‘Faking of the Mass Baby Funerals’: The BBC’s John Sweeney comes up with an embittered and damning “From Our Own Correspondent” piece about torture, fear and propaganda in Iraq. Here’s a modified version that ran in The Observer.

06/22/2002 08:56 PM  |  Comment (7)

This Used to be a Post That Wondered if L.A. Times Sports Columnist Diane Pucin Nicked an Item from Instapundit: Now, after Pucin e-mailed, it's just truncated testimony to the fact that she, in fact, did not (see comments).

06/22/2002 06:32 PM  |  Comment (4)

Rubush’s Post-game Report From K-Town: He’s even proposing a little pre-dawn semi-finals party at his pad so we can be in the ‘hood when our Korean friends put the boot to the Teutons….

06/22/2002 05:34 PM  | 

L.A. Times Media Columnist Slams Kaus, Blogging!: The other day, Mickey Kaus drew a parallel between blogging and the Washington Post’s drip-a-day Watergate coverage, taking a swipe along the way at the L.A. Times:

This is indeed something the Post's editor Ben Bradlee instinctively understood -- you keep the story going, with hit after little hit, which gets people talking, which panics sources into coming forward, which gets other papers into the hunt and ultimately brings much more information to light, even if this means you occasionally get something wrong ... This virtue of Bradlee's editorship, it seems to me, is also a virtue of blogging as a form of journalism. The Web really does put a premium on speed and spontaneity over painstaking acccuracy. Bloggers instantly print want they learn, and what they believe to be true. They sometimes -- often, actually -- get it wrong. But even those errors prompt swift corrections that take the story asymptotically closer to the truth. In the meantime, other bloggers and other sources are activated, which advances the story further, quicker. ... The way to not quickly get at the truth is to follow the unbloggish motto of the L.A. Times' editor of several decades ago: "Do It Once, Do It Right, And Do It Long." That philosophy was why the LAT of that era blew its coverage of scandal after juicy scandal. They waited to "do it once." Sources didn't come forward -- and by the time they finally did it once, nobody cared. ... The urge to "Do It Once, Do It Right" is also why Bradlee's duller successors at WaPo blew the Paula Jones/Clinton/sex story. ... [Are you arguing for a relaxation of libel laws as applied to blogs, to let them make more errors?—ed. Good question. "Reckless disregard" is a pretty loose standard already. I do think the Web changes the social calculus behind libel standards, but mainly because Web errors are corrected so quickly and relatively effectively -- the truth now gets its boots on and catches up with a lie halfway around the world, making errors much less dangerous, meaning we don't need as much of a social deterrent against them.. (Take it away Eugene Volokh!)]

Now, just to demonstrate that folly is constant from medium to medium, consider another of this week's examples -- the blogger Mickey Kaus.

Bloggers, in case you have been spending the irreplaceable moments of your one and only life reading serious newspapers and good books, are people who maintain Internet logs of their personal analysis and reflections. It's sort of old wine in new skins, since the bloggers are basically a narcissistic throwback to an easily recognizable American type, the 19th century cranks who turned out mountains of self-published pamphlets.

The cranks had all sorts of idiosyncratic preoccupations -- single tax schemes, silver-backed currency, vegetarianism and the metaphysical benefits of healthy bowels, for example. Bloggers tend to dabble in politics, media and vendetta.

Wednesday, for instance, Kaus posted an item on his personal site (www.kausfiles.com) praising former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee for allowing reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to publish their articles on Watergate at a rapid pace, even though that "sometimes meant revealing unsubstantiated or simply wrong information."

According to Kaus, "Bradlee instinctively understood -- you keep the story going, with hit after little hit, which gets people talking, which panics sources into coming forward, which gets other papers into the hunt and ultimately brings much more information to light, even if this means you occasionally get something wrong....This virtue of Bradlee's editorship, it seems to me, is also a virtue of blogging as a form of journalism. The Web really does put a premium on speed and spontaneity over painstaking accuracy. Bloggers instantly print what they learn, and what they believe to be true. They sometimes -- often, actually -- get it wrong. But even those errors prompt swift corrections that take the story asymptotically closer to the truth."

