Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.

Okay, we’re up to a third topic. Tim asks whether the $300 billion that has been spent on Iraq could have been spent better in the war on terrorism, port security, homeland security, etc.

Allen kinda evaded that question, essentially falling back on the “it happened, let’s not second guess, let’s look forward’. That would be fair for him to say if he had been in the opposition, but he wasn’t. It happened because this administration and this Congress made it happen. We didn’t slip on our tea and fall into Iraq; we went in on purpose and we spent $300 billion on it, ostensibly to make this nation safer from terrorism. I want to know whether Senator Allen, who was a part of that, thinks that it was money well spent. I want to know if he is looking to spend that kind of money again over the next few years. But he didn’t want to say.

For his part, Jim Webb says there was a better way, but hasn’t said how. I don’t think I buy that. Look, I’m a very non-interventionist kind of guy. I don’t like America invading other nations. But we can’t take a punch in the nose and then curl up into a ball. If between 9/11 and now we had spent that $300 billion building walls on the Mexican and Canadian borders, and beefing up port security and airport security, we would not be safe from terrorism. I would not be comfortable with that response at all. This was Mr. Webb’s chance to convince me, and he passed on the opportunity.

My fourth topic for tonight is that Webb continually implied that George Allen and anybody else who hasn’t served in the military is ignorant on how to use the military. We heard a similar theme from the Kerry campaign in the 2004 elections. This is a point that many on the Left like to use to zing the current administration, as neither the president nor the vice president served in the United States military. In fact, the only cabinet members to have served were the Attorney General, the Secretary of Defense, and of course the Secretary for Veterans Affairs. For a presidency that will be defined by armed conflict, they run very light on personal experience.

This is, of course, irrelevant to the question of whether Jim Webb is better qualified than George Allen to be my senator. But furthermore, I think this is a very dangerous line of argument for the Democrats to keep embracing. For example, how will it play with those Democrats who run for president in 2008? Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich… none of these have military experience, to my knowledge. This point will still sit at the same level of irrelevance to me in 2008, but it still strikes me as a dangerous tune for this party.

The last topic that caught my eye from either candidate was near the end of the interview, when Jim Webb said

African Americans are the only ethnic group in this country that have suffered from deliberate discrimination and exclusion by the government over generations

I’ll be sure to let my American Indian friends know. It’s a shame that this ridiculous comment distracted me from whatever it was Webb was talking about, because I believe it was something about affirmative action being off track from its original, lawful purpose. I might have liked to have heard that, but my brain stopped short at the comment I shared above.

I’m not sure whether I will be able to catch the upcoming debate between these two, but if I do, I’ll share my thoughts here.

Webb on Women in the Military

This speaks for itself...

...but I'll make a few comments anyway. Jim Webb’s comments about women in 1976 were wrong, and he doesn’t seem to recognize this even today. Russert gives him the perfect opportunity to say that he was wrong, and it should be easy, because time (and some courageous women) have proven him wrong. Everybody is wrong from time to time. But he just won’t say it. Why?

The comments were not only wrong, they were irresponsible, as they were made while women were in the military academies. He says that he doesn’t think it was wrong to participate in the debate at that time, but the fact is that his participation was harmful to those women, and therefore the military itself. It was a stance that was unhelpful, combative, and inflexible. I understand his statement about 4:18 on this clip regarding using the military for social experimentation. But neither can the military be allowed to violate legal standards of equality simply for the sake of a slow transition in warrior mindset.

I won’t refuse to vote for Webb on this one issue, of course, but it just doesn’t instill confidence. I prefer to see a politician admit when something they said was wrong, which Webb’s comments were. This brings up another part of the interview, however.

Right after this clip, Russert asked George Allen about some comments he made regarding whether women should be allowed into Virginia Military Institute. Quoting Allen:

Russert: From American Enterprise magazine, “If Virginia Military Institute admitted women, it wouldn’t be the VMI that we’ve known for 154 years. You just don’t treat women the way you treat fellow cadets. If you did, it would be ungentlemanly, it would be improper.” Men and women shouldn’t be treated the same at a military institution?

Allen: The regiment at VMI and the way that it was… the curriculum, the training, would be ungentlemanly to treat women the way that they were doing it.

Without defining what Allen meant at the time by the word “gentlemanly”, I have to point out that this is completely accurate. Now that VMI admits women, it is not the VMI that it used to be. For better or worse, it’s not the same. The curriculum and training have been changed, and there is no point in denying this. But Allen backed away from saying so:

Russert: But has women at VMI worked?

Allen: Yes, it has.

Russert: So you were wrong?

Allen: Well, we were wrong. But here’s the point, here’s the difference: the Supreme Court said we were wrong, [and] we complied with that decision.

No, Senator. SCOTUS said that the practice of not allowing women into VMI was wrong. They did not say that the women should be subjected to the curriculum and training that were in place for 154 years. They said that women had to be admitted, and had to be given access to the same curriculum, training, and opportunities as the men. Senator Allen should have stepped up and said that VMI has done an excellent job of adapting to this new environment (and he probably could take some of the credit there, too). But he let Russert give the impression that it is the same VMI as it ever was, and the same ungentlemanly environment that used to exist.

I said that I prefer to see a politician admit when something they said was wrong, but Allen admitted to being wrong when I don't feel he actually was.

I will likely put out some more thoughts on today's Meet the Press. Perhaps after the kids are in bed...

September 16, 2006

Technological Nirvana

I really enjoy the BBC Editor's Blog (see our blogroll), in part because I frequently read things there that might not matter so much to my life, but are just fascinating to me. For example:

So where is this technological nirvana... the city [that is] one of the first in the world to be a giant wireless zone[?]

Want to know? I think you will be very, very surprised.

September 9, 2006

Partisan Style

Washington Post columnist Tom Shales on the ABC miniseries "The Path to 9/11":

The impression given is that Clinton was spending time on his sex life while terrorists were gaining ground and planning a nightmare.

It would have made as much sense, and perhaps more, to cut instead to stock footage of a smirking Kenneth Starr, the reckless Republican prosecutor largely responsible for distracting not just the president but the entire nation with the scandal.

Ooooooh! That dastardly Ken Starr! The way he commandeered the TV cameras and took over the newspaper presses was unconscionable. The fact that he was able to distract this nation while the media attempted to wrestle our attention back to The Real Issues was absolutely criminal. Why, if he hadn't distracted President Clinton, then 9/11 might have been prevented!

Mr. Shales is out of his element. He is a Style Columnist and a media critic. If he would like readers to know that the historical accuracy of the ABC docudrama is somewhere between questionable and nonexistent, then that's legitimate. But I'm already getting that message from thousands of other sources (which may be recklessly distracting President Bush from stopping the next 9/11 - who knows?). What I want from a WaPo Style Columnist is simply an assessment of whether the acting and production are any good. Hell, I'm not going to watch the thing anyway, so even that information is purely academic for me. But if I want a partisan hack's opinion on Mr. Starr - a man who has long had a reputation as a moderate judge and a staunch defender of the First Amendment - I'll check in at Kos.

Mr. Shales attacks Mr. Starr simply for the sake of the never-ending game of bullshit partisan tit-for-tat. Shame on any journalist who can't see that. It deserves to be pointed out that the paragraph on Ken Starr was completely pointless and irrelevant, and should have been left on the floor - like most of "The Path to 9/11", from what I gather.

August 27, 2006

Bob Smither, Netroots, and Name Recognition

Netroots activism has had a few impressive showings, including the recent victory by Ned Lamont over incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman in Connecticut’s primary elections. The Nation magazine summed it up thusly :

Ned Lamont's victory was driven by two triggers: First, the war elicited a primary opponent; then Internet activists convinced voters that he was a viable alternative.

In other words, there was a demand for change. There was somebody willing to supply that change. Internet activism simply got the message out.

Now, I don’t want to overstate the effect of the blogosphere on a campaign, but clearly blogs are able to get the message out and generate a lot of attention. If a politician has a message that resonates with voters, then a netroots campaign is exactly what he or she needs in this day and age. Name recognition, media coverage, and the buzz of the old-fashioned grassroots movements can help to bring down unpopular incumbents, or draw attention to a candidate who might not otherwise be seen as viable.

Can you see where I am going with this?

In an excellent post at WatchBlog, Richard Rhodes wrote:

The fact is whether many people want to admit it or not is that name recognition does matter. And this is the one thing that third parties lack.

Richard is correct that this problem will certainly burn “third party” candidates in the next presidential election. Congressional elections, however, are a different matter. Name recognition is easier to achieve in a single congressional district. But even in a congressional race, third party candidates generally lack name recognition because most people just don’t care. The real race is between the Democrat and the Republican… if there is both a Democrat and a Republican. I would like to suggest that in any race where there is not already both a Democrat and a Republican, there is a potential for a third party candidate to make a very strong showing and possibly even win a seat. Of course, trying this against a popular incumbent, this would present quite a challenge for even the most savvy and enthusiastic netroots activists. But what if the incumbent is unpopular… or what if there is no incumbent?

A netroots movement may be trying to build up around Libertarian Party candidate Bob Smither for Tom DeLay’s old congressional seat (District 22 in Texas). With Republicans unable to field a candidate, voters face a choice between the Democrat Nick Lampson and Libertarian Bob Smither. Will Republicans vote for a Libertarian just to spite the Democrats? Well, considering Smither’s promise to caucus with House Republicans if elected, and considering that Republican voters tend toward fiscal conservativism similar to that of Libertarians, they might be persuaded.

Jon Henke at QandO calls it the the Ron Paul option.

Other bloggers picking up the cause include Stephen VanDyke at Hammer of Truth, James at Swing State Project, and they’re arguing about it at Daily Kos.

A full read of the article by Lance at Inactivist.Org may spell out the best argument for pushing a netroots campaign. He asks for help in getting Bob Smither elected:

First, we have one more vote against big spending…
Second, we have the opportunity to send a message; most importantly Republicans have the chance to send a message that we as a citizenry are unhappy with the course our representatives have taken.

Hey, Lance, I'm on board. I can't vote for Bob Smither, but I can support his candidacy. I will direct people to his website. I will encourage netroots activism, not only among Libertarians but among all "third party" supporters, and independents. If you are reading this, please look into Bob Smither and see if you can support him and/or his candidacy.

Let's get the word out. Bob Smither for Congress.

(This article was originally posted at WatchBlog)

August 2, 2006

Commerce Not Good for Children

Updated 17:25
Which should concern me more: Sponge Bob on a box of macaroni and cheese, or the possibility that my child will be abducted? Well, seeing that I don’t really give a rat’s ass whether Sponge Bob is on the box, it should be an easy question. But the message of this NPR story is that I am a fool for failing to recognize the insidious dangers of letting my children watch television in a society where there is no government regulation of Sponge Bob on food boxes. You see, if my children watch TV and see Sponge Bob Squarepants, Cinderella, Dora the Explorer, or any of the other so called “children’s programming”, then they will desire bedspreads and cereal and clothing and bicycles and whatever else some evil bastard slaps a cartoon character on and sticks on a store shelf.

It is disturbing, the NPR story says, that a 4-year-old recognizes the logo for Coca-Cola. Stop and think about this: We sing and use flashcards and read books to our children in an attempt to get them to recognize and use symbols to communicate with other people, including across barriers of language and space and time. And the Coke symbol is one of the most widely recognized symbols in the world. But this NPR story presents it as lamentable when a child joins the rest of us in knowing what that symbol means. This knowledge is bad. To desire Coke is also bad. That is the message NPR is pushing.

Some of you [stare at Rammage] will say that this is typical of NPR. Fine, but I have a point beyond complaining that NPR is a bunch of anti-market liberal weenies (especially since I don’t believe that is generally the case).

Mayo Clinic pediatrician Dan Broughton is interviewed in the story. Speaking for the American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr. Broughton is the one who says that I worry too much about child abduction (after all, it’s statistically improbable), and not enough about having my children see Sponge Bob on a box macaroni and cheese in the store (statistically certain). I guess it doesn’t occur to him why, exactly, I worry about child abduction. First of all, the two concerns are not mutually exclusive. What if an abductor exposes my child to the Sponge Bob m&c? Now the kid has been stolen and corrupted by advertising! It is clear, after all, that there is no escaping from advertisers. Better to keep the kid safe from abduction, in my mind, just on the off chance that it would be better for the child to be with me than with an abductor.

But I do get Mr. Broughton’s point. Even while my children are with me physically, they can be mentally abducted right before my eyes by what they are watching on television. Don’t dismiss this as hyperbole – hours upon hours of children’s programming have a serious impact on what your kids believe. They can be pushed a socialist agenda, or a message of rugged individualism… many shows indicate that might makes right, and as a parent I sometimes have to address that. Parents do need to be aware of what their children are exposed to at school, on line, on television… everywhere. This is a legitimate concern. In fact, I have addressed the possibility that the messages in these kids' shows are a means of positive social engineering (see here).

