“Nattering Nabobs of Nostalgia”
Tim Porter, my friend and colleague at the USC Annenberg Institute for Justice and
Journalism, has fired off a roaring post
on the current decaying state of American journalism
He’s let the flea-bitten cat come ripping right out of the
bag: the demoralization among American journalists is now just about universal.
Tim puts a fabulous twist on that conclusion, but as they say in J-School (when
it comes to writing ledes), the conclusion comes first. Says Porter:
In the last 18 months I’ve interviewed several hundred
journalists – reporters, photographers, copy editors, executive editors,
designers, graphic artists. I’ve been in newspaper newsrooms of more than 500
people and in newsrooms of less than 50. It has been an immersion
course in the mood of the press – and much of it hasn’t been pretty.The amount of anger and hostility, of distrust and
suspicion, of inertia and ennui that pollutes the journalistic
environment in these newsrooms at first surprised me. Now, when I
first step into another newspaper I only wonder how long it will take to
surface.Initially, before the realization grew within me that the
negativism was not sporadic but pervasive, I tempered my perception of it with
the desires I heard from so many journalists to do good work, to chase
on still after the dreams that drew them into reporting or photography
- speaking truth to power, afflicting the comfortable and comforting the
afflicted, and, of course, the byline.
All these frustrated journalists, Porter says, seem to yearn
for some forgotten “good old days” when there was more money, more reporters,
better editors, wiser publishers etc. etc. Fair enough. No question that those who run the industry have run much
of it into the ground, says Porter. I agree. We all agree.
But here comes that twist. Many of these same heartbroken
reporters and journalists are, what he calls, ” nattering nabobs of
nostalgia.” While it is just fine to lament what has been lost,
it is not OK to remain paralyzed and embittered, pining for a time that will
never again return. More Porter:
… I am sorry, my friends in the newsroom, much of
the rest is your fault. The journalism, the leadership, the mandate to
reflect and engage your community, the necessity to make tough, but creative
decisions in the face of conflict, as all industries must do from time to time
- those are all your responsibilities and you have abdicated them.The obdurance and avoidance endemic in
newsrooms rests on a bedrock belief that the "problems" at their
newspapers are best solved with more bodies or a return to a more
"traditional" form of journalism.
This belief exists in every newsroom I’ve been in during the last 18 months and
while it is certainly understandable – most people prefer a known past, however
glorified it may be, to an uncertain future, regardless of the promise it may
hold – I believe it is dangerously destructive. It focuses on
what was rather than on what could be. It is a virtual "benchmark"
against which all is measured, usually unfavorably.
Even younger journalists too young to recall the halcyon days of the press
invoke phrases like "staffing situation" and "lack of
resources" when explaining certain newsroom condition. They have drunk
the newsroom Kool-Aid and ingested the defensive culture.
Porter’s observations are spot-on. The conversation that
journalists need to be engaged in now is only about the future. Otherwise they
risk a place in history somewhere between the ossified College of Cardinals and
the museum collections of granitized brontosaurus bones.
Make sure you read all of Porter’s post.
Especially if you care anything at all about the future of journalism.
Journalism is, indeed, caught in a moment of great historic
transition. We know where we are coming from but have little idea where we are
going. At least those of us willing to recognize that we are at such a
juncture.
It remains amazing to me, however, to see just how many of
my colleagues Don’t Get It. Both within the so-called corporate and alternative
media. In regard to the latter, my colleagues at The Nation are currently
redesigning their Pleistocene-era website
which is little more than a mirror of the hard-copy publication. We’ll see in
the next few weeks if it will make some sort of qualitative jump into New Media
when the next version is unveiled or if it will remain mired in dino-juice.
On the corporate front, meanwhile, allow me to recount you a humorous
anecdote from Sunday night. I was among about 300 people that swamped Arianna
Huffington’s house for a Nation Books
party closing out the L.A. Times Books Festival. At one point, Arianna introduced
Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, i.e. uberblogger The Daily Kos, to one of the better L.A. Times reporter who was also at the party. The
Times reporter, it turned out, had no idea who or what America’s most-read blogger is. When Kos was introduced to her as The Daily Kos, she just blinked. Another
friend of mine standing among us came up with a great (and poignant) line when he then introduced
the same Times reporter to Kos: ”Markos,” he said. “This is [name deleted]. She works for a web site
called the L.A. Times. A not very good website.”
