Dude, these kinds of maneuvers are why God invented skateboards.

Like fish meeting a barrel, the "Truthers" meet James Taranto:

Then there were the "truthers," members of a cult that believes 9/11 was a government conspiracy. They are easy to spot because they all wear black T-shirts with pictures of the twin towers and slogans like INVESTIGATE 9/11. (We encountered some of them near Ground Zero on Sept. 11, 2006.)

Two truthers, a man and a woman, were standing in line to ask questions. The man prefaced his by saying, "I'm not going to ask the 9/11 question again." (We don't remember what he did ask.) When it was the woman's turn, she went into a long disquisition about how FDR had advance warning of Pearl Harbor, and "buildings don't fall at 10 stories a second," and finally she asked, "Where is our Bob Woodward to bring the story out?"

Our answer: "Rosie O'Donnell."

Read the whole thing.

Update: The truthers meet Obama: "Until the major Democrat presidential candidates refute these Truther clowns, they’ll find themselves in photos like this one".

Vanity Fair, still suffering the after-effects of the mammoth case of BDS it displayed in the fall of 2004, and with a built-in anti-Republican bias that seemingly dates back to the Coolidge administration, charges that "Rudy Giuliani—former mayor, hero of 9/11, and now presidential candidate—is, quite literally, nuts".

Get ready for loads of articles with this sort of ad-hominem tone from the Manhattan-based publishing world, on whoever the GOP's front-runner candidate happens to be about three months before their publication date.

Speaking of the mayor, City Journal notes that "Broken Windows Turns 25" and that its crime prevention techniques have "worked wonders on both coasts", including, most importantly, Rudy's town.

You can find numerous examples of this sort of thing occurring throughout the MSM, particularly since 9/11, but Tim Blair specifically illustrates how one quote can take on a life of its own, morphing into something increasingly far removed from its original intent.

In June of 2004, after Christopher Hitchens demolished Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11, James Lileks wrote:

Ever wondered if there’s a literary equivalent of someone attacking a hanging side of beef with a chain saw? Wonder no more.

Given that the subhead of Hitchens' newest article is "George Tenet's sniveling, self-justifying new book is a disgrace", I'd say that's also an apt description this time around.

Having only taken office in January, New York's Governor Elliot Spitzer has apparently already resolved every major issue facing the Empire State in record time. How else to explain this?

Normally it is Jersey fans who gripe that they don't get any respect from pro sports teams that play at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford but have "New York" in their names.

But three New York assemblymen recently sponsored a bill to stop football's Giants and Jets and soccer's Red Bulls from using the Empire State's name or abbreviation because they don't play their home games in New York.

"At the very least, the location of the place where a team plays should be accurate, and reflect where they actually play their home games," Assemblyman Ivan Lafayette, of Queens, writes in the bill, as reported by The Record of Bergen County in Saturday newspapers.

As Steven Den Beste writes:

How do you enforce this? If these teams are actually based in Joisey, then a New York State law can't be enforced in Joisey. And if the teams play in New York, then the law wouldn't apply. Besides which, wouldn't this be an infringement of the First Amendment?

And why would New York want to disassociate itself with two NFL teams with longstanding historic ties to the state?

Elsewhere, speaking of sports and naming rights, my wife has some thoughts on advertising and NASCAR over at her business law blog.

Still in Nothern Iraq, Michael Totten has a video interview with Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga Colonel Salahdin Ahmad Ameen in his office in Suleimaniya, Kurdistan:

He also told us about the notorious Abu Ghraib prison – where he was beaten and tortured by the agents of Saddam's regime – about the Peshmerga's doctrine of human rights during war time, Henry Kissinger's betrayal in 1974, why the Kurds have not yet declared independence from Baghdad, and what may happen if the United States withdraws its armed forces from his country. 'Eight times, eight times the American people have disappointed us. I ask the American people, not make it nine times," he says.

What say you, George Clooney?

Tim Blair tells all:

Here’s how blogging works. First you run a site for four or five years, then one day John Malkovich turns up at your house.

Click over for photos. Apparently, the Pope--or at least his personal haberdasher--visited Tim as well on the same day.

To borrow from the Apple campaign of a few years ago, Southwest proves that it's possible to "Think Different", even in a field as staid and heavily-regulated as domestic commercial aviation. They’re not only sympathetic to their core market’s Red State sensibilities; the airline understands the Blogosphere as well. And in an age of increasingly morose stewardesses, their flight crews are some the friendliest I've encountered.

