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I Blame The Stonecutters
TCS Daily looks at "Who Killed the Electric Car?" In a related article, TCS compares a broadband-speed Internet with a dial-up-rated Interstate Highway System. Oceania, Eurasia, Eastasia, Etc.
By Ed Driscoll · June 28, 2006 11:28 AM · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Memory Hole · War And Anti-War
Sweetness & Light reminds us of the New York Times' shifting position on fighting terrorism by routing out its finances with an op-ed written immediately after 9/11 that concludes, "If America is going to wage a new kind of war against terrorism, it must act on all fronts, including the financial one". That's 180-degrees opposite from their current worldview, but then I guess if you flip-flop enough times, you become immune to the effects of whiplash. Meanwhile, Ranting Professors explains to Howard Kurtz why the Times has earned conservatives' wrath on this issue: People are angriest at the Times because the Times went first. They broke the story. At that point the decision was out of the hands of the other papers -- it's just that simple. In fact, as Patterico points out (indeed as the Kurtz story mentions) once the Times posted their story, there really was no decision to be made by the other papers.A few years ago, Bernie Goldberg documented in Arrogance how much the rest of the legacy media takes its lead from the Times--and has for several decades. Nice to see that even in an age of demassified media, some things never change amongst the walking Jurassic. Update: In a new City Journal essay, Nicole Gelinas writes: One of the New York Times’s justifications for exposing the Bush administration’s post-9/11 scrutiny of international banking transactions via access to Swift, the Belgium-based international banking-information system, is that the American people never gave the feds permission to snoop into banking records—even those of suspected Islamist terrorists. Thus, the Times must save the day by alerting us all. But there’s a flaw in this justification. When the Bush administration did ask the American people for permission to scrutinize banking records for terrorist activity, Congress practically shouted yes, without public objection.Certainly not the Times', but hey, that was then, and this now. Heretics Or Traitors? Old Saying Or New?
Clive Davis links to Norm Geras, who writes: As the old political saying has it, the Right looks for converts, the Left looks for traitors....Clive notes that "This saying was new to Norm. And to me too". And me three--the "old saying" I've heard was slightly different--well, it's about four years old, as the first time I heard it was in an August 2002 Instapundit post, where Glenn Reynolds wrote: I disagree with the Christian bloggers on most of their core issues; probably the only thing we're in full agreement on is that the Catholic Church's behavior in covering up its sex scandal has been shameful. We're at odds on cloning, on abortion, and often on birth control and evolution, though the Christian bloggers aren't as unified on those last two issues. But they're always polite.The use of the word "heretics" sounds less charged to me than "traitors"--it least doesn't imply that if you don't follow orders, you risk being shot. And certainly, much of the Kossites-versus-the-world/MSM-versus-Kos battles of the past couple of months have been all about exposing and expelling heretics--with both sides claiming ideological purity, even as the general public at large couldn't care less about the players or their issues. Update: Somewhat related thoughts, here. Israel Strikes Gaza
By Ed Driscoll · June 28, 2006 01:15 AM · War And Anti-War
Pajamas has an extensive round-up of links. "All The Times That's Fit To Sell"
On CNN/Money's Website, media analyst Paul R. La Monica suggests that it wedding bells may be in order for the Gray Lady, if she wants to survive: Some day, hopefully sooner rather than later for New York Times investors, the controlling shareholders will figure out that it would be better off swallowing family pride and selling out.And karmic justice and I know who the appropriate suitor would be! (Yes, he already owns one New York City newspaper. If he added the Times to his Gotham stable, which paper would he chose to fold? Now that would be a fun decision to have to make. But either way, it's a win for New York!) Update: Hey, a Wonkette-lanchette! For those of you clicking through, I hope you're not as satirically challenged as the writer of this post seems to have been. Incidentally, here's someone else who's proposing a suitor for the Times. There's a very, very slight chance he's kidding as well. Is Chutch About To Be Chucked?
By Ed Driscoll · June 26, 2006 02:44 PM · God And Man At Dupont University · The Return of the Primitive
I'll believe it when it finally happens, but according to a local Denver news channel's Website, "The University of Colorado announced Monday that it will dismiss controversial professor Ward Churchill". Of course, to paraphrase (and use in an entirely different context) a line from M*A*S*H, Chutch is merely a symptom. The disease continues to run rampant throughout academia. Update: Occidentality has a round-up of additional links. Zaha Hadid's Kitchen of the Future
By Ed Driscoll · June 26, 2006 01:01 PM · From Bauhaus To Our House
Zaha Hadid is an Iraqi-born and British-based architect whose ideas are some of the most exciting I've seen in a long time. Blending modernism and expressionism, her works at least look like what the future I always imagined as a kid should resemble, unlike most bland postmodern designs. According to this blog, she has an exhibit running through October in the Guggenheim, which incorporates her design for the kitchen of the future: It's not quite Joan [sic] Jetson's kitchen, with the ability to relieve you from all the mundane kitchen chores like cooking or washing dishes, but I'd trade my kitchen in for one like this any day.All it lacks is a replicator in which to say, "Tea, Earl Grey, hot". (Via Technorati.) Don't Hold Your Breath
By Ed Driscoll · June 26, 2006 12:03 PM · Oh, That Liberal Media!
A call for the Times to lose its White House access: The president should match this morning’s tough talk with concrete action. Publications such as the Times, which act irresponsibly when given access to secrets on which national security depends, should have their access to government reduced. Their press credentials should be withdrawn. Reporting is surely a right, but press credentials are a privilege. This kind of conduct ought not be rewarded with privileged access.It'll never happen, but by God, it would be fun to watch the meltdown in the house that Pinch built, if it ever did. The Mona Log
By Ed Driscoll · June 26, 2006 11:55 AM · The New, New Journalism
Mona Charen is now blogging; update bookmarks accordingly. That'll Leave A Mark
By Ed Driscoll · June 26, 2006 10:20 AM · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The New, New Journalism · War And Anti-War
Well, actually, probably not, because the New York Times' Bill Keller is too cocooned to notice. But this post by Glenn Reynolds eviscerates both Keller's moronic defense of the Times' exposure of classified wartime programs... Some of the incoming mail quotes the angry words of conservative bloggers and TV or radio pundits who say that drawing attention to the government's anti-terror measures is unpatriotic and dangerous. (I could ask, if that's the case, why they are drawing so much attention to the story themselves by yelling about it on the airwaves and the Internet.)...And he explains the origins of America's press freedoms to boot. Or to paraphrase a man who surely must be one of Keller's heroes, these pixels were made for you and me. Update: Boy, if you thought Keller's argument above sounds specious, wait'll you see the first draft! (Man, and I thought my first drafts were pretty sketchy...) NRO's J.G. On K.R.'s T.R. Worship
By Ed Driscoll · June 26, 2006 10:01 AM · Democracy In America
Jonah Goldberg writes"Enough with the TR worship!": There's some good stuff in Karl Rove's piece on TR, but this strikes me as good a moment as any to just say it: Enough with the TR worship! TR was a great man, an amazing man, an inspirational man. But he was no conservative in the sense conservatives should emulate today. As Rove notes, TR said "I like big things." Well one of them was big government. He adored Bismarck's Prussia (as did Wilson). He subscribed to modern Darwinian racism (as did Wilson). He was a Progressive in every sense of the word and his politics are of a piece of the Progressive era, an era — contra many in today's Republican Party — conservatives should be loath to mimic. TR worship is a switchback tactic to glorify the intellectual and political heritage of the pre-Goldwater GOP. There is honor there, to be sure. But better to cherry pick the nice patriotic bits and leave the rest of the pile in the dustbin of history. The Weekly Standard was wrong — and flagrantly so in retrospect — to put TR (and "National Greatness") back on the conservative mantle. In the 1990s post-Cold War conservatives were wrong to speak glowingly of the Progressive era. And they are all wrong today when they try to find an escape clause from conservative skepticism toward big government by slapping the pseudo-intellectual feel-good label "progressive" to whatever it is they're looking to do.That's something that Jonah explored further in his syndicated column. Grim Pythonish Deja Vu
Waaay back during the early days of this blog, in September of 2002, I spotted a Monty Python-like moment between UN weapons inspectors and Saddam Hussein's lackeys: Charles Johnson writes that "Iraq officially says their declaration to the UN will claim they possess no banned weapons...[but] an anonymous Iraqi official threatens to use these non-existent weapons".Power Line spots a similar moment occurring within Iran's efforts to acquire its own WMDs: Over at Power Line Video, check out Mohsen Rezai, Secretary of the Iranian Expediency Council, as he discusses Iran's situation vis-a-vis the United States on Iranian television. He says that "Iran has achieved a great thing" by stalling off the United Nations, and offers an analysis of American power that includes the hoary "paper tiger" theme.There is no attempt to build nuclear weapons in Iran, absolutely none, and when I say that there is none, I do mean that there is a certain amount. (But cannibalism is right out. Check out North Korea--on its own quest to launch nuclear weapons--for that. Seriously.) Update: If the Pythons were still active, this would have made a great sketch as well. The Ascension of Charlie's Angels' Angel
By Ed Driscoll · June 24, 2006 12:39 AM · Hollywood, Interrupted
Just saw on Drudge that Aaron Spelling died, at age 83. As his (no doubt largely pre-written) CNN obituary notes, Spelling produced a superfluity of fluffy hour-long series, hitting his peak in the 1970s, when he had an exclusive deal with ABC: Spelling's other hit series included "Love Boat," "Fantasy Island," "Burke's Law," "The Mod Squad," "Starsky and Hutch," "T.J. Hooker," "Matt Houston," "Hart to Hart" and "Hotel." He kept his hand in 21st-century TV with series including "7th Heaven" and "Summerland."As Todd Gitlin astutely observed in his 1983 book, Inside Prime Time, beginning with The Mod Squad, Spelling hit upon his primary formula: a group of young, photogenic leads, and somewhere in the background, a father figure who both provided the older generation with a reason to watch the show, and comforted them that the leads wouldn’t go too far off the beaten bath of societal norms. (Remember, we’re talking 1970s network television here, which was rather tame when compared to your average HBO series of today). Spelling took that formula to its absolute peak with Charlie’s Angels, which built on The Mod Squad's trio of hip young leads, but replaced the sixties-era psychedelic drop-outs with three drop-dead gorgeous women fighting crime not in bell-bottoms and headbands, but very 1970s-style Nolan Miller-designed outfits. The Angels actually had two father figures to keep them out of trouble--the eunuch-like David Doyle on-camera, and above him on the crime fighting food chain, the perfect boss, voiced by the suave John Forsythe, but literally just off-screen. Thus, as Gitlin noted, every man watching the show could pretend that he was Charlie, and “the girls” worked for him. As a television formula, it worked absolutely brilliantly, and the show was a huge ratings smash. It’s no coincidence that the peaks of both Johnny Carson and Spelling’s careers were in the same era; As Jeff Jarvis wrote when Carson passed away: Carson also represented the golden age of America's shared experience in media. That era lasted about three decades, from the late '50s to the late '80s, when the three networks turned most cities into one-newspaper towns and we all watched the same thing. I don't regret that era dying; it means we now have more choice and choice equals control. But it was a unique time in our culture, when popular culture became a common platform, a common touchstone for Americans. We all got Johnny's jokes.And, for better or worse, we all watched Aaron’s shows. Thanks to Nick At Nite and its TV Land spin-off, insomniacs at least, are doomed to watch those shows into eternity. And if there's a God, He's forcing Spelling to as well, in Sisyphean penance. The irony is that Spelling's probably enjoying them. Update: Aaron Spelling: Straussian Neo-Con! Retaking The University
Last year, as Ward Churchill's antics helped to reveal how out of control much of the modern academy seems, Roger Kimball of The New Criterion wrote a powerful essay titled, "Retaking the university: a battle plan". As Kimball writes: Many parents are alarmed, rightly so, at the spectacle of their children going off to college one year and coming back the next having jettisoned every moral, religious, social, and political scruple that they had been brought up to believe. Why should parents fund the moral de-civilization of their children at the hands of tenured antinomians? Why should alumni generously support an alma mater whose political and educational principles nourish a world view that is not simply different from but diametrically opposed to the one they endorse? Why should trustees preside over an institution whose faculty systematically repudiates the pedagogical mission they, as trustees, have committed themselves to uphold? These are questions that should be asked early and asked often.In that effort, Power Line notes that Kimball is adopting his essay into a book, to be released in November. In the meatime, here's a sample of the piece it will build upon: Read More » The Daily Show: Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out Of Voting
By Ed Driscoll · June 23, 2006 02:48 PM · Oh, That Liberal Media!