April 25th, 2005 at 7:39 pm
Great post Marc. One of the things I wonder is whether or not the blogosphere will ultimately begin to sell out for ad dollars, or whether it could have the same kind of deflationary impact on the bidness that technology is having elsewhere. For instance, as previously free sites where people could buy and sell things have started charging for the service, others (like craigslist) have moved in to offer the same service for free. If a blog is perceived to have sold out to its advertisers or caved into party hackery surely this would be an incentive for some enterprising individual to step in and fill the integrity void, blogging for less (or no) money.
April 25th, 2005 at 11:18 pm
Marc, is Tim Porter planning a book from all his First Draft material? It sure seems like a natural.
Now about that LA Times reporter who didn’t know who Markos was…..no hints? Like, maybe, a teensy, weensy hint? (Sorry, but my inner chismosa insisted I ask you.)
April 25th, 2005 at 11:46 pm
My hint would be: think Irish.
April 26th, 2005 at 2:33 am
“The Times reporter, it turned out, had no idea who or what America’s most-read blogger is. When Kos was introduced to her as The Daily Kos, she just blinked.”
Amazing.
“he then introduced the same Times reporter to Kos: “Markos,†he said. “This is [name deleted]. She works for a web site called the L.A. Times. A not very good website.—
Excellent.
April 26th, 2005 at 3:22 am
I think Green Dem is right to reflect on economics as an MSM decay-driver. A couple contributors to Tim Porter’s comment section indirectly endorse this view, in pointing out that, when you strip out the specifics, the general picture is that of pretty much industry that’s coping reactively (hence poorly) with the discomfort of getting less money and less attention. Maybe all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way, but business woes tend to be dismayingly uniform in their symptomology.
Little as I like government intrusion into any economic sphere where government intrusion poses special risks to liberty (as it does, needless to say, with the press), perhaps news in its best sense is going to require subsidies in the future. The position of the BBC (and our own RFE/RL and PBS) shows that subsidies can, if anything, make industry players more objective, even oppositional, the better to deflect concerns about their being in thrall to the governments that finance them.
If not subsidies, then what? Solutions will involve new revenue from some source. Of that, I’ve become convinced. Real reporting simply costs more. Maybe the costs of paper and distribution thereof will become a non-issue, but the disappearance of the paper-related infrastructure will only make the costs of gathering material, writing up stories, and editing them loom proportionately larger in the minds of media corporation beancounters and stockholders.
Also, people are starting to get an awful lot of news for free. Personally, I love this; I’m a news junkie. But may have a serious cultural downside: once people get used to the false idea that getting information through a given channel costs nothing (never been true, never will be), they are loath to let it go in favor of a new payment model. After all, spam would be gone overnight if we would accept some nominal charge for sending e-mail (say, 0.25 cents, low enough for reflexive “impulse buys”, high enough to deter spammers), but try selling THAT idea now! Our e-mail protocols evolved a culture of free e-mail in environments (academia, research institutions) where the transmission costs were largely government subsidized. They don’t make sense in a commercial world, and they never did. Now we’re stuck with them, and it may be a cautionary tale.
The idea that news sources should be subsidized is, I’m sure, shocking to some. However, not only should it be possible to do it in a market-driven manner, but we should bear in mind news is already indirectly subsidized in the interests of making sure that it’s openly competitive. Even Libertarians can be persuaded that the media are a legitimate target for antitrust and for enforcing competition. Those competition-preserving legal regimes for the media actually make news more costly than it would otherwise be, since the overhead of two or more operations will generally be greater than the overhead for one, and it’s the consumer who pays the price (or at least part of it. Advertisers also have to pay more, because they have to buy ad space in several venues, not just one.)
We’re still going to need fact-checkers, editing, legwork. Running a good blog can be done cheaply, but the costs aren’t zero, and most toprank bloggers are remain critically dependent on MSM news sources. A devoted volunteer-help readership may reduce some of those inevitable costs significantly, but at the end of the day, the news has to provide livelihoods for competent people who could make more money doing something else. It comes back to economics, and specifically the deflationary – and destabilizing – economics of dramatically cheaper information technology. I think it’s naive to imagine that institutional innovation and to some extent government support won’t be critical in maintaining quality. Obviously, this has to happen in the right way. The wrong path is one that none of us can afford.
April 26th, 2005 at 4:49 am
This dynamic is not unique to journalism. I’ve worked in the “technology” field for 25 years. There are those who accept and adapt to the constantly changing environment and those that don’t. Those that do are, like me, still gainfully employed in the industry and doing well. Those that don’t, work at Home Depot or Walmart.
