Tue, May 13, 2008

Everything is Beautiful ...

I'll be on a panel on "The Future of News" at Princeton tomorrow that will be livestreamed. You can get the info here.

So Tim Russert and New York Times reporter John Harwood were talking on Meet the Press this weekend, and there was this exchange:

HARWOOD: And one of the interesting things they're going to make, which many Republicans would find ironic, is McCain's people are going to say that the press is pro-Obama. Now, John McCain's benefited from very friendly press coverage for many years, but he's going to try to argue, which will have a corollary benefit of rallying conservatives, if he can pull it off, of saying, "The press wants Obama to win. I'm pushing back, too."

RUSSERT: In 2002, John McCain referred to the press as his base.

HARWOOD: They were his base.

RUSSERT: Speak for yourself, Harwood.

Russert has, in recent days, said that McCain has "really been given this grace period to go around the country, unify his party, raise some money, put a campaign together, and he's benefited from enormously. There's no doubt about it." Russert noted that easy press coverage of McCain has been going on for "some time," but promised that when "Senator McCain is back in the media's light, he'll receive the same scrutiny."

So Russert has been talking a big game about getting tough on John McCain. One wonders how he apparently excuses the failure to hold one of the country's major politicians accountable up to this point, but nevertheless, for right now: We're waiting, Tim.

We've said it before and we'll say it again: if there ever was an appropriate time to start a business news network that takes an "everything is beautiful" approach to reporting, all the time, the past seven months certainly weren't it.

The Fox Business network still hasn't released its Nielsen Ratings info, last reported to be only 6,000 daytime viewers, and now the bosses are rearranging virtually the entire programming lineup. We'll pass on the cheap Titanic-deck-chairs line, but hope that any reports of a Fox Weather Channel that aims to put a smiley face on the upcoming global warming catastrophe prove to be false.

McCain Suck-up Watch: Reuters reported that Sen. John McCain's campaign "is preparing to take $84 million in public funding after the Republican Party convention in September and he is challenging [Sen. Barack] Obama to stick by last year's pledge to use public money and its accompanying spending limits," but did not note that Federal Election Commission chairman David Mason has taken the position that McCain cannot opt out of public financing in the primary without FEC approval, as McCain has attempted to do, or that McCain could be breaking federal laws by exceeding spending limits within the public financing system for the primary." More here.

Mazel tov to Jane Eisner on being named the new editor of The Forward. And congratulations to me and the rest of the search committee for the great job we did in advising publisher Sam Norich to choose her. Now everybody let's get to work ...

From TomDispatch:

Ann Jones, author of Kabul in Winter, writes her second TomDispatch report from strife-torn West Africa, where the war against women never ends. In it, she tells a remarkable tale of the way in which some women have begun to fight back and transform themselves via the digital camera as they document their daily lives.

Jones, who works with the International Rescue Committee, writes:

Digital cameras are the tool. I arrive with them and lend them to women, most of whom have never seen a camera before. I teach them to point and shoot -- only that -- and then I turn them loose to snap what they will. I ask them to bring me some photos of their problems and their blessings. They work in teams, two or three women sharing a camera and very nervous at first. (Some women actually shake.) It takes the whole team to snap the first photos: one holds the camera, another points, another shoots. The teamwork they build is a step to solidarity.

For these women, in Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, the photos -- often of the everyday physical violence men commit against women, of women abandoned, of the economic violence that passes for women's work -- then become the basis for group discussion, even for the first all-women's photography exhibits in villages or cities. And from this comes a new sense of the ability to change what is seen by all, and even a new consciousness. As one of the photographers told her women's group, "Some people use cameras. Some people are cameras. Me, I'm a camera."

Jones comments: "For me -- listening in, asking questions -- it's like the old days of the women's movement in the U.S. and the informal consciousness-raising get-togethers that blew the collective mind of my generation. Now a senior citizen, I have the privilege of surfing another wave of feminism, a distant continent away."

Correspondence Corner:

Name: Tyrone Mason
Hometown: Mililani

Let's see, we have two candidates worth over $100 million each, through marriage or associations, and one has a private jet. They are the salt of the earth, share and know the daily struggles of the hardworking men and women, and both are at a disadvantage: one being a woman and the other his age.

Then we have another candidate, worth approximately $3.4 million, self-made millionaire (in recent years), through his own works (writing books), paid his own way through school; he is the elitist, he does not share or know the struggles of the hardworking men and women, and to top it off, his advantage (according to GF): he's black.

Rod Serling and his writers with their wild imagination never conceived of such a show.

