Entries Tagged 'moralizing' ↓
March 19th, 2008 — Dems, denial, human behavior, hypocrisy, moralizing
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.
November 12th, 2007 — cultural deprivation, moralizing, movies, political correctness
[update: I added a missing link]
There’s a new crop of Iraq movies. Audiences are staying away in droves. Here’s one theory about why:
Despite spend several million dollars on advertising and marketing, ‘Lions for Lambs’ will flop–just like ‘Rendition’ & and ‘Valley of Elah.’
They will flop because the human psyche, especially the American variety, prefers real heroes–like the original hero of the Valley of Elah, a young shepherd named David who killed Goliath then cut off the giant’s head.
In the latest round of war movies the heroes are not the Soldiers and Marines who every day fight and defeat a vicious and barbaric enemy–the heroes are reporters, lawyers and activists.
And since every story requires a villain, the real enemy–Mohammedan Jihadists–are replaced by neo-cons, politicians, Soldiers and Marines.
This substitution of the traditional mono-myth away from a hero who faces physical danger and conquers an enemy is a result of cowardice of the modern story tellers.
What a crock.
The problem with the movies is, first of all, their relentless darkness and pessimism. To go to the movies today is to be assaulted with horror, danger, fear, chaos, and anxiety—and that’s just while you sit through the trailers.
Then there’s the fact that today’s movies offer no redemption. No one who isn’t on antidepressants wants to pay to see the bottomless suffering of human beings again and again. There are only so many gluttons for punishment in the American movie-going audience.
Finally, there’s the empty-headed prattle, devoid of anything approaching a new idea:
But Lions for Lambs is not merely a silly, shallow movie about the war: Its ambitions are broader and more scattered. Not content to stay focused on its central issue, it dabbles and babbles hither and yon, tossing off sophomore term-paper opinions on such topics as Americorps, consumerism, student loans, and corporate ownership of the media.
When Roth complains to her editor that the government hawks are engaged in “Vietnam-era thinking,” it rings truer as a self-critique; she is, after all, the one who keeps bringing up Vietnam and the 1960s. Indeed, if you tug on the emotional threads of the film, they all lead straight back to that crucible of generational consciousness: the fiftysomething journalists worry that they’ve been co-opted by the system that they started out fighting against; the liberal professor is disappointed that his students lack the passion and fervor of his own youth. It’s on this last point that Redford is at his most patronizing. When, repeatedly, the film criticizes today’s kids for being more interested in making money than in making a difference, one is tempted to reply: Yes, Mr. Redford, what a lucky thing it is for all of us that when you were young you eschewed fame and fortune.
September 17th, 2007 — America at war, moralizing, movies
The NYT’s David Carr is much more polite and circumspect than I was when I wrote “one, two, three, four, we don’t want your fucking war,” but he is just as skeptical as I am about Hollywood’s prospects for success with its current crop of antiwar movies:
“In the Valley of Elah,” a mystery about a returning veteran who disappears, starring Tommy Lee Jones and directed by Paul Haggis, opened last Friday. It will be followed into theaters over the course of the fall and winter by “Grace Is Gone,” “Stop Loss,” “Nothing Is Private,” “Lions for Lambs,” “Charlie Wilson’s War,” and “Redacted.” They all take as their central concern the price of America’s military and security activities since the attacks of Sept. 11. HBO, which has already waded into bloody waters with “Baghdad ER” and “Alive Day,” has commissioned “Generation Kill,” written by David Simon, creator of “The Wire.”
All of this is undoubtedly well intended, but will it be well attended?
No, it won’t. As Carr notes,
[H]istorically, audiences enter the theater in pursuit of counter-programming as an antidote to reality***
Yep. But Hollywood elites these days—like book and magazine publishing elites—make cultural products for themselves and for their own supposedly sophisticated crowd. That’s fine. They just shouldn’t expect to gain traction for them in the wider culture.
So it goes.
———-
*** The writer/director Billy Wilder, whom I’ve written about a lot, put it rather more plainly:
People don’t go to the movies to see the awful truth, which hurts.
That’s why Wilder snuck up on them with biting satires. Hollywood is both too stupid and too earnest for that these days. More’s the pity for those of us in the audience.
March 2nd, 2007 — America at war, culture war, moralizing, political correctness, political culture, status anxiety, war
Gerard Baker thinks he sees a time (when America won’t have George W. Bush to kick around anymore) that the opinion elites and Democrats will wish he were still around:
It’s been a great ride for the past six years, hasn’t it? George Bush and Dick Cheney and all those pantomime villains that succour him — the gay-bashing foot soldiers of the religious Right, the forktailed neoconservatives with their devotion to Israel, the dark titans of American corporate boardrooms spewing their carbon emissions above the pristine European skies. Having those guys around for so long provided a comfortable substitute for thinking hard about global challenges, a kind of intellectual escapism.
When one group of Muslims explodes bombs underneath the school buses of another group of Muslims in Baghdad or cuts the heads off humanitarian workers in Anbar, blame George Bush. When Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, denounces an imbalanced world and growls about the unpleasantness of democracy in eastern Europe, blame George Bush. When the Earth’s atmosphere gets a little more clogged with the output of power plants in China, India and elsewhere, blame George Bush.
Some day soon, though, this escapism will run into the dead end of reality. In fact, the most compelling case for the American people to elect a Democrat as president next year is that, in the US, leadership in a time of war requires the inclusion of both political parties, and in the rest of the world, people will have to start thinking about what is really the cause of all our woes. [e.a.]
Oh yeah? Andrew Sullivan is already pointing his finger. Admiringly, he quotes a Euro-blogger who knows how things went down: We [in the West] are to blame for the mess we made after 9/11. Sullivan admires the guy for writing about the fact that he was ”complicit.” In our [the West's] ”mistakes.”
This argument—the notion that 9/11 arrived on a blank slate and it is our reaction to 9/11 that has caused all our problems— (which Tony Blair has called a “mad anti-Americanism” and which he has warned against as a fatal inversion of Western liberalism) will become very popular, I’m sure.
