John D. Hannah, known in various online libertarian circles as JsubD, died several days ago. He was fifty-five years old. A retired Navy Master Chief Petty Officer and a widower who years later still mourned the death of his wife, John lived in the Detroit area and was reportedly homeless and living in shelters the last few months of his life. He would, according to one shelter operator, walk over to Wayne State University library every day, presumably to use their computers.
Detroit Free Press columnist Mitch Albom wrote of John's death here. Ironically, had he not decided to write about John and "the death of being forgotten," those of us who knew John as well as one can know online friends, knew of his terminal illness and were distraught by his failure in the last several months to tell us of his status might never have learned of his death. One member of the discussion forum we all frequented, a woman known among her friends for her relentless tenacity and in general for her feral genius, found the Albom column. From there we had only to perform the sad task of correlating what Albom wrote with what we knew of JsubD to confirm it was one and the same person.
John may have died homeless or, in any case, having chosen to live at the shelter for several months prior to his death. He was, however, a highly intelligent, knowledgeable and articulate man who was also clearly aware of his situation and the options available to him when we heard from him last on that discussion forum. I have every reason to believe, in other words, that the circumstances of his final months were significantly of his own choosing.
Far from forgotten, John had simply become temporarily disconnected from his family and his many online friends, one of the inevitable risks of exclusively internet friendships. I counted him as a friend, I mourn his passing and I will remember him.
Showing posts with label Blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blogging. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Friday, November 16, 2007
Oh, There He Is Over There!
Sigh....
In yet another example of ego triumphing over prudence, I have accepted a kind invitation from Jason Kuznicki to join him and his colleagues over at Positive Liberty. Accordingly, I expect to post one or two pieces a week there until either (1) I find even that schedule too demanding or (2) more likely, my newfound colleagues decide to un-invite me.
In any case,gluttons for punishment my loyal readers -- rumored to number well into the low double digits -- are similarly invited to join us.
In yet another example of ego triumphing over prudence, I have accepted a kind invitation from Jason Kuznicki to join him and his colleagues over at Positive Liberty. Accordingly, I expect to post one or two pieces a week there until either (1) I find even that schedule too demanding or (2) more likely, my newfound colleagues decide to un-invite me.
In any case,
Saturday, June 30, 2007
What the Hell? This Blog is "Rated R"?
With a hat tip to Lance over at A Second Hand Conjecture, it turns out that my little blog thingie here is "Rated R" according to a clever marketing ploy by an online dating site. The site explains, in my case:
So, what they're doing is crawling or spidering or whatever the hip web term is for it over a site, finding instances of certain words and cranking out a rating.
That is, I am sure, a small part of how the MPAA goes about its film rating business, but knowing the film industry (even now that Jack Valenti is dead), I'm betting the MPAA comes after the site for trademark infringement. Why? Here's a picture of a "widget" they offered me:
Them movie industry boys are serious about intellectual property rights, and this dating service site didn't even have the sense to remove the MPAA logo from the picture?
Two other points. First, if Live Free or Die Hard is any indication at all, these guys have set the bar way too low for an R rating and I deserve no worse than a PG-13.
Second, as porn sites found it useful to "voluntarily" use or cooperate with filter services like Net Nanny and so forth, I sadly predict it's only a matter of time before all internet web sites do have some sort of rating category assigned to them. (I say this, by the way, as a father of primary school children who have access to the internet.) Slowly, perhaps, but surely nonetheless, the wild, wild west days of the internet are coming to a close. God forbid, after all, that some sixteen year old should land at this site and read words like "hell" and "shoot."
This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:
* hell (6x)
* crack (4x)
* cocaine (3x)
* suicide (2x)
* shoot (1x)
So, what they're doing is crawling or spidering or whatever the hip web term is for it over a site, finding instances of certain words and cranking out a rating.
That is, I am sure, a small part of how the MPAA goes about its film rating business, but knowing the film industry (even now that Jack Valenti is dead), I'm betting the MPAA comes after the site for trademark infringement. Why? Here's a picture of a "widget" they offered me:
Them movie industry boys are serious about intellectual property rights, and this dating service site didn't even have the sense to remove the MPAA logo from the picture?
