As seen from Just Above Sunset

Sunday, 26 September 2004

Topic: Photos

The weekly virtual magazine in now on line!

The new issue of Just Above Sunset - Volume 2, Number 38 (Sunday, September 26, 2004) has just been posted. What appeared here first is extended, and below you will find links to the items peculiar, so to speak, to the parent magazine of this web log.

This week? Who is better at playing the victim - the conservative right or the progressive left? And notes on changes in the political narratives we are being fed, and some thoughts on scolding others as a diplomatic tool, and the odd hurricane map. And follow-ups on CBS and on the "we've lost it" meme.

Features? A long, extended item how we think about work, and how others think about it - with two readers in France explaining things there. And the usual funny quotes (test your Latin skills).

Bob Patterson is back with a piece on how to do reporting, and on our adventures at an excruciatingly hip Hollywood literary party. And his Book Wrangler column has some suggestions for you.

The photos? Phillip Marlow's old haunts on Hollywood Boulevard, of course.

A new feature added during the week - a search page. Click on SEARCH from the top menu and, with the first option, you can do a key word or topic search on any issue this year. The second option allows you to perform the same sort of search on issues prior to this year and the complete contents of this daily web log As seen from Just Above Sunset.

But this is not me...

Posted by Alan at 17:21 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
home

Saturday, 25 September 2004

Topic: Oddities

Odds and Ends: A Curious Map Reveals God's Politics

This has been going around the net for a week or so. One Bob Morris created it - and that might be Bob Morris, President, Leica Geosystems GIS & Mapping / Technological Advancements Imagery Processing and Distribution - or not. It has moved into de facto public domain with his copyright release at the bottom.

And Rick, The News Guy in Atlanta, where the effects of such things are felt, comments on it - "This is wonderful! It's like I keep saying, but nobody will listen: Jesus was a liberal!" (See August 8, 2004: Rehabilitating the word LIBERAL - and Elvis? in Just Above Sunset for that discussion.)

Rick adds - "I wonder how accurate this map really is? Of course, those lines would in theory be tracking the eye of the storm, which means Gore counties would in some cases get hit pretty hard, too. But still...."

The Map:

___________________

God punishes Republicans, it seems. Over at Snopes: Urban Legends Reference Pages, one of the many sites that debunks internet hoaxes, you will find this:

Claim: Three hurricanes that hit Florida in the summer of 2004 touched only counties that voted for George Bush in the 2000 presidential election.

Status: False.

The discussion that follows there parallels Rick's comment - "The map shown above presents the hurricanes as if they traversed neat, narrow paths, hitting only counties that voted for George Bush in 2000 (colored pink) and avoiding all counties that voted for Al Gore (colored blue). It took some finagling with the actual storm data to produce those results, however." And a complete discussion follows.

But still....

__

The final word from Rick in Atlanta -

All well and good, but if you read that Snopes analysis closely, you will note that all mentions of wind speeds in the hurricane range of over 75 mph in Gore counties were "gusts," while all the "sustained winds" were below hurricane strength! As you know, hurricanes are measured by "sustained wind" speeds, not "gusts"! So it seems that this Morris guy may be onto something after all.

Also, who of us was not already aware that the damn storms would have to take a huge leap into outer space in order to land on some state that voted for Gore in 2000? The point here is that God knew the Deep South was just an irresistible target of opportunity, since all those segregationist Dixiecrats had switched over and became Republicans! (Except for Zell Miller, of course, but for all we know, God was aiming for him anyway!)

Okay, okay, okay! Of course those Snopes people are right when they call this map just a "clever case of political humor"! But you have to admit, it sure is funnier than all those Republican hoaxes that, on a routine basis, rate Snopes Urban Legend exposes!

So yes, I confess, I can keep this feeble attempt at "suspension of disbelief" going for only so long. Then again, I would imagine the only people able to maintain "suspension of disbelief" indefinitely will all be voting Republican this year.

Ha!

And Rick adds this - "I'm enjoying we Democrats finally getting a chance to have our own urban legend, just as long as we don't betray our souls by actually believing it."

Posted by Alan at 20:00 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Sunday, 26 September 2004 10:43 PDT home

Friday, 24 September 2004

Topic: Election Notes

Rhetoric: The campaigns settle on their preferred devices for the final weeks, building the necessary narratives....

Device One: The Democrats Will Outlaw Christianity and Confiscate Your Bible

A bit comical, but it will be effective, and discussed here:

Republicans Admit Mailing Campaign Literature Saying Liberals Will Ban the Bible
David D. Kirkpatrick, The New York Times, September 24, 2004

In short?

The Republican Party acknowledged yesterday sending mass mailings to residents of two states warning that "liberals" seek to ban the Bible. It said the mailings were part of its effort to mobilize religious voters for President Bush.

