tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-123120162024-03-13T13:27:14.175-04:00Virtual ScratchpadA reference and information dump of a politics, technology, marketing, and media junky.Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comBlogger316125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-24064486963144368322015-05-20T11:24:00.001-04:002015-05-20T12:20:06.059-04:00"Mad Men" finale: Don Draper did not write the Coke ad<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fudl_q12iR8/VVyiGqKddsI/AAAAAAAAAX0/e1kKvH5LdZw/s1600/mad-men-finale-meditation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fudl_q12iR8/VVyiGqKddsI/AAAAAAAAAX0/e1kKvH5LdZw/s640/mad-men-finale-meditation.jpg" width="100%" /></a></div>
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<br />
I've been a fan of AMC's series "Mad Men" over the years. It's one of the few shows that I make time for. As the program aged, it had bouts with absurdity but overall, it's held up fairly well.<br />
<br />
I feel the same about the show's ending which occurred this past Sunday. There were some aspects of the episode that could have been done better (such as the way that Stan and Peggy were so utterly unaware of the weirdness of their situation) but overall, it was excellent television and excellent drama.<br />
<br />
"Mad Men" was good drama because it did more than merely entertain, it also explored larger philosophical questions about what it means to be human and did so in a way that was never didactic and closed-minded.<br />
<br />
That brings me to the hotly discussed topic of the final moments of the show which (spoiler alert) featured Don Draper engaging in meditation on a California hillside after he seemingly abandoned his entire life as a serially divorced advertising executive. Immediately thereafter is a cut to the iconic 1970s Coca-Cola ad "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke."<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/2msbfN81Gm0/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2msbfN81Gm0?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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Everyone agrees that the ending is deliberately ambiguous. That's another aspect of good drama. It leaves you with a sense of finality which is simultaneously undetermined.<br />
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It's easy to think that Draper is said to have created the ad. Throughout multiple seasons of the show, it was discussed repeatedly about how amazing it would be to write a spot for Coca-Cola. Coke products were also discussed again and again in the final story arc. Series creator and principle writer Matthew Weiner even got homophonous in having Joan sniffing coke the drug with her then-boyfriend.<br />
<br />
It's no coincidence that actual cocaine was used in the making of the cola beverage early in its history--it's where the name derives from in fact.<br />
<br />
But just as a life of cocaine was not what Joan needed or wanted to be
happy, neither was Don going to be happy working for Coca-Cola. <br />
<br />
That's why he couldn't have written the ad. Not because he didn't have the talent to do so but because he finally realized that his whole life
was nothing but a series of staged fantasies, just like
advertising itself.<br />
<br />
No product is ever as good as its advertising and
simultaneously while everyone was jealous of Donald Draper's situation
as a rich guy doing interesting work and having lots of sex, in
reality, he was never as happy as others might have thought he'd be.<br />
<br />
In
the end, Dick Whitman found happiness by finally coming to terms with
himself by ceasing to run from the totality of his life experience: his
miserable childhood, his accidental killing of another human being, and
then the elaborate series of lies that he told as he repeatedly
reincarnated himself as Don Draper.<br />
<br />
Dick/Don's moment of
catharsis came when he realized that he was actually the same person as
the man who broke down in the chair during one of their self-help sessions. Both of them were desperate for love and yet never found
it--not because it was never available but because deep down they were
both emotionally insecure. The man in the chair never had the success at
masking his unease but ultimately both men were running from themselves
and from others.<br />
<br />
The usage of the "real thing" ad was
meant to be an inversion of the words of the jingle. Advertising is not
real. Donald Draper was not real. Our star found peace when he went back
to being Dick Whitman, a man with nothing but his name. But now he at
least was finally being true to himself. <i>That</i> is the real thing, not a
touchy-feely ad for a sugary drink or some cheesy hippie ripoff of
Hinduism.<br />
<br />
Dick Whitman found happiness because he came to terms with himself. It's something that everyone should do--particularly people who came from such challenging environments as he did. The past is not something to run from but rather something to embrace and learn from. We must live in the present but no one can divorce himself from who he was. That, to me, is the final message of "Mad Men."Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-19530188655800816252009-04-23T17:26:00.002-04:002009-04-23T17:30:09.533-04:00Pretty Much a Ghost Town HereIn case you hadn't noticed, this blog is pretty much abandoned.<br /><br />I've moved my blogging to my <a href="http://twitter.com/mattsheffield">Twitter profile</a>.Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-5650029802107446242008-03-13T01:45:00.002-04:002008-03-13T01:49:33.693-04:00What Celebs Would Look Like Without MakeupYou have to love a good fake photo. This <a href="http://www.wintrest.com/if-celebs-moved-to-oklahoma/">blog post</a> has a bunch. My favorite in the "If celebs moved to Oklahoma" list:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.wintrest.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/johntravolta.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px;" src="http://www.wintrest.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/johntravolta.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Stolen from Ace who stole it from...Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-79786498593149511022008-02-13T02:10:00.002-05:002008-12-11T22:00:01.719-05:00Firefox on Haiku Screenshot<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K3z09lVL9KQ/R7KYG-Vl6SI/AAAAAAAAAA0/h0JGLuVrqkw/s1600-h/2008-02-13+Haiku.bmp"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K3z09lVL9KQ/R7KYG-Vl6SI/AAAAAAAAAA0/h0JGLuVrqkw/s400/2008-02-13+Haiku.bmp" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5166358968127580450" border="0" /></a><br />Looky looky:Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-46110823691579706762007-12-22T01:44:00.000-05:002007-12-22T01:47:48.410-05:00Tech: Microsoft Forced by EU to Release Filesharing CodeA <a href="http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39291688,00.htm">positive development</a> for interoperability:<br /><blockquote>Open-source software project Samba has signed an agreement with Microsoft to receive protocol documentation for the software giant's Windows workgroup server products.<br /><br />The deal will enable the organisation to build software that will interoperate with those products.<br /><br />The non-disclosure agreement was brokered on behalf of Samba by the Protocol Freedom Information Foundation (PFIF), an organisation that seeks to facilitate the exchange of free and open-source software information. PFIF, which is paying a one-off fee of €10,000 (£7,240) for the documentation, is part of the Software Freedom Law Center.<br /><br />Samba's software, used for sharing files over a network and controlling networked printers, is designed to facilitate interoperability between Linux/Unix servers and Windows-based clients.