I’ve worked in the software segment of the high technology industry for the past 15 years. When I was in college (late 70′s) there was no software industry. In the 80′s I worked on mainframe systems supplied by IBM, Amdahl, and Honeywell and on minicomputers supplied by DEC, HP, Wang, Prime, and Data General. In the late 80′s and early 90′s these suppliers all had a good laugh about the “upstart” PC suppliers like Compaq, Apple, and Dell who were making “toy” computers. Who’s laughing now.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that those who embrace the brave new world, like Kos, Cooper, Totten, et al, will also have a hand in defining what it becomes. The rest will come to resemble Walter Cronkite who sits in the corner mumbling about how it was better then. And they’ll be wrong.
As for government involvement in the news industry – yikes! What we don’t need is BBC style objectivity:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4477901.stm
April 26th, 2005 at 7:23 am
I am not surprised that people in newsrooms are unhappy. Why should they differ from lawyers of whom the CALIFORNIA LAWYER, official publication of the state bar, reports that 2/3 say they would choose another prefession. Or the number of burned out nurses and teachers. Newspeople may be nostalgic for a mythical past but I can’t believe that a reflective person could be anything but unhappy working for an institution so divorced from “afflicting the comfortable” or even reporting the news. I can’t even percieve of how soul deadening it must be to work in local TV News. You take the check every few weeks and feel cheap.
As to public Broadcasting would that we had a BBC here. Maybe some of you are CSPAN junkies like me. Then you may have seen the Beeb’s Jeremy Paxman interview the leaders of the three major parties two weeks out from the General Election. Now that is how you do it and after watching him I realized just how lame Tim Russert, supossedly the “toughest” interviewer on the tube really is. I suspect our politicians wouldn’t go on BBC’s NEWSNIGHT to face Paxman. But they have no choice in the UK where the Beeb has such enormous credibility that when a report said that they had mistated a government memo (somewhat like Rather and CBS) public opinion polls showed the people believed them first and found the investigation a “Whitewash.” That would never happen here and our newsies know it!
April 26th, 2005 at 8:30 am
too many steves writes: “As for government involvement in the news industry – yikes! What we don’t need is BBC style objectivity: [link]”
I mentioned the BBC as an example of how government-owned media can still be government-oppositional; that in fact they *have* to be so, in order to maintain credibility. (I have a few British friends who find them too oppositional, if anything.) “Oppositional” isn’t necessarily “objective”, however, which is why I’m in favor of more diversity. Maybe the Beeb works for the Brits, but I don’t think something like PBS as the main American TV channel would fly.
By the way, TMS, I don’t find the story you linked terribly relevant. So the BBC wired up some hecklers, for a documentary on … heckling! Well, that’s the way to do a story like that, isn’t it? What’s the beef? (Especially since the heckling portrayed was so mindlessly partisan as to defeat any possible partisan slant.) Did you actually READ the story?
I’m not sure exactly how the government should be involved, as the media landscape shifts. The thing I find most unfortunate is that we didn’t get media micropayment models built into the Web. I wouldn’t mind having a penny tacked onto my ISP bill for every NYT or WaPo link I happened to click on. I wouldn’t even feel it. The cost wouldn’t amount to nearly what I pay for print editions of daily newspapers. It might not only keep those MSM operations fed, but also provide a financial on-ramp for media upstarts, including bloggers (who, before starting to charge for their own content, could make money from MSM click-kickbacks.) I’d go for news micropayments in heartbeat if it meant no longer having to wait for annoying advertising to download — advertising that, increasingly, only makes reading harder.
Ultimately, we get what we pay for. If I have to get quality news by paying for part of it in taxes, I don’t really care, as long as it’s good, and as long as the government largely stays out of what’s being said. If I have to get quality news by paying small amounts to get good information on a piecemeal basis, then I’m in favor of that, too. Whatever policies are required to reduce the noise pollution, I’m in favor of them. But that’s not what I’m seeing. What I’m seeing is banner ads. And archived stories increasingly being sold at annoyingly high prices — a desperation move that probably can’t work in the long run. Not to mention blog echo-chambers that just get in the way of finding the original source and assessing it. It’s pretty annoying. And it’s because we all want a free ride, isn’t it?
April 26th, 2005 at 8:52 am
When the film The Great Train Robbery came out in 1903, people ran in fright from the movie theaters, thinking that the train was coming out of the screen, right at them. Today’s audiences, educated by a century of viewing, would laugh at such crude special effects.