The mailings include images of the Bible labeled "banned" and of a gay marriage proposal labeled "allowed." A mailing to Arkansas residents warns: "This will be Arkansas if you don't vote." A similar mailing was sent to West Virginians.

A liberal religious group, the Interfaith Alliance, circulated a copy of the Arkansas mailing to reporters yesterday to publicize it. "What they are doing is despicable,'' said Don Parker, a spokesman for the alliance. "They are playing on people's fears and emotions."

No kidding. Yeah, well, it will get out the evangelical zealots. They'll vote now. One can explain to them that gay marriage would not be mandatory, only optional for those so inclined, and that they can keep their Bibles if they'd like, but the seed has been planted. This, actually, is pretty effective politics. It may be absurd, and easily dismissed as a prank, but it gets the job done.

Kirkpatrick in the Times report quotes an editorial on September 22 in The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia: "Holy Moley! Who concocts this gibberish? ... Most Americans see morality more complexly. Many think a higher morality is found in Christ's command to help the needy, prevent war and pursue other humanitarian goals. Churchgoers of this sort aren't likely to believe childish allegations that Democrats want to ban the Bible."

But some will, and vote appropriately. Score one for the Bush team - a very effective move.

Note this exchange on CSPAN - on a recent call-in show:

PETER SLEN, HOST: Kenner, Louisiana, good morning.

CALLER (in a very airy voice): Good morning. I'm going to vote for President Bush because, after all, you know, God made us there, you know, in His image, free from any black color and all [Host looks up, surprised]. The only church that Kerry can go to is where they say the Black Mass, and that is in the Merriam-Webster Pocket Book dictionary, where it says that that is the devil worshippers. [Host looks uncomfortably off-camera, at producer?] I would never vote for, you know, Senator Kerry...

And there is more at the link. The Times piece also has much more detail.

This works.

Two: Raising questions about the president's policies and actions give aid and comfort to the enemy, and giving aid and comfort to the enemy is treason.

The first, or at least the most powerful example of this, was Zell Miller's keynote address to the Republican convention some weeks ago in New York - see September 5, 2004: The defining moment of the Republican National Convention in these pages for a discussion of that. The short form - Miller inveighed against those who want to "bring down this president." The underlying idea was that opposing Bush, or even having an election, was opposing America. This is not the time for that.

That message is being refined.

See Tying Kerry to Terror Tests Rhetorical Limits
Dana Milbank, The Washington Post, Friday, September 24, 2004; Page A01

The idea has now been modified in this: support of John Kerry is support of terrorism.

Milbank opens with this -

President Bush and leading Republicans are increasingly charging that Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry and others in his party are giving comfort to terrorists and undermining the war in Iraq -- a line of attack that tests the conventional bounds of political rhetoric.

Appearing in the Rose Garden yesterday with Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, Bush said Kerry's statements about Iraq "can embolden an enemy." After Kerry criticized Allawi's speech to Congress, Vice President Cheney tore into the Democratic nominee, calling him "destructive" to the effort in Iraq and the struggle against terrorism.

Does this really test the conventional bounds of political rhetoric? Raise questions and you do commit treason. Milbank admits uch accusations have been a component of American politics since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 and surfaced in the modern era during the McCarthy communist hunt and the Vietnam War protests.

This is not unusual.

Milbank does cite how this is becoming the new theme of Republican rhetorical with these examples -

On Tuesday, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said terrorists "are going to throw everything they can between now and the election to try and elect Kerry." On Fox News, Hatch said Democrats are "consistently saying things that I think undermine our young men and women who are serving over there."

On Sunday, GOP Senate candidate John Thune of South Dakota said of his opponent, Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle: "His words embolden the enemy." Thune, on NBC's "Meet the Press," declined to disavow a statement by the Republican Party chairman in his state saying Daschle had brought "comfort to America's enemies."

On Saturday, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.) said at a GOP fundraiser: "I don't have data or intelligence to tell me one thing or another, [but] I would think they would be more apt to go [for] somebody who would file a lawsuit with the World Court or something rather than respond with troops." Asked whether he believed al Qaeda would be more successful under a Kerry presidency, Hastert said: "That's my opinion, yes."

The previous day in Warsaw, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said terrorists in Iraq "are trying to influence the election against President Bush."

This too is effective, and earlier this month Vice President Cheney said that on Election Day, "if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating" and that the United States would not respond vigorously. Milbank points out Cheney later said that he was not suggesting the country would be attacked if Kerry were elected. But a few days later Cheney did say, "We've gone on the offense in the war on terror -- and the president's opponent, Senator Kerry, doesn't seem to approve."

