It’s not bad, but I miss Colbert.
I’ll give it a few months for them to find its feet.
It took me a couple of years to get The Colbert Report.
Category: Media
Notorious V. V. P.
Aviaton Week‘s cover this week is announces its selection of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin as person of the year.
Considering the fact that defense is a significant portion of the magazine’s bailiwick, it is not surprising that they titled the article, “The Notorious Mr. Putin.”
It makes sense, just as it does for them to cast it as a condemnation of his actions. (Hence the notorious bit)
It’s really kind of silly, but I’d love to see Putin do a rap video.
I’m Wondering who has Call-Sign Rainbow Dash………
To quote the great Anna Russell, “I’m not making this up, you know.”
It appears that the USAF has a Brony squadron:
Earlier this month, word hit the Internet that an Air Force unit training to fly America’s most advanced military aircraft are wearing a patch inspired by the television show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
Now the Air Force has confirmed it: bronies are flying jets.
“We train world-class pilots who will go on to defend our great nation,” 1st Lt. Tom Barger, a public affairs officer at Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma, tells War is Boring. “Fostering camaraderie, morale and unity on a regular basis and through small means — like a tastefully humorous patch — enhances our ability to complete the mission when working as a team is essential.”
The pink and purple patch — first spotted by My Little Pony fan site Equestria Daily — and worn by 24 flight students from Joint Undergraduate Specialized Pilot Class 14-05, references the cable cartoon show about a team of magical ponies. Although criticized by some as a cynical bid to get children to purchase plastic pony products (it’s a reboot from the 1980s), the show — which airs weekday afternoons on the Hub Network — became a cult phenomenon that’s now spread to the armed forces.
My son is a Brony, and he was stoked about this.
I still do not get the whole “Brony” thing.
H/t ECop at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
Your Good News of the Day
A new President has been selected by The Discovery Channel, and he has announced that the channel will no longer be doing shows about fake sh%$:
New Discovery Channel chief Rich Ross (no relation to Rick) has vowed to stop airing pseudoscientific bullshit on what is ostensibly an educational channel. Ross made this promise at the Television Critic’s Association press tour earlier today, telling the skeptical crowd, “I don’t think [fake documentaries are] right for Discovery Channel, and think it’s something that has run its course.”
So, no more mermaids, no more men eaten by anacondas, no more assertions that long extinct giant sharks are still swimming out there, and (of course) Amish gangstas.
They just unjumped the C. megaladon.
Why are People are Missing the Old The New Republic?
I really don’t get it.
It was reflexively, and stupidly, counter-intuitive in all the time that I was aware of it, it hasn’t broken a major story in decades, and it has appeared to see its mission as a way for country-club liberals to excuse their own privilige and entitlement. (It’s also been affirmative action for white Ivy Leaguers with degrees in English)
One of the things that its supporters have pointed to is the dense literary writings of the magazine’s now former literary editor Leon Wieseltier.
I never read his stuff. While I read some (not enough) literature, I have no urge to read people who write about literature.
It just seems to be an exercise in solipsism to me.
But Atrios pointed me to this bit of Graphorrhea that Mr. Wieseltier wrote for the New York Times:
Amid the bacchanal of disruption, let us pause to honor the disrupted. The streets of American cities are haunted by the ghosts of bookstores and record stores, which have been destroyed by the greatest thugs in the history of the culture industry. Writers hover between a decent poverty and an indecent one; they are expected to render the fruits of their labors for little and even for nothing, and all the miracles of electronic dissemination somehow do not suffice for compensation, either of the fiscal or the spiritual kind. Everybody talks frantically about media, a second-order subject if ever there was one, as content disappears into “content.” What does the understanding of media contribute to the understanding of life? Journalistic institutions slowly transform themselves into silent sweatshops in which words cannot wait for thoughts, and first responses are promoted into best responses, and patience is a professional liability. As the frequency of expression grows, the force of expression diminishes: Digital expectations of alacrity and terseness confer the highest prestige upon the twittering cacophony of one-liners and promotional announcements. It was always the case that all things must pass, but this is ridiculous.