In the Washington Post, Richard Moran has a column portentously titled, "Jon Stewart, Enemy of Democracy?". It begins: This is not funny: Jon Stewart and his hit Comedy Central cable show may be poisoning democracy.According to Wikipedia (and yes, take it for what it's worth), The Daily Show averages 1.5 million viewers nightly. If that's a million and a half young, underinformed cynics of college age (but I repeat myself in triplicate) who consider The Daily Show to actually be news and then decide not to vote, Stewart has done the nation a great service. We salute him. (And besides, every once in a blue state moon, he's capable of broaching a topic avoided by real reporters who no longer care to do their jobs.) Update: Allah agrees: "Making jaded hipsters less inclined to vote is really more of a feature than a bug, isn’t it?" Exactly. Another Update: Ed Morrissey adds, "Poking fun continuously without ever taking responsibility to advance some rational agenda as an alternative amounts to a form of political cowardice". Exactly. Compare And Contrast
By Ed Driscoll · June 23, 2006 02:43 PM · War And Anti-War
Ben Wattenberg, who served on the LBJ White House staff before becoming a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute compares and contrasts LBJ's war with President Bush's: The central similarity is that both wars were defensive efforts against a global foe. We were right to fear the expansion of totalitarian Communism. We lost that battle — actually the South Vietnamese Army lost it two and a half years after we disengaged — but we won the war. Wars, after all, are won by the party that triumphs in the final showdown: The Soviet Union has disappeared, and its satellites deorbited. In Iraq, our foe is jihadism, which likewise seeks global domination. To think that they can’t achieve this against a technologically superior West is simply a failure of imagination: One terrorist with a smallpox virus might be able to wipe out half a population. Another similarity has to do with our domestic politics. President Lyndon B. Johnson lost no opportunity to explain why we were in Vietnam: from major speeches to arrival and departure statements for important visitors. I was on his staff from mid-1966 to the end, and at parties and dinners in Washington I would repeat the president’s rationale with gusto. Many times, people would respond, “Gee, I wish LBJ would explain it that way.” Sound familiar? President George W. Bush always talks about Iraq — yet we keep hearing the same line: “Why doesn’t he explain the war?” With the exception of one paragraph (on the “ownership society”) Bush’s Second Inaugural was entirely devoted to the rationale for the war. It’s worth reading: a magnificent speech, right in the American grain, one that will be remembered for as long as liberty is an issue on this planet. And the rationale has not changed.Indeed. Night Of The Living Podcast
The must be my day for podcasting: earlier today, an article I wrote on podcasting for the July issue of CE Pro, the home theater professionals' trade publication went live (subscription may be required). And while I'm in the middle of mixing and editing Pajamas' Blog Week In Review podcast (which should go live tomorrow, once I finish it and upload it to Pajamas HQ), over at TCS Daily, the first part of my two-part podcast interview with Michael Yon and Chris Muir went live. Click on over! Spin That Sarin
During his press conference today, Donald Rumsfeld fielded this exchange: QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, there has been a lot made on Capitol Hill about these chemical weapons that were found and may be quite old. But do you a real concern of these weapons from Saddam's past perhaps having an impact on U.S. troops who are on the ground in Iraq right now?It's amusing to watch the pushback from the left after Santorum's press conference yesterday. Beginning in mid-2003, the mantra began that Saddam had no WMDs--zip, zero, nadda. Or as Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said as recently as last week, "There are two things that don't exist in Iraq: cutting and running, and weapons of mass destruction." Now the latest version being fielded is that, well, Saddam had them, but they were old, outdated. pay them no mind. Of Senator Kerry's time in Vietnam, James Lileks once wrote, "The past was more malleable than you had ever expected." But if anything, that's even more true when it comes to Iraq than the Winter Soldier's salad days. Just look at Al Gore in 1993, and today. Update: Evangelical Outpost notes correctly: Opposition to the war has nothing to do with the lack of WMDs. It never did. We could find a nuclear bomb in Uday Hussein’s old apartment and John Kerry would still be gearing up for Winter Soldier II. Unless you dropped your moral compass off the side of a swift boat in Cambodia, it’s easy to see that the world is safer because we secured the one WMD that truly mattered: Saddam Hussein.Meanwhile, Shannon Love ressurects Hitchcock's McGuffin device to explain why Saddam's WMDs were ignorned or spun by the left. Update: Ian Schwartz has a round-up of cable and Blogosphere opinion. Bloody Dan The Gunslinging Anchorman!
When Hollywood Reporter quotes Mike Wallace as saying that Dan Rather's depature from CBS was a "sad, bloody story," they had no idea how much metaphoric blood was on Dan's hands, according to The New York Observer: Peter Boyer, the New Yorker writer and author of the 1989 book Who Killed CBS?, said, “Dan Rather is a creature of a strange, unrealistic, almost surreal arrangement that is so long past, and such an anachronism—which is to say three networks with a captive nationwide audience—that you wonder how he might psychically adapt to being part of the tiniest fraction of the most fragmented form of communication that exists. I don’t know. I guess that’ll be up to Dan and his shrinks in the future.”There’s a trail of bodies--and Dan, "the lone gunfighter" has plugged 'em full of lead during "all these gunbattles"? No wonder "he’s so f***ing alone"--look at his body count! Geez. I thought violence on television was restricted to prime time--when did anchormen go from being overhyped newsreaders to trigger-happy gunslingers? Given the gunslinging image of the man in the oval office (who also made his mark in Texas before going national), and given what the Azlan/MEChA men think of the 19th century American expansion into the west, is this an anology the left really wants to use to describe one of its favorite television sons? Update: As we discussed this story over lunch, my wife mentioned the binary world of television journalism--when it's going right, the anchorman is a gunslinging crusader (just to keep the analogies rendered anathema by PC correctness going) but if there's a problem? Well, as Walter Cronkite said last year: Cronkite did not heavily fault Rather for his role in last September's discredited story about President Bush's military service. Rather anchored the "60 Minutes Wednesday" story.Hey, he's just a newsreader--it's the producer who writes the copy! Which is true, as Tom Wolfe noted in 1980: Read More » The End Of Days
By Ed Driscoll · June 22, 2006 11:25 AM · Bobos In Paradise · The Future and its Enemies · The New Puritans
James Lileks writes, "I am not susceptible to disaster scenarios": I do not believe we have ten years to prevent the inevitable collapse of civilization. As long as I can remember I have been fed end-times scenarios – death by ice, death by fire, death by famine, death by smothering from heaps of clambering humans scrabbling for purchase on an overpopulated world, death by full-scale nuclear exchange, death by unstoppable global AIDS, death by a two-degree rise in temperatures, death by radon, death by alar, death by inadvertent Audi acceleration, death by juju. Doesn’t mean we won’t die of juju. But somehow we survive. The only thing I take away is a vague wistful wonder what it would be like to live in an era when things were generally so bad that the futurists spent their time assuring us it would be better. Say what you will about the past, but at least they had a future. All I’ve ever had, according to the experts, is a grim narrow window of heedless ignorance bliss followed by a dystopian irradiated world characterized by scarcity, mutation, and quite possibly intelligent chimps. You have no future. Oh, and don’t smoke!Oh sure--laugh it up for now. But what happens when the Doomsday Machine arrives?! Krauthammer's Law Gets A Corollary
One of the most-quoted lines by Charles Krauthammer came from a 2002 column, which began thusly: To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.Peggy Noonan drafts a variation on this theme: Democratic leaders in Washington are in a worse position than Republican leaders in Washington. Neither likes their base, really, and both think they are smarter. But the Democrats think, deep down, that their base is barking mad. The Republicans don't. They just think their base is a bore.For some thoughts on the first half of Noonan's equation, click here. Update: North Carolina seems to be taking Noonan's Law a bit too seriously, it seems... Santorum: WMDs In Iraq
Rick Santorum issued a press release today which reads as follows: Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, joined Congressman Peter Hoekstra, (R-MI-2), Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, today to make a major announcement regarding the release of newly declassified information that proves the existence of chemical munitions in Iraq since 2003. The information was released by the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, and contained an unclassified summary of analysis conducted by the National Ground Intelligence Center. In March, Senator Santorum began advocating for the release of these documents to the American public.Why, it's like all this knowledge went down the memory hole or something! Update: Not surprisingly, Ed Morrissey and Allahpundit have more. Another Update: Santorum was on Hugh Hewitt's show to discuss this topic, follow this link to an eventual transcript. Meanwhile, here's a transcript of a press conference that Santorum and Congressman Peter Hoekstra (R-NY) held today. L.A. Confidential
Come to Los Angeles! The sun shines bright, the beaches are wide and inviting, and the orange groves stretch as far as the eye can see. There are jobs aplenty, and land is cheap. Every working man can have his own house, and inside every house, a happy, all-American family. You can have all this, and who knows... you could even be discovered, become a movie star... or at least see one. Off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush, you can also meet a certain very prominent shoe blogger and his posse and spend a marvelous evening trading thoughts on the John Lobb, the New & Lingwood, the Prada, and the Hasselhoff... RatherGate: "Intense Scrutiny" Not Needed To See Flaws
By Ed Driscoll · June 19, 2006 11:59 PM · Oh, That Liberal Media!
Hollywood Reporter writes that Tuesday could be Dan Rather's last day at CBS. But it gets one detail of the debacle known as RatherGate exactly backwards: Rather's position with the network had been strained after a September 2004 report he did for "60 Minutes Wednesday" that questioned President Bush's National Guard service during the Vietnam War. The report, which was prepared by producer Mary Mapes and only involved Rather minimally, was based upon documents that failed to live up to intense scrutiny.The problem with the documents in question didn't require "intense scrutiny". Quite the contrary--it was immediately apparent to anyone who looked (who wasn't so invested in the story that it had to be--had! to! be!--true) that the documents were fake; intense scrutiny was only needed afterwards to confirm the obvious without a doubt. Something that should have been applied to these documents before they were chosen to build a story around, not afterwards. The State Of The State Of The Art
Opinion Journal goes in search of the base truths of modern art: Once in a while a news story so speaks for itself that it threatens to put commentators out of a job.Meanwhile, James Lileks checks in on the state of modern architecture: As for the building’s interaction with the street, well – it doesn’t have a great deal to say, other than “Damn, I’m blue.”You'll be too, when you're done. But click anyway. The Horror...The Horror...