The culture wars will continue…until they are drowned out by the shooting wars. Which, I’m afraid, will come.
January 17th, 2007 — America at war, moralizing
Andrew Sullivan thinks America and the West are morally stained.
Now John Judis says the United States has become a rogue state.
What exactly are we doing in the Horn of Africa, where we have encouraged the Christian government of Ethiopia to invade Somalia and replace its Islamic government? As far as I can tell, we have violated international law, committed war crimes, helped Al Qaeda recruit new members, and involved ourselves in a guerrilla war that could last decades. It’s Iraq writ small. And it can’t be blamed on Donald Rumsfeld.
Both writers are driven by worries about America’s image.
What is their suggestion for fighting the war against global jihadism effectively, so as to destroy and discredit it, without making “them” hate “us” even more than “they” have hated “us” for decades?
How do you eradicate a foul enemy while making nice with the world’s many, many, many humiliated Muslims?
Riddle me that, fellas.
January 17th, 2007 — America at war, moralizing, political correctness, political culture
America has been unalterably morally stained by the war in Iraq, says Andrew Sullivan:
to my mind, by far the deepest damage has been to the idea of America, to the decency of America, and its reputation for responsibility in world affairs. From authorizing torture to the acquiescence in mass murder, this president has stained the honor of this country and the West.
I have a question for the insufferable moralist Andrew Sullivan:
What arrows will be left in your quiver when the United States really goes to war?
December 11th, 2006 — Hamas, Israel, Middle East war, Palestine, anti-Israelism, anti-semitism, moralizing
I have no doubt that the uber-punitive Christian former president of the United States James Earl Carter thinks he means well when he brings the little-known cause of the long-suffering Palestinians to the attention of the world in a book called Palestine Peace Not Apartheid.
Carter may have the best intentions toward the Palestinians; he certainly does not mean well when it comes to Israeli Jews or, for that matter, American Jews. Let’s leave aside the question of why Carter chose this particularly sensitive moment in geopolitical upheaval to publish an aggressively provocative and vicious attack on Israel. Let’s just focus on why he lied about the “facts” he printed—about which Dennis Ross, whose work Carter stole and misrepresented in order to publish those “facts,” had this to say on the Situation Room last Friday evening:
ROSS: I haven’t had a chance to read [Carter's book] yet, but I looked at the maps and the maps he uses are maps that are drawn basically from my book. There’s no other way they could — even if he says they come from another place. They came originally from my book.
BLITZER: We’re going to put them up on the screen on the wall behind you. But the whole notion, what’s the big deal if he lifted maps from your book and put them in his book?
ROSS: You know, the attribution issue is one thing, the fact that he’s labeled them as an Israeli interpretation of the Clinton idea is just simply wrong. The maps were maps that I created because at Camp David and then with the Clinton ideas, we never presented maps, but we presented percentages of withdrawal and we presented as well criteria for how to draw the lines. So after I left the government, when I wrote this book, I actually commissioned a mapmaker, to take those and produce them for the first time.
BLITZER: And then he put virtually the same map in his book without saying this came from you. I want you to listen to what he said specifically about this. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARTER: I’ve never seen Dennis Ross’ book. I’m not knocking it, I’m sure it’s a very good book, but my maps came from an atlas that’s publicly available. And I think it’s the most authentic map that you can get.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: You heard his explanation how– would you say your maps wound up in his book.
ROSS: Well, the reality is the place he got it from, had to get it from mine. I published it before, number one. Number two, you would think that if you wanted to write about the facts of what went on, you would go to a book where a participant actually wrote them and then developed the maps in light of what we had put on the table. Now, again, if the purpose is to say, you’re presenting facts, then you should present facts. To say that his map is an Israeli interpretation of the Clinton ideas is simply not true. These were the Clinton ideas. If he were to say that…
BLITZER: On that point, he’s told me that he understands better what happened at Camp David, where you were one of the principal negotiators, than the former president himself. I want you to listen to this exchange that we had the other day, right here in THE SITUATION ROOM.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARTER: I hate to dispute Bill Clinton on your program, because he did a great and heroic effort there. He never made a proposal that was accepted by Barak or Arafat.
BLITZER: Why would he write that in his book if he said Barak accepted and Arafat rejected it?
CARTER: I don’t know. You can check with all the records, Barak never did accept it. (END VIDEO CLIP)
ROSS: That’s simply not so.
BLITZER: Who is right, Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton on this question which is so relevant as to whether or not the Israelis at Camp David at the end of the Bill Clinton administration accepted the proposals the U.S. put forward?
ROSS: The answer is President Clinton. The Israelis said yes to this twice, first at Camp David, there were a set of proposals that were put on the table that they accepted. And then were the Clinton parameters, the Clinton ideas which were presented in December, their government, meaning the cabinet actually voted it. You can go back and check it, December 27th the year 2000, the cabinet voted to approve the Clinton proposal, the Clinton ideas. So this is — this is a matter of record. This is not a matter of interpretation.
BLITZER: So you’re saying Jimmy Carter is flat wrong.
ROSS: On this issue, he’s wrong. On the issue of presenting his map as an Israeli interpretation of the Clinton ideas, that’s simply not so.
Rick Richman at Jewish Current Issues, in a lengthy, detailed post, explains why Carter had to lie: because it was only by twisting the facts that he could substantiate his extravagant claim—the underlying argument of his book—that it is the Israelis, not the Palestinians, who are and always have been the intransigent obstacle to peace (hat tip Power Line):
But notice that while the map is in identical to Ross’s in almost every respect, Carter has significantly altered its title. Carter calls his map not an illustration of the Clinton Parameters by the U.S. Ambassador who developed them, but rather the “Israeli Interpretation of Clinton’s Proposal” (emphasis added) — as if it were simply one side’s “interpretation.” He also omits Ross’s explanatory note, which made it clear the map “actually understates the Clinton ideas by not showing an additional 1 to 3% of territorial swaps to the Palestinians” (emphasis added).