As Hugh Hewitt suggests, perhaps a much older mass industry could learn something from Southwest's ability to prosper in a tightly competitive marketplace.

As Chris Anderson of Wired magazine and author of The Long Tail explains, there's sad news out of Cincinnati: station manager Arthur "Big Guy" Carlson of AM radio's WKRP has finally lost his long-running feud with his mother, the station's owner. After nearly 30 years of the Carlsons' station in the Top 40 rock & roll format, WKRP is reverting back to generic Muzak.

AP: "Newspaper Circulation Falls 2.1 Percent"

NY Post: "Network Execs Face Hard Sell After Dismal Year"

Some thoughts from NRO's Matthew Sheffield, from whose post our title derives, and Stephen Spruiell.

Meanwhile, based upon the old ioke about the Gray Lady, this New York Times piece could easily have been titled, "Hollywood Box Office Flat, Women Hardest Hit".

Update: Hugh Hewitt spots "The Los Angeles Times and The Minneapolis Star Tribune Bleeding Out".

Cinnamon Stillwell of the San Francisco Chronicle (whom I had the pleasure to meet earlier this month) has some thoughts on comedian Will Franken, a performance artist all too rare in San Francisco:

Lest Franken be labeled a conservative or, what's worse in today's parlance, a dreaded neoconservative, there's something in his show to offend just about anyone. Franken is that rare species -- an independent thinker with a healthy sense of the absurd and a complete and utter lack of political correctness. Not to mention being funny. Demonstrating the universality of good humor, his act has drawn praise from such quarters as The Chronicle, San Francisco Bay Guardian, SF Weekly and the Oakland Tribune.

She quotes Franken thusly:

... I try to make fun of all religions and all political parties. The problem is, it seems more and more like radical Islam is the exception to the rule in that it gets sort of a free pass. What we were told from our media during the cartoon fiasco was that our stance on not showing the cartoons was out of respect for all religions. Well, we know that to be a lie because Judaism, Christianity, even Hinduism (Apu from "The Simpsons") have all had their heads on the satirical chopping block.

... I don't approve of mistreatment of women, murder of homosexuals, suppression of free speech, hatred of Jews, theocratic governments, and a lack of sense of humor in anybody -- which is why I believe that Western society has a great weapon in its satirical tradition to ridicule fundamentalist Islam (as it's already done with fundamentalist Christianity a la Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Lenny Bruce) into a less volatile secular assimilation.

Good luck with that, but in the meantime, it's worth reviewing the thoughts of Orrin Judd and Australia's John Birmingham on the state of modern humor--and the frequent lack thereof.

It moves in mysterious ways, as James Lileks illustrates in his latest Bleat, first via two side-by-side photographs of sculptures at the Minneapolis Public Library, and then an astonishing--and astonishingly rare--moment of clarity regarding the 1950s from Garrison Keillor.

Dr. Sidney Theodore Freedman weighs in on the Randy Moss trade from Oakland to New England: "Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice, pull down your pants and slide on the ice".

This is interesting:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has now learned of a second, more stunning error in Tenet's book (which is due to appear in bookstores tomorrow). According to Michiko Kakutani's review in Saturday's Times,

On the day after 9/11, he [Tenet] adds, he ran into Richard Perle, a leading neoconservative and the head of the Defense Policy Board, coming out of the White House. He says Mr. Perle turned to him and said: "Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. They bear responsibility."

Here's the problem: Richard Perle was in France on that day, unable to fly back after September 11. In fact Perle did not return to the United State until September 15. Did Tenet perhaps merely get the date of this encounter wrong? Well, the quote Tenet ascribes to Perle hinges on the encounter taking place September 12: "Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday." And Perle in any case categorically denies to THE WEEKLY STANDARD ever having said any such thing to Tenet, while coming out of the White House or anywhere else.

According to Kakutani, Tenet concludes by paraphrasing Daniel Patrick Moynihan's comment: "Policymakers are entitled to their own opinions--but not to their own set of facts." How many other facts has George Tenet invented?

Cue the refrains of "fake but accurate", and "emotional truth" that are sure to come.

Two stories that don't happen very often at the Gray Lady:

"NY Times Surprisingly Asks ‘Is the Carbon-Neutral Movement Just a Gimmick?’"

"New York Times(!): Turnaround in Al-Anbar"

Call Roger Waters and prepare the flying pig for launch!

