Matt Towery writes that it could turn its sagging fortunes around by taking some lessons from the NFL.
Brian Williams, the heir apparent to Tom Brokaw, praises bloggers to their faces, and then trashes them when talking to fellow members of the legacy media:
Williams, 45, is capable of showing good humor and a dry wit in public. When Time magazine held a lunch to discuss candidates for its person of the year, he exposed a side of his personality that is seldom seen on the air.As Glenn Reynolds writes, "And yet, they're kicking your ass". Meanwhile, John Hinderaker of Power Line adds a personal reminiscence:When a fellow panelist mentioned that bloggers had had a big impact on the reporting on Election Day, Williams waved that point away by quipping that the self-styled journalists are "on an equal footing with someone in a bathroom with a modem."
I must admit that I expected better from Williams. As many readers will recall, I participated in NBC's election night coverage on Nov. 2. I was at Rockefeller Center with Ana Marie Cox and Joe Trippi, representing the blogosphere. Around 1:00 in the morning, I was walking through a deserted lunch room, returning to our set, when a man approached from the opposite direction, heading toward the men's room. Because he was well dressed and tanned, I took him to be an on-air person. He went out of his way to walk up to me, extended his hand, and introduced himself as Brian Williams. I'd never heard of him, but I said I was John Hinderaker. He said: "I just wanted to tell you that I really appreciate what you guys are doing." I thanked him and walked on.Batteries and a Wi-Fi connection make it doable; the problem is waterproofing the keyboard, while still allowing the monitor to be readable.So: is Williams a secret admirer of bloggers like us, or not?
Beats me. I do wonder, though, about the bathroom reference. First we're in our pajamas, now we're posting from our bathrooms. What's next, nude blogging from our hot tubs?Get over it, I say.
[beat]
OK, to be honest, I've never actually blogged from my Jacuzzi. But I have blogged about it--it's amazing what being desperate for material will do to a man when he's facing a deadline...
Legalized euthanasia in Europe.
As Hugh Hewitt notes, it didn't end very well the last time it was tried, either.
Update (12/1/04): Hewitt notes no coverage of this story in major US newspapers and concludes:
MSM does not care to cover this. You figure out why. In silence is approval, and in approval, an invitation to proceed.Sadly, I think he's right on both conclusions.
Meanwhile, Jim Geraghty adds, "Hugh wonders why his favorite bloggers are saying nothing, so here's my brief bit of something: The canary in the coal mine just slumped over, coughed, and died."
President Bush is in Canada. Protesting moonbats are in full force. Glenn Reynolds has the links--including a disturbing photo of a mutated American flag.
Back in August of 2003, I noted in Blogcritics that Hollywood executives had blamed cell phones--especially texting cell phones--for their drop off in box office revenue that summer.
Today, Forbes writes that Disney and Pixar are using advertising via cell phones to help promote The Incredibles and keep it afloat in theaters.
Rich Lowry writes that it's the mindset on college campuses:
The left's new faith, now that socialism has died, is pessimism. I'm struck by this when I'm on college campuses. I want to say to these kids (and professors), “OK, you think Bush's foreign policy is a disaster, but what do you believe, what's the alternative, what's your vision?” There is none. These people believe in nothing. They aren't even soft-headed idealists anymore because Bush's idealistic rhetoric has prompted them to reject idealism. All they have is a smug faith in American failure, that whatever we do--literally whatever we do: whether its militaristic or altruistic or something in between--is wrong and doomed to fail.Nihilism is always a fashionable pose for youth; it's sad that it's surely reinforced by what their professors--who were part of the first generation of punitive liberals--are telling them.
Pat Sajak is wondering why Hollywood is silent--completely silent--after Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered by Islamofacists on November 2nd.
As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I spent much of last week visiting the great state of Texas. My only previous visits had been stopovers at D-FW Airport while I changed planes; but last year for Christmas, my wife gave me two tickets to see the Cowboys play the Bears on Thanksgiving.
While at the game, we witnessed two anecdotes--a silly one before kickoff, and another more serious example after it was over, that help illustrate the atmosphere surrounding the Cowboys' home turf, Texas Stadium.
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The Digital Bits DVD news and reviews site seems to think it has. Start here then scroll up to the next post for their take.
