Month: February 2011

by Conor Friedersdorf

I finally got around to watching Bill O'Reilly's Sunday sitdown:

As Dish readers know, I am a critic of President Obama's health care bill, the fact that he continues to wage the War on Drugs, and especially his abysmal record on civil liberties. I also think many of his most strident critics on the right are loony, whether it's Dinesh D'Souza's claim that he's a Kenyan anti-colonialist, or Andy McCarthy's notion that he is allied with radical Islamists in a Grand Jihad against America, or Rush Limbaugh's various portrayals of him as a plotting, foreign seeming man bent on damaging the United States.

The interview above helps illustrate how the talk radio right's strategy is likely to backfire. Unlike a coherent, forceful critique of Obama's policies, an emphasis on his supposed otherness works on many Fox News viewers only until moments like the one when he sits down across from Papa Bear on Superbowl Sunday… and appears to be a perfectly pleasant, reasonable-seeming, unmistakably American man – one who maintains his cool, friendly demeanor, is respected by O'Reilly, and can even talk football.

It's hard to be scared of that guy. And while the cognitive dissonance isn't ever fully acknowledged or processed, the gulf that separates the loony right's portrayal of Obama from how he comes across to the average person can only result in most people dismissing a line of attack on which the right spends a lot of its time and energy.

A final thought.

Bill O'Reilly is allegedly a tough interviewer and Fox News a hostile network. But only if your idea of toughness is rhetorical bluster. It's ironic that a guy like me – the scourge of Mark Levin and his ilk – would've asked President Obama incomparably tougher questions had I been given a sitdown with him. 

by Chris Bodenner

A High Court judge in Britain bans sexual activity for a man with an IQ of 48:

by Chris Bodenner

(Hat tip: Caitlin Dickson)

by Zoe Pollock

Cory Doctorow recently excerpted part of this speech by author Philip Pullman, on how profit mechanisms don't apply to libraries:

That branch – how much money did it make last year? Why aren’t you charging higher fines? Why don’t you charge for library cards? Why don’t you charge for every catalogue search? Reserving books – you should charge a lot more for that. Those bookshelves over there – what’s on them? Philosophy? And how many people looked at them last week? Three? Empty those shelves and fill them up with celebrity memoirs.

E.D. Kain takes the opportunity to co-opt and pledge allegiance to reinvent Arnold Kling's concept of civil societarianism:

Profit is fine, as far as motivations go, but it leaves out a whole host of other human compulsions and needs and desires. Public libraries are a good example. How can we determine their value? All they do is cost in strictly financial terms. Some might argue that we should in some form or another privatize our libraries, or at least make them self-sufficient rather than rely on tax dollars. Of course this, like so many other privatization schemes, is hugely regressive and undermines the entire purpose of a public sphere to begin with. Which is perhaps the point. Or take prisons – is efficiency and cost-saving really a reason to turn incarceration into a profit-driven industry? …

All institutions are prone to failure, corruption, capture, the temptation of power, rent-seeking. Human endeavors are littered with predictable and unpredictable calamities alike. To break it all down into these stark black and white terms – private sector good, government bad – misses the way we exist in real life, in these little patches of reality we inhabit. I would mourn the loss of my public library before I would mourn the loss of any number of corporations. Maybe that is selfish of me. If so, so be it. 

But I think part of creating a civil society is crafting a democratic consensus, redistributing wealth, and attempting however clumsily to build a world that is at once as free and as fair as possible. I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive. I don’t think taxes are theft. I think of taxes more as a mandate – if you want to be a part of society you have to buy in.

Updated 2/8: Just to clarify, Kain's version takes a left-wing approach to Kling's original right-wing version of civil societarianism.

by Chris Bodenner

Jeff Jarvis chews over the AOL-HuffPo merger:

I was just thinking yesterday that though Aol has lots of content and plans to make a lot more, I never think to go there, apart from heading to one of its brands, such as Engadget. Portals are burned toast. Making content for search is not, I believe, a growth strategy, as the more Google becomes personalized and successfully seeks out signals of quality and originality, the more SEO will die as a black art. So to execute on its content-and-advertising strategy, Aol needs brands with engagement. Huffington Post is that. [AOL CEO] Armstrong needs someone who understands that the critical sphere of discovery for content will more and more be people: peers links, not algorithms; Arianna gets that.