Name: Jon
Hometown: Ottawa

I really wish someone would ask Hitchens if he can imagine a point where things could get bad enough in Iraq that he would admit that supporting the war was a bad idea. I am all but convinced he could not, and if that's the case, that really tells you all you need to know about his moral and intellectual compass. To me, the guy has invested so much mental energy into picking fights that he has simply forgotten how to think.

If he wants to smear Obama by the company he keeps, he should take a look in the mirror. I hope Bill Kristol and David Horowitz make for good friends.

Name: Ron Kampeas
Hometown: Washington

Hitchens is right that the paper is unreadable (although who among us can claim not to have written an unreadable college paper), but wrong that Michelle Obama is "much influenced by the definition of black 'separationism' offered by Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton in their 1967 screed Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America." So wrong that it's worse than McCarthyism, which implies guilt by association -- it's a lie, because there is no association. She uses the work as a definition of separationism, positing it against other integrationist models. This does not suggest it influences her any more than a scholar who cites Mein Kampf for a definition of Nazism would be influenced by Hitler.

As Pierce might say, Jeebus.

Name: Mark Shotzberger
Hometown: Dover, DE

Once again, this cremation story shows how the MSM can blow anything 50 times out of proportion.

The crematorium does cremate both human and pet remains, but not in the same facilities.

The facility has three separate ovens, two for humans and one smaller one for pets. The extra costs of cremating Rover or Fluffy in the human crematorium would be prohibitive. So they own a smaller one.

The facility was recently toured by an Air Force general as well as DoD representatives and was cleared of any wrongdoing and will continue to receive military remains.

Funny, none of the outlets who spread the story in the first place have reported this. But as we all know, facts are boring!

Name: Mark D
Hometown: Chicago

I teach in a public high school where the Internet is policed by a semi-automated filtering system. Altercation and all of Media Matters seem to make it past the censors intact. However, when I clicked on Eric's link to Pierce, the filter stopped forward progress and gave me the following reason: Provocative Attire. I know it has to do with the Esquire site, but it is amusing to contemplate: Pierce and provocative attire.

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Mon, May 12, 2008

It took me by surprise, I must say ...

If you missed Bill Moyers' appearance on Charlie Rose, you can find it here.

And if you missed Christopher Hitchens' descent in the kind of neoconservative, McCarthyite thuggery that we would not even expect from, say, Bill Kristol, take a look at this piece from the apparently unedited Slate magazine.

Hitchens brings up Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Malcolm X, Tawana Brawley, and Stokely Carmichael, all by way of seeking to discredit Barack Obama with an attack on, believe it or not, Michelle Obama's undergraduate college thesis. He does not actually quote from the thesis, not that it would matter. It's hard to believe he's serious, much less sober. The first time I met Christopher, in the summer of 1982, we spent an afternoon getting drunk in a Dupont Circle bar during which he said a great many silly and, to my young ears, shocking things, which I imagine he would not wish to hear repeated today. Hitchens was already 33 by then, but nevertheless remained under the illusion of a brand of Marxism he has since denounced -- along with virtually everyone who remains wedded to the views to which he committed most of his life's work. The idea that the views of a college-aged Michelle Obama are somehow relevant to her husband's qualification for presidency is McCarthyism of the most disreputable order.

We all know what Christopher's problem is, and for reasons of sentimentality, many of us in the fraternity of his ex-friendships are likely to continue to forgive him. He's been through a great deal I wouldn't wish on my worst enemies, and no less sadly, has wasted more talent than most of us will ever have. But what the hell is going on at Slate? Are there no editors there who care enough to save him from publishing such a pathetic performance?

The true cost of this war is being purposely hidden from us. It's hard to imagine, if Bush and his allies had declared war on this country from someone's government, how they might have been able to any worse damage.

Hey, look, Pierce.

It's officially mutual: Karl Rove (hearts) Mark Halperin (and John F. Harris).

From TomDispatch:

Here's how well-known environmentalist Bill McKibben begins his latest piece -- and it should startle you: "Even for Americans, constitutionally convinced that there will always be a second act, and a third, and a do-over after that, and, if necessary, a little public repentance and forgiveness and a Brand New Start -- even for us, the world looks a little Terminal right now... All of a sudden it isn't morning in America, it's dusk on planet Earth."

And here's the news he wants to convey that leads toward that startling conclusion: "There's a number -- a new number -- that makes this point most powerfully. It may now be the most important number on Earth: 350. As in parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere." In fact, just recently our foremost climatologist, NASA's Jim Hansen, published a piece in Science magazine saying that we must somehow return the planet's atmosphere to 350 ppm (it's now at 385) -- and fast -- "if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted."