I know I shouldn’t breathe more life into this—that in all likelihood even the minimal attention it’s likely to get from this lonely blog will be counterproductive, because more controversy only serves Carter’s purpose: it draws attention to his un-Christian cause—which, as Jeffrey Goldberg notes in the Washington Post, is to dismantle American evangelicals’ support for Israel.
Why is Carter so hard on Israeli settlements and so easy on Arab aggression and Palestinian terror? Because a specific agenda appears to be at work here. Carter seems to mean for this book to convince American evangelicals to reconsider their support for Israel. Evangelical Christians have become bedrock supporters of Israel lately, and Carter marshals many arguments, most of them specious, to scare them out of their position. Hence the Golda Meir story, seemingly meant to show that Israel is not the God-fearing nation that religious Christians believe it to be. And then there are the accusations, unsupported by actual evidence, that Israel persecutes its Christian citizens.
Interestingly, though, I picked up on Carter’s appeal to evangelicals without knowing quite what I was picking up on when I quoted his outrageous anti-Semitic innuendo the other day:
“There’s a tremendous intimidation in this country that has silenced our people [about Israel]. And it’s not just individuals, it’s not just folks who are running for office. It’s the news media as well,” he said.
Silenced our people? I asked. Which people was he referring to? How exactly are “they” being silenced? I wondered. Indeed I still wonder. Was he referring to “real” Americans? to evangelicals? What did he mean?
I wish an enterprising journalist would pursue the matter. Meanwhile, here’s what it looks like: The oh so pious Carter is using his considerable moral authority as a prominent Christian former president of the United States
1) to smear Israeli Jews with lies;
2) to spread crass anti-Semitic innuendo (undue influence of and intimidation by AIPAC) about American Jews;
3) to cover up for and excuse the braying donkeys and pestilential thugs and murderous gangsters who live and thrive among the long-suffering, beaten-down Palestinian Arabs.
Which Palestinians do you support, Jimmy Carter?
A Palestinian mourner watches the funeral for the three sons of senior intelligence officer Baha Balousheh, killed in a drive-by shooting attack, in Gaza City, Monday, Dec. 11, 2006. Palestinian gunmen killed three young children of a senior Palestinian intelligence officer Monday, pumping dozens of bullets into their car as it passed through a street crowded with schoolchildren, an apparent botched assassination attempt that could ignite widespread factional fighting. (
AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)
November 5th, 2006 — moralizing
Now another hypocritical uber-Christian is begging for my forgiveness.
In a letter that was read to the congregation of New Life Church this morning, ousted Pastor Ted Haggard said he was guilty of sexual immorality, and he apologized for his acts and requested forgiveness.
“I am so sorry for the circumstances that have caused shame and embarrassment to all of you,” he stated. He said he had confused the situation by giving inconsistent remarks to reporters denying the scandal.
“The fact is I am guilty of sexual immorality, and I take responsibility for the entire problem. I am a deceiver and a liar. There’s a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it all my.
Dude, I’m not a Christian, so your piety is of zero interest to me. Not my moral code to go around in public begging forgiveness from perfect strangers. Dig?
If I were your wife, however… Well, there’s no way I’d be your wife.
Sexual immorality has nothing to do with it. You are a dirty stinking liar and a fraud: a cheater. You lied because you wanted it all: your piety, your position, your status, your wealth, and your secret sex life.
Feh.
September 27th, 2006 — blogosphere, moralizing
Sadly, I cannot read Andrew Sullivan anymore.
What happened to Maher Arar, a completely innocent man, could happen to you one day.
Really?
Just don’t say you haven’t been warned.
Fine, he’s off the hook. I’ve been warned.
Now what?
September 8th, 2006 — Islamism, culture war, moralizing, tyranny, war
The Daily Mail reports:
Stunning Mariyah Moten, 22, won the ‘Best in Media’ title - for being the most photographed and interviewed contestant - at the pageant in the Chinese resort of Beihai.
The only problem is: she claimed to be representing Pakistan (where she was born and raised), although she is an American citizen. With American values: she loves beauty contests.
Enter the Pakistani authorities:
But furious Pakistani authorities say she did not have permission to represent the country, where many women only go out in public covered in a veil.
They are now threatening the model, who grew up in Pakistan but holds a US passport after she moved there eight years ago, with restrictions on entering her homeland.
“We have asked our missions in Washington and Beijing to investigate this because it is against our policy, culture and religion,” senior Culture Ministry official Abdul Hafeez Chaudhry said.
A bit more provocative than the Danish cartoons, I’d say. Let’s see what happens.
September 4th, 2006 — Islamism, Israel, Middle East war, PR, extreme political correctness, framing, moralizing, narratives in the making, political culture, propaganda, tyranny
The Palestinians seem keen on burying themselves deep in the muck while constantly proclaiming themselves holier-than-we.
First there was the disgraceful kidnapping and forced coversion to Islam of the Fox News journalists and the shameful inaction by Hamas to alleviate the situation—which prompted outcries from unusual places (deep in Palestine) and threatened the Palestinians with the marginalization of their cause (which journalists can’t cover if they’re under threat).
And now an unnamed faction in the West Bank cuts off Tony Blair at the knees:
Several Palestinian public institutions, political factions and figures on Monday declared British Prime Minister Tony Blair persona non grata in Ramallah, saying his planned visit to the city was a “provocation against the feelings of the Palestinian people.”
In a statement distributed in Ramallah, they said that Blair, who is expected to visit the region later this week, was “completely unwelcome in our country because he was coming to wash the hands that are dripping Lebanese blood with Palestinian water.”
Notice the allusion to the purity of the Palestinian cause.
I will be curious to see how Blair addresses this flaming hot potato. Will he wear a hair shirt? Stay tuned.
September 2nd, 2006 — PR, celebrities, culture war, gossip, moralizing, pop culture
Because he is a jerk, of course.