Two other points. First, if Live Free or Die Hard is any indication at all, these guys have set the bar way too low for an R rating and I deserve no worse than a PG-13.
Second, as porn sites found it useful to "voluntarily" use or cooperate with filter services like Net Nanny and so forth, I sadly predict it's only a matter of time before all internet web sites do have some sort of rating category assigned to them. (I say this, by the way, as a father of primary school children who have access to the internet.) Slowly, perhaps, but surely nonetheless, the wild, wild west days of the internet are coming to a close. God forbid, after all, that some sixteen year old should land at this site and read words like "hell" and "shoot."
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Constant Viewer: Credentials? We ain't got no credentials. We don't need no credentials. I don't have to show you any stinking credentials!
Let me put this bluntly, in language even a busy blogger can understand: Criticism — and its humble cousin, reviewing — is not a democratic activity. It is, or should be, an elite enterprise, ideally undertaken by individuals who bring something to the party beyond their hasty, instinctive opinions of a book (or any other cultural object). It is work that requires disciplined taste, historical and theoretical knowledge and a fairly deep sense of the author's (or filmmaker's or painter's) entire body of work, among other qualities.
Thus sprach Time film critic and book reviewer Richard Schickel, who makes the other salient observations that Edmund Wilson and George Orwell were better critics than most (all?) bloggers trying their hand at it and that, presumably among many others, Philip K. Dick and Cornell Woolrich are currently enjoying inflated reputations or would enjoy them if they were still alive. These things are true. Constant Viewer readily admits them.
Schickel goes on to say:
[W]e have to find in the work of reviewers something more than idle opinion-mongering. We need to see something other than flash, egotism and self-importance. We need to see their credentials. And they need to prove, not merely assert, their right to an opinion.
Here, alas, he loses CV on several grounds. First, he conflates reviewing with criticism; that is, were he writing about criticism his position would be far more defensible. Second, by his own standards, much of professional (read: paid) reviewing fails utterly as well. Schickel might not mind that so much, but CV hazards the guess that were he to dredge up some of Schickel's work from the mid 1960s it wouldn't fare all that well by those standards, either. CV, um, asserts this opinion having never read much of Schickel's work under the principle that anyone who doesn't get better at what he has done for over forty years should have packed it in long ago.
Criticism aside, a film or book reviewer's work is little more than an aid to the prospective viewer or reader. Here are the credentials required to be a useful film reviewer: be consistent in your tastes and write what you believe. Readers will fairly quickly discover after several reviews whether and where you can be trusted to share their tastes or not. Knowledge of film making and of the principle cast and crew is useful but not essential. People do not read reviews to educate themselves generally or to improve their taste. Their question is "Will I like this movie?" Just about everything else in the review is posturing; entertaining posturing, maybe, but posturing nonetheless and specifically film reviewing posturing as film criticism. CV knows of one reviewer who apparently doesn't know his aperture from a hole in the ground as far as film making or film history credentials go, but if this guy likes a movie, chances are very good that CV will like it, too. Maybe not for the same stated reasons, but that makes no difference in his value as a litmus test.
Sure, an informed and talented reviewer can occasionally accomplish the loftier goals to which Schickel would have him constantly aspire. But Schickel fails to understand how his elitist perspective and attitude (the latter of which CV largely shares) nonetheless fails to support his implicit conclusion that this internet free-for-all is a bad thing. Yes, most blog reviews suck. But so do most paid reviews, a fact Schickel all too quickly acknowledges.
Maybe Ernie the car parts guy has something worth saying and maybe he doesn't. Chances are he doesn't, but so what? Maybe Ernie will turn into a decent reviewer if he keeps at it long enough. The notion that all real writers find publishers or that, at the very least, they keep writing despite rejection after rejection is, one notes, a notion held almost exclusively by published writers. Let Ernie have his fun, even if it is little more than "cocktail-party chat."
