September 22, 2004
But if he's given a lot of money to Hamas, he is funding terrorism, and we need to change the mind-set that makes a little killing of innocents here, a few suicide bombings there, okay as long as you mean well.
I love this guy; I can't help it. And I can't help but agree with James:
Truly bizarre. Surely, this guy isn't a sufficient threat to national security that they couldn't have waited until the plan got to Dulles to detain him.
But we need to stop the funding of groups like Hamas, and stop conferring respectability on those who transfer funds to them. I didn't buy Teaser and the Firecat on CD with the notion of killing innocent people.
And what we cannot have is a system in which celebrity confers a sort of immunity upon people, who can do whatever they like as long as they are famous.
I love some of what Islam does: starting schools and the like. But we just cannot welcome rich guys who fund terrorists coming and going as they please.
The whole thing is painful to me, though.
Now I've been cryin' lately, thinking about the world as it is,
Why must we go on hating; why can't we live in bliss?
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September 21, 2004
But . . . seriously. Here's The Big Trunk of Powerline, who has a question or two for the brass at CBS.
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Via Bill in DC.
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Here, he discusses the malpractice at CBS:
These are not people who were duped. And the problem is not how they handled it once they were caught -- though they handled that part badly. Their main transgression was in ignoring the evidence staring them in the face before the story ever ran. At the very least, they could have given some time on the broadcast to the dissenters.But they didn't. And I've said this before, but it bears repeating: don't fool yourself believing that this is the first time this has happened. Come on. If you have watched "60 Minutes" then you are familiar with that feeling you have at the end of a segment, when you think to yourself: "Wow, everything seems to point to one conclusion." You thought that was because everything really did point to one conclusion?
Nope. It's because everything else was left on the cutting room floor.
We're just seeing one very notorious example where they got caught.
Yeah. They've got caught before, but there wasn't enough "buzz" that they were forced to kind-of sort-of admit it.
It's a whole new world out there.
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By now just about everybody on the planet also thinks [the "Killian" documents are] junk, except for that dwindling number of misguided people who watch the ''CBS Evening News'' under the misapprehension that it's a news broadcast rather than a new unreality show in which a cocooned anchor, his floundering news division and some feeble executives are trapped on their own isle of delusion and can't figure out a way to vote themselves off it.So the only story you're in a position to break right now is: ''Late-Breaking News. Veteran Newsman Announces He's Recovered His Marbles.'' And, if last week's anything to go by, you're in no hurry to do that.
Instead, Dan keeps demanding Bush respond to the ''serious questions'' raised by his fake memos. ''With respect, Mr. President,'' he droned the other day, ''answer the questions.'' The president would love to, but he's doubled up with laughter.
And:
Why has CBS News decided it would rather debauch its brand and treat its audience like morons than simply admit their hoax? For Dan Rather? I doubt it. Hurricane Dan looks like he's been hit by one. He's still standing, just about, but, like a battered double-wide, more and more panels are falling off every day. No one would destroy three-quarters of a century of audience trust and goodwill for one shattered anachronism of an anchorman, would they?As the network put it last week, ''In accordance with longstanding journalistic ethics, CBS News is not prepared to reveal its confidential sources or the method by which '60 Minutes' Wednesday received the documents.'' But, once they admit the documents are fake, they can no longer claim ''journalistic ethics'' as an excuse to protect their source. There's no legal or First Amendment protection afforded to a man who peddles a fraud. You'd think CBS would be mad as hell to find whoever it was who stitched them up and made them look idiots.
So why aren't they? The only reasonable conclusion is that the source -- or trail of sources -- is even more incriminating than the fake documents. Why else would Heyward and Rather allow the CBS news division to commit slow, public suicide?
Whatever other lessons are drawn from this, we ought at least to acknowledge that the privileged position accorded to ''official'' media and the restrictions placed on the citizenry by McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform are wholly unwarranted.
Yes. That is where we are. If nothing else, this election cycle should have taught us that McCain-Feingold has got to go.
And it is indeed starting to look like the Democratic Party is in this up to its belly button—at least.
Via The Pirate.
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Fair enough, but as one of Smash's commenters points out, how can Reuters report the news if they don't use that word? What is next?—replacing the judgmental word "murder" with something else such as "assisted untimely death"?
