Weekend Question Thread
In light of Walter Cronkite's passing: Who is your hero?
A.

In light of Walter Cronkite's passing: Who is your hero?
A.
When people would ask sportswriter E.M. Swift if a particular sports moment that was unfolding could be the next Miracle on Ice, Swift was always quick to say, “Shut up. There’s never going to be another Miracle. You can’t get that many things to align again.” Sadly, the same can be said for the great Walter Cronkite, who died earlier today.
In an era of 24-hour news, fragmented audience and micro-consumption of news, you’ll never have another singular anchor like Cronkite. In a time in which facts have been replaced by commentary and thoughts replaced by innuendo, we’re probably less likely than at any point in time to bestow upon a media member the “most trusted” man or woman status we gladly handed to him. There can’t be another one like him, and that’s our fault in a way.
We’ve grown accustomed to the O’Reillys of the world, who use partial facts and convenient distortion to score points with a narrow-minded and under-informed constituency. We’ve tolerated for far too long the people who replace good reporting and solid, metered delivery with the desire to be famous. When they’ve got nothing more going for them than their lame-brained opinion, they just scream it louder with the idea that eventually if they’re loud enough, we’ll buy it. We’ve allowed the continual festering and growth of people who seem to believe not in news values, but a set of values that they believe should drive the news.
In today’s market, Cronkite would be as out of place as a “Shit Happens” bumper sticker on a Rolls Royce. His scathing commentary about the Vietnam War would have earned him the “why do you hate America?” questions from his “colleagues” in the media. His stands against corporate media would have had him riding an overnight shift doing radio news at 580 KDIO-AM in Boise. His distaste for “fluff” would have had him cringing at the almost-daily fare of weather stories and pieces on which type of rock salt is best for dissolving the ice in your driveway that masquerades as news these days.
In a time in which we are as uncertain about our own nation as we were during Cronkite’s hey day, we need another Uncle Walter. We need a calm, rational voice that tells us what is going on, why we should care and lets us move about our lives with at least a little inkling that we’re well informed on things that matter. Instead, we’ve had a laundry list of substitute teachers who have either plied us with candy or rattled a saber of fear at us to boost their own sense of self.
In his final days, Cronkite was not as fearful of the “new media” as were many younger journalists. He filed for HuffPo and was a frequent guest on cable shows until he became quite ill. However, he was afraid of what was happening to the message, in that newspapers, TV and the internet had become more sizzle than substance. To that end, his great hope was a return to the glory age of journalism, in which we learned facts and trusted the sources, regardless of platform
It is in that hope we may find improved value in our media.
But never again will we find another Cronkite.
Far as I'm concerned we can send Buzz Aldrin back up anytime. Sally Ride, too. Let's go colonize Mars so we have someplace to go when President Palin drills too deep and makes a hole in the world. I have a total five-year-old's reaction to this stuff. I know it costs bazillions of dollars, but all I can think is ooooh shiny.
A.
A.
Sometimes Mr. A and I forget and leave stuff where the ferrets can get to it. Like on the table, the piano, the floor, in the closets, higher than we ever thought something the size of a football could jump, etc.
Today it was his briefcase. Nothing says "I have a serious presentation to make and you should listen to me because I speak with authority" like needing to lint-roll your laptop first.
A.
You know, Dennis Hastert for years was on TV pretty much every day as Speaker of the House, and that man looked like cartoon drawings of Humpty Dumpty dressed up like a Weeble. Strangely, I do not recall stories about how he was setting a bad example for America by wobbling but not falling down.
Dr. Regina Benjamin, on the other hand, apparently has some problems to overcome, one of them being she's not a tiny little stick insect person thing. But that's okay, because, well, take it away MSNBC:
Most remarkably, she chose to practice among the rural poor at the clinic she built herself in Bayou La Batre, Ala., charging her poorest patients nothing.
I don’t know about you, but a doctor who chooses to care selflessly for the poor and who has the respect of her peers as a good clinician is a doctor whom I am willing to listen to — even if she wears a plus-size lab coat.
So generous! Thank God you're willing to look past her apparently outlandish size (I dunno, looking at that picture she looks like every third person who lives in my building, so whatever) and appreciate her accomplishments! Go you! What a virtuous person you must be! I know he means to defend Dr. Benjamin here, but it comes off so ... I don't know, like he's doing her favors she doesn't really need.
He starts by conceding she's big, and conflating "two assholes on a 'national news site' message board" with "the blogosphere:"
You would think the entire population of the blogosphere had suddenly reverted to the seventh grade.
“I refuse to let fat be socially acceptable … The President should have known better and picked a doctor who could kick start the debate on fat not perpetuate it,” commented one reader on a national news site.