Update: "Reuters got it right. No, really". Prepare the USS Swinetrek!

Watch the video, and read the whole thing, indeed.^TM

In a couple of his Bleats this past week, James Lileks focused on the immediate post-WWII emotional fortitude of what he dubbed "nerd culture", young men who longed for the technological future that sci-fi promised, when that genre was at its lowest ebb:

You can almost imagine the sighs from the readers, who were doubtlessly male, 20s or early 30s, and desperately interested in the future. If only I could live there now. If only I lived in an age of rockets and spacemen and ray guns and monsters. Of course, people still think this today. I thought this when I was growing up. The difference, however, is this: I had Star Trek. I’ve always had Star Trek. Someone who’s 12 today has a broad and satisfying range of sci-fi options. But what did someone in 1946 have?

If you watch any of the memorials for the original Trek, inevitably, they'll feature a cast or crew member who looks back wistfully and says, "What I liked about the show was that Gene Roddenberry had created a hopeful vision of the future; one that showed mankind prospering in space, and in the future".

Funny, I've always been pretty optimistic about the future, and judging by cultural touchstones like Star Trek, the 1939 World's Fair, and the sixties Space Race, historically, most Americans have been as well. For many though, that's no longer true.

One reason for the New Hopelessness might be the belief that America was founded in original sin:

This week saw a small and telling controversy involving a mural on the walls of Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles. The mural is big--400 feet long, 18 feet high at its peak--and eye-catching, as would be anything that "presents a colorful depiction of the rape, slaughter and enslavement of North America's indigenous people by genocidal Europeans." Those are the words of the Los Angeles Times's Bob Sipchen, who noted "the churning stream of skulls in the wake of Columbus's Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria."

What is telling is not that some are asking if the mural portrays the Conquistadors as bloodthirsty monsters, or if it is sufficiently respectful to the indigenous Indians of Mexico. What is telling is that those questions completely miss the point and ignore the obvious. Here is the obvious:

The mural is on the wall of a public school. It is on a public street. Children walk by.

Another reason to feel hopeless about the future is when you share a mindset that consistently seeks and derives pleasure in bad news:

Bad news might be good news when you've got no other news, but a perpetual search for bad news to the exclusion of all else would drive away readers and drive editors into psychiatric care . . . even faster than usual.

Which brings us to the anti-war, anti-West, anti-progress Left. Well, let's start a few generations prior, with old Karl Marx himself.

Marx believed bad news was good; that the "bad news" of capitalism's collapse - with associated societal dislocation, mass unemployment and misery across all classes - was good because it would lead to a glorious revolution. Or, as he put it: "What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable."

Silly fellow. Silly but influential, obviously, right down to the lust for bad news we see from the present-day crazy Left, whose entire belief system is structured around sadness.

Consider this. Opponents of the war are encouraged in their opposition by disasters in Iraq. They feel validated by suicide attacks on coalition forces (including Iraqi forces, fighting to quell insurgents).

Imagine a month of reduced insurgent activity, with related reductions in coalition losses; imagine feeling disappointed by that, because it undermines your argument that the war is wrong. Imagine being a peacenik who craves an ever-higher body count.

Environmental activists thrill to claims that polar bears and other creatures are imperilled because it boosts their argument that urgent change is required.

Point out that polar bears are not endangered (there are so many surplus polar bears that indigenous hunters are still permitted to kill up to 700 every year) and they become defensive and annoyed.

If that seems like a rather toxic pair of mental bookends to operate from, add to it an elite that believes that technology must be rolled back--banned in several cases--and it's easy to see how such pessimism could become all-pervasive.

Almost 20 years ago, I remember buying an early version of the guide handed out to writers on the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation from the late 1980s. In order to prevent another round of episodes where Evil Computers Run Amok and the heroic captain of the Enterprise must destroy them, Roddenberry inserted a passage that reminded his writers that the crew of the Enterprise aren't Luddites: technology is what got them into space and keeps them there, so avoid writing anti-technology screeds.

Would that our current elites, who spread their message via television networks created in the 1940s for profit, and an Internet, created in the late 1960s by the eeeeevil US military (when this man was their commander-in-chief, no less) have a similar take.

Fire actually does melt steel!

Update: "Paging Dr. Rosie: Did Schwarzenegger Demolish Bay Bridge Interchange?"

As Steven Den Beste once wrote: "1984 -- A user manual for lefties; a warning for the rest of us".