Roger Kimball of The New Criterion explores how the left has become the new puritans, disdaining sybaritic pleasure at every turn--and smugly punishing those who don't toe their rigid and arbitrary line.
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal offers an example of new puritanism in action in England.
Kimball's post builds on an essay from June in the Weekly Standard by James Piereson which he called "Punitive Liberalism":
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Via Ressurrection Song, you will believe, in spite of yourself, that a French car can be cool.
(Or that a well-paid advertising team can somehow find a way to make them appear cool.)
John Leo has a look at the reasoned, sublimely nuanced use of language by celebrities and the media in this ever-so-calm election year.
(Via Betsy Newmark, whose writing is fortunately always the exact opposite of that which Leo highlights.)
Democrats can fight long, hard, and dirty when they want to. If they actually chose to defend America itself against its enemies with as much force as they deploy during election-time, they would never have to rely on such tactics in the first place.
For example, Power Line looks at the sad case of Steve Gardner:
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Jim Geraghty, via Slant Point, notes the bipartisan consensus building power of Howard Dean as potential chairman of the DNC.
I just inserted the code into our sidebar to the right that allows our latest headlines to be included in a My Yahoo homepage. You can click through those headlines and go right to this Website. I've used My Yahoo as my home page since, I guess, the late 1990s, and I suspect more than a few of our readers do as well. If you're one of them, click here, or on "+ My Yahoo!" icon on the sidebar, and you can enter this site straight from your homepage.
Incidentally, Yahoo recently redesigned their My Yahoo page, and now allow virtually any site with an RSS feed to be accessible from it--it's possible to really customize the thing. Those guys over at the Museum of Media History were really onto something when they talked about the increasing customization of the news. Or they will be in a decade. Or something like that.
Just before I left for Dallas last week, Dan Rather announced that he'll be stepping down from his nightly CBS news broadcast. Over at his swank MSNBC blog, Glenn Reynolds has a good post about Captain Dan, including several links, and some typically sound advice for the legacy media.
...Who will of course, ignore all of it, thus ensuring the Blogosphere will be happily kept busy throughout the next year--and into 2014, at least.
The next ten years of Internet-based journalism are laid out in this incredibly well done museum exhibit-style piece beamed back in time from 2014.
Reality won't be nearly as clean, but I suspect this site gets more right than wrong. And as The Professor notes, "the news wars of 2010 were notable for the fact that no actual news organization was involved."
Update: I had completely forgotten about this throwaway post from June of 2002, when I wrote that Seagate had announced a 120-gigabyte hard drive. I found it just now, after searching my site for something else I had written.
Two years ago, a 120-gig drive was big enough news that I felt compelled to blog about it.
The Friday before last, I installed double that--a 240-gigabyte hard drive--as a second drive in my PC, to hold all my music software (including both prerecorded loops that I've purchased, and new material that I've recorded). And that was only because my local computer store was out of 300-gig drives.
So I could easily see the technology that leads to the news wars of 2010 coming to pass.
John Hinderaker of Power Line writes:
I bought a book today (Sharpe's Rifles) in my neighborhood Barnes & Noble. It was the first time I'd been in the store since shortly before the election. I was struck by the difference: then, the tables were piled high with anti-Bush books. Dozens of them. Today, they had disappeared without a trace, not even in evidence on a remainder table. It was as though the book store (or the left) had said: Oh, well. Never mind.One thing the left has always been able to do, is turn on a dime, when they feel the need to.Which got me thinking--remember the al Qaqaa story? Ten days before the election, it was of vital importance that we find out what happened to a "missing" one-tenth of one percent of the munitions in Iraq. Since the election? Who cares?
Or how about the draft? Remember how just before the election, the Democrats were feverishly trying to convince college students and others that, should President Bush be re-elected, there was a secret plan to reinstate the draft? Well, now that President Bush has indeed won re-election, shouldn't the left be gearing up to resist this very real danger? Um, no. Forget about it. The draft rumor has served its purpose (or, rather, failed to serve its purpose). The left has Moved On.
Do you suppose, two years or four years from now, when the Democrats are again spinning fables, anyone will remember how quickly they abandoned some of the principal themes of this year's campaign?
