Two guesses as to where I've been this week:

I'm stuck in the American Airlines Admiral's Club feeling a bit like Alex undergoing the Ludovico treatment in A Clockwork Orange, as the two TV sets non-consensually blare out the Academy Awards. I can't help but agree with the New York Post's Kyle Smith when he declares Hollywood part of the "Axis of Chutzpah" for having American troops present the best documentary award:

Given that the most recent statistics show that approximately 97.4 percent of all documentaries present America as a scary place and of those 97.4, most are meant to present the troops in Iraq as overmatched at best and as abusive, sadistic criminals at worst, it’s pretty cheeky of the Oscars to have troops serving overseas present the Oscar for best documentary short subject.

“Move away from the dark side and back to the light,” the director of “Taxi to the Dark Side” says. I doubt our troops agree that we are stuck in the dark side. I think they would argue that the vast majority of them abide by the law, by the rules of engagement and by their own moral compasses, yet they get little feeling of support from their country because those who work in the media are bent on presenting sordid, depraved and illegal acts committed by members of the military and intelligence services (which are of course elements in this war, as they are in every war) as the norm in order to undercut the war and defund the troops.

Believe it or not, it could be worse: Oscar's nadir is reflected here.

Libertas's Dirty Harry is also live blogging the awards--don't miss his commentary here.

James Lileks links to one of the saddest videos you'll watch.

Elsewhere in the global snack food war, are Doritos next in the crosshairs?

(Or is Roger Kimball's quiet crusade being implemented incrementally?)

Roger L. Simon writes that "The New York Times' free fall is a good thing no matter what side you're on":

I cannot believe that an intelligent man like Bill Keller was entirely unaware that most people would be repelled by the thin gruel his paper published - even though he evinced astonishment at the huge number of negative comments, including many from Obama supporters, that appeared on their website. Others may say he and his fellow editors were just unconscious of the way people think, but I am not convinced. As evidence I offer the simple fact that they were for months reluctant to publish. Was the imminence of The New Republic story on the inside deliberations at The Times the trigger? Maybe partly. But again I suspect there was more to it. The New York Times is run by human beings, like everything else, who are subject to the same conflicting cocktail of motivations we all are.

The Jayson Blair affair, of course, was damaging to the paper, but I suspect the fallout here will be worse, since we are in the midst of a presidential campaign to determine the leader of the Western World. I don't think this necessarily means any kind of shakeup in editorial staff. It means something more serious - the continued degradation of the newspaper's already weakening reputation.

And this is a very good thing. No matter what your politics, for too many years The New York Times has had far too much power over our national discourse for one outlet. No media source should have that much authority in a democracy. We need, pardon the expression, a thousand flowers to bloom. I know Bil Keller agrees with that, because I have heard him acknowledge it. He was clearly under considerable pressure from his reporters and editors to publish this unprofessional nonsense. Why did he finally pull the trigger? I submit that he may have done so, at least in part, to shoot himself and his own institution in the foot.

Kate of Small Dead Animals spots another kind of newspaper free fall.

I've had the riffs from this moody Eric Clapton/Michael Kamen soundtrack piece rumbling through my head all weekend. Now it's your turn:

If, as the New York Times and PBS keep hectoring us, global warming requires everyone to make sacrifices, think of the greenhouse emissions and biased omissions that would be saved by the voluntary retirement of these two wasteful corporations.

Wow--to follow-up on Patterico's thoughts last night, how bad does AP want to throw the Democratic presidential race to Obama?

Bad enough that they're dredging up old Whitewater stories for those who've forgotten the scandal-ridden tobaggon ride of the mid-1990s.

(And this is as good a place as any to link to the unfortunate MSM metaphor of the day.)

Update: "All those military stalwartness analogies are a little odd, given how she threw Iraq under the bus."

To be fair though, the left treats politics like it's warfare, and warfare like it's politics.

Ralph Nader: tanned, rested and ready!

A few times on this blog, I've pondered if Michelle Obama is this year's Teresa Heinz Kerry. But the Anchoress thinks she's this year's version of Hillary, circa 1992.

Update: Meanwhile, in "What Brought Us Here?", Victor Davis Hanson has some thoughts on her husband:

One wonders how the United States has come to the brink of nominating and probably electing someone with almost no experience as either an executive or national legislator, replete with ratings and rankings that suggest he will be about the most liberal Presidential candidate since George McGovern.

Definitely worth reading the whole thing.

Compare and contrast screen grabs of two headlines at Time.

Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters catches USA Today's claim that global warming will cause giant snakes to start roaming the fruited plains.

Curiously, only a couple of weeks ago, we were told that global warming killed oversized reptiles.

"Castro Rejects Idea of Political Change."

I guess Fidel's the ultimate example of a one-time youthful leftwing revolutionary who's now standing athwart history yelling "stop."

Patterico writes that "Hillary is now being portrayed the same way as Republicans are portrayed when they defend themselves . . . she is being called an attacker by the L.A. Times (and pretty much the rest of the media as well)":

The Deciders have decided who the winner should be, Hillary. And it ain’t you. They’re already writing your obituary.

Sucks, don’t it?

Welcome to our world. This is how Republicans get treated by Big Media every day.

I don’t feel sorry for you, Hillary. Not one bit.

The Wall Street Journal has this choice soundbite from Hillary:

Sen. Hillary Clinton ratcheted up her attacks on Sen. Barack Obama today, comparing his campaign tactics to those of George W. Bush and urging Ohioans to see past his momentum.

"Enough with the speeches and the big rallies and then using tactics that are right out of Karl Rove's playbook," Mrs. Clinton told reporters at a press conference today.

Sorry, there's not enough chutzpah in the world for someone to complain about another presidential candidate's campaign tactics when her husband reformulated the presidency into an endless political campaign and whose lead strategist infamously said, "If you drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you'll find" regarding Paula Jones.

Mark Hemingway's article, "Swiftboating the Swiftboaters" begins:

Barack Obama’s campaign is “not sufficiently aware of the danger that exists from the conservative Freak Show,” the Politico’s Jonathan Martin wrote this week.

And ends:

When demanding more honesty and accountability in politics gets you accused of creating a Freak Show, you know who the real clowns are in the political circus.

Read what comes in-between.

Neo-Neocon writes, "You know the Times has egg on its face, when the San Francisco Chronicle gives it a tongue-lashing for publishing gossip. Ouch." She quotes this passage from the Chronicle:

Regrettably, the Times left itself and our profession open to such allegations of bias by publishing soft-focus evidence of what would be an outrageous breach of public trust.

Allegations? The Times cleared that up for us four years ago.

People magazine headline: "George Clooney: I'm the Hillary Clinton of the Oscars".

I can see that. Neither seems to play all that well in Peoria. And both were for liberating Iraq before they were against it.

Related: A few years ago, a certain Maverick presidential candidate quipped that "Washington is a Hollywood for ugly people. Hollywood is a Washington for the simpleminded". And Mark Steyn notes that the couple who did the most to equate politics and stardom 16 years ago are watching the tables turning on them yesterday via the same method.

Roger L. Simon has seen the frenzied reaction to Barack Obama's speeches before. But then, there's an increasing sense of déjà vu about the man.

(Title via Michael Totten.)

Related: With "The cautionary tale of Pierre Elliott Trudeau", Lionel Chetwynd writes of an earlier version of Obamamania as well--and its aftermath.

And the maker of "male enhancement" tablets joins Miss Cleo in the tacky cable TV commercial Hall of Infamy.

It's not quite an airbrush alert, as the word still appears in the Times' original attack on McCain, but Ed Morrissey and Tom Maguire are noting that in follow-up articles, Timespersons are no longer using the R-word. Ed writes:

A day after insinuating that John McCain had an affair with lobbyist Vicki Iseman, all of the romance appears to have disappeared from the New York Times. Faster than one can say Roberta Flack, the flak taken by the Gray Lady has apparently resulted in a Soviet-style purge of the sexual allegations from their story. Recall this in paragraph 2 of the original article:

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

Tom Maguire notes that now, Eastasia has never been at war with Oceania -- er, the story was never about sex. In her Friday follow-up, Elisabeth Bumiller cast the story in this manner:

Senator John McCain on Thursday disputed an account in The New York Times that top advisers confronted him during his first presidential run with concerns about his ties to a female lobbyist

After leading with the allegations of sexual misconduct on Thursday, the Times waters it down within 24 hours to "concerns" about "ties" to a female lobbyist. A day after spreading unsubstantiated gossip, they've backpedaled to the "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" method of journalism. Readers could fill in the blanks after two paragraphs, though, when Bumiller could report that McCain denied ever having an affair with Iseman.

Rush Limbaugh noted that McCain said he was "disappointed" by the New York Times' hit piece, and wonders, if he truly is disappointed and surprised, he must have been the only man on the planet not to know that however cozy he relationship with the press was in the past, they'd start to turn on him the moment he locked up the GOP nomination.

As Denny Green would say, "They are who we thought they were."

Update: The people have spoken, the bastards.

Fidel Castro's friends at AP write, “‘The night before, I slept better than ever,’ Castro reportedly wrote in a newspaper column. ‘My conscience was clear and I promised myself a vacation.’”

John McCain has an excellent tropical suggestion for Castro's travel itinerary.

Update: Related thoughts from Mark Steyn, who writes, "there beats in the liberal breast a strange passion for normalizing dictatorships."

Nikke Finke writes:

So, all in all, I think everyone should expect the Worst Oscars Ever In The History Of Hollywood. Really, Sunday can't come fast enough to put this beleaguered 80th Academy Awards which almost was picketed into oblivion out of its misery.

Or as Jonathan Last wrote three years ago:

A survey of the muck soon to be celebrated at the Academy Awards confirms William Goldman's sad truism: Every Oscar night you look back and realize that last year was the worst year in the history of Hollywood.

Dirty Harry of Libertas is once again taking one for the team, watching the Oscars (and blogging about it) so you don't have to.

If you missed Hugh Hewitt's show yesterday because you were listening to Pajamas' PJM Political on XM satellite radio, you can tune-in here and catch two hours of Jonah Goldberg discussing Liberal Fascism.

If you missed PJM Political yesterday because you were listening to Hugh Hewitt, you can catch it here.

And for a sneak preview of next week's PJM Political, take a listen to Austin Bay's interview with Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics.

Ed Morrissey writes that Barack Obama had a Leonard Bernstein moment in the mid-1990s.

(And watch for this story to quickly go back down the memory hole.)

Update: And thus, this story isn't very surprising:

Barack Obama will have a big problem attracting the blue-collar white voters he needs to win the presidency, writes Bob Owens: they like guns and he wants to take their guns away.

