Not just Spitzer


Great article in the Wall Street Journal

Spitzer's Media Enablers

The fall of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer holds many lessons, and the press will surely be examining them in coming months. But don't expect the press corps to delve into the biggest lesson of all -- its own role as his enabler.

Journalists have spent the past two days asking how a man of Mr. Spitzer's stature would allow himself to get involved in a prostitution ring. The answer, in my mind, is clear. The former New York attorney general never believed normal rules applied to him, and his view was validated time and again by an adoring press. "You play hard, you play rough, and hopefully you don't get caught," said Mr. Spitzer two years ago. He never did get caught, because most reporters were his accomplices.

Journalism has many functions, but perhaps the most important is keeping tabs on public officials. That duty is even more vital concerning government positions that are subject to few other checks and balances. Chief among those is the prosecutor, who can use his awesome state power to punish, even destroy, private citizens.

RTWT

Spitzer and Nifong aren't the only prosecutors who play this way, and in almost all the cases, the local media plays along. It's not just politics, it's economics. The DA or US Attorney is the guy with the information that crime reporters need.

I have the same question

Scott Chaffin on the Spitzer mess:

I just want to know how you ask your wife to stand up there on the toob by your side and take the fall for being a whoredog with you.

Political blog readership

Interesting article in the Washington Times

Political blogs not really so popular?

I guess it is a matter of perspective. Not many people read political blogs. But then, not many people read political magazines like National Review or The New Republic. Mass popularity and influence are not the same thing.

I found this notable though:

The Harris poll, meanwhile, found that political blog readership was lowest among those younger than 40 — and highest among people 63 and older.

So the most politically active demographic is most interested in political blogs. Young voters, who have deserted traditional media in droves, also ignore new media when it comes to politics.

If i was David Brooks i'd say something like: "this shows that Obama draws support from those who know and care the least about politics and national affairs."

But that kind of punditry can get a blogger a bad name.

HT: Powerline

This should be interesting

Gray may be the most unfairly maligned man in the whole Watergate affair. His story should be well worth reading.

On the temporal parochialism of sports yakkers So Brett Favre retires and ESPN and sport radio is trying to figure out where he rates among the all time greats. That’s what they say. What the yappers mean is “where does Favre rate among the great quarterbacks I saw play.” The list seems to start in 1981 with Montana and go from there. They give short shrift to Bart Starr who won five championships (Montana “only” won four). They never mention Roger Staubach who won two and came close to winning two more. Was Favre “the toughest quarterback ever”? He was certainly durable. But he had the advantage of playing in an era when QBs were protected by the rules. Check out some of the old NFL footage of games in the 1960s or early 1970s. The QBs were pounded on almost every pass. Today the refs would call it roughing the passer. Heck, in SB X they’d have ejected half of the Dallas and Pittsburgh d-lines for repeated, flagrant fouls. In 1975 it was just football. For my money, Staubach gives Favre a run for his money on “toughness”. All those fourth quarter comebacks he engineered came after he was beaten and battered for the whole game. The defense was licking its chops knowing he had to pass. And yet, he calmly cut them to pieces time after time. To see Staubach operate with the game on the line is something you don’t forget. The milk-drinking church-going all-American boy turned into a heartless assassin, a stone-cold killer. Hit him. Knock him down. It did not matter. The ball was already on its way to Billy Joe DuPree, or Tony Hill, or Drew Pearson. You could force him out of the pocket, you could chase him all over the field, but you could not rattle him. It was toughness as cool calculation. It’s the sort of thing you can’t find in statistics like you can find 214 consecutive starts or 50 touchdowns or 4,500 yards passing. But it was the quintessence of playing quarterback.

History worth reclaiming

I’m slowly working my way through Vincent Bugliosi’s book on the Kennedy assassination. He starts the book with a gripping narrative of the events of 11/22/63. It is rich in detail and filled with vignettes that perfectly capture a long lost era in America.

One of my favorite is the story of Ted Callaway. He was the manager of a used car dealership in Oak Cliffs. On the afternoon of 22 November, he heard the shots that killed officer JD Tippit. He left his office and saw Oswald trot past his business carrying a gun. Callaway ran to the scene of the shooting and arrived before the police could get their.

After he helped load the dying policeman into an ambulance, he noticed the officer’s service revolver lying in the street. Callaway, a Marine veteran of World War Two and Korea, picked it up and went to taxi driver William Scoggins. Here's Bugliosi on what happened:

Callaway tucks the gun in his belt and turns to the cabdriver, Scoggins.

“You saw the guy, didn’t you?” the former marine asks.

Scoggins admits he had.

“If he is going up Jefferson, he can’t be too far. Let’s go get the son of a bitch who’s responsible for this.”

In his blue suit and white shirt, Callaway looks like some kind of policeman, or Secret Service agent. Scoggins doesn’t find out until later that he’s simply a used-car manager. They go back to Scoggins’s cab and set off to cruise along Jefferson, the last place Callaway saw the gunman.

I know that I’m supposed to harrumph and say something about the outrageousness of this act of attempted vigilantism. But I just can’t bring myself to do it. So help me, I admire the guy.

The spirit of our desiccated age begs us to cower behind locked doors when crime happens nearby. Ted Callaway was made of sterner stuff. The world would be a better place if we had more people like him.

Interesting list

Conspiracy Theories Nobody Is Interested In

A different time

One of the most striking scenes from the aftermath of the JFK assassination occurred after Oswald's arrest.

The police had a home address from LHO's employment records and went out to Irving to search it. Today, we'd expect a massive show of force-- SWAT teams, snipers, maybe a "dynamic entry".

In 1963 two Dallas police officers and one sheriff's deputy went to the front door and knocked. They waited until the owner of the house answered and then explained their business Then they searched the house and began to question Oswald's wife.

Waco: Fifteen years later

The first time I watched Waco: The Rules of Engagement it was a revelation. Up until that point I had not paid a lot of attention to the matter. I accepted the conventional wisdom that a bunch of dangerous religious nuts killed themselves and their families after a stand-off with law enforcement. Just a bunch of crazies like the Aryan Brotherhood or The Order.

W:TROE called most of that into question. It turned out that the Branch Davidians were multi-racial with many educated adults as members. They had nothing in common with racists like the Aryan Nation. Then there was the 911 call. Wayne Martin called 911 when the raid started. That just seemed like an odd action for someone who was eager to fight the federal government in an apocalyptic battle.

But most of all, I was struck by the videotapes. Planning for the raid might have been haphazard, but the ATF made certain that they had plenty of videotapes so they could record their big bust at Mount Carmel. It made you wonder: was the “dynamic entry” search a law enforcement necessity or was it a PR move by an embattled agency?

The aftermath was weird. I think Mickey Kaus summed it up best in a column he wrote for The New Republic:

Am I alone in thinking there’s something perverse, even a bit obscene, about the current lionization of Attorney General Janet Reno? She made a disastrous decision that resulted in the loss of more than seventy lives. In a bizarre bit of political alchemy, this somehow protected her from suffering any of the consequences that normally attend disastrously handled responsibilities. Far from restoring accountability, Reno seems to have hit on the formula for avoiding it. Make a dreadful mistake? Go immediately on ‘Nightline’. Say the buck stops with you. Recount in moving terms the agony of your decision. And watch you polls rise.

It was classic Washington. CYA. “Mistakes were made.” “We are sorry”. “Let’s move on.”

Kopel and Blackman understood the problem with the Reno passive accountability:

There is perhaps no institution in the United States government with more unchecked power than the Department of Justice. The job of attorney general is therefore one of the most difficult in the entire cabinet. It cannot be performed effectively by an attorney general who looks the other way at misconduct by her own employees. Nor can it performed effectively by an attorney general who, having been deceived into approving a plan which directly led to the unnecessary death of seventy-six persons, fails to discipline a single one of the persons who deceived her.