Yes. The comments section at the Beaver County Tidbit Online is exactly the same thing as all blogs ever. That's a totally fair comparison! After all, you can completely see both of those sites on your computer! They're on the same Internet!!!!11!
Also? I recall the liberal blogosphere's reaction to Benjamin's appointment being OMG SQUEE and the conservative blogosphere's reaction being SHE'S NOT A WHITE MAN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AGAIN or something, and the non-political blogosphere was all OH HEY A LOLCAT and then we all moved on to bitching about how much the Emmy nominations suck. Dr. Generosity up here had to hunt down anonymous freakazoids one step below the Freepi to prove his point, which isn't unusual in the annals of "oh shit, it's due tomorrow," but it is kind of weaksauce, nonetheless.
Speaking only for myself, I've had several skinny doctors and one I suppose Dr. Caplan here might classify as obese, and about half the skinny ones were assholes and the other half were awesome, and they could all hold a stethoscope and dispense antibiotics competently so who really gives a fuck? When a doctor gives me advice I don't ask to see his diploma, much less his blood pressure readings, I just take the advice if I want to and forget it if I don't. Cheetos are totally a breakfast food. Shut up.
I am not saying we give an inch on the war on blubber. Obesity is an epidemic in the U.S. and growing quickly around the globe.
But people need to relate to the surgeon general, and if she can battle her weight on the job, she will do more to curb obesity then all the salads added to the menus of burger joints everywhere.
See, she can USE it, so it's good! I'm sure that helps her sleep at night. Thank God Dr. Caplan is here to tell me it's okay.
Via ONTD.
A.
I'd love to say I don't get the resentment.
I really would. I'd love to say I don't see where they're coming from, whiny Lindsey Graham and bitchy Jeff Sessions and condescending John Cornyn, with their pointy little questions about what makes Sonia Sotomayor so special anyhow. I'd love to say I don't understand it.
But I do. I hear this stuff all around me, in the bluest state there is, all the time: I've worked hard. I've done my best. And if only I'd been a gay Native American vegan raised by an interracial family on a Buddhist mission in Africa during a coup AND an earthquake, there would have been a scholarship for me, or a promotion, or something. Something to make me special. (As if ethnicity was a hobby you could take up in order to make your college applications seem more interesting.)
I get the resentment. I get the anger that rests entirely on the presumption that somebody somewhere got a little bit of help I didn't. And I get it because for the past 30 years we have basically, all of us, been told help isn't coming, and asking for it is welfare/socialism/pussitude, and if you do get help you should feel very, very bad about it and never mention it at parties when people are running down welfare queens. The problem isn't that somebody somewhere got help (or didn't; more often than not we have no idea who gets what assistance when we talk about this stuff), it's that by and large we as a country have been quicker to abandon our countrymen during times of need than we have been to hold out a hand.
So any example to the contrary -- a scholarship to a prestigious university, however well-deserved and hard-earned, for example -- is viewed with suspicion. You saw this during the earlier waves of right-wing outrage against Sotomayor, that she was "privileged" somehow, that she was unfairly ahead. How did THAT one slip past us? How did SHE get a leg up, I thought we weren't giving those out anymore since St. Ronnie told that story about the lady driving the Cadillac? How dare anyone live a life that proves false what we ourselves know from experience to be true, that people are nasty and small and bitter and mean and if you get screwed oh well, too bad? If we are all victims of our worst circumstances, how dare anyone rise above them?
It would be harder to ask the questions asked, to provide the nasty insinuations provided by Sessions and Graham and Cornyn, were we a different kind of people. If we rested secure in the knowlege that all of us were taken care of, that all of us COULD count on our own hard work being enough to get us there, then we wouldn't mind so much seeing someone who proved that true. It wouldn't be such a shock to the system, it wouldn't be questioned so rudely, it wouldn't be out of the ordinary.
I'm not letting the distinguished senators from 1864 off the hook, but I am saying, this kind of thing worked for a long time because we all felt beaten down and exhausted, we all wanted help, and for too many of us help didn't come, and we couldn't rise above what happened to us. Too many people feel like they have no access to advancement of any kind, and it's easier to teach those people to hate anyone who does advance than it is to help them advance themselves. I wish I didn't get the resentment. By which I mean, I wish we lived in the kind of world in which nobody had to resent, because nobody had to want something so badly, and know they had no hope of getting it.
A.
In Gary, it's inspirational. "Can a newspaper work as an ESOP?" asks a FAQ on the new Web site buytheposttribune.com, then answers, "Yes it can," and points to the Blethen ESOP as evidence.