Steve Green predicts, "Obama probably will be the Democratic nominee. He might even be the next President. But he’ll have no coattails at all. In fact, right now I’d bet there are a bunch of very nervous freshmen Blue Dog Democrats in Congress."

At Newsbusters, Clay Waters writes:

The fallout continues from yesterday's New York Times hit piece on John McCain. The paper itself doesn't seem eager to put up a fight as network news broadcasts, liberal bloggers, journalism professors, and the general public are questioning the Times's journalistic standards.

Roger Simon questions the timing--of the Times endorsing McCain, knowing that this story was slowly simmering on their back burner. But Orrin Judd half-jokingly writes, "Were one conspiracy minded, it would be easy to imagine that Maverick planted the story himself knowing that the Beltway Right would side with him against the Times."

Product placements in novels? It could be a coming thing, writes Stefan Beck in the New Criterion's Armavirumque blog.

Brent Bozell writes, "For decades, this has been an easy display of the media�s foreign affections. Every right-wing dictator, like Chile�s Pinochet, is a �dictator,� while every left-wing dictator is merely a �leader,� or in Castro�s case, a �dashing revolutionary� and a �rock star.� That was ABC�s Diane Sawyer on the morning of Castro�s abdication announcement":

Throughout Castro�s long history of dominating Cuba, he has also dominated the American media, who have covered him with a sickening parade of ardor and accolades, even after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Consider these morally bankrupt valentines:

1. Barbara Walters on ABC, in 2002: "For Castro, freedom starts with education. And if literacy alone were the yardstick, Cuba would rank as one of the freest nations on Earth. �

2. Dan Rather on CBS feeling all warm after Elian Gonzalez was ripped away from those �so-called Cuban exiles� in 2000: �There is no question that Castro feels a very deep and abiding connection to those Cubans who are still in Cuba.�

3. Katie Couric applauding communist achievements on NBC in 1992: "Considered one of the most charismatic leaders of the 20th century....Castro traveled the country cultivating his image, and his revolution delivered. Campaigns stamped out illiteracy and even today, Cuba has one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world."

4. Peter Jennings on ABC, in 1989: "Castro has delivered the most to those who had the least, and for much of the Third World, Cuba is actually a model of development."

5. Even sportscasters darkened their reputations. In a 1991 special covering the Pan Am Games, ABC�s Jim McKay could have been speaking for the media in 2008: "You have brought a new system of government, obviously, to Cuba but the Cuban people do think of you, I think, as their father. One day you�re going to retire. Or one day, all of us die. Won�t there be a great vacuum there? Won�t there be something that will be difficult to fill? Can they do it on their own?"

They always do back the mustache on the left--the MSM's coverage of Castro dovetailed remarkably well with their equally obsequious coverage of fellow despot-in-fatigues Saddam Hussein.

UPI breathlessly reports that "Hearing rap music can spontaneously activate pre-existing awareness of sexist beliefs, North Carolina State University researchers determined."

All together now: I need a study to tell me this?

Yet another interesting quote from Michelle Obama:

Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones.

Can we start with Keith Olbermann, first?

In "What's Ailing Oscar?", Michael Medved just buries this year's Academy Awards show, but the conclusion to this passage couldn't help but stand out a bit to me:

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences produced its first award ceremony on May 16, 1929, none of the movie moguls behind the celebration planned to use such occasions to call attention to under-appreciated art films that had escaped public attention. Instead, the whole purpose of the Academy was to add prestige and a patina of “class” to big studio productions that already appealed to a mass audience. Classic Best Picture winners managed to combine lavish budgets, epic ambition, and crowd-pleasing spectacle, like “Gone With the Wind” (1939), “Ben-Hur” (1959), “The Sound of Music” (1965), or “The Godfather” (1972) . Only recently did the Academy begin making a habit of selecting Best Picture winners that clearly aimed at more limited, selective, sophisticated audiences, as did “The English Patient” (1996), “Shakespeare in Love” (1998), “A Beautiful Mind” (2000), “Million Dollar Baby” (2004) and “Crash” (2005).

Medved adds, "In a sense, this alteration in emphasis reflected the changed status of movie-going from a wildly popular form of entertainment with universal appeal to a specialized interest appealing primarily to niche audiences (particularly young singles)."

Niche audiences? Now there's a phrase I've heard before!

"As of tonight, the market has officially pulled the plug, terminating her campaign. The only thing left for her is to muster some grace, humility and character to begin the process of pulling out."

Update: With that in mind, Jim Geraghty adds, "So, Democrats…are you sure you want to place that bet?"

Carter, Reagan, Bush #41, Baker, Clinton, Albright, Bush #43, Rumsfeld and Condi couldn't get the job done, but finally, Sharon Stone is now on the case.

Take that, Babs!

Falling behind in the delegate count? Let Steve Green and Politico highlight your path to glory!

"Would Chris Matthews have asked a Russian during the 1930s why people continue to support Stalin? Does Chris Matthews really need to have the facts of life in a brutal Communist dictatorship explained to him? Apparently yes."

A youthful case of Radical Chic is always tough to dispel.

Update: Richard Miniter adds that on NPR today, "in the morning, came the mourning":

Mostly it was from NPR’s “Morning Edition,” where the host twice referred to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro as a “hero.” And the funny thing is, Castro isn’t even dead yet.

This story is overblown by both sides: the aging hippies who somehow still admire the monster and impatient exiles waiting for reform and democracy. Suddenly everyone is breathlessly talking about Castro relinquishing power.

But it isn’t true. He will remain head of the Cuban Communist Party, which is where the real power lies. This obvious point has been missed in all of the commentary, offline and online, that I have seen.

All the autocrat has done is decline to accept another term as president of the council of state. He had already provisionally turned over those responsibilities to his brother Raul in July 2006. He is too old and sick to manage petty internal debates about which young comrade should address the provincial deputy assistant commissars planning commission. So Fidel keeps his hand on the big issues and leaves the micromanagement of his gulag island to someone else.

And who is that someone else? Why didn’t any one point out that turning over power to a member of your family, without even a pretense of an election, is what monarchs do, not Marxists? Talk about internal contradictions…

What if that someone else turns out to be Hugo Chavez?

There's a frightening thought.

Called an alarmist for his book America Alone and its accompanying magazine and newspaper articles, Mark Steyn asks a simple question: "The question then arises: fair enough, guys, what would it take to alarm you?"

Sharia in Britain? Taxpayer-subsidized polygamy in Toronto? Yawn. Nothing to see here. True, if you'd suggested such things on Sept. 10, 2001, most Britons and Canadians would have said you were nuts. But a few years on and it doesn't seem such a big deal, and nor will the next concession, and the one after that. It's hard to deliver a wake-up call for a civilization so determined to smother the alarm clock in the soft fluffy pillow of multiculturalism and sleep in for another 10 years. The folks who call my book "alarmist" accept that the Western world is growing more Muslim (Canada's Muslim population has doubled in the last 10 years), but they deny that this population trend has any significant societal consequences. Sharia mortgages? Sure. Polygamy? Whatever. Honour killings? Well, okay, but only a few. The assumption that you can hop on the Sharia Express and just ride a couple of stops is one almighty leap of faith. More to the point, who are you relying on to "hold the line"? Influential figures like the Archbishop of Canterbury? The bureaucrats at Ontario Social Services? The Western world is not run by fellows noted for their line-holding: look at what they're conceding now and then try to figure out what they'll be conceding in five years' time.

The other night at dinner, I found myself sitting next to a Middle Eastern Muslim lady of a certain age. And the conversation went as it often does when you're with Muslim women who were at college in the sixties, seventies or eighties. In this case, my dining companion had just been at a conference on "women's issues," of which there are many in the Muslim world, and she was struck by the phrase used by the "moderate Muslim" chair of the meeting: "authentic women" — by which she meant women wearing hijabs. And my friend pointed out that when she and her unveiled pals had been in their 20s they were the "authentic women": the covering routine was for old village biddies, the Islamic equivalent of gnarled Russian babushkas. It would never have occurred to her that the assumptions of her generation would prove to be off by 180 degrees — that in middle age she would see young Muslim women wearing a garb largely alien to their tradition not just in the Middle East but in Brussels and London and Montreal. If you had said to her in 1968 that Westernized Muslim women working in British hospitals in the early 21st century would reject modern hygiene because it required them to bare their arms, she would have scoffed with the certainty of one who assumes that history moves in only one direction.

Read the whole thing.

Chaz Pazienza, the former CNN producer whom we briefly mentioned here last week after he was fired from CNN for his blog, has a post today on the HuffPo:

When I asked, just out of curiosity, who came across my blog and/or the columns in the Huffington Post, the woman from HR answered, "We have people within the company whose job is specifically to research this kind of thing in regard to employees."

Jesus, we have a Gestapo?

Since you're still able to type, the answer to that would "No." On the other hand, Chez's former employer has rarely met a government with a similar agency it didn't want to prop up.

(Via Greg Pollowitz.)

Update: Speaking of propping up...

"This is not Norway here, and it is not Denmark."

Over at Pajamas HQ, there's an article by Roger L. Simon, followed by a podcast interview which I produced, and transcript, of Roger's interview with Chris Peden, the councilman in Ron Paul's district who would very much like to replace him as congressman.

Highlighted on Drudge is what is currently a brief Reuters note:

HAVANA (Reuters) - Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro said on Tuesday that he will not return to lead the country, retiring as head of state 49 years after he seized power in an armed revolution.

"Developing", needless to say.

Update: UPI adds:

HAVANA, Feb. 19 (UPI) -- Fidel Castro, the ailing strongman who led Cuba for 47 years, is stepping down as president and commander in chief, it was reported Tuesday.

Castro, 81, who has been suffering from an undisclosed intestinal ailment, disclosed his resignation in a letter published in the state-run newspaper Granma, CNN reported. In that letter, he said he would not accept being elected to another term as president of the state council or commander in chief when the Parliament meets Sunday.

Since mid-2006, Castro's younger brother, Raul, has been Cuba's acting president, running the government's day-to-day operations.

Fidel Castro ruled the communist island since leading a revolution that toppled Gen. Fulgencio Batista in 1959.

Michelle Malkin has more.

At the BBC, Bush=Hitler, and "I think al-Qaeda would back McCain."

Why, it's like they're biased, or something!

I do not think it means what you think it means....

"I'm enjoying this Democratic primary, as it seems to be causing our friends to the left to notice phenomena that they had previously pooh-poohed."

"You want to save the earth? Here’s a little hint. Don’t. Buy. S***."

That's pretty much Bill's plan.

