August 12, 2004
Plugged
: Bryan Keefer of Spinsanity and CampaignDesk, who emceed the West Side Y blog show I joined the other night, just appeared on the Daily Show to plug his new spin book (which I bought the other night) and just got a great endorsement from Jon Stewart.
"By the way, as he turns to leave, he says, to me, 'I'm 12.' "
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McGreevey's unsecret
: Well, I didn't know.
But apparently, everyone else in New Jersey media knew McGreevey's secret. And if that's so, it raises lots of questions. I'm not saying they should have outed him; I long for the day when a politician's personal life is just that. But if he indeed hired his lover for a state job for which that reputed lover was in no way qualified... well, that's a crime. Why didn't we know? We want to know.
Robert Sterling says at MemeFirst: Every single politically astute person in New Jersey has known about McGreevey's homosexuality for a long time - at least since 2001. In fact, McGreevey's elaborate efforts to stay in the closet were a source of periodic amusement to New Jerseyites, as when he shattered his femur in 2002 while in the company of his boyfriend, and then concocted an elaborate cover story that claimed the injury occurred while walking down the beach with his wife....
So why has McGreevey come out of the closet now? And so publicly? Simply put, he's in deep doo-doo, and needs a way out. His administration has been wracked with scandal to a degree that well exceeds even the norms of New Jersey. There are at least two distinct rumors of lawsuits or complaints about to be filed, which seem sufficiently distinct to me that they may possibly concern two different men. One of the rumors definitely concerns an Israeli national named Golan Cipel, whom McGreevey appointed to a high paying state anti-terrorism post, before complaints of Cipel's lack of qualifications caused the governor to withdraw the appointment. Were Cipel to admit a sexual relationship, McGreevey's conduct on this matter may be indictable. By resigning - and simultaneously declaring himself a member of a persecuted minority - McGreevey may be able to dodge this and any number of other criminal investigations....
So this is a standard CYA move by McGreevey.
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This is just a demo post. Ignore the man behind the curtain.
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More McGreevey
: I just spoke with a reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer about McGreevey's speech as a moment in television (more on that shortly) and he said that when McGreevey announced he was gay, there was applause in the newspaper newsroom.
: Continue reading the NJ.com breaking news blog on McGreevey. It has news and lots of vox pop.
: UPDATE: Drudge says: McGreevey's office had called the FBI on Thursday and complained that lover had requested $5 million to quash the suit, which assistants to the governor saw as extortion...
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Whereabouts
: I'm at a packed blog MeetUp at MediaTech in Flemington, NJ. Will be blogging McGreevey later.....
: Will Richardson is doing a great job now talking to more than 25 people about hyperlocal blogging. I think Flemington could become the epicenter of the movement.
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McGreevey's out....
: Amazingly, McGreevey is starting his press conference with a most personal announcement. Throughout his life, he said, he had grappled with his identity. He talked about getting married twice. Having doubts in school....
"Were there realities from which I was running?" he asked. "I do not believe that God tortures any person simply for its own sake.... In this, in the 47th year of my life, it is arguably to late to have this discussion. But it is here and it is now.... And so my truth is that I am a gay American. And I am blessed to live in the greatest nation... with the greatest tradition of civil liberties in the world."
"Yet because of the pain and suffering and anguish I have caused to my beloved family.... This is an intensely personal decision and not one typically for the public domain and yet it cannot and should not pass... I am also here today because shamefully I engaged in a consensual affair with another man that violated my bonds of matrimony. It is wrong... It is inexcusable...."
Amazing!
"I am removing these threats by telling you directly about my sexuality," he says, telling the press that if his sexual life had remained secret the state would have had problems.
"Given the circumstances surrounding the affair and its impact on my family and my ability ... as governor, I have decided to resign."
He is resigning as of Nov. 15. That means there is no special election, a Democrat -- the Senate president -- will fill in.
That had to be the most public coming out ever.
: It was a remarkable speech: so painfully personal.
If this were just McGreevey coming out of the closet, that would be that.
But there's more to this: The hiring of Cipel and the reputed involvement with him is an ethical scandal in and of itself.
There have been other campaign finance scandals dancing around the governor's office.
And he was a rotten governor. I voted for him. I was wrong. He messed up the budget, robbing the "rich" to buy votes from the middle class. He messed up development issues, pissing off both sides. He made lots of hiring mistakes. He was a suburban mayor who did not have the experience to be governor.
So it's more than McGreevey coming out of the closet.
Nonetheless, again, it was a most amazing moment in American politics.
: Here's the full text of the McGreevey speech (I live-blogged the partial quotes above). At a point in every person's life, one has to look deeply into the mirror of one's soul and decide one's unique truth in the world, not as we may want to see it or hope to see it, but as it is.
And so my truth is that I am a gay American. And I am blessed to live in the greatest nation with the tradition of civil liberties, the greatest tradition of civil liberties in the world, in a country which provides so much to its people.