Having said that, I don’t really care if my children are watching commercials. I am one of those parents who are capable of saying "no" to my children. And my kids don’t have money, and they don’t have cars, so they won’t be making any purchases for themselves for quite some time. In the meantime, they learn by example. I do not feed them crap, and I do not buy them whatever they ask for. My shopping habits are shockingly similar to those of my parents when I was a child, and shockingly dissimilar to what I was asking for when I was five years old. Despite all of the Smurf-watching I did as a kid, I turned out okay. And that wasn't nearly as educational as Dora, or my personal favorite, Little Einsteins.

But we all know that there are people out there who don’t think that parents can handle raising their kids without regulatory help from the government. Some of those people are parents like the ones the NPR story talks about. So the question for any level-headed lover of liberty is, How can I get these people to leave me alone? How can I keep them from pushing more regulations onto the industry – how can I stop that slippery slope? The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood is a group that wants to end marketing of junk foods to children under eight. [Insert libertarian joke about black-market junk food ads]

But in all seriousness, how exactly would such a ban be enforced? The answer is, sweepingly.

If you listen to the NPR story, you will hear the president of Nickelodeon trying to explain the basic concept of supply and demand, but it’s a futile effort. The story even notes that there is a demand for healthy food to be associated with these cartoon characters, so we see the creation of things like Dora Carrots. But still, in the minds of the media and child psychologists, there is a failure to let parents raise their own children.

Update: The NPR piece I discussed was the first in a series of three. The others are here (on 'tweens) and here (teens).

July 31, 2006

Quick Note on Mel Gibson

Studio executives, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the matter, were divided on how Gibson's behavior would affect his career. One noted that people have short memories, including filmmakers who might want to profit from Gibson's star power.

Filmgoers, too, could overlook much if the film is perceived as worthwhile.

"Usually it comes down to the marketing of the movie and does the average person want to see the film," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations.

July 30, 2006

I Can't Live on this Salary!

I find that most editorial cartoons are really good at communicating a really bad point. Usually, it is that so-and-so is stupid. I am not sure that this one by Etta Hulme is any different in that respect, but I find it very interesting. I hope it can spark some conversation - I'd like to hear some opinions on it. Is there a fair point being made? Talk to me.

July 18, 2006

Exceeding Infinity

As a scientist and technophile, I am all about the research into and application of alternative energy sources. Those who know me will not be surprised that I am on record here, here, and especially here saying what shouldn’t need to be said – that finding alternative energy sources is beyond the proper purview of our government, and should be dealt with by the market, even if that means that some investors get rich (horrors!).

As a scientist and proponent of alternative energy sources, it really drives me nuts to see some of the things people have to say about the topic. For example, Michael Kanellos, Editor at large for CNET News, covered the comments of Rice University chemistry professor and Nobel laureate Richard Smalley in 2004. Dr. Smalley of course calls for more government money to be spent on energy sources. I wish Kanellos had quoted Smalley more extensively, so I would know exactly where to lay blame over some of the comments in the article, such as:

If the government doesn't start funding energy research, future generations might end up living in dark, nanotech scientist says.

…and…

Wind, wave and hydrothermal power have mostly been tapped.

tapped? TAPPED?

I can’t believe that such a statement would have to be refuted, but if it must be, then consider what the U.S. Department of Energy has to say on the subject (emphasis mine):

Sources of renewable energy are either continuously resupplied by the sun or tap inexhaustible resources. They include solar, geothermal, biomass, wind, and hydropower resources.

Specifically if you click on the link for geothermal, you get the following (again, emphasis mine):

In the United States, most geothermal resources are concentrated in the West, but geothermal heat pumps can be used nearly anywhere.

The use of wave power and oceanic thermal gradients is so undeveloped that it doesn’t even get mentioned in the DoE page above.

Not only are these resources far from “tapped” in the way the word is used in the CNET article, the technologies for harnessing these resources are constantly becoming more efficient and affordable.

What was Mr. Kanellos thinking? Did he simply report accurately what Dr. Smalley actually said? If so, he is still guilty of not looking into the facts of the situation. I would like to give him the benefit of the doubt in some way, but I don’t see how I can. The nature and potential of renewable resources is covered in elementary, middle, and high school. It’s easy to look up. It’s even common sense – how could solar power or wind power be “tapped”?

And I haven't even touched the ridiculous scare-mongering suggestion that our children will not know electricity if we don't do something.

Suggestions? I might have to file this one under “inexplicable” until I hear from Mr. Kanellos on the matter. Perhaps he has already clarified these remarks somewhere, but I haven't seen it.

Blair's Embarrassment

British papers are upset with the way Prime Minister Tony Blair came off in yesterday’s incident in St. Petersburg, when he and President Bush had a casual conversation that got picked up by a microphone they hadn’t realized was on.

But they weren't upset with the same colorful colloquialism that the US press picked up on.

While Americans have focused on Bush’s bar room strategery of “what they need to do is to get Syria to get Hizbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s over,” the British press is more upset by Mr Bush hailing the Prime Minister as "Yo, Blair."

The Daily Mirror likened Mr Blair to a trusted counselor of Mr Bush… or perhaps his poodle.

Will Mr Blair have to make a show of opposing Mr Bush in some way, in order to prove that he is his own man? I think he’s too smart to fall for that – the papers would mock that anyway, so what’s the point? This whole thing wouldn’t be that big a deal… except of course now it is being run in every nation on Earth (example: Islam OnLine). Still, no need to worry. International politics would never be about saving face.

A transcript of their (gasp) uncensored gossip is here if you like. It's sweet like honey!

Katrina-Related Euthanasia

There were a lot of misleading and inaccurate media reports about Hurricane Katrina, and I was warned by friends that the story of euthanasia of Memorial Medical Center was probably a part of it. It was not a widely carried story, but it’s back in the news today when three people who worked at the hospital (a doctor and two nurses) were arrested and charged with second degree murder.

We’ll see how this develops.
12:25 Update: The New York Times is reporting the names of the three arrested, as well as a statement from the company that runs the hospital.

(our previous on this here and here)

July 15, 2006

Can You Tell Me How to Get...

I don't know if you realize this, but Sesame Street is worldwide. It runs in over 120 different countries - including those in the Middle East. And it might be doing us some good over there. Amid all of the fighting and the killing, little Semitic children are being exposed to a message that may slip into their homes somewhat innocuously – like Jewish and Arab muppets who like each other.

Chorus: That’s stupid.

You think?

The show has always been about reaching children with some kind of Message; the most obvious is not to judge others by their outward appearance – this pops up in nearly every episode. Some of the decisions and rumors have been rather controversial, because of the Message the kids would get from the show. Think back; the death of Mr. Hooper, perpetual rumors of Ernie being gay, or terminally ill, and of course the introduction of a character with HIV. Hell, even the fact that adults on the show can see Snuffleupagus ever since 1985 is enough to get some people hot under the collar.

Well, the State Department takes it seriously. Officials feel that the show helps teach American values to children who otherwise might never know what the USA stands for. This is why the US government (and to some extent the EU) subsidizes Sesame Street productions around the globe

Says Charlotte Beers, undersecretary of State for public diplomacy, "people we need to talk to do not even know the basics about us. They are taught to distrust our every motive. Such distortions, married to a lack of knowledge, is a deadly cocktail. Engaging, teaching common values are preventive medicine". So, the answer is Sesame Street. "The children are glued to the set. They are learning English, they are learning about American values."

And they are learning how to count. Don’t forget that.

Now, before you accuse me of being just like the New York Times in giving away our secret propaganda tactics, keep in mind that the people who actually make the show are not necessarily on board with this.

However, the Children's Television Workshop has told BBC News Online that it does not accept that it is an exporter of so-called American values. Even a policy for foreign licensing decided back in 1969 stipulated that non-US versions of the show reflect the morals and traditions of the host nation.

"We don't set out in any way to push American or western values. That's not our mission at all," says Beatrice Chow, spokeswoman for Sesame Street's foreign co-productions.

"There are universal values that we encourage, such as sharing, co-operation, respect and understanding. But we see what the needs are of the specific country where the show is being broadcast - such as in South Africa where we introduced an HIV-positive character because of the Aids problem there."

It all sounds so collectivist when you put it that way. But there is nothing wrong with sharing and cooperation, respect and understanding. These are not the values of my enemies and opponents. Right?

As the head of Sesame Street’s foreign projects told the BBC back in 2003;

…we also wanted to build into the Israeli version the diversity that exists within Israel - in fact the two human hosts on the show, one is an Israel Jew, one is an Israeli Arab.

There are places where there are different stages of conflict, and you can be in a stage where there is armed conflict, where social lessons can be done in a certain way.

Then there are times of reconciliation, when you can be more overt about connecting people or concepts.

If you have rolled your eyes through this entire post, then you have missed the point. Sesame Street is not a panacea. The feel-good fiction does not protect from rockets or take back bullets. But consider what else the boys and girls of Jerusalem and Beirut could be watching. It is an attempt to plant something other than hatred into the minds of the next generation. Bravo.

June 29, 2006

Happy Anniversary

The authors of AtlasBlogged have been emailing one another on various issues for about seven years, but this month represents one whole year of slapping this stuff up on the internet for the world to view. My first entry wasn't until July 10 last year, but Rammage did manage to get this beast off the ground a year ago with a test post on June 18, and we formally became a blog on June 28th of last year when Rammage gave the obligatory blasting of the NYT. Anybody who hasn't blasted the NYT may as well stick to MySpace.

Also, Happy Second Anniversary to Kip today. Back in February, Kip placed Atlas Blogged in his Elite Eleven on his blogroll. Ever since then, I have been wondering why anybody who writes like Kip would be reading us. But we really appreciate it - and thanks to everybody else who has stopped by more than once.

Update: What is it with late June? Happy third to Amy Ridenour's National Center Blog.

June 27, 2006

Hurricane Season

Old people watch the Weather Channel.

This might not be entirely true, but it’s a popular American joke that is at least based in some part on truth. My kids hate the Weather Channel. My parents leave it on as background pseudo-informative entertainment. Most people I know have similar anecdotal evidence that it's a channel for senior citizens.

So... am I old enough to link The Weather Channel Blog? I don’t know for sure, but I think I am going to give it a try for a few reasons.

1) I’m interested in the attempts by conventional media to get into that newfangled internet thing. The Weather Channel has a pretty good website, and it’s possible that their foray into a blog will be interesting. If it’s not, I’ll cut it.

2) Schadenfreude. Man, it’s hurricane season! Every swirl of wind in the Atlantic is like a baseball pitcher kicking the dirt on the mound. As the storm gathers form, it's like the beginnings of the windup. I consider Florida to be the center of the strike zone. Some pitches don't have enough on them to be interesting. Others are beautiful to behold. And occasionally, if one comes too far to the right of the zone, it can hit this batter in his Mid-Atlantic home.

May 25, 2006

Free Market Solutions

NPR's Allison Aubrey had a story on "Morning Edition" today that began,

The Food and Drug Administration doesn't test supplements for safety or purity.

Doesn't that sound like the perfect way to begin a story about how evil businesses are, and how more government regulation is needed? I braced myself. But that's not at all the direction the story takes:

Supplement researcher Steve Bent, MD is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Francisco... [he] says that because there isn't any FDA or government agency that's testing these products, it's important to have independent companies doing the testing.

Listen here to the story of ConsumerLab.com - a free market solution to a problem that many would probably assume the government would address.

May 13, 2006

ICANN Rejects .XXX Domains

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has rejected a proposal to place porn websites on a new .xxx domain. Opponents of the new domain are a motley mix of odd bedfellows whose points are a little hard to understand.

Conservative groups didn't want the domain because it could legitimize internet porn make it easy to find. Yes, seriously.

A slightly more thought-out legal argument was made elsewhere:

“Selling hard core pornography on the Internet is a violation of federal obscenity law, so the Bush Administration is right to oppose the .xxx domain,” said Patrick Trueman, Senior Legal Counsel for the Family Research Council and former Chief of the DOJ’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section. “The Bush Administration should not, in any way, be seen to facilitate the porn industry which has been a plague on our society since the establishment of the Internet. The .xxx domain proposal is an effort to pander to the porn industry and offers nothing but false hope to an American public which wants illegal pornographers prosecuted, not rewarded.”

Yet pornographers were also opposed to the new domain, fearing that it would marginalize an industry that is looking to move in the opposite direction - mainstream.

In their opinion, the attempt to gather the the virtual pornography in some sort of a Red Light District will only open a way to easier censorship means.

(Never mind the fact that the .xxx domains would have been voluntary.)

