January 2005 Archives

Who knew? I'm afflicted. From Simon World's excellent blog primer, Everything you wanted to know about blogging but were afraid to ask:

#41. Just like real writing, sometimes bloggers are hit with blog block. There are three ways to deal with this. Firstly, talk about your blog block. Everyone else has, you may as well tell everyone why your creativity sucks so badly too. Secondly, just post nothing. Sure you'll lose the 3 readers you had, but it's best not to make them sick by posting crap. Thirdly, fight your way through it by posting crap.

I've been so busy building my new site that I haven't had time to focus; and reading so much from others on how to blog that I've questioned my own blogging. (Am I a "thinker" or "linker?" Can't I be both? An "iso-blogger," an "extra-blogger" or an "intra-blogger?" huh?) I don't know but I've got 5 posts sitting here that I am reluctant to push out. Maybe I'll just slip them on to the blog among the other posts in the morning. Or delete them! For now, I think I'll sleep on it.

If I had found a podcast that I thought would be interesting, I might have delayed signing on to Audible.com. I looked. From today's San Jose Mercury News:

``You don't have to go hunting for news -- the news finds you,'' said Dave Winer, the inventor of RSS and creator of one of the earliest blogs, the Scripting News.

Podcasting works in the same way. Subscribe to specific Podcasts, and the software finds the latest feeds and transfers the audio files automatically to iTunes, Apple's digital media jukebox. When an iPod is plugged into your computer, it downloads the podcasts. The software also works with other music management programs and digital music players.

I've yet to figure out how to have the news find me. But then, I'm not as technologically agile as I once was. To date I've listened to one of Dave's podcasts; I would gladly listen to more. As I figure it out I'll let you know how it goes.

Here's where to start looking: iPodder, Podcaster.org and Podcast.net (the top in Google's search results but the site is down right now).

Oh, and the BBC is experimenting with podcasts.

At Christmas time while visiting a friend in New York I watched as he sat screaming at his computer. He had just signed up for audible.com and was trying to download his book. Moments ago I signed up, now Doug's sitting here asking why I was yelling at him when all he was trying to do was help me?

"They should make it easier!" says I.

Doug answers, "Sometimes it's not clear, but it was in this case. You just have to read it."

As happens so often in my business, it was a "UE." User error. The error was mine. Sorry.

"Well. it's pretty unpleasant when you're like that."

Understood.

You get 2 free books when you sign up for Audible's $21.95 monthly service and can cancel at any time. Unfortunately, I probably will. The pickings are relatively slim so far and I won't be "reading" that many audio books. I would happily sign up for an annual service with fewer books; for sure I'll buy them one at a time. My advice to you? If you sign up, read the directions carefully.

Microsoft has a new initiative, "PlaysforSure" obviously intended to buttress its position against rival Apple's iTunes. Freedom to Tinker read the instructions and concluded it's PlaysMaybe.

Charlie Peters also had this item:

You may have seen on the front page of The Washington Post in late November the headline “Virginia wife slain after court denies protection.� ...A few days later, the Post ran two sentences in its correction box on page 2, saying that the original story “may have left the impression that the judge had refused� to grant the extension, and that in fact “additional documents show that the protective order was dismissed at the [wife's] request.� Are two sentences on page 2 enough to correct the erroneous main thrust of a front page story?

Obviously not. What to do with the complaint? Scott Rosenberg at Salon has an idea:

Software development teams have used bug tracking software for ages now -- why not journalists? ...The model doesn't map perfectly onto journalism, but it's not too far off: Let people file "bug reports" if they believe your publication has published something in need of correcting. The publication can respond however it seems appropriate: If the complaint is frivolous, you point that out; if it's a minor error of spelling or detail, you fix it; if it's a major error, you deal with it however you traditionally deal with major errors -- but you've left a trail that shows what happened.

He revisited the idea to answer comments and concludes:

I'm not suggesting that this idea is the single, one-fix-solves-all-problems answer to the ills of journalism today. It's a pragmatic, you-could-do-it-real-soon suggestion for beginning to deal with professional journalism's biggest problem: the public's loss of trust, which begins with the sense that media companies are big institutions that pay no attention to their own mistakes.

Agreed.

Charlie Peters' Tilting at Windmills thinks so:

My friend Jonathan Rowe, who lives in California, is puzzled that Democrats don't respond to being called “girly-men� by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Have they missed the issue of Vanity Fair with Arnold and Maria on the cover? In the credit box accompanying the photograph, we are told that the governor's “grooming products� are from Dior, his “hair products� by Bumble & Bumble, and his jacket by Prada.

For that matter, would a “real man� refuse to debate unless he gets the questions first? Or would he have had more cosmetic surgery, as one source put it, “than Joan Rivers�?

Cool:

2005 may be the year when tools for thought become a reality for people who manipulate words for a living, thanks to the release of nearly a dozen new programs all aiming to do for your personal information what Google has done for the Internet. These programs all work in slightly different ways, but they share two remarkable properties: the ability to interpret the meaning of text documents; and the ability to filter through thousands of documents in the time it takes to have a sip of coffee. Put those two elements together and you have a tool that will have as significant an impact on the way writers work as the original word processors did.

For example, he's working on a project involving the London sewers. He does a search using "sewage" and gets a result explaining the way bones evolved in vertebrate bodies. That sends him on a tangent that leads to a whole new idea.

Now, strictly speaking, who is responsible for that initial idea? Was it me or the software? It sounds like a facetious question, but I mean it seriously. Obviously, the computer wasn't conscious of the idea taking shape, and I supplied the conceptual glue that linked the London sewers to cell metabolism. But I'm not at all confident I would have made the initial connection without the help of the software. The idea was a true collaboration, two very different kinds of intelligence playing off each other, one carbon-based, the other silicon.

We made it through the day okay and went to a Mardi Gras party as planned. Driving away we saw that our house was the last to have power and wondered whether we'd have it when we got back. We did not.