<br /><br />Andrew Tridgell, creator of Samba, said in a statement: "We are very pleased to be able to get access to the technical information necessary to continue to develop Samba as a free software project."<br /><br />Samba expects that the agreement will allow the project to add features including full support for Microsoft's Active Directory, encrypted files, a better search interface and support for "SMB2", a new version of Microsoft's Server Message Block protocol from which the Samba project took its name. SMB2 is built into Windows Server 2008.</blockquote>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-71524525785707642952007-12-22T01:18:00.000-05:002007-12-22T01:20:18.434-05:00How to Spam a Poll<a href="http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=28364">Ron Paul supporters</a> and their techniques.Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-84435321968450249162007-12-21T03:16:00.000-05:002007-12-21T03:19:55.791-05:00Google Goes to WashingtonThe Atlantic has a <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/google">short, interesting article</a> about Google's Washington presence:<br /><p></p><blockquote><p>At the same time, many businesses overshadowed by Google have begun looking for political arguments that might slow its seemingly unstoppable ascent. “There is no company on the face of the planet that scares as many businesses as Google,” says Blair Levin, a telecom and media analyst at the financial-services firm Stifel Nicolaus. The most popular and potentially effective argument against Google is the charge that it has become a monopoly that needs reining in. (The political power of this criticism is increased by fears that Google will misuse the vast amount of personal data it has accumulated.) In late September, Congress held the first antitrust hearings concerning Google—the opening salvo in what is likely to be one of the most important business and policy stories of the next few years. </p> <p>The computer world is in the midst of its next great transition, as many applications and services—word processing, spreadsheets, e-mail, data storage—migrate from the personal computer to the Internet. Success for all sorts of businesses will soon depend on whether customers have easy and fast access to these Internet-based applications. Because gaining primacy will involve winning battles over regulation and federal oversight, companies like Microsoft and the major cable and telephone companies are now squaring off against Google in an arena where it has never competed and they have: Washington. </p> <p>Until recently, a company’s Washington strategy tended to evolve at the same pace as its business. As the company grew larger, it would add lobbyists and advisers to protect its interests. But as Microsoft grew more powerful in the 1990s, it mostly ignored politics. It had gotten to the top of the new economy without aid or interference from Washington—why change? Microsoft assumed the government posed no threat—until its competitors persuaded the Justice Department to launch an antitrust suit. Though the company avoided a breakup, its stock price stagnated for years. </p> <p>Microsoft’s example illustrates a problem that can plague any fast-growing tech company: You can control vast markets and terrify your competitors, but still be a Washington rookie. As the government focuses on Google, the city’s familiar machinery is gearing up for battle on the question of whether the company is the large but benign force for innovation its corporate slogan, “Don’t be evil,” suggests—or whether, like Stan [Google's T-rex corporate mascot], it’s a carnivore on the loose. </p></blockquote>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-85930800999543904722007-12-07T11:17:00.000-05:002007-12-07T11:21:12.103-05:00Spambots for Ron Paul<a href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071206-researchers-track-ron-paul-spam-back-to-reactor-botnet.html">Interesting stuff</a>:<br /><blockquote> In a <a href="http://www.secureworks.com/research/threats/ronpaul/?threat=ronpaul">report</a> published this week by security firm SecureWorks, researchers reveal that the recent <a href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071031-ron-paul-camp-gets-over-enthusiastic-with-spam.html">flurry of Ron Paul spam</a> originated from a Reactor botnet controlled by a commercial spammer through a colocation facility in the US.<br /><p> The researchers analyzed header elements of the spam e-mails to trace them back to zombie systems that were infected with the Srizbi trojan, an unusual piece of malware with highly advanced features. According to Symantec research, which has independently <a href="http://www.symantec.com/enterprise/security_response/weblog/2007/06/spam_from_the_kernel_fullkerne.html">studied Srizbi</a>, the trojan is one of the first pieces of malware found in the wild to operate fully in kernel mode with no userspace code. Srizbi bypasses firewalls and packet sniffers by directly manipulating the kernel-level TCP/IP stack. The Srizbi trojan is largely propagated by the well-known msiesettings.com site, which is paid by spammers to deploy viruses and trojans for spam botnets. </p> <p>SecureWorks collaborated with network administrators to analyze the traffic from some of the computers infected with Srizbi that were responsible for sending the Ron Paul spam. This allowed the researchers to discover the location from which the botnet was operated—a colocation facility in the US. The researchers collaborated with Spamhaus to get the server shut down and then obtained the source code used on the control system, a Python-based spam botnet management tool known as the Reactor Mailer. The logs present on the system prove that it was indeed the origin of the Ron Paul spam. Further research showed that other systems in the same colocation facility were also controlling various segments of the Srizbi botnet, and using it to transmit spam advertising replica watches and enlargement pills.<br /></p><p> The evidence leads researchers to conclude that the Ron Paul spam was transmitted by a spammer called nenastnyj who operated a single node in a colocation facility and was likely affiliated with or renting access from the Reactor syndicate. The messages were transmitted by approximately 3,000 bots using a 3.4GB e-mail database file with over 160,000,000 addresses. </p><p> "While the total count of Ron Paul spam messages that actually landed in peoples' inboxes can't be known, it certainly was received by millions of recipients," writes the author of the SecureWorks report. "All this was done using around 3,000 bots—this speaks to the efficiency of the template-based spam botnet model over the older proxy-based methods. The front-end also plays a part in the efficiency, by allowing the spammer to check the message's SpamAssassin score before hitting send, simplifying the process of filter evasion and ensuring maximum delivery for the message." </p> <p>Although it's likely that somebody paid nenastnyj to transmit the Ron Paul spam, there is no evidence to indicate that it was anyone directly associated with the Ron Paul campaign. </p></blockquote><p></p>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-76216579531852137352007-12-06T11:21:00.000-05:002007-12-06T11:22:49.382-05:00Paintball for Terrorists? BBC Paid Islamic Radicals<p>If you thought media bias was bad in this country, flip around the international channels on your cable/satellite box and you'll see it could be <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=499795&in_page_id=1770">much worse</a>:</p><blockquote><p> The BBC funded a paintballing trip for men later accused of Islamic terrorism and didn't pass on information about the 21/7 bombers to police, a court heard yesterday. </p><p>The organisation gave Mohammed Hamid, an Islamic preacher accused of radicalising British Muslims, a £300 fee and paid for fellow defendants to go and be filmed for a documentary. </p><p>After the botched July attacks Hamid told a BBC reporter he had worked with on the programme 'Don't Panic, I'm Islamic' that he knew the identities of the culprits - but she felt 'no obligation' to tell police, the court heard. </p><p> The journalist informed her boss and the information was passed on up to senior executives but a decision was taken not to pass it on. </p> The claims emerged during the trial of Mr Hamid who, along with four others, is accused of running a two-year radicalisation programme to groom London Muslims for jihad.