And I thought that reading a ponderous translation of Immanuel Kant in high schoolwas a tough row to hoe.
It gets worse as it goes on. ……… and on. ……… and on. ……… and on. ……… and on.
I think that if translated to Frankenstein-speak, it translates to, “Paper publications good! Internet Bad!”, but I can only give a confidence that I actually understood that bit of purple prose with about 27.3%.
Why anyone ever bought a copy of The New Republic in the past 40 years is beyond me.
Seriously. If this weren’t Leon Wieseltier, I would think that this was a parody of academic writing.
H/T Atrios
We Need to Recognize the Fact That the Right to Blaspheme is an Essential Right
I do not think that there is really much more to say about the religiously motivated shooting of staff at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris:
The police organized an enormous manhunt across Paris on Wednesday for three suspects they said were involved in a brazen and methodical slaughter at a satirical newspaper that had lampooned Islam.
The terrorist attack by masked gunmen on the newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, left 12 people dead — including the top editor, prominent cartoonists and police officers — and was among the deadliest in postwar France. The killers escaped, traumatizing the city and sending shock waves through Europe and beyond.
Officials said late Wednesday that the suspects had been identified and that two were brothers. They were identified as Said and Cherif Kouachi, 32 and 34, and Hamyd Mourad, 18. French news reports said the brothers had been born in Paris, raising the prospect that homegrown Muslim extremists were responsible.
Religion has been one of the most powerful, and most violent, forces in human history.
To degree that we as a species have any rights at all, we must protect the right to mock and insult religion.
I Have a Very Strange Son
I have been watching the Dr. Who marathon on BBC America, and this evening, I had an epiphany.
Since I was at home, I shared it with Charlie.
I would have shared it with Natalie at the same time, but seeing as how she is in Hawaii, she will have to read it on Facebook.
My epiphany was that the toys in the Pixar film Toy Story are weeping angels. (See picture the picture with the doctor, I am not the first to come up with this idea.)
Whenever someone looks at Sheriff Woody or Buzz Lightyear they are inanimate, but when unobserved, they move on their own.
They, and Mr. Potato Head, are weeping angels.
I mentioned it to Charlie, and he suffered a bit of a meltdown, and he strongly implied that I had ruined his childhood.
About a half hour later, I talked to him again, and he gave me a high-five.
He told me that after some reflection, he realized that my brief moment of insight actually improved his memories of the whole Toy Story series.
Weird.
FWIW, he’s getting into Dr. Who, though he is still first and foremost a Brony.
In particular, he likes the degree to which the show adheres to the Novikov self-consistency principle, and so does not create paradoxes.
Corporate Purchase of the Criminal Justice System: MPAA Edition
It appears that Google is involved in a pissing contest with the Mississippi Attorney General .
It appears that the latter is doing a cut and paste of MPAA legal filing.
Thankfully, the Sony hack has revealed these machinations:
Tensions between Google and Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood exploded into public view this week, as Google filed court papers seeking to halt a broad subpoena Hood sent to the company.
The Hood subpoena, delivered in late October, didn’t come out of nowhere. Hood’s investigation got revved up after at least a year of intense lobbying by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). E-mails that hackers acquired from Sony Pictures executives and then dumped publicly now show the inner workings of how that lobbying advanced—and just how extensive it was. Attorneys at Sony were on a short list of top Hollywood lawyers frequently updated about the MPAA’s “Attorney General Project,” along with those at Disney, Warner Brothers, 21st Century Fox, NBC Universal, and Paramount.
The e-mails show a staggering level of access to, and influence over, elected officials. The MPAA’s single-minded obsession: altering search results and other products (such as “autocompleted” search queries) from Google, a company the movie studios began referring to as “Goliath” in around February 2014. The studios’ goal was to quickly get pirated content off the Web; unhappy about the state of Google’s voluntary compliance with their demands and frustrated in their efforts at passing new federal law such as SOPA and PIPA, the MPAA has turned instead to state law enforcement.