Scroll to about 13 minutes into this podcast on Shire Network News, where Ezra Levant tells his interviewer that Shirlene McGovern, the "human rights officer" who interrogated Levant in the YouTube clips that rocketed through the Blogosphere in early January has resigned from his case, claiming, she has "never been subjected to such public odium in my life."

Here are our small contributions to that odium.

(Via Hot Air.)

Update: Steven Den Beste emails:

Regarding the discomfort of the Canadian Inquisitor assigned to the Ezra Levant case, my reaction: "Aaah! Poor baby!"

It's like the reaction of the press to the rise of the blogosphere. "Wait a minute! We're supposed to be the ones who scrutinize others and make them uncomfortable. Why are we suddenly the ones being scrutinized? That's no fair!"

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

“For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country."

Like I said back in September...

Update: The answer to this headline is, "Yes, it's certainly looking that way at the moment."

More: The answer to this headline? It sounds very likely, but past performance is no guarantee of future results.

"LBJ Did What Now?"

(H/T: IP)

It was only a matter of time before one of America's most influential former presidents finally joined the Blogosphere.

(H/T: HH and 5'F)

Power Line and Jules Crittenden do a thorough job of demolishing an article by Susan Jacoby of the Washington Post titled, "The Dumbing of America: Call Me a Snob, But Really, We’re a Nation of Dunces." As Jules notes:

Like most nostalgia fests, this one envisions a past more intellectual than I suspect it actually was, tosses out all kinds figures about how dumb we are … most of them without any prior reference to indicate whether it’s an improvement or not … and while decrying the dropoff in reading of paper products in the computer age, neglects to note that reading of material from around the world, previously unseen except in the immediate vicinity of distant publishing plants, has skyrocketed.

In his book of the same name, Alvin Toffler posits that the beginning of the Third Wave of history occurred in the late 1950s, when white collar jobs in the US first began to outnumber their blue collar equivalents. Given the slow by inexorable shift that transistion marked towards an information-based economy, coupled with the mania of American parents to send children to college since at least the 1970s, it seems reasonable to assume that Americans as a whole are actually better educated today than they were at any time in the past.

But look at what's also changed during that period: first, the fracturing of a shared monoculture, some of which occurred deliberately, and some the accidental byproduct of technology, such as the hundreds of channels of cable and satellite TV, and more significantly, the launch of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s.

The fracturing of mass culture also has its benefits, of course. But it's been coupled with the death of middlebrow culture and the corresponding coarsening of the media in general, along with the rise of political correctness and the corresponding dumbing down of the educational system. (Not to mention journalism!) As one of Jules' commenters notes, "Isn’t it ironic that the same intellectuals that denigrated Western intellectual history as the product of Dead White European Males now complain that Americans have become anti-intellectual?"

I've written about Reuters' corporate ills on numerous occasions (including a lengthy round-up of Reuters's most infamous moments written during the heat of their most visible recent scandal), but never as eloquently as Roger Kimball does, here.

Jeff Jacoby has some thoughts on one of history's stranger rhymes.

Nikke Finke writes, "I'm hearing that the Los Angeles Times' managing editor for features, culture and entertainment John Montorio could be headed for the chopping block":

Montorio spent 15 years at The New York Times and helped launch many of the NYT signature features sections, including The City and Sunday Styles, before joining the LAT in 2001 at the behest of Dean Baquet. Montorio tried to make several clones of those NYT feature sections at the LAT but wasn't anywhere as successful: those that died demonstrated that the LAT can't draw the necessary advertising. He oversaw an overhaul of the LAT magazine that also flopped. Most recently, Montorio launched Image, a fashion and style section. But it's generally considered that the LAT movie and TV news coverage has suffered greatly over Montorio's oversight, and the paper was consistently beat on nearly every development in the recent writers strike. Worse, his departments' articles are just bland and dull.

How hard do you have to work to make coverage of your town's biggest and craziest industry dull as dishwater?

This hard!

Update: To be fair, give the L.A. Times credit for running this.

That's the topic of this new Politico article. But Ed Morrissey, Duane Patterson and I discussed the idea on Ed's Blog Talk Radio show and Pajamas' PJM Political XM show two and a half months ago!

Building on the previous post regarding the eschaton immanentizing Obama, this CNN item from Monday January 7th, before the New Hampshire primary is a hoot:

I am going to try to be so persuasive in the 20 minutes or so that I speak that by the time this is over, a light will shine down from somewhere.

It will light upon you. You will experience an epiphany. And you will say to yourself, I have to vote for Barack. I have to do it.

Phew! Imagine any Republican running president using language like that.

This past September, I pondered if Michelle Obama was the next Teresa Heinz, whose soundbites would cause much damage control for her husband's presidential campaign. To her credit though, Teresa never said, "we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation."

As Ed Morrissey writes:

But it's the notion that only Barack Obama can save our souls that is the most offensive part of the speech, by far. Government doesn't exist to save souls; it exists to ensure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense. If I feel my soul needs saving, the very last place I'd look (in the US) for a savior would be Washington DC or Capitol Hill. I'll trust God and Jesus Christ with my soul, and I'm not going to mistake Barack Obama for either one.

This, though, is the religion of statism distilled to its essence. Only a government can rescue people from the consequences of their own decisions. Only government programs can provide for your every need, and only government can use your money wisely enough to ensure that your needs get covered. Individuals cannot possibly manage to help their neighbors through their churches or community organizations, let alone encourage people to do for themselves.

And all you need to enter the statist Utopia is to sell your soul. So that it can be fixed.

We know what at least one Obama supporter imagines that statist Utopia looks like. And that at least is not an eschaton I'd like to see immanentized.

Update: Mark Steyn looks at an even creepier side-pocket element of Obama worship.

More: As Orrin Judd writes, "When You Start To Scare Even Mother Jones", you know you may have problems.

Jonathan Stein writes on the Mother Jones blog:

This is our moment to do what? To march? To organize? No. To vote for Obama. As if simply by voting for one man, we make a mark upon this country as indelibly as those who fought the Nazis or sat at lunch counters.

But the easiness of Obama's movement isn't what bothers me most. I am profoundly troubled that any candidate would chart the course of American history as follows (and I'm rearranging Obama's history here to make it more chronological):

American Revolutionaries -> Manifest Destiny -> Slaves/Abolitionists -> Suffragettes -> the Labor Movement -> the Greatest Generation -> the Civil Rights Movement -> Himself.

But isn't that the logical outcome of a solipsistic generation that believes that playing the right music, or going on "a rolling hunger strike", or changing a light bulb is all that's necessary to change the world?

Breaking on Drudge, who links to this BBC article:

Police and ambulances are attending the scene of a large blast in Mexico City, where at least one person is reported to have been killed and another hurt.
The blast occurred at about 1430 (2030 GMT) near the tourist area known as the Zona Rosa (Pink Zone), and the city's police headquarters.

Police officers in riot gear swarmed about and cordoned off the area.

The cause of the explosion was unclear, though a senior police officer said it may have been an explosive device.

"Developing", as Matt writes.

Tim Blair has "A Simple Guide To Avoid Being Fired for Blogging". Just follow Tim's three simple steps, particularly if you work for a stodgy old organization whose name consists of three letters, let's say--just to pick one entirely at random--CNN.

This is hysterically funny on all sorts of levels: The New York Times has an article titled--I think with a straight face--"Parent Shock: Children Are Not Décor". From the headline on, the theme is Bobos in Paradise Yuppie parents who discover, the hard way, a basic and incontrovertible fact of life that in less enlightened times was once considered common sense: Little kids and delicate modernist furniture and decorations are not compatible:

Nevertheless, some people try. Ms. Brown and Mr. Friedman — who of course were thrilled to have a child, like all the later-in-life parents interviewed for this article — were also determined not to let Harrison “take control of the house,” Ms. Brown said. They went ahead with putting in flat-front lacquered maple cabinets in the kitchen, even though they soon had to watch a professional babyproofer drill 300 holes in them for safety latches. (Ms. Brown still cringes.) They put up silk Shantung draperies in Harrison’s bedroom, knowing that they might well end up stained, as they soon did — with yogurt. And they held onto the molded-wood chairs, which were not an easy transition from the highchair. “They have a very sleek bottom,” Ms. Brown explained. “He slides off it.”

The slightly arch tone of the article is a scream--it reads like the writer herself had no idea that high design and rough-housing kids were incompatible concepts when she wrote the piece.

(H/T: IP. On the other hand, I have a lot more sympathy for these parents than this earlier Times story of "modern" domesticity.)

Ace has some thoughts on New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick taping his opponents' defensive signals:

If the Pats had won the Super Bowl, I think it's clear that, human nature and corporate imperatives being what they are, this all would have been buried forever, for the good of all.

But 18-1? Now it's coming out.

BTW, Belichick says it's his belief that the taping of opponent teams' defensive signals was legal. Who knows, maybe the rules aren't clear on this point.

It certainly seems like it was a bit of a gray area at one point, as Jimmy Johnson recently told the Boston Globe:

“When I came into the NFL, back in ‘89, I talked to a Kansas City scout and he said, ‘Here’s what we do, we videotape the opposing team’s signals and then we synch it up with the game film.’ So I did it.”

Johnson admitted it was “borderline” but he ended up stopping because he didn’t think the team got much out of it.

Elsewhere in the world of sports, Roger Clemens is looking for "A Few Good Men"...

Mark Halperin of Time magazine calls Barack Obama a p****. Jane Fonda uses an even more vulgar four-letter description of the same anatomical area on the Today show.

And I'll never look at New Orleans the same way again!

On this week's PJM Political, Glenn Reynolds and I debate David Shuster's now-infamous "PimpGate" remark on MSNBC. Plus a look inside the Romney campaign's sprawling Mitt TV Internet video operation, and a full wrap-up of Chesapeake Tuesday.

Hot Air has the details and an wryly amusing video flashback. The Corner notes an ever-so-classy AP description of Romney as "dropout."

And finally, the American Spectator wonders why Mitt's religion was much more of an issue in 2008 than his father's, when George Romney ran for the White House in 1967.

John Stephenson's blog has a round-up of the early details, here.

"It is now clear that the 'Noughties' [Ugh--Ed] have much in common with the 1970s."

Dude--that was clear five farging years ago.

(More curmudgeonly flashbacks to the decade that taste forgot, here, here, and here. Link to Times article found via David Frum who, in 1999 wrote one of the definitive histories of that sorry brown polyester decade.)

Johnny Carson was once quoted as saying, "New York is an exciting town where something is happening all the time, most of it unsolved."

