New Daily Star Column From Me -- 'On War, John Kerry Is All Vietnam and No Iraq': Headline more absolutist than what I would have written, but you get the idea. It's actually an attempt to read the foreign policy/Middle East tea leaves based on the Democratic National Convention. The lede:

Ever since the Democratic Convention in Boston last month, the John-John ticket has been grumbling about having to fend off accusations that would-be president John Kerry previously fudged vivid details of his war record in Vietnam and (most controversially) Cambodia. There is indeed considerable merit to the notion that a nation at war should be focusing on 2004 instead of 1968, but if Kerry's convention performance was any guide, his go-to selling point for taking the reigns of the "war on terror" is the fact that he was piloting swift-boats up the Mekong back when Osama bin Laden was busy trying to grow his first beard.

08/18/2004 02:34 PM  |  Comment (6)

A Reading You Need to See, a Book You Need to Buy:

This is This Is Burning Man, Brian Doherty’s fantastical new book about the crazy annual anarchy in the sun-blasted desert a ridge or two away from Pyramid Lake. As Brian puts it in the “What’s it All About?” section of his schmancy new book website, he first went to Burning Man in 1995, because

I was told marvelous tales of adventure about this mysterious setting where people with very strange minds could do whatever they wanted, and because anarchy -- a human culture built around something other than force and violence -- is my deepest intellectual interest. And I went, and I saw the fires and the pulse jet cars and the people -- the people! -- and a fire was set in my brain, kindled by the setting, brought to roaring life by the people and the objects and the scenes they created. That fire never went out.

At any rate, Brian will be reading tonight at the world-famous Book Soup on the Sunset Strip, at 7 pm. He is a funny fellow, and I understand the readings are quite amusing. Also -- don’t forget to check out his This Is Burning Man weblog!

08/18/2004 11:35 AM  |  Comment (2)

Does Anyone Else Remember Opposing Illegal Aid to the Contras While Not Loving the Sandinistas? That seems like a common (and reasonable) enough stance in my memory, but everywhere I stumble across the topic these days, they make it seem like it was an Ortega love-fest there in the mid-'80s. That's certainly not how we ran it in my admittedly narrow neck of the woods. It was Sandinista, not Sandinistas, and no amount of middle-aged I-was-wrongism should ever rehabilitate daffy crooks like Oliver North, or all those other Republican hacks who were punished for mocking the Rule of Law by landing key jobs in the Bush Administration.

08/18/2004 02:20 AM  |  Comment (32)

Poor Hungarians: Listening to the Angel game this afternoon from sparsely attended Tropicana Field, you can hear a belligerent single fan with the pipes and personality of John Herbold. The announcers made note, and sport, of the name on his baseball jersey. "It's spelled S-z-a-s-z (both laugh). Maybe that's what's made him so upset! He's never been able to pronounce his own name."

08/17/2004 04:59 PM  |  Comment (2)

Olympic Entitlement: Sgt. Styrker:

The vibe that I'm getting from these athletes is a sense of entitlement. It's not as obvious and overt as it is from Team NBA, but it's there in the performances. It's a sub-conscious thing, I think, that becomes obvious during the events. I watched a women's volleyball match between the US and China that made it clear. The Chinese were diving for the ball and going the extra mile to get the save and the digs, while the Americans just kind of stood there, as if expecting the ball to magically come to wherever they were standing. I didn't see any hustle or desire to win from the Americans like I did from the Chinese, and that's been the story in almost every event so far. I root for the teams and individuals who act like they want to win and dig deep down to make it so. So far, I've been doing little rooting for Team USA.

08/17/2004 04:29 PM  |  Comment (23)

Layne vs. Blair on the Swifties, and John Kerry as a ‘War God’

08/17/2004 12:39 PM  |  Comment (5)

Tony Pierce on Bukowski: Always a good thing.

08/17/2004 12:18 PM  |  Comment (0)

Birth of a Nation, 1915 and 2004: Some excellent comparative stuff from Geitner Simmons, who's working on a fascinating research project comparing the historical self-narratives of Southern California and the South. The timely hook, in case you didn't know, is that a local art-movie house here tried once again to show D.W. Griffith's racist classic the other week, and was again convinced otherwise by protesters.