The MSM was surprisingly complacent about the big questions raised by Waco. By and large, they did not challenge the government. Instead, they served as its mouthpiece. As Kaus notes, it was strange to see reporters fawning over Reno after she presided over a catastrophic failure that left twenty-six children dead.

The MSM was amazingly happy to accept government statements at face value. They continued to do so even after it was clear that some of those statements were wrong, misleading, or outright lies.

Moreover, the press helped to demonize those who raised questions. Critics were lumped together with “far-right militias”, “conspiracy theorists”, and other kooks.

(There is an interesting side note on this point. Kooks who believed conspiracy theories about the Clintons were called “right-wing kooks” by the MSM. Lefties who believed conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination were labeled “buffs”, “critics”, and “researchers”.)

At the time, Waco raised three serious questions that deserved debate. The first was the use of paramilitary tactics in law enforcement. They have become commonplace but Waco showed that they can have tragic consequences. The second issue was one of simple honesty. ATF and the FBI tried to cover-up the truth after the tragedy. Even if their actions were justified, they had no right to spin and lie as they did. The third issue was the use of the press by law enforcement to demonize suspected criminals before they come to trial.

Those issues remain relevant today. Unfortunately, few seem interested in raising them.

This is turning into a sad bleak day

William F. Buckley Jr. Is Dead at 82

George Will got it right:

“All great biblical stories begin with Genesis,” George Will wrote in the National Review in 1980. “And before there was Ronald Reagan, there was Barry Goldwater, and before there was Barry Goldwater there was National Review, and before there was National Review there was Bill Buckley with a spark in his mind, and the spark in 1980 has become a conflagration.”

Myron Cope, RIP

Legendary broadcaster Myron Cope dies at 79

Cope's voice-- that unmistakable, nasal Pittsburgh voice-- is the essential soundtrack of the Steelers's dynasty. It shot out of the radio during the games-- excited, goofy, yet also astute and erudite.

He was a homer. He grew up in Pittsburgh. He pulled for the Steelers. He suffered when they lost and exulted when they won. Yet, he did not hesitate to point out poor play during the game.

Yoi, we didn't block anyone on that play!

He was a homer, but he was not blind. And he was happy to tell us what he saw.

He invented the Terrible Towel and gave away the rights. All the proceeds now go to charity.

Cope liked players. He was not the type to rip a guy just to create controversy and build ratings. He was the antithesis of the loud shock jocks who dominate sports radio today.

Any fool can argue and insult. It takes real talent to hold an audience by being informative, insightful, and interesting. For three decades in Pittsburgh Cope held his audience doing just that.

Before he went into radio Cope was a sportswriter. Actually, he was one of the best. His profiles of Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell stand up well after forty years and still make it into anthologies. The writing sparkles and the insight still shines through. Here is a bit of the Cosell profile that ran in Sports Illustrated in 1967:

''Oh, this horizontal ladder of mediocrity,'' sighs Howard Cosell, ruminating on the people who make up the radio-television industry, which pays him roughly $175,000 a year. ''There's one thing about this business: There is no place in it for talent. That's why I don't belong. I lack sufficient mediocrity.''

Cosell fondles a martini at a table in the Warwick bar, across the street from the American Broadcasting Company headquarters. Anguish clouds his homely face. His long nose and pointed ears loom over his gin in the fashion of a dive bomber swooping in with fighter escort.

''This is a terrible business,'' he says.

It being the cocktail hour, the darkened room is packed with theatrical and Madison Avenue types. A big blonde, made up like Harlow the day after a bender, dominates a nearby table, encircled by spindly, effete little men. Gentlemen in blue suits, with vests, jam the bar.

A stocky young network man pauses at Cosell's table and cheerfully asks if he might drop by Cosell's office someday soon. Cosell says certainly, whereupon the network man joins a jovial crowd at the bar.

''He just got fired,'' Cosell whispers. ''He doesn't know that I already know.''

The man, he is positive, wants his help, but what is Cosell to do when there are men getting fired every week?

''This is the roughest, toughest, cruelest jungle in the world,'' Cosell grieves.

A waiter brings him a phone, and he orders a limousine and chauffeur from a rental agency. He cannot wait to retreat to his rustic fireside in Pound Ridge up in Westchester County.

It is Monday evening, barely the beginning of another long week in which he, Howard W. Cosell, middle-aged and tiring, must stand against the tidal wave of mediocrity, armed only with his brilliance and integrity.

Yes, it is a stupid decision

Is this crazy, or is this crazy?

The decision by Britain, America and certain other European countries to recognise Kosovo as an independent state is mind-blowingly stupid and suicidal and of a piece with their obvious determination to capitulate in the war for civilisation.

That last line is gonna leave a mark

Steve Sailer on HRC:

Failing the bar exam isn't so bad, except that the media has never explained why she should be President other than that she's so smart. But if she's not so smart, then her main claim to being President is the nationally embarrassing one that nobody is supposed to talk about: that she was married to the last President, that she's Imelda Marcos in sensible shoes.

Today's must read

Snark does not equal wisdom

One of my criticisms of modern America is that we don't understand that sarcasm, wittiness or plain snarkiness don't equal wisdom or profundity. We mistake cleverness for thoughtfulness. This is nowhere more evident than in our political life, where politicians live and die, politically speaking, by the sound bite. Sound bites used to be up to 30 seconds, but nowadays they've shrunk to one or two sentences. Consultants get paid riches to come up with the right one-liner.

RTWT

Related:

Humor is over-rated

Sarcasm is corrosive

Its very purpose "is to dethrone the serious"

Another glib fad bites the dust

Maybe hip early-adopters aren't the key to starting trends. That's the gist of this debunking article from Fast Company

Is the Tipping Point Toast?

An island of sanity

Now that the JFK assassination is back in the news, it is worth noting that Dale Myers's has a tremendous website/blog that sorts out the facts from the garbage.

Secrets of a homicide

JFK: The conspiracy puzzle

The vast majority of Americans believe that JFK was murdered by a conspiracy that may or may not have included Lee Harvey Oswald. This has been true for decades.

That is sad on many levels. It is also puzzling. The belief in conspiracy took hold at a time when the MSM was powerful and trusted and the MSM initially defended the Warren Commission.

For example, CBS News and Walter Cronkite (“the most trusted man in America”) did a four part special report on the assassination in 1967. They rebutted the charges made by Mark Lane and other “critics”, yet the conspiracy train kept moving on and gathering steam.

In that same year, NBC News and The Saturday Evening Post ran big stories that were harshly (and rightly) critical of Jim Garrison and his so-called “investigation”. Once again, the conspiracy theories kept finding adherents.

It is astounding when you think about it. A handful of cranks, frauds, and charlatans managed to convince a majority of the public that there was a conspiracy in Dallas. For some reason, they were more persuasive and more influential than the MSM at the height of its power.

Rosenhan redux

KC Johnson posts on a new Duke lacrosse article in a law review. This point caught my eye:

In Mosteller’s opinion, quite beyond Nifong’s complete lack of ethics, a structural problem exists: “Ethical principles, Brady, and our adversary system require a prosecutor to operate with a type of split personality.” On the one hand, the prosecutor is supposed to do justice and hand over exculpatory material. But “for a prosecutor who has reached the conclusion that the accused is guilty, which obviously should be updated as new evidence is received, there can be no true exculpatory evidence.”

There can be no true exculpatory evidence.

See here for additional commentary.

The problem with Lit Crit today

A CURSE ON MEAN-SPIRITED INTELLECTUALS

But I was very pleased when a friend recently sent me a book of literary criticism that he said I would like, and I did. This is rare: I am sick of university teachers treating literature as though it were a branch of something else—Social Studies, Gender Studies, Post-Colonial Studies, Political Studies. The book was by Brigid Lowe and is called "Victorian Fiction and the Insights of Sympathy ".

