September 30, 2004
A one-person poll
 : Here are my own post-debate poll results. I asked myself a battery of questions and the results:
I've said that I was a "likely Kerry voter" because you deserve to know my perspective as I write what I write here.
How likely? Weeks ago, I'd have put that at, oh, 85 percent: not wildly enthusiastic, perhaps, but OK with the decision.
Recently, that number has fallen to, say, 75 percent. I have become disturbed by Kerry's efforts to turn himself into the antiwar candidate -- while we are at war -- and also troubled by his inability to run a compelling campaign (about which I agree with Joe Territo).
As for Bush, I never was a likely Bush voter because I disagreed with him on many fundamental issues. But during the last four years, I did support him as our President; I certainly supported the war on terrorism and I supported the war in Iraq. To my surprise, I saw circumstances under which I would vote for him (eg., if Howard Dean were the other choice). So there were times when I was 50-50 on Bush -- surprisingly high for the likes of me. I became a possible Bush voter and that's a big deal.
But I was OK with Kerry and glad he was not Dean and so I leaned his way. That's not the strongest endorsement, I know. But it also reflected my post-9/11 political views; I believe it is time to pull together against a common demon and not to demonize each other. I seek the center. I'm militantly middle.
Tonight I rushed out of my kid's back-to-school event and turned on the radio to hear the debate soon into it. And I got upset with Kerry from the first.
 Kerry was pushing his Coke-commercial view of a world marching together hand-in-hand and I don't buy it. I don't buy that the U.N. or Old Europe will come into Iraq to save our skins -- or to fight for democracy or the rights of the Iraqi people. If you say that Bush mislead us to think we'd find WMDs in Iraq then perhaps you also should say that Kerry misleads us to think we'll ever find a French butt on the line there. I fear the consequences of giving these countries what amounts to veto power over what we must sometimes do; the result will be paralysis.
In this new era of terrorism and of our role as the sole superpower, I want to see a new vision and strong strategy for foreign policy. The Kumbaya gambit won't cut it.
I heard Kerry criticize the war over and over without hearing a clear plan for winning it -- and a clear will to win it. I also did not hear Bush give a clear plan for winning this war -- but at least I still hear his will. It's not that Kerry flipflops. It's that I don't hear iron will. And in a time of war -- war against terrorism -- we need a leader with iron will.
At the same time, will alone won't win the war. Great planning and great execution and tireless diligence will win this war. And we don't have that today, either. That is Bush's failing.
Many others were able to blog the debate as it occurred. In some ways, I am glad I had to catch the debate in bits and just listen. I listened to what it did to me. And it made me more unsure about Kerry. He sounds more like Howard Dean and I didn't want to vote for Dean. He had my likely vote; it was his to lose. He hasn't lost it ... yet.
I spun around the dial to hear all the spin and on FoxNews, the conservative commentators were saying that it was a close debate and that it may tighten the race, which is to say that they thought Kerry did OK.
Screw their spin. Raze their spin zone.
There is no single score. Each and every voter who watched this debate was looking for something different and scored it differently. I was looking for a resolute Kerry with a clear vision for a foreign policy that will protect us. I didn't hear it.
So how likely am I now? Peg me at 65 percent and note the trendline. The next debates and the next weeks matter. The election isn't over for me or for millions and millions of voters. We're the real pollsters and our results are not in yet.
Upper hand
: Dumb question: Why (on NBC, at least) is Bush 10 percent higher on the screen than Kerry?
: ALSO: I don't mean to dwell on the inconsequential but we had NBC on one TV and CBS on another and they weren't in sync. It sounds as if one of them is using a delay. What, are they afraid one of them will drop the F bomb?
Lub-dub
: Tony Blair is getting a hospital procedure for the same heart wackiness I have: palpitations and irregular rhythm.
In a parallel universe
: I'm at my son's school, stealing a moment's wi-fi and bandwidth as I wait for back-to-school night to begin. It's fun. But I'm madder and madder that this district did not reschedule this to allow us voters to watch the debates tonight. This is one heckuva lesson in priorities to give our own children. Arrrrrgh. See you after the instant replay.
Homework
: Dan Froomkin calls on all bloggers to fact-check the debaters tonight. Your editor has spoken. Now get to work.
I don't care what you say, just spell the URL right
: Wired.com columnist and NYU j-prof Adam Pennenberg makes what I think is a spurious prediction regarding GoogleNews and online news publishers: As it turns out, however, Google has a problem that is nearly as complex as its algorithms. It can't make money from Google News.
So while other online publishers like Yahoo News and MSNBC earn tens of millions of dollars in revenue each year and continue to grow, Google News remains in beta mode -- three years after it launched -- long after most of the bugs have been excised.
The reason: The minute Google News runs paid advertising of any sort it could face a torrent of cease-and-desist letters from the legal departments of newspapers, which would argue that "fair use" doesn't cover lifting headlines and lead paragraphs verbatim from their articles. Other publishers might simply block users originating from Google News, effectively snuffing it out. Who says so? From the way that's written, this doesn't appear to be reported, for there is no one quoted, not even an unnamed source. This seems to be just his speculation -- and if so, he should say so.
Now I don't pretend to speak for the industry or even, in this case, my employer and I'm not a copyright laywer and don't play one on TV. But...
Every online news publisher I know is eager to get links from GoogleNews, just as they're happy to get links from Drudge (which is the No. 1 referrer of traffic to both the New York Times and the Washington Post, last I knew). It's free traffic, free marketing, new audience. Many news sites that require registration even implemented what we call the Drudge exception, allowing readers who come from Drudge or who come directly to a story from a link to see that story without having to register. The only problem with this for some publishers is that it's not necessarily sellable traffic; it may be out-of-market traffic coming to a local site with local advertising. So there's a small cost of that bandwidth. But for most every publisher out there, traffic is good. Period.
GoogleNews merely takes a headline and a snippet and then links to the original source. That is a service to the source and to the reader.
That's not to say I don't have problems with GoogleNews and its questionable choice of some "news" sources and questionable exclusion of others.
And that's not to say that publishers don't have another, bigger, and ultimately unsolvable problem with Google itself:
Google is as brand-killer. Time and again, I've seen that consumers find the information they want via Google without being very aware of who ended up providing that information: They ask a question; Google takes them to the answer; they leave, satisifed; they don't pay attention to where they were. This can harm brands that get advertising based on syndicated research that asks consumers how often they visit or how aware they are of a brand; they may well visit a brand's site but if they don't pay attention then the brand doesn't get credit in the survey and looks smaller than it is. In spite of that, I can't imagine a publisher who wouldn't want to come up in Google searches; hell, they all pay companies in the new industry of search-engine optimization to make sure they come up higher and higher in those searches.
Publishers will have other problems with Google as it enters their spaces. Google is entering local. It will enter directory advertising. It has entered shopping. I wouldn't be surprised if it enters classified.
But GoogleNews merely sends links to news sources, who can then profit from that traffic with advertising.
It's important to challenge Penenberg's assertion -- and ask what his source is -- because what he says has an even greater impact on bloggers, who quote original sources at greater length than GoogleNews (and often critically). Most bloggers don't profit from that; but they will. And it's important to note that bloggers are performing an important function of fact-checking, pushing, and goading news media and we need to protect that.
: See also Rex Hammock and /.
Atta boy
: Months ago, Jay Rosen urged media and campaigns to raze spin alley and now it's happening as Jay praises the NYT's Adam Nagourney for staying away from the spinsters; he'll watch the debates on TV, just like the rest of us, just like a citizen.
Civics class
: My kid's school scheduled back-to-school night tonight. Great timing. So I'll be late watching the debate. Tell me what happens....
: UPDATE: Thanks to my diligent commenters, the reviews are already in. I don't even have to bother watching the tape tonight: Let's see...
The Dems think Kerry won.
The Repubs think Bush won.
Old media agrees with the Dems.
Talk-radio agrees with the Repubs.
The pajama-wearing ankle-biters are divided over who won, but really defend their positions well.
Michael Moore is a jackass.
That pretty much covers it.
September 29, 2004
Issues2004: The blogroll
: At the suggestion of a reader, I've added links to all the Issues2004 posts and comments as well as the Technorati cosmos for each in the right-hand column ...
: THURSDAY UPDATE: See Fred Wilson's response to my foreign affairs post here.
Iranian strongmen freaked by ... bloggers
: Hoder reports that a hardline Iranian paper has gone after bloggers, accusing them of being a -- you guessed it -- CIA plot. Disturbingly, it names names. What are the implications? First, it proves, at least to me, that our recent protest has been so effective that have made them react this desperately and harshly. Second, it shows the fact that hardliner conservatives see Internet as a threat to their interests and therefore act against it, proves it as a potentially powerful medium for promoting democracy and freedom of expression which deserves more attention from the Western countries and media. Third, it displays that the number of internet users in Iran (between 5 to 7 million) is big enough to worry conservatives about its influence. So they probably start policies that limit access the users to Internet and in this regard, Shaare 2 project, gets a whole new meaning.
Personally I'm so happy to see the effort I begun 4,5 years ago in Asr-e Azadegan paper by starting a daily column introducing Internet to journalists and average Iranians have been so fruitful. The miraculous technology of internet enables individuals do things that would have required big political organizations a few years ago. Spread the word.
Issues2004: Election reform
: Every time I scream and shout about protecting the First Amendment (and Howard Stern) against the repression of the FCC, a commenter or two whines that I don't similarly defend free speech when it comes to federal election laws limiting contributions. I ignored them -- first because it pisses them off (hey, a blogger has to have some fun) and second because I honestly don't know what I think about election reform. It's a one-hand/other-hand thing for me.
On the one hand, as an absolutist on free speech and the First Amendment, I agree with those commenters that free speech should extend to elections -- of all activities.
On the other hand, I am concerned about the lobbyists and special-interest groups and now hate groups using their money to hijack elections.
On another hand, if we limit some people but then allow the Bloombergs and Corzines to come in and spend their wealth to get elected, then that is unfair to all of us who aren't rich.
On yet another hand, I think it's ridiculous that we individuals are limited on what we can spend on a candidate; it's our country and our money, eh?
And on another hand, I wonder whether the limitations on candidate contributions are only channelling more money to fringe groups like the Swifties and MoveOn and thus only fueling the mudslinging and nastiness of this campaign.
Anybody have few extra hands?
In the end, I think we're trying to approach this from the wrong end. We are trying to legislate ethics -- with politicians, of all people. And it's not going to work.
Election laws and the loopholes that magically appear in them only provide ethical cover for politicians, parties, and pressure groups to go ahead and game the system however they can. Hey, it's not my fault, they say when caught with mud on their hands; I'm following the law.
So what we should be doing instead is pressuring the political parties to adopt their own voluntary standards for ethical campaigning and slamming those who don't. Election reform should come from within the parties. They should limit their spending and refuse some contributions and those who don't are only revealing themselves as slime.
Media -- and citizens online -- should monitor their financial behavior closely, for I still believe that everything should be transparent.
We also need to shorten the election schedule. This torture goes on way too long. We do need time to push the candidates and smoke out the bozos (read: Dean) but we don't need this much time. It only adds to the bile and the bill.
At the same time, we need to reform the primary process, for it disenfranchises too many Americans from the selection of candidates.
And, finally, I agree with those who say it's time to blow up the Electoral College, which also disenfranchises voters (see: 2000).
We need to rebuild the primary and election process around the principle of one person, one vote -- and mean it. Then the candidates will have to campaign to all citizens and won't be able to ignore those in "safe" states.
Finally, yes, I'll agree that we need to respect the free-speech right of Americans to put their money where their votes are. On principle, I do have a problem with limiting what we can contribute. That's why I'd prefer to see candidates and parties agree to limit on their own what they accept.
One more thing: Once upon a time, I might have argued that it was important to give candidates free airtime -- on "our airwaves" -- as a quid pro quo for the free spectrum we give broadcasters. But I'm not so hot on that idea today for two reasons: First, TV ads are turning into the most destructive bullets of campaigns and fringe groups. Second, the internet will overtake TV as an important medium for campaigning and it will offer more depth and diversity.
That's what I say. What do you say? (Other Issues2004 posts here.)
September 28, 2004
Issues2004: Experts speak
: Blog reader Dave Schuler got Lynne Kiesling, whom he describes as a genuine expert in energy policy, to repond to my Issues2004 post on energy policy. Read on.
Mighty Christian of them: II
: Worse than the brawling brothers below is the behavior of the Presbyterian Church.
The Presbyterian Church is flirting with anti-Semitism. The General Assembly -- the ruling gathering of the church -- voted to start divesting itself of investments in Israeli companies because Israel doesn't hug the Palestinians who send their children as bombs to murder their innocent civilians.
God's work, eh?
Are they also divesting themselves of investments in nations that support the Palestinian murderers? Are they divesting themselves of investments in nations that support terrorism against America? Are they divesting themselves of investments in nations that support tyrannical Arab dictatorships?
The Presbyterians also opposed the building of security barriers -- giving no other solution to the terrorist murders in Israel -- and supported a shameful sham temple in Philadelphia whose sole purpose is to convert Jews (my sister has fought that from within the church there).
I left the Presbyterian church because of its homophobia. Now this. For shame.
An
Good-bye Dollies
: BestWeekEver reports that Dolly Parton is going to get rid of her breast implants. I never heard her actually admit she had them. Yes, I know, it was obvious. But it was a "secret" not unlike Liberace's for years.
: Rex Hammock says tah-tah to the tah-tahs with a musical tribute.
: Let me add that when I was a columnist in San Francisco, I met Dolly a few times covering concerts. And I new a guy at the old UPI who went to high school with her. The honest-to-goodness truth is that she is that nice. She really is.
Tina, you snob - Chapter II
: The other day, I snapped back at Tina Brown for being snotty to bloggers. I did it again on her very own air, when I was interviewed on CNBC. And now I see that she's still at it, so I'll continue. Today Rush Limbaugh gives us a partial transcript [via IWantMedia] of Tina's CNBC show, in which she continues the non-sequitorial attack on bloggers. What bothers me slightly, though, about the way the bloggers have almost become like the media Mujahideen, you know. I mean, in a sense it's like everybody feels so chased by them. I mean, look what happened in a sense: CBS had the same kind of campaign for that -- for their Janet Jackson Super Bowl debacle and for their Ronald Reagan miniseries. I mean, it's the third time, in a sense, that CBS management has been completely kind of, you know, harassed. She's treating bloggers like filthy masses, like fringe nuts. And she's ignoring that what they attacked CBS for in the Rathergate case was a horrible journalistic error, not a titanian tit.
Spirit of America success stories, a brick at a time
: Spirit of America, the charity that helps Iraqi citizens, has sent a big batch of tool kits to Iraq for students trained by the SeaBees and Marines. They want to send another large batch. Read about it -- and contribute -- here.
Go West, young blogger
: I have signed on to join in a workshop on RSS and to blog the entire conference at John Battelle's and O'Reilly's Web 2.0 confab in San Francisco next week. If you're around, come! The RSS workshop is on Tuesday; other good events the following two days. I haven't been to California in years (amazing for an internet guy, I know) so let's get together and conspire on the future of the net.
Good news
: Kidnapped CNN producer has been released.
: MORE GOOD NEWS: The two women from Italy, aid workers both, who were held hostage have also been released.
What's going on? Is hostage-taking out? We can only hope so. And we can only hope that the British hostage is next. No, we can only pray that the British hostage is next.
Nethead/Bellhead/Ushead
: David Weinberger is blogging Susan Crawford's Nethead/Bellhead conference at the Cardoza School of Law in NY; I just got here (and probably won't understand much of what is happening, which is why I begged out of a panel here). David has this gonzo, socko summary of what David Isenberg said in a panel I unfortunately missed (my emphases): Isenberg says that Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of the press. Suppose Congress makes a law that makes it a million times more expensive to own a printing press. Maybe the hypothetical law regulates press prices directly, controls the price of paper, etc. Doesn't matter. It'd be unconstitutional. Suppose the law made presses only twice as expensive...Now that we've established what telcom regulation is, we're just arguing about the price. "So, when I see Americans struggling with crippled kilobit systems when gigabit is available, I want to call the police." Likewise, spectrum that is owned when it doesn't have to be owned, broadcast flag, deep packet inspection without a warrant, I want to punish the criminals who are denying me my constitutional right. The Internet puts a printing press in everyone's house. But it's more than that. It's freedom of assembly: The Internet is group-forming...The duty of the Congress and the FCC if they take the First Amendment seriously is to remove whatever" stands between the user and the use of the Internet. "We're rapidly becoming a third world connectivity nation." [Whooo! Go David!]
Blog farewells
: Two newspaper people just wrote farewells to their blogs.
Doug Clifton, editor in chief of the Cleveland Plain Dealer (a work colleague), has decided to give up his blog because it was too demanding to try to keep up with it. He wasn't blogging to blog so much as he was using the form to try to find another way to converse with readers. It wasn't free-form, it wasn't filled with links to other sites, it wasn't particularly chatty, it wasn't purposely provocative, and it certainly wasn't frequent....
Still, it served a purpose. I did get some insight into reader perspectives. And it forced me to spend more concentrated time thinking about what we do and why -- and explaining it.
I hit the wall in June when I took a week of vacation. Freed of the blog's obligation, I felt liberated. On my return, the press of daily business made it easy to postpone the blog's reawakening. I've never been one to insist that everyone should blog or even that everyone in Big Media should blog (as I say everytime I can so pardon the repetition: We in Big Media have owned the printing press for centuries and now that the people own the press, they are speaking and our first response to blogging should be to listen). I'm always sad to see a blog die (doesn't a star go out in the heavens when that happens... or am I thinking of something else?). But I also fully understand the crush of being expected to fill this blank screen.
: At the same time, Doug Harper, an editor at a paper in Pennsylvania, quit his blog because his employers issued a rather draconian decree on blogging: It's OK to blog if you must, but make sure you don't get any on us, the bosses said. The most ludicrous part of the order: Editorial staffers who operate their own Web sites, blogs or chat rooms are not permitted to trade on their newspaper positions. They may not lingk their personal sites, blogs or chat rooms to the ----- Newspapers' Web site nor to ------ Newspapers' articles. Personal Web sites, blogs or chat rooms may not use column names or any other identifying information or wording that connects the writer to ----- Newspapers. I also understand the need to set the rules. But the tone of this -- yuck, we don't want any blog cooties -- is pathetic.
Issues2004: Responses
: Fred Wilson has the best response to an Issues2004 post today: He quotes liberally (uh, I mean generously) from the comments to the original post. Fred says that original post was just "OK" and he's exactly right about that; this isn't about my posts (in which I keep reminding everybody that I'm the farthest thing from an expert; I'm just another voter); it is about the discussion, when in the comments or in their blogs people who know a helluvalotmore than I do (see: Gillmor) come in to share what they know. That's what the medium is all about. And this is the proof. See: Given half a chance, we will discuss issues. (And we don't have to join the League of Women Voters.)
: ALSO... A reader asked me to put up a sidebar list of links to all the Issues2004 posts. I'll try to get to that; busy right now; in the meantime, the category page will get you all the posts and links to all the comments here.
Fred Wilson also suggested that Technorati set up a page of links to posts here and elsewhere that use the Issues2004 headline. I passed it onto Dave Sifry but, well, he has been a bit busy this last week literally fighting fires.
Issues2004: Foreign Policy
: Here's the toughest one -- not just because the problems frequently look unsolvable and because the relations are often acidic but also because I don't know enough about foreign relations.
I follow the news like a responsible citizen -- though I'll admit that I tend to wait until a part of the world heats up before I catch up. I've warned in all these Issues2004 posts that I'm not an expert and I'm writing these merely as a voter and a citizen but in this category I want to add an extra cup of caveat. So now to the point...
Neither side has yet devised a doctrine of foreign policy that works for the world today.
I don't object to the words "preemptive war" (now that I'm a liberal hawk and I'm rather intense on the topic of terrorism). But the problem with that Bush doctrine is that you put yourself in the position of proving that you're preempting something. You're buying the WMD problem. And you're fighting a hypothetical. Nonetheless, if people believed that a nation or those that nation supports could or would come after us, they would support a war of preemption. But the standard of proof his now nearly impossible to find.
I have supported the war in Iraq on different justification: essentially the Tom Friedman doctrine. I believe it was a proper -- and liberal -- humanitarian goal to liberate a people from their tyrant. I stand by that justification. I now see that knowing what we knew, we should have gone in to liberate Germany and Europe and the Jewish people far sooner than we did; what suffering we could have ended. But I also clearly see the problem with this doctrine: Who plays God? Who's the devil? Which tyrants do you choose to take out? Shouldn't we liberate North Korea? Shouldn't we be shuttling to Africa when wars and tragedy break out? Is Saudi Arabia oppressive enough to liberate? And isn't there a danger -- a history -- of using this doctrine not to liberate but to overturn for political convenience (pick your own examples of that)? This is not, as we say today, a doctrine that scales. That's not to say it is bankrupt; there are times when we must liberate a people or take the responsibility for their suffering. But this becomes a know-it-when-you-see-it policy and it's tough to manage that.
The second half of the Friedman doctrine is that we needed to establish a beachhead of democracy (and modernity, capitalism, education, and prosperity among citizens) in the Arab Middle East. This comes closest to my view of a winning worldview. I don't mean that we invade every country that is not a democracy. But I do mean that we set democracy and freedom of choice for every citizen as the expected standard of nations. We must use economic and diplomatic means -- and, yes, sometimes military will -- to secure demoracy. It's enlightened self-interest. Every human deserves a vote (I do not buy for one second that some nations are not ready for democracy; that is abhorrent political snobbery). And democracies are far less likely to be a threat to the rest of the world. We should expect the United Nations -- of all political bodies! -- to support universal democracy as a goal and hold it and its member states to that standard.
Finally, there is what I'll call the Kerry doctrine of cooperation. He wants to get other nations and the U.N. into Iraq (but I agree with those who say there's a snowball's chance in Baghdad that will happen). He thinks we should work harder to gather consensus among nations. That's a fine goal, by the sound of it, but we cannot set that as the standard or else we find ourselves hostage to the French et al. We have to face up to the fact that we are the remaining superpower. Nations do look to us to take an active role in the world and we should. Of course, there will be no agreement about every case (we had people screaming at us to get into Liberia and we had people screaming at us to stay out of Iraq). So we have to set our own standards.
So what are those standards? In foreign policy, they are never clear cut. That's why diplomacy is diplomacy: It's politics without laws.
But I think when we turn foreign policy around and look at it from the rights and needs of the individual worldwide, we at least have a clear starting point:
1. We must support the growth and strength of democracy. The vote and control of the governed over government must be seen as a fundamental human right. In this age of worldwide person-to-person communication, the internet will begin to tear down dictatorships. We need to help. We should support democracies with economic relationships and, when need be, military protection. We should reward moves toward democracy and shun leaders who resist.
2. We must protect our citizens -- our children and the children of other nations -- against the demonstrated and growing threat of Islamic fascism and so we must use the means at our disposal -- economic, diplomatic, and military -- to root out the terrorists and bring down those who support them. They didn't say it this way, Lord knows, but that's the inevitable conclusion of the 9/11 Commission: If you fail to prevent the next attack, you will be blamed.
3. We must respond to human suffering under tyrannical regimes. That response clearly will vary but it is a justification for action.
I'm writing these Issues2004 posts to put my bandwidth where my mouth is. I want us to talk issues, I need to start the ball rolling. But, again, I emphasize that I'm no expert on these topics; you can see why I'm not likely to replace Condie Rice! Still, that's where I start the discussion. Over to you.
Balls
: MeetUp presents the Great American Bowl-Off: Red teams vs. blue teams trying, for once, to say out of the gutter.
Kill TV
: I don't know much about spectrum and all that (and at last night's Dan Gillmor, event, I saw someone who really does: David Isenberg) but on the way home I read in Wired that only 12 percent of Americans now get TV through an antenna. Could that be: Just 12 percent?
So I wondered: Shouldn't we just kill off broadcast TV soon?
Imagine what we could do with all that friggin' spectrum, no?
We could provide wires to that 12 percent (or they'll die off by then).
And TV -- along with any other form of communication, entertainment, content, or media -- will be delivered by high-speed wireless bandwidth to any number of devices, set in the home or mobile.
Today, kids don't know that difference between broadcast and cable. Soon, they won't know the difference between wired and wireless. Everything will be delivered on demand.
And by the way, there goes the problem with the F word and titanian tits: You pick what "comes into your home" to watch and you don't have to worry about being corrupted by broadcast radio or TV.
Mighty Christian of them
: Fistfights break out among monks at the site of Christ's crucifixion.
September 27, 2004
Dan Gillmor in New York
: I'm in New York now at the Markle Foundation; had the honor to intro Dan Gillmor for a talk he's giving here on his book, We, the Media.
Isenberg is here. Ditto Weinberger. And Blaser. And Spiers. And Weiss. And Sifry (Micah).
Dan is telling a very personal story about his experience with citizens media starting with the 2000 election and how online gave him a better perspective online than TV would give him, up through 9/11, up through Lott and today.
The kidnap weapon spreads its deadly cancer
: Danny Pearl was kidnapped and beheaded in Pakistan. Foreigners of many countries and jobs are being kidnapped and held for ransom of all sorts and killed in Iraq.
Now a CNN producer has been kidnapped in Gaza.
I fear this weapon of terrorism will spread everywhere.
Mud v. substance
: It's so nice to hear one's own stands echoed in Big Media. First Safire (below), now Adam Clymer (an ex-neighbor) on today's Times op-ed argues that mud-slinging is distracting from the real work of the campaign and those covering it. The upcoming debate, he says, is not only a test for the candidates but also for journalists: Phony documents and dishonest advertising have captured more attention than the facts of the candidates' competing claims about health care, or whether either has a plan - a plausible plan - for Iraq....
The test for journalists is whether they can appreciate the importance of the event and help voters make sense of what is said, checking the accuracy of claims about the past and the present and the plausibility of what is claimed for the future. It won't do to say, "We covered that in August."
So if Mr. Kerry says he will solve the situation in Iraq by getting other countries to send more troops, the press needs to examine whether this could happen if he should win. And if Mr. Bush says he is going to solve the health insurance crisis with more community health care centers and fewer lawsuits, then journalists have to help voters determine whether Mr. Bush is offering cures or Band-aids. Exactly. That is the job of the press. And, let's add, an army of fact-checking bloggers can help.
The kidnap weapon; the media target
: William Safire said today just what I said Saturday about examing our role and responsibility in media giving terrorists publicity for their atrocities. He also said that candidates and government leaders (read: Kerry) have an equal responsibility not to be manipulated by the enemy. I agree. Nobody should order reporters and editors to "downplay" a gut-wrenching human interest story involving cruelty, violence and death. Nor should the media flinch from covering casualty counts or honoring the fallen. War involves sacrifice.
But responsible journalists should consider the wisdom of allowing media-savvy terrorists to play them like a violin....
Do we have to become conduits for this grisly, real-death kidnap choreography? We are obliged to report it, but we need not go along with the terrorist propagandists in milking the most horror out of it.
We know that the primary purpose of the kidnap weapon is to drive the coalition forces out of Iraq and to prevent a free election there.
We know, too, that the kidnap weapon is aimed at the U.S. election....
John Kerry, who has evidently decided to replace Howard Dean as the antiwar candidate, last weekend helped to magnify the terrorists' kidnap weapon. In a scheduled commercial Kerry personally approved, just before charging that George Bush had no plan to get us out of Iraq, the Democratic campaign underscored the message Zarqawi has been sending: "Americans," said Kerry's announcer, "are being kidnapped, held hostage, even beheaded."
Though undoubtedly accurate, that paid evocation of horror by a political candidate is a terrible blunder.
Say goodnight, Jay
: Conan O'Brien to replace Leno. It could only improve.
: The NBC press release here. [via Lost Remote]
Sprawl is good for you
: A new "study" argues that suburban sprawl is bad for your health.
What a hock of hooey. It appears to be another of those coincidence-of-statistics "studies" that confirm somebody's desires for the truth.
They found that people in the suburbs complain of more ailments. Could it be that people in the suburbs are more likely to have health insurance and they can afford to complain of ailments more often? Could it be that people in the suburbs have jobs that are stressful and, in fact, their homes are what make life better for them? Could it be that the jobs and competition in bigger, more crowded, more central locations are frequently more stressful than the jobs in out-of-the-way places? Could it be that people in the suburbs grow old out there and get sick more often than young yuppies? I think it could.