For those who cut that particular math class, "asymptotically" is the adverbial form of the noun "asymptote," which is what you call a straight line that always approaches but never actually meets a curve. In other words, bloggers' frequent errors of fact are inconsequential, since they push a story toward the truth, though it never quite gets there, which apparently doesn't matter.

Kaus argues the superiority of this approach to that of "the L.A. Times editor of several decades ago" whose "unbloggish motto" was "Do It Once, Do It Right, And Do It Long."

At the risk of committing "painstaking accuracy," the editor was Bill Thomas, who served until 1989. He was a veteran journalist with a well-founded skepticism of self-interested newspaper crusades. He had traditional notions about the facts, which led him to abhor mistakes and to esteem fairness and balance. His motto was "Do it once. Do it right." He certainly would have recognized an asymptotic approach to the truth for what it is -- an excuse and a scam.

06/21/2002 03:23 PM  |  Comment (14)

The Cockney German Rubs it in: Those of you who have read Ken Layne’s Dot-Con will recall the hero’s main sidekick “Werner” -- a bizarre and friendly German rocker/programmer who speaks with a Cockney accent and takes tumultuous events in stride. Well, let’s just say we have a friend who fits most of that description, and when I woke up this morning, here’s what that friend left in the e-mail box under the subject-line “Guten Morgen Amerika”:

ok, now everybody repeat after me

eins=one

null=zero

Halbfinale=Semi-final

Verlierer=loser

Gewinner=Deutschland

I will now go back to playing variations of our glorious national anthem for electric guitar and huge grin.

Tschuess

06/21/2002 11:54 AM  |  Comment (7)

Smart & Passionate Talk About the Bill of Rights, the War on Terror, and Schizophrenics vs. Extremists: From Dr. Frank.

06/20/2002 04:15 PM  | 

And Here’s a Tribute to a Great L.A. DJ I Rarely Listened to:

06/20/2002 02:43 PM  | 

Writing Well About Music: Is one of the hardest things to do, in my line of work. Which is one of the reasons I can’t bear to read any music magazine not published in London. Lileks, not surprisingly, writes about music very well, even when (I think) I disagree with his thesis. “Mopey baritone sludge-rock” indeed!

06/20/2002 02:39 PM  | 

The Minority Report-Iraq Connection: James Pinkerton, the columnist and former White House staffer in the Reagan and Bush administrations, sees real danger in a pre-emptive unilateral strike against Iraq:

If Bush has a good case against Iraq, let him take it to the world; let him turn his present-day minority into a future anti-Saddam Hussein majority.

If he insists on acting alone, however, and if other countries see an Iraq attack as merely the arbitrary use of Pentagon power, then one need not be a precog to see what will happen next. If the U.S. as global leader lets loose a new doctrine of preemption, then other countries will feel emboldened to identify "pre-aggression" all around them, launching unilateral attacks of their own whenever it suits them.

That's a forecast based on history, not technology. In the age of loose nukes, the idea of Washington green-lighting a return to earlier lawless eras, those of lone-wolf attacks across sovereign borders, is scarier than anything in the movies.

06/20/2002 02:21 PM  |  Comment (8)

Dissenting Opinion on Minority Report Product Placement: Unlike me, the LA Weekly’s Ella Taylor found the future's ads in Spielberg’s latest to be quite clever, thank you:

Never has product placement been such fun.

06/20/2002 01:45 PM  | 

Challenging the ‘Not in Our Name’ Petitioners: San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders, who I forget to read often enough, asks a spokesperson for the ‘Not in Our Name’ petition to come up with examples of who, exactly, said criticism of U.S. policy “verged on treason”; and what, exactly, were some of the examples of the “destruction of … the very right to dissent.” The reactions are interesting. Saunders then concludes:

The shame of it is: There will be times when the left is right, when the feds push too far, when innocent people are harassed and detained, or when academics lose their jobs because of their politics. Too bad, the political center won't listen to them. In their hysteria and self-aggrandizement, they shred their credibility.