To get Post-Tribune employees behind an ESOP bid, the guild reminds them they have nothing to lose. "How much worse can it get?" Grimm asks. He tells me the working assumption is that sometime this fall "we'll have a new owner and the company [the Sun-Times Media Group] will cease to exist—that's what we're told. And that new owner will come in and things will change around here. Whatever we can do to have a say in who that owner is, or to have that owner be us, we're going to do it."
A.
![]() |
| From 2Millionth Web Log |
You've got the Ghost of GOP Past and the Ghost of GOP Future...which I guess puts Jeff Sessions, Lindsey Graham and John Cornyn in the role of Ghost of GOP Present.
Sure, the Democratic Party is merely the lesser of evils for the most part, but that's some evil on the other side of the aisle.
If only newspapers still made money. If only there was a business model that would work. Like printing the news on paper and bringing it to people's homes via some kind of delivery system.
Good thing they laid all those people off.
A.
This was the story, way back before there was dirt, that convinced me that blogging could be completely AWESOME. Bankruptcy couldn't be happening to a nicer bunch of folks. Suck on karma's 14-inch strap-on, boys.
A.
The Texas State Board of Education enjoyed its fair share of bad press lately, and rightly so.
In 2004 Ms. Lowe opposed requiring that publishers obey curriculum standards and put medically accurate information about responsible pregnancy and disease prevention in new high school health textbooks.
In 2008 Ms. Lowe voted to throw out nearly three years of work by teacher writing teams on new language arts standards. Over the strenuous objections of teachers and curriculum specialists, Lowe instead voted for a standards document that the board’s far-right bloc patched together overnight and slipped under hotel doors the morning of the final vote.
In 2003 and 2009 Ms. Lowe supported dumbing down the state’s public school science curriculum by voting to include unscientific, creationist criticisms of evolution in science textbooks and curriculum standards.
“Certainly those are historical figures that students should be aware of, and their goals and their place in history, but it needs to be in the context of what those people were known for. And so if the example is someone of good civic involvement, then there may be a different type of historical figure and leader that would be more appropriate.”

Read this, as well.
I tried arguing about Afghanistan with people back in 2001; naturally, no one listened.
I understood that, after 9/11, we would be attacking somebody. You don't outspend the rest of the world militarily and then not use that military when attacked. However, I did not expect an invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. I thought it was a stupid idea then, and I think it's a stupid idea now.
One of the big justifications for the war was the removal of the Taliban, that group of fundamentalist assholes who imposed their own vision of utopian society in many parts of Afghanistan. Don't get me wrong--they're a bunch of fucks. Everyone's heard the stories about burqas and sex-segregation and women being fourth-class citizens (it was hilarious to watch Republicans trip over themselves to stress how awful and sexist these choad-gobblers were).
I was aware of the Taliban prior to September of 2001. It didn't take a genius to know about this group of sack wranglers. However, there's a reason why they were in control of parts of Afghanistan. They provided order. Order is preferable to chaos--it's why we have government in the first place, and why Libertarian fantasies will always be just that. When, as happens some times, that order becomes unbearably oppressive, certain groups attempt to replace it. But they never wish to eradicate order altogether. There may be a chaotic interregnum, but no one ever abolishes order in favor of permanent chaos.
Put otherwise: When the people who lived in Afghanistan (and I'm not talking about "Afghanis;" there's really no such ethnicity) got tired of the Taliban, they would have done something about it. You can provide aid to these groups, and you can encourage less-repressive elements in societies, but you can't go in and impose an order of your own. It has to be, to use a Hobbesian term, a social contract entered into by the people whose own lives are directly affected--especially in a place like Afghanistan, where interlopers have been frustrated since the days of Alexander the Great.
All that shit about "Freedom is God Almighty's gift" is just nonsense. Even if it were true, it would be up to the Almighty to dispense it, not to us. Isn't that fucking presumptuous, to think otherwise?
Not that Hobbes' view of humanity was perfect. It was, of course, situated in his time--the anarchical years during the English Civil War. However, when in such a state, order--even a harsh order--is something for which people yearn. Corrupt, unpredictable, and abusive governments will always be less popular than repressive yet predictable ones.
Thoughts?
The face we show to the world matters to the world:
People gathered in Ghana to watch for Obama as he toured the Cape Coast Slave Castle.
A.
From last night's All Things Considered, wherein Robert Siegel tried to kill me by interviewing Chuck Grassley on Sotomayor:
Grassley: ...[U]nder our system of checks and balances system of government it's very important that judges judge, in other words interpret law, and that legislators make law.