Kathy Kinsley recently remarked that the word "militant" now means "terrorist," and we'll simply have to come up with a new word for "militant." We may well be at that point, and it's a shame.
Story is at Smash, via Dean Esmay and Joe Gandelman.
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September 17, 2004
In the meantime, check out all the fabulous blogs on my sidebar and don't let Dan Rather get by with any more shit.
Expect another homage to the interstate highway system when I get home.
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A funny, sad, and revealing documentary about Rodney Bingenheimer, a KROQ deejay and LA rock scenester for nearly forty years. Directed by the same guy who worked on Hearts of Darkness, Mayor follows Rodney's life as a sort of superannuated male groupie who's been able not only to insinuate himself with rock royalty from the mid-60s, but to break new acts as a club owner and DJ . . . and yet has virtually nothing to show for his being the first American champion of everyone from David Bowie, to the Ramones, to Oasis. Period clips show Rodney popping up, Zelig-like, in virtually every rock 'n' roll turning point since 1965; one especially interesting piece is a tape recording of him attempting to direct-dial President Kennedy in 1963—speaking with the same halting, wheezy voice as a Mountain View-raised teen that he still sports forty years later.
Rodney comes off onscreen much as he does on the radio. Physically, he's a diminutive, elfin, middle-aged teenager who still sports the same hairdo and clothes ensemble he's had since the late-70s punk/new-wave era. Personally, he's a not-too-bright, unpretentious, likable, good-hearted naif who loves rock 'n' roll, and is only intermittently aware of how much potential success, personal growth and maturity he's sacrificed to the music . . . not as a performer or promoter, but as a mere fan, albeit one who gets to party with his heroes, and occasionally have them shoot him some credit or paid work. He's too kindhearted and courteous to openly badmouth the many people who've exploited him, although the camera does catch one scene where he angrily confronts a prodigy who's returned his kindness by setting up a competing, nearly-identical radio program.
There are plenty of interviews with famous folks who owe their careers to the man, and/or who've tried to help him in return. The standouts are a backstage meeting between Rodney and David Bowie (whom Rodney broke in the USA), and a guest visit on Bingenheimer's KROQ show by the brain-damaged, brilliant Beach Boy Brian Wilson. Fellow scenester, would-be-impresario and uber-asshole Kim Fowley contributes some hilarious observations as well; my favorite is when he answers ex-Runaway Cherie Currie's accusations of past sexual misdeeds with a stinging, self-deprecating riposte.
Watching Mayor of the Sunset Strip brought back memories of listening to Rodney on KROQ on Sunday nights in the late 70s and early 80s. I remember that his show immediately followed Dr. Demento's revue of self-consciously clever novelty records; I was a regular listener. Eventually Rodney's world of punk rock and Sunset-Strip scenesterism proved to be far more fun and refreshing than Demento's retread geekfest, and I joined the burgeoning punk/New-Wave scene.
In other worlds, and more generally, Rodney Bingenheimer saved me from becoming a nerd. Had I—a rather shy music-lover much like Mr. B—not immersed myself in the late-70s L.A. underground, I could very easily have retreated into the dork-world epitomized by Demento and his fans, and spent my college years onward as a Dungeons-and-Dragons-playing, compulsively-punning, socially-illiterate geek. Much of what's been good, interesting, stimulating and just plain fun in my life from 1977 onward can be directly traced to the influence of this funny little guy and his ability to transmit a kind of L.A. rock-n-roll gestalt to both the famous and the fans.
Put me down as yet another individual the Mayor of the Sunset Strip helped, who's only now getting around to giving him his propers.
Mikal is a Bay Area writer and book merchant. As an author, he specializes in the paranormal and the odd; he is most famous for the book Mysterious California: Strange Places and Eerie Phenomena in the Golden State, which is out of print but available here and there. He assures us he's at work on something even wilder.
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September 15, 2004
Rather still wants this whole story to be "Did Bush Bend the Rules To Get Into TANG, And Then Miss His Physical?" When in fact it's "Did Dan Know the Documents Were Fake, Or Not?" I guess we can forgive him for not being able to sniff out the story people actually care about in all this.
I know they've been laying the groundwork for this "forged, but accurate" defense, but it was still startling to see it. I'm going to assume that if Rather got charged with a crime, and there was gossip/innuendo to the effect that he was guilty, it would be okay with him for a cop to plant evidence. After all, the "evidence" so manufactured would be "faked, but accurate." The language is Orwellian, and the logic is circular: "the documents authenticated the rumors; the rumors authenticate the documents. We can all go home early."
