For Sale: Free Press

September 21, 2009

Just in case you don’t think that the media isn’t already completely in the tank for President Obama and the Democrats, comes House act S.673, sponsored by Maryland Democrats Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski. What the proposal amounts to is a Federal infusion of cash to struggling newspapers, if the newspapers in question agree to operate as non-profits.

It’s no secret that newspapers, and publishing in general, are going through a very bad time right now. Publishing was extremely slow to react to the growth of the internet, and even now most publishers are still locked into a “print” mentality. After giving away content for free on the Web in pursuit of more eyes on the page (i.e., higher circulation) and believing that Web advertising (banner ads, etc) would create significant revenues just like full page ads do in print, newspapers are stuck with Web sites that are losing money and no clear idea how to make money. Only the Wall Street Journal Web site makes money. Why? Because they understood the new rules of the game early, and charged for their content. The old print publishers never took the Web seriously and it’s currently biting their buns because of it.

On top of this, we have a mainstream media that is growing increasingly out of touch with most Americans. The New York Times, once considered the best, most important newspaper in the world, is little more than a shill for Democratic politicians these days. Ditto the Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, etc. Sure there are newspapers that lean right, such as my beloved New York Post and the Washington Times, but the overwhelming preponderance tilts left. Worse, the “bigger” the newspaper, the further left it tends to lean. Is there really any wonder that newspapers are failing? They became increasingly strident in their politics at the same time they were following out-dated business models for success.

But now here comes Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski to the rescue: What the free press needs is cash from the people the press is supposed to be holding accountable.

To be fair, President Obama has only said he would “look at” the bill, but he expresses concern at the idea that investigative journalism might go away if the newspapers fail. From The Hill:

“I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding,” he said.

What’s ironic here is that one of the reasons the blogosphere has exploded in recent years is precisely because newspapers had abdicated their responsiblity to do serious fact-checking and putting stories in context. The incredible growth of the political blogosphere, including The Clampdown, was in part spurred on by watching the fair, impartial, objective press seize every available opportunity to present George W. Bush in a bad light for the past eight years, and then spend the last two years scribbling “I ♥ Barry” in their notepads. Remember, it was the blog Little Green Footballs that did the fact-checking that held Dan Rather accountable for his phony Bush/National Guard story, and it was Drudge who broke the Lewinsky story when Newsweek refused to run the story.

There are, unquestionably, blogs that add much heat but little light to the national debate, and those blogs are on both sides of the political spectrum. Even some respectable blogs have comments that cross the line. But the President’s notion that the blogosphere is just a bunch of people yelling at each other is mistaken.

What newspapers need to do is start taking the Web seriously, and recognize that they are now being held accountable for their actions, including their biases. They need to get back to a time when honest reporters reported honestly and saved their opinions for the dinner table or the bar room. They also need to realize that the Web is here to stay and that applying print solutions to an online world is a sure-fire recipe for Chapter 11.

What newspapers most emphatically do not need to do is accept money or tax breaks from the Federal government. The last thing a free press needs is to be in debt to the people they are supposed to be watching. There’s nothing free about that.

UPDATE: Hot Air backs me up.

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Posted by Blaknsam

Is Criticism of Obama Racist?

September 16, 2009

In the wake of Rep. Joe Wilson’s “You lie!” outburst at President Obama’s State of the Healthcare Debate address to a joint session of Congress, more critics are coming out and claiming that criticism of Obama is based on race.

On Saturday, Maureen Dowd wrote in her New York Times column:

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!…Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.

I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer — the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids — had much to do with race.

Today, the Drudge Report is highlighting an AP article that quotes former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter saying “I think it’s based on racism….There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president.”

Then there’s this evergreen chestnut from Georgia representative Hank Johnson: “We will probably have folks putting on white hoods and white uniforms again, riding through the countryside intimidating people. That’s the logical conclusion if this kind of attitude is not rebuked.”

Yes, there’s a fine line between accusing a President who was, to be charitable, not telling the whole story about something, and hooded Klansmen running rampant through the halls of Congress. The logic is indisputable. Somebody should call Robert Byrd…he’ll know what to do in just such an emergency.

All of this proves several things. The first thing it proves is that if you managed to combine Maureen Dowd and Jimmy Carter into one person, like grafting Ray Milland’s head onto Rosie Grier’s body, you would have something with the intelligence, the wit, and the charm of a giant isopod.

But I digress.