But hasn't search engine optimization always been at the heart of HuffPo's dominance? Jack Shafer illustrates that eloquently:

There is no celebrity slide show beneath her tastes and no SEO trick she won't employ if it will get her traffic. As colleague Noreen Malone noted yesterday, and I tweeted, the HuffPo pulled off one of the greatest acts of SEO whoring in the history of the Web yesterday.

If you Googled the query, "What time does the Super Bowl start," the first return was a HuffPo "article" titled "What Time Does The Superbowl Start?" And lest the search engines miss the germ of what was clearly a trending question, the first three paragraphs of the HuffPo posting read:

Are you wondering, "what time does the Superbowl start?"

It's a common search query, as is "what time is the super bowl 2011," "superbowl time" and "superbowl kickoff time 2011," according to Google Trends the evening before the Super Bowl.

It's easily answered too. Super Bowl 2011 will take place on Sunday, Feb. 6, 2011, at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time and 3:30 p.m. Pacific Time.

by Chris Bodenner

Ambinder pens a eulogy for the Democratic Leadership Council. Chait opines:

I always had mixed feelings about the group. I think it was about half innovative effort to counterbalance traditional Democratic interest groups, and half naked effort to suck up to corporate America and/or give contentless messaging cover to red state Democrats. But for the main part, the DLC disappeared because its work was over. The remaking of the Democratic Party begun by Clinton held in place.

by Zoe Pollock

Eman AbdElRahman covers the logistical challenge of protesting for two weeks straight.

by Conor Friedersdorf

As usual, The Daily Show uses clips to great effect making many of the same critiques of cable news I bring in bloggy format. Here's Jon Stewart's take on the retirement of Keith Olbermann:

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by Zoe Pollock

Mark Thompson serves it up:

[N]ow that the protesters — and the international community, led by Washington — have convinced Hosni Mubarak it's nearly time to leave, they've displeased both sides. Mubarak is ticked because he's being forced out by a putative ally. The opposition is upset because it's not happening immediately. …

Instead of joining in full-throated support of the protesters, the Obama Administration has helped take the wind out of their sails. That may be smart if, as some in the U.S. military believe, the great bulk of the Egyptian population is apolitical and only wants a job that can put food on the table. In which case, good move. But if the flames of democracy we saw last week flicker into embers as the fire is banked, to the detriment of nascent Egypt's democrats — and to the benefit of Osama [Bin Laden] — maybe not so much.

by Conor Friedersdorf

After noticing stories about President Bush being threatened with arrest if he travels in Europe, and cancelling a trip as a result, David Frum writes this:

It’s hard to know how much of this story is true, and how much is fundraising bluster. But if even a small portion of the news is true, President Obama has a duty to speak up and to warn foreign governments that further indulgence of this kind of nonsense by their court systems will be viewed as an unfriendly act by the United States. It is one more reminder of why the concept of an International Criminal Court is such an invitation to mischief.

And for those inclined to enjoy the mischief: Just wait until somebody serves an arrest warrant in Luxembourg on ex-President Obama for ordering all those drone strikes on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

I am inclined to enjoy the mischief, and I don't much care if someone serves an arrest warrant on ex-President Obama either. Perhaps I'm being shortsighted. I'd like to hear a longer argument from Frum that isn't aimed at people who want the other side's partisans in jail, but not their own side's partisans.

International prohibitions on torture are a good thing. President Bush acknowledges that he ordered torture, though he doesn't use that word. But I don't want to have an argument over whether he's guilty or not. What interests me is the idea that even if he broke a longstanding law it's outrageous "mischief" to arrest him. Is that Frum's position? I'd prefer my presidents to be constrained by the law, and I don't see how that happens if arresting confessed lawbreakers is verbotten. Maybe a past president sitting in a jail cell would encourage future occupants of that office to show more respect for the law. Why is that attitude wrongheaded? What does Frum want to happen when a president breaks a law as serious as ordering torture? Does he want US presidents to be above the law? Isn't that an invitation to mischief?