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BuzzMachine
by Jeff Jarvis
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June 30, 2004
Not fair
: Indian trains have wi-fi. New Jersey Transit doesn't.
The Daily Stern: The million-buck boobs
: The FCC is reportedly getting ready to fine Viacom more than $500k for showing Janet Jackson's one boob (values the pair at $1 million).
Opinion
: I'm quoted in an editorial in the Ft. Wayne News Sentinal. (Haven't been a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner since 1981, but nevermind, I got quoted.)
Kristof v. the neonuts
: Nicholas Kristof calls the new extremists of the left n their divisive, demonizing tactics -- stolen from the extremists of the right -- in a wonderful column today: So is President Bush a liar?
Plenty of Americans think so. Bookshops are filled with titles about Mr. Bush like "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them," "Big Lies," "Thieves in High Places" and "The Lies of George W. Bush."
A consensus is emerging on the left that Mr. Bush is fundamentally dishonest, perhaps even evil — a nut, yes, but mostly a liar and a schemer. That view is at the heart of Michael Moore's scathing new documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11."
In the 1990's, nothing made conservatives look more petty and simple-minded than their demonization of Bill and Hillary Clinton, who were even accused of spending their spare time killing Vince Foster and others. Mr. Clinton, in other words, left the right wing addled. Now Mr. Bush is doing the same to the left. For example, Mr. Moore hints that the real reason Mr. Bush invaded Afghanistan was to give his cronies a chance to profit by building an oil pipeline there.
"I'm just raising what I think is a legitimate question," Mr. Moore told me, a touch defensively, adding, "I'm just posing a question."
Right. And right-wing nuts were "just posing a question" about whether Mr. Clinton was a serial killer.
I'm against the "liar" label for two reasons. First, it further polarizes the political cesspool, and this polarization is making America increasingly difficult to govern. Second, insults and rage impede understanding. Amen and I'm glad that one outcome of the Moore overdose will be a new call for moderation and centrism. This is a start. Kristof tips his hat to others: Some Democrats, like Mr. Clinton and Senator Joseph Lieberman, have pushed back against the impulse to demonize Mr. Bush. I salute them, for there are so many legitimate criticisms we can (and should) make about this president that we don't need to get into kindergarten epithets.
But the rush to sling mud is gaining momentum, and "Fahrenheit 9/11" marks the polarization of yet another form of media. One medium after another has found it profitable to turn from information to entertainment, from nuance to table-thumping.  Yes. I stopped in the Barnes & Noble where President Clinton signed his book last week and I was shocked at the hate and divisiveness and extremism dripping from the shelves. Sure, moderation doesn't sell. But do we have to sell hate?
Kristof concludes: Mr. Bush got us into a mess by overdosing on moral clarity and self-righteousness, and embracing conspiracy theories of like-minded zealots. How sad that many liberals now seem intent on making the same mistakes. Take that, neonuts.
Let the man speak
: The Wall Street Journal says the right is boiling over Fahrenheit and some unAmerican idiots actually are trying to get it pulled from theaters: Some activists want to confront the movie's controversial assertions or even stop theaters from showing it; others, including the White House, are keeping a low profile to avoid hyping the film....
But some eaglets -- conservative groups operating without sanction from the White House -- have started a late-game campaign to remove Mr. Moore's movie from theaters and its advertisements from television sets. Move America Forward, a new conservative group based in Sacramento, Calif., and formed to support U.S. troops abroad, lobbied movie houses last week to ban the film and urged viewers to boycott it. Citizens United, a conservative grass-roots group based in Washington, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission last week saying the movie's promotional ads, if they continue to run past the end of July, will violate campaign-finance laws.
Such moves may be playing right into Mr. Moore's hands -- and his pocketbook. "I want to thank all the right-wing organizations out there who tried to stop this movie either through harassment campaigns, going to the FEC to get our ads removed from television, or the things said on television," says the filmmaker. "They have only encouraged more people to go and see it." Listen, I've made it clear that I think the film is a pile of poop. But I think it should be shown and I certainly think that any effort to stop it from being seen is not only stupid -- it does, indeed, turn Moore's paranoia into a self-fulfilling prophecy and a profitable one at that. But, more important, it is utterly unAmerican.
Another Cannes winner!
: Heiko Hebig sent me this. He made it into a quiz on his site; I couldn't resist going straight to the punchline. This is an ad for the German tabloid Bild and, just like Michael Moore, it won an award in Cannes (this one the Cannes Lion ad contest; go to page 2, bottom right).
More Moore
: Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post has a great roundup of critical, online, and blog reaction to Fahrenheit.
Mayor Loon
: Correspondent TVsHenry sends me this quote from Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley. I can't find the context and source or confirm it but with that caveat in mind.... The guy is apparently a lunatic, an idiot, and a traitor -- not to the President but to his fellow citizens, his own constituents, the real and potential targets and victims of terrorists' attacks. This is the mayor of a major American city who's supposed to save his residents from terrorists? He'd let the terrorists in and keep the President out. TVsHenry says he said: "I remember after the attacks of September 11th, as the Mayor of this city, I was very, very worried about al Qaeda... and still am. But I'm even more worried about the actions and inactions of the Bush administration." And I'm worried about you, Mayor.
Extremism in the defense of extremism is a vice
: Oliver Willis responds to my post on extremism saying, rightly, that he has moderate opinions and he's tired of being called an extremist for them. Right. I add in his comments: Oliver:
The people branding you extremists for having a legitimate political opinion and taking part in the necessary national debate on issues are the extremists themselves. That's what I'm trying to say: It's time we turn the tables (or mirrors) and brand the extremists as extremists when they oversimplify and label and, more than anything else, demonize. The evil person is, thank God (and take that literally) rare; the incompetent is not so rare. I don't agree with or like George Bush or plan to vote for him yet to watch him being labeled -- by "my side" -- as the devil himself is, at the very least, unhelpful to democracy and to "our side." So it's time we repudiate them. You and I agree about some things and disagree about some things but we respect each other and our opinions and we discuss them here and openly. That's the way a democracy is supposed to work; that's the only away it CAN work. When the extremists try to divide us and throw us into one corner or the other, we need to fight back and tell them we're not the extremists, they are.
The vast blog conspiracy
: Strange column by Paul Carr in the Guardian launches off on a silly local Fox TV "report" that makes fun of blogs; we've seen that plenty, Lord knows, but this becomes a convenient launching pad to argue there's a vast right-wing conspiracy against blogs, thus positioning the column's world view: that blogs are the salvation of the left and that Air America is blog-brilliant. If he turned down the volume below 11, there might be a point here, but it's hard to hear it over the speaker distortion.
The Daily Stern
: TAKE THAT, CLEAR CHANNEL: Stern is holding a press conference now to announce that he's adding nine markets, going back on in many of the markets where Clear Channel pulled him -- including swing-state Florida -- and adding new markets. He's still talking about going to satellite when his contract is up in 18 months and he's still saying that if large personal fines are signed into law by Bush, he will just play music and shut up. But in the meantime, Viacom has shown its support -- and balls -- adding stations for Stern.
June 29, 2004
Extremism
: I just opened the most upsetting email, one of many that responded to my view of Fahrenheit 9/11. It said in part: Wake up Mr. Jarvis, we are a nation divided! It is us vs. them! What rock have you been living under for the past few years? I am much more afraid of Bush, Ashcroft, and the rest, then [sic] I am of any terrorists. Now that is truly frightening. This man -- a guy named Robert who lives in Moscow, ID (supply your own irony) -- truly believes that his enemies are his fellow citizens and his President, not the terrorists who murdered 3,000 of my neighbors before my eyes.
What the hell is happening to America?
Or is it really happening to America?
Or is it happening to an extreme fringe?
When I was on CNN the other night, the only thing I said that surprised Aaron Brown and Jeff Greenfield -- and it took them physically aback -- was when I responded to the old saw that we are a divided nation and said, "It's our fault."
It's our fault -- in media and politics -- when we paint America as a nation divided and it's as if we want it to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This is why I have such a problem with Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11: It seeks to divide.
It demonizes. And it picks the wrong demons. It's us vs. them, but the them is us.
I hated it when the right wing demonized Bill Clinton. So, you know what? That pretty much makes me honor-bound to hate it when the left wing demonizes George Bush. For I do not believe that the half of America that elected the one is evil while the half that elected the other is angelic.