06/20/2002 12:36 PM  |  Comment (8)

If You Read One Post About Blogging This Week, Read This One: I’m generally trying to avoid the subject here, for reasons of claustrophobia & time, but Jeff Jarvis spools some interesting and resonant thoughts about the impact of Web writing on book publishing. Specifically, on book consumption, and creation.

06/20/2002 12:07 PM  | 

Italian Soccer Club Fires South Korean Player Who Scored World Cup Goal: Read Tim Blair’s post about it.

06/20/2002 11:28 AM  |  Comment (5)

Letters-response of the Day: By Christopher Hitchens, in the July/August Atlantic. This is just a snippet, and entirely context-free, but I think it can be enjoyed nonetheless:

I should not want to quarrel with those who argue that alcohol and rhetoric can be advantageously mixed, and I hope I did not say anything to offend those who believe otherwise.

06/19/2002 04:18 PM  | 

Surfers vs. Hot-rodders -- the Musical: H.D. Miller has an engaging post on California music, Dick Dale, early rockabilly, the clash between surfers & ho-dad hot-rodders … and how the Beach Boys brought it all together.

06/19/2002 01:15 PM  | 

The Musical Six Degrees of Separation Between Clara Schumann and Max Martin: Kate Sullivan connects the long dots between the 19th century German composer and the 21st century Swedish pop songwriter who pens hits for Britney. Check it out.

06/19/2002 01:07 PM  | 

Foxy Punk Rocker: Dr. Frank, a pop-punk singer/songwriter of renown who is also one of my favorite webloggers, has his first column up for FoxNews.com. It contains this terrific if obvious throwaway line about civil rights:

Vigilance against government over-reach is always necessary.

06/19/2002 12:40 PM  | 

Feeling Blasé About Ashcroft and the Bill of Rights?: Then go read some Nat Hentoff. Then get ahold of some transcripts of the FBI-investigating Church Commission in the mid-‘70s. There were many good reasons for the reforms introduced back then on intelligence & law enforcement agencies. If some of those restrictions no longer make sense while obstructing legitimate policing & defense, well, that’s worth talking about (preferably, with a Volokh-level of seriousness). But those who pre-emptively ridicule others who are worried right now about the Bill of Rights are performing an insulting disservice.

06/19/2002 12:08 PM  |  Comment (4)

Counter-Attack of the ‘Homocons’: Last week, I scanned this curious Andrew Sullivan-fearing cover story in The Nation, Attack of the Homocons, and e-mailed it to one of my gay conservative readers. He responded with the following fascinating e-mail, which was not intended for publication, and which I have edited slightly:

The thing that's interesting to me on the whole subject is this:

When I first self-identified as being gay and joining the "gay movement" (whatever that is), there was a clear unified message to the rest of America, that "We are everywhere" -- this was post-Stonewall, pre-Anita Bryant.

When did that message change to "We are everywhere, except there, cuz if'n you're there, you must be a self-loathing hypocrite"?

It just seemed (still seems) clear to me, that everywhere means everywhere, including the Churches and the Republican party. I believe it hurts the cause of acceptance if you try to discredit that. Granted, one has his work cut out for him to be gay, Christian, and Republican. On top of that, I understand the feeling of betrayal that the mere existence of such a creature engenders. I've felt it myself.

In 1992, at the Republican Convention, when Pat Buchanan, the political enemy of gay people, and the candidate that Log Cabin (gay Republican Group) worked hard to defeat -- got convention support from a lone gay individualist -- it got noticed all over the place. People, to this day, use it as an example of "self-hating" gay Republicans. […]

It totally pissed me off.

Until I looked at it this way: We truly are everywhere. Even in the Catholic Hierarchy, as Orthodox Jews, Mormons, and even, believe it or not, as Muslims. Why, then, should I think that all anti-war, isolationist types who support Buchanan gotta be straight?