The most controversial elements of SOPA/PIPA would have let content owners effectively shut down websites they said were infringing their copyrights or trademarks. This already happens—think of various peer-to-peer sites that no longer exist—but it usually involves drawn-out litigation. SOPA promised a faster-moving process that would have essentially made rights holders a website’s judge, jury, and executioner.
To get the same results in a post-SOPA world, MPAA has hired some of the nation’s most well-connected lawyers. The project is spearheaded by Thomas Perrelli, a Jenner & Block partner and former Obama Administration lawyer. Perrelli has given attorneys general (AGs) across the country their talking points, suggesting realistic “asks” prior to key meetings with Google. Frustrated with a lack of results, Perrelli and top MPAA lawyers then authorized an “expanded Goliath strategy” in which they would push the AGs to move beyond mere letter writing. Instead, they would seek full-bore investigations against Google.
If the AGs felt short on resources—well, Hollywood studios could help with that. Money from Sony and other Big Six studios was available to draft the actual subpoenas, to research legal theories to prosecute Google, to spread negative press about the search giant, and to reach out to other state AGs that might join with Hood.
………
One chain of e-mails among the MPAA and studio lawyers bears the subject line “STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL PROJECT” and focuses on how Google could be pressured into altering its search results, demoting or removing so-called “rogue sites” that host high levels of copyrighted context.
Most notes on the project came from Vans Stevenson, the MPAA’s VP of state legislative affairs; higher-level updates were written by MPAA general counsel Steven Fabrizio or took the form of memos written by Perrelli. Most information about the AG project was shared with a group of more than 30 lawyers, including several from the MPAA and RIAA, as well as each of the six big studios, but some were kept to just general counsels and their immediate confidantes.
“[Attorney] General Hood told me by e-mail today that his conversation ‘with Google’s General Counsel did not go well,’ and therefore he followed up with the letter that was sent yesterday,” Vans Stevenson informed the group in November 2013. “Hood also said he was organizing a meeting during the NAAG [National Association of Attorneys General] meeting next week in New Orleans with his outside counsel Mike Moore, former MS Attorney General. Also attending that meeting will be MPAA/RIAA outside counsel Tom Perrelli and others, ‘so we can discuss the next move,’ Hood wrote…. I will keep you advised of further developments.”
The e-mail includes a letter from Hood to Google general counsel Kent Walker. It was published earlier this week by The New York Times, which reported that most of the letter was actually written by Perrelli’s law firm.
(emphasis mine)
Google counter-sued, which has the AG Hood calling for a timeout:
It appears that Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood is making a strategic retreat in the wake of publicity about his investigation of Google.
On Friday morning, Google sued Hood, saying that a 79-page subpoena he had sent to the company was “punitive,” and violated Google’s First and Fourth Amendment rights. The company also pointed to recent press reports that showed Hollywood studios had lobbied heavily for the investigation.
Later that day, Hood sent a statement to The New York Times saying that he’s “calling a time out, so that cooler heads may prevail.” Hood says he wants to negotiate a “peaceful resolution to the issues affecting consumers” that he and other state AGs have pointed out in a series of letters.
Rather unsurprisingly, after the Mississippi AG told the press that he had received no funding from the MPAA, and challenged them to look, the press looked, and to no one’s surprise, they found MPAA money:
The saga of Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood and his cozy ties to Hollywood continue to come out. He’s been claiming that, sure, he met with Hollywood’s top lawyer, Tom Perrelli, had him prep Hood for a meeting with Google, and even took a ~4,000 word angry letter that Perrelli wrote for him, signed it as his own and sent it to Google — but he did all that without knowing that Perrelli worked for Hollywood’s top lobbying arm, the MPAA. Uh huh.
And then in a press conference, he insisted that he was doing this out of his own interest in protecting the children — but also admitted that his office didn’t have any intellectual property experts and didn’t have a million dollars to do an investigation (approximately the amount the MPAA’s leaked emails show them discussing to fund this investigation) and that he needed to rely on such help from “victims” to make his case. It’s fairly rare, though, that “victims” of a crime run the actual law enforcement investigation and fund it as well.