While you're over at Geitner's consistently stimulating website, also take a gander at Rosa Parks' California Predecessors; and, for you Slavo-trash out there, enjoy watching Geitner stumble across the horrifi-comic culture-blending wonder of Central European injun fave Winnetou. (And whoever's got a good Winnetou story, please leave it in the comments.)

08/17/2004 10:17 AM  |  Comment (3)

Look Who's Writing a Book About Rock & Roll! It's our very own Dr. Frank! From the press release:

Dr. Frank, the songwriter behind one of punk's most influential bands, has just announced that his novel, "King Dork" will be published by Delacorte, a young adult division of Random House. […]

Quite unusual for the publishing world. Dr. Frank was inspired to write his first novel, "King Dork," after being approached and encouraged by a literary agent who was also a fan. He wrote and sold the book in rapid-fire time, within a few months.

"King Dork" follows the picked-upon and wry Thomas "Chi-Mo" Henderson and his only friend, Sam Hellerman, as they fight their way through the demoralizing, mysterious, ridiculous experience of high school. Tom and Sam have each other, and their band, with its ever changing name; Baby Batter, Tennis With Guitars, Liquid Malice, Green Sabbath, Balls Deep, (to name a few.) The book is funny, and sad, and filled with observations about starting a band and being young, with thriller/mystery elements as well as larger observations about the nature of life. Dr. Frank said, "What I'm going for is an amalgam of Judy Blume, P.G. Wodehouse, Philip Roth, Agatha Christie and Behind the Music."

08/17/2004 09:37 AM  |  Comment (1)

I Agree With Just About Every Word of This Excellent Jesse Walker Review of Outfoxed

08/16/2004 06:21 PM  |  Comment (11)

Prescient? Obvious? Wrong? All of the Above? From this here website, on Jan. 20, 2002:

I am detecting some stronger-than-usual Euro-bashing and unilateralism coming from people more typically associated with Woodrow Wilson-style multi-lateralism. By whom, of course, I mean myself. Seriously, though, the European disdain for the rampaging Yank was an amusing and infrequent distraction pre-Sept. 11; now it is starting to annoy the hell out of people here. A domestic backlash against the Continent would have interesting implications … could the crude stereotype of the gunslinging, my-way-or-the-highway American become a self-fulfilling prophecy? Are mainstream European commentators and politicians expending their moral and diplomatic capital willy-nilly? Will isolationism gain a foothold in the Democratic Party?

08/16/2004 03:23 PM  |  Comment (7)

Tell Me Your Favorite Presidential Campaign Books! Even if everyone just says Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 and Boys on the Bus, I'd be interested in knowing what your favorites are. Doing some research here, etc.

08/12/2004 05:20 PM  |  Comment (26)

While You’re at it, Buy This Record

Them's The Mere Mortals, featuring Fought Down lead guitar-slinger Axel Steuerwald (the vampire to the right) on lead vox & songwriting. They've got a terrific EP out that's been making the heavy rotation on our alarmingly high-quality Indie 103.1 radio station, especially the Steve "Sex Pistols" Jones show. (Check out the gushy Jones quote on MM's main page.) The EP is a limited edition number with neato cover art, and can be had for the low low price of $7 (that includes shipping). Listen to some MP3s if you don't take my word for it, and watch that space for upcoming shows.

08/12/2004 04:12 PM  |  Comment (2)

This Is the Art Opening You Need to Attend:

That’s the world-famous COOP, the rock-and-roll devil-girl poster boy extraordinaire, adding some touches to his absolutely massive new painting, “Parts With Appeal,” that will be making its global debut Saturday night at the sixspace gallery in downtown Los Angeles (549 W. 23rd St., at Figueroa, plenty of parking, reception from 7 to 10). For those of you unlucky enough to live near Southern California, I heartily encourage you to browse through the merch and artworks of an American original.

08/12/2004 12:32 PM  |  Comment (0)

Bonjour, Frenchies! Mais, le meilleur blog c'est jusqu'i.

08/12/2004 11:49 AM  |  Comment (2)

A Reason to Love the 'Continue Reading' Function: Noam Chomsky, in addition to his other accomplishments, is one of the most dreadful prose stylists in the English language. But nothing cuts straight to the comedy of his grave absolutism than the "Continue Reading" cut-offs facilitated by the publishing software on his blog. Check out these gems:

* The basic theory is incontrovertible. The only questions have to do with timing and cost. ...

