Via Big Blue, I came across something so Zen and perfect that I just had to post on it. Concerning some Villager I never read and a piece he wrote on BHO:

Number of references Tapper made to himself: 14

Number of references Tapper made to Obama: 16

That’s really it, isn’t it? They can’t understand that it’s not about them. Celebrity is a great evil, and clearly it’s utterly corrupted our press. But the next time you need an excuse to get drunk like a frat boy during pledge week, just count the number of times the Villager you’re reading makes reference to himself, and take a drink for each one.

What astounds me is that I think a lot of them believe that America gives a crap about their lives. Newsflash: we don’t. Bloggers should also take note of how little America could care for Insider Squabbles of the Moment, and the personal relationships relating to them.

Eventually, the courtiers at Versailles got too witty for their own good. Tired of our Villagers and their inability to speak with honesty and self reflection? Try this instead. It’s totally possible to love someone you’ve never met, and to be made a romantic again by a single post…

I HAD WANTED in some way to remember Lt. Ehren Watada, as this anniversary of the Iraq Invasion passed us. Remember him? Yeah. Mad respect for this cat. But the media has drowned out that story, it’s slipped away, they lost it…we’ve moved on to Jeremiah Wright and other pressing matters. Here’s to you, sir. You are one of the heroes of this war to me.
You know who was a real Citizen Journalist? Brad Will. I feel trapped into making cute video cookies with my weekly deadline. I want to haul my ass down to the ruins of Katrina or spend weeks getting next to some hidden or ignored truth that the public needs to know about spend time building a story, building rapport, investigating, planning…and really busting out wild with something that matters. This is jingles and I want to do a concept album. I feel I am chasing snacky, quickly rotating headlines. Hey, don’t get me wrong. It’s a way to pay some bills. And I am proud of winning it. But I long to do some good in the face of all the harm being dropped down on so many out there. And I’m more a part of a corporate entertainment empire now than I am in being a useful eye for the public. That’s how I’m feeling lately, at least.  Read more 

The last post I wrote on this site took us through the backdoor sliders that Rove and Atwater plunked on Democrats in the Republicans’ last successful bids. At first, I was going to examine how some of the previous backdoor sliders were being used today(The Dean Scream morphing into The Hillary Cackle, for example), but recent events have pushed that one to the far burner.

While it looks like the Rezko situation, which I first believed was going to be the Backdoor Slider that makes Obama freeze at the plate for Strike Three, and would give McCain the White House at that point, I’ve come to realize that Rezko will be the frontal assault – or the High-Inside Fastball that Rove and company will throw at him. McCain, thanks to the  Read more 

[Note: I’ve decided to break this into 2 parts to make things much easier for me to deal with. Enjoy, or not]

Watching the SCLM and FRWC start their opening salvos on Barack Obama this week - as well as the responses from his many supporters - made me remember a few things about some of the previous Presidential elections - and how there seemed to be a backdoor slider that made the Democrats (sans W. Clinton) freeze at Strike Three.

1988 - Bush vs. Dukakis.  Read more 

When party invites become more important than ’the story,’ you’ve lost it. We’ll see how extending the magic blanket of Seriousness to “citizen journalists” corrupts some of our voices:

The National Press Club, a 100-year-old professional club for journalists, aims to recruit new online-media members through a partnership with Helium.com, a hub for citizen journalists. The deal is expected to be announced on Tuesday.  Read more 

Natasha says a lot of what I’ve been trying to say here re Edwards and the media. One comment really struck me:

Edwards is a little too goodlooking for my taste. He should have a scar across one cheek, maybe grease up his hair and comb it back.  Read more 

Ten goddamn minutes. Perhaps more; I’m not sure as I picked up in what sounded like the middle of the story. Blah, blah, ’bottom of the hour, human interest stories are important too.’ If they can devote over ten minutes of their oh so precious morning airtime to a fictional dog from a teevee show in the 50s they can find a 30 second slot for Edwards.

After the dog story, I heard that Hillary is trailing Obama in NH, but is wearing bunny slippers to counter act that. And that while there are only those two people running in the Democratic primaries, Huckabee is a distanct third despite his strong Iowa showing.

Fuck I hate our press  Read more 

(MSNBC) Facebook chooses Huckabee, so far

Giuliani 5%

Thompson 4%

Huckabee 22%

McCain 15%

Romney 11%

Paul 43%

About 5,500 responded.



Note: The candidate ordering isn’t alphabetical and seeing how Paul is at the bottom it is almost in order of corporate preference.

Just for reference, they don’t have a post about Dems polling only “Most Presidential”, which I’m not sure what that means. Facebook: Obama most presidential

Pathetic. You can leave some choice comments if you’d like, and let this wanker feel a little blogswarm wrath. Avedon already skewered him:

Avedon wrote:
Some bloggers are doing excellent, real, journalism. They do original reporting, make the phone calls, even put in some leg-work. They’re reporters, pure and simple.