Yet because of the pain and suffering and anguish that I have caused to my beloved family, my parents, my wife, my friends, I would almost rather have this moment pass. For this is an intensely personal decision, and not one typically for the public domain.
Yet, it cannot and should not pass. I am also here today because, shamefully, I engaged in adult consensual affair with another man, which violates my bonds of matrimony. It was wrong. It was foolish. It was inexcusable....
I realize the fact of this affair and my own sexuality if kept secret leaves me, and most importantly the governor's office, vulnerable to rumors, false allegations and threats of disclosure. So I am removing these threats by telling you directly about my sexuality.
Let me be clear, I accept total and full responsibility for my actions. However, I'm required to do now, to do what is right to correct the consequences of my actions and to be truthful to my loved ones, to my friends and my family and also to myself.
It makes little difference that as governor I am gay. In fact, having the ability to truthfully set forth my identity might have enabled me to be more forthright in fulfilling and discharging my constitutional obligations.
Given the circumstances surrounding the affair and its likely impact upon my family and my ability to govern, I have decided the right course of action is to resign. To facilitate a responsible transition, my resignation will be effective on November 15th of this year. Audio here.
: Says NJ.com editor Dean Betz on the NJ.com newsblog: The dirt is about to get very deep, and the governor's apparent moment of courage will probably reveal itself to be tainted by cowardice - maybe a lot worse. : Here, prominently displayed on the NJ Governor's home page is the governor's "code of conduct."The Governor shall not accept any personal gift, favor, service or other thing of value under circumstances from which the Governor knows or has reason to believe that such personal gift, favor, service or other thing of value is offered with the intent to unduly influence him in the performance of his public duties or under circumstances from which it might be reasonably inferred that such gift, service or other thing of value was given or offered for the purpose of influencing the employee in the discharge of the employee’s official duties.
The Governor shall not knowingly act in any way that might reasonably be expected to create an impression or suspicion among the public having knowledge of his official duties that he may be engaged in conduct inconsistent with this Code.
Consistent with the other provisions of this Code, the Governor shall use the information, property and funds under his or her official control in accordance with prescribed procedures and not for personal gain or benefit. : From the NJ.com Statehouse Forum:
: "Being a gay governor isn't the problem; being a CROOKED governor is."
: "It's not about Mc Greevey being gay! if it is true a law suite will be filed by Golan Cipel, the whole prospective changes because Jim Mc Greevey gave a position to Cipel in exchange for sexual favors. God, a position dealing with the security of the people of this state! This is where the real problem lies."
: Radio's Kevin McCullough's blog on the topic.
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McGreevey out!?!
: NJ Gov Jim McGreevey is quitting today. More to come later. I will link you to everything on NJ.com.
: The NJ.com Statehouse Forum has the hints to what's coming.
: The reason, you'll learn soon, is incredible.
: Here's the NJ.com breaking news blog; they'll be on top of this huge story.
: NJ101.5 radio is saying that it's not 100 percent he will step down. The TV stations are hedging like mad.
: Here's the WABC report.
Let's put it this way: It's not a campaign finance scandal.
: It's dripping out: Golan Cipel is reportedly going to file a sexual harrassment claim against McGreevey.
Cipel was, with great controversy, appointed as state anti-terrorism chief early in the administration.
: For reference only, here's a link to McGreeveySucks.com.
: Let's put it this way: You Soprano's fans will remember the surprise about this guy on the Sopranos. A Jersey trend in the making.
: Says PoliticsNJ.com: If McGreevey were to resign before September 15, New Jersey would have a special gubernatorial election on November 2, 2004. If he were to resign after that date, Codey would hold the office until the end of McGreevey's term in January 2006. : The NJ.com Statehouse Forum says that McGreevey's mysterious broken leg is related. Rumors....
For the record, so far, all this is rumors and reports.
: The background on Cipel is that he was hired by McGreevey to be head of homeland security for the state -- even though he had no experience in that (other than being an Israeli).
Overheard in my office: "This is worse than banging your intern."
: The press conference is much delayed. Wonder whether they're sedating McGreevey... or bribing his wife.
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Morning reading
: I'll say more on this later but I have to run to a meeting about brides (hey, it's a job). But in the meantime, go read what Doc has to say.
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Clearly
: J.D. Lassica writes in the OJR about transparency and trust, blogs and news media. He also gives us a fascinating chart from Technorati tracking inbound links to big media v. blogs. For the story, JD asked me to riff in email (a very dangerous thing to do!). If you dare, click on "more" to see what I sent (soundbites you've heard before if you've made the mistake of hanging around here).
MORE...
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August 11, 2004
In the lions' den
: Atrios brings his link oomph to the site of blogging Democrat Nathan Rudy, who's running for the county board in my neck of the woods, which is 99 44/100ths pure Republican.
: By the way, near as I can tell, Atrios took his name (Duncan Black) back off his site. As a friend of mine once said to a former lover: You can't go back in the closet, honey.