Chances are good that more people decide which film to see or book to read next from cocktail party chatter than from Mr. Schickel and his ilk's reviews or criticism. Chances are even better there's a good reason why.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Transparency vs. Anonymity on the Internet
In today's Washington Post, former Post reporter and editor Tom Grubisich makes a bad case for greater "transparency" on the internet. It is a bad case because, among other things, Grubisich begins his argument with a false premise, as follows:
The first sentence, taken literally, is obviously false. I don't want transparency in private institutions, do you? Of course you don't. Your family is a private institution, after all. How much transparency, whatever that means, am I entitled to about your private affairs, institutional or not. Precious little, and rightly so. Mr. Grubisich may want transparency in private institutions, though I seriously doubt it. Perhaps he's just accustomed to writing in the editorial plural. Regardless, the premise is false.
Furthermore, we're told all sorts of things about the internet. Sure, "town hall" is one such metaphor, but metaphors are not to be taken literally. You can't get arrested for speeding on the Information Superhighway, nor do you even need to buckle-up. The internet is a communications medium, similar in some ways to other media, different in others. That it can be used as a sort of public forum doesn't mean that it is sufficiently like a real town meeting or public gathering of any sort to make it reasonable to apply the same rules.
Anyway, Mr. Grubisich's principal complaint is the anonymity of many "hate-mongering" commenters on such websites as, well, as wasingtonpost.com. Grubisich again:
Well, now. Amused though I am to see the Washington and Huffington Posts thusly compared, a bit of perspective about those nasty anonymous commenters seems in order here.
In the first place, not that many people spend that much time reading that many comments on these or any other websites. Oh, sure, if a reader finds a particular article interesting he might well peruse the reader comments, agreeing with some, disagreeing with others, finding some amusing or insightful and others insulting or disgusting. There are a few popular websites where the readers' comments are at least as interesting and fun to read as the primary article (Reason's Hit & Run strikes me as one example, probably because I frequently comment there), but they are the exception to the rule, at least when it comes to MSM websites like the Post.
Knowing the writer's name would be of little additional value to the average reader at such websites and of no value to the website's owner and operator who can, in any case, delete offensive comments and ban commenters fairly easily. Yes, some internet trolls can get around such bans up to a point, but very few are willing or able to go to the trouble.
In the second place, while there are all sorts of reasons someone may wish to be anonymous on the internet (though some are better, in my opinion, than others), anonymity automatically carries with it a certain penalty in terms of credibility, the only exception being where anonymous commenters build up a reputation, for better or worse, at a particular website over time. In a sense, therefore, market forces are already at play in assigning value to reader comments.
Moreover, Mr. Grubisich's comparison to an actual public meeting is entirely inapt. Internet trolls or, for that matter, "hate-mongers," can't "take over" a website. They can't shout over other commenters and drown them out. Yes, they can collectively flood a site with spam; but that, in fact, rarely happens. In reality, Mr. Grubisich would apparently really rather that the anonymous "haters" have no voice at all on the internet or at least that they be marginalized beyond the extent to which both their anonymity and the substance of their comments already marginalizes them. After all, he already acknowledges that sites can prohibit comments that are "libelous, abusive, obscene or otherwise inappropriate," so what we are pretty much left with is that he would prefer those with whom he disagrees either identify themselves (why?) or, more likely, simply not comment at all.
Websites are free, and should remain free, to treat commenters as they see fit. As I have written previously, the notion that there is something special about an MSM website beyond the fact that it provides straight news reportage is a dubious proposition, though apparently a common one among professional journalists.
On a personal note, odd as it might seem, I am inclined to agree with Grubisich in that I, too, would prefer that commenters used their real names. Again, I understand why many believe they cannot or should not do so; but then I am, after all, merely stating a preference. In fact, my reasons are similar. Using one's real name tends to have a moderating effect on what one posts on the internet. At least it does for me, which is one of the primary reasons I use my real name here and elsewhere.
Now, I've written enough over the past five years or so on the internet that there are already any number of really dumb comments of mine encased in virtual amber for all times. Some of them I now recognize as dumb. Others I may eventually and probably already would have recognized as dumb were it not for the fact that I remain a bear of very little brain. Patience, dear reader, patience!