<br /><br /> The court was told Mr Hamid was first approached by BBC researcher Nasreen Suleaman in late 2004 when she was making a documentary before the July 2005 attacks.<br /><br /> It was shown on June 12, 2005 on BBC2.<br /><br /> The BBC paid for Hamid, fellow defendants Mohammed Al Figari and Mousa Brown and others to go on a paintballing trip at the Delta Force centre in Tonbridge, Kent, in February 2005.<br /><br /> The court was told that July 21 bombers Ramzi Mohammed and Hussein Osman also went on a trip to the same centre before the 7/7 attacks. Ms Suleaman said she was unaware that they were on the trip.</blockquote>Sick stuff. Makes you wonder how many New York Times editors would act if they were in a similar situation.Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-1069204255332217022007-11-28T07:58:00.000-05:002007-11-28T08:01:49.691-05:00More Double Standards at YouTube?<p>As YouTube is gearing up with CNN to host a Republican presidential debate on Wednesday, the video-sharing service is finding itself embroiled in another <a href="http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnL27590430.html">censorship controversy</a> with an Egyptian blogger named Wael Abbas:</p><blockquote><p>The video-sharing Web site YouTube has suspended the account of a prominent Egyptian anti-torture activist who posted videos of what he said was brutal behaviour by some Egyptian policemen, the activist said. </p><p> Wael Abbas said close to 100 images he had sent to YouTube were no longer accessible, including clips depicting purported police brutality, voting irregularities and anti-government demonstrations. YouTube, owned by search engine giant Google Inc, did not respond to a written request for comment. A message on Abbas's YouTube user page, http://youtube.com/user/waelabbas, read: "This account is suspended."</p> <p> "They closed it (the account) and they sent me an e-mail saying that it will be suspended because there were lots of complaints about the content, especially the content of torture," Abbas told Reuters in a telephone interview. Abbas, who won an international journalism award for his work this year, said that of the images he had posted to YouTube, 12 or 13 depicted violence in Egyptian police stations.</p><p>Abbas was a key player last year in distributing a clip of an Egyptian bus driver, his hands bound, being sodomised with a stick by a police officer -- imagery that sparked an uproar in a country where rights groups say torture is commonplace.</p><p>That tape prompted an investigation that led to a rare conviction of two policemen, who were sentenced to three years in prison for torture.</p></blockquote><p>Abbas's videos and pictures are admittedly very graphic depictions of disturbing violence. My guess is they also feature nudity as well, both of which are violations of YouTube's terms of use. For that reason, YouTube's removal of the clips isn't necessarily wrong (although I personally would make exceptions to such policies if the content in question is news reports). What is wrong is the site's apparent double-standard when it comes to offensive content.</p><p></p><p>As <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2007/11/youtubes_double_standard_1.asp">Stephen Hayes points out</a>, YouTube hasn't touched videos featuring full nudity when the topic in question is the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.</p><p>Why the disparity when it comes to "inappropriate" content? I think it's mainly a matter of who's complaining about it. In my experience with YouTube, I've noticed a few things:</p><ul><li>There are fewer conservatives and libertarians who have registered YouTube accounts.</li><li>There are more videos on YouTube than its staff can possibly monitor.</li><li>Liberals are <a href="http://newsbusters.org/node/8229">far more likely</a> to <a href="http://newsbusters.org/node/8355">misuse</a> YouTube's "rate" and "flag" tools to downgrade videos they personally dislike such as the famous anti-Democrat ad which angry liberals managed to get classified as "inappropriate," despite the fact that it is completely nonviolent and nonsexual.</li><li>People who feel very passionately about their religion also seem to downgrade videos which attack their faiths. We've previously reported how this happens among <a href="http://newsbusters.org/node/12773">Muslims</a>.</li></ul><p>Throw in a little ideological uniformity among YouTube employees and you get the mess we currently have.</p><p>Some suggestions to fix this situation:</p><ul><li>More conservatives and libertarians need to get signed up for YouTube. It is part of MSM 2.0 and unlike MSM 1.0, anyone can help decide what gets put there.</li><li>YouTube should give "moderation points" to users to allow them only a certain number of votes.After that margin has been reached, they should not be allowed to vote on videos until the next week.</li><li>Users who consistently vote one-star or five stars should receive fewer points.</li></ul>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-1939726536826797482007-11-24T15:09:00.000-05:002007-11-24T15:19:23.886-05:00Avoiding Annoying Website RegistrationAs the internet ages, more and more companies are trying to work harder at turning a profit from their online operations. This in turn has led to an increase in web sites that force you to register before reading their content.<br /><br />I don't believe in that type of restriction and consider it an annoyance. Fortunately, there are a few nice tools available if you happen to agree with me. My favorite two are Firefox extensions:<br /><ul><li><a href="http://roachfiend.com/archives/2005/02/07/bugmenot/">BugMeNot</a>: This extension taps into the extremely useful password aggregator web site <a href="http://bugmenot.com/">BugMeNot.com</a>, allowing you to simply right-click in a site's login box and automatically get user login information. It works with most non-discussion sites.</li><li><a href="http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/">Web Developer</a>: A very handy Firefox add-on with a host of useful features, including the ability to shut off "referrers," the information that your browser sends to web servers about how you found their pages. This ability allows you to freely surf sites like the Washington Post without ever even seeing the login box.<br /></li></ul>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-78501741853016873152007-11-15T17:20:00.000-05:002007-11-15T17:22:11.696-05:00Hillary Front Group Media Matters Issues "Don'ts" for Blitzer<p>The Clinton machine has spoken. Wolf Blitzer in moderating tonight's Democrat debate must follow the Media Matters approved script </p><p>Greg Pollowitz at NRO Media has <a href="http://media.