I was about to say, "Just ask Winston", except that that supposes that the clean-up in aisle #12 at Barnes & Noble (and Borders) is the result of some sort of top-down conspiracy--but I think it's something in the left itself that allows it to instantly disgard old ideas and create new ones just as quickly as the American populace can go from one fad to another: skateboarding, rollerskating, disco, jogging, and down the line.
Hello? Check one, two! Check one, two! Is this thing on?
Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving; I spent mine in Dallas--in fact, I'm still there, waiting for my plane at D-FW Airport. (I'm using the Wi-Fi at the American Airlines Admirals Club.)
Watching for regular blogging to resume shortly, hopefully tomorrow.
Update: Safely back; though lots of turbulence on the second half of the flight.
Heh.
Update: This is also heh-worthy.
Interesting essay by Scott Hogenson of CNSNews. It makes a good double feature with this October 2002 piece on left-wing bigotry by Andrew Sullivan, who wrote it just as the bloom was coming off the all-too-brief post-9/11 detente by the American left.
When I originally linked to it, a week before the 2002 mid-term elections, I wrote:
When you resort to the examples that Sullivan gives above, it says to me that you're losing the argument; you've relinquished your role as moral leader, and you've got to crank up the noise--and the hate--to compensate.I think that's even truer today.
I have a review of Peter Gabriel's new Play DVD over at Blogcritics.
Jim Geraghty has some thoughts on the sociological ramifications of Friday's NBA fight over at the (presumably soon-to-be-retitled) Kerry Spot at National Review Online.
A few years ago, when NFL Films began running its Inside The Vault series on ESPN, I was struck by how conservative and dignified most mid-'60s fans looked. There was little or no team merchandise available, so fans arrived to stadiums on Sunday looking like they had just come from church (which many no doubt had), rather than wearing rainbow-colored wigs, Darth Vader Helmets, or cheeseheads. No doubt, the games had their share of hecklers, but I'll bet that in general, fans of the past were much more subdued than today's members of Raiders Nation, the Philadelphia Eagles' crazed fans, or...the courtside fans of the NBA's Detroit Pistons.
This isn't meant to exclude the players' guilt in Friday's incident: compare atheletes of the past with today's every-millionare-for-himself attitude. (Indiana's Ron Artest, the player who was banned for the rest of the season for being the pointman in the fight, actually asked for time off before the fight--to promote a rap album he was releasing on his recording label!)
But somehow, and without really thinking consciously about it, society has created the notion that sports arenas are a place for fans to go almost literally insane, rather than merely observe the hometown team in person and cheer for them. But the Pistons/Pacers rumble gives sports--and the public that watches them in person--a chance to hit the control/alt/delete keys and reset.
Will it? To be honest, I doubt it, but we'll see. Geraghty's right though: the politician who actually addresses this issue will look very smart.
Update: Welcome Kerry Spot readers!
Err, former President Bill Clinton that is, for the funding of his library.
Betsy Newmark has the details--including a link to information about the library's Tinky Winky exhibit. (Why yes, you did just read that correctly.)
Michael Moore could not be reached for comment.
Update: In other Clinton news, the Weekly Standard says that somewhat surprisingly, his campaigning efforts had little or no effect on the November elections.
Jami Bernard of The New York Daily News gives The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie three stars.
Her panel of carefully chosen experts agree.
Update: Meanwhile, Virginia Postrel is praising The Incredibles, which is a film I really need to see while it's still in theaters.
President Bush's rescue of his Secret Service man is being played by most in the Blogosphere as another example of Bush=Machismo. But Power Line notes that it could have larger--and possibly far darker--implications.
Back on November 4th, The American Spectator quoted sources who said that the bogus exit polls of election day afternoon were leaked--or heck, manufactured--by the Kerry Camp to the press.
But rather than investigate their source, and how they made their way to both bloggers and Matt Drudge, the legacy media are using them as a tool to trash the Blogosphere.
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Concerned that President Bush won reelection? Feeling trapped in "Jesusland"? Don't hitch the U-Haul to the Yugo and head towards the 49th parallel just yet: Fox News is coming to Canada.
Back on Friday, we received a huge Insta- and Power-Lanche from our post about seeing Tom Wolfe speak in San Francisco and witnessing the remarkable exchange between Tom and the fellow in the audience I dubbed "Dieter", after the Mike Myers Saturday Night Live character.
