILLY GRAHAM: I like Christopher Hitchens. He's a wonderful writer, and one of the few leftists who has been absolutely right about the threat of Islamic terrorism. But his latest "Nation" column, in which he uses nasty attacks on Billy Graham as a springboard to discuss the separation of church and state, is a bit overblown. To Hitchens, Graham is nothing but "a gaping and mendacious anti-Jewish peasant" who is an "avid bigot" and a "cheap liar" because of anti-Semitic comments he made in a private conversation with President Nixon 30 years ago. And then there's this incredibly nasty bit:
After all, in the National Cathedral after September 11 he was allowed in the presence of our country's elite to assert that all the murder victims were in paradise and happy to be there--a wild outburst of evil and stupidity that implicitly copies the fantasies of bin Laden.
You don't have to be an overly religious person to realize that there's a world of difference between comforting words uttered to ease the grief of those who lost loved ones in the most horrendous manner imaginable and a theology that sees murder and suicide as the highest religious calling. The former is a triumph of the human moral instinct; the latter is a debasement of it. I don't know what to make of this piece. It could be an outburst of Hitchens' well-known atheism, or it could be some shameless trawling for hits for "The Nation." The faith-based bloggers out there should have a field day with it.
After all, in the National Cathedral after September 11 he was allowed in the presence of our country's elite to assert that all the murder victims were in paradise and happy to be there--a wild outburst of evil and stupidity that implicitly copies the fantasies of bin Laden.
You don't have to be an overly religious person to realize that there's a world of difference between comforting words uttered to ease the grief of those who lost loved ones in the most horrendous manner imaginable and a theology that sees murder and suicide as the highest religious calling. The former is a triumph of the human moral instinct; the latter is a debasement of it. I don't know what to make of this piece. It could be an outburst of Hitchens' well-known atheism, or it could be some shameless trawling for hits for "The Nation." The faith-based bloggers out there should have a field day with it.
COVERING A DANGEROUS WORLD: We all know that newspapers love stories that feature death, serious injury or bizarre acts of nature. Thank God for the "New York Press" for providing a little levity:
On amusement-ride tragedies: Things got under way early this year at a makeshift carnival in South Ozone Park, Queens, as last night 10 children were sent to the hospital after the inflatable trampoline they were cavorting upon tipped over and deflated—dumping some children 15 feet to the ground and trapping others beneath what the New York Post called "a blanket of rubber." Nobody was seriously hurt—just minor cuts and bruises—but believe you me, everyone was pretty badly shaken there for a while. And what was the name of this fun kiddie ride?...The Titanic. It was shaped like a giant fucking ship, and they called it The Titanic. Well, what in the hell did they expect? Smooth sailing?...Like I said, though, they were lucky this time, and no one was hurt too badly. In fact, after being comforted by their parents, those children who weren’t sent to the hospital ran off with money enough left in their pockets to ride on The Mangler, The Nauseator, The Eye-Poker, The Bone Chipper and The Child Abductor.
On that "mysterious "blob" off the Florida coast: It’s all very disconcerting. But even more bothersome is the news, tossed off quite casually there near the end, that new satellite photos reveal that the Blob is dissipating. These men with their haircuts and Mr. Fancypants degrees may call it "dissipating," as if that’s supposed to be a good thing. Well, I’ll tell you what I call it—I call it "breaking up into smaller Blobs"—each independent of the other, each with the ability to spread about and grow into new giant Blobs. Haven’t these people ever seen The Green Slime, for godsakes? Haven’t they seen anything?
On amusement-ride tragedies: Things got under way early this year at a makeshift carnival in South Ozone Park, Queens, as last night 10 children were sent to the hospital after the inflatable trampoline they were cavorting upon tipped over and deflated—dumping some children 15 feet to the ground and trapping others beneath what the New York Post called "a blanket of rubber." Nobody was seriously hurt—just minor cuts and bruises—but believe you me, everyone was pretty badly shaken there for a while. And what was the name of this fun kiddie ride?...The Titanic. It was shaped like a giant fucking ship, and they called it The Titanic. Well, what in the hell did they expect? Smooth sailing?...Like I said, though, they were lucky this time, and no one was hurt too badly. In fact, after being comforted by their parents, those children who weren’t sent to the hospital ran off with money enough left in their pockets to ride on The Mangler, The Nauseator, The Eye-Poker, The Bone Chipper and The Child Abductor.
On that "mysterious "blob" off the Florida coast: It’s all very disconcerting. But even more bothersome is the news, tossed off quite casually there near the end, that new satellite photos reveal that the Blob is dissipating. These men with their haircuts and Mr. Fancypants degrees may call it "dissipating," as if that’s supposed to be a good thing. Well, I’ll tell you what I call it—I call it "breaking up into smaller Blobs"—each independent of the other, each with the ability to spread about and grow into new giant Blobs. Haven’t these people ever seen The Green Slime, for godsakes? Haven’t they seen anything?
