Mary Elizabeth Williams compares the celeb-blogger to James Dobson:
Like an overly evangelical politician or priest (Hilton, interestingly, is an alum of the Belen Jesuit School), he spends his time obsessing on the sins of others — but without the mannerly restraint those other guardians of our good behavior are obliged to show. He's closer in spirit to those abortion clinic protesters brandishing posters of fetuses, preferring to stomp around and wave his vivid shows of outrage in our faces. Look at this! Isn't it DISGUSTING? Here, let me get another eyeful. Still HORRIBLE!
This is too-cute-by-half. Hilton – whom I can't stand – may sound like an evangelical pol but he's titillated by debauchery and rather than trying to stamp it out. Williams's argument would benefit from examining how celebrity scolds differ from social conservatives.
I don't really get a chance to watch TV in Unalaska, and the one thing I miss is Megyn Kelly of Fox News. The last week or so of her work — her one woman crusade against the New Black Panther Party — has been truly riveting television. Kelly widens her eyes in a way that bespeaks both horror and anger at the subject she's reporting on. "Shocking new video," she'll say, introducing a clip of the Panthers acting like idiots and yelling about "crackers" at a Philadelphia street festival. "We have a DOJ whistleblower alleging there is a discriminatory policy at the DOJ voting rights section," she'll say, "and no one seems to give a darn." It's the "darn" that ties this together — she's not just a journalist, she's a concerned citizen who has to bring you this story before it's. Too. Late.
The people who grab these videos for the web use the same cliches to title them. "Megyn Kelly DESTROYS Kirsten Powers on New Black Panther Case" says one of them; "Megyn Kelly schools lib pundit over New Black Panthers Party." But why is she doing so many stories on the Panthers? It's because Fox News uses the Panthers the way that Phil Donohue used to use the KKK or G.G. Allin. They're good on TV. The difference between the Panthers and other freakish groups that look good on the air, of course, is that that they threaten white people.
How often does Fox bring on the Panthers, or talk about them? A Lexis-Nexis search finds 68 mentions of "Malik Zulu Shabazz," a leader of the NBPP. The majority are appearances on Fox News, where Shabazz is repeatedly brought on to act as a foolish, anti-Semitic punching bag. Among the segment titles: "Professor's Comments on Whites Stir Controversy" and "Black Panthers Take a Stand on Duke Rape Case." Here's one example of a Shabazz appearance during the Jeremiah Wright controversy. Fox was the only network to book him; Sean Hannity conducted the interview.
HANNITY: Malik Zulu Shabazz joins us right now. Malik, welcome back to the program. Now, we didn't show the one time I think you called me a devil on the air. So I'm going and try to start off and see if we can have a civil dialogue here tonight. You said I have nothing but respect for and his pastor. Is there nothing that the pastor said that you disagree with?
SHABAZZ: I understand that he comes from the black church tradition. And in the church they study Babylon, Sodom and Gomorrah and Egypt. And they believe that those nations in the church. Both the black church and white evangelicals believe powerful nations in the past that have done evil to their slaves will be condemned by God. So this is not just Jeremiah Wright. It's a regular church teaching. Same teaching that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson do the same teaching.
HANNITY: Do you believe G.D. [God damn] America? Is that your view?
SHABAZZ: I think that's too simplistic of a question.
HANNITY: That's not simplistic, it's the right question because these are the words of Jeremiah Wright.
This isn't journalism. No one cares what the NBPP thinks about anything. This is minstrelsy, with a fringe moron set up like a bowling pin for Hannity to knock down. And that's the role the NBPP plays on Fox, frequently.
Kelly's obsession with the current NBPP controversy is something else, though. No one disputes that two members of the Panthers lurked outside of a heavily black, Democratic polling place in Philadelphia on election day 2008, and no one thinks this was a smart or legal thing for them to do. Police were called to the scene to disperse them, and King Samir Shabazz, who was filmed holding (though not using) a nightstick, lost the right to be a poll-watcher for the next election cycle. It was the only recorded incident like this in the nation; nearly two years later, no voter has come forward and said he or she was prevented from voting by the Panthers. And in his publicity tour to attack the DOJ over the Panther case — a second-rate case against a fifth-rate hate group — J. Christian Adams has been unable to name any case in which the DOJ was presented with a crime committed by black people and chose not to prosecute it.