According to Milbank the White House and the Bush campaign said they would neither endorse nor disavow the remarks by Hastert, Armitage and all these others. It's all just the opinion of concerned citizens.

Milbank also reminds us that a few months after the 9/11 attacks Attorney General Ashcroft said tactics used by critics of the USA Patriot Act "only aid terrorists" and "give ammunition to America's enemies." And that in 2002, President Bush charged that opponents of his version of homeland security legislation are "not interested in the security of the American people." And that in 2003, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said that if terrorists think Bush's opponents might prevail, "they take heart in that, and that leads to more money going into these activities or that leads to more recruits or that leads to more encouragement."

Milbank has a long memory. The message has been clear all along - Shut up. Don't ask questions. This is not the time. Questions get our troops killed. Asking questions means the terrorists have won, and your questions helped them win. What is needed now is silence, and obedience. Bush and the Republicans will keep you safe, and you don't want to die, do you?

Milbank also quotes Ann Coulter on Fox News - "It's unquestionable that Republicans are more likely to prevent the next attack." Kerry, she said, "will improve the economy in the emergency services and body bag industry."

And that's that.

Three: One could argue that the president is pretending things are fine when everyone knows things are not fine - he is not in touch with reality

This is Kerry's counter, hammered hard all this week, to the "shut up and don't ask questions" Bush rhetoric that is rising rapidly.

Kevin Drum in The Washington Monthly lays it all out here -

Is George Bush in "fantasyland" regarding Iraq, as John Kerry says? I realize that's the fashionable position among lefty partisans, but it's honestly hard to come to any other conclusion these days. ...

A long history of the Iraq war over the last two years is then presented, and it's is clear things are a mess, and Drum ends with this -

... It's no longer clear if George Bush is merely a cynical, calculating politician -- which would be bad enough -- or if he actually believes all the happy talk about Iraq that his speechwriters produce for him. Increasingly, though, it seems like the latter: he genuinely doesn't have a clue about what's going on. What's more, his staff is keeping him in a sort of Nixonian bubble, afraid to tell him the truth and afraid to take any positive action for fear that it might affect the election.
So things will just get worse, since no one is willing to admit the truth and no one is willing to propose serious action to keep things from deteriorating further -- at least not until after November 2nd. But by then it will be too late. And when the Iraqi elections fail, what happens then?

Thus the counter device, rhetorically, is that Bush is too stubborn, or dumb, or isolated, or proud, or power-mad, to even acknowledge much less fix an obvious problem that he himself created, and he shouldn't be reelected.

Digby over at Hullabaloo piles on with an item he titles Shameless. Digby makes the mistake of watching the news.

Joie Chen on CNN just interviewed Brigadier General David Grange who basically said that John Kerry is causing the insurgency in Iraq because he is criticizing the president and "emboldening" the bad guys. ... It looks as if their plan is to say that the increased violence is John Kerry's responsibility in the hopes that Kerry will ratchet down his effective attack. ...

This is just the latest chapter in the classic post 9/11 playbook in which they virtually shut down dissent and paralyzed the country with accusations of 5th columns and treason for speaking out against two-faced Junior Bush. More and more it looks to me as if Rove is simply running a 2002 replay, which depended on keeping the dems off balance on national security and ginning up turnout.

... I've noticed that the wingnuts always vociferously deny impugning the patriotism of their rivals even though they constantly do it. So, I'm hoping the Dems run straight at their accusers with this latest nonsense. I suspect this patented fratboy "don't blame me" strategy is not ringing true with the swing voters. It's just kool-aid for the faithful in a turn-out street fight.

Well, it is a street fight. Of course the weapons are only words, so far.

But the rhetorical devices have been chosen - memes at dawn. Opposing Bush causes terrorism and is treason that aids the enemy, and besides that, you want to take away our Bibles and force us to marry gay folks. On the other side? This Bush guy has no clue about what he did, or is doing, and he's dangerous - so let's get someone to lead us who is at least attached to reality. This mess may be hard to fix, but it might be nice to start with accepting the facts of the matter.

So we've settled how this will play out.

Posted by Alan at 20:13 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
home

Thursday, 23 September 2004

Topic: The Media

Follow-Up: Who do you trust? What happened to CBS?

A few weeks ago here - September 12, 2004 - Bush's Bad Day at Black Rock (CBS) - Just Above Sunset covered the September 8 CBS broadcast which presented memos on "60 Minutes II" allegedly written by a colonel concerning how George Bush behaved in the Texas Air National Guard. The reporter was Dan Rather, the managing editor of the CBS evening news.

