Simon Dumenco isn’t all that excited about the economic meltdown, and he points a finger at—who else?—the media for its hysterical trumpeting of the “crisis” now that it’s upon us and its failure over the years to report on the hazards of high finance and Wall Street.

Really, you could argue that Wall Street, during the subprime boom, was simply doing its job: getting away with what it could get away with. (Hey, if regulators were willing to turn a blind eye to the dubious profiteering and financial smoke-and-mirrors … well, if the government says it’s OK, it’s OK, right?) But you can’t say the same for much of the press, which spent a lot of time over the past few years celebrating the feats of financial “wizards” — and not enough time peeking behind the curtains and questioning the too-good-to-be-true magic.

Granted, there’s been increased sensitivity in the past couple weeks among some media in regard to, at least, semantics. For instance, in The New York Times last week in a piece titled, “Amid Market Turmoil, Some Journalists Try to Tone Down Emotion,” Richard Pérez-Peña noted that some reporters are steering clear of terms such as “meltdown” and “panic” to avoid further inflaming an already-twitchy market.

Don’t get me wrong: Politely tip-toeing through the apocalypse after the fact is a nice gesture! But it hardly makes up for the fact that few financial journalists really questioned the meaning and ramifications of toxic Wall Street voodoo such as “credit-default swaps” and such until it was way, way too late.

No one has been covered in glory since this meltdown began to show its ugly face—least of all our elected representatives, beginning with Bush, who is clearly out of his depth and “out of juice,” according to David Brooks, who is being way too kind.

I certainly agree with Dumenco that the MSM comes in for a lot of the blame, but irrational exuberance is a widely known human weakness.

In early January, as Obama was ascending, I wrote:

… mundus vult decipi. (You could look it up.)

People want to believe in magic, as P.T. Barnum, for one, knew.

Despite its prominence in Barnum lore, historians agree that he probably never said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” What he said was less cynical and more astute: “The people like to be humbugged.”

The Times piece from which I took the quote above goes on to note:

Barnum humbugged the highbrow as well as the low. In 1850 he brought the opera diva Jenny Lind, “the Swedish Nightingale,” to Manhattan for the start of an American tour. Neither he nor anyone else in America had heard her sing a note.

“Jenny Lind’s story is perhaps Barnum’s single most extraordinary accomplishment,” Ms. Maher said, “because he took something that was absolutely nothing in American society and created a frenzy, a mania, very much equivalent to today’s rock stars.” [e.a.]

People with their feet on the ground should always know how to protect their interests, even in times of irrational exuberance. Maybe that’s what we have to teach both our children and the nation’s “journalists”—how to reason. Now that we’re enmeshed in a world of 24/7 deceptive and/or ignorant “news” and marketing and advertising, this seems more important than ever

Al Gore won an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize for bringing his message to the world—for naught in Britain, where only a minority trust that he (among others) is telling the truth about global warming. Most people believe they’re being misled, and that it’s a tax scheme:

The majority of the British public is still not convinced that climate change is caused by humans - and many others believe scientists are exaggerating the problem, according to an exclusive poll for The Observer.

The results have shocked campaigners who hoped that doubts would have been silenced by a report last year by more than 2,500 scientists for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which found a 90 per cent chance that humans were the main cause of climate change and warned that drastic action was needed to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Bjorn Lomborg took the opportunity to lay blame exactly where it belongs:

Professor Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, said politicians and campaigners were to blame for over-simplifying the problem by only publicising evidence to support the case.

Ya think?

I’m telling ya—influencing people to change their minds isn’t as easy as it appears. And the world ain’t what it used to be. I mean the guy won the Nobel Peace Prize and no one in Britain believes him!

Maybe George Lakoff is right after all, and only propaganda works.

I should probably point out that I wrote more than two years ago about the overhyping  of the urgency of global warming … but did anyone listen to me? Of course not!

The divisions on the left have left some people feeling smug and self-satisfied.

Here’s Mark Steyn:

Randi Rhodes agrees with Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro on everything - abortion, health care, climate change, you name it. Yet the first is “a f***ing whore” and the second is “David Duke in drag” merely because they disagree on which Democratic senator would make the best president. …

There’s something rather heartening about this for those of us on the right who’ve been on the receiving end of the left’s vehemence: Apparently there really is nothing personal about it. You can be a chickenhawk warmonger racist homophobe mysogynist Bush shill or a pro-feminist pro-gay pro-black icon of progressive politics for a generation, but, if you cross the likes of Randi Rhodes, you’re all the same and you merit the same four-letter words and KKK slurs.

I can see why Steyn would be comforted to know that his critics are irrational by definition and not just mad at him. But that doesn’t help us, as a country and as a society, deal with the dime-store demagoguery that now characterizes our public “discourse.”

Demagogues of all stripes should be discouraged, marginalized, de-fanged, deligitimized, and brought down. They’re dangerous in any society, because they stir up mob sentiment.

You can’t make this stuff up. Really:

Possible Nazi Theme of Grand Prix Boss’s Orgy Draws Calls to Quit

Few scandals in recent years have provoked as much anger and dismay across Europe as the saga of Max Mosley, the overseer of grand prix motor racing who made tabloid news last weekend in a front-page exposé and accompanying Web video showing him in a sadomasochistic orgy with five supposed prostitutes in a London sex “dungeon.”

But beyond the licentiousness of the episode, it was the suggestion of Nazi undertones in the role-playing during the session in a basement in London’s fashionable Chelsea district that led to demands for Mr. Mosley’s resignation as president of the Paris-based Federation Internationale de l’Automobile.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, they say, and they would be right [e.a.]: 

Family history has added to the notoriety: Mr. Mosley, 67, is the younger son of Britain’s 1930s fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, and the society beauty Diana Mitford, whose secret wedding in Berlin in October 1936 was held at the home of the Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels and included Hitler as a guest of honor.

 Naturally, automakers are distancing themselves from this nasty episode and this nasty man. But he isn’t having any of it [e.a.]:

Mr. Mosley, undaunted, tried to turn the tables on BMW and Daimler Benz, which manufactures Mercedes-Benz cars, with a statement that raised the specter of the two companies’ own role during the Nazi era. … His statement held to his insistence that fault lay with the way in which his actions had been reported by The News of The World, and not with the actions themselves.

