Iatribe

2005-06-26T20:08:00.000-04:00

StevenIWeiss.com launched, which is now my more official home blog.

2005-04-11T16:27:00.000-04:00

Has golfing equipment improved scores? I was wondering about that over the weekend, as Tiger Woods, who won his fourth Masters, faced off against a field that included Jack Nicklaus who won his four Masters some time ago.
Comparing the winners since 1970 with the winners before 1970, it seems the average winning score in the latter term is about three shots below that of the initial term, 278.38 vs. 281.61.
And Woods vs. Nicklaus show far more disparity: Woods has won by an average of 9.25 shots fewer than Nicklaus did over each of the pair's four tournaments.
For one area where performance likely won't improve, see this Slate item on why baseball pitching velocity doesn't grow over time.

2005-03-23T14:43:00.001-05:00

Juan Cole on Paul Wolfowitz's Arab girlfriend:

Actually, if the article is true, it is the best thing I've ever heard about Wolfowitz.

Well, then he's been intentionally missing out on the best part of Wolfowitz for some time, because it's common knowledge.

2005-03-23T14:43:00.000-05:00

Wurtzel herself has a word for this: in her second book, Bitch, she coined the term "mental-health pornography" in a discussion of our culture's obsession with beautiful, suicidal women.

Have you noticed this obsession? Neither have I, but it's just reported out as something everyone grants.

2005-03-22T13:32:00.000-05:00

Jarvis on the AP's two-lede approach: "I have a different problem with this plan: It wastes readers' time."
Exactly! The original statement explicitly declared that this was the intention:

The new initiative is in response to requests from many editors who want to be able to offer readers "something fresh so they will want to pick up the newspaper and read a story, even though the facts have been splashed all over the Web and widely broadcast."

The AP: here to repackage facts you already know...with cuter lede paragraphs.

2005-03-10T14:50:00.000-05:00

Jarvis: "The only problem for Rather was that his last big story was Rather."

2005-03-07T02:57:00.000-05:00

You know a man is out to lunch when...
David Horowitz writes:

Peter Beinart is also a leftist but a moderate one who could plausibly be called a liberal. He wrote a sharp critique of the left in The New Republic calling on liberals to purge Communist fellow travelers from their ranks.

Beinart's essay -- rather famously -- was using the analogy of Communists in the ranks, which should be apparent to anyone even remotely aware of his article, or to the fact that Communism just isn't the big issue in America anymore.

2005-02-13T01:57:00.000-05:00

I'm shocked -- shocked -- at Eason Jordan's resignation. It seemed all along from a casual glance at what was available that he'd been well within the reasonable limits of conversation. The way it seemed to me, he was pissed that dead journalists were being called "collateral damage" when they were actually viewed incorrectly as legitimate targets. It seems reasonable to get pissed off and respond -- and even perhaps go a bit too far in one's response and then have to walk it back to rationality.
But to resign without the real story ever having come out is just wacky.
My initial instinct is that he figured he was on the outs anyway and that if he's resign without the tape he'd have a better chance of being rehired without controversy later.
Did bloggers do this? If the video had come out and it turned out to be bad, I'd say "sure." But this seems so premature, so odd, that it simply doesn't make sense to say that.
Could Jordan really have resigned because he thought that a story that was gaining no groung in the mainstream media simply wouldn't die down in the blogosphere?
The sex angle doesn't make a lot of sense, either:

Several CNN staffers say Jordan, who was distraught about the controversy, saw the handwriting on the wall in tendering his resignation. But top executives are also said to have lost patience with the continuing gossip about Jordan, including his affair with Marianne Pearl, widow of the murdered reporter Daniel Pearl, and subsequent marital breakup.

Yeah, I suppose that explanation might be meaningful if Jordan worked for some old-boy law firm (but wasn't a partner), or if he were a politician...but a CNN exec? Please, that just sounds stupid.

2005-02-03T10:23:00.000-05:00

CampusJ launches today.

2005-01-03T11:49:00.000-05:00

Steve Martin on the hiatus-ing columnist:

Dave Barry, and I am not making this up, loves Satan.

2004-12-26T13:12:00.000-05:00

Ali G. In Real-Life Update. Running back Shaud Williams -- who didn't have much to tell Austria's gay community -- is scheduled to play for the Buffalo Bills today after Willis McGahee injured his knee.
BTW: Check out some of the coverage of this deep-south venture for some read-between-the-lines hilarity.
ALSO: His official bio contains no mention of the meetup with Bruno, but he actually is kind of petite: a short but burly 5-7", 193.

2004-12-02T11:11:00.000-05:00

Modern Dance = Porn for Aesthetes. That's the best equation I could come up with to kind of explain it to myself. The special ladyfriend, showing me her world of art, brought a videotaped rehearsal over yesterday.
In figuring it out, I thought to myself that it was kind of like a moving sculpture, painting and more all brought into one. If portrayals of the human body are achievements of beauty in art, well then the actual body doing actual movement would seem to be a relative aesthetic overload.
That's all I've got, in my oaf's view of the high-culture world. Maybe I'll read some dance criticism so I can toss in a few humdingers of the literature's terminology for future dispatches.

2004-12-01T18:56:00.000-05:00

Impromptu party to observe Protocols' conclusion:

WHAT:
Novel Jews monthly literary series featuring Myla Goldberg and Sana Krasikov.

WHEN:
Wednesday, December 8, 7- 9pm
Admission is always free.

WHERE:
KGB Bar 85 East 4th Street (between 2nd & 3rd Avenues) and can be reached by taking the F Train to Second Avenue or the 6 Train to Astor Place.
www.kgbbar.com

2004-12-01T17:37:00.000-05:00

Revelations from Love, Actually:
1) Some Britons think America is a bully and that they can stand up to it with speeches invoking the greatness of its past.
2) Hugh Grant really, truly, absolutely cannot dance.

2004-11-26T01:08:00.000-05:00

The "King of the Hill" line that's made me laugh the most:

HANK: Bobby, I never thought I'd need to tell you this, but I would be a bad parent if I didn't. Soccer was invented by European ladies to keep them busy while their husbands did the cooking.

2004-11-16T15:07:00.000-05:00

Did you know that Dom Deluise made a movie about being fat?

2004-11-16T09:51:00.000-05:00

Had some technical difficulties yesterday, including downtime at some blogs. If you tried sending e-mail, please re-send.

2004-11-15T13:29:00.000-05:00

Holy shit. Talk about over-stepping your bounds...the only reason the FCC exists is because of limited, public-domain airwaves. Institutions threatened by irrelevance adapt new purposes in order to hang on; but we own our government institutions, and we don't have to allow this to happen to the FCC.

2004-11-09T20:22:00.000-05:00

Are you an undergraduate interested in the Jewish community on your campus? Do you think you're a good writer and reporter?
Do you want to be part of a project that will give you real training, real credentials, and a real future in journalism while allowing you to do real work about the Jewish community?
E-mail me with a resume and clips, if any.

2004-11-05T02:26:00.000-05:00

I'll be speaking Wednesday, November 10th, at NYU's Bronfman Center for New Voices event entitled "The Jewish Media Conspiracy -- Behind the Myth." Which, of course, assumes it's a myth...or does it? You have to come to find out.

