31 December 2008 >>
Just days before Barack Obama was elected president, Pepsi unveiled a new logo. According to some, the updated logo bears a striking resemblance to Obama’s campaign logo. Wonkettesaid it was “what would happen if a can of Tab had sex with Barack Obama.”
To me, the notion that Pepsi would consciously mimic the Obama logo seems like a bit of a stretch. Considering how fickle poll numbers can be, why would a major mass-market brand risk being seen as promoting a particular politician? Nobody in politics remains popular forever.
But when I left work Monday evening, I saw something that made me wonder if I my assumptions were wrong.
You see, my office is in Times Square, where advertisers are revving up for the millions of people who will see tonight’s New Year’s Eve festivities.
And directly across the street from my office, at the base of the building where a crystalline sphere counts down the final seconds of every year, Pepsi placed a sign that looked familiar:
In case your memory wasn’t jogged by the photo above, here’s a hint:
If Pepsi is invoking Obama’s campaign materials deliberately—and I have no reason to believe that they are—then maybe the folks behind it see some business sense in doing so.
Judging from the volume of painted plates and limited-edition coins being hawked on TV ads that gush about Obama’s “kind eyes and warm smile,” the Merchandising of the President-Elect might be the only growth industry left.
Here in NYC, you can’t walk a block in midtown without passing several street vendors pushing Obamawear. But maybe I’m only perceiving this avalanche of advertising and street trinkets because I’m stuck inside the New York bubble.
Could Obama’s campaign imagery help sell sugared water to a entire nation?
I’m skeptical. The United States isn’t Manhattan, and selecting a particular brand of cola isn’t usually where people make political statements.
If the new Pepsi logo was designed to evoke the Obama logo, maybe the Ad Men of Madison Avenue—unable to see outside the New York bubble themselves—simply miscalculated on something that could backfire. Or maybe they launched this redesign fully aware that they were using one of the world’s most recognizable brands as collateral in a big bet on the political fortunes of one person.
30 December 2008 @ 9:18AM >>
An Australian government body will begin removing seashells from a beach because they make the beach too uncomfortable to walk on:
The committee, responsible for managing seven kilometres of coast stretching from Rye to Sorrento, has ordered oyster shells be cleared from Blairgowrie beach in time for the summer peak season.
But the decision has provoked criticism the committee is being overly protective and bureaucratic.
Kelvin Stingel, from the Whitecliffs to Camerons Bight Foreshore Committee of Management, said residents’ complaints about the “hazardous sharp” shells had prompted the volunteer body to act.
“We haven’t had any reports of people being injured but they said that they might get injured,” Mr Stingel said. “I walked across it myself and I wouldn’t let my kids run across it, it is pretty bad.”
[...]
“I think it’s ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous,” [Sorrento resident Dr. Keith Stead] said. “If they’re going to get rid of the shells I hope they’re not going to decide to get rid of the rocks and stones as well - it would just go on and on.”
Dr Stead said if parents were worried about their children they should teach them to be careful and wear sandals.
“I think we can probably do more harm to our kids by constantly trying to wrap them in the proverbial cotton wool and keep them from all danger and not have them recognise danger when they’re by themselves,” he said.
[...]
A long-standing Sorrento resident, who did not want to be named, said the decision was “misguided, far-fetched” and reminiscent of George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
“When I was a kid people were always cutting their feet on sea shells, you can’t control it,” she said. “It’s just another example of the nanny state where people no longer have to make their own decisions because they are looked after by a higher authority.”
Keith John Sampson, a student at Indiana University - Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI), was found guilty of racial harassment for reading a book about a riot that took place in 1924 between Notre Dame students and the Ku Klux Klan.
Called Notre Dame vs. The Klan, the book’s author describes it as a discussion of a historical event and a celebration of the defeat of the white supremacist terrorist group in that event.
In an odd twist, the very book that led to Sampson’s racial harassment “conviction” was carried in the school’s own library!
But that didn’t stop the IUPUI’s Affirmative Action Office from finding Sampson giulty of racial harassment.
You can watch Andrew Marcus’s coverage of this case here:
If this is the kind of story that infuriates you, check out Indoctrinate U if you haven’t already.
29 December 2008 @ 9:21AM >>
Deborah Howell, the departing ombusman of the Washington Post, reflects on her colleagues as her tenure at the paper comes to a close:
My worry is that journalists aren’t as connected to readers as they were in the days of my youth, when the city’s newspaper was the equivalent of the public square. Then, reporters tended to be folks who often hadn’t graduated from, or even attended, college, and they weren’t looking to move to bigger papers. They knew the community well, didn’t make much money and lived like everyone else, except for chasing fires and crooks.
Now journalists are highly trained, mobile and, especially in Washington, more elite. We make a lot more money, drive better cars and have nicer homes. Some of us think we’re just a little more special than some of the folks we want to buy the paper or read us online.
That’s a mistake. Readers want us to be smart and tough and for the newspaper to read that way, but they don’t want us to think we’re better than they are. We need to be worried sick when people drop their subscriptions. We need to think of ways to prevent that.