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The big one
: Nicholas Kristof has a frightening column in the New York Times today. It presents a scenario of a 10-megaton nuclear device lit at Times Square (why the hell does everyone have to use that as the next ground zero: the very corner where I work?). OK, we've heard that before. But then he says: Could this happen?
Unfortunately, it could - and many experts believe that such an attack, somewhere, is likely. The Aspen Strategy Group, a bipartisan assortment of policy mavens, focused on nuclear risks at its annual meeting here last week, and the consensus was twofold: the danger of nuclear terrorism is much greater than the public believes, and our government hasn't done nearly enough to reduce it. In his next column, he'll tell us how to reduce that risk. If it's not too late.
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Not-so-swift boats
: Glenn Reynolds once accused me of getting obsessed on the FCC vs. Howard Stern and the First Amendment. I disagree but fine, he saw that as a friendly intervention.
In that same spirit, I'd say that Glenn is going overboard -- pun a fringe benefit -- on the Kerry swift boat/Cambodia hooha.
I tried to do a search on what Glenn had to say about the Bush National Guard hooha; couldn't get it right; but I'll bet Glenn didn't go so glub-glub deep into the attempted Bush scandal as he is going into the attempted Kerry scandal.
And in any case, I don't think either is a big issue or should be a big issue in this campaign for either side. I don't think this is a productive fountain of blather. I think it is symptomatic of picking presidents by gotchas and personality rather than issues and stands, which is the dumb and dangerous way to pick presidents. I fear it feeds an atmosphere of gotchas and presidential hatred (about which I've written much; see the links in this graph).
In a post Glenn belittled yesterday, Matt Welch said it well: What I don't understand is how anyone professes to truly give a flip about what John Kerry and George Bush did 32 or 36 years ago. On Friday, I was given a talking-to by a right-of-center friend (who told me, helpfully, that "even though you're a liberal we still like you") about Why I Should Care About the Swift Boaters, and last night a left-of-the-dial pal wanted to get me excited about Bush's National Guard service … and in both cases my reaction is the same: Is this what you're basing your vote on this November? Really? Whatever happened to the New Seriousness after Sept. 11? And how many people who are feverishly talking up all this nonsense have NOT already long made up their minds on who they're going to vote for?
As far as I can tell, every presidential candidate with military experience has embellished it, and every candidate with a youthful drug habit has tried to paper it over. Let's remember a few things:
First, we're not voting for sainthood here, even for a Pope. We're talking about politicians. Do any of us think that there's a politician alive who hasn't stretched something? OK, all of you who raised your hands, I have some WMDs to sell you. Under the Brooklyn Bridge.
Thus, second, let's concentrate on what matters: Doing the job of running the government.
Third, as I've said lately, I'm going to keep calling people on this wasteful and distracting and ultimately destructive game of gotcha. I said it over the Bush National Guard nonstory. I'll say it over this nonstory. It doesn't get us anywhere except mired in bile. Worse, it's just getting boring.
Let's pull up anchor and move on.
: UPDATE: Glenn snarks back: I think that I have a ways to go before I catch up to Jeff's Stern coverage in terms of either volume or tone. But I promise to quit covering this issue so much as soon as the major media -- who certainly didn't ignore the Stern issue, or the bogus Bush/AWOL claims -- start carrying the ball. I'd say it has been obsessive over there in recent days. Just in the interest of intervention, my friend.
But let's go back to Matt's point: Let's assume that (1) Bush did not do his duty and lied about not doing his duty and (2) Kerry stretched the truth about doing his duty. Let's just say it, for the sake of argument. Is that going to change anyone's vote? No, I can't imagine it will. Does it change my view of either man? No, it doesn't. And that means it's so much one-sided cynicism.
It's just more Gotchaism.
: UPDATE: Glenn adds, just to complete the record: ANOTHER UPDATE: In an update to the post linked above, Jeff says that I'm snarking at him, and that I belittled Matt Welch in this post. I certainly didn't mean to be either snarky or belittling -- I was aiming for polite disagreement, and thought I'd achieved it. I like both Jeff and Matt a lot. But I think that this is an important issue, and I would have thought that two champions of the blogosphere like Matt and Jeff would have approved my work to bring in original documents and material not available on the web, and make them part of the conversation. And given that the Kerry Campaign now seems to be admitting that the Christmas in Cambodia claim is false, I don't think I can be accused of raising phony issues. I appreciate Jeff's call to "move on" and address other issues, but I've done that too. I just think that -- given the importance Kerry has placed on all of this stuff -- this sort of dishonesty is worth noting, and I'm disappointed that the big media seem to be covering for him. Yes, fear not, Glenn, Matt, and I all like and respect each other (though we'll skip the hug). We clearly disagree about how to view this. And that's why there's a conversation.
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Saving the industry
: Fred Wilson is doing God's work: He -- like all civilized souls -- hates spyware, but he found that legislation heading into Congress to try to stop it would also stop cookies advertisers need to advertise on and support web sites (and without those cookies, believe me, they won't advertise). So Fred goes to see his senator and shows him the light. Anything the rest of us should be doing, Fred?