RACISM FOREVER: That's apparently become the rallying cry for the so-called civil rights establishment. Sensitive to perceived racism everywhere, it is not afraid to throw rocks at the glass house of its best friend, the American media. That explains why the "Knoxville News-Sentinel" is getting blasted for failing to get the historic Oscar wins for Halle Berry and Denzel Washington in the paper, even though the simple explanation is that those awards were handed out after the paper's deadline had passed. There was no conspiracy to "whitewash" history. But this kind of cheap mau-mauing can still cause liberals to flail themselves over their lack of "sensitivity":
The late running Oscars, of course, are a press run deadline nightmare for all newspapers except those on the Pacific Coast. But critics were quick to shout "racist!" Lara Edge, managing editor of the Knoxville paper, said no insult was intended. "We need to be more sensitive about benchmark events in the minority community," she told E&P. "In past years, we've not been able to get all the Oscar results [due to press run deadlines] in all editions, and we've lived with that. ... But in our planning, we did not take into account the potential reaction from our African-American community if Berry and Washington both won." In summation, Edge called it just right: "We didn't do anything wrong. But we could have done better. ...We do need to find a way to communicate to readers how our newspaper works. After all, we work for them."
That's interesting. It's an admission that the "potential reaction from our African-American community" to news coverage could be more important than the facts of the matter, no matter how unpleasant (or mundane) those facts may be. It certainly wouldn't be unheard of.
The late running Oscars, of course, are a press run deadline nightmare for all newspapers except those on the Pacific Coast. But critics were quick to shout "racist!" Lara Edge, managing editor of the Knoxville paper, said no insult was intended. "We need to be more sensitive about benchmark events in the minority community," she told E&P. "In past years, we've not been able to get all the Oscar results [due to press run deadlines] in all editions, and we've lived with that. ... But in our planning, we did not take into account the potential reaction from our African-American community if Berry and Washington both won." In summation, Edge called it just right: "We didn't do anything wrong. But we could have done better. ...We do need to find a way to communicate to readers how our newspaper works. After all, we work for them."
That's interesting. It's an admission that the "potential reaction from our African-American community" to news coverage could be more important than the facts of the matter, no matter how unpleasant (or mundane) those facts may be. It certainly wouldn't be unheard of.
MORE ON THE BLOGGING BACKLASH: Via the Instantman comes this piece from the "L.A. Times." Norah Vincent is a bit too screechish for my tastes, but she makes some valid points:
Web logs are infuriating because they are thoughtful alternatives to the self-important New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and their toady satellites, much of whose reporting has become hardly less biased than the bloggers'. Bloggers at least have the honesty to admit their biases up front. They don't pretend to be objective. But they do provide a healthy criticism of the liberal establishment's hopelessly arrogant monotone. What's more, they make news interactive, so that we can all stop yelling at the television and actually do something. Readers can opine, as well as argue, grapple or exchange expletives with their host. That's something you'll never get in print.
Web logs are infuriating because they are thoughtful alternatives to the self-important New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and their toady satellites, much of whose reporting has become hardly less biased than the bloggers'. Bloggers at least have the honesty to admit their biases up front. They don't pretend to be objective. But they do provide a healthy criticism of the liberal establishment's hopelessly arrogant monotone. What's more, they make news interactive, so that we can all stop yelling at the television and actually do something. Readers can opine, as well as argue, grapple or exchange expletives with their host. That's something you'll never get in print.
THE POLLS ARE IN: Howie Kurtz takes on presidential polling in his media column today. Personally, I think polling gets way too much media coverage. I can't tell you how many times the results of this or that poll has been the lead story on Page One of whatever paper I've been working for. Howie explains why:
The media, of course, are voracious for this stuff and pay big bucks to cook up poll stories. If a president is treading water in the polls, reporters describe him as struggling. If a president is rising in the polls, journalists say he's on a roll, like a baseball manager on a winning streak. In other words, it's okay for us to use polls; it's suspect for them to use polls.
The media, of course, are voracious for this stuff and pay big bucks to cook up poll stories. If a president is treading water in the polls, reporters describe him as struggling. If a president is rising in the polls, journalists say he's on a roll, like a baseball manager on a winning streak. In other words, it's okay for us to use polls; it's suspect for them to use polls.
THANK YOU, JAMES LILEKS: Stepping back into Alex Beam's "echo chamber of self-regard," I'd like to say thanks to James Lileks for his kind words about this site yesterday. I've now made that quote the motto of my page. That's more praise than I've received in three years of work at some places. And it would be a gas to work for the "Lileks Daily News."
'A RIOT IS AN UGLY THING': Remember that line by Inspector Kemp (Kenneth Mars) in "Young Frankenstein"? Michelle Cottle of "The New Republic" expresses the same sentiment after getting caught up in the near-riot in College Park, Md., after the Terrapins won the national basketball championship Monday night. What she saw was disturbing enough, but what really upset her were the double standards of the police:
Still, you have to wonder why we tolerate--condone even--this kind of destructive B.S. from coddled, affluent suburban kids, many of whose only encounter with "social injustice" was when Daddy refused to buy them a new Land Rover until their seventeenth birthday.
First of all, the idea that big segments of society condone this kind of behavior is a fantasy - indeed, these hijinks are often roundly denounced in the media, as they should be. But apparently the students are ripping shit up for the "wrong" reasons. Cottle seems to be suggesting that rioting is OK if you're a victim of "social injustice." Middle-class, mostly non-malevolent college kids getting a little rowdy during a victory celebration, well, THAT'S an outrage. But it's not like the cops weren't out in force:
If the urban assault vehicles seemed a bit much, you still had to feel for the cops. This white-collar breed of rioting puts police officers in an uncomfortable position. They are expected to prevent raging students from completely destroying local homes and businesses--but without getting too rough on the perps. It's true that officers are less likely to be seriously injured in these situations than, say, last spring's race riots in Cincinnati.