Still, in that last post, we also mentioned how Hood implied that anyone suggesting he was “paid off” might be defaming him, and apparently also stated that he wasn’t getting any money from Hollywood, encouraging reporters to “check records.”
Okay then. Let’s… check the records. Here, for example, is the MPAA’s Political Action Committee apparently giving $2,500 to an operation called “The Friends of Jim Hood.”
And, you can also look at the public record of who donated to his campaign, which pretty clearly shows donations to his campaign from NBC Universal and 20th Century Fox.
And it goes on and on.
One big take away about all this is that the leaked emails reveal that the Hollywood studios long term goal is to break DNS:
Most anti-piracy tools take one of two paths: they either target the server that’s sharing the files (pulling videos off YouTube or taking down sites like The Pirate Bay) or they make it harder to find (delisting offshore sites that share infringing content). But leaked documents reveal a frightening line of attack that’s currently being considered by the MPAA: What if you simply erased any record that the site was there in the first place?
A bold challenge to the basic engineering of the internet
To do that, the MPAA’s lawyers would target the Domain Name System (DNS) that directs traffic across the internet. The tactic was first proposed as part of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in 2011, but three years after the law failed in Congress, the MPAA has been looking for legal justification for the practice in existing law and working with ISPs like Comcast to examine how a system might work technically. If the system works, DNS-blocking could be the key to the MPAA’s long-standing goal of blocking sites from delivering content to the US. At the same time, it represents a bold challenge to the basic engineering of the internet, threatening to break the very backbone of the web and drawing the industry into an increasingly nasty fight with Google.
One final note, it appears that various legislators and Attorneys General are trying to restrict the practice of AGs getting secret funding from industry to prosecute cases.
Notice however how the New York Times story completely avoids mention that the MPAA was literally writing an AG’s legal documents:
In state legislatures and major professional associations, a bipartisan effort is emerging to change the way state attorneys general interact with lobbyists, campaign donors and other corporate representatives.
This month, during a closed-door meeting of the National Association of Attorneys General, officials voted to stop accepting corporate sponsorships. In Missouri, a bill has been introduced that would require the attorney general, as well as certain other state officials, to disclose within 48 hours any political contribution worth more than $500. And in Washington State, legislation is being drafted to bar attorneys general who leave office from lobbying their former colleagues for a year.
Perhaps most significant, a White House ethics lawyer in the administration of George W. Bush has asked the American Bar Association to change its national code of conduct to prohibit attorneys general from discussing continuing investigations or other official matters while participating in fund-raising events at resort destinations, as they often now do. Those measures could be adopted in individual states.
The actions follow a series of articles in The New York Times that examined how lawyers and lobbyists — from major corporations, energy companies and even plaintiffs’ law firms — have increasingly tried to influence state attorneys general.
These outside players have tried to shut down investigations, enlist the attorneys general as partners in litigation, or use their clout to try to block or strengthen regulations emerging from Washington, the investigation by The Times found.
While it may be a stretch to say that a lot of state Attorneys General are for sale, they certainly appear to be for rent.
Idris Elba Should Be the Next Doctor
When I criticized Rush Limbaugh’s racist screed about the possibility of Idris Elba being James Bond, I neglected to consider other possibilities.
I think that, once Peter Capaldi is done, Mr. Elba should give it a shot.
It would be an epic win.
It Goes Without Saying that Rush Limbaugh is a Blithering Idiot
As evidenced by his recent racist screed about how Idris Elba cannot play James Bond because the actor is black.
Emails revealed that a senior Sony executive was looking to tap Elba to replace Daniel Craig when the latter is done with the role.
Of course, Rush Limbaugh had a bigotrygasm over all of this.
This begs the question: Why are sponsors supporting this inveterate racist?
To be clear, I would much rather have Elba playing George Smiley than James Bond: I’ve always found Bond to be a bit one dimensional.