An unpleasant fact about journalists is that we can be way too defensive. We dish it out a lot better than we take it. It’s not that we have thin skin; we often act as though we have no skin and bleed at the slightest touch.
[...]
Journalists need to be tough enough to face down a mayor, a police chief or the president of the United States, but we also should be tough enough to respond to honest criticism. The worst part of my job as official internal critic hasn’t been dealing with readers, though that has been both daunting and rewarding. Taking those complaints to reporters and editors has been the biggest challenge.
The next ombudsman of the Post, Andy Alexander, will start his term on Groundhog Day, 2009.
17 December 2008 @ 8:57AM >>
If you ever get any odd or cryptic e-mails from me, now you know why:
Doctors have reported the first ever case of someone using the internet while asleep, after a sleeping woman sent emails to people asking them over for drinks and caviar.
It was only when a would-be guest phoned the next day to accept, that she found out what she had done.
The 44-year-old woman, whose case is reported by researchers from the University of Toledo in the latest edition of medical journal Sleep Medicine, had gone to bed at around 10pm, but got up two hours later and walked to the next room.
She then turned on the computer, connected to the internet, and logged on by typing her username and password to her email account. She then composed and sent three emails.
Each was in a random mix of upper and lower cases, not well formatted and written in strange language.
One read: “Come tomorrow and sort this hell hole out. Dinner and drinks, 4.pm,. Bring wine and caviar only.”
Jay Carney is leaving Time magazine after 20 years to be Vice President-elect Joe Biden’s communications director in the White House, astonished magazine and gleeful transition sources said.
Carney’s title will be assistant to the vice president and director of communications. TIME.com’s “The Page” first reported his new job.
Carney, the magazine’s Washington bureau chief, is one of Washington’s best-known talking heads, with regular appearances on ABC’s “This Week,” “The McLaughlin Group” and MSNBC’s “Hardball.”
[...]
A Democratic official close to the selection process said Carney had already decided to do something different after the election, and Biden advisers believed Carney would bring “a fresh perspective” to their deliberations.
“It’s an adventure,” the official said. “Everybody thought it was an interesting idea and worth the risk. You never know how guys in your business are going to do in politics or the private sector.”
The official added: “There are those on the right who will see this as the embodiment of their assertions about the media and Obama, and this is just making it official.”
Carney would likely be shilling for the Obama administration whether or not his checks were still signed by Time magazine. At least now his allegiance is out in the open, and he won’t be working in the dying print news business.
14 December 2008 @ 11:38AM >>
The day the world comes together as one may have to be postponed a bit.
Barack Obama’s election was supposed to usher in a new era in which America’s enemies shed their animosity, embraced hope, and began worshipping our new leader along with the rest of us.
Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell al Qaeda (which greeted Obama’s election with racial insults) and Iran.
The leader of the Iranian parliament “has branded US President-Elect Barack Obama’s comments on Tehran’s nuclear activities as ‘cowboy’ talk,” according to London’s Telegraph:
“These comments resemble those of old American cowboys. If you have something to say about (Iran’s) nuclear issue, just say so. Why wave a stick,” asked [parliamentary speaker Ali] Larijani, in a speech in Qazvin province.
“The new US president has said he wants to pressure Iran since it seeks to produce atomic weapons and because it supports the terrorists like Hamas and Hizbollah,” he added.
“We are proud of supporting Hizbollah since they are defending their homeland and you are wrong in calling them terrorists.”
Iran is a staunch supporter of the Palestinian Hamas and Lebanese militant group Hizbollah.
In an interview broadcast on Sunday, Mr Obama vowed “tough but direct diplomacy” with Iran, offering incentives along with the threat of tougher sanctions over its atomic programme.
As president from January 20, Mr Obama said he would make clear to Tehran that the nuclear program was “unacceptable,” along with support of Hamas and Hizbollah and its “threats against Israel.”
Mr Obama, whose offer of direct talks with Iran represents a break with three decades of US foreign policy, promised a “set of carrots and sticks in changing their calculus about how they want to operate.”
Three days ago, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi said “the carrot and stick approach has proven to be useless.”
Some problems may require a bit more than Mr. Obama’s kind smile and warm charm to solve.
President-elect Barack Obama and his wife Michelle are appearing in Italian nativity scenes this year, alongside the baby Jesus and wise men, according to Naples craftsmen selling figurines in the run-up to Christmas.
The production of handmade figurines for nativity scenes is big business in this southern Italian city and has been for centuries.
But beyond the thousands of angel, sheep, Mary and Joseph figures filling market stalls before Christmas, craftsmen say Obama has become a top seller.
“The ones we are selling the most of are those of Barack Obama, America’s new president, along with his wife Michelle,” said craftsman Genny Di Virgilio.
11 December 2008 >>
Australia’s southeastern state of Victoria may soon encourage so-called “positive” discrimination against white males, according to Australia’s Herald-Sun:
DISCRIMINATION against dominant white males will soon be encouraged in a bid to boost the status of women, the disabled and cultural and religious minorities.