Libertarians usually find it distasteful to agree with religious conservatives, but were correct to do so on this matter. The attempt to segregate pornography would be a mistake, and fairly difficult - probably requiring a big fat bureaucracy of porn-searching federal employees. Which might just be a legitimization of what is already going on in some offices, I don't know. [shrug] Can you picture that cubicle farm? [shudder] It's sketchy enough that News.com refers to one fellow in their article as an "adult-industry observer".

When it is worded like that, it sounds pretty respectable, doesn't it?

In fact, the logistics of policing seems to be the reason ICANN rejected the .xxx domains (story here):

ICANN CEO Paul Twomey said the decision largely came down to whether the creation of "xxx" might put ICANN in a difficult position of having to enforce all of the world's laws governing pornography, including ones that might require porn sites to use the domain. Speech-related laws, he noted, often conflict with one another.

April 12, 2006

What is the Difference Between a Journalist and a Blogger?

This week, Andrea Seabrook takes over the reins at Mixed Signals, the NPR blog. Apparently they are on a rotation over there. It's a young enough blog that they seem to still be getting their identity - or at least, still conveying it to readers.

One of Andrea's first blog entries was a fairly blog-stereotypical post about a story that the blogosphere had picked up, but the MSM had missed.

Over the last couple of days there's been a lot of blog buzz about this Wired story that details another possible NSA eavesdropping program... My question is why hasn't this bubbled into the mainstream media?

What I find especially telling, however, is the fact that she sounds less like a blogger and more like a journalist. For example, she noted:

the ever-self-obsessed blogger set is in a tizzy about the news.

Ever-self-obsessed? Well, sure, that describes bloggers pretty well. But most bloggers can't note that without sounding, well, ever-self-obsessed. Seabrook manages to sound like an outsider who is dabbling in the blog fad. So what is the difference between a blogger and a journalist, really?

NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin wrote yesterday about the Mixed Signals blog. His tone, and that of JJ Sutherland and Robert Smith, who authored the blog before Seabrook, imply that the main difference is that bloggers are snarky and puckish.

For the past weeks, Sutherland and Smith... have commented on a astonishing range of NPR stories, backroom gossip and extra angles on stories that didn’t quite make it past the editors, but which the bloggers, in their own puckish way, deemed worthy of note and mention.

Without the blog, these guys were just journalists; snarkless, puckless, and therefore able to draw a salary - though today, Seabrook asks why she can't be snarky as a journalist. Would this blur the line too much?

Mr. Dvorkin also gives some insight to the origin and purpose of Mixed Signals. I had assumed it was an attempt by NPR to reach out to the new medium, as the NPR website itself once extended from the radio network. A sort of asexual budding, as NPR tried to produce a version of itself that could speak the language of blogosphere denizens. And to some degree, that appears to be the case.

...it is another opportunity for listeners to comment on and to challenge NPR’s programming decisions.

Dvorkin quotes Jeffrey Katz, the Senior Supervising Producer at NPR Digital Media:

We started a daily blog to bring a voice to our Web site. It's a way of guiding our audience through some of the most interesting offerings we have on the air and on the Web. It's also a way of connecting what we do to the rest of the Internet, pointing out stories and developments that we think will be of interest.

We have a lot of remarkable audio on our Web site, and we've increased our photographic resources, too. But our readers have told us they also want more text, to be able to have more that they can read and scan. And blogs are a convenient way for readers to respond to what they hear and read on NPR and to connect with one another. We received about 2,000 comments to our blog and to two community forums in the past month. Those readers' opinions and ideas add real value to what we do.

But, interestingly, Mr. Dvorkin indicates that the purpose is not just to be a news blog, but also an office journal.

Newsrooms have always been great sources of endlessly amusing storytelling, absurdist observations and wry notes on the idiosyncrasies of humanity -- especially the foibles of journalists.

So Mixed Signals is meant not to be a news blog, but more an actual log of the thoughts of the journalist du jour - something more along the lines of what blog researcherer James Richards is talking about when he says:

In my experience blogs are demonstrative that we all have something to share about our lives and blogging is just one of many ways of doing this.

This is not traditional journalism by any stretch of the imagination; nor is it for commerical gain.

In this sense, it may have more in common with blogs by chefs, wedding planners, preachers, prostitutes, teachers, delivery drivers, and secretaries than with the main NPR website. But as I noted, it is a young blog, and is still getting its identity. And each time they switch writers, they may be changing the motivation for blogging.

Seabrook's desire to be snarky may ultimately be the biggest difference between journalists and bloggers. I do not have any financial incentive to refrain from blasting away at any public figure or policy that strikes me as foolish. What are you going to do - cancel your subscription to this site? There are no financial strings attached to my writing, nor consequences for unsubstantiated assertions or conjecture. Provided I steer clear of actual libel, I can get away with saying quite a bit that Seabrook cannot afford to say. While the title of this piece may sound like the opening to a joke, it is a question that is more and more topical as newspapers, magazines, and now radio networks attempt to delve into the blogosphere. But if the media blogger is a journalist first, they won't be able to help sounding like a journalist - an outsider who is dabbling in the blog fad. It may be that the average reader won't know or care about the difference, but it will still be there. Would a simple dash of puckishness be enough to make a newspaper "blog" a part of the regular Daily Kos / Glenn Reynolds community?

Let me leave you with this final thought from the NPR Ombudsman:

The value of a blog is precisely in its spontaneity and in the play of opinions between the blogger and the listeners. The blogger must do this several times a day in order for the blog to remain "fresh."

Several times a day? Ouch. AtlasBlogged = pwned.

April 9, 2006

Define "Protestor"

Headline: Protester shot dead in Nepal

Story:

KATMANDU Nepal (CNN) -- Nepalese police shot and killed a protester Sunday in the Banepa region when pro-democracy protesters tried to storm a police post, a government official said.

Prostestor? Or... "riotor"? Or Maoist terrorist? It depends on your point of view, doesn't it?

Nepal is pretty much the last place I want to be, with Maoists fighting to overthrow a monarchy. I couldn't support either side. Plus, it is my understanding they do not play hockey over there. Sounds like hell.

I guess I have nothing useful to say here - I just noted the headline on Google News and decided to check out the story. And I was struck (yet again) by the difficulty news organizations and reporters seem to have with objectivity and impartiality. This is the kind of stuff that makes me roll my eyes when people compain about Fox News having a bias. Hey, show me a news source that doesn't.

March 23, 2006

A Slur Mispoken, and a Career in Jeopardy

I was very disturbed to hear this news story about Dave Lenihan, the DJ in St Louis who was fired for using a racial slur against Condi Rice.

Lenihan had been heaping praise on Rice, who has said she aspires to run the National Football League one day but has more recently ruled out seeking to replace retiring NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue.

“She’s been chancellor of Stanford,” Lenihan said on the air. “She’s got the patent resume of somebody that has serious skill. She loves football. She’s African-American, which would kind of be a big coon. A big coon. Oh my God. I am totally, totally, totally, totally, totally sorry for that.”

He said he had meant to say “coup” instead.

I was accidentally listening to Sean Hannity in the car tonight and I heard the clip for myself. There is no mistaking that the comment was not intentional. Lenihan was so flustered he immediately took a station break. Unfortunately for him, the station managers don't want to hear it - he's gone for accidentally saying "coon", end of story. In addition, the Belleville News Democrat reports that he was suspended Thursday from his job at Logan College of Chiropractic, where he's taught anatomy and neuroanatomy since September 2004.

The station and Logan College should have the right to fire or suspend Lenihan for contract violation at the drop of a hat - though I am not sure what part of his contract with Logan College he might have violated with this word mispoken while at another job. The actions of the station and Logan College reflect an atmosphere of fear bordering on paranoia. As Larry Elder notes in the News Democrat article, black radio hosts have said far worse without reprisals. Double standards are always worrisome, as is an irrational fear of a particular word.

But that isn't why I was disturbed to hear this story. You see, I have a cousin named Dave Lenahan (not Lenihan - note spelling difference) who has been a songwriter and DJ in Ohio for roughly my entire life. I haven't kept up with his radio career over the last five years or so, and it wouldn't have been impossible for him to have recently started a gig in St. Louis without first clearing it with me. I thought it was him being introduced on Sean Hannity's show tonight. It didn't sound quite like my cousin, but with that crappy cell phone it was tough to tell. I imagined the blood draining from the faces of my aunt and uncle as a potential national controversy whipped up around their son.

Thankfully, a little web searching showed that the guy getting screwed is some guy I don't know. That doesn't make what happened to him okay, but I would really just as soon not have it be my cousin sitting there on Hannity and Combs tonight, trying to explain how he called the Secretary of State a "coon". And cousin Dave's parents - my godparents - can sleep easy tonight... unlike the Lenihan family, who has heard Dave called a member KKK on air over this incident, and who are probably wondering how they will replace his two jobs that are now in jeopardy.

March 22, 2006

The NPR Blog

There have been times when I wondered if Atlas Blogged was becoming the unofficial NPR Blog. I mean, consider the evidence.

I can't help it. I listen to NPR during my commute - not exclusively, but daily. They cover great topics, usually well. And they make their stories available on line for later listenings. That's a certain recipe for somebody like me to reference them frequently while blogging.

But now NPR has its own blog, called Mixed Signals. It is in my blogroll at left, much to Rammage's pain I am sure. But expect reference to Mixed Signals - for example, author JJ Sutherland's reaction to an article in the Toronto Star about whiny kids was essentially the same as mine, and it would have been useful to quote him if I hadn't felt like putting together a long post on the issue myself.

I worry about the comments section - what trolling will occur there? And I see some other aspects of the blog that I am not sure are as user friendly as they could be. But the content seems good, and I know I will be checking it out often. And Rammage, I have some posts percolating that take shots at NPR stories, so don't fear for my soul just yet.

The Obsolescence of Traditional Political Labels

Libertarians often grouse about the traditional political labels of "conservative" and "liberal". These terms don't mean the same thing from one nation to the next, or from one person to the next. Two people who identify with the same term may find that they are diametrically opposed on a multitude of real issues.

Libertarians purport to represent economic conservativism and social liberalism (though I feel the latter is often true only in comparison to self-identified conservatives - some self-styled libertarians are really conservatives who are fairly tolerant, but when push comes to shove, they don't all value personal liberties over social mores). But those Americans who identify as more politically liberal are decidedly illiberal when it comes to economics. Consider Merriam-Webster's definition of liberal as it relates to economics:

2 b : a theory in economics emphasizing individual freedom from restraint and usually based on free competition, the self-regulating market, and the gold standard.

Sounds nothing like most Democrats I know.

(In a moment of pointless sniping, allow me to note what happens if you ask Merriam-Webster for a definition of "economic liberalism":

The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary... Suggestions for economic liberalism: 1. agammaglobulinemic

The inability to categorize political persuasions accurately and easily causes difficulty for people who would like to discuss topics like the recent report that whiny children grow up to be conservatives, while self-reliant children become liberals.

Some news outlets have reported the findings without much comment - implying validity. Washington Post on the other hand dismisses the results of the study as ridiculous and wrong without ever investigating what the words are supposed to mean. Liberal a la Merriam Webster? Or political followers of Michael Dukakis (who was not refering to a then-future lame TV show when he mentioned "The L-Word")?

When I first read about the study in a Toronto Star article by Kurt Kleiner, it became immediately apparent that the research methods were poor. In fact, they sucked. Maybe that's just the hard scientist in me, lashing out at headline pop-psychology. But there is no reason why social science has to be carried out at a near-pseudoscience level of correlation-noting and post hoc ergo propter hoc conclusions.

The study followed 95 people from the Berkeley area over 20 years, whose personalities were measured subjectively by researchers who knew them personally. In fairness, Professor Block admits in his paper that Berkeley is not representative of the United States as a whole. But that isn't enough. Jonah Goldberg at Townhall.com takes a couple of shots at the methods of the study, noting

self-reliance explains seven percent of the variance between kids who bravely became liberal and tykes who supinely embraced conservative politics.

But still, what the hell is a conservative? What is a liberal? Everything else is beside the point if these two terms are not understood.

Our political beliefs are the natural extension of our personal philosophies, the groundwork for which is laid out in our earliest childhood. Do not mistake what I am saying - I would not attempt to predict the future voting patterns of 4-year-olds. But children are molded by their parents and their communities, and their personalities reflect their experiences. That really is not in debate.

It is very possible that children who desire greater structure and stability will grow into adults who value structure and stability. In fact, it is likely. And kids who desire structure and stability at 4 years of age are easy to pick out - and easy to label after subjectively evaluating how annoying you find them (let's face it, whining is a function of the personalities of the child and the interviewer - that could be avoided with better methods, but it wasn't).