It is a brave book, with one big simple message: all too often literary scholars merely use books (they call them "texts") for the sake of their own agendas and careers. Here's the novel; here's the ideological agenda to which it is to be fitted; and here's the critical mallet to whack it into shape. For example, here is the opening of another recent book on Victorian Sympathy from Stanford University Press which goes something like this: "The Victorians were very interested in sympathy - which was all about consolidating the male sense of identity, and an early example of interpellation in action." So that's what it's all about.

HT: Milt's File

See also:

Knowledge and Knowingness

Fraud with Footnotes

Warren Commission Redux

Bombshell!

Commission Confidential

In a revelation bound to cast a pall over the 9/11 Commission, Philip Shenon will report in a forthcoming book that the panel’s executive director, Philip Zelikow, engaged in “surreptitious” communications with presidential adviser Karl Rove and other Bush administration officials during the commission’s 20-month investigation into the 9/11 attacks.

Shenon, who led The New York Times’ coverage of the 9/11 panel, reveals the Zelikow-Rove connection in a new book entitled The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, to be published next month by Twelve Books. The Commission is under an embargo until its February 5 publication, but Washington DeCoded managed to purchase a copy of the abridged audio version from a New York bookstore.

In what’s termed an “investigation of the investigation,” Shenon purports to tell the story of the commission from start to finish. The book’s critical revelations, however, revolve almost entirely around the figure of Philip Zelikow, a University of Virginia professor and director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs prior to his service as the commission’s executive director. Shenon delivers a blistering account of Zelikow’s role and leadership, and an implicit criticism of the commissioners for appointing Zelikow in the first place—and then allowing him to stay on after his myriad conflicts-of-interest were revealed under oath.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. How did Karl Rove ever get the genius tag anyway?

Tennessee Women End Duke Home Streak

DURHAM, N.C. — The Tennessee men’s basketball coach, Bruce Pearl, showed his school spirit last season, baring his chest and painting it with a white “V” when the Lady Vols faced Duke in Knoxville. There was no such display Monday night from Pearl’s Duke counterpart, Mike Krzyzewski, when Tennessee played at Duke.

Instead, the Cameron Indoor Stadium fans greeted Tennessee with the kind of vitriol that Coach Pat Summitt has warned could end the series between two of the elite teams in women’s college basketball. But amid the chants and jeers, Tennessee held off the Blue Devils, 67-64, to end Duke’s 24-game home winning streak.

Sometimes the good guys win one.

Wendy's comes to its senses

Wendy’s: No Longer Red All Over

A new rule at Wendy’s: only Wendy can be coiffed like Wendy.

Wendy’s, the third largest hamburger chain, is jettisoning a campaign it introduced amid much hoopla last May. The fast-paced campaign showed consumers in pigtailed red wigs that emulated the hairstyle of the chain’s familiar female mascot.

See also:

Marketing Malpractice

Brian Nichols and the high price of death

The New Yorker as a very interesting article on Brian Nichols-- the man who murdered four people in a jail escape turned rampage in Atlanta in 2005.

Death In Georgia

The high price of trying to save an infamous killer’s life.

His trial is at a standstill because the state of Georgia does not want to pay for his defense. It's become a political issue and that is never good for justice. Nichols's escape provided a log of blog fodder for a couple of days in 2005. (See here and here). Then we moved on.

That's too bad because there were some serious issues raised about the procedures in the jail that allowed this crime to happen.

This blew my mind when i read it in the article.

The response by law-enforcement officials to Nichols’s crimes was marred by terrible errors. After the shanks were discovered, Judge Barnes said he wanted the sheriff’s department, which handles security in the courthouse, to provide Nichols with additional guards, yet he was escorted to court by a single female deputy sheriff. Part of his attack on the deputy was captured by surveillance cameras, but no one was monitoring them. The Atlanta police, who did not begin searching for Nichols until forty minutes after the first shootings, failed to seal off access to two parking garages where Nichols had been seen; he escaped from both. During a subsequent investigation, five sheriff’s deputies were found to have lied about their actions with regard to Nichols. Eight deputies were fired for misconduct, all but two of whom were later rehired.

Four people dead and most of those involved escape consequences.

Forty-five years in Dallas: Time to put the conspiracy theories in their place

OK. So we know Oswald did it. Why do so many people believe otherwise?

That, in my mind, is the only important question left when it comes to the JFK assassination.

Bryan Burrough, in his review of Bugliosi's Reclaiming History describes the appropriate response to the conspiracy theorists:

What Bugliosi has done is a public service; these people should be ridiculed, even shunned. It’s time we marginalized Kennedy conspiracy theorists the way we’ve marginalized smokers; next time one of your co-workers starts in about Oswald and the C.I.A., make him stand in the rain with the other outcasts.

What is killing newspapers?

Great piece in Slate by Jack Shafer:

Simple Simon

What the auteur of The Wire doesn't (and does) understand about the newspaper business.

See also:

The newspaper today and tomorrow

Fear and loathing in Arizona

Until this season, I was not a Patriot-hater. To the contrary, I found a lot to admire in the way they played and how they won. They were smart and flexible on defense. One week they could shut down a high-powered passing offense like the Colts and then the next week they would stuff a physical running team like the Steelers. No team was better at halftime adjustments. Few teams hustled more or executed as crisply.

All of this is still true, but now it is overshadowed by the baggage. Or, to be blunt about it, the cheating and the Patriots’s arrogant response when they were caught.

Videogate is a big deal. To me, it did taint the Patriots legacy. It was a big illegal edge that is especially important in light of the narrow winning margin New England racked up in their first three Super Bowls. It was supremely relevant to Belichick’s ability to beat teams the second time around.

Sadly, the NFL blinked when they confronted the issue when they confronted the issue. While they dished out some fines, they also moved quickly to sweep the matter under the rug and to destroy the evidence.

Sports media played along. Instead of investigating the matter, jock-pundits assured us that “everyone steals signals” and it was no big deal. (If it was no big deal and if the Patriots did nothing wrong, then why even bother with the fines?)

The “every one does it” defense of the Patriots stands to in stark contrast to the on-going crusade by sportwriters against Barry Bonds. To be fair, shouldn’t they admit that his home run mark is A-OK because pitchers were juicing too?

The Patriots response was telling. Belichick churlishly refused to admit that he did anything wrong. He just copped to an inaccurate interpretation of the rules. Right after the fines were levied, his boss gave him a big raise and contract extension. His bank account never felt the pain of his “punishment.”

This is in keeping with the Patriot way. Belichick does not like the NFL’s injury reporting requirements. So he makes a mockery of it by listing Tom Brady on it by for over 50 straight weeks (4 seasons). In that time, Brady never missed a start. Belichick does not like the coaches game day dress code, so he manages to comply while at the same time looking like a tramp.

The NFL, to its shame, has tolerated this willful defiance. The new commissioner was John Wayne when it came to players and their off-field behavior. When Roger Goodell has to go nose to nose with Robert Kraft or Bill Belichick the tough talking lawman turns into Barney Fife.

This official cowardice makes its way onto the playing field. In big games, the Patriots get to push the envelope. TMQ has made this point many times but the problem continues.

Once again, not only did the weather (stiff winds died down just before kickoff) seem to be under Belichick's control, but so did the officials. Disciplined teams commit fewer penalties, and Belichick teams are disciplined -- but there's a difference between discipline and seeming to get a free pass from the officials. A few years ago, New England won an AFC championship when repeated obvious pass-interference penalties by the Patriots against the Colts went uncalled in the fourth quarter; that year, New England won the Super Bowl without ever being called for pass interference or offensive holding in the postseason. On Sunday, the Pats were flagged just twice, for 19 yards. With 11 minutes remaining and San Diego driving, Richard Seymour, after the whistle, shoved Philip Rivers to the ground directly in front of referee Jeff Triplette -- no flag. During a play, linebacker Mike Vrabel spun around his blocker, then leg-whipped Rivers, causing him to fall and throw an interception -- no flag. Reader Jacob Robertson of Rock Hill, S.C., writes, "Tripping is a penalty in the NFL, yet not only was this not called, the announcers praise New England linebackers when they cheat."