I’ve never heard of Georgia rep Hank Johnson, so I won’t comment on him here except to say that his comments about this subject are so simplistic they actually cross the border into the territory of feeble-mindedness. However, the very concept of Jimmy Carter, an anti-Semitic fool who presided over a failed Presidential term and who toadied up to every monstrous dictator who graciously gave him boot licking privileges, is going to lecture anyone about anything is staggering. Jimmy Carter was, is, and always will be, an absolute embarrassment to this country. At least Maureen Dowd is only an embarrassment to the New York Times and the Pulitzer committee.

But are they right? Is the criticism of Obama, from “You lie” to the town hall protesters, based on race?

While I’m sure that there are people out there who don’t want a black President because of the color of his skin or some perceived “otherness,” the short answer is NO. I’m loath to admit, to borrow MoDo’s phrase, that there are any people out there who think this way, mainly because my admission will be seen by the Left as another conservative conceding their point. But there are racists in the world, and they do have a problem with a black President. Newsflash people: You think Louis Farrakhan disliked George Bush because of his No Child Left Behind policy? Racists come in all colors, and just as there are whites (and Asians, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, Inuits, and Arabs) who don’t like Obama because of his skin color, there are also blacks (and Asians, blah blah blah) who didn’t like George Bush or any of his predecessors because of their race. Let’s face it: a lot of the criticism of the Founding Fathers that has emerged in the last twenty years has been of the “they’re Dead White Men” school of non-thought. How is that not racist?

The fact is that people dislike Obama for the same reasons people disliked George Bush. For some it’s strictly party-based. For most it’s based on policy. For a tiny few, it’s based on race.

Accusing Obama’s critics of racism is a vicious trick used by the Left. In the world of politics, accusations of being “racist” carry considerably more baggage than “adulterer” or even “thief.” The charge is the atomic bomb of political accusations and it is designed to end the debate and shut the other side up. That is what Dowd, Carter, Johnson and their ilk are really doing here: they do not like the way the debate over health care (or whatever the current debate may be) is unfolding, and they are trying to stifle anyone who disagrees with them by marginalizing those people as “racists.” Frankly, this says more about the people hurling the accusations than it does the recipients of their phony outrage. With the rarest of exceptions (I’ve never once met anyone who has disliked Obama because of race), the accusations are untrue and should be either ignored or exposed as the political weapons they are. They’re just a way for the operatives on the Left to say “Shut up.”

Michelle Malkin has more on the House rebuke of Joe Wilson while Hot Air brings you video and commentary on Hank Johnson and thoughts on Jimmy Carter. Meanwhile at First Things, The Anchoress beats up on all concerned…deservedly so.

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Posted by Blaknsam

Joseph Vincent Vigiano—Project 2,996

September 11, 2009

"Greater love hath no man more than this;
that a man lay down his life for his friends."
—John, 15:13

Detective Joseph Vigiano had 14 years in the NYPD, but it was the odd career path he chose on the job that helps demonstrate who he was.

Joe’s love of service led him to the police department, where he worked in the 75th Precinct in Brooklyn, one of the busiest precincts in the five boroughs of New York. As one of New York’s most highly decorated officers, making Detective was inevitable. After working in Robbery and, briefly, Homicide, he sought a transfer to the Emergency Services Unit. For a detective, especially one as highly regarded as Joe, to join ESU was unusual, since the function of ESU is to provide rescue and SWAT services, not solve crimes. In fact, at the time he transferred, there were no detectives in ESU. So why did he make the move?

The answer is found in the man himself. Transferring to ESU was not a career move; it was a human move. The paths that led to this move came from his family background. Joe’s father was a retired Marine (there are no ex-Marines, after all) and Joe had a profound respect for military service. He viewed the military as the road not traveled, and believed it to be a high and honorable service. His brother John was one of New York’s Bravest, in the New York City Fire Department. Joe was also a volunteer fireman in his own community. ESU provided Joe with the dream job of being able to fuse all of his career loves: the military-like precision of the SWAT team combined with the task of rescuing people in need. He got his transfer and was assigned to Truck 2. For Joe, it was all about helping people, and when the job called he was all business, all the time.

But there was another side to Joe when he had some down time. Joe was a cut-up. He played practical jokes, and was seen around the offices wearing novelty nose/glasses and doing imitations. The brass was frequently the target, but the jokes were accepted with good grace because they were never intended to hurt, only to make people laugh. The police need humor, especially in places like New York where so much bad can happen so quickly, and Joe was a man who provided many great laughs. Humor serves to remind those in the trenches that there is light and joy in the world. It takes them out of the mean streets and deposits them, however briefly, in a happier place.

For Joe, the happiest place of all was with family. His wife Kathy was also a police officer, and he had three children. Both Joe and his brother John had been Eagle Scouts, and now Joe was volunteering as an assistant Scoutmaster for his children. His youngest, at only 3 months, was still some time away from donning the uniform.