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Is this going to be on the final?
: The Olympics coverage is taking me back to the hell of sixth grade. Oh, how I hated Greek myths!
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Another day, another panel
: David Teten put up notes from last night's blog panel at the West Side Y. It was taped for C-Span (so now I'm officially boring). Best line of the night: Daniel Radosh reminding us we shouldn't take this thing too damned seriously: I wouldn't want to live in a blogosphere, he said, where we could not speculate on whether Lindsay Lohan has breast implants. (Daniel thinks no, I think yes, by the way.)
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August 10, 2004
World Trade Center health registry
: More than 50,000 people have now signed up for the World Trade Center health registry. I've signed up. If you were there, so should you.
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Reuters' agenda
: John Kerry and answered George Bush's question on the war, saying that he would still have authorized the war in Iraq, even knowing there were no WMDs there. Of course, he says he would have used that authorization differently if he had been president.
I say that was the stand-up thing to do. Kerry knows it won't be popular with his corps -- it could even send some running to Nader -- but he said what he would do and didn't back away. I respect him for that.
Reuters today does the followup with Bush still trying to tweak Kerry -- fruitlessly, in my view -- and here's the headline:
"Bush Goes After Kerry on Iraq War Admission"
Admission is an awfully loaded word -- as in, Kerry admits he would support the war Reuters opposes.
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Help bring free speech to Iran: Click here
: Iranian blog pioneer Hossein Derakhshan's blog is being blocked by Iran's mullahs. His only way around this -- until technology geniuses invent incredibly clever ways to foil censors -- is to buy new domains. So click here and go help him buy some.
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 Do not bend
: Stamps.com got final approval to let you use your own photos to create stamps.
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Not a nation divided, just a nation deafened
: I've been saying for sometime that we are not a nation divided -- that's just how media and politicians want to portray us because it fits their agendas. The truth is that we all have lives; they don't. So they spend their time shouting at us, deafening us. But they don't represent us.
I'm not alone in this view. In this week's Time, Joe Klein says it's "only the blabocrats": We are a divided nation, it is said. There is a cultural chasm between the red states and the blue, between the religious and the secular, between Michael Moore's America and Rush Limbaugh's. The "culture war" has become a pillar of the conventional wisdom. But is it real? Is it possible that the great partisan divide is a media-induced mirage, little more than an exaggerated case of squeaky-wheelism? There is plenty of evidence that the very real disputes pushed by political activists and chair-throwing media yakkers—call this the Anger-Industrial Complex—are being carelessly extrapolated to include a far less vehement populace.
Take the Moore/Limbaugh divide. A new Annenberg poll shows that the two infotainers are little more than postmodern tribal leaders: an estimated 8% of Americans saw Fahrenheit 9/11 in July, and an estimated 7% listened to Limbaugh. Their tribes are hilariously antithetical on a range of issues—83% of Rushites support the way Bush is handling Iraq, 87% of Mooreists are opposed; 85% of Rushites support Bush's handling of the economy, and 82% of Mooreists don't.
And yet, these extremist clumps throw disproportionate weight in the public square....
Maybe we're just busy living our lives. A new book by the Stanford political scientist Morris Fiorina, Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, argues that a closely divided nation isn't necessarily a deeply divided nation. Amen.
It's deceptive and destructive to insist that we are at each others' throats because it skews the public debate toward venomous trivia and away from matters that matter. And it sets a bad example for public discourse: When I talk about politics and issues with family and friends, we disagree, but we don't bulge veins and shout the way they do on TV. But on TV and too often on the Internet, the shouting is drowning out the reason. This fosters hatred.
Look at the comments under the Tit for Tat post below: I -- evenhandedly, if I do say so myself -- said I didn't care about the efforts to find military gotchas about either Bush or Kerry -- because it doesn't affect (a) the future or (b) our lives. What ensues in the comments is a fair volume of venom spitting. So listen to yourselves, folks: You sound like a bad cable "talk" show. You're not arguing about matters that matter: I'd prefer to you see you go after each other -- or better yet, go after solutions -- on health care in an effort to find common ground for improvement. Or homeland security. Or stem-cell research. Or education. Or tax reform. Not this. All this blab produces nothing but bile. It's not productive. It's not helpful. It just stinks.
Says Klein: Scream journalism — Crossfire, Hannity and Colmes, the various "gangs" and "groups" of Washington blabocrats assaulting our senses — was always nauseating, but it was more understandable in a world where the most important issue was the definition of the word is. It was the only way to scare up an audience in those days. But this is a different world now. And we are being forced to examine the most serious, complicated sorts of issues—war and solvency—through an anachronistic, irresponsible political-media lens created for more trivial times. Right. We have real issues in this election, real choices, real questions. But we're wasting time talking about this crap. Worse, we're falling into the media-political complex trap: We are believing our own PR that we really do hate each other. We don't. You know damned well that if you met any of the people you're shouting at, you'd end up having a civil disagreement over beers.