Those children who desire greater structure and stability are not necessarily going to be more fiscally conservative. Nor are they necessarily going to vote Republican over Democrat, which is the implication in this study and report. But they are likely to grow into adults who are more cautious, more family and community oriented, and more interested in structured and traditional religion. This is the conservativism that the research points to. But this is not the same as saying that adults who are cautious and structured are voting for candidates we call "conservative". Democrats typically stand for many social programs that a cautious voter would not want to see eliminated. Democrats typically stand for a statist structure and government "social net" that is highly illiberal, but is misidentified as "liberal" on the political spectrum. Would a cautious voter want to see Social Security overhauled? Roe v Wade overturned? The BCS system eliminated?

Is this what you thought "conservative" meant?

From Kleiner's Toronto Star article:

The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity.

The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective.

This article and this study are describing social conservativism, which is not the same as economic or political conservativism. And both the article and the study are meaningless if they do not spell that out clearly. The terms "conservative" and "liberal" are too ambiguous and misleading. Call me conservative, but I want clarity in the language we are using in this conversation.

More from Kleiner:

Jeff Greenberg, a social psychologist at the University of Arizona... was [un] impressed.

"I found it to be biased, shoddy work, poor science at best," he said of the Block study. He thinks insecure, defensive, rigid people can as easily gravitate to left-wing ideologies as right-wing ones. He suspects that in Communist China, those kinds of people would likely become fervid party members.

Greenberg is spot on. Those children who seek stability and order are not looking for the ideals of the American GOP. They are looking for fewer challenges to the way things currently are. These are children who are stressed by moving to a new home or new school, or getting a new daily schedule, or seeing two men kiss passionately in public in downtown Richmond, Virginia. Is that conservativism? Yes, it is. And in this sense, it is conservative to vote for the incumbent, even if it is Ted Kennedy. When we choose the familiar over the unfamiliar, we are acting conservatively. Consider Merriam-Webster's definition of conservative as it relates to personal behavior:

3 a : tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions : TRADITIONAL b : marked by moderation or caution

Self-identified political conservatives may scoff at this research from Berkeley, and self-identified political liberals may smirk knowingly. But these reactions seem to be based on an imprecise understanding of the terms "conservative" and "liberal". I think this may be the biggest battle for libertarians (or other small parties); to explain what they stand for in terms that actually communicate some meaning. An understanding that there is more than one dimension of political identification is great (see the World's Smallest Political Quiz), but how many Americans know what a libertarian is?

One last note from Kleiner:

the work suggests that personality and emotions play a bigger role in our political leanings than we think. All of us, liberal or conservative, feel as though we've reached our political opinions by carefully weighing the evidence and exercising our best judgment. But it could be that all of that careful reasoning is just after-the-fact self-justification. What if personality forms our political outlook, with reason coming along behind, rationalizing after the fact?

Yes, it could be that. And that's okay, to a degree. Kleiner makes it sound as though we are self-deceiving, but I think it is instead helpful to realize that one's political position on any topic should be self-evident if one is of a clear understanding about one's personal values and philosophies. It is necessary to recognize whether we are seeking security and stability from our government, or freedom. That is what true conservativism and liberalism are all about, even if those words have been hijacked to mean something else by a large section of our media, and therefore our general population.

March 13, 2006

Claude Allen Innocent, Evil Twin Guilty?

I could not believe what I was hearing on NPR this afternoon.

Michael Fletcher of the Washington Post was talking with Michele Norris about the former Bush domestic policy advisor Claude Allen, shown above with his evil twin. Mr. Allen made news when he was arrested last week for refund fraud. The story did not strike me as very interesting - it's a pretty easy crime to commit, but it's pretty stupid, and this was over a matter of about $5,000. President Bush - loyal to a fault - didn't exactly come out with any support - "If the allegations are true, something went wrong in Claude Allen's life, and that is really sad. When I heard the story last night I was shocked, and my first reaction was one of disappointment, deep disappointment." That sounds to me like Mr. Bush knows Mr. Allen is guilty.

The biggest part of this story seemed to be that Allen is a black Republican - or maybe the story could serve as "yet another example" for people who see this administration as one of the more corrupt and evil in all of history.

But the story may have taken a turn for the bizzare:

Michele Norris: And we should note something, Michael. Apparently Claude Allen has a twin brother?

Michael Fletcher: Yes, he does. He has an identical twin brother who even close friends can't tell them apart when they see them... And close friends say that Mr. Allen has indicated to them that maybe his brother holds the key to this entire puzzling affair.

(Listen to their conversation here.)

An evil twin? What? I would love to see this have legs. Admit it, you would, too. You can't make that kind of stuff up!

Incidentally, Trey Ellis at Huffington Post feels that Mr. Allen's small time criminality is rooted in a deep self-loathing for going around acting white all of the time, as black Republicans are wont to do. Claude Allen stole in an attempt to act black, says Mr. Ellis, which gives Mr. Ellis an opportunity to explain to Mr. Allen that "blackness isn't crime".

I'm really glad Mr. Ellis spelled out that pretzel logic for of us - otherwise, this might just be a story about $5,000 worth of refund fraud by a guy who hangs out with the president of the United States (hopefully because his evil brother set him up - man that would be a great story). I never would have realized that Mr. Allen is a self-loathing black, otherwise.

The only possible explanation for a crime by a black Republican would be self-loathing and internal racial conflict.

Black Republicans should probably be watched carefully when they enter Target, right Mr. Ellis? It was bad enough to see Condeleeza Rice shopping for her Ferragamo shoes during Hurricane Katrina (when she should have been flying rescue missions). But thinking back, she was probably stealing those shoes, let's be honest. You know black Republicans.

February 25, 2006

Photo Caption Contest

Photo Caption Contest time! I have a personal like for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. I disagree with him on many issues, but I just love his straightforward manner and his lack of patience with stupid questions from the press.

But let's make fun of him anyway. Come on, look at that picture and come up with something!

Dubai and the Security of our Ports

I had no intention of writing about the sale of P&O ports management company to a Dubai firm. I really didn't. It just seems so cut and dried - there is absolutely no issue here, and there shouldn't be, and I don't understand what besides ignorance and xenophobia could convince a person otherwise.

But this is just too delicious not to share.

NPR's Adam Davidson:

I cannot think of another story I have ever covered, where what seems to be the facts are so far away from the public debate.

Click here to hear the whole report where Davidson absolutely embarasses and fisks Senators Schumer, Frist, Clinton, and Menedez, along with several House members. Davidson is actually laughing derisively during the report... because it is so, um, laughable. None of the Congressional offices contacted by Davidson were able to put him in contact with a single port security expert who backed their position. Not one!

Of course, NPR is just a mouthpiece of the White House (see previous), so maybe we would do better to get a perspective from outside our own borders. The Economist is a British based paper. Good old Great Britain, they're an ally of ours, so we can trust them. What do they say?

On February 13th, DP World, a ports operator owned by the government of Dubai, a small but economically ambitious member of the United Arab Emirates, paid $6.8 billion to acquire P&O, a British firm which runs a global network of maritime terminals. With P&O came six American ports—Miami, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, New Jersey and New York...

To his credit, George Bush has risen above such populism, reasserting his free-trade principles by promising to veto any legislation that tries to block the takeover. Mr Bush's problem is that, with the exception of Jimmy Carter and John McCain, no prominent politician seems inclined to speak out on his side. With mid-term elections looming in November, Congress may well find enough votes to override the presidential veto...

Underneath all the posturing is one legitimate worry: ports are one of America's weak spots when it comes to national security. Only 5% of the containers that bring 2 billion tonnes of freight to the ports each year are inspected on arrival. That is up from 2% before September 11th 2001, but is still worryingly low. Weapons of mass destruction could be smuggled in and, if the ports themselves were targets, closures or even interruptions would disrupt the global supply chain, says William Daly of Control Risks, a consultancy. This would mean potentially huge consequences for the American and world economies.

But will letting DP World operate there really make a material difference to that risk? Nobody denies that Dubai, though pro-western, is a notoriously porous place, with blind eyes reputedly turned to shipments of drugs and arms. A.Q. Khan's Pakistani nuclear-smuggling network, for instance, was hidden behind a Dubai front. But that does not mean DP World is unfit. It is a globally respected firm with an American chief operating officer, Ted Bilkey, and an American-educated chairman. When Mr Bush nominated an American manager from DP World to a ports post in the Department of Transport last month, nobody objected (though they are complaining now). The company will not own the American ports and it has no incentive to run them badly. Just as under P&O, American coast guards, customs and immigration people will remain fully responsible for security.

The United Arab Emirates is a member of America's Container Security Initiative, which allows American customs officials to inspect cargo in foreign ports before it leaves for America. The employees will continue to be unionised (and presumably patriotic) American citizens. Any Arab employees whom DP World ships in will be subject to American visa approval, no easy matter nowadays.

Alas, America's politicians seem to be in no mood to discuss this issue rationally. So much easier, and more popular, to base policy on the prejudice that every Arab is a potential terrorist.

I'm sure none of this matters to those who are opposed to the sale. But I think it's a real shame. I've been to Dubai, and it was one of the best experiences of my six years in the United States Navy. They were very pro-modernization, with beautiful architecture, huge malls, and a traditional Gold Souk that was an amazing marketplace with fantastic deals and pro-American passers-by. You should see the place. I can't wait to go back.

If you are unmoved, and you have a really good argument against the purchase of P&O by a frim from Dubai, let me know. And you might want to drop a line to Senators Schumer, Frist, Clinton, and Menedez. Because right now they are grasping at straws.

February 19, 2006

What is the Value of Algebra?

You will never need to know algebra.

Richard Cohen of the Washington Post writes an open letter to a high school dropout named Gabriela:

The L.A. school district now requires all students to pass a year of algebra and a year of geometry in order to graduate. This is something new for Los Angeles (although 17 states require it) and it is the sort of vaunted education reform that is supposed to close the science and math gap and make the U.S. more competitive. All it seems to do, though, is ruin the lives of countless kids. In L.A., more kids drop out of school on account of algebra than any other subject. I can hardly blame them.

Oh, no. Is this guy really going to tell students that one of the subjects we most need to improve in our schools is useless? Why would he do that?

Most of math can now be done by a computer or a calculator. On the other hand, no computer can write a column... Gabriela, sooner or later someone's going to tell you that algebra teaches reasoning. This is a lie propagated by, among others, algebra teachers. Writing is the highest form of reasoning. This is a fact. Algebra is not.

I am almost at a loss for words. The hubris is so thick that it seems like sarcasm... but there is no follow-through. It is not sarcasm. He is serious. He thinks that he never uses algebra. He thinks that it ruins lives to tell students that they have to learn it in order to get a high school diploma.

Part of me really wants to get worked up over this. I'd like to ask Mr. Cohen if he feels any differently about literature, because his column reminds me of those people who drag their child into the bookstore and demand the books that are assigned by the school, and then stare in horror as the books are delivered. "Oh my GOD! She has to read that whole thing? Look at the size of that book, and it looks so boring! What the hell does she need to read this for? Augh!"

But part of me is too tired for Mr. Cohen and his kind. Good for you, Mr. Cohen. There is nothing so satisfying as the casual dismissal of things you do not like, is there? I am sure it makes you feel like Peter Pan to tell the students of this nation that they are wasting their lives away in the persuit of education. But even in this dismissal of learning, Cohen may have taught the careful reader a lesson: One need know nothing more than how to type, in order to get a job as a journalist.

This article is cross-posted at WulfTheTeacher, as are most of my science or education posts.

Mr. Cohen is addressed by many other bloggers out there, including Dave Ex Machina, who failed trigonometry and got a degree in English, only to later rediscover math and pursue (abortedly?) a career as a math teacher. He says;

Don’t listen to Richard Cohen, who failed at something and now wants you to fail as well, so that he can be justified in hating and fearing that which he wasn’t good at. He doesn’t care about your well-being, he simply wants to justify his own beliefs. Don’t let him or anyone else convince you to close a door in your life for no good reason.

Are these really one problem, stated two different ways?

Another blogger on the topic is Hodges Lab, whose reaction sounds very, very familiar:

Regardless of how he tries to frame it, he really is defending ignorance by defending walking out on education. This makes me wonder how Cohen would react to an engineer telling young students that they don't have learn to communicate effectively in order to get a job.

One is tempted to think that Cohen's article is an attempt at over-the-top satire, like suggesting for the starving to eat their own children. But even after re-reading it twice, I don't think it is...

February 14, 2006

That's So Brokeback

One of my administrators gave me the scoop on a nearby high school that made the Richmond Times-Dispatch today:

Parents and other interested spectators will have to do the cheering for the Douglas Freeman boys basketball team at tonight's Colonial District basketball tournament quarterfinal.
Freeman's principal, Dr. Edward Pruden Jr., has banned all students from the Rebels' game against visiting Maggie Walker Governor's School. The Rebels won the district regular-season title and are the top seeds in the tournament. The ban doesn't affect Maggie Walker students...
The ban is punishment for an inappropriate cheer during last Friday's home game against archrival Mills Godwin.