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzMzMDM5ZDY1NmM5NGVkMGQxMWVhOGU5N2VhMzQwZWI=">the full list</a>. Here's just a few. The arrogance of these folks still continues to surprise. The funny thing is now that the groups strong ties to Hillary Clinton have become common knowledge, the list leads off with requirements related to her rival Barack Obama: </p><ul><li>Don't contradict your own reporting and suggest that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) "cash[ed] in" on a stock deal in which he lost $13,000. </li></ul><ul><li>Don't say that Obama's position on Pakistan is "very much in line with what" President Bush says regarding Pakistan. </li></ul><ul><li>Don't contradict your own reporting — again — and say that Obama, in following legal requirements to count purchasers of his campaign merchandise as campaign contributors, is "apparently using some creative math" and "overselling his grassroots support." </li></ul><ul><li>Don't misleadingly crop quotes when challenging a candidate's consistency on a particular issue, as NBC Washington bureau chief Tim Russert did on the November 11 broadcast of <i>Meet the Press</i>, when he suggested that Obama has "not been a leader against the [Iraq] war." </li></ul><ul><li>Don't tell Obama that "[i]t's difficult to say that you're against the war and at the same time not say that you're against the troops." </li></ul><ul><li>Don't suggest that former Sen. John Edwards' (D-NC) work "for financial markets" might "contradict his anti-poverty message." </li></ul><ul><li>Don't adopt GOP framing and ask Edwards about his "flip-flop" on Iraq "to win the vote."</li></ul>Be sure and join me tonight for the <a href="http://newsbusters.org/chatrooms/chat/12">live NewsBusters chat</a> of the debate. Note: you must be registered and logged in to do so.Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-12963937742975493692007-11-14T17:40:00.000-05:002007-11-14T17:41:36.242-05:00Nothing Is Ever Enough for Fringe Environmentalists<p>Reading this <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laurie-david-and-gene-karpinski/did-tim-russert-get-the-m_b_72433.html">HuffPo entry</a> from "Inconvenient Truth" producer Laurie David and environmental activist Gene Karpinski, it's hard to not come up with the impression that these two are a bunch of whiners.</p><p>Both are outraged (!) that NBC host and former Democratic strategist Tim Russert is not as obsessed with global warming as they are.</p><p>What's even funnier (unintentionally of course) is that David and Karpinski frame their outrage around the recent NBC Universal PR campaign "<a href="http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/11/05/tv-columnist-slams-nbc-s-green-universal-campaign">Green Is Universal</a>," which was nothing more than a corporate-driven shillfest designed to drum up interest in parent company General Electric's non-fossil fuel offerings. (So much for the left-wing lie about corporate "conservatism.") </p><p>Tim Russert's real sin was that he didn't parrot the company line like a good liberal media hack. The arrogance is stunning. A billion-dollar media empire devotes an entire week to promoting their pet issue and yet it's still not enough for David and Karpinski:</p><blockquote><p>This past week, NBC completed its Green Is Universal campaign -- a week-long effort to educate and engage the public by infusing its programming with environmental themes. The effort resulted in everything from Matt Lauer reporting from the Arctic circle to Al Gore making a cameo appearance on 30 Rock parodying himself. Throughout the week, global warming was front and center. And then there was Tim Russert.<br /><br />As the network's Washington Bureau Chief, Mr. Russert was surely alerted to the broadly publicized campaign. The emerald green tie he donned in Sunday's Meet the Press interview with Senator Barack Obama would seem to confirm that. But if you watched the interview, you probably noticed that Tim Russert didn't actually get the memo. Instead, Russert continued his long-running pattern of ignoring an issue that the American voters, the international community and the world's scientists have all identified as one of our most pressing challenges. Not to mention one of the most consequential. [...]</p><p>So here we are at the tail-end of an unprecedented year-long primary campaign and the media has largely failed to ask difficult and direct questions about one of the greatest challenges humanity has ever faced.<br />In light of this failure, several groups have partnered with Grist to host a presidential forum -- Global Warming & America's Energy Future -- this Saturday in Los Angeles. This will be the first event exclusively devoted to questioning the candidates on their policies and vision for tackling our growing energy problems. But with dozens more candidate forums, debates and interviews, the real question is this: </p><p>As interesting as it is to ponder whether we are alone in the universe, when on Earth will Mr. Russert cover global warming as a political issue?</p></blockquote><p> </p>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-66932432548093428882007-11-13T03:09:00.000-05:002008-12-11T22:00:02.171-05:00Political Video BuzzA new feature here at Virtual Scratchpad, a look at how well non-candidate political shows on YouTube are doing, measured best by the number of people who are subscribing per day to a given program.<p>The data here was gathered on Nov. 11, 2007.</p><p><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K3z09lVL9KQ/RzllpIfb0vI/AAAAAAAAAAs/ETVTPZVlfHw/s400/youtube+buzztracker+11-11-07.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5132245007693763314" border="0" /></p>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-12426274258905345262007-11-01T11:29:00.000-04:002007-11-01T11:30:43.832-04:00U.N. Scientist Rejects Nobel Prize Share, Denounces Climate Alarmism<p>Has the global warming alarmism movement hit its apex? Maybe so. </p><p>In recent weeks, we've seen a resurgence of hard scientists who have come out strongly against the warm-mongers, the latest of which is Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change member John R. Christy. In an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal, Christy tells the world that not only does he believe it's unproven that humans cause global warming, he's refusing his "share" of the Nobel Peace Prize that he was awarded because it was based on a misunderstanding of science.</p><p>An excerpt from this must-read op-ed: </p><blockquote><p>I've had a lot of fun recently with my tiny (and unofficial) slice of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But, though I was one of thousands of IPCC participants, I don't think I will add "0.0001 Nobel Laureate" to my resume.</p><p>The other half of the prize was awarded to former Vice President Al Gore, whose carbon footprint would stomp my neighborhood flat. But that's another story. Large icebergs in the Weddell Sea, Antarctica. Winter sea ice around the continent set a record maximum last month.</p><p>Both halves of the award honor promoting the message that Earth's temperature is rising due to human-based emissions of greenhouse gases. The Nobel committee praises Mr. Gore and the IPCC for alerting us to a potential catastrophe and for spurring us to a carbonless economy.</p><p>I'm sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never "proof") and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time.</p><p>There are some of us who remain so humbled by the task of measuring and understanding the extraordinarily complex climate system that we are skeptical of our ability to know what it is doing and why. As we build climate data sets from scratch and look into the guts of the climate system, however, we don't find the alarmist theory matching observations. (The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite data we analyze at the University of Alabama in Huntsville does show modest warming -- around 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit per century, if current warming trends of 0.25 degrees per decade continue.)