I can't stand Michael Moore for looking at America as inspiration for leftist invective just as I can't stand Rush Limbaugh for looking at America and spewing his right-wing rants.
I hate it when my colleagues in media talk about how we all hate each other when I see absolutely no reporting that backs that up; I can't stand being turned into a one-dimensional fool by my own business.
Am I going to light a candle and ask, "Can't we all get along?" No. The issue isn't us. The issue is how we are portrayed by politicians, political activists, and media. They're wrong about America.
So it's time to turn the tables and treat them as they treat us: Let's cut them out of one-dimensional cloth, for they truly deserve it.
It's time to treat Michael Moore as the extremist that he is. Simple-minded, simplistic, mean, venemous, a hate-monger who does nothing to advance the debate and aims instead to divide. Add your nominees on the left.
And the same goes for Rush and Jerry Falwell and others who spew their hate and half-facts and bile and intolerance. Add your nominees on the right.
They are extremists.
We're not.
And media are their dupes or, worse, coconspirators.
But we the people now have a medium to call our own. We need to use it to reclaim the reasonable middle.
Don't quit your day job, Brooks
: Said it before. Say it again: When David Brooks writes a good column, it's good. But when he writes a dumb column it's a doozie. File today's under doozie.
He has been trying to write about polarization in America (see the post above this one) and today he argues: To a large degree, polarization in America is a cultural consequence of the information age. This sort of economy demands and encourages education, and an educated electorate is a polarized electorate. He says that people who are more educated stick to their parties and sides more loyally, therefore they are more polarized. Or, professor, it could be that they've thought through their views and analzye issues differently -- perhaps more intelligently.
He also argues that it's a matter of geography: The information age was supposed to make distance dead, but because of clustering, geography becomes more important.
The political result is that Republican places become more Republican and Democratic places become more Democratic. That's absurd, too. I live in a rabidly Republican county and I'm a Democrat. But I don't yell at my neighbors about politics over the fence. Nor do I long to move to a place where I can sit in the Starbucks and talk with people sure to agree with me (in fact, I'd find that pretty damned dull). I might have no hope of winning a local election, but I cast my vote in the presidential election and mine counts just as much as the vote of the liberal in Upper Montclair.
But then Brooks really goes off the deep end with his suggested fixes for this problem he's imaginging: Still, it's worth thinking radically. An ambitious national service program would ameliorate the situation. If you had a big but voluntary service program of the sort that Evan Bayh, a Democrat, and John McCain, a Republican, proposed a couple of years ago, millions of young people would find themselves living with different sorts of Americans and spending time in parts of the country they might otherwise know nothing about.
It might even be worth monkeying with our primary system. The current primaries reward orthodox, polarization-reinforcing candidates. Open, nonpartisan primaries might reward the unorthodox and weaken the party bases. To do nothing is to surrender to a lifetime of ugliness. Oh, that's cute: The ideology draft: Forced service to meet people not like you. Well, you know, everybody isn't like me already. And "nonpartisan primaries"? That's oxymoronic; it's just plain illogical.
: Micah Sifry responds to the same doozie column asking, What political ghettoes? Here are some problems with these notions:
-50% of us don't bother to vote in presidential elections; barely over 1/3 vote in non-presidential years and in some cases single digit turnouts have been sighted for some municiipal and even statewide races. If partisanship was on the rise, surely that would lead to much higher identification with each party's candidates, and thus be reflected in higher turnouts.
-More Americans are identifying as political independents and registering as such (or "decline to state"), while Democratic identifiers are sharply down and Republicans are flat. This recent column by Rhodes Cook spells out some of the salient facts.
-The information economy isn't as big as Brooks cliaims, so his theory that more of us are suddenly free to move wherever we like and thus congregate in places "where people share their cultural aesthetic and...political values" seems like quite a stretch. And even in such places, diversity reigns. Go read the rest.
See, we're not as divided as they -- media and politicians -- say we are. Only the extremists are.
Let the people speak
: Tim Blair, the most forward-thinking journalist I know, just did something great: He handed over his big-media Australian column to three Iraqi bloggers: This week's column is brought to you direct from Baghdad by Ali Fadhil, a paediatrician, and his brothers Mohammed and Omar, both dentists. Read more from the trio at http://iraqthemodel.com/.
How is life in Iraq? Depends on your point of view. A bunch of us were talking the other night; one friend, very angry, said: "Did you see what happened today in Antar Square? The Americans came, blocked the street and attacked the toy store. They were smashing kid's bicycles!" Another friend, listening carefully, asked: "Was there a big loading truck with them?" Yes, came the reply. The second friend then told his version: it turned out he'd been at the store buying a bike for his son. "I was in the middle of tough bargaining with the shopkeeper when two Humvees and a truck stopped out front. One of the Humvees waved all the cars to pass. Soldiers from the second Humvee said they wanted to buy some bicycles. It didn't take a long time, as they didn't bargain, and they bought a huge number of bicycles and filled the truck with them and left." Whom to believe? Here are two good friends and both were on the scene. As for me, it didn't take a lot of effort to figure out who was closer to the truth. Those bikes have probably been delivered to a local school. – Mohammed
Something you may not have read about: in May, Iraqi soldiers saved the life of a US marine shot during patrols in Al Karmah, near Fallujah. Private Imad Abid Zeid Jassim dragged the injured marine away from gunfire then attacked the enemy. We (and you) don't read any good news like this. All we get are pictures of idiots throwing bricks at burnt cars. Why don't the media cover such stories? The attitude of the major media no longer surprises me. It only disgusts me. – Omar
Go read the rest.
And big-time American journos should be ashamed of themselves they didn't think of this first. It has been there, on the web, right under their noses, all along.
And I have to share this email from Tim, when he told me about this last week: Another thing -- Ali, who is so polite and formal, insisted on beginning every email with "Dear Sir". So I told him everybody in Australia calls each other "mate".
Now he's writing "can we change this, mate?", "Omar wants another couple of lines, mate", etc. And he's signing off with "Cheers, mate."
It's beyond beautiful. I must meet these people. Me, too, mate.
Fisk away
: Andrew Sullivan asked any blogger to create a transcript of Fahrenheit 9/11 and a day later, here's the first chunk. And here's Andrew's take on the messianic parallels between Michael Moore and Mel Gibson.
What's really happening in Iraq
: Winds of Change has a roundup of what the Iraqi bloggers said about the handover of power.
: Here's Michele's roundup.
: And reservist and writer Eric Johnson tells a story of the Washington Post's bureau chief in Baghdad telling one view of what's happening there, the dark view.
A place for my stuff, cont.
: Today's packed PaidContent has two great items that point to the future of a Place for My Stuff:
: Motorola, Rafat reports, is restarting its iRadio initiative. Here's Motorola's description in the job posting Rafat found: • Time-slipped & buffered audio – record & store radio/TV audio and play it back at a scheduled time or on-demand. The audio might originate from Satellite radio, AM/FM broadcast, Internet or Cable TV. Imagine listening to your favorite radio/TV show when & where you want to . . . not when it happens to be broadcast!
• Pause-Resume – pause audio playback in one domain (person, home or car) and resume it in another. Picture listening to NPR during your commute home, pausing when you reach your garage and resuming where you left off on your home stereo!
• Push-to-Buy – push a button to purchase & download audio to a target destination. Imagine listening to a great new song on a phone or in your car . . . a simple push of a button launches a transaction to purchase a legal, secure digital copy of the song, download it to your home PC and wirelessly stream it to your car and phone when you get home!
Think of it as a Virtual Personal Audio Recorder based on a few building blocks:
• Car – An aftermarket, Bluetooth/802.11 enabled storage capable device or a multi-function head unit
• Home – A multi-media, 802.11 enabled gateway
• Person - A Bluetooth, MP3 & FM capable handset (Cell Phone or iPod)
• Back Office - Client & Server software architecture to enable seamless services
iRadio . . . doing to analog AM/FM broadcast what HBO & PVR did to traditional TV broadcast! This is what the Place for My Stuff enables: I get my stuff wherever I want, whenever I want, on whatever device I have.
: But until high bandwidth is ubiquitous, this will be accomplished by syncing. See, then, Rafat's World's-Fair-quality demo of a wi-fi car: "At a table inside Starbucks, Ford executives set up a laptop that had a bunch of MP3 tracks on its hard drive. Inside the [2004 Lincoln Aviator SUV], a prototype Wi-Fi entertainment system from Delphi was built into the dashboard. It had all the regular buttons for AM and FM radio, a CD player and even a Sirius satellite radio receiver. But there was one more: a synchronization button...We pushed it, and in about 20 seconds, some two dozen MP3 files from the laptop inside Starbucks were downloaded to the Delphi radio and stored on a built-in flash memory drive."