This is not a call for us all to get along. The last thing I want to see is a group blog hug. Perish the thought!
No, instead I'm merely arguing -- in line with Klein -- that most of us on most issues most of the time are not filled with division and hatred; that's just TV. Most of us are getting on with our lives. Most of us care about trying to do what's right.
And so it is time to call media and politicians on their libelous lie about us, the people. We're not a nation divided. They are the divisive ones. I intend to keep calling them on it.
The real division in the end is not red from blue or right from left. The real division will media from audience, politicians from constituents, the powerful from the people. That is the "us" vs. "them" at work here.
: UPDATE: And also I'm not alone in the argument that we've had enough of presidential hatred.
See Namoi Klein in The Nation -- The Nation! -- taking lefties to task for their politics of snark: It's not that the President is dumb, which I already knew; it's that he makes us dumb.... You know the line: The White House has been hijacked by a shady gang of zealots who are either insane or stupid or both. Vote Kerry and return the country to sanity.
But the zealots in Bush's White House are neither insane nor stupid nor particularly shady. Rather, they openly serve the interests of the corporations that put them in office with bloody-minded efficiency. Their boldness stems not from the fact that they are a new breed of zealot but that the old breed finds itself in a newly unconstrained political climate.
We know this, yet there is something about George W. Bush's combination of ignorance, piety and swagger that triggers a condition in progressives I've come to think of as Bush Blindness. When it strikes, it causes us to lose sight of everything we know about politics, economics and history and to focus exclusively on the admittedly odd personalities of the people in the White House. Other side effects include delighting in psychologists' diagnoses of Bush's warped relationship with his father and brisk sales of Bush "dum gum"--$1.25. It is as if we have turned over the body politic to a People magazine mindset -- the dark side of People magazine: It's all about personality. It's predicated on the belief that a single famous person actually matters. We might as well pick our winner on American Idol, the way this is going.
But wait: The people, I have faith, are ignoring these fringe fits of feistiness. They're sitting back and asking what is best for the nation and themselves. And they will give their answer in November. All the rest is merely a tabloid nightmare. [via Daniel Radosh]
: See also Radosh's sum-up of various reviews and views of Nicholson Baker's book about a would-be Bush assassin. My take -- not on the book, but on a review of it -- here.
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Tit for tat
: I didn't care about the hooha hooey over Bush's military work records just as I don't care about the hooha hooey over Kerry and the swift boat vets. It's all about trying to find a gotcha. It's sniping. It's not about running the country and improving the world. Enough already.
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Digital division
: At last week's journalism education confab, Jay Rosen, Hossein Derakhshan, and I were all taken aback by this kneejerk response to blogging:
Asked the kneejerks: What about the people who can't or won't blog because they (a) don't have computers or (b) don't have broadband Internet access or (c) don't spell well?
Hossein shook his head and said to a few within earshot that folks in Iran and Iraq have those problems but still manage to blog.
Jay shook his head and said for all to hear, to paraphrase: Yeah, so, what do you want us to do about it?
As they say on Family Feud: Good answer. Good answer.
My response: Well, there's one helluva lot more access to blogging than there is to printing presses and broadcast towers!
Blogging does not cure society's ills. It does not make have nots haves. Blogging is not meant to be done by all.
The point of blogging is simply that those with the will now have the way. Those who want to publish something to the world can. They can find a PC and Internet access and if they can't, well, I'm sorry, but it's not as if there is a universal right of blogging.
And it's not as if blogging should be deemed worthless -- the limousine of free speech -- just because not every person on earth can or does partake in it.
The odd thing is that I've attended many a blog conference where just this point was raised and the neckjerk reaction of the crowd is to start nodding heads in unison: Oh, yes, we all should be concerned about those who cannot blog. Well, hell, if you're so concerned, then invited the great unblogged into your home to share your PC and your cable modem!
It's a silly PC argument that is ultimately empty and silly.
: UPDATE: In the comments, see lots of good notes from Kathy Shaidle and this from Jay Rosen: This point--blogging sounds great but what about the digital divide?-- was raised at all three panels I was on in Toronto. When I finally lost patience with it, I first asked the woman: so what's your solution? She looked shocked and said, "well, I don't know." Neither do we, I said. "We're doing about it what you're doing about it."
She looked confused, and came up to me after to explain that she didn't mean to suggest that she had any answers. (No kidding!) But she didn't really have a question, either, and that fact had eluded her. All she had was a PC reflex. It's kind of sad.
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Proud blog papa
: My son has been blogging up a storm here. He just put up a PHP tutorial he wrote (and he's a 7th grader) for a local tech camp. He also has earned almost $100 in Google AdSense in the last six weeks. Here ends the proud father's bragging.