* The sharp increase in focus on Iran's alleged threat (nuclear weapons, connections to terror, etc.) is very clear. ...

* Regarding the rising price of oil, the first point to remember is that the price of oil is not high by historical standards.

* I won't run through the details regarding Somalia since you can find a lot in print, right at the time and later.

* I think there are many reasons why the South African analogy does not apply to this case.

08/12/2004 02:50 AM  |  Comment (8)

What Bush’s Economic Plan Should Look Like: An interesting list from Tyler Cowen. (Via Les Jones)

08/12/2004 02:16 AM  |  Comment (0)

The Usefulness of Seemingly Partisan-Motivated Obsessiveness: Regarding that kerfuffle below, Glenn Reynolds writes:

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.

All that said, if this Cambodia Hat thing turns out to be a creepy lie, then that's pretty damning, and the court of public BSing will owe you & the other drum-bangers a debt of gratitude.

With the Spinsanity guys, the question was never "Are they ready for prime time?" but "Why doesn’t every newsroom with more than 100 employees have a built-in Spinsanity?" After all, newspaper journalists never tire of reminding cynical outsiders about their hard-earned "credibility" and well-trained bullshit-detecting skills. And since newspaper profit margins still exceed 20 percent on average, why not deploy these remarkable resources to tell readers whether their favorite authors or columnists or politicians are full of it?

Keefer theorizes that "reporters really don’t...evaluate the truthfulness of their subject." He says that’s in part because they’re taught in journalism school that to be balanced you have to represent both sides fairly. "They’re good at picking up when someone’s obviously lying, but what they’re not good at is picking up the sort of fudges that people do." John Timpane, the Inquirer editor who made the deal with Spinsanity, says newspapers "are fighting a losing battle, partly because there’s so much stuff [to fact-check] and partly because they're all understaffed....That's not a defense, because we should do a much better job than we do."

Or maybe professionally nonpartisan institutions just aren't the best generators of the political passion that fuels so much amateur media criticism. Both Keefer and Timpane are unusually committed to the elevation of reason over rhetoric. Keefer studied history at Stanford under professors who believed "it's not all subjective impressions; it's not just however you feel or whatever; there really are facts." And Timpane, a former English professor who taught at Rutgers, Stanford, and elsewhere, co-wrote Writing Worth Reading, a textbook that included a large section on "how to avoid the pitfalls of easy argumentation and how to make a strong argument without making some of the errors, like...name-calling."

08/12/2004 01:02 AM  |  Comment (12)

Any Libertarians out There Want to Take a Crack at This? From my pal Cathy Seipp:

My position against gay marriage is essentially libertarian, although I've never managed to convince my libertarian friends of this. But really, why is expanding the state into private living arrangements something that libertarians should wish to do? In any case, declining to legally recognize gay marriage may be right or it may be wrong, but it doesn't take rights away from anyone, despite rather hysterical current arguments to the contrary. You can't take away something that has never, in the history of the human race, existed in the first place.

08/11/2004 12:47 PM  |  Comment (24)

I’ve Just Slashed My Ad Rates in Half! For those with a hankering to give me money. Tragically, BlogAds undercounts my traffic pretty substantially -- I get 2,400 visitors a day, not 6,000 per week -- though I don’t have much sense of whether the ads are useful to anyone or not. Still, there are worse $75 gambles out there. (Like betting that the Redsox will even make the playoffs, for example.)

08/11/2004 12:21 PM  |  Comment (2)

'Matt Welch Is an Assclown' Blog: Yes, the lifelong burden of being a Red Sox fan -- in every sense of the phrase -- has finally caused one grown "man" to snap.

08/11/2004 12:39 AM  |  Comment (9)

New National Post Column -- "Confessions of a 'Booger': The Agony and Ecstasy of Being a Democratic Convention Weblogger": I guess it ends up a little bit short on the "ecstasy" count.

08/10/2004 01:14 PM  |  Comment (1)

Tim Blair = Stalinist: Just let the record show that Tim Blair, Australia's favorite so-called "encourag[or of] global capitalism's savage inequities," has been prattling on, shrimps-on-the-barbie style, for the previous 90 minutes about how "Californians hate the planet" because we refuse to acquiesce to his Third World diktats about "using a clothesline instead of those energy-abusing clothes dryers." (I had to insert the word "clothes" in front of "dryers" in the previous sentence because, as another party rightly pointed out, the Australian race "wouldn't understand what you are talking about.") He literally carried an armful of his terrible under-garments to my backyard this afternoon, asking "where's the clothesline?" I could have sworn he even used the phrase "sustainable development" at some point, but maybe that was just me cursing at him. At any rate, he is basically a Communist.