Same with newspape readers. We have been watching and reading and deconstructing media for decades and do not accept the media as The Oracle anymore. Bias, sloppiness, profit motive–we get it. We understand the media; they don’t understand us.
Buzzmachine has some interesting stats on that today BTW.
April 26th, 2005 at 9:03 am
Yes, I did read the story. What do you say about BBC’s news division reports on the event that made mention of the heckling? Strikes me that they crossed the line from reporting the news to making the news.
Fabricating facts whether for a documentary – which is “news” of a sort – or a more traditional news program is still, well, fiction, not news. Couldn’t they have simply filmed real hecklers? Wouldn’t that be more credible?
Ever read ’1984′? Fabrication, even if true to life, in the name of expediency is a poor exchange. I know, false but accurate, right?
Me? Let the capitalist pigs produce the news and prey upon each others credibility by pointing out their mistakes. As for the ADS, I’ll just continue to TIVO and keep my wages thank you.
April 26th, 2005 at 9:05 am
By the way, as a software engineeer with computer industry job experience going back to the mid-70s, I find “too many steves” account what happened in the computer industry in the last few decades flatly weird:
“I’ve worked in the software segment of the high technology industry for the past 15 years. When I was in college (late 70′s) there was no software industry. In the 80′s I worked on mainframe systems supplied by IBM, Amdahl, and Honeywell and on minicomputers supplied by DEC, HP, Wang, Prime, and Data General. In the late 80′s and early 90′s these suppliers all had a good laugh about the “upstart” PC suppliers like Compaq, Apple, and Dell who were making “toy” computers. Who’s laughing now.”
Aren’t we talking about the same IBM that introduced the PC, following Apple’s success, pretty much dooming Apple to be a minority player? Soon after, DEC tried to follow with a PC. HP also followed. I wouldn’t call that “having a good laugh.” A number of these players were running scared, and for good reason. A number of them are gone now. Who’s laughing now? Not Compaq: Compaq has been absorbed into an increasingly-troubled HP. Not Apple: Apple is down to, what, 2% market share? Techies rather dislike the tendency to monopoly in their industry, because it flies in the face of their most cherished preconceptions about how technology and markets work.
Techies (and I was one, and am one) tend to view the world in terms of how they think their industry works, whenever that’s convenient, and to view their industry as unique, whenever *that* view is convenient. What’s inconvenient is making the effort to see the differences that matter, and the similarities that matter, when such perceptions are discomfiting. And that effort can always be avoided: There’s always the nice warm opinion-bath over there at Tech Central Station …. brought to you by the man who had that the ultimate warm-fuzzy meme-hit back in the late 90s, entitled “Dow 36,000″: James K. Glassman.
Me? I want to know which way even the *chill* winds are blowing. And Tech Central Station is a chill wind indeed: lobbying disguised as journalism. Yet another bad trend to watch. There oughta be a law ….
April 26th, 2005 at 9:08 am
Hmm, technology does seem to put some people out of business, doesn’t it? Cardiologists are now doing procedures that cardiovascular surgeons used to do. That, and new medication regimens, means that there are less jobs for cardiovascular surgeons than they used to be. That’s gotta be rough – imagine all those years of training and then trying to find a job and being told we just don’t have so many jobs for your type any more.
I was at a party and met a reporter from the Boston Globe. What surprised me was how little interest he/she showed in blogs when I mentioned them to her/him (sorry, don’t want to tell tales out of school). Just a complete lack of curiosity. Strange.
How can you create a model where people can surf the way they’d like and ya’ll still get paid? Maybe a subscription to a certain amount of time on the internet where you can access any newspaper or newsmagazine that is part of that service (so that you don’t have to individually subscribe to one. How about a subscription like a blog roll where you get a, er, subscription to the whole blog roll and can read any article on any site that is listed. I’m sure people have come up with better ideas. Hello, Larry Lessing)? I don’t know the answer. You will always have competition from people who are willing to provide things for free – commentary and the like.
April 26th, 2005 at 9:11 am
Michael Turner, are you joking about ‘there oughta be a law….?’ Please tell me you are joking.
April 26th, 2005 at 9:30 am
Yeah, Rosen was touting this topic last week. I was at the blogger panel Saturday. It was good, but the audience was hostile. David Shaw stayed out of the fray but did say he reads two newspapers a day but was unaware that they had been online the night before. That’s a disconnect too, but like Ben Bradley said “you can’t take the computer to the john.”
