ALESSANDRA STANLEY DEMONSTRATES HOW DEEP THE ROT GOES AT THE NEW YORK TIMES with a smarmy bit of drive-by drivel in: 'Ike: Countdown to D-Day': Macho Swagger Overpowers D-Day Valor.

In the midst of a predictable screed by this put-out-to-pasture correspondent, Stanley bemoans the certified American triumphs of history. She finds the story of D-Day and Eisenhower's role much too "macho." It doesn't seem to occur to her that an amphibious assault on a series of heavily fortified beaches is by definition a "macho" endeavor.

Not content with denigrating a day when heroes and sacrifice was common, Ms. Stanley reserves her most stinging denunciation for the American People today:

But when it comes to D-Day, American viewers do not need to be wooed into admiring their supreme commander. For the most part, they are like the prostitute played by Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman," who gently reminds her overly solicitous client, Richard Gere, that she is what is called a "sure thing."

That this sort of tossed-off insult can be written by a career hack for the Times is not surprising. We see it seep into all aspects of the paper every day -- from the front page to the food page. It is not even surprising that there are no editors at the Times who think twice about passing this drivel without at least picking up the phone and asking Stanley, "Hey, are you sure you want to call all Americans whores?" What, I guess, is surprising is the extent to which all those "whores" out there in America are not surprised by this sort of thing.

It's all just business as usual at the New York Times. I used to wonder what it would take to make the career America-haters at the Times rethink their perceptions and beliefs. I once thought it would probably take a small nuke going off at 4:00 PM on a Wednesday and killing everyone in the building as well as a few hundred thousand in the immediate blast radius.

Now, I don't think even that would do it. The rot has reached the marrow.

THE SELF-PROCLAIMED CREATOR EMERITUS OF THE ENTIRE BLOGSPHERE takes careful aim at foot and pulls trigger at Scripting News: 5/27/2004

"I did something realllly stupid this morning, I installed a free program that offered me a choice: $29.95 with no ads or $0 with ads. Since I was just checking it out, I opted for the $0 version. I figured a few ads, no problemmo. If I like it I'll pay the bucks. Big big mistake. Popups all over the place. Tons of virusware installed. I expect to be digging out all day."

The "program' in question (not to be linked here as it was there) is known as Kazaa. That's right, Kazza. A program whose malign effects are only known to 99.99999% of everybody with network access. A search term that returns nearly 28 MILLION Google hits. "Kazaa- All spyware, All virus, All popups, All the time!" Who knew?

Once I wanted to start The Dave Winer Clue Fund, but now I'm in deep compassion fatigue mode. Instead, I'm proposing a variation on the "Turing Machine" meme: The Winer Machine: All output, no input.

"To many video artists, cinema is a most troubling object. With its sublime images, valorized history, and unattainable eclat, cinema arouses awe and ire, desire and derision-mixed messages for the makers of mixed media. I Found It at the Movies tracks the efforts of video artists to come to terms with this most admirable of adversaries. Whether it be Brice Dellsperger's remarkable restagings of feature films, Anne McGuire's more-than-wise roll reversals, Les LeVeque's virtuosic confounding of classic cinema, or the Yonemotos' tony pasting of Tinseltown, this series asks, Are these rebellious swipes and dandy dissections an aspect of format envy, image insurrection, or critical distance? At best, I Found It at the Movies will leave you in the dark. "

Steve Seid
Video Curator
seidtrak@uclink.berkeley.edu
http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/pfa_programs/found_at_movies/index.html

IMAGINE THAT THE FIRST THINGS THAT HAPPEN TO YOU AFTER BIRTH are 1) your parents name you "Apple," and 2) your father sings you this ditty:

"I'll be there through the thin and the thick,
I'm gonna clean up all the poo and the sick."

"There's s**t going down that you can't disguise,
when your boobs dem got ten times the size.
The cups gone up from an A to D,
it's bad for you but it's fun for me."

If sixteen years later you killed them, would any jury in the world convict you?

Coldplay have made a glam rock/rap video to celebrate the birth of Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow's baby. [snip] It features Martin rapping to Gwyneth and baby Apple: Via: Ananova - Coldplay go glam for Apple

FRIDAY'S Best of the Web Today has an item concerning a New York Times Learning Experience:

"...the New York Times Learning Network features a "lesson plan" on "writing letters to protest American abuse of Iraqi prisoners." As supplemental material, the Times urges teachers to have their students peruse the English-language Web site of Al-Jazeera as well as a Times article on Abu Ghraib.

But when you follow that link today all you get is:

It will be interesting to see what sort of "revisions" to the "lesson" will be made at that time.