My next thought is, If I can figger this out -- what makes it so damn difficult for other folks to understand, and recognize that gay people, across the entire political and social spectrum, have one and only one thing in common -- we get turned on by members of the same, rather than the opposite, gender, and we don't think that entitles you to treat us any differently than the way you expect to be treated.

Period.

The rest is up for grabs.

And besides, if you're of the opinion (I'm not) that there's something noble in defining yourself as not mainstream -- reveling in finding community in being ex-cepted rather than ac-cepted, then wouldn't Sullivan's exceptionalisticness make him even nobler in your eyes, and therefore a welcome member of that excluded, but inclusive-seeking community, who wants to exclude him?

Doesn't it strike you as a little odd, that Stanley Kurtz, in his piece on why Gay Marriage is Bad, tries to discredit Sullivan by referring to his endorsement of a libertine lifestyle, and Goldstein, in this piece, tries to discredit Sullivan by referring to his endorsement of a conservative lifestyle (while living a libertine one)? […]

Kinda discredits each premise, huh?

Thus, given my respect for the man, plus my obsessive need to understand and explain the *truth of the matter* as it pertains to me and mine, I take comfort in recognizing that mere common sense will lead anyone who reads both pieces to the same conclusion -- and, therefore, neither piece can be persuasive.

http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2002_05_19_dish_archive.html#85111098

(Scroll down to the Stanley Kurtz part)

This is the most telling part of Goldstein's piece:

The gay right exists, just as Jews for Jesus do, but it stands apart from the ethos that marks gays as a people. You can't really be a queer humanist and a homocon.

Sez who? -- and even if everything in that statement is accurate, so what? What initiation rights or secret handshake do ya gotta learn to be a “queer humanist” (whatever that is), just so's you can identify as a part of and not apart from "the ethos that marks us as a people”? Plus I doubt that Jews for Jesus make up 25-30% of the total community of self-identified Jews, or that even all Jews have the same understanding of "the ethos that marks Jews as a people."

To sum up:

I identify as “gay” cuz I'm a guy who likes lookin' at nekkid guys.

I identify as right of center (conservative), cuz I believe change should happen slowly and deliberately, to avoid making the situation worse than it already is -- the law of unforeseen consequences, and the risks associated with throwing the baby away with the bathwater -- a potential cure that is worse than a disease, to use up all applicable aphorisms.

I identify as a Republican cuz I believe in market forces, personal responsibility, limited government, local control, free trade, and efficient use of taxes, and recognition that taxes are my money.

I identify as Christian because I believe in that Amazing Grace that saves a wretch, like me. (At least I'm working toward acceptance of this -- my faith journey has taken a rather meandering path, and I'm still trying to reclaim this wonderful something that I let be stolen from me for a time.)

I believe I can, and do, hold these views without contradiction -- without hypocrisy (I hope) -- with attempted consistency, and with integrity as a goal. Anyone who suggests otherwise, is either wrong, or ignorant, about me, or what it means to me to be gay, or Christian, or right of center, or Republican.

More thoughts:

I've never seen “homocon” before -- is this a new label? Is it intended as pejorative? Certainly, it seems that Goldstein views them (us?, me?) as a threat to something he holds dear. I dunno. Given what I said before, a certain "same old conservative" connotation isn't so bad. Also, I don't understand the implied pejorative of being just the same as a neocon. Not sure I understand what he means by that. Then again, I'm not sure what a neocon is. New conservative makes no sense, as applied to me -- I've thought of myself as conservative and republican my entire life (Christian has come and gone -- mostly as a result of feeling rejected, as I indicated) -- gay became fixed at age 23, tho I peeked out of the closet at 18, 19. Nothing neo about any of it. I must be missing something.

BTW, although I identify with Rich Tafel and Log Cabin, I have never joined, although I signed some literature at Pride parades before. Activism is not my strong suit, as you learned. I marched with the MCC crowd, usually.