Here's the Washington Post report on the "study."
The real problem I have with this is that "sprawl" is such a dirty word. Hey, yesterday's "sprawl" is today's "preservation" project. The house you're living in was sprawl when it's built but now that you're in it, it's not sprawl -- but the new one going in next door is.
My town is wasting millions buying land by the Interstate that no one should want to build on -- and if they wanted to build, who'd care? -- in the name of "open space" and its moral opposite, "sprawl." It's a waste of good land and good money and doesn't really serve the interests against "sprawl" because it only forces people to move farther and farther away from their jobs and communities.
"Sprawl" is a boogyman for the age.
Technorati's ills
: Dave Sifry explains why Technorati has been down all weekend: a fire in the hosting facility caused one mean game of dominos. I have complete sympathy, having been hosed similarly by the big New York blackout a year ago. And I also see that Dave is going to the obvious next step already: new disaster and back-up plans (we've just finished implementing ours). I'm utterly addicted to Technorati and I've been shaking and quaking with chills and sweats without it.
: UPDATE: It's back. The data appears to be a little out-of-date; I'm guessing it came from a back-up. But that should catch up soon.
Credibility gaps everywhere
: The other day, I posted the momentous news from Gallup that trust in big media has declined markedly. Tor the first time in recent history, more people distrust than trust big media. That is big news (which, no, we haven't seen prominently displayed on the news).
But big media isn't alone with declining trust.
In the post below, I quoted results of a USC/Annenberg Center for the Digital Future study on Internet v. TV time and when I went to the original study, I found some sobering stats on the public's trust of the internet -- and particularly of sites created by individuals -- which, of course, includes blogs.
Now this could just be the general cooties attached to the internet and to personal home pages from the start. But I think it's more than that.
First, I do fear that the tone of much of what comes from the internet and blogs contributes to this; thus my sermonizing on mud-slinging. I doubt that contributes much to this decline in trust, but I will say that we'd better watch out, or it will.
I also think that there's a new skepticism rising in the land (and it's not necessarily a bad thing): Just as we come to distrust big media more, and just as we come to realize that we can go to the source of news ourselves and judge for ourselves, we have to wake up to the notion that making that judgment isn't easy. We're not sure whom to believe. Call that mistrust. Or call that cynicism. Or call that healthy skepticism. When every citizen becomes his own reporter, every citizen becomes as skeptical as a reporter should be.
I actually think that the Rathergate case will improve the reputation of internet (and individual) media. If this survey were taken again today, I'd just bet that among those aware of the Rathergate story and of the internet's and blogs' role in it, we'd gain a few points. But that's only a bet.
The USC study says: Web sites mounted by established media (such as nytimes.com) ranked highest in perceived accuracy and reliability; 74.4 of users say that most or all information on established media Web sites is reliable and accurate.
Government Web sites also fared well with users in the current study; 73.5 percent say that most or all of the information on government Web sites is reliable and accurate.
Information pages posted by individuals have the lowest credibility; only 9.5 percent of users say the information on Web sites posted by individuals is reliable and accurate.
Even though large percentages of users say that most or all of the information on Web sites posted by established media and the government is reliable and accurate, it is worth noting that significant numbers of users believe that only half or less of information on these sites is reliable and accurate; 25.7 percent of users say that about half or less of news sites posted by established media are reliable and accurate, while 26.5 percent of users judge that about half or less of government Web sites are reliable and accurate....
Of very experienced users, 83.5 percent say that most or all of the information on news pages posted by established media is reliable and accurate, compared to 49.1 percent of new users who provide the same response.
When asked about government Web sites, 81.4 percent of very experienced users, compared to 50.1 percent of new users, say that most or all of the information on those sites is reliable and accurate.
New users and very experienced users agree about the low credibility of information posted by individuals; only 9.2 percent of very experienced users and 7.5 percent of new users say that most or all of the information on pages posted by individuals is reliable and accurate. The bottom line: Trust is something you earn every day and can lose anytime. Little media has to work just as hard -- no harder -- at gaining trust than big media. And you know how hard big media has to work at it.
: UPDATE: Ken Layne doesn't buy the huge decline in media trust.
TV and me
: I came to a shocking realization over the last few days:
I don't watch broadcast TV anymore.
Now that's shocking because I love TV. I was the TV critic for TV Guide and People magazines and I created a damned entertainment mag and appeared on TV and watched TV. I kept four VCRs going at once almost every night. I knew what was happening in every corner of prime time. This weekend, when I took my son on the NBC studios tour in New York (our clever avoidance of a visit to the American Girl store with the women of the house), I was the only person in the group who could name every founding cast member of Saturday Night Live. TV was my life. Was.
But here comes the new fall season and, frankly, I couldn't give a damn. I'm not watching any new series. I'm not following old series. I'm not watching broadcast TV. Three reasons:
1. The internet and the distraction of blogs. I spend a great deal of my day doing just what I'm doing at this second: reading and writing on the internet. I don't consume media anymore; I live it.
2. Cable is so damned good. There are great shows on cable, especially on HBO, and I watch them with the same devotion I used to give to Cheers or Hill St. Blues and Seinfeld. But The Sopranos and The Wire and Curb Your Enthusiasm are better and more addictive. And even when I'm not watching them, I'm watching niche TV: We love do-it-yourself home improvement shows, for example. As with all other media, one-size-fits all is dead; nice programming -- quality niches, special-interest niches, audience niches -- are taking over.
3. Broadcast is getting so damned bad. I am not now and never have been and never will be a snob about TV. I look down my nose at people who look down their noses at people who watch TV; I distrust anybody who brags to me that they don't own a TV or just watch PBS. Bull. But I do have to say that I have not become a regular with The Apprentice or Survivor or American Idol and I do believe that -- as with all other trends that threatened to eat TV -- these, too shall pass. And then where will the networks be?
All of this is to say that the studies showing a decline in TV viewership tied to an increase in internet usage are right. I'm the damned poster child. A greater percentage of the Internet households surveyed by the Digital Future Project indicated that they spent less time watching TV in 2003 than previous years. Nearly 38 percent said they spent less time watching television in 2003, compared to 31 percent in 2002, and 33 percent in 2001.
The greatest impact on television viewing was seen among veteran users with 7+ years online, with 45.5 percent saying they watched less since they started using the Internet. In 2001, just 35 percent said the Internet caused them to watch less TV. That swelled to 38 percent in 2002. Just wait until TV explodes with alternate means of delivery -- via the internet -- and alternate sources of programming -- the citizens. The death of the network age, so often predicted, is upon us.
Issues2004: Energy police
: This is an easy one, right?
We want to end our dependency on foreign oil, right?
Then why the hell have we not made one damned inch of progress toward that goal?
My big break as a cup reporter came in '73-'74, when I worked for Chicago Today (a paper that had no tomorrow) and ended up covering the energy crisis. I lucked into covering gas lines and ended up on the front page day after day because -- if you're old enogh to remember, you will remember -- we were caught in a national gasoline panic. There were shortages and lines everywhere. Prices skyrocketed. Price controls hovered. We vowed we would get out from under the thumb of the Arab oil oligarchy.
How soon we forget, huh?
We're just as dependent upon foreign oil today as we were then. And, no, I'm not going to go blaming SUV drivers (who often buy for the four-wheel-drive, not the extra ton). It's bigger than that.
It's a failing of government policy and business innovation and national will at every level.
And now we are paying the price. Oh, boy, are we. So what should we do about it? Well, as I emphasize in all these Issues2004 posts, I am no expert. But I'll start here:
: Gasoline: We must reduce our driving dependency on gasoline. Hybrid engines are a start, at last. So let's find every possible way to encourage more gas efficiency. I suggest a self-liquidating, Peter-Paul tax that gives rebates to efficient car buyers paid for by inefficient car buyers. It's not a tax. It's a transfer of wealth and energy ethics.
: Nuclear power: I would far rather deal with the devil atom than the devil Arab. I'm as freaked as the next guy at scenes from China Syndrome. But it's time to get over our nuclear jitters. I now (suddenly) believe that the more we can generate energy with nuclear power, the better. Let's be smart. Let's be safe. But let's not be stupid and let our fears of nukes prevent us from using this using this powerful energy source.
: R&D: We have to cut through all limitations to create a Manhattan Project for energy independence, bringing together academics and corporate scientists -- antitrust be damned -- to find new ways to reduce our oil addiction. This includes reducing regulation and increasing tax advantages for R&D and even creating the means for scientists to communicate openly. You want to have a 9/11 Commission that actually accomplishes something meaningful for our future and our safety, start the Energy Commission and put former Presidents on it along with CEOs of energy and auto companies and energy utilities.
: Reduce Arabs' dependence, too: As we cut the Arab world off from dependence on our oil dollars, we must replace it with new economic relationships not with Arab governments but with the Arab people: That is, we must create jobs via commerce and, yes, outsourcing. Otherwise, we'll only create more desperation and anger. If we do this properly, we transfer prosperity and economic power from corrupt Arab governments to the Arab people.
Your thoughts?
September 26, 2004
Excited
: Just found that Joe Kraus, a founder of Excite (and its predecessor concept-based search company, Architext, about which I was always far more excited than about Excite), has started a blog. He tells stories inside the funding of Excite with Kleiner Perkins venture god Vinod Khosla (avoiding the sad end to that tale, however). Kraus is now working on a new company in stealth. What's nice about this is that it comes from the other side of the table than all the many good VC blogs out there. [via VentureBlog]
Ready for his close-up
: Bill O'Reilly did his 60 Minutes interview tonight and did a masterful job of coming off as Mr. Reasonable.
Whew
: I love the understatement of the cosmology beat: Astronomers have spotted two monster galactic clusters slamming together in one of the biggest collisions ever recorded.
The smash-up poses no danger to Earth -- it is about 800 million light-years away, and the galaxies involved tend to speed by each other without crashing -- but the Milky Way could be on a similar collision course in a few billion years. It's happening 800 million light-years away. Yes, I'd say we have little cause to worry.
Ms November
: It's obligatory to link to the New York Times Magazine discovery of blogs today. My reaction:
It's time to create the bloggers' pin-up calendar. In pajamas, please.
: Glenn Reynolds gives the NYTMag story a very gracious link, not being concerned about the focus on liberal bloggers; he says that conservatives have gotten their ink, too. What amuses me is that he still bristles, though wearily now, at being called a conservative himself, still wondering how the label has stuck to him, being that not all his positions are conservative. Well, I'd say that incessant and angry Kerry-bashing might have something to do with it, no? Or maybe not. Glenn still categorizes Andrew Sullivan as a conservative (properly) even though he is now a Kerry backer.
Tony Blair on terrorism and modern media
: Tony Blair calls for firm support of the work in Iraq and the war against terrorism in an interview with The Observer. After talking about the terrorists' kidnapping of a Briton... However, he hoped the public would understand that terrorism in Iraq 'is to try to stop the country getting better, to murder anybody who tries to help its reconstruction and its democratic process. And our response, surely, has got to be to stand firm'.
Blair called on those divided over the war to rally behind a fresh battle for the control of Iraq: 'I can understand why people still have a powerful disagreement about the original decision to go to war. But whatever that disagreement, surely it is absolutely clear we have to stay and see it through. Because the consequence of not doing so is that global terrorism will get a tremendous boost.'
Downing Street has been privately alarmed by the sophistication with which hostage taker Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has played on western public opinion. 'What these terrorists understand is that they can use and manipulate the modern media to gain enormous publicity for themselves and put democratic politicians in a very difficult position,' he said....
Asked if the war on terrorism had really delivered a safer world, Blair suggested things were often darkest before dawn: 'There was more bloodshed in 1941 than in 1938.' The intensity of the insurgency showed, he said, how much was at stake. He's right about staying the course (and, yes, I wish I could vote for him in November).
He's also right about the terrorists' ability to manipulate modern media -- and modern media should be grappling with what to do about it. Playing the hostage videos, one after the next, is not necessarily the responsible or moral choice, for it gives the terrorists what they want: publicity. If Hitler released a press release, would you print it verbatim? Just because the terrorists in Iraq put out their press releases on video, that doesn't mean you need to air the images on TV. Video is the ideal format for manipulating video media; the terrorists have learned that.
We are also entering an era of unfiltered media and that, too, is an issue. Back to that Hitler PR example: In the days of filtered (that is, published, edited, time-delayed) media, what Hitler had to say would have been cut up and quoted in stories. Today, in the age of go-to-the-source media, you can put your message on a web site and it can be quoted in the same media (TV on TV) and linked to directly.
On the one hand, some bloggers and some on cable news have said that we need to see the full horror of what these terrorists are doing and so they argued that the threatening and beheading videos should be seen.
But you also have to be aware that when you do that, you play into the hands of the terrorists; you give them just what they want: publicity. Does that make you complicit?
All this is quite counterintuitive -- you'd think that the terrorists would realize that this should hurt them, make them look like the murdering slime they are. But this is a counterintuitive world with the most countercivil people: They don't care about bad PR. They don't care if we hate them for they hate us; in fact, if we hate them, it's a badge of honor. So the worse we think of them, the better it is for them. And playing their videos accomplishes that goal.
But playing their videos too much eventually desensitizes us to the horror of their crimes. The sameness of the videos and of the reports of terrorist bombs killing civilians in Iraqi marketplaces or outside Iraqi police stations is becoming numbing. And that, too, suits the terrorists just fine; it dilutes our resolve to fight them.
We need to be aware of how the terrorists are manipulating modern media, as Blair said. What exactly we should do about that, I'm not yet sure; I invite discussion.
But I do know one thing: We start by calling terrorists terrorists.
September 25, 2004
Quiet day
: Heading into the city for a day of fun with the family: Lion King, at last, plus the joys of overpriced parking. See you this afternoon.
Voting against
: Have we ever seen an election in which so many people are voting against rather than voting for a candidate? Sure, we've seen many when voters lament they'd rather vote for "none of the above." We've seen a lack of enthusiasm. But how long has it been since we've seen this much antipathy toward each candidate in turn. The left has been in full anybody-but-Bush swing for months; MoveOn has made that its rallying cry; even the DNC put people on the street not to push voting for Kerry but to push voting against Bush. And similarly, on the right, we've seen an often vitriolic effort to get people to get out to vote against Kerry. This is not a campaign of what we used to call constructive criticism. It could be that these two candidates bring out the bile in us. Or it could just be that this is close, so people have more reason to fear the person they don't like will win (though they could just as easily have the hope the person they do want will win). So here's my question:
Is there a poll that indicates whether voters are more motivated by voting against a candidate rather than for a candidate?
September 24, 2004
Elevating the debate
: Catching up with Virginia Postrel's on-target response to Glenn Reynolds' post -- she calls it "a bit defensive" -- about whether blogs elevate the political debate... or not. It's true that many bloggers, including Glenn, do a lot of media criticism. Media criticism is relatively easy, and Web links are ideally suited to it. But it's hardly true that "the political blogosphere isto a large degree about media criticism." Many of the best policy blogs have almost no media criticism, nor do they go looking for political scalps. They don't even constantly write about the superiority of blogs. That's why you almost never read about them. Reporters and media critics are bored, bored, bored by the very sort of discourse they claim to support (a lesson I learned the hard way in 10 long years as the editor of Reason). They, and presumably their readers, want conflict, scandal, name-calling, and some sex and religion to heighten the combustible mix. Plus journalists, like other people, love to read about themselves and people they know.
Hence, newspapers don't writes stories about how blogs like Volokh Conspiracy elevate the debate over legal issues or how blogs like Marginal Revolution improve the public's understanding of economic scholarship. You won't read any articles about comparing the military policy discussions on Intel Dump and Belmont Club. Education blogs, science blogs, and foreign-policy blogs all engage in excellent issue discussions, but you'll never, ever hear them held up as examples of the blogosphere at work. Even Glenn forgets they exist. And more....
 : I may be accused of being a member of the League of Women Voters (do you like my new hairdo?) but I'll carry that card proudly. The Issues2004 posts demonstrate that given half a chance, you all will read and comment on and blog and link to posts about issues just as you do to the sexier topics of mud-slinging. If I didn't have faith in that -- in the citizens -- then I wouldn't be a believer in democracy. But I am.
I'm no expert on any of the issues I have posted on or will post on. And so I again encourage you to post links to the kinds of blogs Virginia writes about. The experts are among us. I want to learn from them.
That's what I call elevating.
Just vote
:
: Halley is blogging voter registration deadlines to make sure we don't miss any of you.
More blogcasts: Updated
: More broadcast appearances on blogs and Rather and all that...
: Brian Lehrer's WNYC show Friday at 10:40a.... Done this morning. Enjoyed it. I'm a fan of Lehrer's. He runs a smart show.
: Capital Report on CNBC at 7p ET on Friday.
: FoxNews between 1-2p ET on Sunday. Preempted by the next hurricane, they just told me.
: Possibly Aaron Brown's show (minus Aaron) tonight on CNN at 10 ET. Preempted too. Or maybe it was something I said....
Unspun
: FoxNews' Bill O'Reilly gives an interview to 60 Minutes -- matter meets antimatter -- and says: Long a favorite of conservatives, O'Reilly's stances on big issues came as a surprise to Wallace, as did his answer to whether he would vote for George W. Bush.
O'Reilly states he is pro-gun control, against the death penalty, for civil unions, for gay adoption (as a last resort instead of state custody) and mindful of the environment.
But when asked if he would vote for President Bush, O'Reilly left open the possibility he would vote for John Kerry.
"I've known Kerry for 25 years. He's a patriot. I'm listening to what he has to say," he tells Wallace. Bill O'Reilly, undecided voter?
Blogs bring relief
: NJ.com blogger and colleague John Shabe tells a story about how, indeed, "Turns out we can change the world one blog at a time."
: In unrelated news, Shabe finds that lobster-lovers prefer Bush.
Scoop
: Note that Gawker scooped the tabs on Cynthia Nixon's sexual flip-flop. And who says this isn't real journalism with real reporting, eh?
The advantage of bias
: Getting ready to go on Brian Lehrer's show, I was thinking about the advantage of bias.
We're always painting a refusal to admit bias as an underhanded secret, a lie of omission, as I've called it lately.
Well, partly that's because "bias" is loaded; it's a perjorative. So let's call it "perspective" instead.
I've been saying that transparency about your perspective is a good thing. Hell, I said it yesterday about FoxNews on FoxNews. It's a refrain I've sung in this blog often but it was fun to blurt it out on Fox: Not to suck up to the air on which I'm appearing, I said, but FoxNews is No. 1 because it has a perspective -- label it what you want -- and the audience wants to see that perspective, to know what it is and judge what is said accordingly.
Perspective is context.
This morning I thought of another example: A few days ago, I praised Ira Glass' This American Life on NPR (PRI) for a surprising show about the Republican Party as the party of the big tent.
Now I don't know that Glass is liberal. But I think it's a safe assumption he is. And even if he's a closet McCain supporter, you can bet that a lot of his NPR (PRI) coworkers are blue-staters.
So that's what makes the story they did praising the Republicans' efforts to open their tent -- and criticizing the PC Democrats for closing theirs -- all the more noteworthy. If I heard Bill O'Reilly talking about the GOP tent, I'd discount it. But hearing Glass go on about it, I said: Wow, there's a real story here. This is something I should pay attention to; this perception (or reality) is why the Republicans are winning right now. Thus this is something the Democrats listening to certainly pay attention to.
My point is that Glass'/NPR's perspective (bias) added a lot to that report. I judged what they said in that context and it helped the story; it gave it more credence and importance.
My colleagues in journalism mostly act deathly allergic to the notion of revealing their own perspective. I say they shouldn't be. Being transparent about your perspective, when you have one, adds to the trust and credibility of what you say; it respects the audience and gives them more information to let them judge what you say. It's about telling the truth. And isn't that supposed to be what journalism is supposed to be about?
Are you listening, Dan Rather?
The Daily Stern
: Be warned: The Daily Stern is about to rise again. Congress is about to send its indecent indecency bill to Bush's desk. So if you are on TV and say "F Bush," you could be bankrupted. Well, let me get this in while I can: F Congress.
On Howard Stern yesterday, they recounted a Dr. Phil show in which the quack put a 9-year-old boy on, showing him smearing feces on a wall, and said he had most of the warning signs that said this kid was going to be a serial killer. Now I call that obscene (and irresponsible and inhuman). But Congress -- and, apparently, the American psychiatric governing body -- won't go after that. But Congress and the FCC will rule that a four-letter word and a breast are obscene.
I'm just getting revved up.
September 23, 2004
Issues2004: On radio
: Brian Lehrer's WNYC show in New York is covering 30 issues in 30 days leading up to the election.
The snob's response
: There's no greater snob -- and I mean that in only the nicest way, of course -- than Tina Brown. She imported snobbery into the U.S. the way the Beatles imported rock music.
Today, she exudes snobbishness about journalism. I won't call on my usual preists-and-cathedrals image; this more the has-been queen sniffing in her castle at all the riff-raff out in the streets, typing fast. Now the conventional wisdom is that the media will be kept honest and decent by an army of incorruptible amateur gumshoes. In fact, cyberspace is populated by a coalition of political obsessives and pundits on speed who get it wrong as much as they get it right. It's just that they type so much they are bound to nail a story from time to time. This isn't Brown sniffing at bloggers; it is Brown sniffing at the audience, the great unwashed. Too bad you have to get commoners to watch your TV show to be successful, eh, your highness? She continues: The rapturing about the bloggers is the journalistic equivalent of the stock market's Internet bubble. You can see the news chiefs feeling as spooked as the old-style CEOs in the '90s who had built their companies over 20 years and then saw kids in backward baseball caps on the cover of Fortune. It finally drove them nuts. It was why we saw Time Warner's buttoned-down corporate dealmaker Gerald Levin tearing off his tie and swooning into the embrace of AOL's Steve Case.
The equivalent today is when news outfits that built their reputations on check-and-double-check pick up almost any kind of assertion and call it a "source." Or feel so chased by the new-media mujaheddin they start trusting tips garnered from God-knows-where by a partisan wack job in Texas. What a crock of caviar. So now she is blaming bloggers for making Dan Rather and CBS panic and air a forged memo from a nutty Texan. Can somebody diagram the logic of that paragraph?
Damn, I guess Gawker has gotten under Tina's skin.
: Tina is fooling herself not only about the Rather story and the fate of news media and the role of citizens but also about the campaign: Documents or no documents, everyone knows Bush's dad got him out of Vietnam. Everyone knows he thought he had better, funner things to do than go to a bunch of boring National Guard drills. (Only a killjoy like John Kerry would spend his carefree youth racking up high-minded demonstrations of courage and conscience, right?) Like O.J. Simpson's infamous "struggle" to squeeze his big hand into the glove, the letter was just a lousy piece of evidence that should never have been produced in court. Now because CBS, like Marcia Clark, screwed up the prosecution, Bush is going to walk. : UPDATE: See also Wonkette's simultaneous translation.
Declining trust in media
: A new Gallup survey says that trust in media has taken a dramatic decline.
This survey was taken after the start of Rathergate but before the denouement. Gallup doubts that Rather is the primary cause. We all can -- and certainly will -- speculate about what the real causes in this decline are. You can predict that I'll say the focus on and exasperation with mud-slinging is a factor. Some will say it's the lack of coverage of the Bush and Kerry military stories; others will say it's the excessive coverage. Whatever. I think that looking for a cause of this decline is as short-sighted as CBS appointing a commission to look just at the forgeries, not at the network.
This is a bigger story, of course, is the future and fate of journalism and news media. Trust and credibility are the only real assets of this business and Gallup says they are eroding, though we didn't need Gallup to tell us that, eh? (See Tim Oren's related post.)
So journalism must reform its relationship with the people formerly known as the audience (aka us). It must face us eye-to-eye and become transparent to rebuild trust. It must recognize that the internet allows people to go to the source sometimes -- they report, they decide -- and to talk back. It must admit the problems and failings it has. It must involve the citizens in that rebirth as equal partners, or they may as well not bother.
Can you hear that ringing sound, journalists? It's another wake-up call from Gallup. The Sept. 13-15 poll -- conducted after the CBS News report was questioned but before the network issued a formal apology -- found that just 44% of Americans express confidence in the media's ability to report news stories accurately and fairly (9% say "a great deal" and 35% "a fair amount"). This is a significant drop from one year ago, when 54% of Americans expressed a great deal or fair amount of confidence in the media. The latest result is particularly striking because this figure had previously been very stable -- fluctuating only between 51% and 55% from 1997-2003.
Conversely, 39% currently say they have "not very much" confidence in the media's accuracy and fairness, while 16% say they have "none at all."
Clearly, something new has happened to shake public confidence in the media, but whether that "something" is the recent CBS News controversy is a matter of speculation. One might assume that if the CBS News story were the culprit, that this would be reflected in a disproportionately large drop in confidence in the media among Republicans. However, the data on this is not conclusive. Trust in the news media is typically lower among Republicans, but all three partisan groups show a significant decline in confidence in the media since last year. It did drop by a somewhat greater degree among Republicans than Democrats, however. My emphasis.
The blind blogging the blind
: Who knew that Jayson Blair had a blog? (Does this singlehandedly dilute the credibility of all blogging?)
Rathergate.com cleverly asked Blair his thoughtson the Rather story. I'm not sure we should give a damn what Blair says, but it's interesting in a ship-of-fools way. [via Instapundit]
Canyouhearmenow?
: The second I get off FoxNews, I get email from a lady telling me to slow down. I thought I had. Oh, well. Too late.
Calling Kerry's brand manager
: We often say in blogs that the wise company will spot somebody complaining about its product or brand in a blog and respond directly to serve that consumer and win him back.
Well, perhaps Kerry's brand manager (yes, if only he had one) should respond to this post from my friend, colleague, and fellow blogger Joe Territo, which ends: I'm starting to question my own, somewhat recent decision to vote for Kerry. Can somebody who is running what appears to be such a weak campaign possibly be a strong and effective president? I am starting to buy into the Republican argument that even though I don't agree with Bush, it's better to have a leader who is clear and straightforward than one whose message is muddled. Please, somebody, talk me out of this spiral back into Bush's corner.
All Dan All The Time
: Andrew Tyndall -- who publishes a respected report on network news coverage -- posts this in a comment below, reacting to my reaction to Glenn Reynolds' post about blog (and thus media) coverage of scandals v issues. He starts quoting Glenn: "If the Big Media were talking more about issues, and less -- to pick RatherGate as the example which I think inspired this conversation -- about Bush's National Guard service, probably bloggers would be talking about issues more, too."
As big a story as the 60 Minutes memos are in media circles and the blogosphere, it is flat out untrue that it has dominated campaign coverage in the aforesaid Big Media.
Last week on the three networks' nightly newscasts combined (including CBS, which spent extended time to defending its own reporting), the memos accounted for less than one quarter of all Campaign 2004 coverage (14 minutes out of 61). The previous week--when the story broke--it was a similar small proportion (17 minutes out of 68). Our tracking data on campaign coverage is archived at http://www.tyndallreport.com/campaign.html. Valuable data. Is one quarter a lot?
Oh, Danny boy
: Dan Rather is throwing his boss, CBS News President Andrew Heyward, to the wolves in today's New York Times: "This is not verbatim," Mr. Rather recalled. "But I said: 'Andrew, if true, it's breakthrough stuff. But I need to do something unusual. It may even be unique. I have to ask you to oversee, in a hands-on way, the handling of this story, because this is potentially the kind of thing that will cause great controversy.'
"He got it. He immediately agreed.'' Nope, Dan. It came out of your mouth. You're responsible.
: It's also troubling that the Rather camp apparently tells The Times that he is opposed to the appointment of Dick Thornburgh to the baby-blue commission investigating him: Mr. Rather considers Mr. Thornburgh a confounding choice in part because he served two Republican presidents, Mr. Bush's father, and Richard M. Nixon, with whom Mr. Rather publicly clashed, the colleagues and associates said. Well, who the hell do you think they should appoint? Ted Kennedy?
Issues2004: Education
: My issue with education is that we keep attacking the bottom without pushing the top.
Bush's No Child Left Behind initiative is a fine thing. Kerry doesn't fight it on his site and vows to go enforce it. Fixing bad schools is vital. Nobody can disagree with that.
I have one complaint about the initiative: its reliance on testing. I say we already depended way too much on on testing, from standardized measures in elementary schools through the dreaded SATs. I know testing doesn't treat all students fairly or accurately. We all know that teachers and school systems reorder themselves to game the test: they teach the test rather than teach. And the industry that has popped up around gaming the SATs is an offensive waste of money and brainpower. Still, I understand that you can't measure whether children have been left behind without testing them. So fine.
