« June 21, 2004 | Main
| June 23, 2004 »

June 22, 2004

Apple PC for the teacher

: Will Richardson's work with blogging and education gets a well-deserved nod from Intel.

LINK | Comments (0)

Bastards

: Another beheading. Slime.

: UPDATE: OhmyNews' reporting on the story.

LINK | Comments (24)

Letting the Air out

: Air America "restructures." That's essentially another way to go into and out of bankruptcy.

LINK | Comments (0)

When your audience gives you the finger

: Joe Territo caught this scene before the start of Dodgeball:

Previews included an anti-movie pirating public service announcement. Several in the audience spontaneously, simultaneously gave the screen the finger at the end of the ad.

Surprised they didn't wing wrenches at the screen.

LINK | Comments (6)

The Daily Stern

: F***ING SENATE: The Senate snuck in passage of its indecent indecency bill by tacking it onto a defense appropriations bill.

The U.S. Senate on Tuesday approved a measure to crack down on indecency on radio and television by sharply raising fines.

The Senate also took steps to rein in the growth of U.S. media companies by invalidating new, more relaxed ownership rules.

The provisions were attached to a bill to reauthorize defense programs and would need to get full congressional approval later this year.

After being flooded with complaints about nudity on broadcast television and explicit discussions about sex on radio, lawmakers voted 99-1 to raise the maximum fine that can be levied on a station from $32,500 to as much as $275,000 per incident and up to $3 million a day.

It's a bad day for free speech, which is a dark day for America.

: PUPPETRY OF THE CENSORS: Broadcasting & Cable is reporting another attack on speech but one that tries to avoid the FCC and the first amendment issues by instead going after a local public-access TV creator for "conduct" rather than "speech." Says a B&C press release quoting Max Robbins, ex of TV Guide:

The first real blow to the First Amendment protections enjoyed by the cable television industry may have been dealt by prosecutors in Grand Rapid, MI, setting a precedent that can render FCC and Congressional oversight irrelevant, according to Broadcasting & Cable magazine.

An exclusive story appearing in editions of B&C reports that the prosecutors there used a novel approach to convict a local public access cable TV host after an "indecency" complaint was lodged against him for airing a particularly explicit skit on his late night program. The American Civil Liberties Union has come to his defense and, by implication, the defense of the entire cable industry.

"If this guy's conviction is upheld on appeal, existing state statutes can be used to effectively censor programming on cable," Max Robins, B&C's editor-in-chief says.

ACLU lawyers appealing the conviction, meanwhile, offered an even more ominous view of the legal tactics applied in this case. They said that allowing the conviction to stand threatens to expose not only cable TV, but broadcast television "programming, movies, videotapes, and even books and magazines to prosecution." ...

A trial court and circuit court [found] that the cable access channel was a "public place" and that exposure was conduct, not speech, and thus not protected by the First Amendment. Now it's up to the Michigan State Court of Appeals to weigh in.

What the guy did was dorky and dumb: He painted his penis to tell jokes. But, hey, it's good enough for Broadway.... And no matter, what's happening here is that local officials are going after someone on what is supposed to be "public access" for what they don't like.

There's nothing to stop them from going after the exact same behavior on the Internet.

There's nothing to stop your local cops, then, from knocking on your door for what you put on your blog.

LINK | Comments (12)

Blogphobic

: The Online News Association announced its rules for its awards this year. Last year, I was one of many who made fun of them for not awarding -- that is, recognizing -- weblogs. This year's rules don't recitify the misstep. Ostrich. Sand. Head.

: Forgot to mention (and Ken Layne inspired remembering) that you all should submit your weblogs to the contest. Flood them with great weblogs. And blog that you entered. And then we'll see how enlightened they've become.

LINK | Comments (4)

One last Clinton book post

: Many yearn for a Clinton. Look at the lines to get his autograph.

: Update: I just wandered by the Barnes & Noble on Fifth Avenue to catch the scene. It's raining hard. But people are standing in line and have been for hours just to see Clinton. I followed the line around. It stretches from the entrance on Fifth at 48th Street all the way down 48th to Sixth, up Sixth to 49th, and all the way back 49th to Fifth again: around the entire city block, three of four thick. And those are just the people who got wristbands to let them in; I have no idea how many were turned away. I snapped the shot above with my camera phone.

There were TV crews and drowned-rat photographers and radio and print reporters trying to mine their nuggets for stories. The pictures will tell this story.

: When I was a kid, my mother took my sister and me to Richard Nixon's signing of My Six Crises (he hadn't stopped counting yet) at John Wanamaker's in Philly. No line. Nobody cared.

Compare. Contrast.

: I bought the audio version of My Life this morning and started listening on the way to work. More later. See, I lied. It's not the last Clinton book post....

LINK | Comments (20)

TV readers

: In the print (but not online) version of this story on the Clinton book debut, Knopf's director of publicity, Paul Bogaards, pooh-poohs the impact of Michiko Kakutani's slam of the book on the front page -- front page?!? -- of Sunday's -- Sunday's! -- New York Times.

"The American public gets its information about books from television," he sniffed back.

Times have changed. When I first proposed the idea for Entertainment Weekly six years before its launch, it was soundly rejected by Henry Grunwald, then editor-in-chief of Time Inc. The reason: Grunwald said that people who watch TV do not read; one magazine cannot possibly serve both.

Now big books are pure mall, Wallmart through and through.

LINK | Comments (0)

Fashion statement

: Just saw tape of celebs arriving for Bill Clinton's book party last night and there's Al Franken arriving wearing a huge, honking backpack. What's with that, Al? Was he wearing Birkinstocks and hemp underwear, too? You already have the liberal credentials, Al. You don't need to dress it.

LINK | Comments (6)

Kerry's God problem

: David Brooks says today that John Kerry has a God problem -- but, remarkably, Brooks deals with only one side of the problem and completely ignores the other.

Brooks says that Bill Clinton (who mentions his doubts about religion as a young man at the start of his autobiography) "understands the role religion actually plays in modern politics. He knows Americans want to be able to see their leaders' faith."

And Clinton seems to understand, as many Democrats do not, that a politician's faith isn't just about litmus test issues like abortion or gay marriage. Many people just want to know that their leader, like them, is in the fellowship of believers. Their president doesn't have to be a saint, but he does have to be a pilgrim. He does have to be engaged, as they are, in a personal voyage toward God....

John Kerry doesn't seem to get this. Many of the people running the Democratic Party don't get it either.

A recent Time magazine survey revealed that only 7 percent of Americans feel that Kerry is a man of strong religious faith. That's a catastrophic number.... They should be doing everything they can to change that perception, because unless more people get a sense of Kerry's faith, they will feel no bond with him and they will be loath to trust him with their vote.

Yet his campaign does nothing. Kerry talks about jobs one week and the minimum wage the next, going about his wonky way, each day as secular as the last.

I don't disagree with any of that. We are not quite so religious a nation as Europeans like to think, but we do want to know where candidates stand on God -- not too strong, not too weak, just right.

But Brooks completely ignores Kerry's specific problem with religion: He's Catholic, man. He's pro-choice. He's stuck between the rock upon whom Jesus built his church and a hard place. If he turns all religious and Catholic, liberal and women voters will fear he'll go soft on choice. If he stands up to the church on abortion and gay rights, among other issues -- as he well should, if he could -- he will unleash a Vatican fatwa against him, for Catholic bishops already have proven they'll mix church and state and try to get Catholics to vote against Catholics who don't parrot what they say. Brooks says none of this. Does he have no editors?

LINK | Comments (22)