"We Are America. We Don't Fucking Torture."

Do we have to pay some kind of ransom to get this guy out of there?

Steven R. Hurst Needs A Factchecker

Oh, wait, he is the factchecker. Uh-Oh.
In the midst of a remarkably silly and wrongheaded "analysis" piece concerning the Somali Pirates, the AP's Hurst drops in this little gem of misinformation:

Short of flooding the waters with fighting ships, the only course of attack would seem to be special operations assaults on the ground in Somalia. But Obama is sure to remember the outcome—Black Hawk Down—when the last young Democratic president, Hillary Clinton's husband, Bill, sent U.S. forces ashore in that lawless land.

The current situation has absolutely nothing in common with the Battle of Mogadishu and "flooding the waters" (Cool metaphor, huh? Weak reasoning gains so much from lazy writing) with "fighting ships" (Ar!) is actually a pretty good idea.... as Hillary pointed out yesterday. In fact, it is such a good idea that every nation that has ever encountered a piracy problem or, for that matter, a U-boat problem has done exactly that.

But beyond all that, President Clinton did not send U.S. forces ashore in Somalia. Our forces went into Somalia in December,1992. Bill Clinton did not assume Presidential authority until January 20th, 1993. A lot of us non-interventionist types believed at the time that it was a pretty thoughtful poison-pill parting gift for president Bush to leave office with.

Checking this "detail" would have taken five minutes, minutes Hurst apparently didn't have. So when the newspapers finally shut their doors just remember that they didn't always produce a lot of value in the first place.

Snark Done Properly

Imagine Ed Henry. Now imagine him at Jack In The Box. Repeat as necessary.

Thank Heaven For Bullshit....

.....without it what would little boys do?

"Cities Deal With Surge In Shantytowns" shrieks the NY Times headline.

Guess they don't get out that much on the Upper West Side these days, or wherever Times reporters live until they lose their jobs. Tulsa, of course, has had a, um, thriving "Tent City" for about 15 years now, and we ain't even ground zero. That's some timely journalism there, boys.

Hey! Just wondering....what's that Macarena thing all about?

Marty Peretz: Sometimes It Takes A Shill

There is little to say about the public flogging of Jim Cramer at the capable hands of Jon Stewart that has not been said already. But Marty Peretz's defense of Cramer represents such a perfect apex of hackery that it merits some notice. I guess if you have spent a few years as the lapdog for Likud, shilling for a buddy and former business partner presents no problem at all....particularly if, like Perez, you long ago lost any claim to journalistic credibility you may ever have possessed.

The short version of Peretz's defense is that, though Jim Fallows and Edward R. Murrow are over-rated, self-righteous cockatoos, Jim Cramer is an under-appreciated egalitarian journeyman tilling away in the vineyards of the Lord. Cramer is merely getting the rough treatment because he is one of us little guys, tooling up to the CNBC parking lot in his two year old KIA with it's dented fender while Jon Stewart is presumably sipping champagne with Axl Rose and getting BJs from his Filipino houseboy.

Lastly, and most ludicrously, Peretz claims that the stratospheric ratings for the Cramer episode of The Daily Show are simply because Jim Cramer has an Elvis-like ability to pack in a crowd. This is so deluded that....well, if he actually believes this, maybe we've finally found a buyer for those GM shares.

I hope that this doesn't end Cramer's career. It probably won't because this is America and, with notable exceptions like O.J. Simpson and Bernie Madoff, we don't do public tragedy that much. It can't help though because Cramer did the one thing Americans really won't put up with. He came out looking small.

John Derbyshire - A Neo-Rockefeller?

Here's a very entertaining article by right-wing curmudgeon John Derbyshire, "How Radio Wrecks The Right" in which he outlines the manifold ways in which the Dittoheads contribute to the petrification of the GOP.

He's right, of course, but fortunately the process of ossification is too far advanced for his counsel to be heard. This is probably why the article is published in The American Conservative, the Warsaw Ghetto/leper colony of conservative magazines. Even so, one of the lunatics at Free Republic went so far as to describe Derbyshire as a "neo-Rockefeller" type, which is a hoot. For those who haven't read him , the man is not merely right-wing but Screaming Monster Loony right-wing. Still not quite crazy enough for the Alan Keyes grokking brown-shirts that seem to constitute an amazingly large proportion in what's left of the Party,though.

Anthony Bourdain - A Foodie After My Own Heart

He digs MSG.