Their inappropriate cheer that went unreported in the T-D? Some Freeman students singled out a Godwin player and referred to him as "Brokeback Bobby" all night. The school was concerned about proper public decorum, sexual harassment lawsuits, and general sportsmanship.

Um, especially that part about the lawsuits.

Pruden has expressed in the past that he wants the students to cheer for Freeman and not against the opposition, and especially not to single out an individual player. "We were shocked he banned students from a home game," said Laura Rothenberg, a senior who has been a part of the cheering section for four years. "It has made us step back and see that Dr. Pruden took it to heart and was offended. Once everyone cools down, we can accept the fact that it was inappropriate and come around and start with new momentum."

Pruden has expressed in the past that he wants the students to cheer for Freeman and not against the opposition, and especially not to single out an individual player.

The ban covers one game. The district tournament continues at Douglas Freeman with the semifinals tomorrow night and the final Friday. Freeman, as the district champion, already has earned a berth in next week's Central Region tournament and will have a home game Feb. 21.

But it's not just an issue at high schools, as fans of the Gonzaga basketball team have been in the news lately for the exact same thing. The response there?

...the faculty advisers for the Kennel Club booster group urged students to avoid "inappropriate chants"...

There is no ban of the entire student body. There is open discussion on campus of what is appropriate and what is not. High school students are not too young to be treated the same way. As one of my openly gay students noted to me today, teenagers are more offended about not being treated as mature individuals, and having the entire student body punished for the actions of a few, than by the chanting of words that are used as slang throughout the school anyway.

"That principal is so... brokeback!" he said with an ironic smile as he swept out of the room.

These kids know what is right and what is wrong. It is just that they sometimes need to be reminded of it, and told that wrong behavior will not be tolerated. They don't need to be summarily barred from a school event just so the administration can cover their butts.

Reduced to a Caption Contest

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Saddam Hussein is now on a hunger strike. This news is lower on the American radar than the fact that the Vice President waited 22 hours to tell the media that he didn't kill anybody.

So let's see what you've got. Give us your best caption for this image... I think it is just begging for a good one.

February 12, 2006

The Popularity and Influence of Blogs

Do your friends read your blog? Do all of your friends read your blog? Do you sometimes feel as though the entire world is reading your blog?

We at AtlasBlogged never feel that way, either. Now we know why.

Gallup's annual Lifestyle survey, conducted Dec. 5-8, 2005, finds only 9% of Internet users saying they frequently read blogs, another 11% read them occasionally, 13% say they rarely read them, while 66% never read them.

(emphasis mine, because I find it amazing!)

We really shouldn't be surprised... this week alone I spoke with a half dozen educated, well-read friends who had not seen the Muhammed Cartoons, and had no idea how to find them. Some people just don't visit the blogosphere, and are content to get their news from NPR, CNN, and GoogleNews, though I cannot imagine why.

What I do find surprising is the finding that these numbers are almost identical to last year - the number of people reading blogs in the United States does not appear to be growing.

In a blatant attempt to impress the graph-loving Captain Capitalism, I am including this bar graph, which I found at the story I linked earlier (okay, here):

Commentary from Gallup:

To put blog readership in context, the December survey found that checking online for news and weather is done regularly by 72% of Web users. Fifty-two percent regularly shop online, 40% pay bills, and 28% play games. At 20%, blog reading is on par with downloading music and participating in online auctions such as eBay...
It is important to note it's not just blog readership that suffers from anemic growth: Americans' likelihood of doing most of the other online activities has not changed over the past two years. As reported in a Feb. 6, 2005, Gallup news article, of the nine activities measured in December 2003, the only notable differences are modest increases in the percentages using the Internet for making travel arrangements and paying bills, and a slight decline in the percentage using instant messaging.
Furthermore, the percentage of Americans who use the Internet to any degree has not changed during the past three years -- roughly 75% of U.S. adults say they use the Internet on at least some occasions.

The story also notes that readership is skewed to the younger generation, who might only be visiting My Space or something like that. Not that I want to sound like a blog snob, but come on.

Obviously, the raw numbers don't tell the whole story. Michelle Malkin might not have the same viewer numbers as the TV show Survivor, but she and other powerful bloggers are able to get the ear of policy makers, and blogs are able to steer the coverage on some news stories. Gallup recognizes this:

Of course many bloggers will argue that the influence of blogs is immeasurably greater than their readership statistics would suggest because of the disproportionate influence they have on opinion leaders, political insiders, and modern news media. That may be true, just as it may also be true that, by providing a competitive and handy marketplace for discount and used goods, online auctions such as eBay -- used regularly by only about a quarter of Web users -- are making a mark on the broader worlds of e-commerce and retail shopping.

I think they just compared AtlasBlogged with eBay.

February 8, 2006

When They Eulogize Me, I Hope They Stay On Target

I don't know much about Coretta Scott King as a person. I have no idea whether she would have approved of the political grandstanding that occurred at her funeral yesterday in Georgia. I don't know if somewhere out there, her soul was laughing at President Bush for having to endure the situation. But personally, I don't think it was the time or the place. It was shameful.

Former presidents Jimmy Carter, George Bush and Bill Clinton, as well as Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., Michigan congressman John Conyers and poet Maya Angelou, were among the more than three dozen speakers during the funeral. The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who cofounded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., spoke directly to the current administration's foreign and domestic policies. "Our marvelous presidents and governors come to mourn and praise ... but in the morning will words become deeds that meet need?" he asked. The mourners rose to their feet in a roaring applause. "For war, billions more, but no more for the poor," he said, drawing a roaring standing ovation from the phrase...

Former President Carter was among the speakers who took political shots at Bush, somehow equating FBI wiretaps of the King family in the 1960s to the NSA wiretap controversy of today, and telling the crowd that their skin color matters when a hurricane hits (see previous).

BizzyBlog notes there is also the question of veractiy, because people keep harping on the issue of whether there were WMD in Iraq. The Anchoress notes that the Democratic Party shouldn't be remembered as the party that pushed for civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. And these are excellent points. But my primary thought in all of this is... why couldn't this funeral be a funeral? How long was it after the news of her death that these speakers decided to use the moment to grandstand? And is there any corner of their soul where they wish they had been as respectful and reserved (really!) as Senator Ted Kennedy?

Maybe some of the speakers should have read former president Bill Clinton's speech ahead of time.

I don't want us to forget that there's a woman in there, not a symbol...a real woman who lived and breathed and got angry and got hurt and had dreams and disappointments.

When I die, I don't care too much about the arrangements or what is said. But I do hope the people there can at least stay on topic if they decide to give any eulogy.

February 3, 2006

The Brussels Journal

UPDATE (10 Feb): Welcome, readers from the Brussels Journal! We have been seeing quite a bit of visitors from there, and we appreciate it. Please read our articles here, here, here, here, here, and here for our commentary on the cartoons.

I've been asked by several people what I think of the "Danish Cartoons". So I'll tell you what I think: I think Americans are very slow to catch this story, and our press is not doing it justice. Bloggers are in an uproar, but most of them seem unfamiliar with the story other than having read it in the Washington Post this week.

If you want to know about these cartoons, or see them, and see what is going on in Europe and the Middle East because of them, go to The Brussels Journal.

A few key articles:
22 Oct "Jihad Against Danish Newspaper"
and:
27 Oct "Cartoon Case Escalates into International Crisis"
21 Dec "Europe Criticises Copenhagen over Cartoons"
19 Jan "Moderate Muslims Oppose Imams"
24 Jan "European Appeasement Reinforces Muslim Extremism"
27 Jan "Norway Apologizes over Muhammad Cartoons"
31 Jan "Danish Paper Apologizes"
03 Feb "Muslim Radical Defends Freedom of Speech, Deplores Europe’s Hypocrisy"

Kashmir held a province-wide strike over these cartoons back in December (see here).

By the way, if you have read this far, let me just suggest that The Brussels Journal be on your "at least once a week" list. Think it over.

January 15, 2006

Socialist Victory in Chile

Socialist Michelle Bachelet won Chile's presidential with 53.5 pct of the vote and a seven-point lead over her rival, according to partial results with most of the ballots counted.

Yay. Socialism. Her opponent Sebastian Pinera was able to pinpoint the problem:

'We wanted to win this election ... we did not achieve it because a majority of people decided otherwise,

Well, that darned Democracy that we tell our kids is the pinnacle of political achievement. The thing is, of course, that the rights of the individual can be voted away in a pure democracy. That's what socialism is all about.

Let me take a moment to share a concept that is not a driving factor in the politics of Chile or, for that matter, the United States, but really lights a fire in me, personally:

It is evident that the right of acquiring and possessing property, and having it protected, is one of the natural, inherent, and inalienable rights of man. Men have a sense of property: Property is necessary to their subsistence, and correspondent to their natural wants and desires; its security was one of the objects that induced them to unite in society. No man would become a member of a community, in which he could not enjoy the fruits of his honest labor and industry. The preservation of property then is a primary object of the social compact.

These are the words of Supreme Court Justice William Paterson in 1797. If Ayn Rand ever knocked your socks off, you should read the founding fathers.

So Michelle Bachelet, the socialist, wins the presidency of Chile. As upset as I am, I am forced to admit that this democratic election is better than when Chile was a dictatorship. And as Publius Pundit notes, she's no Hugo Chavez - check out Publius here for an interesting profile on the woman who is the new Chilean president.

Hurricane Katrina and the Media: Looking Back, Moving Forward

The following is an email that went out to the entire VCU community from the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs:

To the VCU Community:

It took a hurricane - not since 9/11 has the national press beenforced to confront the issues of race and class in America and in so doing, redefined the country's political landscape. At our annual Living the Dream program honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the VCU community has a unique opportunity to learn about the Katrina disaster from a panel of media professionals who will share their experiences in words, photographs and video. Their presentation will challenge us to consider how well prepared are we to take care of the most vulnerable citizens in our own community. Please join us for:
Hurricane Katrina and the Media: Looking Back, Moving Forward
Thursday, January 26, 2006
7:00 p.m.
W. E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts

Panelists:
Eva Russo, staff photographer, Richmond Times-Dispatch
Aaron Gilchrist, co-anchor, NBC 12News Today
Gordon Hickey, special projects editor, Richmond Times-Dispatch
Will Sutton, visiting professor, Hampton University's Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications
Panel Moderator: Robert Holsworth, acting dean, College of Humanities and Sciences

This program is free and open to the public. Please plan to attend and encourage your colleagues, students, and friends in the community to join us.

Contrary to the beliefs of some friends who read this blog last week and have telephoned or emailed their comments, I am aware that poor people suffered and died, and I am aware that black people suffered and died. But they didn't suffer and die because they were poor, or because they were black - and these are the "reasons" the media kept giving for the death and destruction laid upon the residents of New Orleans. Kanye West was not openly ridiculed for his ridiculous comments. The Knight-Ridder findings have not overtaken the initial sensationalism as the way we think about Hurricane Katrina. In fact, I expect the words, photographs and video on the 26th to be more of the same. I am hoping to be wrong about that, but we shall see...

January 8, 2006

When the Media is Wrong - The Sago Mine Blunder, and Almost Everything You 'Knew' About Katrina Is Wrong

When a newspaper prints something that is later found to be incorrect, it often (sometimes?) prints a retraction or correction. When everybody gets a story wrong, finger pointing is involved. We have seen quite a bit of this surrounding the story of 12 miners killed in Sago Mine in West Virginia, with the media passing the unofficial and erroneous report that all miners were alive, only to have to turn around a few hours later and inform the world that no, the story was botched, only was had survived after all. Reporters have written about how much worse the news seemed, coming that way - not just for the families but for the poor reporters and photographers.

They all tell us that the families have suffered from the error, but I have yet to see a reporter or network apologize for their part in the error. I imagine some have - I hope so - but I sure haven't seen it.

Who owes the families an apology? More importantly, who owes the public some better fact checking? Where do we go to get a retraction and correction when the entire media botches coverage of a large story, like New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina? Every newspaper, network, radio show and magazine told us that the victims of Katrina were "so poor, and they are so black" (Wolf Blitzer's words but it was the same message everywhere - see FAIR for examples).

And yet, as Barton Hinkle said in the Richmond Times-Dispatch a couple of days ago, Almost Everything You 'Knew' About Katrina Is Wrong.

Hurricane Katrina no longer is making banner headlines, but it should -- if only because so many of the original headlines turned out to have, on closer inspection, no basis in fact.

I got really worked up reading the article, but when I read the commentary at Cafe Hayek on Mr. Hinkle's article, in all honesty, I got distracted. (Cafe Hayek is such a good blog - their gems are the bright shiny objects that keep me from concentrating. Sorry.)