But I do have a favorite moment. It was the point when Mrs. Knox asserted to Rather that the young Lt. Bush "didn't seem to think he had to go by the rules that others did."
I'm sure Rather found something to relate to there.
A few little blogger-picky things: Why is Dan Rather asking a TANG secretary questions outside her real area of expertise, pertaining to military procedure and so forth? Memos and files are things she's qualified to discuss, but chain-of-command issues, and the seriousness of not taking a physical, are matters that I would expect pilots and their actual superiors to speak to—not support staff. Why does this matter? Because every pilot from the time who's weighed in on this on the sites I've visited has said that missing a physical wasn't a matter one's commanding officer would normally get involved in. You did it within the month your birthday fell, or you stopped getting paychecks if you were required to maintain your flight status. Or, in Lt. Bush's case, the understanding was, IIRC, that it was more practical for him to let his flying status lapse since he wasn't going to be flying anyway. As I understand it, it was considered wasteful for him to maintain it if he wasn't going to need it.
If Bush really was supposed to have a physical exam, why can't CBS find someone in his chain of command to assert this? Other than a dead guy into whose mouth they are putting words?
And Mrs. Knox admits that medical exams normally took place around one's birthday! She said that in the interview! So why would Killian be leaning on him to get it done earlier in the year, rather than in July?
And then there's the vaguely unpleasant insinuation that a man's secretary is going to have a more accurate memory about his state of mind regarding any given individual than his own wife would. (But then, that's why CBS used Killian's son as the gentle challenge to Mrs. Knox's recollections, rather than his widow.)
If Bush really was resented by his fellow officers for his "attitude" (and that may well be; he's only recently mastered that smirk thing), why can't CBS find one of them?
And there's this weird two step wherein some unknown party saw a file full of Killian's notes (which must have been hand-written, and therefore material Knox didn't necessarily see) pertaining to Bush, and transcribed them. But Mrs. Knox says things were changed so Killian wouldn't get into trouble. Why would a dead man need plausible deniability, anyway? And also: from the news organization's point of view, if you have hand-written notes, you've struck the mother lode. Who in their right mind would transcribe them to make them look more "official"?
If this is the way they want to go, then they need to find those original notes. This may be a problem, since the family maintains they never existed.
And if I were Killian's family, I'd be thinking about slander suits.
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Rather Alters Stance on Space-Unicorn RoyaltyNEW YORK -- In a stunning reversal yesterday, embattled CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather renounced his claim to the throne of the Space Unicorns, instead declaring himself to be the Bonnukarr, culmination of human evolution, sent back in time from the 857th Century by the warrior-god Kobaltine IV to prepare mankind for the coming Insect Wars.
Via Ilyka.
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September 14, 2004
The goal is to finish the entire play, of course. Each blogger does one scene.
Me, I want to do the scene wherein the forest starts moving . . . Oh, wait.
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(Yes, the links to the commenters are real. The comments themselves are not. Use your head.)
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I'm on Safari, and I'm running OS 10.3. So I'm having to learn both of these at the same time. And I'm not always sure which new things are a function of which.
This is my fourth Macintosh. My first one was a "Fat Mac," a super-duper 512K model from 1985. State of the art. No hard drive, of course. It's hilarious to think of how far we've come since then. That's part of the reason I got a little more computer than I really felt I needed: I assumed that seemingly exotic functions like the ability to burn DVDs will be commonplace in a few years, and the way I hang on to computers, I thought I'd need functions that appear frivolous right now. Computers aren't like cars: you can't drive the same model for 10-12 years just because it's well-made.
At the moment, I can't access my Little Miss Attila e-mail account from here. I'm assuming that's a function of low memory, and that when I get the Obligatory Mac Upgrade tomorrow it'll be better.
I may be asking questions here from time to time, since that's always been a fast way of finding technical information.
Also, I'm having to reassemble all my e-mail addresses. If you're in my private life and haven't sent me mail in the past eight days or so, you might want to do this. I do have some data from the old computer, but not everything. (If your info is on the Olive web site—and you know who you are—never mind.)
Technical question 1:
How do I copy photos in 10.3? I'm accustomed to just holding the trackpad cursor on the image, with the lever depressed, for one or two seconds, until a dialogue box pops up to ask if I want the image copied. This isn't working.