No kidding. Because of that, perhaps the administration was wise to suggest that the police take it a little easy on the students. But what's missing here is a little perspective on another, more important reason why the P.G. cops might have used less forceful techniques. The county's police force has been subjected to a series of investigations into allegations of police brutality by the media, led by the "Washington Post." What turned up was not pretty. Suffice it to say that the Prince George's police force has been a little trigger-happy in the past. With that in mind, when the whole country is watching what's happening in your county after the final notes of "One Shining Moment" fade away, it might be wise to tell the local gendarmes to go a bit easy on the kids. Of course, the cops weren't happy about it:
But many of Prince George's County's finest made it clear that they resented having to stand around while snot-nosed college kids trashed their town and threatened their colleagues. One officer--we'll call him Bert--expressed disgust that, in all of last weekend's chaos, one arrest was made. "One." He shook his head in disbelief.
Again, given this police force's shoddy history, shouldn't they be applauded for showing restraint? Unless you think "coddled, affluent suburban kids" deserve to get a truncheon upside the head for dropping trou. I certainly hope Cottle isn't suggesting there's a moral equivalence between College Park pranksters and the monsters in L.A. who pulled Reginald Denny from his truck and tried to smash his head in with a brick merely because he was white and in the wrong neighborhood. Oh, did I just needlessly inject race into this story? Well, she started it:
Trudging back to my car--which had fortunately been neither burned nor towed--I kept thinking back to something a young, black kid had muttered to a friend early in the evening. "You should have seen it here Saturday," he said in obvious wonder. "These white folks was out here just burning shit in the middle of the street." ...The kid was clearly amazed that young people would be allowed to run wild like that with virtual immunity. With the sounds of shattering glass and howled profanity echoing in the street behind me, I had to wonder the same thing.
Ah yes, the imputation of official racism. No mention that the P.G. police force is 41 percent black; more importantly, no mention of the actual diversity of the students at Maryland. This is from the university's own Diversity News Bureau:
About 25 percent of the university's almost 32,500 students are minorities. More than 2,300 foreign students, representing over 100 countries, attend the university.
Now suppose the P.G. cops went in and started busting heads like they clearly wanted to do. Do you think the image of cops bashing up one of the nation's most racially diverse student bodies would have been applauded in the pages of "The New Republic"? Do I really even have to ask?
Still, you have to wonder why we tolerate--condone even--this kind of destructive B.S. from coddled, affluent suburban kids, many of whose only encounter with "social injustice" was when Daddy refused to buy them a new Land Rover until their seventeenth birthday.
First of all, the idea that big segments of society condone this kind of behavior is a fantasy - indeed, these hijinks are often roundly denounced in the media, as they should be. But apparently the students are ripping shit up for the "wrong" reasons. Cottle seems to be suggesting that rioting is OK if you're a victim of "social injustice." Middle-class, mostly non-malevolent college kids getting a little rowdy during a victory celebration, well, THAT'S an outrage. But it's not like the cops weren't out in force:
If the urban assault vehicles seemed a bit much, you still had to feel for the cops. This white-collar breed of rioting puts police officers in an uncomfortable position. They are expected to prevent raging students from completely destroying local homes and businesses--but without getting too rough on the perps. It's true that officers are less likely to be seriously injured in these situations than, say, last spring's race riots in Cincinnati.
No kidding. Because of that, perhaps the administration was wise to suggest that the police take it a little easy on the students. But what's missing here is a little perspective on another, more important reason why the P.G. cops might have used less forceful techniques. The county's police force has been subjected to a series of investigations into allegations of police brutality by the media, led by the "Washington Post." What turned up was not pretty. Suffice it to say that the Prince George's police force has been a little trigger-happy in the past. With that in mind, when the whole country is watching what's happening in your county after the final notes of "One Shining Moment" fade away, it might be wise to tell the local gendarmes to go a bit easy on the kids. Of course, the cops weren't happy about it:
But many of Prince George's County's finest made it clear that they resented having to stand around while snot-nosed college kids trashed their town and threatened their colleagues. One officer--we'll call him Bert--expressed disgust that, in all of last weekend's chaos, one arrest was made. "One." He shook his head in disbelief.
Again, given this police force's shoddy history, shouldn't they be applauded for showing restraint? Unless you think "coddled, affluent suburban kids" deserve to get a truncheon upside the head for dropping trou. I certainly hope Cottle isn't suggesting there's a moral equivalence between College Park pranksters and the monsters in L.A. who pulled Reginald Denny from his truck and tried to smash his head in with a brick merely because he was white and in the wrong neighborhood. Oh, did I just needlessly inject race into this story? Well, she started it:
Trudging back to my car--which had fortunately been neither burned nor towed--I kept thinking back to something a young, black kid had muttered to a friend early in the evening. "You should have seen it here Saturday," he said in obvious wonder. "These white folks was out here just burning shit in the middle of the street." ...The kid was clearly amazed that young people would be allowed to run wild like that with virtual immunity. With the sounds of shattering glass and howled profanity echoing in the street behind me, I had to wonder the same thing.
Ah yes, the imputation of official racism. No mention that the P.G. police force is 41 percent black; more importantly, no mention of the actual diversity of the students at Maryland. This is from the university's own Diversity News Bureau:
About 25 percent of the university's almost 32,500 students are minorities. More than 2,300 foreign students, representing over 100 countries, attend the university.
Now suppose the P.G. cops went in and started busting heads like they clearly wanted to do. Do you think the image of cops bashing up one of the nation's most racially diverse student bodies would have been applauded in the pages of "The New Republic"? Do I really even have to ask?