The event quickly degenerated into the Great Explainer of liberal media bias, ala Hugh Hewitt and debunked by Ken Auletta. I side with Auletta. Real journalism is expensive to produce. There is no alternative comparable.
And blogs are mostly opinion and misinformation; they generally don’t pay, so working for free isn’t a big selling point. In the few job interviews I’ve had on both coasts at small papers, I’ve been appalled at the workload; at least two stories a day and others tossed in as well from time to time. That’s a lot of original reporting and frantic desperation to get the sources on the record every blasted day. There’s no blogger that does this on the ground that I know of.
“Ink stained wretches” certainly applies. Everything is easy in the peanut gallery. Real life is different.
April 26th, 2005 at 1:11 pm
The French have a saying: When the left forms a firing squad, it’s always in a circle.
April 26th, 2005 at 3:33 pm
I have some unused IBM punch cards behind my desk in case someone is as mired in technology as others are in jounalism.
I want journalists to have a thriving industry, as I am a consumer of their product. I want accurate and objective news available on a timely basis.
I do not believe that technology driven media started out with the idea of replacing that which is traditonal. However, it began to fill a vacuum when traditional media failed to maintain high stardards. For years journalism schools and major media have taken great offense when criticized for not doing a good job. Few changes were made and the reporting became worse. So, consumers said that if you’re not going to change then we’ll find another source for our information. (That’s a great thing about a market driven economy and why we don’t need a BBC.)
Journalists assumed such a condescending attitude towards the public and critics, that it did not believe that anyone could possibly and intelligently claim that changes are in order. That smug attitude has brought down many powerful people. Why couldn’t the industry see what was happening to it when it was a force in causing that to happen to others?
I see no changes in attitudes and no longer have much faith in or hope for traditional journalism.
April 26th, 2005 at 4:56 pm
The mainstream media is in vast need of overhaul, and it is being pressured to change by blogs, the rise of the alternative press, and documentaries made by people like Michael Moore.
But even his Farenheit 9/11 scans multiple articles in The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times on such things as the evacuation of the Bin Ladens following 9/11, before they could be questioned by law enforcement.
It seems a little premature to declare the mainstream media, however flawed, to be obsolete.
April 26th, 2005 at 5:04 pm
Premature indeed. The biggest critics are wingers like Hewitt wh only want one severely slanted view told. And if you’ve never been to J-school this 0 is the sum of what you’d know about the training.
April 26th, 2005 at 5:43 pm
Lifted from Jeff Jarvis’s blog (www.buzzmachine.com) which he lifted from Wilson Quarterly:
Stats from WQ compliled from many sources:
* Daily newspaper circ from 1990 to 2003: 62.3 to 55.2 million
* Number of daily U.S. papers from 1990 to 2003: 1,611 to 1,456
* By age group, percentage of Americans who read a paper yesterday: 18-29 – 23, 30-49 – 39, 50-64 – 52, 60+ – 60
* Time spent by 8-19 year olds on all media: 6 hours, 21 minutes; time spent on print media: 43 minutes
* Combined viewership of network evening news: 1980 – 52 million, 2004 – 28.8 million
* Median age of network news viewer: 60
* Percentage of people who believe all or most of what’s on: network news – 24, CNN – 32, FoxNews – 25, C-Span – 27, PBS NewsHour – 23
So, who of you here visited the inside of a bank today? Yesterday? Within the last week? Month? Year?
Similar dynamic I think. It’s not about what was or what should be, it is about what is and what is most useful.
April 26th, 2005 at 6:26 pm
“useful”? Or infotaining? When was the last time some news you read was of the type you “needed” to read … to do something? Have an actual question, research with google. News is show business, read by those who want “information superiority”; usually to butress their own feelings of “moral superiority”. (Ever see Michael Nesbith’s great Elephant Parts video? With NNS — Neighborhood Nuclear Superiority).
Michael Turner, your need for superiority is why you need to “win” arguments, even if they’re only against strawmen. Of course you’d like a cozy gov’t subsidized PC “superior” news product, for your personal enjoyment.
The gov’t SHOULD have at least one subsidy — every official gov’t document should be on-line, and searchable, and linkable. Every report by every gov’t employee, or tax paid consultant, including those for the UN, should be on-line. Stop all civil secrecy of gov’t decision making (defense needs to keep its secrets).
Moral Hazard of a Free Press The press as it is now is supporting Al Qaeda, see the Pulitizer photo lists. The Leftist press support is almost certainly helping them kill more Americans. That’s prolly not going to continue too much longer.