Back in 2002, when I suggested that the last person watching turn off the lights at MSNBC when she was done watching, I had no idea Connie Chung would take me so literally! NOTE: The management of Ed Driscoll.com, YouTube, and Pajamas Media are not responsible for the psychic damage that clicking on the above link could cause. Click at your own risk! (Via Hot Air.) Al Gore: The Ultimate Neocon Ringer!
By Ed Driscoll · June 19, 2006 10:19 PM · Bobos In Paradise · The Future and its Enemies · War And Anti-War
David Frum links to a New York Sun article that discovers the, err, inconvenient truth hidden in Al Gore's agenda: For the watchdogs of Israeli influence in Washington, I have an inconvenient truth, indeed. You have a powerful new enemy. Forget the neocons and the regime change in Iraq. Now is the time for the self-appointed guardians of the national interest to look over the horizon and see the next operation the agents of the Jewish state in America are plotting.Read the whole thing. And then click on this for the misdirection play that absolutely clinches it! (And yes, I'm kidding about that last part. Or am I...?) If That's Likable, I'd Hate To See Him When He's Angry
Slate has an at times fawning profile of Garrison Keillor this weekend: Keillor's humor has always been a bit of a puzzle: What is its irony/sincerity ratio? Is he mocking Midwesterners or mocking the rest of us via Midwesterners? In 1985, when Time magazine called Keillor the funniest man in America, Bill Cosby reportedly said, "That's true if you're a pilgrim." A decade later, a cartoon version of Keillor forced Homer Simpson to assault his TV and shout, "Be more funny!" But judging Keillor by mainstream standards of comedy (compression, originality, edge) misses the point. He works hard to be unfunny in a very particular way. His humor is polite, understated, and deliberately anachronistic; it never breaks a sweat.I don't know how much perspiration Keillor was generating when he spoke to a university in November of 2004, but it's certainly not my definition of polite: “I am a Democrat—it’s no secret. I am a museum-quality Democrat,” Keillor said. “Last night I spent my time crouched in a fetal position, rolling around and moaning in the dark.”And in a 2002 piece for Salon, Keillor wrote of Norm Coleman, Minnesota's then-newly elected Republican senator: Norm got a free ride from the press. St. Paul is a small town and anybody who hangs around the St. Paul Grill knows about Norm's habits. Everyone knows that his family situation is, shall we say, very interesting, but nobody bothered to ask about it, least of all the religious people in the Republican Party. They made their peace with hypocrisy long ago. So this false knight made his way as an all-purpose feel-good candidate, standing for vaguely Republican values, supporting the president.In 2004, Keillor wrote the following passage about Coleman's voters: ...hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, see-through fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, hobby cops, misanthropic frat boys, lizardskin cigar monkeys, jerktown romeos, ninja dittoheads, the shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, cheese merchants, cat stranglers, taxi dancers, grab-ass executives, gun fetishists, genteel pornographers, pill pushers, chronic nappers, nihilists in golf pants, backed-up Baptists, Crips and Bloods of the boardroom...Near his conclusion, Sam Anderson, the author of the Slate piece writes: once Keillor's trademark simplicity begins to look complicated and unnatural—the paradoxes start tumbling out like herrings out of the pickle-barrel: His plainness seems pretentious, his anti-bombast bombastic, his anti-snobbery snobbish. This sense of affectation is why some people instinctively dislike such a likable entertainer.Or maybe--just maybe--they simply dislike being dubbed hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, see-through fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, hobby cops, misanthropic frat boys, lizardskin cigar monkeys, jerktown romeos, ninja dittoheads, the shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, cheese merchants, cat stranglers, taxi dancers, grab-ass executives, gun fetishists, genteel pornographers, pill pushers, chronic nappers, nihilists in golf pants, backed-up Baptists, Crips and Bloods of the boardroom. But hey, Keillor's humor has always been a bit of a puzzle, as the article notes. Good Night Dan, And Good Luck
By Ed Driscoll · June 17, 2006 08:51 PM · Oh, That Liberal Media!
As Tom McGuire writes, the New York Times "delivers a poignant look at Dan Rather's sunset": The 74-year-old man with the Mets cap pulled far down on his forehead slid into a booth at a diner on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and ordered a glass of milk without so much as turning a head — so quietly, in fact, that it was hard to believe it was Dan Rather.Cuban, as the Times article notes, was also the producer of Good Night And Good Luck, which, as liberal journalist Jack Shafer noted in Slate, is riddled with errors and distortions. But then of course, so is Rather. Maxine Waters: Majority Of Americans Support Iraq War
As Betsy Newmark writes, "Maxine Waters reveals a bit of the truth", though rather inadvertently, of course: In the debate yesterday over the House Resolution on the Iraq War and battle against terrorism, Maxine Waters, always entertaining, revealed the real reason why the Democrats were so upset. (Thanks to Laura Ingraham for posting the audio.) She got up on the House floor and said that many Democrats were going to be "trapped" because they would have to vote on this resolution and they don't want to have to pick a side and vote on it.So in other words, if you add together to majority of the electorate that voted for President Bush in 2004, and the "half of [the] constituents" in Democrat districts that Waters refers to, the 256 in favor, 153 opposed vote yesterday sounds like, if anything, actually a smaller representation of what the national consensus actually is, despite post-voting waffling by Waters and others on the left. Barone: Left Wing Nostalgia Dies Hard
By Ed Driscoll · June 17, 2006 11:05 AM · Bobos In Paradise · Oh, That Liberal Media! · War And Anti-War
Speaking of being trapped in a fashionable Mobius loop, Michael Barone explores how the war in Iraq is framed by the left: Historians may regard it as a curious thing that the left and the press have been so determined to fit current events into templates based on events that occurred 30 to 40 years ago. The people who effectively framed the issues raised by Vietnam and Watergate did something like the opposite; they insisted that Vietnam was not a reprise of World War II or Korea and that Watergate was something different from the operations J. Edgar Hoover conducted for Franklin Roosevelt or John Kennedy. Journalists in the 1940s, '50s and early '60s tended to believe they had a duty to buttress Americans' faith in their leaders and their government. Journalists since Vietnam and Watergate have tended to believe that they have a duty to undermine such faith, especially when the wrong party is in office.Err, not in the forseeable future. On the other hand, as Barone notes, trying to shove events into a pre-existing template has its downsides: It has been a tough 10 days for those who see current events through the prisms of Vietnam and Watergate. First, the Democrats failed to win a breakthrough victory in the California 50th District special election--a breakthrough that would have summoned up memories of Democrats winning Gerald Ford's old congressional district in a special election in 1974. Instead the Democratic nominee got 45% of the vote, just 1% more than John Kerry did in the district in 2004.Add one more to the list, as Jonah Goldberg notes: I don't think we can over-estimate the significance of the fact that Dan Rather will be leaving CBS. I don't see how you can interpret this as anything less than his firing over Memogate. Undoubtedly, in my mind, CBS felt in 2004 that they couldn't sack him on the spot because of how it would appear. His slow departure and temporary job-shuffling was a face-saving effort for both Rather and CBS. But, the delay doesn't discount the fact that if it weren't for Memogate, Rather would probably still be the esteemed anchor of CBS News. This constitutes a monumental triumph for the rightwing blogosphere and I don't think we should let it be obscured by the kabuki dance CBS put on to downplay their embarrassment.And another example of Mobius loops coming full circle ad infinitum (sorry, just intertwining as many metaphors as possible), CBS is ejecting Rather to make way for Katie Couric, in much the same way Rather forced the issue for Walter Cronkite two decades ago. Whistling Dixie: Root Causes
By Ed Driscoll · June 17, 2006 10:32 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Bobos In Paradise · The Return of the Primitive · War And Anti-War
Ian Schwartz asks, "Why Do The Dixie Chicks Hate America?". The answer (or at least the root causes of what is a surprisingly ancient and reactionary fashion now sclerotic, hard and covered with liver spots) is blowing in the wind... See also this essay; scroll down for the history of another previously apolitical musician gone round the bend. Update: Tammy Bruce writes: since [Natalie Maines of the Dixies says] she "doesn't understand" patriotism, I have a short list of a few concepts which epitomize America and illustrate why we goofballs so love this country.Read the rest. C'Mon, Tell Us How You Really Feel
By Ed Driscoll · June 16, 2006 01:35 AM · Hollywood, Interrupted
Libertas reviews Warners' 260 million dollar Superman Returns: here’s what I think of director Bryan Singer’s $260 million Superman Returns: I think it stinks. I think it’s a complete waste of your time and money. I think it’s a film made by idiots, for idiots - a film made for people whose standards have dropped so far, they don’t even remember what a good film was like.It's hard to tell, but I'm guessing that's a thumbs down vote. Superman, incidentally, has been updated a little: Our new Superman, incidentally, doesn’t even stand for “Truth, Justice & The American Way,” anymore. Playing Daily Planet editor Perry White, Frank Langella tells us that Superman stands for “Truth and Justice …” and leaves it at that. The Superman Returns press materials tell me that Superman now stands for “truth, justice and all that is good.” “All that is good” is apparently the phrase of choice when “The American Way” sounds too - what? Imperialistic? Jingoistic? Symptomatic of Bush-style militarism? I’m not sure, exactly. All I know is this ‘American Way’ stuff is now apparently too edgy and controversial for a Warner Brothers product shipped to Peru, Pakistan and Malaysia. Don’t want to offend anyone!Except the red states, of course. But they're expendable. Another Pajamas Podcast On The Way
Look for it go online later today at Pajamas HQ, with another special guest sitting in for Glenn Reynolds this week. (I'm sworn to secrecy on this one...) While you're waiting for it to go online, to other great audio files to pass the time: Mark Steyn's weekly visit to Hugh Hewitt (which is normally required listening for me on Thursdays, except we were taping the podcast at that time yesterday) and...the return of James Lileks' Diner, back after a fresh tank of bandwidth has been deposited in his account. Update: It's up. Hey, I could have sworn it was Michelle Malkin who was sitting in yesterday. Apparently though, it was actually The Mommas And The Pappas... One From The Thumb
By Ed Driscoll · June 15, 2006 01:03 PM · War And Anti-War
If al-Qaeda in Iraq reads Western news sources, and their media-savvy but tactically insane recent communications suggest they do, they may soon decide that their operation has blown its cover completely. After an AQ associate dropped a dime on Zarqawi, they now have a much larger security breach than they knew:Ed notes however, that a much more controversial method of obtaining additional information may be tried:Iraq's national security adviser said Thursday a "huge treasure" of documents and computer records was seized after the raid on terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's hideout, giving the Iraqi government the upper hand in its fight against al-Qaida in Iraq. Prime Minister Maliki has a plan for the other native insurgents: amnesty. However, his proposal has a clause to which the US will plainly object, which allows terrorists who have conducted attacks on US forces in the past to walk free if they lay down their arms.Read the rest. "Climate Change" As The New Holocaust
By Ed Driscoll · June 15, 2006 12:42 PM · Bobos In Paradise · The Assault On Reason · The Future and its Enemies · The Reich Stuff