Not the least of which is how this staggeringly idiotic anti-Big Apple screed came to be published by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

A couple of years ago, Julia Gorin wrote:

It's a peculiar thing that as the threat of global terrorism reaches a crescendo, so apparently does the threat of global warming - at least that's what some would have us believe.

Tough language is borrowed from the war on terror and applied to the war on weather. "I really consider this a national security issue," says celebrity activist and "An Inconvenient Truth" producer Laurie David. "Truth" star Al Gore calls global warming a "planetary emergency." Bill Clinton's first worry is climate change: "It's the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it."

Freud called it displacement. People fixate on the environment when they can't deal with real threats. Combating the climate gives nonhawks a chance to look tough. They can flex their muscle for Mother Nature, take a preemptive strike at an SUV. Forget the Patriot Act, it's Kyoto that'll save you.

And no one conflates the two like the Ultimate Nanny Stater, Nurse Bloomberg.

Michael Kolowich, who ran Mitt Romney's online video operation, has some excellent tips for others who will be planning similar campaigns. This one is particularly spot-on, I think:

9. Don’t believe everything you read about clip length. The conventional wisdom is that video clips need to be under 2 minutes to have a prayer of getting watched. But looking over the viewing statistics, we see that many of the most popular clips were complete speeches or events that were as long as 20 minutes or even more. For example, the 21-minute “Faith in America” speech was the third-most-highly-viewed clip on Mitt TV in December and January, and nearly half of the viewers watched every minute of it.

Everything I've read from direct marketing copywriters is that you'll never get anyone who isn't interested to read a marketing piece whether it's one page or a hundred. So you might as well aim your material at those who have the best shot of buying the product, and writing long, detailed, and hopefully passionate copy to help close the sale.

Fortunately on the Web, the same material--whether it's video or text--can be reformulated and repackaged in all sorts of ways, offering both plenty of two minute clips, as well as lots of 20 minute clips.

(H/T: 5'F)

Wow, this proposal by Barack Obama sounds like it's straight out of FDR's--ultimately unconstitutional--National Recovery Act of the 1930s:

So the Democrats who constantly carp that their patriotism isn’t to be questioned because they’re consistently making it easier for terrorists to plan and carry out attacks against us, want to have the legal right and authority to question the patriotism of US corporations now? Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) says that he and Barack Obama want to do exactly that.

I’ve talked to Barack a lot about his Patriot Corporation Act, which is not trade per se, but it’s certainly part of the economic package around globalization. The Patriot Corporation Act has not gotten the attention that I would hope it would. But, basically it says that if you play by the rules, if you pay decent wages, health benefits, pension; do your production here; don’t resist unionization on neutral card check, then you will be designated a “Patriot Corporation” and you will get tax advantages and some [preference] on government contracts.

Here’s the bill, S.1945. Set aside the fact that so many big Democrats, including the Kennedy clan with their offshore accounts, are total hypocrites on this. They’re total hypocrites on this. And obviously they’ll exempt themselves from this as Congresscritters always do.

Setting that aside, by defining some corporations as patriotic, you’re necessarily defining others as unpatriotic, and based on economic decisions they’re making and often being forced into making by the tax and legal environment that’s forced on them by the idiots in Washington.

What gives people like Obama and Brown the idea that they have the right to do this? Certainly not the Constitution.
As the post over at the NAM says, this is a terrible, terrible idea. It has Hugo Chavez statist anti-freedom tactics written all over it.

Somebody should write a book about this stuff! Maybe two!

Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the American Spectator, James Bowman writes, with tongue only slightly in cheek:

The New York Times obituary of Robert Goulet reminded us that "in 1961, The New York Daily News Magazine called him ‘just the man to help stamp out rock ’n’ roll.’" Alas, as the obituarist for The Times added — could it be just a touch wistfully? — "it was an impossible assignment." By 1967, when The American Spectator first saw the light of day in Bloomington, Indiana, most people of the generation of the Spectator’s editors — and your correspondent — would probably have forgotten that in that dim and distant past of six years previous anyone had even wanted to stamp out rock ‘n’ roll. By that time, the parents who had complained about the suggestiveness of Elvis Presley’s stage performances had much bigger problems to worry about. Yet for 40 years the magazine has offered the hospitality of its pages to those who would write the minority report out of the sixties, including even a few would-be Savanarolas who, however belatedly, might still be up for a campaign to stamp out rock ‘n’ roll.

It's actually doing a pretty good job at the moment of finishing the job that Bob started:

Amy Winehouse, Herbie Hancock and Kanye West didn't provide quite enough drama to enthrall television viewers. Preliminary estimates indicate the Grammy Awards telecast was watched by 17.5 million people.

Nielsen Media Research said Monday that would make it the third least- watched Grammy Awards ever if later estimates confirm those numbers.

Viewership is down from the 20 million people who watched last year. The 2006 awards, with 17 million viewers, is the Grammy low point. The show had 17.3 million viewers in 1995.

The industry can't blame this on sales lost to downloading, as we note each year when the typically dreadful postmortem arrives.

Here's a sentence I never thought I'd type cut and paste: "James Lileks on Tie Dying."

Recently, the dovish, leftwing Barack Obama received the support of Teddy Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy, and even Maria Shriver, Mrs. Arnold Schwarzenegger, as the “new son of Camelot", as Terry Moran put it.

All of which of course is staggeringly ironic to anyone who looks at the 1960s with a gimlet eye, considering what a staunch cold warrior, and especially anti-Castro hardliner JFK was. As James Piereson told me last year:

"In 1963, you have a fairly conservative country, culturally," Piereson notes. "You have a communist assassinate the president, a popular president. In 1968, the country has kind of gone off the rails, especially liberal-left culture as you find in the universities, and places like that. The students are taking drugs, and they're demonstrating, and they're rioting against the war in Vietnam.

"Their hero is Castro, and people like Ho Chi Minh and Mao Tse Tung," Pierson says, noting the surfeit of Castro and Ché-style army fatigues being worn on campuses. "So how do you get, really, from this place in 1963, where Kennedy is shot by a communist, to '68 where communists like Castro are heroes to the left?"

And much of the left has been frozen in amber, since, as juvenilia such as this illustrates.

(I think we can safely say though, that with this photo, Obama has Carlos Santana's vote locked up.)

Update: Related thoughts from Captain Ed.

Back in 1993, in a "Wayne's World" sketch, Saturday Night Live made a joke about young Chelsea Clinton, and caught hell from her parents. "Wayne's World" star Mike Myers and producer Lorne Michaels both apologized, and the latter cut that joke from reruns of that episode. The trend was established: thou shall NOT make jokes about the first daughter.

At least when her parents are Democrats. But when a president that most in the media didn't vote for is in office, all bets are off. Bob Parks has a long list of television comedians who've had no problem yucking it up about the Bush twins:

So, if we're going to start throwing around apologies when anyone says something nasty about a First Daughter, there's going to be a long line when it comes to apologizing to the Bush Twins.

Don't hold your breath.

As the Anchoress writes, Don Surber "wonders why no one will tell Hillary to buzz off. Seems to me the only one who dares to do that is Obama, and he deserves some props for seeming to be utterly indifferent to her power or her reach. Good for him."

On Friday, Bill Maher called for Rush Limbaugh's death, so far with nary a consequence, according to Brian Maloney.

(H/T: IP)

Dr. Helen writes, "For 'Feminists' Only Well Behaved Women Make History":

Bridget Johnson at Pajama's Media has an interesting column on Golda Meir and today's brand of female leadership:

As I watched the life of the former prime minister unfold onscreen, I chuckled at the thought of how our 2008 obsession with identity politics seems to forget the great leaders — who just happened to be women — who have long had the attention of the rest of the world. After all, Oprah is not the most powerful woman in the world; that woman is, as ranked by Forbes, German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

But Merkel is a conservative. Meir fought for Israel’s survival in the Yom Kippur War. Even Condoleezza Rice’s term as secretary of state has not been hailed as a great advance for women and/or African-Americans. So is a leader who happens to be a women only hailed as advancement if she pursues a feminist agenda outlined by NOW or the Code Pink sisters?

It would seem that the answer to that question is a resounding "yes."

In December of 2004, in the immediate aftermath of President Bush's victory over Senator Kerry, Michael Barone wrote, "History does not always move in one direction". But that's not a message the identity politics-obsessed left seems able to process.

The star of Jaws, All That Jazz and 2010 was 75.

Noel Sheppard reprints--and fisks--the letter that Hillary sent to Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, after David Schuster's "PimpGate" incident Friday on MSNBC. Noel writes, "the truly unfortunate revelation from this entire incident is just how beholden media in this nation are to the Clintons, which not only makes their defeat in November more difficult, but also more imperative":

After all, when the Pimp Gate dust settles, Americans truly paying attention will learn that employees of MSNBC are allowed -- nay, encouraged! -- to debase a Republican whenever the whim overcomes them.

However, if someone dares say anything negative about a Clinton, the offending party will be forced to apologize, be suspended, and the head of NBC News will personally beg the former first family for forgiveness.

Is this really the best General Electric, one of the world's largest corporations, can add to journalism in this country?

Oh no--PimpGate is merely the tip of the iceberg for GE's video subsidiaries.

"Bikini-Clad Women Go Ice Fishing in Minnesota for Semi-Clear Reasons":

In the Philadelphia Inquirer, Tony Campolo, described in his cutline as "professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University and served as pastoral counselor to former President Clinton", writes:

Those who argue at school board meetings that Darwin should be taught in public schools seldom have taken the time to read him. If they knew the full title of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, they might have gained some inkling of the racism propagated by this controversial theorist. Had they actually read Origin, they likely would be shocked to learn that among Darwin's scientifically based proposals was the elimination of "the negro and Australian peoples," which he considered savage races whose continued survival was hindering the progress of civilization.

In his next book, The Descent of Man (1871), Darwin ranked races in terms of what he believed was their nearness and likeness to gorillas. Then he went on to propose the extermination of races he "scientifically" defined as inferior. If this were not done, he claimed, those races, with much higher birthrates than "superior" races, would exhaust the resources needed for the survival of better people, eventually dragging down all civilization.

Darwin even argued that advanced societies should not waste time and money on caring for the mentally ill, or those with birth defects. To him, these unfit members of our species ought not to survive.

In case you think Darwin sounds like a Nazi, there is a connection. Darwin's ideas were complicit in the rise of Nazi ideas. Pulitzer Prize winner Marilynne Robinson, in her insightful essay on Darwin, points out that the German nationalist and anti-Semitic writer Heinrich von Treitschke and the biologist Ernst Haeckel also drew on Darwin's writings to justify racism, nationalism and harsh policies toward the poor and less privileged. Although these men's lives much predated Hitler's rise to power, their ideas were very influential as he developed the racist ideas that led to the Holocaust. Konrad Lorenz, a biologist who belonged to the Nazi Office for Race Policy and whose work supported Nazi theories of "racial hygiene," made Darwin's theories the basis for his reasoning.