Wall Street Journal Blows It On Net Neutrality

The WSJ story annoyed me so much that I broke a cardinal rule and vented about it on C-Span's Washington Journal (humiliating, I know). Lessig has been spluttering about it for two days now, which is understandable as he was quoted as one of the "sources" for the article. Fred Benenson wraps up the problem with the article pretty tersely:

WSJ’s technology writers are either vastly under-skilled for such reporting or are interested in remaining ignorant of the real issues.
Edge caching does not violate network neutrality in the same way the telecommunications companies are interested in violating network neutrality. More specifically, Google’s movements to place caches at ISP level is not as controversial as the WSJ would like it to be. Despite having many opportunities to get the story right, the WSJ has repeatedly ignored the technological subtlety of the details and has misquoted others who were trying to set it straight.

Stupidity Watch

Apparantly constitutionally incapable of recommending an affordable item, The NY Times useless style writers recommend a Timex "J. Crew" watch for the low,low price of $150.00.
Guys, it's a fucking Timex. While I am impressed that the Times was able to find a Timex watch that costs that much, it does seem a little out of step with our economic moment. Try the army surplus for a better watch and save a hundred clams.

Otto The Anchorman

This is good ol' Otto the autopilot. We celebrate Otto today because I think he would make a fairly decent anchor for our evening news.
We may need Otto because, as it turns out, the local evening news anchor is an endangered species....at least in terms of holding down their six figure salaries. Oh, the humanity. Funniest quote from the story:

When the anchors depart, they take decades of experience and insight with them. “Basically, you replace someone who knows City Hall with someone who can’t find it,” said John Beard, who lost his job at KTTV last December after 26 years as a news anchor in Los Angeles.

Stop it, you're killing me. Man, that is a really good one. First, it asks you to remember the last time you saw a City Hall story. Then it invites you to ask when the last time was that you saw a City Hall story that appeared prior to the boys downtown being ready for you to see it. Most local TV reporters have their hands full covering a pot hole, never mind the talking head anchors. Once we get used to Otto we won't miss these guys at all. Otto even has the same empty, fatuous, reassuring smile

Joan Walsh Humiliates Christopher Hitchens

This entire Hardball segment was well worth watching in order to relish the sight of Walsh handling Hitchens's arguments with the sneering contempt that they deserve. I have always wondered why more folks don't apply the treatment to this absurd little man. I half-suspect that many of them are intimidated by the poxy British accent and by his ostentatious, often irrelevant, literary references. Walsh actually gets many better licks in than the link above indicates.
Joan Walsh as been a pretty biased Clinton booster for quite a time, and Hitchens is correct to say that Clinton's qualifications for State are pretty thin. Nonetheless, his constant attacks on Hillary are so ad hominem and so reflexive that they really deserve to be called out as the shrill hysteria the Clintons so often provoke. Buffoons like Hitchens are actually something in the way of a secret weapon for the Clinton team, as their attacks are so over the top and unhinged that they make the pair seem more reasoanable. Had the Clinton foes not attempted to torpedo them, the so-called "Progressive" wing of the Democratic party would have emasculated President Clinton far more effectively than the haters ever could.

A Prayer For The Prince Of Darkness

He has had me screaming, red-faced with rage. But, here at the end, I feel I should acknowledge as Timothy Crouse did long ago that he is one of the very greatest reporters. He has often been terribly wrong but he was sometimes bracingly right. When he finally shuffles off he will be greatly missed.

Less Supine Media

Not exactly a news flash, but an interesting article anyway. In Tulsa, the daily paper is far too cheap to allocate the resources for any decent coverage of local affairs and is hopelessly compromised by it's way-too-cozy relationship with the realty and construction interests that call the shots downtown. Local television, by it's nature, does not do this kind of coverage well, though I think some of the reporters might try if the stations devoted more than 2 seconds to City Hall stories. The only time that they wake up is when some festering injustice finally comes to a head and bursts, as happened with the recent White City boondoggle.

As I have mentioned before, Michael Bates does some actual shoe-leather style reporting on this kind of thing and gets the satisfaction of having the Tulsa World studiously ignore him. Unfortunately, Bates is only one guy and has a life outside of Batesline and the Urban Tulsa. The rest of the blogging community is mostly stuck at snarky comments and even those usually come too late to affect the outcome. It would be nice if Tulsa had a decently funded alternative to the World....one with a little bit more of an adversarial relationship to the boys and girls around the Mayor's office.

Obama Does Not Support The Fairness Doctrine

Charles Krauthammer, whose reputation as a knee-jerk dolt would be unrivaled were it not for the continued vitality of Robert Kagan, furnishes all good Americans with another characteristically over the top screed titled "Further Left than LBJ", in which he asserts that Obama is, well, further left than LBJ. Of course, they said the same thing about Clinton. And Dukakis. In fact, they used to say the same thing about McCain (and after hearing his mortgage proposal, I think they may have a point). I wonder why McGovern gets so little respect? Used to be he was the high water mark for Democratic Leftiness.