Jonah Goldberg and Betsy Newmark have some thoughts on Al Gore's language--both in 1992's Earth In The Balance and this year's An Inconvenient Truth comparing global cooling (sorry, that was the 1970s), global warming, climate change, or whatever the expression du jour is, to the Holocaust. Betsy writes: But, Goldberg asks, if addressing the crisis of global warming demands the same diligence and dedication that fighting the Nazis demanded, why isn't Gore proposing similar sacrifices today to fight global warming? For a start, they should be out there denouncing the movie Cars for glorifying the weapons of mass destruction that cars are in this global crisis. They should be campaigning against NASCAR. But, of course, they won't be doing these things because it would be political suicide. So, now we know where they draw the line. They'll talk a good game, but they won't actually propose anything or say anything that would offend potential voters.Oh, I don't know--Arnold Schwarzenegger's been doing a pretty good job of taking his conservative base for granted, with all of his recent talk about global warming. Update: Jonah debates Mark Schmitt of The Decembrist and the New America Foundation on this topic in a video podcast at Bloggingheads.tv. And Speaking Of The Long Tail
Glenn Reynolds has a great post on mil-bloggers and their efforts in short-circuiting the legacy media's role in (inadvertently and otherwise) aiding terrorism: Reader Michael Russo notes why this matters:Just ask CNN.Reader Michael Russo notes why this matters:Terrorism is an information war disguised as a military operation. The press plays a symbiotic role, and isn't willing to address that.Notice strategy number one for Al Qaeda based on the Zarquawi safe house documents: Ed On The Tammy Show
By Ed Driscoll · June 15, 2006 11:58 AM · Ed On The 'Net
Just had another appearance on The Tammy Bruce Show, this time to discuss Chris Anderson's concept of the Long Tail and how it impacts the Blogosphere, which I wrote about a while back for TCS Daily. Anderson's new book is due out early next month; you can order it now though from Amazon, which as I discussed with Tammy, is dramatically impacting the Tail as well. Watch this space for more coverage on that topic, shortly. Oh--and for the original T.A.M.I. Show with James Brown, click here. I think I covered the breakup of mass media reasonably well, but unlike James, my Electric Boogaloo is awfully rusty these days. The Amp That Led Zeppelin
By Ed Driscoll · June 14, 2006 11:28 PM · All You Need Is Ears
Vintage Guitar magazine looks back nostalgically at the Supro Thunderbolt guitar amplifier, a tiny amp with a roaring sound, one that's all over Led Zeppelin's iconic first album. Egypt: "We Ban Any Book That Insults Any Religion"
Debbie Schlussel notes that while Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni claims that his nation bans "any book that insults any religion", including The Da Vinci Code, there are definitely exceptions that he's willing to make. Like Mein Kampf. Oh, and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, both burning up Egypt's best seller lists. But hey, other than those... Update: Not surprisingly, Iran's doing a fair amount of banning as well: Middle Eastern ban: It is the second time in two years that Iran has prohibited a publication of international repute for failing to use the term "Persian Gulf" in its maps. In November 2004, it banned the National Geographic atlas when a new edition appeared with the term "Arabian Gulf" in parenthesis beside the more commonly used Persian Gulf.Meanwhile, Betsy Newmark looks at more homegrown censorship. Update: Egypt's Big Pharaoh has some thoughts on the banning of Da Vinci: People downloaded the movie from the internet and passed it from one PC to the other. It was even uploaded to my company's shared network. Banning books and movies will do nothing except raise people's curiosity who end up doing everything to see the controversial material.As Michael Medved noted last month, American Christians have only recently begun to understand that their getting up in arms about Hollywood's product is expected by Hollywood, and deliberately incorporated into its marketing plans. CNN's Exile In Reutersville
Here's Reuters' world view, as James Taranto noted on September 24th, 2001: Stephen Jukes, global news editor for Reuters, the British wire service, has ordered his scribes not to use the word terror to refer to the Sept. 11 atrocity. . . . "We all know that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter and that Reuters upholds the principle that we do not use the word terrorist," Jukes writes in an internal memo. "To be frank, it adds little to call the attack on the World Trade Center a terrorist attack."And from just this week...This is CNN: CARL AZUZ, CNN STUDENT NEWS REPORTER: WordCentral.com defines terrorism as the use of a violent or destructive act to achieve a goal. Why is it so difficult for the international community to agree on a definition for terrorism?Err, if such acts are "totally unacceptable", then why the scare quotes, the "so-called" obfuscating, and all of the dissembling? Roger Ailes of Fox News once told C-Span's Brian Lamb that CNN's CNNi, their international feed, frequently is much more anti-American than the version of CNN that Americans watch--almost in Al Jazeera territory. On the other hand, as Ailes noted, CNNi's tone is also good for business: Well, the best way to get distribution around the world is to be the BBC or Al Jazeera or CNNi, basically do -- if you watch it day in and day out, you can't find a whole lot good about America. Now, they have no obligation to do good stories about America, but they do have an obligation to have balance and context. And Al Jazeera simply doesn't. BBC doesn't. And CNNi is less offensive, but they don't do it much, either. And I think that context is critically important to the news.I quoted Ailes early last year during the scandal that arose after CNNi's founder Eason Jordan was lying about American troops targeting reporters for assassination. Jordan's one shining moment as a journalist was coming clean with the American people in April of 2003 with the fact that Saddam Hussein had previously controlled CNN's news coverage of Iraq, after Hussein was toppled by American-led forces. But sadly, it looks like even after 9/11, even after Saddam's fall, even after years of terrorism that has killed and otherwise impacted far more Middle Eastern Muslims than Americans, little has changed in CNN's collective world view. (Via Hugh Hewitt, who writes, "No Wonder the Iraqi Defense Minister Says 'I Hate CNN'".) The Best Peter Gabriel Homage, Ever
By Ed Driscoll · June 13, 2006 11:49 PM · All You Need Is Ears
It doesn't hurt that it co-stars Gabriel himself... Poll Dancing
The International Herald Tribune (owned by the New York Times) has this week's hell-in-a-handbasket poll: As the war in Iraq continues for a fourth year, the global image of America has slipped further, even among publics in countries closely allied with the United States, a new global opinion poll has found.In an effort to get as far ahead of the news cycle as possible, P.J. O'Rourke responded to this poll two years ago: And the best thing about Americans recusing ourselves from global entanglements is that we will be loved again. Imagine a world where American manners and mores set the standard almost everywhere, where American fashions, American ideas and American lifestyles are universally sought out and copied. A world where people avidly listen to American music, eagerly watch American TV and movies, and try to imitate Americans in every way. Imagine a world where the U.S.A. is so admired that people by the millions want nothing more than to come to America and recuse themselves from global entanglements.Imagine it--it's easy if you try... The MSM Military Smear Du Jour
With the Haditha story unraveling, it's time for the media's next drive-by smear of the Marines: "Hadji Girl". (Soon to be dubbed HadjiGate?) Charles Johnson has both the video, and the story behind it: We’ve been watching this develop, as earlier today the Council on American Islamic Relations sent out one of their infamous email alerts about an amateur music video of a song about a Marine lured into an ambush by a “Hadji girl.” At this point there’s no verification that the singer is a Marine, although it looks authentic.Don't miss it. It's no great shakes as a song or performance (Lennon and McCartney's reps as master tunesmiths won't be diminished). But without the Blogosphere, this would be somewhat similar to how the legacy media treated the Swift Vets in August of 2004--with the media reporting their opinion of the story, but without providing links to readers to access to the underlying details; in this case the song's video and lyrics. Lorie Byrd writes that for the elite media, assertion has essentially replaced truth--and it's safe to assert that that remains true with this story. Writing about bias being inserted into a Washington Post story about President Bush's surprise trip to Iraq today, Ed Morrissey notes: This war has afforded the American media with a number of opportunities to demonstrate their firm conviction that they are an objective system designed to discover and report the truth. Instead, they have repeatedly shown in ways small and large that they allow their personal biases to flow into their news reporting, underscoring the widespread knowledge that they ceased being objective decades ago.And fortunately, for America--and Iraq--it's no longer 1972. Tofflerian File Sharing
Futuramb Blog, published in Sweeden, uses my recent TCS Daily podcast interview with Alvin Toffler as a launching point on some thoughts about file sharing. He concludes: And before you comment on this, yes I suspect that these thoughts are connected to Jeremy Rifkin’s book End of Work which I haven’t read (yet).To paraphrase Pete Gent, don't bother kid, everybody gets unemployed in the end. Back When Scandals Meant Something
By Ed Driscoll · June 13, 2006 02:49 PM · Bobos In Paradise
The New Criterion's Emily Ghods reminds us that September was the 50th anniversary of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita: As The New Criterion’s summer intern, I happily make my debut into the world of blogs with a post about Vladimir Nabokov’s tragic nymphet. Last September marked the fiftieth anniversary of Nabokov’s Lolita, a novel that historically inspired the kind of controversy now only dreamed of by literary publicists. An indelicate and serious examination of pedophilia, a self-conscious attempt at psychoanalysis, and pedestrian invocations of Sigmund Freud seldom escape the excited repartee hovering around the Lolita imbroglio. This is all beside the point, but this is the world into which Lolita has aged, on to her golden years.Meanwhile, Mark Steyn looks at "the standard by which were measured all subsequent political sex scandals" in his Atlantic obituary for John Profumo, whose moment of infamy occurred barely five years after Lolita's initial publication: In other words, Jack Profumo was done in by the “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” moment. Whether or not President Clinton should have suffered the same fate for his finger-wagging, it would doubtless have been merely a temporary retreat before reemergence for a full-scale redemption-by-talkshow tour, doing the flawed-but-all-too-human shtick to Larry and Oprah, explaining how he’d conquered his demons and how you can conquer yours, too, with the help of his new self-help video, etc. The advance from Random House probably wouldn’t have been any bigger, but the book would have been at least partially readable.Read the whole thing. Fizzlemas
By Ed Driscoll · June 13, 2006 10:40 AM · Democracy In America · Oh, That Liberal Media! · War And Anti-War
Karl Rove won't be indicted by Patrick Fitzgerald causing CNN's Jack Cafferty to reach for the Prozac. Follow the round-up of links here for more details. Meanwhile, Will Collier is questioning the dismissal's timing... Michael Newdow's Latest Lawsuit Thrown Out
The Harold Stassen of the courtrooms loses another one: US District Judge Frank C. Damrell Jr. dismissed a lawsuit brought by activist and atheist Michael Newdow seeking to have the words “In God We Trust” removed from our money.Stop The ACLU has some more and some thoughts on both this case, and the left's war on religion in general. "Ride It When You Retire", Bradshaw Warned Roethlisberger
By Ed Driscoll · June 12, 2006 02:13 PM · Run To Daylight
Ben Roethlisberger, you just captured the Pittsburgh Steelers' elusive fifth Super Bowl, and their first in over two decades. Where are you going next?! To the emergency ward after crashing into a car while riding a Suzuki motorcycle without a helmet: Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is in serious but stable condition and underwent surgery following a serious head injury he suffered this morning when his motorcycle collided with a car on Second Avenue near the 10th Street Bridge, police said."Roethlisberger was talking and moving his arms and legs after the accident", the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article notes, but this is clearly a devastating beginning to a team looking to repeat their championship. Update: No word yet if Roethlisberger participated in this event for two-wheelers before his crash. Another Update: Boy, when I wrote "Cycle Of Stupidity Speeds Up" this weekend, I had no idea what an eerily prescient headline I had written. Stop! Or Z-Mom Will Blog!