Such positive discrimination — treating people differently in order to obtain equality for marginalised groups — is set to be legalised under planned changes to the Equal Opportunity Act foreshadowed last week by state Attorney-General Rob Hulls.
[...]
Equal Opportunity Commission CEO Dr Helen Szoke said males had “been the big success story in business and goods and services”.
“Clearly, they will have their position changed because they will be competing in a different way with these people who have been traditionally marginalised,” she said.
“Let’s open it up so everyone can have a fair go.”
[...]
At present, individuals or bodies wanting to single out any race or gender for special treatment must gain an exemption from [the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal].
Companies and public bodies accused of discrimination can only be held to account after a complaint has been made.
But the proposed changes go much further, allowing the commission to inquire into discrimination, seize documents and search and enter premises after attempts to bring about change have failed.
Businesses and individuals would be required to change their ways even if a complaint had not been received.
While such an idea may seem foreign, discrimination against whites and males in the United States has been legal for quite some time under the government-sanctioned racial and gender preference system known as “affirmative action.”
Of course, even if you support the idea in theory, the election of Barack Obama to the presidency makes such a concept seem antiquated. Nevertheless, because of the color of their skin, affirmative action assumes that Barack Obama’s children are more disadvantaged than, say, those of a white welfare recipient living in Appalachia. As a result, under affirmative action, Malia and Natasha Obama will always be favored over the children of a white welfare recipient.
Race is an increasingly poor proxy for socioeconomic status. It’s time to end affirmative action, because if we want a society that doesn’t discriminate, we won’t get there by writing discrimination into the law.
Muslim prayer rooms should be opened in every Roman Catholic school, church leaders have said.
The Catholic bishops of England and Wales also want facilities in schools for Islamic pre-prayer washing rituals.
The demands go way beyond legal requirements on catering for religious minorities.
But the bishops - who acknowledge 30 per cent of pupils at their schools hold a non-Christian faith - want to answer critics who say religious schools sow division.
[...]
Islam teaches that Muslims are unfit for prayer if they have not performed Wudhu after breaking wind or using the toilet.
Wudhu involves washing the face, hands, arms and feet three times each, gargling the mouth three times and washing the neck and inside the nose and ears. Some Muslims also wash their private parts.
Catholic schools would need to install bidets, foot spas and hoses to facilitate such extensive cleansing rituals, Muslims say.
Daphne McLeod, a former Catholic head teacher from south London, said it would be ‘terribly expensive’ for the country’s 2,300 Catholic primary and secondary schools to provide ritual cleansing facilities.
She said: ‘If Muslim parents choose a Catholic school then they accept that it is going to be a Catholic school and there will not be facilities for ritual cleansing and prayer rooms.
‘They do their ritual cleansing before they go to a mosque, but they are not going to a mosque.’
Instead of raising money to fight an illness that only affects oppressors, a reader from New Orleans suggests a novel way to bring the races closer together:
There has long been a glaring disparity between blacks and whites in longevity. I think this calls for nothing less than a moratorium on all life-saving medical services for white people. It would also be helpful to remove seatbelts and airbags from their automobiles and police protection from their neighborhoods. Eventually this would lead to equality in longevity, thus contributing to peace and harmony between the races.
2 December 2008 @ 9:03AM >>
My friend Lon Symensma, who worked the camera on my first video, introduced me to my wife Jill, was one of the groomsmen at my wedding, and who supplied me many times with fine meals when I was his Kramer-like mooching next-door neighbor, is currently one of the two finalists for the “Hottest Chef in NY” contest at Eater.com.
After stints at Jean Georges and Spice Market, Lon is now the executive chef at Buddakan, one of the top restaurants in NYC. (If you’ve never been there, you might have seen part of the restaurant’s interior in the Sex and the City movie.)
1 December 2008 @ 9:06AM >>
Multiculturalism as practiced on college campuses isn’t about tolerance and inclusion, it’s about ranking people based on the groups they fit into and treating them accordingly.
Students at an Ottawa university are pulling out of a Canada-wide fundraiser that provides close to $1 million a year for cystic fibrosis research and treatment, arguing that the disease “has been recently revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men” - something experts say is untrue.
The Carleton University Students Association voted Monday night overwhelmingly in favour of choosing a new charity to support during its orientation week in September, in lieu of Shinerama, which raises money for the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
The foundation funds research into cystic fibrosis, a fatal, genetic disease that affects both sexes with a similar frequency and is most common among Caucasians. The foundation also helps fund services for people with the disease. It affects mainly the lungs and digestive system, causing a build-up of thick mucus that leads to infection and inflammation.
The student council motion stated that orientation week “strives to be inclusive” and “all orientees and volunteers should feel like their fundraising efforts will serve their diverse communities.”
[...]
Brittany Smyth, president of the Carleton University’s student council, said she is trying to get in touch with the cystic fibrosis foundation because she doesn’t want the group to think Carleton students are switching charities for the wrong reason. She said the clause about cystic fibrosis being a white man’s disease was not the determining factor in Monday night’s vote, but for now the council is sticking to the decision and looking for a different cause to support next fall.
