Month: January 2013

Seth Fischer narrates his unsparing experience with PTSD:

I’m spending days in bed, even though I can’t, even though I am working 50 to 80 hours a week, doing a damn good job when I’m there. But still, somehow, I manage to spend entire days in bed, in silence, staring at the ceiling, not listening to music, not cruising the Internet, just staring, cursing every time the ice cream truck drives by my window because of that God damned song. It’s not even that it drives by; it actually parks in front of my fucking house just to make me crazy. My therapist calls what I’m doing “dissociating.”

I want to pour a coke in the engine of the ice cream truck. I want to take a sledgehammer to its speakers. For a moment, I want to be cruel. It is ruining everything. I don’t know what this is. I just know I can’t control it.

His perceives the elements of his own illness in the country’s troubles at large:

Pareene finds reason to think so:

While some elite-backed elements of the right-wing press will fall in line — Murdoch will keep his media organs on his side of the immigration debate — the “grass-roots” conservative press is going to react the same way it did in 2006, when they helped kill their own president’s immigration reform plan. National Review’s The Corner is currently like 75 percent hysterical accusations of betrayal from anti-immigration zealots like Mark Krikorian, who has written four separate lengthy posts decrying “amnesty”  [yesterday] alone. Michelle Malkin’s headline is “Suicidal GOP senators join open-borders Dems for Shamnesty Redux.“

Naomi Rovnick exposes the less-than-rigorous auditing practices of Chinese companies:

[Apple’s] worst finding was that one of its manufacturers—which supplies other companies too—was employing 74 children. In total, it found 106 cases of child labor across its factories. Apple also reported that 158 of the factories it uses were not auditing their own suppliers. We italicize the last part of that sentence because failing to probe Chinese suppliers’ subcontractors is something labor activists and manufacturing experts have long suspected multinationals do. …

TNC gives a helpful timeline on the NFL’s awareness and action/inaction on the brain trauma it inflicts on so many of its players. Big Football’s similarity to Big Tobacco begins to look somewhat ominous.

John H. Richardson rails against cultural prudishness:

I want to suggest that sex, be it adulterous or premarital or deviant or polyamorous, is a good thing, not a bad thing, and that sex itself is the moment of grace. And that our sterile idea of perfection is the actual sin.

To start with the subject on the table, adultery is a brave rebellion against the invisible prison we build for ourselves. When the sad little man Larry Craig widened his stance in that airport bathroom, it was probably the most honest and courageous act of his life. When Clinton got that blowjob in the White House, he wasn’t indulging a weakness (and an eager intern) but enacting the hero’s journey of reconciling inner and outer, risking all to break through the wall of hypocritical purity he had spent years building and projecting to the world in the effort to get elected. By risking martyrdom, in fact, he lifted himself up into an exaltation we still refuse to understand.

He concludes:

By declaring that which is most beautiful to be filthy, that which is most natural to be unnatural, by always making laws against and never for, we ensure that laws will continue to be broken and we will always have spouses to scorn and a Christ to crucify.

I’ll let readers have a first crack at this argument; but stay tuned …

James Alan Fox believes that the “key to freedom should rarely, if ever, be discarded when it comes to juveniles”:

The most sensible approach would be to make all juvenile offenders eligible for parole. Eligibility for release is far from a guarantee. Any changes in punishment should be judged by a parole board or other resentencing authority after the perpetrator has served many long years behind bars, rather than being anticipated by a judge or jury at trial when emotions are high and political pressure is intense. Punishments should fit the criminal, not just the crime.

Below is the disturbing story of the two kids seen above:

James Bulger’s mother left her two-year-old son at the butcher shop’s door thinking that it would not take her long to return, since there was no queue in the store. Little did she know that it would be her last time she would see her son alive.

Now that women are eligible to serve in combat roles, Kate Brannen wonders if they’ll be required to register for the draft:

Although the Selective Service law is inherently discriminatory — requiring something of men that it doesn’t require of women — it was considered constitutional because women were excluded from combat. Since women wouldn’t be conscripted, they didn’t need to register. Now that women will be joining at least some combat units, Congress eventually must determine how to handle that new reality.

One of Justin Green’s commenters tackles the question:

I’m not sure why we continue to require men to register with selective service. We haven’t had a draft in over 35 years. It’s a lot of paperwork and must be expensive maintaining a system we don’t intend to use. If we want to reinstate the draft, then we can address that at such a time. I suppose it makes sense for women to register as well as men if we are going to continue to require men to participate in this charade.

Commenting on Palin’s split with Fox News, Ambers sees little chance of political comeback for the former half-term governor:

Simply put, Palin simply did not do the work. She crested and rolled on the waves of resentment, which are now channeled elsewhere.

Waldman agrees:

She luxuriated in her grievances—against the establishment, against the media, against everyone from the mightiest politician to the lowliest teenager who happened to knock up her daughter (as Levi Johnston put it at one point, “It’s almost funny, that she’s like, 46 years old, and she’s battling a 19-year-old, and I’m winning”). Resentment was her instrument, her tool, her vehicle and her purpose.

Alyssa wonders if the Palins will lose their other gigs:

The Palin family as a whole seems to hope for careers in show business, but this is only the latest in a string of failures for them. The TLC show Sarah Palin’s Alaska saw declining ratings and wasn’t renewed for a second season. Bristol Palin’s Lifetime show was yanked from the network for lower viewership, but not before landing $354,348 in tax subsidies from the state of Alaska. Todd Palin was reduced to appearing as one of many celebrities on NBC’s military reality show Stars Earned Stripes.

Maybe now that Fox News has cut ties with Palin, the rest of the television industry will follow suit.

Here’s what I hope: that they all lead long, happy lives far far away from any hint of political office. And that one child with Down Syndrome gets the care and love he needs and deserves.

(Photo: Sarah Palin waits to appear on NBC News’ ‘Today’ show. By Peter Kramer/NBC/NBC NewsWire via Getty Images.)

Let me first second Kirsten Powers’ loathing for Media Matters’ campaign to shame and target individuals for appearing on Fox News. But the memo she cites is from a year ago. And I have to say that even if it means agreeing with David Brock, I’m afraid I have to confess that I do not regard Fox News as a legitimate news organization. It’s a propaganda channel for the far right, and not much worse than MSNBC’s leftist partisan smugbursts. And an administration, in my view, should be open to all at regular press conferences (okay, not heckling by the Daily Caller) … but does not have to legitimize propaganda machines by appearing on them. I’d keep off MSNBC and Fox if I were in any administration. They both poison our discourse. Let these propaganda channels put talk radio on TV all day if they want. You don’t have to enable them.

Powers – one of Fox’s token “liberals” – argues:

It’s not okay — or presidential — to continue smearing an entire network of hard working journalists because you are mad at Sean Hannity.

And why not, pray? If Fox wants to regain some semblance of respect for their viewers, they need not have that partisan fanatic on every night. Was he not exposed as a complete fraud and a total fool on election night? Every time he opens his mouth, he delegitimizes Fox News as a journalistic enterprise and when he’s on in prime time that reflects on the whole enterprise.

Are some Foxies better than others? Sure. Shep Smith is an entertaining, talented newsman. Megyn Kelly is razor-sharp. They belong on a real news network, not Fox. Of course, the White House cannot and should not do anything to restrain Fox’s freedom of speech – including untruths and propaganda designed entirely for political rather than journalistic purposes. If it did, I’d be the first to go after them. But you don’t have to cooperate with non-journalists and well-paid “liberals” at Fox to be some dreadful threat to free discourse.

Fox is the threat to free discourse and to journalism. Because it has turned journalism into partisan oppo research. And revels in it.