The value of links
: Paid Content tells us that game company IGN just bought movie-review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes for $10 million. When you think about it, Rotten is a sort of early weblog -- summarizing and linking to reviews everywhere -- and it gets traffic (276k unique users per week), so it built value.
Supreme Court and free speech
: The Supreme Court just blocked a law aimed at pornographers as a likely unconstitutional slap at free speech.
The court was divided and sent the case back to a lower court. But even in the case of pornography and children, the court stood behind free speech as a principle, an American ultimate, that requires protection. And if the Court protects free speech against even pornography and children, surely it will protect free speech against the indecent indecency legislation about to be signed by Bush.
"There is a potential for extraordinary harm and a serious chill upon protected speech'' if the law took effect, Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority.
: UPDATE: Here's Ernie Miller's take on the decision. And here's Eugene Volokh on the issue of prurient interest. And here's Jack Balkin, who also says: Putting together Justice Thomas' opinion in Hamdi with his vote in ACLU v. Ashcroft, we may infer that the President can throw any citizen in a military prison indefinitely, but that the citizen has the right to view pornography while there. Don't you just love having your very own constitutional law experts at the ready?
: UPDATE: Henry sends me this great quote from Dennis Miller: "The Senate overwhelmingly agreed on a bill Tuesday to fine broadcasters as much as $3 million a day for racy language. Oh, yeah? Well guess what, FCC. I'm still going to say whatever I want. So don't intercourse with me."
Memevertising
: Hugh McLeod, marketing visionary, is trying to create a new kind of advertising by creating a meme for Technorati: Smarter conversations equals better products. It’s so frickin’ obvious. Spread the word.
RSS I: What RSS needs to make money... and grow
: I joined in an RSS webcast the other day and ranted on what RSS needs to grow -- which is also to say what it needs to make money, for if content creators can't make money from it (or at least not lose money because of it), they won't join in... but when they do join in, RSS will grow and become a new standard for delivering content across multiple media, clients, and devices. It goes hand-in-hand, or hand-in-pocket.
Especially since RSS will be read by multiple clients on multiple devices (see the next two posts), we need to set business standards -- or at least establish business needs -- now so that as it proliferates it prospers. But I do not see any means of getting those business needs into standards-setting discussion now. Here are my opening bids for business needs:
1. Unique users. If content creators cannot report unique users they cannot get advertising. Period. So RSS readers must set unique-user cookies. Period.
2. Traffic. RSS readers must allow content creators to count displays -- versus just downloads -- of RSS items.
3. Advertising. If content creators cannot put advertising on feeds, they will not give full content and will give only headlines to link back to their sites where they have the ads. But partial feeds are a pain, right? So there's the carrot/stick: Give them ads, they will give you content. That's the way the world works.
4. Brand. I'm adding this one. As a reader, I find it frustrating that I can't see the brand of a feed unless I scroll up on FeedDemon and read the one line atop the the screen. Brand matters to the content creator, of course, but it also can matter to the reader: You want to know what you're reading.
5. Navigation. I'm adding this one, too. But I know I'm not alone here: Like many RSS fans, I use the feeds to alert me that something is new and if it is of the slightest interest, I prefer to read the post on the web page with full functionality. It's a pain to get to that web page now. The easy solution to Nos. 4 & 5 is to include a brand element that is also clickable to the creator's web page.
Now I know some will accuse me of just turning feeds into HTML and I will agree that this can go too far real fast. But there is also good need to consider this functionality to make RSS prosper.
That's precisely why we need some means of soliciting, discussing, and incorporating business needs into the future of RSS. There are a few ways that can happen. Dave Winer just left the RSS advisory board and they're looking for a replacement; I suggest they get someone (no, not me) with a business outlook to join in. Or someone can put together an RSS business summit. Whatever. If someone does not take this bull by its horns, RSS will grow too slowly.
RSS II: Putting his mouth where is money is
: Brad Feld, a VC at Mobius, explains on his blog why he just invested in Newsgator. It's a very good post but even more important, it's an example of a new and more transparent world of investment.
RSS III: More on Newsgator
: By the way, regarding Newsgator... I said in an offhand remark when Brad invested in the company that I didn't use Newsgator because I don't want anything more cluttering my Outlook (it's plenty cluttered already!). Brad answers that in detail on his post, explaining that Newsgator also has web and mobile versions. I didn't mention it in my offhand remark but I've already used both. And they're both very good. In fact, I would absolutely love it if I could sync my reading of RSS feeds across mobile and laptop, as Newsgator offers. The rub remains: I still prefer using a client to using a web service with less functionality (and no offline usage) and Newsgator's non-web client uses Outlook and so I don't use Newsgator as my core reader. I do use Newsgator on my Treo.
All of this is just transitional nitpicking on the way to the integration of RSS feeds into most every bit of software we use: It will be part of our browsers (see Safari); it will be on our mobile devices; it will feed the architecture of web sites (I'm working to rearchitect my day-job sites around news feeds); it will feed media of many sorts (it's already being used to feed ESPN video and rich advertising); it will feed new devices not yet invented.
Feeding me -- sending me any kind of content anytime anywhere on any device -- is the promise of this medium in an ever-connected world and RSS will be at the core of that. This is just the beginning.
June 28, 2004
Geekgasm
: Jason Shellen has a moment of rapture when his Treo talks to his TiVo to record 60 minutes.
Apple & RSS
: Apple just announced adding RSS to its Safari browser and Vivek Shankar (of the Northwestern Hyperlocal project) just sent me the link to the demo. Most cool. Nice features, such as a slider to change the length of the listings. Amusing note: They say the feeds are ad-free, not something the client can control at the end of the day. Bottom line: How long before it's in IE?
Dear Bill Gates,
:
: Jay Rosen sends Bill Gates an open letter with suggestions for his rumored blog. Do a newsy blog. Something like: Bill Gates reads the headlines. Gates on politics and world affairs. Gates on the spread of freedom and markets, war and peace, public education, AIDS prevention, the limits of technology, the misery of Africa, and the difficulty of solving messy global problems. Gates on why the politicians are sometimes a joke. The big picture Gates. The occasionally angry Gates. Even the ranting Gates. The man who had to expand his knowledge in order to extend the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to its practical, global and problem-solving agenda. Jay, ever the media historian, says there have been three ways for the rich, powerful, and famous to deal with media: (1) Lock them up. (2) Ignore them. (3) Hire a flack. This is a fourth way ( a la Mark Cuban): Speak to your public directly.
Jay also gives Gates some practical suggestions: Hire a blog assistant. Ignore the lawyers.
I'm with Jay on the overall notion: Who needs to be humanized more than Bill Gates? Who needs a means of talking directly to the people without enough filters to clean up the Hudson more than Bill Gates? What modern business mind would be more fascinating to step into more than Bill Gates?
Plus, we fellow bloggers can suddenly find ourselves in the same club with Bill Gates. And we can all hope to get a little Gates link love (a microlanch?).
And more Moore
: The Sun-Times has two good stories on one page about Fahrenheit followups. In the first, reporter Tom McNamee does a straightforward fact-check on the film. In the second, a MacArthur genius got so upset over the film that he found himself starting a revolution with nothing but his pooper scooper: Saturday night, a 64-year-old man was walking his Doberman through a South Side neighborhood where residents have been complaining about dog owners not cleaning up after pets.
Patrol officers stopped the man -- community activist Sokoni Karanja, a onetime recipient of a prestigious MacArthur Foundation fellowship -- to see if the dog, which was on a leash but without tags, had a license, police said.
But, officials said, Karanja became agitated and threatened to sic the dog on the officers. A scuffle ensued, and Karanja was arrested and slightly injured.
"He just saw 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' and apparently he was telling the police officers, 'George Bush does not control me,'" said Prairie District Lt. Dave Caddigan.
Police Capt. Eugene Roy said "the best way to summarize is he was distraught and upset after viewing the movie, and his wife attributes his behavior to that."
More Moore: Health next
: Well, this is good news/bad news:
Michael Moore plans to tackle health care next.