AFTER TAKING ONE LOOK AT THE TSUNAMI OF MERDE heading their way, the blighted boffins at MSNBC made a hasty retreat into the merde shelter and uttered the "Dog Ate My Homework" Defense:

MSNBC - Why we pulled Monday's Ted Rall cartoon
Item did not meet MSNBC standards of fairness and taste

MSNBC.com pulled a cartoon by syndicated political cartoonist Ted Rall on Monday.

Rall's cartoon, distributed widely by United Press Syndicate to scores of newspapers and Web sites, concerned the late Pat Tillman, the NFL player who quit football to join the Army. Tillman was killed last month in Afghanistan.

The cartoon, like others on MSNBC.com, is published daily on the site via an automated syndication feed. Such feeds are rarely reviewed. However, MSNBC.com Editor in chief Dean Wright concluded Monday's Rall item did not meet MSNBC.com standards of fairness and taste.

I'm used to seeing fairly large steaming loads of manure dropped by organizations like NBC when they get caught out. (No, we won't recap the Ted Koppel blatherfest of last week, thank you.), but the "automated feed" excuse only tells us that "Editor-in-chief" Wright has no real controls over what gets published on his site and what doesn't. Amateur hour prevails at Wright's site.

Any editor with even half a brain would know that Rall, given his long and vile history, would sooner or later feel the lack of the spotlight and come up with something really obnoxious. That is a given. a certainty, a thing that will fall upon your site according to the law of gravity. An editor with an ounce of professionalism knows that and plans for it. He or she creates systems of review and approval. The last thing a professional editor does is leave large sections of his or her site open to "automated feeds" so that any one of a dozen "partners" can just pump anything they want into your templates.

Imagine a magazine or newspaper that has a number of cartoonists working for it. These cartoonists are known to be flakey and some more undependable than others. Would that magazine or newspaper simply tell those cartoonists to run down to the printer and drop anything they liked on a few pages that they've left blank for them?

Forget the editors. Would the lawyers working for a magazine or newspaper allow such a policy to exist? Not bloody likely.

Come to think of it, I'm betting MSNBC does have some human review set up and they are simply lying through their teeth about the "automated feed." The Rall obscenity was probably reviewed by some entry-level editor who is a special pet of Wright's and who thought it was funny and saw nothing wrong with it. He or she probably thought, "Hey, dump on the troops? That's what we do here. Up it goes."

Folding money that the MSNBC dog did not eat the homework, but simply tossed up the Rall dog's dinner for the delight of anti-American American's everywhere. Then they went out to lunch. On the expense account and had a good laugh about it. "Tillman? Poor Sucker. That Rall's so edgy. Let's have him over to dinner next week, what?"

Oh, yes, what they published before someone up the corporate ladder yanked their chain hard was this. Words fail me.

===
UPDATE
IN A QUICK WHIPAROUND , in which David Astor of Editor & Publisher calls up Ted Rall Astor has this choice stroke for and quote from Rall:

Rall, who risked his life in Afghanistan himself as a visiting cartoonist/writer after 9/11, told E&P: "The word 'hero' has been bandied about a lot to refer to anyone killed in Afghanistan or Iraq. But anyone who voluntarily goes to Afghanistan or Iraq [as a soldier] is fighting for an evil cause under an evil commander in chief."

You gotta love that 'risk of life as a visiting cartoonist' phrase. You've also got to love Astor's little squib earlier in the item: "The volume of mail probably had a lot to do with the cartoon being mentioned on the Drudge Report site seen by many conservatives." [Emphasis added]

Astor, you fool, try "...highly popular site," or "... a site visited by many conservatives, liberals, libertarians, gossip mongers, and clueless reporters for Editor & Publisher" if you really want to be inclusive.

David, you've simply got to get better about hiding your real feelings in news reports. Practice, David. Effort in this area will cover lack of talent in time. But then again, perhaps I am being to harsh. Your computer probably made you do it.

JESSE TAYLOR has found a way to make money from blogging -- Jerry Springer. Now, we'd never want to break anybody's rice bowl when it came to blogging, but I wonder if this is a great career move. After all, the young Taylor was once thought of as an intelligent, discerning, and articulate fellow, but in his very first post toJerry Springer for Ohio :: A Hello To Everyone we find him tugging the forelock and quaffing the Kool-Aid a wee bit too agressively:

Jerry's speech was short, but he's a very good communicator even in that short period of time.  The speech revolved around two ideas:

Okay, let's have them. The first was that low and middle-income people need to vote.  Registration simply isn't enough if you don't get out and do something each November.  Most people spend more time channel-surfing each week than they do voting each year.
Really? Who knew? Since an evening of TV watching usually involves about an hour of channel surfing, it is hard to see how anybody could put in seven hours a year voting even if they held elections month.