And the NYT’s John F. Burns ends with the kicker:

If he recognized the irony in the son of the man who led Britain’s “blackshirts” in reproving German companies for their wartime past, Mr. Mosley did not show it.

Perhaps those commentators were right after all when they said that 9/11 signaled the end of irony.

Or perhaps 9/11 will prove to be the beginning of an era when people will once again understand irony, and satire, the weapon of resistance par excellence. One can always hope.

It’s a little cruel of the New York Post to team up news of Tina Brown’ new web venture

“It’s a news aggregation site for the busy and beleaguered, put out by a smart group of editors,” Brown told Media Ink.

Brown, who rose to prominence as the queen of buzz at Tatler in London, and ran Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, wouldn’t pull back the curtain on her latest venture any further, and says the site is not yet ready to launch.

“It’s very early on,” said Brown. “When we’re ready to roll, we’ll start to experiment by putting it into its trial stage.”

with a media pitch from Carnie Wilson begging some media outlet to track her as she tries to lose weigh (again) [e.a.]:

Sources say she is actively peddling a package that will include before-and-after pictures, plus an extensive sit- down interview or interviews. …Wilson, who’s been in an ongoing battle with her weight, actually dished to OK! magazine several weeks ago, saying she was very disturbed by a recent TMZ photo that showed her having put on weight, and that she was determined to get back into shape.

Now, it’s preposterous that Carnie Wilson had to see a picture of herself on TMZ before realizing that she’d put on weight [!], but it sure does grab your interest if you’re a sucker for a good story. Doesn’t it?

This person, who you don’t know and don’t care to know, lays herself open to you (and millions of others) in a bid to heal herself of her wounds, a process that, watched with ardent interest by you, also may also allow you to cleanse your spirit.

Now, that’s (disposable) entertainment!  (Tina, eat your heart out!—but I’ll be on the lookout for your venture.)

Christopher Hitchens offers a pretty persuasive explanation of alpha-male Eliot Spitzer’s “puzzling” behavior:

[H]e was a bright dude.

So what in the wide world was Eliot Spitzer thinking?

“Oh, that’s easy,” Christopher Hitchens said from his Washington apartment last week, as word of Spitzer’s morning resignation buzz-sawed through the Beltway.

Hitchens—a former contributor to the Voice—has written the obituaries of more than a few political careers, and he has a theory about the ones with poor coital judgment: They just don’t see illicit sex as an obvious threat to their political survival. In fact, they see it as a primary reason to seek higher office in the first place.

“You wouldn’t be doing any of this if one of the objectives was not to increase the amount of pussy that was available to you. That is what you do,” Hitch says. “You don’t do it to be, ah, the most approval-rated governor of New York, for fuck’s sake.”

Hitchens is a little harsh, but we all know that power goes to your head.
We do know that, don’t we?
Spitzer’s behavior isn’t really “puzzling,” is it?

Hitches, no stranger to powerful men, claims that this is what alpha males say with their alpha-male behavior:

‘I do this to get laid.’

Could be!

Via Ann Althouse, who, having more visitors than I and being more careful of her visitors’ possible sensitivities, provided only the link. Her commenters have some interesting insights, however:

My wife was a lovely young woman with an amazing head of light golden blond hair and an advanced degree in international law from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She’s been saying what Hitch just wrote here since I met her.

A stint in the service of Your Federal Government, including contact with plenty of elected officials, convinced her that politicians and alpha male types in government generally, have a “high sex drive,” as she puts it charitably. Sometimes she isn’t so charitable. In any event, she didn’t lack attention from the high and mighty, although it didn’t seem to have much to do with the quality of her latest legal analysis of issues surrounding hydro power export from Québec.

An old friend from Fletcher is even more bitter about the international diplomats at the U.N. for whom she worked.

One commenter clues me in to news I haven’t been following for 24 hours—and look what happens!

George said…
[Brand-new New York Governor David] Paterson needs to go, too. Multiple affairs, procuring a job for at least one mistress, tape recordings, possible use of state funds…

9:23 AM

Yikes! The Dems’ heads are going to explode after all of this exposure of their peccadilloes.

A “memoir” is made up out of whole cloth and quickly withdrawn from bookstores.

Why does this keep happening? Because mundus vult decipi: people want to be deceived.

The last time I noted this long-known fact it was in relation to Barack Obama. I am not saying that he’s a fake. What I’m saying is that people want to believe in him so much that they invest him with a power he doesn’t have (the power to heal the hurtful rifts in America and across the globe).

In this particular case of the faked memoir, sophisticated readers—including agents, editors, copy editors, lawyers, and highly qualified reviewers—wanted to believe (no matter how unlikely it is) that a former fringe-dweller in American society is also very, very gifted author.

It’s a romantic mind-set. We’re human and we’d be lost if we didn’t have such a mind-set, because it is very human to want to hope and to want to believe and to want to trust.

We just need to put the brakes on sometimes, that’s all.

The NYT’s David Carr delivers grim news to “creatives”:

I’ve got some bad news for striking Hollywood writers: Election 2008 is a breakaway hit.

January was supposed to be the month when the writers’ strike took its toll, subjecting viewers to a menu of desiccated repeats and cheesy reality shows. Instead, the primary season is serving as the backdrop for one of the most compelling runs of event television in years, creating the kind of chatter network marketers would kill for and spectacular ratings for cable news.

Carr repeatedly tries to suggest that it’s the absence of appealing alternatives (like sports, late-night comedy, and scripted shows, for example) that accounts for the huge gains in audience numbers for “cable news” since 2004.

The Times’s Bill Keller disagrees:

“I think the level of interest in the presidential race would be intense even if writers were still churning out episodes of ‘24’ and ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ ” he wrote. “It’s a defining race for both parties, with a cast of fascinating candidates, some of whom fall into the breakthrough category. There also seems to be a visceral national yearning to turn the page.”