Nevertheless, he has apologized to Brooke Shields, or so she said to Jay Leno. Apparently, Cruise visited her at her home on Thursday, August 30, and gave a “heartfelt” apology
Funny, though, that according to Google News, his people started saying how sorry he was on August 26, several days before he actually went over and apologized.
Tom Cruise ‘Deeply Regrets’ Brooke Shields Attack
Post Chronicle - Aug 28, 2006
Hollywood star Tom Cruise “deeply regrets” his verbal attack on Brooke Shields, after the actress praised anti-depressants for helping her fight against …
Producer: Tom Cruise regrets Brooke Shields comments
Reality TV World, MA - Aug 25, 2006
Hollywood producer Kathleen Kennedy says Tom Cruise has expressed regret over comments the actor made regarding Brooke Shields‘ anti-depressant use. …
Now, this is a PR campaign. Not that anyone should care. And for what it’s worth, she accepted his apology. Because she’s a movie star, and that’s what stars do for each other.
August 27th, 2006 — Iraq, Middle East war, culture war, extreme political correctness, geopolitics, liberal opinion, moralizing, political culture, politics
I wonder what is in the mind of this former president, who works tirelessly to undermine American and British foreign policy:
Tony Blair’s lack of leadership and timid subservience to George W Bush lie behind the ongoing crisis in Iraq and the worldwide threat of terrorism, according to the former American president Jimmy Carter.
|
 |
| Outspoken: Jimmy Carter condemns the Iraq invasion |
“I have been surprised and extremely disappointed by Tony Blair’s behaviour,” he told The Sunday Telegraph.
“I think that more than any other person in the world the Prime Minister could have had a moderating influence on Washington - and he has not. I really thought that Tony Blair, who I know personally to some degree, would be a constraint on President Bush’s policies towards Iraq.”
Why does Carter purposefully ignore the deeply considered and thoughtful explanations that Blair has repeatedly and patiently laid out?—explanations that offer the perspective we in the West need to see in order to understand the world we live in.
I am amazed at how many people will say, in effect, there is increased terrorism today because we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. They seem to forget entirely that September 11th predated either. The West didn’t attack this movement. We were attacked. Until then we had largely ignored it.
The reason I say our response was even more momentous than it seemed at the time, is this. We could have chosen security as the battleground. But we didn’t. We chose values. We said we didn’t want another Taleban or a different Saddam. Rightly, in my view, we realised that you can’t defeat a fanatical ideology just by imprisoning or killing its leaders; you have to defeat its ideas.
There is a host of analysis written about mistakes made in Iraq or Afghanistan, much of it with hindsight but some of it with justification. But it all misses one vital point. The moment we decided not to change regime but to change the value system, we made both Iraq and Afghanistan into existential battles for Reactionary Islam. We posed a threat not to their activities simply: but to their values, to the roots of their existence.
We committed ourselves to supporting Moderate, Mainstream Islam. In almost pristine form, the battles in Iraq or Afghanistan became battles between the majority of Muslims in either country who wanted democracy and the minority who realise that this rings the death-knell of their ideology.
Well, it turns out that Carter has become such a pacifist that he would only have considered going into Afghanistan after 9/11—an action endorsed wholeheartedly by the vast majority of Americans.
But had he still been president, he says that he would never have considered invading Iraq in 2003.
“No,” he said, “I would never have ordered it. However, I wouldn’t have excluded going into Afghanistan, because I think we had to strike at al-Qaeda and its leadership.
Carter, whose geopolitical sophistication resembles Cindy Sheehan’s, is trying to shame Blair into changing his foreign policy. What a joke—from the president whose policies and actions buried us in the quicksand of the Middle East.
August 1st, 2006 — Jew hatred, Middle East war, moralizing, political correctness, politics
Arianna Gabor Stassinopoulos Huffington, political operative, finds Mel Gibson’s troubles inconvenient. His Jew hatred (which people might unconsciously associate with, for example, Hezbollah’s Jew hatred) creates problems for those who wish to express “legitimate criticisms of Israel’s methods”:
Reading the horror stories of the survivors of the Qana bombing, any rational person’s instinct is to criticize the tactics Israel is using to take on Hezbollah. Then a thought arises: will this criticism come across as part and parcel of the anti-Semitic worldview of the Gibson crowd?
Which is yet another reason Gibson needs to be ostracized: his lunatic ravings make it all-the-harder for legitimate criticisms of Israel’s methods to be expressed and to be heard with uncluttered ears.
To attain her desired end—plenty of room for “legitimate criticisms of Israel’s methods”—she urges Hollywood’s Jews to burn Gibson at the stake. And she’s not above using anti-Semitic innuendo to try to convince them:
I know this is, at its heart, a very cautious town — a place that always likes to keep one eye on the bottom line — but this is no time to play it safe or to put dollars ahead of doing the unquestionably right thing.
Meanwhile, Gibson’s friends and business associates in Hollywood are doing what their individual hearts, consciences, and other decision-making mechanisms dictate, which is exactly as it should be (as Nikki Finke reports: read her blog).
Arianna is just trying to make political hay out of Gibson’s wretchedness. I hope Hollywood’s Jews have the good sense to ignore her advice.
If Gibson is to be crucified—and that does seem to be afoot—it should be the gentiles, not the Jews, who do the deed.
July 18th, 2006 — culture war, how we live now, moralizing, political correctness, political culture, status anxiety
The New York Times ($$) calls it an effort to “micromanage residents’ lives in mundane ways.”
I call it Extreme Political Correctness. And it drives me crazy:
Edward M. Burke, who has served on the Chicago City Council since 1969, when cooking oil was just cooking oil, is pressing his colleagues to make it illegal for restaurants to use oils that contain trans fats, which have been tied to a string of health problems, including clogged arteries and heart attacks.
If approved, nutrition experts say, the ban will be the first in a major city, following the lead of towns like Tiburon, Calif., just north of San Francisco, where restaurant owners have voluntarily given up the oils. In truth, while the proposal’s prospects are uncertain, Chicago officials have been on a bit of a banning binge these days in what critics mock as City Hall’s effort to micromanage residents’ lives in mundane ways.