Today, Hugh Hewitt writes that Dieter's mindset is proving to be the rule, not the exception in today's Democratic Party:
The hostility towards religious belief expressed by some Democratic activists is extraordinary. This was once the party of the working poor and immigrants who have always cherished their faiths. If the elites of the party share this resentment --even if it is not openly expressed-- the party will never recover. I would like to see some from among those elites answer this growing anti-Christian sentiment within their ranks.As Rod Dreher noted in a brilliant piece from last year, the Democrats started becoming the Godless party back in the early 1970s. It may take them equally long if they want to reverse the process.
Glenn Reynolds, blogging on a 1972-era eMachine that he purchased surplus from the Texas Air National Guard, writes that CBS is continuing to stall whatever "investigation" they're supposedly mounting, even as humorists run roughshod over CBS's brand name and goodwill.
On November 17th, Sean Hackbarth wrote that while Kmart has acquired Sears, that strategy that's emerging is that Kmart is more than likely to keep the Sears name and junk their own brand.
Today he notes that others agree wth his initial take.
Yesterday we linked to video of the brawl in the stands of the Detroit Pistons game on Friday.
Today, the NBA has handed out stiff suspensions to players on both the Pistons, as well as the Indiana Pacers, as well as sent a cautionary note to potentially rowdy fans:
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One the issues that we've been tracking off and on here at EdDriscoll.com HQ is the ongoing fight to allow oil drilling in the area of Alaska that Jonah Goldberg once dubbed "America's Vast Pestilential Wasteland" .
You'd think that the left would favor such drilling, especially since they're driving around in cars with "NO BLOOD FOR OIL" bumperstickers--but they're not: stasis is a way of life for the conservative left.
Fortunately, the issue may be a moot point in the Senate, thanks to the growing Republican majority there.
Senator Kerry, on March 19th, talking about the snowboarding collision he had with a Secret Service agent assigned to protect him while he was having a photo op in Idaho's Sawtooth National Recreation Area:
"I don't fall down. The son of a bitch knocked me over!"President Bush, yesterday:
SANTIAGO, Chile Nov 20, 2004: President Bush stepped into the middle of a confrontation and pulled his lead Secret Service agent away from Chilean security officials who barred his bodyguards from entering an elegant dinner for 21 world leaders Saturday night.To paraphase the InstaPundit, you can mess with Massachusetts, but don't mess with Texas.Several Chilean and American agents got into a pushing and shoving match outside the cultural center where the dinner was held. Bush noticed the fracas after posing for pictures on a red carpet with the summit host, Chilean President Ricardo Lagos and his wife and first lady Laura Bush.
Abandoning the other three, Bush walked over to the agents, reached through the dispute and pulled his agent from the scrum.
The president, looking irritated, walked away with the agent. The incident was shown on APEC television.
"Chilean security tried to stop the president's Secret Service from accompanying him," said White House deputy press secretary Claire Buchan. "He told them they were with him and the issue was resolved."
Scott Ott "reports" that Tom Daschle tried to filibuster his own departure from the Senate.
Certainly would have been keeping in character!
For the one percent of you who haven't seen the rumble in the stands of the Pistons/Pacers NBA game last night, here's the video.
Expect ESPN to be analyzing this fight and its implications for the next six months.
Jonah Goldberg writes that even after President Bush's victory at the polls, he gets the same treatment from the press--that he can do nothing right, even when he does exactly what they've been carping for:
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Frank Martin has the 2008 Republican ticket for president all lined up and ready to hit the campaign trail.
(But please, give me until next fall to recover from this election, huh?)
I have a review of the new DVD release highlighting this 1970 concert, over at Blogcritics.
New York's legendary Museum of Modern Art reopens to the public tomorrow (or today, depending upon which time zone you're in) after being closed for several years for an extensive remodeling and renovation. If you can't make it there on Saturday, The New Criterion has a sneak preview.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I spent many, many hours at MOMA--Nina and I even had our wedding reception there in 1998. But this new version sounds like a very, very different museum.