City officials have ordered 22 New York churches to stop providing beds to homeless people.
With temperatures well below freezing early Saturday, the churches must obey a city rule requiring faith-based shelters to be open at least five days a week — or not at all.
Arnold Cohen, president of the Partnership for the Homeless, a nonprofit that serves as a link with the city, said he had to tell the churches they no longer qualify.
He said hundreds of people now won’t have a place to sleep.
The Department of Homeless Services said the city offers other shelters with the capacity to accept all those who have been sleeping in the churches. The city had 8,000 beds waiting.
Sure, the city can take them in, but maybe some of the homeless prefer the church-provided beds to the city shelters, even if they’re only available a few nights a week.
I’ve been in many city government buildings, and I’ve yet to find one I’d feel comfortable taking a 5-minute nap in, much less sleeping through the night.
And although I can’t say I’ve spent the night in a city-run homeless shelter, I find it hard to believe that any of them are an improvement over the other esteemed edificies maintained by the City of New York.
If the churches are willing to provide the beds and some homeless are opting for them over the city’s shelters, why impose an arbitrary rule to deny one more option to people who already have so few?
Thousands of conservatives and even some moderates have complained during my more than three-year term that The Post is too liberal; many have stopped subscribing, including more than 900 in the past four weeks.
It pains me to see lost subscribers and revenue, especially when newspapers are shrinking. Conservative complaints can be wrong: The mainstream media were not to blame for John McCain’s loss; Barack Obama’s more effective campaign and the financial crisis were.
But some of the conservatives’ complaints about a liberal tilt are valid. Journalism naturally draws liberals; we like to change the world. I’ll bet that most Post journalists voted for Obama. I did. There are centrists at The Post as well. But the conservatives I know here feel so outnumbered that they don’t even want to be quoted by name in a memo.
Journalists bristle at the thought of their coverage being viewed as unfair or unbalanced; they believe that their decisions are journalistically reasonable and that their politics do not affect how they cover and display stories.
Tom Rosenstiel, a former political reporter who directs the Project for Excellence in Journalism, said, “The perception of liberal bias is a problem by itself for the news media. It’s not okay to dismiss it. Conservatives who think the press is deliberately trying to help Democrats are wrong. But conservatives are right that journalism has too many liberals and not enough conservatives. It’s inconceivable that that is irrelevant.”
[...]
The opinion pages have strong conservative voices; the editorial board includes centrists and conservatives; and there were editorials critical of Obama. Yet opinion was still weighted toward Obama. It’s not hard to see why conservatives feel disrespected.
Are there ways to tackle this? More conservatives in newsrooms and rigorous editing would be two. The first is not easy: Editors hire not on the basis of beliefs but on talent in reporting, photography and editing, and hiring is at a standstill because of the economy. But newspapers have hired more minorities and women, so it can be done.
Rosenstiel said, “There should be more intellectual diversity among journalists. More conservatives in newsrooms will bring about better journalism. We need to be more vigilant and conscious in looking for bias. Our aims are pure, but our execution sometimes is not. Staff members should feel in their bones that unfairness will never be tolerated.”
Bob Steele, ethics scholar at the Poynter Institute, which trains journalists, thinks editors should be doing “ongoing content evaluation of candidates and issues to provide scrutiny on photos, stories, placement of stories and what are the weaknesses and strengths of the candidates.” He also recommends “prosecutorial editing” as one way to “minimize the ideological bias and beliefs that all journalists have. It would greatly reduce the news content being skewed by beliefs.”
The Post and other news media can work harder on eliminating even the perception of bias while never giving up the willingness to follow stories that will inevitably tick off some readers.
Intellectual diversity in the newsroom is essential to the quality of the media’s product. There need to be people involved in the reporting process who challenge the assumptions of the dominant thinking in the industry.
Today, it’s clear that isn’t the case, and that’s one of the reasons for the sorry financial state of the news business.
19 November 2008 @ 9:02AM >>London’s Telegraph reports on the latest developments in global warming, sorry, climate change:
A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore’s chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.
This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China’s official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its “worst snowstorm ever”. In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.
So what explained the anomaly? GISS’s computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.
The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious “hockey stick” graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new “hotspot” in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.
A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen’s institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.
If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)
Yet last week’s latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen’s methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.
Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising “very much faster” than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.
Meanwhile, on the subject of global warming climate change:
A new Irish film claims that climate change guru Al Gore is an alarmist and that those who think they are saving the planet are only hurting the poor
IF THE ADVANCE publicity is anything to go by, Not Evil Just Wrong will do for Al Gore what Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 did for George W Bush.
“This is the film Al Gore and Hollywood don’t want you to see,” declares the website for the latest work by film-makers Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer. The site even features a big picture of Gore, with his lips in the photograph seemingly digitally enhanced to make them look like Heath Ledger’s Joker from the latest Batman film.