The aldermen voted in April to forbid restaurants to sell foie gras. They have weighed a proposal to force cabbies to dress better. And there is talk of an ordinance to outlaw smoking at the beach.
I really wonder how long the American people are going to keep tolerating this assault by Moral Marauders on their freedoms in the public square.
July 17th, 2006 — Middle East war, how we live now, moralizing, narratives in the making, political correctness, political culture, propaganda, war
Disproportionate Response
The criticism that Israel is using a “disproportionate response” to the kidnappings of its soldiers is an attempt to morally disarm Israel and make Israel out to be a bully.
coxandforkum.com
July 15th, 2006 — framing, information war, language, media, moralizing, narratives, news
From under the imprimatur of BBC News, which, according to one of its editors, tries to avoid the “careless use of words which carry value judgements,” and straight from the horse’s ass mouth of one Nick Thorpe, reporting on BBC Radio:
Driving down Highway 60 - the spine of the superstructure Israel has built on the West Bank - one understands the resentment and the sense of oppression the Palestinians feel.
Smart, middle-class Israeli settlements have sprung up on virgin hillsides, watered by springs often diverted from Palestinian villages.
Tunnels and fences have been erected by the occupier to keep Palestinians away from Israeli roads, Israeli settlements and Israeli soldiers.
Increasingly confined by barriers and checkpoints into little reservations, it is little wonder that Palestinians applaud Sheikh Nasrallah, the spiritual head of the Hezbollah, when he calls for the release of some of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. [emphasis added]
——
From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday 15 July, 2006 at 1130 BST on BBC Radio 4.
I note, in disgust, that the BBC editors compound their initial mistake (claiming that there is an editorial policy for the use of words such as “capture” as opposed to “kidnapping”) with weaselish whining on their blog. They were blasted in the comments section, and now they have a new excuse:
There are 8,500 journalists in the BBC producing thousands of hours of output each month – most of it for English speaking audiences here in the UK, some not. Some output is very formal, most is not. Some is scripted for BBC staff or stars to present, most is live and involves outside guests.
The idea that you could have a single stone tablet – like the Economist or FT has, setting out in detail the “house style”, words to be used and words not to be used – and that every BBC journalist and contributor be forced to follow it is nonsense.
Would anyone really expect every interviewee on every BBC programme to ingest the “house style” before appearing… or that BBC presenters should correct and reprimand them on every departure?
I am totally against any kind of policing of language—whether by reporters or citizens or government. I am totally for being thoughtful in the use of language, under all circumstances, because it is such a powerful tool and can have such a powerful effect.
Also: either the BBC has an editorial policy or it doesn’t. Make up your minds.
June 16th, 2006 — culture war, how we live now, moralizing, political correctness, political culture, status anxiety
Michael “Judge Roy Bean” Tomasky was deeply offended by Peter Beinart during the years 2002-2004:
Punditry has consequences, Peter. And the consequence of your essay among many people who opposed the war was, to put it benignly, a conclusion that you were not interested in reasonable debate. I have to say that I believe it was possible to draw this conclusion even earlier, via some of your TRB columns and those Washington Post quotes I mentioned yesterday…. I remember reading that article at the time and being shocked at your overgeneralization of war critics.
Some sinners don’t deserve redemption, even after they have repented. Apparently, Beinart was insufficiently apologetic when he said in his book that he’d been wrong to support the Iraq war:
You went too far, Peter, way too far.
And now, you seem to expect that all can be forgiven with a few sentences’ worth of apology in The Good Fight.
Read the whole depressing exchange of letters between the two at Slate.
This argument should be about liberal internationalism and the Democrats’ approach to foreign policy. Instead, it’s a witch-hunt.
June 12th, 2006 — books, culture war, free speech, how we live now, moralizing, political correctness, publishing, status anxiety
Sara Nelson, editor in chief of the trade magazine Publishers Weekly, addresses the moral dilemma of those booksellers who may hate the message of Ann Coulter’s book. She feels their pain:
Are some of the people involved in Team Coulter—editors, publicists, salespeople—disgusted by some of the things she is saying? You bet.
And then Nelson steps into the no-man’s-land of the benighted:
Are we all nonetheless obliged to defend her right to say them? Maybe.
One of her readers responds:
Does she (Coutler) have the right to say what she does. You say “maybe”. WHAT? Look, she’s pushing a political agenda, not advocating fire bombing elementary schools. If you support the 1st Ammendment, you must logically support HER right to say what she says, even as you dislike or despise it.
Nelson closes her piece by reminding publishers that they have a responsibility for what they’re putting out there:
In the business of shaping and selling ideas, we bear some responsibility for the ideas we choose to disseminate, and the people we choose to disseminate them. So if we have to do what’s best for business, so be it. But I have to hope that at least while we’re doing it, we all wrestle with these questions, and even lose just a little bit of sleep over what and who we’re putting out there.
I guess she forgot about Messages to the World, by Osama bin Laden, about whom an Observer (UK) reviewer wrote:
For bin Laden is a charismatic man of action, an eloquent preacher, a teacher of literature and a resilient, cunning, wonderfully briefed politician.
Another one of Ms. Nelson’s readers adds a shrewd observation:
coulter may be offensive, but so may be michael moore, who sold plenty of books and got plenty of press. do the ideas we shape and sell and disseminate have only to be liberal in order to be useful, or even tasteful? it seems that in order to get anyone in the media to take notice, authors must make a lot of ugly noise, liberal or otherwise. it is all business after all, isn’t it. [emphasis added]
Ms. Nelson doesn’t seem to want to get that. It’s too distasteful. David Carr gets it, though. And I alluded to it here.
June 10th, 2006 — anti-totalitarianism, free speech, moralizing, political correctness, political culture, political speech, propaganda, status anxiety
She makes me cringe. As I read her behavior, she’s trying to test the limits of her free speech…and rake in the bucks while doing so. She seems to be doing both: everyone is talking about her, which should help boost her book sales.