Thanks.
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60 MINUTES TO INVESTIGATE 60 MINUTES II
NEW YORK — In a stunning development, the flagship news program of CBS, 60 Minutes, has decided to investigate its Wednesday night counterpart, ‘60 Minutes II.’60 Minutes producer Don Hewitt came out of retirement in order to investigate the spinoff program, which, he pointed out, was an idea he had always hated and opposed anyway.
“This story has all the classic ingredients of a archetypal 60 Minutes story,” Hewitt said. “Forgeries and lies. A brazen attempt to influence a presidential election. Shadowy political operatives. A powerful institution that is hiding behind short, defiant statements. The whole situation just screamed a need for a hard-hitting reporter to hold the powerful guys in suits accountable. It just happens that in this case, we’re interviewing the powerful guys in suits down the hall.”
The media world is abuzz with excitement about the shocking interview of CBS Evening News host Dan Rather by Mike Wallace. CBS has released one particularly tense exchange:
(Wallace and Rather sit opposite each other, eye to eye, almost mirror images.)
Wallace: ExpertÂ… after expertÂ… after expert has declared these documents (dramatically holding up four sheets of paper) to be forgeries. What is your response to them?
Rather: We have solid sources.
Wallace: Who are they?
Rather: IÂ’m not going to say.
Wallace: Why should people trust you?
Rather: Do you know who I am? IÂ’ve been in the news business for 42 years!
Wallace: Do you know who I am? IÂ’ve been in the news business for 53 years! And Christopher Plummer played me in the movie!
Rather: I am 100 percent certain that the chances of this document being real are almost 51 percent.
Wallace: YouÂ’re being evasive.
Rather: IÂ’m not being evasive, IÂ’m just being more nimble than a one-legged Texas bullfrog before a prairie thunderstorm!
Wallace: That doesnÂ’t even make sense.
Rather: IÂ’m tired of this criticism coming up with regular frequency, Kenneth.
Wallace: What frequency? And whoÂ’s Kenneth?
60 Minutes will present its report, “The Great CBS News Civil War of 2004” on Sunday.
WARNING: The above statement is a parody. So far.
My favorite line? "It just happens that in this case, we’re interviewing the powerful guys in suits down the hall.”
Scroll around the "Kerry corner" while you're in the neighborhood: Geraghty has some interesting insights on what's going on inside CBS right now, and how all these events affect the rest of us.
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But it's cargo cults that are on my mind. Remember those?—tribal island societies that enjoyed a surplus of exotic/luxury goods when Western pilots landed in their midst (particularly during WWII, though also at other times), and came to associate abundance with planes and pilots. The pilots and other military personnel became connected, in their minds, with godlike ancesters, and when the Westerners stopped using the bases and landing strips the people constructed replica planes out of indigenous materials such as bamboo. They wore faux headsets, made of wood. They lit up the landing strips, now empty. They acted like the Westerners had acted, but without understanding.
And so the Democrats, including the ones at CBS, saw the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth succeed in "smearing" John Kerry's military record, and saw Kerry's lead against Bush melt away. Like islanders constructing wooden headsets, they emulated the form, not understanding the function. They found/manufactured evidence that George W. Bush wasn't such hot stuff in his military career, either. They didn't understand that the potency of the Swifties' claims was not so much in the mechanics of how Kerry got any of his particular medals, but in the startling realization of the common voter that a group of American vets was hurt that badly by John Kerry's actions when he got home—the perception that he got out early on a pretext, and then proceeded to slander them to their families and their countries—that they could never forgive him. Even those whose religious faiths demanded that they at least try.
That's what was important about the Swift Boat ads: America got to see just how much many military men and women—but particularly men from this one war—despised Kerry. And they began to wonder if there might be a reason for that.
And so the decision was made by some Democrat (either inside or outside the DNC, and that little detail does matter) to create scandal about George W. Bush's record during Vietnam. To close the deal that Gore had pitched, and Ann Richards before him: that George W. Bush was AWOL during Vietnam.
In a country that elected Bill Clinton as commander-in-chief twice. Including the time he ran against Bob Dole. It should be obvious that we don't place a huge value on military service— or John McCain would be President of the United States right now.
Clearly, the Dems didn't think it through: they confused the circumstances of a bounce with the true reason for a bounce.