I also understand the resource and effort put into mainstreaming children with educational difficulties of all sorts. It's good for those children and good for those around them. I'm not going to be politically incorrect about this. But make no mistake about it: The cost is tremendous. Every extra dollar a district can find goes into extra attention for children with problems of one sort or another.
At the same time, all across the country, we've worked so hard to level playing fields that we don't let the best stand out; it's damned near politically incorrect in some districts to be smart. In my day, we "tracked" students by ability and I believe that worked well for everyone; it pushed the best to do their best and it didn't intimidate the rest and allowed them to do their best as well. Tracking is out now.
Well, if fixing bad schools is all we do, and if extra resources mostly go to children with problems, and if we make everyone equal -- if we put all this effort into raising the lowest common denominator -- then we'll give short shrift to another important job: We also have to raise the nominator. We have to challenge the best and the brightest. We must nurture genius.
I would have hoped that Bush, as a Republican, as a business President, could have framed this properly: Great education is our best investment. The more we train students to innovate in science and technology and math and the arts (remember that entertainment is a huge industry and gigantic export), the more we inspire them to create, the better chance we have to profit and compete and grow. Education is not just a social issue but a business issue.
So what do we do about that? The problem is that whenever we talk about improving education, it means money. Special programs for children with special needs costs money. Special programs for gifted kids costs money. Funding research costs money. Voters -- and talk-show hosts -- everywhere complain about that. But teachers still don't earn much (and that affects the quality of teachers we get). Vicious cycle.
Look at Bush's plan or Kerry's and you'll find lots of proposals for lots of programs. I'm no expert, as I've emphasized in all these Issues2004 posts. So I can't really dig into all their suggestions and say what will work and won't. But I do know that many of us are frustrated with this vicious cycle; we want better education. I simply think that pushing the top is almost as important and beneficial as fixing the bottom.
Your priorities?
David Letterman's No. 1 way for CBS to improve its image
: "Oh, I dunno, stop making up crap."
What's not funny
: CrushKerry.com -- which, by its very name and mission, is hardly aiming to be fair and complimentary to John Kerry (they're hardly the League of Women Voters, after all) -- comes out in agreement with the Kerry campaign's complaint against the latest Bush commercial, which makes goofy jokes about the Democrat's wind-surfing and flip-flopping over the war in Iraq. Says CK: Therefore, we feel the windsurfing spot was an unfortunate mistake.
And thats not easy for us to say. A few days ago in a memo to Karl Rove, we urged the Bush team to begin to turn John Kerry into a joke. The windsurfing ad attempts to do that, but in our opinion it does so on the wrong issue.
The truth is, there have been 1,000 American deaths in Iraq. Kidnappings and beheadings have made American hearts scream for justice. Now is not the time to laugh about such atrocities, even if the joke is ultimately at John Kerrys expense. Good for them.
September 22, 2004
Triumphalism or mere triumph?
: A few times today, I heard people say that blogs didn't really triumph over Dan Rather and CBS and that other news organizations (notably, ABC News) were on the story just like blogs were, and that all this required was some couch reporting in Microsoft Word isn't real reporting.
All that misses the point.
The point is that bloggers were heard. They (we) were heard right alongside Big Media. They (we) pushed Big Media hard. Attention was paid. Respect is due. The citizens spoke and the nation listened. That's the point. Citizens' media has arrived. And it's not leaving.
Elevators go up and down
: Glenn Reynolds addresses the question of whether blogs are elevating the political debate.
I hesitate to get into this because I haven't enjoyed tangling with Glenn lately, since I sensed that he'd developed an obsession with Swifties and Cambodia and I'll quickly concede that I'd developed my equivalent obsession with campaign mud, decrying the Swifties and Mooreites, the supposed scandals about Kerry's and Bush's honorable service. I saw a real change in the character of his blog; I said so; he took issue, as well he should; and others had complaints, in turn, about my blog. It felt like two buddies drifting farther apart down the bar. I started reading a lot into a lack of Instalinks and was, frankly, relieved when I got one earlier this week -- not for the traffic, but for the communication. Christ, I was getting ready to send him flowers and a box of chocolates.
But this is what happens in a personal medium. It gets personal.
And all that is necessary background to Glenn's post today: IS THE BLOGOSPHERE ELEVATING THE POLITICAL DEBATE? I just had an interesting conversation with a journalist who's writing on that question, and who pretty clearly seems to feel that the answer is "no."
If "elevating the debate" means a sort of good-government, League-of-Women-Voters focus on where candidates stand on health care, etc., that's mostly true, I suppose. But I think it misconceives what blogs are about. There certainly are bloggers posting on healthcare and other issues -- see, for example, Jeff Jarvis's Issues 2004 posts and this post by Ann Althouse on medical malpractice -- but the political blogosphere is to a large degree about media criticism. If the Big Media were talking more about issues, and less -- to pick RatherGate as the example which I think inspired this conversation -- about Bush's National Guard service, probably bloggers would be talking about issues more, too. Actually, I would have thought that Glenn would have said the opposite. His complaint was that Big Media were not talking about Swifties and Kerry and Cambodia. Now he complains that they were talking about Bush and the National Guard. My complaint was the Big Media -- and bloggers -- were not talking about issues but were, instead, talking about both Bush and the National Guard and Kerry and the Swifties and Cambodia.
That is precisely why I started posting about issues, because I decided I should put my bandwidth where my mouth is.
I completely agree that blogs are, to a large degree, about media -- because they are media. But in fact, if all blogs do is criticize media, then that's damned limiting. I'd hate to see blogs get too inside baseball (on steroids).
If blogs are media, then they can and should talk about anything media talks about, including issues that matter to our lives and our future (with, I might add, a helluva lot more relevance and passion than any League of Women Voters).
Glenn continues: Of course, what's striking about RatherGate is the absolutely incredible degree of ineptitude, arrogance, and outright political manipulativeness that it has revealed. In light of that, I can understand why members of the media would rather talk about other things. Cheap shot and not really right. Media's going mad talking about Rathergate; I've had tons of media calls and so have many other bloggers. And on those appearances, I -- as both Media Man and Blog Boy -- have been attacking the ineptitute, arrogance, and political mucking of Rather et al -- and I've not been alone among media men. Glenn goes on: But, all blogger triumphalism aside, the media criticism matters. And it matters because Big Media are still the main way that our society learns about what's happening, and talks about it. A serious breakdown there, which seems undeniably present today, is very important. In many ways, as I've said before, it's more important than how the election turns out. I agree with most of that (I do not think that media matters more than terrorism, homeland security, health care, education, and such). But cut away the brush and vines and that's a fine tree there. If he'd ended there, we'd stand in agreement. But the snark gun fires once more: Meanwhile, I don't recall much tut-tutting about bloggers focusing on Trent Lott's racial remarks, instead of his position on national health insurance. Were we elevating the tone then, but not now? Cheap rhetorical trick. Lott's statement was a present-tense story and it wasn't in the midst of a presidential campaign and it didn't blot out other discussion.
Bottom lines: Big Media and bloggers can and should talk about more than media because all media and no issues makes Jack a dull boy.
Media's important. But so are homeland security, Iraq, health insurance, education, energy, and all the other issues that affect our lives and about which we have opinions and about which we -- bloggers as well as Big Media -- should be debating. We can talk about all this at once. Pixels are cheap.
As I have said here often lately, I had hoped that blogs would push Big Media to do better on the issues that matter to this nation and its future, not just about mud from the past. That's how I hoped blogs would, indeed, have helped elevate the political debate.
I believe blogs can do both. Blogs can criticize and fact-check and dog -- and, here's the point -- improve Big Media. Blogs can also debate and inform and push and prod both media and politicians on issues that matter to us. I wouldn't want to limit them.
Blogs can do all that -- and make pajama jokes, too.
: And let me add this... The reason that I went ahead and posted this is because if we in blogs criticize Big Media, we also should be prepared to examine ourselves. So I think it's good that Glenn posted what he did; he tries to boil us down (ouch) to our essence. And I think it's best if we then continue to discuss that. We're a new medium. We're figuring out what the hell we are. So long as we don't get caught in (a) navel gazing or (b) triumphalism or (c) boring self-indulgent droning (each a disease of Big Journalism, Lord knows), then the discussion is good. So discuss....
: UPDATE: Patterico says I missed the point of present-tense vs. past-tense. I didn't. But I did shorthand what I said too much so here's his post and see my repy.
Also see my earlier post arguing that blogs should be judged on how we try to affect the coverage and conduct of this election. : Think of the next 11 weeks until the election as a challenge: as a test of weblogs' real value:
When we wake up after the election, will we be able to point to the ways and posts in which this new medium contributed, or at least tried to contribute, to improving the coverage of the campaign and the policies of the candidates and the wisdom of the electorate? Will we have made a difference at all? Or will we have made it worse?
Did we push the coverage and the candidates in ways that mattered? Or did we wallow in mud?
Now is our opportunity to show what we can do. So what can we do?
National pundit shortage!
: I'm supposed to be on FoxNews Thursday between 9 and 9:30 a.m. (my virgin voyage into their air). This must indicate a dire shortage of pundits!
: I apologize for the lack of posts since this morning. Real work, real life, you know how it is. And now I have to get out early to make sure I make it to FoxNews on time. Then more meetings. More real work, real life. But I blog when I find a breath....
Two little
: CBS is doing as little as possible with its Rathergate commission: It appointed only a two-person commission and though they are respected -- former AP head Louis Boccardi and former PA Gov. Dick Thornburgh -- they aren't TV and they don't represent the various constituencies and thus viewpoints I think are important. But far, far worse: CBS is charging them only to look into how the forged docs got onto the air, nothing after, nothing more. Big mistake. Muffed opportunity. Frightened and frightening lack of vision.
My view of what they should have done here. CBS' announcement here. See Ernie Miller's parallel reaction here.
Issues2004
: Fred Wilson has posted two more good replies to my Issues2004 posts on health insurance and homeland security. If you've posted replies on your blogs, please leave links in the comments; the point of this is to discuss the issues so let's discuss. (And now I feel guilty I haven't posted the next one, having wasted time on Dan Rather and all that. Shame on me.)
Email hell
: Rafat Ali is having the same problem I'm having: Some spam virus is spoofing my email address sending more virus spam everywhere with fake mail-bounce messages. As those get slapped into spam folders, our domains are getting black marks on black lists (even though it's not really our domains sending them; our addresses are only being spoofed). It's affecting Rafat's business and he's asking for expert help. Go here to help.
He's being followed by a moon shadow...
: Cat Stevens' (new) name, Yusuf Islam, is on no-fly security lists, so when he was allowed to board a plane and it was discovered, the jet was diverted to Maine. "He was interviewed and denied admission to the United States on national security grounds," said homeland security spokesman Dennis Murphy. He said the man would be put on the first available flight out of the country today. : OK, let's start in.... Maybe they feared he'd say, I'm Gonna Get Me A Gun or just that he's on the wrong side of this Wild World. He's just Cat Stevens, but now he looks like a Foreigner. At any rate, it was A Bad Night last night and you could pretty much say that Tuesday's Dead and When Morning Has Broken he finds himself in the land of L.L. Bean. And you know where this is headed. Yup, next time, Cat/Yusuf, better take the Peace Train.
The anti-Reuters machine
: Maarten Schenk created a Movable Type plug-in that does just what Can-West newspapers do to Reuters story, pissing off Reuters and making reasonable people cheer for Can-West: "It will change all instances of the words militant, activist, fighter, gunman and resistance into the T-word."
A charge to the CBS Commission
: Since Jay Rosen nominated me to the CBS commission that will investigate the Rather affair, I've been thinking about what it should accomplish. So, here is my charge to the CBS commission:
 1. The screw-up: Find out everything that Rather and the producers did wrong -- find out how they aired these forgeries and their conclusions based on them -- but get past that quickly; it's not the real story. Report about the reporting; find out who talked to whom when and what they said; find out who passed on the documents and the conclusions. Fine. Treat all that as the 9/11 Commission treated its narrative; it's just the story of a screw-up, that's all. It's the symptom, not the disease.
Don't fire anybody. That's management's job, not yours.
2. The fixes: Make recommendations about how not to do this again -- but get past that quickly, too, for that is also not the real story.
We know how that will turn out: more people checking more things, more rules: We don't cover the waterfront, we cover our asses. Fine.
But be careful: This could also chill gutsy reporting (and not just stupid reporting) and so you don't want to go too far. Don't get all anal, OK?
Now we get to the meat of your job, commissioners:
3. Transparency of process: Take a good, hard look at what we, the citizens, deserve to know about the process of news.
It's sausage and yes, we do want to know how it's made. It is our news. It is our right to know.
So make it clear how you decide what to air, how you make the stories, what you don't run, even the debate in the newsroom. When I was at the Aspen Institute for this discussion, many of the (other) gray beards said we in journalism should be judged by our product, not our process. I disagree. Our product is being questioned, so we must reveal our process.
And I say that will work to our favor; it will show how we try to get it right, even when we fail.
And, by the way, if the network had believed in transparency of process, they would not have stonewalled this story for 12 days. (And ain't that ironic, by the way: Dan Rather goes out stonewalling just like Dick Nixon.)
4. Transparency of bias: This the biggie, commissioners, so don't wimp out. I say that every reporter, producer, and executive should be quizzed in detail about their own opinions and biases and those biases should be revealed. Then let the public judge their truthfulness, for they already are. Let's see whether Dan Rather still tries to act as if he doesn't dislike Bush, then he's still not telling the audience the truth... and if he doesn't tell the truth about that, then they will wonder about the rest of what he tells them.
That is why we need to be transparent about our viewpoints: The worst agenda is a hidden agenda. So let's not hide behind "objectivity' and all this "Tiffany network" bullshit. We're human; we have opinions; spit 'em up.
5. Conversation: Now we get to the citizen journalists. And yes, they (we) are journalists, too.
The commission should invite the bloggers who went after CBS into the same room with the highest PTUTB (powers that used to be) of CBS News for at least a day and they should vow to come out understanding each other better. Rather has to understand that we, the people, also care about the truth -- perhaps more than he does. He has to understand that we, the crowd, know more than he does. And the bloggers need to understand that not every journalist is a venal viper; they really do want to serve the public.
Speaking of the public, the next day, CBS PTUTB meet viewers and discover that they're not idiots waiting to be spoonfed. And then the PTUTB meet news sources and discover that they often feel misquoted and screwed.
These encounter sessions should leave even Dan Rather humbled.
6. Future: Another tough one (they're all tough): CBS has to admit that it's all downhill from here for network news.
They have to face the facts of cable news (I'd make the mucketies watch FoxNews for 24 hours straight) and the internet and blogs and mobile phones and the commoditization of news. They have to come to grips with the idea (pardon my repetition) that we don't wait for them to bring the news to us anymore, but the news waits for us to get it. They have to serve us where and when and how we want to be served (probably without overpaid anchors, by the way).
And they have to wrestle with the business reality and the deadly dominoes of more competition and smaller audiences and less revenue and smaller news operations the need to be more efficient and concentrate on what makes them valuable and what doesn't (i.e., no more sending 15,000 reporters to a political convention where no news happens... and no more fat paychecks to overpaid anchors).
So the bottom line: You the commissioners should imagine what TV news should be. Don't just fix Dan's screw-up. Reform and reinvent TV news.
Anything less is only another CYA memo.
: A few more things:
Make sure you don't just include retired TV news PTUTB on this commission. Bring on bloggers (in addition to me), news sources, viewers, and young people, too (it's their news next). This isn't about the priests policing the priests.
And the entire process should be transparent -- completely on-the-record and bloggable from the first minute. Don't give me any crap about how that would chill the commission's work. It's time for tough truth love here: All the truth, all the time.
September 21, 2004
The real revolution
: Mark Glaser reports on the latest wave of Iranian repression of speech for bloggers and journalists alike: In the U.S., when bloggers fact-check the media -- as they did with the questionable National Guard memos on "60 Minutes" -- they are hailed as new media heroes. In Iran, when reformist bloggers and journalists fact-check the government -- as they did when the ruling hardliners railroaded the last election -- they are put in jail and their publications are shut. Spread the word.
Back on MSNBC
: I couldn't be on Deborah Norville's show tonight, but nonetheless, she read t his quote from a post below on the air just now: It's bigger than Dan Rather. It's bigger than CBS. It's about journalism and Big Media and their relationship with the citizenry and democracy. It's about sharing authority with the people."
Geekplomacy
: Ethan Zuckerman revels in a delicious nya-nya moment. He recalls the trouble he had raising funds for Geekcorps to take technology and connectivity to the developing world and now reads Business Week's story about how the big growth in the technology is going to be in that same third world.
He predicts that big developments in technology will come from the developing world.
I also think that technology business and education could be our best opportunities for bringing peace and prosperity to the hostile third word -- namely, the Middle East. Look at Eastern Europe: as soon as it opened up, we saw great programmers emerging from Russia, Poland, Hungary. Look at India, which has become a world leader in technology and related industries. We should be bringing technical education to Iraq (I'm not suggesting the same for Afghanistan... yet) for jobs and industry and codependency and meaningful relations will follow.
The new universal language of industry, prosperity, education, and diplomacy: C++.
Who, what, when, where, why, wiki
: Dave Sifry starts a wiki chronicling events in which blogs et al had an impact on the world around. [via Steve Rubel]
Not ready for my closeup
: Well, I guess I didn't talk too fast on Deborah Norville's show last night. They just asked me back tonight: All Dan, All The Time. Alas, I can't; have to watch the kids on back-to-school night; priorities, you know; Deborah v. daughter, daughter wins. But I was damned happy they asked. Oh, well.
The badge of honor
: Hossein Derakhshan has received an attack from Iranian hardliners for his work on weblogs (and, parenthetically, for saying on his blog that he has imbibed alcohol). He says they call this a "badge of honor." He also says this now means he'd have real trouble going home to Iran.
What he said
: Just saw George Bush's speech before the U.N.
Why was Colin Powell wearing the simultaneous translation earpiece the whole time? Was he getting an alternate soundtrack? What Powell wished he'd said?
: I liked the proposal to establish a U.N. fund for democracy. It's necessary to help nations with democracy and elections and it helps remind us that that is the goal: To give all the citizens of the Earth the opportunity to rule themselves.
Issues2004: Homeland security
: This post will be unlike the prior Issues2004 because it's more personal and, yes, emotional and less specific; I have to begin with my perspective on terrorism and I'm not sure where to end on homeland security.
Of course, witnessing terrorism firsthand changed my view of war. In front of my blog readers three years ago, I lost my '60s-legacy pacifism and became the liberal hawk. I also reordered all my political priorities. Terrorism is real. Protecting ourselves and our children is our most vital task. This is a president's most important job. This is the issue voters care about above all others.
So you would think that our strategy and resolve would be utterly clear but they were not; that's how the 9/11 Commission drove a truck through the hole in our national debate. I blame neither side for this; I blame both. I'm not sure why we are not more united on at least this front. Perhaps it's denial, perhaps its odd American optimism, I don't know.
But we must affirm and reaffirm that we are at war and that we must protect against our enemy.
I'm scared to death of these fascist lunatics who are our enemy. This makes me tolerant of a lot. The more they check us in the airport, the better. Want to pass along data about me and my travels from the airline to the government? No problem; I won't be one of those people screeching about privacy. What's private? I'm on the plane in public. I have nothing to hide and everything to gain. More cops? Great! Interview foreigners? Well, who else? Check cargo? I wish we could afford to search it all. Patriot Act? You don't hear me wailing about it. Our ancestors gave up butter and nylon stockings in other wars. We can give up a little data.
I never want to witness what I saw on September 11th again. Yes, I am willing to give up privacy to help assure that. And, no, I don't think we need to give up fundamental rights. We have a Constitution and courts that protect those rights; I have faith in that.
But I also know that government cannot protect and provide for us like God in Eden. I did not join in the finger-pointing of the 9/11 Commission; I saw no point in fooling ourselves into thinking that we could have prevented the attacks.
I also have not joined in the stampede to adopt the 9/11 Commission's recommendations without debate. As I've said often (see the links atop this post), I'd prefer to see our leaders debate the recommendations rather than blindly adopting them and thinking that will make us safe.
I'd prefer to see the candidates falling over themselves to outdo the Commission and find better solutions. Instead, they played catchup with the Commission. That makes homeland security too easy. That's fooling ourselves.
But the candidates do have more than just the 9/11 Commission stands on their own web sites. Here is Bush's and here is Kerry's. I say, yes, give us all that and more. I wish we didn't have to do this. I wish we didn't have to spend all this money to fight this enemy. But we do.
So I don't have a specific wish-list on this issue except to have the confidence that future presidents in years to come will do what they can to protect us. On a recent Bill Maher show, noted security expert and foundering sitcom star Jason Alexander said that no president will or can afford to drop the ball on homeland security and I agree with that. It's our job to keep the pressure on and not think that we've ever solved this problem and to support the measures needed.
Your ideas?
Kerry on Letterman
: Al Gore was a much more exciting guest. And, yes, that's saying something.
Issues2004
: When I started the Issues2004 posts, I hoped there'd be good (on-topic) discussion in the comments. That's happening. Thank you! I also hoped others would respond on their blogs. That's happening. See Fred Wilson on Iraq here. Fred also suggests that other bloggers should post under that headline structure -- e.g., Issues2004: Education. (That also would allow us to search Technorati or our RSS feeds for those headlines and -- next time -- to put all those posts in a category and produce RSS feeds of them; this is a way for people to gather around this campire talk or that.)
Issues2004: Iraq II
: A followup on yesterday's Issues2004 post on Iraq:
I don't believe we have heard from either candidate a clear strategy and tactical plan for victory in Iraq -- that is, for bringing security and democracy to the country, which is now our moral and political responsibility; that is the goal I set forth below.
I haven't heard it clearly from Bush. His actions speak louder than word and so far, sorry to say, his actions do not reveal a plan for victory.
And last night, I added to the post below Kerry's four-point plan on Iraq. But that troubled me as well. First, Kerry is not going for victory; he is going for withdrawl. Second, his means of withdrawl depends upon something I cannot see happening: namely, the entry of the U.N. and other countries into that literal minefield. You can kiss Annin ass and French ass and German ass and Russian ass as much as you want and I don't see them coming in to -- let's call a spade a spade -- rescue us from Iraq.
David Brooks said it, too, today in The Times: The crucial passage in the speech was this one: "The principles that should guide American policy in Iraq now and in the future are clear: we must make Iraq the world's responsibility, because the world has a stake in the outcome and others should share the burden." From a U.S. responsibility, Iraq will become the world's
responsibility....
Rhetorically, this was his best foreign policy speech by far (it helps to pick a side). Politically, it was risky. Kerry's new liberal tilt makes him more forceful on the stump, but opens huge vulnerabilities. Does he really want to imply that 1,000 troops died for nothing?
By picking the withdrawal camp, he has assigned himself a clear task. Right now 54 percent of likely voters believe that the U.S. should stay as long as it takes to rebuild Iraq, while 39 percent believe that we should leave as soon as possible. Between now and Nov. 2, Kerry must flip those numbers.
Substantively, of course, Kerry's speech is completely irresponsible. In the first place, there is a 99 percent chance that other nations will not contribute enough troops to significantly decrease the U.S. burden in Iraq. In that case, John Kerry has no Iraq policy. The promise to bring some troops home by summer will be exposed as a Disneyesque fantasy.
More to the point, Kerry is trying to use multilateralism as a gloss for retreat. If "the world" is going to be responsible for defeating Moktada al-Sadr and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, then no one will be responsible for defeating them. The consequences for the people of Iraq and the region will be horrific.
September 20, 2004
Words fail
: I really don't know how to continue to find ways to express outrage appropriate to the latest attrocities by the terrorists in Iraq. American civilians beheaded. Iraqi civilians bombed. Horrid murderers.
: Meanwhile, in Canada, Reuters makes CanWest remove its byline from stories because the papers up there -- bless them -- came up with a policy replacing Reuters' quisling euphemisms with the word "terrorist." Not to call them terrorists is not journalism; it's lying; it's the worst of hidden agendas. Good for you, Can-West. Curses on you, Reuters.
Shucks
: A Slashdotter says something nice about this here blog. I now await the fall of the other shoe.
: It's about the Issues2004 posts below. I'll write the next as soon as I get a chance; was going to do it tonight, but spending the evening in Manhattan to do the TV thing took away that time.
It's bigger than Dan Rather
: It's bigger than Dan Rather. It's bigger than CBS. It's about journalism and Big Media and their relationship with the citizenry and democracy. It's about sharing authority with the people.
My fear is that CBS will create a commission -- just as The New York Times had its commission and 9/11 had its commission -- and out of that, some people will be fired [please, tonight, let us not make references to heads rolling] and new rules will be instituted and the network will think its problem is solved... while the network's detractors will insist nothing will change.
But it's bigger than that.
Tonight on Deborah Norville's show, there was too much talk for my taste about CBS as the Tiffany network and the gold-standard of TV journalism. That's not only a terribly outdated perception of CBS -- which is just another news company -- but the attempt to harken back to those alleged golden days also continues to separate journalism from the people. It tries to keep journalism behind stone walls, cathedral or palace, priesthood or monarchy.
As the Rather affair shows, journalists are nothing if not human, and nothing if not fallible.
The time has come for journalists to admit that. The time has come for them to take Dan Gillmor's words to heart and realize that the audience knows more than they do.
The time has come to reshape journalism -- and not just CBS or (if it were possible) Dan Rather's brain.
You could argue that CBS is the last body to do that. Or you could argue it is the best to do it: Humbled, chastised, bruised, bloodied... What if CBS tried to imagine new relationships between news and the people? They certainly can't do it singlehandedly. But they could make a start.
That commission could include not just news priests but also bloggers and news sources and news subjects (including those who've been wronged) and competitors ... just plain viewers aka consumers aka citizens (the people who should matter most).
They could dig into what CBS did wrong -- but that's already pretty obvious. They should produce an object lesson for journalistic hotshots everywhere. And that has value.
But how much better if they started imagining a new view of news that involves the wisdom of the people. They should examine not just what CBS did wrong but what CBS could have done right.
That's what journalism needs now.
: Jay Rosen speculates on the CBS commission here. (And I'm terribly flattered at the link to this blog.)
: Richard Bennett's perfect line: Dan Rather has plead guilty to Gross Stupidity in order to avoid a conviction for Extreme Bias in the court of public opinion.
Off the air
: Just got home after taping Deborah Norville's show; it's on the air now. I have to say that she does a good job; she runs a sane show; she was well-researched; she involved everybody; and she was tough on CBS -- Norville was downright shocked that this happened from the No. 1 guy on a big story about the President only 50 days before an election.
I was impressed with Hugh Downs, who said that anchors used to do commentaries; the last was John Chancellor. I like that idea; it's a way for an anchor to reveal his viewpoint and separate it from reporting the news -- while allowing us to know his perspective and judge his delivery of the news based on that.
As for me... I talk too damned fast, I know. So shoot me. More above.
: I also made the point tonight that when I didn't cover the Rather story, the commenters here complained and I apologized and then you actually thanked me. I said that Rather could have done likewise.
: Now I'm watching Michael Wolff of Vanity Fair and he's making no sense. He's telling CBS that if they believe the story they should keep on it. Then he says that this is a "take down" by those who wanted to discredit the story of Bush. No, no, no. The story is now that Rather based his story on obvious forgeries from a sleazy source and went with it even after ignoring warnings. It's a media story, Mr. Media Critic. But he chooses to ignore that.
: In the green room before the taping, I watched Tom Shales of the Washington Post practicing similar flagrant cognitive dissonance, or worse. He said that Dan Rather didn't lie but George Bush does lie.
: On the show, they kept referring to me as a media critic. I kept insisting I just wanted to be called a blogger. It's not a good night for media critics.
: Later, watching Letterman: "Tonight on the CBS Evening News, we report nine real stories and one fake one. Can you guess which one?"
Just got out of the Deborah Norville taping with Hugh Downs, Tom Jarriel, Robert Greenwald, David Blum. On MSNBC at 9pm ET. Will blog from home.....
On TV tonight
: Supposed to be on Deborah Norville's show tonight talking media bias and bloggers and all that.