We built a raging fire and I read the old-fashioned way, candlelight and ink. Doug had battery power for his laptop so worked on his dissertation. The crack and crash of limbs continued through the evening. Several made us sit up and take notice including the one that hit our porch and took down our awning. Another took down the power line to the house and another a tree in the neighbor's yard, now leaning over the stretched downed power lines.

I'm in my office now, where it's warm, and Doug's in his with our cold little dogs. Georgia Power was on the scene when we left and said it's possible, not likely but possible, that power will be restored today.

3:55 PM UPDATE: Power's back. Thank you Georgia Power!

Or a Mac. Not a Sony.

Now, truth be told, I've had to go back and forth with Dell support enough to make me crazy. In the end I still bought another Dell. But then, we're a Dell shop.

I miss C-SPAN's Booknotes. It was one of my favorite shows on television. It's replacement, Q&A, is a dud. (George Bush is the guest tomorrow). Maybe it will get better.

An author I'd have liked to see on Booknotes is Malcolm Gladwell. I enjoyed his first book, The Tipping Point (The New Yorker article it's based on is here) and look forward to reading the just released Blink.

One of my first posts, Everything's Derivative, was about another New Yorker article of his, the thought-provoking Something Borrowed: Should a charge of plagiarism ruin your life? I'll have another Malcolm post later today.

A good day for C-SPAN and blogging. I only hope the power stays on.

2:11 PM UPDATE: It's still raining. And icing. Limbs are falling from the trees. We've got one line down going into our house but power and cable are still on. I got a call from the staff at the computer labs; power is off at school so we closed them down. I can only hope my router doesn't blow with all the power pops we're having here. My Mac just blinked off but the PC's hanging in there...

Our driveway. The yard is littered with limbs too.

If you watched last night's Nightline "Iraq, Why We Stay" Town Meeting to the end, you heard Ted Koppel's closing remarks interupted by a shouter:

I was upset that nothing was said about the health of our troops mentally, physically or otherwise. So, I satarted chanting "GULF WAR SYNDROME" over and over again, very loudly so it filled the church and drown out Ted Koppel. He replied, "I am sure I have no idea what you're talking about" and I yelled, "It's about Depleted Uranium!" Then I shut up, and he finished his closing and it was over.

The full account is well worth reading. Via Steve Gillard's News Blog.

The Oklahoma legislature outlawed cockfighting because of its cruelty to the roosters, which are slashed and pecked to death while human spectators bet on the outcome. A Democratic State Senator says it costs $100 million in business. (Where do they come up with these numbers?) His sollution:

To try to revive it, he has proposed that roosters wear little boxing gloves attached to their spurs, as well as lightweight, chicken-sized vests configured with electronic sensors to record hits and help keep score.

All Things Considered talked to him.

The Good - Last week, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the state's fornication law was invalid. The ruling was based on the precedent of Lawrence v Texas which overturned the nation’s sodomy laws and was part of the reasoning behind the Massachusetts’ court decision to allow same-sex marriage. Harvard Law Professor and FindLaw columnist Joanna Grossman:

"...fornication laws are a relic of a past in which most non-marital sexual conduct was considered criminal behavior. Yet laws still persist on the books in about twenty percent of the states.
Virginia was right to invalidate such an antiquated law, and other fornication laws, if challenged in court, are very likely to be invalidated as well.

The Bad - Last week in Pennsylvania U. S. District Judge Gary L. Lancaster, a Clinton nominee, dismissed federal obscenity charges against a hard-core pornographic video business that produces and distributes graphic videos depicting rape and murder (the decision and news links are gathered here). From Monday's Nightline transcript:

JAKE TAPPER (Voice Over): Judge Lancaster...repeatedly referred in his ruling to the 2003 US Supreme Court decision in Lawrence V. Texas, which struck down that state's law against gay sodomy. Though, the minority on the court argued the state had the right to establish a moral code, they lost.

The Ugly - Allow gay tolerance and you have to allow "bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity," Scalia wrote in the Lawrence dissent. This case appears to confirm that; not good for gay people. And it shouldn't come to pass. Joanna Grossman again:

[Scalia] certainly overstated Lawrence's intended scope, and he probably overstated its eventual reach as well.
In truth, laws against sodomy and fornication are the only sex laws that do not implicate any of the boundaries the Supreme Court tried to limn [sic] in Lawrence. The Court strongly suggested that laws affecting the institution of marriage, involving minors, or involving sexual activities that are conducted in public or for commercial purposes would not be within the bounds of the "private relationships" protected by the Fourteenth Amendment - and thus will not be struck down under a Lawrence-like analysis.

I hope she's right.

In the MyDD Cattle Call Dean's in the lead:

Dean secured the frontrunner position with his getting the endorsement from the entire delegation of Florida, with Maddox saying, "I am a Southern chairman of a Southern state, and I am perfectly comfortable with Howard Dean as DNC chair."

In December it was Snowball, now it's "Postcards From Buster." But this time they had government encouragement. From CNN.com:

The nation's new education secretary denounced PBS on Tuesday for spending public money on a cartoon with lesbian characters, saying many parents would not want children exposed to such lifestyles.

HRC denounces her intolerance. PBS pulled the show:

A PBS spokesman said late Tuesday that the nonprofit network has decided not to distribute the episode, called "Sugartime!," to its 349 stations. She said the Education Department's objections were not a factor in that decision.

Of course not.

UPDATE: PBS pulled the epidode's web page. Google cached it. Josh Marshall found it.

I missed it. The Macintosh turned 21 on Monday. kottke.org has the 1984 video of Steve Jobs introducing it.
Via The Last Minute. (If your timing is right, mine wasn't, you could find a coveted G-Mail invite there.)

UPDATE: As it happens some Apple folks are visiting campus today, one from Cupertino. I gave them a tour of the Mac labs. We're on their website (4 pages!) for our iPod project. Maybe we will get that larger article in the New York Times.