The fact is, Americans don't really vote for their Presidents based on events of 30 years ago. But when the nation is under attack they like having a guy around whom the military establishment feels it can get a thing or two done with. And one whom the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines actually like.
Dan Rather helped his pals in the DNC to build wooden planes without engines. I wonder if he realizes this in the middle of the night when he's trying to figure out how long he can survive.
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September 13, 2004
Can some of this information be shared via e-mail while more of the facts are being nailed down?
Also, please keep in mind that the person who constructed these documents may well have done it as a joke (that would explain why they are so sloppy—they may not have been intended to deceive).
The focus should be on why Dan Rather accepted these memos at face value without more than a fig-leaf type of fact-checking job. It doesn't matter a whole lot where they actually came from, because they are just that bad: no one Dan Rather's age should have been taken in by them. After all, I'm sure he's seen a typed document or two in his day.
Let's be careful out there.
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Most of the other couples looked funny to me—ill-suited to each other, unattractive. I realized first that we probably look that way as well, and second that the reason was that it was early on in the process, and most couples were about to adopt for the first time. So there was still a bittersweet quality to the experience, as many were probably still mourning their infertility. Add to this the sense of a new, invasive experience, and it was the aura of uncertainty and discomfort I was picking up on more than anything else.
At one point my husband leaned over and whispered, "what if we adopt a monkey by mistake?"
I gave him a little smirk, and didn't roll my eyes, but I raised my eyebrows slightly and the look meant, "you don't get the laugh just because we're married. You'll have to do better than that."
"I mean, it would be cute and all, and we'd be really proud."
I started to smile.
"But what about when it finally became a toddler? It wouldn't really toddle, would it, just kind of shamble from side to side, and—"
I broke then, and started laughing out loud, thankful that we were on a break.
"—and start climbing. Wouldn't we feel like maybe we'd made a horrible mistake?"
"You're so evil," I told him. Which is what I always say. He knows it means I'm glad I married him.
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September 12, 2004
Please find your local CBS affiliate and complain about the shoddy reporting on the 60 Minutes segment that contained the forged Bush/TANG memos.
In the meantime, though I don't usually like boycotts, I think this is an extreme situation here, and we need to think about what our consumer dollars are supporting.
CBS advertisers include:
Sprint
Splenda
Pepcid
Novartis
Morgan Stanley
Merck
Kleenex
Kia
Infiniti
Home Depot
Estee Lauder
Cingular
Campbell's
Aventis
UPS
Consider getting in touch with some of these companies (the link above can help), and explaining to them why you are taking your business elsewhere.
Via Rather Biased.
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In the 80s and 90s you could make your own video about media bias and typefaces, and hawk it at gun shows to 5-10 people a day. And if mainstream media types even saw this material, it was easy to write you off as a crank.
I'm having that same feeling now that I did when I was ten years old and Walter Cronkite (whom we trusted in those days) came on the CBS Evening News to talk about all the insect parts that had been found by labs in commercially available hot dogs. To this day I'm a Hebrew National Beef Franks kind of girl—partly for the garlic they're laced with, but also for the rabbinical supervision over their production.
When I was ten, the question in my mind was, "how many insects have I eaten in hot dogs over the course of my life?" And now it's "how many flagrant lies have I swallowed because I've assumed that—despite the way the truth is shaded in the MSM—the bare-bones facts had been verified and could be trusted?" Beyond the spin, there were the facts. And they were reliable, or so I thought.
Now I've got less of a feeling that I can really count on any mainstream news organization at all. CBS, the Boston Globe, AP, and NPR have proven completely unreliable with respect to their fact-checking in areas related to the TANG issue (which no one cares about in the first place, BTW—it's not the crime, as they say . . . ).
The Los Angeles Times is trying to report the story, but bury it at the same time. It has, however, stopped short of lying, so we have to place it on the side of the truth-tellers here. Barely. (As Patterico points out, they place the meat of the allegations in the jump, and never use the word "forgery.")
ABC, Fox, the Dallas Morning News, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Washington Post are interested in preserving their reputations. They are at the top of the cliff, watching the other lemmings fall through the air, and deciding that they aren't interested in that particuar leap.
There are some journalists who realize what's happening, and want to preserve their reputations.
So the glass, going forward, is half-full. If only it weren't for all those metaphorical insect parts I've eaten over the past three or four decades.
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