Perhaps. But I’m more inclined to accept the explanation of Brian Grazer, who is not a gazillionaire producer for nothing [e.a.]:

“There is a new episode on almost every night,” said Brian Grazer, a Hollywood producer who is in what is left of the Oscar hunt with “American Gangster.” “It is very human to be constantly searching for new stories, and now that the traditional outlets of those stories are shutting down, people are finding their drama in these unfolding events.”

So, yes, I agree with Grazer and with Keller. But neither one of them will come out and say the bleeding obvious: that it is the manner of coverage of politics that is drawing in the audiences. The “drama” is being manufactured by the cable “news” networks. (In this case, it is helped along by the wide-open nature of the political race, but that only makes it easier for the networks to churn out stories with unpredictable endings.)

It is not news. It is infotainment—in other words, information (none of which is necessarily true) packaged as entertainment.  

Now do you believe me when I say that Infotainment Rules? Here’s what I wrote:

Television, however, delivers what sells, and what sells is entertainment—or stuff that is packaged like entertainment. Infotainment doesn’t have to be bad or stupid or crass. High-quality infotainment may in fact be superior to dry “news” as a vehicle for delivering information to audiences.

Once again: I do not endorse the hideous devolution of TV “news” into infotainment. I am merely trying to get people to understand that what they’re getting on TV is not “news.” It’s entertainment, and the goal of its producers is to get you to watch their channel.

They do it by hooking you on stories. If the stories are exciting and the ending isn’t known to anyone in advance (as in an election, or a sensational kidnapping, or some violent flare-up somewhere, for example), people tune in. That’s why cable “news” is addicted to horse-race coverage of the U.S. election that is ten months away and can barely turn away to give any attention to the visit of our president to the Middle East.

If you want to know the news, take advantage of the vast amount of information available on the Internet and read widely.

If you want fictional rather than reality-based (and reality-bending) entertainment on TV and you want our political process to be a little more serious and less unseemly … I don’t know how to advise you. All I do is call ‘em how I see ‘em.

Sarkozy loses it, or abandons himself to the moment—take your pick. A tabloid tale made in heaven, courtesy of the Daily Mail:

Sarkozy’s fiancee ‘pregnant’ as ex Cecilia delivers blistering attack on couple

Sarkozy is “ridiculous, badly behaved and not fit to be president” Cecilia Sarkozy says in a new book, adding for good measure that the women in his life are just a “bunch of slappers” (or des petasses fardees, as the French would have it).

Even the president’s female political colleagues do not escape her barbed tongue: they are just “boring wallflowers, and now that there is no First Lady, he needs to surround himself with pretty young things dressed in Dior”.

It has taken just a few short weeks for the revenge of Cecilia to begin.

Sarkozy, 52, began dating Bruni, 40, just one month after his divorce from Cecilia following a 12-year marriage and his election last May as France’s new president.

Now it is Carla who stays with the president at the Elysee Palace and has been given a £10,000 ring - embarrassingly similar to one he once bought Cecilia.

Very juicy and totally sensationalistic as told by the Mail.

In the New York Times this past week, Sarkozy himself suggested that he’s being very 21st-century:

Sarkozy Says Press Is Free to Ignore His Personal Life

“I didn’t want to lie,” Mr. Sarkozy said of his romance with Ms. Bruni. “And I am breaking with a deplorable tradition in our political life — that of hypocrisy, that of lies.” …

“Really, truly, and it is very satisfying for me, France is moving forward,” he said, his words tumbling out in incomplete sentences. “What was hidden under a mantle of secrecy for one of my predecessors — whom I will not judge — everyone must live as he sees fit.”

It’s nutty, but I’m gonna have to go with Sarkozy here, because of his real defense, which he said just after “everyone must live as he sees fit”:

“Life is so difficult and so painful.”

Indeed, and he wants to feel good. He’s got the right to do it. However, as the much more sensationalistic but also more informative Daily Mail piece tell us, Sarkozy’s behavior affects not only his popularity at home but also France’s relations abroad:

Aside from any pregnancy, a speedy wedding would also mark the end of headaches for protocol planners in foreign countries Sarkozy plans to visit, though he might still be a bachelor when he goes to Saudi Arabia and India later this month.

Dominique Moisin, of the French Institute of International Relations, szaid: “The sooner they marry, the sooner the presidency’s dignity will be restored. …
Sarkozy was disappointed that the Pope declined to receive him with his new girlfriend. Under Vatican protocol it was deemed “inappropriate” for a head of state to meet the pontiff on an official visit, accompanied by a girlfriend.

Meanwhile, the Indian government, which is receiving Sarkozy as a guest of honour at the Republic Day Parade in New Delhi on January 24, has released a half-hearted statement, saying: “It is for the French to decide whether Miss Bruni should be treated as First Lady or not”.

It will be fascinating to see what happens when Sarkozy arrives in Britain for the state visit in March. Since the Entente Cordiale - the end of centuries of war between Britain and France - was signed in 1904 every French leader on a state visit has been accompanied by a First Lady.

So, yeah. He’s got a right to personal happiness, but we’ll see if he manages to hold on to the respect that a politician with his global ambitions needs in order to effect his agenda.

Or perhaps that time has passed into oblivion.

We do live in interesting times, don’t we?

Roger L. Simon deconstructs Obama, image and text:

Maybe I missed something, but the “Change” poster behind Barack Obama seems to have, well, changed. (There’s

that word again.) The words “We Can Believe In” have been added to the bottom, for the first time acknowledging, pace Orwell, that not all changes are equal. … Nazi Germany, for an example, was a change. So was Stalinism (although less of change from Leninism). …

So far Obama is doing a brilliant job of being vague about what “change” he is referring to. “We Can Believe In” is a masterpiece of obfuscation. He has some good writers.

Simon came out against “change” early:

If there is one thing we learned from tonight’s debates on ABC, it is that the word “change” - formerly so useful - must now be banned from the English language. … [T]he poor parole has been put been in disgrace and rendered meaningless by a collection of nitwit politicians and pundits, so sayonara to “change.” It’s been nice knowing you. We give you your gold watch - bye bye.

Droll. But Obama is a good salesman, and mundus vult decipi. (You could look it up.)