08/10/2004 12:22 AM  |  Comment (19)

Adventures in Community College Courses: The instructor knows the terrifying answer.

08/09/2004 05:45 PM  |  Comment (0)

This Cartoon Is Worth More Than 1,200 Words: I wrote a hopefully humorous piece for this weekend’s National Post about what it was like to be a blogger at the Democratic Convention (will post it as soon as I can); meanwhile, Tom Tomorrow nailed it in just six panels.

08/09/2004 02:50 PM  |  Comment (1)

Dept. of Dreadful Lead Paragraphs: From the LA CityBeat's Mick Farren:

I learned a lot in the four days of last week's Democratic National Convention. I learned I have a passion for Teresa Heinz Kerry, and that Barack Obama is so brilliantly charismatic, he may well be an alien come to save humanity. I was reminded that Bill Clinton is still the Elvis Presley of political orators, and of why I liked Wes Clark in the first place. The tale of Alexandra Kerry's pet hamster is etched in my memory, but, above all, I learned that I detest Chris Matthews, and the absurd egos of cable-news performers may be the greatest threat to democracy since the Nazi Party.

08/09/2004 02:10 PM  |  Comment (5)

Jose Mesa, Professional Relief Pitcher and Procreator: Alert reader Scott "Look how busy I am at work" Ross asks you to click on the link, note the date of birth, and then read the biographical info at the bottom of the page.

08/09/2004 01:41 PM  |  Comment (6)

Is There a 'Pretty Much' Legal Standard? Glenn Reynolds, writing about the Swift Boat Dudes Who Hate John Kerry:

Indeed, if people start dishing dirt about these guys instead of offering factual refutations, it will pretty much serve as an admission that the charges are true.

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. If either one of these guys has used a dime of taxpayer money to obfuscate their pasts, well that sure is worthy of rebuke, but it would still rank about 1,754th on my list of Decisive Issues come November. Actually, that's not even true, it wouldn't rank at all. I'm going to vote for the guy who I think will do the best job leading the most powerful country in the world in the war against people who want to blow us up, period. Everything else -- only 32,000 new jobs this month! This one dude acted weird at a Wendy's! -- is an increasingly pointless and unfunny diversion. UPDATE: Reynolds says I’m off-base (see also comment# 47); Jeff Jarvis says I said it well; Thomas Nephew says he can’t quite agree with me & Jeff, and JunkYardBlog says Ronald Reagan, for one, didn’t embellish his military record.

08/09/2004 11:51 AM  |  Comment (69)

The Point of Terror Alerts Should Be to Alert Us About Terror: Roger Simon writes:

how indeed is the public to understand that we are at war if there are no terror alerts from the administration? From the Congress, the talking heads...? Let's be serious. That ain't gonna happen. If it is not brought home to the populace in a relatively graphic, even though extremely imperfect, manner, they will soon forget - if they haven't already.

08/07/2004 02:48 AM  |  Comment (18)

The 'Bush Lied' Publishing Boomlet: Browsing through Powell's Books in Portland the other week, I was flabbergasted at the huge number of new titles out there with George Bush's mug on the cover, calling him a liar and a bounder and a knave. So I thought it might be an interesting data point to collect them in one spot. That spot is here; please leave other suggested titles in the comments.

These are listed in order of Amazon rankings, with all other data (including spelling) coming from the online bookseller. Some books probably don't belong, some are probably very good, others are probably very bad, etc. I'll add new titles as they come, and I will also soon compile a "Liberals Suck Eggs" collection, for "balance." Enjoy:

14. Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, by Anonymous
Publisher: Brassey's Inc; (July 15, 2004)

60. Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush, by John Dean
Publisher: Little, Brown; 1st edition (April 6, 2004)

76. Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency, by Robert Byrd
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; (July 2004)

174. Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror, by Richard Clarke
Publisher: Free Press; (March 22, 2004)

235. American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, by Kevin Phillips
Publisher: Viking Books; (January 1, 2004)

270. Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, by Al Franken
Publisher: Dutton Books; (August 29, 2003)