I fully expect the Patriots to win SB XLII. That will make them the greatest team in the Super Bowl-era. I’m just sorry that an extraordinary season comes with so much baggage.

Oswald’s Ghost After watching it and thinking about it a few days, I have three big problems with the documentary. While it does, finally seem to come down on the side of Oswald as Lone Gunman, it does so subtly and quietly. I wish the director had been more clear and forthright about the manifest problems with the conspiracy theories. The film uses Tom Hayden and Todd Gittlin as talking heads who spend most of their time talking about the impact the “unanswered questions” surrounding the assassination on the politics. Since both men were leaders in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) we get a heavy does of New Left perspective and apologetics. Hayden is especially problematic because he is more propagandist and activist rather than sober historian. Morevover, the famed socialist Irving Howe said of him: “Tom Hayden gives opportunism a bad name.” I can’t help wondering if Gitlin’s and Hayden’s explanation is the whole story. The New Left was quite willing to seize an issue and use it to their own end: From The Roots of Radicalism by Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter: (1982)

Quoting Mark Rudd (SDS president at Columbia): "We manufactured the issues. The Institute of Defense Analysis is nothing at Columbia. And the gym issue is bull. It doesn't mean anything to anybody. I had never been to the gym site before the demonstration began. I didn't even know how to get there." "Even Berkeley had a slogan that "the issue is not the issue," meaning that the real issue was not free speech on campus but thoroughgoing social change." Mike Goldfield in New Left Notes (1966): "You have to realize that the issue didn't matter. The issues were never the issues....It was the revolution that was everything. The only thing that mattered was what you were doing for the revolution. That is why dope was good. Anything that undermined the system contributed to the revolution and was therefore good."

Hayden and Gittlin’s narrative is debatable. Maybe the New left was energized by the conspiracy theories. OTOH, maybe The Movement promoted the theories because they fit their preconceived ideas about a corrupt power structure and also helped undermine the authority of the Establishment. That’s a key question for historians. Are we looking at an honest attempt to grapple with unanswered questions, or a species of “popular delusion”, or a cynical exercise in agit-prop. “Oswald’s Ghost” treats the conspiracy theorists and promoters as honest and never addresses the other possibilities. The movie basically ignores the toxic, noxious, consequences of the Grassy Knoll cult. Very little time is spent on Clay Shaw, the innocent man that Jim Garrison indicted in New Orleans as part of his crude, demagogic charade. Shaw was bankrupted and died a few years after the jury exonerated him. Or take the case of Dallas police officer J D Tippett. He was shot by Oswald shortly after the assassination. His murder is a problem for the conspiracy theorists. Rather than revise their opinion that Oswald was innocent, they perform contortions to exonerate LHO on this murder as well. Many of them suggest that Tippett was part of the plot (i.e. he helped kill JFK or helped those who did). Thus, the “buffs” smear a policeman who died in the line of duty so that they can still pretend that Oswald was a patsy. They have no evidence, of course, but that has never stopped the Church of the Grassy Knoll.

Ernie Holmes, RIP

Ernie Holmes, part of Steelers Steel Curtain, dies

Ernie Holmes, a defensive lineman and member of the famed Steel Curtain for the Steelers in their dynasty years in the 1970s, died last night in a traffic accident in Texas.

He was one of my favorites from the 70s Steelers.

Oswald's Ghost

PSB Frontline ran an interesting documentary on the JFK assassination and the conspiracy theories that surround it.

Oswald's Ghost

Washington Decoded has an incisive review.

UPDATE:

According to the movie, 70% of the American public believes that the assassination was carried out by a conspiracy. That should be fairly sobering to those who are full-throated proponents of the "wisdom of crowds".

After all, here we have the most investigated crime in history. And yet, more people believe fairy tales than the honest, messy historical truth.

UPDATE 2

Just found a great example: Here is a journalist and true crime blogger who refuses to accept that the Lone Gunman was a Lone Gunman. Even more unbelievable is that he thinks Jim Garrison was a poor victim who was "hounded to his grave" for trying to find the truth. How can history stand a chance against such arrogant and invincible ignorance?

See also:

Bill Whittle takes on conspiracy thinking

Portait of the artist as a cowardly clown

Grayson Perry serves as the ideal poster boy — or perhaps poster girl — for this discomfiting trend. A Turner Prize recipient and England’s most famous cross-dressing potter, Perry has been heralded for his controversial explorations of religious imagery, which include a vase entitled “Transvestite Brides of Christ” and a portrayal of the Virgin Mary that is best left to the imagination. Yet apparently there are some boundaries that even groundbreaking artists dare not cross.

“I’ve censored myself,” Perry told the Times, admitting that he treads lightly around radical Islam. “With other targets you’ve got a better idea of who they are but Islamism is very amorphous. You don’t know what the threshold is. Even what seems an innocuous image might trigger off a really violent reaction so I just play safe all the time.” Self-censorship thus boils down to self-preservation. “The reason I haven’t gone all out attacking Islamism in my art is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat.”

RTWT

Beldar is talking sense

and taking no prisoners.

The fat lady has barely begun her warm-ups

Most of the mainstream media, and large chunks of the blogosphere, are behaving like children — more specifically, like children who have not yet completed third-grade arithmetic.

Network anchors, national columnists, and prominent bloggers (left and right) have pronounced both the Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani campaigns either dead outright or else on life-support (with Do Not Resuscitate toe-tags).

But only three of fifty states have determined their delegates — three very small states, at least two of which (the ones everyone has paid attention to) are arguably pretty unrepresentative of the Republican Party nationally.

Happy Birthday

to Lane Core.

A dissenting opinion on the Genarlow Wilson case

A different view on '07 Newsmaker

Genarlow was not a young man who got caught having oral sex with his slightly younger girlfriend; Genarlow and his friends took advantage of two young women in an environment that reeked of male dominance and exploitation. The jury knew that, that is why it deadlocked for a day and half before reaching a verdict. There were jurors who were crying about the mandatory minimum sentence, but there were also jurors who were furious that they were unable to convict Genarlow for the gang rape he committed. No paper, yours included, bothered to write about those jurors.

How Reagan became Reagan: The Texas Earthquake of 1976

When conservatives set to work to remake the Republican party (1960-1980) they faced two distinct battles. One was against the liberal Rockefeller Republicans of the Northeast. The other was with the Republican rump in the Sunbelt.

It is difficult to remember now just how hard the GOP establishment in the South and Southwest fought against Goldwater and Reagan. They were keen to hold on to their own power even if that meant their party was nonviable in their state.

There are many perks for party leaders even if their party is unsuccessful. In a rump party, the leadership gets to keep their perks without challenge. Who cares if the GOP can’t win Georgia? The rump establishment still gets courted during the run-up to the convention. They get to make speeches and bestow patronage. And they get to do all this without working too hard to earn their position.

The press played a key role in this situation. They portrayed the rump leaders as pragmatic even though they could not win general elections. The insurgents were painted as foolish kamikazes who did not understand politics. The approval of the New York Times and the Rockefeller wing was a big perk and big asset for the neutered leaders of the old GOP.

The media also overstated the power and influence of the party leaders and were blind to the political realignment that a Reaganite party could carry out.

In May 1976 Gerald Ford was far ahead of Reagan when the campaign moved to Texas. He seemed to be coasting toward the magic number of delegates needed to lock in the nomination. Reagan needed a big win just to keep his campaign alive and stay in the race.