Well, the good news is that health care is a subject that damned well needs tackling. It's shameful what's happening in this country: millions uninsured; people trapped in the wrong jobs just because of health benefits; money wasted on exploding insurance bureacracy; doctors' time wasted with insurance time-wasters; proper and necessary care withheld from the sick; costs skyrocketing; malpractice rates driving doctors away.... Oh, Lord, it needs tackling.
The bad news: If Moore does as blunt and bad a job of it as he did with war and politics in Fahrenheit and gun control in Columbine, it ratchets-up and dumbs-down the debate. What we don't need is more polemic and preaching to the converted and the sick. What we do need is intelligent, well-researched, strongly argued media that will set and change the agenda in both parties. Once upon a time, I might have thought that Moore could contribute to that debate. But that's my real problem after Fahrenheit: He merely seethes and it's too damned easy for the other side to ignore the slob seething in the corner.
The Daily Stern
: Adam Thierer of the Cato Institute writes in the conservative National Review that the Senate had its head up its ass -- well, he didn't quite say that; I did -- when it sneaked in its indecent indecency bill last week. First, he argues that playing nanny is not government's job: Parents like me should be rejoicing that our judicious and morally upstanding leaders are taking steps to protect our children from the filth in this world.
But there is another, less popular way of looking at the issue. That is, whatever happened to personal responsibility?
I have a serious problem with calling in Uncle Sam to play the role of surrogate parent and I would hope some others out there do too. Particularly troubling to me is the fact that so many conservatives, who rightly preach the gospel of personal responsibility about most economic issues, seemingly give up on this notion when it comes to cultural issues. Art, music, and speech are fair game for the Ministry of Culture down at the FCC, but don't let them regulate our cable rates! He goes on to reveal the corner the censors are painting themselves -- and us -- into, for their primary rationale is that broadcast is pervasive and that's why it is excused from the First Amendment to the Constitution. Except broadcast isn't pervasive anymore; it's dying. Cable, satellite, and the Internet are pervasive. Does that mean they have to/want to regulate the speech on all those media? Uh-oh. As traditional broadcasting dies a slow but certain death, do we start censoring "indecent" speech on cable, satellite, the Internet, and everything that follows?
In a free society, different people will have different values and tolerance levels when it comes to speech, and government should not impose the will of some on all. When it comes to minding the kids, I'll take responsibility for teaching my own about the realities of this world, including the unsavory bits. You worry about yours. Let's not call in the government to do the job for us. Amen.
In defense of the taste of the masses
: I was a TV critic during broadcast TV's -- and American pop culture's -- true golden age, when television was filled with good shows and those shows were also the most popular, proving -- against all popular snarking -- that Americans, the masses, do have good taste.
TV has changed but that doesn't mean we've lost our taste.
Kurt Andersen wrote/spoke about this on Studio 360 this week. Television in the 90s was defined by smart, well-written prime-time network sitcoms like Roseanne, Murphy Brown, Seinfeld and, of course, The Simpsons.
But in the 90s the best shows were also by and large the most highly rated shows. That had never happened before. And mainstream TV was arguably superior to mainstream motion pictures. That had never happened before either.
Looking at the Nielsen top 10 in the 90s actually used to made me feel a little better about my fellow Americans. Western civilization wasn't necessarily in decline.
But that golden age, like all golden ages, was too good to last. In 1999, among the top shows were still ER, Frasier, Friends, 60 Minutes and The X-Files. But then within just a couple of seasons, the highest-rated programs were mostly,…not so good.
And ever since, most of the shows at the top of the ratings have been mediocre series... Or worse. And he cues a clip from Survivor.
Kurt, of course, finds greater meaning in this: So…what happened?
Some of it is just a matter of inevitable, uncontrollable boom and bust cycles, like farming. We're in a drought. But there's also an unmistakable generational underpinning to this trend line. He says it was baby boomers who, as an audience, created the boom but it is also baby boomers who, as TV executives, are causing the decline: And in response to the rise of cable TV, those big network executives are running scared…and making panicky, safe, second-guessed, uncreative programming choices, in favor of the dumb and the bland.
In other words, it may have been baby boomers who made prime-time great in the 90s…but it is also baby boomers who are turning network TV back into an unsatisfying wasteland today. Interesting analysis but I'll argue that Kurt got it wrong. He's looking at media the old way -- just as folks who analyze weblogs on the basis of the power law do: This analysis says that the biggest shows/blogs/pubs/entities are what matter most because they're the biggest.
That's no longer true. In a world of extreme choice and consumer control, in a world of a zero-barrier to entry to publishing and of exploding TV, in a post-mass-medium world, you can't judge our taste or take our pulse based on the biggest. You have to look at the whole.
So when judging our taste on the basis of TV, you have to include cable and HBO in your sweep. HBO is now the fountain of the best TV in history and also the most daring TV because it can be, unfettered as it is by ratings and advertising. We watch those shows and even pay for them. We still have taste.
We also have lots of special interests that can now be satisfied by lots of cable channels: My wife and I could sit there and watch hours of home-redo shows yesterday. You can watch history or news or music or whatever you like. We still have taste.
There is more TV than ever. There is more great TV than ever. The audience for TV is bigger than ever. We still have taste.
So what about broadcast TV?
It is now just another niche. It's the biggest niche, but that's a matter of circumstances, economics, and habits; it is now the default, when-there's-nothing-better-on choice. They said for years that TV was a lowest-common-denominator medium and that wasn't true; as Andersen and I have argued, in the '90s, when given a chance to watch good shows, we did. But now we have other places to watch those good shows. So broadcast TV becomes the fast-food joint on the busy highway with the high rent that will slap out burgers; it's the tabloid sitting on the stands next to The Atlantic; it's the volume business; it's the LCD on the LCD screen. But you can't judge our taste as a culture based on what is shown just on broadcast TV anymore.
A place for my stuff, cont.
: Blogfriend Rex Hammock just sent some amazing links continuing the wishful thinking about getting a place for all my (and your) digital stuff:
: Rex found this remarkable new service made available to every resident of Indiana (finally, a good reason to live there!): SimIndiana gives hooked-up Hoosiers free "word processor, e-mail, contact manager, spreadsheet, personal information manager, and file manager" and -- far more important than that -- a place for all that stuff: If you create a document in SimWord® (SimIndiana's word processor), you do not have to save it to a disk or to a computer’s hard drive. With SimIndiana, you have the option to save your document in your virtual drive on the SimIndiana server.
The SimIndiana server is accessible on any computer with an Internet connection. Each user is provided a virtual disk drive on the SimIndiana server where files and folders can be securely stored and shared with other SimIndiana users. SimDesk, the company that does this, has a similar deal in Houston. Damn. I want it. Do I have to move to get it?
: Rex also sent me the text of a story about a digital Place for My Stuff that he's running in one of his publications soon and with that, a bunch of links, including this one on the Digital Living Network Alliance -- which "established ground rules for building compatible electronic devices that can share movies, music and other media."
But far more fascinating is this link Rex sent for a truly visionary 1945 article by Dr. Vannevar Bush, then director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, in which he envisioned the functionality of computers and, yes, a Place for My Stuff, not to mention the Web and Google: Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, "memex" will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory....
Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. Welcome to that future.
(My original posts here.)
The Stern bloc
: The Times writes about the New Democratic poll (days after we did) and its discovery of a Stern voting bloc: Unfortunately for Republicans, a lot of these voters tune their radios to Mr. Stern, who has been crusading to oust President Bush. Mr. Stern is angry at the Federal Communications Commission, which cracked down on stations that broadcast a show of his that discussed anal sex and what the commission called "repeated flatulence sound effects."
Mr. Stern, who has backed Republican candidates in the past, has a mother lode of swing voters in his audience, according to a poll by the New Democrat Network, an advocacy group. Its pollster, Mark Penn, calculates that this "Stern Gang" of swing voters makes up 4 percent of the likely voters this year, nearly as large as the entire Hispanic vote in 2000.
But one bit of solace for Republicans is that Mr. Stern's listeners go to church frequently, which tends to correlate with voting Republican. The poll showed that Mr. Stern's listeners were slightly more likely than nonlisteners to call themselves born-again Christians and were three times more likely to attend church daily. The pollsters did not ask why they went to church after listening to Mr. Stern, so there is no way to calculate how many were performing an act of contrition.
The transfar in Iraq
: By now you all know that power was transferred in Iraq, ahead of sked.
Stuart Hughes beat all the big guys breaking the news on his blog.