The website goes on to say that their latest film - which takes on what are described as global warming alarmists - is “the most controversial documentary of the year”. Indeed, it could very well be the most controversial. And Al Gore and Hollywood may well not want you to see it. And in that respect, Gore and co are actually succeeding for the moment. Because there is no completed film. Not yet anyway.
McElhinney and McAleer have raised almost $1 million (EUR799,000) but need a total of $4.5m (EUR3.6m) to allow for a full cinema release. They say they were acutely disappointed at being turned down for funding by the Irish Film Board, especially its conclusion that it was “repetitive and creatively thin”.
Instead, they have gone onto the internet hoping to solicit donations in the style of Barack Obama. The finished product will be around 90 minutes long. Both film-makers rebut the Film Board’s criticism by pointing out that a near-complete version of the film has been chosen in the audience category at the Amsterdam Film Festival later this month.
I saw the couple’s previous release, Mine Your Own Business and found it quite illuminating.
I hope they’re successful in their fundraising efforts. I may try to raise money online to finance future film projects, and I’d like to see it work.
Russia’s parliament is rushing through plans to extend the presidential term from four years to six, leading to speculation that Vladimir Putin plans a dramatic return to the Kremlin.
A constitutional amendment is to be fast-tracked through the Duma, the lower house of parliament, which will vote tomorrow on all three readings of the Bill. Deputies usually take weeks to consider legislation over three readings before passing it into law.
[...]
An unnamed Kremlin adviser was quoted in Vedomosti, a daily business newspaper, last week as saying that the reform was intended to restore Mr Putin to the presidency as early as next year. He became Prime Minister after selecting Mr Medvedev to be his successor in elections in March.
Under such a scheme Mr Medvedev, 43, would enact the amendment and some unpopular social reforms. He would then resign and call a snap election in 2009 to make way for his mentor to return.
Mr Putin, 56, would govern for two more terms of six years each, until 2021, allowing him to fulfil the Putin Plan for the social and economic development of Russia.
Mr Putin fanned the belief that he is preparing for a comeback as president by pointedly refusing to state who would be the first to benefit from a longer term.
“I support Dimitri Medvedev’s proposal. As regards to who can run for the next term and when, it is premature to talk about this,” he said after a meeting with Matti Vanhanen, the Finnish Prime Minister.
He added: “We are looking for instruments which would allow us to guarantee sovereignty, to implement our long-term plans . . . and assist the development of democratic processes in the country.”
[...]
By engineering his return to the Kremlin, however, Mr Putin will strengthen criticism that Russia is sliding into dictatorship.
13 November 2008 @ 9:12AM >>
Did you hear the story claiming that Sarah Palin didn’t know Africa was a continent? Turns out it was a hoax:
It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.
Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. “Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Mr. Shuster said.
Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow - the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy - is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.
And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months. MSNBC, which quickly corrected the mistake, has plenty of company in being taken in by an Eisenstadt hoax, including The New Republic and The Los Angeles Times.
Given the nature of our media, a lot more people heard the lie than will ever hear that the lie was a lie.
A cynic might conclude that the media has a political agenda.
Update & Clarification: The hoax appears to be “Eisenstadt” claiming credit for the Palin leak. Apparently he is not the leaker; assuming the leaker exists, it’s someone whose identity is still not known.
So what do we know? That an unnamed person apparently told a reporter that Palin didn’t know Africa was a continent. We don’t know exact Palin quote that led to the anonymous allegation, so we can’t evaluate the context or whether Palin’s words were misinterpreted or deliberately mischaracterized.
The details surrounding this hoax and the original report are fuzzy, whereas Obama’s goof has incontrovertible proof.
While I misinterpreted the original scope of this hoax—mea culpa—it still serves as yet another case in which the media ignores undeniable evidence of an Obama gaffe while piling on Palin for an infraction that’s anonymously sourced and of which no recording exists.
9 November 2008 @ 12:27PM >>
Now that the hangovers from their post-election celebrations have begun to dissipate, members of the media can finally be honest about their coverage.
The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.
[...]
But Obama deserved tougher scrutiny than he got, especially of his undergraduate years, his start in Chicago and his relationship with Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who was convicted this year of influence-peddling in Chicago. The Post did nothing on Obama’s acknowledged drug use as a teenager.
[...]
One gaping hole in coverage involved Joe Biden, Obama’s running mate. When Gov. Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president, reporters were booking the next flight to Alaska. Some readers thought The Post went over Palin with a fine-tooth comb and neglected Biden. They are right; it was a serious omission.
I guess it’s too much to ask for media honesty before an election.
4 November 2008 >>
Although I didn’t vote for him myself, I do know there are a lot of people celebrating the symbolism of America electing its first black president. I’m happy for them. Considering that this country once counted black Americans as only three-fifths of a person, this aspect of the outcome is something about which all Americans can be proud, even if you would have preferred a different result.
Let’s hope this truly does usher in a post-racial America, one in which we move beyond the hatreds of the past and divisive policies like racial preferences. After all, if a black man can become president, do we really need laws that judge people on the color of their skin and not the content of their character?