Via Kudzu Files. A 17 year old guy's been blogging as The New Democrat since November. Along comes a former Swift Boat Veteran supporter, "Ricky Vandal," who starts a blog with the same name, except with the added tagline "Saving the Democratic party from the looney left." Centerfield was the first to try to help and has the details. Now lots of blogs are talking about it.

UPDATE: Happy ending.

Reihan Salam at The American Scene says it "could be a big deal." A friend wrote to tell me of her Republican mother's favorable comments. The Moderate Voice calls it "an almost startling middle leaning stance" and links to many other bloggers' comments. From the NYTimes coverage:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Monday that the opposing sides in the divisive debate over abortion should find "common ground" to prevent unwanted pregnancies and ultimately reduce abortions, which she called a "sad, even tragic choice to many, many women."

Positioning for a presidential run? Everyone says so. I stand by what I said last week.

The FCC rejected 36 indecency complaints by the Parents Television Council. Among the PTC objections, shows with "scenes in which male characters talk about kissing men and female characters talk about kissing women." Jeff Jarvis's Buzz Machine details all 36 of them, noting:

In the first set of rulings, the FCC seems to bravely decides that "dick" in various forms is OK. Ditto ass, penis, vaginal, nutsack, and a three-way. In the second set, they add the words hell and damn -- as if they were ever in contention as indecent and blaspamous -- as well as breast, nipples, can, pissed, crap, bastard, and bitch. It's the liberalization of America, I tell you, it's the second damned sexual revolution!

What happened to Tavis Smiley's NPR show? We liked it and my guess is it was very popular in Atlanta. The NPR site has a Press Release expressing regret. The Washington Post details a falling out:

NPR executives say Smiley simply would not negotiate after an agent delivered his demands. "We tried to meet, we tried to talk by phone," says Washington lawyer Robert Barnett, who represented NPR. "We were woefully unsuccessful. . . . "

Says Smiley: "What NPR is apparently upset about is not that I would not negotiate, but that I wouldn't acquiesce. I do not do my best work in chains and shackles. For black kids and brown kids yet unborn, I felt I had to say no. They were being disrespectful."

NPR documents the agent's "$3 million demand for promotion" that it was unable to meet. The show started three years ago on 16 stations and was reaching a multiethnic, upscale and educated audience on more than 80 when Smiley exited in December. His replacement, "News & Notes," is also a partnership between NPR and the African-American Public Radio Consortium.

I've been mired in Movable Type installation woes. If I had gone through this the first time around, I'd probably be blogging at Typepad or Blogger. Not a bad option but The Moderate Voice has recently had problems at Typepad and Right Wing News said in June of 2003 that Blogger should be "dropped like a hot rock" even as my favorite AMERICAblog seems happy there still. But then, John Aravosis is a gay DC liberal.

It's hard to keep up quality blogging under these conditions. I did have time to note Left Oblique's Wal-Mart post (you can't buy gay liteature but you can buy hate literature) and SoVo Blog delivered the sad news about the delayed opening of Atlanta's Ikea (small consolation that they get a new Target - so Midtown residents have four while we here in Milledgeville drive 40 miles to Macon). And now that The Passion of the Christ was passed over for a Best Picture nomination (receiving the well-earned nod for Cinematography, Music and Make-Up instead) the blogoshere is bound to erupt. Alas, I'll be changing CHMOD settings and banging my head that my new site still doesn't work.

Last week I pointed favorably to Arnold's prison reform plan. This week I'm reminded he's got plenty of the Republicanisms in him that I don't like. To deal with California's budget crisis, he proposes cutting spending on the poor while preserving tax breaks for the well-off. What's worse, writes Kevin Drum:

Schwarzenegger actively created a huge part of the budget crisis himself. Just as George Bush seems to hope that tax cuts will create an artificial crisis atmosphere that allows him to pursue pet projects like Social Security privatization, Schwarzenegger campaigned on a pledge to cut the auto license fee. This slashed $3-4 billion in revenue, an amount that would go a very long way toward eliminating California's problem....

He campaigned on a promise never to cut education funding and went back on his word almost immediately. He campaigned on a promise to end "crazy deficit spending," but adopted Gray Davis's deficit spending plans almost verbatim within months. He's made some interesting proposals, and has demonstrated some genuine charisma and political talent, but in the end his only real tactic seems to be the same one George Bush loves so much: convincing the public that everything is a crisis and he's the only one who can deal with it.

Howard Dean's appearance yesterday on THIS WEEK affirms again my belief that he's the best candidate for DNC Chair. Among his comments:

That's why I'm running for DNC chair. Democrats hope that once in a while a John F. Kennedy or a Bill Clinton will come along and all of a sudden, aha. We can't do that. What the Republicans have is a better system than ours. Now, we made great strides in this election but the Republicans have 14,000 people on the ground in Ohio. We have to bring them in.

Now, the next time, through training and through money to the state parties and building up state parties through grassroots organizations, I want to have a system that's as good as the Republicans and the time after that I want to have a system that's better than the Republicans because the one thing that Republicans don't do is they don't empower their people on the ground. They, they give the orders from on high and then the masses go forth and do their bidding.

I think if you empower people on the ground to make their own decisions, the Democrats can win again. I'm interested in this because of the systems, not because of the policy.

I agree with the diagnosis and I agree with the proposed solution. If nothing else in the last campaign, he demonstrated he could organize and motivate. Let's let him do it again.

Kudzu Files asks, "How did the chick get into the Fox house?" Great question! Nicely put. Let's watch.

I'm moving. I've been working all weekend on developing my new site. And new nom de plume - "aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural south." I decided that I want to put just a bit more space between my dog pictures and home life and my daily blogging.

Hoping to do it right, get better, I've been reading up on blog building. I started at Kudzu Files who pointed me to Outside the Beltway and the evangelical outpost who then pointed me to others too numerous to mention. Many of them will be in my blogroll on the new site. (That's after I learn how to build a blogroll!)

All seem to agree that quality, consistency and distinctiveness are key. I'll be looking to make progress in those three areas. In the meantime, feel free to check out the new site as I build it over the next few days and weeks; I'll let you know when I'm ready to move over there. This site, "Vintage Joe," will of course remain.