By Ed Driscoll · June 12, 2006 10:59 AM · War And Anti-War
Al-Zarqawi's "Mom" has a blog: Now it is time for the Bush one, cursed be he! to make level with me and with all the al-Zarqawi in the world, also in Jordan. It is time for the Bush to come outside. I get CNN so I know that 61 percent of Americans are on my side. They know they should have sent the Army of the Devil home long ago. If they had sent home the Army of the Devil then my son would be alive! He could make videos! He was very talented with lighting.Via The Corner. Zarqawi's mother actually died in 2004, but if she hadn't, these days, I wouldn't have been at all surprised to see her blogging. 20 Minutes Into The Future
Life imitates Max Headroom: Max exposed the dangers of Blipverts 20 years ago. Today's headline, "Clear Channel Eyes One-Second Radio Spots". Edison Carter could not be reached for comment. Painting The Podcast Red
![]() I interviewed Hugh Hewitt on Friday concerning his new book, Painting The Map Red; it's the subject of my latest podcast. You can click here to listen to it; or tune in via our iTunes page. (No iPod required--virtually any computer can download and play an MP3 file.) With primaries this past week in California and several other states, as well as the death of Zarqawi, it seemed like a particularly opportune time for an autumnal preview: the midterm elections, the role the Blogosphere will play in them, and the state of the Cleveland Browns, the NFL's perrienial powerhouse... Drudge: "Mexico Stomps Iran!"
By Ed Driscoll · June 11, 2006 01:14 PM · The Future and its Enemies
Maybe Somalia’s Sharia courts knew what was coming when it forbid viewing the World Cup. (Via Tim Blair.) Update: I wonder if we'll be hearing stories such as this coming out of Iran in a few years. The Return Of The Re-Primitive
Mark Steyn looks at what he describes as a globalization success story: Writing about the collapse of nations such as Somalia, the Atlantic Monthly's Robert D. Kaplan referred to the "citizens" of such "states" as "re-primitivized man." When lifelong Torontonians are hot for decapitation, when Yorkshiremen born and bred and into fish 'n' chips and cricket and lousy English pop music self-detonate on the London Tube, it would seem that the phenomenon of "re-primitivized man" has been successfully exported around the planet. It's reverse globalization: The pathologies of the remotest backwaters now have franchise outlets in every Western city. You don't have to be a loser Ontario welfare recipient like Steven Chand, the 25-year-old Muslim convert named in the thwarted prime ministerial beheading. Omar Sheikh, the man behind the beheading of the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Pearl, was an English "public" (i.e., private) schoolboy and graduate of the London School of Economics.As Steyn writes, "it seems the true globalization success story of the 1990s was the export of ideology from a relatively obscure part of the planet to the heart of every Western city". Read the rest. Hollywood Wants To Bypass The Rest Of The Legacy Media
Mark Cuban, the billionare owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks and producer of such leftwing movies as Good Night, and Good Luck and The War Within, would prefer not to do business with the original legacy media: Ive spent a lot of time thinking about the Newspaper and Magazine businesses lately. Not because I want to buy a company in either industry. I dont.They're not alone. In The Mail
Recently arrived review copies: Controversial Films Controversy; God Rated PG
By Ed Driscoll · June 10, 2006 11:20 AM · Hollywood, Interrupted
Betsy Newmark suggests a couple of curious omissions from Entertainment Weekly's list of "the most controversial films of all time". Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds wonders "Why They Hate Us": I blame Hollywood. So do Muslim women, according to a Gallup survey:Oh sure, they'll be cranking those out by the dozens! Of course, if they actually did, the MPAA would slap a PG rating onto such seemingly family-friendly fare for all of the "controversial" references to God.The most frequent response to the question, "What do you admire least about the West?" was the general perception of moral decay, promiscuity and pornography that pollsters called the "Hollywood image" that is regarded as degrading to women.No doubt antiwar Hollywood producers and talent will begin self-censorship at once to remedy this problem. Look for remakes of those wholesome Bing Crosby Irish-priest movies. Cycle Of Stupidity Speeds Up
By Ed Driscoll · June 10, 2006 11:07 AM · Bobos In Paradise · Democracy In America · The Return of the Primitive
Despite 2006 being a midterm election, tensions seem to be running hot on the left. It's still five months from election day and we're seeing pranks such as this, which I don't recall appearing on the radar screen until until the fall of 2004. (And as a much saner professor asks of the state that gave us Ward Churchill, "What is it about academics in Colorado"?) Update: Michelle Malkin has much more--and of course, she literally wrote the book on this subject. Brut: The Smell Of Death
By Ed Driscoll · June 9, 2006 10:40 AM · War And Anti-War
Iowahawk's most famous guest commentator checks in from beyond. Update: the Z-Man writes that he can only get signals out from "some s***ty internet cafe [with] nothing but AOL dial-up", a sure sign that he really is in Hell. Maybe the slow dial-up speed is why today's Protein Wisdom interview with Zarqawi seems somewhat uninteractive... The Creative Class vs. Capitalism
TCS Daily (where I contribute from time to time), has streaming video of a terrific roundtable discussion from earlier this week on Hollywood versus capitalism. I'm just in the process of watching the first 15 minutes, which features an energetic Michael Medved discussing why Hollywood and its modern-day product is invariably anti-business. Update: Do not miss Medved's Grand Unified Theory of Hollywood, about an hour into the program. If Only This Had Been Around 25 Years Ago
By Ed Driscoll · June 8, 2006 02:58 PM · The Electronic Cottage
"Detox Clinic Opening for Video Addicts". We needed this in the 2600/Colecovision days, as badly as Elvis needed Hazelden. Elmo Cannot Be Killed By Conventional Weapons
By Ed Driscoll · June 8, 2006 12:56 PM · Bobos In Paradise · Democracy In America · Oh, That Liberal Media!
PBS: We're not liberal, but Republicans have been gunning for us since 1972! (With apologies to Del Preston.) Reflections On The California Primary
By Ed Driscoll · June 8, 2006 12:51 PM · Democracy In America
Stephen Frank has some thoughts on the California Primary and what it portends for November, including Gov. Schwarzenegger's re-election chances. In the Wall Street's Journal's "Opinion Journal" spin-off, Jill Stewart writes: let the reality show begin, starring the chastened movie star politician versus the unpleasant taxer. In a state where entire neighborhoods are rebuilt from the ashes of firestorms and earthquakes, nobody will be shocked if a remade Arnold Schwarzenegger comes roaring back.Read the whole thing. Blog Week In Review Online
"PJM Sydney editor Richard Fernandez joins regulars Tammy Bruce and Eric Umansky in a spirited discussion of Haditha, the Canadian terror arrests and Internet click-through fraud. Moderator Austin Bay comments on Zarqawi’s death." Click here to listen. "Race-Based Government in Hawaii Defeated"
By Ed Driscoll · June 8, 2006 12:25 PM · Democracy In America
This is great news as well, today. Interesting take on how Z-Man's demise influenced the defeat of this bill: Things looked very grim at the beginning of the week. What made the difference? Zarqawi didn’t hurt, for sure. If they got cloture in the Senate today, senators would have likely spent the next week debating the Akaka bill instead of the Defense-authorization bill. That would have looked great. Senators aren’t that blind.Though the bar is set awfully low; as Mark Steyn recently quipped: The present disenchantment south of the border arises in part because in Washington the alleged greatness of the "great men" has become entirely unmoored from the great questions of the day. It's like watching a sporting fixture where you can no longer tell what game they're playing.Fizzbin, no doubt. Iraq The Model: Happiest News
By Ed Driscoll · June 8, 2006 11:59 AM · War And Anti-War
"This is the happiest news we've gotten in a long time"--Iraq the Model on Zarqawi's death, in Richard Fernandez's podcast interview from very early this morning. "One of the joys of waking up around 1 am EST", as Jim Geragthy quips, who also beat Drudge to the punch. Richard sat in on yesterday's Blog Week In Review, which should also be online this afternoon. Update: Heh, indeed.TM Another Update: Not the happiest news for all, of course. One More: This fellow has all sorts of reasons to be unhappy with the news: "Jordan arrests Zarqawi's brother-in-law and an Al Jazeera journalist live!" Must Be A Typo
By Ed Driscoll · June 8, 2006 10:37 AM ·
In his Strib column, James Lileks confesses: I drink a can of diet soda per day.Only one? Per day?! Sheesh--and he calls himself a writer. When Wars Collide
Hugh Hewitt looks at the MSM and the death of Zarqawi: It isn't sad. It is predictable.And of course, there's no way, in the media's eyes for the president to win: "If he's too jubilant, he's a cowboy. If he's too subdued, he's being phony", notes Michelle Malkin, who adds, "Another reporter raised suspicions about why the White House waited too long to make its announcement (someone wants to relive Cheney's shooting incident)". And if it was rushed and turned out to be another red herring, there's be no end to those complaints. On the other hand, it's not like such drive-by tactics are ratings winners; if they were, this man wouldn't be out of a job today. The Grand Unified Theory Of France, Revealed
By Ed Driscoll · June 8, 2006 09:41 AM · The Return of the Primitive
Oxblog finds what it calls "the quote of the century". "According to the wife of French President Chirac, her husband claims": We men are like the Cro-Magnon people of prehistoric times,” he once told me. “We’re always hunting and wenching. But, at the end of the day, we always go back to our caves. For my part I need this cave to feel at ease with myself. Without it I would be as unhappy as could be.”So the French think of themselves as cavemen and look to Woody Allen to bring them nuance and sophistication? Now it all makes sense. New Blog Week In Review Coming Later Today
We recorded the show yesterday to accomodate everyone's schedule, but Austin recorded an update this morning on Zarqawi's death and its implications for the War On Terror as a whole, which I cut into the top of the show. In the interim, you can read his thoughts on his blog. Update: The Economist did one heck of a last minute update as well. Be Afraid Boys...Be Very Afraid
By Ed Driscoll · June 8, 2006 02:48 AM · War And Anti-War
Peter Brookes writes that perhaps the most intriguing detail of Zarqawi's demise is that the end "came from tips given by associates": This sort of "actionable intelligence" is critical in prosecuting an insurgency and, perhaps, most importantly shows significant discord in al Qaeda's ranks.Good. Zarqawi Killed?