People want to believe in magic, as  P.T. Barnum, for one, knew.

Despite its prominence in Barnum lore, historians agree that he probably never said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” What he said was less cynical and more astute: “The people like to be humbugged.”

The Times piece from which I took the quote above goes on to note:

Barnum humbugged the highbrow as well as the low. In 1850 he brought the opera diva Jenny Lind, “the Swedish Nightingale,” to Manhattan for the start of an American tour. Neither he nor anyone else in America had heard her sing a note.

“Jenny Lind’s story is perhaps Barnum’s single most extraordinary accomplishment,” Ms. Maher said, “because he took something that was absolutely nothing in American society and created a frenzy, a mania, very much equivalent to today’s rock stars.”  [e.a.]

The way Barack Obama is being covered by the media and the blogosphere, he’s not a political candidate anymore—he’s a celebrity. He doesn’t have political followers—he’s got fans. He doesn’t have a political platform—he’s got a one-word slogan—”change” [which works, 'cause "change is good," just like Nissan says, right?]. He makes narcissists feel so good about themselves.

Andrew Sullivan’s Obama Blogorama—all Barack all the time, except when he’s dancing on Hillary’s grave—is exhibit number one. Not enough Obama links for you from Sullivan? Here’s another one, about Obama’s “Sweet Spot.” (Contrast Mickey Kaus’s reaction to this nauseatingly “pompous” [scroll up] post from Ezra Klein about Obama.)
As I understand it, Sullivan used to be a conservative Republican and a devout Catholic. Now he worships “change,” as you can see in this exchange of questions and answers:

[Bainbridge]: What specific changes in law, society, or polity, if any, that Obama supports do you also support?

[Sullivan]: I support a fresh start in foreign policy, a willingness to negotiate where necessary, a new outreach to allies, and prudent, expeditious withdrawal from Iraq. I favor an end to poisonous partisan polarization. I favor strong measures to innovate new energy sources. I favor a restoration of the Geneva Conventions.

Why are those changes “necessary”?

Because the war is draining massive resources, and, despite recent tactical success, is clearly a historic mistake. Because the U.S. is extremely isolated and needs more support in the world, and especially a new appeal to moderate Muslims worldwide. Because the red-blue divide has poisoned our polity to the detriment of practical problem-solving. Because dependence on foreign oil is both environmentally fatal and dangerous for our future security. Because torture gives bad intelligence and is un-American.

What evidence is there, if any, that Obama would be prudent in effecting such changes?

Obama’s legislative record, speeches, and the way he has run his campaign reveal, I think, a very even temperament, a very sound judgment, and an intelligent pragmatism. Prudence is a word that is not inappropriate to him.

No, because Obama is Sullivan’s American Idol: the God of Change.
Look: I like Obama, from the little I know of him. But so far he’s mostly a mirage.

The mysterious disappearance of Madeleine McCann has become an unparalleled worldwide super-spectacular media sensation, and a lurid tabloid nightmare for her parents. The Sydney Morning Herald dubs it a “trial by new media” and a “vicious affair.”

Describing a chain of events that started with the British tabloid media “invading” the Portuguese town where the girl disappeared, the Herald suggests that the Portuguese authorities then leaked false stories about the parents in relatiation for the British tabs’ excesses.

British tabloids mocked many of these stories yet, hedging their bets, also reported them. The most lurid example was the Daily Express, which ran a headline, “Gerry may not be the father”, above a story that began: “The smear campaign in Portugal against the McCanns continued yesterday…”

The resulting spiral - unsourced British reports of unsourced Portuguese reports - created a perfect storm: huge media fascination with almost no facts to feed it.

Hmmm. This seems to focus the blame on the media. As I recall, however, the parents launched an enormous PR campaign across Europe and Britain to focus attention on their daughter almost immediately after she went missing. I wrote about it here in May, and also posted this astonishing picture, taken at a soccer stadium:

In May, writing about other abductees who were also (vaguely) in the news and who got almost no attention by comparison (such as the British journalist Alan Johnston and the Iranian American scholar Haleh Esfandiari), I tried to explain the appeal of this particular story and the hold that stories can have over us:

… I’m not going to lecture you about how trivial this one abducted child is compared to the other abducted people in the news that we could be concerned about … Nope, this is not a guilt trip about the geopolitical messages we should be listening to (although we should be listening to them, of course). …

This is just a reminder of the extraordinary, magical, mystical power of [certain] stories to capture our imagination in a way that nothing else can—that is, to capture our imagination and attention in a way that influences us. …

Most of us will never run for office in ultra-violent Colombia. Most of us will never serve in Iraq. Most of us will never report from war-torn Gaza. Most of us will never have to toe a precarious line between being a free American scholar and a devoted Persian daughter who goes home to totalitarian Iran twice a year to visit her 93-year-old mother.
But which of us cannot put himself or herself in the shoes of Madeleine McCann’s parents and which of us does not remember being a helpless child?

Surely there’s a lesson here for all marketers (of anything, whether product or idea). The lesson is this: nothing beats a great story (in which category I include heartbreaking, sad, horrifying, etc.). We will give you our momentary attention pretty readily if you make enough noise (for example: if you say something totally outrageous, like what Jimmy Carter said about Tony Blair the other day, we’ll notice). But if you want to get through to us, give us a story we can relate to at gut level.

Give us a story that no amount of cynicism or jadedness or ironic detachment can protect us from and we are your slaves.

Indeed, a lot of people became slaves to that story. The Herald continues [e.a.]:

The McCanns are partly to blame. Well-educated doctors, they have hired spin doctors and tried to harness the media to their cause. Their stated reason is understandable: they want to keep the focus on finding their daughter.

But the journalist Matthew Parris wrote in The Spectator last week that their savvy media strategy - down to Gerry McCann’s daily blog and constant photos of Kate McCann clutching Madeleine’s pink cuddle-cat - was starting to hurt them. With both reporters and the public alert and resistant to spin, the McCanns had proved “unwisely media-wise”

That seems to be an understatement, considering the backlash that has swept over the McCanns. The Herald’s James Button makes an important point [e.a.]:

[W]e have learnt a few things about the media and their relationship with the public - all of us.