June 27, 2004
God's revenge against mobile phone users
: A scientist says mobile phones reduce sperm counts by 30 percent. MEN who regularly carry a mobile phone could have their sperm count reduced by as much as 30 per cent.
Those who place their phone near their groin, on a belt or in a pocket, are at greatest risk, new research has revealed.
The findings, to be presented at an international conference this week, are the first to suggest male fertility could be affected by the radiation emitted by mobile phones, also long suspected of causing cancer.
The study by Hungarian researchers found the sperm that did survive exposure to mobile phone radiation showed abnormal movements, further reducing fertility.
But Australian experts advised men not to panic yet. Or it could just be that guys who wear dorky belt clips for phones get less action.
Free speech
: CNET gives you a decent backgrounder on the coming Supreme Court ruling on the Child Online Protection Act, expected this week. The court is expected to decide early next week whether the Child Online Protection Act violates Americans' right to free expression on the Internet. The 1998 law, which restricts sexually explicit material deemed "harmful to minors" that appears on commercial Web sites, includes civil fines and prison terms in its provisions. COPA has been on hold during the court proceedings.
"If it's upheld, there will be a shock wave," said Ann Beeson, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union who argued the case before the high court. "We've been assuming on the Internet that there aren't laws like this." Nobody would argue that children should not be exposed to pornography (I say we should start with the horrid spam being sent to everyone in the world, including children). But, as with the FCC's and Congress' indecent indecency jihads, as always, the problem will be: Where's the line and who's drawing it? For example, is the Washington Post over the line because it reported what the Vice President of the United States said this week?
Red herring run
: RatherBiased and now a Pittsburgh columnist and now Instapundit are all nattering that CBS is in some payola scandal or conflict of interest -- take your pick -- because (a) CBS interviewed Bill Clinton and (b) CBS' web site has an Amazon affiliate.
Oh, come on.
That's the most crimson of herrings. These people all know in their sane moments that no one at CBS is choosing to interview the former President of the United States and now author of what may be a record-setting biography beause they might make, oh, 20 bucks from Amazon. Yes, and when they put on TV's 10th home improvement show, it's obviously because Amazon sells tools, right?
These critics better be careful, for if they set this as the standard for conflict of interest, then all bloggers who open up for ads are going to find themselves tied in knots: Take an ad for Walmart and Walmart sells books and so you're tainted, eh? And what about the columnist who complains: Shouldn't he start off every column with a disclosure of all the paper's sponsors who pay his salary? Oh, yes, then there'd be no room for a column. But in this case, that may be a good thing.
Come on, folks.
: By this same logic, the LA Times is engaging in payola every time it reviews a movie since, on its web site, it has a deal with Fandango to sell movie tickets.
: UPDATE: Now this is just too beautiful. I go to the aforementioned columnist's page and what do I see? Why, yes, an ad for the aforementioned Clinton book. So this columnist is sucking at the Clinton teat. Spit out that milk of commerce, boy! See for yourself:
: UPDATE: Let's imagine this scene: Sumner Redstone calls in Don Hewitt and Dan Rather and giggles as he says, "Let's get Bill Clinton onto 60 Minutes and when his book comes out our secret Amazon deal -- well, actually, it's not a secret; anybody can see it -- will make us hundreds, I tell you, hundreds! That will cure our pathetic stock price, boys! Hee-hee-hee!"
Folks, this is about the most ridiculous meme I've yet seen. It makes Michael Moore's almost-seven-minutes-in-the-classroom meme look like Pulitzer-calibre reporting.
If you want to complain about Dan Rather's questions, fine. I'm no Rather fan; in a major national magazine, I called him the dumbest anchor alive. You want to complain about Bill Clinton's answers, cool. I like Clinton; you don't; that's politics.
But this is below naive. In New Jersey, we have a word for it: It's dumb. And, frankly, it doesn't speak well for weblogs. Imagine you're a first-time reader, having heard about the balanced, intelligent, nuanced, sophisticated, savvy discussion that occurs on weblogs. You come into the middle of a discussion about how 60 Minutes had on the former President of the United States and author of a record-selling book because they'd make a few Amazon affiliate bucks. It would make you run back to the comfort of old media. But you're better than that, aren't you?
: Q&O castrates this meme with a swift and sharp knife. [via Instapundit]
Max Black says: Of course, Jarvis is right but I'm still fuming about the CBS 60 minute Clinton infomercial. In any case, CBS should have noted the apparent conflict of interest. Oliver Willis does a little digging -- didn't take much; anybody could have done it; good on Oliver for doing it -- to point out who owns the aforementioned Pittsburgh paper. Why, its none other than the behind-the-scenes bad guy of The Hunting of the President, the Clinton hater of Clinton haters, Richard Mellon Scaife. Says CNN: Scaife's tax-exempt foundations disclose their grants on the Web. Among them: $2.4 million over several years to American Spectator to pay for anti-Clinton reporting, even a private eye to dig up dirt. And millions more went to other anti-Clinton groups. Hmmm. Shouldn't the columnist have disclosed that: "My money to write this very column comes from the guy who spends his money to smear Clinton." Not doing so is what I'd call, well, a conflict of interest to beat all conflict of interests. But I expect no more of the likes of these.
Says Oliver: "Nothing to see here, move along." Yes, sir, officer!
June 26, 2004
Religious freedom?
: Well, it's not just France that's doing dumb things like banning religous clothing. Germany's banning headscarves.
Smut.de
: Germany leads in porn.
And someday, he will grow up to be governor of California
: Doctors report a superstrong German toddler: A "genetic mutation has given a Berlin five-year-old muscles twice the size of other kids his age and about half the body fat."
 More Moore
: I was going to take a vacation from Michael Moore today but, what the hell, here's a wonderful compilation of self-loathing-American quotes by the big man himself from David Brooks:
For example, it was during an interview with the British paper The Mirror that Moore unfurled what is perhaps the central insight of his oeuvre, that Americans are kind of crappy.
"They are possibly the dumbest people on the planet . . . in thrall to conniving, thieving smug [pieces of the human anatomy]," Moore intoned. "We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing." : The big man is doing boffo box office, beating White Chicks and Dodgeball Friday.
: Photo thanks to Donald Sensing.
: UPDATE: Allah reconsiders his HQ.
New York, where fads become cliches
: Lockhart Steele says: Beware The Lamp.
X-rated Ashcroft
: Nerve is holding a contest to create the "sexiest" one-minute video starring prude-in-chief John Ashcroft. I can't decide whether to animate the stone lady with the naked breasts he covered up or to dabble in puppetry of the penis.
His Life
: Daniel Radosh presents Bill Clinton's My Life: The Powerpoint.
Switching accents
: Just got email announcing that Arianna Huffington will be subbing for Tina Brown on CNBC's Topic A this Sunday. Should be livelier. Among the guests: Al Franken and 15-year-old Theo Spielberg plus a "book club" reviewing Clinton's bio.
BilLOG
: Bill Gates is getting ready to blog. [via Standard Deviance via Kinja's new blog on blog compilation]
CNN notes
: A few notes on CNN last night...
: As we left last night, Greenfield said he starts every mornking reading blogs. He mentioned Instapundit and Kos. "Wonkette?" I asked. "Of course," he said. Continuing my campaign to make Wonkette a TV star, I said to Greenfield, "You should do her," and realized that didn't sound so good. "I mean, you should do her on TV," I said and realized that sounded even worse. Then we were through the revolving doors.
: Newsnight has changed. The show is much better paced than it used to be, filled with more reporting, more stories, less droning. I don't know whether it's a change in format or a new producer I've warmed to Aaron Brown.
: The email I read on my Treo moments after leaving the studio included such gems as this: "I don’t know how you can say that Bush is not the enemy. He is the enemy. " And: In case you hadn't noticed, Bush et al ARE 'evil, venal, corrupt, incompetent co-conspirators out to ruin our world.'" And: "People like you are the problem with this country." I got some nice emails, too.
: Transcript of the show here.
June 25, 2004
Just got off CNN Newsnight with Jeff Greenfield and Aaron Brown and the, uh, charming email is starting already. Blogging from the cab. More later...
If you came in from CNN, here's a link to the review that got me there.
It's late. Good night.
More Moore
: As of now (and this could change), I'll be on CNN with Aaron Brown tonight between 10 and 11 ET to talk about Fahrenheit 9/11.