Wednesday, April 03, 2002
'A RIOT IS AN UGLY THING': Remember that line by Inspector Kemp (Kenneth Mars) in "Young Frankenstein"? Michelle Cottle of "The New Republic" expresses the same sentiment after getting caught up in the near-riot in College Park, Md., after the Terrapins won the national basketball championship Monday night. What she saw was disturbing enough, but what really upset her were the double standards of the police:
Still, you have to wonder why we tolerate--condone even--this kind of destructive B.S. from coddled, affluent suburban kids, many of whose only encounter with "social injustice" was when Daddy refused to buy them a new Land Rover until their seventeenth birthday.
First of all, the idea that big segments of society condone this kind of behavior is a fantasy - indeed, these hijinks are often roundly denounced in the media, as they should be. But apparently the students are ripping shit up for the "wrong" reasons. Cottle seems to be suggesting that rioting is OK if you're a victim of "social injustice." Middle-class, mostly non-malevolent college kids getting a little rowdy during a victory celebration, well, THAT'S an outrage. But it's not like the cops weren't out in force:
If the urban assault vehicles seemed a bit much, you still had to feel for the cops. This white-collar breed of rioting puts police officers in an uncomfortable position. They are expected to prevent raging students from completely destroying local homes and businesses--but without getting too rough on the perps. It's true that officers are less likely to be seriously injured in these situations than, say, last spring's race riots in Cincinnati.
No kidding. Because of that, perhaps the administration was wise to suggest that the police take it a little easy on the students. But what's missing here is a little perspective on another, more important reason why the P.G. cops might have used less forceful techniques. The county's police force has been subjected to a series of investigations into allegations of police brutality by the media, led by the "Washington Post." What turned up was not pretty. Suffice it to say that the Prince George's police force has been a little trigger-happy in the past. With that in mind, when the whole country is watching what's happening in your county after the final notes of "One Shining Moment" fade away, it might be wise to tell the local gendarmes to go a bit easy on the kids. Of course, the cops weren't happy about it:
But many of Prince George's County's finest made it clear that they resented having to stand around while snot-nosed college kids trashed their town and threatened their colleagues. One officer--we'll call him Bert--expressed disgust that, in all of last weekend's chaos, one arrest was made. "One." He shook his head in disbelief.
Again, given this police force's shoddy history, shouldn't they be applauded for showing restraint? Unless you think "coddled, affluent suburban kids" deserve to get a truncheon upside the head for dropping trou. I certainly hope Cottle isn't suggesting there's a moral equivalence between College Park pranksters and the monsters in L.A. who pulled Reginald Denny from his truck and tried to smash his head in with a brick merely because he was white and in the wrong neighborhood. Oh, did I just needlessly inject race into this story? Well, she started it:
Trudging back to my car--which had fortunately been neither burned nor towed--I kept thinking back to something a young, black kid had muttered to a friend early in the evening. "You should have seen it here Saturday," he said in obvious wonder. "These white folks was out here just burning shit in the middle of the street." ...The kid was clearly amazed that young people would be allowed to run wild like that with virtual immunity. With the sounds of shattering glass and howled profanity echoing in the street behind me, I had to wonder the same thing.
Ah yes, the imputation of official racism. No mention that the P.G. police force is 41 percent black; more importantly, no mention of the actual diversity of the students at Maryland. This is from the university's own Diversity News Bureau:
About 25 percent of the university's almost 32,500 students are minorities. More than 2,300 foreign students, representing over 100 countries, attend the university.
Now suppose the P.G. cops went in and started busting heads like they clearly wanted to do. Do you think the image of cops bashing up one of the nation's most racially diverse student bodies would have been applauded in the pages of "The New Republic"? Do I really even have to ask?
Still, you have to wonder why we tolerate--condone even--this kind of destructive B.S. from coddled, affluent suburban kids, many of whose only encounter with "social injustice" was when Daddy refused to buy them a new Land Rover until their seventeenth birthday.
First of all, the idea that big segments of society condone this kind of behavior is a fantasy - indeed, these hijinks are often roundly denounced in the media, as they should be. But apparently the students are ripping shit up for the "wrong" reasons. Cottle seems to be suggesting that rioting is OK if you're a victim of "social injustice." Middle-class, mostly non-malevolent college kids getting a little rowdy during a victory celebration, well, THAT'S an outrage. But it's not like the cops weren't out in force:
If the urban assault vehicles seemed a bit much, you still had to feel for the cops. This white-collar breed of rioting puts police officers in an uncomfortable position. They are expected to prevent raging students from completely destroying local homes and businesses--but without getting too rough on the perps. It's true that officers are less likely to be seriously injured in these situations than, say, last spring's race riots in Cincinnati.
No kidding. Because of that, perhaps the administration was wise to suggest that the police take it a little easy on the students. But what's missing here is a little perspective on another, more important reason why the P.G. cops might have used less forceful techniques. The county's police force has been subjected to a series of investigations into allegations of police brutality by the media, led by the "Washington Post." What turned up was not pretty. Suffice it to say that the Prince George's police force has been a little trigger-happy in the past. With that in mind, when the whole country is watching what's happening in your county after the final notes of "One Shining Moment" fade away, it might be wise to tell the local gendarmes to go a bit easy on the kids. Of course, the cops weren't happy about it:
But many of Prince George's County's finest made it clear that they resented having to stand around while snot-nosed college kids trashed their town and threatened their colleagues. One officer--we'll call him Bert--expressed disgust that, in all of last weekend's chaos, one arrest was made. "One." He shook his head in disbelief.