April 26th, 2005 at 7:00 pm
One suspects the deep end is not quite deep enough for Tom.
April 26th, 2005 at 7:58 pm
Well isn’t he wearing a straw hat? The press is supporting al Qaeda? Ha! Morons I tell you. There are Morons on my team.
April 26th, 2005 at 8:21 pm
Here’s are a few choice clips from a piece by an apparently Politically Pathological counterpart to Tom Grey currently op over at the despicable David Whorowitz’s website/zoo. A prime example of why this nattering about blogs and spurious websites supplanting serious, professional journalism informed by something at least minimally resembling a set of standards is such horseshit. (Of course there’s nothing sacrosanct about print as a delivery system, except if you read something like what follows in a print journal the obvious and sensible response would be to wipe your ass with it. Whorowitz – the purveyor of this shit – gets creeps and clowns like Zell Miller, Ann Coulter, Mitch McConnel, Lindsay Graham, “Dick” Morris and – yes – Christopher Hitchens to participate in his seminars and soirees. Amazing how lacking in discretion and decency some folks are.)
Meet the Real Marla Ruzicka
By Debbie Schlussel
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 25, 2005
When The New York Times, “Nightline,†and CNN nominate a young blonde for sainthood ahead of the Pope, it’s time for a reality check.
Especially when that blonde, Marla Ruzicka’s sole purpose is to legitimize our enemies, cause problems for U.S. troops already in harm’s way, and morally equate dead terrorists with victims of 9/11.
Jane Fonda lite—but without having been spat upon by right-thinking veterans.
The recent death of Ruzicka, an American “activist†in Iraq, elicited an orgy of gush—everywhere from Time Magazine to The Guardian of London to Al-Jazeera.
A 28-year-old San Franciscan, Ruzicka was in Iraq “to help the Iraqi people,†proclaim the multi-orgasmic mainstream media memorials to her. Even the Wall Street Journal’s normally excellent Robert Pollock mourned “Ambassador Marla†for being a less gnarly America-hater than the others.
Et tu, Robert?
With her cascading blonde hair and youthful looks, Ruzicka didn’t look like your average greasy-haired, pot-smoking, hackey-sack-playing, crunchy radical. And the media swooned over her, the newly-anointed Vanity Fair pin-up in Birkenstocks.
But looks are deceiving. Marla Ruzicka was no mere peace activist.
She formed the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), the goal of which was anything but CIVIC during the War on Terror or ever. Ruzicka’s aim was to force the U.S. government to get an “accurate†count of “innocent civilian†deaths by U.S. troops and blackmail America into paying monetary settlements for each death.
But many of those dead included assorted terrorists, jihadists, and other collaborators and uprisers against Americans. Ruzicka had the gall to insist that these Afghani and Iraqi dead, terrorists or not, get recognition and sympathy equal to victims of the 9/11 attacks.
More outrageous, Ruzicka got taxpayer money to fund her aiding-and-abetting pursuits. Where was Marla Ruzicka on 9/11? Hint: Not asking al-Qaeda for money to count and compensate U.S. victims of terror.
…
There are plenty of young American men and women Ruzicka’s age and younger who’ve been brutalized or killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. But none of them got the wall-to-wall fawning coverage that Ruzicka got—unless they were anally raped or formerly played pro football.
That should tell you something about the media’s outlook on whose life is more worthy and whose death is more important: American soldiers fighting for freedom—bad; vociferous activist bimbette hampering those American soldiers and helping their terrorist killers—very, very good.
While it’s a sad day when any American gets killed by Islamic terrorists, it’s measurably less sad when that American aided and abetted them—and belittled our troops.
For Marla Ruzicka, some might call it, poetic justice.
April 26th, 2005 at 8:31 pm
FYI
Debbie Schlussel, a conservative political commentator, radio talk show host, columnist, and attorney. Schlussel’s unique expertise on radical Islam/Islamic terrorism and a host of other issues make her a popular speaker and television and radio news talk show guest, both nationally & internationally. (Her online fan club is the Internet’s second largest for a political personality–behind only Ann Coulter.) She is a University of Michigan graduate and holds both Law and MBA degrees.
As both an attorney and a frequent New York Post and Jerusalem Post columnist, Schlussel’s writings/commentary on radical Islam and her legal actions against radical Islamic parties have gotten a great deal of attention — and results. Columns she’s written in the New York Post and appearances she’s made on “O’Reilly Factor blah, blah….