Firefox continues to make impressive gains against Internet Explorer. Not only do people download it, they're using it. Some of it's a "simply not being IE" effect, some because it's more secure, and some no doubt because it's good software.

We put it in the labs here at Georgia College for security reasons. The recent discovery of a security vulnerability makes it likely that malicious coders aren't far behind. And though the threat is really minor, I expected something more from the folks at Mozilla. No patch, no word, on their website to date.

Good riddance:

Michael K. Powell will step down today as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, officials there said, ending a four-year term that was marked by the tightening of standards on decency and attempts to loosen restrictions on media ownership.

I'll say! As I noted yesterday, eight radio stations, one conservative coporate owner, here in the tiny Macon market.

I tuned out.

UPDATE: Primetime too.

Earlier this month when House Democrats needed a Senator to force debate on the legitimacy of the presidential electoral votes (Fahrenheit 9/11 you will recall noted that no Senator would do this last time around), Barbara Boxer said yes. Then this week she took on Condoleezza Rice, in a tone many of us found highly appropriate. The New York Times has a profile.

1/25/05 UPDATE: DailyKos on "Boxer the new Wellstone"

There is no crisis. Really. Check it out.

Sponge Bob Square Pants. A secret agent in the recruitment of gays. Details in the New York Times.

Don't buy into the Noise Machine propaganda. There is a market for liberal opinion on radio. Crooks and Liars points to, of all places, The Wall Street Journal for the good news on Air America.

They've made inroads with ClearChannel, but are not likely to turn up anytime soon on boycott-the-Dixie-Chicks-leader Cumulus Radio, the dominant Middle Georgia broadcaster with 8 stations in the tiny Macon market.

I can't say I pay close attention to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he's doing some things that make him the kind of Republican I could support. This week, it's prisons. California has the nation's largest state prison system, in such sorry shape it's on the verge of a federal takeover. So who has he named to head the system? Jeanne Woodford, a reform-minded warden who believes in prevention, education and rehabilitation. From Tuesday's Morning Edition:

GONZALES: Jeanne Woodford knows what it's like to work her way up from the bottom. She joined the California prison system fresh out of college and came to work at San Quentin as a prison guard. Back then, in 1978, California, like the rest of the nation, was getting tough on crime. But Woodford remembers how the practice of locking up prisoners for fixed terms backfired.

Ms. JEANNE WOODFORD (Department of Corrections, California): And so we started to see more and more younger people coming into the prison who did not have the incentives to behave themself, and they were coming in with longer terms, they were coming in street gang members, so the violence quickly increased.

GONZALES: And with the violence came long periods of lockdowns, which choked off vocational training classes. Over time, college classes, provided at taxpayer expense, were eventually outlawed, and Woodford, working her way up the chain of command, was learning a lesson.

Ms. WOODFORD: My history at that particular prison led to my belief that if you're impacting that offender, the potential for impacting that offender's children and their family can stop the cycle of crime and stop victimization. And that really is true public safety.

The broken windows theory applied to prison reform. With no tax funding she turned to community and non-profit volunteers to build education and training programs. That impressed the governor. Schwarzenegger's overall reform plan, which creates a new Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to underscore the shift towards rehabilitation and prevention, has been met with substantial criticism. Time will tell. I'm just impressed to see that rehabilitation and prevention are part of one Republican's agenda.

Here is the concluding Part 2 of the Morning Edition series.

Via Atrios, Bill O'Reilly, who never served in the military, nevertheless says he's seen combat. Al Franken had a good time with that on his Air America radio show (listen here). Now James Poling is offering a reward to anyone who can corroborate the O'Reilly claim. You can help.

Monday's Washington Whispers piece about Hillary's brothers saying she's readying for a presidential run kicked up this week's Hillary talk. Lots of critics on the left; Chris Bowers answers them point by point. I'm reminded of another Michael Moore comment from his January 6 Today Show appearance:

COURIC: What about Hillary Clinton, do you think she has a chance?

Mr.MOORE: What--she's a star. Absolutely she has--absolutely she has a chance.

COURIC: Many people think she could not--even if she won the nomination could not win the election because she's so polarizing.

Mr. MOORE: I don't--well, talk about polarizing, how about George W. Bush? They don't worry about--they never ask themselves that question. `Geez, I don't know, should we run Bush again? He's kind of polarizing. A lot of people don't like him,' you know? It's like, you know, we--our side has got to knock that off. Hillary Clinton is beloved by millions of Americans. I'm not saying, you know, she should necessarily be the one. But, you know...

I voted for her in New York and she's doing, by most accounts, an outstanding job. I recall her working hard to get elected, running a smart campaign that won over conservative leaning upstate voters. If she wants to run, good for her. She's earned it. If she were to get the nomination, I'd vote for her.

Michael Moore was on the Today Show a couple weeks back (January 6). I thought he made a lot of sense when he asked:

Where's our Arnold? Why aren't we running our Arnold? Why do we continue to run these wonks? The American people--see the Republicans, as much as they berate Hollywood, actually they love Hollywood. In fact, they know that Americans love Hollywood, too, and that's why Republicans run people from Hollywood. Reagan, Arnold, Gopher from "The Love Boat." He was in Congress...Sonny Bono...Fred Thompson. They know that Americans love Hollywood. That's why they run people from Hollywood. And--and when the Democrats run stars: Bill Clinton, the rock star; John Kennedy, the movie star, they win. And when they run wonks, they lose. And they've got to start thinking about the people who connect to the average American out there, and who are really--you know, people who move the American public in--in a very visceral way...when we start running people that are beloved by the American public, we're going to win.

Let's start with the DNC Chair. Howard Dean is our star. Martin Frost is not.

Today in Georgia, the Cobb County School Board appealed the judges ruling from last week holding that "evolution disclaimer" stickers must be removed from science textbooks. And in Dover, PA, the town where my brother raised his family and my 2 nephews attended the public schools, today was the first day students were read the "Intelligent Design" statement. The Associated Press reports it was read by administrators:

Seven science teachers, including three biology teachers, wrote a letter earlier this month saying that reading the statement would violate Pennsylvania's professional standards and practices code. All three biology teachers chose not to read the statement.

