Month: August 2009

"Wednesday, August 5th 2009, Coup'd etat inauguration: news and speculations… You are the Media : چهارشنبه 13 مرداد 1388،مراسم تحلیف دولت کودتا: اخبار و شایعات…. رسانه شمائید," – Mir Hossein Mousavi, via Facebook.

WaPo's Ian Shapira claims that Gawker's Hamilton Nolan "ripped off" his profile of Gen-Y consultant Anne Loehr because Nolan, well, blogged about it. Conor Friedersdorf makes sense of the mini scandal:

[Shapira's piece] is in fact an awful piece of journalism. As Gawker notes, it exemplifies a kind of newspaper story where “hidebound newspaper editors are too afraid to let their reporters write,” and the closest it comes to a point of view is “a tangled mass of clauses that takes [Anne] Loehr and her consultant pablum at face value.” Reporter Ian Shapira might defend the piece by arguing that it isn’t his job to make a judgment about his subject and her worth as a consultant, only to report the facts about her and let the reader decide. That is the premise behind a lot of newspaper writing.

And in this case, it’s bullshit. A profile is an inherently subjective exercise. It forces the writer to make all sorts of judgments about his or her subject, picking and choosing which scenes to render, which quotes to include, which descriptions to offer, and what to leave out — the stuff my former professor Lawrence Weschler would call “the fiction of non-fiction.”

Gawker's Gabriel Synder reveals how many of WaPo's own people, unlike Shapira, have come to rely on blogs to disseminate their work to a larger audience:

But if you're going to fixate on blog links as the death knell of the industry, we have a lead for you: The threat is coming from inside the building. Nearly every day — 26 times in July alone — a Washington Post staffer not only sends us links to its expensive reporting but even pulls out the most interesting quotes so as to make it easier to pirate. I have strong feelings about revealing the identity of any Gawker tipster, but in this case it seems the public interest is simply too pressing and we must reveal this threat to journalism:

Maria Cereghino
Manager, Communications
Washington Post Media

Conor thinks I was too easy to support the cash-for-clunkers program:

Just because the right includes a lot of people making very bad arguments right now doesn’t make the people they’re arguing against right. It’s a lesson I learned when I saw the behavior of bombastic, juvenile folks on the left translate into support for President Bush’s bid to invade Iraq.

He then points to several "serious arguments" against the program, including Radley Balko's:

You mean the government is offering people free money . . . and they’re taking it? And they’re measuring the program’s success by how many people . . . are willing to take free money? Shocker that it’s been so successful, huh? […T]he government’s energy savings equation looks something like this:

(all of the energy that went into making the old car) + (the energy it will take to destroy it) + (all of the energy it took to make the new car) + ($3,500) < an extra four miles per gallon!

But the point was more narrowly tailored – to stimulate new car buying at a time when the auto industry is on life-support. It seems to me that by that criterion, it worked.

A new insight into the mindset behind Blackwater comes from whistle-bowers in the Bush-Cheney military-industrial-mercenary complex. Among the charges, reported by Scott Horton:

Both men requested anonymity to avoid mortal threats. “It appears that Mr. Prince or his employees murdered, or had murdered, one or more persons who have provided information, or who were planning to provide information, to the federal authorities,” said John Doe #1. John Doe #2 says he received personal threats after leaving Blackwater.

Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe.” He “intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis.”

Blackwater “employees openly and consistently used racist and derogatory terms of Iraqis and other Arabs, such as 'ragheads’ or ‘hajis.’”

Blackwater deployed to Iraq individuals who (a) made “statements about wanting to… ‘kill ragheads’ or achieve ‘kills’ or ‘body counts,’” (b) drank excessively, (c) used steroids, and (d) failed to follow safety and other instructions governing the use of lethal weapons. Mental-health professionals who raised concerns about deployment of such individuals were fired.

Prince obtained “illegal ammunition… designed to explode after penetrating within the human body” and smuggled it into Iraq for use.

Prince distributed other illegal weapons for use in Iraq.

Prince was aware of the use of prostitutes, “including child prostitutes,” at Blackwater’s “Man Camp” in Iraq, which he visited.

I wonder how much more we will find out about Iraq in the years to come.

Two innocent Americans were freed, and so far as I can tell, there was no quid pro quo. And here you have John Bolton, yearning for the first Bush term (when we made so much progress with NoKo):

But I worry that the outcome is a lot better for North Korea than for the United States. I mean this is a classic case of rewarding bad behavior, the seizure of these two basically innocent Americans. Obviously all of us want to get them out but we want it done in a way that doesn’t increase the risks in the future for other Americans seized by North Korea, seized by Iran, seized by other despotic regimes and then turned into pawns to get senior officials like former presidents to come and legitimize the regime in order to get them out.

The NoKo regime says Clinton apologized for the behavior of the journalists, but we have no confirmation of that from the US. But I loved this detail from the Lede:

The video of Mr. Clinton’s arrival in Pyongyang was featured in a news bulletin on North Korean state television on Tuesday evening, just after a report on the improving quality of biscuits at a local factory.

CNN reports that a young woman is suing her college because she could not get a job after graduating:

Trina Thompson, 27, of the Bronx, graduated from New York's Monroe College in April with a bachelor of business administration degree in information technology. On July 24, she filed suit against the college in Bronx Supreme Court, alleging that Monroe's "Office of Career Advancement did not help me with a full-time job placement. I am also suing them because of the stress I have been going through."

Daniel Indiviglio quips:

Who wouldn't hire a 2.7 GPA (B- average) from the renowned Monroe College? Especially when those credentials include the attitude of someone who would sue her college. […] This story illuminates a larger problem in the generation of instant gratification. Many young people in their 20s today are having trouble in employment due to short attention spans and the need for immediate recognition and advancement. Unfortunately, that's not how the real world works.

Matthew Cooper imagines what Bill said to Kim Jong Il. Ackerman imagines Bill as a suicide bomber.

A reader writes:

You wrote:

"…cash-for-clunkers is one example of the government actually doing something right, helpful and popular…"

Really?  Twenty years ago I bought an inexpensive subcompact car that gets gas mileage in the mid-20s and has passed every smog check with no problem. It's still my only car, now worn and battered.  I'd like to replace it–and stimulate the car market along the way–but can't afford to risk a car loan or spend substantial amounts of savings on a car purchase (I'm getting a six percent paycut next month and am, like most of my co-workers, in danger of a layoff).

But I'm also not eligible for the "cash for clunkers" program because my car is too efficient.  Yet people who bought expensive, "gas-guzzling" cars and trucks can suddenly get Federal money to buy cars that, in many cases, still won't be as fuel efficient as the one I drive. I definitely don't think that the Federal Government owes me financial assistance, but it is pretty disheartening to see what direct assistance is offered to those who often behaved recklessly or lived consistently beyond their means.

"We live in a land where a person who goes by the name "NakedEmperor" with editing software and a laptop can rattle the President of the United States," – Michael Sherer, writing about the White House v. Drudge Report "YouTube War." Tumulty has more.