I will say something here: If Sony co-chairman Amy Pascal has mooted casting Elba take the role of Jack Ryan in a Tom Clancy movie, I would be upset: It’s a profound waste of his not inconsiderable acting talent.
Then again, playing Jack Ryan in a Tom Clancy would be a waste of pretty much anyone’s acting talent.
Mazel Tov!!
The new editor of The New Republic has announced that he will try to expand its bullpen beyond its white Ivy League past:
The best way for any new editor of this magazine to respect the spirit of the institution is to first recognize its defining characteristic is a habit of reinvention. The task before us is to ask what The New Republic should be one hundred years after its founding. We set out with many advantages: first, an owner who has committed to investing in quality journalism and who has granted his editorial staff the creative freedom to find a new path. We have an impressive editorial team that has demonstrated exceptional mettle and we will be adding to their ranks. And we have the heritage of sustaining a continuous conversation about America’s promise.
As we revive one proud legacy of The New Republic—the launching of new voices and experts—those new voices and experts will be diverse in race, gender, and background. As we build our editorial staff, we will reach out to talented journalists who might have previously felt unwelcome at The New Republic. If this publication is to be influential, and not merely survive, it can no longer afford to represent the views of one privileged class, nor appeal solely to a small demographic of political elites.
You know, I think poaching Ta-Nehisi Coates from The Atlantic might be a good start.
He’s a great writer, and has been aggressive critic of The New Republic‘s indifference, and occasional hostility, to the minority community, and it would do a lot to indicate that this is a clean break from the ignominious reign of the contemptible Marty Peretz.
This is Pretty Much what I Hear They Play It………
Yeah, this is pretty much what happens when you pass a PBS sponsorship clip through a Bullsh%$ to English translator:
H/t Neo at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
Rush Limbaugh is a Whiny Bitch, Part MMMMMMCMLXIX
Yeah, he’s threatening to sue the DCCC over their use of his quotes in the last campaign:
Rush Limbaugh is hopping mad at the Democratic Party — but this time he’s threatening to do more than just talk about it on the radio.
The conservative pundit is threatening to sue the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for a series of fundraising e-mails that suggested Limbaugh was condoning campus rape in comments he made on his widely syndicated program on Sept. 15.
In a letter to the Washington-based organization intended for delivery Monday morning, Limbaugh’s lawyer demanded a retraction and a public apology for the fundraising e-mails. The letter indicated Limbaugh will sue for defamation and business “interference” if his demand isn’t met.
DCCC representatives were not available Monday; the organization’s offices are closed for the Veterans Day holiday.
The legal threat is the result of DCCC fundraising appeals sent out in the wake of Limbaugh’s on-air comments about a new policy at Ohio State University that instructs students to get verbal consent before having sex. The DCCC highlighted one particular sentence from his commentary — “How many of you guys . . . have learned that ‘no’ means ‘yes’ if you know how to spot it?” — saying it was tantamount to condoning sexual assault.
………
The legal threat is the result of DCCC fundraising appeals sent out in the wake of Limbaugh’s on-air comments about a new policy at Ohio State University that instructs students to get verbal consent before having sex. The DCCC highlighted one particular sentence from his commentary — “How many of you guys . . . have learned that ‘no’ means ‘yes’ if you know how to spot it?” — saying it was tantamount to condoning sexual assault.
Yeah, well I listened to what he said, and even if he weren’t a public figure, this would be laughed out of court, because, in the United States, the truth is always a defense against accusations of libel and slander.
As a public figure, there is no evidence of malice or a reckless disregard for the truth in this.
Also, considering how the DCCC did no November 4, why the f%$# would Limbaugh, who is Republican to his core want to force the Democratic party to change its strategy?
Seriously Rush, take one for the team, and man up.
Tommy Franks Needs to Apologize to Douglas Feith
Because it appears that the good Mr. Feith appears not to be the dumbest guy on the f%$#ing planet.