(Note that this touch helps complete the Orwellian vision.)

Mark Steyn's latest column features this incandescent opening:

Everything's difficult, isn't it? In the Democratic presidential candidates' debate, Sen. Barack Obama was asked what he personally was doing to save the environment, and replied that his family was "working on" changing their light bulbs.

Is this the new version of the old joke? How many senators does it take to "work on" changing a light bulb? One to propose a bipartisan commission. One to threaten to de-fund the light bulbs. One to demand the impeachment of Bush and Cheney for keeping us all in the dark. One to vote to pull out the first of the light bulbs by fall of this year with a view to getting them all pulled out by the end of 2008.

In 1914, on the eve of the Great War, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey observed, "The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." Whether he was proposing a solution to global warming is unclear. But he would be impressed to hear that nine decades later the lights are going out all over Washington.

To understand what a topsy-turvy world our political class has entered due to its need for emotional displacement, check out the sign that a protestor in Turkey is holding, and note the two elements that make up the protestors' symbol for the ruling AK Party. Note which one the left in the US wants to ban, and which they want to promote.

Update: In a way, it's too bad this woman's headdress doesn't come in black and obscure her face. Then you'd have one story that truly ties together all of the elements of the modern (err, actually anti-modern, to be precise) political zietgiest.

Another Update: "And so as America slides ever closer to the 14th century in their pathetic bid to appease these uncivilized extremists, countries like Malaysia move decidedly toward the 21st century".

Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters interviews Day By Day impresario Chris Muir on Ed's Blog Talk Radio show.

For our profile of Chris a few years ago in Tech Central Station, click here.

John Hinderaker writes:

So al-Hadi, a former Iraqi soldier who became a top al Qaeda operative in Afghanistan and later supervised that organization's operations in Iraq was caught re-entering that country from Iran: three entities that, we are told, cannot possibly have anything to do with one another.

Meanwhile, Don Surber notes a curious omission from the legacy media:

The U.S. announced on Friday that it captured the mastermind behind the 7/7/2005 bombings in London.

But you would not know it by reading the New York Times, the Washington Post or the Associated Press.

None of them mentioned the London bombings in reporting on the capture of the man who organized that attack, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi (aka, Abu Abdallah).

Instead, reporters concentrated on where this major player in the war on terrorism was held after his capture.

Incredible.

No it's not.

Update:Needless to say, don't expect this meme to generate much MSM traction, either: Tom Joscelyn writes to Power Line that it's "amazing how many former members of Saddam's regime became al Qaeda bigwigs."

On his own blog, Joscelyn has some questions that should be asked of al-Hadi. Meanwhile, Dafydd ab Hugh explores the rococo measures the British feel they must employ to interrogate him, as al-Hadi's new permanent residence will be in a tropical council flat that's no longer UK approved.

Thoughtful progressive reader questions prominent libertarian blogger's lack of "Comments Sectino".

"At the Kennedy Library, just outside Boston, they went through all the files. They couldn't see much evidence Lloyd Bentsen knew John Kennedy very well. But it certainly was an effective campaign ploy for him".

Because no journalist at the time reported that it was a lie, much like they would immediately flip 180 degrees on the strength of the economy four years later in late 1992. To riff off of one of David Halberstam's lines, prior to the Blogosphere, the truth could be shrink-wrapped into whatever way elite journalists wanted it to appear.

Meanwhile, for yet another flashback to the era of Bush 41, Dan Quayle must be feeling a certain amount of closure after this.

"Manolo says, ayyyyyy! The Ellen DeGeneres is looking bad these days".

Making the rounds today in the Blogosphere is this editorial on "The Disarming of America" by one Dan Simpson, whom the Toledo Blade describes as "a retired diplomat, [and] a member of the editorial boards of The Blade and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette":

When people talk about doing something about guns in America, it often comes down to this: "How could America disarm even if it wanted to? There are so many guns out there."

Because I have little or no power to influence the "if" part of the issue, I will stick with the "how." And before anyone starts to hyperventilate and think I'm a crazed liberal zealot wanting to take his gun from his cold, dead hands, let me share my experience of guns.

As a child I played cowboys and Indians with cap guns. I had a Daisy Red Ryder B-B gun. My father had in his bedside table drawer an old pistol which I examined surreptitiously from time to time. When assigned to the American embassy in Beirut during the war in Lebanon, I sometimes carried a .357 Magnum, which I could fire accurately. I also learned to handle and fire a variety of weapons while I was there, including Uzis and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

I don't have any problem with hunting, although blowing away animals with high-powered weapons seems a pointless, no-contest affair to me. I suppose I would enjoy the fellowship of the experience with other friends who are hunters.