The Ford camp had a strong hand. They had the support of all the leading RepublicansJohn Tower, George H.W. Bush, Jim Baker. They looked to pick up a pile of delegates and maintain their lead over the Gipper. But Texans did not follow the script.

Ronald Reagan won every single one of the 100 delegates. A shut out in a huge state where the rules worked to ensure that the rump leaders always got their seats at the convention. Reagan carried every single county in the state. The win revitalized the Reagan campaign and kept it in the fight right up to the convention. When Ford lost to Carter Reagan became the front runner for 1980.

A funny thing about those pragmatic southern republican leaders--they could not carry their states for Ford. But the kamikazes had no problem in 1980. Alabama went for Carter by 150,000 votes in 1976. He lost by 22,000 to Reagan. Ford lost Texas by 130,000; Reagan carried it by 650,000. Same thing in North Carolina (Ford -180,000, Reagan +40,000). The trend carried across the south and gave Reagan his crushing electoral landslide in 1980.

Conservatives did not just take over the moribund party. They revitalized it, made it first viable and then dominant in the south. Bad for the democrats but bad as well for the rump establishment. The party won, but they lost their leadership positions.

Not to whine or anything

But i think these guys are right

Steelers Notebook: Lack of penalties has LBs outraged

I watched the replay several times and Jax got away with a couple of blatant holds on Garrard's 32 yard run.

That said, i think the coaches lost the game. On the Steelers's next to last drive, they needed a first down to really milk the clock and lengthen the field for the Jags. Instead, they called three unimaginative plays that forced a punt before the two minute warning.

One more example of playing it safe (read predictable) and losing.

Good teams know that the Steelers will play that way and they stop us with regularity.

That is a problem for next season. Right now, i am a Jaguars fan. It will be a glorious football season if they beat the Pats next week.

UPDATE: Apparently, i'm not the only one who feels this way.

And the metrocons think this makes Romney a conservative?

Mitt Romney

As governor, signed into law a permanent ban on assault weapons. Supported the 1994 federal assault weapons ban. Supported the Brady Bill requiring waiting periods for handgun purchases, but says it is no longer needed due to instantaneous background checks. Joined the NRA as a lifetime member in 2006.

Do they really think that the heartland is going to be thrilled by this guy? What's in the coffee at NRO?

Must read

This post by Joe Carter is the best political analysis i've seen in years.

The One-Legged Stool:

How the Elites Misunderstand "Reagan Conservatives"

These rural/suburban Republican-voting conservatives--for the sake of identification let's call them "Reagan conservatives"-- don’t make sharp distinctions between the three branches. You won't find, for instance, many "fiscal conservatives" in rural Oklahoma that are squishy on the life issues or think that we should shrink the Armed Forces. In fact, when you hear someone referring to themselves as a "economic conservative" or a "defense conservative" you can almost be assured that they are (a) a libertarian and (b) live or work in an urban area.

RTWT

George MacDonald Fraser, RIP

The Telegraph has a very nice write-up

In 1943 he joined the Border Regiment and served as an infantryman in North Africa and with the "Forgotten" Fourteenth Army in Burma. He was eventually commissioned in the Gordon Highlanders. Some of his finest writing is contained in his graphic recollections of his Burma service, Quartered Safe Out Here (1992), in which the affectionate portrait of his Cumbrian comrades demonstrated his keen eye for character and acute ear for dialogue.

John Keegan, in The Sunday Telegraph, justly called it "one of the great personal memoirs of World War II".

QSOH is a marvelous book-- insightful, generous, and beautifully written.

Better dead than un-PC?

An interesting footnote to the criminal profiling post.

The profilers blew it when they kept insisting that the Baton Rouge serial killer was a white male. The investigation got back on track thanks to DNA testing. Wired has a story on the company that did the test. Oddly, (or maybe sadly) the DA who prosecuted Derrick Todd Lee says this about the technology:

Tony Clayton, a black man and a prosecutor who tried one of the Baton Rouge murder cases, concedes the benefits of the test: "Had it not been for Frudakis, we would still be looking for the white guy in the white pickup." Nevertheless, Clayton says he dislikes anything that implies we don't all "bleed the same blood." He adds, "If I could push a button and make this technology disappear, I would."

Duke lacrosse

The indispensable KC Johnson has gone on hiatus. He did, however, give us a useful guide through the case as he covered it on his blog:

Glossary

The perfect starting point for anyone coming late to the story as well as a great reference for those who have followed the case from the beginning.

Merry Christmas

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Luke 2:8-14

Fear and dread in Steeler Nation

So the Steelers are 10-5 and won their division. They are in the play-offs for the third time in four years. Yet, we fans are worried and cranky. If you didn't know better, you'd think the team was 6-9.

Part of the reason is that the five losses were ugly. Good teams dominated us (Jax and the Patriots) and we made bad teams look good (Denver and the J-E-T-S- Jets Jets Jets). Not much glory in being a paper champion who makes the playoffs and then gets bounced in the first game.

I think the larger reason is that the team that wins does not look like the Steelers teams we are used to watching. No longer do we pound the ball on the ground and play suffocating defense. Now our victories are keyed to big plays in the passing game and a desperate hope that the defense can make a couple of stops. Classic Steerlers football was a 20-7 game that never felt close. This years version is perfectly captured by the second Cleveland game and the win over the Rams. No lead felt safe because no lead was safe.

What makes this concern especially worrisome is that the defense lacks young players who have shown promise. Our good players are mostly old while our recent draft choices have failed to make an impact. The defensive problems could get worse before they get better.

This is a high holiday in Steeler nation

Thirty-five years ago, Franco made the Immaculate Reception and a dynasty was born.

Why Steve Sailer is the best

He knows and sees things your typical reviewer cannot fathom. Vide his review of No Country for Old Men:

Developing video games is consuming more and more of today's creative talent, with little benefit to show for it in the broader culture. Traditional art forms such as poetry, music, and painting tended to inspire each other forward in a virtuous cycle, but video gaming, a solitary vice, has been a cultural black hole. Game-inspired films, for instance, have mostly failed, because watching a movie star frenetically shoot bad guys is missing the point of playing, which is to shoot them yourself.

How about this for a throw-away insight?

For reasons I don't fully understand (and am not sure I really want to think about), most of us guys, no matter how blameless our lives, enjoy doing some contingency planning about how we'd handle it if we ever had to climb into that white Bronco and make a run for the border. Thus, many men hated the great Chick Flick "Thelma and Louise" less for its supposed feminism than for how dopily Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon let their feelings botch up their escape from Arkansas to Mexico. I quickly worked out for them an itinerary for their getaway over the Rio Grande to Matamoros, but they weren't equally serious about route selection and ended up in northern Arizona, where they fell, deservedly, into the Grand Canyon.

The real value of simplicity

Analysis of Paralysis

If your strategy doesn't help employees act, it's not a strategy.

"Keep it simple, stupid." That's the advice every executive has received on how to share strategy with employees. The subtext is often, "Keep it simple, because your people are stupid." But you don't need to embrace simplicity just so your people can comprehend your message. The point of simplicity is more fundamental: Simplicity allows people to act.

This might be the the number one cause of strategic failure in business. A major reason for this is the overly intellectual approach that B-schools take toward strategy.

See more here:

GWB and his MBA


Waiting for our Clausewitz


Clausewitz (II)

Vietnam: What we know now that we didn't know then

Who Owns the Vietnam War?

Above all, antiwar activists and critics of American policy in the media denied their own moral responsibility for what happened in Vietnam and Indochina once the policy they themselves had vociferously advocated—namely, withdrawal and disengagement—was carried out. When, four years after the fall of Saigon, Joan Baez, Richard John Neuhaus, and other former antiwar activists tried to draw attention to the plight of Vietnam’s boat people and the brutal tyranny that had been established in that country, their former comrades, led by celebrities like Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda, denounced them as “stooges” and CIA agents. “Even if the [North] Vietnamese had chosen the course of mass executions and plunder,” one of these former comrades stated in a letter, “it would have been our own strategies of terror and brutality that drove them to it.”