But the internet is a "big enough place" that there's room for dumb guys like me and for everyone else, too. Of course, neither the Washington Post nor any other website is obligated to give me or you or anyone a forum. But as is unfortunately more often said than believed in some journalistic quarters, the remedy for bad speech is more speech. Even including anonymous speech and even if the likes of Mr. Grubisich disapproves.
These days we want "transparency" in all institutions, even private ones. There's one massive exception -- the Internet. It is, we are told, a giant town hall.
The first sentence, taken literally, is obviously false. I don't want transparency in private institutions, do you? Of course you don't. Your family is a private institution, after all. How much transparency, whatever that means, am I entitled to about your private affairs, institutional or not. Precious little, and rightly so. Mr. Grubisich may want transparency in private institutions, though I seriously doubt it. Perhaps he's just accustomed to writing in the editorial plural. Regardless, the premise is false.
Furthermore, we're told all sorts of things about the internet. Sure, "town hall" is one such metaphor, but metaphors are not to be taken literally. You can't get arrested for speeding on the Information Superhighway, nor do you even need to buckle-up. The internet is a communications medium, similar in some ways to other media, different in others. That it can be used as a sort of public forum doesn't mean that it is sufficiently like a real town meeting or public gathering of any sort to make it reasonable to apply the same rules.
Anyway, Mr. Grubisich's principal complaint is the anonymity of many "hate-mongering" commenters on such websites as, well, as wasingtonpost.com. Grubisich again:
You would think Web sites would want to keep the hate-mongers from taking over, but many sites are unwitting enablers. At washingtonpost.com, editors and producers say they struggle to balance transparency against privacy. Until recently, many of the site's posters identified themselves with anonymous Internet handles -- which were the site's default ID. Now, people must enter a "user ID" that appears with their comments.
Hal Straus, washingtonpost.com's interactivity and communities editor, says the changes "move us in the direction of transparency." But the distinction is not quite a difference, because washingtonpost.com user IDs can be real names or fictional Internet handles. While the site prohibits comments that are libelous, abusive, obscene or otherwise inappropriate, Mr. anticrat424 could still find a well-amplified podium at washingtonpost.com.
The news and opinion site Huffingtonpost.com requires posters to register with their real names but maddeningly assures them that it will "never" use those names.
Well, now. Amused though I am to see the Washington and Huffington Posts thusly compared, a bit of perspective about those nasty anonymous commenters seems in order here.
In the first place, not that many people spend that much time reading that many comments on these or any other websites. Oh, sure, if a reader finds a particular article interesting he might well peruse the reader comments, agreeing with some, disagreeing with others, finding some amusing or insightful and others insulting or disgusting. There are a few popular websites where the readers' comments are at least as interesting and fun to read as the primary article (Reason's Hit & Run strikes me as one example, probably because I frequently comment there), but they are the exception to the rule, at least when it comes to MSM websites like the Post.
Knowing the writer's name would be of little additional value to the average reader at such websites and of no value to the website's owner and operator who can, in any case, delete offensive comments and ban commenters fairly easily. Yes, some internet trolls can get around such bans up to a point, but very few are willing or able to go to the trouble.
In the second place, while there are all sorts of reasons someone may wish to be anonymous on the internet (though some are better, in my opinion, than others), anonymity automatically carries with it a certain penalty in terms of credibility, the only exception being where anonymous commenters build up a reputation, for better or worse, at a particular website over time. In a sense, therefore, market forces are already at play in assigning value to reader comments.
Moreover, Mr. Grubisich's comparison to an actual public meeting is entirely inapt. Internet trolls or, for that matter, "hate-mongers," can't "take over" a website. They can't shout over other commenters and drown them out. Yes, they can collectively flood a site with spam; but that, in fact, rarely happens. In reality, Mr. Grubisich would apparently really rather that the anonymous "haters" have no voice at all on the internet or at least that they be marginalized beyond the extent to which both their anonymity and the substance of their comments already marginalizes them. After all, he already acknowledges that sites can prohibit comments that are "libelous, abusive, obscene or otherwise inappropriate," so what we are pretty much left with is that he would prefer those with whom he disagrees either identify themselves (why?) or, more likely, simply not comment at all.
