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December 22, 2004

Smuggled out in a cake

: Martha Stewart sends a message to her fans from inside prison (and links to her appeal).

: Tony Pierce in the comments:

it took jail time for martha to see that drug reform is necessary.

maybe we should send congress to jail for a few months until they get it too.

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Aw shucks

: I started reading Fimoculous' year-end State of the Blogs address nodding my head in agreement:

Before anyone tries to talk you into uttering senseless historical inanities, let's just clear this up: 2004 was not "The Year of the Blog." This was not the year of Howard Dean's bold online campaign, nor was it the year of dismantling Trent Lott. It wasn't even the year of the Paris Hilton tape. That was all last year, and while we have plenty to celebrate about '04, it's best to approach the past 365 days wearing a new look: maturity. In other words, this was the year blogs grew up.

Don't mistake that assessment as a suggestion that blogs are slipping into a rheumatic slumber. To be sure, it was a good year, one in which we (may I use the royal first person?) booted a tiresome TV anchor, sparred with the FCC, pre-reported Ken Jennings' demise, and discovered an entire radical music movement. Excellent work, and that's not even counting the intrepid analysis of Tara Reid's nipple.

But this was a landmark year for independent publishers not so much because of Lewinsky-size scoops, but because the internet came into its own as a medium for experiencing news events. Think about it -- look how many events didn't necessarily happen first online, but seemed to exist because of the blogosphere. The moments that best defined culture in '04 -- the best political debate (Jon Stewart pouncing on Crossfire), the best sex media scandal (Bill O'Reilly raping a falafel), the best TV moment (Janet exposing a Super Bowl nipple), and the best music video (Ashlee Simpson lip synching on SNL) -- were all probably delivered to you via blogger keystrokes. These media events all somehow felt, if you will, "internety" -- somewhat like how Jon Stewart's Daily Show has that intangible quality that makes it feel like television's version of a blog.

In other words, 2004 was the year we became the medium that mattered....

And then I scrolled down to find something I didn't agree with, but it's damned nice of him anyway. You'll see....

: MORE: Uh-oh, there are more year-end wrap coming. I hate year-end wrap, except that they make the last week of the year easy for reporters and editors. That is why they exist.

: MORE: Lileks does his year-end wrap (no mayo) on blogs:

Full disclosure: This writer knows the Power Line guys, and has a Web site of his own. Good thing, too; the Internet is going to make gigs like this obsolete, once enough people realize that some guy in his basement is capable of turning out commentary as insightful as a tenured eminence who was handed a column 30 years ago and has spent the last 10 coasting on a scoop from the Reagan years. It takes dynamite to get some writers out of the paper.

In the new media, however, a clever blog can spring up overnight and get 100,000 readers in a day. That number can quickly fall to zero if the blogger gets a terminal case of the stupids....

In a sense, blogging is so 2004. The next big thing will be videoblogs. You can fit a rudimentary TV studio in a suitcase -- a laptop, a camcorder, a few cables, and a nearby Starbucks with Wi-Fi you can leech onto to upload your reports. This too will be good. One hundred thousand pairs of eyes looking high and low, versus CBS' staring monocular orb. We'll all turn to the nets to see what they think we should think. And then we'll hit the blogs for the rest of the story.

I second that motion.

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When bleeding hearts clot

: I really can't stand Sen. Sam Brownback for a host of reasons (his attacks on free speech and the First Amendment not least among them). Nick Kristof can't stand Brownback, either. Yet today Kristof writes:

Sure, Mr. Brownback is to the right of Attila the Hun, and I disagree with him on just about every major issue. But 'tis the season for brotherly love, so let me point to reasons for hope. Members of the Christian right, exemplified by Mr. Brownback, are the new internationalists, increasingly engaged in humanitarian causes abroad - thus creating opportunities for common ground between left and right on issues we all care about.

So Democrats should clamber down from the window ledges, roll up their sleeves and get to work on some of these issues. Because I'm embarrassed to say that Democrats have been so suspicious of Republicans that they haven't contributed much on those human rights issues where the Christian right has already staked out its ground....

Liberals traditionally were the bleeding hearts, while conservatives regarded foreign aid, in the words of Jesse Helms, as "money down a rat hole." That's changing. "One cannot understand international relations today without comprehending the new faith-based movement," Allen Hertzke writes in "Freeing God's Children," a book about evangelicals leaping into human rights causes.

I don't know why the bleeding hearts of the left have coagulated and hardened, but in many quarters, sadly, they have.

That is my complaint with the left and Iraq. Protest the war: fine. Complain about its execution: Sure. Disagree with me on the war: Absolutely. But I have heard too little empathy for the people of Iraq and too little disdain for their dictator. Even when two wonderful gentlemen, just people, just bloggers, came here this month, my fellow travelers tried to fang them just because they were associated with Iraq. That's just plain uncivilized. I've always seen Iraq as a humanitarian issue more than an issue of defense or terrorism but that human aspect is too often lost.