: Last night, I watched the Independent Film Channel, which aired Moore's press conference in Cannes after he won the big enchildada there and it was incredibly boring: a guy drones his opinions for a half-hour; it was like being stuck in an elevator with him.
But I kept watching as they aired The Big One, Moore's film after Roger & Me, because I wanted to see whether he had changed or I had. I used to enjoy Moore; I clearly don't now. Well, I'm sure we've both changed: I'm skinnier and the beard's whiter; he's bigger and the beard's scruffier.
But Moore has lost something: Call it his light touch (I said his light touch, light for him) or call it his sense of humor, he used to make his point by making fun. He poked at the powerful to bring them down to earth. He laughed.
Now he's still poking fun but in the immortal words of Billy Crystal, it's not fun, it's not funny. He's deadly serious. He's downright rabid. And that makes him harder to take; don't you always want to back away from somebody who's seething at you? It also makes his role as a filmmaker and political activist different: He's no longer just ridiculing the powerful; he's no longer turning them into punchlines; he's now trying to convince us that these particular powerful people -- Bush et al -- are evil, venal, corrupt, incompetent co-conspirators out to ruin our world. If you're going to try to convince us of that, then you have a different obligation of fact and argument than if you're just trying to make fun of somebody. You should give us legitimate facts and arm us with arguments by showing both sides of an issue and beating down the other side. If you don't do that, you're only shrieking. You're weakening your own argument by ignoring the other side. You're insulting the intelligence of your audience by not giving them both sides. You're just seething. That's what Moore is like now. He wants to convince us he's telling the truth but he's afraid to tell the whole truth.
: By the way, Mike's Blog is coming soon! Hoo boy!
: UPDATE: A commenter says I was wrong in part of this post about the first day's take and the number of screens it appeared on in two NY theaters; couldn't confirm either way and I'm headed out and so I killed that part of the post.
Cynical tax cuts
: George Bush (following in the footsteps of Reaganomics) made a politically cynical tax cut when he came into office, cutting taxes but not cutting spending and instead borrowing so he could cut those taxes. He gave away money to voters, money he didn't have. He borrowed money from our children to pay us to curry favor with us. That is political cynicism at its worst; it's one of my big problems with Bush.
Now Democratic New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey has made an equally cynical act but with a uniquely Democratic twist. In the state budget just approved, McGreevey lowered taxes by raising taxes. He is taxing income over $500,000 at a new and high rate to give property tax relief to people who make under $200,000 and it has been acknowledged that he can do that because there are only X thousand people in that high income bracket and, hell, none of them probably voted for McGreevey anyway. He also raised taxes on property sales so anyone in the state who is trying to use the money made in a home as a nest egg or as payment on the next home now has to pay the state on the way.
If either manager had cut spending to cut taxes, fine. That's good management. Government, just like industry, needs restructuring. But neither did that. Bush stole from our children and McGreevey stole from the state's most successful to give money and buy votes. That's bad management. That's political cynicism.
The Daily Stern: F the VP
: The irony is so neon-garish it's not even irony. It's just stupid:
On the very day the Senate sneaks its indecent indecency bill through, the President of the Senate -- aka Vice President Dick Cheney -- spews the F word to a fellow senator.
Now I have no problem with him spewing the F word. Spew it myself. Often. But on this very day, the Senate decided that if you or I spew that word on broadcast, we can be fined up to $3 million a day because the F word, says the gospel according to the FCC, is profane.
Sounds like political speech to me.
: Note that the Washington Post actually printed the word. And the republic did not collapse.
The New York Times, on the other hand, got prissy about it. At that point, the aides said, the vice president turned and stalked away, using an obscene phrase to describe what he thought Mr. Leahy should do. Just whom are they protecting? The vice president said it on the the floor of the U.S. Senate and the word is newsworthy because the Senate just chose to chill such speech by the people on the people's airwaves. The word is news. He said fuck, folks.
The death of perspective
: German media are comparing Abu Ghraib to -- yes, I'm actually going to say this -- Auschwitz. We expected it. We knew it would come. Only the when and where were in doubt. The German media are drawing parallels among the American soldiers’ abuses in Abu Ghraib, Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and the Nazi’s concentration camps. And the icing on the cake? This moronic idiocy, which first appeared in a low-circulation, leftist, feminist rag, is being reprinted in Germany’s most important conservative newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.Do Women Torture as Men Do? By Alice Schwarzer
(...) The first (photo) shows a hooded victim on a pedestal who, with his arms outstretched like the crucified Christ, symbolizes the world’s sufferings. … The second photo shows a pile of naked men that reminds us of pictures from the concentration camps. … The issue here is nothing less than the revision of German history. Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Theresienstadt and Dachau are all in the same league with Abu Ghraib. (While under American control – the German media treated Abu Ghraib under Saddam’s rule as a non-event, as a sub-set of the category Arabian folklore.)
Cool, man
: Michael Tchong's Trendsetters.com newsletter reports: At a May 29 Toronto concert, Blink 182 asked attendees to pull out their lighters. When few people heeded the call, the lead singer announced, “We’re in the age of the Internet, everyone pull out their cell phone!” Within seconds, a sea of lights illuminated the audience. Says our Toronto Cool Hunter, “Everyone could not believe how amazing it looked.” It will look even more amazing in the future, if the new Nokia 3320 is any indication. With an optional cover, the 3320 lets you create “wave messages” that resemble those “Let’s Party” spin tickers sold at rock concerts. Just click on Fun Features and “Wave Messaging” to see what we mean.
Sharing the wealth
: Rod Dreher shares the wonders of blogs with his editorial-page readers at the Dallas News. [via Tim Porter]
A place for my stuff, cont.
: Fred Wilson wonders whether Jeremy Zawodny's plan for using lots of gigantic free email accounts is the place for my stuff. Well, it's a start. It proves that storage in the cloud is no problem.
Reregulation
: Government should not be in the position of regulating media and thus speech, but regulation is only growing. Besides the indecent indecency bills, the Senate's snuck-through version pulls back on the FCC's media deregulation and now a court has ruled against the FCC. Dangerous, very dangerous.
Do they make them in sizes big enough for Michael Moore?
: The Socialist Shirt Shop. [via der Schockwellenreiter]
Paris Hilton blog
:
: No, she's not blogging. Drat. But someone is blogging about her. [via der Schockwellenreiter]
Pumped media
: Rafat Ali reports that Nike is expanding its creative content ambitions after its successful launch on Gawker.
June 24, 2004
Cablenewser scoop: Wolfowitz apologizes to reporters
: The amazing Cablenewswer gets a scoop: Wolfowitz sends an apology to reporters in Iraq for hinting they're chicken. See Howard Kurtz' story on the dustup.
News from Iran
: Hoder uses his wonderful photoblog to report the news that that Sina Motallebi, the Iranian blogger who got out of jail and out of Iran, has been summoned and the bail that freed him is at issue.
: Hoder also says that since the mullahs started filtering (read: censoring) blogs his traffic has gone down.
: Finally, Hoder rightly points out that the Iranians putting the captured and blindfolded British sailors on a perp walk on TV was stupid, for it reminds us all of both the recently beheaded Westerners and the one-time hostages.
Lubcricated?
: Bush backs condoms to stop AIDS. Wonkette says: "In related news, the White House warned audiences that Darth Vader is actually Luke's father and said that Homeland Security has many leads on who shot J.R...."
Watching Michael Moore
: As I walked out of the theater on the opening day of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, I thought (read: hoped) that even here, in the East Village of Manhattan, true Moore country, where the flick was already sold out all night, surely even here they wouldn't fall for all his obvious, visual/rhetorical tricks, his propaganda too unsubtle for the cheapest tin-horn demagog.
Take this scene: Moore shows dead American soldiers in Iraq, many of them, the more blood the better. Then he says we need to replace them and he asks where they'll come from. He takes us to his favorite man-of-the-people populist playground, Flint, MI, and says that we'll find soldiers "in the places that had been destroyed by the economy." He focuses on poor black men as Bush's next victims -- not even acknowledging that virtually every soldier he has just shown -- and ridiculed -- in the film is white. It's all so convenient: anti-war-pro-poor-multi-culti-heartland. The rhetoric is as obvious as the gut on the guy.
But as I leave, I hear an older woman behind me, with a voice as loud at New York traffic, saying to someone who's passing her on the escalator, obviously a stranger: "Don't you sign up, now! Don't you join!" I turn around. She's saying this to a black man, just because he's black: After all, Michael Moore said those people are all conservative cannon fodder, didn't he? The man and the woman with him are polite enough to wait until they're out the door before they laugh and then sadly shake their heads.