(Just so this crap isn’t dismissed as the ravings of a nonentity who no one in their right mind would take seriously.)
April 27th, 2005 at 12:36 am
“One suspects the deep end is not quite deep enough for Tom.”
Are you suggesting Tom’s got mental problems? Ridiculous. The press as it is now IS supporting Al Qaeda, as PROVED by Pulitzer Prize-winning photos. Makes perfect sense to me. As does Tom’s suggestion that the government get “subsidies” to put all its non-defense information on line. I’m all in favor of subsidizing government, which couldn’t exist without subsidies from the government, subsidies which come from … um … uh … what was I just saying? Damn, I lost the thread. I think SO much better when I’m wearing my tinfoil hat, which I can’t find right now ….
April 27th, 2005 at 5:49 am
Get your Debbie Schlussel here:
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/
Now THAT’s infotainment!
Enemies everywhere. Nobody can be trusted.
I like her comment about how “24″ has capitulated to the Forces of Islamofascist Terror. Kiefer Sutherland will [I am not making this up] “… do as he’s told by the FOX network execs, who can’t take the heat from whining Islamic terror apologists.” Oh, no! Even Fox is selling out the Homeland! (Full disclosure: I am absolutely addicted to this “24″ trash; in fact, I’m writing this after having watched no fewer than *four* Season One episodes on video, back to back, when I really should have been cranking out sketchy translations of disorganized engineering specs for a Japanese TV set-top box that will have a higher IQ than most viewers.)
Debbie’s a puzzle, all right, but unknit that brow of yours. It’s really very simple. Imagine yourself as President David Palmer in a “24″ episode, listening on a mobile phone to Debbie’s non-negotiable demands with a deep scowl, and finally responding: “You’re insane!” Try it. OK, now admit it: didn’t an enormous (albeit temporary) feeling of relief just wash over you?
Like all nutbars, her use of reasoning is selective at best. Dubya can stroll hand-in-hand with a Saudi prince, but Schlussel reserves her ire for Suhail Khan, currently General Counsel to the Federal Highway Administration, whose main sin appears to be only in having had the wrong father. Hey, Debbie, it happens! Schlussel doesn’t seem to realize that once you start using “is linked to” to mean “is guilty by association with,” George W. Bush is revealed as an all-but-card-carrying member of Al Qaeda. Or at least, he is Al Qaeda IF you’re consistent in your illogic (which illogical people seldom are, admittedly.)
Anyway, reg, after reading some Debbie (that’s enough thank you, please apply the electrodes now), I must agree: with a sex-change operation, a good dye job (assuming Woody isn’t already naturally blonde) and slightly better editing, Woody could have a political commentary career on par with Debbie’s. Personally, I wouldn’t change a thing about Woody, but if he’s up for it, let me offer a piece of advice to him: do the sex change stuff on a pay-as-you-go basis, prioritizing the surgery and the hormone doses whose effects are most easily reversed. The market for blonde, paranoid, ultra-rightist attack-dog women may only be a fad, after all. You don’t want to end up all dressed up with no place to go, do you?
April 27th, 2005 at 6:38 am
I don’t know…I think that’s really bad advice…our friend Woody could never make it as an Attack Doll a la Schlusser/Coulter/Malkin, even estrogen-enhanced…he’s too laid back and has a sense of humor. Just doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d enjoy scratching a liberal’s eyes out with his fingernails and then head off for a manicure. Also have a feeling he doesn’t drink the requisite amount of Diet Coke, Slim Fast or Chardonnay.
April 27th, 2005 at 2:51 pm
Afraid a redesign of The Nation’s website barely scrapes the surface. They need an editorial regime change in a big way.
If I read another “Progressives, Get Ready To Fight” headline, I’m going to hurl chunks.
I think John Powers put it best when he described the tone as “naive boosterism.” Or maybe it was one of the Heeb editors who compared the reading experience to “doing homework.”
Don’t get me started on the friggin Deadline Poetry: the lefty equivalent of the Family Circus. I think I prefer the latter.
And has anyone ever emerged from a Patricia Williams column awake?
April 27th, 2005 at 5:11 pm
Debbie Schlussel is a semi-regular caller on the Howard Stern radio show. Howard and his sidekicks are pretty gung-ho about US foreign policy, but even THEY think she’s over the top.