Siegel: But this is what Justice Samuel Alito said at his confirmation hearing, before the very committee--he said, and I quote, 'When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender, and I do take that into account.' By your standard, that would be disqualifying. He should have said instead, 'My background, my family counts for nothing.'
Grassley: Uh, that's absolutely right, because I expect, a person who's a judge to look at the four corners of the law, and make decisions based upon what that law says. Now, if it isn't clear, then of course they got a right to go beyond just the words of the law, to court debate and to other courts and to the history behind the bill. But here's, I think we're--
Siegel: But you didn't vote against Justice Alito's confirmation.
Grassley: No, I didn't. And uh, let's put it this way--she was very positive, in saying today that fidelity for the law is going to be her benchmark. The extent to which she doesn't distract from that over the next three days is going to help her standing with members of the committee, particularly Republican members of the committee.
Later, in an exchange about Stevens:
Siegel: Let me tell you something about Stevens. I want to ask you a question about that justice in particular and about this notion of empathy. His father, as you may know, was wrongly convicted of embezzlement when Stevens was a young man, and then he was vindicated. Wouldn't an experience like that make a person who sits on the bench think differently about the fallibility of the criminal justice system than another judge might? Don't our individual experiences in some way color the way we would answer a supposedly objective question?
Grassley: If I were Justice Stevens, I wouldn't even have to use the example of my own father. All I'd have to do is use an example of when justice has not been given to an individual that deserves justice. And that happens in our society. And when there's an injustice, that ought to be corrected. [snip] Justice Stevens could render that sort of justice regardless of whether his dad had a bad experience or not.
Okay, so Robert Siegel gets a cookie for at least posing a difficult pair of questions to Grassley. Too bad he let him off the hook. (I nearly drove off the road when I heard the "No, I didn't vote against Alito, and let me quickly change the subject" bit. Grrrr.)
But what really prompted me to write this post is that the whole empathy/objectivity thing is making me crazy. I do a introductory thing in all my classes about historians and how we study history. The objectivity debate has been a contentious one in history circles for years. I tell my students that I'm from the wussy middle in the debate. While I believe that objectivity should be a goal, we need to recognize that it is, because of human nature, a completely unattainable goal. You can't take the historian out of the equation when dealing with the interpretation of history--that's why we have 8 million books about Napoleon and Caesar and the Civil War and everything else. If there were such a thing as truly objective history, there's just be one book about each subject.
The same is true in the judicial system, at least to a certain extent. While I'd like to think judges would do their best to be objective, I know they can't--they're human (except for Scalia. And Thomas.). They're going to each bring their own personal interpretation of the letter and spirit of any given law to their bench. So I find the whole empathy debate really stupid. We are all, as Siegel pointed out, and Grassley missed, shaped by our experiences. We can't avoid it.
Frankly, I find Sotomayor's comments about her background informing her decisionmaking on the bench refreshingly honest. I'd much rather have a person on the Supreme Court who recognizes where her biases may come in to play (sometimes appropriately) and is up front about that than somebody who is either in denial or lying.
Sometimes, you just want to choke the assholes in the media who get the vapors whenever people use unauthorized language. You know, the same dipshits who read the Starr Report and salivated over every salacious detail, but who think that it's The End Of Western Civilization if you use the word "blowjob" instead of "oral encounter." Behold:
Oh, dear me. Look, I can see the Huns approaching!
Bonus points for whoever gets the title reference.
UPDATE: At the end of the video, Shuster apologizes, and refers to the broadcast as a "daytime, family-oriented" program. Right. 'Cause you just know all the kids who are out of school for the summer are sitting indoors, watching cable news. This is just like that time Mr. Rogers had that unfortunate attack of Tourette's.
It was asassinations of Al Qaeda operatives. Okay, awesome! Who doesn't want to hunt down and smoke out and hang high our nation's fearsome enemies? Tell Congress all about it! It's not like any of them have Osama on speed dial, no matter what Rush says, so for fuck's sake, what's the problem here? Right after 9/11 congressmen were falling all over themselves (and most of them still are) to cross the finish line of Most Hardcore first. You really think they'd have had an issue with it?
It was even more illegal spying than the illegal spying we already knew about. Well damn, hooker, shit. That clearly would have been tough for Congress to accept, considering that they totally gave retroactive immunity to everybody who went along with the illegal spying we knew about and have prosecuted exactly no one for any of the previous lawbreaking. A little more might have pushed them over the edge? Honestly? They might have used adjectives in their sternly worded letters? You might as well tell Congress basically as a DARE.
I realize that I am presently arguing that Congress is such a bunch of stupendous pussies that it really doesn't matter what sick and twisted shit Herr Cheney was up to in his secret bunker, that they would have agreed to it completely. Yet, no one who has been paying attention could argue this wasn't the case.