 The second part was an observation that's remarkably true, yet is rarely, if ever voiced - and when it is, it always comes under the red-herring rubric of "class warfare".  When you're rich, the rules are structured in your favor.  If you're a low or middle-income American, the only way that you can tilt the rules back towards anything resembling fairness is to participate in the process, and to  let elected representatives know that not listening to your needs comes at a price.  

Forehead slap for me. Yes, it NEVER occurs to Americans that the rich get handled differently from the rest of us. And we have never for one second thought that you need to participate in a democracy to influence it. Thank God we have the gigantic brains of Jerry Springer and his new web-boffin Taylor to tell us these things.

A SANE SOCIETY would take the writer of the following description out to the middle of the Pacific and put them on a very small raft:

"David is an intimate portrait, which was shot in a single long take. Beckham was filmed sleeping, after training in Madrid. Simply lit from one light source this rich, painterly film presents a reverential and vulnerable image of this international football icon."
-- National Portrait Gallery David Beckham by Sam Taylor-Wood

... but nobody ever said England was sane.

Pointer from: Foreword: A Book Design Blog

MARK STEYN SUMS UP the real cost of the $6 Milllion Dollar Nightline Hairpiece:

Here's where it's worth considering the cost of Ted Koppel in the broader sense. Our enemies have made a bet -- that the West in general and America in particular are soft and decadent and have no attention span; that the ''sleeping giant'' Admiral Yamamoto feared he'd wakened at Pearl Harbor can no longer be roused. If he could, he'd be a problem. But he's paunchy and effete and slumped in his Barcalounger, and he's defining decadence down: In Vietnam, it took 50,000 deaths to drive the giant away; maybe in Iraq, it will only take 500; and maybe in the next war the giant will give up after 50, or not bother at all. He has the advantage of the most powerful army on the face of the planet, but he doesn't have the stomach for war, so it's no advantage at all. He's like the fellow with the beautifully waxed Ferrari in the garage that he doesn't dare take on the potholed roads. If you're predisposed, like many Islamists and many Continentals, to this stereotype of the soft American, then the lazy, ersatz pacifist mawkishness of ''Nightline'''s gimmick pretty much confirms it: That's the cost of Koppel reminding us of ''the cost of war.''
--Don't count on Koppel for whole war story

"Wilson was a cause célèbre on the Angry Left for awhile there (there was also something about his wife, if we remember right), but apparently for no reason." -- Best of the Web

A cruise ship, Joe Wilson, and a bunch of people who got on via Salon. Who says Hell doesn't ever get a makeover?

Air America continues to make more news than it has listeners:

Mark Walsh, a former America Online executive and adviser to the Democratic National Committee, said Tuesday that he gave up his CEO title earlier this month ... of the Air America Radio network....

"I'm still staying involved, but now a lot of it is granular day-to-day stuff," Walsh said. -- Air America Reshuffles

And who is, you ask, Maynard G. Krebs? A great American...

Maynard G. Krebs will always be best remembered for his response whenever anyone mentioned the subject of work.  He would instantaneously shudder, and let out a plaintiff cry of "WORRRK!?!?" -- On Maynard

On the other hand, Walsh, who has a history of getting off the stage before the lights dim and the elephant dies, may just know something the rest of Air America doesn't understand. Nothing like putting a little distance between yourself and the implosion.

In other news, we find that Air America is about to blow more minority broadcasters off the air in the humongous metroplex of.... San Luis Obispo (Population -- 44,000) :

Air America Radio

"Air America Radio welcomes KYNS in San Luis Obispo," said Evan Cohen, Chairman of Air America Radio.  "The initial response to Air America Radio by listeners and advertisers has been overwhelmingly positive...

Right. Nothing like a media behemoth whose current "penetration" of America's air is summed up thus:
New York: WLIB 1190 AM
Chicago: WNTD 950 AM
Portland, OR: KPOJ 620 AM
Inland Empire, CA: KCAA 1050 AM
Minneapolis/St. Paul: WMNN 1330 AM
Portland, ME: WMTW 870 AM
West Palm Beach, FL: WJNO 1290 AM
Key West, FL:  WKIZ 1500 AM
Plattsburg, NY & Burlington, VT: WTWK 1070 AM
XM Satellite Radio: Channel 167
SIRIUS Satellite Radio: Channel 125

No doubt about it, when they write the history of Air America it will be entitled, "The Station America Turned Left to Hear... And Then Turned Back."