Hey, somebody should write a book about that!

Well, that's one way to bury a story, I guess:

If you've got bad news to put out that you've been looking for the right time to release, sometimes the right time is sandwiched between two other pieces of bad news. So if you're Hillary Clinton, and you're looking to replace your campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, a good time to do it would be after a Saturday, when you lose the Washington state, Nebraska, and Louisiana primaries/caucuses, and shortly before a Tuesday when you'll probably lose at least two out of three among Maryland/Virginia/Washington, D.C. ...

A day like a Sunday, when you lose the Maine caucus...

Heh. Or as Byron York puts it, it's all part of Hillary's "ongoing effort to send out as many signs as possible that her campaign is troubled, desperate, and flailing about".

As for Maggie Williams, Doyle's replacement, Michelle Malkin writes that Williams was "knee-deep in the Johnny Chung scandal", as Time magazine noted a decade ago.

The identity politics of the Democrats' presidential race--or at least the way it's being reported by the legacy media--is turning Bryant Gumbel's infamous 20 year old line that "This test is not going to tell you whether you’re a racist or a liberal" completely on its head.

Update: Susan Estrich writes:

We who are Democrats would like to believe that race is not a factor in the polling of our party members, but maybe we’re wrong.

Gee, ya think?

“Gosh, my history teacher never talked about President Wilson like this. I wonder why?”

Good question! I've asked it myself.

Say Anything notes that the San Francisco Chronicle will say pretty much anything:

Now that the Berkeley City Council is starting to crawfish on their mighty stand against Marine recruiting in their little slice of nirvana there have been a couple of developments.

One is that the left, including the lame and idiotic Codepink and aging hippies who are reliving their glory days of the 60’s, will be attending the next Council meeting in protest of the city’s pending decision to withdraw or at least soften their stance aginst the Marines.

And two is that there will be counter protesters there who, like much of the rest of the country who aren’t blessed with being able to live in the enlightened heaven that Berkeley seems to think it is, are outraged at Berkeley and will be there to tell them so.

But it’s this statement in the opening paragraph of the SF Gate coverage of the issue that got my attention:

If you want to get a seat at Tuesday night’s Berkeley City Council meeting, you better start lining up now. And you might want to bring earplugs. And a flak jacket.

Just curious, but I’m wondering just why they think a flak jacket (even a metaphorical one) would be needed? And I’m wondering just who they think might start the kind of trouble in which body armour would be required.

Because, as far as I’ve seen it’s been the left that incites the violence in these issues. It’s been the left that blocks or shouts down speakers on college campuses that they don’t like or agree with. It’s been the left that damages property. It’s been the left that blocks access to offices while shouting about their freedom of speech - all the while denying others that same right.

Chalk this one up as being the same territory as Doris Lessing's despicable quote that the otherwise undefined "they" will assassinate Obama.

Compare. Contrast. Weep.

(Via the vast Manolo empire.)

Heh:

Some of our younger readers might be astonished to learn that many years ago, these tips used to be called, in less enlightened, less obssessed with counterknowledge times, common sense.

(Via the H.R. department at Maggie's Farm.)

Chapomatic writes, "I Despair For My Country (Although My Waistline Might Well Improve)":

Jonah Goldberg just helped me get thrown out of an ice cream shop.

Over in Pacific Grove, California, a pretty little town between Monterey and the Pebble Beach golf community, where no hovel goes for less than about $800K, is a Lappert’s ice cream shop. Lappert’s is a brand from Hawaii and makes a darn good vanilla.

This vanilla today had some auwe in it. As I get to the head of the line I note that prominently displayed on the counter is a bunch of Truther literature. You know the kind: pictures of the WTC7 collapse, links to loathsome websites, the works.

“You don’t believe all this stuff, do you?”, says I, not realizing the storm to come.

“It’s all in there”, says the aging boomer running the place, pointing to a copy of the 9/11 Commission report in a Ziploc bag beneath the Troofer stuff.

“But you believe that the U.S. did it to ourselves? Then you’re a fool.”

He didn’t start calling me a Nazi and racist, though, until he noticed the book in my hand. Saturdays are the only time off I have from this job, so I try to get a little reading in sometimes. In this case, it was Liberal Fascism, and I’m up to the part where Goldberg gets into Wilson versus Teddy Roosevelt in progressive ideals. Apparently the red cover is a red flag. Then I got called a racist for being white–how do you know what I am, quite frankly?–and it got a little loud in the shop.

I received a Nazi salute as I walked out, and the aging boomer eating his ice cream with his date near the door fluffed up and started telling me how he wasn’t going to talk to me as I was going out the door. I guess he didn’t like it when I stopped and asked him why he was talking to me if he didn’t want to talk to me…the gears didn’t move too quick on the guy.

Troofers. Boomers. Rich comfortable people in fake alt-lifestyle decorated businesses. Argh.

I can’t even buy ice cream without Troofer crap served up liberal fascism style.

I would have asked them Kathy Shaidle's questions: Why are on earth are you still in this country? And why are you talking openly about 9/11 as an inside job? The nation who's government is so powerful, so secretive and so focused that it can nuke two of the largest structures in the world and keep all the potential leakers quiet wouldn't lose much sleep over waxing a pair of big mouth proles in an ice cream parlor, right?

Race42008, whom we quoted on this week's PJM Political show on XM regarding their spotting of a key Romney flip-flop, suggests that "the Democrats are in quite a pickle with their NASCAR-like rules, but, unlike the racing circuit, the world’s oldest political party has a little totalitarian detour on the way to the nomination":

NASCAR settles all its points on the tracks.

Democrats, on the other hand, borrow from Figure Skating and the old Politburo, with elitist judges holding ultimate coronation power.

Many Obama supporters have given notice that they will not abide winning the “standard” delegate race only to lose due to “super” delegate votes.

It appears that it is near impossible for either candidate to amass the needed majority of delegates via only standard delegates.

But then, there is Florida squared.

In 2000, the Democratic Party considered itself aggrieved when it lost the presidency despite the fact that Gore got the most national popular votes.

No matter that the rules have been in place since 1789 that make such calculations irrelevant. Also, no matter that they they tried to change the rules in Florida.

So, now the Dems find themselves rhetorically committed to exalting mob-rule pure democracy.

Add to all this the Clintons extreme ambition and the religious fervor of the Obama-ites, and one sees the makings of a convention that could make 1968’s look pedestrian.

As T.O. would say, bring your popcorn.

Update: More from Glenn Reynolds.

The crying game continues for Hillary.

AP's David Espo reports:

WASHINGTON - Sen. Barack Obama won caucuses in Nebraska and Washington state and moved ahead in the Louisiana primary Saturday night, slicing into Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's slender delegate lead in their historic race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The Illinois senator was winning two-thirds support in both caucus states.

Returns from the first handful of Louisiana precincts showed him leading, a black man hoping to extend a string of Southern primary triumphs that already included South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia.

Other than the usual leftwing obsession with identity politics, why the curious gratuitous reference to Obama's race in that last paragraph?

Update: On Bloggingheads.TV, Mickey Kaus ponders if Obama is too far to the left to win in the general election.

In his latest syndicated column, Mark Steyn writes:

A decisive chunk of the Republican primary electorate didn't find this goofily endearing. When Mitt stood up and warbled, they didn't like his tune. They wanted something meaner and rawer and tougher, and there was John McCain. At the risk of overextending my musical analogy way beyond its natural 32 bars, it should be noted that the defining McCain moment came back in the fall when he responded to Hillary Clinton's support for public funding for a Woodstock museum. If you're under 70 and have no idea what "Woodstock" is or why it would require its own museum, ask your grandpa. But McCain began by saying he was sure Mrs. Clinton was right and that it was a major "cultural and pharmaceutical event." Which is a cute line. And McCain wasn't done yet: "I wasn't there," he said of the 1969 music festival. "I was tied up at the time."

And the crowd roared its approval. It's not just a joke, though it's a pretty good one. It's not merely a way of reminding folks you've stood up to torture and you can shrug it off with almost 007-cool insouciance. But it also tells Republican voters that, when Sen. Clinton offers up some cobwebbed boomer piety, you know a piñata when you see one, and you're gonna clobber it.

And that's the music a lot of Republican voters want to hear. For a certain percentage of voters, McCain is tonally a conservative, and that trumps the fact that a lot of his policies are profoundly unconservative. He won New Hampshire because if you stuck him in plaid he'd be a passable Beltway impersonation of the crusty, cranky, ornery Granite Stater. The facts are secondary that, on campaign finance, illegal immigration, Big Pharma and global warming, the notorious "maverick's" mavericity (maverickiness? maverectomy?) always boils down to something indistinguishable from the Democrat position.

As it happens, on the Woodstock museum, McCain's absolutely right: If clapped-out boomer rock is no longer self-supporting and requires public subsidy, then capitalism is dead, and we might as well Sovietize the state. In a sense, it's the perfect reductioof geriatric hippie idealism: We've got to get back to the garden, but at taxpayer expense. A McCain presidency would offer many such moments. But, in between, he'd be "reaching across the aisle" to enact essentially Democrat legislation on climate change, illegal-immigration amnesty and almost everything else.

Charles Krauthammer calls McCain the "apostate sheriff," which is a nice term. He suggests that, for many Republican voters, "national security trumps social heresy." I'm not sure about that. This isn't shaping up to be a war election and, if it was, McCain would come under greater scrutiny. What's his big picture on radical Islam? We know, because he now claims all but sole credit for it, that he's pro-surge, and he was surging when surging wasn't cool, especially among jelly-spined Republican senators. But, as Mark Levin points out, the surge is a tactic, not a long-term strategy.

He's no great shakes on domestic issues, but McCain certainly sounds like he gets foreign policy, particularly the Middle East, in the extended interview he did for Pajamas recently.

Is John McCain the Manchurian Candidate? That's still better than the Frenchurian candidate, in my book.

Update: Meanwhile, is Obama the new Walter Mondale? Or is he the next Will Smith?

The Seattle Seahawks' first quarterback becomes Dan Snyder’s latest head coach.

But given Dan's Al Davis-style track record (without a similar level of pro football success as Al's great run from the 1960s through the 1980s), how long will Zorn last?

Photo technology is rapidly changing, with analog formats quickly going by the wayside: back at the start of 2006, "Nikon UK has posted a press release here indicating that they are all but ending production of their 35mm film cameras, medium- and large-format lenses and enlarging equipment", Slashdot noted.