Back to Mr. Hinkle:

For instance, Knight-Ridder recently conducted a cross-tabulation of the location of corpses with Census-tract data from pre-Katrina New Orleans. Contrary to the almost universal impression left by early reports, the examination found that Katrina's victims were not dispropationately poor. Nor were they disproportionately black. For that matter, lack of transportation did not turn out to be a chief cause of death: "At many addresses where the dead were found," the wire service reports, "their cars remained in the driveways, flood-ruined symbols of fatal miscalculation."

Mr. Hinkle calls out the Washington Post and Newsweek for their false statements on Katrina's disproportionate devastation. I will call out my only paid news subscription - the Economist ran articles and even a cover photo that fed into the false and misleading reports that white people got out and black people drowned.
Where is the retraction? The apology to the reader?

A little more of Hinkle:

Hurricane Katrina exposed the establishment media's obsession with race and poverty, to the point of ignoring reality. Countless media outlets reported what amounts to a now entrenched urban legend -- one they invented themselves out of whole cloth. The figures demonstrating its falsity have received, by comparison, infinitesimal coverage: Fewer than two dozen newspapers carried Knight-Ridder's story about its findings. Revealingly, many of them wrote headlines to the effect that the numbers "bring surprises," or "shake beliefs," or show that "assumptions" were incorrect, or "challenge . . . assumptions." But those beliefs and assumptions did not materialize out of thin air. The initial news coverage greatly shaped them.
For too many in the media, it evidently is not enough for a massive storm to destroy a city and kill nearly a thousand people; it must do so in such a way as to permit lugubrious lectures on what Newsweek censoriously terms America's "Enduring Shame" -- "poverty, race, and class."

Okay, I will allow that some reporters and agencies are trying to expose the truth (Dave Zeeck sounds positive about it the situation), but it is not even a shadow of the divisive media frenzy that we saw rising like flood water immediately after Katrina. Selective sensationalism and the reporting of fiction as fact are simply acceptable practice - because everybody's doing it.

December 23, 2005

NPR is Clearly Biased to the Left Right?

I admit it - I haven't been listening to NPR in the last couple of weeks, and I have no idea what's going on there. But I am having a hard time buying that it has gone right-wing since I went on vacation. Yet that's exactly what MediaMatters.org is claiming, based on comments by NPR ombudsman Jeffrey A. Dvorkin.

Now, it is true that if we take two of Mr Dvorkin's comments and place them in a vacuum for comparison, he appears to contradict himself.
Dec 14:

NPR does not lean on the so-called conservative think tanks as many in the audience seem to think.

I will state it again: I believe NPR relies too much on think tanks in general and on conservative think tanks.

I am a regular listener, the last two weeks or so notwithstanding. I have no idea how objective listeners could think that NPR leans on conservative think tanks - the key word being objective. Most likely, the think tanks in question are simply farther to the right than the complaining members of the NPR audience. This will be easy to fix - let's just fire off some letters to Mr Dvorkin complaining that the tanks are to the left of Atlas Blogged and its readers, and the whole thing will balance out.
But what about Mr Dvorkin contradicting himself? Well, let's take a look at his comments with a slightly different boldfaced emphasis than did MediaMatters.org...

Mr Dvorkin first says that NPR does not lean on the so-called conservative think tanks as many in the audience seem to think, and goes on in that same column to spell out a conservative think tank bias of "Right 239, Left 141". Evidently this is not as much of a rightward lean as the audience thought. In addition, Mr Dvorkin's December 14 column spells out reasons why there might be an imbalance in think tank quotes - for example, an inherent bias in the story itself. NPR Pentagon Correspondent John Hendren spells it out in particular with reference to a report on November 30 about the Department of Defense planting pro-U.S. stories in Iraqi newspapers.

using a lone conservative was not merely justifiable in the story, it was necessary for balance. Out of four sources whose voices were heard in that story, two were critical of the military's policy of planting news stories in Iraqi papers, and a third was Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld talking about Iraq's "free media" before news of the program was disclosed. To neglect a point of view of a significant segment of the public, and certainly a significant segment of defense analysts, would slant the story.

Back to Mr Dvorkin:

So I'm with the listeners who complain about NPR’s decision not to more fully identify the think tanks. For many, the lack of a political context can sound too much like "inside-the-Beltway" reporting and I agree. NPR also needs to be consistent about how think tanks are identified; too often conservative institutions are identified as such but liberal ones are not.
More importantly, NPR needs to make sure that it is presenting an appropriate range of ideas and not just from one side of the debate.

Now to the column on the 19th:

So, for those who missed it, I will state it again: I believe NPR relies too much on think tanks in general and on conservative think tanks in particular -- especially when it comes to economics, and defense policy issues. NPR must make sure there is a better balance between liberal and conservative experts in these partisan and contentious areas.

As expected, this is all about context. Taken out of context, these two comments are nearly identical. Kept in context, they actually make sense.

MediaMatters further blinds the horse by failing to recognize Mr Dvorkin's overall theme on Dec 19; Some listeners complain about everything. The conservatives complain about Terry Gross. The liberals complain about quoting the Cato institute in economic pieces. Atlas Blogged complains about this all being funded by the government. You can't please everybody.

Others blogging on this topic include Life, Liberty, and Property fisks the numbers (and has a great name), K Marx The Spot (you have to see this)

December 20, 2005

Blogs Bigger Than Jesus

Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer Daniel RubinInquirer quotes Google as his source when he says blogs have become:

Bigger than Jesus. Bigger than sex.

While that is an amusing way to think of it, and I always appreciate a reference to the Beatles, I did enjoy the actual facts and figures laid out in the article.

Nine percent of American adults who surf the Web write blogs, according to Pew's Internet and American Life Project - that's 13 million people. And 27 percent of Internet users read them - 39 million Americans. That's only counting those 18 years old and up. Millions more young people post Web logs - diaries, sounding boards, screeds, commentaries that draw commentary - in places such as Xanga, LiveJournal, AOL and MySpace.

Hey Rammage, remember when our friend G-Dawg used to blog? That was great, wasn't it? Ah, the good old days...

On a similar topic, USA Today carried an article the other day on how people are using Google instead of remembering things. Speaking as a teacher who has internet access in the classroom, I can say that students had better get damned good with Google if they expect to make it in life, because they spend all of our lecture time on MySpace, posting their pictures and IMs to strangers around the world. With the computer open, the good Googlers can tell me just about anything I ask in under a minute, if it doesn't involve a calculation (give them an extra two if it does, Google does calculations you know... and unit conversions... try it!). But with the computer closed, it's no wonder why their standardized scores are dropping - they can't answer anything. I don't remember how bad the scores are at our school - why should I? I can Google it if I need to know.

November 15, 2005

Who is Ethical, Really?

An internal investigation at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) published its report today, declaring that its former chairman Kenneth Tomlinson is an unethical, partisan jerk.

Tomlinson resigned as the chairman of the CPB on November 4 because of the investigation alleging that he applied undue political pressure on public radio and television (discussed previously here).

Tomlinson is undoubtedly partisan - that's not the issue. And he might be a jerk, or not - I don't know, but that's also not the issue, either.

The issue is whether he is unethical. Allegations spring from the fact that Tomlinson applied a political test in pushing for the hiring of a new president and chief executive to lead the CPB - in other words, he is a loyal party bureaucrat. What Republican chair of any agency pushes for the hiring of a Democrat for a top position - or vice versa?

It is also alleged that Tomlinson acted inappropriately in secretly hiring outside consultants to monitor how partisan the shows on NPR and PBS are. But when push comes to shove, this comes down to the fact that NPR and PBS operate under different rules from the rest of the broadcast world. They are funded by taxpayers to the tune of $400 million dollars, and they expect a level of journalistic freedom from bureaucrats that is unrealistic in the private sector, where there is a financial bottom line, and the suits call the shots based on public demand - not based on party loyalty and partisan positioning. The justification for the CPB has become more nebulous and weak with every passing day.

NPR and PBS must be driven from the public trough. After five years of the federal government being controlled by the self-styled Party for Smaller Government, it has not yet happened. They have preferred to let partisan bureaucrats continue fighting over control of the federal dollars, growing the government larger and larger (see here).

Kenneth Tomlinson is gone from CPB, but does it actually herald any good and ethical change?

November 12, 2005

Michelle Malkin on Fox & Friends

My two favorite sources of news—Michelle Malkin and Fox News—have merged this morning as Michelle Malkin guest-hosts on the Saturday morning edition of Fox & Friends.

Malkin was joined by co-hosts Julian Phillips and Kiran Chetry. Chetry is an interesting choice for pairing with Malkin, and I can't help but wonder if this was done because they both have ties to the Montgomery County, Maryland area, or because Chetry and Malkin represent opposite ends of the political spectrum, the former being Fox News' most left-leaning host. Regardless, in the few segments that I watched, I didn't notice any conflicts arise between these two.

This move for Malkin, incidentally and if it becomes permanent, will absolutely drive the leftists crazy, who already hold a seething hatred for her [See here and especially here]. For my part, I thought she did a terrific job this morning. Malkin will bring a nice balance to the creeping RIFNOs (Republicans in Fox News Only) like Kiran Chetry.

October 22, 2005

Troop Morale

I saw the headline, "U.S. Troops Maintain High Morale in Iraq", and I clicked on it to read the story. Yahoo! was carrying a top story that focused on the high morale of U.S. troops? Could the AP be answering recent charges by the Media Research Center that

...network reporters giving the public an inordinately gloomy portrait of the situation [in Iraq]... the positive accomplishments of U.S. soldiers and Iraq’s new democratic leaders [are] being lost in a news agenda dominated by assassinations, car bombings and casualty reports?

Sadly, that was not the case.

The AP story made little to no mention of U.S. accomplishments in Iraq or positive interaction between American troops and the Iraqi people. Instead, according to this story, troop morale is kept artificially high by limiting soldier access to newspapers, and plying them with "a startling range of amenities, ranging from big screen televisions to the latest videogame systems packed into trailers that serve as homes to tens of thousands of soldiers."

In other words, morale is only good because our service members are oblivious to how bad they have it.

The story ends with a pot shot at the Secretary of Defense - a sure-fire way to keep up the morale of those soldiers lucky enough to evade the flashing lights and sneak a look at this particular story on line.

The Media Research Center's complaints can be found in full here, but basically their report accuses the network television news of excessive and increasing pessimism in their coverage of the war in Iraq, focusing only on terror attacks and neglecting the political process, heroism, good will, and economic growth occurring over there.

The MRC report has been met with smug righteousness (no pun intended) from conservatives (ex: here) and smug, sarcastic derision from liberals (ex: here).

MRC might be run out of Dick Cheney's garage for all I know, but they have a point. Sort of. The fact is that the media gives the news that they think will sell, and the people who watch the networks want to see that Bush's policies are causing the world to go to hell in a hand basket. The networks have always focused on the negatives more than the positives - it is an American punchline that there is exactly one "feel good" story per newscast, and it's at the very end. But does it really matter anymore? Fewer and fewer people are getting their news from the television, and fewer of them are trusting it. A Gallup Poll in June found that public confidence in newspapers and television has declined from 54 percent in 1989 to only 28 percent today – an all-time low.

Yes, it does matter. The television networks try to pass themselves off as objective, as do most newspapers and internet news sources, and even a couple of blogs. Any reporter, editor, broadcaster or institution has an inherent bias in their perspective, but people understand integrity. We expect a sincere attempt at objectivity from our news outlets, and we should not have to feel cynical about the bias that exists. But market forces always make themselves felt, which is why newspapers and televised news have been hemorraging viewers for years. (readers are viewers, right?) Just as in any other industry, the consumers will seek out that which they desire, especially in this day and age of the internet.

And that's the "feel good" story today at Atlas Blogged.

October 17, 2005

Inquiry into Hospital Deaths Widens

Atlas Blogged has been getting a lot of visitors lately from people who are doing web searches about Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans, where 45 dead bodies were discovered floating in the flooded first floor a few days after Hurricane Katrina hit the area. Shortly after the bodies were found, it was alleged that patients there were euthenised before medical workers evacuated. It has been suggested to me by friends, associates, and fellow bloggers that our previous article on the topic (How Did They Die?) was sensationalist and irresponsible, since the source was the Daily Mail (folks, "tabloid" is only derogatory in the US... the Mail is respectable).
The story was not carried by the MSM, so it couldn't have been true. I have been wondering what ever happened to the story - for a time there was precious little on it - but that may be changing. Curious about the number of people looking into the story (and stumbing across us) lately, I found that MSM outlets are suddenly ablaze with the story (check GoogleNews)

A state probe into reports that critically ill patients were left to die or were euthanized at a New Orleans hospital during the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has broadened to include an estimated 215 deaths at nursing homes and hospitals across the area, according to the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals. The Louisiana attorney general's office, which is overseeing the inquiry, has launched a "monumental investigation" that will examine what happened to patients and residents at 19 hospitals and nursing homes, spokeswoman Kris Wartelle said. The expansion of the probe -- which now includes 21 percent of the 1,035 Louisiana deaths linked to the hurricane Aug. 29 -- comes after a doctor at New Orleans' Memorial Medical Center alleged that some of the 45 patients who died there might have been euthanized to end their suffering.