2004-11-03T21:32:00.000-05:00

I know this might sound stupid, but I caught the closing segment of Crossfire yesterday (no, that's not the stupid part...at least not entirely), and noticed that it runs at 4:30, which at least used to be during the period when "The Daily Show" would be taping. Jon Stewart claimed to watch it every day. So either he's lying about watching Crossfire, which is really weird, or he tapes it every day...which is weirder.

2004-10-27T22:08:00.000-04:00

This guy checked out my JDate profile. I guess he seems kinda gay.

2004-10-27T19:07:00.000-04:00

10:23 p.m. to 11:45 p.m.
Total Eclipse of the Moon.
--9:14 p.m. _ Eclipse begins.
--12:54 a.m. _ Eclipse ends.
--Note: Facing Southeast.

I've never been much in for these things. Natural wonders don't thrill me.

2004-10-26T23:19:00.000-04:00

The ultimate in desperation. Very near to being down 3-0, some Cardinals fans have hung pictures of the Babe around Bush Stadium. I don't think you're allowed to do that if you're not in the Bronx.

2004-10-26T22:27:00.000-04:00

Because they've been eliminated? Come up with your own reasons:

Today Slate continues a tradition initiated four years ago, when we asked our staff and contributors to tell us who they voted for on Election Day 2000. Last time, the tally was 29 for Gore; 4 for Bush; 2 for Nader; and 2 for Harry Browne, the Libertarian candidate. This time, we've cast a slightly wider net and caught 45 for Kerry; 4 for Bush; 1 for Michael Badnarik (Libertarian); and 1 for David Cobb (Green). Interesting footnotes: One of those who voted for Bush in 2000 (our former publisher) has switched to Kerry. (The other Bush 2000 voters aren't in this year's survey.)

Emphasis added.

2004-10-26T21:41:00.000-04:00

Watching both Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz make important fielding plays so far in tonight's game, I'm thinking that maybe a part of the reason why they shone so well is because they're such mediocre fielders regularly. A better right-fielder perhaps imagines that Larry Walker can't be thrown out at home and a better first baseman perhaps imagines that he must first throw home to stop Suppan.
Maybe, maybe not. Just a thought.

2004-10-26T20:48:00.000-04:00

On the bus today, two old men had a brief chat about Chief Justice Rehnquist's cancer. It was pretty different from the average conversation:

Old Man #1: So did you hear about the Supreme Court justice?
Old Man #2: I just hope that he ends up alright.
OM#1: Yeah.

There seemed to be something specifically age-relevant about this; I guess they empathize with him more than they care what it means.

2004-10-26T20:44:00.000-04:00

Megan McArdle betrays her age in a stunning display of P. Diddy, GOTV ignorance.

2004-10-25T16:48:00.000-04:00

Who will win? HBO and Cinemax schedule music-themed movies from the same period in the same slot: "Great Balls of Fire" vs. "That Thing You Do!". Who will win?

2004-10-24T04:02:00.000-04:00

Really, everything these days gets documented. Even when you're not there to talk about your being a dumbass, someone else is:

Monday, I spent QT with my dear Steven, even playing bystander to his relationship drama. Further proof that even "dating" is for the birds, kids. I also made the mistake of taking him out Tuesday night to meet up with Jenny, open bar, and new drinks in radioactively glowing green cups (Everglo, folks. It's aight.) and then forgot the cardinal rule of getting a heartbroken friend drunk: put their drunk ass to bed so they can't cause any more damage. Ah well.

Some other people could be blogging some far more revealing exchanges about all this. Getting drunk in the midst of a dwindling relationship really is a pisser. It is only by the sake of the charity of others that I stand before you a man with dignity.

2004-10-22T09:15:00.000-04:00

Y'know, for all the talk and bluster about Hollywood sequels being just for the cash, and inevitably worse than the originals, I'm fairly certain that Short Circuit 2 beats the pants off of Short Circuit. Hands down, any day.

2004-10-21T20:52:00.000-04:00

Slowly crawling out of the darkness. Things are finally getting together at my more hopeful blog projects. Expect things to be semi-live quite soon at Kosher Bachelor, Canonist, and The Metro Section.

2004-10-20T13:23:00.000-04:00

The youngsters in the cast of Annie, a group of really talented and magical kids that made a wonderful and magical movie which is playing right now on HBO, all seem to have abandoned their careers rather quickly; none of the child actors seem to have had much of a career afterward. In a way, that's kinda cool. Maybe they're not as screwed up as most child actors.

2004-10-20T13:11:00.000-04:00

"I just want to contribute." The words of 42-year-old greatest wide receiver ever Jerry Rice on being traded to the Seattle Seahawks. Profound, and sad.

2004-10-18T16:12:00.000-04:00

David Adesnik rounds up reviews of "Team America" and finds them wanting in political sophistication. No surprise there.

2004-10-15T13:14:00.000-04:00

A while ago, Maccers wrote about the bellini, a peach cocktail. In the movie Welcome to Collinwood, a "bellini" is the term for the perfect crime, or the heist that'll let a career criminal retire.

2004-10-14T19:48:00.000-04:00

LukeIsBack.com, in the man's words:

I write about ten percent of the site -- principally stuff on organized crime, drugs, CAL-OHSA regulations, AIDS, HIV, government regulation and prosecution of alleged obscenity... There are other writers for it. I am not the one who came up with the site and I am not the one who pushed it forward but I have made my contributions to it, but I am not responsible for the site in its entirety nor everything that goes on it or will go on it. He who pays the piper picks the tune and I don't pay the piper here.

2004-10-14T16:43:00.000-04:00

Elizabeth Spiers' new gig looks to be pretty cool.
Two items worth noting:
- Spiers' post debunking this story. I'll just add to that with my personal experience, of writing a prominent back-page profile of Jessica Coen for the same publication just two months ago. The story was held up on NY1's "In the Papers," which apparently is a big deal at the dailies, or at least it was made into a big deal at the NYSun. One of the agendas for the piece that came from the top brass for the story was to specifically focus on how the stories in Gawker found themselves in New York's dailies the next day. This kind of trend-jumping, where blogs are alternately praised and insulted, speaks more to a kind of internal psychological battle at these papers than it does to the reality of the facts on the ground (or in the ether, as it were).
- Given Spiers' new place of employment, check out MediaBistro CEO Laurel Touby's JDate profile.
UPDATE: From reader Marc Weissblott, we can familiarize ourselves with Laurel's dad, Frank.

2004-10-09T21:02:00.000-04:00

I didn't watch the VP debate, because I knew that all it would emphasize to me was how much it sucks that John Edwards doesn't lead the Democratic ticket. This rundown makes it an almost painful realization.

2004-10-04T03:26:00.000-04:00

Wow. So the last edition of the Cupcake Reading Series featured a special ladyfriend of mine amidst some other friends/acquaintances, and the next one features one of my former professors. Worlds are colliding.

2004-10-03T23:38:00.000-04:00

BTW: You might notice there's nothing going on at three of my four blogs, and that I've been bad about returning e-mail, etc., for the past couple of weeks. Server problems have been the culprit, and I'm assured they'll finally be weeded out very soon.
Assuming my assurances turn into occurrences, all will be well and much will be done very soon.