Too little, too late
: CBS and Dan Rather so royally screwed up and they didn't even help themselves when it finally came time to admit they screwed up. They should have come out telling all and explaining every step of the process -- reporting on their own reporting -- and falling over themselves to apologize to (1) the audience, (2) Bush, (3) journalism. Instead: The network did not say the memoranda purportedly written by one of Mr. Bush's National Guard commanders were forgeries. But the network did say it could not authenticate the documents and that it should not have reported them.
"Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report," said the statement by CBS News President Andrew Heyward. "We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret.... Oh, yeah.
And what the hell is Rather doing just releasing a statement. You're a TV network, mate. You should be releasing your statement on video -- if not on the air then at least on the internet -- so people can hear your tone of voice and judge your contrition.
The biggest scandal of the campaign so far is....
: ... that both candidates would waste their time talking to that obnoxious TV quack Dr. Phil.
Well, duh: They were forgeries
: The NY Times has the story this morning: After days [try almost two weeks - ed] of expressing confidence about [read: stonewalling on - ed] the documents used in a "60 Minutes'' report that raised new questions about President Bush's National Guard service, CBS News officials have grave doubts [read: know they f'ed up -ed] about the authenticity of the material, network officials said last night.
The officials, who asked not to be identified [hoping they wouldn't be the ones to take the fall for this -ed], said CBS News would most likely make an announcement as early as today that it had been deceived about the documents' origins. CBS News has already begun intensive reporting on where they came from, and people at the network said it was now possible that officials would open an internal inquiry into how it moved forward with the report. Officials say they are now beginning to believe the report was too flawed to have gone on the air. [well, duh -ed] What they should do is come on the air tonight with Rather apologizing and interviewing those who exposed the forgeries and thank them for getting to the truth. That's what they should do. But they won't. (See my NY Post op-ed below. The Post just put it online here. )
: UPDATE: See also Tom Watson's call for restraint from reflexive back-patting. I don't fully agree with him; he doesn't fully agree with me; that's what makes the 'sphere go round.
: See also Rex Hammock charting the 10 phases of fan-hitting.
Issues2004: Iraq
: My stand on Iraq: Out of moral obligation and enlightened self-interest, we must stay and assure that the nation gains security and democracy. Easier said than done, sure. But first we need to say it.
No matter what your view of the Iraq war, this remains true: If we leave Iraq too soon, we are screwing the Iraqi people again and we are setting the perfect conditions for more terrorism and instability in the region, then the world, including our homefront.
My view of the Iraq war was: I supported the war but did not agree with Bush's rationale. WMD were speculative, a gamble, a ploy for international support that was doomed to failure. It set him up for the fall that came. My support was humanitarian and practical; it was, I've argued, a liberal stand: We knew that Saddam was a tyrant torturing his people and depriving them of basic rights. We should have gotten rid of him the first time around. I'm also a Tom Friedman hawk here; I believe we need to establish a foothold for democracy in the Islamic Middle East and Iraq was as good a place as any. And byi this logic, I'll acknowledge, it doesn't necessarily stop at Iraq: There are other tyrants; there are other places there that deserve democracy (try: everywhere).
But I also believe that we have mucked up the aftermath to war horribly for the Iraqis and for our forces. We have done worse than squander an opportunity. We are creating a problem for the future. We didn't plan. We didn't execute the plan we didn't make. We are now foisting this unfairly onto Iraqi shoulders. If we don't act quickly to shore up security, all will be lost.
But I also refuse to call the people killing for the sake of killing in Iraq today "insurgents' or even "revolutionaries." They are terrorists, murderers, thugs. Where is their great principle of revolution? It doesn't exist. They are only about defeat for the other side, about terror for terror's sake.
The cause of bringing democracy and freedom to Iraq -- as an example for the Middle East -- remains a good and hopeful one. '
And so I want to see a candidate give me a strong and clear plan for bringing security to Iraq and for supporting open and peaceful elections. Then I want to see a plan for ongoing security. And then I want to see a plan for other American relationships with Iraq that will build a stronger connection, especially business connections to create jobs and prosperity. That will defeat Islamic extremism better than anything.
(This is one of a series of posts on Issues2004. I'll repeat that I'm no expert on this; I'm posting my wishlist in various issues in the hopes of sparking unmuddy debate.)
: Want to read more from the candidates? Good luck. Oddly -- frighteningly -- I can't find an Iraq page per se on the Kerry site. We're in a friggin' war there and there isn't a page about what to do about it on his site. Ditto Bush. He's the President who put his there. Correct me if I'm wrong; find it if you can. Unlike other issues, there isn't a clear page; to put it in our dorky terms, this should be part of the user interface for the campaigns. But I find no clear statement on an issue that matters to most Americans.
This is what media and we should be pressing the candidates about, not past-tense mud.
: UPDATE: Well, this doesn't make me feel better. Novak's column today: Inside the Bush administration policymaking apparatus, there is strong feeling that U.S. troops must leave Iraq next year. This determination is not predicated on success in implanting Iraqi democracy and internal stability. Rather, the officials are saying: Ready or not, here we go....
Whether Bush or Kerry is elected, the president or president-elect will have to sit down immediately with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The military will tell the election winner there are insufficient U.S. forces in Iraq to wage effective war. That leaves three realistic options: Increase overall U.S. military strength to reinforce Iraq, stay with the present strength to continue the war, or get out.
Well-placed sources in the administration are confident Bush's decision will be to get out. They believe that is the recommendation of his national security team and would be the recommendation of second-term officials. An informed guess might have Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, Paul Wolfowitz as defense secretary and Stephen Hadley as national security adviser. According to my sources, all would opt for a withdrawal.
Getting out now would not end expensive U.S. reconstruction of Iraq, and certainly would not stop the fighting. Without U.S. troops, the civil war cited as the worst-case outcome by the recently leaked National Intelligence Estimate would be a reality. It would then take a resolute president to stand aside while Iraqis battle it out.
The end product would be an imperfect Iraq, probably dominated by Shia Muslims seeking revenge over long oppression by the Sunni-controlled Baathist Party.... So much for strategy.
: UPDATE: Kerry gave a speech with is four-point plan for Iraq. I'm not impressed. First, he said, he would work towards more international support. Mr. Kerry noted that the president is scheduled to visit New York on Tuesday to speak to the United Nations about Iraq.
"The president should convene a summit meeting of the world's major powers and Iraq's neighbors, this week, in New York, where many leaders will attend the U.N. General Assembly," Mr. Kerry said....
Secondly, Mr. Kerry said, he would work harder to train Iraqi security forces.
He pointed out that in February Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that more than 210,000 Iraqis were in uniform. But Mr. Kerry asserted that in reality only 5,000 Iraqi soldiers had been trained "by the administration's own minimal standards."...
Third, he said he would devise a better plan for the reconstruction of a devastated Iraq.
"Last week, the administration admitted that its plan was a failure when it asked Congress for permission to radically revise spending priorities in Iraq." Mr. Kerry said. " It took 17 months for them to understand that security is a priority, 17 months to figure out that boosting oil production is critical, 17 months to conclude that an Iraqi with a job is less likely to shoot at our soldiers."
And lastly, he said he would make sure elections would take place in the country.
"Because Iraqis have no experience holding free and fair elections, the president agreed six months ago that the U.N. must play a central role," Mr. Kerry said. "Yet today, just four months before Iraqis are supposed to go to the polls, the U.N. secretary general and administration officials themselves say the elections are in grave doubt."
September 19, 2004
Some good news
: Iranian blogger Sina Motallebi just emailed the good news that his father has been released. Background here.
: UPDATE: Hoder reports that Iranian blogs are changing their names to Emrooz to protest the censorship of the site by that name.
My New York Post op-ed on Rathergate
: Here is my Post op-ed on Rathergate; they asked me to do it as the schizo Media Man/Blog Boy. Oddly, it's not online. So here's the text. The sidebar is below...
 : Blogger Ken Layne famously faced down Big Media in 2001 and warned, We can fact-check your ass.
Today, bloggers are fact-checking Dan Rathers ass but good. Strangely, the fool isnt grateful.
Just hours after Rather announced on 60 Minutes II that he had memos documenting President Bushs slacking off in the National Guard, citizens on the Internet starting with a commenter called Buckhead on FreeRepublic.com questioned the documents authenticity with a series of well-duh-obvious doubts about how 70s typewriters could have produced those notes.
Blogger Charles Johnson at LittleGreenFootballs.com quickly retyped one memo in Microsoft Word and found the results to be identical that is, Rathers evidence was apparently a clumsy, computerized forgery. Johnson created an animation overlaying the two to prove the point more powerfully than the most expensive TV graphic could.
Then many bloggers notably PowerlineBlog.com, Jeff Harrell, INDCjournal.com, and Instapundit.com took up the typeball and ran with it.
Heres what Dan Rather and CBS News should have done then:
They should have said to the bloggers, Thank you and welcome to journalism; we can use your help.
They should have been grateful that smart citizens using weblogs had added to the available information and helped us get closer to the truth.
They should have engaged these bloggers in televised conversation.
They should have revealed everything they knew so we could judge the truth.
They should have admitted (in a day, not a week and a half) that they could be wrong.
But they didnt. Instead, Rather and CBS issued the Big Media equivalent of I am not a crook namely, We stand by our story.
Worse, they dissed the bloggers. Rather sniffed that this was a counterattack (which is to admit that he was, indeed, on the attack) from partisan political operatives (which is to say voters).
Rather and CBS News exhibit the worst of Big Media arrogance: They believe they are the priests guarding the temple of truth. But the real truth is that they have set themselves up for this fall by refusing to admit that they are human, that they can make mistakes and, most importantly, that they have a viewpoint. That is the real issue with Rather: viewpoint.
Rathers real downfall is not the superscript on that purported military memo but the subtext of the joy of those exposing him. There is a firm belief among many in the audience that Big Media is biased and that Rather is the worst of it (see RatherBiased.com). The greater sin, though, is not the bias but the denial of it.
Instead of protesting too much, Big Media should learn the real lesson of this news era, when FoxNews (corporate sibling to this newspaper) is No. 1 because it has a viewpoint, when the Guardian grows internationally because of its viewpoint, when bloggers explode because there is an audience for their varied viewpoints: Namely, its time to reveal our perspectives, our agendas, our biases. Not to do so is to lie by omission.
Recently I spoke to media execs at the Aspen Institute about changes to news brought by technology by weblogs, open-source software, MP3 sharing, and community online. I said: This culture of transparency expects us to be transparent. And havent we always expected those we cover to be transparent? Havent we demanded openness, frankness, honesty and a hearing from the politicians, business people and civic leaders we cover?
So it is our turn to open the shades, to reveal our process and prejudice, to engage in the conversation, to join in the community, to be transparent.
Bloggers would never say, My evidence looks as phony as a Saddam dollar and I wont tell you how I know what I say I know, or why I think what I think but you should trust me, just because of who I am. Bloggers admit mistakes. Instead of hiding from bloggers, Rather should follow their example.
On my own weblog, Buzzmachine.com, I have been less triumphal about this than fellow bloggers for a few reasons:
First, I am still a journalist, trained in print and transfused with ink. I hate to see colleagues act so deaf and dumb and I hate to see this business torn down from within, by the mendacious (Jayson Blair), the pompous (Howell Raines) or the clueless (Rather).
Second, this story still has its roots in the mud of this campaign: ceaseless personal attacks made under the cloak of character as an issue.
If everything Michael Moore and Dan Rather said about Bushs service and everything the Swifties said about John Kerrys service were true, I wouldnt give a rats rump. What a shock: Politicians treat the truth like taffy! Politicians use influence! Stop the presses! Thats news!
We have urgent issues facing us in this election, issues that desperately need debate. Id hoped Big Media would spur conversation about them instead of going for the obvious, painting us as a nation divided (when were really just a nation deciding) and joining in the mud-slinging from both fringes. So much for media utopianism.
As a blogger, Id also hoped that we the people online would have pressed Big Media to do better and would have turned our considerable fact-checking power on the coverage of and the candidates stands on issues that matter for our future, not our past. But weve been too busy arguing over Michael Moore, Swifties and Rather. Oh, well, we are human.
I just hope that bloggers arent seduced by the scoop and the gotcha as Big Media has been. As a reporter, I well understand the joy of the hunt, the thrill of the kill. But in this campaign, in print and online, the scoops havent been the real story. The real story is still out there.
I am proud of bloggers for fact-checking Big Medias ass and improving news. Im also proud that not all bloggers have been in lockstep on Rathergate; they have debated every point of forensic typography. Thats good. Debate is how we get to the truth. Debate is how we run a democracy.
New York Post op-ed sidebar: Blogger theses on Big Media's door
: Here's a sidebar to the Post op-ed piece above:
: In this age of blogs, says NYU Journalism Prof. Jay Rosen, the writers are readers and the readers are writers.
Citizens media upends journalists relationship with the public in ways that the Dan Rathers of that world have not begun to grasp.
Theyre dismissive of it, which means theyre scared of it. But they shouldnt be.
This isnt a war, its not even a revolution. Its a reformation. The bloggers are at the door to the cathedral of journalism, nailing up their theses for a new and better order:
Big Media has owned the printing press for centuries but now the people have the power of the press. So it is Big Medias turn to listen. That means: Dont speculate about what the voters are thinking; let the voters speak for themselves.
News becomes a conversation. Its not finished and fishwrap when its printed. Thats when the public finally gets to ask questions, contribute facts, and add new perspective. That means Big Media should link to competitors, bloggers, anyone who has something to add. The goal isnt to own the story. The goal is to inform and find the truth.
Citizens media challenges the authority of Big Media and establishes the authority of the audience. And that makes sense: Which movie critic do you trust more Roger Ebert or your best friend, Sally?
Big media is about institutions, while citizens media is about people. Bloggers value openness, candor, and trusting relationships. Bloggers admit mistakes. Big Media would do well to act more human once in awhile.
This isnt a competition. Big Media has the reporters, resources, access, and experience. Citizens media complements Big Media with fact-checking and challenges and with new sources of news, information, and diverse viewpoints. Together, they will improve news.
Issues2004: Health care
: There can be no doubt that we are living in a health-care crisis in this country:
Too many are uninsured. Costs are too high at every level: doctor, hospital, drug, insurance. Insurance companies are trying to save money by making everyone's life so miserable it's just easier and cheaper to die. Paperwork alone is torture. Doctors are squeezed by malpractice suits and insurance -- and paperwork. Hospitals are suffering. Employees who have insurance feel trapped by the jobs. Employers who offer insurance are seeing costs grow at incredible rates (40 percent in one year at one company I know). And on and on.
All the solutions proposed so far are inadequate and don't begin to address the fundamental flaws, inequity, and illogic of the system. I'm not for nationalizing health care. But neither am I for letting the uninsured suffer.
This post is the first in a series on Issues2004. Remember that I am not an expert in any of these areas, nor did I report on them. I'm just a voter. And that's the point. I want to learn more about these issues and want to have the forum to help push the candidates on these issues.
My wish list on health care:
: All citizens must be insured: If a prosperous society cannot help the sick among us, then what good is the prosperity?
Basic tenant: Every citizen (yes, citizen) of this country should be covered by health insurance and a prescription drug plan.
This also means that every citizen should receive the benefits of being part of a group. The serendipity of my getting insurance with my colleagues at one rate while my neighbor, who's self-employed, gets higher rates is unfair, unjust, illogical, stupid, harmful, wrong.
And it's expensive: Those who cannot afford insurance people end up going to hospitals and getting care that has to be paid for with higher rates for the rest of us, which means that insurance companies and employers and thus employees and consumers end up paying for the uninsured anyway. It's broken. The only way to fix it is with the fundamental promise that all are insured. If we're insured to drive, we should be insured to live.
: Insurance remains private: Who should run insurance? Government or industry. I say industry. The last thing we need is another inefficient and irksome government bureacracy. We need competition. We need choice.
: But who should pay? Think about it: By what logic should should employers have to be the ones who pay for health insurance? What started as a benefit of employment has become an entitlement for many, but then the rest are left out in the cold. Offering health insurance via work makes no sense.
My hope is that we all pay according to our needs with aid for those who need it. So I get a good group rate (see above). I earn a lot of money. I pay for my insurance. If I want, I can buy the deluxe insurance. If rates are fixed, most should pay for a good share of their own insurance (instead of paying taxes or higher product costs to indirectly subsidize their insurance).
Government support comes in a few forms: Those who help supplement insurance costs for employees or the poor get tax credits; that is one form of government support. Those who earn little and pay for their insurance get tax credits; that is another form of government support. Those who cannot afford to pay anything get on Medicare and Medicaid; that is another form of government support.
Who pays for that government support? We all do, of course, in the form of business and individual taxes. But run properly, this will end up being more efficient than the present system. And -- pardon my lapse into supply-side social program economics -- but the less companies have to build these costs into budgets indirectly, the better salaries and prices will be in the longrun. (Debate below.)
: Who should pay for R&D?: It is similarly illogical that through high drug costs, the sick underwrite R&D for new drugs to cure other diseases they don't have. I don't know how this system works today but it seems logical that government should help underwrite some cost of development -- and then get the benefit for all of us of lower prices for the drugs that result.
I'll say this again later, but I will add here: I support stem-cell research. I support science.
: The paperwork torture must end: Insurance companies are managing costs via harassment, in paperwork and in "managed care." As I understand it, one great thing Canada did was standardize paperwork and bureacracy. With the Internet, it is now possible to standardize and modernize this entire system, from doctor to hospital to pharmacy to insurance company. It reduces the costs considerably for doctors and hospitals (and that should stop some of their complaining) and it reduces the hassle for us, the sick.
: Malpractice should be limited: But the threat of malpractice must remain over the heads of incompetent practitioners. We are still consumers of health care. We reserve the right to go after bad doctors -- protecting fellow consumers from them -- the way we can after bad contractors. And, yes, lawyers must stop being the primary beneficiary of the malpractice system.
: We must grapple with extreme care: I don't want anyone unplugging me and letting me starve or choke to death. No thanks. And I hate seeing old people treated like the leftovers at garage sales. But I also recognize that some care is extreme and costs everyone a great deal of money for buying little hope. Who should set and enforce the standards of what is covered and is not? I don't know. Debate below.
Here is Bush's health stand. Here (with additional links on the side) is Kerry's health stand. And what do you have to say?
: UPDATE: TB in the comments raises a good point: People who don't take care of themselves cost the system and us. So how about higher rates for people who not only smoke but, what else?, get fat, don't exercise, don't get preventive tests on a set schedule....
: UPDATE: A previous post on this topic is here. It caused good discussion and I wanted to link to it ... but disorganized mess that I am, I couldn't find it. Thanks to Brett, here's the link.
Issues2004: A hopeful series
: I've been complaining for weeks/months about the mud-slinging that is overtaking coverage of this campaign in all media, from print to TV to, yes, blogs. I've been whining that we should be talking about issues.
But, of course, I've spent so much time whining that I've hardly talked about issues myself. So now I'll try.
When I did go on about health care in a recent post, I was delighted with the discussion that ensued. No forged documents. No angry assaults. Earnest efforts to discuss a solution to the problem.
So I'll write my wish list on the issues: health care, homeland security, Iraq, and so on.
But note importantly: I do not pretend to be expert in any of these areas nor to have reported on any of them. That's just the point: I'm a voter. I want experts and reporters to tear into the candidates' stands and I want the campaigns to talk about their stands so I can learn more -- and so I can join in the debate and, as a whole and in the longrun, so we can pressure candidates on these issues.
My hope in the comments is that you will add their views, from various sides of the prism. I also very much hope that you'll contribute links to blogs and sites that are covering these issues well. Or maybe nobody will care and they're just waiting for the next barrage of mud. Free country. Do as you wish.
The first up, above: health care.
September 18, 2004
New media and more new media
: Watching Tim Russert on CNBC now. He and his guests are acknowledging the power of blog, saying all the things we all have been saying for a year now. And then he says the only major interviews Kerry has given in recent weeks have been to Jon Stewart, Don Imus, and on Monday, David Letterman. Big Media not so big anymore.
Inside Lileks' head
: Just saw Sky Captain and I felt as if I had entered James Lileks' head (through his ear, after hacking through the hair we middle-aged men grow).
The scenery -- all computer-generated -- is filled with the things I've seen James stop in the middle of sidewalks to gape at. We know he was looking forward to the flick; can't wait to read the full reaction.
: The flick is a throwbck in so many ways, not just graphical. It takes us back to a time when everyone believed that both soldiers and reporters could save the world.
: But I am tired of movies that warn about the dangers of technology. OK, we know about it already. Spam. Viruses. Bad cell phones. Been there.
: Oh, and the movie's pretty good. It's not as thrilling as the reviews let me to believe it would be. But the graphics are great.
Live by the gotcha, die by the gotcha
: Doc, like me, didn't stay on top of the Rather story -- and many of you piled on top of both of us because of it. But after reading and due consideration, he writes a wise post today. Money quote and conclusion: That credibility has never been better than every good journalist's commitment to do the best they can, under the circumstances (which usually involve constrained time and resources). Which is to say compromised, though understandably so. What's changed is the involuntary outsourcing of fact-gathering and -checking to a growing assortment of amateurs and professionals who are largely external to the profession. What we need isn't competition between blogs and mainstream news outlets, but a working symbiosis between the two....
Right now Dan and CBS are losing the same Gotcha! game they've played for decades on 60 Minutes. I don't think that's any kind of poetic justice, or karma, or anything to cheer. It's a tragic story.
Because the truths we need to know aren't just the one Gotcha!s expose. And getting to those will take another kind of journalism: one we won't copy off TV, and we won't need to save because we still don't have it yet. This is one of the themes of the op-ed I just wrote. It's appearing in the New York Post on Sunday; I'll link to it as soon as I can.
: Doc also has a collection of great lines in that post I enjoyed just for their bloggy writerlyness; a random sampling: There isn't a smoking gun on the Dan Rather/CBS case. It's more like a firing squad of machine guns that barely stop to re-load. Dan Rather's career death is starting to look like Sonny Corleone's...
(Spare me the quibbles. I'm agreeing with you.) ...
Andrew Sullivan sums it up with his usual pith and vinegar ...
...back when Mike Wallace wore an honest hair color...
New net news
: Germany's wonderful net-only newspaper, NetZeitung, under the leadership of the good Dr. Michael Maier, is about to spawn its next generation.
I've long followed and liked NetZeitung and I've had the privilege of meeting Dr. Maier, a journalist with amazing credentials and also a nice guy. Maier believes in the value of reporting and editing; his netpaper is not a product of interactivity (they played with a blog only for awhile; I think they could do more to capture the value of citizens' media; see the post below).
Now he's stealing a beat from GoogleNews (and Moreover and RSS) and adding feeds of headlines from other sources to every story. (I talked with Google long ago about trying to license their categories of headlines to do just that on my day-job sites; they never got around to it; their opportunity missed. Looking at two better alternatives now.)
Here's Maier's column announcing the changes (auf Deutsch) with my bad translation: ...The Netzeitung will soon appear in a whole new form: We're integrating a news search so that next to Netzeitung's classic articles, you'll find articles of other media. After every article a link list will appear automatically. Maier says they've identitied 200 quality sources -- "unlike traditional search engins, Netzeitung will offer journalistic quality" -- and now he asks their readers for help finding more small quality sources in specialized areas, including weblogs.
I'll predict, Dr. Maier, that you'll soon find that the greatest value you provide isn't your own articles -- though that has value -- but the bringing together of the best and latest coverage of -- and perspectives on -- stories. And don't skimp on the blogs!
It's about trust
: Ross Mayfield riffs on Tim Oren's riff on the unbundling of media -- accelerated by news scandals like Rathergate (my riff here). He focuses on the issue of trust. Someone pointed out to me today that Rathergate is unfortunately an adversarial event. Most blogged to death and fact-checked ass issues are because identities are so strong. Brand can get too strong. That makes Rather want to own the story -- rather than get to the truth. You see, if he wanted to get to the truth, he'd quote (or in our world, link to) all the other reports and questions and fact-checking. But he and too many other journalists think they are the trusted ones -- they have the standards and reputation, right? right? -- and by going to all these others -- even amateurs, even mere citizens -- they dilute their brands; that's how they delude themselves. Of course, the irony is that the exact opposite then occurs: By not linking to others, by "standing by our story" in the face of evidence and arguments they ignore, these guys only dilute their own trust and thus their brands. In the end, because their brand is too strong, they set themselves up for a fall; bigger the brand, bigger the fall (see: Howell Raines).
In this new world of ours, trust -- like everything else -- is distributed. The bundling of citizens -- instead of content -- wields the wisdom of the crowd.
Ross sees that happening in wikis, of course, since he's the leading thinker and doer in that end of this new world: "To see the future of trust in media, look how strangers are learning to trust each other by sharing control with wikis." He also argues that the trust of strangers and the value of that trust increases with time and volume (see: Wikipedia).
I see it in blogs, too, of course. The ability for people to so quickly link to each other and add to each other's knowledge and effort in Rathergate produces a new level of trust and credibility.
But then there's so much sharing of knowledge that it gets out of hand and it's hard to figure out where to start. That's when Ernest Miller steps in to add value by summarizing it all (or for another example of the value of summary -- with perspective -- see Nick Kristof's column on Kerry v. Swifties today). Imagine if everyone had also contributed to the Rather wikki.
All this does tie back to Tim's riff: There are shifts of trust and value and new opportunities to be had in this. To obnoxiously quote my riff: In this new distributed, unbundled, post-marketplace, molecular, commoditized media world, value can be added in many ways. It's about relationships. It's about relevancy. It's about service. It's about uniqueness. It's about perspective. All these riffs are rather vague. That is, in part, because it's early and formative discussion; that is also, in part, because some of the people linking to Tim have business ideas they're not ready to part with.
What's so fascinating about Tim's post is that he takes a social issue -- news and trust -- and measures it through a business perspective. I have always said that in the news business, our only asset is credibility. Tim is now measuring the declining value of that asset in the midst of scandal and in the face of new, trusted competition.
: Meanwhile, Hugh MacLeod looks at the employment implications of all this.
September 17, 2004
Media value chains
: Tim Oren has an incredible post looking at the dissipating value of media bundles in this atomic age of media when the essential element of content is (to paraphrase former blog empress, now kitchen empress Meg Hourian) no longer the network or the publication or even the show or the page but the post. Tim looks at how consumers are unbundling media and how attacks on credibility (see: Rather) accelerate the unbundling and the loss of value.
Being a VC, Tim then wants to start the discussion about new ways to create new value. I can name a few. But first, there's more to say about that dissipation of value.
If the network or the newspaper or the magazine or the cable system was the old bundle, the internet itself is the new bundle: In this medium of extreme control, we each put together whatever bundle we want.
I have taken to calling Google the content brand killer. People go to content galore via Google. But because it's so easy to get there, they often don't even notice -- let alone recall, let alone value -- the brand of the actual provider of that content. Why should they? Google got them what they wanted.
This accelerates the commoditization of content. It also provides opportunities for those who can add value (and convenience and perspective and even fun); more on that another day...
There is also the matter of distributed content and advertising. Used to be, we waited for the news to come to us, on our doorstep or when the clock ticked 6 on TV. Now, the news waits for us to come to it; we get the nugget of news or content we want from any of many sources. The same will soon be true of advertising -- of the process of putting a buyer and seller together. eBay and Craig's List and Monster have had a major impact on old, bundled Big Media -- but even these new upstarts will fall, for all they really did was replace old marketplaces with new and cheaper marketplaces. In a distributed, networked world, it's the marketplace that will disappear. I've written about this before: Put your resume online with standard tags (speaks: C++, German; in: New York; status: unemployed....) and soon some specialized successor to Google -- a resume engine -- will find that resume wherever it exists. It no longer needs to go to a marketplace; the market comes to it. Ditto jobs. That is our new distributed world. There is value that can be added in this transaction as well; that, too, I'll save for another day.
Now add technology: The mouse, the remote control, RSS, and the soon-to-exist TiVo-of-anything-digital-anywhere makes bundles for us so we don't have to pay someone else to bundle. So technology adds value and many will make money at that, though only until the next technology comes along. And technology won't solve all problems (see how TiVo recommends gay channels if you dare to watch gymnastics; you won't believe what Amazon pushes on me after I ordered one book about Yiddish and another about pianos plus some books for my kids).
People help. That's why weblogs have become popular: We read so you don't have to; we click on your behalf; we bundle for you. There's incredible value to be built there; that, of course, is for another day.