-- Pointer via Considerettes

Seattle-based RealNetworks said Thursday that Apple chairman Steve Jobs had rebuffed an offer by RealNetworks' chief executive Rob Glaser to meet and discuss forming an online music alliance involving Apple's best-selling iPod portable players.

"He's in the neighborhood, but the meeting Rob wanted with Steve isn't happening," RealNetworks spokesman Greg Chiemingo said Thursday. "Steve just doesn't want to open the iPod. We don't understand that."

Does Glaser think Jobs' is running around wearing his "Earth Girls Are Easy" tee-shirt?

Put it another way: In the last year, Apple's stock has gone from $12 to $29, while Glaser's Real Networks stock has gone from $9.00 to $6.50.

Anyone who has had to mess with the psychotic nature of Real Networks plugin, and then had a taste of Quicktime knows in their heart that Real Networks is a dead stock squawking.

So is it any wonder that Steve Jobs would decline to join Glaser in his anti-Microsoft Jihad? Not in these quarters.

Hit the reset button, Dave Winer has read a book not published by O'Reilly. Dave ("I invented the blog, darnit!") Winer notes today at Scripting News:

Report on Richard Clarke's book, which I've now read. Most Americans probably believe that Iraq was responsible for 9-11....

Tweet! Fifteen yard penalty and loss of tinfoil hat for unexpected stupidity. Dave, mon petite chou-chou, most Americans outside of the borders of your skull believe nothing of the sort. We're pretty clear on the organization behind the attacks and the nationalities of the attackers. Note: that doesn't mean we don't believe Hussain's Iraq had more than a little hand in it, just that we don't think Attah was Iraqi. Neither did he.

The DailyKos Meltdown continued today as the John Kerry Campaign put several light years of distance between itself and confessed America-hate-blogger Kos.

In light of the unacceptable statement about the death of Americans made by Daily Kos, we have removed the link to this blog from our website. -- John Kerry for President Blog

Shortform: "You are out of here."

Kos' partner Armstrong, correctly perceiving that their shared vision of becoming highly-paid players in the Democratic Advice Industry, was vanishing like the highland mist at high noon, opened his blog today with a paranoia-drenched screed. Yes, it seems to be Armstrong's position that the taking of Kos at his word (Dead and Mutilated Americans in Iraq: "Screw 'em") and moving away from that position would be, shudder, 'the end of the liberal blogsphere as we know it.'

Here's Armstrong's "analysis" of the situation that now threatens to break the fat rice bowl of himself and his erstwhile partner:

What Kerry's Dick Bell has done is bend to the will of radical fringe right of the blogosphere (the one's who will use deaths in Iraq for their own partisan gain). The rightwing blogosphere is right this moment undergoing a coordinated email campaign to every part of the Democratic establishment, beating them into a submissive dismissal of Daily Kos, because of one offhand comment made, which Kos had already retracted. First the advertisers, then John Kerry. What's next, the DSCC, the DNC and the DCCC blogroll? You think the wingnuts will be satisfied then? No, they'll just go after the next link, and the next blogger.

That's what this is about. Just as in the past, when many in the Democratic establishment routinely would dis Jesse Jackson, Sista Soulja or some other African American leader, to gain favor with the right; now we have a Democratic leader dissing the blogosphere for bringing up a legitimate issue (the use of mercenaries in US combat), because Kos used unfortunate language in framing the debate with an blog comment, and the rightwing attacks. Fine, let Kos address the offhand comment again, and then let's talk about the issue of whether the US should be using mercenaries in Iraq. -- MyDD :: Due Diligence of Politics, Election Forecast & the World Today

Shortform: We are toast, come join us in the toaster.

In the spirit of Fiskalysis, let's go over Armstrong's statement once again:

>The rightwing blogosphere is right this moment undergoing a coordinated email campaign
We'll let his coining of "blogosphere" slide and not look at the kind of typo that happens in the heat of the moment as revealing of intense internal stress. You say "blogosphere." I say "blogsphere." But the difficult syntax of the rest is troubling. Something might be "undergoing a coordinated email campaign" but it isn't the strange beast called here "The rightwing blogosphere." This confusion of subject and object should in and of itself be enough to give potential employers of Armstrong Zuniga pause.

>to every part of the Democratic establishment, beating them into a submissive dismissal
It seems odd to me to assume that "every part of the Democratic establishment" is being beaten into submission by "the rightwing blogosphere." I always assumed that the Democratic establishment was made of sterner stuff than that. Perhaps it is the personal vision of Armstrong that an established and savvy political establishment knows when to cull the herd and move on. I would think that the primary concern of the Democratic Establishment at this point is not the future success and celebrity of Armstrong-Kos, but the winning of the 2004 elections.