Anyway, I'm just not really in the mood to do a Full Fathom Five Fisking of Krauthammer's many unfounded claims and exaggerations. But one did leap out at me - the notion that the election of Barack Obama will mean a return to the "Fairness Doctrine". Now, the so-called Fairness Doctrine truly is an odious concept, and I would be very disappointed to see any former lecturer in Constitutional Law support it. So does Obama? In a word, no.

Sen. Obama does not support reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters," press secretary Michael Ortiz said in an e-mail to B&C late Wednesday.

"He considers this debate to be a distraction from the conversation we should be having about opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible," Ortiz added. "That is why Sen. Obama supports media-ownership caps, network neutrality, public broadcasting, as well as increasing minority ownership of broadcasting and print outlets."

Thus Obama supports many other measures, all of which are debatable on their own merits. However, they lack a certain soundbite quality. Nonetheless Krauthammer, never one to feel overly hemmed in by the facts, simply makes up a policy position and ascribes it to Obama. Hey, it's worth a try.

Krauthammer. A delightful name for a delightful man. Sounds rather like a guest at one of Jay Gatsby's parties, doesn't it?

P.S. Jesse Walker has a pretty even-handed treatment of this topic.

Megyn Kelly Commits Journalism

What has gotten into everybody? Nobody watches cable news to get informed....We watch it to see vapid but delectable hardbodies babble inanities. So I'm quite disappointed to note that some of these hotties actually know how to do their job, though fortunately they don't demonstrate it all the time. Is this just a regrettable fad, like Lindsey Lohan becoming a lesbian? First, Campbell Brown reduced Tucker Bounds to a whimpering, quivering blob of jelly, now Megyn Kelly - Fox News! - shows that she can do the same trick. Damn, folks, if I wanted the truth I would be watching C-Span.

Whatever they are paying Tucker Bounds isn't enough (by the way, doesn't he look a bit like Anthony Perkins in Psycho?). A little more treatment like this and he'll be one of those guys paying hot dominatrixs to degrade him. I wonder if that's how Dick Morris got into the toe-sucking thing.

Man, I Hate Schools Like That.

I was just re-reading Gary Brecher's great article "Victor Davis Hanson: Portrait Of A Traitor" (more on that shortly) when I encountered his description of UC Santa Cruz:

Hanson graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 1975. I don't know if you non-Californians understand what that means. UC Santa Cruz is the official sex-and-drugs campus of the whole UC system. It's so hippie-cool and mellow it doesn't even give grades, which are just too bourgeois. You just get little notes from your teachers. The kids who go there are rich brats who don't have to worry about getting a job-because graduating from there is like telling your future employers you were stoned for four straight years.

And Hanson graduated from there in 1975. I can only dream about what it must've been like to be a student at Santa Cruz back then, at the climax of the hippie days. I seriously doubt if anybody on that campus was un-stoned from enrollment to graduation, or un-laid for more than a week.

That's all very nice but those of us who went to Bennington know that Santa Cruz had a rep for bunk drugs and lame, frigid women. Just sayin'. All of that explains a lot about Hanson though, now that I think on it.

Campbell Brown Rocks

She just eviscerated McCain flacker Tucker Bounds on CNN.

Video here.

Michael Bates and BatesLine

A lot of my liberal friends can't abide the Michael Bates column in Urban Tulsa, and to be honest I would say that I'm in vociferous disagreement with him on about 95% of his opinions (except that I like Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys almost as much as he does) but he is the go-to guy when it comes to issues surrounding land use and urban planning....if you want to dispute his points you had best have your ducks in a row because he has thought long and hard on these matters and his arguments are often deep and multi-layered. So I decided to add his BatesLine to my list of preferred blogs.


What makes Bates unusual is that he will actually get down into the nitty-gritty.....do his research, read the statutes and relevant codes, familiarize himself with the agenda of administrative boards that most Tulsans don't even know exist....and then he does a yeoman's job of explaining all of that to his readers,and usually without over-simplifying things. He is also without fear when he determines to pick a target. His nose for smelling out bullshit is remarkable. It's been a long time, if ever, since the Tulsa World did comparable work (I'll make an exception for Janet Pearson's reporting, but her best stuff is generally concerning social agencies and not the development industries that constitute the World's power base).

In short, he's not just an opinion hack, he works as a reporter - and he might be the best one in Oklahoma, either in-print or online.


Am I giving short shrift to anyone? Does anyone have an Oklahoma journalist that deserves a shout-out?