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Watching BBC America, waiting for Top Gear to come on, and BBC World News America did a preview of a report they’re doing this week from Cuba. “And, of course, there’s the spirit of Fidel Castro, El Commandante, who ruled over this country for nearly half a century, a world record.”
Um, no? Should I chalk that up to Commie media censorship?
Apollo posted this at 8:09 PM EST on Monday, February 22nd, 2010 as Journalism, Those Wacky Foreigners
That’s a pretty strong piece, and a pretty strong charge, from someone I generally respect. I don’t have a fully formed opinion on the matter, so I won’t say whether I agree with it or not.
What I will say is that I stopped reading Sullivan when he took up residence in Sarahpalin’s nether regions. I’ve visited his site maybe a half dozen times since then, and each time I saw some unflattering comment about Jews. I didn’t say anything, here or elsewhere, because I had no way of knowing whether what I read was at all representative of his current incarnation. That is, I gave Sullivan an undeserved benefit of the doubt.
Whether Wieseltier is right about Sullivan’s Jewish problem I won’t say, but Wieseltier is certainly correct that Sullivan has an unhealthy tendency to see conspiracies and evil motives wherever he looks. Once people start conspiracy rambling, it’s usually the case that at least some anti-Semitism will creep in. If it’s crept into Sullivan, I wouldn’t be surprised. At least, not as surprised as I am to see TNR run such a lenthy and personal takedown of one of its former editors.
Apollo posted this at 2:36 PM EST on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 as Journalism, What Ever Happened to Andrew Sullivan?
How to create news:
Jamie posted this at 12:38 PM EST on Friday, January 29th, 2010 as Humor, Journalism
It is utterly beyond me why some New York publication has chosen to publish a blog which consists of an unattractive women being catty about the hottest woman on American television. Perhaps I’m not the target demographic? It is also beyond me why whoever puts the photos on the NYTimes website didn’t notice that they’d stretched said hottest woman horizontally.
I thought real women had curves, and the scrawny chicks were the ones we were supposed to make fun of. Or am I a decade behind there, and we’re back to making fun of fat chicks? Whatever; I have a hard time keeping up with these sorts of things. But if there are any notions of fashion or beauty that deny that Christina Hendricks was a complete knockout in that dress, they’re wrong.
Apollo posted this at 1:43 AM EST on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 as Journalism, Pop Culture Is Filth
Jonah posts an email that raises one of my favorite subjects that never gets raised. I posted a few years ago that for all the Democrats may bitch about Republicans gaining an advantage in the senate and electoral college from the disproportionate power of small states, the Democrats get at least their fair share. Now I’ve got an excuse to count things again!
Back then, in the 109th Congress (2005-07), for both the ten most populous states and the ten least populous states, there were 11 Democrat senators and 9 Republicans, with Republicans getting their large majority from the 30 states in the middle.
Now for the 111th Congress, which has 60 Democrat senators and 40 Republicans, I’ll review the ten most and ten least populous states. The ten least populous:
That’s 15Ds, 5Rs. That’s a somewhat higher proportion (75%) than the overall number of Democrats in the Senate (60%). How about the ten most populous states?
That’s 13Ds, 7Rs, a somewhat more Republican ratio (35%) than in the ten least populous states, but still more Democratic than the Senate at large (Note: In 2006, New Jersey was the 10th most populous state, and it had and has 2Ds; North Carolina has moved up).
As I did for the 109th Congress, I’ll break down states into groups of ten and list their partisan representation in the Senate:
So, as in the 109th Congress, the Republicans do better in states 21-40. But what’s interesting this time is that the most lopsided group is the Democrats’ control of senate seats from the ten least populous states. I said this in 2006, and I’ll say it in 2009, and I’ll almost certainly say it for any future years I compile such numbers: “Remarkably enough, senate apportionment seems to most benefit the party that wins elections.”
While I’m doing numbers, I’ll also break down the 2008 presidential election as I did the 2004 presidential election, showing how many states from each group were won by each party. Overall, Obama carried 28 out of 50 states (56%):
So McCain won a majority of the 30 smallest states. But considering that he only got 32% of the electoral vote, it’s hard to say that Republicans really benefited from their wins in the small states. Obama carried a huge electoral majority because he won 15 of the 20 largest states. That is as it should be. The Constitution works again: he who wins the votes of the American people wins the votes of the American people. Hallelujah, amen.
Apollo posted this at 4:16 AM EST on Friday, January 15th, 2010 as Amer-I-Can!, Journalism, Politics
Prof. Althouse is, I think, correct that the NYT got played in part of its profile of Roger Ailes.