283. House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties, by Craig Unger
Publisher: Scribner; (March 16, 2004)

393. The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, by Chalmers Johnson
Publisher: Metropolitan Books; (January 13, 2004)

474. Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else, by David Cay Johnston
Publisher: Portfolio; (December 25, 2003)

499. Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia, by Gore Vidal
Publisher: Thunder's Mouth, Nation Books; (May 10, 2004)

755. Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance, by Noam Chomsky
Publisher: Metropolitan Books; 1st edition (November 4, 2003)

857. Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America, by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose
Publisher: Random House; (September 23, 2003)

859. The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity: A Diplomat's Memoir, by Joseph Wilson
Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers; (April 30, 2004)

1,113. Dude, Where's My Country?, by Michael Moore
Publisher: Warner Books; (October 7, 2003)

1,518. The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Truth About Corporate Cons, Globalization and High-Finance Fraudsters, by Greg Palast
Publisher: Plume Books; Rev. American edition (February 25, 2003)

1,542. The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill, by Ron Suskind
Publisher: Simon & Schuster; (January 13, 2004)

1,692. A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies, by James Bamford
Publisher: Doubleday; (June 8, 2004)

1,974. The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century, by Paul Krugman
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (September 2003)

2,571. The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Love Them, by Amy and David Goodman
Publisher: Hyperion; First edition (April 2004)

2,712. Thieves in High Places: They've Stolen Our Country--And It's Time to Take It Back, by Jim Hightower
Publisher: Viking Books; (August 14, 2003)

2,961. The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception, by David Corn
Publisher: Crown; (September 30, 2003)

3,287. Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order, by Mark Crispin Miller
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; (August 16, 2004)

3,353. Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth, by Joe Conason
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; 1st edition (May 25, 2003)

3,761. Banana Republicans: How the Right Wing Is Turning America into a One-Party State, by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber
Publisher: Jeremy P. Tarcher; (May 24, 2004)

5,013. The Bush-Haters Handbook: A Guide to the Most Appalling Presidency of the Past 100 Years, by Jack Huberman
Publisher: Nation Books; (December 1, 2003)

7,259. Stop Bush In 2004: How Every Citizen Can Help, by Michael John Dobbins
Publisher: iUniverse, Inc.; 0 edition (April 11, 2004)

7,558. The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy, by David Brock
Publisher: Crown; (May 18, 2004)

8,836. Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq, by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber
Publisher: Jeremy P. Tarcher; (July 1, 2003)

10,414. The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America, by Eric Alterman and Mark Green
Publisher: Viking Books; (February 5, 2004)

10,868. Fraud: The Strategy Behind the Bush Lies and Why the Media Didn't Tell You, by Paul Waldman
Publisher: Sourcebooks; (January 1, 2004)

12,038. Incoherent Empire, by Michael Mann
Publisher: Verso; (October 2003)

34,063. Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq, by Tariq Ali
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; (November 1, 2003)

34,283. The I Hate Republicans Reader: Why the GOP is Totally Wrong About Everything, by Clint Willis
Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press; (September 1, 2003)

39,038. The White House Inc. Employee Handbook: A Staffer's Guide to Success, Profit, and Eternal Salvation Inside George W. Bush's Executive Branch, by the writers of WhiteHouse.org
Publisher: Plume Books; (February 3, 2004)

46,295. Big Bush Lies: The 20 Most Telling Lies of President George W. Bush, by Jerry “Politex” Barrett
Publisher: SCB Distributors; (May 31, 2004)

46,742. Secrets and Lies: Operation "Iraqi Freedom" and After: A Prelude to the Fall of U.S. Power in the Middle East?, by Dilip Hiro
Publisher: Nation Books; (January 1, 2004)

54,406. How Much Are You Making on the War Daddy? A Quick and Dirty Guide to War Profiteering in the Bush Administration, by William Hartung
Publisher: Nation Books; (January 1, 2004)

58,259. Bush's War For Reelection: Iraq, the White House, and the People, by James Moore
Publisher: Wiley; (March 5, 2004)

68,209. The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq, by Christopher and Robert Scheer, Lakshmi Chaudhry
Publisher: Seven Stories Press; (January 15, 2004)

78,381. Warrior King: The Case for Impeaching George Bush, by John Bonifaz
Publisher: Nation Books; (December 10, 2003)

255,235. Crude Politics: How Bush's Oil Cronies Hijacked the War on Terrorism, by Paul Sperry
Publisher: WND Books; (September 4, 2003)

08/06/2004 12:25 AM  |  Comment (20)

More on Convention Music, and Other Missed Stories: From Jay Rosen.