</p><p>It is my turn to cringe when I hear overstated-confidence from those who describe the projected evolution of global weather patterns over the next 100 years, especially when I consider how difficult it is to accurately predict that system's behavior over the next five days.</p><p>Mother Nature simply operates at a level of complexity that is, at this point, beyond the mastery of mere mortals (such as scientists) and the tools available to us. As my high-school physics teacher admonished us in those we-shall-conquer-the-world-with-a-slide-rule days, "Begin all of your scientific pronouncements with 'At our present level of ignorance, we think we know . . .'"</p><p>I haven't seen that type of climate humility lately. Rather I see jump-to-conclusions advocates and, unfortunately, some scientists who see in every weather anomaly the specter of a global-warming apocalypse. Explaining each successive phenomenon as a result of human action gives them comfort and an easy answer.</p><p>Others of us scratch our heads and try to understand the real causes behind what we see. We discount the possibility that <i>everything</i> is caused by human actions, because everything we've seen the climate do has happened before. Sea levels rise and fall continually. The Arctic ice cap has shrunk before. One millennium there are hippos swimming in the Thames, and a geological blink later there is an ice bridge linking Asia and North America.</p><p>One of the challenges in studying global climate is keeping a global perspective, especially when much of the research focuses on data gathered from spots around the globe. Often observations from one region get more attention than equally valid data from another.</p></blockquote><p>Read the <a href="http://mobile2.wsj.com/beta2/htmlsite/html_article.php?id=1&CALL_URL=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119387567378878423.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries">whole thing</a>.</p>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-16084441971372934632007-10-31T17:51:00.000-04:002007-10-31T17:59:04.046-04:00Falling Housing Market Creates SuperstitionThese types of stories are one reason that a lot of people have no regard for journalism. Do Wall Street Journal readers really need to know about some <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119370066239175607.html">silly superstition</a> about St. Joseph statues helping to sell homes?<br /><blockquote>Cari Luna is Jewish by heritage and Buddhist by religion. She meditates regularly. Yet when she and her husband put their Brooklyn, N.Y., house on the market this year and offers kept falling through, Ms. Luna turned to an unlikely source for help: St. Joseph.<br /><p class="times">The Catholic saint has long been believed to help with home-related matters. And according to lore now spreading on the Internet and among desperate home-sellers, burying St. Joseph in the yard of a home for sale promises a prompt bid. After Ms. Luna and her husband held five open houses, even baking cookies for one of them, she ordered a St. Joseph "real estate kit" online and buried the three-inch white statue in her yard.</p> <p class="times">"I wasn't sure if it would be disrespectful for me, a Jewish Buddhist, to co-opt this saint for my real-estate purposes," says Ms. Luna, a writer. She figured, "Well, could it hurt?"</p> <p class="times">With the worst housing market in recent years, St. Joseph is enjoying a flurry of attention. Some vendors of religious supplies say St. Joseph statues are flying off the shelves as an increasing number of skeptics and non-Catholics look for some saintly intervention to help them sell their houses.</p> <p class="times">Some Realtors, too, swear by the practice. Ardell DellaLoggia, a Seattle-area Realtor, buried a statue beneath the "For Sale" sign on a property that she thought was overpriced. She didn't tell the owner until after it had sold. "He was an atheist," she explains. "But he thanked me."</p><p class="times">Statues of St. Joseph sold online can be as tall as 12 inches. One, made of colored resin, portrays St. Joseph cradling the baby Jesus. Yet most home sellers favor the simpler three- or four- inch replicas -- most of which are made in China and often depict St. Joseph as a carpenter.</p> <p class="times">Most statues come in a "Home Sale Kit" that is priced at around $5 and includes burial instructions and a prayer. One site, Good Fortune Online, recently added another kit with a statue of St. Jude -- known as the patron saint of hopeless causes -- "to help those with a difficult property to sell," the site says.</p></blockquote><p class="times">There are several other superstitious people quoted in the piece. I have to wonder where Journal reporter Sara Schaefer Muñoz dug them up from, one hopes that there isn't an online forum catering to them.</p><p class="times">I can understand the human interest angle here but at the very least, Muñoz ought to have held their silly beliefs up to just a little bit of scrutiny.<br /></p>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-82472513247786451882007-10-30T16:18:00.000-04:002007-10-30T16:19:36.194-04:00Ann Coulter Loves NewsBustersEarlier this month, <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-sheffield/2007/10/16/karl-rove-newsbusters-fan">Karl Rove</a> said he was a fan of NewsBusters. Count Ann Coulter, author and humorist, as another prominent conservative who is a fan. <p>Moments ago, I spoke with her during a conference call for bloggers in which I asked her for her thoughts on MSNBC host Chris Matthews.</p><p>Before I got to my question, however, Coulter interrupted. "I love NewsBusters," she said and then turned to my question.</p><p>"Chris Matthews is the perfect example of the media's 'it girl' mentality. He's been on TV forever and been shoved into America's face for years and what does he have like 26 or 27 viewers?</p><p>"The media is always trying to pawn these 'it girls' of the moment off on us, I mean look at Ashleigh Banfield who was talked about as if she were the Second Coming. But no one watched. I have no idea where she is today. The same thing applies to Matthews."</p><p>At the end of the call, I asked Coulter if she'd be interested in doing an interview with NB. She readily agreed so expect one in the coming days.</p>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-63172494422978025582007-10-30T16:16:00.000-04:002007-10-30T16:18:21.511-04:00NewsBusted 115<p align="center"><object width="351" height="284"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/XYVvHw3cQlo"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/XYVvHw3cQlo" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="351" height="284"></embed></object></p>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-90833699264233615902007-10-29T09:56:00.000-04:002007-10-29T09:59:12.532-04:00An Opportunity for Center-Right Journalists, Bloggers<p>Are you a journalist or writer or interested in furthering your career in the media? If so, consider applying for the 2008 <a href="http://www.thephillipsfoundation.org/index.php?q=node/11">Phillips Foundation's fellowship program</a>.</p><p>This year, the foundation is expanding its program to make it so anyone with 10 years or less of professional journalistic experience, up from 5 years or less. Winning participants will receive grants of $75,000, $50,000 or $25,000.</p><p>Here are the details:</p><blockquote><p>The Phillips Foundation is now accepting applications for the 2008 Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellowship Program. Print and online journalists with less than ten years of professional experience are eligible. The Foundation created this program to provide fellowships for projects to be undertaken by journalists who share the Foundation's mission to advance constitutional principles, a democratic society and a vibrant free enterprise system.