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October 01, 2003

The art of community
: Tom Coates has three good pieces of advice for community members (in forums or in blog comments).traffic warcraft3

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In labor
: Elizabeth Spiers gives birth to the new NY Mag blogs, The Kicker, tomorrow. traffic warcraft3

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Compare and contrast scandals
: Just for the fun of it, let's compare and contrast two scandals:
: In the U.K., someone -- Dr. David Kelly -- had unauthorized and possibly illegal contact with the press regarding confidential, classified government information on weapons in Iraq. The government reveals his name. He kills himself. The government gets hell for it. Revealing the name of the person is considered a scandal.
: In the U.S., someone, unknown, had unauthorized and possibly illegal contact with the press regarding confidential, classified government information on a CIA agent's identity. The government is under pressure to find and identify and prosecute the person. Not revealing the name of the person is considered a scandal.
Hmmmm.traffic warcraft3

: Sometimes when a story breaks, I take the calculated risk of ignoring it because I think it will go away and I'll be no worse off. I did that with the Valerie Plame CIA story. And why? Because this is -- on the scale I set forth the other day -- useless news. It has no impact on my daily life. I can ignore it. So can most of America. And that should make us in the news business ask whether we overplay these stories.
Now here's Ed Cone giving hell to Glenn Reynolds because he's underplaying the Plame story. Glenn responds at Ed's site and in a post I quote below. I side with Glenn on this both because he's not a newspaper and he has no obligation to report or comment on every dutiful story; that would make him predictable and dull. But even if he were a newspaper, I'd still ask whether the story is being overplayed.
: Totten's ignoring it, too. traffic warcraft3

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Is California sane?
: The Week magazine [disclosure: I'm running their ad but I don't know whether I've sold a single subscription and, yes, that's a hint and, yes, that's conflict of interest] held another of its entertaining debates at Grand Central today. The topic: Is California crazy? The panel, led by Harry Evans: Ron Reagan; Barry Goldwater, Jr.; Tom Hayden; and Ed Klein. As those named marched into the room, it looked as if Sherman and Peabody -- no, make that Wesley Clark -- had run the Wayback Machine.traffic warcraft3

: Porn star and California gubernatorial candidate Mary Carey (aka Mary Cook) showed up, far away from her constituency. The Women's Wear Daily reporters at my table immediately and excitedly agreed that they had to go over and find out what she was wearing. In her line of work, that's rarely a question she's been asked.
She said she's not a politician and then -- delightfully -- sounded exactly like a politician. See, it's easy:
"I should be governor because I've got lots of new ideas," she said. "Radical problems need radical solutions." Yup, except for the dress and what's inside it, she could be any politician. If Hillary had her hair...
Harry Evans, making reference to Arianna Huffington's departure from the race, said to her, "You didn't pull out." He gulped visibly when he said it. So did Tina Brown at the next table.
Then Mary outlined her platform: Legalize gay marriage to envigorate a California gay honeymoon industry... Put a live webcam in the governer's mansion ("Imagine if we'd done that for Bill Clinton, it would have been very exciting")... Lower the tax on cars... Put a tax on plastic surgery and breast implants. "I'm very serious!"
The room exploded in delight. Bill Simon, failed Californa gubernatorial candidate, who called in from the Schwarzenegger campaign, blurted out, "I want to switch my endorsement!"
As the laughter died down, Hayden looks around the room and says, "Well, New Yorkers, you're all Californians now."traffic warcraft3

: The pleasant surprise of the event is that I like Reagan: sensible, well-spoken, liberal (but not Hayden).
Toward the end, former Rep. John Brademas asked him why he shouldn't start a recall campaign to oust Schwarzenegger as soon as he's elected and then run as a Democrat to take the job himself.
"I'm not a Democrat," said Independent Reagan.
"You sure sound like one," said Brademas.
Reagan said that he has, in fact, heard Democrats talk about starting a recall effort once Schwarzenegger's in. 'Cause this one's so much fun, eh?traffic warcraft3

: Tom Hayden argued that, yes, it's all Gray Davis' fault -- but because Davis listened to the damned Democratic centrists and took money from big guys and shifted to the center, pissing off the liberals.
"He abandoned the grass roots," Hayden said. "He took them for granted."
Well, but it's not the liberals who are getting rid of him.traffic warcraft3