2004-10-03T21:21:00.000-04:00

"But he also said what I reported." Thus quoth the Instapundit, defending his claim of a version of events. That's a mighty peculiar terminology for him to use, one I cannot recall seeing him use before, and very much at odds with his constant claims to not being a "news source."
The choice of wording here is likely not part of some grand restatement of purpose, but it's nonetheless worth noting, inasmuch as it is an indicator of a basic shift in perspective, intentional or not.
It was inevitable that, at some point, he'd be claiming to be providing not just an opinion, not just a link, not just a perspective, but a version of events as he saw it, and to refer to that in some way as "journalism" or "reporting" or some other similar phrasing. That has now happened.
This is important.

2004-10-03T01:20:00.000-04:00

"George the Stubborn." Nick Denton recommends that John Kerry affix that nickname to the president. With that message, Denton asserts, he can win voters. How utterly British that strategy is; should he take it back to his homeland, Denton might be able to assemble a campaign that can win some more seats for the Liberal Dems in Parliament.
And, also like a Brit, Denton then paints the American dream entirely in colonial colors, with the grandest of self-deceptions coming in his writing of "individuals who found themselves on an unfamiliar continent," and completely failing to reference those who are still landing on these shores, including himself.
As he notes in conclusion, he hasn't much of career in political work ahead of him. Though, then again, he might if he jumped back to the other side of the pond.

2004-09-20T18:34:00.000-04:00

I was going to assume the position of having no sympathy for CBS, Mary Mapes, or Dan Rather, but then I heard about this:

But Mapes' father sees a political agenda behind his daughter's work. Don Mapes, 76, was a recent guest on a radio talk show hosted by John Carlson on KVI in Seattle.
He said, "I'm really ashamed of what my daughter has become. She's a typical liberal. She went into journalism with an ax to grind, and that was to promote radical feminism."
He confessed to being disappointed in his daughter's role in the controversy. He said, "When I heard about 60 Minutes, I suspected she would be the producer of the show."
In an interview with Talon News, Don Mapes said his suspicion was because that he believed, "Dan Rather and she have been working on this ever since Bush was elected."
In commenting on the Wednesday's 60 Minutes show, he said, "It was a farce, it was fraud. I'm sorry as a father that my daughter was the producer of it."
His fatherly instinct showed through when he said, "To give her the benefit of the doubt, I believe she has been had."
But he also chastised his daughter for being intellectually dishonest.
He said, "She ought to look closer at George Soros or Michael Moore."
Mary Mapes declined several opportunities to comment for this article.

What a dick.
So I guess Mapes does have some of my sympathy. Damn it.

2004-09-20T10:09:00.000-04:00

Via Gizmodo, this guy is willing to exchange his PlayStation 2 in order to get laid. I've got a certain geeky lady in mind who just might be willing.

2004-09-20T09:28:00.000-04:00

"Reinventing the Wheels", my latest for New York Magazine, is about Cushmans and those who drive them. Ostensibly, the print version contains several pictures and lengthy captions.

2004-09-15T01:44:00.000-04:00

Reading this over at Wonkette:

While the undecideds are not looking as ugly for Bush, the election isn't over. This is a big election and it's going to be close. Cook forecast the biggest turnout in 30 years, with 57-59 percent showing up on Election Day.

I'm wondering which will be worse for Democrats: losing an election that has an historically-large turnout, or losing by a large margin with an average or even small turnout. The saddest thing, of course, is that a Kerry victory isn't necessarily better for Democrats than either of those two options.

2004-09-14T14:11:00.000-04:00

The admission here is that Page Six has a reporter who basically thinks all black people look alike.

2004-09-13T17:56:00.000-04:00

I know that phrenology is much-debunked, old-school "science." In fact, I occasionally refer to phrenology in sarcastic moments, and laugh when I see it referenced as such, on "The Simpsons" and the like.
Thing is, I kind of agree with it. Not in the specific terms that leechers used to a century ago, mind you, but in the sense that certain physical characteristics tend to lead to certain personality traits. Very often, people who look alike act the same. It's part of the sizing-up I do of people, and it often provides some good instant insights.
For instance, I saw an advertisement for one reality show that has a participant who looks pretty similar to an ex-girlfriend. That similarity noted, a commercial today for the same show focused on said participant and revealed her to be an actress, like that ex-girlfriend, and having certain other personality traits in common.
It probably doesn't count as phrenology, but it's real.

2004-09-13T01:51:00.000-04:00

To keep the campaign "on message" they've got to keep Kerry from talking (2nd item). Ugh.

2004-09-13T01:15:00.000-04:00

After all was said and done in support of the argument that the CBS docs aren't forgeries, it seemed that the debunker debunkers were suspicously silent on one element: centering. The end of this item gets at that pretty definitively.
I don't understand why people are so focused on superscripts and proportional spacing and fonts and so forth when centering is so overwhelmingly difficult on a typewriter.

2004-09-12T22:11:00.000-04:00

What's so pathetic is that after reading this concise, justified and broad attack on Bush's policies, even without addressing it with potential counter-arguments, one's left to wonder what alternative one has. George Bush seems, again, the feather candidate, needing just the slightest breath of life to knock him over. And once again, a Democratic candidate with a sad mixture of old-leftism and meandering principles has been utterly confounded by him.
Oh, and again once more, those who want to serve as Democratic attack-dogs-by-proxy are achieving the profound mistake of insulting Bush's intelligence. Even in this otherwise-smart article by generally-smart Timothy Noah:

A common theme is the theoretician's contempt for empiricism. But how did George W. Bush, of all people, end up getting conned by a bunch of eggheads? Typically, it's intellectuals, not party-hearty Dekes, who are most susceptible to grand untested theories. It was a reasonable worry, for example, with Bush's 2000 opponent, Al Gore. Bush, who not only lacks intellectual curiosity but seems to hold in contempt those who possess it, does not belong to the risk group for willed agnosia. One would have expected Dubya to growl at his advisers, "Enough of this hifalutin' talk. Tell me how we're going to solve the problem at hand." But on the evidence, whenever Bush attempts this (as in the quote from the Suskind book, above), it comes out a mere feint, easily quieted by the enunciation of one of the words his PR superstructure uses to define his presidency: "steadfast," "entrepreneur," "forceful," or whatnot. This suggests that, although not easily conned by intellectuals, Bush is easily cowed by them. He is intimidated out of trusting his own Texas-bred common sense. So rather than willed agnosia, a better diagnosis for Bush is probably hysterical agnosia brought on by exposure to deep thinkers. No wonder he hates them as a class.

Engaging Bush on the grounds that he's stupid is just, well, stupid. And it shows some stupidity that despite losing with this strategy in 2000 and then in mid-term elections, many are choosing to stick with it. Calling Bush stupid isn't an argument, it's a dodge.

2004-09-12T11:26:00.000-04:00

Jarvis:

Weblogs: as much fun as cocaine, Ecstasy, and oral sex!

2004-09-11T23:49:00.000-04:00

Great line:

IT WAS BAD ENOUGH WHEN this election was about 1970s war records. When it became about 1970s typewriters, I decided to go write my dissertation.

2004-08-29T15:48:00.000-04:00

I hadn't realized that that CJR "Young Editors" article from a while back was written by Ana Marie Cox. Could put the coverage of her in an interesting light.