(Indianapolis Star)

Dr. Bryant King, who was at Memorial during the period of time in question, told CNN that while he did not witness any acts of euthanasia, "most people know something happened that shouldn't have happened."

CNN disclosed that when Dr. King saw a physician with a handful of syringes approaching patients, he "decided he would have no part of what he believed was about to happen,” and left the hospital.

Another member of the hospital’s medical staff, nurse manager Fran Butler, told CNN: "Did they say to put people out of their misery? Yes.”
(NewsMax)

Will this see the light of day? Will the families of the dead know exactly how their loved ones died? We will be watching the investigation closely...

October 14, 2005

Condi Rice and Andrea Koppel

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was sharing the podium with President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan on Thursday, when he tried to dodge reporters. Reports are that Rice blocked his escape, and brought him back to the podium to answer some questions. I have heard that she is a no-nonsense, take-charge kind of woman, but this is great.

And the questions he faced from the media? Bravo to CNN Andrea Koppel for this beauty:

I have a question for both of you. Mr. President, one of your daughters controls the media. The other controls the main bank here. The opposition, the political opposition, is routinely harassed, arrested. What evidence is there that you are anything more than a dictator?

More at Gateway Pundit...

October 8, 2005

Earthquake Blogging for the BBC

Shaista Aziz, 28, is a UK-based Oxfam aid worker. She is keeping a blog (they are quaintly calling it an "online diary") of the South Asian earthquake disaster for the BBC News website.

After just two hours in the office I got a call asking me to get a visa and get on the next plane to Islamabad. I packed in a rush, forgetting everything I'm sure, and drove to the airport. I made the plane in the nick of time and tomorrow I'll wake up in Islamabad, hoping the scale of the disaster isn't as bad as we fear.

October 7, 2005

Al Gore: Democracy in Danger, so Democratize TV!

Former Vice President Al Gore recently announced that he is spearheading a new cable channel called "Current TV". It launched on August 1 and is available on Direct TV and some cable providers. If you weren't aware of this, then you soon will be - the station is available in 20 million homes so far, and is expected to grow. It is basically video news blogging, where anybody with a video camera can create a short news entry of 15 minutes or less, and send it in for consideration. Current TV staff then review the programs and choose the best ones to broadcast.

Gore thinks his new venture will supplant traditional televised news in an internet world, for a blogging generation. And it might - the traditional televised media has an outdated format, and is nearly finished. Couldn't this take its place?

On October 5, Gore criticized the media in a speech in New York (transcript here). He opened by saying,

I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave danger.

Grave danger? Is there another kind?

More Gore:

On the eve of the nation's decision to invade Iraq, our longest serving senator, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, stood on the Senate floor asked: "Why is this chamber empty? Why are these halls silent?"

Senator Byrd's question is like the others that I have just posed here: he was saying, in effect, this is strange, isn't it? Aren't we supposed to have full and vigorous debates about questions as important as the choice between war and peace?

Those of us who have served in the Senate and watched it change over time, could volunteer an answer to Senator Byrd's two questions: the Senate was silent on the eve of war because Senators don't feel that what they say on the floor of the Senate really matters that much any more. And the chamber was empty because the Senators were somewhere else: they were in fundraisers collecting money from special interests in order to buy 30-second TV commercials for their next re-election campaign.

I admit I am impressed with his effort at avoiding a partisan stance. He is criticizing the entire Senate, possibly minus Byrd. But has he lost it? Do Senators really feel that what they say on the floor doesn't matter? By virtue of his experience, he has me at a disadvantage, but I do personally care what is said on the floor of the Senate. The problem is, most of it is not worthy of note - it is parliamentarian, partisan bickering. We all know that the deals are made in private, and the grandstanding is done on TV, so the floor of the Senate probably isn't very important after all.

Newspapers are hemorrhaging readers and, for the most part, resisting the temptation to inflate their circulation numbers. Reading itself is in sharp decline, not only in our country but in most of the world. The Republic of Letters has been invaded and occupied by television. The internet is a formidable new medium of communication, but it is important to note that it still doesn't hold a candle to television.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't watch television, and I certainly don't use it to get information about the world. Why would you turn on the TV when you have high speed internet available? And soon you will have that available wherever you go, due to the collectivist democracies we call American cities. Don't be surprised if Gore's idea is profitable, but is eventually supplanted by video blogs online.

(Rammage, please look into upgrading AtlasBlogged to video soon.)

Whether it is called a Public Forum, or a "Public Sphere" , or a marketplace of ideas, the reality of open and free public discussion and debate was considered central to the operation of our democracy in America's earliest decades.

I really, honestly think he makes a great point. It's worth a read. Again, the transcript to his speech is here.

One last highlight (with emphasis added by me) - think about how exciting it is to be alive for all of this:

The greatest source of hope for reestablishing a vigorous and accessible marketplace for ideas is the Internet. Indeed, Current TV relies on video streaming over the Internet as the means by which individuals send us what we call viewer-created content... We also rely on the Internet for the two-way conversation that we have every day with our viewers enabling them to participate in the decisions on programming our network...
[but] as exciting as the Internet is, it still lacks the single most powerful characteristic of the television medium; because of its packet-switching architecture, and its continued reliance on a wide variety of bandwidth connections (including the so-called "last mile" to the home), it does not support the real-time mass distribution of full-motion video.
It is true that video streaming is becoming more common over the Internet, and true as well that cheap storage of streamed video is making it possible for many young television viewers to engage in what the industry calls "time shifting" and personalize their television watching habits. Moreover, as higher bandwidth connections continue to replace smaller information pipelines, the Internet's capacity for carrying television will continue to dramatically improve. But in spite of these developments, it is television delivered over cable and satellite that will continue for the remainder of this decade and probably the next to be the dominant medium of communication in America's democracy. And so long as that is the case, I truly believe that America's democracy is at grave risk.

Others talking:
Brendan Nyhan, focusing more on Gore's eventual partisanship and penchant for stretching the truth - good post.

October 2, 2005

Google to Blanket San Francisco in Wireless Internet Service

On Friday, Google filed an application to blanket the city of San Francisco with "WiFi" service that would enable anyone in San Francisco to connect to the Internet. Isn't that great?

Well, my flags went up when I read why this was done:

...In response to a request from Mayor Gavin Newsom, who is looking for a company to finance a free wireless network to lower the financial barriers to Internet access in his city.

Note that the article talks about how great this is for Google, and of course this is great for people who want to cruise the blogs from the park benches, for free.

But there is no such thing as a free WiFi.

If it were economically viable for Google to provide this service to the city and make up the expense through ads (the source of almost all of Google's profits), they would be doing it everywhere. So far, they have only tested out in a small area of New York City's Bryant Park, to my knowledge.

Russell Shaw points out why Bryant Park makes economic sense. He makes a great point, but when he explains why all of San Fran makes sense, he leaves out the fact that the city will be paying Google (or somebody else) to do this. Smell the money? That's why Google spokesman Nate Tyler said Saturday that the company doesn't have any plans to offer a WiFi service outside the San Francisco Bay area.

"Unwiring San Francisco is a way for Google to support our local Bay Area community," Tyler said. "It is also an opportunity to make San Francisco a test-ground for new location-based applications and services that enable people to find relevant information exactly when and where they need it."

All true, but again, if this were viable without San Francisco's city government funding "free" WiFi for the city, it would be done in your hometown, too.

Is it?

It sure isn't here in Virginia. WiFi stops where San Francisco's municipal funding stops.

For now.

It is already considered the government's responsibility to provide internet access to citizens in schools and libraries. This development will encourage politicians to promise WiFi in other cities, for "free", paid for by those silly taxpayers. I don't really see any way to prevent it - voters will love it, mayors will approve it, you and I will pay for our "free" access and the end result is that I will someday be able to write articles for Atlas Blogged from the park bench downtown, for free, at greater cost to me than my current arrangement. We slide farther down the collectivist slope because most voters don't see a downside. In fact, they are probably more concerned about Google taking over their internet.

Don't think so? Check here. And here.

September 23, 2005

NY Times: Predictable, Consistent

It's uncanny how many times this blog, in its short existence, has blasted the NY Times on their coverage failure. In just the last week there have been two entries written on the dying medium. On September 18th Wulf wrote:

Thus, a lack of coverage on a topic by the Times is an editorial statement in and of itself. With great readership comes great responsibility, and the Times has not been living up to that responsibility.

Indeed. And while the Times' staff is busy feeling self-important, Michelle Malkin and Hugh Hewitt are having a field day with the emerging NY Sen. Chuck Schumer scandal:

THE NYTIMES OMBUSDMAN IS TOTALLY WORTHLESS
Memo to DSCC Staffers

As of this writing, the NY Times remains the last of the major New York publications to report this story. Clearly it does meet the requisite "all the news that's fit to print within the confines of our agenda" criterion.

This question will reverberate throughout the Blogosphere for the next several weeks, so Atlas Blogged might as well echo it too: What if the shoe had been on the other foot? How many weeks in a row would the NY Times run this story on their front page if Republican operatives had done this to a Democrat minority? And what would it be called by the MSM? 1-800-FREECREDITGATE?

Ho-hum. I suppose it goes without saying that the ACLU is not bothered.

September 21, 2005

NYT Cutting Jobs

The New York Times Co. is cutting 500 jobs companywide. The Boston Globe (owned by NYT) reports:

The Times Co. will slash about 250 jobs from its flagship New York Times broadsheet, 45 of them within the Times' newsroom... 160 from its New England Media Group alone, 35 of them in the Globe's newsroom... the Times' announcement came on the same day the Philadelphia Inquirer and its sister newspaper said they'll ax 100 newsroom jobs due to reduced revenue.

The Times, they are a changing. Tell me that print newspaper has any future. Their online editions would stand a chance if these papers could just stay ahead of those amateur hacks in the blogosphere. (see previous)

Incidentally, no cuts are forthcoming here at Atlas Blogged.

September 18, 2005

Taking the Times to Task

How does one decide which news is fit to print? We at Atlas Blogged have no special formula to address this issue, and as such we print an eclectic mix of whatever strikes our fancy. And we try not to be pretentious about it.
But at the New York Times, there is a pretention to carry all of the news that is fit to print. That's their motto. Thus, a lack of coverage on a topic by the Times is an editorial statement in and of itself. With great readership comes great responsibility, and the Times has not been living up to that responsibility.

Mediacrity takes the Times to task today with a short article highlighting the lack of any coverage of recent events in Gaza, which is of course just the latest example of the paper being called out for its biased coverage of the region. For example, Tom Gross was in the National Review railing over this same issue back in March.

It's no wonder the MSM is getting killed by the blogosphere.

September 17, 2005

Emergency Planning Officials had been Indicted in Louisiana

At The American Thinker:

The Los Angeles Times breaks the story today that several “senior officials” in Louisiana’s emergency planning agencies were under indictment for waste and fraud concerning expenditure of federal funds for disaster mitigation before Katrina hit. Federal auditors are still trying to account for nearly $60 million that was sent to the state from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), dating back to 1998. In March, FEMA also demanded that Louisiana repay $30.4 million to the federal government. Most of these funds were sent to the state under the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, which was to be used to retrofit property and improve flood control facilities.

The American Thinker's link is to a LA Times website that requires a password, but I found the story by going to Google News.
To be clear, the indictment occurred before Hurricane Katrina. But this story helps to explain how the situation in New Orleans could have gone so poorly. Oh, by the way... the office that is the target of this investigation is the same one that will be responsible for administering a large portion of the federal aid anticipated for victims of Katrina.

Much of the FEMA money that was unaccounted for was sent to Louisiana under the Hazard Mitigation Grant program, intended to help states retrofit property and improve flood control facilities, for example. The $30.4 million FEMA is demanding back was money paid into that program and others, including a program to buy out flood-prone homeowners. As much as $30 million in additional unaccounted for spending also is under review in audits that have not yet been released, according to a FEMA official.

September 12, 2005

Brown resigns as FEMA head

Michael Brown resigned as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency today, after becoming a focal point for the criticisms heaped upon the Bush Administration in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Personally, I have refrained from the Brown-bashing bandwagon, mostly because I know very little about him and I find it hard to believe that he could really be responsible for so much. But I have found woefully little that would bring me to his defense. The ineptitude of the governments of New Orleans and Louisianna aside, FEMA has really not been up to par (Top Ten stupid decisions here).

I have been impatiently waiting to hear Mr Brown's side of the story, and had expected his resignation a while ago. It's the smart thing to do. This man was (as far as I can tell) a smarmy connected lawyer with no background in emergency response or management, and he was out of his league. I cannot imagine what the justification was for his appointment, and after the fiasco that befell the woefully unprepared City that Care Forgot, I imagine that Mr Brown just wishes he could disappear from the public eye completely.