By Ed Driscoll · June 8, 2006 01:18 AM · War And Anti-War
As of the time of this posting, certainly sounds that way. I wonder if he filed a last post at Iowahawk before the big sleep? Hide Away
By Ed Driscoll · June 7, 2006 02:39 PM · All You Need Is Ears
Getting ready for some Pajamarecording this afternoon, so blogging may be light. In the meantime, I leave you with the great Freddie King, who illustrates how the electric guitar should be played: Building Utopia, Part II
By Ed Driscoll · June 7, 2006 12:42 PM · The Return of the Primitive
William Saletan of Slate goes "Among the Transhumanists": Remember those kids who played Dungeons & Dragons and ran the science-fiction club in your high school? They've become transhumanists. Their resident immortalist, Aubrey de Grey, walks around in sneakers, a ponytail, and a 14-inch beard that he strokes like a cat. One of the CCLE officials at the conference calls herself Wrye Sententia; the other dresses like an LSD trip. This was the kind of conference where people talked about the Matrix the way Christians talk about the Bible, and where speakers apologized for their discomfort with piercings or tattoos.Wow--so this is where the crew at Tower Records goes after work! Utopia For Them Would Be Hell For Us
By Ed Driscoll · June 7, 2006 11:55 AM · The Future and its Enemies · The Return of the Primitive · War And Anti-War
Last summer, after the London 7/7 bombings, I wrote: We have met the enemy, and he is us--or at least an offshoot of multiple elements of 20th century far left worldviews, as two essays making their way through the Blogosphere today argue.As Brooks wrote, "In short, the Arab world is maintaining its nearly perfect record of absorbing every bad idea coming from the West. Western ideas infuse the radicals who flood into Iraq to blow up Muslims and Americans alike". Austin Bay picks up this theme, explaining " Why Salafism is a utopian ideology": This article from the Toronto Globe and Mail (hat tip pajamasmedia) provides an illustrative quote, from the now-defunct website of alleged terror conspirator Zakaria Amara:Indeed. As Austin concludes, while the far left and the Islmofacists have very different views of what the eschaton would look like, both claim to offer "paradise on earth" at the end of the rainbow.…on July 28, 2003, Mr. Amara posted a statement claiming flags are nothing but a symbol of nationalism and segregation. (Punctuation and spelling are as they appeared in the blog.)This week’s Creators Syndicate column ends with these observations: And yet the 20th century gave the world numerous concrete examples of what that utopia looks like when true believers conquer the pragmatic masses: the Soviet Union and the gulag, Nazi Germany and its ovens, and Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, with their amputation squads. All define hell on earth, but that doesn't stop those who desire to recreate them. California: Bilbray Over Busby
By Ed Driscoll · June 7, 2006 11:07 AM · Democracy In America
California Conservative looks at yesterday's race for control of California’s 50th congressional seat; where Republican Brian Bilbray prevailed over Democrat Francine Busby. Busby's campaign will be footnoted by this incident, of which RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman says, "gave everyone a boost...Symbols or symbolic statements come to be what a candidate stands for." It's one thing when your last minute hit comes from outside (for example, the drunk driving charge unearthed against candidate George W. Bush at the very end of the 2000 presidential race, and the daily October surprises from late 2004 the media threw at him, along with the surprise cameo appearance of Osama bin Laden or his Mini Me), but to shoot yourself in the foot in the last minute of a campaign is just idiotic. On the other hand, to paraphrase George Costanza, it's not a gaffe...when you believe it's true. Because It's Worked So Well In Europe
John Hinderaker of Power Line writes: This morning, National Public Radio's Renee Montagne interviewed Toronto Mayor David Miller on the arrest of 17 terrorist suspects, who, it has now been stated in court, plotted to behead the Prime Minister of Canada. It would be hard to say whether the interviewer or the interviewee was more at sea. We got the usual cliches about Islam as a religion of peace, but it went way beyond that.Ms. Montagne expressed bewilderment as to how anyone could be radicalized in Canada, where social services are so plentiful. Mayor Miller shared her incomprehension.I'm astonished by that as well. Somewhere, Hunter S. Thompson Is Insanely Jealous
By Ed Driscoll · June 6, 2006 04:21 PM · Hollywood, Interrupted · The New, New Journalism · War And Anti-War
Roger L. Simon writes, "Want to see some video much more interesting than Spielberg et al's latest? Try Pat Dollard - direct from Iraq". This is journalism--well, video journalism--at its most gonzo. (With equally gonzo language and graphic images to boot. Don't say you weren't warned.) Life Amongst The Carbon-Neutral
By Ed Driscoll · June 6, 2006 03:00 PM · Bobos In Paradise · Hollywood, Interrupted · Muggeridge's Law · The Return of the Primitive
Pearl Jam in 2003: Pearl Jam plan to offset the estimated 5,700 tons of greenhouse gas emissions generated by the trucks, buses, airplanes and their fans' 1 million cars on their current world tour by purchasing 5,700 tons of carbon produced by the Makira Rainforest Conservation project in Madagascar.Al Gore three years later: the producers of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth are letting everyone know that they’re “teaming up to offset 100% of the carbon dioxide emitted from air and ground transportation and hotels during the production and promotional activities associated with the documentary An Inconvenient Truth, making it the first-ever carbon-neutral documentary.”Believe it or not, yesterday, I was planning a tongue-in-cheek post asking if, like Pearl Jam three years ago, Gore has released sufficient CO2 into the atmosphere to counteract the enormous amount of jet-setting he and his entourage do to promote this film (pumping up its world-beating box office). Once again real life is always far stranger than any satire. Baseball, Blogging, And Ballet
By Ed Driscoll · June 6, 2006 02:30 PM · The New, New Journalism
Neo-Neocon finds the elements that connect these three seemingly disparate activities. "A Sadly Familiar Tune"
By Ed Driscoll · June 6, 2006 01:31 PM · God And Man At Dupont University · Radical Chic · War And Anti-War
Cathy Young writes that Israel is the unfair target of selective academic outrage: In the 1980s, there was a concerted movement to make South Africa a pariah state because of its policy of racial apartheid. Today, a similar effort is directed at the state of Israel. A week ago, the anti-Israel campaign achieved two significant victories. Britain's National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education, one of the country's two leading educators' associations, voted for a boycott of Israeli academics and colleges unless they take a stand against Israel's "apartheid policy." On the same day, the Ontario division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the largest labor union in Canada, voted for a boycott of Israel because of its treatment of Palestinians.Read the rest. Sympathy For The Numerology
By Ed Driscoll · June 6, 2006 01:05 PM ·
Today's episode of Ed Driscoll.com is brought to you by the number six...six..six...: Read More » Podcasting Through The Blogosphere
By Ed Driscoll · June 6, 2006 11:27 AM · Radical Chic · The Making of the President · The New, New Journalism · The Substance of Style
Three really interesting podcasts went online over the past couple of days: Gerard Vanderleun of Pajamas has an interview with Mary Cheney, daughter of Vice President Dicky Cheney, on her role in the 2000 and 2004 elections. She was also on Hugh Hewitt's show yesterday (Radio Blogger has clips and a transcription), and is a great interviewee. Glenn and Helen Reynolds interview James Lileks and Cathy Seipp on parenting then and now. (I interviewed James in the fall of last year; which makes for fun simul-reading while The Glenn & Helen Show runs.) And finally, Michelle Malkin has a slickly produced video podcast documenting with chromakeyed photos BDS amongst the fashionistas, from Marc Jacobs' San Francisco storefront, to Johnny Depp's Che necklace on the cover of Rolling Stone. Then there's the Arafat-style kaffiyeh that Howard Dean was once spotted wearing on the 2004 presidential campaign trail. As Michelle mentions, the radical chic of thse fashion accessories unknowingly--or worse, knowingly--ties their wearers in with the very people who would put fashion models in burkas, and do far worse to someone openly gay such as Jacobs. Just to tie it all together (though not with a kaffiyeh), as Cathy Seipp once said: “one of the great paradoxes of our time is that two groups most endangered by political Islam, gays and women, somehow still find ways to defend it”Not all do--as Mary Cheney herself illustrates. But anarcho-authoritarianism certainly runs deep. Full Metal Rather
Last year, we quoted veteran CBS producer Don Hewitt on Dan Rather. Immediately after the Kennedy assassination, Hewitt suggested that Rather, who had just come onboard with the network, punch out Abraham Zapruder and steal his now iconic home movie so that CBS could scoop the other networks: "Dan Rather, new to CBS and our correspondent on the scene, phoned me from Dallas and told me that a guy named Zapruder was supposed to have film of the assassination and was going to put it up for sale. In fact, he eventually did, sold it to Life magazine for a reputed $600,000. In my desire to get a hold of what was probably the most dramatic piece of news footage ever shot, I told Rather to go to Zapruder's house, sock him in the jaw, take his film to our affiliate in Dallas, copy it onto videotape, and let the CBS lawyers decide whether it could be sold or whether it was in the public domain. And then take the film back to Zapruder's house and give it back to him. That way, the only thing they could get him for was assault because he would have returned Zapruder's property. Rather said, 'Great idea. I'll do it.' I hadn't hung up the phone maybe ten seconds when it hit me: What in the hell did you just do? Are you out of your mind? So I called Rather back. Luckily, he was still there, and I said to him, 'For Christ's sake, don't do what I just told you to. I think this day has gotten to me and thank God I caught you before you left.' Knowing Dan to be as competitive as I am, I had the feeling that he wished he'd left before the second phone call."As I wrote back then, "I had no idea Dan was such a swashbuckling guy!" I also had no idea Rather would advocate the death of a fellow CBS colleague, either: In "Lone Star," an unauthorized bio of Rather out this September, Alan Weisman writes that [Morley] Safer "has not been a friend of Rather's for years, since their days in Vietnam." The final straw came when Rather took over for Safer not long after Safer's jolting report about the burning of a Vietnam village by a platoon of U.S. Marines.As Allah quips, "And just like that, he’s back in conservative bloggers’ good graces. Redemption, baby!" Heh. Boy, when Slate's Bryan Curtis wrote an article immediately after RatherGate broke titled, "Dan Rather - The anchor as madman", he didn't know the half of it. Of course, I'm sure Morley told Dan immediately after the incident, "Dan, we were friends yesterday, we're friends today, and we'll be friends tomorrow. So tell me about it", before getting viscerally angry about it. Won't Get Fooled Again
By Ed Driscoll · June 5, 2006 05:04 PM · The New, New Journalism
The anti-ACLU backlash appears to be both heating up--and getting bipartisan. Hey, I'm not crazy about all of their decisions myself, but geez, that's no reason to go Pete Townshend on your television set... General Motors Thought They Were Invulnerable, Too
By Ed Driscoll · June 5, 2006 04:24 PM · Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal
Last month, when I profiled Alvin Toffler's new book, Revolutionary Wealth, I wrote in TCS Daily: The death late last month of John Kenneth Galbraith helps to illustrate just how much the American economy -- and indeed the world's -- has changed over the last four decades. Galbraith could plausibly write in 1967's The New Industrial State, that large corporations were immune to market forces.To some extent, the Internet has restored that feeling amongst its biggest players. Drudge, Amazon, Google, eBay and a few others got there early, and each built unique business models that kept their customers more or less pretty happy over an extended period. And while the Long Tail is a growing phenomenon, by and large, the Internet has rewarded the early adopters who both got in before the dot.com boom/bust of 1999-2000, and weathered the storm. But lately, as Glenn Reynolds notes in his MSNBC blog, Google appears to believe it's as invulnerable to market forces as General Motors did in 1973: Google has been a huge deal — its founders have become rich, its name has become a verb, and its influence is international.Like New Shimmer, it could be both! It's a brand that, like a fad that has peaked, could very well find itself in number two--or worse--if a smarter competitor comes along. Just ask Yahoo. "Chill Out Over Global Warming"
By Ed Driscoll · June 5, 2006 02:04 PM · Bobos In Paradise · The New Puritans · The Return of the Primitive
David Harsanyi of The Denver Post has some thoughts on So next time you're with some progressive friends, dissent. Tell 'em you're not sold on this global warming stuff.HehTM. I Hope This Store Knows Their Customers
By Ed Driscoll · June 5, 2006 11:45 AM · Bobos In Paradise · The Return of the Primitive · The Substance of Style