Hoo boy.
: One of the many things I've learned from blogging confrere Jay Rosen is that you have to stand back and investigate the assumptions that underly a media enterprise.
Moore's assumption is venality. He assumes that President Bush and his confreres are venal, that their motives are black, that they are out to do no good, only bad, and that the only choices they make in life are between greed and power.
That's inevitably a bad analysis. It's the exact same analysis Bill Clinton's enemies made of him. If they were wrong about Clinton, well then, Michael Moore is wrong about Bush. Life is never that simple, never that obvious, unless you're a propagandist or one who believes propaganda. I especially can't buy that analysis when we are a under attack as a nation, when we need to decide who the "us" and "them" are. The war on us as well as the dialogue among my confreres here online has made me question that assumption of venality in American politics.
Oh, you can argue Bush is incompetent; sometimes I do wonder. You can disagree with his policies; I disagree with many. You can question his intelligence; jury's out still. I didn't vote for Bush the last time and don't plan to this time. But I don't buy Moore's Bush. To say that he's the dark force of the universe only leads to simple-minded over-generalizations and bilious caricatures.
Like Fahrenheit 9/11.
: The real problem with the film, the really offensive thing about it, is that in Fahrenheit 9/11, we -- Americans from the President on down -- are portrayed as the bad guys. If there's something wrong about bin Laden it's that his estranged family has ties with -- cue the uh-oh music -- the Bush family. Saddam? Nothing wrong with him. No mention of torture and terror and tyranny. Moore shows scenes of Baghdad before the invasion (read: liberation) and in his weltanschauung, it's a place filled with nothing but happy, smiling, giggly, overjoyed Baghdadis. No pain and suffering there. No rape, murder, gassing, imprisoning, silencing of the citizens in these scenes. When he exploits and lingers on the tears of a mother who lost her soldier-son in Iraq, and she wails, "Why did yo have to take him?" Moore does not cut to images of the murderers/terrorists (pardon me, "insurgents") in Iraq or killed him -- or even to God; he cuts to George Bush. When the soldier's father says the young man died and "for what?", Moore doesn't show liberated Iraqis to reply, he cuts instead to an image of Halliburton.
He doesn't try, not for one second, to have a discussion, to show the other side -- and then cut that other side down to size with facts and figures and the slightest effort at argument. No, he just shows the one side. And that, really, is a tragedy. It would be good if we had a discussion. It would be good to have a movie that made us think and reconsider and talk.
But polemics don't do that. They're only made of two-by-fours.
: The cheap tricks keep on coming, mostly in what is not said. At the start of the movie, Moore fuzzes the video of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Wolfowitz, et al to make it look as if it were recovered World War II film from Hitler's Berchtesgaden: the bad guys in happier days. The trick is unintentionally appropriate: He's trying to say that these guys are Nazis but he's also using the Nazi propaganda motif to say it.
He asks the same questions, streteches out the same memes, we've seen on the Web regarding Bush and 9/11: Why did he sit there in that school another almost seven minutes after hearing that the second tower had been hit? The implication was that he could have done something. But how often do we hear anyone ask -- certainly Moore does not -- what he would have done? What if he had popped up in a panic and ran off? How would that have looked on TV to a nation and a world in such a moment of disorder? Is there some order he could have given in those minutes that the vast federal power structure could not -- and, in fact, was not better equipped to handle than Bush? And if you think Bush is such a frigging idiot, isn't it better that he sat there? The question keeps getting asked. The ellipsis carries the message. But that's no answer.
He goes after Bush ties to the Saudis again and again but never enumerates the Saudi sins. They're there. It wouldn't be hard. It would be helpful. Why not? Just laziness? Or is it easier to end with another ellipsis? Conspiracies are spiced with silence.
We know that Moore opposed even the war in Afghanistan but here he doesn't say that. Here he says we didn't bring enough force to Afghanistan and thereby gave bin Laden "a two-month headstart." Moore doesn't say that Bush, with his family ties to bin Laden's family, wanted that to happen. But the ellipsis whispers it.
He ridicules the terror threats and alerts, showing goofy stories about poison pens and model airplanes and goofier guys from the canned-bean crowd showing off their terror shelters. He gets a congressman, Rep. Jim McDermott, to downright say that the alerts are all engineered to keep us on edge. The implication is -- the sllipsis says -- that we're not in danger. I watch this scant blocks from where almost 3,000 Americans were killed that day. Oh, yes, Moore, we are in danger.
But Moore wants to pooh-pooh the danger and make it into a conspiracy: "Was this really about our safety or..." [pregnant ellipsis] "...something else?" He adds (and I can't read one word of my scribbled transcription): "The terrorism threat wasn't waht this was all about. They just wanted us to be fearful enough to get behind their plan."
Of course, it was all about Iraq.... Wasn't it?...
: If you don't believe that, well, says Moore, you're an idiot. You're Britney Spears, shown in all her ditziness saying, "Honestly, I think we should just trust our President." There's your spokesman for the other side: Britney.
Or you're a bloodthirsty American goon, which is how Moore portrays soldiers who rush into battle hopped up on rock 'n' roll. He spares us the obvious napalm, morning, smell thing.
In Moore's view, you're either with him or against him. Hmmm, who else looks at the world that way?
Yup, Moore is just he mirror image of what he despises. He is the O'Reilly... the Bush of the left.
: After leaving the theater and walking by the black man now shaking his head at what Moore had wrought and the people with bring-down-Bush clipboards, I made my way back to New Jersey through the PATH train at the World Trade Center where, most of you know, I was on 9/11. And now I was shaking my head. Michael Moore did not present bin Laden and the terrorists and religious fanatics (from other lands) as the enemy who did this. No, to him, our enemy is within. To him, our enemy is us. And that's worse than stupid and sad and it's most certainly not entertaining. It's disgusting.
: Later, I read Christopher Hitchens' wonderful fisking of the film.
And then I read A.O. Scott's mealy-mouthed review in The Times. He points out that the movie is full of crap in many ways: "...blithely trampling the boundary between documentary and demagoguery..." Hey, blurb that! [Fahrenheit 9/11] is many things: a partisan rallying cry, an angry polemic, a muckraking inquisition into the use and abuse of power. But one thing it is not is a fair and nuanced picture of the president and his policies. What did you expect? Mr. Moore is often impolite, rarely subtle and occasionally unwise. He can be obnoxious, tendentious and maddeningly self-contradictory. He can drive even his most ardent admirers crazy. But then Scott lets Moore off the hook -- and himself off the hook with that audience that applauded the flick in the East Village, which is Times Country, too -- with this: "He is a credit to the republic."
I guess he'd say the same thing of Rush Limbaugh, then.
Scott keeps going. On the one hand: After you leave the theater, some questions are likely to linger about Mr. Moore's views on the war in Afghanistan, about whether he thinks the homeland security program has been too intrusive or not intrusive enough, and about how he thinks the government should have responded to the murderous jihadists who attacked the United States on Sept. 11. Right. But on the other hand: At the same time, though, it may be that the confusions trailing Mr. Moore's narrative are what make "Fahrenheit 9/11" an authentic and indispensable document of its time. The film can be seen as an effort to wrest clarity from shock, anger and dismay, and if parts of it seem rash, overstated or muddled, well, so has the national mood. Crap. It is not creditworthy only to attack and call that discussion and democracy; to insult our intelligence with half, quarter, and untruths; to stifle debate with polemic rather than provoke debate with facts; to mock the people he exploits on film; to gloss over his own outrageous opinions for the sake of convenience; to turn his guns on his own people, letting those who attacked us off as free as birds.
No, this is no more good democracy than it is good filmmaking.
: EPILOGUE: The movie was Topic A in Howard Stern's opening this morning and the discussion there demonstrates exactly what is wrong with Fahrenheit 9/11: Moore provided no facts for an honest discussion. He provided only fuel for the fire, bullets for bombast.