Charles Krauthammer brilliantly places it into context: Arafat's goal wasn't merely the creation of a Palestinian state, but the destruction of Israel:
That was the theme of his entire life. Yes, he signed interim deals to get a foothold in Palestine. But that was always with the objective of continuing the fight from a better strategic position. It was never to conclude a lasting compromise or real peace with Israel.Needless to say, read the whole thing.That is why he died so far from his promised land. This promised land was never the West Bank and Gaza. Arafat founded Fatah in 1959 — eight years before Israel even acquired these territories. His objective then, and until the day he died, was a Palestinian state built on the ruins of an eradicated Israel.
Bill Clinton was astonished when Arafat rejected the offer of a West Bank and Gaza state, turning down the opportunity to be its George Washington. Americans never understood that Arafat saw himself completely differently: as an anti-imperialist revolutionary in the mold of Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro. Like them, his motto was "revolution unto victory." Total victory. No half loaf. And given Israel's stubborn refusal to die, Arafat's cause became sustaining the struggle — the revolution — indefinitely, almost as an end in itself.
Sotheby's is auctioning the world's largest bottle of wine tomorrow:
On November 20th Sotheby's auction of Finest and Rarest Wines will include The World's Largest Bottle of Wine, which holds over 173 standard bottles - the equivalent of 1200 glasses - of wine. The creation of this gigantic Bordeaux-style bottle of 2001 Beringer Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley, was conceived by Beringer Vineyards & Morton's, The Steakhouse, and is to be soldto benefit Share Our Strength, one of the nation's leading anti-hunger organizations. A sister bottle will make a coast-to-coast tour of 27 of the 61 Morton's restaurants in the United States, celebrating the restaurant's 25th anniversary. This masterpiece of glassmaking art was certified by Guinness World Records and measures 4.5' tall and 4.5' around.The current bid is $26,000; straws not included.
(Via Blogdex.)
One of the reasons why the far left are so depressed (as my friend "Dieter" demonstrated last night), is because on Election Tuesday, for a few hours, they felt the race was in the bag, as a result of seriously out-of-whack exit polls, which sources say were leaked by the Kerry Camp.
(In contrast, I for one spent the afternoon election Tuesday preparing to welcome our new snowboarding overlord. And was ready to remind him that as a trusted member of the Blogosphere, I could be helpful in rounding up others to toil in his wife's underground white raisin caves.)
But as PoliPundit writes, it turns out that exit polls have "leaned significantly Democrat in every race since 1988".
The retail industry received another shake-up today as Sears Holding Corp. (NYSE: S), the parent company behind the recent merger of Sears and Kmart, announced the acquisition of embattled European cheesemaker France (NASDAQ: FROG). The buyout deal, estimated at $2.7 billion, will position Sears/Kmart/France as the world's third largest retailer and 15th ranked military power.I'd say it's a smart move on Sears' part: it always makes sense to buy an asset when its share value has bottomed out.
But can Sears turn their new asset--a perennial underperformer--around?
Tom Wolfe spoke yesterday in San Francisco, at the Herbst Theatre, an early 1930s, 916-seat auditorium. He was introduced by Michael Lewis, who began by describing a visit to New York in 1989, shortly after Liar's Poker was released.
"Tom Wolfe really loves your book", his agent said.
"Oh suuuure, he does", Lewis replied to his agent, who said, "No really, he does. And he'd like to meet you for lunch".
"Well, I'm staying at the Algonquin. Tell him to give me a call", Lewis told him.
"The next day, the phone rang. And a voice said, "Hi, I'm Tom Wolfe. I really loved Liar's Poker. Where do you want to meet for lunch?"
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George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Brian Eno, Mick Fleetwood, Stanley Kubrick and the cast of South Park all meet for swinging postmodern shindig in my latest Blogcritics post.
And you're invited, too!
Interesting post by David Bernstein, who makes it sound as if "Likudnik" is the latest nudge nudge, wink wink word to replace "neocon" as a subtle anti-Semitic epithet by the left.
Why not a solid mahogany USS Reagan model?
The detail and craftsmanship is impressive--as is the price: $999.00
Hugh Hewitt writes that "Time magazine can--should--must name George W. Bush "Man of the Year." So they probably won't.