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August 09, 2004
The terror warnings
: I actually bought a copy of Time today to read what they said about the terror intelligence and warnings. I challenge the nya-nyaers to go read it and still argue that the government should not have warned us about what they learned. But there remains plenty of cause for concern. Al-Qaeda has cased targets for years before attacking; preparations for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa began in 1993, for instance. Intelligence and law-enforcement officials familiar with the material recovered in Pakistan told TIME that the discs revealed far more detailed, wide-ranging and current research and planning by a terrorist group than have so far been made public. Though the surveillance information on the discs was done mostly in 2000 and 2001, one disc contained an updated photo of the Prudential Plaza building that was added to the al-Qaeda file in January of this year.
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Tasteless towers
: An Australian radio station uses the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in its crass promotion. Ozzies enraged.
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Jersey blog meetup!
: The folks at NJ.com, together with blogger/teacher Will Richardson and other good people are holding a blogger MeetUp this Thursday, August 12 at 7 p.m. at MediaTech, upstairs at 118 Main Street in Flemington, NJ. All bloggers, would-be bloggers, and the merely curious are invited to please, please come on by.
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The family that sleazes together....
: Don't you just love it: The NY Post reports today that one factor in the success of so many reality shows is that for the first time in years, prime time is now filled with shows that families can and do watch together. Survivor and Fear Factor and American Idol are good for American family values!
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Comment changes
: I finally (belatedly) added comment spam protection, because I was wasting time on the bile-slurpers who spam blogs. Besides adding Jay Allen's wonderful program, I have made it necessary for you to preview comments first before posting. Pain? Perhaps. But it also gives you that extra second to ask, "Do I really want to say this? Do I really want to add this morsel of snark to the permanent record? Or should I think better of it?"
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Disunity
: Jay Rosen has a followup to his excellent commentary on the Unity Kerry-ovation hooha. The whole logic of diversity hiring assumes that minority journalists will exert and express themselves within the councils of the profession, and--for example--at daily meetings in newsrooms. Freedom of speech in public settings is not a trivial issue for people who band together to make their voices heard in journalism. I agree.
There are two issues at work here: diversity (of ethnicity or opinion?) and free speech (do journalists have it?). Below, I called for redefining diversity around opinions that are openly held.
The ironies are foghorn-loud. Here is an organization of ethnic journalists that forms to rally around their special interests as ethnic journalists. If they didn't have special interests -- if they didn't have an agenda -- they wouldn't be coming together. So we should be surprised that they have opinions when Kerry or Bush come to talk?
This only throws a spotlight on the essential hypocrisy of journalistic objectivity and rules of alleged ethics that put a gag on journalists when it comes to expressing their opinions openly.
I think it is unethical to withhold those opinions in public, to act as if you don't have them, to lie by omission.
I also think that Unity should be pushing for diversity of different definitions -- diversity of viewpoint and opinion and new source and not just hiring. This whole thing is a bit too insular to the journalism community. It's an echo chamber, damnit.
The bottom line of all this is that journalism should be the town square at which we, the people, come together to find facts and explore problems and try to find solutions and share our diverse viewpoints in an effort to discern the wisdom of the crowd -- of the democracy. That is diversity at work.
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Changes at the top
: Choire Sicha is making the long-anticipated move to editorial director of the Gawker Media empire. Jessica Coen is taking his place at Gawker; I'm told she's cute.
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Luxury kills
: Time says that the terrorists were planning to use limousines to blow up the Prudential Building and other targets -- because limos are hardly ever checked and because they have darkened windows and, no doubt, because it's symbolic: They love to turn our symbols of success against us. What's next: exlpoding Manolo Blahniks?
. . .
It's about control
: At the journalism confab from which I just returned, one media exec raised what has become a standard complaint about all this new media: Fragmentation. It's said as if that is an ill of the age. My answer: Turn that word around and look at it from the opposite perspective -- from the individual's perspectived -- and it's really a question of control. The audience is moving to lots of new places now that they have the choice, now that they have control. The single, shared national experience we keep sighing about existed for only a few decades as we lived with three networks and fewer and fewer newspapers. The natural state of media is fragmentation: consumers gain choice, media loses control, citizens gain control. Fragmentation is good.
In a variation on this theme, Sunday in The Times, Jack Rosenthal filled in for Dan Okrent and whined about too much news: Much more news and much faster news: it has created a kind of widespread attention deficit disorder. When news events cycled in and out of the spotlight more slowly, they stayed in the public mind longer. People could pay attention until issues of moment were resolved. Now, we are surrounded by news - on the TV at the gym, on the AOL home page, on the car radio on the way to work. To pass through Times Square is to be enveloped by no fewer than four electronic zippers flashing headlines day and night....
Saturation coverage now seems inevitably to exhaust the public and leave the media eager to move on. But that means the spotlight goes dark even when the wrongs endure. That, in turn, suggests that this all-news environment is creating a new responsibility for The Times and other serious media: systematically to look back, recall and remind. This, too, is a question of control. Rosenthal longs for the allegedly good old days when The Times and the big media outlets controlled the news cycle, as he quaintly calls it. Now we all do.
This is the way I put it in Toronto:
It used to be, we waited for the news -- when the paper was plopped on our doorstep, when the show came on the TV. Now the news waits for us -- we get what we want when and where we want it.