Another shoe dropped yesterday; the AP reported, "Polaroid Corp. is dropping the technology it pioneered long before digital photography rendered instant film obsolete to all but a few nostalgia buffs."

James Garner and Mariette Hartley could not be reached for comment.

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi writes:

Quietly, while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been inspiring Democrats everywhere with their rolling bitchfest, congressional superduo Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have completed one of the most awesome political collapses since Neville Chamberlain. [Nicely done Bush=Hitler Godwin's Law violation--Ed] At long last, the Democratic leaders of Congress have publicly surrendered on the Iraq War, just one year after being swept into power with a firm mandate to end it.

Not surprisingly, given that it's Rolling Stone, that's a fundamental misreading of the results of the November 2006 midterms.

(And apropos of nothing, Douglas Kern used the phrase "Chickendoves" three years ago over at Tech Central Station.)

Oy:

If Barack Obama becomes the next US president he will surely be assassinated, British Nobel literature laureate Doris Lessing predicted in a newspaper interview published here Saturday.

Obama, who is vying to become the first black president in US history, “would certainly not last long, a black man in the position of president. They would murder him,” Lessing, 88, told the Dagens Nyheter daily.

Who is "they?" Clearly Lessing must be referring to those same right wing reactionary racists who bumped off JFK, maaan!

Err, wait a second...

From Fora.TV, here's Jonah Goldberg, Michael Ledeen, Fred Siegel, and Ronald Radosh, discussing Liberal Fascism at the Hudson Institute:

For more inconvenient truths salvaged from the memory hole, don't miss John H. McWhorter on the "Party of Chains" at City Journal.

"A man, a vision, a three-story structure built out of solidified liquid":

Roger Kimball on Berkeley on the Maumee:

Mayor Finkbeiner can boast on his official website that Tony Packos Restaurant in Toledo was “made famous on the television show M*A*S*H.” But when he has an opportunity to help the men and women who in real life protect this country, including the City of Toledo, he refuses to grant them the sort of permit he would routinely give to a bunch of anti-American activists who wanted to organize a protest march down Main Street. I think it’s disgusting. If I lived in Toledo, I’d be wondering when Carty Finkbeiner was up for re-election and would look forward to sending him out on a 6:00 p.m. bus at the earliest opportunity.

Remember the aftermath of 9/11, when politicians we're happy to see Marines and soldiers protecting urban areas? Seems like a lifetime ago sometimes, doesn't it?

(Plus--of course!--name that party.)

As part of their Super Tuesday coverage, Roger Simon and I were interviewed by XM's senior director of news programming, Scott Walterman. At one point, Scott asked us about the enormous sums of money that Ron Paul has raised, largely via the Internet. Scott asked us what will happen to that war chest when Ron drops out of the race: well, now we know.

Via Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs, who gave him a terrific introduction, here's Mark Steyn yesterday at CPAC:

Read More »

Yesterday, I wrote:

Imus was fired from MSNBC for using the word "hos" [sic], Shuster suspended for "pimped". When similar language is used towards a Republican or his family, equal sanctions will be applied, right...?

(Don't hold your breath, but it would be fun to watch MSNBC or its parent company squirm if they ever have to explain the enormous double-standard.)

Last year, one of MSNBC's junior correspondents used the phrase on his public access cable TV show, to refer to Republicans "pimping General David Petraeus", with nary a peep at the time from MSNBC or its parent company.

Is this violation grandfathered in, or can a suspension be applied retroactively?

Update: The Shuster incident "is a tool the Clinton machine is using to remind the media that, when they cover the Clintons, they are covering people who can destroy their careers. These reporters may as well be covering their bosses."

Joel Stein writes, "Obama is Peter Sellers in 'Being There'", adding:

Thing is, I've watched too many movies and read too many novels; I can't root against a person who believes he can change the world.

Wanna bet?

"I was rooting for Fred before I was rooting for Mitt, and I really don't usually care much about endorsments. But when I heard Pat Buchanan say 'McCain will make Cheney look like Ghandi' I decided he had my vote."

JammieWearingFool catches the Times once again confusing activism with journalism:

The relentless bias of the New York Times is exposed once again and sure enough, the alleged paper of record, with their layers of editors and factcheckers, claims they "were not aware" the author of a front-page story was an "outspoken critic" of U.S. policy.

Sure. And I have some oceanfront property in Nebraska up for sale.

Maybe a Times editor is interested in purchasing it.

Well, it would be a good place to display his Andres Serrano artwork...

Back in November, the New York Times reported on MSNBC's coming out party:

Officials at MSNBC emphasize that they never set out to create a liberal version of Fox News.

“It happened naturally,” Phil Griffin, a senior vice president of NBC News who is the executive in charge of MSNBC, said Friday, referring specifically to the channel’s passion and point of view from 7 to 10 p.m.

And now it's time to pay the price:

SEATTLE (AP) - A distasteful comment about Chelsea Clinton by an MSNBC anchor Thursday could imperil Hillary Rodham Clinton's participation in future presidential debates on the network, a Clinton spokesman said.

In a conference call with reporters, Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson Friday excoriated MSNBC's David Shuster for suggesting the Clinton campaign had "pimped out" 27-year old Chelsea by having her place phone calls to Democratic Party superdelegates on her mother's behalf. Wolfson called the comment "beneath contempt" and disgusting.

"I, at this point, can't envision a scenario where we would continue to engage in debates on that network," he added.

It truly is a disgusting comment by Shuster (especially coming after Don Imus' equally bad turn of a similar phrase), and nice triangulation by Hillary: given their ratings, she really has nothing to lose by boycotting them.

Update: David Shuster has been temporarily suspended:

Although MSNBC representatives make disgracefully offensive comments about President George W. Bush on a daily basis, it appears there is something the network won't tolerate: over-the-top remarks about Chelsea Clinton.

Such appears to be the case as MSNBC correspondent David Shuster has apparently been suspended for comments he made about the former first daughter on Thursday's "Tucker."

Imus was fired from MSNBC for using the word "hos" [sic], Shuster suspended for "pimped". When similar language is used towards a Republican or his family, equal sanctions will be applied, right...?

(Don't hold your breath, but it would be fun to watch MSNBC or its parent company squirm if they ever have to explain the enormous double-standard.)

Tim MacMahon of the Dallas Morning News writes, "Wow, talk about anti-Cowboys bias":

Sports Illustrated's Dr. Z gave each Super Bowl a grade and accompanying comment. The following comment was so unprofessional that it even made me cringe.

XIII (1979) Steelers 35, Cowboys 31 -- Yeah, it was exciting, with a recovered onside kick at the end and then Rocky Bleier recovering the final one, but this was the heyday of the America's Team arrogance and I wanted to see the Cowboys crushed not merely beaten. Call it B-

So much for the golden rule about no cheering in the press box. But I'm sure Dr. Z is able to put that bias aside during Hall of Fame voting.

I stopped reading the 75-year old Dr Z., aka Paul Zimmerman, after his disgraceful comments following Pat Tillman's death. But at least you know where you stand these days with SI, and whether or not you're wanted as a reader. It's a bit like Spinal Tap going from an act with a mass appeal to one with a much narrower and "selective" audience, but as mass media dissolves into nothing but a series of small niche markets designed to cater to various ideologies, that's inevitable anyhow.

Jonah Goldberg writes, "One thing we’re learning from this election: These really are different parties":

First, look at the Democrats. Listen to the discussion about their strategies. Hillary needs to win more blacks and men. Obama must capture more Hispanics and peel away more white women. Both need to fight for “the youth.”

Now look at the Republicans and how we talk about them. Can McCain win over conservatives? Should he apologize for his support of amnesty or his opposition to tax cuts? Can Romney convince pro-lifers? Will Huckabee ever make inroads with economic conservatives? Were Rudy’s positions on gays, guns, and abortion too liberal?

He concludes:

The Republican party is a mess, absolutely. Conservatives are sorting out what they believe, what heresies they can tolerate and on which principles they will not bend. At times this argument is loud, ugly and unfortunate. But you know what? At least it’s an argument about something. On the Democratic side, if you strip away the crass appeals to identity politics, the emotional pandering and the helium-infused rhetoric, you’re pretty much left with a campaign about nothing.

Yes, but in both Hollywood and on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, shows about nothing were extremely popular throughout virtually all of the 1990s. And could very well be due for a revival.

"While in Berlin for the release of a new documentary he helped produce, music legend Neil Young shocked reporters Friday with the revelation that music cannot change the world."

That painful moment when youthful naivete gives way to wisdom, made even more difficult when you're 62 years old.

On the January 9 NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams read a letter on the air from a viewer who complained:

I was disappointed in your coverage of the New Hampshire primary last evening. You do know that there are two political parties, don't you? All the air time and talk was directed to the Democrats, and nothing of any substance was shared about the Republican candidates. As a voter who hasn't yet decided how to vote, it would have been nice to hear from both sides. What ever happened to equal time?

Nearly a month later, the jury's still out on that NBC viewer's question:

Catching up with a revealing comment from Monday morning, the day before the New York primary, Today show co-host Meredith Vieira recalled how over the weekend in her suburban New York town she was “with a group of friends” who “were trying to choose between Clinton and Obama.” She then recited how those for both liberal candidates cited the “electability” of their preferred candidate, but Vieira didn't say anything about having any friends struggling between John McCain and Mitt Romney. Could that be because she doesn't have any friends close enough to hang around with on weekends who would consider voting Republican?

In 1972, the New Yorker's Pauline Kael infamously said, "I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them."

I wonder if Viera is even that aware of the modern-day equivalents in her audience?

Well, that's one way to put it, I guess. Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff and its movie version brilliantly depict America's first astronauts fighting against NASA bureaucrats to keep their balls--the piloting skills they earned the hard way, by surviving dangerous, experimental aircraft.

It took NASA almost 50 years, but these days, since space is no longer about actually going anywhere useful, their bureaucrats have finally won that battle.

James Lileks writes:

Love of country must always be qualified these days, lest anyone think you are unaware of slavery, insufficiently regulated railroad stock offerings, Lester Maddox or the attempt by Philip Morris to conceal the addictive nature of cigarettes. Say “I love this country” at a dinner table with strangers, and it’s like shave and a haircut without the two bits. But? But?

Back on September 11th 2003, based on a James Taranto "Best of the Web" column that day, dubbed it the Copperhead Conjunction. Laura Ingraham has more potent, if slightly less elegant term, for that conjunctive word.