Rather, it appears everyone at Breitbart’s research/fact-checking department are way stupider:
Members of the conservative media are attempting to scandalize President Obama’s Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch by suggesting she was involved in the Whitewater investigations of the 1990s. However, the Loretta Lynch that played a bit role in Whitewater — an investigation into fraudulent real estate deals that did not include any wrongdoing by the Clintons — is a different person than Obama’s attorney general nominee.
According to a November 8 Breitbart.com article by Warner Todd Huston, “few are talking about” the fact nominee Lynch “was part of Bill Clinton’s Whitewater probe defense team in 1992.” Huston pointed to a March 1992 New York Times article that “reported that Lynch was one of the Clintons’ Whitewater defense attorneys as well as a ‘campaign aide.'” And in a November 9 article Huston’s colleague, Breitbart.com Senior Editor-at Large Joel Pollak wrote, “The connection to Whitewater ought to provide additional fodder for Republicans during Lynch’s confirmation hearings”:The connection to Whitewater ought to provide additional fodder for Republicans during Lynch’s confirmation hearings. It is odd that Obama chose someone so close to the Clintons–or perhaps not, given the prominent role played by Clinton insider John Podesta in the second term of the Obama White House. Lynch has been rewarded throughout her career for her political loyalty–not an unusual path up the career ladder for federal prosecutors, but certainly one that will allow the GOP, as well as Obama, to raise the political stakes.
Because it is so easy to confuse the two:
Morons.
That place must have even been more dysfunctional before Andrew Breitbart drank himself.
Yes, I Voted Today,
This morning, before I went to work.
With the exception of voting for Peter Franchot as state comptroller, it was a thoroughly depressing lesser of two evils experience.
And now, I am watching MSNBC, where Rachel Maddow is so happy to be covering the election that it looks like she is having a newsgasm.
What a Surprise, the No Fly Zone over Ferguson was About Restricting Press Access
It was patently obvious at the time, but now we have evidence on tape:
The federal government agreed in August to a request by the police to restrict about 37 square miles of airspace over Ferguson, Mo., for 12 days for what they said were safety concerns, but audio recordings show that the local authorities privately acknowledged that the purpose was to keep away news helicopters during violent street protests.
On Aug. 12, the morning after the Federal Aviation Administration imposed the first flight restriction, the agency’s air traffic managers struggled to redefine the flight ban to allow commercial flights to operate at nearby Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and for police helicopters to fly through the area — while still prohibiting flights.
“They finally admitted it really was to keep the media out,” one administration manager said about the St. Louis County Police Department in a series of recorded telephone conversations obtained by The Associated Press. “But they were a little concerned of, obviously, anything else that could be going on.”
At another point, referring to the temporary flight restriction, a manager at the administration’s center in Kansas City, Mo., said the police “did not care if you ran commercial traffic through this T.F.R. all day long. They didn’t want media in there.”
Seriously, this is America, and this is not acceptable.
Not only do we need to disband the Ferguson PD, we probably need to do it for the St. Louis County PD as well.
These are ineluctably corrupt organizations.
They cannot be fixed. They need to be shut down.
The World Just Got a bit Less Funny, and a Lot Less Weird
Tom Magliozzi, half of Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, died today
Tom Magliozzi, the older, taller half of Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, died today at 77 of complications from Alzheimer’s disease.
Tom and his brother Ray Magliozzi first broadcast their public radio call-in show Car Talk in 1977 from the studios of WBUR in Boston.
They offered advice on cars and life, but it was the duo’s sense of humor and Tom’s iconic laugh that made the show so memorable for millions of fans across the country.
NPR began distributing Car Talk nationally in 1987. More than 4 million people tuned in each week, making it one of public radio’s most successful shows ever.
I was actually was on Car Talk once, in 1997.
I asked them about the edibility of automotive fluids, which, come to think of it, may explain how my writing style developed.