By the way, note who's on the panel. Hugh Hewitt includes a link to a blog post by Andrew Sullivan:
I just got back from a fun luncheon for Time magazine, where a panel of me, Al Sharpton, Brian Williams, Alessandra Stanley and Coleen Rowley (the 9/11 FBI whistle-blower)With the possible exception of Rowley, that's quite a convention of (irony mode on)moderate and conservative red staters that Time has assembled to help choose their "Person of the Year" (/irony). As Hewitt writes:
Time is nothing if not contemptuous of Henry Luce's original audience, and the tastes of Manhattan and the left side of the Beltway would love nothing more than to amuse themselves with the idea of successfully insulting George W. Bush and his red state supporters.Since it's likely to be anybody but the president, Hugh has a few modest suggestions to help ensure that Time "goes way off the rails--again".* * * Why would anyone expect Time's editors to escape from the fevers that have swept the left this year, fevers which have only grown worse post-election? To do the obvious thing and recognize 2004 as a year of Bush would be in some way to capitulate to the obvious center of gravity of American sentiment, and the left would rather talk insanely about secession than capitulate.
Of course, as Jonah Goldberg notes, Time has long passed its freshness date.
Update: Tim Graham also noticed the diverse panel that Time assembled to help make their choice:
Most of those are yes, Kerry-loving media liberals (this year including Sullivan), but...Al Sharpton? How on Earth does everyone have to include this guy in their little plans? Is he really an objective journalist at heart? No. He's still a Tawana-fraud-pushing, violence-urging, racial-ambulance-chasing embarrassment. Time should try a more reputable POY judge -- Anna Nicole Smith, or the host of "Fear Factor," or someone responsible for messing up the flu vaccine.Heh.
"I'd rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6."
Why on earth is the Target department store chain taking aim at the Salvation Army??
Hugh Hewitt has details and contact information for Target.
Update: For more Blue State-style buffoonery, James Lileks has some thoughts on the ACLU's ongoing war against that most evil of American enemies...the Boy Scouts.
In addition to being linked to by the Blogfather, and my three pieces in PC World, I also have a review of the Sirius Sportster portable satellite radio in Digital World, the magazine-in-a-magazine that's bundled with PC World. And I also have a review of Unledded, from Jimmy Page & Robert Plant, in this months' Vintage Guitar. It builds on some of the material that Kevin Shirley, who engineered the DVD, told me for Blogcritics.
Ed Driscoll: on the Internet, at your local supermarket's magazine rack--and beyond!
Cliff May of National Review makes a great point:
The MSM is going on and on about President Bush filling his Cabinet with people who “agree with him” – that is to say people who share his vision and are eager to implement his agenda.Not even if it might help their stock prices and readership, or TV ratings.Instead, they say, he should be hiring people who disagree with him, people with different visions and other agendas.
This is particularly curious coming from the MSM (“mainstream media” for those who don’t speak blogian). Why? Because the publishers and seniors editors of the complaining publications -- do they hire people who disagree with them? Do they hire conservatives and evangelicals and other such characters as editors and reporters?
No, of course they don’t. And they never would. Not for all the chardonnay in France.
“People don’t realize that by voting Republican, they voted against themselves,” she says. Of Iraq in particular, she adds, “I worry that some people are entertained by the idea of this war. They don’t know anything about the Iraqis, but they’re angry and frustrated in their own lives. It’s like Germany, before Hitler took over. The economy was bad and people felt kicked around. They looked for a scapegoat. Now we’ve got a new bunch of Hitlers.”
Allow Dennis Miller to rebut that astonishing bit of crystalline logic:
The Left is so busy saying John Ashcroft is Hitler, and President Bush is Hitler, and Rudy Giuliani is Hitler that the only guy they wouldn’t call Hitler was the foreign guy with the mustache who was throwing people who disagreed with him into the wood-chipper.I think Linda's just trying to be one of "the squeaky wheels shrieking for grease (Soy-based non-petroleum recycled post-consumer grease, please)".
Almost forgot--if you did vote Republican, remember, Linda doesn't want you in her audience. Or doesn't want to be in the same audience with you. Or something like that. Because music is a universal force for good, helping to change the world and bring people together. Except for eeevil, eeevil, icky Republicans.
Check out the photograph and description over at Power Line, and then check out Captain Ed for his thoughts.
For more fun chemical warfare thoughts, PoliPundit has an interesting connect-the-dots theory regarding the anthrax scare from shortly--very shortly--after 9/11 and possible Iraqi involvement.