</p><p>The Phillips Foundation awards $75,000 and $50,000 full-time fellowships and $25,000 part-time fellowships to undertake and complete a one-year project of the applicant's choosing focusing on journalism supportive of American culture and a free society. In addition to the regular fellowships, the Foundation awards separate fellowships in specific topic areas: The Environmental Fellowship for a project on the environment from a free market perspective; The Shelby Cullom Davis Fellowship for a project on the impact of free enterprise on society; and The Law Enforcement Fellowship for a project focusing on law enforcement in the United States.</p><p></p><p>Three Phillips Foundation Trustees serve as judges: Thomas L. Phillips, Chairman of Eagle Publishing, Inc.; Robert D. Novak, prominent national journalist and syndicated columnist; and Alfred S. Regnery, Publisher of The American Spectator. </p><p>The Foundation is looking for journalism projects which are both original and publishable. The winning projects will be delivered in four installments with the potential to be published sequentially in a periodical or as a book.</p><p>Applications must be postmarked by March 1, 2008. The winners will be announced next May at an awards dinner at the National Press Club in Washington. The starting date for the fellowships will be September 1, 2008. Applicants must be citizens of the United States.</p></blockquote><p>Go to the link above if you are interested in applying. </p>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-75883353771682387522007-10-29T09:54:00.000-04:002007-10-29T09:56:04.550-04:00Boston Globe Actually Notices 'The View' Is Biased Against the Right<p>Most everyone on the center-right knows the media are biased in a leftward direction, much fewer on the left are able to see this phenenomenon--they are just saying the truth. Because of this, it's always refreshing to see a liberal news organization sit down and notice something that's left-biased such as the Boston Globe did recently when it correctly observed that ABC's "View" is skewed against conservatives and religious people.</p> <p>The paper made this observation in <a href="http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2007/10/25/conservatives_left_without_a_voice_on_the_view/">a profile of Elisabeth Hasselbeck</a>, "View's" sole conservative who is going to be leaving the show for two months' maternity leave.The profile is also remarkable in that it notices the sheer amount of hatred that is heaped upon a woman who is by anyone's standard a soft-spoken and nice person: </p> <blockquote><p> When Elisabeth Hasselbeck bade farewell to her cohosts on "The View" Tuesday, it was all hugs, well-wishes, and baby-product endorsements. But as Hasselbeck begins her 2 1/2-month maternity leave, the political landscape is shifting, as well. America's most dangerous conservative - or so some liberals see it - is leaving TV for a while.</p><p>Hasselbeck, the apple-cheeked blonde with the football-player husband, consistently draws a brand of hatred from the left that Hillary Clinton generates from the right; "screechmonger" is one of the more printable slurs hurled at her from the blogosphere. Barry Manilow has called her "offensive." Alicia Silverstone once refused to touch her. And that an America's sweetheart-type would generate such vitriol says a lot about the state of debate in a polarized country.</p> <p>Hasselbeck is a far cry from the most prominent conservative women on the cable talk-show circuit, the ones who deal in slick sarcasm, publish books that vilify liberals ("Godless" and "Slander" both by Ann Coulter, "Unhinged" by Michelle Malkin) and take obvious pleasure in a claws-out fight. The youngest member of "The View" lineup is hardly a master debater; she's always outnumbered and usually outargued. But she has a prominent daily forum for her antiabortion, pro-war views - "The View" often reaches more than 3 million viewers each day.</p> <p>And Hasselbeck represents "an audience that the left just can't crack: traditional, God-fearing red state women, well-intended, who have made up their minds and won't hear it. Won't hear otherwise," said Matthew Felling, editor of Public Eye, the CBSNews.com media commentary site.</p> <p>To her like-minded fans, Felling said, Hasselbeck's lack of slickness is a strength. "Regardless of how much effort or thought she puts into her views or stances, it comes across as just from the heart. Or from the gut. Which is one of the strengths of the conservative conversation."</p></blockquote>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-89613562329551854472007-10-27T10:25:00.000-04:002007-10-27T10:28:34.186-04:00Facebook Provides Fascinating Glimpse Into Society's, Media's Demographics<p>As the popularity of personal web spaces continues to skyrocket, their usefulness as a demographic research tool has increased dramatically, both as a means of studying the general public but also to study the ideological bent of the self-described mainstream media. </p> <p>On the second point (see below for a very interesting discussion of the first) a recent study of Facebook profiles of BBC employees finds, surprise surprise, that Britain's taxpayer-funded network is <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=490047&in_page_id=1770&ito=1490">utterly dominated by socialists</a>: </p> <blockquote><p>A survey of BBC employees with profiles on the site [Facebook] showed that 11 times more of them class themselves as "liberal" than "conservative." </p><p> Critics seized on the figures as evidence that the supposedly impartial corporation, paid for by the licence fee, is dominated by liberals. [...]</p><blockquote><p> Research by the conservativehome. com website showed that 1,340 staff put themselves in the "liberal" or "very liberal" category, compared with just 120 who were "conservative" or "very conservative". Some 340 regard themselves as "moderate." [...]</p> <p>[S]eparate research revealed that nearly 80 per cent of those who describe themselves as "liberal" on Facebook either vote Lib- Dem (49.9 per cent) or Labour (38.5 per cent). </p> <p> Just 3.9 per cent in the liberal category said they vote Tory. The research was carried out by Samuel Coates, the deputy editor of conservativehome, a Tory grassroots Internet site. </p> </blockquote> <p>On the general demographic angle, Republican political consultant Patrick Ruffini has been doing some interesting analysis of American Facebook profiles. </p> <p>According to Ruffini's research, liberals are <a href="http://www.patrickruffini.com/2007/10/26/the-early-adopter-effect/">far more likely</a> to be taking advantage of Facebook than conservatives, except for the younger generation of righties. For the political right, this is both a strategic difficulty in the present internet age but also an opportunity:</p> <blockquote><p> </p><p>Out of idle curiosity, I started running an ideological breakdown of Facebook users by age, starting at Facebook’s minimum age of 14 and working my way up. <a href="http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pGs001QCUxNKHXeRrKbK7Xg" target="_blank">The spreadsheet is here</a> so you can follow along. </p> <p>It was after I started reached the mid-20s that I stumbled upon something that may help quantify the early adopter bias. High school and college users were pretty consistently about 4-8 points more liberal than conservative. That’s sort of where you’d expect them to be given the 18-29 year old vote. And Facebook’s market penetration with this cohort is such that this is likely to be a highly representative sample of Americans that age. </p> <p>But the older you got, through users in their 20s, the more liberal the user base became. It was inexorable. Each year, liberals picked up a couple of points on conservatives. My fellow 29-year olds on Facebook are +25.3% liberal. The 20-year old bracket is +4.5% liberal. </p> <p>Given how stable