She has also succeeded in exposing the totalitarian impulse in some of our fellow Americans…in this case a congressman:
Rep. Rahm Emmanuel, D-Ill., said Thursday on the House floor that Coulter is a “hatemonger” and called on Republicans to denounce her: “I must ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle: Does Ann Coulter speak for you when she suggests poisoning not Supreme Court Justices or slanders the 9/11 … widows? If not, speak now. Your silence allows her to be your spokesman.”
Voltaire is my North Star on this. So, even as I shudder at her heartlessness, I defend her right to say it.
On Coulter’s right to speak her mind rests our own right to say as we wish: free speech for me and for thee.
And—and this is especially important: the remedy for “hate speech” is more speech, not less speech.
That is what separates us from the totalitarians, for whom some ideas, words, thoughts, jokes, stories, and speech are too dangerous and must be “denounced.”
Let there be no witch-hunts. From either side of the “debate.” ***
***I’ve written about this subject a lot. Click here and here for posts on this and related subjects. I’m an Enlightenment Fundamentalist.
May 23rd, 2006 — framing, information war, moralizing, political culture
I just watched the second episode of the immensely entertaining British show The Thick of It, TiVo’d from last Friday.
It is such a corrosive “comedy” that I don’t know why I would ever believe even one word that comes out of the mouth of a politician after watching it…but Tony Blair continues to impress me with his determination to make the case for anti-totalitarianism and liberal humanist values. His forum this time was a joint news conference in Iraq with the new Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.
And the answer to your Question is it worth it, is the fact that we are even here, having this conversation and discussion, as people in a country that is now a democracy and for all the challenges which we have to overcome, that is better surely than people living in dictatorship and we should refuse absolutely to believe that Iraqis are not entitled to the same rights and the same freedoms as people in our country or throughout the rest of the world
(via Andrew Sullivan)
Interestingly, John F. Burns of the New York Times provided some color commentary of the same news conference. The color is Revealing:
At one point, a BBC reporter asked him if he accepted that his “legacy as prime minister” depended on “the man standing next to you,” Mr. Maliki, implying that a failure of the new government would doom Mr. Blair’s standing in history. Another British reporter asked if Mr. Blair or Mr. Maliki “could honestly say” that Iraqis were better off than they were under Saddam Hussein.
Mr. Blair’s tone hardened. Proof that it had been worth it, he said, was evident because “you are able to put me, the British prime minister, and the Iraqi prime minister, under pressure” in a place where any challenge to authority was potentially fatal under Mr. Hussein. “The answer to your question, is it worth it, is the fact that we are even here having this conversation, in a country that is now a democracy.”
Interesting indeed. Is John Burns critizing his press colleagues for their belligerence?
April 30th, 2006 — moralizing, political culture, political theater, politics
This trial balloon is so pathetic.
A movie about Al Gore giving a PowerPoint presentation about global warming doesn’t sound all that exciting, but if you liked “March of the Penguins,” you’ll love “An Inconvenient Truth.” Gore is as relentless in his travels to save the planet and faces almost as many obstacles as those penguins making their way across the tundra.
Getting the country to face up to global warming is his life’s mission, and it could be his ticket to the presidency. Voters yearning for a principled leader who truly believes in something may find what they’re looking for in the former vice president. [emphasis added]
Any old thing will do…as long as he believes in something.
On the other hand…see this post about the (un)likelihood of getting Americans to respond to the urgent threat of global warming.
April 24th, 2006 — anti-totalitarianism, framing, free speech, geopolitics, moralizing, political theater
Chinese president Hu’s U.S. trip may have been marred by protocol slip-ups and “gaffes” such as letting a “heckler” **sneak onto the White House lawn and dare speak up in protest of official Chinese repression of the Falun Gong.
Indeed, according to the Times,
The Chinese Embassy in Washington sent a delegation to the White House on Friday to demand a detailed explanation of how an adherent of the Falun Gong spiritual sect, which is banned in China, managed to infiltrate the welcome ceremony for Mr. Hu on the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday and heckle Mr. Hu for several minutes before being escorted away.
On the other hand, Mr. Hu received an extra-warm welcome from his new best friends, the Saudis.
Meanwhile, the NYT’s crusading Nicholas Kristof is accusing China of “underwriting its second genocide in three decades” (the first was in Cambodia; this one is in Darfur).
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**On Thursday night after the event, I heard every anchor and broadcaster on CNN repeatedly refer to the protester as a “heckler”–they seemed to want to underscore this point, completely (and cluelessly, as usual) missing the point that this woman was doing in America what Chinese are not free to do in China: protest against their government. For which she should have been applauded for her bravery—and damn the diplomatic consequences. China, despite its capitalist fervor, is still run by totalitarians.
By Friday night, CNN had redeemed itself a little bit. Wolf Blitzer had a sit-down with the “heckler,” who was now miraculously transformed into a “brave” and “courageous” protester.
The MSM works in very mysterious ways…
April 20th, 2006 — anti-totalitarianism, free speech, information war, moralizing, political culture, politics
For a man who says he believes in spreading democracy, this president sets a miserable example. As he failed to do during the cartoon jihad, Bush fails to lead when it comes to vigorously defending freedom of speech at home. From Tim Cavanaugh at Hit and Run:
A Falun Gong protester who briefly interrupted Chinese President Hu Jintao’s welcoming speech will be charged with speechcrime disorderly conduct and “intimidating” a foreign official. President Bush has apologized to Hu (whom?) for the incident.
Meanwhile, the clueless folks at CNN describe this incident thus:
President Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao on Thursday stressed the importance of their nations’ ties after a White House welcoming ceremony, which was disrupted by a lone heckler and the misidentification of China’s anthem.
CNN’s take on this incident is that it was another black eye for Bush, who was embarrassed by the fracas.
And they completely miss an appalling, horrifying example of actual (and public) stifling of freedom of speech in America.
This fills me with dread.
April 19th, 2006 — anti-totalitarianism, framing, geopolitics, moralizing, political culture, status anxiety
Reason’s Jacob Sullum comes out forcefully against the Palestinian Authority for its dismal failure to lead in the aftermath of the terrorist killings in Israel yesterday.