So why obsess over the Panthers? Is it turnabout for the way that liberals elevate the craziest tea party activists, or the way they call them racist? Because it's obviously not a search for justice or a muckraking effort to discover reverse racism in the DOJ. If this is an effort to make sure that King Samir Shabazz is prosecuted for intimidating voters, why not try to find some voters he intimidated? Why, instead, as Kelly and Glenn Beck have opted to do, show video of the Shabazz yelling about "crackers" at a street fair before the election? No one disputes that he hates white people — just watch one of the tapes from the times Fox News invited his colleagues on to discuss how they hate white people.
One of the more jarring passages in Rick Perlstein's "Nixonland" is his recounting of a popular myth that went around Iowa in 1966, the year of the conservative backlash against the Great Society. The myth was that black gang members on motorcycles were going to head from Chicago to ransack Des Moines. Reading this in 2008, it sounded preposterous, the kind of thing that no one could believe in the country that was about to elect Barack Obama. But Kelly, under the guise of journalism, is working to create a rumor like this in 2010. Watch her broadcasts and you become convinced that the New Black Panthers are a powerful group that hate white people and operate under the protection of Eric Holder's DOJ. That "Megyn Kelly DESTROYS Kirsten Powers" video that I mentioned begins with her introducing a clip of a town hall meeting with Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Ca.) in which he gets an angry question about whether the DOJ has a policy of not prosecuting African-Americans.
"I am extremely sure that we do not have a policy at the Department of Justice of never prosecuting a black defendent."
The crowd rises up. "Yes you do!" shouts one voter. When Sherman says he doesn't know much about the Panther case, the crowd erupts in boos. They've been driven to fear and distrust of their DOJ by round-the-clock videos of one racist idiot brandishing a nightstick for a couple hours in 2008.
Blogs have become an important source for news junkies looking for breaking news and instant analysis, but blogs still look to old media for news stories. In fact, more than 99% of the news stories linked to in blogs come from traditional media sources such as newspapers and broadcast networks. The larger news organizations dominate these links. The BBC (23% of all blog links), CNN (21%), the New York Times (20%) and the Washington Post (16%) combined accounted for fully 80% of all news stories linked to on blogs. Web-only sites, on the other hand, made up less than 1% of the links in the blogosphere.
Perhaps a clever media strategy has made her into what Cottle calls “the p.r. genius of our time.” But the beliefs which Palin is touting matter far more than her own beaming, resolutely confident self. In two years, she will at least be able to veto any Republican who seeks the nomination and be king, or queen-maker, of whomever gets to run against Obama. That frightening prospect is what talented reporters like Cottle should begin to explain.
In honor of the French national day, a link to Francois Furet's classic essay, "The French Revolution is Over." It opens (my bad typing, please excuse):
Historians engaged in the study of the Merovingian kings or the Hundred Years War are not asked at every turn to present their research permits. So long as they can give proof of having learned the techniques of the trade, society and the profession assume that they possess the virtues of patience and objectivity. The discussion of their findings is a matter for scholars and scholarship only.
The historian of the French Revolution, on the other hand, must produce more than a proof of competence. He must show his colours. He must state from the outset where he comes from, what he thinks, and what he is looking for; what he writes about the French Revolution is assigned a meaning and label even before he starts working: the writing is taken as his opinion … As soon as that historian states that opinion, the matter is settled; he is labeled a royalist, a liberal or Jacobin.
Then this:
The Revolution does not simply 'explain' our contemporary history; it is our contemporary history. … For the same reasons that the Ancien Regime is thought to have an end but no beginning, the Revolution has a birth but no end.