I do not mean simply mainstream media, but the online world of websites, bloggers and instant public feedback. The old and new media have not just reported the McCann story. They have changed it.

Indeed, the media became an actor in the story and nudged it along on an arc that no one could predict and, worse for the McCanns, that no one could control. As they inevitably lost control of their story, it overtook them.

The harsh truth is that when you live by media, you walk the razor’s edge. The rewards of launching a PRopaganda ^TM campaign are potentially very high, as Former Spook reminds us here, discussing the media consultant hired by the diaper-wearing Astro-nut Lisa Nowak:

In a “sample” chapter from the book (posted on her firm’s website), Mackenzie claims that her efforts helped a convicted killer avoid the death penalty; more astonishingly, her fees in that case were paid for by the taxpayers of Florida, after a public defender successfully petitioned to court to add a p.r. specialist to the defense team.

However, in this era of “celebrity justice,” Nowak’s decision to hire a spin doctor is a shrewd move, indeed. The disgraced former astronaut understands that a skilled defense lawyer, aided by an equally competent “image” specialist, can go a long way toward an acquittal, or at least, a hung jury. In the case of Lisa Nowak, Mr. Lykkebak is already hammering away at the credibility of police officers who handled her arrest.

But the risks of things spinning out of control are potentially greater, as the McCanns can now attest, as sympathy for their loss has now apparently turned to revulsion at their very presence:

The online public, however, has been far more hostile. When the Daily Mail last week ran an article, “McCanns’ DNA dossier to demolish Portuguese police’s ‘pathetic’ evidence”, the 60 readers who emailed feedback to this positive story came out two to one against the McCanns.

Evi Labi of London wrote: “It’s terrible for a child to disappear but would it be possible to get some peace from the McCanns’ organised and very well-orchestrated publicity?”

A newspaper in the McCanns’ county of Leicestershire had to close an online discussion forum because of vicious comments about the couple. More than 17,000 people signed an online petition asking social workers to find the McCanns unfit parents to look after their two-year-old twins. An internet poll found that only 20 per cent of Britons thought they were completely innocent.

update: Gawker is wondering why the dearth of Owen coverage on TMZ. Good Question! Meanwhile, Mickey Kaus is wondering why all the focus is on Kate’s tragedy. ‘Cause, Mickey, if she’s all sad about it, that makes her a good person rather than the slut she appeared to be in the rumors that were published about her at the time of Owen’s little accident.

Last week, amid the instantaneous global release of the most intimate details surrounding the presumed suicide attempt of the actor Owen Wilson, I wondered what had happened to Hollywood that there wasn’t even one layer of PR protection around this highly bankable star when the ravenous celebrity press got hold of the details.

Today, it looks like—finally—somebody is at home, even if what follows sounds like a fairy tale called “Owen Wilson’s Wonderful Recovery”:

Wes Anderson: Owen Wilson “Doing Very Well”

Actor Owen Wilson is in surprisingly good spirits after attempting to commit suicide on August 26, according to his friend, director Wes Anderson.

“Obviously he has been through a lot this week,” said Anderson, who directed the actor in his latest film The Darjeeling Limited.

“I can tell you he has been doing very well, he has been making us laugh.”

Let us agree from the outset that in the real world where we all live, Owen Wilson cannot possibly be doing “very well.” He was abusing various drugs and alcohol and was reportedly despondent or enraged shortly before he attempted to take his life a week or so ago. Only on another planet—let’s call it Bizarro Hollywood World—could this man be doing “very well.” He is human, after all. Right?

Wrong! He’s a star. Of course he’s doing well! In Bizarro Hollywood World, suicides get better overnight, with the help of their loving friends, family, and business partners.

So this news of Owen Wilson’s fabulous recovery is what I often refer to as PRopaganda ^TM: “dramatic realities” or “dramatic narratives” spun (by PR meisters) from a few legitimate details of a given celebrity’s autobiography and then embroidered with fan-pleasing details. The story-weavers get a peg to hang a plausible tale on (in Wilson’s case, he’s a comic actor, so when he’s being normal and not suicidal, we would expect him to be making people laugh) and run with it, till those of us who want to believe it, ’cause we loooove Owen, actually believe it.

[There's an entire academic and non-academic literature about this stuff, if you're interested. Start with Joshua Gamson's Claims to Fame---a fascinating read. But read it at your own risk: You will never love a celebrity in quite the same way again after you finish it, 'cause you'll know that you've been deliberately seduced. You've been had.]

Helpfully, in today’s WaPo, Shankar Vedantam tells us all about the stubborn human propensity to believe “myths” over reality:

The conventional response to myths and urban legends is to counter bad information with accurate information. But the new psychological studies show that denials and clarifications, for all their intuitive appeal, can paradoxically contribute to the resiliency of popular myths.

You should read the whole thing, but here’s the most fascinating bit:

[T]he mind’s bias does affect many people, especially those who want to believe the myth for their own reasons, or those who are only peripherally interested and are less likely to invest the time and effort needed to firmly grasp the facts.

Have favorite myths (e.g., good triumphs over evil)? Not likely to invest the time and effort need to grasp the facts? That would describe most of us, except when the subject matter is our passionate interest and/or hobby. We’re too busy to pay minute attention. Which is what gives marketers of all stripes—not to mention potential propagandists—their opening:

Clever manipulators can take advantage of this tendency.

Yes indeed. They most certainly can.This is where clever public relations comes in—in order to fight a damaged reputation, you’ve got to try to avoid repeating the claims made against you. Vedantam explains the paradox:

“If someone says, ‘I did not harass her,’ I associate the idea of harassment with this person,” said Mayo, explaining why people who are accused of something but are later proved innocent find their reputations remain tarnished. “Even if he is innocent, this is what is activated when I hear this person’s name again.

So how to you refute a false claim or reclaim a damaged reputation?

[R]ather than deny a false claim, it is better to make a completely new assertion that makes no reference to the original myth. Rather than say, as Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) recently did during a marathon congressional debate, that “Saddam Hussein did not attack the United States; Osama bin Laden did,” Mayo said it would be better to say something like, “Osama bin Laden was the only person responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks” — and not mention Hussein at all.