More news is good. Choice is good. Citizens controlling their media is good. Fragmentation is good.
. . .
August 08, 2004
Toward a new definition of diversity
: Perhaps it is time to come up with a new definition of "diversity" in American media.
Perhaps we should be looking for diversity of viewpoint -- though that means one has to admit having a viewpoint -- rather than merely diversity of ethnicity.
This is an era of fusion people: I've watched Tiger Woods, Soledad O'Brien, and Vin Diesel refuse to be categorized by one of their ethnicities or another.
This is also an era of fusion opinions: You can't tell a conservative or a liberal by his or her cover... and so we want them to tear off the covers and reveal themselves.
So now go read Jay Rosen's excellent wrap-up of the brouhaha that occurred at last week's Unity convention of minority journalists, many of whom gave John Kerry a standing ovation while most gave George Bush at best a polite and seated clap-clap.
Two forces come together in this story: The journalism orthodoxy, which says that journalists should not have public opinions, and the diversity orthodoxy, which defines diversity, as Michelle Malkin says, as merely "skin-deep."
Jay, as only Jay can, gets to the marrow of the group-think going on here: that "the display of political feeling is unprofessional" ... that ethics are about following rules set by the rule-makers... that minorities are ethnic minorities (not opinion minorities)... and so on. Go read his neat surgery of the ideas at play here.
Like Jay, I hope we have the ambition to break up that grouppressthink.
Imagine a world where:
+ Journalists admit they are human, just like their publics...
+ Journalists admit that they, like their publics, have viewpoints...
+ Journalists admit those viewpoints so their publics can judge what they say in that context...
+ Journalistic organizations seek out and publish or broadcast a variety of viewpoints so their publics can judge what the journalists are saying...
Imagine a world in which we value diversity of viewpoints and opinions -- not just birth -- so we can seek the wisdom of the crowds to find the best solutions to the issues that face us.
In this world, it would not be big news that a gaggle of journalists gave the liberal candidate a standing O; it would be confirmation of what many already think of journalists -- and of what Dan Okrent confessed when he wrote that, indeed, The Times is a liberal newspaper.
Isn't it better to be honest? And isn't honest the essential value of journalism?
And having been honest, isn't it better to then seek diversity of many defininitions -- ethnic, sure; and sexual, of course; but also political and economic and and geographic (suburbanites are was underrepresented in major media!) and educational (I'll bet we're thick with Harvard diplomas) and religious (and nonreligious) and attitudinal (optimists vs. cynics) and on and on? It's so damned one-dimensional so define diversity by one dimension.
How do we seek that diversity? I've told editors at various confabs and panels that we no longer need to assume that the only route to diversity is through hiring (though there's nothing wrong with such hiring). We need not be limited to whom we can hire to gain diversity because that is limiting. We can -- yes, I'm about to raise weblogs -- find an ever-growing world of diverse viewpoints in citizens media. Embracing what citizens think and say is a step toward the real goal: Representing what the citizenry thinks.
. . .
Presidential hatred
: We have slid to dangerous depths of presidential hatred in this country.
Both sides are plenty guilty: the rabid righties who hated Bill and Hillary and the seething lefties who hate W. Two wrongs make too many wrongs.
The dangers of presidential hatred are many:
First, it makes the debate stupid. The presidential haters think that getting rid of one man will get rid of our problems. That's naive. It's dumb. And it cuts off serious debate on difficult issues. "President X is evil" is pretty much a conversation stopper. (See Enough Gotchas.)
Second, what goes around comes around. The left has lost its right to complain about the demonization of Clinton the First because of its own treatment of Bush the Second. So just wait until Clinton the Second gets into office.
Third, presidential hatred speaks ill of us. Whether to young people entering the republic or to Frenchmen who want to hate us -- or to terrorists who want to kill us -- it only makes us look bad.
Fourth, it shifts our attention away from the real bad guys. Terrorists and tyrants are the enemies -- presidents are not -- and the real bad guys are glad for the distraction, thank you.
Fifth, we don't know where this will lead, but I fear it could lead to assassination. No, Michael Moore will not pull the trigger (he doesn't like guns, remember). But this atmosphere of hatred could inspire and embolden someone to try. The ultimate extension of presidential hatred could be assassination.
The movement of presidential hatred is dangerous and destructive. It puts higher value on argument than conversation, on invective than improvement. It is time to put an end to it. It has gone too far.
See Nicholson Baker's new polemic/novel, Checkpoint, about a man determined to assassinate George W. Bush "for the good of humankind" with his "Bush-seeking bullets" in the belief that murder is a means to a cause: "By causing a minor blip of bloodshed in one human being I'm going to prevent further bloodshed."