Now, how would one disarm the American population? First of all, federal or state laws would need to make it a crime punishable by a $1,000 fine and one year in prison per weapon to possess a firearm. The population would then be given three months to turn in their guns, without penalty.

Hunters would be able to deposit their hunting weapons in a centrally located arsenal, heavily guarded, from which they would be able to withdraw them each hunting season upon presentation of a valid hunting license. The weapons would be required to be redeposited at the end of the season on pain of arrest. When hunters submit a request for their weapons, federal, state, and local checks would be made to establish that they had not been convicted of a violent crime since the last time they withdrew their weapons. In the process, arsenal staff would take at least a quick look at each hunter to try to affirm that he was not obviously unhinged.

Time to pull out the Sheryl Crow Defense once the emails start arriving at the Blade--which should probably be renamed something far less aggressive sounding, after all.

Update: Since I linked to Ace of Spades' Sheryl Crow post, it's only to fair to also include a link to his thoughts on Simpson's gun-grab op-ed.

More: "But don't call Simpson a ‘liberal’ or a ‘zealot’. After all, he's fired an RPG".

Elsewhere: "Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?" First draft of Simpson's screed uncovered by--who else?--IowaHawk.

Reader Stephen Shields finds yet another great moment in Memeorandum synchronicity.

Related thoughts from James Lileks and Dean Barnett; details on the Al Qaeda operative captured at Hot Air.

A topic discussed on video:

And on blogs.

Because it won't be in the legacy media.

Speaking of which, Don Imus could not be reached for comment.

A Shatnerian look at the state of the presidential race.

A few years ago, Michael Medved asked Jack Valenti:

With all the gratitude and acclaim surrounding Jack Valenti's recently announced retirement, no one dares confront the long-time president of the Motion Picture Association of America over the chief mystery of his 38-year reign: What happened, Jack, to all those missing moviegoers?

The Internet Movie Database reports that Valenti has joined them today, at age 85.

Former screenwriter turned Maximum Pajamahadeen Roger Simon writes, "the movie industry, specifically film production, is one of the most ecologically-wasteful businesses around":

I can think of dozens of instances, many of which I was involved in, in which no one ever gave the slightest thought to the ecological consequences of what we were doing. There were only two questions ever asked: Was it right creatively and how much did it cost, not necessarily in that order.

Never once, I hasten to add, did I hear the word "cost" attached to the environment, only to the studio's pocketbook. I doubt that is changing in any real way. Maybe the studios are leading the charge on light bulbs and toilet paper these days, but you can bet you won't hear Jeff Katzenberg advising Steven Spielberg to cut his shooting schedule to save on energy or cut down on greenhouse gases. This same duo was involved some years back in the brouhaha surrounding their efforts to build Dreamworks on the Ballona wetlands in Venice. They seemed anything but green at that time - 1995 - when it came to their work.

There's a simple solution of course...

If, as Marvin Olasky wrote yesterday, the death of David Halberstam closes a chapter on the legacy media, La Shawn Barber explores how it's facing the future: "Newspapers Agonize Over Allowing Comments".

Can't say I blame them, actually.

Lawyer seeks $65 Million from dry cleaner for missing pants. Bill Clinton could not be reached for comment.

(Via Pajamas HQ.)

Reuters: "Palestinians attend a demonstration against violence in Gaza April 23, 2007".

(Via Tim Blair.)

Related: "Does Anyone Edit The AP?"

Or not.

Time magazine unwittingly provides further proof for Arnold Kling's thesis that there is no escape from 1968.

With the Dow topping 13,000 yesterday, Larry Kudlow writes:

We are in the midst of the longest uninterrupted bull market run in memory. We have record low tax rates on capital, a benign inflation rate, and recent economic releases suggesting the Goldilocks soft landing scenario remains very much in place.

But in the end, it all boils down to two simple things—two stock market locomotives that have created enormous, still untapped, value in equities. Viewers have heard talk about them night after night:

High earnings, low interest rates.

Mark my words, it ain't over yet.

Will George W. Bush ever get any credit for this?

I would tend to doubt it. At least, not while he's in office.