You have to respect those teachers. Surprisingly, they're in the minority. A Gallup Poll found that only 35% of Americans say that evolution is well-supported by evidence. Now that's scary.

Phillip Nobile wrote to wish that I link to his reply to Andrew Sullivan, whom I quoted approvingly in my last Lincoln post. After reading it all yet again, Nobile's 2001 HNN posting, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Publish: Homophobia in Lincoln Studies? followed by his Weekly Standard Review and finally Sullivan's New Republic essay, I have to say I come down once again on the side of Sullivan.

Details are in the extended entry.

We're not journalists, we're bloggers. A different animal. The idea is to be politically active. "Thus, any discussion of 'blog ethics' or 'blog accountability' cannot be done exclusively within a journalistic frame. Instead, 'blog ethics' and 'blog accountability' is equally, if not more, similar to 'organizing ethics' and 'activist accountability.'" More from Chris Bowers at MyDD:

For me, the primary difference between the Blogosphere and the media oligopoly is simply not the content and register of our discourse, but instead the function of that discourse. In particular, these days our discussions almost invariably are not ends in and of themselves. Instead, while pundits of the media oligopoly work to inform (at which they do a terrible job), we work to agitate. While they supposedly labor toward objectivity (and fail miserably), we clearly labor toward subjectivity, agency and direct political action. For me, it is not about creating an alternative avenue for edgy discursive expression. Instead, it is about organizing and effectively channeling the activism of the people who take part in and witness those discussions.

We rant and rave about the establishment on a daily basis, but it is only when we organize huge rallies for Dean, raise large sums of money for candidates, help expose a major news story, and gather huge readerships that blogs receive much press. Our actions have gained us our notoriety.

Well if not that, I most certainly aspire to this:

The Blogosphere is a counter-institutional formation that seeks to relocate the primary purpose of political and opinion journalism in agitation toward action rather than in profit-based consumption.

The Republican Noise Machine is at it again. Saying Dean paid bloggers to blog favorably of him is distortion enough, but then they treat it as if it's equivalent to the Bush Armstrong Williams payments. (Compare it to understand clearly, there's no comparing!) If history is any guide they'll get away with it. Talk radio, Fox and cable news all chatter away about it, it moves next to mainstream media and the world comes to believe it's so. Meanwhile, you're not likely to see this from Laura Gross of Dean For America, the "Dean spokeswoman" quoted in the WSJ piece that started it all, via Kos:

Here's the deal: the campaign paid these guys with private funds to do work that did not include writing content or otherwise talking/writing about the campaign -- and widely disclosed the relationship at the time anyway, just in case. The Bush administration used taxpayer dollars to pay Williams to lace his commentary with praise for a certain policy -- and both the administration and Williams covered it up. Also, it appears that what they have done is illegal.

Here's Joe Trippi's response. And here a Wall Street Journal Armstrong Williams conflict of interest.

UPDATE: Dave Winer, Scripting News, 16 minute podcast interview with Joe Trippi from Saturday, January 15. Transcript & audio.

Staying in a borrowed house in Savannah, I had only broadcast television. No cable. At 11:30 this Sunday morning I tuned in. On five of the seven channels was Christian broadcasting. Here's some of what I did not hear:

The findings in numerous national polls conducted by highly respected pollsters like The Gallup Organization and The Barna Group are simply shocking. "Gallup and Barna," laments evangelical theologian Michael Horton, "hand us survey after survey demonstrating that evangelical Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, self-centered, and sexually immoral as the world in general." Divorce is more common among "born-again" Christians than in the general American population. Only 6 percent of evangelicals tithe. White evangelicals are the most likely people to object to neighbors of another race. Josh McDowell has pointed out that the sexual promiscuity of evangelical youth is only a little less outrageous than that of their nonevangelical peers.

There's more, lots more, in "The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience" in Christianity Today. And what's the proposed solution?

Weeping and repentance are the only faithful responses to the sweeping, scandalous disobedience in the evangelical world today.

Okay. What precisely does that mean?

It is a deep, heartfelt sorrow for offending the Holy Sovereign of the universe and a strong inner resolve to embrace the conversion—the complete reversal of direction—that our forgiving Savior longs to bestow.... Daily, we can pray to the Lord to transform us more and more into the very likeness of Jesus.

Somehow, I don't think that'll do it. But there is hope. Read on.

I'd like to see it happen, but can't believe it ever will. And I think it's the conservatives who will kill it. They know there's no liberal media and don't want to let go of their Republic Noise Machine.

TiVo's CEO is stepping down but remains as Chariman. Thomas Hawk says it's about time and enumerates his failings (included here in the extended entry). I wish TiVo well but have my doubts.

UPDATE: More from the New York Times.

From an editorial in today's Atlanta Journal Constitution:

On Thursday, a federal judge summoned the courage and conviction to uphold the U.S. Constitution and thwart efforts by creationists to insert their religious beliefs into Georgia's public schools. U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper ordered the immediate removal of evolution disclaimers on high school science books in Cobb County, ruling that the controversial stickers ran afoul of the constitutional divide between church and state...In affixing the stickers to textbooks, the Cobb County school board wasn't looking to enhance the science education or critical thinking skills of students. Cornered by a petition with 2,300 signatures, board members were just bowing to public pressure.

Last night Nightline did a terrific piece on the creationist drive in Dover, PA to mandate that teachers read a statement about "Intelligent Design" during biology lessons. Hijacking the word "objectivity" and trying to cloak itself in science, "Intelligent Design" holds "that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause." And they're not talking extraterrestrials here.

At a party recently I had a conversation with a Georgia Military College biology teacher. A Brit who's the son-in-law of the Commandant, he spoke of the problems teaching biology here. For example some students flat out refuse to even listen in class. He believes the problem is Constitutional and boiled it down to this: the lack of religious education in school. He believes religion should be taught in school. All religion. World religion. Christian, Muslim, Hindu, you name it.