According to the memorandums, Bush refused to obey orders and had a "bad attitude." One Lieutenant Coronal Jerry Killian, now dead and gone, also said the future president could not qualify to fly jet planes because he did not show up for his physical, disobeying a direct order. But the memos have been questioned and appear to be forgeries. Killian's secretary, who did all his typing and is still with us, said she didn't type the memos - though she told CBS they were the colonel's thoughts. Weak stuff.

It seems handwriting experts hired by CBS said they warned that the documents might not be authentic. And there was a lot of this and that on whether the memos were typed in the seventies on an IBM Selectric typewriter, or created with word-processing software at a Kinko's in Abilene, Texas. (A good discussion of that matter is here.)

On the 14th Dan Rather in his evening news broadcast finally acknowledged that there are serious questions about the authenticity of the documents he use on the initial broadcast. (A summary of that is here.)

If you follow the news you've seen the reaction. Rather should resign and there should be a congressional investigation. Joe Scarborough on MSNBC on the 23rd devotes his entire show to a discussion of whether Rather and CBS have committed some crime - something like trying to unlawfully influence an election through the use of forged documents. The liberal media is evil, and so on and so forth.

From the Democrats we got this on the 21st -

Washington, D.C. - In response to false Republican accusations regarding the CBS documents, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe issued this statement:

"In today's New York Post, Roger Stone, who became associated with political `dirty tricks' while working for Nixon, refused to deny that he was the source the CBS documents.

"Will Ed Gillespie or the White House admit today what they know about Mr. Stone's relationship with these forged documents? Will they unequivocally rule out Mr. Stone's involvement? Or for that matter, others with a known history of dirty tricks, such as Karl Rove or Ralph Reed?"

Stone won't comment - so no denial. (More background on Stone, a prot?g? and long-time friend of Karl Rove is here - years ago Bob Dole fired the guy after this business about Stone and his wife and the sex clubs hit the news. Juicy stuff.)

Did Dan Rather and CBS try to subvert democracy by presenting, as news, documents they knew were false, and slander a sitting president in an attempt to get him voted out of office? Or did Karl Rove and his crew from the White House set up CBS to make them look like either fools or devils, and thus drive everyone to trust only Fox News - those patriots who back the president no matter what and say those who oppose Bush in any way hate America and are committing treason?

Stay tuned, or don't.

Well, Dan Rather is the one taking the hit. And there is an obvious irony here. As Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, Comedy Central's faux news program, pointed out as he opened his show recently - "We begin tonight with a simple, indisputable fact: as a young man, President George W. Bush benefited from family connections to get a place in the Texas Air National Guard, thus avoiding service in Vietnam. As you would guess, this has led to calls for the resignation of Dan Rather."

Ah, yep. These were additional supporting documents of something fairly obvious.

So what happened with CBS?

I've never much liked Tina Brown - when she ran the New Yorker for those few years she turned it into a magazine of style, sex and gossip and it's only now recovering - but lots of commentators are saying her column this week may be the definitive one on this CBS, Dan Rather business. Brown talks about the pressure in news these days. "Every editor, producer and reporter knows that the warp speed of the news cycle means we are all only one step ahead of some career-ending debacle." And that may be true. Rather lost a gamble.

See Breaking the News, Then Becoming It
Tina Brown - The Washington Post - Thursday, September 23, 2004; Page C01

Fleshing out her contention we get this -

... For Rather and CBS, all the conflicting tensions that torture journalists and producers day and night came together. The broiling partisan heat, the pressure to get out of third place with a scoop, the hot breath of cable news, the race to beat all the hacks and scribes who keep nibbling away at the story (your story, the story you've spent five years trying to get right), the baying of the bloggers, the sick sense of always being news-managed by the White House's black arts, the longing to show the Web charlatans and cable-heads that rumpled-trenchcoat news is still where the action is, the pounding inner soundtrack that asks: Am I a watchdog or a poodle? A journalist or an entertainer? A tough newsman or a mouse with mousse?

All this pandemonium in his ears is what made a legendary news icon go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, as David Gergen put it on CNN. And when the barrel hit the rocks, he stuck to the line that always used to work before in this movie: I Stand by My Story! Rather may have been eerily calm when he finally went on the air to announce, "I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically." But he looked as if his psyche had been through Hurricane Ivan.

Ah, conflict! And a bad decision made under pressure.

And news folks all know that pressure, from the competition and now from bloggers -

Journalists the length and breadth of the land publicly beat up on Dan, but privately -- even in the capital of schadenfreude -- they were not as gleeful as you might expect. Every editor, producer and reporter knows that the warp speed of the news cycle means we are all only one step ahead of some career-ending debacle. But still the panic to beat the competition trumps every other concern. Reports this month that Fox News had surpassed the other networks' ratings with its GOP convention coverage only inflamed the terror of mounting obsolescence.