I wish we knew more about Barack Obama’s worldview. During the campaign, we’ve seen plenty of hints, but the core of his true political philosophy has never been fully illuminated. (And for that, we can thank our selectively-inquisitive media.)
But all of this is a moot point now. Barack Obama will soon be our president. And when he is, we’ll see how he governs, and we can begin to assess his presidency.
I’m sure there will be many times when I will vigorously oppose our future president. But for tonight, my congratulations to Barack Obama and to his supporters.
4 November 2008 @ 8:16AM >>
In New York State, the winner of a general election is often whoever won the Democratic primary. So by the time I get a chance to cast a vote, many elections have effectively been decided.
This year, Senator Barack Obama will win New York State. Period.
It’s a sure thing affords me a little flexibility with my vote.
I’ve never been a big fan of John McCain. Although I salute him for a life in which he’s shown more courage than most men—including myself—ever could, he’s just never appealed to me as a politician. Was his maverick persona genuine or merely designed to maximize media coverage? Senator McCain obviously knew that, as a Republican, the surest way to end up on TV is to publicly tell your own party to shove it.
I also consider the McCain/Feingold campaign finance reform law to be one of the greatest infringements on political speech this country has ever enacted. (I explain a bit why in my interview with Michael Moore.) It isn’t quite the Sedition Act, but a part of me will never forgive McCain for pushing it or President Bush for signing it. It would be a bittersweet irony if, hamstrung by rules of his own creation, John McCain were to be defeated by an Obama machine that made a mockery out of the central premise of McCain/Feingold: that by passing it, the political system would be shielded from the corrosive effects of money.
On the other hand, I can’t in good conscience vote for someone who surrounds himself with such an appalling cadre of felons, bigots and 60’s leftover leftist revolutionaries who have changed only their means, not their ends. Obama campaigned as a messianic blank slate, and the media did its best to ignore any information that might smudge up the halo. The best I can say is I hope Obama is a much better—and more moderate—man than his associations indicate. We don’t really know who we’re getting by electing Obama. But I won’t be voting for him, especially at a time when Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are running Congress.
So Obama’s out.
Philosophically, the political label that matches my views the most would be “libertarian.” Unfortunately, it’s a label shared with a political party of the same name.
“Big-L” (as in the party) Libertarians seem to attract an uncomfortable mixture of conspiracy theorists, isolationists and pacifists. The Libertarian Party is the political equivalent of a Star Trek convention. Contrast that with “small-L” libertarians (as in adherents to the political philosophy) who tend the be the type of people you’ll have the most fun breaking laws with.
I consider myself a libertarian for two reasons.
First and foremost: for the betterment of the human race. True, these aren’t easy days to proclaim oneself an unashamed capitalist. But whatever governmental market distortions led to the current financial crisis, the simple fact remains that no single system has brought more material comfort to more people worldwide than capitalism.
In America today, people we consider poor have a standard of living that would’ve been thought of as middle-class a century ago. Sure, we can to do better for more people, but there’s only one historically proven way to do it: capitalism. By definition, government can’t create wealth. Only private economic activity can. The more economic activity, the faster the growth, and the richer even the poor become. The larger the share of the economy that flows through the government, the longer it’ll take for the engine of capitalism to grow poverty into extinction.
The second reason I’m a libertarian is because I believe that the individual should be afforded the maximum personal liberty in cases where no other individual’s rights are being abridged. In their private lives, people should be allowed to set whatever personal boundaries their consciences allow and require. And while I believe that people should abide by some form of moral code, it is not the function of the state to impose one person’s moral code on another. If you want to convince someone else to live by your rules, you’re free to do so in the private sphere. But government is too big a bludgeon to be used for such a function.
So, in a nutshell, that’s why I’m a (”small-L”) libertarian.
Unfortunately, the (”big-L”) Libertarian Party is a bit of a joke, repeatedly letting itself get hijacked by vanity candidates who aren’t serious about libertarianism or winning elections.
This year’s Libertarian Party candidate is Bob Barr, a former Republican who didn’t seem to be much of a libertarian until the moment he figured out he could get the party’s nomination.
When Bob Barr was last seen on the political stage, it was during the Clinton impeachment hearings. Barr, as one of Clinton’s ineffectual Republican antagonists, went on to be thought of as one of those Clinton-was-lucky-to-have-him-as-an-enemy types.
Barr isn’t the sort of candidate I’d pull the lever for in any other circumstance. But I don’t live in a swing state where voting for the Libertarian is effectively the same as a voting for Obama (who—for me anyway—fails the libertarian lesser-of-two-evils test).
The political leanings of my fellow New Yorkers has effectively reduced my vote to a protest anyway. So I might as well cast my vote in a way that most accurately reflects my political philosophy.
Which is why, this year, I’m holding my nose, voting Libertarian, and hoping that, somehow, McCain wins.
Someone has to stand between your wallet and the Democrats in Congress.
Since 1884, Democrats have gotten 78% of the paper’s endorsements, while Republicans have gotten 19%. (A third-party endorsement in the election of 1896 accounts for the remaining 3%.)