Of course, there are too many other humanitarian issues in the world today and Kristof is warning his fellow travelers that they will be left behind -- their historical leadership usurped by, of all people, the fundamentalists they too often disdain -- if they don't wake up and find their moral bearings again.

Liberalism is supposed to be about people, about caring for your fellow man, not just about shouting.

But if you prefer to judge this on a political rather than a moral basis, then heed Kristof's warning: Don't let Brownback win this one alone.

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God would roll His eyes III

: Blog Done With Mirrors has a wonderful commentary on what is becoming known as the Hewitt-Jarvis debate on religion in America this Christmas season. This is the best of blogs: Hugh and I (and others) have a good and respectful discussion and others join in with good thoughts.

If you close one eye and look at America, you can see basic ideas of right and wrong -- a bulwark of a robust, free people -- eroding under attack from reckless and embittered relativists. Close the other eye and you see just as clearly blind fundamentalist morality on the march, threatening to enshrine an un-democratic Old Testament creed as the higher law.

Open both eyes, then, and see what Madison saw. The tension, the negotiation, the struggle for consensus and a common view, is the unscripted balancing act that keeps America safe.

But the best thing about this Hewitt-Jarvis discussion is what it isn't. So far, the focus isn't on government and religion. That's in there, but the posts are largely about We the People and our faiths and our joint ownership of the nation. I like that. Too often talk of religion in America presumes Americans are passive little leaves buffeted by the whims of a few fundamentalists in the corridors of Congress, or a few secularists on the 9th Circuit Court.

We're citizens, not subjects.

: ON THE OTHER HAND: There is the Lileks-Wolcott debate.

: MORE: Michael Bérubé, a profblogger from Penn State, fantasizes:

They warned me this would happen back when I was in boot camp at Focus on the Family, but I didn’t believe them. “You will need to gird your loins for the attack on Christmas,” they said. “Jacob Grinchstein and all his liberal friends in the media, the banks, and the intelligentsia are gearing up for an all-out assault on our Christian nation. First they came after Mel Gibson, and now they’re planning to take the Baby Jesus away from us.”

“Oh, come on,” I said at the time. “Next you’ll be telling me that they use the Baby Jesus’ blood to make matzohs.”

“No, they don’t do that anymore,” I was told. “Today they’re much more indirect and insidious-- they’re forbidding us even to say the word ‘Christmas,’ and they’re forcing your kid to sing ‘dreidel dreidel dreidel’ and make menorahs in your public school. Then when we call them on it, they hide behind Santa and start singing contentless ‘holiday’ music like ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.’”

Now don't get all offended. A little humor is a healthy thing, remember.

: And here's John Scalzi (keep that sense-of-humor switch in the "on" position, please):

Here's the deal. Wish me a Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays. Either way, I'll get what you mean, I'll take it in the spirit in which it is given, and in either case, you're likely to get the same response (i.e., "Thanks. You too."). On the other hand, wish me a "Merry Christmas" with that defiant air that means that you are driving your Christ-sticky foot into the ground and digging in against the godless forces of "Happy Holidays," and what you're declaring is that you are, indeed, a first-class idjit. It also signals that you're less interested in wishing me joy and glad tidings than in pimping the baby Jesus, in the guise of being nice. So not only are you a first class idjit, you're also rude. If you're going to wish me a Merry Christmas, try to mean it, for Christ's sake.

: LATER: Hugh Hewitt challenged Jim Geraghty at National Review to tackle somebody his own size -- aka me -- on this issue. I think Hugh did a better job of tackling, frankly. But here's Geraghty's take. Where this is coming out is where it went in: These folks think there is a [pick your lighter synonym for 'war'] on Christianity and I say there isn't. Geraghty wants me to "Go rip the 'You can’t say Merry Christmas, you have to say Happy Holidays' folks!" And I do [pick a lighter synonym for 'rip'] them. In fact, that's just the point. I think they're silly. And silliness does not add up to war or persecution or an attack on religion and Christianity in America. It's silliness. That's precisely the point. That is why I propose that God's reaction to this is a sigh and an eye roll in a world where so many of His children face very real challenges to their faith.

: AND ON THE EIGHTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS: Wolcott answers Lileks answering Wolcott:

In a holiday season when some of the leprechaun people are lamenting that not everyone accepts their cry of "Merry Christmas!" like a wet kiss, I am happy to report that here in Manhattan we're taking the savior's upcoming birthday in stride. After leaving the dermatologist's--I was relieved to discover I didn't have ringworm--I passed an adult video store in midtown which boasted a neon Christmas tree and menorah in the window, strategically flanking the latest exciting releases from San Fernando Valley. A Santa cap dangled from some sort of personal pleasuring device, a rather jaunty decorative touch, I thought. This is the sort of ecumenical spirit that ought to be encouraged in those fractious times.

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