Fear of missing the bandwagon is behind all the hype about the brilliance of bloggers who blew the whistle. You'd think "Buckhead," who first spotted the flaws in the documents, is the cyberworld's Woodward and Bernstein. Now the conventional wisdom is that the media will be kept honest and decent by an army of incorruptible amateur gumshoes. In fact, cyberspace is populated by a coalition of political obsessives and pundits on speed who get it wrong as much as they get it right. It's just that they type so much they are bound to nail a story from time to time.

The rapturing about the bloggers is the journalistic equivalent of the stock market's Internet bubble. You can see the news chiefs feeling as spooked as the old-style CEOs in the '90s who had built their companies over 20 years and then saw kids in backward baseball caps on the cover of Fortune. It finally drove them nuts. It was why we saw Time Warner's buttoned-down corporate dealmaker Gerald Levin tearing off his tie and swooning into the embrace of AOL's Steve Case.

The equivalent today is when news outfits that built their reputations on check-and-double-check pick up almost any kind of assertion and call it a "source." Or feel so chased by the new-media mujaheddin they start trusting tips garnered from God-knows-where by a partisan wack job in Texas.

Well, it's a tough business.

And Brown does say this really is pretty much "Karl Rove's wet dream: a living, breathing example of ostensible liberal media bias with which to bludgeon the rest of the press into an even deeper defensive crouch."

And echoing Stewart she adds this -

Documents or no documents, everyone knows Bush's dad got him out of Vietnam. Everyone knows he thought he had better, funner things to do than go to a bunch of boring National Guard drills. (Only a killjoy like John Kerry would spend his carefree youth racking up high-minded demonstrations of courage and conscience, right?) Like O.J. Simpson's infamous "struggle" to squeeze his big hand into the glove, the letter was just a lousy piece of evidence that should never have been produced in court. Now because CBS, like Marcia Clark, screwed up the prosecution, Bush is going to walk.

Is he? I fear she is right. The press will be good little girls and boys from now on out. It's a dramatic lesson in being extra, extra careful.

But Brown has an idea that the whole thing boils down to the "romance of news reporting," such as it is.

As for Dan and CBS, it wasn't really politics that drove them over the edge, was it? It was romance. That's the sad part. How good did it feel when they broke the Abu Ghraib story just a beat before Seymour Hersh at the New Yorker? How satisfying is it when a real news sensation takes hold instead of some tabloid trash moment (like Janet Jackson's flashing breast)? A veteran newsman is in the twilight of a long and distinguished career. He just wanted to taste that sweet medicine one more time.

Ah, bitter medicine.

Rick, The News Guy in Atlanta, agrees with Brown -

My theory on why CBS rushed to air, by the way: Seymour Hersch was on Terry Gross "Fresh Air" [NPR] a week or so ago, and he mentioned that CBS had originally been the sole recipient of all the Abu Ghraib material, but was then asked by the government not to run with the story, and they sat on it. Meanwhile, the sources of the information got annoyed that CBS was doing nothing with it, so they took the stuff to Hersch. I guess CBS got wind that the New Yorker was about to run with it, so they came running in with it just ahead of them. I suspect that CBS, smarting from someone stealing much of their thunder, vowed to never let it happen again.

That makes sense too.

And Hersch has been on fire, and CBS sleeping, but this is one hell of a way to wake up.

Hersch on fire? Just Above Sunset has noted that.

See these:
May 2, 2004 - It is all a matter of having the right attitude...
May 16, 2004 - Responsibility - Military Style... and legal issues
May 23, 2004: Notes on the War Scandals
July 18, 2004 - Hollywood Feels Like Steamy Florida

This CBS scandal - be it an honest but stupid mistake, or a nefarious but incompetent plot to damage George Bush, or a sinister plot to undermine the mainstream press and make them all behave more like Fox News - is taking up much of the available air in the room; that is, a lot of column inches and broadcast and cable hours have been devoted to it. And with how things are going now in Iraq, that can only help the Bush campaign.

It is most curious. I have no theory. I report. You decide.

Tina Brown does say this all is "Karl Rove's wet dream: a living, breathing example of ostensible liberal media bias with which to bludgeon the rest of the press into an even deeper defensive crouch."

It works - as the Associated Press reports here (Saturday, September 25, 2004) -

CBS News has shelved a "60 Minutes" report on the rationale for war in Iraq because it would be "inappropriate" to air it so close to the presidential election, the network said on Saturday.

The report on weapons of mass destruction was set to air on Sept. 8 but was put off in favor of a story on President Bush's National Guard service. The Guard story was discredited because it relied on documents impugning Bush's service that were apparently fake.

CBS News spokeswoman Kelli Edwards would not elaborate on why the timing of the Iraq report was considered inappropriate.