Do you the really tacky thing about this US Weekly photo? Last Friday, after ignoring Sadie and his mom for days, Levi suddenly called up and asked Sherry to cut his hair. When he arrived they asked what it was for, but he refused to say anything other than that had a photoshoot on Saturday. So Levi woke his mother up, demanded that she cut his hair, but said NOTHING about his engagement to Bristol.
A Slog commenter accuses Dan of pushing open relationships on people. He protests:
There's a column, pretty recent one, not gonna look up, where I encouraged a guy who was into monogamy to dump a girl who wasn't. And told him he was fine. Go and find it! Gotta run.
I do advocate, however, being realistic about the odds that one or the other or both partners in a truly long long-term relationship will cheat at some point. The stats on infidelity? Shocking, considering that monogamy is so favored, culturally. We fail at it, though, pretty predictably, and so I think we should be realistic—the monogamous wannabes should—because I think a good, strong relationship should be able to survive, and be expected to survive, a routine, non-nuclear-level infidelity.
Because, you see, I'm a conservative, and I don't like to see marriages fall apart over trivial bullshit.
Rick Barber — the man who cut three of the most dizzingly amusing YouTube ads of the cycle — will not be heading to Congress. He badly lost last night's runoff in his Alabama district, falling by 22 points to Montgomery City Councilwoman Martha Roby, who pitted the support of the Republican establishment against Barber's aggressive courting of tea parties.
There is a lesson here, as well as an excuse to post Barber's best video. It's easy to look at a loss like this and conclude that the hype for tea party candidates like Barber or like failed Agriculture Commissioner Dale Peterson — both of whom ran ads directed by the wily Ladd Ehlinger, Jr. — outpaces their support from voters. That's not wrong — Barber, not Roby, was the subject of cable news profiles, and Peterson will be the only Alabama AC candidate profiled by the Washington Post. But in a normal year, could Barber have forced a runoff or gotten to even 39% of the vote? More likely, he would have been the latest "fringe" candidate to see his exposure limited to some helpful paragraphs in a newspaper voter guide and be trampled into single digits.
But the tea party's success in boosting some serious candidates, like Scott Brown, has got the nonpartisan and liberal media chasing after any candidate who ostentatiously proclaims himself a tea partier. The "wackier" his appeal, the better. The easier it is to "nail" him on his views in an interview, the better. It's a bit like when a new craze hits (let's say alt rock) and all of a sudden every going-nowhere band can get a record deal (let's say The Verve Pipe, Days of the New, Marcy Playground) simply for acting up.
Who could have expected this? Criticizing my blog-host's indulgence of the "Trig isn't the son of Sarah Palin" theory inspired a bunch of e-mail, some of it critical of me for doubting. Or of not doubting enough. I've lost track.
Your argument comparing the Birthers and those questioning Trig Palin’s birth misses the largest most salient fact of all. Obama has answered his questioners with a legal document that clearly proves those stating he was not born in the US are choosing to disbelieve what has legally been shown to be fact. Sarah Palin has answered her questioners by producing a statement: "I already answered those questions". I am foreigner who does not even live in the US, I have no horse in this race. But these arguments are not of the same ilk. While both arguments can be be settled with supporting documentation, only the Birthers have been shown to be WRONG. As Andrew has stated before, just prove him wrong…
It's true that Palin has not published a certificate of birth the way Obama's campaign did when confronted with the early spasms of the birthers. A medical report that describes her pregnancy is all the media has. Remember, though — birtherism didn't really take off until the campaign did so, and conspiracy theorists began to argue that the document was flawed and lacking. Palin has reacted to more information requests with anger. I think that anger's understandable.
I'm utterly astounded that you take it upon yourself to claim that evidence against Palin as Trig's mother a) is vapor, and b) doesn't make any difference even if it's not vapor. If you are finding people in AK who "followed" Palin during her brief pregnancy, would you please give their names and their comments? And may I ask, why haven't they themselves come forward to offer eyewitness accounts of the pregnancy? And why haven't those who were present at the birth (other than Levi, who's a confessed liar, and Palin's father, who is a creep of the first order and clearly biased) ever come forward to confirm the details of the birth story? And by the way, not even the doctor who wrote Palin's "medical letter" before the 2008 election said in the letter that she was present at the birth.