Websites are free, and should remain free, to treat commenters as they see fit. As I have written previously, the notion that there is something special about an MSM website beyond the fact that it provides straight news reportage is a dubious proposition, though apparently a common one among professional journalists.
On a personal note, odd as it might seem, I am inclined to agree with Grubisich in that I, too, would prefer that commenters used their real names. Again, I understand why many believe they cannot or should not do so; but then I am, after all, merely stating a preference. In fact, my reasons are similar. Using one's real name tends to have a moderating effect on what one posts on the internet. At least it does for me, which is one of the primary reasons I use my real name here and elsewhere.
Now, I've written enough over the past five years or so on the internet that there are already any number of really dumb comments of mine encased in virtual amber for all times. Some of them I now recognize as dumb. Others I may eventually and probably already would have recognized as dumb were it not for the fact that I remain a bear of very little brain. Patience, dear reader, patience!
But the internet is a "big enough place" that there's room for dumb guys like me and for everyone else, too. Of course, neither the Washington Post nor any other website is obligated to give me or you or anyone a forum. But as is unfortunately more often said than believed in some journalistic quarters, the remedy for bad speech is more speech. Even including anonymous speech and even if the likes of Mr. Grubisich disapproves.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Cats and Dogs (Updated: Oh, if only a reporter had been there!)
Oh goody, a Blogwar! Well, a skirmish, anyway. Voicing his views with perhaps unintentional irony by using, of all outlets, a blog, "grizzled reporter" and "no ivy tower thumb-sucker," Jonathan Alter takes Radar's Jebediah Reed to task for his coverage of a conversation including Alter, Tom Edsall and former Sen. Mike Gravel. Salon's Glenn Greenwald then weighs in, skewering the underlying pomposity and arrogance of Alter's journalistic gripes with the blogosphere.
Greenwald gets the better, so far at least, insofar as the the argument is over the parasitic faults of the blogosphere versus the parasitic faults of news reporters. Damning a cat for being an unsatisfactory sort of dog is foolish, especially for someone like Alter who has gone from dogged reporter to feline columnist (and consultant to that hard-hitting news organization, MTV, no less!) over the years.
For that matter, whether Reed's reporting of the conversation was bad (as opposed to Reed merely being "a bad reporter") seems less a matter to Alter of getting the facts wrong than of not interpreting or understanding what was said in the way that Alter, himself, would have done. Yeah, well, welcome to the club, Jon. Wanna take a poll of the people you've reported on over the years who might make the same sort of complaint? Hey, maybe Reed just isn't grizzled enough yet.
One point, though, I'll give to Alter. If the now infamous lunch in question was really "off the record," Reed had no right to report it as he did. Maybe that's a fact in dispute, too. I couldn't say. But fair's fair. Even a mildly grizzled ivy tower thumb-sucker like me knows that.
UPDATE: But wait, there's more! Now Reed fires back, claiming Alter not only knew the lunch wasn't off the record, save for a moment, but that Reed had his tape recorder running and note-pad out the entire time! Well, it could still technically have been "off the record" as background only, but it sure sounds now like there's some pretty good evidence not only that it wasn't but that Alter clearly knew it wasn't. Hmmmmmm. I think Mr. Reed is calling you a liar, Mr. Alter. Care to respond?
Reed's priceless P.S. -- "Thanks for the cup of black bean soup! (Actually, please thank General Electric.)" Meow!
Greenwald gets the better, so far at least, insofar as the the argument is over the parasitic faults of the blogosphere versus the parasitic faults of news reporters. Damning a cat for being an unsatisfactory sort of dog is foolish, especially for someone like Alter who has gone from dogged reporter to feline columnist (and consultant to that hard-hitting news organization, MTV, no less!) over the years.
