While the young progressives at TAPPED Talmudicize about the finer points of Israel’s nuclear deterrence capability and speculate about the plans to use that capability. And while other progressives fulminate about those Embarrassing, Nasty Jews and AIPAC, who want to lead the United States straight to destruction—and damn the consequences!—for the sake of Israel. And while yet more young progressives debate about whether or not Comrade Edwards is with them or against them in the campaign to Just Say No to Bombing Iran…

Israel is getting busy deterring the Iranian nuclear program—if you believe this item first published in The Times (London):

 A PRIZE-WINNING Iranian nuclear scientist has died in mysterious circumstances, according to Radio Farda, which is funded by the US State Department and broadcasts to Iran.

An intelligence source suggested that Ardeshire Hassanpour, 44, a nuclear physicist, had been assassinated by Mossad, the Israeli security service.

Hassanpour worked at a plant in Isfahan where uranium hexafluoride gas is produced. The gas is needed to enrich uranium in another plant at Natanz which has become the focus of concerns that Iran may be developing nuclear weapons.

According to Radio Farda, Iranian reports of Hassanpour’s death emerged on January 21 after a delay of six days, giving the cause as “gas poisoning”.

Is it too much to ask all the young opinion makers to follow the goddamn news?

 Gawker reports on a “Firm Potent Leader with Plenty of Stamina”:

The Post ruined all our breakfasts with their cover this morning (seriously: “Judi gushes as Rudi rushes in”?? Ewwwww!!!)

 

Check out the placement of her hand on his cheek. And her hair, cascading just so. I’m going to throw up.

One journalism professor and her students don’t see eye to eye:

Every semester, in my Mass Media class, we get into an argument about whether “The Daily Show” is real journalism. The students insist that it’s journalism. I argue that it’s satire. They don’t do their own reporting — it’s entertainment wrapped around news.

I tell my students, “You may be learning something and you may be having fun while you’re learning it, but you’re not getting news.”

I beg to differ. But you know that, ’cause, as I keep saying, infotainment rules. ‘Cause people don’t have time—and especially don’t have energy—to take in just “straight news.” They would shoot themselves after a week.

Chris Rock said it best:***

“People like distraction. …Nobody likes to sit down and write a novel. You can’t wait for something to distract you.” He laughed. “Nobody wants to do work. Hard work ahead of you? Look, a bunny rabbit!

“I’m just saying the world’s addicted to distraction,” Mr. Rock said. “It’s the oldest drug in the book, distraction. We know what has to be done. We know how to do it. But it never gets done because we’re addicted to distraction.”

Sad to say that it has come to this: If not for the Daily Show and cable “news” and Oprah and Sunday morning slugfests and all the rest of the programming that tries, in every conceivable way, to grab our attention and force-feed us some nutritious nuggets, most of us Americans would be even less informed about the world than we are today.

Think about that.

So: of course we need journalism—i.e., newsgathering. But there are many ways to communicate the results of your reporting, and they don’t all have to amount to something called Journalism.
———-

*** The article isn’t available online: February 9, 2004 edition of The New York Observer.  It’s an interesting profile (now three years old) of an interesting guy. Here’s some more:

“All this celebrity news is just some bullshit to get your mind off the war,” he said. “I think Bush sent that girl to Kobe’s room. To get your mind off the war. He sent the girl to Kobe’s room. He took the little boy to Michael Jackson’s house. Bush killed Laci Peterson. Bush was fucking Paris Hilton. All of this shit is to get your mind off the war.”

The crowd erupted. …
“The whole country’s got a weird mentality. A really pumped-up gang mentality. Everyone wants to be in a gang,” Mr. Rock said. But the beauty of his comedy and the reason he is pop is that though a tough moral streak runs through his comedy, Mr. Rock remains steadfastly nonpartisan.

“Republicans are fucking idiots and Democrats are fucking idiots and conservatives are fucking idiots and liberals are fucking idiots. Pretty much anyone that makes up their mind before they hear the issues is a fool, O.K.?” he said onstage at Madison Square Garden to healthy applause. “Everybody wants to be in a gang. Why don’t they just fucking make up their own mind.”

Backstage, he was just as steadfast. Asked if he was following the Democratic primaries, Mr. Rock said, “Nah. It’s like college basketball. I wait for the Final Four.” He laughed and went into announcer mode. “Well, the Final Four! North Carolina’s back. Syracuse.” Said Mr. Rock: “It’s always like the same cats.”

When I said he had talked a lot about President Bush, Mr. Rock stopped me. “I’m talking about the President. In my last special, I talked about Clinton. I haven’t picked a side. I’m still where I’ve always been. It’s my job to talk about the President, no matter who he is,” he said. And a little later, worried that he’d be perceived as being co-opted, he said what generations of comics have said, “You want me to take a political stance. That’s career suicide.”

“I’m 38,” he said. “My whole life, no matter who’s been president, Harlem’s been Harlem. Fucking Bed-Stuy”-that would be the Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn where Mr. Rock grew up-”is still Bed-Stuy.”

Well, did Mr. Rock think that Republicans or Democrats were better at creating the kind of distractions to which he was referring earlier? “People like distraction,” he said with a smile that suggested he was not going to be fooled into committing career suicide. “Nobody likes to sit down and write a novel. You can’t wait for something to distract you.” He laughed. “Nobody wants to do work. Hard work ahead of you? Look, a bunny rabbit!

“I’m just saying the world’s addicted to distraction,” Mr. Rock said. “It’s the oldest drug in the book, distraction. We know what has to be done. We know how to do it. But it never gets done because we’re addicted to distraction.”

But Mr. Rock has clearly not given up on good old American democracy. During his show, he says something that seems shocking at first-then he explains himself. “I love to see the flag burn, because it lets me know I’m in the right spot,” he says. “People only hate the winners. People the hate the Yankees. People the hate the Cowboys. People hate the Lakers.”

In other words, Mr. Rock like, like the other big comedians in the Pantheon-Redd Foxx, Bill Cosby, Lenny Bruce and Will Rogers-likes being in the free speech vortex of the world.