Some bloggers do expert analysis when the subject matter is in our own field of expertise. This will usually be superior to what’s in the major newspapers.

The rest of us know that most of what we’re doing is not reporting. A lot of it is commentary, and no worse than anything you’d find on the op-ed pages of the major newspapers. (I mean, how much worse could you be than Krauthammer?)

And some of us are basically creating our own table of contents - links to articles elsewhere that might interest our readers.

And occasionally, even those of us who don’t usually do reporting or specialist analysis do some local reporting, or do some expert analysis in our own field.

And quite a lot of it is good and enhances our readers’ understanding of what’s going on - and this is vital in a real democracy.

Some of it is not so good, but once you’ve read The Washington Post, you’re used to seeing a mix of very good and very bad journalism.  Read more 

To me, Ellen has always been the gay world’s version of Hillary. I don’t think she’s very funny, I found her comedy of errors with that bi-curious actress depressingly plebeian, and I’ve never understood or accepted the construction of her as the “face of the New Lesbian,” and the symbol of how we are accepted by mainstream society today. I didn’t know she had a talk show, but it seems she’s no friend to unions either. I’m alll for lesbians breaking the glass ceiling, but this seems like a classic case of “fuck you, I’ve got mine.” Way to help out your fellow artist, grrl. Not.

I know I’m the big anti-TeeVee blogger here, but I thought I’d take this moment to say that I do actually care to see the writer’s come out on top in this strike. When I’m Queen of the World, creative people will be the ones paid the most for the work from which others have been making billions. The Suits are the reason TeeVee sucks so badly today; I just heard a piece by some director talking about media consolidation, and he was saying that basically 6 corporate entities are responsible for everything that is shown. Worse, it’s no longer acceptable to use “out of house” production companies; if you’re part of the Disney Borg, you’ll find other Mouseslaves to write, tech and act in your show.

Media integration is a great evil, and for that reason alone, I support the strikers. I hope many of them realize that it’s still somewhat free on the Intertubes, and they’ve got the know-how to skip the corporate trap and just produce material for distribution here. I already pay for Netflix so I can watch what I want commercial free and at my lesiure; I would do the same for material from a production house headed up by say, Joss Wheadon.

OK, maybe not here exactly, but still. Because you know, like we do, where all the fresh, exciting talent really is:

According to the Arketi Group 2007 Web Watch Survey, 84 percent of journalists say they would or already have used blogs as a primary or secondary source for articles. 100% of those (journalists) surveyed say they rely on the Internet to help get their job done. One-quarter of journalists say blogs make their job easier, while 18 percent say instant messaging makes their job easier.

The “primary” source part amuses me. Having done some Original Reporting and writing, I’ve always been offended by the notion that only those with Village membership are able to produce quality material. That’s so obviously untrue, and a big part of our problem (that so many still believe that). Anyway, I wonder who reads whom, and just how many stories in the SCLM originate in the blogosphere. I’ve always known it was “some,” but I guess now I should wonder if it’s not “most.”

Elizabeth Edwards put it to me very plainly. She told me that any airtime is like free campaign time on TV, and the media can make a spike in the polls more quickly and significantly than many boots on the ground can accomplish. That’s the depressing truth about our electorate: if they don’t see it on TeeVee, it’s doesn’t exist to them. I’m being lazy and just going with the Yahoo story, but the bullet points are very useful reminders about how the “democratic” process works:

he study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, to be released Monday, also portrays the political press as a hidebound institution out of touch with the desires of citizens.

Among the findings:  Read more 

Let’s have a Free for all post. Jeralyn is ticked off, because a judge punishing a reporter who broke the law wants her to do a public interest story as penance. Is this wrong? A bad idea? Why, or why not? Lambert reminds us that B and C (blog) listers aren’t really “journalists.” Is that a good thing, in light of this case? Meanwhile, journalism is becoming more and more akin to state sanctioned observation and data mining. Again- we want to protect these people?  Read more 

Sid is one of my heroes, I really sort of worship the guy, but this piece provokes a different reaction in me than it will in many people. Or rather, many of some people.

From the get go, the Bush administration has frustrated me because a small group of people, people who weren’t really that bright or courageous, decided that fantasy was more important than reality. Now, normally I don’t care if other people want to smoke crack all day or otherwise avoid reality with aplomb. But when those people are the gatekeepers to which policies in government are applied, we have a problem.  Read more 

I never want to hear any of that shit about “capitalism” and “free markets” and the media again, OK?

On average during the summer, 31 percent paid very close attention to the situation in Iraq, making it far and away the hottest news topic throughout the season. Yet on average, the situation in Iraq represented just 4.5 percent of the overall news coverage. No other story, as tracked by the News Interest Index and the News Coverage Index, produced such a consistently wide disparity between June and September.  Read more 

Expect more of this in the future.

McClellan is under a restraining order prohibiting him from loitering within 30 feet of minors, and as a father of an LG, news of McClellan’s arrest yesterday outside a UCLA child development center elicited no empathy from me. Yet I couldn’t help but notice the curious way the AP wire story was reported.