And I love drag queens -- Rupaul is terrific -- my God, what a brave, sincere, nice person. Goldstein's got Sullivan wrong if he thinks Sullivan has something against drag queens. We homos, con or lib, love them. It's merely my own inhibitions that prevent me from donning drag and creating a fabulous lip-synched number to Shania Twain's "I feel like a woman", plus the spotlight thing, plus the scared feeling that I'm not up to the challenge, and that embarassed feeling while nursing a hangover -- plus it's too difficult to explain all this to well-meaning, but somewhat sheltered folk, who might misunderstand it all, and say something mean, unintentionally.

Re lesbians, and women. I plead somewhat guilty. I blame ignorance, for the most part. I grew up with 3 brothers, and no sisters -- and most of the politically informed lesbians I met seemed so damn angry all the time (even Norah Vincent). I likes Dykes on Bikes, tho. Like I said, just not a lot of contact. I mean, when you think of it, if you're gonna try to identify with like-minded folks, lesbians and gay men represent polar opposites when it comes to preferences and shared experiences, so finding common ground is a little difficult.

Finally, the community of spirit I found while fighting the AIDS battles left me with the feeling that we were all united against something truly evil -- that damned virus. It pains me no end, to see all the goodwill generated by the response of our community -- and our collective feeling of the loss of so many friends, trivialized and reduced to internecine infighting about how we should celebrate our uniqueness, while trying to find community. In one support group, we got a new co-facilitator, a Catholic priest, who started off his intro saying he was called to ministry to help the marginalized members of society. There were 6 of us in the room -- 2 computer guys, a lawyer, a school teacher, a lobbyist, and a hill staffer. All gay, all bummed about everybody around us dying, and this boob was trying to score points with God for treating the lepers. Our contempt was thick. Why I should feel community about being ostracized is beyond me. I'd rather work to be not ostracized, OK? And now, that the opportunity for true progress with the hearts and minds of ostracizers is there, these “Queer Humanists” wanna muck it all up by discrediting the most articulate spokesman of my world view. My contempt gets thicker.

Ick.

06/18/2002 08:19 PM  |  Comment (14)

The Perils and Responsibilities of Covering the Mideast War: Interesting excerpt in Sunday’s L.A. Times of a recent lecture given by Ha’aretz Editor in Chief Hanoch Marmari. He starts with a breakdown of the Jenin Massacre hype, and then goes on to deliver a farily impressive explanation & self-criticism of trying to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If anyone has a link to the entire speech, in English, please drop it into the comments section.

06/18/2002 04:21 PM  |  Comment (3)

Big in Omaha: Hey look! I’m quoted in another Omaha World-Herald editorial! It’s about Afghan-deaths inflation. The conclusion:

The analysis by the Los Angeles Times underscores how the U.S. military went to enormous lengths last year to minimize harm to Afghan civilians. That fact illustrates the vast moral difference that separated the American bomber pilots from the al-Qaida hijackers of 9/11.

A minority of Nebraskans and Americans continues to voice sincere opposition to action by the U.S. military. Room should be made for their dissenting voices. Some of their colleagues in the anti-war camp, however, have discredited themselves on the issue of civilian casualties. It is appropriate that their demagoguery-by-numbers has been revealed for the sham it was.

06/18/2002 02:58 PM  | 

One Reason Why Nick Denton is a Particularly Good Web-logger: Economy of words.

06/18/2002 02:19 PM  |  Comment (2)

Minority Debauchery: Saw that Minority Report last night. Pretty durned interesting, especially the way it looked. It’s definitely the next episode of the chin-stroking futuristic series that began with the inferior AI. But, criminy -- why go to all the trouble to declare your Artistic Intent, only to debauch the whole somber exercise by inserting blatant and jarring product placements? Here we are, sucked into the alluring vision of 2054 Washington, D.C., and then BAMMO! -- a big old meaningless ad for … wait for it … Aquafina. Aqua-fookin-fina? Everyone will comment on the Lexuses everywhere, but USA Today must have ponied up some serious cash to become the future’s newspaper of choice for subway riders, and to have had a secretary character say: “The reporter for USA Today is here.” (There was a newspaper thrown on a lawn near the beginning, but I didn’t notice the title … because the spell hadn’t been broken yet.) The effect was to snap your head back into the present, into the movie theater, into the vagaries of film-industry financing. Spielberg’s clearly gunning for his place in motion picture history, but I’d predict that when they watch this one at the American Cinematheque in 2054, they’ll wonder why such a respected director was willing to befoul his own creation for a few million dollars.