Edward Bernays, the “father of PR”, recommended this tactic. Don’t refute. Fight PR with more PR. This stuff is all around us—in every corner of public life—all the time. Observe, and you’ll see.

By the way, the New York Post has a ways to go to catch up with the rosy picture quoted above about Wilson’s recovery. According to the Post, Wilson is “on the mend.” But he looks like shit.

Now, that’s more like it—slow and easy. Extend the life of the story, give it more room for endless ups and downs (for the next ten years, if Wilson is really unlucky).

The Post, of course, is the undisputed master of PRopaganda ^TM.

Class dismissed.

Lesley Chamberlain’s new book Lenin’s Private War should give pause to those in the leftosphere with an urge to purge

Carlin Romano explains:

In 1922, a year of living dictatorishly, Lenin devoted astonishing time to handpicking intellectuals to be exiled from Russia. In missives to underlings, including a go-getter named Joseph Stalin, he railed against these “bourgeoisie and their accomplices, the intellectuals, the lackeys of capital, who think they’re the brains of the nation. In fact, they’re not the brains, they’re the shit.” He told Stalin in a note, “We are going to cleanse Russia once and for all.” An earlier Bolshevik poster already showed Lenin sweeping enemies from the globe over the caption, “Comrade Lenin cleanses the filth from the land.”

Wikipedia illustrates:

Comrade Lenin Cleanses the Filth from the Land

William Grimes, writing in the NYT, elaborates about how it all went down:

She sees the episode as a continuation of the armed conflict between Red and White forces, part of what she calls the “Paper Civil War,” in which the Bolsheviks closed down independent journals, purged universities and took the first steps in creating a new intellectual class of militant Marxist-Leninists.

“Only when Lenin deported the liberal intelligentsia in 1922 did the overall conflict end,” she writes.

Ms. Chamberlain’s narrative divides into three parts. The first, and the most interesting, deals with the Paper Civil War. Relying on archival material that has surfaced in the post-Soviet period, she traces the quiet campaign by Lenin and his underlings to identify dangerous thinkers, round them up, manufacture legal cases against them and expel them permanently. The thinking and the procedures behind the expulsions resonate profoundly. They are the dress rehearsal for Stalinist terror to come.

Meanwhile, inside the Beltway, the ‘Crat Pack ^TM, heady with its great victory in Chicago and as blissfullly ignorant as ever, continues on its merry way, auditioning for positions (any positions!) in the regime of the ‘Crat Who Would Be President—whoever he or she may be. Happy job hunting, all you whippersnappers! (And I hope your parents taught you that you should always have a Plan B.)

The father of sociology, Herbert Spencer, who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest,” has been greatly misunderstood as a social Darwinist, claims a new biography. Carl Rollyson, writing in the New York Sun, explains:

The clinching scene of this intellectual biography is Spencer’s appearance at Delmonico’s, the famous New York City restaurant, where, on November 9, 1882, 200 of his admirers gathered to honor Spencer with a farewell banquet capping off his only American tour. Spencer told his American acolytes there was too much emphasis on the “gospel of work” — a direct blow to [his fan Andrew] Carnegie and his ilk. Now it was time, he said, to emphasize the “gospel of relaxation.”

The audience was in a state of shock, but Spencer was not attempting to be provocative. He had come to believe that overwork had ruined his own constitution, and that the evolutionary progress he believed in should lead to a world where people worked less and lived for pleasure, especially aesthetic enjoyment.

Hear, hear! So why was the audience shocked?

… Spencer saw an opportunity to level with sympathetic listeners. Or as Mr. Francis puts it, “Since he was addressing Americans, who he had mistakenly assumed liked to hear the truth, he had spoken more plainly than usual.” [e.a.]

Yes, that’s a mistake many made before Spencer, and that many make every day.

No one likes to hear the “awful truth, which hurts.” Billy Wilder said that about moviegoers. And we are all moviegoers.

I love Milos Forman. His best movies are breathtaking. And even his worst movies are a hundred times more interesting and entertaining than most of what passes for highbrow mainstream entertainment. That said, Goya’s Ghosts is a mess—didactic where it should be satirical, melodramatic where it should be dramatic, stingy where it should be generous. As I said: a big mess.

That’s a damn shame, because, as Cinematical notes, it’s got some really stirring moments on a subject of hot contemporary debate—

Javier Bardem embodies one of Forman’s favorite fool-archetypes here: the true believer who is double-blind in thinking that the system he loves loves him back and that his earnestness in upholding it will produce rewards down the road. Bardem plays Brother Lorenzo, a Catholic priest who argues passionately for the grisly torture of the Inquisition in the opening scene, as the other priests sit quietly and imbibe his passionate commitment to the cause instead of daring to debate any of his points. It’s only later, when an unlikely turn of events sees him having dinner in the home of a man suspected of being a “Judiazier” that he’s asked to give any kind of thoughtful defense to his beliefs. ‘How could there be any value in a confession given under extreme physical torture?,’ Brother Lorenzo is asked, to which he replies that God grants the innocent the ability to withstand the torture and not utter false statements, but allows the guilty to perjure themselves. A few minutes later, he’s singing a completely different tune.

And Time magazine puts it in perspective:

[T]he entire film is less an exercise in historicism (though the portrait of the painter is accurate enough, as is the depiction of historical events, the story is pure fiction) than it is an elaborate analogy with our own times. This is quite understandable — Forman lost his parents to the Nazi concentration camps and came of age in Communist-ruled Czechoslovakia, and he has long needed to address the issues that shaped his life in a movie. Goya’s Ghosts is not entirely successful in doing so. …

[I]t has about it a kind of messy passion that is quite fascinating. It obviously means a great deal to its auteur, and that passion grants the film a felt and wayward life not usually granted historical epics.