... The CBS statement followed a report in the online edition of Newsweek that described the frustration of CBS News reporters and producers who said the network had concluded that it could not legitimately criticize the president because of the questions about the National Guard report.

According to the Newsweek report, the "60 Minutes" segment was to have detailed how the administration relied on false documents when it said Iraq had tried to buy a lightly processed form of uranium, known as yellowcake, from Niger. The administration later acknowledged that the information was incorrect and that the documents were most likely fake.

The Newsweek article said the segment was to have included the first on-camera interview with Elisabetta Burba, the Italian journalist who was given the fake documents and who provided them to a United States Embassy for verification. The documents were sent to Washington, where some officials embraced them as firm evidence that Iraq was aggressively trying to make nuclear weapons.

So CBS, sensing this would make it look like they were picking on Bush, will withhold the piece until after the election.

The expected liberal reaction from Kevin Drum here - "...the resulting debacle has now convinced CBS that they shouldn't air any negative stories about George Bush for the next six weeks -- even if they're true. That's some courageous journalism for you. If this is the liberal media, conservatives can have it."

Rove is giggling. The press is being rolled. The press will indeed be good little girls and boys from now on out. As least CBS has been taken care of.

__

Footnote on the New Yorker -

As I said above, when Tina Brown ran the New Yorker for those few years she turned it into a magazine of style, sex and gossip and it's only now recovering. I thought she did damage.

Rick, The News Guy in Atlanta, said this -

There's something else you and I disagree on. Although I've never been crazy about her personally, I thought New Yorker was generally boring and inconsequential until she came along. Although I wasn't crazy about her preoccupation with sex, the articles on politics and foreign affairs were must-reads for me. Although it did seem to take a dip after she left, it's still my favorite magazine.

I will admit I always liked it too, but I was an English teacher and when Tina Brown cut back on the fiction and poetry and upped the trendy and the sexy, I missed my old read. But yes, she increased the geopolitical, and that was good. But those odd, long essays on the history of the orange or whatever were my intellectual comfort food for years.

___

Footnote on Fox News -

"All of the traditional media is against us. The traditional media in this country is in tune with the elite, not the people. That is why we're not liked by the traditional media. That's not us."

- Rupert Murdoch here

"Far be it for me to contradict the saintly Mr. Murdoch, but when his usually unnamed minions spend their days trumpeting their volume of viewers and readers (100 billion flies can't be wrong) and anonymously kicking the shins at every rival and every critic in a way that would embarrass Robert Novak, I'm afraid he's going to have to face the horrible truth: he is the "media elite."

- Keith Olbermann of MSNBC here

Tip of the hat to BartCop for the quotes ...

__

Footnote on Rick, The News Guy in Atlanta -

Rick finished working for CNN in 1985, although he did publish his TV News Journal after that, until 1988. We've known each other since the mid-sixties and I consider him an "old school" journalist sort - one of the guys who actually knows what fair and balanced really means. There are not many of them left.

Posted by Alan at 17:13 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Saturday, 25 September 2004 11:13 PDT home

Wednesday, 22 September 2004

Topic: For policy wonks...

Policy: A slightly autistic self-satisfaction remains the dominant tendency of American power...

Exactly one year ago today, September 22, 2003, Richard Perle, who at that time chaired the Defense Advisory Board helping Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld make all the right decisions about the war in Iraq, said this -

And a year from now, I'll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush. There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people close to a vicious regime, the people of Iraq have been liberated and they understand that they've been liberated. And it is getting easier every day for Iraqis to express that sense of liberation.

Today was the day. A grand square in Baghdad named after President Bush? Not today.

Last I heard Perle was at his vacation home in the south of France, near Aix, fending off questions from reporters about his role in the looting of Hollinger - Conrad Black's press empire that fell apart. Perle ran the Jerusalem Post for Black and was still on the board of directors. There are tens of millions of dollars gone. Perle is mum. I guess we should cut him some slack. He's been having a bad summer.

Should we cut George Bush some slack for that speech yesterday at the United Nations?

The New York Times doesn't, and sort of says that the speech represented the antithesis of diplomacy -

We did not expect President Bush to come before the United Nations in the middle of his re-election campaign and acknowledge the serious mistakes his administration has made on Iraq. But that still left plenty of room for him to take advantage of this one last chance to appeal to an increasingly antagonistic world to help the Iraqis secure and rebuild their shattered nation and prepare for elections in just four months. Instead, Mr. Bush delivered an inexplicably defiant campaign speech in which he glossed over the current dire situation in Iraq for an audience acutely aware of the true state of affairs, and scolded them for refusing to endorse the American invasion in the first place.