the numbers were for college/high school users, with much higher numbers, this seemed unlikely to suggest an actual demographic shift in Generation Y. </p> <p>But something else was going on. As liberals were picking up steam, the number of Facebook users were getting progressively smaller with each age cohort. [...] </p> <p>This is pretty strong evidence of a liberal/early adopter correlation. Non-college Facebook users in their late twenties are two to one liberal where their college age counterparts are pretty closely matched. </p> <p>That two-to-one ratio probably correlates with usage of other high-end web services and even traffic to the candidate sites themselves. It also gives quantifiable backing to the idea that Republicans stand to gain as the universe is widened entering the general election, as I’ve long suspected. [...] </p> <p>Most campaign sites are probably getting visitorship in the tens of thousands of visitors per day, if that. That’s still within the early adopter universe. As politics online becomes more mainstream, the Democrats’ potential for growth is considerably constrained. Actual online engagement among people who are fully comfortable with the medium (the Millenials) is no worse than the D/R split in voting. That’s still a problem for Republicans given our challenging numbers with 18-29 voters, but the problem then becomes merged with the electoral one rather than being compounded by online-specific trends. As the popularity of the tools grows and the Millenials go mainstream, the 2-to-1 split Democrats have counted on could be a thing of the past.</p> </blockquote> <p> </p><p>While this data seems to indicate a natural increase in the online audience for right-oriented publications, it also means that there is a large, untapped market out there for existing conservative and libertarian readers. Activating this audience to take the next step beyond just doing email would be another great opportunity. It will also be necessary if the right wants to keep those new potential online political news consumers engaged and active in the future who would take to the web anyway. Here's hoping that the conservative think tanks, policy and activist groups realize this trend and act accordingly. This effort will also require conservative online activists (such as 97% of you reading this) to educate and motivate their friends and family to start taking part in the political and social web.</p></blockquote>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-52765335112086730822007-10-26T16:42:00.000-04:002007-10-26T16:43:05.520-04:00New Republic: We Still Believe!<p>After weeks of saying nothing, the editors of the New Republic magazine have stepped out of their batcave to inform the world that <a href="http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2007/10/26/a-scott-beauchamp-update.aspx">they still believe</a> in Scott Beauchamp's "reports" from Iraq.</p><p>For his part, Beauchamp is starting to look more and more like Memogate's <a href="http://ace.mu.nu/archives/045480.php">Bill Burkett</a>, the Texas moonbat who repeatedly told different versions of his story to Dan Rather and Mary Mapes:</p><blockquote><p>Beauchamp’s refusal to defend himself certainly raised serious doubts. That said, Beauchamp’s words were being monitored: His squad leader was in the room as he spoke to us, as was a public affairs specialist, and it is now clear that the Army was recording the conversation for its files.</p><blockquote><p>The next day, via his wife, we learned that Beauchamp did want to stand by his stories and wanted to communicate with us again. Two-and-a-half weeks later, Beauchamp telephoned Foer at home and, in an unmonitored conversation, told him that he continued to stand by every aspect of his story, except for the one inaccuracy he had previously admitted. He also told Foer that in the September 6 call he had spoken under duress, with the implicit threat that he would lose all the freedoms and privileges that his commanding officer had recently restored if he discussed the story with us.</p></blockquote> <p>The magazine's editors, meanwhile are getting all <a href="http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=27696_TNR_Breaks_Silence_Says_Nothing_Blames_Army">Ratherian</a>, demanding the Army to completely disprove Beauchamp's "reports" instead of the other way around:</p> <blockquote><p>The New Republic is deeply frustrated by the Army’s behavior. TNR has endeavored with good faith to discover whether Beauchamp’s article contained inaccuracies and has <b>repeatedly requested that the Army provide us with documentary evidence that it was fabricated or embellished</b>. Instead of doing this, the Army leaked selective parts of the record—including a conversation that Beauchamp had with his lawyer—continuing a months-long pattern by which the Army has leaked information and misinformation to conservative bloggers while failing to help us with simple requests for documents.</p> <p>We have worked hard to re-report this piece and will continue to do so. But this process has involved maddening delays compounded by bad faith on the part of at least some officials in the Army.<b> Our investigation has taken far longer than we would like, but it is our obligation and promise to deliver a full account of our findings.</b></p></blockquote><p><a href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110010780">Peggy Noonan</a> has a good column in today's OpinionJournal that pretty much sums up the situation here:</p><blockquote><p>Everyone in journalism thought first of Stephen Glass. I actually remember the day I read his New Republic piece on the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington in 1997, a profile of young Republicans as crude and ignorant pot-smoking alcoholics in search of an orgy. It, um, startled me. After years of observation, I was inclined toward the view that there's no such thing as a young Republican. More to the point, I'd been to the kind of convention Mr. Glass wrote about, and I thought it not remotely possible that the people he painted were real. I also thought: Man, this is way too convenient. The New Republic tends to think Republicans are hateful, and this reporter just happened to be welcomed into the private world of the most hateful Republicans in history.<br /><br />On the Thomas stories, which I read not when they came out but when they began to come under scrutiny, I had a similar thought, or a variation of it. I thought: That's not Iraq, that's a Vietnam War movie. That's not life as it's being lived on the ground right now, that's life as an editor absorbed it through media. That's the dark world of Kubrick and Coppola and Oliver Stone, of the great Vietnam movies of the '70s and '80s.<br /><br />If that's what you absorbed during the past 20 or 30 years, it just might make sense to you, it would actually seem believable, if a fellow in Iraq wrote for you about taunting scarred women, shooting dogs, and wearing skulls as helmets. This is the offhand brutality of war. You know. You saw it in a movie.</p></blockquote><p>Bryan Preston at Hot Air also <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2007/10/26/tnr-beauchamp-called-us-without-the-army-goons-around-and-stood-by-everything/">nails it</a>:</p><blockquote><p>[New Republic editor Franklin] Foer can spin and twist his conversations with Beauchamp and various Army officers all he wants. He can suggest that the Army is being devious with him, that it’s strong arming Beauchamp, whatever. But if he can’t verify, after all this time, the existence of that mass grave, and since he now has official records documenting that his reporter has lied to somebody, Foer has no choice but to consider Beauchamp’s credibility as beyond repair and his stories as fatally flawed.