Kathy Shaidle links to this Gawker collection of clips of movies about the newspaper industry. She spots someone in the comments saying, "We watched All The President's Men in my news reporting class." I can't really tell from the comment when this student was in school, but it's a pretty safe bet that more than a few journalism classes in America will be running that movie this year for their students. Just last month in the Washington Post, David Simon waxed mawkishly nostalgic and wrote, "Bright and shiny we were in the late 1970s, packed into our bursting journalism schools, dog-eared paperback copies of 'All the President's Men' and 'The Powers That Be' atop our Associated Press stylebooks."

But at 32 years old, the movie version of All The President's Men is these days the equivalent of a journalism class in 1976 running His Girl Friday, with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. Only instead of dark suits, fedoras, fast talking dames and candlestick phones, it's fat ties, polyester and IBM Selectric typewriters. But both movies reflect journalistic paradigms long since passed into history, no matter how painful that might be for newspaper journalists and the professors who taught them to come to grips with.

Last night, I put together a segment for Pajamas's PJM Political show, which referenced Romney's flip-flop on guns and the NRA earlier this week on The Glenn & Helen Show. I sort of figured that it was the only way to make the interview with Romney relevant, after his less than stellar Super Tuesday showing.

This morning, Mitt makes it all academic.

Michael Goldfarb of the Weekly Standard writes (and my fellow Blogway Boy--not to mention Bob Dole--agrees) that Rush has got it bad, and that's not good.

(Of course, MDS is merely a pale substitute for the new and remarkably virulent strain of BDS sweeping the lands--Belichick Derangement Syndrome...)

Andrea Harris writes that although she's never watched 24 (truth be told, neither have I), "I just think it’s a shame that yet another apparently hard-hitting and gritty show is going to be shoved into the Very Special Lesson cesspool — as well as months of having to endure television commercials on how we should teach our kids not to hate anyone — really, including, say, pedophiles who rape and kill children?"

But it’s always been like this. Dealing with what our so-called entertainment media sees fit to serve up to us here in the US of A has always been an exercise in torment for anyone who thinks that art should not take a back seat to teaching five-year-olds how to share their toys. Unfortunately to get into power in this country (and probably others, but I know my own country the best so I’ll just focus on America right now) you have to be the sort of person who really believes that the rest of the nation is comprised of toddlers clutching their dollies stubbornly to their chests. I don’t think I have to give any examples, do I? Just think of the upcoming election, or look at the night’s television schedule. The media, of course, is part of the powers that run this country. Back when I was young the problem was an entertainment industry hamstrung by the need to be “proper” according to the standards of no later than twenty years previous. In the Sixties and Seventies that meant the Forties and Fifties was the touchstone of progress, and Depression-era decorum was the norm, which meant only women on TV wore white gloves and hats when they went outdoors. Today, in the supposedly progressive first decade of the 21st century, our Baby Boomer-run media empire has stalled in those halcyon days when women considered themselves “emancipated” if they were living with bearded stoners, being called “my old lady,” and serving mushroom tea instead of coffee to all the bearded stoner’s bearded stoner pals. There have been a few attempts to crawl at least into the Reagan era, but for the most part we’re stuck in the commune, and the natives are no more tolerant of “different” viewpoints than the squares of Eld were.

Maybe a big reason why television executives feel the urge to make their programming as childlike and condescending as possible is that they base their assumptions regarding America as a whole from daily observations of a remarkably dysfunctional talent pool.

The ironically eponymous star of the Beatles' "Sexie Sadie" from the White Album moves on to the next plane of existence, at age 91.

A.O. Scott of the New York Times explores territory long since mapped in depth here at Ed Driscoll.com:

With a few exceptions, though — “Juno” being the current and somewhat controversial example — the rituals of heterosexual courtship no longer provide as flexible or adaptable a framework as they once did. The sexual revolution, of course, had something to do with this, since it dented the symbolic prestige of marriage and thus challenged the realism of plots that ended with wedding bells. (The quintessential romantic comedy of the revolutionary era was probably “The Graduate,” a movie that ends with the disruption of a marriage ceremony and an ambiguous escape from the altar.) And movies, after the 1960s, were able to deal more candidly with matters that had previously been addressed through indirection and innuendo.

That’s one theory, at any rate. But the movies made under the old taboos of the Production Code are far more sophisticated, and far less timid, than what we see today.

Indeed--as I wrote almost a year ago:

The need to bury these themes to get them past the censors in the Hays Office made for brilliant writing and great moviemaking. As did the need to use innuendo rather than overt sexuality (see: Hitchcock, Alfred). That period ended when--talk about unintended consequences--the demise of the Hays office depressed Hollywood’s box office by removing restrictions upon its writers and directors.

More Scott:

And yet, while the romantic comedy has almost always trafficked in happy endings, that happiness is rarely accompanied by a sense of risk or exhilaration. When you think of, say, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn — or even Doris Day and Rock Hudson — you recall the emotional combat of two strong-willed, independent individuals ending in mutual conquest. Love, in those old pictures, was a dangerous and noble sport that required skill and cunning as well as commitment. It required movie stars whose physical appeal was matched by verbal dexterity and a vital sense of idiosyncrasy. They were not real of course: Who ever met anyone like C. K. Dexter Haven and Tracy Lord, the central pair in “The Philadelphia Story?” They were better.

That's because unlike today's stars, they were grown-ups, a species that's virtually extinct in today's Hollywood, where Jack Nicholson is 70 going on 18, and Leonardo DiCaprio is 33 going on 12.

But then, that's a topic that Frederica Mathewes-Green explored brilliantly two and a half years ago.

The New York Times: Where the news is almost as old as our readers!

At Pajamas, we believe in covering all of the election returns, no matter how obscure the precinct:

(Hey no worse than Florida voters, who can't figure out that they've already had their primary, last week...)

Update: Real results here.

Well, that's what my fellow Blogway Boy says, at least:

In-between recording some--hopefully!--serious Super Tuesday material for this Thursday's Pajamas Media's PJM Political show on XM Satellite Radio, I also sat in, along with Roger Simon, on a shoot by Pajamas' video maestro Mark Anderson. I'm not sure which of us is Mort and which of us is Fred, but here you go:

Stanley Kurtz writes, "For all the grousing about liberal bias in education, conservatives have done virtually nothing substantive to combat it":

Unfortunately, the Bush administration has intentionally avoided fighting the education battles that earlier administrations pursued under the leadership of Bill Bennett and Lynn Cheney. Leading a public campaign against the bias and foibles of the American education system could have put a far larger question mark behind the taken-for-granted leftism students find at school.

Read the whole thing.

Glenn Reynolds asks, "Do Blogs Matter In Presidential Politics?"

Last time around, I said they'd probably matter in the primaries -- when it's mostly about a comparatively small number of tuned-in voters -- but not so much in the general election. With the Rathergate affair, that was proved spectacularly wrong as the explosion of CBS's bogus story may well have swung that close election, not only because it shut down a particular anti-Bush story but because it made other, similar stories less likely, and less believable. So who knows? So far I'd say blogs haven't made much of a difference. But the election is nowhere near over.

Meanwhile, does the legacy media matter? Roger L. Simon catches David Broder of the Washington Post claiming, "Few of those voters will have had more than a quick glimpse of the candidates, who have had little time to devote to the entire country since the last single-state contests in South Carolina and Florida." Roger responds:

Como se dice? What country is Broder living in? We have television and the Internet now. Any citizen with the slightest interest in the candidates has been bombarded by them and their minions for months. Most of us are ready to say "Uncle." Yet Broder wants more. Perhaps he missed the 17 or so debates where the same questions were asked several dozen times. Some of us are reciting Hillary's health plan in our sleep... Sheesh.

Finally, the New York Times decries blogs for passing on misleading quotes.

Yes, the same New York Times which led to the phrase "Dowdification". Hey--all the news that's refitted for print.

Robert Bidinotto wonders if Super Tuesday (aka--today!) will annoint a new round of American "progressives". Meanwhile in the Christian Science Monitor, Jonah Goldberg (whom Bidinotto references in his post) suggests "You want a more 'progressive' America? Careful what you wish for: Voters should remember what happened under Woodrow Wilson."

Ironically, for a book with a smiley face with a Hitler mustache on the cover, Jonah's book may cause the most damage to Wilson's reputation, simply because so many inconvient truths of his presidency have been tossed down the memory hole by successive generations of Wilson's fellow "progressive" academics.

(Incidentally, I'm at Pajamas HQ in L.A. today, where they'll be having complete Super Duper Mega Ultra Crunktacular Tuesday coverage.)

As Umberto Ecco wrote a few years ago:

G K Chesterton is often credited with observing: "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything." Whoever said it - he was right. We are supposed to live in a sceptical age. In fact, we live in an age of outrageous credulity.

"Quarter of Brits think Churchill was myth: poll."

Update: Steven Den Beste emails:

I'm not sure that poll really indicates what you're reading it to indicate.

Nominally it says "A quarter of Brits thinkg Churchill is a myth."

To me it says "A lot of Brits think that this kind of poll is idiotic, and a quarter of them gave idiotic answers as a form of protest."

Something pollsters know but don't like to admit is that an increasing percentage of people these days deliberately lie to pollsters.

Which could really play havoc with predicting 2008. And maybe already has.

I hope the Boston Globe is planning to change the title of this Dewey-Defeats Truman book!

(H/T: IP)

Plaxico Burress gets the last laugh:

We're only going to score 17 points?" Brady said with a laugh. "OK. Is Plax playing defense?"

Turns out New England wished it could have scored 17.

Heh.

Jim Geraghty writes, "This is the era of the Paranoid Candidate." Stefan Beck has some thoughts on what "the odd allure of the conspiracy theory" in general means to those who radiate them.

Transatlantic Politics looks at "German protectionism against Nokia":

German protectionism at its best: Nokia is a "subsidy locust" and promotes "caravan capitalism" for having decided to move its 2,300 emplyees-factory from the Germany to Romania, where workers cost 10 times less - claim German politicians and trade unions.

Even the European Commission promised some help from "anti-globalization" funds for the angry German workers, backed by influential trade unions and populist politicians, while the European Parliament launched an investigation into alleged abuse of EU funds in relocating to Romania. Everyone seems to forget that Nokia is the LAST mobile phone manufacturer to leave Germany, after Motorola and BenQ Siemens did the same last year and two years ago. And Nokia is not moving to China, like everyone else, but stays in the EU and gives a fair chance of development to Romania, the poorest member of the club after Bulgaria.

Yet principles such as "freedom of goods, labor and services" within the EU are easily forgotten when it comes to German protectionism.

Socialism: if you build it, they will leave. Which is why, back in 2002, Steven Den Beste wrote, "Europe is a high-tech disaster area"; policies such as this indicate that little has changed to alter that perception.