In his classic 1977 book on selling, master automobile salesman Joe Girard wrote that when facing potential car buyers, "Political stuff I say nothing about, because politics is not something you can talk about with a customer without getting into trouble. If my own son were running for President, I wouldn't ware a Girard For President button to work". That sort of thing used to be common sense in business. But as with so much of what used to be common sense, it seems to be dying away these days in our bluer alcoves. Update: Conservative Princess, who combines "Right-wing extremism with impeccable fashion sense" (hey, extremism in defense of Brooks Brothers is no vice...) has some very much related thoughts. Over 1,000,000 Served
By Ed Driscoll · June 5, 2006 10:31 AM · Ed On The 'Net
Sometime last night, we went over the 1,000,000 visitor mark. I realize that the big boys (Glenn, Charles, Hugh, et al) do these kind of numbers in a week, but I'm very happy--and very grateful to folks like yourself who read this--that our little operation has had a million visitors stop by over the life of this blog, which originally started out in early 2002 kluged together via Blogger templates I hacked up myself, before Stacy Tabb polished things up considerably two years later. The million mark would have happened sooner, of course, if I had employed comments on the blog, but the clean-up work required would have no longer made this site fun. And it would have happened sooner had my mom not turned off her WebTV box, but that's a whole 'nother story... Back When Hollywood Still Employed Grownups
By Ed Driscoll · June 5, 2006 10:04 AM · Hollywood, Interrupted
Libertas reminds us of the days when Hollywood still casted grown-ups, even in its silliest movies: What everyone remembers most about the original The Poseidon Adventure, of course, is Shelley Winters - who, incidentally, was responsible for one of the film’s Oscar nominations (Best Supporting Actress). I haven’t seen the new film, Poseidon, and one of the reasons I haven’t seen it is because I’d heard that there was no Shelley Winters role. And quite frankly, I don’t know why anyone would bother re-doing The Poseidon Adventure without the Shelley Winters role.Of course, taken as a pair, along with the series of eco-doomsday movies Hollywood was then also simultaneously cranking out, these films marked the beginning of Hollywood's attack on modernity, virtually in lockstep with the McGovern-era left. In such a climate, we shouldn't be all that surprised that what remains aren't "stars with personalities", but an absolutely endless supply of child actors. All Media All Malleable: The Video
By Ed Driscoll · June 4, 2006 04:34 PM · All You Need Is Ears
Back in November of 2004, I described how malleable technology makes music, building on concepts that Brian Eno discussed in the late 1970s. This somewhat droll twenty minute video does a nifty job of explaining how one six second 1969 drum loop on the b-side of a hit 45 ended up everywhere starting in the mid-1980s, from rap songs to Jeep Cherokee ads: Cats And Dogs Blogging Together
AllahPundit is praising Salon for risking the alienation of "80-85% of your readership in one fell swoop". Update: Ian Schwartz has video of Kennedy on CNN earlier today: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared on CNN’s The Situation Room Sunday to discuss his article in The Rolling Stone charging the Bush administration and Republicans of stealing the 2004 election. First, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find it extremely funny that a KENNEDY is accusing someone else of stealing an election. Secondly, Kennedy uses the Mary Mapes “standard” that it isn’t up to him to prove what he is saying is authentic. In other wards, when he was asked about his proof for several of the charges, he says that they haven’t yet been challenged so therefore it must be true.Uh-huh. Transforming London Into Londonstan
By Ed Driscoll · June 4, 2006 11:30 AM · War And Anti-War
In contrast to the fear and self-loathing at the New Yorker, The New York Post seems to get it: they're running an op-ed by British journalist Melanie Phillips explaining how London was transformed into Londonstan: AFTER 9/11 plotter Zacarias Mous saoui was sentenced to life im prisonment, his family blamed - the British. Their son had had first arrived in London in the 1990s for an MA course in international business studies - and been radicalized and recruited for jihad at London's Finsbury Park mosque.Not to mention fly their own flag. As Phillips writes: BRITAIN is the mother-ship for American values and the brand leader of English-speaking culture. The Londonistan mindset is being replicated in America: on campus, in the media and in official circles. If Britain goes down under this assault, the forces in America now holding back the tide of cultural immolation will be immeasurably weakened.That's a threat that everyone should worry about. Excepting a certain "broad strata", of course. Update: Just to further tie this post to the previous one, the BBC is running a gushing photo tribute to the fortunately very late Ayatollah Khomenei. In contrast, while meeting with Khomenei in 1979, Oriana Fallaci boldy and indignantly ripped off the chador she originally forced to wear in his presence, and told the New Yorker, "it did not take long to realize that in spite of his quiet appearance he represented the Robespierre or the Lenin of something which would go very far and would poison the world". As I recall from the late '70s, the BBC, Reuters, the New Yorker, and the Washington Post and other liberal western media all seemed to have understood that at the time, but could use a refresher course these days. Orianna Disturbs The Sleep Of The Tiny Mummies
Horseeathers has some thoughts on the New Yorker's profile of Orianna Fallaci: Ever since 9-11 scared the hell out of this wordsmith class, the magazine has devoted itself to explaining that there is no real threat from totalitarian Islam, the misunderstood “other”, but instead the danger to the world emanates from the person of President George Bush. Like any shared delusional belief, the community of believers feels special, superior to the unknowing masses, and reassured. While radical Islam is battering at the gates, the New Yorker turns its collective gaze, every week, to the imaginary threats posed by the macho cowboy in the White House. No reason to be concerned about an enemy who declares war on America and sets about annihilating the infidels. Hey, it’s the evil Christian believer, the man who's clear about his gender, George Bush, who must be stopped. Soothing the anxieties of its readers is accomplished, not only by flattering their sense of moral superiority, but by applying childhood utopian fantasies to real dangers. Multicultural leftism is such a balm to the worried. No reason to fear a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; after all, he is simply articulating a belief system shared by many. We have our own shared liberal faith, and its devil is W. and the Neo-Cons, not totalitarian Islam. Multiculturalism is a form of self flattery, a 'We are the World' incantation, designed to calm the frightened upper west side liberal.Nobody mention the crater at the intersection of Church and Vesey Streets. Private Investigations
By Ed Driscoll · June 3, 2006 01:50 PM · Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal
Why are more and more publicly-held businesses going private? As the Journal explains, "Imagine: No Reg FD, no 10Ks, no Sarbox, no . . . ": Sarbanes-Oxley has been the last straw for some, with its auditing and reporting requirements imposing major new costs, especially on smaller companies. This has already played a part in the remarkable slowdown in U.S. initial public offerings. Today's largest IPOs are taking place mainly on foreign markets, away from the reach of U.S. regulators. New York Stock Exchange CEO John Thain understands this as well as anyone, which is one reason for his $20 billion EuroNext purchase.Sorry, I've used my quota of "Indeeds" today before having to pay royalties to the Professor. So...exactly. The Details We Kept To Ourselves
Brendan Loy looks at the Toronto terrorist bust and writes of the details that--shocker!--Reuters chose to omit: Michelle Malkin has a list of the would-be terrorists’ names. ThreatsWatch calls them “twelve adult Muslim jihadists and five juveniles…some of them second-generation Canadian citizens and some of them recent immigrants.” Canada’s National Post says they are “homegrown extremists…young followers of the al-Qaeda ideology.” The Star elaborates, calling them “Western youths who have never set foot in Afghanistan but allegedly were radicalized here, and who are thought to be potentially as dangerous as the cells that once took orders from Osama bin Laden. Western governments, including Canada’s, have repeatedly warned of this phenomenon and blamed recent attacks, such as last July’s bombings in London, as the work of such groups.” The Canadian authorities themselves called the plot “al Qaeda-inspired,” according to CNN.IndeedTM. Update: Glenn Reynolds wonders "what's cooking here in the United States"; Don Surber wonders if the near-simultaneous busts in Toronto and London "may or may not have prevented another set of digits -- 6/6??? -- from being associated with death and destruction". Another Update: Meryl Yourish asks, "Do you think it’s time we stopped discussing root causes?": Because the last time I checked, Canada was an obnoxiously multiculti, socialist-oriented nation replete with national healthcare and hate speech laws.No, and they never do--just ask Mr. Eric Blair. I've Seen This Story Before, Too
By Ed Driscoll · June 3, 2006 01:11 PM · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Memory Hole · War And Anti-War
Yesterday, Michelle Malkin had a fun video blog on her Hot Air site about the legacy media manufacturing news. And today, the London Times appears to be doing just that, with the photographs it chooses to accompany its Haditha story. As Allah Pundit asks: How many Iraqis will be killed in the next few weeks and months by terrorists eager to make it look like American troops have perpetrated another massacre?We've been down that road too many times already. I've Seen This Story Before
Power Line writes of the Washington Post's Karl Vick, who has nothing but sweet kisses and bonbons for Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But then, the bulk of the western media--especially CNN--had rarely a discouraging word for Saddam Hussein and his frequent 99.96 percent "election" victories. If Iran under the mullahs ends in the same fashion as Iraq under the Baathists, I wonder if any of the western media will be honest enough to write something like this immediately afterwards. Update: Hey, who says the BBC doesn't have a sense of humor--an inadvertent one at least, as Rand Simberg notes: [Jimmy Carter's] comments are significant, given that he was the president when US relations with Iran hit an all-time low.As Simberg writes, "Some British reporter actually wrote this with a straight face, and some British and Australian editors actually printed it, again with no humor intended". Chaps, it's time meet Jay Nordlinger. Superman Versus The Heartland Brokeback Breakout Meme
By Ed Driscoll · June 2, 2006 10:33 PM · Hollywood, Interrupted
What makes a hit movie a hit? I guess it isn't box office, according to this piece by the L.A. Times' Joe Horn on promoting the latest version of Superman to gay audiences: But four of the movie marketing executives, all of whom declined to speak on the record, said gay "Superman Returns" interest presented two potential box-office problems. First, teenage moviegoers, especially those in conservative states, might be put off by a movie carrying a gay vibe; among some teens, these executives agreed, saying something "is gay" is still the ultimate put-down. Second, the attention threatens to undermine the film's status as a hard-edged action movie, making it feel softer, more romantic, and thus less interesting to young ticket buyers who crave pyrotechnics.It's understandable that Hollywood considers 1997's Batman & Robin a bust--it was a truly horrendous movie that didn't make back its enormous $125 million budget. But while Brokeback was far cheaper to produce at $14 million, domestically, it's grossed $24 million less than Batman & Robin's $107 million--despite ticket prices being a third higher than they were nine years ago. But that doesn't stop the L.A. Times' Horn from cooing about Brokeback "selling a ton of tickets"--and thus running smack dab into what Mickey Kaus (who was virtually alone in pointing out Brokeback's middling-level success) dubbed the imaginary Heartland Breakout Meme. Just out of curiosity: Given Bruce Wayne's lengthy affiliation with his "youthful ward Dick Grayson" (not to mention the camp 1966 TV series), I know Batman has long had a gay undercurrent. But when did Superman, last seen shagging Lois Lane, become a gay icon? The Theory and Practice of Blogarchical Collectivism
By Ed Driscoll · June 2, 2006 05:26 PM · The New, New Journalism
IowaHawk explores "The Two Minutes Snark" wherein the face of "Goldstein, the Enemy of the People" is used to whip practitioners of BlogSoc into a mindless robotic frenzy: Winston had heard the whispered story of a terrible blog, a compendium of all the heresies, of which Goldstein was the author and which circulated clandestinely here and there. It was a blog with a weird title. People referred to it, if at all, simply as 'Goldstein.' But one knew of such things only through vague rumours. Neither the blog nor its contents was a subject that any ordinary Faculty member would mention if there was a way of avoiding it.Indeed. (Whoops--that's from the frenzied climax of The Two Minute Heh.) Two New Pajamas Podcasts
Richard Fernandez, Pajamas' Man In Sydney, interviews blogger Bill Roggio, who is reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan on that city's recent riots. As Glenn Reynolds writes, "Who says bloggers don't do original reporting?" (Somebody tell Gene Weingarten.) And the latest Blog Week In Review is up, featuring Glenn, Eric Umansky of Slate, guest blogger and Advice Goddess Amy Alkon, and hosted by Austin Bay. You can hear both podcasts, by clicking here. Nobody Better Get Any Ideas From This!