Finally, look at how advertising will be turned on its head. In a distributed world, it won't come to us; we will go to it. I'll spare you that rant today; see this post on Love Ads.
In this new distributed, unbundled, post-marketplace, molecular, commoditized media world, value can be added in many ways. It's about relationships. It's about relevancy. It's about service. It's about uniqueness. It's about perspective.
I gotta go buy Tim a beer and talk this over....
: UPDATE: Rex Hammock disagrees (though quite agreeably).
Rathergate, the timeline
: Ernie Miller just created an incredibly detailed timeline of CBS' response to Rathergate. (This is what I mean when I say it's hard to catch up on this story.) Just saw PowerLineBlog on FoxNews and now former CBS correspondent Liz Trotta is on the channel saying she's "salivating at the thought of Dan Rather giving a Richard Nixon Checkers speech."
We're mainstream, too
: I hate that everyone is starting to call established media "mainstream media" (MSM, to its friends).
That assumes that bloggers aren't mainstream. We are.
I've taken to calling the big guys "big media" (and we'll ignore the joyful abbreviation). That works for me, at least for now (until we get big). You could call them "institutional media."
But let's not cede the turf of the mainstream. I argue that as blogs grow, they take on the wisdom of the crowds and, in sum, will represent the mainstream better than any institution that purports to represent the mainstream.
I say we're citizens' media. They're big media.
: Jay Rosen has taken to calling Big Media "legacy media." Maybe. But I don't think any medium is cut off from its forebears; the legacy will continue through blogs to the next thing.
Ed Cone in the comments goes for "corporate media" v. "personal media." But look at Gawker Media; it's a corporation already but it's made of blogs and bloggers. I don't think business structure does it.
Another poster still likes "old" v. "new" media. My problem with that is that we're new today but tomorrow we, too, will be old (and something else will be new).
SUNDAY UPDATE: Jay Rosen adds in the comments: Interesting discussion. Actually, Jeff, I was writing about the appearence of "legacy media" as a sign 'o the times, zeitgeist thing. I haven't taken to using the term myself.
One of the things I dislike about the blogosphere is that it comes up with inelegant names that grate on the ear; "blogosphere" is one. MSM is another. In sorting through the suggestions here, there are two different scales to use: one is insight (descriptive power) and the other is elegance (economy + beauty = elegance).
Institutional vs. personal is the most descriptive pair of terms. Old vs. new media is probably the most elegant.
Guess
: Everybody's wringing hands today over which poll is right and which is wrong and why as they all show widely different predictions for the fall. (See the WSJ's Al Hunt here; free link.) There's lots of talk about likely vs. registered voters and demographics and all that.
I have a much simpler theory for the disagreements:
Voters are gaming the pollsters.
Just as voters started taking pride in gaming exit polls, now I'll be a high proportion plays with pollsters' heads. It's insurgent citizens' media. But it's just a guess -- as good as any other guess.
Heels click, too
: The WSJ says [not a free link] the fashion industry is in a swivet worrying about who's going to set hem trends now that Sex and the City and Friends are off the air.
That's an interesting cultural/marketing issue that goes beyond product placement. It's a meta level above that: Trend placement.
If there are no shows pushing fashion trends and pushing consumers to buy new clothes -- if we have nothing but All Survivor All The Time -- then the fashion industry suffers.
In the old days, Procter & Gamble underwrote shows -- not just soap operas but also Northern Exposure -- to make sure it had an environment for its advertising to speak to its consumers. These days, major advertisers are getting direct product and brand placement in shows, like Mattel in The Apprentice.
Now take this to the meta level and I wouldn't be surprised if we see major trend-sensitive advertisers and industries -- fashion, auto, entertainment, electronics -- underwriting programming not to place ads or products but to hope that these shows can still push the trends that push purchase.
How do you say 'We f'd up' en Espanol?
: El Pais apologizes profusely for its utterly offensive ad showing the World Trade Center here one day and gone the next over a cutesy slogan. Franco Aleman is all over the case. Credit where credit is due, they have quite harsh words for the initiative and they announce they have launched an internal investigation to establish responsibilities about it, and have given instructions to the email marketing company to send a message apologizing to all 50,000 recipients of the original advertisement..... [A]pparently some of the Spanish embassies around the world, particularly Washington- was innundated with complaints, and they reacted.
September 16, 2004
Baghdad Broadcasting strikes again
: The BBC, even the picture of balance, makes a big deal that we didn't go to the DMV (Division of Military Vehicles) to get a license plate for our war in Iraq. Joe Territo reports: The BBC today is making a big deal of an exclusive interview in which UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan says the War In Iraq was "illegal." In the course of hyping Annan's Bush/Blair-bashing position, a BBC reporter asked an Iraqi official about whether his government is essentially invalid because the war was illegal. My car-pool colleague chortled that this is the equivalent of saying that since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center was illegal, the buildings that will replace the towers are invalid. What should this invalid government do? Reinstate Saddam Hussein? Yes, and I'd like America to meet its Queen.
The New New York
: Adam Moss is bringing his changes to New York Magazine.
He just brought back Kurt Andersen as a columnist of this and that.
And Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly is the new film critic. Said Ken: "I'm really glad I won't have to review that new Jason Alexander sitcom."
A note on Ken: When I started EW, I was the TV critic at People and I thought that finding another TV critic would be the toughest hire I'd have to make. It was, instead, the easiest. I read a bunch of critics; liked Ken's stuff in the Philly Inky; met him; liked him; hired him; and always enjoyed his criticism.
Two good Moss moves.
New parlor game: Who's worse?
: Glenn Reynolds makes a few points in today's anti-Kerry post that I feel compelled to address.
First, he quotes Hugh Hewitt saying that: Kerry's problem is that he is simply the worst major party candidate of my lifetime, period running against a likeable incumbent backed by a growing economy and a record of bold action in the global war on terrorism. I'll leave the last two-thirds of that to your judgment. But "simply the worst major party candidate of my lifetime"? Really? I thought Hugh was older than 8.
I offer for your consideration Michael Dukakis... Walter Mondale... Jimmy Carter (the loser)... George McGovern... Barry Goldwater (who cares if you love him; he made landslide a household word)... "Simply the worst major party candidate" of this generation? Naw, not yet.
And then Glenn says: The Democrats' problem is that the base, which, like bases do, cares mostly about emotional returns, wanted Howard Dean. But the leadership, which, like leaderships do, cares about status and connections and thus about winning, knew that Dean couldn't win. They tried to split the difference with Kerry, whom they thought could fool the gullible folks in flover country into seeing him as a more-macho version of Bush, while winking to the base that he was really a tall Howard Dean with some medals. This was a dumb idea, and it hasn't worked. No, the Democratic base did not want Howard Dean. That's why he never won a frigging primary! Give the people some credit! The Democratic base isn't nearly nutty as Dean became.
This all came because BoiFromTroi speculated what things would be like with Gephardt instead (as I speculated the other day about what things would be like with Gore instead). And the moral to the story is still the same, I will readily grant: Kerry is neither an inspiring nor is he burning up the polls.
Oh, to have a Clinton....
I heard the news today, oh boy...
: Ken Layne watches the news: And nothing about Iraq on the news today. I've been flipping through the cable news channels and it's all Ivan the Terrible and Bush Memos. Did the war with Iraq end, again? Did we win? High Five! And Martha. And Laci.
Rathergate and me
: I just finished the op-ed I was asked to do on Rathergate; if it runs, it will be this weekend and I'll post it then. But today I wanted to address why I haven't written more on DanScam because some people -- some nicer than others -- have been pushing me on it.
First: I should have written more and that is my mistake. I do cover media here, in a manner of speaking. I live in both media worlds -- big and blog. And CBScam is big media news. And so I should have commented on it here earlier and more often. I was wrong not to.
Second: I have found frequently in the blogosphere that if you don't jump on a story at the first moment, it's damned hard to catch up. That was particularly true of Typegate; the story moved with the speed of bits and expanded so fast I couldn't even reliably link to who was on top of it. Others were covering it far better than I could.
Third: I still have problems with the fact that the roots of this story, too, are in the mud of this campaign. Others make typography or Cambodia their hobbyhorses; mud is mine. But I grant that the story morphed; it wasn't about Bush and the military but instead about Rather and the apparent forgeries. My allergy to mud dissuaded me from paying sufficient attention to this.
Fourth: I also regretted being drawn into the mud-slinging stories by people pushing me to do so here. I tried to stay away from it and did for a long time but finally succumbed to comment on it in my way and it got just as dirty and nasty (and predictable and boring and useless) as anyone could predict it would. So I didn't want to be sucked in again.
Admit the irony: We get sick of Big Media telling us what we should read. But here commenters try to tell us what to write.
It's not media. It's a blog. It's personal. I'll write about what I want to write about (or not). You don't like it? Then go blog.
So I'm admitting that I should have been more on top of the Rather story but I'm not saying this because natterers needled annoyingly; in fact, the more they nattered, the longer I stayed on the sidelines.
Doc Searls says it much better than I am: I got slammed in an email this morning that essentially called me chickenshit for not piling onto Dan Rather and CBS for whatever it was they did (and continue to do) wrong.
Well, folks, it's not that I don't care. Or that I don't know anything. It's that I don't know enough, and I'm busy doing my job, which isn't blogging.
And it's not like nobody's on the case. I see Technorati finds 332 posts matching "Rathergate" alone.
My fave, of the few threads I've visited on the matter, is this one, following a cautious and responsible post by Dan Gillmor. Lots of intersting thoughts and perspectives in there.
Here's one more. Blogging isn't cable TV. We don't have to fill otherwise empty pipes with "content," and we don't have to hold eyeballs still while our customers stab them with advertising messages. Most of all, we don't have to join the ranks of the professionally opinionated, or the choirs of voices raised in righteous rage against political enemies.
We're free-range writers. If you don't like what we say or don't say, there are plenty of other potential sources of what you want, all gathered in a place that would never exist if it were up to the major media, the entertainment industry, the publishing industry, and the lawmakers and regulators who protect them all. (Even the writer who gave me shit wrote back later to report that he'd found what he wanted here.)
If there's any fer-sure "message" about this "medium," that's it. When I do put up my op-ed, you'll see that I slam the man, Dan and praise the bloggers and issue a few cautionary notes but if I summarize it in 25 words here, the guy who asked for the op-ed won't give me the 1,000 words of space I'm expecting. So that will come later.
: UPDATE: See Jay Rosen in the comments responding to a commenter who demands that he speak on an issue.
This is an odd reaction to blogs. In the long run, I think it's a compliment, a backwards valentine: Somebody wants to know what you say about something or expects you to have an opinion -- even and often one with which they'll disagree -- and so they can't believe it when you don't; you disappoint. Nonetheless, a blog is still personal; it's what a blogger wants to write when he or she wants to (or has the time to) write it.
The war on spam and viruses
: Fred Wilson says here and here that the spam crisis is essentially over, meaning that technology has reduced its impact and pain to a minimum. I think he's right about that. But as I said in a comment over there, there are always new fronts in this war. The latest I've seen:
A spam virus right now is spoofing email addresses and is sending me spam apparently from my address to my address. Of course, it's not really from me; they merely spoof the address.
But here's the problem: I've just been blacklisted from sending email to AOL because of complaints about spam coming -- apparently, but not really -- from my address.
Now the truth is that AOL is just doorknob-dumb about this. They should recognize that many users -- including many on AOL -- are the victims of this spoofing and spamming, not the perps.
Nonetheless, spammers are now using my own address against me.
The real irony is that I use AOL Communicator because it has good spam controls. And so every time I kill one of these virus spams I am, in essence, reporting my own (apparent) address as a spammer. I'm blacklisting myself.
Blacklists don't work. Consumer complaints about addresses are obviously fallible. I agree that the situation is improved thanks to technology. But spam is email terrorism and the f'ers will find new ways to attack constantly. The war isn't quite over, I fear.
: UPDATE: Rafat Ali adds this impassioned and painful rant on the topic in another comment over at Fred's place: Sure, you think the war's over...meanwhile, I lie dead in its wake...my e-mail, which is very public as a result of my website and my newsletter, is blocked out by everyone these days, it seems. My e-mails are not getting through to people, and these include my invoice e-mails, which are a part of my livelihood.
So while you at your end are smug in the knowledge that you've browbeaten spam into submission, techniques like Jeff mentioned above are killing my livelihood, one filter a day...
Sniffs and snorts
: Blogging will be light this morning as I disgust my officemates with the sounds of nasal attrocities and as I try to finish up that op-ed on Rathergate. Just did a quick radio thing with Frank Branako at Marketwatch on the topic. I'll say more on it as soon as I can. And I know I haven't said enough on it here. And that's mainly because others are so far ahead of me reporting the latest that I can't catch up. I am appalled at Dan Rather's behavior, as most of you are. I will say more about that as soon as I get a breath of air by one means or another. Later.
September 15, 2004
Blog biz
: Ad Age has an uncharacteristically numbnutty story on blogs and marketing in the current issue (not online). After saying that there was a "controversy" with "hackles raised" and a "brouhaha" by Gawker's sponsor blog for Nike's Art of Speed -- without ever saying who had what problems -- it goes on to give marketers a list of Don'ts and Do's for blogs, starting with this: DON'T throw money at bloggers. These influencers will not respond to outright, traditional ad placements. Horsecrap. Look at Blogads. Look at the room filled with bloggers eager to accept advertising at Bloggercon.
How could an advertising magazine suggest that advertisers shouldn't advertise? It could be because the source of the chart is Edelman Worldwide, which is a PR company. PR guys sometimes don't get advertising. The other source is Intelliseek and right now, I'm listening to a webinar from those folks right now and they're arguing that "PR tactics work better than advertising." I disagree. Advertising is a clear and straightforward relationship -- somebody bought this space. PR is and always has been about influencing the influencers and it's important for bloggers (as it should be for reporters!) to reveal that. I've long said that if I ran a newspaper, I'd create a flack-free day to eliminate all PR just for one day to force reporters to go out and talk to real people and real sources. Or if reporters talked to PR guys, they should reveal what comes from such spokesmen and spinners.
Steve Rubel -- a PR guy who really gets it -- and I talked about a lot of this last week at an enjoyable lunch.
To the barricades, fellow bloggers!
: No, I'm not talking about Rathergate (more on that later) or anything American.
The real blogging revolution is happening in Iran -- and the powers that be are fighting back in frightening ways.
Hoder reports that the father of blogger Sina Motellebi has just been arrested.
It was when Sina himself was arrested in April, 2003, because of what he wrote on his blog that I first discovered Hoder and the incredible Iranian weblog culture. Thanks in some measure to the attention brought to his case by bloggers and then Big Media, Sina was released from prison and he fled Iran for Europe, where he has continued to write about what is happening in his homeland. And now, to pressure him to shut up, the mullahs have arrested his father. Iranian blogger Davood calls this what it is: hostage taking.
Tyrants play dirty.
Hoder sums up other arrests of people related to blogs and online. And he emphasizes: Hardline consrvatives are very concerned when it comes to foreign press. So please help us spread the word in the blogosphere -- by linking to the post or to other related resources -- and give the news maximum exposure. Please spread the word. Tells the mullahs that the whole world wide web is watching.
Now this is truly sick and disgusting big media
: Spanish newspaper El Pais runs a truly sick and disgusting and wrong and evil ad showing two skylines of New York -- one with and one without the World Trade Center towers -- over the headline, "You can do a lot in one single day; just imagine what can happen in three months."
You'd think that a newspaper would have more sense. Well, I would. Once upon a time.
And you'd think that a newspaper in Spain, victim of a horrid terrorist attack itself, would have more humanity.
They don't print with ink. They print with slime.
This from Spanish blogger Franco Aleman, via many bloggers.
Hurricams
: As long as the power holds out, you can watch the storm coming into New Orleans at Nola.com here and here and here. (Our fabled Bourbocam is out of commission because they slapped plywood onto the window in front of it!)
Note also that the Times-Picayune is using Movable Type at Nola.com to update school closings and such.
Rathergate: Who's on first?
: I'm working on an op-ed on Rathergate, etc. Help me out and leave comments telling me which sites you think deserve the most credit for fact-checking Rather's bony Texas ass (and fact-checking the fact-checkers, in turn). I don't want to get into a debate of the finer points of modern typography; that's being argued effectively elsewhere. I just want to make sure I give credit where credit is due: Who was first? Who had the best evidence and arguments? Thanks.
If this blog had a soundtrack... well, by golly, it does!
: Rex Hammock creates a buzzworthy playlist.
September 14, 2004
We're only human
: Terry Teachout speculates about whether we're still allowed to be human anymore. Humans make mistakes. What would happen if someone actually admitted one? I was thinking today about how so few public figures are willing to admit (for attribution, anyway) that theyve done something wrong, no matter how minor. But I wasnt thinking of politicians, or even of Dan Rather. A half-remembered quote had flashed unexpectedly through my mind, and thirty seconds worth of Web surfing produced this paragraph from an editorial in a magazine called World War II:Soon after he had completed his epic 140-mile march with his staff from Wuntho, Burma, to safety in India, an unhappy Lieutenant General Joseph W. Stilwell was asked by a reporter to explain the performance of Allied armies in Burma and give his impressions of the recently concluded campaign. Never one to mince words, the peppery general responded: "I claim we took a hell of a beating. We got run out of Burma and it is as humiliating as hell. I think we ought to find out what caused it, and go back and retake it." Stilwell spoke those words sixty-two years ago. When was the last time that such candor was heard in like circumstances? What would happen today if similar words were spoken by some equally well-known person whod stepped in it up to his eyebrows? Would his candor be greeted by a wholehearted roar of astonished approval? Or would he be buried under the inevitable avalanche of told-you-sos from his sworn enemies and their robotic surrogates, amplified well beyond the threshold of pain by the 24/7 echo chamber of the media, old and new alike?
The accidental rich
: I'm not getting Mark Cuban's competitor to Donald Trump's The Apprentice. Cuban became a billionnaire by finding idiots at Yahoo.com who bought his Broadcast.com and promptly killed it. Prior to that, he sold a company to idiots at CompuServe, who promptly drove their company into the ground. Well, good for him. He makes money finding idiots, one of whom will now make a million bucks. I guess that's the perfect reality-show resume. And this is how we redistribute wealth these days.
Kitty, kitty, kitty
: In a rich irony torte, Jim Wolcott gets catty about the NY Times getting catty about Kitty Kelly: As soon as I get my greedy mitts on Kitty Kelley's epic tone poem about a certain upper-crust white-trash clan, I intend to provide ongoing interpretation of its findings. Michiko Kakutani was so hopping mad about it in The Times, stamping both her little moccasins at once, that I'm convinced La Kitty is on to something. The Times never gets that indignant about a simple piece of pop trash; it's only when the ruling class is given the tabloid treatment that the paper becomes institutionally huffy. And it's rather rich for a Times writer to squawk about an author using anonymous sources. The Times couldn't function without self-serving leaks from highly placed urinators. It might have been better had the Times assigned the review to Janet Maslin, who has the taste of a middlebrow hausfrau; she could have devoured the book in one sitting and put on seven pounds.
It's a sickness
: My own parents called tonight worried because I was so sick, I wasn't blogging and if I wasn't blogging, I must be sick.
My fever explains why I had problems interpretting Limbaugh's humor. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. Limbaugh is just a product of feverish delirium.
Confab
: I've signed up to blog from John Battelle and Tim O'Reilly's Web 2.0 conference in SF. If you're there then, lemme know.
Rather not
: I wish my old TV columns from the '80s were online for just one reason: Way back then, I said that Dan Rather was the dumbest anchor alive.
He typed, she typed
: Andrew Sullivan's letter of the day (the top one) sums it up quite nicely. From the right-wing blogs, I learned that the memo font matches MS Times-Roman, and nothing else. From the left-wings blogs, I learned that the memo font matches IBM Press-Roman, and nothing else.
From the right-wing blogs, I learned that small horizontal variation in spacing is proof of "kerning" and therefore computer generation. From the left-wing blogs, I learned that small vertical variation in alignment is proof of mechanical action and therefore typewriter creation.
I learned that the right-wing facts are certainly true, as noted by Washington Post experts, and the left-wing facts are certainly true, as established by the Boston Globe. And so on, and so on.....
Old media, new audiences
: The ever-impressive Bryan Keefer of Spinsanity writes a smart, direct, and insightful open letter to big media about how it should be changing for newer, younger audiences in the Washington Post. The media's obsession with getting the latest minutiae about John Kerry and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, or the latest gossipy tidbits about President Bush's alleged past drug use, is misplaced. The endless he said/he said reporting and the airtime given to questionable allegations highlight the reason why so many young people like myself are turning away from mainstream outlets such as newspapers and network newscasts. Instead, we're increasingly choosing to get our news and analysis from the Internet and even turning to unconventional outlets like Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" in pursuit of the straight story. But blogs are the land of he-said/he-said these days. Anyway, point taken. To me and others raised in our media-saturated environment, where 24-hour cable news and Internet access bring us more information than we can possibly digest, the mainstream media seem trapped in the age of "All the President's Men." They're still wedded to outdated ambitions like getting the "scoop" or maintaining a veneer of objectivity, both of which are concepts that have been superseded by technology. We live in an era when PR pros have figured out how to bend the news cycle to their whims, and much of what's broadcast on the networks bears a striking resemblance to the commercials airing between segments. Like other twenty-somethings (I'm 26), I've been raised in an era when advertising invades every aspect of pop culture, and to me the information provided by mainstream news outlets too often feels like one more product, produced by politicians and publicists. If I start quoting more, I'll copy the whole thing. So go read the whole thing instead.
Shock the vote
: Howard Stern has given over the entry to his site to voter registration.
A blog's other b-roll
: Like an NPR show with an actual sense of humor, Rex Hammock is adding appropriately amusing iTunes musical bumpers to the end of every post (in hopes that he'll inspire you to click and buy). Check out his choices.
Just asking
: I haven't seen anyone else asking this but I've been wondering lately...
Would the Democrats be better off with Al Gore as their candidate?
There'd be less mud; one presumes (hopes) that was to be slung was slung last time.
Gore has a clearer record and stronger accomplishments and clearer stands. Those stands are in starker contrast to Bush's (including on the war, where Gore has become rather, well, vitriolic).
And for sport, both sides would probably relish the rematch of Florida 2000 (while most of us would probably sooner forget it). But at least that would bring out voters eager to prove that their man was the true winner; it's like voting in two elections at once.
When you get right down to it, Gore has more personality than Kerry (sorry to damn with faint praise).
I wonder whether Gore regrets not running and whether some Democrats regret it, too.
Just asking.
Freedom squandered
: Elie Wiesel, a man who truly understands the value of freedom and democracy, is disappointed and depressed about this election. Has it always been this way? Have we always had adversaries hurling insults at each other rather than allowing debate and analysis to influence undecided voters? Should we be afraid to trust the public to comprehend the issues in depth? One could almost say that the goal is not to inspire but to incite, not to inform but to dumb down.
I'm not talking about the candidates themselves. I have deep esteem for one and great respect for the other. They represent two political ideologies, two philosophies for this society, and each of us is free to choose the one with whom we identify.
But why the disagreeable, offensive tone that emanates from this event? Wiesel has covered American presidential elections since Kennedy v. Nixon and he has never seen a year like this. In every case, the supporters and spokesmen of both the incumbent and the opposition expressed themselves with ardor, conviction and dedication.
But never with such violence as we see today....
Why this need, among people on both sides, to let the discussion be dominated by nastiness and ugliness? And why don't they listen to the voices calling for an end to this slide into the gutter? Do we care about what our children think as they watch this on television? What are they to make of the exchanges, insults and attacks among politicians? ...
This presidential campaign is full of verbal violence. In fact, it's bursting with it. Instead of elevating the debate, this campaign is debasing it. Instead of examining the serious problems of a society in crisis, it's treating them in a superficial way. Rather than comparing one philosophical doctrine with its counterpart, the campaigns are succumbing to propaganda -- propaganda that is striking for its excessive anger and its lack of elegance, generosity and even simple courtesy. This is the election of shame. [ via Keats' Telescope]
September 13, 2004
Feeling snotty
: I'm sick. You don't want me to blog. Good night.
: TUESDAY UPDATE: It's catching.
No, it's a damned epidemic.
It's the future, stupid
: Howard Kurtz and a few folks he quotes finally start calling media on paying attention to mudslinging instead of what really matters: our future as a nation.
I think we will look back on coverage of this campaign with all the pride of our pre-9/11 Condit and shark coverage. Says Kurtz (my itals): Is absolutely everything fair game for the press these days?
From the contours of John Kerry's war wounds to George Bush's failure to take a National Guard physical to a book's disputed allegations of drug use at Camp David, the media seem consumed these days with excavating the down-and-dirty past.
All too often the details are murky, the evidence secondhand, the documents doubted, the arguments driven by high-decibel partisanship....
If journalists devoted the same investigative energy to the candidates' efforts to bolster Medicare and Social Security or deal with the mess in Iraq -- as opposed to precisely what happened on the Bay Hap River in 1969 -- perhaps more people might find campaign coverage compelling. ...
"Here the campaign is dealing with terrorism and war, but we're still capable of losing ourself in matters 35 years old that belong on 'Jeopardy!' or 'Trivial Pursuit,' " says Frank Sesno, a George Mason University professor and former CNN anchor. While he blames Kerry in part for putting Vietnam at the center of his campaign, Sesno sees an "almost ridiculous contrast" between the country's problems and the media's obsession with old controversies. I'll let you decide whether the same is true of blogs. Are blogs raising the standards of media or lowering themselves to media's standards?
As we've discussed here before, all this is often cloaked under the tattered blanket of "character," in an effort to make mud matter. Today's free Wall Street Journal link looks at coverage of "character" in the campaign: A bruising fight over "character" has taken center stage in a presidential campaign that once seemed it would hinge more on Iraq, terrorism and the economy.
Character is the crux of the battle over the Vietnam-era behavior of President Bush and John Kerry, as well as the prism increasingly used by both campaigns to refract the debate over current issues such as taxes and Medicare.
The Democratic National Committee has fanned questions in recent days about President Bush's National Guard service because "the issues about the president's military service go to his credibility and his character," said party Chairman Terry McAuliffe in a weekend interview. "If you lie about your military record, you lie about creating jobs. You lie about the deficit. You lie about fully funding education. You lie about a real prescription-drug benefit."
Similarly, the Bush-friendly Vietnam veterans who challenged Mr. Kerry's combat heroics and postwar protests say their push has accomplished their broader purpose of sowing doubts about Mr. Kerry's integrity. "We have...touched off a national debate concerning John Kerry's character and leadership ability," said Roy Hoffmann, founder of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, in a statement Friday....
The character tilt to the campaign so far has helped Mr. Bush and could continue to give him an edge if it remains the dominant theme through the fall. Republicans have been more persistent with personal attacks against Mr. Kerry than Democrats have been against Mr. Bush, and polls show Mr. Kerry's negative ratings rising more sharply than Mr. Bush's. While Democrats vow to fight back, it is harder to change public perceptions of an incumbent president than a lesser-known challenger.
Democrats also risk taking the focus off the economy, health care, and Iraq, where polls show voters still have serious concerns about Mr. Bush's record. A character debate "is clearly much more effective for Bush because it takes him away from the issues," says Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, which analyzes public opinion. "Kerry has to talk about how bad conditions are. Everybody's guilty this season.
Everybody has mud on their hands.
And a year from now, we'll see some commission wonder why we as a nation didn't pay attention to terrorism... or the health-care crisis... or education.... or the economy.... It's because we couldn't see through the mud on our glasses.
: Here is my post about character and the campaign.
Lincoln's nose
: WTC memorial architect Daniel Liebeskind writes in The Guardian about coming to America as a young immigrant and seeing North by Northwest: North by Northwest perfectly communicates the vastness of the American canvas and the drama of its images - everything that is beautiful, dramatic and exciting. The integration of Mount Rushmore into the final climax symbolises the idea that in the US gods actually come down to earth, human beings become part of the landscape and the landscape becomes heroic.
A thorn by any other name
: Chicago Tribune ombudsman Don Wycliff writes a quisling column about coverage of the Russian terrorist attack and the Tribune's refusal to call terrorists terrorists: One other facet of the Russian hostage story also provoked considerable reader response: It was the Tribune's use of the words "militant" or "rebel," but not "terrorist," to refer to the hostage-takers in news stories.