06/18/2002 02:13 PM  |  Comment (10)

Two Reasons to Appreciate the New Yorker: Blogs, and a busy life, have cut most drastically into my magazine consumption, making the clutter of 20 or 30 subscriptions less and less excusable. If I was a smarter person, I’d cancel everything except the New Yorker and The Economist (closet elitist that I am). Last week, I cracked open the N-Yer for the first time in a while, and was rewarded with two classic Talk of the Town features.

First up, the indestructible Lillian Ross writes a little ditty about a regular Central Park jogger who died, and more specifically about how the community of joggers, most of whom did not know his name, reacted to and commemorated his death. It’s a miniature and globally insignficant story, and you won’t read anything that looks or smells more like the city of New York for the next three months.

Next, Louis Menand makes a meandering but wholly satisfying point about the Washington Post’s recent “byline strike” (whereby peeved reporters are writing articles without attribution, to protest contractual issues). I’ll quote the whole first chunk:

A very short quiz for the end of the school year. Don't panic! There is only one question, and all you will need is a No. 2 pencil. Please settle down now and read the instructions carefully. Here is the test: You read the newspaper this morning. In doing so, you looked at the lead story (front page, top right-hand corner). You read the headline. Possibly you also read the first paragraph, possibly more, possibly even the entire article. O.K. Who wrote the article? When you have finished writing your answer, put your pencil down and look up.

How many of you wrote nothing on your answer sheet? That is because most readers never pay attention to the byline on a newspaper article, and the reason they never pay attention is that who wrote the article has nothing to do with the decision to read it. You read the story because you're interested in the information, not in the personality and opinions of the reporter. Personality and opinions are, in fact, what you hope not to find in a newspaper article. Those are things you look for in a column, where the writer's name and, in some papers, a tiny head shot, made in, maybe, 1983, when the writer had a lot more hair, appear at the top. You would not like to see a tiny head shot of a reporter at the top of a news article, because a news article is supposed to be a clear window on the facts.

This is not to say that there are not great stylists of the front page. Professional journalists and aficionados of the press know the bylines and savor the special flair of the great writer-reporters. But the ideal of perfect transparency is the ideal that is supposed to be subscribed to by reporters themselves, devotees of the dying art of self-effacement in our increasingly face-centric culture. So why did many Washington Post reporters decide, last week, that it would constitute a telling act of protest against the paper's management if they took their bylines off their pieces? Almost all the articles in the Post for June 5th, the first day of the protest, ran without personal bylines. (Columnists who tried to pull their bylines had their columns killed.) "Dismissal of Abusive Priests Is Proposed" was the headline on the lead front-page story. (Not, perhaps, the most compelling or informative headline ever composed. Proposed by whom? Dismissal of abusive priests is proposed daily around water coolers, in bars, and at dinner tables across America.) The byline on the article read, simply, "By a Washington Post Staff Writer."

The issues behind the protest are the usual bones of collective-bargaining contention: pay increases, vacation time, union membership. Did management quake in its Timberlands when it saw that byline-free issue? It is not easy to think so.

06/18/2002 12:52 PM  |  Comment (4)

Layne Expands on the Bin Laden/Ian Fleming Thesis: As always in his Fox columns, follow the links for the crucial, word-saving “just like THIS” feature.

06/18/2002 12:11 PM  |  Comment (1)

Happy Birthday, to the Prettiest and Coolest Girl who Ever Lived in the Future: That would be the love of my life, Emmanuelle Richard. Want two examples of how she kicks my behind? She designed and coded every last bit of her website herself (whereas I just badgered long-suffering friends to do my heavy lifting). And English is her third language (Hungarian, probably her favorite, is number four). Happy birthday, Manu!

06/16/2002 12:58 PM  |  Comment (8)

Hi! What are you doing down here?