Now there's a thought. What would the creationists think of that?

The Athens Banner Herald reports that a Fulton County judge will hear arguments today about whether Georgia's anti-gay marriage amendment was legally written.

Doug's young niece in Mississippi voted in favor of their amendment. She didn't see her vote as intolerant. "I'm sure lots of folks voted 'no' but weren't being judgmental." I believe she's right. Now how do we make them understand otherwise?

Maybe this conservative argument in favor of gay marriage will help. Pass it on.

This week Frank Rich's topic is "All the President's Newsmen." He begins with a well-earned chiding of CNN's Crossfire for its treatment of Armstrong Williams. (I've had it with Paul Begala, who called Williams "a stand-up guy" and lauded his by now rote apology with "God bless you for that." Begala's no liberal, he's a smarmy political hack.) Then there's this example of the Republican Noise Machine in action:

At a time when no one in television news could get an interview with Dick Cheney, Mr. Williams, of all "journalists," was rewarded with an extended sit-down with the vice president for the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a nationwide owner of local stations affiliated with all the major networks. In that chat, Mr. Cheney criticized the press for its coverage of Halliburton and denounced "cheap shot journalism" in which "the press portray themselves as objective observers of the passing scene, when they obviously are not objective."

This is a scenario out of "The Manchurian Candidate." Here we find Mr. Cheney criticizing the press for a sin his own government was at that same moment signing up Mr. Williams to commit. The interview is broadcast by the same company that would later order its ABC affiliates to ban Ted Koppel's "Nightline" recitation of American casualties in Iraq and then propose showing an anti-Kerry documentary, "Stolen Honor," under the rubric of "news" in prime time just before Election Day.

Simon for DNC Chair.

When Nightline is good it is very good. Last night it was very good. (Full transcript in extended entry.) In a portrait of a gay 17 year old Oklahoma boy, Michael Shackelford, his family, church and community come to terms with his sexuality. There was no correspondent; the people told their story. And what a story it was.

Shackelford was the subject of Anne Hull's 4 part Washington Post series, Young and Gay in Real America. That made him the target of Fred Phelp's Westboro Baptist Church (found at www.godhatesfags.com). Phelps most recently thanked God for 3,000 dead Americans in the Tsunami, but was probably seen by most Americans in news coverage of Matthew Shepard's murder, where he picketed the funeral. He's been around forever, a staple at Gay rallies and news events nationwide. When Phelps and his crew targeted the Baptist church Shackelford's family attends, Nightline was there.

Shackelford's mother, sister, preacher and classmates were interviewed, as were the Westboro protestors - whose bigotry was so extreme and explicit that it helped most of those who knew Shackelford come to support him. They didn't change their mind about the sin of homosexuality, but hated the sin not the sinner. Progress. The preacher said from his pulpit that God loves everyone. The congregants applauded. Real progress. And in a real life ending that avoided sentimentality it was revealed that Shackelford had dropped out of high school and is now working towards a GED.

These stories are true to the experience of people I know living here now in Middle Georgia. Milledgeville is 30 miles from the nearest Interstate, a town dominated by a state hospital, 6 prisons and a liberal arts college. The college tempers us somewhat, but here and in towns all around here, growing up gay, coming out and finding acceptance is tough. I have a young acquaintance right now struggling with exactly the issues raised in the Nightline piece and Washington Post series. Isolated and facing rejection from his family, he still chose to come out. I've saved the show for him and will direct him to the Post series.

The NYTimes review of "The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln" sure made it sound like the book was convincing. Lincoln, in today's vernacular, was gay. One thing I wondered about at the time was the author, C. A. Tripp, had a falling out with his original co-author, Phillip Nobile, who charged plagiarism. Nobile wouldn't comment for the Times, promising his own article. It's here and it's scathing, if ultimately unconvincing. Andrew Sullivan calls the Nobile "review" appearing in The Weekly Standard a hatchet job, points to an earlier Nobile essay that contradicts his Standard piece, does side by side comparisons of the earlier essay and the review, then concludes:

So the Weekly Standard's reviewer was a strong proponent of the view that Lincoln was bisexual. He had his own book in the works on the subject. Tripp beat him to the punch - and is now dead so cannot challenge Nobile's account of the editorial process. Isn't this a conflict of interest that the Standard should have disclosed? Isn't it relevant background for understanding Nobile's own motives for trashing a book by a scholar whose exhaustive research on the subject may have made Nobile's own book largely redundant?

Indeed it is. So that's that. But then there's this in The New Republic (included in full in the extended entry) by Princeton's Christine Stansell. She starts out by asking, who cares? and what would it matter anyway? then walks through the evidence dismissively ("what did it really mean for people to sleep together in small beds?"), calls it all "conjecture amplified by conjecture," and explains away his affinity for men as "like the great majority of nineteenth-century men." Her conclusion:

In his very naïveté, however, Tripp compiles a dossier of ambiguities--not truths, but ambiguities--worth considering. He wants to trumpet the unassailable truth of Lincoln's homosexuality--or, in his more nuanced moments, what he implies to be bisexuality. His bullish proclamations are easily countered, and not just by the heterosexists and the homophobes whose attacks he predicts will result from his revelations. But he puts forward some oddities. Too insubstantial in themselves to prove anything about Lincoln, they do add to a larger body of evidence concerning sex before sexuality--that is, bodily life before the advent of the modern notion of an all-encompassing state that lies at the core of identity.

No, it can't be incontrovertibly proved, and yes Tripp may make too much of his gaydar, but yes Stansell's insubstantial oddities are quite enough for me. He was gay. If not gay, bi.

The guy I wanted, Donnie Fowler, is apparently not happening. He's young, he's got time, he'll do great things. (Click here for a roundup of results from the DNC regional caucus in Atlanta). Now that Dean made it official, I'm with him. And strongly against Roemer

Chris Bowers sees the White House trying to sweep Armstrong Williams under the rug and urges action.