Again, given this police force's shoddy history, shouldn't they be applauded for showing restraint? Unless you think "coddled, affluent suburban kids" deserve to get a truncheon upside the head for dropping trou. I certainly hope Cottle isn't suggesting there's a moral equivalence between College Park pranksters and the monsters in L.A. who pulled Reginald Denny from his truck and tried to smash his head in with a brick merely because he was white and in the wrong neighborhood. Oh, did I just needlessly inject race into this story? Well, she started it:
Trudging back to my car--which had fortunately been neither burned nor towed--I kept thinking back to something a young, black kid had muttered to a friend early in the evening. "You should have seen it here Saturday," he said in obvious wonder. "These white folks was out here just burning shit in the middle of the street." ...The kid was clearly amazed that young people would be allowed to run wild like that with virtual immunity. With the sounds of shattering glass and howled profanity echoing in the street behind me, I had to wonder the same thing.
Ah yes, the imputation of official racism. No mention that the P.G. police force is 41 percent black; more importantly, no mention of the actual diversity of the students at Maryland. This is from the university's own Diversity News Bureau:
About 25 percent of the university's almost 32,500 students are minorities. More than 2,300 foreign students, representing over 100 countries, attend the university.
Now suppose the P.G. cops went in and started busting heads like they clearly wanted to do. Do you think the image of cops bashing up one of the nation's most racially diverse student bodies would have been applauded in the pages of "The New Republic"? Do I really even have to ask?
Tuesday, April 02, 2002
TURN TO PAGE: Remember that Frenchman who wrote a book claiming the Pentagon was never attacked on Sept. 11? Well, the Last Page provides powerful testimony that the attack did indeed happen. She witnessed it. A remarkable personal essay by an excellent blogger. Please go read it, and keep the memory of what happened on that day alive.
LEFT-WING PARANOIA ALERT: Alternet has a book review of something called "Into the Buzzsaw," a collection of stories from disgruntled journalists who had their works marginalized or criticized by a massive conspiracy in the mainstream media. Here's what the book is about:
Edited by ex-CBS producer Kristina Borjesson, "Into the Buzzsaw" is a collection of essays, mostly by serious journalists excommunicated from the media establishment for tackling subjects like the CIA's role in drug smuggling, lies perpetuated by the investigators of TWA flight 800, POWs rotting in Vietnam, a Korean war massacre, the disenfranchisement of black voters in Bush's election, bovine growth hormone's dangers and a host of other unpopular issues.
And the fate of those brave souls who fight the power is eerily similar to what happened to John Nash in "A Beautiful Mind":
Borjesson describes "the buzzsaw" as "what can rip through you when you try to investigate or expose anything this country's large institutions -- be they corporate or government -- want to keep under wraps. The system fights back with official lies, disinformation, and stonewalling. Your phone starts acting funny. Strange people call you at strange hours to give you strange information. The FBI calls you. Your car is broken into and the thief takes your computer and your reporter's notebook and leaves everything else behind ... The sense of fear and paranoia is, at times, overwhelming."
Despite the fact that most of these stories have been thoroughly debunked, here's Alternet's blurb-worthy conclusion about "Buzzsaw":
An otherwise appallingly convincing book, a book that suggests that the truth about our media-military-industrial complex might go beyond even our paranoid imaginings.
Edited by ex-CBS producer Kristina Borjesson, "Into the Buzzsaw" is a collection of essays, mostly by serious journalists excommunicated from the media establishment for tackling subjects like the CIA's role in drug smuggling, lies perpetuated by the investigators of TWA flight 800, POWs rotting in Vietnam, a Korean war massacre, the disenfranchisement of black voters in Bush's election, bovine growth hormone's dangers and a host of other unpopular issues.
And the fate of those brave souls who fight the power is eerily similar to what happened to John Nash in "A Beautiful Mind":
Borjesson describes "the buzzsaw" as "what can rip through you when you try to investigate or expose anything this country's large institutions -- be they corporate or government -- want to keep under wraps. The system fights back with official lies, disinformation, and stonewalling. Your phone starts acting funny. Strange people call you at strange hours to give you strange information. The FBI calls you. Your car is broken into and the thief takes your computer and your reporter's notebook and leaves everything else behind ... The sense of fear and paranoia is, at times, overwhelming."
Despite the fact that most of these stories have been thoroughly debunked, here's Alternet's blurb-worthy conclusion about "Buzzsaw":
An otherwise appallingly convincing book, a book that suggests that the truth about our media-military-industrial complex might go beyond even our paranoid imaginings.
HEADLINES I'D LIKE TO WRITE: Not that I have anything against Naomi Campbell, but it would be fun to get away with stuff like this. It's from the "Mirror":
"JUDGE GIVES LYING DRUG ABUSER £3,500 (But, shh .. don't tell anyone. You know how Naomi likes to keep these things private.)"
Here's the rest of the story from Slate. Again, I missed it the other day. It's an interesting look at the press and privacy in Britain.
"JUDGE GIVES LYING DRUG ABUSER £3,500 (But, shh .. don't tell anyone. You know how Naomi likes to keep these things private.)"
Here's the rest of the story from Slate. Again, I missed it the other day. It's an interesting look at the press and privacy in Britain.
PRANKING THE PRESS: This is funny. For 17 years, members of the New York media have fallen for a bogus press release about the upcoming April Fools' Day parade. It happened again this year. (CNN was among those suckered in.) The "New York Press" wonders why:
The really funny thing is, it’s hard to imagine why anybody would fall for it anymore. Not only because he’s been successfully pulling the same damn prank for nearly two decades now, but because even a cursory glance over his press release—you’d think—would make at least a few people suspicious. There’s just something a little hinky about it.