2004-08-29T15:33:00.000-04:00

What is rock-bottom for personal fitness? As good a waking point as any would be getting sore from two games of bowling.

2004-08-24T06:48:00.000-04:00

There are all kinds of rationales one can use for asserting one's made a correct decision. When it comes to being confident in a recent move, there are few greater rationales that could present themselves than waking up to the television news saying that your former residence is on fire.

2004-08-19T10:43:00.000-04:00

These are the people in your neighborhood. On My Way Into Work discusses the freak show between home and midtown.

2004-08-19T10:34:00.000-04:00

Women's beach volleyball: Olympics with a purpose.

2004-08-15T22:14:00.000-04:00

Did you know there's a Van Damme movie where he brawls in a mostly-drained pool? I've had TBS -- the home of Van Damme on cable -- nearly all my life, but had to flip past Telemundo to discover this gem, "Corazon de Leon," aka "Lionheart."

2004-08-15T19:21:00.000-04:00

Watching Oliver Beene, the sort-of more-funny version of The Wonder Years, when a brunette with bangs and arms crossed around a book in front of her chest passed by, and I thought, for a moment, "Winnie"!

2004-08-13T16:47:00.000-04:00

Some McGreevey jokes making the rounds:

TOP 10 McGreevey jokes...
10 nj state bird swallow
9 nj tpke renamed hershey highway
8 nj raises terror alert level to lavender
7 we know he didn't like bush, but this is ridiculous
6 now we know why mcgreevey enjoyed "polling" so much
5 what does mcgreevey and the isreali navy have in common?
jewish seaman.
4 nj dmv to now call rear end accidents, a mcgreevey
3 gives new meaning to stuffing the ballot box
2 post headline...mcgreevey goes down
1 shouldn't take mcgreevey long to get out of the governers
mansion, he's already got his schitt packed!

2004-08-10T21:08:00.000-04:00

Canonist's trial run starts moving.

2004-08-05T05:55:00.000-04:00

Something I'd long wondered about, but never bothered to get the actual figures on, was whether the claim that Congressmembers' children are under-represented in today's armed forces is a true one. It's claimed to be untrue here (via Instapundit.
I did a fair amount of research and number-crunching on a lot of the claims of anti-Iraq-war types, some of which was done regarding Charlie Rangel's NYT Op-Ed suggesting a reinstatement of the draft, which also questioned Congressmembers' willingness to send American troops to war in light of their perceived inability to grasp the true costs of war.
I don't have a digital copy of that research with me, and my hard-copy is elsewhere, but the research showed -- and feel free to try to duplicate this -- that if the votes on the Iraq war resolution are broken down by status as a veteran, and then as a veteran who's been in combat, members became more likely to vote for the war the further they are along on this costs-of-war-awareness spectrum, across party lines. Presumably, veterans are more aware of the costs of war than non-veterans, and combat veterans more so than veterans who did not experience combat. Yet, contra Rangel (and Moore), for both Republicans and Democrats, veterans voted in greater numbers for the war, and veterans with combat experience voted for the war in greater numbers than veterans who did not experience combat. There was only one category for which this proved not to be the case; if I recall correctly, Senate veteran Democrats voted for the war at a higher rate than Senate veteran Democrats with combat experience, the latter of which, if I recall correctly, voted for the war at a rate of 66%.

2004-07-24T23:40:00.000-04:00

There's a new pain reliever commercial that starts off with "Moving in on two hours' sleep? That's a headache."
And I'm all thinking: did they make a television commercial just for me? I mean, I did that just two days ago.
But then the ad concludes with two attractive ladies stopping by, and I realize this ad was so totally not tailored to me. Only two?

2004-07-23T19:27:00.000-04:00

So you're in your first day in your new apartment on the Lower East Side and you're thinking of checking out the Stanton Street Shul, 'cause you've heard it's fun. You do a Google search and you get a lot more than the address. Cool.

2004-07-19T20:26:00.000-04:00

So far as I know, the first Orthodox Jewish organization to act on Darfur will do so tomorrow:

12:15 p.m. -- Members of the Coalition for Jewish Concerns-Amcha, joined by African American clergy, protests ``mass murders'' in Sudan; Sudan Mission to the UN, 305 East 47th St.

If there have been other protests of Darfur by any groups in New York City, I don't recall them.

2004-07-16T18:56:00.000-04:00

I can confirm that I was indeed fired today, though the cause/effect is not quite as Luke seems to be implying. I don't know what I'm going to do, either in terms of blogging or in terms of writing for print publications. Thankfully, Shabbos is to start soon, and I'll have the day off anyway.
You'll know more when I know more.

2004-04-03T21:19:00.000-05:00

I've changed my AIM screen name slightly. Please IM me at "SHLEVE" (instead of "SHLEVE1"), as I may not have your screen name.

2004-04-01T02:23:00.000-05:00

Did Michael Moore Lie About Nader On Al Franken's First Day? In today's Air America Radio debut, featuring the first installment of "The O'Franken Factor," Al Franken's comedic approach to the news, Michael Moore was an in-studio guest and Al Gore was a call-in listener. When the two crossed beams, Franken and his co-host did a staged nudge to have Moore apologize for supporting Nader's blowing the 2000 election for Al Gore, but Moore beat around the bush too much.
To get something more explicit out of his guest, Franken said, "You made a mistake," a point that Moore refused to concede. Moore went on to say that Nader had promised his supporters, before the came on board, that he would not campaign in swing states, thus tossing the election to Bush. Moore continued, saying that he had personally made a trip to Florida in the two weeks prior to the election to convince voters there to vote for Gore, not Nader. If true, this assertion would be relatively big news, especially insofar as it would establish mainstream liberal credibility for Moore in the much-listened-to debut of a radio station ostensibly targeted to mainstream liberals.
This claim struck me as likely quite specious, given Moore's propensity for fabrication, as well as the fact that I didn't recall any such move and that this seemed just too opportune a time for him to suddenly reveal this story. A Nexis search seems to prove that extreme skepticism of Moore here is proper.
According to an October 26, 2000, story in Florida State's View by Jessica Van Smith, Moore did deliver a lecture at the school on October 23rd. The relevant paragraphs are:

"I'm considered in the mainstream. I belong to the majority party in this country, the non-voters," Moore said at a press conference before the 8 p.m. lecture. "Fifty-five percent will not vote in this election, and it is not because they're ignorant, stupid or apathetic. It's because they're sick and tired of the miserable choices we are given on this ballot in each of these elections. And I believe people planning to vote for Bush or Gore will admit out of 275 million people, if this is the best we can do, maybe we should be getting candidates from Canada or Mexico from NAFTA."
[...]
Moore spoke at length about the similarities between Bush and Gore and the lack of many differences between their ideologies. He compared the voting strategy of "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" to a tic-tac-toe game, trying to block Bush by voting for Gore. In the end, it forces the appointment of president from "the evil of two lessers."
"A vote for Nader is a vote for Nader and a vote for Bush is a vote for Bush," Moore said. He reprimanded older adults for asking young voters to settle for less and not to vote with their conscience, claiming this mentality leads to menial jobs, bad relationships and the inability to make a change.
[...]
"I think if you poll people on the issues that Ralph Nader stands for you would probably find the majority of people in agreement with him," Moore said. "The majority of people in this country believe that everybody in this country should have access to universal health care in some form or another. The majority of people in this country support a significant increase in the minimum wage. I would say the majority of people would support Ralph's plan to bring our troops home from Japan and Germany where they're no longer needed to defend those countries against a non-existent enemy. If you just took half the money we spend on having our troops in Europe and Japan, every college student in America at a public university would go tuition-free."