A few months back on the show she strongly implied that she was, nearing 40, still a virgin. That might explain her apocalyptic worldview: “I’m not getting laid, NOBODY’S getting laid!” (apologies to Bill Hicks)
April 27th, 2005 at 5:22 pm
Hmm, M. Turner didn’t quite understand me when I wrote: “Of course you’d like a cozy gov’t subsidized PC “superior” news product, for your personal enjoyment.
The gov’t SHOULD have at least one subsidy — every official gov’t document should be on-line.”
Let me try again. You want gov’t subsidies for some PC news, like brits have to pay for the BBC (some of which is great; lots of anti-American stuff though).
I claim the Leftist Press supports Al Qaeda. The argument against … insults. How intelligent. How refined. But of course, only the sophisticated, the truly elite, can see the Leftist empereor’s clothes.
Guess that’s not me; Leftist Press looks naked. Ha! And I’ll laugh more as they go down more; LAT, WaPo, NYT. Adios.
But you can’t name a three pieces of recent news that were really valuable to you, that you could take action on. Therefore, you want gov’t subsidies for your own enjoyment. And higher taxes? (on the rich!)
I actually DO want gov’t to subsidize news-junkies a little bit — by increasing the work load on gov’t workers, not by increasing taxes. Gov’t workers should put their paper outputs, official reports, etc., in searchable on-line archives. So infotainment junkies can read them. And laugh. Or cry. Or rant.
April 27th, 2005 at 7:40 pm
“And has anyone ever emerged from a Patricia Williams column awake?”
Only if the dog happens to bark…her column should be called “Diary of Good Intentions and Diminishing Returns”. I only wish she were a “mad law professor”…that might be a bit of fun.
April 27th, 2005 at 7:46 pm
Anyone who thinks the three biggest papers in the country are leftist is Koo-Koo for Cocoa Puffs.
April 27th, 2005 at 7:47 pm
“I claim the Leftist Press supports Al Qaeda. The argument against … insults.”
The argument for: “I claim!” How intelligent, how refined…how pathetic.
April 27th, 2005 at 9:02 pm
Tom Grey’s brilliant rejoinder: “”I claim the Leftist Press supports Al Qaeda. The argument against … insults.”
Well, look at what you wrote, Tom:
“Moral Hazard of a Free Press The press as it is now is supporting Al Qaeda, see the Pulitizer photo lists.”
This sounds like an argument for censorship, Mr. Father of Liberty. I really can’t figure out whether, by “Leftist press”, you mean “the part of the press that is leftist” or “the press, which is leftist”, but it really seems like the latter, from what you write.
In any case, if you think insults are unfair in an argument, why do you argue chiefly by engaging in insults? And by distorting other people’s arguments. For example, you “clarify” by writing:
“Let me try again. You want gov’t subsidies for some PC news, like brits have to pay for the BBC (some of which is great; lots of anti-American stuff though).”
No, I don’t *want* those subsidies. I sugggest the possibility that such subsidies (i.e., beyond the ones we already have) may become a regrettable necessity. Again, read what I wrote:
“Little as I like government intrusion into any economic sphere where government intrusion poses special risks to liberty (as it does, needless to say, with the press), perhaps news in its best sense is going to require subsidies in the future.”
If you’re just going to rant, however (and nonsensically at that), I’m going to make what I can of it. Which is to say, I’ll make fun of it. Anyone who imagines that NYT and WaPo are “leftist” and “supporting Al Qaeda” has a screw loose, it’s that simple. If we can’t reason with you, at least we should get a few laughs out of you.
April 28th, 2005 at 7:09 am
Marc Cooper,
Best Post, Ever!
April 28th, 2005 at 7:30 am
No wonder Bush licks the sweat off of the Saudi Princes’ balls…Tom Grey – Liberty Dad is his supporter…sheesh!
April 28th, 2005 at 2:40 pm
Ah, the Westside, with its hothouse insularity, its lefty-scented affluence, and its Whim of Iron:
Last week it was education reform, the week before that it was Wesley Clark, or was it Howard Dean? Then it was Kerry. And now it’s blogs.
So hard to keep up with it all, so easy to be clueless on the Chic of the Week.
Here’s a question regarding ignorance: How many of you hard-core Angeleno salon habitues speak Spanish?
If you really want to learn about the society you levitate above, you might try to learn its de facto lingua franca.
(Silence Marc. I know you do)
April 28th, 2005 at 5:32 pm
“you might try to learn it’s de facto lingua franca…”
Uh…Latin ????
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August 21st, 2010 at 10:00 am
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