... Mr. Bush might have done better at wooing broader international support if he had spent less time on self-justification and scolding and more on praising the importance of international cooperation and a strengthened United Nations. Instead, his tone-deaf speechwriters achieved a perverse kind of alchemy, transforming a golden opportunity into a lead balloon."

Scolding the effete snobs who don't even speak English like normal people does play well in the current election here. Assume folks here ate it up - he really shamed them. Unfortunately, the General Assembly didn't seem inclined to hang their heads in shame and say, well, Bush is right, we have all been naughty children.

Was it effective? That depends on your point of view.

Dan Froomkin in the Washington Post provides a roundup.

See Bush Speech: Resolute or Clueless?
Wednesday, September 22, 2004; 12:04 PM

In a soaring, eloquent, upbeat speech from the marble podium at the United Nations, President Bush yesterday put forth the purest distillation yet of his foreign policy views.

And depending on your own world view, I'm betting you either loved it or hated it.

Was he strong, resolute, unyielding, unapologetic? Undeniably so. And in the view of his supporters, enough said.

But viewed in the context of how things have worked out, particularly in Iraq, his critics -- including many in the audience of world leaders yesterday -- found him misguided, simplistic, imperious and trigger-happy.

If the whole speech was a litmus test, this one sentence was the clincher:

"We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace," Bush said.

Some people see irony there. Others don't.

Well, it is there.

Froomkin then quotes from all the coverage.

Dana Milbank and Colum Lynch also in the Post say this - "Bush's upbeat assessment of world affairs in general and Iraq in particular contrasted sharply with assessments of diplomats and world leaders gathered for the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. While others lamented spreading violence and a breakdown of the rule of law, Bush asserted that times have improved."

Okay. That's one way of looking at things.

And Bush took three questions from reporters during his subsequent photo opportunity with Ayad Allawi, the man we allow to run Iraq at the moment. One of the questions was about the recent CIA report predicting serious troubles ahead for Iraq, that National Security Estimate he has had since July and surfaced last week. It said that there are only three possible scenarios now. The best? That would be "a tenuous stability" - but that's unlikely. The second? That would be where "increased extremism and fragmentation in Iraqi society impede efforts to build a central government and adversely affect efforts to democratize the country." The third is an all out civil war in Iraq by 2005, where the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds have it out and we have to deal with that. (Discussed in these pages here.) Bush said the CIA was "just guessing" and things were just fine.

Here's the text of that exchange - and the second American hostage was beheaded within a day of that exchange.

Well, we here at home will buy anything and we believe Bush, because we want to believe him, or have to believe him or think there's something mighty wrong in the White House. And if you think that you are unpatriotic - you obviously hate America.

But UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was not impressed with the Bush speech, or its underlying assumptions. As the Los Angeles Times summarizes - "Annan insisted that `every nation that proclaims the rule of law at home must respect it abroad.' Although the secretary-general did not name the United States, to the scores of world leaders listening in the vaulted chamber, the target of his comments was obvious... `Those who seek to bestow legitimacy must themselves embody it,' he said, `and those who invoke international law must themselves submit to it.' "

That was probably a bit too low-key and subtle for Bush. He probably didn't get it. The man not only, as he says, doesn't do nuance, he no doubt is just puzzled by irony. George, he was talking about you, big guy.

John Kerry said the expected about the Bush UN speech - "After lecturing them, instead of leading them to understand how we are all together with a stake in the outcome of Iraq, I believe the president missed an opportunity of enormous importance for our nation and for the world. He does not have the credibility to lead the world. And he did not and will not offer the leadership in order to do what we need to do to protect our troops, to be successful, and win the war on terror in an effective way."

As usual, no one listening to Kerry, who seems to think we should treat others as adults, with common interests we can discover and build on. Boring. And it doesn't play well to America's growing sense that we are only adults in this world, and all others or children who need to be slapped around.

Of course the rest of the world is unhappy with our assumption that that is just the way things are. Patrick E. Tyler at the New York Times provides a summary of European and world reaction -

European newspapers, including some that supported the American military campaign in Iraq, were largely critical of Mr. Bush's address on Tuesday to the United Nations.

The Financial Times contended in its lead editorial that the Bush administration "systematically refused to engage with what actually has happened in Iraq" namely, in its view, that American policy "mistakes" have "handed the initiative to jihadi terrorists" who "now have a new base from which to challenge the West and moderate Islam."

The paper said that Mr. Bush's Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, "after being evasive, long-winded and sometimes contradictory," was beginning to speak more realistically than Mr. Bush about deterioration in Iraq. And, the newspaper asserted, that Mr. Bush's "disengagement from the reality of a sinking Iraq is alarming."