In Real Clear Politics, David Warren writes:

My friend, Uwe Siemon-Netto, a German Lutheran pastor and also life-long journalist, was there as a reporter. Entering Hué as the smoke was clearing: "I made my way to university apartments to obtain news about friends of mine, German professors at the medical school. I learned that their names had been on lists containing some 1,800 Hué residents singled out for liquidation.

"Six weeks later the bodies of doctors Alois Altekoester, Raimund Discher, Horst-Guenther Krainick, and Krainick's wife, Elisabeth, were found in shallow graves they had been made to dig for themselves.

"Then, enormous mass graves of women and children were found. Most had been clubbed to death, some buried alive; you could tell from the beautifully manicured hands of women who had tried to claw out of their burial place.

"As we stood at one such site, Washington Post correspondent Peter Braestrup asked an American TV cameraman, 'Why don't you film this?' He answered, 'I am not here to spread anti-communist propaganda'."

The Tet Offensive ended not only in a huge allied victory in the field -- some 45,000 of the Communist soldiers had been killed, and their infrastructure destroyed. It was victory after an event that showed sceptical South Vietnamese, and should have shown the world, the nature of the enemy our allies were fighting.

Walter Cronkite, the famous news anchor of CBS, led the American media reaction. After a very brief visit to Saigon, in which he got himself filmed wearing flak jackets, he returned to the United States, declaring before his huge prime time audience:

"It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honourable people who have lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could."

The media turned a tremendous victory into a tremendous defeat. Yet seven more years would pass until an America, which had by then abandoned Vietnam, and a Congress, which had cut off military supplies to the South Vietnamese, watched the helicopters removing America's last faithful servants from a roof in Saigon's old embassy compound. The South Vietnamese Army had surrendered, to another Tet Offensive, as it ran out of ammunition.

We have seen this "Vietnam syndrome" writ large, through the intervening years. We see it today in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Romans, too, had a facility for winning ground battles.

Photos of modern-day Visigoths, here.

As the Times of London aptly quips, "Never mind the fundamentalists, here’s Morrissey":

Iran is still suspicious of pop music. Last summer police raided an underground festival in an orchard near the town of Karaj to stop what they called a “provocative, satanic concert”. More than 200 people were arrested.

If the event does go ahead, Morrissey will have to play to an audience segregated by gender. Women would be allowed only if they stayed in roped-off areas and wore modest clothing, including headscarves. All song lyrics would be vetted. Female backing vocalists and mixed dancing in the aisles would be outlawed and beer, of course, would be banned.

I guess that's as good a definition for the current meaning of progressive rock as anything.

Baptist Press quotes the Goracle on his namesake issue, Goreball Worming:

"This is not a political issue," Gore told a crowd of approximately 2,500 paying attendees. "It is a moral issue. It is an ethical issue. It is a spiritual issue."

As its name implies, Baptist Press frequently reports on topics important to the "predecessor religion to environmentalism called Christianity", to borrow a prescient line from Charles Krauthammer.

I guess I'm strictly an old school kind of guy: unlike Al, I can't say I'm too comfortable with most post-Christian religions. They often end rather badly for all concerned.

Update: And as Jonah Goldberg notes in Liberal Fascism, they often end-up attempting to eliminate or modify into incoherence the holidays named by their predecessor faith.

As a follow-up to my earlier post, which quoted a Washington Post journalist liberally (but of course) when he forlornly pondered, "Does the news matter to anyone anymore?", Kevin D. Williamson writes:

To acquire Yahoo, Microsoft is offering nine times what News Corp paid for Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal. If you want an indicator of just how much the media business has changed in the past decade or so, that's a good one. And 500 million sets of eyeballs for a struggling No. 2? That's nearly three times the audience of the major network news programs combined.

For more on the merger, don't miss this Jeff Jarvis post, in which he perceptively notes that Yahoo is "the last old media company."

Dan Gerstein, a senior advisor to Joe Lieberman writes:

This analysis will likely be seen as a bit of grave-dancing on my part, given that I have been an occasional target of the wrath of Kos. But while I am troubled by their hostile, hyper-partisan tendencies, I think the Kossacks have at their best made enormous contributions to the party over the last few years -- most noticeably by stiffening the Washington establishment's spine in confronting President Bush and energizing and organizing the base. One could credibly argue, in fact, that Mr. Obama would not be in the position to inspire the base if Kos and his allies had not first helped to get them "fired up, ready to go."

In this, you might say that Mr. Obama did not kill Kos-ism so much as co-opt it -- by harnessing its most powerful forces and channeling it in a more constructive, convincing direction for a new political moment. He recognized early on that the primary electorate was changing in the wake of Mr. Bush's departure, and that it was hungry (post-Boomer voters in particular) for something bigger and better than the same polarization wrapped in a blue ribbon.

The signs of change are unmistakable. Over the last year, the Kossacks themselves seemed to be waning -- the number of monthly page views on the site is down dramatically.

Moreover, in the last few weeks they and their avatars have been flocking to the great reconciler. First Ned Lamont endorsed Mr. Obama, a mentee of Mr. Lieberman in the Senate. Then on Wednesday, in the first Daily Kos straw poll after Mr. Edwards left the race, Mr. Obama beat Mrs. Clinton by 76%-11% (a result inflated by the Netroots' unbreakable contempt for Hillary). Just yesterday, MoveOn.org gave its formal blessing to the "post-partisan" candidate.

The best evidence that Kos-ism is about kaput, though, comes from Kos's mouth himself. Yes, the most delicious irony of this campaign is that the supposed hatemonger is supporting the hopemonger.

Seeing the writing on the wall, as well as on his own blog, Markos Moulitsas -- Kos himself -- rejected the candidacy he himself helped spawn and announced (albeit grudgingly) on Dec. 12 that he would be voting for Mr. Obama via "a process of elimination."

Not exactly the most graceful concession, but the import is undeniable: Hope trumped Kos for Democrats. Now let's see what it will do for the rest of the country.

The Angry Left may be in decline, but as if to prove Jonah Goldberg's thesis remarkably prescient, large pockets of them remain trapped here and here.

This Washington Post columnist pines for the Good Ole Days, as he mournfully writes, "Does the News Matter To Anyone Anymore?"

Isn't the news itself still valuable to anyone? In any format, through any medium -- isn't an understanding of the events of the day still a salable commodity? Or were we kidding ourselves? Was a newspaper a viable entity only so long as it had classifieds, comics and the latest sports scores?

It's hard to say that, even harder to think it. By that premise, what all of us pretended to regard as a viable commodity -- indeed, as the source of all that was purposeful and heroic -- was, in fact, an intellectual vanity.

Newsprint itself is an anachronism. But was there a moment before the deluge of the Internet when news organizations might have better protected themselves and their product? When they might have -- as one, industry-wide -- declared that their online advertising would be profitable, that their Web sites would, in fact, charge for providing a rare and worthy service?

And which, exactly, is the proper epitaph for the generation that entered newspapering at the very moment when the big-city dailies -- the fat morning papers, those that survived the shakeout of afternoon tabloids and other weak sisters -- seemed impervious, essential and ascendant? Were we the last craftsmen prepared for a horse-and-buggy world soon to prostrate itself before the god of internal combustion? Or were we assembly-line victims of the inert monopolists of early 1970s Detroit, who thought that Pacers and Gremlins and Chevy Vegas were response enough to Japanese and European automaking superiority?

Yes, to the last rhetorical question, of course.

The news matters to many people--but unlike the 1920s through the 1970s, the Washington Post and the New York Times alone aren't the news anymore. They're merely two aggregators of news, with a particular tone that appeals to establishment liberal sorts of readers. The angrier far left have the Daily Kos and other Netroots sites, and conservatives and libertarians, long badly served by the Post have Instapundit, Drudge, NRO, Townhall, Michelle Malkin, Little Green Footballs, Pajamas, etc. (And sports junkies have sites devoted exclusively to their interests, and the elderly still have television news, of course.)

For the most part, like the Post, all of these sites are packaging up AP, Reuters and UPI feeds, but like the Post, each group repackages that info with a tone and a slant that appeals to their particular demographic. The period in time that one big city newspaper was the source of news will be proven by history to have been a fairly brief one, roughly from the 1920s to about the early 1980s, when the first cable television news networks, and the first online news sources (such as CompuServe and The Source) arrived.

These days, to compete against an endlessly growing Long Tail of information, newspapers must be much leaner to survive than their monopoly period, as Alan D. Mutter writes:

The deteriorating economics of the industry were underscored for the third day in a row this week when publisher Brian Tierney told union representatives of the two Philadelphia dailies that their company will face “a dire situation” by summer if it he cannot cut operating costs by 10%, according to a Newspaper Guild press release.

The Philadelphia meeting was reported the day after Chris Harte, the publisher of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, issued a strikingly similar warning to his staff.

At each newspaper, the story was the same. Profits are being sapped to an unimaginable and alarming degree by rapidly declining advertising revenues and rising expenses for everything from newsprint to payroll.

Tightening cash flow is a particular problem for the Philadelphia, Minneapolis and Tribune Co. newspapers, because each company has been bought within the last two years with vast sums of borrowed money. As such, a great portion of the operating profit at each company is earmarked to pay interest and principal on the newly acquired debt.

Mutter writes, "Worst case, and no one is saying the worst case is upon us, some newspapers could go out of business. Then, where would we be?"

In terms of receiving global, political and sports news--and certainly opinion--no worse off, to be honest. And in terms of local news, hopefully leaner operations will rise up to replace the dinosaurs who never planned on the asteroid arriving.

Up-close and personal with Hillary Clinton and Tom Cruise on the campaign trail

(Via Breitbart.TV)

Chris Berman is better than you--or at least his cameraman and interns:

(Headline explanation here, flashback to Paul Anka meltdown with similar tone, here.)

Having recorded God-only-knows how many telephone interviews in the past three years, I wrote some tips on how to get a decent telephone recording for Videomaker magazine. These suggestions work whether you're using the interview for an audio podcast, or for video.

Just add this one--and the mock-surprised response of its makers--to these earlier attempts.

As Ace wrote last year, "Lefties want a free reign to speak in absurdities, but also want us to go along with their calling verbal mulligans when their absurdities become punchlines."

Update: Which isn't to say that right isn't immune from having botched jokes, of course.

"Journalists are taught never to 'bury the lead.' Yet it looks as if that's precisely what CBS's '60 Minutes' did in reporter Scott Pelley's fascinating interview Sunday with George Piro, the FBI agent who debriefed Saddam Hussein following his capture in December 2003."

Or as Robert Bidinotto recently wrote, "Saddam lied, people died."