For that matter, whether Reed's reporting of the conversation was bad (as opposed to Reed merely being "a bad reporter") seems less a matter to Alter of getting the facts wrong than of not interpreting or understanding what was said in the way that Alter, himself, would have done. Yeah, well, welcome to the club, Jon. Wanna take a poll of the people you've reported on over the years who might make the same sort of complaint? Hey, maybe Reed just isn't grizzled enough yet.
One point, though, I'll give to Alter. If the now infamous lunch in question was really "off the record," Reed had no right to report it as he did. Maybe that's a fact in dispute, too. I couldn't say. But fair's fair. Even a mildly grizzled ivy tower thumb-sucker like me knows that.
UPDATE: But wait, there's more! Now Reed fires back, claiming Alter not only knew the lunch wasn't off the record, save for a moment, but that Reed had his tape recorder running and note-pad out the entire time! Well, it could still technically have been "off the record" as background only, but it sure sounds now like there's some pretty good evidence not only that it wasn't but that Alter clearly knew it wasn't. Hmmmmmm. I think Mr. Reed is calling you a liar, Mr. Alter. Care to respond?
Reed's priceless P.S. -- "Thanks for the cup of black bean soup! (Actually, please thank General Electric.)" Meow!
Why I'm Not Blogging About Ron Paul (Yet)
I'm probably missing the web opportunity of a lifetime by not blogging more about Ron Paul, as Technorati still amazingly lists him at the top of its Top Ten "Where's The Fire?" list.
The fact is, though, I have nothing of interest to say about Paul. He's a decent guy, I like his politics, and he has a Texas snowball's chance in August of making it very far in the Republican presidential nomination race.
Rumor has it all this blogosphere traffic about Paul is the result of some small coterie of diehard libertarian supporters spamming web polls and such. I suppose the possibility can't be ruled out, but if there was ever a political category for which "herding cats" was the apt metaphor, it's libertarians. Just try to get a concerted effort out of three or more libertarians at a time, I dare you!
Maybe Paul is just the internet flavor of the month. If so, it can't be for his less than sterling performance during the first Republican candidates' "debate." He gets national air time and wastes it confusing people about the "inflation tax" or original intent regarding presidential citizenship requirements? Oh puleeze!
Still, I'll happily jump on the Ron Paul bandwagon just as soon as I have reason to believe its current momentum isn't from already having plummeted over the edge.
The fact is, though, I have nothing of interest to say about Paul. He's a decent guy, I like his politics, and he has a Texas snowball's chance in August of making it very far in the Republican presidential nomination race.
Rumor has it all this blogosphere traffic about Paul is the result of some small coterie of diehard libertarian supporters spamming web polls and such. I suppose the possibility can't be ruled out, but if there was ever a political category for which "herding cats" was the apt metaphor, it's libertarians. Just try to get a concerted effort out of three or more libertarians at a time, I dare you!
Maybe Paul is just the internet flavor of the month. If so, it can't be for his less than sterling performance during the first Republican candidates' "debate." He gets national air time and wastes it confusing people about the "inflation tax" or original intent regarding presidential citizenship requirements? Oh puleeze!
Still, I'll happily jump on the Ron Paul bandwagon just as soon as I have reason to believe its current momentum isn't from already having plummeted over the edge.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Afraid Of Being Shot On Your Way To An Illegal Abortion? Blame Ralph Nader!
I should start a regular feature called Mind Bloggling.
With the usual hat tip to memeorandum, we now find Martin Lewis easily outdistancing Barack Obama and Dr. Phil in the Warped Logic contest that is now sweeping the nation. Mr. Lewis asserts -- as Jack Paar used to say, I kid you not -- the following:
Thanks to Ralph Nader and those "holier-liberaller- progressiver-purer-than-thou" folks who voted for him, Al Gore and John Kerry lost their presidential bids and that led to weaker gun control laws and a more conservative Supreme Court and that, that, THAT, Ladies and Gentlemen, has resulted in "tens of thousands of women who will be denied an abortion as a result of the new Supreme Court decision" and "the slaughter in Virginia."
Truly, the mind boggles.
Mr. Lewis is not, as I first thought (having never heard of him before -- have you?), the love child of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, but:
And now we know why he can't hold a steady job. [bada-bing!]