One of the many difficult aspects of being a police officer in a huge metropolis like New York is that the job is harshly intrusive on your personal life. Work schedules change rapidly, weekends have little or no relation to Saturdays and Sundays when the rest of the world is relaxing, and always there is the overtime that keeps you head down in paperwork instead of hanging out with your family at the barbecue. Joe’s way around this was to plan vacations with his children that would be memorable. He knew that the job would keep him busy, and there would be missed class plays and family functions, so the time he spent with his family was time he wanted his kids to remember. One of his favorite vacations was to take the kids to visit some of the old warships that are now tourist destinations, from Old Ironsides in Boston to some of the battleships of more recent vintage. As a former young boy myself, it’s difficult to describe the thrill boys can get from seeing this kind of stuff. Clearly Joe knew that, too, and wanted to give his kids vacations where they would not only be entertained, but also learn about history and maybe gain some of that same respect for our military that ran in the Vigiano family.

On September 11, 2001 Joe was on the job, looking forward to a Scout meeting scheduled for that night. As part of the Emergency Services Unit he went to the Trade Towers to assist in the rescue. There was so much mass confusion in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Were there thousands of people in the Twin Towers, or tens of thousands? So much has been written about the awful toll in life that day that one thing is consistently overlooked: 9/11 was one of, if not the, most successful rescue operations in history. Thousands of people died that awful day. Many thousands more were saved by people like Joe Vigiano and his fireman brother John, who also died that day.

Joe’s death represents the loss of all those people who died that day. He was a man who showed up for work that crisp, clean, late summer morning. He was a policeman, he was a fireman, he was an EMT. He was a brother, a husband, a friend. He was a joker, a prankster, a lover of America’s armed forces, a Scoutmaster. He was a son, he was a father. His loss cannot be calculated. It is now eight years later and his friends and co-workers still miss that man with the great sense of humor, the man who could be counted on to have your back. His wife Kathy misses her husband. His children, John, Joseph, and James, miss their Dad; they always will.

I never met Joe; never knew him. Writing this insufficient tribute has brought him alive for me. From what I understand about the man, duty and responsibility were very high on his list of priorities. It was his duty to go into Tower 1; it was his responsibility to save as many people as he could.

It is our duty, and our responsibility, never to forget him.

There’s a full list of participants for Project 2,996 here. Take some time to go through them and remember.

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Posted by Blaknsam

Oh Well, Whatever…Never Mind

September 10, 2009

Over at Whatever, science fiction writer John Scalzi offers up an amazingly bad argument over whether Barack Obama is a Socialist. Now, for the record, I don’t believe that Obama is a Socialist, at least not in the capital-S sense of the word. I do believe that he is a deep Left progressive that has some socialist tendencies. In this way, he’s a mirror image of myself as a deep Right conservative with libertarian tendencies. But no, Obama is not the reincarnation of Eugene Debs.

Scalzi starts his piece by talking about Obama’s speech to school kids, and mocks all those who raised questions or shouted accusations. His contention is that those crazy Right wing nuts didn’t want Obama to speak to the kids because Obama is a Socialist:

Wow, that was sure some socialist speech Obama gave yesterday, huh? I went to pick up Athena from school, and all the kids marched out of building, singing “The Internationale” and clutching copies of the children’s illustrated edition of Das Kapital, distributed by smiling members of Young People’s Socialist League. Truly, it’s a new day in America, comrades!

So his piece begins with a bad faith argument. There may have been some people on the Birther circuit who opposed the speech on these grounds, but the overwhelming majority of thoughtful (and sometimes not-so-thoughtful) criticism was not of the speech itself, but the lesson plan, provided by the Department of Education, that wanted children to write letters demonstrating their support for Obama. The lesson plan is mentioned nowhere in the midst of Scalzi’s snark. My guess is that he had no problem with it, and that’s fine. But he characterizes the critics disingenuously.

….Obama gave a pleasant, platitudinous and largely bland speech exhorting the kids to, you know, stay in school and study hard and respect their teachers, and everyone who got all wound up that the President of the United States would have the gall to address the nation’s school children when he’s a socialist now looks like a complete jackass.

It’s just a strawman. Rather than look at the substance of the debate, Scalzi sticks to name calling based on bad faith assumptions of what conservatives said.

From this point, Scalzi ignores the speech and concentrates his efforts on 1) defending Obama against the charge that he is a Socialist and; 2) insulting those who disagree with him.

Now, I don’t actually disagree with him on the first point. There are differences between Obama and, say, Lenin. But I do think that Obama’s willingness to assume control over private industries (such as the car companies) displays a mindset that may not be dyed-in-the-wool Socialist, but clearly is open to the idea that a legitimate role for the government is controlling some of the means of production.