This Daily Billboard feature from the "New York Press" is an insanely funny blog. Here's a recent selection of funny lines:
On TV cancellations: The networks have began announcing their canceled shows, and the big story is that not even teen lesbianism could save Once and Again.
On country music: Country radio caters almost exclusively to an upwardly mobile class of suburban white women. The Lifetime network crowd. The women who tape Rosie and Oprah so they can watch them when they get home from work. In other words, women who have made it virtually impossible for any sane, nondesperate, heterosexual man to want any sort of a relationship with them, much less one of a romantic nature. And you know what that means: a bunch of made-to-order male-bashing songs for them to cry over their light beers and wine coolers to with the other girls at TGI Friday's.
The really funny thing is, it’s hard to imagine why anybody would fall for it anymore. Not only because he’s been successfully pulling the same damn prank for nearly two decades now, but because even a cursory glance over his press release—you’d think—would make at least a few people suspicious. There’s just something a little hinky about it.
This Daily Billboard feature from the "New York Press" is an insanely funny blog. Here's a recent selection of funny lines:
On TV cancellations: The networks have began announcing their canceled shows, and the big story is that not even teen lesbianism could save Once and Again.
On country music: Country radio caters almost exclusively to an upwardly mobile class of suburban white women. The Lifetime network crowd. The women who tape Rosie and Oprah so they can watch them when they get home from work. In other words, women who have made it virtually impossible for any sane, nondesperate, heterosexual man to want any sort of a relationship with them, much less one of a romantic nature. And you know what that means: a bunch of made-to-order male-bashing songs for them to cry over their light beers and wine coolers to with the other girls at TGI Friday's.
SOCIALISM, R.I.P.: Roger Kimball writes an obit for socialism in the latest "New Criterion":
It is one of the great ironies of modern history that socialism, which promises a more humane, caring, and equitable society, has consistently delivered a more oppressive and mismanaged one. Socialism’s motto...turns out to be: “If you build it, they will leave.” If, one must add, they are allowed to leave.
It is one of the great ironies of modern history that socialism, which promises a more humane, caring, and equitable society, has consistently delivered a more oppressive and mismanaged one. Socialism’s motto...turns out to be: “If you build it, they will leave.” If, one must add, they are allowed to leave.
REPARATIONS RESPONSE: Something else I missed from the other day: The excellent John McWhorter addresses the beginning of the slavery reparations battle:
Real civil rights will mean standing down this misguided manipulation and devoting our efforts to the less glamorous efforts of fostering concrete change for people who need help....What ails the black community today is the very illusion that holds the reparations gang in thrall — that serious black achievement is impossible except under ideal conditions, that white neglect must be at the root of any black-white disparity, and that only the actions of whites can significantly improve the conditions of blacks.
Speaking of reparations, here's a book review of David Horowitz's latest book on the issue.
Real civil rights will mean standing down this misguided manipulation and devoting our efforts to the less glamorous efforts of fostering concrete change for people who need help....What ails the black community today is the very illusion that holds the reparations gang in thrall — that serious black achievement is impossible except under ideal conditions, that white neglect must be at the root of any black-white disparity, and that only the actions of whites can significantly improve the conditions of blacks.
Speaking of reparations, here's a book review of David Horowitz's latest book on the issue.
RACIAL PROFILING DEBATE ROLLS ON: You take it easy on blogging for a couple of days and you miss some good stuff. Remember that Heather MacDonald piece celebrating the demise of the racial profiling myth? Some readers may recall that the Opinion Journal offered a rebuttal. MacDonald has now rebutted the rebuttal. Media Minder says check it out.
IT'S EASY BEING GREENE: Bob Greene has a nice column today on the nature of news. Here's the part I like:
The good news is that the news-is-old theories are dead wrong -- the good news is that there is nothing fresher, nothing more vibrant, nothing that overrides everything else in the world more than news does. Yes, there have been times when the tellers of the tales have attempted to make themselves more important than the tales themselves; yes, there have been times when we who report the news have not exactly covered ourselves with dignity and decorum. But that's us -- that's our problem to repair. The news itself -- in each of its many forms, written or spoken -- is, by definition, brand-new, every day. It can't be preempted -- it's preemptive. It can't be made obsolete -- it's the antithesis of obsolete. It is the story of our world, our country, our town, our block, and the details of it today didn't exist when the sun went down last night, and the details of what it will be tomorrow don't exist even now. The news grow old? The sun will go black before the news becomes old.
The good news is that the news-is-old theories are dead wrong -- the good news is that there is nothing fresher, nothing more vibrant, nothing that overrides everything else in the world more than news does. Yes, there have been times when the tellers of the tales have attempted to make themselves more important than the tales themselves; yes, there have been times when we who report the news have not exactly covered ourselves with dignity and decorum. But that's us -- that's our problem to repair. The news itself -- in each of its many forms, written or spoken -- is, by definition, brand-new, every day. It can't be preempted -- it's preemptive. It can't be made obsolete -- it's the antithesis of obsolete. It is the story of our world, our country, our town, our block, and the details of it today didn't exist when the sun went down last night, and the details of what it will be tomorrow don't exist even now. The news grow old? The sun will go black before the news becomes old.