Think about that. In other words, if humanity doesn't act in the next few years, we may quite literally run out of history. It's hard even to take this in, but McKibben, who has started a new campaign, 350.org, to get this number (and what it means) around the world and into consciousness, sounds the alarm in this piece, discussing the climate change "tipping points" that lie in our immediate future.

He adds: "We might stop just short of some of those tipping points, like the Road Runner screeching to a halt at the very edge of the cliff. More likely, though, we're the Coyote."

Consider this piece a powerful warning about what humanity must bring itself to do -- or else.

Correspondence Corner:

Name: Norman Gravely
Hometown: Woodbridge, VA

It seems to me that what is defined as liberal means that if one disagrees with the far-right agenda then you are liberal. The middle ground appears not to exist. I look forward to reading Why We're Liberals.

Name: Matthew Saroff
Hometown: http://40yrs.blogspot.com

You write, "These programs are chosen as if specifically designed not to work."

That is too mild. They are specifically designed not to work.

The driving force for the people behind these programs is that they believe that sex is evil.

The scripture, "It is better to marry than to burn," states that marriage is preferable to lechery, but inferior to celibacy, and people behind this are not interested in protecting children, they are interested in punishing them.

Sexual freedom, even within the context of marriage, is an anathema to them, which is why they are now protesting birth control available to married couples.

Name: Todd Hedley
Hometown: San Antonio (go Spurs!)

I'm surprised no one has brought this up, but recently the Pew Charitable Trust conducted a survey of news consumers (basically a 4-question current events quiz), and found Fox viewers to be the least informed (more incorrect responses) of all the major cable news networks.

But the funny thing was who turned out to the the most informed viewers. CNN? No MSNBC? Nope.

The most informed cable "news"viewers watched The Daily Show.

Pretty sad commentary on the state of our media, really.

Name: Michael Green
Hometown: Las Vegas, Nevada

As one who views the program religiously, I think some are missing what "The Daily Show" really is. Stewart famously pointed out in his "Crossfire" appearance -- which ultimately led, I think, to CNN canceling that program, given his brutal discussion of how horrid it was -- that he is not a journalist. He is not.

What he is, I think (and this would be true of his producers and writers, so I will lump them together), is perhaps the nastiest, most perceptive media critic this side of A.J. Liebling, who beautifully vivisected the press in The New Yorker. The main thrust of "The Daily Show" most of the time is how stupid the MainStream Media are. And as they prove to any thinking person who watches them even without benefit of "The Daily Show," boy, are they stupid.

Name: Derrick Gibson
Hometown: http://allpanthersareblack.blogspot.com/

Thanks to Bill from CT for awaking our eyes (ok, mine) to the simple fact that like Ford and Daddy Bush before him, George is going out on the pardon train.

But, a president cannot pardon himself, right?

Which means that by signing those pardons, all GWB will have done is free his cohorts from any possible prosecution for their crimes. Is there not one weasel among them who -- once freed from cause and facing a suitably vengeful public -- will not step forward and call out "J'accuse!"?

Could this pardon train leave GWB alone at the station as the only one to face justice for the last eight years of criminality?

PS -- Good on ya, Siva! I say make room for BEHM!

Name: Brian Donohue
Hometown: http://dailyrevolution.net

Many thanks to the WaPo for this revelation; but the real problem is NOT that soldiers are being cremated with Fido and Fluffy, but that they have to be cremated at all.

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Fri, May 9, 2008

Slacker Friday

We've got a new "Think Again" column here called "The Costs of Enforced Sexual Ignorance." And I'll be speaking at a conference on the future of the media at Princeton on Wednesday.

Name: Siva Vaidhyanathan
Hometown: Left field

The greatest baseball song of all time is Chuck Berry's "Brown-eyed Handsome Man."

Say hey.

Eric replies: Great song, but how far are we extending this? BEHM? Mrs. Robinson? Paradise by the Dashboard Light? Glory Days? Are these really baseball songs? These are important questions.

Name: Elizabeth
Hometown: Bavaria

I worked for half a dozen years as an obstetrics nurse in South Texas, and I can attest to the appalling numbers of teen pregnancies.

The lack of common sense behind "abstinence only" education was best summed up by a friend as, "sending your children to Mexico and telling them not to drink the water, but not telling them what to do when they get thirsty."

Name: Bill Ardis
Hometown: Frisco, TX

Eric,

So Hannity is still trying to tie Ayers to Obama, which of course means (in Hannity's tiny little mind) that Obama is unqualified to be elected. Isn't Hannity somewhat of a hypocrite? After all, Hannity has associated (on a very friendly basis) with someone who has suggested killing supreme court justices.

Ann Coulter acknowledged that she has previously suggested "putting rat poison in [U.S. Supreme Court] Justice [John Paul] Stevens' crème brulee"; suggesting people blow up the New York Times, saying: "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building"; and suggested killing Muslims or forcing them to convert.