This collapse of ethical and intellectual integrity would have consequences far beyond Vietnam. In the decades to come, the Vietnam myth would justify the Left’s instinctual opposition to America’s efforts to contain Communist aggression in Latin America in the 1980’s, its characterization of the 1991 Gulf war as a campaign of “blood for oil,” and its denunciations of our interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11. The need to prop up the same myth in the face of a contradictory reality would fuel the “paranoid style” of leftist conspiracy-mongering in films like Oliver Stone’s JFK, Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911, and most recently and blatantly Loose Change, which argues that the Twin Towers were brought down by agents of the Bush administration. And, as President Bush discovered last August, it remains potent enough to trigger the most irrational and rhetorically violent responses when anyone dares challenge its proprietary construction of what the Vietnam war was in fact all about, and what are its lessons.

Historical analogies are never entirely accurate. They may not even be useful. But it remains true that our present and future actions are always based, to some extent, on our evaluation of past experience. Generals are often accused of fighting the last war. This is something that, when it comes to Vietnam, liberals and leftists have been doing for more than three decades, by refusing to confront (in words Peter Marin once flung in the face of American authorities) “their own culpability” and “their own capacity for error and excess.” Whatever the differences or similarities between Vietnam and Iraq, or between Vietnam and our global war with Islamic radicalism, the real analogy between then and now may lie in this tenacious refusal of self-examination by the liberal Left—especially when the facts utterly contravene its reflexive indictment of the motives, purposes, and actions of the American government.

The truth about criminal profiling

Malcolm Gladwell has a fascinating and important article on criminal profiling:

Dangerous Minds

He is not impressed by the "science" or the results:

In the case of Derrick Todd Lee, the Baton Rouge serial killer, the F.B.I. profile described the offender as a white male blue-collar worker, between twenty-five and thirty-five years old, who “wants to be seen as someone who is attractive and appealing to women.” The profile went on, “However, his level of sophistication in interacting with women, especially women who are above him in the social strata, is low. Any contact he has had with women he has found attractive would be described by these women as ‘awkward.’ ” The F.B.I. was right about the killer being a blue-collar male between twenty-five and thirty-five. But Lee turned out to be charming and outgoing, the sort to put on a cowboy hat and snakeskin boots and head for the bars. He was an extrovert with a number of girlfriends and a reputation as a ladies’ man. And he wasn’t white. He was black.

A profile isn’t a test, where you pass if you get most of the answers right. It’s a portrait, and all the details have to cohere in some way if the image is to be helpful. In the mid-nineties, the British Home Office analyzed a hundred and eighty-four crimes, to see how many times profiles led to the arrest of a criminal. The profile worked in five of those cases. That’s just 2.7 per cent, which makes sense if you consider the position of the detective on the receiving end of a profiler’s list of conjectures. Do you believe the stuttering part? Or do you believe the thirty-year-old part? Or do you throw up your hands in frustration?

[snip]

A few years ago, Alison went back to the case of the teacher who was murdered on the roof of her building in the Bronx. He wanted to know why, if the F.B.I.’s approach to criminal profiling was based on such simplistic psychology, it continues to have such a sterling reputation. The answer, he suspected, lay in the way the profiles were written, and, sure enough, when he broke down the rooftop-killer analysis, sentence by sentence, he found that it was so full of unverifiable and contradictory and ambiguous language that it could support virtually any interpretation.

Astrologers and psychics have known these tricks for years. The magician Ian Rowland, in his classic “The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading,” itemizes them one by one, in what could easily serve as a manual for the beginner profiler. First is the Rainbow Ruse—the “statement which credits the client with both a personality trait and its opposite.” (“I would say that on the whole you can be rather a quiet, self effacing type, but when the circumstances are right, you can be quite the life and soul of the party if the mood strikes you.”) The Jacques Statement, named for the character in “As You Like It” who gives the Seven Ages of Man speech, tailors the prediction to the age of the subject. To someone in his late thirties or early forties, for example, the psychic says, “If you are honest about it, you often get to wondering what happened to all those dreams you had when you were younger.” There is the Barnum Statement, the assertion so general that anyone would agree, and the Fuzzy Fact, the seemingly factual statement couched in a way that “leaves plenty of scope to be developed into something more specific.” (“I can see a connection with Europe, possibly Britain, or it could be the warmer, Mediterranean part?”) And that’s only the start: there is the Greener Grass technique, the Diverted Question, the Russian Doll, Sugar Lumps, not to mention Forking and the Good Chance Guess—all of which, when put together in skillful combination, can convince even the most skeptical observer that he or she is in the presence of real insight.

The television audience keeps leaving the broadcast networks

According to Turner Research, the average American viewed 32.6 hours of television a week this year, up ever-so-slightly from 32.5 last year. More significantly, Americans are watching two more hours of television now than they were five years ago.

That growth has come at the expense of broadcast. Five years ago, viewers spent an average of 11.7 hours a week with broadcast and 13.2 hours a week with cable; this year, viewers spent 9.6 hours with broadcast and 15.3 with cable.

Source

Highly recommended

Duke lacrosse: KC Johnson sums up

KC Johnson's indispensable Durham in Wonderland is going on hiatus. His last post is a terrific summary of the case and its implications.

Legacies

I think he is dead on about the coverage by the drive-by media:

It is difficult to offer an explanation other than the obvious for the records of figures such as Wilson, Feinstein, or Ashley—namely, that this was a story that some in the intelligentsia so much wanted to be true that they blinded themselves to reality.

Ranger Ray on civilian reponse

I discussed the role of civilian response in the Texas Tower sniper case here.

One of the men who went up the Tower that day was officer Ramiro Martinez. In his memoirs he has some interesting things to say about the actions of the civilians in Austin.

I was and am still upset that more recognition has not been given to the citizens who pulled out their hunting rifles and returned the sniper's fire. The City of Austin and the State of Texas should be forever thankful and grateful to them because of the many lives they saved that day. The sniper did a lot of damage when he could fire freely, but when the armed citizens began to return fire the sniper had to take cover. He had to shoot out of the rainspouts and that limited his targets. I am grateful to the citizens because they made my job easier.

The Huckabee beat down

I don't know what to make of the Wayne Dumond story. Maybe it is Willie Horton redux. Or, perhaps, it is a Duke lacrosse case with a tragic ending.

A couple of stories are important background because they show how the case looked when Huckabee had to deal with it.

The Castration of Wayne DuMond

Talk Left on Wayne Dumond

One thing is for certain. Right-wing pundits are as hypocritical as their left-wing brethren. In the case of "Scooter" Libby and (late) in the Duke lacrosse hoax, right-wing opinion-mongers professed a deep concern about due process, the presumption of innocence, and the danger of out-of-control prosecutors. All of that has been tossed aside in the attacks on Huckabee.

This is how the new media revolution ends

Not with a bang but a simper

It’s come to this: Mary Katharine Ham talks MILFs on O’Reilly

MKH plays earnest straight man to O'Reilly's sleazy, sniggering, tabloid major domo.

The problem with wiki's

Inside Wikipedia’s Inner Circle

If there’s a flaw in the Wikipedia model, it isn’t that the site relies on the wisdom of crowds too much, it’s that the site’s highest-volume contributors and editors—the people who effectively run the place—could succumb to the gravitational pull of groupthink.

The problem is that it’s difficult to engineer a way to allow for group-driven creation of content while dispersing certain responsibilities and decision-making tasks among the masses. It’s impossible to create a system that’s completely open to everyone without getting overrun by malicious vandals, so it’s hard to see how the site could avoid issuing bans or using some other form of group-imposed censorship.