By Ed Driscoll · June 2, 2006 10:37 AM · Oh, That Liberal Media!
OK, it's fun to work for a business with the quirky name of Pajamas Media, after Jonathan Klein of CBS (and eventually, CNN) snarled, at the height of the RatherGate scandal: "You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances [at '60 Minutes'] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing."But please, I really don't want to see a news service called Underpants Media: Washington Post humor writer and journalist Gene Weingarten, who writes a regular commentary called Below the Beltway, gave a commencement speech to graduating journalism students at the University of Maryland.As fellow Pajamahadeen Michelle Malkin writes: Move over, Jon Klein. Washington Post "humorist" Gene Weingarten (that's pronounced WHINE-garten) wants to claim the MSM blog-haters' throne.There's a lot of people ahead of him. Just get in line, Gene. Manufacturing Dissent
By Ed Driscoll · June 2, 2006 09:57 AM · Oh, That Liberal Media!
Michelle Malkin exposes the legacy media's dirty laundry--how news can be faked--with several clips from over the years, in her latest Hot Air video. She kicks off with the video from this story about, as Michelle calls her, Australia's answer to Katie Couric: THE bitterness between ratings rivals Channel 7 and Channel 9 escalated after Nine's Today program yesterday was accused of setting up a shot to make a situation in East Timor look more dangerous than it was.Good for him. And speaking of Katie herself, she predicts that "the 'pretentious era' of the evening-news anchor is going to be a thing of the past". As Tim Graham writes: The dictionary says one definition of "pretentious" is "Making or marked by an extravagant outward show." Didn't this woman just sit at the center of a wildly extravagant three-hour tribute to her greatness on Wednesday morning? And to get up the next day, and say this? This, from the woman who tries to do the tough interviews in the ridiculously serious cat's-eye glasses?Even as their number of viewers both declines and ages, the pretentions of the big three TV networks and their cocooned newspeople will remain for quite some time. Personally, I'd rather fast-forward to how this story ends, and happily take as much of the 2015 model of news that's currently available. Update: The "ridiculously serious cat's-eye glasses" play a big role in Ian Schwartz's own unique video tribute to Katie's last day on The Today Show. Speaking Of Redneck Nation
The Chicago Tribune notes that the Akaka Bill is back--and is as odious as ever: Long-stalled legislation to grant Native Hawaiians the same federal recognition and self-governance that most Native American tribes possess is scheduled to make it to the Senate floor amid charges that such a move would intensify racial tensions in the nation's 50th state and further strengthen a growing movement to secede from the United States.Gee, ya think? Separate But Equal Education, Part Deux
By Ed Driscoll · June 2, 2006 09:20 AM · God And Man At Dupont University
Yesterday, we kicked off a post on an apparently growing trend towards racism in education with a link to Betsy Newmark's look at Seattle's public school system. Betsy has an update today: Yesterday, I blogged about Seattle Public School's laughable racism policy. As I noted and the the Seattle newspaper reports today, they have now taken down their controversial description of racism and replaced it with another statement sure to rile people up. Part of that explanation had this sentence in it.Just another day in Redneck Nation.Our intention is not to put up additional barriers or develop an “us against them” mindset, nor is it to continue to hold onto unsuccessful concepts such as a melting pot or colorblind mentality.So, apparently, the school system now thinks that Martin Luther King's plea for a society where his children could be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin is a rejected and unsuccessful goal in Seattle. Camelot And Its Aftermath
By Ed Driscoll · June 1, 2006 03:49 PM · Bobos In Paradise · Democracy In America · War And Anti-War
Mark Steyn's song of the week is "Camelot" by Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner. As Steyn writes, neither composer asked for the historical freight the song was forced to carry three years after their Broadway show first opened: And then in November 1963 John F Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas. A few days later, the President's widow gave an interview to Life magazine, to another T H White – Theodore White, the political analyst. This is what she said:In his recent Commentary essay, (which we previously discussed here), James Piereson brilliantly noted that it wasn't just JFK's terrifying assassination that has had repercussions to this day, but how it was historically framed by his survivors:When Jack quoted something, it was usually classical. But I’m so ashamed of myself— all I keep thinking of is this line from a musical comedy. At night, before we’d go to sleep, Jack liked to play some records; and the song he loved most came at the very end of this record. The lines he loved to hear were:Don’t let it be forgotOnce, the more I read of history the more bitter I got. For a while I thought history was something that bitter old men wrote. But then I realized history made Jack what he was. You must think of him as this little boy, sick so much of the time, reading in bed, reading history, reading the Knights of the Round Table. For Jack, history was full of heroes. And if it made him this way — if it made him see the heroes — maybe other little boys will see. Men are such a combination of good and bad. Jack had this hero idea of history, the idealistic view: Significantly, Mrs. Kennedy’s notion of Arthurian heroism derived not from Sir Thomas Mallory’s 15th-century classic Le Morte d’Arthur but from The Once and Future King (1958) by T.H. White (no relation to the journalist), on which the musical was based. White’s telling of the saga pokes fun at the pretensions of knighthood, pointedly criticizes militarism and nationalism, and portrays Arthur as a new kind of hero: an idealistic peacemaker seeking to tame the bellicose passions of his age. This may be one reason why Mrs. Kennedy’s effort to frame her husband’s legacy in this way was widely regarded as a distorted caricature of the real Kennedy and something he himself would have laughed at. Aides and associates reported that they had never heard Kennedy speak either about Camelot the musical or about its theme song. Some of Mrs. Kennedy’s friends said they had never even heard her speak about King Arthur or the play prior to the assassination.Earlier, Piereson notes how JFK's killer was similarly reshaped in the immediate aftermath of November, 1963: Hence, when the word spread on November 22 that President Kennedy had been shot, the immediate and understandable reaction was that the assassin must be a right-wing extremist—an anti-Communist, perhaps, or a white supremacist. Such speculation went out immediately over the national airwaves, and it seemed to make perfect sense, echoed by the likes of John Kenneth Galbraith and Chief Justice Earl Warren, who said that Kennedy had been martyred “as a result of the hatred and bitterness that has been injected into the life of our nation by bigots.”"It is one of the ironies of the era", Piereson writes, "that many young people who in 1963 reacted with profound grief to Kennedy’s death would, just a few years later, come to champion a version of the left-wing doctrines that had motivated his assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald". And perhaps, in order to justify this radical change in worldviews, invented the paranoid fantasies that drove Oliver Stone's 1991 movie, and continue to inspire the farther elements of the left today: “We’ve been talking about Martin Luther King Jr this night. My son [Casey] was killed the same day he was killed, on April 4th. I don’t believe in any coincidences. Casey was born on John F Kennedy’s birthday. He was born on the day, and died on the day, of 2 people who were assassinated by the war machine in my country. ”It's probably not entirely surprising that I don't agree with a few of the suppositions that Peter Beinart of The New Republic made when discussing his new book, The Good Fight : Why Liberals---and Only Liberals---Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again in his podcasted conversation today with Glenn Reynolds and Helen Smith. But I admire his efforts to try to return the modern left to pre-Camelot liberalism. Will anyone listen? Sometimes Less Is More
By Ed Driscoll · June 1, 2006 02:40 PM · Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal
This version of The King James Bible is 2,208 pages long, and contains the foundation of western civilization's wisdom. The IRS's rules required General Electric to file a 24,000-page tax return, and presumably, next year's will be just as long, if not longer. Exclusive Video From Silicon Valley Fight Club!
By Ed Driscoll · June 1, 2006 01:57 PM · Muggeridge's Law
A couple of days ago, we linked to an article that reported that Menlo Park, right here in Silicon Valley, had its own version of Hollywood's Fight Club: They may sport love handles and Ivy League degrees, but every two weeks, some Silicon Valley techies turn into vicious street brawlers in a real-life, underground fight club.We at Ed Driscoll.com bring this exclusive video of one of the more extreme rumbles, smuggled out at great risk to one of our top-secret and omnipresent informants: Please note: sensitive viewers should be prepared for the intense on-screen violence and geekiness. "An Hourlong Show That Is A Work Of Art"
By Ed Driscoll · June 1, 2006 01:43 PM · Oh, That Liberal Media!
Lee Siegel of The New Republic discusses "The Strange Genius of Oprah". It's tough to use the word "genius" about Oprah's advertising representatives at times, though. (Via Maggie's Farm.) The Return Of Separate But Equal Education?
By Ed Driscoll · June 1, 2006 12:48 PM · God And Man At Dupont University · The Return of the Primitive
Betsy Newmark links to a Wendy McElroy piece on cultural racism in Seattle public schools, and writes: The Seattle Public Schools just bought themselves a heap of controversy by attempting to define racism. Their definition is laughably racist itself.Meanwhile, Los Angeles has a racially devisive school of its own. Michelle Malkin looks at a government-run public school whose founder and principal, Marcos Aguilar, was recently quoted in a self-decribed "an online journal that addresses educational conditions in Los Angeles schools" as saying: We don’t necessarily want to go to White schools. What we want to do is teach ourselves, teach our children the way we have of teaching. We don’t want to drink from a White water fountain, we have our own wells and our natural reservoirs and our way of collecting rain in our aqueducts. We don’t need a White water fountain. So the whole issue of segregation and the whole issue of the Civil Rights Movement is all within the box of White culture and White supremacy. We should not still be fighting for what they have. We are not interested in what they have because we have so much more and because the world is so much larger. And ultimately the White way, the American way, the neo liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction.This isn't all that new a development though--last year, we looked at separate but equal college graduation ceremonies, and way back in 2002, segregated college dorms. Pinch Sulzberger of the New York Times recently personally apologized at a college commencement ceremony for the state of America; somehow I doubt though, that these decisions by academia were what he had in mind. Update: La Shawn Barber has some related thoughts on this topic. Who Watches The Watchers?
By Ed Driscoll · June 1, 2006 11:38 AM · The New, New Journalism · The Return of the Primitive · War And Anti-War
Following the death threat he received last week from an Reuters IP address, Charles Johnson adds a counter on his homepage to track the number of daily visits that address drops by his site. Meanwhile, in another discussion of fear and loathing in the Blogosphere, Ace of Spades looks at Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom, who sat-in on Pajamas' Blog Week In Review last week, and writes: Why Does The Unhinged Left So Hate Jeff Goldstein?Read the rest. Related Update: Drudge: "NY Dem Apologizes For Saying Bush Should Be Shot Between Eyes..." Nuclear Boilerplate
By Ed Driscoll · June 1, 2006 11:32 AM · The Return of the Primitive
Obviously if you're busy professional protestors like Greenpeace, you look for any shortcut you can to speed up your repetitive assault on modernity... |
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