Doesn't that mean Hannity is unqualified to be (and I use the word loosely) a pundit? After all, what is the difference between what Ann Coulter said and what William Ayers said? If one is reprehensible and should be condemned, shouldn't the other? And using the guilt by association standard, Hannity is definitely guilty of the same condoning this behavior. Will Hannity be forced to leave Fox? Will the media at least call Fox on this hypocrisy? Because it is not only Hannity, O'Reilly has said the same types of comments (like about terrorists attacking san Francisco).

Name: Ralph Sommerer
Hometown: Berne, Switzerland

Dear Dr. Alterman,

I've already found quite a while ago that I watch fake news shows like The Daily Show to get "real (U.S.) news" because they provide context of the sort that you'll never get on the MSM (perhaps "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" excepted). Where else can you actually witness the current administration officials' barefaced lies by simple being shown two video pieces side-by-side where they say one thing and then the exact opposite. Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, by the way, did this once in a news programme and were subequently being accused by a political party of attempting to "dismantle" their Federal Councillor. I haven't seen anything like it since in Switzerland on TV. "What liberal media" everywhere.

PS: Are you having any plans of coming to Europe to give talks/book tours this year? Travelling to the U.S. has become sort of a hassle lately.

Eric replies: Thanks for asking, but no. I am going to Israel in late June/early July in case anyone wants to set up a talk for me there...

Name: Beth Harrison
Hometown: Arlington, VA

Eric, you aren't being fair to viewers of "The Daily Show," comparing them (numerically) to the viewers of "Hannity & Colmes." I bet that you compared the "money" demographic (18-53), Jon Stewart would have more viewers than that joke of a program on Fox News (was that an oxymoron?). And TDS viewers need to know what Jon Stewart is talking about in order to get the satire. Unfortunately, "Hannity & Colmes" isn't satire -- they're deadly serious. Wasn't there a study somewhere several years ago that said that Faux viewers and Druggie Rush listeners were actually LESS informed after three hours?

Name: Dev Tobin
Hometown: Rensselaer, NY

Fox News shows like Hannity and Colmes get 2 million viewers, on their best night.

O'Reilly is Fox's top draw, at just 3 million viewers.

That's more than other cable TV political shows, but still a micro-minority of voters.

In 2004, Bush/Cheney got 62 million votes.

Fox viewership, at its best, is less than 5 percent of that.

Fox News preaches to the micro-minority Bush/Cheney choir, and, therefore, has no real influence on anything.

Name: Thomas Heiden
Hometown: Stratford, CT

Eric,

So the Blue Dog Democrats are balking at the new GI bill because their fellow Dems will not offset the increased spending with new revenue sources or spending cuts.

They seek fiscal responsiblity on the backs of our soldiers, but will always borrow money to continue the occupation of Iraq.

If it is true that they need to do this to get re-elected, perhaps it's time for them to lead their consituents instead of trying to follow them in such irrational and immoral priorities.

Name: Bill Strachan
Hometown: Enfield, CT

Oh how we rant and rave about the lawlessness, the anti-Constitution bias, the unconstitutional behavior, and the Administration's view that the Constitution is only a minor obstacle to their shenanigans. Well, since Bush has become so massively unpopular to the American electorate, a parting salvo to all of us -- especially the "Democrat" party -- I see a slew of pardons and clemencies on the near horizon. All members of his administration, both appointed and civil service hires, will be pardoned for any and all acts they have committed or will commit in the future for as long as they live. It will be signed by the President, Vice President, Secretary of State, Chief Justice Roberts & Justice Alito, and ruled OK fine by the Attorney General, and voted Constitutional by Justice Scalia. In this way they can easily negate any Statutes of Limitations and make sure the "Fix is In"!

They will then return to Crawford and LOL as the nation erupts with outrage powerless to prevent it.

The perfect ending to the "No Accountability" administration. I do smell it coming.

Name: Ken
Hometown: Cherry Hill, NJ

In response to Ed from Arlington, I am truly sorry for your loss.

Eric replies: As are we all. May he be among the last to die for this folly.

Name: Brian Donohue
Hometown: http://dailyrevolution.net

Last month, I argued that Obama left out a key element in the Joe Six Pack existential-crisis remarks that were so blatantly twisted in the media. He got guns and god in there, but forgot Grand Theft Auto. $500M in a week, folks. Call me an elitist, then, but a society in which a computer game featuring exploding cars outsells anything Hollywood can make has got to have some serious growing up to do.

I have to wonder how GTA IV might do in Baghdad ... hell, they're building Disney theme parks there.

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