Published in Journalism
Journalism
Kicking Holder?
I understand, indeed share, conservative frustration about the reluctance of Attorney General Holder to investigate Acorn and other supporters of the Democratic Party, but Andrew Breibart goes too far when he says Holder must investiage them or else:
Not only are there more tapes, it's not just ACORN. And this message is to Attorney General Holder: I want you to know that we have more tapes, it's not just ACORN, and we're going to hold out until the next election cycle, or else if you want to do a clean investigation, we will give you the rest of what we have, we will comply with you, we will give you the documentation we have from countless ACORN whistleblowers who want to come forward but are fearful of this organization and the retribution that they fear that this is a dangerous organization. So if you get into an investigation, we will give you the tapes; if you don't give us the tapes, we will revisit these tapes come election time.
It's not the place of a private citizen, even a combative, guerilla journalist, to talk like that.
Journalism
Press Bias in Action?
From the first page of today's Wall Street Journal: "The U.S. lags far behind other nations in paid leave and other work benefits, a study at Harvard and McGill found."
Would it not be more objective to say: "The U.S. has different laws than other nations about paid leave and other work benefits," or even, "U.S. policymakers disagree with ther counterparts in other nations about what paid leave and other work benefits ought to be."
The Journal's version is only fair and balanced if one believes that "progress" is always in the direction of socialism.
Journalism
Fox in the Chickencoop?
As I rarely parse an Obama speech and I never watch Fox news (not getting it and other cable news in my basic cable package, so I have no idea who Glen Beck is), maybe I can offer some unprejudiced insight into the recent contretemps. Krauthammer attempts a principled objection--though he misses the point about Madisonian factions: Factions are not "legitimate"; they are by definition unjust groups, who misuse the fundamental commitment to liberty. So the real objection to Obama's shunning of Fox (he spent a couple hours before a group of leftist journalists dismissing it as "talk radio") is his assault on liberty--his misunderstanding of the freedom of the press.
For all their leftist inclinations, a significant number of journalists don't want to be known as anyone's stooge. The Fox infection will spread quicker than the swine flu.
As evidence see the NY Times on Fox's effect on the MSM:
White House officials said [...] they noticed a column by Clark Hoyt, the public editor of The Times, in which [leftist Clarence Thomas hater] Jill Abramson, one of the paper's two managing editors, described her newsroom's "insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio." The Washington Post's executive editor, Marcus Brauchli, had already expressed similar concerns about his newsroom...."This is a discussion that probably had to be had about their approach to things," [Obama political strategist David] Axelrod said. "Our concern is other media not follow their lead."
In fact, perhaps the most effective media purveyor of conservatism (next to Rush and Fox) is C-Span radio and news. (Have I let the cat out of the bag?) For without its coverage of otherwise obscure think-tank speakers and panels, many eminent conservative voices would get no significant hearing at all. And their book programs may be the best thing on tv (save the excellent baseball playoffs this year).
Journalism
Connoisseurs of the Obvious Department
Politics
Sarah Palin's book
Journalism
National Affairs
Journalism
Crossing the country
"In my life, I had sought out other parts of the world--Patagonia, Assam, the Yangtze; I had not realized that the dramatic desert I had imagined Patagonia to be was visible on my way from Sedona to Santa Fe, that the rolling hills of West Virginia were reminiscent of Assam and that my sight of the Mississippi recalled other great rivers. I'm glad I saw the rest of the world before I drove across America. I have traveled so often in other countries and am so accustomed to other landscapes, I sometimes felt on my trip that I was seeing America, coast to coast, with the eyes of a foreigner, feeling overwhelmed, humbled and grateful.
"A trip abroad, any trip, ends like a movie--the curtain drops and then you're home, shut off. But this was different from any trip I'd ever taken. In the 3,380 miles I'd driven, in all that wonder, there wasn't a moment when I felt I didn't belong; not a day when I didn't rejoice in the knowledge that I was part of this beauty; not a moment of alienation or danger, no roadblocks, no sign of officialdom, never a second of feeling I was somewhere distant--but always the reassurance that I was home, where I belonged, in the most beautiful country I'd ever seen."
Elections
Krugman, Nixon, and Campaign Finance Reform
Paul Krugman waxes nostalgic for the Nixon era, not because he likes Nixon, but because back in those days "moderate" Republicans and Democrats could come together to pass pretty much any piece of legislation that a liberal might want. The piece would be unremarkable if not for this line: "our corporate-cash-dominated system is a relatively recent creation, dating mainly from the late 1970s."