Take a deep, cleansing breath, Mr. Lewis. The lapsed, so-called assault weapons ban never prohibited the 9mm or .22 caliber handguns used in the Virginia Tech massacre, and no president or would-be president could have possibly pushed through legislation banning or even imposing serious restrictions on such weapons in the last decade, nor is it at all clear that such legislation would, itself, pass Constitutional muster.
No responsible abortion rights advocate has ever claimed that there are or have been or are ever likely to be anywhere near tens of thousands of cases of the particular abortion procedure, the prohibition against which the Supreme Court did not overrule as being unconstitutional. Moreover, although the matter is disputed, there is evidence that, for the majority if not the overwhelming majority of women seeking an abortion whose physician might otherwise have considered that procedure, alternative procedures exist and remain legal.
Reasonable people can reasonably disagree about the likely alternative history of the U.S. since 2000 had Ralph Nader chosen not to run for president. But Mr. Lewis cannot be counted among such people. Opinions such as his should not be dismissed lightly; they should be dismissed with howls of derisive laughter.
With the usual hat tip to memeorandum, we now find Martin Lewis easily outdistancing Barack Obama and Dr. Phil in the Warped Logic contest that is now sweeping the nation. Mr. Lewis asserts -- as Jack Paar used to say, I kid you not -- the following:
Thanks to Ralph Nader and those "holier-liberaller- progressiver-purer-than-thou" folks who voted for him, Al Gore and John Kerry lost their presidential bids and that led to weaker gun control laws and a more conservative Supreme Court and that, that, THAT, Ladies and Gentlemen, has resulted in "tens of thousands of women who will be denied an abortion as a result of the new Supreme Court decision" and "the slaughter in Virginia."
Truly, the mind boggles.
Mr. Lewis is not, as I first thought (having never heard of him before -- have you?), the love child of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, but:
[started] his career as a protégé of fabled Beatles publicist Derek Taylor – he has had a storied 36-year history as a journalist, columnist, writer, humorist, monologist, comedic performer, radio host, TV host, TV correspondent, Master of Ceremonies, producer (of movies, TV, radio, DVDs, stage shows and record albums), talent manager, record company owner, independent film distributor, film-festival curator, political commentator, pioneering organizer of benefit events, human rights activist - and as an award-winning publicity & marketing strategist.
And now we know why he can't hold a steady job. [bada-bing!]
Take a deep, cleansing breath, Mr. Lewis. The lapsed, so-called assault weapons ban never prohibited the 9mm or .22 caliber handguns used in the Virginia Tech massacre, and no president or would-be president could have possibly pushed through legislation banning or even imposing serious restrictions on such weapons in the last decade, nor is it at all clear that such legislation would, itself, pass Constitutional muster.
No responsible abortion rights advocate has ever claimed that there are or have been or are ever likely to be anywhere near tens of thousands of cases of the particular abortion procedure, the prohibition against which the Supreme Court did not overrule as being unconstitutional. Moreover, although the matter is disputed, there is evidence that, for the majority if not the overwhelming majority of women seeking an abortion whose physician might otherwise have considered that procedure, alternative procedures exist and remain legal.
Reasonable people can reasonably disagree about the likely alternative history of the U.S. since 2000 had Ralph Nader chosen not to run for president. But Mr. Lewis cannot be counted among such people. Opinions such as his should not be dismissed lightly; they should be dismissed with howls of derisive laughter.
Madness In Our Method
In his usual measured and even tempered way, Hugh Hewitt rhetorically asks if NBC’s decision to air portions of the video sent by Virginia Tech mass murderer Cho Seung-Hui is “the single worst editorial decision in the history of broadcast news.”
I’d still give the nod to the decision to hire Katie Couric for the Today Show chair formerly held by J. Fred Muggs, but reasonable people can disagree about such things.
I’m being flippant because, frankly, much of the commentary that has exploded in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech tragedy is worthy of, nay, begs for ridicule. I have already commented on the alleged causal connection between such tragedies and video game violence by America’s child psychologist for children of all ages, Dr. Phil.