One thing that too often gets left out when discussing newspaper or magazine profiles of those those at Fox or in the new media is that these are [allegedly] for-profit organizations writing about their competitors. We probably wouldn’t take seriously a Ford employee’s profile of a Honda VP, but a Roger Ailes profile in the NYT or a story about Rush on CNN for some reason gets treated seriously. Perhaps if the NYT or CNN could be trusted to be honest, their stories about their competitors should be taken seriously. But in large measure the success of Ailes and Rush, and a whole swath of openly conservative journalists, is due to the fact that the NYT and CNN can’t be trusted to be honest.
Apollo posted this at 12:13 PM EST on Sunday, January 10th, 2010 as It's Economics - Stupid!, Journalism
I learn from Reuters:
Electricity usage in Texas rose Friday as arctic air covered most of the state, hitting another winter power record after setting one just the night before, according to initial data from the state grid operator.
I’ve never been to the arctic, but I was in Austin last night, and I think it got down to around 20 degrees. That’s definitely the coldest it’s been since I’ve been here, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it’s not really “arctic” around here.
Yes, perhaps this air was once over the arctic (the planet’s only so big – the air I’m breathing has probably been in most areas). But before it got here it warmed up considerably at the expense of other locations. At most it should be said that we have “Dakota air” covering the state, or “Montana air.” Texans don’t need Reuters’s help in exaggerating how cold it is here.
Apollo posted this at 1:20 PM EST on Saturday, January 9th, 2010 as Deep in the Heart of Texas, Journalism
“Mind-reading systems could change air security”
I’m pretty sure that a system that read minds not only could, but would, change every type of human interaction in ways beyond our powers of prediction.
Fortunately, the story only describes computer devices that attempt to interpret physical behavior. Useful, perhaps, in airport security. But nowhere near mind-reading.
Apollo posted this at 5:55 PM EST on Friday, January 8th, 2010 as Journalism
From WaPo’s star juvenile policy analyst:
To put this in context, Lieberman was invited to participate in the process that led to the Medicare buy-in. His opposition would have killed it before liberals invested in the idea. Instead, he skipped the meetings and is forcing liberals to give up yet another compromise. Each time he does that, he increases the chances of the bill’s failure that much more. And if there’s a policy rationale here, it’s not apparent to me, or to others who’ve interviewed him. At this point, Lieberman seems primarily motivated by torturing liberals. That is to say, he seems willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.
Personally, I oppose socialized medicine because I love the sound of the uninsured wailing and gnashing their teeth. Their lamentations help me relax.
So I guess it’s a bad thing that Joe Lieberman is committing genocide just to annoy Ezra Klein. But compared to me, his motives seem almost noble.
Apollo posted this at 12:07 PM EST on Monday, December 14th, 2009 as Health Care, Journalism
From Reuters:
BEIJING, Nov 18 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama gave his sternest warning yet about the need to contain rising U.S. deficits . . .
Apollo posted this at 8:31 AM EST on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 as Barack Obama Couldn't Persuade a Bear to Crap in the Woods, Journalism
Does this bear any resemblance whatsoever to the promises our president made during the campaign, or the way that some David Brooksy-types assured us he would govern?
Or is this the Chicago-style politics we ignorant knuckledraggers on the extreme right predicted?
Just something to consider when thinking about who to believe in the future.
Apollo posted this at 9:40 AM EDT on Monday, October 19th, 2009 as Journalism, That's Not Change!
I don’t know much about the “Oath Keepers,” but I do know how to spot hack journalism, and this is it. It’s difficult to to think of a better example of shoehorning an organization into a predetermined story line. This story leaves me firmly with the impression that, while I probably wouldn’t join it, this is just a right-wing organization getting smeared as “extremists” by the usual suspects who think anything to the right of Susan Collins’s left foot is “extremist.”
Apollo posted this at 7:49 AM EDT on Monday, October 19th, 2009 as Journalism
So, just to clarify.
Apollo posted this at 6:41 PM EDT on Friday, October 16th, 2009 as Journalism
Anytime someone implies that CNN is the serious news network that eschews opinion journalism in favor of actual reporting, remember this.
In a rational world, there would be a libel payout over this crap.
Apollo posted this at 8:36 PM EDT on Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 as Journalism
The most meaningless and misleading euphemism in English-speaking politics – and that’s a difficult list to top – is how abortion advocates have turned “choice” into a synonym for abortion.
Read this story. And count how many choices that this woman made that led up to her abortions. Opposing abortion has nothing to do with opposing “choice,” no more than opposing theft or vandalism or slavery involves opposing “choice.” That is, surely all things we ban restrict “choice” in some way, but the relevant question is whether that is a choice we believe should be closed off to our fellow citizens. Monopolizing the word “choice” for the pro-abortion cause is perhaps the single most audacious maneuver in the lengthy American history of twisting language for political purposes. What’s galling – utterly galling – is how the entire media goes along with it.
Apollo posted this at 8:03 PM EDT on Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 as Journalism, Kulturkampf, Politics and the English Language