Since the election of 1960, the paper has endorsed only Democrats.
Barack Obama’s admission that his policies would “spread the wealth around” has ignited a nationwide discussion of how progressive the tax system should be and how it should be used to redistribute income among Americans. Obama has been very successful in bolstering the conventional wisdom that the U.S. tax system does not place a significant enough burden on wealthier households and places too much of a burden on the “middle class.”
But a new study on inequality by researchers at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris reveals that when it comes to household taxes (income taxes and employee social security contributions) the U.S. “has the most progressive tax system and collects the largest share of taxes from the richest 10% of the population.” [... T]he U.S. tax system is far more progressive-meaning pro-poor-than similar systems in countries most Americans identify with high taxes, such as France and Sweden.
Even after accounting for the fact that the top 10 percent of households in the U.S. have one of the highest shares of market income among OECD nations, our tax system is second only to Ireland in terms of its progressivity for households.
[... T]he U.S. [also] collects more household tax revenue from the top 10 percent of households than any other country and extracts the most from that income group relative to their share of the nation’s income.
Twicebefore, I asked: how much tax would “the rich” have to pay before it becomes fair?
I think Barack Obama and the Democrats owe us an answer. Preferably before election day.
29 October 2008 @ 8:53AM >>
I thought the job of the news media was to provide information, not suppress it. I guess I’m wrong:
Let’s try a thought experiment. Say John McCain attended a party at which known racists and terror mongers were in attendance. Say testimonials were given, including a glowing one by McCain for the benefit of the guest of honor ... who happened to be a top apologist for terrorists. Say McCain not only gave a speech but stood by, in tacit approval and solidarity, while other racists and terror mongers gave speeches that reeked of hatred for an American ally and rationalizations of terror attacks.
Now let’s say the Los Angeles Times obtained a videotape of the party.
Question: Is there any chance — any chance — the Times would not release the tape and publish front-page story after story about the gory details, with the usual accompanying chorus of sanctimony from the oped commentariat? Is there any chance, if the Times was the least bit reluctant about publishing (remember, we’re pretending here), that the rest of the mainstream media (y’know, the guys who drove Trent Lott out of his leadership position over a birthday-party toast) would not be screaming for the release of the tape?
Do we really have to ask?
So now, let’s leave thought experiments and return to reality: Why is the Los Angeles Times sitting on a videotape of the 2003 farewell bash in Chicago at which Barack Obama lavished praise on the guest of honor, Rashid Khalidi — former mouthpiece for master terrorist Yasser Arafat?
[...]
Is there just a teeny-weenie chance that this was an evening of Israel-bashing Obama would find very difficult to explain? Could it be that the Times, a pillar of the Obamedia, is covering for its guy?
Gateway Pundit reports that the Times has the videotape but is suppressing it.
Back in April, the Times published a gentle story about the fete. Reporter Peter Wallsten avoided, for example, any mention of the inconvenient fact that the revelers included Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, Ayers’s wife and fellow Weatherman terrorist. These self-professed revolutionary Leftists are friendly with both Obama and Khalidi — indeed, researcher Stanley Kurtz has noted that Ayers and Khalidi were “best friends.” (And — small world! — it turns out that the Obamas are extremely close to the Khalidis, who have reportedly babysat the Obama children.)
If Barack Obama is elected, he’ll probably be the president about which the American public knows the least. The media seems only interested in conveying feelings about Obama, not facts. As National Review’sMark Levin wrote:
Virtually all evidence of Obama’s past influences and radicalism — from Jeremiah Wright to William Ayers — have been raised by non-traditional news sources. The media’s role has been to ignore it as long as possible, then mention it if they must, and finally dismiss it and those who raise it in the first place. It’s as if the media use the Obama campaign’s talking points — its preposterous assertions that Obama didn’t hear Wright from the pulpit railing about black liberation, whites, Jews, etc., that Obama had no idea Ayers was a domestic terrorist despite their close political, social, and working relationship, etc. — to protect Obama from legitimate and routine scrutiny. And because journalists have also become commentators, it is hard to miss their almost uniform admiration for Obama and excitement about an Obama presidency.
Sure, we’ve heard about Obama incessantly, but what do we know?
We know he’s good-looking, super-cool, and he sports a spiffy halo. We know the celebrities in Hollywood love him, and European rock stars encourage Americans to vote for him on Saturday Night Live. We know that he will transcend race, even though he spent 20 years of Sundays in a racist church.
Aside from winning elections, we know that his greatest accomplishment to date has been to write two books about himself. We know he portrays himself as a moderate, but he hasn’t been on the political stage long enough to amass a record proving it. Even in his short time in the Senate, his votes have positioned himself further to the left than any other Senator.
True, the man has a voice that manages to soothe even as it commands respect. Unlike the raving lunatics and aging bomb-throwers he surrounds himself with, Barack Obama has the air of someone unflappably reasonable.
But who is Barack Obama really?
Given the lack of actual evidence backing up his supposed moderation—besides his take-my-word-for-it assurances—it is not only fair to judge Obama on the company he keeps, it’s pretty much the only way to judge him.