That judgment applies particularly to Bardem’s performance as the loathsome Lorenzo. In the beginning, as he volunteers to lead the newly revived Inquisition, he is all soft-voiced reason. He is polite to the point of obsequiousness, not only to his church superiors, but even to the people he torments. Creepy, well-met and utterly corrupt, and when the French invade he simply disappears — only to reappear later as, of all things, a Voltairian rationalist, married, with children, and growing rich as an enforcer for Spain’s occupiers. He is, in his way, also a perfect modernist, blowing blandly and prosperously with the winds of change. As long as there is power and status to be had, he does not care who he must serve to obtain those boons. By analogy, Goya’s Ghosts has much to say, largely through this character, about such current issues as torture, terror and the fact that some people can profit hugely by making up ideological justifications for the anarchy they loose upon the world.

The reviewier, Phil Bray, concludes his political takeaway thus:

If you find yourself thinking about, say, Abu Ghraib while you’re watching this movie, that’s OK with Forman and Carriere.

That’s true, as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough, because the film isn’t about politics. It’s about human nature—about how even the apolitical among us (and most people are apoliticial) are ensnared, and potentially enslaved, by the pathologically political people who live among us: the seekers of power and privilege and those who serve and/or cozy up to them … regardless of their political persuasion. Right or left, it doesn’t matter. Potentially, power corrupts us all.

In the movie, “There shall be no liberty for the enemies of liberty!” is the cry of the secular republicans against those who would stand in the way of their revolution: monarchs, cardinals, clerks, lawyers, bankers, newspapermen, merchants—everyone with a stake in the system.

Goya’s Ghosts is a failed film, but its 75-year-old director has got something to say, if you’ve got the time and the curiosity to listen.

Via ETP, hard evidence that politics is just that—the greatest show on earth. And proof that at a certain level inside the Beltway, after dark, all of those harsh words rendered in print and harsher judgments barked into microphones are left behind. Because at that level they’re civilized people, you see. (Eric Alterman thinks otherwise—he thinks New York is more forgiving after dark than Washington—as he mentions in this fascinating episode of bloggingheads.tv, about which more another time.)

The photo below, featuring Paul Wolfowitz and Arianna Huffington, *** was taken this past Saturday night at a reception before the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. To read the press last week and over the weekend, you’d think that Paul Wolfowitz is fighting for his very life as the long knives at the World Bank slash him and his girlfriend.

[[ Indeed, he may not survive this attempted takedown. I don't feel particularly sorry for him. I am spitting mad on behalf of his girlfriend, however. And if any case ever cried out for attention from feminists, this is it: an accomplished woman is forced to leave her job, where she's up for a promotion, because her boyfriend, who has nothing at all to do with her work, is appointed the head of the institution she works for. But you would have to put aside other political considerations ("Are you now or have you ever been a Neocon?"---addresssed by Garance Franke-Ruta in that same episode of bloggingheads.tv) in order to come to that conclusion, and I don't see too many people other than sturdy Christopher Hitchens, that noted woman-hater, making this obvious case and standing up yet again for intellectual honesty and a measure of justice. ]]

But back to my point. Here Paul Wolfowitz is smiling warmly at Arianna Huffington, who wrote a blog post just last week titled “Are Gonzales and Wolfowitz the Next to Swim with the Fishes?”

Arianna with Paul Wolfowitz and AOL founder James Kinsey

Left or right, progressive or conservative, Republican or Democrat, hawk or dove—these folks are all the same. Moreover, they are (as is said about the rich) not like you and me. They’re insiders. Their game is about getting there and staying there.

Remember that the next time you feel their intimate presence and read their words via this great new democratic forum, the blogosphere. Not everyone here is created equal. They are not like you and me.
———-

*** She’s so tall! (Jane Fonda is no shrimp, but look at the height difference!)

HuffPo founder Arianna Huffington with actress, activist and radio host Jane Fonda

 Direct from China to Egypt:

Digital Korans, automatic prayer reciters and headphones dispensing religious advice are all part of the growing wave of outward religiosity that is increasingly defining daily life in Egypt.

At least some people think it’s a sign of the growing religiosity in Egypt that people want to carry around these gadgets that supposedly keep them on the straight and narrow. Others are not so sure:

Sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim, on the other hand, thinks the trend is more indicative of the “naivety of the consumers and the intelligence of the merchants.”

“It also says a lot about how quickly the Chinese economy reacts and adapts to the desires of the consumers — whoever they are,” he said with a smile.

Well, I’m with Mr. Ibrahim, ’cause I have a soft spot for sociologists.

Also: there’s this old joke about new gadgets. Here’s the punchline:

Does it give blowjobs?

Add the fear of blaming South Koreans—I kid you not ***—to the brilliant list of the post-Virginia Tech media memes compiled by ETP’s Jason Linkins. Weirdly, none of them attribute guilt (sole guilt or, for that matter, any guilt) to the perpetrator, who was apparently a lone gunman (and a VT student), Cho Seung-Hui.

Linkins’s list:

GUNS, GUNS, GUNS (and a subset of same: THE JIM WEBB COROLLARY)

EVERYONE IN CHARGE FAILED AND SHOULD BE FIRED

“INSTANT PREJUDICE” [I'm not quite sure against whom --ed.]

CREATIVE WRITING AND THE AGONIES OF ARMCHAIR PSYCHOANALYSTS

VIDEOGAMES? REALLY? [the commentary "really?" is Linkins's, not mine]

In a later post, Linkins also remarks on the “English major” meme—which is really a subset of the “creative writing” meme. You can’t trust an English major—and you certainly can’t trust an English major at an institution where he’s surrounded on all sides by engineers. Right?

——-

*** Here’s where Americans are supposedly going to explode in a massive backlash against South Koreans—or so the South Koreans fear:

South Korea expressed its condolences, and said it hoped that the tragedy would not “stir up racial prejudice or confrontation.” “We are in shock beyond description,” said Cho Byung-se, a Foreign Ministry official handling North American affairs.

Today, the WSJ reports more or less everything I posted about Gaza yesterday (which I painstakingly stitched together after five weeks of following this story).

 Uncertain Fate
Of Gaza Reporter
Deepens Concerns

 Fanatical Islamists of the type sowing chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan appear to be operating with increasing impunity in the Gaza Strip, heightening concern about the rising danger posed by al Qaeda-inspired groups or similar violent fringe groups in the Palestinian territories.