My friend Alex pointed me to Business Week's cover story on the future of the New York Times. As a onetime Times subscriber, reading it on the subway on the way to work in New York, I became a fan. It's a 30 mile drive to get it here, an occasional treat. No other paper I've found matches it. Here's why:

In essence, Sulzberger is doing what his forebears have always done: sink money into the Times in the belief that quality journalism pays in the long run. "The challenge is to remember that our history is to invest during tough times," he says. "And when those times turn -- and they do, inevitably -- we will be well-positioned for recovery."

Great sentiment, but will the market allow it?

NYT Co.'s stock is trading at about 40, down 25% from its high of 53.80 in mid-2002 and has trailed the shares of many other newspaper companies for a good year and a half. "Their numbers in this recovery are bordering on the abysmal," says Douglas Arthur, Morgan Stanley's (MWD ) senior publishing analyst.

After the jump -- the constancy of their commitment and will the Website remain free? If you're not a registered web user, many of my friends here aren't, sign up now. It's one of the best sites on the web!

Gary Condit's video deposition was on the Today Show today in a report about his $11 million libel suit against Dominic Dunne. Part 2, Dominic's side, tomorrow. It reminded me that I recently read in David Brock's book that MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, then a conservative Republican congressman who would later abruptly resign, had a dead female aide found in his Florida office at the same time Condit was under intense media scrutiny. Where was the coverage of that?

Meanwhile, just the other day John Aravosis at Americablog found hope in Scarborough's reaction to the Armstrong Williams payolagate scandal and suggested Scarborough might be an unlikely ally of the left.

As seen on various cars in the community.

When I say, "we'll take what we can get," it's in the context of the Right Wing domination of our media. If you doubt that's true, read David Brock's book, "The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy." Doug and I listened to the audio version on our trip north. For a primer, read Chris Bowers' Book Club entry at MyDD. It neatly summarizes the book, with extensive excerpts and links.

Kos likes radio personality Ed Shultz and points to this Washington Post article. I had never heard of him before. Of course there's a Red State hook:

The most widely carried liberal on radio is a "prairie-dwelling, red-meat-eating, gun-toting former conservative" who broadcasts from the unlikely locale of North Dakota...Insisting he's no Democratic foot soldier, Schultz criticizes John Kerry as a terrible presidential candidate and says "the righties connect with Joe Beercan better than the Democrats do." He also opposes abortion but doesn't talk about it on the air, calling it "a lousy talk radio topic."

That's liberal?

It's been 70 degrees here every day for the last week and is scheduled to stay that way next week. So today we took the dogs and a picnic lunch to the Bartram Forest. We picked up sandwiches on the way at the Goodie Gallery. There was a slovenly young fellow with a Harley t-shirt which read:

I like snatching kisses.
And vice versa.

Now how are they going to blame that on the Blue States?

Andrew Sullivan pointed to this comment by Susan Sontag from a May 2000 Guardian piece:

It's simple, she says. "As I've become less attractive to men, so I've found myself more with women. It's what happens. Ask any woman my age. More women come on to you than men. And women are fantastic. Around 40, women blossom. Women are a work-in-progress. Men burn out."

My experience hints it's true...er, the women blossom part!

Sullivan also pointed to this Bay Windows piece by Michael Bronski and this explanation by the New York Times on why it didn't note Sontag's lesbianism in her obituary. SoVo Blog notes others omitted it too and later revisited the subject again here.

Train tracks snake in around and through this town that I live in. Very close to homes and Georgia College dorms. So I note the train wreck in Graniteville, SC, a ghost town now - 8 dead, 58 hospitalized, hundreds more treated, and thousands driven from their homes. From the New York Times:

Ten months ago, government safety officials warned that more than half of the nation's 60,000 pressurized rail tank cars did not meet industry standards, and they raised questions about the safety of the rest of the fleet as well. Their worry, that the steel tanks could rupture too easily in an accident, proved prophetic. On Thursday, a derailment in South Carolina caused a catastrophic release of chlorine.

The problem's not going away anytime soon. Because pressurized tank cars remain in service for up to 50 years, some could be hauling hazardous chemicals through Milledgeville in 2039. What's needed is strong government safety regulations, similar to those imposed on the airline industry. My Republican neighbors would disagree.

Ten former WorldCom board members have to pay $18 million out of their own pockets in a settlement with investors who lost a fortune when the company collapsed in scandal. New York state Comptroller Alan Hevesi, the lead plaintiff in the class-action suit, insisted on it. From "All Things Considered:"

The notion that companies can commit fraud and that the directors can ignore that and not meet their obligations as fiduciary because they are covered by insurance and they don't even pay the premiums for it, we thought that, I thought that was just unfair and it was wrong.

That sure makes sense to me.

I liked my betamax. Unfortunately for Sony, there's really not much advantage to being first. I don't miss it. TiVo is a terrific product but it's hard to see how it won't end up a betamax. Yesterday, DirecTV announced the launch of its own Digital Video Recorder (DVR) service after divesting itself of its TiVo ownership stake last June.

The original TiVo idea was that it would be a service, like HBO, that you'd subscribe to, not a machine that you buy. The cable companies never bought in. They thought "we can do that!" and planned their own DVR service right off. TiVo started building machines. The DirecTV deal gave them a boost. Buzz built; Hollywood celebs love TiVo. There was excited talk about NetFlix and TiVo teaming up to deliver movies on demand. Nice when it happens, but they need the killer ap now. Big subscriber numbers have never materialized. Instead in Manhattan and Macon you can get DVR service from the cable company, and though you have to buy through other cable packages to get the service, it's got great features.

It will be some time before that comes to Milledgeville. In the meantime I've got a TiVo decal in my car's rear window and lifetime service since 2000 (ported over to my Series 2 DVR through a special offer). I like the way TiVo integrates with my home network -- I can listen to iTune playlists or view iPhoto albums through my TiVo (Windows Media Player works too). I'm happy. But with the sale of the fast-forward button and now the DirecTV news, my guess is that these are the good old days.