There are no other news reports available on Nexis that refer to any appearances by Moore in Florida in the two weeks prior to the election. It should be noted that some skepticism of Van Smith's report could be appropriate; it's obvious from the tone of her article that she leaned Nader-ward, and a Nexis search shows not a single other article authored by her.
It should be noted that Nader supporters did make some effort to scale back operations when it appeared that Bush was closing in on Gore in a state. For instance, according to an October 24, 2000 press release, Nader's celebrity supporters were to hold a conference call announcing the pulling of Nader advertisements in California following a poll that showed Bush at 39 percent, Gore at 44 percent, and Nader at 6 percent support in the state. Though even then, the group still hedged its position:

"Citizens for Strategic Voting is still encouraging Californians to vote for Nader," Greg MacArthur, the businessman paying for the ads said. "We just think we will get more bang for the buck in New York, where many more people can vote for Ralph Nader without fearing that Bush will win."

As the election drew yet closer, Moore even responded to Joe Lieberman's complaints of Nader's potential influence on the election. In an October 31, 2000, story in Wisconsin's Capital Times, Moore was quoted as follows:

Even as Nader continues to pursue his candidacy, Lieberman argues that the Green Party candidate's supporters should think again.
''Ralph's on a course, and he's got that right,'' Lieberman said.
''So my appeal is to the people thinking about voting for Nader to think about the issues, as I believe most of them do. If you're concerned about environmental and consumer protection, campaign finance, fairness in the tax system, right to choose, then I don't think you want to wake up on Nov. 8 and realize that by voting for Ralph Nader you helped elect George W. Bush.''
Award-winning film and television director Michael Moore, who has campaigned for Nader, contends that backers of the Green will reject appeals by Lieberman and others on the ''a-vote-for-Nader-is-a-vote-for-Gore'' bandwagon. ''I lot of these people are backing Nader so strongly because Joe Lieberman is on the ticket. They don't like his record in Connecticut -- the same way they don't like Gore's record of selling out to the special interests.''

Of course, while Moore was claiming that when the election seemed close, he sought to campaign in swing states, obviously when he campaigned in a place like Washington, D.C., he was hoping to raise national turnout for Nader. At a rally there days before the election, the Associated Press reported the following:

Filmmaker Michael Moore said it hurt as a friend of Nader's to hear the assaults against him "from people we thought were our allies." He challenged the crowd to name any legislation by either Gore or Bush that "made this country a better place to live in."
Because of Nader, he pointed out, the nation has federal laws to improve the air, water and environment, not to mention seat belts and many other auto safety features.
"That is what we have from Ralph Nader, and we owe him," he said.

Another AP story reported on the event:

Filmmaker Michael Moore challenged the crowd to name any legislation by either Gore or Bush that "made this country a better place to live in."

The Washington Post reported:

Filmmaker Michael Moore, a warm-up speaker for Nader, took on the Spoiler charge directly, addressing Gore: "If you don't win on Tuesday, it won't be because of Ralph Nader. It will be because of you."

Moreso, Moore made a numer of public and media appearances in the immediate aftermath of the election, at none of which did he present the version of events that he claimed during Franken's show.
According to a November 10, 2000, report in New York University's newspaper, The Washington Square News, Moore gave a speech at the school the night before about the campaign, beginning with the declaration, "Welcome to the burning at the stake of Michael Moore." The report contains no mention of a narrative at all akin to that present by Moore during Franken's show.
Of course, even if Moore was telling the truth -- doubtful as that now seems -- his claim is essentially that he agreed to support Nader in his mission and then felt duped when Nader took the mission in directions Moore hadn't expected. That's basically precisely the claim that John Kerry takes with regard to his vote for the authorization of the Iraq war. Cute.

2004-01-19T17:14:00.000-05:00

Funny pic covering TNR's story on John Edwards:

Note the banner up top, reading "His time is now." Usually such descriptions are given to people who've had lots of time to try the job, and are now truly worthy of it. See the NYState gubernatorial chant in '02, "It's time, it's time, it's time for Carl McCall."
This could be meant to combat the idea that Edwards could run at some time in the future; either way, it's an odd choice.

2004-01-11T01:19:00.000-05:00

Everyone's all upin arms about Paul O'Neill's revelation that Bush wanted to take out Iraq as early as early 2001. Except it's not a revelation, just a restatement of what we already know from David Frum's book, as pointed out by Mickey Kaus. He quotes Frum's recounting of a February, 2001 meeting thusly:

I certainly was not cool, but I manged to scratch some notes to keep my memory fresh. As I reread them now, I am startled at how much of what would happen over the next year is prefigured there: Bush's optimisim about Russia and Vladimir Putin, his wariness of China, his focus on the danger presented by Iran, his determination to dig Saddam Hussein out of power in Iraq, ....

2003-12-31T17:59:00.000-05:00

Dana Milbank, picking on teenagers:

The student told the Monitor that he did not mean to make a political statement with the shirt, which features the likeness of "Psycho Chihuahua," a talking Mexican dog whose appearance in Taco Bell commercials is the subject of recent litigation. "I completely forgot that he" -- Kerry, not the Chihuahua -- "was coming," LaGuardia, 17, told the Monitor. "I asked, 'Do I have time to ride home to change?' But I didn't."
One finds this explanation suspect; LaGuardia admitted that he is a Republican. Either way, giddy rival campaigns see a metaphor.

Y'mean, Milbank, "finds this explanation suspect"? Either try to verify his claim ("Who'd he ask?" Would be a good place to start), or give it up. Goodness.

2003-12-17T13:18:00.000-05:00

My first published photography, kinda sorta.

2003-12-15T18:47:00.000-05:00

Governor Dork:

6 p.m. -- Gov. George Pataki attends ``Lord of the Rings'' premiere

2003-12-08T09:48:00.000-05:00

My first piece to be not just paid for, but actually published, by NYMag is up here. It doesn't appear to have my name on it, though...I hope that doesn't mean they'll forget to send the check.

2003-12-04T14:04:00.000-05:00

NYPost front page, second graf:

The return to the moon would be for the purpose of technological advancements in technology, including energy exploration and testing a military rocket engine.

2003-11-08T18:03:00.000-05:00

Whoa! Right now on C-Span2's BookTV, Sidney Blumenthal is finishing a speech and welcoming questions. Just barely caught on the mike is the event's organizer telling Blumenthal that she'd rather he not answer questions because outside is "A wild crowd," and Blumenthal nods, then she goes, "it's a Spanish crowd." Blumenthal just nods & starts taking questions.

2003-11-06T23:16:00.000-05:00

On Food Network just now, a Motts spokesperson described one of the pluses of juice boxes as that "they're easy for children to operate."
Operate?