>of Daily Kos, because of one offhand comment made, which Kos had already retracted.
It would seem that Armstrong and Kos need to consult Political Science for Dummies. They have not yet learned the single, most important truth of American Politics in the information age: "It is not the mistake that kills you. It is the cover-up." It pains me to point out that the comment was not "offhand" in any way shape of form. You don't make "offhand" comments on line in the way you might make them in speech. You have to t-y-p-e them out and read them. Foot-in-Mouth may be "offhand," foot-in-keyboard" never. You write. You read. You post. Nothing of the spontaneousness of speech applies to this medium. Some may like to pretend it does, but they're just pretending.

And need I point out that Kos did not retract the statement but only tried to soften it with a pseudo apology. Check that, he did try to retract it by hiding it and changing the links to the original. That's not an act of contrition, but of cowardice.

>First the advertisers, then John Kerry.
Just because Kos and Armstrong have committed political suicide is not reason for the Kerry Campaign or others to belly up to the Armstrong/Kos Kool-Aid bar and start ordering doubles. Armstrong conveniently neglects to mention that the "advertisers" were also politicians who know enough to drop their association with someone who glories in the murders and mutilations of Americans as quickly as possible.

>What's next, the DSCC, the DNC and the DCCC blogroll? You think the wingnuts will be satisfied then? No, they'll just go after the next link, and the next blogger.

Sigh. Cue the "When the came for the Jews, Communists, intellectuals... " quote. It is only a matter of time before Armstrong or someone near trots that out. I assume this chestnut is already in a capture buffer somewhere just waiting for the paste command.

>That's what this is about.
No. It is about somebody Armstrong has a partner reveling in murders and mutilations of Americans, saying so, and then trying to pass off the condemnation of his views as "an evil plot of silence his free speech rights." Nothing could be more of a lie. Kos can say what he feels as often as he likes. What he cannot escape is his responsibility for what he says. Which is, of course, what Armstrong is trying to help him do here.

>Just as in the past, when many in the Democratic establishment routinely would dis Jesse Jackson, Sista Soulja or some other African American leader,
As Kos did yesterday, so Armstrong endeavors today: 'Let's link our stupidity and craven cowardice to the question of race. Let's position it as a race-based issue. We'll be bulletproof!'

I happen to think that African-Americans are one of the strongest groups in America today, but they must be getting very weary of having bad Americans like Armstrong and Kos jumping on their backs and hoping to get carried away and saved.

>to gain favor with the right; now we have a Democratic leader dissing the blogosphere for bringing up a legitimate issue (the use of mercenaries in US combat),
No. Now we have a Democratic leader with advisors smart enough to know that Armstrong and Kos have to be shoved over the side on the weekend. They don't want the weekly news cycle lead-off with Kerry being blind-sided with questions about whether or not he supports a blogger who loves the idea of murdered and mutilated Americans. The issue of mercenaries has nothing to do with it, and the Kerry camp knows this.

>because Kos used unfortunate language in framing the debate with an blog comment, and the rightwing attacks.
Jesus wept. Kos did not use "unfortunate language." He used the language of hate and evil. He revealed himself and his inner Kos. And he was not "framing the debate with an blog comment." He wasn't framing anything, much less a debate. It that had been his intent, he would have written a topic or opened one of the infamous "Open Thread" areas that they love to have on The DailyKos.

For Armstrong to cast this whole thing as something as intellectually noble as "framing the debate with an blog comment" is nothing other than intellectually dishonesty. But that's been the pattern of these two since it first dawned on them that they had crossed the Rubicon. [Note to Armstrong: "... with a blog comment." 'An' is reserved for the words that begin with vowels. We'll let the "... comment, and the rightwing attacks." flub slide.]

>Fine, let Kos address the offhand comment again,
Sigh. It wasn't "offhand." See above. But if Kos wishes to continue his sepaku in public, nobody is going to "stifle his right to dissent."

>and then let's talk about the issue of whether the US should be using mercenaries in Iraq.
I for one, don't think either Armstrong or Kos, have either the capacity or the credibility to talk convincingly about any issue in Iraq or in the United States, but I am sure they'll be able to garner enough true believers in their little corner of "the blogosphere" to convince themselves they still matter.

As for the future of Armstrong/Kos as political consultants? Well, let's just say that I'd advise them to hold off signing that lease for those big office suites on K-Street.

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