According to Scalzi, I am now “ignorant as chickens,” “mad as hatters,” a “tool,” a “moron,” “ignorant,” a “troll,” and “not serious.”

He ends thus:

So, Obama opponents, either find a better and more accurate way here to voice your opposition to the president and his policies than diving for the “socialist” button, or run the risk of being expunged for being a moron, and having me laugh at you while I do it. I’m tired of it, here and everywhere else, but especially here. Please, Obama opponents, be smarter. The nation, its president, its people and its discourse, deserve better.

While I find it hilarious that at the end of such an insulting, take-no-prisoners post Scalzi would then claim that our “discourse” deserves better than to call Obama a Socialist, I would point out that Scalzi offers only one (1) piece of evidence in his claim that Obama is not a Socialist.

You know who don’t think Obama is a socialist? Socialists, that’s who. “We know, of course, that Obama is not a socialist, and that he is not a radical,” wrote Dave McReynolds, in the pages of The Socialist, which, if you don’t know, is the magazine of the Socialist Party USA, and McReynolds a two-time presidential candidate for that party. Yes, I know, it’s wacky to rely in this matter on the assessment of someone who is both a socialist and a Socialist, rather than, say, someone belonging to a tribe of political thinkers whose understanding of socialism is so screwed up that many of them apparently can’t tell the difference between socialism and fascism.

Aside from the fact that Scalzi also cannot tell the difference between fascism and socialism (he dodges the question in the comments section of this even snarkier and more poorly-reasoned post that is completely dismantled here by Michael Moynihan at Reason), this is the equivalent of saying that Ronald Reagan was not a conservative because some lunkhead in the Klan or the John Birch Society claimed otherwise. So the proof is that a man who wants a complete takeover of private industry by the government has disavowed a man who only wants the government to take over some industries. Okay. Whatever.

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Posted by Blaknsam

Thomas Friedman’s Love Of Dictatorship

September 9, 2009

New York Times writer Thomas Friedman has never been the sharpest tool in the shed, but he sinks to unprecedented levels of stupidity in this disgraceful column.

In this column Friedman lets slip a position way too many on the Left share, a position warned against by Paul Johnson in his excellent book Intellectuals. Here Friedman boldly rips the mask off and shows the world what he believes: that we are better off being ruled by an enlightened elite of intellectuals than submit ourselves to the filthy plebian democracy of the great unwashed.

Think I’m exaggerating? Try this:

There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.

Friedman then goes on to compare the American system unfavorably with the Communist dictatorship in China:

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.

Oh yes, it’s so much easier to get things done when you have an elite few with the power of life and death over 1.3 billion slaves.

Friedman’s point, if you can call it that, is that the Republicans are not helping President Obama achieve his goals. He’s confused by this since he insists that Obama is simply a centrist politician looking to do the right thing, not a socialist Leftwinger out to push an agenda. Because the Republicans aren’t helping, they are essentially creating a “one-party democracy.” Leaving legislation up to the Democrats, Obama is a victim of the different factions within that party while the Republicans just stand on the sideline, smirking. Let’s shed a tear for poor Barry, trying to govern with a large majority in the House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. It’s so tough. Of course, Friedman should be aware that according to The Hill, Obama and the Democrats have shut the Republicans out of the health care debate since April, so I don’t know why he’s complaining that the GOP isn’t helping.

Of course, what Friedman means by “factions” is you. People are rising up against the goals that Friedman wants to see achieved. You proles are spoiling his Utopia, dammit!

This causes Friedman, a beneficiary of living in the most free country on Earth, to wax nostalgic for a dictatorship by “reasonably enlightened people” like…like…well, like Obama and Thomas Friedman.

Climate change has long been one of Friedman’s pet concerns, though in light of this column one can’t help wondering if he views global warming as merely a stalking horse for a completely centralized takeover of the country. Hey, he’s the one with a soft spot for a regime that crushes dissent, forces abortion, imprisons or murders dissidents and suppresses free speech. Friedman pines for an American government that pays no mind to the babblings of the little people who probably don’t read the New York Times. Friedman desires an American government that imposes the will of the few on the backs of the many, with all decisions made by a star chamber of the “reasonably enlightened.” I’m glad to see the paper that published Walter Duranty (and still has his Pulitzer award on display) is keeping up with their grand intellectual tradition.

UPDATE: I see I’m not the only who noticed this piece. Hot Air weighs in here and Jonah Goldberg and Mark Steyn chime in at The Corner.

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Posted by Blaknsam

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