The last point is not true. From the letter: "Routine prenatal testing early in the second trimester of Palin's pregnancy determined that the fetus had the chromosomal condition known as Down Syndrome. The Alaska governor and her husband, Todd, decided to go ahead with the pregnancy." That's pretty clear, isn't it? And among the people who told me that Alaskans were well aware of Palin's pregnancy were Shannyn Moore, an award-winning and left-leaning political radio host who has been roundly attacked by Palin fans.
Ok, so, she gave birth to Trig. But that does not mean that her story doesn't smell. I look at this not so much as a political story, but a medical one. Here are the questions that remain unanswered for me:
1) Why did she have amniocentesis at 13 weeks gestation (as she stated in People Magazine in August 2008). Amnio is normally performed at 16-20 weeks. It is considered too risky at 13 weeks.
2) Why didn't she seek medical attention when she discovered she was leaking amniotic fluid (she confirmed this in an interview in the ADN shortly after Trig was born)? This is a huge red flag because once your water is broken, the risk of infection increases. If she was leaking amniotic fluid, wasn't she at all concerned that she would get amniotic fluid all over her plane seat? (Sorry, but delivering a baby is messy business).
3) Why was Trig delivered by a family physician, and not an obstetrician, or a perinatologist? Over-40 women are almost always considered "high risk" because of the increased chance of pre-eclampsia, a potentially fatal condition.
4) Why did she give birth to Trig at a small community hospital that does not offer high-risk obstetrics and does not have a neo-natal intensive care unit? She was 44, in labor prematurely, and carrying a Downs' Syndrome baby (who sometimes face complications at birth). Any of those three things qualifies her as "high-risk". This is the part that just sounds so implausible to me. The Providence Alaska Medical Center is close to the airport in Anchorage, is a state-of-the-art facility, and Palin's physician had privileges there. So why did they drive an hour past that facility back to the Mat-su hospital?
Here's what you and so many others are missing, Mr. Weigel: It is simply not normal behavior to "go into labor" in Texas and then take a very long trip, involving two planes and a car ride, to get home. Labor hurts like hell, and can turn on a dime. You may have heard the story of the birth of Gov. Bobby Jindal's third child, but here's a recap. Mrs. Jindal had typically long, drawn-out labors with her first two children, and she assumed her third child would arrive in a similar fashion. He did not. Mrs. Jindal's labor progressed so quickly that there was no time to get to the hospital, and Mr. Jindal ended up delivering his son himself, while on the phone with a 911 operator who coached him through it.
In "Going Rogue" she describes how she woke up in Texas feeling contractions and prayed that her baby would be okay even though he would be premature. That is very understandable, but if she really cared about her baby's well being, why didn't she also visit a hospital in Texas to have a physician reassure her?
Andrew has never stated that he thinks Palin faked the pregnancy. He has stated clearly that he thinks there are three options here: 1) she behaved recklessly by flying while in labor 2) she lied about the details of Trig's birth to make herself sound more tough or 3) she faked the whole thing.
Not to be too flippant about this, but who cares? This is a woman who named her other children Track, Bristol, Willow, and Piper, and gets made fun of all the time for that, and whose husband participates in multi-week snowmobile races. So, yes, count me in as a believer of theory #1 who hasn't been too interested in it since then. (I have read "Going Rogue" with her account of this, via ghostwriter Lynne Vincent.) Why interpret her odd decisions as part of a cover-up?
Regarding the marijuana ballot measure, it appears that support is strong among whites and opposition is strong among minorities. At first this surprised me, given that minority communities are the ones most impacted by the insanity of drug enforcement. On the other hand, that sort of thing cuts both ways. If prohibition exacerbates the pathologies associated with drug abuse, then the least advantaged communities that are impacted the most by prohibition will understandably have the most negative view of drugs.
The Dish 