"How can you ... describe these folks as anything but `terrorists'?" asked Jim Ihlenfeld of Aurora, in one of the more temperate such messages
Our eschewal of the word "terrorist" was in keeping with a stylebook policy adopted several years ago, a policy that is in keeping with the journalistic purpose of the news pages: to provide as complete, thorough and unbiased an account as possible of the important news of the day.
No intellectually honest person can deny that "terrorist" is a word freighted with negative judgment and bias. So we sought terms that carried no such judgment. Well, bub, no "intellectually honest person" can call these murderers anything other than terrorists. To do otherwise is intellectually and humanly dishonest.
Do you not call people who rape rapists? Do you not call people who murder murderers? Do you not call people who murder many mass murderers?
These are terrorists.
To go out of your way not to call them terrorists is journalistically criminal.
: Go read the rest. It's a pretty disgusting column all around. He calls a picture of dead children a work of art. That's sickness of another sort. [Just caught up on this thanks to Editors Weblog]
Content superstore
: Rafat Ali's blog of digital jobs reveals that Amazon is getting deeper into selling digital content.
September 12, 2004
Come on in, the water's lukewarm
: Tim Oren moves his blog in part so he can be a bit more political. He categorizes himself as a member of the militant middle (where I'm proudly listed on his blogroll).
: MONDAY UPDATE: Fellow blogger-hyphen-VC Fred Wilson notes Tim's blog switch and says: It's a real concern and something that I have often thought about as I have been playing out this exercise in transparency that is my blog.
My partner doesn't share my political views. He's in the middle along with Jeff, Tim, and most other rational people. The views expressed on this blog are not the views of my firm. They are my views.
Further, when I blog that I root for the Jets, it doesn't mean that my firm is rooting for the Jets and rooting against the Patriots. It means that I do that.
The big tent
: Ira Glass' This American Life on NPR has become my favorite radio program, for it's not only the best exercise in story-telling anywhere, it is consistently and delightfully surprising (hear this amazing story about a Hasidic Jew who became an underground rocker and this story about how hard it is to work in Iraq).
This week's surprise: An entire show devoted to the Republican Party as the inclusive party, the big tent. I told you it was surprising: It's on NPR (well, PRI, but I tire of splitting that hair) and it's fair and balanced about Republicans.
The show makes the point that the Republicans are the party that's growing and they're doing it, in great measure, by acting open. Whether, in the end, they really are open depends on where you stand and what matters to you and whether you'd feel OK in their tent. The Republicans had Guliani and McCain and Schwarzenegger on the dias and kept the fringes locked in a closet during the convention. But their platform was a document of the concrete-solid right. And from my perspective, Bush is from that solid right (though I know many of that far right would disagree); if he were more open to other views on some issues I'd be more open to him. Still, the show says, the Republicans make an effort at openness while the Democratis, it can be argued fairly, persist in PC dogma and are not open to, say, pro-lifers. On the other other other hand, though, it's not news that there are gay Democrats but it is news that there are gay Republicans and that's an indication of relative and historic openness. I could keep this on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand all day but I won't.
I recommend the show highly (it's being aired this week; it's on Audible now; it'll be on Real next week). You won't hear mudslinging and hate. You will hear people who honestly disagree within and without the Republican party trying to at least discuss issues. It can happen.
Review this
: David Hajdu writes a review of Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers that pretty much goes nowhere, except for this shocking comparison: In content and theme, ''Maus'' and ''In the Shadow of No Towers'' share some ground. Each of the books deals with a relatively ordinary man, a Spiegelman of one time and place, confronting mass murder (on vastly different scale and a wholly distinct nature, of course) and an arrogant, power-hungry regime (again, on a far different level). So here we have The New York Times drawing parallels between Hitler's regime and Bush's.
That's shocking. I hope it's just shockingly sloppy. But I wonder.
(I review this unbook here.)
: More fun from the NY Times book review:
In a negative review of pompous Princetonian Cornel West's Democracy Matters, Caleb Crain writes this: Then there are West's eccentricities of tone. For the ''soul murder'' of American youth, West blames cocaine, Ecstasy, oral sex and --Weblogs. He writes, somewhat cryptically, that ''Since 9/11 we have experienced the niggerization of America.'' Weblogs are murdering the soul of American youth. Wow. It that because we are addictive or just because we like puncturing that self-important bag of tepid wind, West?
Then again, we could use this as our new marketing slogan: Weblogs: as much fun as cocaine, Ecstasy, and oral sex!
: One more bit of NYT book review fun: Ana Marie Cox, the Wonkette, reviews the new chick-lit novel by Al Gore's daughter, Kristen Gore. She didn't like it.
September 11, 2004
September 11, 2004: Crossfire
: I am tired of living in the crossfire.
Right now, I am at the World Trade Center. Outside, parents and grandparents who lost children at on 9/11 -- Mayor Bloomberg says our language has no word to label their loss -- are reading the names of the dead.
And I am angry.
Every year, I return to the site to remember and pay tribute. I retrace my steps that day, grateful to survive. I stand and listen to the litany of innocence and tragedy. And I don't know what emotion is going to take me over until I am here. Two years ago, it was reverence. Last year, I said that sorrow and anger fought and sorrow won.
This year, anger wins.
I am angry to be living in the crossfire, angry to be living between the fringes.
I am angry to hear the names of 2,727 who did absolutely nothing to deserve death ... except that they were in America. They were caught in the crossfire of a war that wasn't theirs. They were murdered just for the sake of it by the fascist fringe.
And I am angry at the same time that the political fringes in America are taking over this election. I'm mad because they are distracting us from the real enemy, the one who struck that day, the one who killed those 2,727 whose names are being read right now, the one who turned America into his battleground; they are making us forget the real war. I'm mad because they are distracting us from the real work we should be about in this democracy. I'm mad because they are turning into America into their battleground, too.
I'm mad because I'm sick of being surrounded by mad people.
Insert irony here.
: This is all about being American and to me, being an American means living in the middle, finding the mainstream, melting into equality, finding the consensus. Being an American means tolerating but not living on the fringes.
I am the drippings from the melting pot. I'm a mix of so many unknown ethnicities that I have no ethnicity. I'm a little bit of everybody. I am everyman. I am American.
I am pathetically typical: One of two children, father of two children, raised in the 'burbs, living in the 'burbs, politically sitting in the middle leaning this way on this issue and that way on that issue and averaging out like everything else in my life, back to the middle.
I love the middle, the center, the mainstream, the masses. It's not just how I live, it's how I think. It's why I love this medium of ours, citizens' media, that is the sum of its limitless parts, the consensus of the whole. It's why I defended the taste of the American people and what they watched on TV when I was a critic. It's where I'm most comfortable: America, the middle.
We were attacked that day because we are America, the middle. But it only made me more American, more determined to recapture what makes us American, to defend the middle and not be overtaken by the fringes.
: But I have to admit some hypocritical history. I was a reporter. Well, I still am. I'm reporting in my strange way right now. And I reported that day. When I came out of the World Trade Center and saw it burning, I should have run the hell away from here. At 9:03 this morning, I heard the bells marking the second jet's attack and I stood not 20 feet from where I write this and felt the heat of it and ran into the window I'm staring at now to get away from the debris. I should have run then. But I didn't. I stayed. I'm a reporter. I reported. Damned near killed me for no good reason. I hope I wouldn't think of doing that again. I hope I've learned a lesson.
But I stand here and watch reporters and photographers try to leach on the life and emotions of the people who have come here. Ahead of me this morning was a man with his wife and daughter comforting him. I don't know why. I don't want to know why. I moved away, feeling as if I was invading his life. But I saw news photographers coming up behind because it made a great picture: sorrow at the fence, under a gigantic American flag and a sign that said, "We will not forget." They turned him into news. I felt a little ashamed.
And I watch reporters play to the fringes in this election, digging up mud, giving attention to others who do, and slinging with the best of them. They're not paying attention to the middle, to America. They're egging on the fringers. I feel ashamed of that.
Maybe I did, indeed, change on September 11. Maybe it took me a few years to recongize it but I see what's wrong with playing to and promoting the fringes and exploiting rather than serving the people. I hope I'm learning that lesson, too.
: So for me, today is about recapturing the middle, recapturing America and my Americanism, recapturing life and civility and stealing it all away from the fringes that would rob us of it. I'm tired of living in the crossfire. I'm tired of living between the fringes. I'm tired of listening to mad people. I'm tired of being angry.
: I'm going back outside now. I'll listen to more of the names and look at the plaques of names (replaced yesterday afternoon with the latest list on them). I'll listen to the words of parents and grandparents, grateful that I neither feel nor caused their pain because of that day. I'll leave them to their grief and tribute. And I'll take the PATH train back that I took here that morning and get home before my kids return from the orthodontist's -- how typically American can you get? -- and play outside under the warm, bright September 11 sun.
: POSTSCRIPTS: As I walked back to the PATH station, I saw a crowd with flashes and boom mikes and cameras. I figured it might the be the mayor or the governor. No, it was a nutjob. Earlier in the morning, I'd seen a few nutjobs standing together with a banner that said "Bush Regime Engineered 9/11" and similar looney signs. There were only a handful of them. I used my news judgment and better judgment and walked away from them and didn't tell you about them; they don't deserve the attention. But here was a gaggle of press paying attention to the fringe. As if I needed more evidence.
: LINKS: Joe Katzman has a great roundup of great posts on the event. Glenn Reynolds has more. I couldn't link to his post before; he had the images I dread most, large, on his page; they're gone now.
September 10, 2004
Oink update
: After the post below on the political piggies wallowing in mud, I got lots of comments and email continuing the slinging and also going on about the alleged forgery of the Bush documents used on 60 minutes. Two points:
First, yes, CBS did quote and link to all the questions prominantly on the CBSNews homepage. They say they're still standing by the story. I have no way to know who's right, who's innocent, who's guilty, who's scamming, who's not. Which leads to my second point:
I still don't care. It's all about mud. I don't care about the mud. If, as Rex says in the post below, all the mud that has been slung is true it's not going to make a difference in how I view these candidates -- and it's only distracting from the debates we should be having. It's just mud.
Another commenter suggested I should push the debate to those other topics. When I did that on health care a few days ago, good discussion ensued. I'll try. The only problem is: I'm no expert on any of those topics. That's why I'm hoping to find bloggers who are going to be better than me at leading those discussions. So what I really want is links to the folks who know about and are talking about -- from each perspective -- health care, jobs, the economy, homeland security, and education ... the issues that all matter one helluvalot more than mud.
The mudslinging is coming from media, campaigns, 527s, and bloggers -- they're all guilty of slinging crap instead of debating issues. I had hoped that we bloggers would be holding them all to a higher standard and, yes, I'm harping on that. Go read Rex's post again.
: LATER: Having had the time between meetings to read more of the stories about the documents....
Yes, bloggers should be proud of exposing what, indeed, looks like a hoax. This is a great power of blogs -- and I wish they would do it more often. Fact-checking the asses of media and politics should be part of our mission.
Yes, CBS should not only quote those reports and link to them but also respond more fully and immediately. Every second that clicks by on that 60 Minutes stopwatch is another degree of credibility shot.
Yes, CBS should now put its investigative powers toward find out and revealing who perpetrated the hoax. I do not assume it was CBS; I assume instead they were dopey and duped.
Yes, if anyone in the news organization is found to be complicit with a hoax in any way, it is a scandal that tops Jayson Blair by miles and harms the credibility of not only the network but also the industry. I doubt this will be the case but who knows?
Yes, CBS should vow to get to the bottom of this and make that vow quickly and publicly.
But, no, I still don't care about the would-be Bush or Kerry military scandals. I still say it's all about mud. I still say it's distracting and destructive.
Falling
: A few days ago, I wrote a piece about the image I cannot bear from September 11th: the falling.
It was wrenching to write and apparently wrenching to read, for I received some very touching notes and comments from people suggesting dealing with PTSD. Let me assure you that I'm fine. I meant everything I said in that piece but, of course, it's a concentrated view of one aspect of the day and the aftermath and though metaphor is real, it's still mataphor.
Today, I read something even more wrenching: a New York Times report on the people who fell.
It points out what I speculated about back then: that perhaps many of the people who fell did not jump but fell out of the windows as they leaned out to get oxygen or to escape the unbearable heat and smoke or under the crush of other people trying to do the same thing. Police helicopter pilots have described feeling helpless as they hovered along the buildings, watching the people who piled four and five deep into the windows, 1,300 feet in the air. Some held hands as they jumped. Others went alone. As the numbers grew, said Joseph Pfeifer, a fire battalion chief in the north tower lobby, he tried to make an announcement over the building's public address system, not realizing it had been destroyed.
"Please don't jump," he said. "We're coming up for you."
Almost instinctually on Sept. 11, people recognized that they had an unfortunate view into an intensely private matter, an unseemly intrusion not just into someone's death, but into the moment of their dying. American broadcast networks generally avoided showing people falling. A sculpture that depicted a victim, known as "Tumbling Woman," was removed from display at Rockefeller Center after one week.
Some commentators later remarked that those who had fallen had made one brave final decision to take control of how they would perish. Researchers say many people had no choice. Witness accounts suggest that some people were blown out. Others fell in the crush at the windows as they struggled for air. Still others simply recoiled, reflexively, from the intense heat.
A spokeswoman for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said the city agency had not classified any of the dead as "jumpers," a term used when people jump to their deaths, because the people were forced from the buildings.
"This should not be really thought of as a choice," said Louis Garcia, New York City's chief fire marshal. "If you put people at a window and introduce that kind of heat, there's a good chance most people would feel compelled to jump." What's almost more difficult than reading again about this image that I find unbearable is reading about the horror within the buildings: Temperatures in pockets of the buildings rose to more than 1,000 degrees, sufficient to weaken steel, according to researchers. The first people jumped or fell from the upper floors of the north tower just minutes after the impact of American Airlines Flight 11. The heat reached people on the upper floors long before the flames. Some of those trapped reported that the floor itself had grown so hot they had to stand on their desks, according to a fire official.
"The heat was absolutely phenomenal," said Dr. Guylene Proulx, who studies human behavior in fires for the National Research Council of Canada. "If you have ever burned your finger, you know how much that hurts and how you pull away. In the trade center, it was such a hot fire. It was impossible to think you might survive. Why suffer a minute longer when it is so unbearable? It may have appeared to be the best thing to stop the pain, when the window is shattered and the opening is there." Then there are the questions of how many and who fell. The Times quotes earlier estimates saying as many as 200 did.
When I wrote my news story about surviving the attacks on September 11 (I recorded these audio memories days later), I got the number way wrong. I said I saw at least three; as a reporter, I felt compelled to give a number and make sure it was right. But I know I saw many more. Now I think this was some strange, subconscious effort to protect my memory from the reality I'd witnessed. The human in me defeated the reporter in me. Surely, I apparently wished, this couldn't have happened to more than three. Surely, I didn't really see that. Lord, I wish I hadn't seen that.
200.
That's another hard number. 2,726 dead. 1,000 degrees. 200 fell.
It's important to remember. It's important to prevent. But I wonder whether we are reaching the point at which it is no longer important to dissect every aspect of that day, every toll of tragedy, every pain.
September 10th
: A reader sent me this link to a Washington Post story about what was happening on September 10, 2001 -- besides sharks. Patrick Gavin is writing a book on the day. Outgoing Mayor Rudy Giuliani attends a sermon by Father Mychal Judge, who is addressing current and former firefighters, as well as Fire Department Chief Pete Ganci, at a Bronx firehouse. "You have no idea, when you get on that rig," the priest says at the firehouse, "no matter how big the call, no matter how small, you have no idea what God's calling you to do. . . . Good days, bad days. Up days, down days. Sad days, happy days -- but never a boring day on this job."
President Bush's approval rating stands at 51 percent. He spends the first part of his day meeting with Australian Prime Minister John Howard, discussing a potential free-trade agreement between the two countries. Later he flies down to Florida to promote his education bill, pursued throughout the day by questions about the slumping U.S. economy. Unemployment is 4.9 percent and rising. The surplus is disappearing. More than 1 million people have become unemployed since January.
"This has been an awful week for the stock markets," Sam Donaldson declared yesterday morning on ABC's "This Week." He was being modest: It has been an awful year. The manufacturing and technology industries have been especially hard hit by the economic downturn, and corporate profits have dwindled. The Dow Jones is down 11 percent this year, the Nasdaq down 32 percent.
"Is the worst over?" Donaldson asked. "I mean, what's ahead?" And then there were things happening that did not make the news, yet: I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, informs Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who had sent Cheney a copy of her legislation on counterterrorism and homeland defense in July, that the vice president will be unable to review her legislation for at least six months.
At the Justice Department, Attorney General John Ashcroft rejects the FBI's request for $58 million to fund such counterterrorism initiatives as new field agents, intelligence analysts and translators.
U.S. intelligence agents tape al Qaeda members saying "the match begins tomorrow" and "tomorrow is Zero Day." The tapes won't be translated until tomorrow. I don't long to return to September 10th. Oh, of course, I wish September 11th had never happened. But I don't long to return to some imagined era of innocence, which was really an era of ignorance. We didn't know. We weren't prepared (and I'll argue, unlike the 9/11 Commission and other pilers-on that we couldn't have been). But now we know.
Always on paper
: When Always On started, I snarked that it was a magazine from a company that couldn't afford paper anymore. A big cruel, I'll admit, but I liked the line.
Now it turns out to be true -- and they can afford the paper. AlwaysOn is freeze-drying itself as a magazine.
Somebody (I forget who) said it was the first web site to become a magazine. Nope. Nerve beat 'em. And Lawrence.com is a web site that became a paper. Ditto NorthwestVoice.
Are readers demanding to see all these sites on paper? No, I don't think so. Ad sales people are. It's still a lot easier to sell ads on paper than on screen. The ad industry just hasn't caught up to the market.
But as soon as you try to make the switch and get the ambition to kill trees, watch out: Lots of risk and expenses -- production, paper, ink, printing, distribution -- follow. Print is hard.
: Rex Hammock, the boswell of slick print, chortles at all this: So, just to bring us all up to speed regarding these vaporzines: The Red Herring is selling subscriptions to a weekly and Tony Perkins is selling subscriptions to a quarterly written by former Red Herring writers. So does Rafat Ali.
Want to join my society of amateur journalists?
: I'm on a panel today at the meeting of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Doesn't that title sound anachronistic? Under one definition of the word, it's odd these days to demark just those who are paid (the only blogger I hear going about that is Eric Alterman... and, by the way, how come I haven't heard much of him lately?) These days, a lot of people do practice journalism -- and, yes, it is journalism -- for free because it is their passion, because they are -- in the right definitions of the word -- amateurs.
And under the other definition of the word -- it's all about standards, you know -- the title is still anachronistic. Did these folks revoke Jayson Blair's membership card because he was unprofessional? There are good and bad journalists and good and bad citizen journalists. Bragging about being "professional" seems like another way to try to stand up and apart from the people, it's about creating the priesthood of the professionals.
Of course, I'm not criticizing the group for inheriting this name or even the folks who created it. Back in the old days -- oh, five years ago -- the only people who could practice journalism were the professionals because they were the ones who had access to the presses and broadcast towers their bosses, who paid them, owned.
But that has changed in an era when anybody can publish, anybody can broadcast, anybody can be a journalist. Being "professional" is now about being apart.
September 09, 2004
Election terrorism
: Well, the terrorists disrupted an election, but it wasn't ours (so far, God forbid); it was Australia's: THE scourge of international terrorism has dramatically infiltrated the federal election, with Mark Latham last night announcing plans to suspend Labor's campaign and John Howard diverting to Canberra today in the wake of the Jakarta bombing.
The Opposition Leader, who was in far north Queensland to announce an environmental inititiative, spoke with the Prime Minister yesterday, and both agreed to proceed with Sunday's nationally televised debate in Sydney.
But Labor will cancel all campaign advertising and delay any further election policy announcements as the political leaders grapple with the shocking events in Indonesia.
A clearly shaken Mr Latham refused to answer questions as to whether the bombing was designed to influence the Australian election.
Oink
: The mudslinging continues and bloggers are complicit in the crime.
I was thinking of calling them Manchurian bloggers, for it seems as if some of them (pick your side) are hyp-no-tized to attack on command. In some cases, it's quite out of character. They just can't help themselves. They keep attacking. See mud. Must sling.
But that doesn't quite capture it. It doesn't grab the glee they have at hurling the dirt.
It's all crap and they all know it but they're talking crap rather than jobs or health care or Iraq or terrorism or education or anything that really matters. They're adding nothing but nothing to the campaign.
The're wallowing in mud.
They're the political piggies.
Yeah, that's it: Piggie, piggie, piggie. I'll speak their language. That's what I'll call them now, the mud wallowers, the mud slingers, the dirty ones. Oink away, piggies. I don't care.
Neither does Tony Pierce. raymi has returned because there is a God and He loves us. i keep telling you this. none of you listen. but it's cool. it's cool.
speaking of which, jeff jarvis wants us to lay off the hate and the evil and the mudslinging when blogging about this presidential election.
at first i was all, "come on hippie, isnt half the fun of a blog to have not only the ability to sling a little mud, but then sling a little more?"
but, as usual, i was wrong.
half the fun of blogging is getting nice emails from hot chicks who want to get naked with you. the other half is getting a chance to practice writing three times a day in front of hundreds of people.
there actually is no room for mudslinging in a proper blog that aspires to be taken seriously. a gentleman should leave that for the discussion boards.
blogs should be setting the standard. we should be setting the tone that tv and newspapers and magazines once had. and even if we shouldnt be, we could be, so therfore we should be. To which Ken Layne retorts: Tony Pierce says we should follow Jeff Jarvis' advice and quit the mudslinging.
I say Nuts to That. Why should anyone quit now, right when it's getting good? Who walks out of a prize fight right when the bloodied halfwit underdog jumps up and knocks the other dude across the ring? Besides, you and I have as much chance of stopping such a fight as some spectator in the nose-bleed seats. Close your eyes, run for the bathroom, do whatever you must do for yourself, but that fight will continue until somebody is Knocked Out & carried away on a stretcher. But here's my favorite call for mud disarmament -- step back from the pigsty, piggies! -- from Rex Hammock. What he says: But I want to be on record as agreeing with Jeff Jarvis that at some point, this whole gotcha campaigning crap has got to stop. I know the history of American presidential politics is filled with mud-slinging and rumor-milling that makes the Kerry-Bush accusation-duel look like a kindegarten squabble. But still, enough already.
Who cares who served in Vietnam...or avoided it? Didn't the election of President Dole, the WWII hero, over Bill Clinton, the draft dodger, settle that as an issue? And frankly, if Kitty Kelly's book claims that back in the 1980s, George W. Bush performed abortions at Camp David while dancing naked on a table, drunk and on cocaine, it won't influence my vote. And frankly, if some veteran steps forward tomorrow proving John Kerry cut himself shaving and tried to leverage that into a Congressional Medal of Honor because he thought it would help him get a date with Jane Fonda and would look good on his campaign resume, it won't influence my vote. Hell, you could tell me that John Kerry and George Bush were once secretly married to each other in a private Skull & Crossbones ceremony at Yale, and I would be too desensitized by this campaign to give a rip.
Is anyone actually going to vote this November based on something that happened during the Vietnam war or based on decades-old DUIs or anything other than the economy or the threat of terrorism or a personal conviction related to a specific public policy isisue? No one.
Bottom line: George W. Bush has served as president for the past four years. We've all had a front row seat to how he'll likely serve if he's re-elected to the office. Vote against him or for him based on what you, yourself, have observed and based on your personal convictions. Or vote for or against John Kerry based on your perception of his service in the Senate and on what you think of him today or if you are convinced that he'll be a better president. Or vote for someone else if you think neither of them is fit for the office.
All that other crap is noise. Amen, blogging brother.
Flash traffic
: Having spent five hours yesterday needlessly stuck in traffic after a little rain in New Jersey, I have two things to say (besides the fact that New Jersey's infrastructure is about as good as Baghdad's these days):
1. Shadow Traffic and Metro Traffic suck. They are worse than worthless. I'm backed up for 20 miles for hours on a major Interstate and they don't know about it or if they do, they're not telling. I might as well listen to a psychic to find the traffic. This Shadow doesn't know.
2. We need to start the citizens' traffic service, the flash traffic service: Smart Traffic. Hundreds, then thousands of people all knew more about the traffic on my route yesterday; they were close enough to shout at, yet we had no way to share what we knew.
I actually tried to convince folks in this traffic business years ago to use technology and drivers to solve all this. But they're either too dumb or too scared of being replaced and I've seen no movement in this direction. So let's invent it around them.
The goal is simple: Other drivers ahead of me on my route know what the traffic is like. I want that information. In return, I'll share what I know with the drivers behind me.
This is the ultimate gift economy: information for information.
How to accomplish this? There are degrees of sophistication that can ramp up as technology does. At a simple level:
: Let's say that I give my standard route to a web site.
: From my car, I call into a number; the system recognizes my number and thus my route. (And if I use a different route, I can tell it what highway I'm on.)
: It quizzes me about each part of the route and I reply: Fast, slow, flooding, accident, avoid -- simple keywords that can be recognized and passed on by the system.
: It then tells me what it knows about the next leg of my journey with a rating of the quality of the information (how many calls, how recent).
I gave information, I got information.
Ramp it up with technology and let the system pass on what cells I'm passing from and to so it knows me and my phone and where we are and also how fast we're traveling and it analyzes that.
Ramp it up again and put a GPS transponder in my car with data that feeds into a dynamic traffic data base, which in turn can feed data back down to my little device in my car.
Ramp it up more sell me a display device tied to GPS in my car that warns me before I get to a slow spot.
The key to all this is that it learns the lesson of citizens' media: namely, how much more efficient and effective it is to have countless citizens reporting for you than a few dolts in helicopters who are over the wrong highways or a few state bureacrats who are too slow to report what's really happening.
This can be simple. It can be technology dependent. I really don't care. I just want it! I wasted five hours of my life yesterday for no good reason.
It can be supported with subscriber fees (but the more you use the service and the more information you feed in, the better discount you get) and/or advertising (don't pay and you suffer through a commercial before you get your report).
And so now I want to see Shadow and Metro replaced (and with it go the revenue that comes from this bogus content given to radio stations that don't always air the traffic at the same time, just to trick us). I want to join a network of fellow commuters reporting for each other.
This is citizens' media that is truly useful. Forget politics. Give me citizens' traffic!
: And we also need to invent the portable SUV potty.
: James Joyner in the comments suggests a traffic blog with audio posts. Yes, in fact, what I need is an I-78 in New Jersey with audio posts and audio output: a community answering machine that actually gives me answers.
Words wanted
: The amazing Micah Sifry passes on this notice with a request to post it in the town square: Writers Wanted
Personal Democracy Forum, a new online resource focusing on the intersection of technology and politics, is seeking contributors for its website, blog and newsletter. We're looking for seasoned journalists versed, ideally, in both the political and technology industries who are interested in covering a wide range of subjects, including: how the Internet is moving votes, money and perceptions; the digital political industry; tools and techniques of clued-in campaigns; and emergent technology-enabled democracy. Political or business journalism background a plus but not required. We're looking for 800- to 1500-word features as well as shorter blog entries on ongoing beats. Will pay competitive freelance rates. Send resume, clips, blog info, etc to Micah L. Sifry at micah@personaldemocracy.com.
A living memorial
: Families and survivors of 9/11 have started a Living Memorial online [via Steve Rubel]. Here was my not-dissimilar proposal for a World Trade Center memorial that used video to continue to tell the stories of the innocents lost that day.
More repression of free speech
: Hoder sends the bad news that three young journalists in Iran have been arrested for helping reformist web sites. Remember more than a year ago that a blogger was arrested for what he blogged.
Who can stop Islamic terrorism
: We can't stop Islamic terrorism. But Muslims can. Oh, we can fight them and hunt them down and wipe them out wherever we find them -- we have absolutely no choice. But to truly stop them before they start, Muslims of influence and Muslims as a people must rise up and tell these slime to stop.
I don't have much hope of that happening.
But occasionally, we see a glimmer of civility and hope. Tragically, it occurs only after the Islamic terrorists have mined new depths of hell.