08/05/2004 04:32 PM  |  Comment (0)

Some 'Media Monopoly' -- Five Conglomerates, Zero Agenda-Setting Newspapers: Jack Shafer:

In typical overstatement, Bagdikian writes, "These five corporations decide what most citizens will—or will not—learn." […] But the Big Five determine what the majority learns only in those places where the newsstand sells only the New York Post and Time and where TV receivers have been doctored to accept signals only from CNN, ABC, CBS, and the Fox News Channel—which is to say nowhere.

If anybody decides what most citizens learn, it's the agenda-setting editors at the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times. […]

For all the Big Five's alleged powers of mind control, consider the list of influential news organizations besides the Big Four Newspapers they don't control. The top newspaper chains: Gannett, Knight Ridder, Cox, Scripps, McClatchy, Landmark, Copley, Newhouse, Freedom, Hearst, MediaNews, and Tribune. The Boston Globe. Newsweek. The various flavors of NBC News. The New Yorker and Conde Nast's other titles. PBS. NPR. Reuters. AFP. AP. Bloomberg. U.S. News & World Report. Pearson. Hachette Filipacchi. The Atlantic. The Economist. And scores of local TV stations.

08/05/2004 10:11 AM  |  Comment (0)

Speaking of Critiquing Malkin’s Internment Book: I just wanted to bookmark this post for posterity….

08/04/2004 06:37 PM  |  Comment (1)

Look Who the Fair-Minded Kids Are Calling a Systematic Deceiver: Most of us have respect for the Spinsanity boys' take on political honesty, right? You know, those earnest, somewhat anal young men who have contributed to the discourse by dissecting the B.S. of Michael Moore, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Maureen Dowd? (I once wrote about them a bit for Reason.) Anyway, they more than most have earned credibility as equal-opportunity debunkers, which is something to keep in mind before you click on that BlogAd to the left, advertising their brand-new book: All the President’s Spin: George W. Bush, the Media, and the Truth. (I'm running the ad for free, in case you care about such things, though I may in theory take a three-cent commission on any sales it directly generates.) Some notes from the book's preface and introduction:

[T]he man currently doing the most damage to our political debate is the President of the United States, George W. Bush. […]

George W. Bush has done serious damage to our political system. His deceptions span nearly all of his major policies, were achieved using some of the most advanced tactics from public relations, and were designed to exploit the failings of the modern media. In the process, Bush has made it even more difficult for citizens to undersand and take part in democratic debate. […]

Previous presidents have also drawn on PR, of course, but Bush has gone far beyond his predecessors, systematically employing these dishonest strategies in nearly every major policy debate. […]

That is why, after nearly four years of constant deception on major issues of public policy, the President must be held accountable. If we fail to do so, Bush’s approach to political communications threatens to become the new standard for politics in America. From its campaign for tax cuts to the debate over war with Iraq, this White House has invented a new politics of dishonesty.

08/04/2004 04:46 PM  |  Comment (18)

Benefits of a Blogged Book Review: As Eric Muller continues his yeoman work of challenging the merits of Michele Malkin's latest liberals-are-preventing-my-ability-to-call-for-ethnic/immigrant-roundups-without-me-being-called-a-meanie book, the dull thought just hit me -- there are many benefits to a multi-post book review. Books are massive informational packages, and in any piece of nonfiction worth its salt there are at least four or five major topics worth writing about. Reviewers, who are usually stuck with the stunted work of summarizing a book's Importance, or using it as a jumping-off point for a tangentially related essay, would probably enjoy the opportunity to tease out a handful of separate responses. Especially, of course, if they were paid. Whenever someone launches (or buys) the 21st century version of Slate, that may be something to think about.

08/04/2004 02:34 PM  |  Comment (9)

What Happens When You Introduce Cathy Seipp to Your Friends: La Seipp discovers that lefties can be anti-Stalinists, and my pals learn that Republicans can be perfectly delightful. It's a win-win!

08/04/2004 02:03 PM  |  Comment (1)

Hi! What are you doing down here?