2003-11-06T15:06:00.000-05:00

Word around City Hall today is that Gifford Miller's communications director, Chris Policano, is quitting his position to go to the Phoenix House. Obvious rejoinder: is he going as an employee or a client?
It's really puzzling why someone so loyal to Miller would seem to jump ship just as his mayoral campaign is ready to get going. Which leaves three possibilities: a) there's been a major break among Gifford supporters, b) Policano's been told he's no longer the man, c) he's going elsewhere to make more money so he'll be able to live off of a campaign salary for when it's necessary.
A & B are solid stories, but C would likely be quite the scandal.

2003-11-06T15:02:00.000-05:00

New Yorker no refuge for Kantians. Elizabeth Spiers reports on the FourSquare conference, where Ken Auletta held up a copy of the controversial Us issue . Thing is, if one's so against that cover, one shouldn't be waving it around, or even looking at it, and certainly not purchasing it. Ken Auletta is not today's winner of the Categorical Imperative Award.

2003-11-06T09:56:00.000-05:00

Strange election system in Cambridge discussed in this article.

2003-11-05T16:22:00.000-05:00

Elizabeth Spiers, old-person-o-phile. What gives with the anti-under-32 rhetoric? Must be that, into the tail end of her twenties, she's resigned herself to her permanent status as a member of the slowly wilting, wrapping up the tail-end of Gen-X in a warm blanket of aging.
Could be that having joined the institutionally-hegemonic, corporate nature of a full-time gig at a print publication, she just feels old.

2003-11-05T09:31:00.000-05:00

U.S. celebrities' Japanes advertisements.

2003-11-04T16:15:00.000-05:00

This person is deciding the future of our country.

2003-11-04T11:52:00.000-05:00

Mickey Kaus writes of LAT reporter Mark Z. Barabak, "Face it. Would Barabak have gotten where he is without the "Z"? I don't think so!" In all truth, my "I." has really taken me places.

2003-11-04T11:17:00.000-05:00

Gregg Easterbrook trips over himself, in critiquing the Bush administration at the end of a post on the Chinook helicopter crash.

With each additional United States casualty, the question becomes louder: Why are we in Iraq? If the reason really, truly was that we really, truly believed Saddam Hussein possessed banned weapons, then our assault on Iraq was justified, but now we must leave immediately, as no banned weapons have been found. Arguing "we're there by mistake, but are obliged to pile more mistakes atop the original mistake"--even France has recently said as much!--makes no sense.
Either the Bush aministration must admit that it was wrong about weapons of mass destruction and articulate different--possibly valid--reasons for the occupation of Iraq, or we must leave immediately.

Thing is, the reason for occupation was always articulated as different from the reason for invasion...so the administration has "articulate[d] different--possibly valid--reasons for the occupation of Iraq."
Easterbrook makes a Vietnam comparison with the hed to the post:

LBJ, BEAR IN MIND, LET THOUSANDS OF AMERICAN SOLDIERS DIE IN ORDER TO POSTPONE ADMITTING A MISTAKE

In the sense that both LBJ and Bush apparently overstated the danger to the US and neighboring countries of Ho Chi Min and Saddam Hussein, respectively, Easterbrook has something of a valid point...but it falls apart again when one realizes the difference between invasion and occupation.

2003-09-30T18:43:00.000-04:00

I had a conversation with someone recently in which I argued that we shouldn't view India as a democracy. Here's one more reason why not.

2003-07-31T10:21:00.000-04:00

Since the published version of Witness Iraq is very different from what I put together, I've posted my version here. Basically, the assignment was to come up with a cool way of narrating the war and have it fit in nine pages for the book.

2003-07-30T15:23:00.000-04:00

Burt Egel is reviewing Witness Iraq for the Joe Bob Report. I guess it'll be up soon; I'll link to it when it is.

2003-07-30T14:31:00.000-04:00

Tom DeLay's speech before the Israeli Knesset today. (via GedankenPundit) Question: Who is "My traveling partner, Ander Crenshaw"?
He uses an interesting phraseology that I hadn't seen before, "Israel's liberation from Palestinian terror is an essential component of that victory." That's probably pretty effective.
Overall, his speech is mostly about sympathy for terrorists' victims, etc. He starts early by citing Bush and you really have to search for tidbits like this:

An immediate and total end to Palestinian terrorism is not a concession the civilized world asks of the Palestinian Authority to advance the peace process.
It is a prerequisite to the Palestinian Authority's invitation to it.

Then there's this:

This war we fight — this war on terror the United States shares with free nations, like Israel, around the world — we fight for this reason: to establish and secure a community of nations safe to be free, and free to be prosperous.
It's the same reason we fought Nazism, fascism, and Communism: the liberation of all mankind from oppression.
Terrorism, like its tyrannical forebears, is borne of the idea that with enough guns, enough fear, and enough violence, human power can control the human spirit.
That through brute force, powerful men can erase the imprint of the Almighty etched into the souls of all His children.
That through domination of the weak, in the words of the serpent, "Ye shall be as gods."
Ladies and gentlemen, IT IS A LIE.
It was a lie at Auschwitz. It was a lie in the Gulag.
It was a lie behind the Iron Curtain. It was a lie in Kabul and Baghdad. And today, it remains a lie in Beijing, and Havana, and Tehran, and Pyongyang, and Damascus and Ramallah!
But history has taught us, The Lie's grip on civilization is only as tight as civilization permits.

So...Israel's living through another Holocaust, another Auschwitz. Add to it Palestinian sympathizers' statements re: the Holocaust, and you have something that reminds me of an exchange between Kumah's Yishai Fleisher and Tikkun's Michael Lerner in which they basically started fingerpointing, going "You're Hitler," then "No, you're Hitler," then "No..." you get the point.

2003-07-28T19:57:00.000-04:00

Gawker on the "Media at War" Conference

There were a number of students in attendance; the more vocal of whom appeared to be anti-war and not very happy with media coverage. I'm told that before I got there, CNN's Bill Hemmer was questioned by a scruffy young man in a hat who demanded an explanation that Hemmer didn't want to give. Hemmer used his trump card: some variation of 'Young man, how old are you?' The 'young man' responded, 'thirty-seven.' Hemmer stammered, 'Um...so am I!'

Having been there when it happened, I recall the exchange being somewhat different, and I sent Elizabeth this e-mail:

Elizabeth -
The exchange went like this. Hatted guy (who was one of the ones clapping fiercely at every semi-anti-war statement and generally made an ass of himself) started asking a question about how he's got this friend down in Atlanta that does graphics for CNN and how they were trying to come up with the "sexiest" graphics for the war coverage, and why they would show those graphics instead of "dead bodies." (Forgetting for the moment, apparently, that those graphics were used to surround images, not replace them).
The guy was obviously not young. Hemmer goes, "how old are you?" The guy says "thirty-seven," and Hemmer goes, "Well, I'm 38," and then proceeded to explain how they were _both_ too young to recall the kind of skepticism that pervaded coverage of the Vietnam War, and that what we were now discovering about Bush's statements before the war and not finding in Iraq is changing his generation's perspective, which is now going to change the coverage. It was actually a pretty humbling statement on his part -- and it should be said that, throughout, he was a pretty straightforward and humbling fellow. When Garey Younge of the Guardian noted the problem of TV coverage using the word "we," Hemmer responded later that he'd made a strong effort to keep the word off of CNN and that he didn't think it'd been used; so someone from the audience later shot back that "we" might not have been used, but "heroes" was, and Hemmer responded "Guilty as charged," admitting that it was a problem.
As probably the youngest person at the event, other than some kids in a family that walked in at the end, I did notice a sort of age-ist feel in the room -- but it didn't come from Hemmer.

keep it good,
Steven I. Weiss

2003-07-28T00:56:00.000-04:00

A friend sent out a recent Economist article by e-mail; entitled "Right Young Things," it's yet another attempt to portray America's youth as swaying to the right. The major assertions, predictably, don't stand up to scrutiny.