Update: Looks like they're actually tubes designed to test for the presence of Sarin. Of course, why the "insurgents" would feel the need to test for such a thing is an interesting question...
Jim Litke of AP looks at ABC's stunt to promote their Desperate Housewives series by starting Monday Night Football yesterday with Nicollette Sheridan frolicking in a nothing but a towel (and apparently losing even that) with Terrell Owens of the Philadelphia Eagles.
Just as with CBS's NippleGate (man, thank God Dan Rather wasn't involved in that), the networks are doing the equivalent of "cheat and retreat": knowingly going outrageously over the top with their raunch and then mock-apologizing for it afterwards.
Wonder if Michael Powell will come down as hard on ABC as he did with CBS after the Super Bowl in January.
Update: More here, and here's Michael Powell's initial take.
Here's Michael Moore on April 14th.
Here's Chris Matthews, last night.
(And of course, they're both unconsciously parroting "Pinch" Sulzberger of the New York Times.)
And the left wonders why Americans don't trust them to defend the country?
To paraphrase that eminent archeologist Dr. Henry Jones, Jr., "Tranzis--I hate those guys".
(Via InstaPundit. And yeah, I know--but it's too good a line not to spoof. Background here.)
Have I got a bartender for you!
(I wonder if the Subservient Chicken stops there for a frosty one?)
David Brooks, and Joseph Bottum of The Weekly Standard weigh in on Tom Wolfe's latest novel.
After my own casual experiment of not watching the presidential election on TV this year, and after a year of crazed TV news reporting, culminating in RatherGate, I decided to do this month's "Ideas For Every Room" newsletter for Electronic House on yet another reason why a PC belongs in your media room or home theater.
It looks like advertisers are agreeing with me: Internet ad revenues are soaring, as more and more people (especially men, interestingly enough) tune out TV networks in search of content on the Web.
TV as a device isn't going anywhere, but in a trend that George Gilder first spotted over a decade ago, more and more it's going to be an interactive device for playing back entertainment (sports, movies, and music-oriented content, whether it's via DVD or TiVo'ed off the networks), rather than for simply a device for passively pumping the media's biases into our brains. But when Dan Rather is disgraced (how badly? Well, I reflexively started typing the HTML superscript command when I got to the "th" in his name just now), Tom Brokaw booed at college football games, and ordinary folks come up to Peter Jennings and say this...
Well, the handwriting is on the wall for the big three's national TV news coverage.
(On the other hand, if Fox wants to put together a nightly news show for their TV network, they've got a pretty darn good chance of cleaning up in flyover country. And the infrastructure is already there: make Brit Hume the anchorman, let James Brown (no, not the Godfather of Soul--this James Brown) do the sports, and presto!--instant ratings and advertising revenue machine.)
Update: Great line by James Lileks:
Oh: one more thing. The Administration is clearing the decks for the second term. Out with the old & tired, in with new ideas, etc. How’s about the mainstream media does the same? Burn up half the deadwood, ease the ossified elements off the stage, bring in new writers and editors and announcers and producers. If they can do it at State, they could do it at CBS.But they won't, at least for now. Rather (I know--bad pun. Sorry!) nice of them to make the point of my newsletter for me.Yes, yes, I know. The State Department is just that. But CBS is the news.
Update: Talk about not learning your lessons. This article in the Sacramento Bee describing a recent post-election meeting of TV news bigwigs sounds like they have their heads completely buried in the sand about what just happened this year. On the other hand, the original dinosaurs never understood the concept of extinction, either.
Update: More here on the Sac Bee story. Also, check this out:
Fox News and the Internet emerged as new leading sources for election news, finds a Pew Research Center post-election study of 1,209 voters. Overall, 21% say they got most of their election news from Fox, compared with 15% for CNN and 13% from NBC.I wrote my EH piece mostly based on what my fellow bloggers were saying, and my own gut feeling after election night. Looks like I'm far from the only one who thinks that way, though.
Those who cite the Internet as a main source of campaign news rose to 21% from 11% in 2000 and 3% in 1996. Those who say they got any campaign news online rose to 41% from 30% in 2000.Voters are increasingly troubled by what they see as unfair treatment of the candidates. This year, 40% of voters thought Bush was treated unfairly, up from 30% in 2000; 31% said Kerry was treated unfairly, up from 24% who faulted Al Gore's coverage in 2000.