A spokesman for Hamas, the party that controls the Palestinian legislature and cabinet as a result of January’s parliamentary elections, blamed the attack on “the Israeli occupation,” saying, “Our people…have every right to use all means to defend themselves.” The Hamas-run Interior Ministry called the bombing “a direct result of the policy of the occupation and the brutal aggression and siege committed against our people.”
The “occupation” to which Hamas refers is not the one that occurred after the Six Day War in 1967, when Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza (which it left last year). Hamas is talking about the “occupation” that resulted from the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
The position of the Palestinian Authority, which was created as a result of negotiations aimed at achieving a lasting settlement between Israelis and Palestinians, is clear: All Israel must do to stop the terrorist attacks–excuse me, the perfectly legitimate acts of self-defense–is cease to exist.
Some of the comments on Reason’s Hit and Run aren’t pretty [emphasis added]:
Why would Reason post such a one-sided pro-Israel article? I am sure what Sullum said is true, but also woefully incomplete as a description of what happened and is happening over there. Usually Sullum is more intellectually honest than this, at least when he writes about smoking.
Let me suggest the libertarian approach to Israel: the US gov’t should get out of the Israel business.
Comment by: Dave W. at April 19, 2006 09:21 AM
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I agree with Dave W on this one. Yup the Palestinian authorities are total scumbags. But it’s not like the Israeli authorities are any less so. The Palestinians use suicide bombs, the Israelis use helicopters and rockets. Their targets may not be ‘random’ but they’ve demonstrated that they’re perfectly happy to take out a few innocent children when targeting (alleged) terrorists, even when they miss the target.
There are no good guys in the Middle East. I am very disappointed in Jacob. No doubt, his perspective is influenced by his personal involvement. But really Jake, if you want to be part of the solution (as opposed to perpetuating the “their side is evil” problem), get your niece out of that fucked up part of the world. That’s as much as you can do. The people of the Mid East are committed to killing each other and nothing will ever change that.
Comment by: Warren at April 19, 2006 10:16 AM
I am, sadly, reminded of a December 2001 essay by the late Michael Kelly, who later died in the Iraq war, which he was covering:
Not to be judgmental about it, but two cheers for Alison Hornstein. Ms. Hornstein is a student at Yale University and she has written a column for the Dec. 17 [2001] issue of Newsweek in which she attempts to come to terms with what for her and her friends at Yale is the most troublesome question arising out of Sept. 11: Did somebody do something really bad here? This is not a question that most people have a hard time with, and that is Ms. Hornstein’s point. She is surprised and bothered to find that, in the wake of the murders, many of her classmates had been unable even to address the question. Why? Because to address it would be to make a moral judgment, and to judge others is, for Ms. Hornstein’s generation of properly educated young elites, the great taboo. [emphasis added]
Read the whole thing.
And I am also reminded of Michael Walzer’s 2002 essay “Can There Be a Decent Left?”
There is no deeper impulse in left politics than this enlistment [on the side of oppressed men and women]; solidarity with people in trouble seems to me the most profound commitment that leftists make. But this solidarity includes, or should include, a readiness to tell these people when we think they are acting wrongly, violating the values we share. Even the oppressed have obligations, and surely the first among these is not to murder innocent people, not to make terrorism their politics. Leftists who cannot insist upon this point, even to people poorer and weaker than themselves, have abandoned both politics and morality for something else. They are radical only in their abjection. That was Sartre’s radicalism, face-to-face with FLN terror, and it has been imitated by thousands since, excusing and apologizing for acts that any decent left would begin by condemning. [emphasis added]
This isn’t an argument against the left per se. The folks at Reason are, supposedly, libertarians. Which means that “we should never judge others” is a cultural phenomenon, not a political platform.
That is worrisome. Because “even-handedness” presupposes that there are two equally “right” sides to every issue, and that both sides deserve a “fair” hearing. It presupposes that one side should never be “privileged” over another.
Is no one ever wrong in this universe?
(Michael Kelly does a much better job than I do of laying it out. Read that essay. It’s short.)
April 16th, 2006 — PR, framing, information war, moralizing, narratives, news, political culture, politics
In the pages of the Washington Post, Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, comes out in favor of nuclear energy:
More than 600 coal-fired electric plants in the United States produce 36 percent of U.S. emissions — or nearly 10 percent of global emissions — of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change. Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely.
More interesting than Moore’s new position is his explanation of how and why he changed his mind, including the fact that it was a mind-set, rather than reason, that allowed him to hold a steady position on the subject for so long [emphasis added]:
In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That’s the conviction that inspired Greenpeace’s first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.
Lest we celebrate too soon at this rare occurrence in the culture war–and admission by Moore that he and his “compatriots” (i.e., all of us, and I include myself, who bought in to this belief) allowed faith, rather than reason, to guide their judgment–let me quote Moore on how this might relate to Iran, which is much in the news because it claims it is developing nuclear technology in order to provide energy for its population:
I [endorse nuclear energy] guardedly, of course, just days after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that his country had enriched uranium. “The nuclear technology is only for the purpose of peace and nothing else,” he said. But there is widespread speculation that, even though the process is ostensibly dedicated to producing electricity, it is in fact a cover for building nuclear weapons.
And although I don’t want to underestimate the very real dangers of nuclear technology in the hands of rogue states, we cannot simply ban every technology that is dangerous. That was the all-or-nothing mentality at the height of the Cold War, when anything nuclear seemed to spell doom for humanity and the environment.
Well, okay. We had one kind of “mentality” back in 1979. But isn’t Moore’s new position just another “conviction”–a “mentality” acquired through faith rather than reason?
Nuclear fuel can be diverted to make nuclear weapons. This is the most serious issue associated with nuclear energy and the most difficult to address, as the example of Iran shows. But just because nuclear technology can be put to evil purposes is not an argument to ban its use.