It is important that I leave now to avoid further distraction from the ongoing mission of FEMA. It has been an honor and a privilege to serve this president and to work shoulder to shoulder with the hard-working men and women of FEMA.

Thank you Mr Brown. I actually agree with this statement from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA);

President Bush's next FEMA director must be a qualified emergency-response professional with the leadership experience to manage this disaster and future emergencies.

Well, if we are going to have a FEMA, then yes, it should be competent, and its head should be qualified. Does this really need to be said? Well, apparently it does. Now that Mr Brown is out, the acting director of FEMA is R. David Paulison, head of the U.S. Fire Administration (part of FEMA). So far, he hasn't botched anything, so this is a step in the right direction.

August 30, 2005

Katrina's Aftermath

I don't have much to say except I hope that the people of this country will back the relief efforts from this storm with as much enthusiasm as we saw during the tsunami that hit Asia last year. From all the images that I saw, it looks like it is going to be some time before there is any sense of normality in all areas that were hit. Hopefully we can all do something in one way or another to help.

See what Wulf said about it first here in an earlier post on Atlasblogged.

August 26, 2005

General Myers

General Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said today that you aren't getting an accurate picture of what is going on in Iraq.

I am concerned about what appears to be a growing gap between what people are hearing back here in the United States and with what we saw on this trip.

Opinion polls show public support is low and waning further in America, but Gen. Myers just got back from Iraq, and he continues;

Our troops overwhelmingly want reassurance that they will be allowed to finish what we began four years ago.

I wonder what the bring-them-home-now crowd thinks of this.
(I heard this story on NPR of all places.)

This sounds familiar;

If we're a nation at war, the most important thing we have right now in this kind of conflict is our will and our resolve... and if you look at what the adversary is trying to do, of course, their whole strategic communications plan, if you will, is to try to weaken that resolve.

(discussed here yesterday)

While enlistments are down, reenlistments are up. Who do you suppose knows more about the realities of the situation? Casey Sheehan or his mom?

More from General Myers;

This military can do anything as long as they have the will and resolve of the American people...

August 24, 2005

Letter to WMAL, Re: Michael Graham

Mailed to Talk Radio 630 WMAL on Wednesday, August 24th:

Mr. Chris Berry
General Manager
WMAL
4400 Jenifer Street NW
Washington DC 20015

Dear Mr. Berry:

I will be succinct with my point, as you are undoubtedly being inundated with customer feedback over your firing of Michael Graham.

Politics aside, your removal of The Michael Graham Show coincides with my discontinued listening of News Talk 630 WMAL. The only other worthy program that you offer is now available on podcast, rendering your station irrelevant to the Greater DC-area talk radio.

While I remain incredulous that you would allow an organization that advocates suicide bombings to dictate your programming, I am even more bewildered at your business decision to let go your only water-cooler caliber host.

For our part, my family and I will encourage our friends to join us tuning in to Michael Graham when he resurfaces in our area, and turning off WMAL, ABC, and especially Disney.

This letter will be posted to www.atlasblogged.com.

It seems that we will not have long to wait for that resurfacing. According to Michael Graham's website:

Starting this Monday, I'll be on Rightalk.com every weekday at noon for a one-hour edition of a new radio show, Michael Graham, Unleashed! No liberal network execs, no advertisers, not even the FCC. You'll be able to listen live, or the show will be available for podcasting or downloading every hour, on the hour. And that includes INSIDE The beltway, too.

This is especially good news for those of us trying to avoid ABC stations altogether, as they have quite a hold of our DC market. And I can't listen to [shudder] NPR any more.

See here for an email list of WMAL's advertisers.

Previous: Michael Graham, Terrorist Victim

Also see: Michael Graham, Spiked By ABC

More on Michael Graham

August 19, 2005

Red Decade, Grey Lady - NY Times Condemns Ayn Rand's Ignorance of the Joys of Socialism

Atlas Blogged has only been online for a few months, and already we have commented on the abysmal, agenda-driven, reporting by the New York Times. See here, here, here, here, and here. None of this should be surprising, although it is sometimes easy to lose sight of the fact that the NY Times has been pushing a socialist agenda for the better part of a century, as Ronald Radosh writes in The New York Times’ Continuing Love Affair With Communism

Here is an anecdote taken from Leonard Peikoff's introduction to the 60th anniversary edition of Ayn Rand's We the Living that provides a wink and a gentle reminder that not much has changed at the NY Times in the last seventy years:

Ayn Rand knew that the American public did not understand the nature of communism, but she did not know that she was trying to publish the truth at the start of the Red Decade, as it was later called. An anti-communist librarian had told her, when she was still working on the novel, that "the communists have a tremendous influence" on American intellectuals, "and you will find a lot of people opposing you." "I was indignant," Ayn Rand recalled years later. "I didn't believe her. I thought that she is a typical Russians and is, in effect, panic mongering."

For nearly three years, We the Living was rejected by New York publishers. It was rejected by more than a dozen houses. A typical rejection said that the author did not understand socialism. Gradually, Ayn Rand came to see how accurate the librarian had been. By 1936, she herself was writing to a friend that "New York is full of people sold bodies and souls to the Soviets."

At last the book come to Macmillan, whose editorial board was divided about it. One of the associate editors, who fought against the book "violently" (Ayn Rand's word), was Granville Hicks. Several years later, Hicks admitted publically that he had been a member of the Communist Party. After a bitter struggle Hicks was overruled by the owner of the company, an elderly gentleman who said that he did not know whether the book would make any money, but that it was important and ought to be published. (It is instructive to note that in 1957, the New York Times chose the same man, Granville Hicks, to review Atlas Shrugged for the Sunday Book Review.)

Granville Hicks once said, "The sooner we all learn to make a decision between disapproval and censorship, the better off society will be... Censorship cannot get at the real evil, and it is an evil in itself."

I'd be curious to see if his attitude on censorship changed after reading Atlas Shrugged.

August 13, 2005

The "Air Enronization" of the MSM Continues

A report was released last month that has an "Air Enron" chance of showing up in the mainstream media. (And indeed, as of this writing, the report does not appear in a Google News, NY Times, Washington Post or AP online search)

The American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), an alleged non-partisan organization that "neither supports nor endorses any political party or candidate," released a report in July 2005 called Vote Fraud, Intimidation & Suppression In The 2004 Presidential Election.

Their press release summarizes,

ACVR Legislative Fund further found that, despite their heated rhetoric, paid Democrat operatives were far more involved in voter intimidation and suppression activities than were their Republican counterparts during the 2004 presidential election. Whether it was slashing tires on GOP get-out-the-vote vans in Milwaukee or court orders stopping the DNC from intimidating Republican volunteers in Florida, the evidence presented in this report shows that paid Democrat operatives were responsible for using the same tactics in 2004 that they routinely accuse Republicans of engaging in.

After all of the MSM attention to alleged Republican voter intimidation and fraud, one would expect to see this reported in the interest of balance. Surely this lack of attention is because this American Center for Voting Rights organization is a fringe group run by GOP-sponsored cronies motivated by partisan agendums, right?

Nope.

ACVR Board Chairman, Brian A. Lunde worked for Jimmy Carter and served as Executive Director of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

The "Air Enronization" of the mainstream media is becoming a bigger story than the news that they ostensibly cover.

All the news that's fit to print, right?

Pardon My English breaks it down.

August 8, 2005

Peter Jennings

Peter Jennings died late Sunday night of lung cancer. I find it an amazing testament to my lack of television watching, that I did not even know that he had left the ABC anchor chair. A few months ago, I hear?
I also find it an amazing testament to the power of television media over the past several decades, that I care at all about this event. I did not know this man personally. Peter Jennings did not share my philosophies on life. I will not lionize him. But for years, this man was part of my connection to the greater world.

Far better epitaphs will be written elsewhere. I just wanted to give a moment's respect to a journalist who rose to greatness, and was by all accounts a good man.

August 7, 2005

NY Times' inquiry reveals John Roberts' children bought from Air America Radio child slavery ring; Reports "nothing irregular" about adoptions.

Over a week has passed since I first wrote about the Air America scandal (Air Enron), and still no significant coverage by the MSM. Sister Told Jah tells us why.

The AB Special Section will temporarily display a Bore America ticker to count the time elapsed between this story first breaking and when the mainstream media decides it's more newsworthy than why Judge Roberts' Latino children are blond-haired and light-skinned.

Previous: Reverse Fair-and-Balancism?

July 30, 2005

Reverse Fair-and-Balancism?

Breaking News: There may be bias in the mainstream media.

I have found that the blogosphere delivers news up to 48 hours earlier than traditional media. I first heard about the Air America Radio investigation on Wednesday morning through Brian Maloney at Radio Equalizer, and subsequently Michelle Malkin. Since then, only the blogosphere has caught fire over this, while the MSM has been Holloway'd.

A Google News search for Air America returns only blogs and the Washington Times.

At the writing of this entry:
A CNN website search reveals nothing.
A Washington Post website search reveals nothing.
MSNBC, empty.
NY Times, nada.

And perhaps most surprisingly,
Fox News, zilch.

Why hasn't Fox News jumped on this? Are we witnessing reverse fair-and-balancism? Are they perhaps going out of their way to not look biased after the O'Franken/O’Reilly conflict? Or is it not newsworthy to report the fact that a half million dollars of taxpayer money – earmarked for community programs – has vanished somewhere in the seedy halls of Air America Radio?

As a comparison, a Google search of “Tom Delay House Ethics” yields 494,000 results (57,000 w/ ‘House Ethics’ in quotes). Even if every accusation against Tom Delay were true, he still wouldn’t be anywhere near the half-million dollar figure that Air America Radio stands accused of "borrowing." And Delay's funds weren’t intended for children’s clubs and Alzheimer’s patients.

But perhaps most disturbing is Air America Radio's cavalier attitude, undoubtedly emboldened by their immunity from MSM scrutiny. Their statement says

[...] we agreed months ago to fully compensate the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club as a result of this transaction.

Regrettably, the camp did not survive the closure of the Gloria Wise organization.

Which begs the question: Do you plan on returning the $500,000 to the government, or are you just going to invest that back into the station? And since no one in the press is bothered enough to ask these questions, I'll go ahead and assume that Tom Delay can borrow Air America Radio's excuse that he "agreed months ago to fully compensate" the American people for his overseas travel.

July 10, 2005

Seeing Red, Feeling Blue

I lay up some nights thinking about how much this angers me, and I think my blood pressure actually elevates.

The traditional color of the GOP has always been blue, and the traditional color of the Dems has always been red. It makes sense:

Blue: Traditional. Time honored. Rational. Calm. Lincoln. Union. Yankees
Red: Change. New. Emotional. Anger. Redcoats (i.e. Loyalists). Red Sox

This is the order of things. In addition, it's a nice touch that red also symbolizes communism, which the American Democratic Party prefers, despite their cries to the contrary.

So then one day, some liberal arts journalism major from Oberlin Socialism Indoctrination University working for CNN makes a critical call, one that would change how America views politics. This Democrat working for the Democratic CNN decides to depict Republican states as red, and Democrat states as blue. A very simple decision, probably made out of ignorance, or at least contempt, and every one else follows suit. I don't know this faceless, nameless person, but I hate her.

I mean, don't get me wrong. The overall strategy is brilliant: "We can't beat them on ideas, therefore, get ahold of the media, entertainment, and education industries and the indoctrination will occur naturally....kinda like how Apple gave its computers to schools." It's brilliant, but it's still aggravating.

I'll never, ever, use the term "Blue State/Red State." Please slap me if I do.

The democratic media has already erased all sources that stated the official color of the GOP is blue.

"United States: Republican Party, hence states that vote Republican are referred to as red states as opposed to blue states which vote for the Democrats."

It's a conspiracy now, I tell you.

Ha! Here's a site the bastards haven't gotten to yet:
"We use BLUE for GOP, Red for Democrat normally but you have a choice in the maps."

Even the Canadians do it: "Canadians politically associate the colour blue with conservatives."

This is how it's always been done here, too.

June 28, 2005

Journalism

Michelle Malkin article on NYTimes

NYTimes doesn't have a clue.

Focus on diversity of religious upbringing and military experience?

This yahoo also wrote that

it is part of our professional code that we keep our political views out of the [NY Times].

How many journalists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Five:

• One to screw it in (via spinning it)


• One to fabricate facts about the event while hiding behind anonymous and non-existent sources


• One to write about how the Bush Administration has purposely failed to come up with an alternative energy source to power that lightbulb so that we remain shackled to big oil


• One to pine for the primitivistic lifestyle before our post-industrialized nation needed lightbulbs


• One to write about the misogynistic symbolism behind the engineering of the bulb interface and the socket




Posted by Rammage