CONSERVATIVE MEDIA BIAS? The "Columbia Journalism Review" has posted its entertaining "Darts & Laurels" section. The lead items, however, aren't that funny. They're about the allegedly fawning coverage President Bush has received from the press.
CJR is not amused.
First, the "Washington Post" gets ripped for putting Bush's response to Tom Daschle's criticism of his economic polices on Page 1 while shoving Daschle's speech inside. I don't know if this is a sign of bias or not. It could have more to do with timing. It's possible that Daschle's criticism was all over the TV in the early part of the day and Bush's response come later in the day, thus making it more timely for a morning newspaper. But you'd never know from this item. CJR just seems pissed that the Post didn't automatically assume the role of media attack dog. Then there's this item:
The Associated Press, in a dispatch about a White House meeting between Bush and Republican and Democratic congressional leaders, accorded powers to Bush that were downright kingly: he had “summoned” the leaders, ran the AP report, and given them “marching orders.” As every middle-school student knows, the separation of powers, a constitutional principle that has served democracy well for lo these two hundred years, allows the executive branch to exercise no such authority over the legislative branch.
Now this is just silly. You could easily argue that, in a democracy such as ours with clear separation of powers, painting President Bush's meeting with congressional leaders in "kingly" terms is a liberal attempt to subtly smear Bush. And tired as the phrase "marching orders" may be, it has entered common usage as meaning a strongly worded command, request or charge, not actual orders that carry any legal weight.
The rest of "Darts & Laurels" this time around is uniformly excellent. If you ever want to learn about the follies of journalism as it is practiced in smaller media markets, this is an invaluable resource.
CJR is not amused.
First, the "Washington Post" gets ripped for putting Bush's response to Tom Daschle's criticism of his economic polices on Page 1 while shoving Daschle's speech inside. I don't know if this is a sign of bias or not. It could have more to do with timing. It's possible that Daschle's criticism was all over the TV in the early part of the day and Bush's response come later in the day, thus making it more timely for a morning newspaper. But you'd never know from this item. CJR just seems pissed that the Post didn't automatically assume the role of media attack dog. Then there's this item:
The Associated Press, in a dispatch about a White House meeting between Bush and Republican and Democratic congressional leaders, accorded powers to Bush that were downright kingly: he had “summoned” the leaders, ran the AP report, and given them “marching orders.” As every middle-school student knows, the separation of powers, a constitutional principle that has served democracy well for lo these two hundred years, allows the executive branch to exercise no such authority over the legislative branch.
Now this is just silly. You could easily argue that, in a democracy such as ours with clear separation of powers, painting President Bush's meeting with congressional leaders in "kingly" terms is a liberal attempt to subtly smear Bush. And tired as the phrase "marching orders" may be, it has entered common usage as meaning a strongly worded command, request or charge, not actual orders that carry any legal weight.
The rest of "Darts & Laurels" this time around is uniformly excellent. If you ever want to learn about the follies of journalism as it is practiced in smaller media markets, this is an invaluable resource.
DIVERSITY UBER ALLES: Thanks to Susanna Cornett for pointing this piece out to me yesterday when I was too busy to do much blogging. Stanley Kurtz gives an overview on three recent diversity-related news stories, and a slim reason for hope:
The diversity wars drag on, and it isn’t easy to tell who’s winning. Three incidents in recent days drive home the embarrassingly flimsy nature of the diversity movement’s pronouncements — and the maddening success the movement has nonetheless enjoyed in foisting its bogus claims on the American public. Yet all is not lost. The last two weeks saw flare-ups in long-running battles over alleged racial profiling by police, alleged discrimination against female professors, and the alleged stifling of the “female voice” by an oppressive and patriarchal Western culture. The parallels between these three cases are striking. In each instance, the same sort of blatantly unscientific methods have been used to validate claims of discrimination, and in each case, a similar (and not entirely discouraging) pattern of response has emerged.
It's my sincere hope that "diversity fatigue" is spreading among Americans of all persuasions. Sure, Sept. 11 threw the irrelevance of the diversity industry into stark relief, but there's some simple facts that far too many people overlook. The great Albert Murray said it best when he pointed out that the so-called whitebread "mainstream" of American society is already one of the most diverse cultures the world has ever produced. It's difficult to imagine a society as open to "foreign" influences as this one. Here's more of what Murray had to say back in 1970 in "The Omni-Americans":
"..in spite of their common destiny and deeper interests, the people of the United States are being misled by misinformation to insist on exaggerating their ethnic differences. The problem is not the existence of ethnic differences, as is so often assumed, but the intrusion of such differences into areas where the do not belong. Ethnic differences are the very essence of cultural diversity and national creativity."
Amen to that.
The diversity wars drag on, and it isn’t easy to tell who’s winning. Three incidents in recent days drive home the embarrassingly flimsy nature of the diversity movement’s pronouncements — and the maddening success the movement has nonetheless enjoyed in foisting its bogus claims on the American public. Yet all is not lost. The last two weeks saw flare-ups in long-running battles over alleged racial profiling by police, alleged discrimination against female professors, and the alleged stifling of the “female voice” by an oppressive and patriarchal Western culture. The parallels between these three cases are striking. In each instance, the same sort of blatantly unscientific methods have been used to validate claims of discrimination, and in each case, a similar (and not entirely discouraging) pattern of response has emerged.