<br /><br />But he’s not going to do that. He’s going to continue to focus on the leak and make the Army out to be the villain. That’s been his standard tactic throughout, and that attitude probably contributed to TNR’s publishing Beauchamp’s fables in the first place.</p></blockquote></blockquote>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-80408116598978491992007-10-26T16:38:00.001-04:002007-10-26T16:42:00.198-04:00NYT: Nepotism Is Wrong<p>Sometimes chronicling media bias and hypocrisy is just too easy. You couldn't have asked for better material than what was provided Wednesday by the New York Times which ran a thousand-word-plus article discussing the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/arts/24comm.html?_r=1&8dpc=&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin">alleged nepotism</a> of Commentary’s hiring of John Podhoretz to run the magazine. (Hat tip: <a href="http://ace.mu.nu/archives/244589.php">Ace</a>.)</p> <p>I’ll grant that this type of character assassination article is typical when it comes to the liberal press’s normal gorillas-in-the-mist view of conservatism. Still, you’d think that the Times might be a little more inclined to avoid such journalism when its prestige and profits have been on a downward spiral ever since publisher Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr. was handed the reins to the New York Times in 1992 by his father.<br /></p><p>That’s not the case, however. Instead, Times reporter Patricia Cohen finds a former Commentary writer who accuses the magazine of violating its foundational ethical principles. She finds others to grouse about the Podhoretz appointment, quotes author Adam Bellow speaking of “the new nepotism” and then ends—after a few pro forma quotes praising Podhoretz—with nary a mention of her boss. </p><p>And these are the same folks who accuse President Bush of being intellectually incurious? Surely, an article with the phrase “new nepotism” in it ought to have a mention of young Pinch. Sadly, no.</p> <p>Here’s an excerpt from the piece:</p> <blockquote><p>To some within the neoconservative movement, the announcement of John Podhoretz as the next editor of Commentary magazine — the same job his father, Norman, held for 35 years — is the best of all possible choices. It is a model of what Adam Bellow (son of the Nobel-winning novelist Saul) called the “new nepotism,” combining the “privileges of birth with the iron rule of merit.”</p><p>But to others the decision reeks of the “old nepotism,” in which the only credential that matters is the identity of your father — in Mr. Bellow’s cosmology, less like the Roosevelts than like Tori Spelling getting an acting job because her father was Aaron Spelling.</p><p>“I think some people are pretty shocked,” said Jacob Heilbrunn, whose book “They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons” is coming out in January. John Podhoretz, movie critic for The Weekly Standard magazine and a political columnist for The New York Post, “isn’t seen as a heavyweight intellectual,” said Mr. Heilbrunn, who has discussed the appointment with several neoconservatives. Rather, “he is seen as being a beneficiary of his parents’ fame in the George W. Bush mold.” [...]</p><p>As for charges of favoritism, Mr. Podhoretz said: “It’s silly for me to respond because I don’t accept the premise. I have a professional career that’s dated back 25 years. I’ve started two magazines, worked at three others. I am who I am. I have millions of words that you can read on Nexis.” He has also written three books. </p> <p>Mr. Podhoretz’s supporters agree. “John happens to be in the family,” said Tamar Jacoby, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute who has written for Commentary, “but he is also more than qualified to carry the tradition forward. John is a serious person and takes ideas personally.”</p> Still, of the more than 30 people contacted for this article, several who have written for the magazine or have contributed money to the Commentary Fund said they were troubled by the family connection, the lack of an open search process and what they consider to be Mr. Podhoretz’s lack of intellectual credentials for such a highbrow journal, partly because he has written so much about popular culture. A former writer for Commentary said the appointment repudiated one of neoconservatism’s founding principles, a commitment to meritocracy. </blockquote> <p>The hypocrisy is almost palpable. Here we have a newspaper that is forever insisting that despite the fact that it’s run by a bunch of pampered Manhattanites and headed by the unqualified offspring of the former publisher, it really is a true advocate for the poor, the dispossessed and the little guy turning around and accusing another publication of violating its own principles.</p><p>You really have to wonder if the editors at the Times are even trying nowadays. An editor with even half a brain would’ve put the kibosh on this article the moment it crossed his desk. </p><p>The fact of the matter is that John Podhoretz is eminently qualified to edit Commentary. He has a long record as a political journalist and essayist. He helped start the Weekly Standard and turn it into a must-read in the political world. He’s written three books. That’s a lot more than you can say for Pinch Sulzberger who was appointed assistant publisher of the New York Times just 13 years out of college and publisher just 5 years later.</p>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-19701098725484241812007-10-26T16:38:00.000-04:002007-10-26T16:40:28.116-04:00The NewsBusters Interview: Evan MaloneyThis week I introduced a new feature to NewsBusters, a regular interview series with various figures in the media and political worlds. My first subject is <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-sheffield/2007/10/25/newsbusters-interview-indoctrinate-u-filmmaker-evan-maloney">Evan Maloney</a>, creator of "Indoctrinate U," the important documentary on academic censorship.Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12312016.post-3748273819430718612007-10-16T15:18:00.001-04:002007-10-16T15:18:59.854-04:00Karl Rove, NewsBusters Fan<p>Living in DC has its interesting moments. Flying into town from Atlanta Sunday night, I happened to bump into former White House adviser Karl Rove. In the process I learned two things: Karl Rove flies coach class now that he's left the White House and that he also is a fan of NewsBusters.</p><p>The story:</p><p>My girlfriend and I had gone down to Atlanta to visit some friends for the weekend. On our way back Sunday night, we flew into Reagan National in coach class. After the plane landed, I realized that we'd been sitting not to far away from Rove. I only realized this, however, after some guy (a short, reporterish-looking fellow) started accosting Rove on the plane badgering him with questions about his post-White House career.</p><p>As a national figure, I'm sure Rove's gotten used to strangers coming up to him on the street but it's got to get annoying. He seemed irritated but was being nice to the guy--not answering the questions and hinting that he'd just like to be left alone.</p><p>Finally, the guy blurted out "Can't you at least give me your email address? I promise I won't give it to anyone."</p><p>I'd had enough of the idiocy at that point and interjected: "Because it's not like anyone else is overhearing this conversation. I'm sure your address would be completely confidential."</p><p>That provided enough distraction for Rove to blow the guy off--he left soon after. As we exited the plane, I mentioned that I ran NewsBusters, the blog of the Media Research Center.</p><p>"Thanks for doing that," Rove said. "You guys do great work there." He also said he was a fan of MRC president Brent Bozell.</p><p>After that, I left Rove to his Sunday evening.</p>Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15394238365038798194noreply@blogger.com