I always knew Steven A. Smith was an idiot

Stephen A. Smith Q-and-A Part 3: Internet writers have "sabotaged" newspapers

"And when you look at the internet business, what’s dangerous about it is that people who are clearly unqualified get to disseminate their piece to the masses. I respect the journalism industry, and the fact of the matter is ...someone with no training should not be allowed to have any kind of format whatsoever to disseminate to the masses to the level which they can. They are not trained. Not experts. More important are the level of ethics and integrity that comes along with the quote-unqoute profession hasn’t been firmly established and entrenched in the minds of those who’ve been given that license."

Here's one for "The Law is an Ass" files

Mom who killed son may still get alimony

Court rules dad's payments could resume when his ex-wife is released from prison

A father whose ex-wife killed their son in a drunken rage does not have to pay alimony while she is in prison, but may have to resume payments when she gets out, a state appeals court ruled yesterday.

A three-judge Appellate Division panel found there is nothing in the law that would automatically stop alimony payments to a former spouse who killed a child.

A harrowing account of an honor killing

Sins of the father

In a suburban McDonald’s a father begged his wayward daughter to come home... so he and the men of her family could have her beaten, raped and murdered. Fearing violence, but moved by his tears, she relented – and died. Our correspondent investigates how a man can choose the death of a daughter above dishonour

RTWT

Facts don't lie

From Cold Hard Football Facts

Icy Issue: How come nobody talks about Ben Roethlisberger as an elite NFL quarterback?

Icier Response: Apparently people just can't believe it's possible to be so good so young.

Another atomic spy is revealed

This one is pretty important:

George Koval also had a secret. During World War II, he was a top Soviet spy, code named Delmar and trained by Stalin’s ruthless bureau of military intelligence.

Atomic spies are old stuff. But historians say Dr. Koval, who died in his 90s last year in Moscow and whose name is just coming to light publicly, was probably one of the most important spies of the 20th century.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!!!

From Michelle Malkin:

The document of the day is a press release from the Justice Department announcing, “Former Employee of CIA and FBI Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy, Unauthorized Computer Access and Naturalization Fraud.” A Lebanese illegal alien was working for the Bush FBI and CIA, got into our computer systems, got access to info about her Lebanese relatives and the terrorist group Hezbollah, arranged a sham marriage (where have we seen that before), and nosed around in bribery and extortion conspiracy probes. Debbie Schlussel, Jihad Watch, and Allah have full coverage of Nada Nadim Prouty’s guilty plea and the appalling security lapses involved.

RTWT but it carries a blood pressure alert.

Peter King is an idiot

Sports Illustrated actually pays him to write this garbage:

None of those items, however, was the story of the day. Ben Roethlisberger was. When I watched Roethlisberger last year, I thought, "Flawed quarterback.'' When I watched Roethlisberger on Sunday, I thought, "Franchise quarterback.''

I didn't like his lackadaisical decision-making last year, or his declining accuracy, or what I'd heard his teammates say about his work ethic. Maybe it was right, and maybe it wasn't. But Roethlisberger wasn't the most popular guy in his own locker room last year, and he needed a change. He got it.

Gee, i wonder if it occurred to him that Roethlisberger's poor 2006 performance might have something to do with a NEAR FATAL MOTORCYCLE ACCIDENT? Think that might be enough to throw him off his game?

The fat poseur ignores that elephant in the living room. Instead, he spins a grand theory out of locker-room gossip.

He also ignores a highly relevant comparison:

Peyton Manning in four post-season games (2006)

70.8 QB rating
3 Touchdowns
7 Interceptions


Ben Roethlisberger in four post-season games (2005)

101.7 QB rating
7 Touchdowns
3 interceptions

Confusing ends and means

Vic Carucci on NFL.com

I was as impressed as anyone with the way Ben Roethlisberger moved and threw his way to a franchise-record five touchdowns. But that's what a good quarterback with above-average receivers should do against a team missing both starting cornerbacks. I was as impressed as anyone with the very convincing Jack Lambert imitation that James Harrison gave in the first half. But that's part of what the league's top-ranked defense should do against an offense, and especially a quarterback, that can't out of its own way. What troubled me was seeing the Steelers' No. 2-ranked rushing attack struggle to move the ball on the ground, even if it didn't have to.

Why should a team beat their head against a wall. The Ravens sold out to stop the run and left their inexperienced DBs exposed. The Steelers made them pay for that. (Big time).

What, exactly, would be gained by running the ball into the teeth of the defense? The Steelers were already reaping the benefits of a running game.

Clash of titans

The barbarians are at the gates in Indy. All of us who believe in Truth, Justice, and the American Way are Colt's fans this week-end.

Failing upward

Editor Melanie Sill is leaving the Raleigh News and Observer

Melanie Sill is named The Bee's new top editor

Of course, the PR flacks and internal spin-meisters want to put the best face on it:

Sill was in the thick of one of the most explosive stories to hit North Carolina in recent years, the accusations of rape against a group of Duke University lacrosse players.

After the players were eventually exonerated, the national media were roundly criticized for taking the rape allegations at face value

.That may be how it looks inside the media bubble. For those of us who followed the case, The N&O’s performance was abysmal on many, many levels. In fact, I’d argue that the paper’s performance won it the coveted title of “most embarrassing screw up in the annals of daily journalism.”

Previous high-profile scandals (Janet Cooke, Jayson Blair) involved individual malfeasance and slipshod editorial oversight. The Washington Post and New York Times also deserve credit for how they handled their screw-ups. When questions arose about their stories, the bosses investigated, took action, and told the public what went wrong.

Contrast that with how the N&O handled the lacrosse case. Their attacks on the players was not the work of a single rogue reporters. The editors pushed the story hard and flooded the zone to trash the team. In short, the paper failed to get the story right when they were trying very hard to get the story.

What really hurts the N&O is not that they made mistakes. Rather, it is their obstinate refusal to acknowledge those mistakes. Unlike the Times and the Post, they have refused to give a full explanation of what went wrong and how they intend to prevent future errors.

It is understandable that a young reporter got conned by a sob story. It is embarrassing that her editors bought the same story that ignited the firestorm. It is ludicrous that the paper still defends their early reporting and tries to shift the blame to “national media.”

OTOH, it paid off for Sill who gets a nice promotion and a ticket out of Raleigh.

Two other points:

We see again how “public editors” work mainly as PR flacks for their paper:

The News & Observer's public editor said the paper did a far better job than most of digging beneath the surface but committed some "serious missteps" in the first few weeks, including making references to the accuser as "a victim."

Once again, they praise themselves with faint damns.

Also, this is worth a laugh to those who followed Sill’s blog and her testy relationship with internet readers:

Hailed as a risk taker who will push the newspaper further into the Internet age

Prepare to be inspired and enraged at the same time

This column is a must read.

G.I. Joe was just a toy, wasn't he?

Hollywood now proposes that in a new live-action movie based on the G.I. Joe toy line, Joe's -- well, "G.I." -- identity needs to be replaced by membership in an "international force based in Brussels." The IGN Entertainment news site reports Paramount is considering replacing our "real American hero" with "Action Man," member of an "international operations team."

I'm not surprised that Paramount feels the need to lessen Joe's American identity. Hollywood's slavish pursuit of the oversea's box office is not news. (See here.)

What deserves attention is the arrogant hypocrisy of their political ambitions. One one hand, they are global citizens eager to make a buck anywhere they can. At the same time, they aspire to to be kingmakers in the good ole US of A (something they would never dream of doing in Yemen or China or Venezuela).