Now, after the murder of children in Russia, the Muslim press is at last -- at long damned last -- expressing the revulsion any civilized soul should. A few days ago, I found some outrage here. And today the Times finds "self-criticism" from the Muslim press. Andrew Sullivan finds a longer version of the money quote in that story at Memri: Obviously not all Muslims are terrorists but, regrettably, the majority of the terrorists in the world are Muslims. The kidnappers of the students in Ossetia are Muslims. The kidnappers and killers of the Nepalese workers and cooks are also Muslims. Those who rape and murder in Darfour are Muslims, and their victims are Muslims as well. Those who blew up the residential complexes in Riyadh and Al-Khobar are Muslims. Those who kidnapped the two French journalists are Muslims. The two [women] who blew up the two planes [over Russia] a week ago are Muslims. Bin Laden is a Muslim and Al-Houthi [the head of a terrorist group in Yemen] is a Muslim. The majority of those who carried out suicide operations against buses, schools, houses, and buildings around the world in the last ten years are also Muslims.
What a terrible record. Does this not say something about us, about our society and our culture? ...
Islam has suffered an injustice at the hands of the new Muslims... We will only be able to clear our reputation once we have admitted the clear and shameful fact that most of the terrorist acts in the world today are carried out by Muslims. We have to realize that we cannot correct the condition of our youth who carry out these disgraceful operations until we have treated the minds of our sheikhs who have turned themselves into pulpit revolutionaries who send the children of others to fight while they send their own children to European schools.
- Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, former editor of the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. This is even better. Iraqi columnist Aziz Al-Hajj wrote: The Islamic-Arab terrorism has turned into the greatest danger in the world, and threatens civilization, security, and life everywhere. It is today the symbol of evil, religious fanaticism, and moral degradation, and it is the essence of political crime in today's world
The Arabs and the Muslims today contribute nothing to civilization and progress except for blood, severed heads, scorched bodies, and the abduction and murder of children. The Jihad for religion and Arab chivalry have turned into the art of exploding, booby-trapping, and spilling blood. What an innovation and what a social contribution the Arabs have made in the 21st century!! More outraged quotes -- and a few outrageous quotes about, guess what?, Jews being to blame for this -- at Memri here.
Outraged quotes are fine. A start. Better than nothing, I suppose, since nothing is pretty much all we have seen from the Islamic world. But clearly, outraged quotes are not enough.
What we should be seeing is every civilized leader in the nonterrorist world demanding that leaders in the Islamic world -- government, political, religious, media, academic, business -- take care of their own.
We should be hearing loud and resounding condemnation of ridicule of terrorists from these leaders. If we do not, then they are only supporting terrorism.
We should see swift and ruthless justice against these terrorists by governments of Islamic nations. If we do not, then they are only supporting terrorists.
We should see clear and strong lessons from religious, academic, and journalistic leaders that murder is murder, whether the victim is a Muslim or not. If we do not, then they are only supporting murder.
And we need to get tough on our end: We need to condemn those who refuse to condemn.
It's time to call the bluff. Forget Bush's either-with-us-or-against-us calculation. It's not about "us." It's about you, Islam.
Either you're civlized or you're not.
Time to prove it.
: UPDATE: It's very personal for Terry Heaton.
Heeeeeere's George!
: Jim Wolcott says Dick Cheney reminds him of Ed McMahon: the broken-down sidekick.
Not not doing evil
: Brad Feld has a good suggestion for Google that goes beyond just not doing evil: How about doing some good? How about buying Linux bete noir SCO and shutting them down?
Reporting for blogging, sir
: The WSJ and the LA Times report that a military blogger in Iraq is being disciplined for allegedly revealing too much on his blog. Says the WSJ: But Spc. Buzzell's writing aspirations may prove his undoing as a professional soldier. Recently, shortly after his commanders discovered My War on the Web, Spc. Buzzell found himself banned from patrols and confined to base. His commanders say Spc. Buzzell may have breached operational security with his writings. "My War" went idle as he pondered the consequences of pursuing his craft while slogging through five nights of radio guard duty, a listless detail for an infantryman. More recently, the pages again went blank, as he chafed under a prepublication vetting regime imposed by his command....
Lt. Col. Barry Venable, a Pentagon spokesman, says blogs, like other forms of communication, are tolerated so long as they don't violate operational or informational security. "We treat them the same way we would if they were writing a letter or speaking to a reporter: It's just information," he says. "If a guy is giving up secrets, it doesn't make much difference whether he's posting it on a blog or shouting it from the rooftop of a building." ... Note that they're not trying to stop blogging.
September 08, 2004
Live by the mud, die by the mud
: I'll say it once again: The Bush National Guard flap and the Kerry Swiftie flap are both nonstories, just negative campaigning, just mudslinging, just distractions from what really matters. But the Bush side should not be surprised at all the renewed attention to his military history now (see 60 Minutes and the Boston Globe).
What a friggin' newsflash: Politicians stretch the truth!
Stop the friggin' presses.
Can we move on now?
See the post below from The Week's event: Gallup finds that we the people say candidates and media (and bloggers, by extension) are not discussing the economy, health care, and jobs enough.
We don't want more mud.
Something else to look forward to
: Scientists say 9/11 cancers may take years to emerge.
Who will be President
: I'm at The Week's panel with Mario Cuomo, Dick Morris, Joe Trippi, and Frank Newport of Gallup, I'll liveblog. So I'm not packaging this. React to the quotes as you may. I make no warranty on their value. Mine away.
Newport: "Where we are now is George Bush is ahead of Kerry." He says Bush is ahead among likelies by 7 points. Morris says the gap is larger. "Bush is substantially ahead at this point. " Harry evans asks Cuomo whether he accepts that: "Yeah, I accept them with ease because I don't think mean an awful lot."
Cuomo: "The difference between the two conventions is that the Republicans did it better than the Democrats." But he says the impact is temporary.
Trippi on polls: "I believe this one.... The Kerry campaign has two gears: Coast and fight. They really coasted in August. But I've seen them when they fight."
Evans asks whether Superman will take his vest off. Trippi: "I saw Superman take his vest off in Iowa... I would never underestimate them."
Evans asks whether the lesson of this campaign over others is that negative campaigning works.
Morris makes an aside to praise Trippi, who singlehanded "accomplished campaign finance reform in this country."
Morris then launches into a spiel to say it's not a campaign between men or parties but between two issues: terror or domestic policy. "The real race boils down to whether we want a wartime or a peacetime president."
He says that the rest of the Democratic convention set domestic as the agenda and "Kerry like an idiot' brought it back to Bush's issue, terror. Cuomo disagrees and says that "Kerry did not talk about terror enough.... This is a war on terrorism and the President is doing everything wrong.... He does not have a plan for terrorism."
Evans asks Trippi what he would advise Kerry: "Oh, I think he should take a hammer to these guys."
The Gallup guy says that a poll this weekend asked what issues aren't being talked about. The economy. Health care. Jobs. That's what the voters said. Iraq was way down the list.
Evans asks why the Democrats keep tripping over each other. Morris says it's because the Democrats don't agree with each other. "The problem Kerry has is that he cannot open his mouth on these (terror) issues, he alienates half his voters."
Trippi accepts credit, oddly, for splitting those Democrats by pushing the antiwar agenda.
Morris, disagreeing with Cuomo, says the more the Democrats talk terrorism -- "Bush issues" -- the more they hurt themselves; they should be talking about domestic issues because "those are the issues Kerry leads on."
Evans asks how many people in the room think Kerry should concentrate on terrorism now. Only a half dozen out of a few hundred raise their hands.
Morris says that Bush will stick with one issue in all the debates: terror in foreign policy, homeland security in the domestic debate.
Pathetic Nader guy now gets microphone. "America is about jobs and computerization takes away jobs," he says. What, Nader is becoming the Stone Age candidate: Vote Flinstone?
Russell Simmons is on the phone to talk get-out-the-vote. He says "the number one concern of these people is the war on poverty and ignorance." Oh, that war.
The Gallup guy debunks what they call "the Michael Moore hypothesis... It's an urban myth that somehow if you bring young people into the voting stream, they're going to vote one-for-one for Kerry." He says young people are split, too.
Holly Hunter stands up. I love that accent. "I'm here just to talk a little about People for the American Way" and avoid the problems with disenfranchisement in the last election and educate voters on their rights. Is it wrong for me to also notice how athletic she looks? Well, if it is, ignore that.
Cuomo emphasizes the issue of Supreme Court appointment. Morris asks why Cuomo didn't say yes to Clinton's nomination to the Court. Cuomo says Ginsberg was better than he would be.
It's getting duller. Amazin g how even this election can get dull.
Trippi says "I really believe there's a pretty good chance that Kerry is going to win the popular vote by an even bigger margin than Gore did in the end" while it's still likely that Bush will win the electoral vote.
Morris theorizes that this could be in part because, following Clinton's lead, campaigns run commercials only in swing states.
Now Michael Dukakis is on the phone. Of course, Evans asks about negative campaigning. "I did a terrible job of dealing with it," Dukakis concedes. He says no one believes the "independent' committee is independent and "on the whole Kerry has done a pretty good job of dealing with that.... At least Willie Horton happened. I had to deal with this story that I'd had a nervous breakdown..." That is, with lies "you find your campaign stopped." He said the press would not touch the story until "the incumbent president called me 'the invalid' and then it was in play."
Mario speaks. Dukakis interrupts: "You gave me lousy advice, remember? You said don't pay any attention" to the attacks.... "At least at the time it happens, you gotta deal with it."
Evans asks whether Cuomo was tempted to hit back in kind. "Well, I did, but much too late," Dukakis says.
Monica Crowley of FoxNews complains that the conversation about negative advertising is "extremely one-sided." Cue Soros line.
Dukakis responds: "We've had negative campaigning... This is about telling the truth... The business about Kerry and the Swift Boats is a pack of lies... The business about my mental health is a pack of lies." Morris gives the other side of that. You know the drill. No need to waste more pixels on it.
Trippi says that when you start with Bush, who had negatives, you have one way out, which is to emphasize the other guy's negatives and "it's mutually assured destruction."
Cuomo: "There's no doubt that negative works." He said he ran a campaign insisting on "nothing but positive" and "the polls went nowhere and then they went negative and I went down like a stone in the pond, including an ad that said I'd stolen $14 from the state treasury for a license for my dog, Ginger."
Cuomo: "I am not going to call him a liar about weapons of mass destruction.... But I tell you this: It would be easy to call a liar with the evidence since."
Cuomo gets on the stump and can't stop; on a roll.
Morris stands up and starts shouting and shaking: "The Garment District was not blown up because of George Bush's Patriot Act!" Now he's on the stump and on the roll. He goes on about al-Qaeda buying a Garment District business to use import licenses for Stinger missiles.
Hmmm. Al-Qaeda fashions.
Cuomo: "Dick, I would have thought that even now even a political consultant could have gotten away with trying to sell the Brooklyn Bride, but you did."
Now its a Cuomo v. Morris fistfight.
Evans asks whether the next campaign will be different because of the Internet.
Trippi: "By 2008 you will see a real third party emerge in this country."
I always said that Dean's real agenda was to launch a third party. I'd call that a tacit admission.
He said you'll see a Republican and Democrat with $200 million each and someone else with $300 million.
Morris says we'll see a fight between Hillary Clinton and Edwards for the nomination.
Morris praises Trippi again for his campaign finance reform and says that "the other part of that revolution is that people have stopped watching television" and the focus of attention in campaigns will shift to the internet.
The Gallup guy says we have problems because elected leaders "pay too little attention to the wisdom of the people themselves." Amen! He says there'll be less interest in what candidates say and whether they listen to us. Amen again!
Cuomo looks for one big change in 2008: Let the parties have their exercise in narcisim in conventions "but then in October have an unconventional convention: all debates." Not just candidates but the experts and leaders across the board. Amen to that, too.
It took me five hours to get from home to midtown via car and trains this morning and I speeded it up by negotiating with other drivers to unlock one jam. How to waste a life.... At The Week event now. Blogging soon.
Dean's children
: Zephyr Teachout of the Dean campaign has just teamed up with Mitch Kapor to start Baobab, aimed at getting college students in swing states to mobilize and bring out the vote.
Meanwhile, Zack Rosen, who created DeanSpace, is helping movements create their own space online at Civic Space Labs. He's about to announce something exciting in the Middle East.
Maus house
: I picked up Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers yesterday, its first day out as a book.
The packaging is as pretentious as the politics. These were cartoons that ran in Old European publications where Spiegelman says "my political views hardly seemed extreme." But there are only a few of them -- 10 to be exact -- so they are printed onto hard, thick, oversized cardboard stock to beef this up and make it feel $20 worth of heavy, and even then only after the end of the book is padded with vintage cartoons from another age. It's not a book. It's newsprint acting uppity.
I have no doubt of Spiegelman's own humanity and horror from that day, as he watched the terror of 9/11 and rescued his daughter from the shadow of the attacks. But even as he complains that others -- namely, Bush and Cheney -- politicized the attacks, he politicizes them himself, more bluntly than I am accustomed to seeing. In those first few days after 9/11 I got lost constructing conspiracy theories about my government's complicity in what had happened that would have done a Frenchman proud.... Only when I heard paranoid Arab Americans blaming it all on the Jews did I reel myself back in, deciding it wasn't essential to know precisely how much my 'leaders' knew about the hijackings in advance -- it was sufficient that they immediately instrumentalized the attack for their own agenda.....
When the government began to move into full dystopian Big Brother mode and hurtle America into a colonialist adventure in Iraq -- while doing very little to make American genuinely safer beyond confiscating nail clippers at airports -- all the rate I'd surpressed after the 2000 election, all the paranoia I'd barely managed to squelch immediately after 9/11, returned with a vengeance.... He writes about being "equally terrorized by al-Qaeda and by my own government."
He writes about his daughter: I intended to do a sequence about my daughter, Nadja, being told to dress in red, white and blue on her first day at the Brooklyn high school she was transferred to while her school in Ground Zero was being used as a triage center. I forbade her to go, ranting that I hadn't raised my daughter to become a goddamn flag..." He complains later, asking "why did those provincial American flags have to sprout out of the embers of Ground Zero." And he asks: "Why not a globe?" Well, perhaps it was because we were attacked because we were Americans that we chose to fly those flags in defiance. If we run into each other in the elevator of the building where we've both worked, I'll make sure to wear my flag pin in my lapel, just to piss you off.
The most glib panel shows Spiegelman himself falling from one of the towers -- the most sacred of all 9/11 images, to me, instrumentalized for his own agenda -- as he shows a homeless bum on the street at the bottom of the panel, surrounded by garbage and these words: "But in the economic dislocation that has followed since that day, he has witnessed lots of people landing in the streets of Manhattan." He thinks it's cute. He thinks it's profound. He thinks it's bold and brave. I just think it's tasteless and dumb.
Spiegelman, whose Maus was, indeed, wonderful, says that "after all, disaster is my muse!" Or, in this case, merely his tool.
Ad cops
: John Battelle has a hilarious exchange with Google over his alleged violations of the AdSense terms of service, even bringing Fred Wilson down with him. What's most amusing is that Battelle is writing the book on search and Google and now this search bureaucrat in the Kremlin of queries will end up in that book.
Google is a machine and interacts like a machine.
That is why Google's hegemony will not last long. This is a medium of humans and relationships, not machines.
Tomorrow, Google will be so yesterday.
Liveblogging politics
: The Week magazine is having a star-sprinkled discussion on the presidential election today and I'll try live-blogging it later.
September 07, 2004
Falling
: There is one image of September 11th that I have said I could not and would not talk about:
The falling.
The image is too awful to recall, too painful to relate, even now, three years later. Instead, I remember the sounds: the sudden and horrifying realization of what we were witnessing heard through the airless, paralyzed gasps all around; the terrible sound that punctuated each life; the stifled, staccato screams then.
The falling is the worst of it for me.
Perhaps that's because I have always had a crippling fear of falling. I can't watch a movie or so much as hear a story about heights and edges without being overcome by involuntary cause and effect: palms drenched, heart crazed, adrenalin abundant, nerves arcing. We all fear our own worst death. Mine has always been falling.
And so you see, the worst thing about that day is not what happened to me, but what didn't happen to me, what happened to so many so close that could have so easily happened to me. But it didn't.
They fell, God rest their souls. I did not.
And ever since that day, I have lived in a limbo. I realize now that it has felt as if I have been falling all this time. I'm a third of the way down the giant tower. I can't scream. All I can hear is the woosh of wind and jets and fire and speed; that sound is deafening and blocks out every other sense. And yet I'm not really moving. I'm paralyzed. Just falling.
The fall never ends.
Another year comes and I take stock and that doesn't take long, for I haven't moved and sometimes I fear we have not, either. My own stock-taking is my business and I'll not bore or burden you with it; you shouldn't care, frankly. But our stock-taking as a nation and as a civilized half of the world is troubling this year, for we are fighting with each other, not with our enemy.
And that enemy has only dug down to new depths of atrocity: from jets filled with innocents killing innocents, down to children strapped up as bombs, down to bombs in backpacks on trains, down to beheadings on video, down to schoolchildren captured and killed. They fall deeper and deeper into hell.
And we just yell at each other: left v. right, Kerry v. Bush, Swift v. Kerry, Moore v. Bush, France v. America, America v. France, Iraqi v. Iraqi, damned near everybody v. Israel.... We fight all the wrong fights and wrong enemies and meanwhile let our real enemies invent new evil and drag us down with them.
We're all falling.
You'd think by now that I'd start to be feeling better, that we all would. Time heals, no?
No. Time hides.
Just look at the scabs of Vietnam: Scrape them today and they ooze and hurt. Amazingly, even Zell Miller's accent at the RNC brought out a few pokes to the scars of the Civil War. Hell, let's not stop there: All this we're fighting about traces back to the Crusades and the odd old war in the allegedly Holy Land and, sure, Cain and Abel, while we're at it.
You'd think by now we'd be learning. But we're forgetting.
We're forgetting the horror and anger and resolve of that day. How could we?
Oh, but I forget, too. Last weekend, I shuddered when I realized that this coming Saturday was the anniversary already. It used to be -- right here in this weblog -- that I counted the days, then weeks, then months, yet now I'm losing track of the years.
And that is why I will return to the scene on Saturday. I didn't even have to tell my wife that I would; she already knew it.
I have to go back to remember so I can begin to forget, so I can snap out of this and end the paralysis and accomplish something real and decent again: So I can stop the fall.
I wish we would all go back to remember this Saturday, so we can forget the foul temper we are in as a nation and remember instead who our enemy is -- and who his enemy is -- and what our duty to our children must be.
Because the image I truly fear is not the image of what I saw that day but the image of what has yet to happen if we continue to fight among ourselves, if we continue to fall.
Results vs. attention
: Om Malik sent email to a few of us with a link from a self-described anarchist telling the tale of her arrest in New York during the RNC. Anil Dash replied to the group with this so-true sentiment: I dunno, maybe its because shes only 18, but there seemed to be a lot of whininess. (Did you know anarchists are among the most peaceful political groups?) The part that frustrates me is all these kids that were marching around in the streets could have sent $50 each to fund door-to-door canvassers in swing states and then stayed home and played video games and would have had more impact. Yes. As I keep contemplating the changing nature of protest in this new age, that's a great scale by which to judge the means: Did you accomplish something or did you just get attention and something to blog about?
: To expand and clarify, here's what Anil added in the comments: I should be clear: I sympathize with this young woman, and hell, I probably agree with most of her political positions. But her writing about the peanut butter sandwiches in the holding center being lousy just seems... farcical. It's not helping her achieve her political goals.
Protest can, and frequently does have a point. My great-grandfather was intimately involved in Gandhi's protest marches, and the work he and his compatriots did changed the world. So I'm not arguing that nobody should protest ever. I'm saying that people who are passionate and young and enthusiastic about issues should pursue courses of action that help effect the change they'd like to see in the world.
I don't feel that was the case in these circumstances. No minds were changed, no policy was modified, and no dialogue was established. : UPDATE: I saw a local TV report tonight on the arrested whining about being held in a dirty pier.
Would they have preferred a night on Riker's Island?
Indecent?
: God and NOW should be suiting the FCC for saying that a nipple is indecent.
For God's sake, God might say, God made the nipple. What's so damned indecent about it.
And NOW should say that it's indecent to call a woman's nipple indecent and not a man's (unless it appears yearning to be free under an Olympic costume, like a male swimmer's butt crack, which looks indecent to me but apparently isn't).
Indecent, indeed. It's the FCC and its nanny attitude and waste of our resources and assault on the First Amendment that's indecent.
There's nothing indecent about a nipple, even Janet Jackson's.
The (not quite) Daily Stern
: The FCC is getting ready to fine CBS $550,000 for Janet Jackson's nipple.
Shouldn't they feel just a little embarrassed, grown men sitting there tsk-tsking a nipple with the full force of government. Infantile.
Says the Washington Post: "We would be extremely disappointed," CBS said in a statement issued last night. "While we regret that the incident occurred, and have apologized to our viewers, we continue to believe that nothing in the Super Bowl broadcast violated indecency laws.
"We would obviously review all of our options to respond to the ruling and we continue to call on the FCC to address serious issues raised by the more than 30 industry participants who challenged the FCC's sweeping new indecency policy," the statement said.
September 06, 2004
Bloggers are human, too
: Pretty much took the day off from blogging. See, I am human. Went to the miniature golf course and drove go-karts with the kids. Going to a barbecue. Plan to drink wine. Happy Labor Day, all.
Call a terrorist a terrorist
: Terry Heaton's had it with handwringing over whether to call terrorists terrorists. Amen. I've been there for so long: Not calling terrorists terrorists is the worst sort of appeasement and bias.
What's what
: Glenn Reynolds calls a story in Richard Mellon Scaife's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review "major media attention." Well, I'd be more inclinded to call it major right-wing crackpot attention.
: UPDATE: Glenn responds to this here. I'm simply saying that a story in Scaife's paper doesn't qualify to me as major media attention, that's all. I said what I meant.
Glenn, to his credit, says he doesn't necessarily buy the story; he already said that. If I'd wanted to get into a discussion of the merits of this particular story, I would have made that clear. Perhaps I should have anyway. But, again, I wan't trying to discuss the particulars of this story, only the characterization of a Scaife enterprise as major media.
Of course, Glenn uses it to flog his Cambodia angle. And that's fine. He is proud of the world he has done on that story. I still consider in a nonstory (just as I considered Bush's military record -- with its hanging questions -- a nonstory; I always repeat that for the record).
I'll repeat for the record, too, that I think Glenn's the greatest; I have the utmost respect for him. But from the beginning, I've disagreed with him about the importance and significance and value of the Swiftie and Cambodia stories (and I have some standing to be able to do that since I have also attacked Michael Moore's attacks against the man I now assume is Glenn's candidate and because I equally pooh-poohed the attacks on Bush's military record). So we disagree. Friends disagree. Bloggers disagree. If we didn't, this would be as dull as, oh, I dunno, a blogging panel?
So I send virtual air-kisses to Glenn and a big e-hug.
But I still say that Scaife is a fringe-dweller and conspiracy-addict and troublemaker who delights in trying to destroy politicians he hates. Citing his enterprises is like citing, well, Michael Moore's or Al Franken's.
September 05, 2004
New lines in terrorism
: Just as apparently al-Qaeda-backed terrorists in Russia crossed a new line in attacking innocent civilians, I wonder whether Vladimir Putin will cross new lines in hunting them down and attacking and exterminated the the swine. He'll have many around the world rooting him on. We'll still be fretting the niceties of a war on terrorism. He'll be going batshit.
: And by chance, at this moment, I happen to turn to Death in Gaza on HBO, where masked terrorist slime of the Palestinian branch are showing off a young boy they're training as a terrorist. Slime. Slime. Slime. To use children in your crimes is every bit as evil as victimizing them.
Outrage
: Where is the outrage in the Muslim world over the atrocity in Russia?
I found some: Many Arabs found themselves in an increasingly common quandary: struggling to reconcile their sympathy for a political cause with growing revulsion at the wrath levelled by self-described "holy warriors" against the innocent.
"What is the guilt of those children? Why should they be responsible for your conflict with the government?" Grand Sheik Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, Egypt's highest-ranking imam, railed during Friday prayers in the Egyptian town of Benha. "You are taking Islam as a cover and it is a deceptive cover; those who carry out the kidnappings are criminals, not Muslims."
Sheik Tantawi's refrain was a familiar one among Muslims who have felt unfairly tarred by the growing number of highly publicised bloodbaths perpetrated by fellow believers.
But on Saturday some prominent Arabs had a more sobering interpretation: corrupt, repressed Arab and Islamic societies have turned into breeding grounds for terrorism. It is a judgement rarely voiced in heavily censored Arab rhetoric.
"Most perpetrators of suicide operations in buses, schools and residential buildings around the world for the past 10 years have been Muslims," wrote Abdulrahman al-Rashed, general manager of the Al-Arabiya TV channel.
In a blunt column in the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, he listed attacks carried out by Muslims in Iraq, Russia, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. "Our terrorist sons are an end-product of our corrupted culture," he wrote. "The picture is humiliating, painful and harsh for all of us." At last. At frigging last.
Is this the line they had to cross to evoke this revulsion? Will the rejection of these tactics last? Will they repudiate the scum of their earth?
: The BBC recaps editorial comment in Arab papers: A lesson in terror at a children's school - What happened at the ill-fated school is not only unjustifiable and unacceptable, it also provokes anger and revulsion among Muslim public opinion, since it tarnishes the name of all Muslims and distorts the image of our noble faith.
--Jordan's Al-Dustur
An ugly crime against humanity - What happened at the Russian school is a reprehensible crime against the whole of humanity and the perpetrators should be called to account.
-- Egypt's Al-Ahram
These children and their teachers had committed no crime to justify their lives being endangered and their blood shed. If this terrorist group had chosen a Russian military barracks, their cause - if they had one at all - would have been more credible and many would have sympathised with them. What happened is the absolute opposite: the world reacted to the crisis with humanity, and the only loser is the side to which they [the hostage-takers] belong.
-- Saudi Arabia's Al-Watan However, Iran's papers, following the mullahs' party line, criticized Russian officials just as much as they criticized these baby-killers.
Terrorism of the age
: I've been thinking about protest and terrorism as they fit into our age and ages before.
I was reading Douglas Coupland's Souvenir of Canada, a neat book (the first of two) cataloguing the icons of his country and his age. Just as terrorism spread its dark slime to a school in Russia last week, I read Coupland's memory of October, 1970, when he and his fellow elementary schoolchildren were called into the gym to watch the funeral of Quebec Minister of Labor Pierre Laporte, who had been murdered by the Front de Liberation du Quebec. Said Coupland: The FLQ was very much of its era, the heydey of other terrorist groups within the industrialized nations of the west: Germany's Baader-Meinhof, Italy's Brigada Rosa, America's Weather Underground, and the high profile and dangerously loopy Symbionese Liberation Army. In the '60s and '70s, protest was internal, it was about fixing or taking back your own country, its policies and power structure.
And in the '60s and '70s, protest metastasized into terrorism. That's not to say there was cause and effect or a direct connection -- the political equivalent in that time of marijuana leading to heroin -- but one fed on the other. Legimate causes -- race, civil rights, Vietnam -- were exploited by what became terrorist groups that robbed and bombed and murdered.
Protest has changed in this age. Much more often, it is external: Crowds in France, Germany, and England protesting our Iraq war; crowds in Seattle or Europe protesting globalization. Oh, of course, there's plenty of internal protest. But protest, too, is now globalized.
And, of course, terrorism has changed in this age. It, too, is external. Outsiders come to terrorize and murder Americans, Spaniards, Russians, Israelis, Britons, Iraqis.... Those outsiders are most often Islamofascists exploiting mangled versions of religion more than causes. Terrorism, too, is now globalized.
Today, there is no connection or pretense of one between protest movements and terrorism, and thank goodness for that. Terrorism today has overstepped every imaginable boundary of civilization. Well, yes, that's the very definition of terrorism, isn't it? And I don't mean to create any relative scale of terror: Murdering one person is evil just as murdering 3,000 is evil and the numbers don't make one more evil than the next; innocent life is innocent life. Still, the terrorists today, the Islamofascists, seek out atrocity for its own sake: bombing workaday busses and flying jets into buildings and now capturing and murdering children by the hundreds.
All this -- I hope -- makes protest movements more careful about not finding themselves morphing and metastasizing into violence and then terrorism. The globalism twits who burned and pillaged started down that slope. I feared, quietly, that the protests in New York last week could have descended into violence since there were precedents (see: Seattle). But I saw absolutely no desire by any of the protesters to cross that line.