Over the past 20 years, one of the simplest tools — the machete — has been used to kill more than a million people in Africa, far more than were killed in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings combined. What are car bombs made of? Diesel oil, fertilizer and cars. If we banned everything that can be used to kill people, we would never have harnessed fire.
And here we lose the thread of reason, because Moore has just defined down the threat from nuclear weapons.
He compares, randomly, and absurdly, the number of people killed by machetes in the last 20 years to those killed by the nuclear bombs released on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I’ve been in favor of reopening the question of nuclear energy for a long time. But if support for this endeavor is hijacked to justify naive policy toward Iran (i.e., no policy or, worse, the idea that Ahmadinejad is all bluster), count me out.
April 15th, 2006 — framing, information war, language, moralizing, political culture, political speech
Things seem to be spiraling out of control over at Arianna’s place.
Last week, while Ms. Huffington was taking the high road and imploring her readers (and perhaps some of her bloggers) to curtail their calls for ideological purity (they have declined, defiantly), elsewhere at the HuffPost, Jane Smiley and Eric Alterman were flaying Time columnist Joe Klein.
It’s all very complicated, and dramatic. Apparently, Joe Klein, a liberal pundit who has been critical of the Democrats and of the hard-left elements in the party that have been allowed to set policy and agendas and the terms of debate on certain issues, engaged in some name-calling at a private event (that was attended by many press types). Alterman reports:
after someone brought up the question of the whether the Democrats will be able to present an effective alternative to Bush in the next election, Joe Klein shouted out, “Well they won’t if their message is that they hate America–which is what has been the message of the liberal wing of the party for the past twenty years.”
Klein explains his point:
Alterman had me castigating the “liberal wing” of the party, which I was careful not to do. There is a crucial difference between liberals and leftists, especially on foreign policy–even though Republicans (and leftist-wingers) have successfully conflated the two over the past few decades. The default position of leftists like, say, Michael Moore and many writers at The Nation, is that America is essentially a malignant, imperialistic force in the world and the use of American military power is almost always wrong. Liberals have a more benign, and correct, view of America’s role in the world and tend to favor the use of military force if it is exercised judiciously, as a last resort, and in a multilateral contect–with U.N. approval or through NATO. The first Gulf War, the overthrow of the Taliban and the Kosovo intervention met these criteria; Bush’s Iraq invasion clearly did not. That was the point I was trying to make at breakfast.
Jane Smiley titles her post “Let’s Pile On Joe.” She invokes Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, James Cagney, and Martin Luther King. And her all-American grandpa. I have written about Smiley’s poisonous partisanship here and here and here. And about left sectarianism here and here.
The Euston Manifesto describes this phenomenon. Read it.
April 12th, 2006 — PR, gossip, moralizing, political culture, political theater, pop culture
Despite what the heretofore unknown Ron Burkle would like you to believe–that he is a victim (I’m not saying he isn’t a victim of extortion: he is; but he is not a victim of bad publicity; he won that round)–he has gotten exactly what he wanted: a massive amount of attention.
A week ago he was Ron Who? Now everyone knows his name. To what end, though? Why is this extremely wealthy private citizen so eager to get his name in the papers? (to come to the attention of a Jared Paul Stern in the first place, you have to be hanging out with the beautiful people, so we know Burkle was eager to be a somebody.) What is Burkle selling? What, one wonders, is his cause?
Burkle claims that the Post repeatedly dismissed his requests for corrections to “one inaccurate item [about his personal life] after another.”
But when he voices his main complaint, you’ll see that Burkle ups the ante, extrapolating that the long arm of the New York Post’s Page Six gossip column (which is considerable: Dominick Dunne, who writes about the rich and the powerful for Vanity Fair just told Larry King, as I write, that he reads Page Six first thing every morning) has reached into the Wall Street and Washington, D.C. with its brutal takedown style:
Casual disregard for the facts may be synonymous with tabloid gossip. And it would be satisfying to reach the conclusion that simply holding gossip-writers to the same standards as other journalists will solve the problem. But it won’t. For one thing, gossip and tabloid-style journalism has been spreading rapidly to other spheres of reporting. Gossip coverage that used to be devoted primarily to movie stars now encompasses politicians and business people. [emphasis mine]
What’s that you say? The wealthy and the powerful are suddenly the object of interest to a once-discreet press?
Not so fast.
No less an authority than Gail Collins, editorial page editor of the New York Times, wrote this about gossip (”unverified information about a person’s private life that he or she might prefer to keep hidden”) in her highly entertaining 1998 book Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity, and American Politics:
Gossip answers a wide range of human needs. It makes the teller feel important. It bonds both teller and listener together with a sense of sharing something slightly forbidden. By revealing behavior that’s normally hidden, it helps people to understand how things really work in the mysterious world behind closed doors [emphasis mine]…..
For much of human history, it was one of the few weapons available to the powerless: servants who spread stories about their masters, peasants who irreverently speculated about the most private aspects of life in the manor. … In American history, gossip has sometimes been a reaction against heavily marketed politicians who voters might suspect were being thrust upon them against their will.
Collins’s book details the long, inextricable relationship between politicians and gossip throughout American history. The wealthy and powerful court attention, and those who court attention—especially if they are wealthy and powerful—attract envy and, yes, gossip. It is the oldest story in the book.
But the “persecuted” Ron Burkle draws a rather astonishing conclusion from his own travails–that the media’s standing in our great democracy is at stake!
No doubt the challenge of upholding the highest media standards has never been harder. But institutions that give up [like the Post, which refused to retract gossip items about a nobody--ed.] will find that the lines between them and bloggers, demi-pundits and rumor-mongers on the Internet will be blurred beyond recognition. Newspapers that continue to go down the road of tabloidism, that adopt the shoddy standards of gossip reporting, and that arrogantly resist correcting their mistakes, risk losing their special role in our democracy.
If Dominick Dunne is right, the NYT will stop printing its gossip column, Bold Face, this coming Friday.
Stay tuned. I’ll definitely be following this story.
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updated 4/23 to fix some typos and some garbled syntax