The left-leaning Independent newspaper carried an editorial cartoon of Osama bin Laden putting up a Bush campaign poster saying "4 More Years" on a shell-pocked bit of masonry in Iraq. The cartoon seemed to be inspired by a diplomatic spat over remarks attributed to the British ambassador to Rome, Sir Ivor Roberts. After a private discussion on policy that was deemed to be off the record, Sir Ivor was quoted by an Italian newspaper as saying that Mr. Bush had become "the best recruiting sergeant" for Al Qaeda.

In its editorial, the Independent said that Mr. Bush "gave little hint" in his speech of the "catastrophic war" under way in Iraq. "Instead of a measured account of reality in Iraq," the editorial said, "he treated the ranks of national leaders gathered at the U.N. to a portentous and self-justifying speech brimming with clich?s about `freedom' and `democracy' that glorified the American way."

Elsewhere? Tyler notes in Poland Gazeta Wyborcza ran a commentary by Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz saying the Bush UN speech had to be considered in the context of an election campaign. Poles, and everyone else, shouldn't take it that seriously. Nasz Dzinnik ran an editorial that said the opposite - Bush, having "attacked Iraq in defiance" of those nations that called for United Nations authorization for invasion was now trying to convince the international community that it should pay for the "chaos" caused by "reckless policy."

Tyler does the French press too - Lib?ration saying Kerry has it right, not Bush, as Bush "showed that slightly autistic self-satisfaction remains the dominant tendency of American power." Le Figaro on the right had correspondent Philippe Gelie noting that Mr. Bush was "impervious to criticism" in the conduct of American foreign policy. His speech in New York was that of a "campaigning American president" who "lectured the rest of the world." And they like Bush.

The German daily Tagesspiegel ran the headline "US, UN, Iraq: the truth counts for nothing." In Italy, Corriere della Sera said Bush had "forgotten that his go-it-alone approach has alienated many sympathizers" with American goals in the Middle East. And they said it would take "more than an isolated appeal during an election campaign" to rebuild the consensus that once existed on Iraq.

Yeah, but who cares about the silly foreigners?

Take William Saletan...

See Bush the Liberal
The nobility and folly of democratizing Iraq.
Posted Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2004, at 3:13 PM PT - SLATE.COM

You have love the opening -

I admit it. I have a soft spot for President Bush.

I love it when he goes to the United Nations--as he did two years ago and again today--and tells those lazy cynics to get off their duffs. They spend their days congratulating each other, passing toothless resolutions, and giving lip service to tired pet issues. Bush is just what they need. He pokes them in the ribs. He points out that scofflaws are treating them like a joke. He tells them to enforce their threats, or he'll do it for them. He preaches freedom and democracy. He vows to serve others, no matter who else joins in the cause. He refuses to back down, no matter what the price.

Ah, good strong, conservative xenophobic stuff. You have to love it.

But Saletan is off-balance because circumstances have reduced Bush's war to, well, a kind of liberal adventure to make the world a better place - a do-gooder effort you'd expect from a left winger. How did THAT happen?

... Bush didn't plan Iraq as an altruistic war. He thought Saddam Hussein posed a grave threat to the United States. He thought there were weapons of mass destruction. He still thinks Saddam was al-Qaida's buddy. It's the evidence that has undercut these arguments. So Bush has fallen back on arguments that used to be peripheral to his case: We liberated Iraqis from a brutal dictator. We're building a model of democracy in the Middle East.

It's inspiring stuff. But don't tell me Americans would have tolerated going to war for these reasons. We thought we were heading off another 9/11.

In today's speech, Bush tried to sell the world on collective law enforcement. "Every nation that wants peace will share the benefits of a freer world," he observed. "Eventually, there is no safe isolation from terror networks, or failed states that shelter them, or outlaw regimes, or weapons of mass destruction. Eventually, there is no safety in looking away, seeking the quiet life by ignoring the struggles and oppression of others."

... Bush wants you to think that he's the America-first guy, and Kerry is the utopian internationalist. But take a closer look. Yesterday, Kerry asked, "Is [Bush] really saying to America that if we know there was no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to al-Qaida, the United States should have invaded Iraq? My answer: resoundingly, no, because a commander in chief's first responsibility is to make a wise and responsible decision to keep America safe."

So who here is the change-the-world-and-make-it-better liberal and who the keep-the-status-quo-and-amass-wealth conservative? The world turned upside down?

The Bush speech and its underlying new doctrine? Saletan says that as a liberal, he admires it, and as a conservative, he wonders how it looks to the guy in Ohio who can't pay his bills.

It is all very curious.

Posted by Alan at 21:14 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Thursday, 23 September 2004 08:36 PDT home

Newer | Latest | Older

«	September 2004					»

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30