Last week, I posted a few times about what I think is the changing context of protest. On the one end, there are new ways to get your message heard, thanks to the Internet and, for better and worse, the new-media-savvy examples of MoveOn.org, F9/11, and the Swifties. On the other end, you have to be careful to stay on this side of the line of violence or else you could find yourself next to the terrorists and no civilized soul wants to get anywhere near that possibility. And so I don't want to tie protest and terrorism together, either; I want them to stay far apart, for protest is necessary in a democracy and terrorists are the enemy of the age.
And that is the other change in this realm: We should all see that we have a common enemy in terrorists -- and if we don't see that, then we're self-destructive fools.
The protestors and the powerful are -- or should be -- on the same side in this war and this age: We may all have different means but the end must be the same: Death to terrorism.
BOBs
: Deutsche Welle, the German broadcaster, is holding a contest to name the best international blogs. As Loic points out, it's odd that they don't include French -- and do include English as well as Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese and Arabic. Too bad not Persian or Polish or, hell, Icelandic. It's only so international.
Filthy lucre, cont.
: Continuing action in the comments below and in Rushkoff's post. See also Ken Layne's reaction to what Rushkoff wrote.
: See also Ed Cone and Dave Winer. Fred Wilson, too.
The militant middle
: I'm watching Bill Maher's show (I always end up seeing it a day late; I've heard that, like meatloaf, it's better cold) and Andrew Sullivan is doing a great job representing the militant middle. That's where I see myself these days. I'd been called (and called myself) a liberal hawk but that just sounds like peanut butter and ketchup. No, the militant middle is my neighborhood now.
Andrew and I disagree about lots but we meet in the middle. We're both likely not voting for Bush but we're not nuts about Kerry, either. We each saw the necessity of the war in Iraq and regret the quality of peace that has followed. We lump the Swifties and the Moories into the same bucket. We defend the voters in the middle and the undecideds who don't live on the edges and breath fire at the other side but who are, indeed, trying to figure out who the hell to vote for this fall, because it sure ain't easy. Glad to see Andrew there.
Mars National Convention v. Venus National Convention
: Also on Bill Maher's show, he was depressed that the Republicans run a better convention than the Democrats, a better show.
Maher thinks the Republicans are all about emotions and the Democrats are all intellectual. I don't think I buy that.
On a truly awful local NPR show today, some lady complained about the "hyper-masculinization" of politics by the Republicans. That's crap but still, it actually makes better (useless) sense: Republicans are male and aggressive ("Bring it on!"); Democrats are female and sensitive (yes, the "sensitive" war on terror). If you're going to deal in gross oversimplifications, at least make them make sense.
September 04, 2004
Filthy lucre, forceful moderator
: Well, I pissed off (and depressed) Douglas Rushkoff at the PS122 blogging panel the other night.
I shouldn't be surprised. Here I was, the guy in the suit in the heart of what wants to be the counterculture on the Lower East Side. I thought I'd get ridden out of town on a rail because I supported the wars in Iraq and, for that matter, Afghanistan and because I wasn't off getting arrested to show my dyspepsia with the current Bush et al.
But, no. I should have seen this coming: I got in trouble for being a -- gasp -- capitalist.
Maybe that's an ounce unfair but, hell, it's my blog and I'll be unfair if I want to. At least I'll link to and quote Rushkoff by name (to him, I'm merely "the moderator"): But as we veered over into the realm of career blogging, we touched briefly on the subject of whether ads hurt blogs - and that's where I think the whole thing died. And even depressed me a bit.
I tried to make the point that the early Internet and early rave culture were alike in that they were ad-free zones - alternatives to the free market reality in which we were living. And that's what made them so powerful. I was trying to go on to explain that there might be a value in ad-free blogging; that doing it for money, for ads, may not change our writing on a conscious level, but that we may be changed - yes, corrupted - by the ads we're endorsing, er, displaying.
The moderator shut me down with great force, dismissing the entire notion of ads affecting writers as silly - that the marketplace would judge the integrity of those writers accordingly. Now, I've been shut down by co-panelists, but not by moderators. And I would have chalked it up to my own 'sensitivity' had I not received more than a few emails from people calling the moment to my attention.
So I thought I'd call it to yours - not because I feel slighted or hurt, but because I believe that the underlying assumption that the market corrects all problems, eventually, or that the market is itself 'value neutral,' is incorrect. I'm not challenging free market capitalism; God bless the USA and all that.
I'm only challenging the perception that we are living in a marketplace. We don't have to use the metaphor of a competitive economy to understand this world; it may as well be a collaborative ecology.
Plus, if I put ads on this blog, it'd be the end of something. No? First, let me deal with the notions that I "shut [him] down with great force" and that moderators are neutered of opinions. Sorry. I have opinions and I state them. In fact, I believe that moderators -- just like bloggers and journalists -- should be transparent about their views. If I was too forceful, I apologize (and did so in Douglas' comments; I like the guy). But I was also trying to involve as many of the people in the room as possible and not just the people who happened to be sitting up front; that's the way I do these things ( a la Bloggercon); love me or leave me. Prof. Rushkoff didn't like my pace; another blogger complained that it was "too academic." Can't win. Don't expect to. But I hardly think I'm Bill O'Reilly or Chris Matthews!
Now to the substance: What I said to Douglas -- and others agreed -- was that whether you accept ads is entirely your choice.
If you don't want to have ads on your blog and believe that ads would not just present conflict of interest but could corrupt the very medium, well, then, fine, have no ads.
But if you want ads to help support yourself in this new medium -- and thus support the growth of this medium with more contributions from more voices and more perspectives with more information and conversation and value, then you can do that. Maybe you can even quit working for The Man; what could be more counterculture than that?
The beauty of this medium -- yes, the rave quality of it -- is that I can do what I want to do and you can do what you want to do and our freedom is not zero-sum. It ain't a slam dance, man.
I also said on that night and will repeat now that as soon as you accept advertising, you do have to deal with issues of conflict of interest and transparency and your own credibility. This is a matter of individual integrity. That's exactly what I dealt with when I started Entertainment Weekly and the starstruck bosses at Time Inc. tried to make me be nicer to big-studio movies. I quit. Ads don't kill integrity. Corruption does. I've faced that first-hand.
I also said in Douglas' comments that, yes, legions of slimy bloggers with no credibility and lots of greed could affect the reputation or credibility of this new medium as a whole. But given the crush of folks who will fact-check-your-ass (trademark Ken Layne) -- just as Rushkoff and another anti-ad, anti-me blogger at the session have challenged me -- the likelihood of such corruption on a mass scale is reduced greatly.
The bigger choice here is whether we want to keep blogs as an elitist, edge medium or whether we want to see it expand. I know plenty of bloggers who would love to quit their job to blog (or get jobs blogging). When I ran a session on making blogs make money at Bloggercon at Harvard, I thought I'd hear a lot of this kind of latter-day-socialist sniping, but I heard none. People love blogging and want to find a way to support themselves doing it. What the hell is wrong with that?
I remind you, media prof. Rushkoff: Without advertising, we would not have The New York Times or The Guardian. Is the world better off that way? Or should we rely on rave news?
And let's go one step further: Douglas advertises his own books on his own site and his blog with eagerness. He plugs the articles he writes for magazines that pay him because they are paid by magazines. I helped him plug his Open Source Democracy PDF done for a group that paid him to write it (and didn't even mention that I never had the energy to fisk it, though I did print it out and mark up lots of things with which I disagreed).
I'm going to be pretty unapologetic about all of this. I'm unapologetic about having a lively discussion at a panel. Want to disagree with me? Disagree! Discuss!
And I'm unapologetic about hoping that we can find advertising support for this new medium -- for those who want it -- to help the medium expand and hear new voices and new viewpoints and more citizens.
Yes, we are living in a marketplace: a marketplace of ideas. And trying to restrict that marketplace to just those who can afford to play in it and don't need support to be there will limit the diversity and value and openness and transparency of it.
I am eager to see bloggers who do this only and exclusively for the love it. But I expect them to be equally open to those who do it and also need to eat.
: CORRECTION: Rushkoff says in the comments that he was not paid for Open Source Democracy. I stand corrected. More bubbling in the comments.
Nicest thing said about me in I don't know how long...
: Tom Watson calls me "reliably centrist." Yes, I thought so.
If this blog had a soundtrack...
: RexBlog is now an iTunes blog.
LAX shut down
: TV has it; the Internet doesn't: FoxNews and KABC are reporting an explosion at LAX. They say there were two incidents at the airport today. The airport has been shut down, at least to outgoing flights.
: CNN is saying a "flashlight with corroded batteries exploded" injuring seven people. That sounds like more than a flashlight.
Blog advertising works
: Henry Copeland's BlogAds just placed a whole mess of ads for Sex and the City on TBS.
Lobbying under the knife
: G'bless Hillary Clinton: She takes the opportunity of her huband's quadruple bypass surgery to lobby on the health insurance crisis in this country: "We're delighted we have good health insurance. That makes a big difference. And I hope someday everybody will be able to say the same thing." Damned straight.
September 03, 2004
Stop the presses: I just posted this!
: By odd accident, I found this press release on GoogleNews from a guy announcing that he'd just posted his 100th blog post! Surprised he didn't give the exclusive to Dan Rather. My favorite bit: While no one has called him - yet - with a film offer such as happened to the famed 'Baghdad blogger', Addicott says he has been approached with a book deal but for now will make no commitments while the company's services are in rapid growth mode - referring those requests to the Company's scientific advisors. And I'm going to send out a press release saying that no one has yet offered me a National Book Award... because I haven't written a book.
Iraqi blogs on radio
: NPR's The World tonight aired a report (audio link) on Iraq's bloggers, including Ali, Raed's mother, and Salam Pax. They said there are more than 70 Iraqi bloggers now and they plugged Ali and Mohammed's run for the National Assembly.
The slime spreads
: On NBC news tonight, they said that nine of the dead mass-murderers in Russia were Arab and that there was a connection to al Qaeda.
They do this there, they can do this here.
Diligence. Furor. Strength. We must wipe them out.
Terrorism is the world's war
: It's impossible to express outrage equal to the terrorist atrocity in Russia. Children, they used and killed children.
Last week, it was said that the two plane explosions were Russia's 9/11. Now there is this, another 9/11.
Meanwhile, in France, they awaited the fate of journalists held by more Islamic fascists. (Update: They are reportedly now in the hands of a moderate group.)
Those are this week's terror stories. There are stories every week from countries around the world.
Yesterday, I ended up in a conversation on the PATH train -- which is a rarity -- with a man who lives in New York, who said we have "forgiven" and "forgotten" 9/11 too quickly.
Look at what happened in Russia and pray it does not happen here.
When I started this blog days after 9/11, I called it World War III. We are all at war and the tragedy in Russia should remind us all of that -- in America, in Russia, in France, in Germany, in Pakistan, in Indonesia, in Spain. Terror is the world's war.
No drip, he
: Blogger David Radulski gets to the bottom of an Internet rumor, started from a military man's email, that Starbucks refused to give coffee to G.I.'s in Iraq. Starbucks, wisely, tracked down the Marine who wrote the email, explained how the company can donate only to official charities but how many employees send coffee; the Marine sent an email taking back the accusation; and here are the emails.
Clinton's heart
: I think I just heard on TV that Bill Clinton's getting quad bypass surgery.
: UPDATE: Confirmed. Emergency surgery today. CBS details here. A source close to Mr. Clinton tells CBS News that Mr. Clinton complained of chest pains Thursday night and was taken to a hospital near his home in Chappaqua, N.Y. Doctors, according to our source, found a blockage. Mr. Clinton is now in the New York Presbyterian hospital. The NY Times has an alert saying he had a heart attack; no further details.
 The newest blogger on the block: Vanity Fair's James Wolcott!
: I am proud to be the first to announce that my favorite critic and social commentator, Vanity Fair's James Wolcott, is now blogging.
Here's a sample of his first post on Zell Miller's speech. The blue eyes of wrath. The gnarled hands gripping the air as if clutching a liberal in a lethal chokehold.
Zell Miller did not disappoint millions of disenfranchised Americans with Confederate flags decorating their basements when he delivered his rousing speech to the Republican National Convention last night.
His inner Bunsen burner was still ablaze when he hit the cable news shows afterwards to unlease additional Zellfire. There he met resistance. On CNN, Wolf Blitzer, in an apparent research mixup, asked actual reportorial questions regarding Miller's contradictory statements over the years regarding Kerry etc, and the old boy began babbling like Lionel Barrymore....
Inviting Zell Miller to the Republican convention to give voice to lynch mobs who feel neglected by the Democratic Party will prove to be a prehistoric bonehead mistake and an early Christmas present of Schadenfreude to his former colleagues. I picture certain Democratic bigwigs reacting the way Brian Dennehy did in that wonderful made-for-TV docudrama about Three's Company as ABC chief Fred Silverman. Hearing the news of Suzanne Somers' latest contract tantrum, Dennehy's Freddie takes a rich puff on his cigar, smiles, and croons with satisfaction, "Not my problem anymore."
Zell Miller: Not our problem anymore. And this: Just now on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough described Miller's speech as a "barnburner," presumably intending a compliment. But any reader of Faulkner knows that there's few souls rottener than that of a barnburner, who leaves nothing in his wake than rage and destruction. In Faulkner Country, a barnburner is driven out of the county. In Bush Country, he's given a privileged timeslot. Whether you love or hate what he says -- and I know you will -- you have to love the way Wolcott says it. And now you can link to it and admire or argue with it, as you please. Wolcott is joining the conversation.
Wolcott will do much more than write about politics. He's a critic, so he'll criticize. He recommends books, movies, and blogs.
: There's a bit of back story to this:
Wolcott has been reading and writing about blogs for sometime (see this post quoting his April column on the political blogs). He was on my list of people who should be blogging (who's on yours?). But Vanity Fair wasn't online (some tried to blame me for that, since I am a corporate cousin but it's not my fault... well, not completely) and so Wolcott was not online.
Now VF is coming online (very soon) and so when I saw the man in charge of the venture, editor David Friend (one of the nicest guys in the Conde Nast building -- and I don't mean to damn him with faint praise saying that) I quietly cajoled: You have to include blogs. Oh, he said, we want to, but you know how it works in the world of corporate technology: Major studies of blogging software will ensue; months will drag on; posts will go unposted.
Who would blog? I asked.
Wolcott wants to, he said.
This became a holy cause. I'm a great admirer of Wolcott's. He is the critic's critic. I wanted to help. I said that since I was once a critic myself, this would be like a lowly Vegas lounge crooner finding Frank Sinatra stranded on the side of the road with a flat and stopping to give him a lift.
So we conspired. Getting a blog up is easy, I said. Jim can just do it on his own (in time to promote his new book). I showed Jim how to blog on Movable Type and he was amazed: No editors, no layouts, no copy editors, no production hassles, no delays: Push and publish. Stacey Sekimori designed the blog and set it up on Hosting Matters and, voila, Wolcott is blogging. That's the precisely the beauty of this new publishing world: It is that easy. Even the pros can do it.
So enjoy. Give Wolcott link love.
: Update: Jim gets an authentic bloggy welcome: sniping and snarks. See the comments.
: Gawker's Jessica Coen says: While VF has largely ignored the internet, Wolcott's new venture perhaps signifies the invasion of editor Graydon Carter's foot soldiers into our precious haven.
Blogging is officially over.
: Vox says...
And Joan Rivers does the RNC red carpet
: Jay Rosen wonders whether convention coverage could (not necessarily should) change radically next time around so that a party sells exclusive rights to cover its show to one network, as happens with the Oscars and the Super Bowl.
Blogger Rex Hammock (the guy who blogged meeting Bush a few months ago) attended the convention and saw them trying to turn it into the Oscars.
Well, it's not exactly as if the convention is half as entertaining as even the dullest Oscars (and it's even longer). And there is that matter of the public's right to know and all that. But don't get caught up in the details. We're talking TV. We're talking high concept.
If you want a network to give the convention more than an hour of coverage, then don't give it to everyone; don't turn it into a dull commodity.
In a audio interview with Chris Lydon, Rosen said the relationship of TV to conventions is one of unrequited love. The conventions tried to make TV love them. They turned the stages into sets, they put stars on stage, they produced soundbites. Didn't work.
But now we see that FoxNews beat all the big boys with its coverage of the RNC. It'd be even bigger if it were exclusive; they'd put more resources and coverage and promotion into it; more people would watch. What's not to love?
Tom Biro doesn't love the idea because there'd be even less balance. OK. But this assumes that there is balance and that the networks do more than pontificate. Maybe if they actually reported and fact-checked the speeches and found news, that'd be worthwhile. But they don't. And anyway, there is no news at conventions.
The conventions are just commercials anyway, so maybe we should just admit it and turn them into infomercials.
Gorevision
: Al Gore's TV network, Indtv, is going public with a web page that describes the network and gets it half right: TV can be better. Much better.
Want to see more than just reality television? Tired of news outlets that cover celebrity trials instead of tackling critical questions? Bored with shows that don't challenge or engage you? So are we.
The sad reality of TV is that young adult viewers are coveted, but not really asked to participate. You can be characters, but rarely creators. We want to change all that. And with your help, we will create shows that are bold, irreverent, intelligent and relevant to the passions and experiences of our audience. I say they got it half right because if they really wanted to be ballsy about this new network and how they present it, then the people (formerly known as the audience) wouldn't just help create shows, they would create them.
Become the first network that hands over the network to the people: You create the shows and we watch, you speak and we listen. That should be what the net execs of the future say.
Or better yet, get rid of the first-second-third person separations altogether: This is our network. To paraphrase Jay Rosen: The people are the programmers and the network executives are the audience. The people don't help the executives make TV; it's the other way around: The executives help the people make TV. Now that would be new. That would be TV worth watching.
Also, I suggest they stop talking about "young adults;" that turns people into a demographic rather than democratic equals. Programming to a demographic nearly always ends up smelling like condescension or pandering. You don't hear MTV speaking to young people; they simply air the music and programming young people like.
Full disclosure: Someone I know sent an email intro between me and Gore's partner in this venture, Joel Hyatt. I sent him email offering to talk and share experience about citizens' media and exploding TV and interactivity, just because I find this interesting and I really do hope they invent something new, media of the people. He never responded. OK, so I'll do what bloggers do: I'll share my advice, whatever it's worth, right here, in public, and solicit yours, too. [via Lost Remote]
September 02, 2004
What's wrong with GoogleNews
: Strange crap like this pops up as the lead story today. Once again, GoogleNews gives prominence to fringe opinion sites, treating them like news sites (when I've suggested before that it would actually be compelling to create a service called GoogleViews and put them there) while ignoring blogs that at least link to news sources.
Dancin' fools
: John Perry Barlow gives us a report from the front (chorus) line of his dancing protests/theater/whatever: After four missions, Dancing in the Streets has exceeded my fondest expectations.... We generally make the credentialed Republicans we encounter visibly nervous and spread good will and humor to most of the rest, including the police, who could well use it at the moment....
Republicans were hard to encounter at first. They are being quarantined behind the blue membrane of the NYPD (for whom my affection and respect has only increased through this experience). In addition, they spend much of their time inside the Garden having a lot less fun than we were. (As several of them told us.) Levels of engagement have increased with fine-tuning. The results vary, ranging from the Stepford husband whom we made so nervous that he walked into a plate glass window to the sweet young delegate from Oklahoma who tore off his tie and joined us for the balance of the evening. Video, please.
FoxNews, the home team
: It's utterly unsurprising to me that FoxNews beat the big three networks with this coverage of the Republican convention. Conservatives watching a conservative event want to see it with fellow conservatives.
Don't start whining about an "echo chamber." This is perfectly predictable, understandable, normal social behavior: When you're watching a Yankees game, do you go to a Red Sox (or should I say Indians'?) bar? Of course, not. Did the Democrats rush to watch FoxNews' coverage of their convention? No.
And don't start wailing about "fragmentation." Fragmentation is good; it means that people are finding what they want to find; it means the end of one-size-fits-all news reporting ... and media ... and politics ... and marketing. The grand "shared experience" of media was an accident of having just three networks emerge and, at the same time, kill competitive newspapers.
The shared experience of unfragmented one-size-fits-all media lasted just a few decades in this country. Before that, conservatives read conservative papers, liberals liberal papers. And democracy survived. In fact, I'd argue that it prospered because there were more viewpoints, not fewer being heard.
Media execs should pay attention to this and change not just products but even business plans as a result.
The right to publicity
: The New York Times complains today that "police tactics mute protestors and message" -- even as, without acknowledging the obvious irony, the paper gives those protestors coverage right on its front page in that story and in a picture of a protestor against something global being carried out of Madison Square Garden.
Whoa. Let's examine the assumptions behind this: The Times assumes that if you hold a demonstration, you have some right to coverage. How come? If 10 people or 100 people gather on a street corner and shout about something, is that necessarily newsworthy? Does that mean they represent a movement with a story that needs to be heard? Aren't there better ways to measure the size of a movement these days?
Next, this assumes that mediated media is still the right, the only way to get a message across: that a movement has to shout on that corner and get arrested before Times and TV cameras to be heard. But in this new era of emerging unmediated media -- that is, the internet -- this is soon to be untrue. Going to all that trouble to perhaps get five seconds on TV or five sentences in print is not going to be the most effective and efficient way to get your message across.
MoveOn and Michael Moore and the Swifties are all more effective taking their message off the streets and online.
The Times' next assumption is that it is somehow the job of the police to help these demonstrators get publicity by letting them get close to the Garden or by waiting for cameras to arrive before arresting them if they exercise civil disobedience. Of course, that's wrong. It's the job of the police to protect New York and it's important and understandable that they are doing that swiftly and efficiently -- because of the experience of both terrorism and of violent anti-globalism nuts in Seattle.
Let me be clear: I'm all in favor of exercising the fullest right to free speech and protest. But as I pondered here and here, what's fascinating me about the scene in New York this week -- to my surprise -- is the role of these demonstrations in a new world of unmediated media where you don't -- or soon won't -- need mainstream media as the sole pipeline to the public and where our view of friends and enemies must radically change.
And his boats are really swift
: Amazing commercial running in Jersey this week: Hyundai dealer Brad Benson comes in announcing that in the state's time of need, he has decided to run for governor. A reporter's voice asks whether he is a gay American. If gay means happy, he says, youbetcha -- and anybody who comes to Brad's Hyundai sale will be a gay American, too!
A to Zell
: Anybody note the irony that Zell Miller complains about Kerry as a flipflopper yet Miller is the biggest flipflopper of them all. Love Kerry. Hate Kerry. Love the Democrats. Love the Republicans. The man has clearly used this patented Jarvis product.
Choose Nukes
: I got behind a (slow) driver (in a van) from Florida this morning and saw his "Choose Life" license plate, through which the state has enabled $2.6 million to be raised for a thinly veiled anti-abortion group.
So why doesn't anybody with a message have the right to both get that message on state plates and raise money?
How about the F Bush or F Kerry plates. I know many who'd buy Drop Out Ralph plates.
Hell, if I could get Nuke Islamofascist plates, I'd move to Florida. After the hurricane.
Blog appeal
: The other night as we left PS122 after our blog panel, we saw one of the bloggers -- young, handsome in a serious and pensive way -- absolutely surrounded by beautiful young women hanging on his every sigh.
Blogroupies.
Damn. Why did they have blogs back in my day? Who'd have thought that punditry could get you laid?
September 01, 2004
Blog booty call
: Jessica Cutler -- aka The Washingtonienne -- poses for Playboy.com (you have to pay and I'm not paying) and gives an interview (I just read the articles, you know). Playboy.com: What would people be most surprised to know about life inside the Beltway?
Jessica Cutler: People like to pretend that money and looks don't matter, but they do. It's supposed to be a big meritocracy, but people here are just as shallow as anywhere else. The thing about D.C. is it's not Miami or New York where there are all these hot people everywhere. I'm cute by New York standards, but when I came here, my stock just shot up fast. Also, people who have so much to lose can't help themselves.
Playboy.com: What advice would you give to someone starting a blog?
Jessica Cutler: With a blog, you can't expect your private life to be private anymore. You just never know. But, when you work on the Hill you find out the guy you've been sleeping with has told everyone in your office about it. So, what's the difference? It's writing on the bathroom wall.
Playboy.com: Are your blog and your novel going to be the final nails in the coffin for attractive young women being interns in Washington? What father would send his little girl to Capitol Hill?
Jessica Cutler: I don't think so. It might encourage more men to come to Washington, and there's nothing wrong with that. What, no Wonkette?
Flehsbot has a sneak peak. Not work safe. Not Capitol safe.
Man in the gray flannel suit
: Didn't blog all day because I was buried writing memoes on a topic so horrific you don't want to know. Usually, I take a quick break to blog; clears the mind like mango ice on the tongue. But these docs put me in such a foul mood you should be glad I didn't take a break. Now I'm home. Ready to blog. Civliized again.
BlogPR
: It's not just Denton getting good PR for blogs. It's Calacanis, too.
Arrested
: I spent last night around the HQ of the protest movement as I came and went from the PS122 blog event; buzz all about.
I heard people talking excitedly about getting arrested. For some, it is the goal; it's part of the game; it's fun; it's a badge of honor. Not for others.
Julian Sanchez of Reason's convention blog was pacing back and forth at 10 m.p.h. getting updates on his cell about a bomb square downtown and he told me about covering a bunch of arrests at the World Trade Center, a game of he-said-she-said orderly-or-disorderly.
Arrest used to be about steel: steel handcuffs, steel bars. Now it's about plastic: plastic strips on your wrists, plastic netting to pen in the protestors until they're processed.
Fellow blogger Rossi almost got arrested last night -- she didn't want to, her other half did -- and she blogged about it immediately.
And I'm waiting to get the report from John Perry Barlow, who was supposed to be on the panel last night but who was off dancing as protest in midtown and was sending in SMS messages relayed to the crowd at PS122. Arrests were happening, he reported. We have no idea whether he danced or danced free or danced into plastic bars.
I certainly understand the arrest-as-protest thing. It was the metaphor of protest of my age, first for civil rights, then for Vietnam. I never got arrested (wimp!) but it happened all the time, all around.
But now, it seems like an odd means to an end. Does getting arrested help make the point? Well, it does if you're arrested by the enemy. But New York isn't the enemy or an agent of it. The New York cops are generally polite and friendly (and happy for all the overtime pay). New York is a Democratic town; this ain't Texas. Matt Welch said yesterday that it's a different matter in L.A., when you can't see the beetle-eyes of cops behind sunglasses, you fear arrest or worse. In New York, you fear a gruff grunt and plastic jail. Hell, the one person seriously injured so far in the protests was a cop.
So do you have to get arrested to make your point? I don't think so. Do the cops have to arrest to keep order? In many cases, no.
When I spoke with Jay Rosen last night, he said that too many people -- media people particularly -- are trying vainly to make 2004 into 1968, though there really are very few parallels; they are different times with different causes, a different experience.
If getting arrested isn't necessary to make your point or to get publicity or to make the power look by by turning the arresting agent into the bad guy, then is getting arrested really a form of protest nostalgia?
I said the other day that demonstrations themselves feel a bit anachronistic in this age when people have so many new ways to be heard.
The conventions are certainly anachronisitc in this age when all the decisions are already made and all the spin well spun.
So everything the city is going through this week is so oddly anachronistic ... EXCEPT the concrete and steel barriers everywhere, and the cops and soldiers with huge guns, and the checkpoints where we our bags are checked as if we were in Tel Aviv, and the huge trucks filled with sand and steel ramps meant to stop suicide trucks, and the Checkpoint Charlies on our streets, many of which are closed. That we have never seen before. That is new. And that is because the real enemy isn't the other side in a political argument or a mayor or a cop or a president. The real enemy is a band of sick terrorists who killed thousands of us only a mile south of here three years ago next week. That is the real war and there's nothing fun or a game about it.
So, oddly, the anachronisms of the convention and of the protests on the other side are oddly comforting. OK, we'll all play along and nominate the president who's already nominated and we'll wrap you in plastic and play along. It all looks like a game.
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JEFF JARVIS is former TV critic for TV Guide and People, creator of Entertainment Weekly, Sunday editor and associate publisher of the NY Daily News, and a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner. He was until recently president & creative director of Advance.net, the online arm of Advance Publications. Now he is working with The New York Times Company at About.com on content development and strategy and consulting for Advance, Fairchild, and the City University of New York's new Graduate School of Journalism, where he lead the creation of the curriculum for the new media program. He says he is at work on a book.
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