Sure, a couple of speeches might have been given, and Feingold might have told the entire U.S. Senate to suck him once your mom was done, but in the end anything and everything would have been authorized lest Bill O'Reilly make fun of Democrats or some imaginary voter living in Chris Matthews' head have concerns you might be the kind of pansy who drinks the wrong thing at the diner. They should have just owned up to it. Nobody would have stopped them.
Even with this major scary new revelatory whatever, no matter what it ends up being about, in about two weeks we're going to have a resolution declaring it's all okay, and nobody needs to go to jail or apologize or anything. I'd love to be proved wrong, by the way, but I don't think I will be.
A.

So, it turns out that swearing fucking kicks ass. No, really, there's fucking SCIENCE and shit backing this the fuck up. So take note, assorted cocksuckers, motherfuckers, bitches, bastards, and dickheads: Swearing can make you feel better.
I must be the best-feeling motherfucker on this whole motherfucking bubble.
No wonder David Broder and Cokie Roberts walk around with permanent sticks up their priggish asses. They think that saying the word "fuck" is a crime against humanity. Chill the fuck out, assholes!
That's right. This motherfucking post gets the motherfucking "science" tag. Fucking believe that.
Say that three times fast. Then punch yourself in the head and fall down onto a pile of tacks, because it will be more pleasant than reading this:
That high-pitched whine you just heard, followed by a screech? That was the irony meter burying the needle and then bursting into flames.
Could it be that your status as a complete and total bologna pony influenced your actions all those years you were giving Bush public tongue-baths in front of whatever microphone you could shove in your face?
I managed to get the meter fixed but that popped it again. Damn it. Which is to say, will no one think of the white men? Where is whitey's motherfucking iced tea, anyway?
Oh, me too, honey, if only because at some point you are going to slip and just say what's actually on your mind instead of cloaking it in this mealy-mouthed crap.
A.
Here's what's happening today and the rest of the week:
A.
Good morning everyone! I'm still disposing of old drums of toxic Free Republic waste, so bear with me on the topicality thing - because it's always open season on stupid.
Before we get to the older stuff, though - Free Republic honcho Mike.....er Jim Robinson posted a thread about a Daily Kos thread about a Free Republic thread.
I sense an imminent collapse of web punditry into a singularity.
I do believe you're right.
The thread at Freeperville was restored after being pulled "for review".
Out of the mouths of babes.....
Apparently, NoobRep has been frequenting FR for years, but with his monitor turned off.
And now we have about twenty-five versions of "He pushed me first", which I didn't even let my kids get away with when they were five:
Then they get all paranoid:
Then they get nasty:
I'll just leave the irony of a Jew calling someone "you people" as an exercise for the reader...
And then - suddenly - one of them gets a clue, like awaking from a fever dream:
Is it? Good question. Let's ask the other posters in this thread:
That's a "Hell, yes!".
Ya know, I was born and raised in the city, as diverse as one can be or as diverse a neighborhood can be and I’m so sick of all this PC crap. Personally, I think it’s from people that have no clue what it’s like to live in a freakin’ ghetto, yeah a ghetto. Fortunately, the area in the city I grew up in wasn’t what it’s like today. It was getting there, which is the reason I got out 20 years ago. But it was a ghetto of sorts. And today it’s much worse. And many people got out which is why the city is what it is today. WTH chooses to live like that?
I don’t give a damn if I’m called a racist or anything else...some of us not only lived in the so called ghetto, we were able to WORK our way out of it. And I’m damn tired of paying for those who don’t get up off their asses and work. I don’t give a damn what color/race one is but I know the so called minorities in this Country get a free pass on some things.
And that's a "Fuck yeah, and what's it to ya??".
More (and vintage) craziness after the jumparoonie...
Continue reading "Today on Tommy T's Obsession With The Freeperati - Potpurri edition" »

It's amazing, the things you learn as you go through life.
It turns out that going-away parties are actually a sort of analgesic. You hurt so badly from the hangover the next day that you don't realize how much you're actually going to miss the person/people in whose honor said hangover-inducing party was thrown.
Also: OWWWW.
This is yet another case of print pretending it's pure and that the Internet is filthy. Newspapers adjust their coverage all the time based on where their readers are and how many readers there are. A frequent refrain at my last paper was "We don't have any readers there!" whenever somebody wanted to spend time covering a big story in a small town which was, more often than not, very poor. "Go out and get some readers there," was apparently not the response they were looking for, but really. These kinds of economic decisions get made all the time. All the Internet has done is made it a little more obvious.
A.