George Bush's presidency is producing a tremor similar to the Reagan youthquake of the 1980s. The College Republicans have tripled their membership in the past three years, increasing their chapters from 409 to 1,148 and recruiting 22,000 new members in 2002 alone. They now have more than 100,000 members, many in the most unlikely places.

But as the article reveals towards the bottom, the College Republicans' budget has been increased more than five-fold as part of a huge recruitment effort, which makes their growth in membership seem to have come short of financially-based expectations. It is also worth noting that the College Republicans has always been a primary focal point for student activism of that sort, while the most famous liberal student organizations have never included the College Democrats among their rank. Nonetheless, College Democrats chapters doubled in 2002 alone. In general, the growth in size of these groups -- to whatever degree that's relevant -- can be largely attributed to the continually increasing number of college freshman, with Gen Y producing a new record every year.

At the University of California at Berkeley, there are now 500 Young Republicans and a conservative newspaper, the California Patriot. At a recent convention of Californian Young Republicans in Berkeley (entitled “behind enemy lines”), several hundred enthusiasts marked the 34th anniversary of the People's Park riots by descending on the park to mount a noisy display of patriotism (awakening the local homeless from their mid-day naps in the process). They waved flags, chanted “USA” and sang the “Star-Spangled Banner”. “Like the marines rolled into Baghdad a few weeks ago to liberate the city, we rolled into Berkeley ready for a fight,” as one put it.All this coincides with a general rightward shift in young people's views.

500 students attending activities and writing for a newspaper funded in large part by a national organization is simply not a great effort; as to the closing sentence, you'll see that it lacks justification.

Bob Dole lost the 18-29-year-old vote by 19 percentage points; Mr Bush lost by two points. Students have been sceptical about bossy governments for years. Now they are increasingly sceptical about the “Ab Fab” values of the 1960s generation—particularly in regard to casual sex and abortion—and increasingly enthusiastic about America's use of military might. A poll by Harvard University's Institute of Politics in April found that three-quarters of students trusted the armed forces “to do the right thing” either all or most of the time. In 1975 the figure was about 20%. Another poll, by the University of California at Los Angeles, found that 45% of freshmen supported an increase in military spending, more than double the figure in 1992.

By tracking these statistics against their nadirs, the author is seemingly trying to fool readers -- but anyone should be able to recognize what was going on in 1975 and that 1992 came immediately after the Cold War and when the first Gulf War ended in 11 days; by projecting today's figures against the peak of anti-military sentiment and the year in which peace prospects looked better than they ever had, a lot more drama is produced. The UCLA support for military spending was 17.7% in 1992, but 37.3% in 1982 -- basically, when it looks like there's a war on, somewhat less than half of the students can be expected to support military spending. As to trusting the miltary to "do the right thing" -- no one who came of age in the Clinton years has any reason to think otherwise. But what's even more deceptive about citing these studies is what the reporter is hiding about them. For instance, the IOP study shows little change in party affiliation since 2000 (Q. 5), a decrease since May in President Bush's job approval (Q. 8), a huge 15% dropoff in Bush's re-elect rating (Q. 9), a 15% increase in the number who've attended political demonstrations in the past nine months (Q. 20), and a 21% drop during the same period in the number who rank "Iraq/National Security" as their number-one issue -- with an 11% increase for economy (Q. 29), plus a 25% shift since April in support for the Iraq war (Q. 30), with a general lack of confidence in Bush's domestic and foreign policies indicated throughout.
The results of the UCLA study are no more charitable, with the highest number of students referring to themselves as liberal or far left since 1975.
But what is most incorrect -- and most insulting, really -- about this article is the assumption it brings to the table regarding left/right issues. The idea that trusting kids their same age to not be evil in the military is "conservative" or "of the right" degrades the real ability of these students to differentiate between people who do their jobs for good reasons and those who don't. Or that military spending needs to be increased when a war is happening -- as though it's the position of those on the left to be suicidal. When it comes to issues that are, and have been, the hallmark of the Left -- breaking down antiquated social institutions to better serve all people as equals -- these students are right there. Just because the elder Democratic leadership is impotent doesn't mean its successors have to be.

2003-07-26T22:25:00.000-04:00

Where are the fact-checkers here? James Ridgeway, on Bush's potential impeachment:

During the buildup to the invasion of Iraq, Congress made no effort to investigate and showed little interest in obtaining independent information; instead, it meekly endorsed the resolution to go to war. If there are high crimes and misdemeanors involved, Congress is complicit in them.

Ummm...not according to any standard of law I've heard of.

2003-07-25T11:42:00.000-04:00

For the summary of the NYMag/Guardian/New School "Media at War" event, see Jarvis' posts here, here, here, here and here.
There's a hilarious episode I missed that Nick Denton has here.
What I have will just add nuance or whatever to what Jarvis already has; his notes are far more detailed, as I was, in theory, trying to finish my Rushkoff piece.
Jarvis quotes the New School flack who opened the event:

: The session starts with an agenda-dripping intro from a provost of the New School: "I have never been more concern and indeed angry about where the republic is headed today." That set the course.