An unconfirmed statement on Sunday by a group saying it had killed abducted BBC correspondent Alan Johnston has added to these fears. Even if that claim turns out to be false, the kidnapping marks a low point for the already troubled Gaza Strip. Palestinian human-rights groups are documenting an increasing number of firebombings and other attacks against targets such as Internet cafes, libraries and cultural centers.

Concerns about such violence come amid an overall state of lawlessness that has prompted even the United Nations to keep nearly all of its foreign staffers out of Gaza. The convoy of a lead official for the world body was shot at last month, despite the use of clearly marked U.N. vehicles. Foreign charitable organizations working in Gaza are similarly concerned.

So I’ve been saying for quite a while now.

I’m not bragging—I’m noting the lag between the time an energetic amateur like me notices a straw in the wind (in this case the Johnston kidnapping, which I’ve been writing about for five weeks) and the time it takes for the MSM to use its megaphone to luanch the story into the news cycle.

Truth be told, despite its huge impact on journalists and on journalism—and despite its ramifications for the rest of us, who depend on journalists to report those things that we cannot see or hear for ourselves—this story may never make it into the news cycle. The WSJ doesn’t have much of a megaphone.

Much will depend on what happens to Johnston (and the kidnappers are hoping to hook us with that ongoing soap opera, to grab our attention with it, as kidnappers are wont to do [[see this June 2006 post, "kidnapping makes for good television," for a link to a study about how kidnapping is an excellent headline-grabbing narrative for terrorists who are looking to make their mark, or their point, in a shrug-it-off world.]] ).

But let’s not forget that Johnston’s kidnappers are competing with what’s  being called the ”deadliest shooting rampage in American history“. Those kidnappers don’t stand a chance. Because we’re now going to feast on this orgy for weeks and weeks and weeks.

My heartfelt best wishes to these two adults:

Democratic Presidential hopeful John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth share a moment as they discuss Elizabeth’s recurrence of cancer during a news conference in Chapel Hill, N.C., Thursday, March 22, 2007. Edwards will continue his campaign for the presidency. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

It is the foundation of peaceful coexistence, and it has deep roots in human evolution:

Though human morality may end in notions of rights and justice and fine ethical distinctions, it begins, Dr. de Waal says, in concern for others and the understanding of social rules as to how they should be treated. At this lower level, primatologists have shown, there is what they consider to be a sizable overlap between the behavior of people and other social primates.

Social living requires empathy, which is especially evident in chimpanzees, as well as ways of bringing internal hostilities to an end. Every species of ape and monkey has its own protocol for reconciliation after fights, Dr. de Waal has found. If two males fail to make up, female chimpanzees will often bring the rivals together, as if sensing that discord makes their community worse off and more vulnerable to attack by neighbors. Or they will head off a fight by taking stones out of the males’ hands.

Dr. de Waal believes that these actions are undertaken for the greater good of the community, as distinct from person-to-person relationships, and are a significant precursor of morality in human societies.

The other day, casting a harsh judgment, I wrote in response to Jimmy Carter’s American Jihad to Create More Sympathy for the Palestinians:

When the Palestinians become more sympathetic—i.e., when they are seen to behave in a manner that befits sympathy rather than disgust, indignation, or outrage—they will garner more sympathy from Americans.

What I meant was this: The Palestinians have been in the news (sorta) again. No, I’m not referring to the long piece by Steven Erlanger (”Years of Strife and Lost Hope Scar Young Palestinians“) in the yesterday New York Times, which certainly elicited my sympathy.

What I’m referring to is this story, first reported on Monday:

BBC journalist feared kidnapped in Gaza
 

which is just now (more than 24 hours since it happened) starting to get play, according to Google News.

E Canada Now Johnston kidnappers ‘identified’ ic Scotland.co.uk, UK - 2 hours ago BBC television correspondent Alan Johnston was taken from his car by four masked gunmen in Gaza City on Monday. The abduction was the latest in a string of … Concern for missing BBC reporter ic Wales Palestinian authorities aim to free journalist Guardian Unlimited ‘Reward wanted’ for kidnapped BBC man Telegraph.co.uk Toronto Daily News - Washington Post all 395 news articles » PRESS TV World press body calls for safe return of missing reporter in Gaza Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran - 1 hour ago The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) Tuesday called for the safe return of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston in the Gaza Strip, … Palestinians denounce BBC reporter abduction PRESS TV all 3 news articles » BBC journalist kidnapped in Gaza Israel Insider, Israel - 15 minutes ago Palestinian Authority security officials were able to quickly identify the victim as Alan Johnston because the latter had thrown a business card on the …

This story is probably what most Americans will hear about the Palestinians today, if they hear anything at all (while they’re driving home or while they’re fixing dinner for the kids or wherever they tune in to the “news”… if they do tune in to the “news” … and, of course, if “the news” even bothers to cover the story rather than cover it up—or cover up for the Hamas shitballs, who will try to paint themselves as heroes when miraculously recover Johnston, as they did when they miraculously recovered Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig in August, after the two Fox journalists had been kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam on videotape. Which is certainly a topic for another post.).

But back to the point: It’s horribly unfair to those Palestinians who are indeed suffering because of Israel’s policies (and because of Israelis’ seeming indifference to this suffering—emphasis on “seeming“), but reports of the following do not create sympathy for “the Palestinians” (in quotes because it’s unfair to the suffering Palestinians to be lumped in with the Palestinians who create the suffering):

kidnappings,

bombs lobbed into Israel,

suicide killings,

shootings,

gang warfare,

terrifying violence,

corruption,

upheaval,

kidnappings that end only after the victims have converted to Islam, on pain of death, 

hard-line threats emanating from Hamas leaders with broken-record regularity (”We will never recognize Israel“).

What’s to sympathize with here? Where are the people we should sympathize with? I don’t see them here, for example, in the kind of image that Palestinians proudly broadcast to the rest of the world:

Nevertheless, there are suffering Palestinians. There are things the Israelis can do to ameliorate some of their suffering—particularly the suffering they themselves cause. And there should be forward movement between the Israelis and t