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| Wednesday, April 19, 2006 |
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Grayer Lady 
| | "Despite significant underperformance, management's total compensation is substantial and has increased considerably over this period," he said. |
Wash, wash, repeat
| | Tara: The vicious circle we find ourselves in is perpetuated by marketing messages. I know that. |
Question of life or death
| | Connor is due to be executed on May 12 for a rape and murder conviction. More here, here, here and here. |
A new home for your Daily Dan
People + Press
| | What was revolutionary was the way the audience responded to the event. |
| | Within minutes of the collapse, the BBC had received some 600 photos e-mailed by eye-witnesses. Some were put on air immediately, long before the "real" reporters and satellite trucks arrived. |
| | Other people e-mailed eyewitness accounts, together with contact details which were followed up when reporters arrived on the scene. |
| | The user-generated content flooding in drove the newsgathering operation, with the work of citizen and "professional" journalists seamlessly complementing one another. |
Hal's homily
| | "I've been wrong in so many personal evaluations that I've taught myself not to have them," he boasted. Opinions are for lesser beings; Mr. Woodward soars high above personal feelings, like a god -- or an info-cyborg, an organic tape recorder. Thirty-five years in the business, he said, has eradicated both emotion and intuition. |
| | This nonsense is the final insult. After 40 years in that same business, I can't recall a time when it was easier to form opinions with confidence. Without benefit of Woodward's high-level sources, I've yet to make a prediction about the Iraq war that proved inaccurate, or offered a criticism of this administration that proved to be unfair -- though many were too timid or too generous. In spite of its obsessive secrecy, the Bush White House is as obvious as Donald Trump's comb-over. Liars, bullies and bunglers, these conspirators are the authors and owners of the single worst mistake an American government has ever made. Ever. It takes no insight whatsoever to see through them, yet considerable courage to oppose them. They've created a national crisis where every credible voice can make a difference, where experienced journalists who close their eyes or mask their responses are something worse than useless. |
| | Part of me finds this hyperbolic. But another part of me winces at the truth of it. Crowther scatters more shrapnel: |
| | The word "liberal" has been too ruthlessly overworked and misused to retain any stable meaning. The innocent creatures it once called to mind exist only on hermetically sealed college campuses and small magazines, a remnant slightly less influential than the Branch Davidians. In current usage, "liberal" seems to cover everyone who doubts that the United States of America can survive much more of George W. Bush. "The Hollywood liberal," that vain, superficial limousine lefty who pontificates on talk shows, has become such a weary cliché that every time I hear it I expect, in the next breath, to hear about "liberal bias in the media." Maybe entertainers like Clooney and Warren Beatty, not to mention Michael Moore, shoulder a disproportionate share of the burden of dissent because self-serving celebrities like Hillary Clinton and Bob Woodward -- and a timorous host of other politicians and journalists -- lack the clarity and courage to take the lead. |
| | Though the lockstep Right rarely wins an argument in the open court of reason, its propagandists enjoy tremendous success portraying America as a Manichean society where political opinion comes in two flavors only -- vanilla or chocolate, and no fudge ripple, please. This ultra-polarized model, pure myth, is the cornerstone of reactionary rhetoric. "Here's a timesaving tip," writes my favorite local columnist, Barry Saunders of Raleigh's News and Observer. "When the first word out of someone's mouth is 'liberal' or 'conservative,' run away -- because not one original thought will be forthcoming. Most people with brains ... consider themselves liberal or conservative depending on the issue." |
| | What's true of "most people with brains" is 10 times true for journalists, who've spent their working lives watching inflexible ideologies founder on the facts. An ideologue with a press pass is always a whore or a fool. But this widespread perception of politics as partisan ping-pong and pundits as team players -- a cretinous legacy of Fox News and the Sunday shouting shows -- has worked to marginalize legitimate dissent just when the republic most urgently needs to hear it. |
| | Old-timers beyond the grip of ambition, like Cronkite and Sen. Robert Byrd -- and most admirably, Jimmy Carter -- don't hesitate to join the resistance and say what they think. But whisper "liberal" to Sen. Clinton with her eye on the White House, or to Bob Woodward with his seven-figure book contract, and you'd think they'd been asked to wear a yellow star. In Murrow's day, of course, McCarthy had to label you a communist to wreck your reputation. People were proud to call themselves liberals, and many of those people, like my late father, were diehard Republicans. Dad was so stubborn he might have remained a Republican through it all -- or at least to the point where George W. Bush surveyed his ruinous wars and tax cuts and declared that deficits don't matter. |
| | Want at least one aspect of blogging explained? It's somewhere here in Crowther's closer: |
| | As Murrow demonstrated in 1954 and Moyers is telling us now, any journalism of substance has a moral, judgmental component. Two sides, sure -- but rarely two sides of equal merit. And at the point when the side with the power begins to ignore the facts, the laws and other people's rights -- a point Bush passed years ago -- anyone with special knowledge, access or influence is ethically obligated to tell the public what he knows and what he thinks. No matter who proclaims it, "objectivity" that ducks this responsibility is a contemptible sham. |
S'mo rolling
| | More than any of the other creator/coordinator pairs described (writer/editor, musician/DJ, experiential/referential), something that makes the blogger stand out is the act of co-creation. |
| | And bloggers recognise that intrinsic difference, so much so that (at least from my experience) the thinker-blogger normally frees up his ³content² from the get-go. Why? Because he does not see it as owned or as content. |
| | This is what I mean by the provisionality of the best blogging. And by snowball rolling. It's co-creative. And it grows. "Content" is static. It's packaged and shipped container cargo. |
| | Consider the combustive power of an idea. Here's Jefferson: He who receives an idea from me receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. |
Mouth shoots feet
| | There have always been people who have opposed wars... I think we just have to accept it, that people have a right to say what they want to say, and to have an acceptance of that and recognize that the terrorists, Zarqawi and bin Laden and Zawahiri, those people have media committees. |
| | They are actively out there trying to manipulate the press in the United States. They are very good at it. |
| | Of course, that may not be what Rumsfeld actually said. After all, I read it on a lefty blog. But I don't want to sign up for Rush 24/7 membership (any more than I want to pay whatever it is for Times Select), so I can listen to the show or read the transcript. So, I dunno. |
| | I do know that registered (as well as philosophical) independents like myself would have a much better chance of cutting the Defense Secretary some slack if he came out of his bunker and allowed himself to be interviewed by independent journalists. |
| | Well, maybe he has. I don't know. I do know that hanging out in his Amen Corner does nothing more than fan the partisan flames on both sides of the Secretary. |
| | And piss off the independent journalists at the same time. Those are growing in number, and approximately none of them have been contacted, directly or indirectly, by the Zarqawi or bin Laden media committees. |
Testes, testes, 1, 2...
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