I Think that This is an Indication that Glenn Greenwald’s New Employer is Circling the Drain
First, Matt Taibbi has left First Look:
Matt Taibbi, the star magazine writer hired earlier this year to start a satirical website for billionaire Pierre Omidyar’s First Look Media, is on a leave of absence from the company after disagreements with higher-ups inside Omidyar’s organization, a source close to First Look confirmed today. (UPDATE: Taibbi has left the company. See statement below.)
Taibbi’s abrupt disappearance from the company’s Fifth Avenue headquarters has cast doubt on the fate of his highly anticipated digital publication, reportedly to be called Racket, which First Look executives had previously said would launch sometime this autumn.
………
UPDATE: Omidyar announced on Tuesday night that Taibbi has left the company. Here’s the full statement posted on FirstLook.org:I regret to announce that after several weeks of discussions, Matt Taibbi has left First Look. We wish him well.
Our differences were never about editorial independence. We have never wavered from our pledge that journalistic content is for the journalists to decide, period.
We’re disappointed by how things have turned out. I was excited by Matt’s editorial vision and hoped to help him bring it to fruition. Now we turn our focus to exploring next steps for the talented team that has worked to create Matt’s publication.I remain an enthusiastic supporter of the kind of independent journalism found at The Intercept and the site we were preparing to launch. As a startup, we’ll take what we’ve learned in the last several months and apply it to our efforts in the future.
Above all, we remain committed to our team and to the First Look mission.
The word for Mr. Omidyar’s claim about it not being editorial independence is best described as a lie.
When this enterprise was announced, Taibbi noted in interviews it would be “focusing on financial and political corruption,” while Omidyar described it as, “A new digital magazine with a satirical approach to American politics and culture.”
These are not the same things, and Taibbi’s understanding was that he would be going after people who are very much like Pierre Omidyar friends and business associates.
There is also the issue of Marcy Wheeler’s brief tenure with First Look, which appeared to be caused by her writing about entities linked to Pierre Omidyar being linked to the coup in the Ukraine. (Though Wheeler denies that this the proximate cause of her exit.)
When all this is juxtaposed along with Omidyar’s own statements about how First Look was moving from news organization to news platform, (think eBay for journalists) will leave him with very little in the way of a news organization:
I mean, I get it. Editorial is expensive. Christ, it’s so expensive… But it gets worse: Not only is editorial expensive, but nobody wants to pay for it. Readers, we’re told, don’t want to pay for it (I’ll deal with that bullshit another time). And investors certainly don’t want to pay for it… No investor of sound mind thinks he or she will make money from a magazine, any more than they think investing in restaurants or airlines is a smart move.
A platform, on the other hand… well, that’s the answer to everything. Noone ever went broke building a platform. For one thing, a platform doesn’t need to commission editorial: some other sap takes care of that — either clients (Atavist, Punch!) or Joe User (GOOD magazine).
First Look is not going to mature into an internet news org like Pro Publica, Talking Points Memo, or Pando, and I expect to see further staff defections in the not too distant future.
There May be Hope for Us as a Civilization
TLC has canceled Here Comes Honey Boo Boo:
Cable television network TLC on Friday said it has canceled “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” the popular cable reality series, about a rural Georgia family and their precocious beauty pageant daughter.
TLC, owned by Discovery Communications Inc, did not explain why it was canceling the show but said in a statement that “supporting the health and welfare of these remarkable children is our only priority. TLC is faithfully committed to the children’s ongoing comfort and well-being.”
Hopefully this is the first of many cancellations or reality TV.
Also, I really hope that Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson doesn’t end up too screwed up as an adult.
Why Republicans will take the Senate in November
CBC Coverage: No white Ford Bronco moment here
Because when the populace is in a state of abject pants soiling terror, people are more likely to vote conservative, and between Isis, Ebola, and the shootings in Ottawa, when juxtaposed with the hysterical coverage of our national press, leaves me unable to reach any other conclusion.
So, I expect Democrats to lose the Senate, and I expect Obama to use it as an excuse to try and privatize Social Security, which he has been itching to do since his election in 2008.
I hope that it fails because the Republicans are unwilling to give him a win.