Marvin Olasky makes a great point, writing that the death of David Halberstam in a Bay Area traffic accident on Monday may be looked back upon as a chapter in journalism closing. Olasky compares it to Buddy Holly's death signifying the end of 1950s-era rock & roll, even if the echoes of that style of music would linger on until 1964:

These days, reporters regularly gather to bemoan the demise of old journalism and the rise of blogs. Future historians will peg Monday's death of David Halberstam, 73, in a California car crash, as a signpost of the old era's end.

Halberstam was the first big-time journalist with whom I ever had dinner, in 1969 or 1970 when I was a college student. My fellow leftists and I venerated him for winning a Pulitzer Prize on the back of anti-Vietnam War reporting that had gained the ire of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. As William Prochnau, author of "Once Upon a Distant War," later noted, Halberstam in his reporting of those he distrusted ''didn't say, 'You're not telling me the truth.' He said, 'You're lying.'"

Compare that with fellow Jurassic journalist Marvin Kalb, who wouldn't commit to saying on the air yesterday whether or not he thought Bill Moyers and George Soros are on the left. More from Olasky:

We loved that -- Halberstam wrote like a god -- but four decades later, the epigone of Halberstamism is found in books like Al Franken's "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right." Unlike some of his successors, Halberstam was a hardworking reporter who didn't grab for sneering laughs, but his 1965 book about Vietnam, "The Making of a Quagmire," has inspired journalists for four decades to look for a quagmire as soon as the first American soldiers set foot on sand. [Sometimes before they set foot on sand--Ed]

Halberstam's perceptiveness and blindness were both evident in an interview he gave to the San Jose Mercury News in 1993. He said he was worried about journalism's future because "The public perceives us as being too powerful and too arrogant." But he went on to state his version of the problem: "We give a jarring perception of reality to people." Journalists knew reality, and people weren't strong enough to handle the shrink-wrapped truth.

Cue Nicholson's nostril-flaring "You can't handle the truth" riff.

Halberstam was the best and brightest of the old journalistic era, which will not be resurrected. He elegantly wove tales of government and corporate mendacity. He orated brilliantly about oppression. He worked hard, gained disciples and received not only numerous honorary degrees but something more important -- articles upon his death with headlines like "Halberstam was my journalistic hero" and "Saying goodbye to a mentor."

According to song, the day Buddy Holly's plane crashed in 1959 was the day the music died. When a car broadsided the one Halberstam was riding in, he died almost instantly as a broken rib punctured his heart. The journalism he was the heart of, one where reporters claimed to possess gnostic wisdom, is also dying. We've entered an era of citizen journalism, where everyone has a camera and YouTube replaces You Believe What I Write.

I think it's safe to say that to a man, the Marxist and socialist elite journalists of Halberstam's era believed in Marx's 19th century smokestack-era theories that eventually, the workers would own the means of production and enjoy the full fruits of their labor.

When the information revolution finally came (surprisingly peacefully--we simply all went down to Best Buy and bought PCs and cable modems), the workers not only had an infinitely greater variety of news sources when compared to, say, Halberstam's 1965 quagmire mass media three TV network salad days. They could make their own news and opinion if they wanted to. And the men of Halberstam's era hate this new era--really, viscerally hate it.

It's the new reality. But I guess some legacy journalists just aren’t strong enough to handle the shrink-wrapped truth.

The five myths of Harry Reid; related thoughts here.

Claudia Rosett describes the hellish North Korean famine:

When the Soviet system imploded in 1991, there was great concern that in the immediate aftermath the populations of post-communist nations, suddenly cut loose from Big Brother, might starve. They didn't. Although life was hard, people used their newfound freedoms to cope. But in one of the Soviet-engendered communist states where the totalitarian regime survived — North Korea — the result was famine.

Perhaps because no TV cameras were allowed in, and far too little information was allowed out, the North Korean famine of the 1990s remains one of the most muffled horrors of modern times. By now, however, there have been enough studies, reports, and tales from defectors to confirm that the deprivation in North Korea was catastrophic: One million or more people died, and food shortages continue to this day.

Ted Turner and the editors at the L.A. Times should read Claudia's article--naturally, the odds that they actually will are virtually zero.

Andy McCarthy explains why in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s "present hour of need, his only enthusiastic supporter appears to be the president":

Throughout her tumultuous tenure as attorney general, Janet Reno could always rely on Democrats and liberals to circle the wagons when critics ripped her judgment, competence, and forthrightness. They’d close ranks when the opposition claimed her Justice Department elevated political considerations over legal ones. By contrast, in Alberto Gonzales’s present hour of need, his only enthusiastic supporter appears to be the president. Why?