Update: Professor Bainbridge looks at a member of the media who gets it--and one does not.
Insta-Update: Welcome readers of Glenn Reynolds' MSNBC blog!
Junk Yard-Update: If you've heard the original, this is a riot.
It's really fascinating watching the Blogosphere change and evolve. Back in the late '90s, I associated Weblogs with online personal diaries. Then came September 11th and the ascendancy of InstaPundit and other political and current events bloggers (like me)!
But as I've written before, a Weblog is just a platform--anybody can blog about anything.
Witness Manolo, the purveyor of what looks to be a mighty fine Weblog about...shoes.
And why not? Frankly, I'm surprised there aren't more fashion-oriented blogs. (Or maybe there are, and I'm simply not aware of them--which wouldn't be very surprising. Here's another one, by the way.)
Now if I could just find a decent pair of suede monkstraps in a size 12D...
(Found via Technorati.)
Patrick Ruffini is back in the Blogosphere under his own name, after his Herculean efforts in helping to re-elect the president.
Welcome back!
Back in 2002, Garrison Keillor smeared newly-elected Norm Coleman of Minnesota. In mid-2004, he released a book called Homegrown Democrat: a Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America , which demonstrated the warm feelings he plainly thought about the people who make up the heart of America.
The day after the elections this month, Keillor again demonstrates his superior tolerance and willingness to accept a diversity of ideas and opinion.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International, which once ran TV ads featuring celebrities toasting freedom, demonstrates their new-found contempt for the idea. (Note the poster in that above link. I read it as moving beyond believing the idea that "Bush=Hitler". That poster is implying that America=Nazi Germany. Gee, nice, Amnesty.)
Paul Mirengoff of Power Line places these sorts of temper-tantrum-like actions into context:
Liberals don't want to give the public much credit even when it elects Democrats, and this fact reinforces my thesis. The liberals attributed Clinton's win in 1992 to "the economy, stupid" coupled with "Bubba's" ability to connect with rednecks. If they viewed Clinton's win in 1996 as the result of anything more uplifting, I guess I missed it. Compare this to the way Republicans talk about Reagan's victories or Bush's recent triumph. All of this suggests that leading Democrats don't hold the public in contempt because they are now the minority party; rather they are now the minority party because they hold the public in contempt.I think there's much truth there. And in a way, they have only themselves to blame: their actions, all year, but especially in the weeks before Election Tuesday, were not a signal to middle-America that these were sophisticated grown-ups you wanted to let run the country. Despite Garrison's opinion, Red Staters aren't stupid--and can smell contempt and condescension for their ideals and beliefs a mile away.
Update: David Limbaugh agrees, writing:
Voters can usually detect counterfeit peddlers of faith and morality. For candidates to resonate in this area they have to do more than talk. They must show they truly believe in what they're selling. But it's more than that. In the end, it ultimately turns on what they're selling.It will be very interesting to see where--and how--the left goes from here.For presidential candidates to garner the conservative Christian vote — which is the block of voters we're mostly talking about here — they can't get too far by just promoting any issue and wrapping it in the language of morality.
Update: Charles Eklund has some advice for Keillor:
Keep talking.Keep pushing the Democratic Party further away from the life experiences of the average American. Keep demonizing group after group. Gun owners, small business people, the professional middle class and now Christians. Run 'em off, tell 'em the Democrats can get by without their sorry arses.
See if that's the way to win elections.
I dare ya.
Here's a headline (complete with trademark police siren) you don't expect to see every day, even on Drudge:
Oooooooh....kaaaaay.....FEDS TO PUT RADIO ANTENNAS ON MEDICINE BOTTLES
Food and Drug Administration and drug makers are expected to announce an agreement Monday to put tiny radio antennas on labels of millions of medicine bottles to combat counterfeiting, abuse and fraud... Developing...
Quick as a, well, ninja, our next national threat emerges from the shadows.
(Yes, that's a very sexyful reference in the title, if I do say so myself.)
Well, quite a bit, actually. And liberal blogger Michael J. Totten writes that until the left starts assembling a coherent approach to the subject, they risk being out of the White House for a very long time.
I'd like to think that back in 2002, I was a couple of years ahead of the cur