Perhaps that’s why news organizations like the Los Angeles Times wants us to know as little as possible about Obama’s associations. They know America would never elect a guy who keeps the company that Obama does.
27 October 2008 @ 8:24AM >>
An e-mail that’s making the rounds:
In a local restaurant my server had on a “Obama 08” tie [...]
When the bill came I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that I was exploring the Obama redistribution of wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need—the homeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed from my sight.
I went outside, gave the homeless guy $10 and told him to thank the server inside as I’ve decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy was grateful.
At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment I realized the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn even though the actual recipient deserved money more.
I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application.
26 October 2008 @ 6:48PM >>
A local TV reporter in central Florida made television history the other day by questioning Saint Barack’s running mate in a manner usually reserved for Republican candidates.
And, of course, disciples of The One aren’t happy about it.
So the TV station has been cut off from all access to the Obama campaign for the duration of the election.
WFTV-Channel 9’s Barbara West conducted a satellite interview with Sen. Joe Biden on Thursday. A friend says it’s some of the best entertainment he’s seen recently. [...]
West wondered about Sen. Barack Obama’s comment, to Joe the Plumber, about spreading the wealth. She quoted Karl Marx and asked how Obama isn’t being a Marxist with the “spreading the wealth” comment.
“Are you joking?” said Biden, who is Obama’s running mate. “No,” West said.
West later asked Biden about his comments that Obama could be tested early on as president. She wondered if the Delaware senator was saying America’s days as the world’s leading power were over.
“I don’t know who’s writing your questions,” Biden shot back.
Biden so disliked West’s line of questioning that the Obama campaign canceled a WFTV interview with Jill Biden, the candidate’s wife.
“This cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election,” wrote Laura K. McGinnis, Central Florida communications director for the Obama campaign.
McGinnis said the Biden cancellation was “a result of her husband’s experience yesterday during the satellite interview with Barbara West.”
[...]
WFTV news director Bob Jordan said, “When you get a shot to ask these candidates, you want to make the most of it. They usually give you five minutes.”
Jordan said political campaigns in general pick and choose the stations they like. And stations often pose softball questions during the satellite interviews.
“Mr. Biden didn’t like the questions,” Jordan said. “We choose not to ask softball questions.”
Voters overwhelmingly believe that the media wants Barack Obama to win the presidential election. By a margin of 70%-9%, Americans say most journalists want to see Obama, not John McCain, win on Nov. 4. Another 8% say journalists don’t favor either candidate, and 13% say they don’t know which candidate most reporters support.
[...]
In recent presidential campaigns, voters repeatedly have said they thought journalists favored the Democratic candidate over the Republican. But this year’s margin is particularly wide. At this stage of the 2004 campaign, 50% of voters said most journalists wanted to see John Kerry win the election, while 22% said most journalists favored George Bush. In October 2000, 47% of voters said journalists wanted to see Al Gore win and 23% said most journalists wanted Bush to win. In 1996, 59% said journalists were pulling for Bill Clinton.
In the current campaign, Republicans, Democrats and independents all feel that the media wants to see Obama win the election. Republicans are almost unanimous in their opinion: 90% of GOP voters say most journalists are pulling for Obama. More than six-in-ten Democratic and independent voters (62% each) say the same.
For an industry that by all measures is in severe financial trouble, you’d think that reporters and editors would be a little more worried about the public’s perception of their output. But the media’s short-term desire to elect Barack Obama is apparently more important than their long-term credibility. That’s an exceedingly poor business decision.
[W]e have this extraordinarily complex global economy, which as everybody now realizes is very difficult to forecast in any considerable detail.
And, Mr. Chairman, I know — I agree with you in the fact that there were a lot of people who raised issues about problems emerging, but there are always a lot of people raising issues, and half the time they’re wrong. And the question is, what do you do?
I mean, you point out quite correctly that the Federal Reserve had as good an economic organization as exists, and I would say, in the world. If all those extraordinarily capable people were unable to foresee the development of this critical problem, which undoubtedly was the cause of the world problem with respect to mortgage-backed securities, I have to — I think we have to ask ourselves, why is that?
And the answer is that we’re not smart enough as people. We just cannot see events that far in advance. And unless we can, it’s very difficult to look back and say, why didn’t we catch something?
24 October 2008 >>
I’m excited to announce that the Documentary Channel will be showing my film Indoctrinate U several times next week as part of its “Controversy in America” series. Airtimes are:
Monday, October 27th: 09:00 PM - 10:30 PM
Tuesday, October 28th: Midnight - 01:30 AM (After midnight Monday)
Saturday, November 1st: 05:00 PM - 06:30 PM
Sunday, November 2nd: 02:00 AM - 03:30 AM
Tuesday, November 4th: 03:00 AM - 04:30 AM
(All times Eastern U.S.)
The Documentary Channel is available on satellite and many cable systems nationwide. Check your provider for channel information.
These times are subject to change. Visit the Documentary Channel’s website for an up-to-date schedule.