A good review of a bad book

Artist as Hero

So what looked from the distance to be a charmed life was, viewed from closer up, a complicated, in some ways even a quite sad, life. But possibly the saddest thing to have happened to Ralph Ellison came after he died, when the assignment of writing his biography was given to Arnold Rampersad. The author of two previous biographies--one of Jackie Robinson, another of Langston Hughes--Rampersad is an academic (a teacher at Princeton, now at Stanford), a writer one thinks of as reverential and hence quite uncritical toward his subjects. But in Ralph Ellison, far from being reverential or uncritical, he is unrelenting in the persistence of his pinpoint attacks on his subject's character and politics and highly critical of much of his writing, only rarely giving his subject the least hint of the benefit of any possible doubt.

Now here is a site that speaks for all true football fans

I Hate Monday Night Football

Debunking some myths about the Jena 6

Media myths about the Jena 6

There's just one problem: The media got most of the basics wrong. In fact, I have never before witnessed such a disgrace in professional journalism. Myths replaced facts, and journalists abdicated their solemn duty to investigate every claim because they were seduced by a powerfully appealing but false narrative of racial injustice.

I should know. I live in Jena. My wife has taught at Jena High School for many years. And most important, I am probably the only reporter who has covered these events from the very beginning.

Sounds like another case where the media picked a narrative before they established what the facts were.

Outstanding article

The Pornography of Misery Memoirs

An argument repeated by publishers to me when justifying the harrowing detail is that “the readers of these books are less well educated and need graphic detail to make them understand the impact of abuse”.

Oh, please! How stupid does a person have to be if they don’t understand the terrible impact of sexual abuse without having to read the horrific detail?

The chief reason to include detail that borders on pornographic is to entertain a prurient readership which would otherwise be reading about Fred and Rose West in the kind of True Crime books upmarket publishers like to sneer at.

Publishers churn out these misery tales for one reason: they ell.

See also:

The Other Pornography

Further evidence of the pointlessness of public editors

I have to admit that the ESPN ombudsman sometimes makes a lot of sense. Le Anne Schreiber told the Southern Pines Pilot

One of the most satisfying things about being the ESPN ombudsman is that it provides a very good perch for watching what is happening to journalism in general.

She is on to something there. I had the same thought and was going to use the Mike Gundy/ Jenni Carlson dust-up to illustrate the pernicious attitudes that hurt the Dinosaur Media. The public editor, though, beat me to it in her most recent letter.

The instigator of Gundy's Saturday rage was an opinion column couching itself as fact. I am not ombudsman for the Oklahoman, but through a week's ridicule of Gundy on ESPN, I never heard or read a clear account of the column that ticked him off. In what was supposed to be a balanced, give-both-sides-of-the-story report on ESPNEWS, I saw the full three-minute, 20-second videotape of Gundy's news conference for the umpteenth time, followed by a videotape of reporter Jenni Carlson's response on "Good Morning America," in which she says, calmly, "I stand firmly on the facts of the column." He looked bad. She looked good.

"What facts?" somebody at ESPN should have asked before ridiculing the coach while giving the columnist a pass. In building her case against the benched quarterback, Carlson introduces her evidence of his no-can-do attitude with these phrases: "If you believe the rumors and the rumblings …", "Tile up the back stories told on the sly over the past few years …", "Word is …" and "Insiders say …". In my book, those are not phrases from the realm of fact; they barely count even as speculation by anonymous sources.

Several commentators faulted Carlson for criticizing an amateur athlete so harshly, and ESPN.com columnist Gene Wojciechowski raised questions about the accuracy of her observations But why did I hear no one at ESPN explicitly note that the column that so enraged Gundy was based on rumors and rumblings and the sayings of "insiders"? Because they want to be allowed to take those same liberties? Because they didn't bother to read the column? Because all that mattered was milking that videotape for a week's worth of commentary? Because the boundaries between fact, opinion and rumor have become so porous that nobody noticed rumor crossing the border with a fake passport?

All of this is true. Moreover, it came from ESPN’s internal conscience. How can a mere blogger compete?

Actually, it’s pretty easy. Schreiber comments on espn.com and my non-post on an unread blog had exactly the same effect on the World Wide Leader:

ZERO. Nada. Zip.

Despite Schreiber’s trenchant criticism, the same clueless blowhards hold forth on ESPN. Bayless, Lupica, Forde, et. al. still cough up their fact-lite punditry on subjects they are too lazy to study.

It’s a perfect case study of corralled rebellion.

“The most righteous of all the possessors of the Right Stuff”

First Mach flight propels Yeager, Air Force into history

It was just another test mission for Capt. Chuck Yeager.

Captain Yeager arrived at Muroc Air Force Base, Calif., the morning of Oct. 14, 1947, for what would be his ninth powered flight piloting the Bell X-1.

On to the trial!

Civil suit in lacrosse case filed

The city of Durham, former District Attorney Mike Nifong and the DNA laboratory hired by the disbarred ex-prosecutor conspired to falsely charge three Duke lacrosse players with rape, a federal civil lawsuit filed Friday alleges.

The 162-page document, a detailed account of every step of alleged misconduct that drips with indignation, sets the stage for a high-profile, high-stakes legal battle.

The old boys club at work


I'll admit that I don't have high expectations for ombudsmen or "public editors". An interesting example of the problems inherent in the role shows up in this story:

Schreiber Keeps an Eye on ESPN 'Monolith'

Schreiber actually has a good grasp of the basic problems at ESPN:

Schreiber has been quite critical of ... the loud, talking heads who shout too much
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Schreiber criticizes some of the anchors of the "Sports Center" shows throughout each day, complaining that those people make themselves more important than the news.
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Schreiber wrote a strong and excellent column claiming that sportscasters doing a game should "keep their eye on the ball."
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She said, "The most consistent complaint I get from viewers is that the announcing team is not sufficiently focused on the game." She explained that game announcers often digress from the game "by discussing topics near and far from the game at hand".

So far so good. But how can she believe such things and then do something like this?

Throughout her critiques, Schreiber lauds some ESPN talking heads such as Tony Kornheiser...

Come on now. Kornheiser is one of the most high profile figures at ESPN and he is guilty of every talking head sin that Schreiber condemns. He is loud, lazy, ill-informed, and self-indulgent. His primary role on Monday Night Football is to divert attention away from the game and onto some subject he like more.

Maybe i am the suspicious sort, but i wonder if this is the reason Kornheiser gets a pass:

Throughout her critiques, Schreiber lauds some ESPN talking heads such as Tony Kornheiser, for his work on "Pardon The Interruption." Tony was on the Times sports staff as a reporter with me when Schreiber was the sports editor.

It's easy for Schreiber, with her "postgraduate degree in literature" and her tenure at the NEW YORK TIMES, to chastise ex-jocks and reporters from lesser papers. But she just can't quite say a mean word about litle Tony who worked with her at THE TIMES.

As with most public editors, Schreiber is, first and foremost, a member of the journalist s guild. Further, she is a member of its most exalted order-- New York Times alums. That shapes her thinking and her criticism. What she calls "perspective" we in the gret unwashed call "blinders."

Not just in Durham

Bar tape refutes cops

Video of '04 raid casts new doubts on city's elite police unit

The arrest report filed by two Chicago police officers claimed they searched Raymundo Martinez outside a Southwest Side bar because he threw a bottle of Corona down on the sidewalk when he saw them coming.

The officers, members of the special operations section, saw a plastic bag that turned out to contain cocaine poking from his sleeve and arrested him, their report states.

But cameras on the bar's ceiling and outside caught a very different scene that night in 2004 at Caballo's, 3748 W. 63rd St. Instead of two officers approaching a man drinking on a public street, the video shows more than two dozen police from the SOS unit raiding the bar and searching everyone, and arresting Martinez inside the bar.

Richard Jewell

Outstanding post over at the Autonomist

Richard Jewell, 1962-2007

Part I: Ray Cleere Seizes an Opportunity

This is the story of Richard Jewell, the hero who saved countless lives, and of Ray Cleere, the first of many heels who sought to railroad him for another man’s crime.