It's my sincere hope that "diversity fatigue" is spreading among Americans of all persuasions. Sure, Sept. 11 threw the irrelevance of the diversity industry into stark relief, but there's some simple facts that far too many people overlook. The great Albert Murray said it best when he pointed out that the so-called whitebread "mainstream" of American society is already one of the most diverse cultures the world has ever produced. It's difficult to imagine a society as open to "foreign" influences as this one. Here's more of what Murray had to say back in 1970 in "The Omni-Americans":
"..in spite of their common destiny and deeper interests, the people of the United States are being misled by misinformation to insist on exaggerating their ethnic differences. The problem is not the existence of ethnic differences, as is so often assumed, but the intrusion of such differences into areas where the do not belong. Ethnic differences are the very essence of cultural diversity and national creativity."
Amen to that.
LOST IN 'BLOGISTAN': Alex Beam of the "Boston Globe" wanders into the world of blogs, takes a look around and decides it's not fit for the likes of a serious journalist such as himself. Unfortunately for Beam, he dissed James Lileks. Bad idea.
The main problem I have with this piece is the writer's lack of knowledge of his subject. Noting blogger Bjorn Staerk's "bizarre recommitment to left-wing raving," he fails to realize that it was an April Fools' Day joke. And he fails to acknowledge that there's already a blog called Blogistan. (Pardon me while I wander into the "echo chamber of self-regard," but thanks for the perma-link, Justin. I don't think you're "outre," no matter what Beam says. In fact, one of the reasons I like you is because you and other bloggers would never use the word "outre.")
One of Beam's bravest lines is the very last. After sarcastically naming a couple of bloggers who expressed some jumping-on-the-bandwagon sentiments, he writes this:
Maybe you will even be mocked in a medium that people actually read.
Is Beam referrring to the rapidly declining print medium, which fewer people are actually reading, or the Web? Echoing a recent piece in the "Weekly Standard," It seems to me that blogs are going to help newspapers, including ones that publish tripe such as this. The circulation of this link among the blogosphere will increase Beam's Web readership, undeserved as it is.
I found this link over at Romenesko, but I see that Glenn "Tha Bloggfatha" Reynolds saw it, too. I would say go check it out, but I'm sure that you already have. After all, Beam nailed us on this, too:
Another cloying attribute of bloggers is their intense admiration for other bloggers.
And a cloying attribute of snide, elitist opinion columnists is their casual dismissal of any grass-roots challenge to their perceived authority. Bloggers may be unaware of a lot of things, but they've been all over that.
The main problem I have with this piece is the writer's lack of knowledge of his subject. Noting blogger Bjorn Staerk's "bizarre recommitment to left-wing raving," he fails to realize that it was an April Fools' Day joke. And he fails to acknowledge that there's already a blog called Blogistan. (Pardon me while I wander into the "echo chamber of self-regard," but thanks for the perma-link, Justin. I don't think you're "outre," no matter what Beam says. In fact, one of the reasons I like you is because you and other bloggers would never use the word "outre.")
One of Beam's bravest lines is the very last. After sarcastically naming a couple of bloggers who expressed some jumping-on-the-bandwagon sentiments, he writes this:
Maybe you will even be mocked in a medium that people actually read.
Is Beam referrring to the rapidly declining print medium, which fewer people are actually reading, or the Web? Echoing a recent piece in the "Weekly Standard," It seems to me that blogs are going to help newspapers, including ones that publish tripe such as this. The circulation of this link among the blogosphere will increase Beam's Web readership, undeserved as it is.
I found this link over at Romenesko, but I see that Glenn "Tha Bloggfatha" Reynolds saw it, too. I would say go check it out, but I'm sure that you already have. After all, Beam nailed us on this, too:
Another cloying attribute of bloggers is their intense admiration for other bloggers.
And a cloying attribute of snide, elitist opinion columnists is their casual dismissal of any grass-roots challenge to their perceived authority. Bloggers may be unaware of a lot of things, but they've been all over that.
WAY TO GO, TERPS: Congratulations to Maryland for winning the national college basketball championship last night. They were deserving winners. If I'm not mistaken, Maryland now is one of a handful of schools to have won national championships in both football and basketball (the Terps were national football champs in 1953). The only ones that come immediately to mind are UCLA, Michigan State, Ohio State and Michigan. (I'm not counting those football championships from the 1920s and 1930s.) Pretty good company.
Monday, April 01, 2002
THOSE DAMN FROGS: The French are at it again. Some "respected left-wing think tank" is pushing the bizarre theory that the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon was a hoax:
Thierry Meyssan's book ''The Frightening Fraud'' has topped best-seller lists. Meyssan, president of Reseau Voltaire, a respected left-wing think tank, theorizes that American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, killing 189, did not exist and that the crash was staged by the government. ''I believe the American government is lying... No plane crashed into the Pentagon,'' he told France 2 television. Meyssan did not provide an alternative theory for what may have damaged the Pentagon.
I guess the hundreds of people stuck on that freeway that runs beside the Pentagon hallucinated the whole thing.
To their credit, the mainstream French media is scoffing at this crap. But the fact that the books is flying off the shelves is a little disturbing.
Thierry Meyssan's book ''The Frightening Fraud'' has topped best-seller lists. Meyssan, president of Reseau Voltaire, a respected left-wing think tank, theorizes that American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, killing 189, did not exist and that the crash was staged by the government. ''I believe the American government is lying... No plane crashed into the Pentagon,'' he told France 2 television. Meyssan did not provide an alternative theory for what may have damaged the Pentagon.
I guess the hundreds of people stuck on that freeway that runs beside the Pentagon hallucinated the whole thing.
To their credit, the mainstream French media is scoffing at this crap. But the fact that the books is flying off the shelves is a little disturbing.
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