My notes have, and this is how I recall it, "Where the Republicans are headed today." I could be wrong. Irrespective, it was a weird -- really, really weird -- way for someone to open a conference on how the media dealt with the war. How should the media deal with this guy? What was more disturbing to me was the smattering of applause for the comment -- who applauds such obnoxious stupidity?
It's not clear in my notes whether it was the flack or Caroline Miller, NYM's E-i-C, who then noted that Bush is being hurt "by the widening credibility gap" and that "President Bush appears vulnerable for the first time since 9/11." As though all this time, journalists should have been chiseling away, hoping to finally etch the final chapter in Bush the Younger's history.
Michael Wolff -- for whom the conference was staged, and staged well by Serena Torrey (formerly of the NYSDems and the McCall campaign) -- got into his main thesis early, asking if (but really suggesting that) "the war was staged on our behalf". None of the journalists bit on this one. Later in the conference, Wolff had a restatement of this thesis, "we don’t have that old-fashioned role of just reporting the facts, we are part of the war machine now." You kind of get the sense, though, that Wolff isn't the kind of guy who wants just the facts reported. His main contention throughout, I'd say, was with journalists who let themselves get shoved around, and he's right. Thing is, to add some context, US journalists weren't the only ones who got shoved around, and it wasn't only the Bush administration and its allies that did the shoving. Eason Jordan's Op-Ed hung in the air throughout for me, and I was waiting for it to come up. When it didn't, I raised my hand at the last panel and Eric Alterman took the mic instead.
I was troubled when, in the first panel, Hafez Al-Mirazi claimed that Paul Wolfowitz is "a man as powerful as Uday or Qusay" were under their father. Wolfowitz was a deputy, and Saddam's sons were, well, his sons. They were like Twin Cheneys, really. Is there really any rational belief behind the idea that Wolfowitz is that powerful? This seemed like perpetuation of the anti-Wolfowitz-but-really-anti-Semitic meme. One bit of context that was cute that Al-Mirazi added was that apparently the average Arab viewer used to think of Al Jazeera as "The secret Israeli/CIA network," because it broadcast Israeli and American politicians, to give balance to its reporting. Nifty.
Supreme Jackass of the Conference Award goes to Rick MacArthur of Harper's, who probably left there thinking of himself just as highly as when he came in, but what a loser. He immediately launched into this idea of how the French press was so much better, blah blah blah. Mike Elliott of Time said he reads the same French papers and didn't see all that much difference. Then Elliott mentioned the real heart of the matter -- that Chirac himself maintained that the WMDs were there; it isn't that some people got taken for a ride, it's that every intelligence agency in the world thought that Saddam had chem/bio -- consequently, there wasn't a newspaper in the world that could contradict, and none really did. MacArthur repeatedly cited Judith Miller's reporting as evidence of the crap we were being fed; sure, Miller's reporting sucked, but she's just one reporter at one paper. MacArthur ran Picasso's Guernica on his cover -- does he think that's supposed to be a serious statement about war? I read Lewis Lapham leading up to the war, and it was crap. MacArthur also complained that there wasn't enough reporting leading up to the Congressional resolution, but I remember plenty. He wasn't satisfied with the reporting on Ed Kennedy's and Robert Byrd's anti-war stances -- only by being willfully blind can one cite those two senators as the leading voices of a mass movement. Tom Daschle didn't speak out against the war -- that would have been news. Throughout his whole tirade about the foreign newspapers and foreign opinion, I kept recalling this Jarvis post about Germans thinking America was complicit in 9/11. No stats of this kind were brought up at the conference, but one other was -- that a large number of Americans think Iraq was involved in 9/11; thing is, thinking the former is pretty damned crazy, while thinking the latter makes sense even if it's not true, especially as more evidence is uncovered in Iraq indicating some form of cooperation between Saddam and certain terrorist groups, probably including Al Qaeda. A guy like MacArthur reminds me a lot of Sydney Schanberg; these old guys hate the Bush administration for lying, but they're also too afraid of the truth to honestly deal with it. Sure, the media should catch Bush in his lies, but they should also put forward a message of what is really going on -- something MacArthur and those guys don't seem interested in. Poignant matter: Later on, Mark Whitaker of Newsweek said "We knew this intelligence was flimsy before the war," and, "I think most people understood that we were going to war because the Bush administration wanted us to go to war," not because of a nuclear threat or what have you -- thing is, he's right about some people being aware of the truth, but certainly not most Americans. Odd bias was belied by many at the event -- take the Guardian's Suzanne Goldenberg, who said that John Wilson was sent to check into the uranium documents "by the insistence of Dick Cheney," something I'm pretty sure no one has proved yet. Oh, and there was the BBC story about Jessica Lynch, wherein panelists tried to defend the reporting, but Eric Umansky of Slate spoke up from the audience.
And so did Jonathan Foreman, an embed with the New York Post, who was fantastic. At one point on the panel, he criticized some war reporters for not knowing the basics of war. He said some were, "ludicrously ignorant," describing a single bomb as carpet bombing or heavy bombardment. Another stupid-lefty moment came soon after, when ABC reporter John Donvan just mentioned in passing (when asked whether he'd like to do war reporting again) "I have very small children and I want there to be peace in the world," followed by perhaps the most uproarious applause of the entire conference.
The Guardian's Alan Rusbridger keynoted the conference, and I'll point out three key quotes: In reference to the big fake stories propagated by government about the war, "None of those glaringly wrong or manipulative stories came out of Baghdad"; Re: Brits' apprehension about the war, "It would have been extraordinary to have a national press which didn’t reflect that unease"; Re: the inspectors, (this one's a paraphrase) "When the Bush administration shut down UNMOVIC, it was an attack on journalists, it was an affront to independent institutions."
Overall, the event accomplished its main goal, which was to have the media world pay homage to Michael Wolff. It was cool to see all these people basically worshipping him. Cooler yet, though, was meeting all these people I'd only corresponded with. Like, I couldn't really tell from the picture, but: Nick Denton tall, Elizabeth Spiers small. Jeff Jarvis, tall too. Simon Dumenco very reminiscent of Benji Joffe -- he had a great comment about watching Elizabeth watching Jeff watching Alterman. Joanna Coles looks American. Serena Torrey -- peppy.
It was weird being the young kid there, but I think I made out alright.

2003-07-09T12:27:00.000-04:00

My fellow intern at the Voice, Solana Pyne, on anti-Arab discrimination post-9/11.

2003-07-01T14:26:00.000-04:00

The book I worked on is hitting stores July 4th:

It's of particular interest to the blogging world, as the nine pages of quote-based-narrative I put together consists primarily of quotes from bloggers.
I haven't seen the finished version yet, so there might've been some edits of which I'm unaware, but I'll put up a list of the bloggers quoted later.
I can send a copy of the version that I handed in to anyone who's interested, unless the list gets long (I won't post it, 'cause that might get me in trouble).
As far as I know, it's the first book to deal with blogging in this way.

2003-06-24T16:58:00.000-04:00

Timothy Noah is a guy who can make you laugh from time to time. But this is the hardest I've laughed at anything recently:

Presumably by accident, somebody left a live prototype of President Bush's 2004 campaign site on the Web for a few hours today. (It's locked up behind a password now, so all links in this item are to snapshots Slate took earlier.) At least Chatterbox thinks it was a live prototype. An editorial by former Justice Department spokesperson Mindy Tucker is headlined, "Placeholder for Mindy's Editorial," with the intriguing subhead, "Mindy's editorial on women." The editorial itself reads like radical feminist poetry:

This is the body this is the body this is the body this is the body this is the body this si th body asdf asdf sdf asdfsadf sadfsdfsdfsadf

2003-06-24T11:53:00.000-04:00

I finally got around to reading Saletan's take on Edwards' big speech. And it most certainly is a big speech. As Saletan notes, "In a nutshell, Edwards is trying to turn the traditional politics of left and right upside down." And that's precisely what is necessary and right.

2003-06-23T22:37:00.000-04:00

Dick Gephardt's campaign for president is over. Not in the sense that he's quit yet, but in the sense that he's said something which will keep him from ever getting elected, any time. Instapundit has the details, and quotes Gephardt:

When I'm president, we'll do executive orders to overcome any wrong thing the Supreme Court does tomorrow or any other day.

The only way a guy could overcome that to become president would be if his opposition were DOA in an even worse way...it's hard to imagine how that could ever be.
When you check out the video (at about 45:40) and read the article, it becomes plainly obvious that he's only talking about cases of affirmative action, but that only narrows the area in which he's proven he is currently totally incapable of serving as president. I never thought the guy had a chance; now it seems almost a matter of fact that he doesn't.
He says he's agreeing with Dennis Kucinich, but Kucinich's answer says he'd pass executive orders to "enshrine" affirmative action; I don't know what that means, if it's meant to be the same as what Gephardt said, but it doesn't sound as though it has to be interpreted as being as stupid as what Gephardt said.
It's a pity nobody else answered the question, so as to separate the wheat from the chaff with this statement.