Let's leave aside the blithe assumption that if things aren't developing as Krugman would like, it must be that evil corporations are to blame. Surely it can't be that le Peuple, repositories of all that is virtuous, are opposed to Nancy Pelosi's health care proposals. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that he is correct. Large corporations are not new to the United States, nor are campaign donations. Shouldn't the fact that this "corporate-cash-dominated system" has allegedly arisen in the environment created by the Federal Election Campaign Act and, more recently, McCain-Feingold make us a just a tiny bit skeptical about campaign finance reform? In this context, this 1995 study by Brad Smith seems more relevant than ever.
Journalism
Is this really the Washington Post?
A favorable profile of an opponent of same-sex marriage appears in today's WaPo Style. Not without the typical WaPo condescension, however.
Journalism
Michael Tomasky's Elastic Rules of Decent Political Discourse
Tomasky was more direct with those who posted "deeply tasteless" comments in response to his own obituary of Kennedy. "What's the matter with you people?" Tomasky says. And to those who want to reduce Kennedy's biography to Chappaquiddick, "Shame on you." He pushes back against comment section critics who thought he was too generous to Kennedy and, a couple of weeks earlier, too stingy in writing Robert Novak's obituary: "All I said then was I disagreed strongly with his politics and thus couldn't offer the man a deeply heartfelt eulogy. I didn't even mention the homeless guy he hit with his car."
There's a small and a not-so-small problem here. The small problem is that if you applaud yourself for not mentioning something, and then mention it in the course of applauding yourself, the number of people who will join in commending you for your restraint is likely to drop sharply. This is particularly so when a liberal criticizes a conservative for hitting a homeless guy with his car, and fails to mention that the accident occurred because of the conservative's brain tumor, which neither he nor his doctors knew about before the auto accident and was diagnosed a couple days after it. By choosing to leave that part of the story unreported, but including the detail about the pedestrian Novak hit being homeless, Tomasky unfairly leaves the impression that the political menace Novak posed in print and on television was of a piece with the public safety menace he posed behind the wheel.
The bigger problem is that the conduct Tomasky deplores is about as tasteless, and about as representative, as the behavior of those on the Left after Ronald Reagan died in June 2004. America is now in the midst of a bitter debate over health care reform, but the moment five years ago was politically charged, too, as the campaign to deny George W. Bush a second term was intensifying. Most Democratic politicians and journalists dutifully said the right things and avoided saying the wrong ones after Reagan's death. They slogged through "a week of praise for a man they didn't really like," one reporter wrote at the time.
But in a big country, where lots of people are politically engaged and some are politically enraged, message discipline is never universal. As the news that Reagan was dying reached some anti-war protesters in front of the White House, one said, "We need to clap when he dies." Another called him "the arch-enemy of the poor people of the world and of the people of the United States," while a third said, "He is a slime; basically, a horrible, horrible person. People didn't like him. They despised him."
Some of the Reagan haters had megaphones bigger than those available to street demonstrators. An article by the playwright and activist Larry Kramer said, "The man who murdered more gay people than anyone in the entire history of the world is dead. . . More people than Hitler even." The famous New York columnist Jimmy Breslin said Reagan "proudly hurt the boroughs of this city more than anyone before or after him. [Since this column appeared almost three years after 9/11, this includes Osama bin Laden.] If you live in Brooklyn, the record shows that Ronald Reagan hated children."
As for the Village Voice obituary by Tom Carson, you had to read it not to believe it. "He should have died alone - a long, long time ago," it begins, before turning hostile. The ensuing condolences include:
- "I think that Reagan, like no other American, deserves the honor of being the first person ever embalmed at Disneyland."
- "Ronald Reagan is the man who destroyed America's sense of reality - a paltry target, all in all, given our predilections. It only took an actor: the real successor to John Wilkes Booth."
- "No other chief executive has been so at ease with his own preposterousness."
- "While overt racism is unseemly, a Republican leader should signal to white-power proponents that he agrees with them: Reagan pioneered insulting the poor and powerless and proved how popular this is with white men."
- "Bust unions whenever you can, because those people are a danger to the continued concentration of wealth and power in the hands of trust-fund Republicans."
What's the matter with you, David Lytel? Shame on you, Michael Tomasky.
Journalism
Lazy Journalists Flunk Again
Journalism