As of 9AM PST this morning, a quick Google News search found over 200 published articles on McClellan’s arrest, and in nearly every single one the headline refers to him as a “pedophile” or “admitted pedophile” or “self-described pedophile” as in the Los Angeles Times headline, “Pedophile arrested outside UCLA child development building.”

That is, every single headline except that in the Seattle Times, which had its own unique take on McClellan’s dangerous perversion: “Controversial blogger is arrested near children.”
 Read more 

Position: It accomplishes absolutely nothing constructive or meaningful, in terms of progressive causes, for members of the blogosphere to appear on national MSM TV.

Discuss.

She Who Until Very Recently Was Unseen:

If we do nothing else, we should ensure that the Democratic candidates pay no attention to these gasbags. That’s not to say they shouldn’t pay attention to the actual press narratives and the stereotypes that will inevitably emerge. But the punditocrisy should be shunned and ignored.  Read more 

[Welcome, Crooks and Liars readers!]
[And dKos readers too!!]

Sometimes it’s hard not to quail before your betters, and I just had that experience, in the best of ways. Helen Thomas agreed to speak with me about the war, the Bush administration, and life in the Beltway, and I am honored and flattered as a Little Blogger to have had this opportunity.

Helen’s impressive bio can be found here. She’s got long experience with Republican administrations, and earned her credentials as a feminist icon as the only woman member of the press corps to travel with Nixon to China. She written several books, which you can learn more about here.
Because this was a phone interview, this post will be a little shorter and different than my Q&A with another member of the White House press corps, Olivier Knox of the AFP.

I started out by thanking her for her bravery and willingness to ask the tough questions that few others are wont to do these days. I told her that she is well loved in the blogosphere, but I could tell that Ms. Thomas isn’t the kind of person who enjoys a lot of flattery. She also didn’t want to talk about herself, saying that enough has been written about her already. This strikes a sharp contrast with other members of the mainstream media, who seem to me to love being the center of attention, and always more interested in their own perspectives than the issues of the day (I’m looking at you, Bowtie).

We moved on to the topic of blogs.  Read more 

The Grey One has some interesting things to say about Imus, and what Imus represents, and I’ve got a slightly different take on it.  Read more 

Glenn is such a great polemicist, I always want to respond with inappropriate pr0n that gushes on about how much he inspires the Big Love.  Read more 

Well now, all you naysayers should take note: our friend Mr. Knox earned his cookie today.

What kinds of conversations does executive privilege protect?…What are the limits on privilege?” a newspaper columnist wrote in the spring of 1998 on a subject strangely familiar today.

“Evidently, Mr. Clinton wants to shield virtually any communications that take place within the White House compound on the theory that all such talk contributes in some way, shape or form to the continuing success and harmony of an administration,” the columnist wrote. “Taken to its logical extreme, that position would make it impossible for citizens to hold a chief executive accountable for anything.”

“Sounds like you’re reading an old column of mine,” Tony Snow, the Bush administration’s press secretary, said today, readily recognizing his nine-year-old words read back to him today at a press gaggle in which Snow was arguing for Bush’s right to protect the internal deliberations of his White House staff.  Read more 

Rick is leaving TNR for fairer shores, and he knocks one out of the park as he goes. I wish I’d written this, it’s damn good.

Please excuse the blunt language. From here forward, to avoid the ugly words, I’ll refer to it as “FNB politics.” With little to show the electorate in 2008—after six years of uninterrupted control—besides sub-standard care from a privatized workforce at Walter Reed Hospital, thrice-married “family values” presidential candidates, and a boom in home foreclosures, the conservative base’s 2008 strategy has begun to emerge: Weaken the major Democratic opponents by making their image unpalatable to the public.

Ann Coulter might have been the one to use the precise word aloud. But the effort to discredit John Edwards as not really a man began soon after he came to national prominence as John Kerry’s running mate. And the endeavor fits into a running conservative pattern—one Ann Coulter’s most important patron, Roger Ailes of Fox News, knows perfectly well. In The Selling of the President, Joe McGinniss relates an episode where Richard Nixon’s set dressers had the candidate in front of a turquoise curtain. Ailes, Nixon’s detail-obsessed TV guru, had a conniption. “Nixon wouldn’t look right unless he was carrying a pocketbook,” he grumbled, ordering the curtains replaced by wood panels with “clean, solid, masculine lines.”  Read more 

The depressing future of “news.”

Which brings me back to sex with horses. The story last summer about the man who died from a perforated colon while having sex with a horse in Enumclaw was by far the year’s most read article.

What’s more, four more of the year’s 20 most clicked-upon local news stories were about the same horse-sex incident. We don’t publish our Web-traffic numbers, but take it from me — the total readership on these stories was huge.

So much so, a case can be made that the articles on horse sex are the most widely read material this paper has published in its 109-year history.  Read more