Month: June 2010

A reader writes:

The conversation you are having about political reporters and their access to the people the cover, and the protection of that access, reminds me very much of the coverage of Barry Bonds. Bonds spent years cheating but very few sports reporters would report the truth because they feared losing their access to the locker room. Bonds would quite bluntly threaten that access, as I remember. His hitting performance, due to the cheating, was making him a big draw for reporters. But if they asked about the cheating, they lost access.  Eventually it took two investigative reporters from SF to expose the cheating. Those reporters, who were not covering sports, did not value access to the locker room, so could not be manipulated by Bonds. 

Hastings' career isn't damaged by losing access to his subjects. But Lara Logan's would be.

And yet Bonds' steroid use was as plain as the zits on his back.

Byrd's courageous and prophetic speech before the catastrophe of the Iraq war – which I relentlessly championed:

A famed 1975 Atlantic profile of the then-junior senator is here.

I was the recipient of a GOP email today which had a link in it alleging to show Eric Cantor's ideas for balancing the budget. I was thrilled  and eagerly clicked through. Yes, we'll balance the budget by bravely taking on UNESCO. Seriously. If you want to see how conservatives govern, look at Britain's brutal budget cuts. The GOP are left-liberals on this, pretending to be right-conservatives. It really is time to call bullshit on them. Or maybe that time will be after the mid-terms when they might actually have real governing responsibility and their utter indifference to actual spending cuts will be exposed.

TNC asks:

If I root for Ghana does that make me racist?

A reader writes:

I can't refute your claim that Byrd directed an inordinate amount of monies to his state, nor any of your other claims about him for that matter. I will say that I was impressed that he was close to the only person to have spoken the truth about the Iraq war before it began. And I am happy he lived long enough — and was shamed enough about his past ways — to endorse Obama over Clinton. The first act showed that he was astute enough to know the war was wrong and that he was bold enough to say it when the tide was largely against him. The second act showed that people can change, pure and simple. He doesn't deserve a loving tribute, perhaps, but he deserves props for those two acts.

Another:

I'm no apologist for Senator Byrd, but I am certainly aware of his repentance of his racism. A white person born 92 years ago and living in West Virginia would be nothing but a racist because it would be the only thing he was taught. He lived long enough, and had enough flexibility of intellect, to overcome those powerful teachings of his culture. His acknowledgment of his wrongdoing and his regret mean, according to your faith, that he has been forgiven, and it's not your place to continue to tar him for those sins.

Another:

Throughout much of his career but moreso in his later years, Sen. Byrd was a champion for the humane treatment of animals. Byrd fought to end intensive confinement of animals on factory farms, barbaric cockfighting, and the slaughter of horses for human consumption. He fought for minimal humane slaughter protections for all "food" animals, including the over nine billion birds slaughtered annually. At a time when there are so few true champions for animals left in the Senate, Byrd’s leadership will be missed.

(Photo: U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) asks a question during a hearing before the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee May 20, 2010 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The hearing was to examine issues regarding the safety of coal mining. By Alex Wong/Getty Images.)

Weigel explains himself over at Big Government:

I was cocky, and I got worse. I treated the list like a dive bar, swaggering in and popping off about what was “really” happening out there, and snarking at conservatives. Why did I want these people to like me so much? Why did I assume that I needed to crack wise and rant about people who, usually for no more than five minutes were getting on my nerves? Because I was stupid and arrogant, and needlessly mean. Yes, I’d trash-talk liberals to Republicans sometimes. And I’d tell them which liberals “mattered,” who was a hack, who was coming after them. Did I suggest which strategies might and might not work for liberals, Democrats, and the president? Yes, although I do the same to conservatives — in February, for example, I told many of them that Scott Brown’s election hadn’t killed health care reform, and they needed to avoid dancing in the endzone, because I was aware of what liberals were saying about how to come back.

Still, this was hubris. It was the hubris of someone who rose — objectively speaking — a bit too fast, and someone who misunderstood a few things about his trade.

Elsewhere he defends his use of the term "ratfucking." I find the idea of journalists not being able to vent in any way they like in private to be depressing. The lesson from this episode, alas, will be simply to wall off private beliefs and comments and jokes and vents into a tighter and tighter personal space. A list-serv isn't safe. Are any emails safe? At some point, our hacks may become Elena Kaganized. Can you imagine a worse fate?

Stephanie Mencimer wonders how gay the Kagan hearings will turn out to be. This is awesome:

Last week, the president of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, issued a statement suggesting that maybe Kagan isn’t gay now, but she might have been before Obama nominated her. The group urged her to come out publicly as an "ex-gay."

Hale Stewart is worried about housing:

1.) The existing home sales market has farther to fall. There is simply far too much inventory on the market for prices to remain stable.

2.) During the recession, the economy lost a total of 7,281,000 million jobs. Of these, 2,102,000 or 28% were construction workers. Given the massive inventory overhang in the existing home sales market it is highly doubtful that we'll see large construction employment gains in the near future.

3.) Housing wealth is one determinant of consumer behavior. If housing prices continue to move lower, expect lower consumer spending to follow.