: Barry Goldwater, Jr., is a cartoon character: crusty cowboy Barry with the Arizona leather complexion and the penchant for shouting dumb things at a high volume with pride.
On the role of government: "They're there to ... inspire inspiration!"
To Reagan: "You and I moved out of California because of too much government." (Reagan says hold on, feller: "I got tired of the smog, the attitude, the expense."
On the difference between New York and California: "New York's just as crazy. When you order a chocolate milkshake, they give you chocolate ice cream. It should be vanilla ice cream." (Reagan looked at first embarrassed by him and then charmed.)
On the recall: "The recall is a classic case of socialism's failure." (He keeps hitting that gong until Hayden explodes: "Socialism?! Where is the socialism?!" He's a guy who'd know socialism when he sees it.)traffic warcraft3

: Much fun with ancestry.
Harry says to Simon, "You're surrounded by famous names."
Simon says, "I'm a junior myself."
Ron corrects him: "I'm not actually a junor."
At another moment, Hayden complains about Scharzenegger's school program and how it won't get funded unless the entire budget is ballanced and he calls this a case of "shall we say, Reaganomics... Ron." Ron nods, "Thanks, Tom."
When it seemed that Reagan had made a swipe at the idea of an actor being governor -- he hadn't -- someone in the audience asked him about this and Ron said, "You're referring, of course, to my father. My father certainly was an actor -- I like to think a better actor than Arnold Schwarzenegger..."traffic warcraft3

: The most illuminating moment to me came when everyone agreed, to my surprise, that immigration -- particularly illegal immigration -- is the undercurrent that goes through the recall and the California attitude. Somebody asked whether that's a bigger issue than economics. They didn't disagree. They talked about people resenting illegal immigrants getting free medical care -- because we're humane -- while too many working citizens are without health insurance. They talked about immigration and jobs.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is a California issue, not an American issue. I don't see that here.traffic warcraft3

: And that was pretty much that. Bernie Goetz, subway shooter, sat next to Elizabeth Spiers, media it person, at the head table. I sat near Eric Alterman, who kept editing a manuscript through the entire thing; busy, that Eric. Next to him was Tina Brown and we didn't get to meet because she had to leave early. traffic warcraft3

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Rebel media
: The core staff of Time Inc.'s Trans World Skateboarding mag walked out because they were being forced through the corporate meatgrinder.The WSJ reports:

"The blueprint they are using is like Burger King and Wal-Mart and it's like, look man, you have a bunch of kids who are nuts and you can't put them in this corporate mold," says Mike Mihaly, the magazine's former general manager who quit earlier and is helping to found the new publication. He is starting it with TransWorld Skateboarding's former editor in chief and photo editor, among others.
All this would be a sideshow on the fringes except for one thing: Since the beginning of the year, the magazine through August had logged more ad pages than BusinessWeek, TV Guide and Time (albeit at lower rates).

As a former Time Inc. burger myself, I find this hilarious and somehow gratifying.traffic warcraft3

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The Daily Him
: Glenn Reynolds -- like the French McDonald's -- tells you not to read just him and to have a more balanced news diet:

I don't have much trouble resisting people's efforts to bully me into advancing their agendas. What worries me more, in a way, are the friendly emails from people saying that they get all their news from InstaPundit.
Don't do that! It's "InstaPundit," not "InstaNews Service." ...
What you get here -- as with any blog -- is my idiosyncratic selection of things that interest me, as I have time to note them, with my own idiosyncratic comments. What's more, to the (large) extent that it's shaped by my effort to play up stories that Big Media are ignoring, it's even more idiosyncratic. I hope you like it, but making it your sole source of news is probably not a good idea.

Right. There are a few reasons why blogs will not replace journalism as we knew it -- because old journalism gives us reporters with the training and support to go get facts and old journalism tries to package the news in a comprehensive and reliable way. That's not to say one couldn't create such a product out of blog technology -- but that's not what the big blogs are and I wouldn't want them to try to be. What makes the bloggers I enjoy so enjoyable is that they are idosyncratic; they have personality. In a word: Blogs are human.traffic warcraft3

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