CNN cancelled Crossfire. CNN-U.S. president Jonathan Klein has been saying all over (New York Times, "All Things Considered," AP) how much he agreed with Jon Stewart, who famously said while a guest on Crossfire that the show and others like it are "hurting America." Wonkette loves the posturing. Cynics presume the show's ratings dive influenced the decision.

Update: I'm sooo off the mark. Apparently, cancelling Crossfire's not the story; Tucker Carlson's leaving is. He's been a hot blog topic for weeks. One asked, "Who likes Tucker Carlson?" Well, actually, I do. I don't agree with him but he doesn't make me seethe the way Rich Lowry, the other young buck, does.

John Aravosis comments on the recent firing of Cheryl Jacques as Executive Director of the Human Rights Campaign after less than a year in the position. He's heard that she was a bad boss; her side says she was fired for being too aggressive. He's doubtful:

I can't name a single large gay group that was aggressive last year other than the gay Republican group, Log Cabin Republicans. The notion that HRC was "too aggressive" and "too edgy" last year strikes me as laughable. I WISH our groups were so aggressive as to be accused of being TOO truly aggressive, we should be so lucky. So it doesn't ring very true in my ear that Jacques was forced out for being too aggressive. I just don't buy it....

The issue isn't whether HRC was TOO aggressive last year. The issue is why HRC wasn't MORE aggressive last year. The issue is why the other gay groups weren't more aggressive last year. Why the other liberal groups, women, anti-guns, civil rights, enviros, weren't more aggressive. And why the Democratic party and John Kerry weren't more aggressive.

Pew has a new report out on blogs. Big gains but most people (62%) still don't know what a blog is. Here's the report (pdf) here's a synopsis.

After reading the NY Review of Books article earlier, I finally sat down and watched the Frontline documentary, "Is Wal-Mart Good for America?" that has been sitting on my TiVo since November. From the transcript, after a sequence describing the role Wal-Mart played in the demise of Rubbermaid:

HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] It seemed to me that it wasn't just a plant dying, a set of corporate values was passing away. Ten years ago, Rubbermaid, with its reputation for quality, was named most admired. Last year, Wal-Mart, with its reputation for its cost-cutting, was most admired.

[on camera] If you look at the shift from Rubbermaid as the most admired company in 1994 and Wal-Mart as the most admired company today, in terms of the larger American economy, what does that mean? What does that say about the touchstones of success?

Prof. GARY GEREFFI, Duke University: Rubbermaid represented an innovation-oriented high road towards U.S. competitiveness. I think Wal-Mart represents a cost-driven, low-price low road towards U.S. competitiveness. And in a sense, they're two dramatically different styles in which the U.S. economy can be organized. I think the Wal-Mart model is winning out.

Now the problem is, even though this isn't news to me, I shop at Wal-Mart. Not often and only for the most trivial stuff, but if even I am drawn there by cheap stuff, how do we ever change things? I won't shop there again.

Jerome Armstrong debunks a Fred Barnes column, "The Incredible Shrinking Dems," that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on New Years Eve (the full column is included in the post). Much as the Republicans loathe admitting it:

...in 2004, Democrats gained state legislative seats nationwide, and retook the majority. Republicans have lost governorships, state legislatures, and legislators to Democratic gains-- a post-election fact that is a measure of Democratic success... What we really had in 2004 was a "southern peak" for the Republicans, where they gained 4 open Senate seats in the South, took over state leg seats in TN and GA (IN too), and saw an even stronger performance by Bush in the South than in 2000.

Doug forwarded me this New York Review of Books article on Wal-Mart. Its well documented thesis, the exploitation of the working poor is central to the business strategy of the world's largest and most powerful corporation. Some highlights:

As of last spring, the average pay of a sales clerk at Wal-Mart was $8.50 an hour, or about $14,000 a year, $1,000 below the government's definition of the poverty level for a family of three. Despite the implied claims of Wal-Mart's current TV advertising campaign, fewer than half— between 41 and 46 percent—of Wal-Mart employees can afford even the least-expensive health care benefits offered by the company.

...One of the most telling of all the criticisms of Wal-Mart is to be found in a February 2004 report by the Democratic Staff of the House Education and Workforce Committee. In analyzing Wal-Mart's success in holding employee compensation at low levels, the report assesses the costs to US taxpayers of employees who are so badly paid that they qualify for government assistance even under the less than generous rules of the federal welfare system. For a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store, the government is spending $108,000 a year for children's health care; $125,000 a year in tax credits and deductions for low-income families; and $42,000 a year in housing assistance. The report estimates that a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store costs federal taxpayers $420,000 a year, or about $2,103 per Wal-Mart employee. That translates into a total annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million US employees.

Wal-Mart is also a burden on state governments. According to a study by the Institute for Labor and Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2003 California taxpayers subsidized $20.5 million worth of medical care for Wal-Mart employees. In Georgia ten thousand children of Wal-Mart employees were enrolled in the state's program for needy children in 2003, with one in four Wal-Mart employees having a child in the program.

The article concludes that there is every prospect this strategy and its harsh practices will continue to spread throughout the economy. One industry I often wonder about is the airline industry. We hear that the new upstart airlines are efficient and not burdened by the legacy costs of the older carriers. What are the legacy costs? Better working conditions, higher pay and pension plans. I thought a goal of civil society was a higher standard of living, instead large swaths of our society face a deteriorating one.

We pulled into our Milledgeville driveway today, after leaving New York City on Friday, with 999 miles on the odometer. We set it at 24th and 7th. In between we celebrated the New Year with my high school friends in Harrisburg, PA, with my family there and with Doug's in Athens, GA. Our holiday travels were filled with love and friendship; we visited with many of the old friends, colleagues, and family who mean so much to us. Tonight we settle back in here, after dinner with a friend at Amici's, me with TiVo to catch up on what I missed while gone, Doug with school work. Tomorrow it's back to full-fledged blogging.