Granted, this ain't exactly the Algonquin Round Table; it doesn't pretend to be. Stern switched sides so completely that he tries not to acknowledge his former support for the war and for Bush as command-in-chief against the terrorists. Stern wasn't fooled about WMD as he tries to argue now; he was -- like me -- a Tom Friedman war supporter who believed that we had to do this somewhere, we had to bring democracy to somewhere in the Middle East and Iraq was a good place to do it because Saddam was a tyrant and his continued rule was, in good measure, our fault. It's possible to be against Bush in this election and still be for the war and at the same time think that we've messed up the aftermath; it's still possible to support Bush as the sitting president while wanting to unseat him. As Bill Clinton said on Today today when asked whether the release of his book would distract voters: "The American people can walk and chew gum at the same time." Nonetheless, I grant that Stern is hardly trying for a nuanced argument. And the only person to argue against him is his TV director, a graduate of Glassboro State, which ain't exactly Yale.
Still, the argument that raged for 20 loud minutes on Stern this morning will be replayed by water coolers all across America. And you could say that is good for Democracy. You could say that if the people arguing were armed by the film that causes the arguments with facts and intelligent views of the issues. But, instead, they're armed only with one side, half-facts, and bile. That doesn't make for good dialogue or democracy.
: BY THE WAY: The commercials for the film are still saying it's not rated. It has been rated R because of the copious gore and the appeal of that rating lost, even with Mario Cuomo arguing the case. So the commercial isn't quite, well, telling the truth.
: LINKS: Fred Wilson reacts to this post and asks whether I react similarly to Rush Limbaugh; in his comments, I list many posts where I do. He also says it's time for the left to play hardball. Hardball yes, Dodgeball, no. Hardball with real facts and reasoned arguments and intelligence. Mimicking the worst of the right is not what the left should do -- the Rush of the left in Randi Rhodes on Air America or Bizarro Rush in Michael Moore on film. We're smarter than that, aren't we?
Fred says I'm angry. Yes. I'm angry this movie isn't better made.
And here are MooreLies, the Jobless Lawyer, Nick Troester, Sisu, more later.
Says Jason Kottke: The film, while entertaining -- very funny in parts and at times powerfully moving -- was ultimately disappointing for me....
Fahrenheit 9/11 is so much about Michael Moore's opinion that it's difficult to go through that process of finding the truth. The frustrating thing is that Moore has a point, but he's unable to get himself out of the way enough to tell us the story so we can make up our own minds about it.... Samizdata says: One last thought: Fahrenheit 9/11 is many things, but for pity's sake let's not call it a documentary.
- Ty Burr, Boston Globe Here are Reason's Nick Gillespie's links.
Jimspeak: "I think [Moore] and Madonna should get lost on some island somewhere, never to be heard from again ..."
Beth's post here. Smack My Booty's is here. Doc's here. Doubleplusgood here. Greg Piper here. Jared here.
Tony Pierce says Michael Moore is in a dog fight and he's the dog Tony's backing.
: MORE MOORE LINKS: Andrew Sullivan says: I will say this: I will generally go see anything. I even sat through "The Passion of the Christ." But I cannot bring myself to go to this piece of vile, hateful propaganda. I sent him email urging him to see it anyway, just because I'd love to see what he writes.
Here's Pejman. Here's Mathieu (can anyone translate?). Jay Reding. Chaos Overload. Sea-Glass here. Kevin Mori. Drake says.
Richard Bennett says my seeing the movie deserves your sympathy.
And here's Glenn Reynolds.
Gmail virus
: Heiko Hebig notes that restricting access to Google's Gmail to friends of friends of friends is brilliant viral marketing. It's the Studio 54 of mail.
Truly the Baghdad Broadcasting Company
: The BBC is launching a competitor to Al Jazeera. How will anybody be able to tell them apart?
Exploding TV
: Another video blogger. See this about the Manhattan Neighborhood Network and all the video content the people want to make and show. It'll all be coming online soon. [via Loic] Earlier exploding TV posts here.
On the air
: On an RSS Decisioncast today at 1p ET.
June 23, 2004
Clinton's book, cont.
: I'm a third of the way through listening to Clinton's book and I have to say I'm enjoying it, especially as he goes through the details of political life. Sure, he has a few too many details in other areas (his Oxford room was down the hall on the left, up three stairs, right after that, across from the closet, down the hall, and up to the right, or something like that). And there are a few hokey moments. But when it gets to politics, this is Being Bill Clinton and that's fun.
: Slate does the work for you and comes up with all the juicy bits.
: As if to repent for its Michiko Kakutani hatchet job on Clinton's book Sunday, here's an admiring piece by Larry McMurtry today.
: The NY Times says the book set records for sales in its first days, beating Hillary, and perhaps racking up 500k in a day. But then there's the pissy local-angle story: It's not selling well in East Texas. So, what, that means four copies instead of five?
: An autographed copy sold for $675 on eBay.
Respect
: Steve Hall reports that the ANA, a big ad trade group, is inviting marketing bloggers to cover its confabs. Steve Rubel seems to have something good to do with this. Every industry should follow suit.
A place for my stuff, cont.
: Fred Wilson continues the dialogue on a place for my stuff: Is it a server in your house or up on the Internet? (My latest posts here and here; Ed Sim's here and here.)
With all due respect to these guys who know a helluva lot more about making successful business than I do, I still want to keep pushing this issue up the ladder to see it from a more strategic viewpoint.
Let's make two (somewhat risky) strategic assumptions:
1. Always-on-everywhere broadband will become ubiquitous soon. See this note on Wi-Fi news with Sprint, AT&T and Cingular fighting over getting high-speed wireless access up soonest. This means that you will be able to get to your stuff from any device anywhere anytime -- even on a plane. Once that happens, it's less important what you store on your device. It's also less important what clients you have; any client can get data from anywhere.
2. The entertainment and technology industries will figure out digital rights management so that you will be able to store your stuff where it's convenient -- whether that's on your iPod or on your TiVo or on your TiVo in the cable cloud. OK, this is an optimistic stretch, but if these industries don't figure it out, they'll be committing murder-suicide. (See lots of DRM coverage from Ernie Miller.)
Once these assumptions come true -- if they do -- you should not worry what device you're using with what clients and what you're storing where. You will want to get to your stuff from anywhere anytime on anything.
That's why storing your stuff in the cloud is preferable.
Short of that, you may want to store your stuff in this device or that -- but that really means you'll want to be able to sync your stuff (which is an opening for a company like FusionOne, which happens to be one of Fred's portfolio companies).
In any case, I won't want to worry about having to get a song or show from this TV to that PVR to that laptop to that video iPod; I will want to either (a) download or stream -- it shouldn't matter if bandwidth is sufficient -- to anything from anywhere anytime or (b) download and sync seamlessly. This still argues for storage in the could, not on a single device I have to install and manage in my home.
Pointpower
: Brad Feld blogs a list of questions a business should answer for VCs. Many an existing business could afford to answer the same queries.
The Daily Stern: Taps for the First Amendment
: TEARING DOWN THE BILL OF RIGHTS: Religious fundamentalists, organized as a Dumb Mob, just dealt a deadly blow to free speech in America with legislators, cynical hypocrites, as their henchmen and media standing idly by, the short-sighted quislings.
The Senate has now passed its indecent indecency bill; the House already passed its version; they'll be reconciled soon and signed by the President. And then anyone -- you or me -- who utters what the unelected FCC decides is indecent, after the fact, can be fined up to $3 million a day.
The Senate is a stinking pile of monkey shit.
If I said that on radio, I'd be fined personally hundreds of thousands of dollars. If I said it three times -- Senate money shit, Senate monkey shit, Senate monkey shit -- I'd be fined $3 million a day. I can be bankrupted for making what is, in fact, political speech. The Senate and House just took profane action and they deserve a profane political response. But that's not allowed on radio or broadcast TV. Such speech is protected in print. It's still protected on cable or the Internet. But watch out: Cable and satellite and the Internet are next. You are next.
: THE DUMB MOB: While millions of people listen Howard Stern every day, only a few thousand complained to the FCC about him and about Janet Jackson's titanium.
The FCC will admit, when asked, that almost all of the thousands of complaints they got came from one organization, religious scary man Brent Bozell's self-appointed Parents Television Council. Now that is their right to organize and protest.
But the FCC and Congress should recognize that this alleged "outcry" is not the nation speaking; it is really just the organized effort of one Dumb Mob.
I call them a Dumb Mob -- not a Smart Mob -- because these "protesters" are following a party line and doing as told and, more importantly, because anyone who does not understand the vital importance of the First Amendment and free speech to the essence of America is dangerously dumb.
But the Dumb Mob won and we let them.
: THE CYNICAL HYPOCRITES: Well | |