Because of politics. Not politicization, as in partisan obstruction of particular investigations. Rather, good, old-fashioned politics in the best sense of the word: namely, an administration’s accountability to its supporters and its fealty to the policies that induced their support.

The Reno Justice Department, whatever else you may think about it, cared passionately about signal “progressive” causes and backed them to the hilt, regardless of criticism. To the contrary, the Gonzales Justice Department and, indeed, the president, often turn spaghetti-spined when the priorities of their base are at stake. How surprising, then, that when friends are most sorely needed there are none to be found.

You can only tune out your base for so long before it reciprocates.

(Via Ed Morrissey, who reminds us to get used to the endless hearings. "We have two years to live in Subpoenaville".)

As Charles Johnson writes, "How could Reuters’ experienced editors miss a fake picture that was so bleeding obvious, at every step of the way toward publication? Answer: because they just didn’t care":

It’s interesting that in an age of obsessive media focus on scandals, no wire service or newspaper has ever followed up on that story in any real way. Adnan Hajj seemed to simply vanish off the face of the earth; no interviews, no photos of him, no investigations, nothing; just that one statement where he claimed his fakery was to “remove dust.”

For blowing the whistle on Hizballah’s manipulation of Reuters, LGF was smeared by numerous leftists; the diversionary tactics ranged from personal attacks to attempts to minimize the importance of the faked photos.

Now the Harvard Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, hardly a bastion of neocon wingnut thinking, has issued a paper that absolutely skewers the media for their outrageously biased and terrorist-enabling behavior. Maybe this will be a little harder for them to ignore: How the Media Partnered With Hezbollah: Harvard’s Cautionary Report.

Just add it to all of the evidence here.

Interesting posts by Neo-Neocon and Dr. Helen on matching patients and therapists, and the potential prejudices on both sides of the equation. Neo writes:

And, although this sounds like some sort of bad joke, I know quite a few therapists who say they would have difficulty treating a client whom they know to be a Republican. So it’s not just clients who want therapists who are as much like themselves as possible—some therapists return the favor.

Dr. Helen responds:

If therapists only want patients they deem to be "deserving" of empathy, how empathetic can they really be?

Read the rest.

Terms used to describe Iraq? Kosovo? No, quotes from a San Francisco Chronicle article about...San Francisco.

And so as she flies the blue lady of the skies into the sunset, we say "Aloha, 9 O'clock Rosie!" and return to our duties. Let me remind you the Weblog is open 24 hours for your dining and dancing pleasure.

Or not--it depends on whether or not The Most Important Story In Television History actually pans out tomorrow morning.

John Hinderaker of Power Line spots yet another candidate for the sequel to Unhinged:

Given the level of hysteria that is constantly being whipped up by the Party of Hate, we've worried for a while that someone is going to get hurt. Cases of voter intimidation and violence against Republican campaign headquarters were widely reported during the last election cycle. A Democratic poster whom we had to ban from the Power Line Forum recently went to the home of a Republican campus leader and assaulted him, resulting in criminal charges.

Most recently, a Democrat and former political candidate named Matthew Hunter Kramer has been arrested for threatening the executive director of the Republican Party of Nevada with a rifle, tearing photos of President Bush and Vice-President Cheney off the wall of the party's headquarters, threatening staffers at the Republican Party's office, and "warning that he would be back if President Bush vetoed an emergency war spending bill being considered by Congress."

It's no secret that Democrats are trying to bully their way back into power. But bullying with rifles--as well as "swords, knives, a flare gun, a shotgun and shells," which also were found in Kramer's car, ups the ante considerably.

Rifles, swords, knives, a flare gun, a shotgun and shells in Nevada? Yes, it's time for the obvious "Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good time in Vegas with all this stuff" line.

But more importantly, these incidents happen mainly around election time. Why the early start--and what does it foreshadow for the fall of 2008?

Over at the Pajamas' mother of the ship, The Manolo weighs in on the $400 a pop haircut of the John Edwards:

Southern politicians and televangelists know, the beautiful and important southern hair can make up for many sins of the flesh and spirit.

Don't miss it, even if you're one of "the Manolo’s internet friends who still go to the Super-Duper Cuts, or the Floyd the Barber", and not the Pink Sapphire.