See next Leon Wieseltier's brilliant dissection of Baker and his book and the atmosphere of presidential hatred. I love this lead in his New York Times review: This scummy little book treats the question of whether the problems that now beset our cherished and anxious country may be solved by the shooting of its president. Nicholson Baker's novel does not advocate the assassination of George W. Bush, to be sure. It is more cunning. ''Checkpoint'' comes armored in ambiguity about its own character. The protagonist of the novel, who is preparing to perpetrate the deed, is quite obviously an unbalanced individual, a misfit, a loser, a fantasist, a paranoid, and so his violent plan for rescuing the United States cannot be taken seriously, though of course this is true of all such conspiracies. And Baker includes another character, a sensible friend of the homicidal progressive, who tries to dissuade the man from acting so drastically on his alienation. So ''Checkpoint'' is not, strictly speaking, an incitement to a crime, and there is no need for the F.B.I. to pull people off the hunt for this summer's terrorists and open an investigation into the fictional devices of a certain Nicholson Baker. Except for its inflammatory theme -- Baker's novels have always been desperate to be noticed, and here he breaks new ground in his sensationalism -- ''Checkpoint'' could be dismissed as another of Baker's creepy hermeneutical toys. But this is no ordinary inquiry into obsession. The object of Baker's fascination this time is the murder of the president of the United States. And the fascination is genuine. Like all of Baker's books, this one is much too close to its subject. This novel whose subject is wild talk is itself wild talk, and so another discouraging document of this age of wild talk. Yes, art -- or polemics hiding behind the cloak of art -- are not trying to etch a message for the ages; they are trying to change the world today. Baker, Moore, John Le Carre, the Manchurian Candidate (which I have not seen yet): It's all political argument, but without the discipline of facts or the opportunity for debate. It used to be when art abstracted the world, it made you think. Now, when art abstracts current issues, it wants to make you mad. It's not just talk radio that's doing this now. It's cable news and nonfiction books and movies and now even works of fiction.
So I'm glad that Wieseltier identifies the bigger, badder, stupider trend at work in society, in politics and art. For the virulence that calls itself critical thinking, the merry diabolization of other opinions and the other people who hold them, the confusion of rightness with righteousness, the preference for aspersion to argument, the view that the strongest statement is the truest statement -- these deformations of political discourse now thrive in the houses of liberalism too. The radicalism of the right has hectored into being a radicalism of the left. The Bush-loving mob is being met with a Bush-hating mob.... American liberalism, in sum, may be losing its head. And Wieseltier finds similarities between the monologues of the demented assassin in the Baker's novel and those of Bush haters in op-ed pages:The opinion that these are not normal times, that the Bush years are apocalyptic years, is quite common. ''We are no longer in the ordinary times we were in when the conservatives took out after Bill Clinton,'' Janet Malcolm recently explained in a letter to [The New York Times]. ''We are in a time now that is as fearful as the period after Munich.'' Life in South Egremont, Mass., may be excruciating, but Malcolm's knowledge of the period after Munich has plainly grown dim. And who, in her ominous analogy, is Hitler? If it is Osama bin Laden, then she might have a little sympathy for the seriousness of this administration about American security, whatever her views about some of its policies. If it is George W. Bush. . . . Well, she continues: ''Those of us who are demonizing George W. Bush are doing so not because of his morals but because we are scared of what another four years of his administration will do to this country and to the world.'' So whether or not Bush is Hitler, he is a devil. This is what now passes for smart....
The demagogue's gravest sin is not incivility, it is stupidity.... It will be disastrous, for liberalism and for America, if the indignation against George W. Bush becomes an excuse for a great simplification, for a delirious release from the complexities of historical and political understanding that it took the American left decades to learn. This is why I try to give the administration at least a chance; I don't want to pile on -- and that's a problem, too. There is plenty to criticize in this administration! But I fear that others who have wise and well-founded criticism are shying away from joining the mob. As Weiseltier puts it: "There are many good reasons to wish to be rid of George W. Bush, but there are no good reasons to wish to be rid of intelligence in our public life."
But there's good news: To go up against Bush, Democratic voters did not select an opposite -- Alien v. Predator (Bush v. Dean); they selected a bore. There may be little to love in John Kerry but there is little to hate. It has been said that he's another Carter (or, I'd say, Ford). Maybe what we really need is a president who bores us and that's the choice we have this fall.
. . .
Blog slap
: Also in Leon Wieseltier's review of Nicholson Baker's Checkpoint (see above) is this uppercut to bloggers' egos. Referring to the book's would-be presidential assassin, he writes: We infer from what is said that Jay is a deeply unhappy man. His wife has left him, his girlfriend has left him, he has lost his job as a high-school teacher, he works as a day laborer and has declared personal bankruptcy, he spends his days reading blogs. (About the deranging influence of blogs Baker makes a sterling point.)
. . .
Bzzzzzzz
: I caught Maureen Dowd, touting her book, on the Sunday morning gabest this morning and now I know why I rarely see her on TV: The woman has a horrible voice for broadcast. She drones like a lawnmower.
. . .
Bloggers blather!
: I'll be on a panel on blogging at the West Side Y at 35 West 67th Street Tuesday at 7:30. They're charging for the event (and, no, I don't get a cut).
. . .
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