Meanwhile, Radley Balko at Reason has nailed Barack Obama’s ludicrous comparison of the shootings to outsourcing as “ignorant,... exploitative and offensive.” And, of course, the finger pointing and ax grinding over everything from justifying more or less gun control to whether campus police and administrative officials acted properly or quickly enough and what about the early warning signs that Cho might have been mentally ill (you think?) and on and on and on continue to inundate the media and the internet and force their way into our collective consciousness.
Here’s a thought. It’s all garbage. The Virginia Tech massacre is the responsibility of one man and one man, alone. Cho Seung-Hui. He was a sick man, a deranged man and a tragic and pathetic man. None of the rest of the 20/20 hindsight pop psychology, ax grinding and blame spreading is worth a rodent’s hindquarters.
Yes, including my own ax grinding right here and now. None of us writing about this tragedy, when we attempt to say anything more at this point than what a tragedy it was and is and will remain, are contributing anything worthwhile to that terrible truth. Unforeseen, unforeseeable and unavoidable tragedies occur to innocent people every day, sometimes because madmen walk the earth, and innocent lives are lost as a result. The urge to make sense or to find something, anything redeeming from such events is understandable. So, even, are the baser urges to exploit those events to our own advantages. We are only human. But unlike madmen, we are supposed to be able to resist our urges.
Or at least to try.
I’d still give the nod to the decision to hire Katie Couric for the Today Show chair formerly held by J. Fred Muggs, but reasonable people can disagree about such things.
I’m being flippant because, frankly, much of the commentary that has exploded in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech tragedy is worthy of, nay, begs for ridicule. I have already commented on the alleged causal connection between such tragedies and video game violence by America’s child psychologist for children of all ages, Dr. Phil.
Meanwhile, Radley Balko at Reason has nailed Barack Obama’s ludicrous comparison of the shootings to outsourcing as “ignorant,... exploitative and offensive.” And, of course, the finger pointing and ax grinding over everything from justifying more or less gun control to whether campus police and administrative officials acted properly or quickly enough and what about the early warning signs that Cho might have been mentally ill (you think?) and on and on and on continue to inundate the media and the internet and force their way into our collective consciousness.
Here’s a thought. It’s all garbage. The Virginia Tech massacre is the responsibility of one man and one man, alone. Cho Seung-Hui. He was a sick man, a deranged man and a tragic and pathetic man. None of the rest of the 20/20 hindsight pop psychology, ax grinding and blame spreading is worth a rodent’s hindquarters.
Yes, including my own ax grinding right here and now. None of us writing about this tragedy, when we attempt to say anything more at this point than what a tragedy it was and is and will remain, are contributing anything worthwhile to that terrible truth. Unforeseen, unforeseeable and unavoidable tragedies occur to innocent people every day, sometimes because madmen walk the earth, and innocent lives are lost as a result. The urge to make sense or to find something, anything redeeming from such events is understandable. So, even, are the baser urges to exploit those events to our own advantages. We are only human. But unlike madmen, we are supposed to be able to resist our urges.
Or at least to try.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Update: Coble and Kirk Settle Their Differences
I wrote several days ago about threatened litigation against blogger Katherine Coble by legal counsel for JL Kirk & Associates for libel stemming from comments Coble and her readers had posted on her blog. Coble now reports that the Media Bloggers Association took up Coble's cause and, as these things tend to happen, a mutually agreed upon resolution short of litigation appears to have been reached.
Here's an old joke: The only lawyer in a small town was starving to death until another lawyer moved in and then they both got rich. Here's the reality, at least in many situations: The threat of litigation is a double-edged sword at least once competent attorneys are representing both sides in the dispute. Sanity short of expensive litigation usually prevails.
Here's another reality, albeit of an anecdotal nature: Being once a "starving" young lawyer, myself, I was approached by a would-be client who wished to sue someone for slander. We discussed the facts and, as it turned out, she had a reasonably good case as far as meeting the technical elements of the tort of slander was concerned but her only real damages were her wounded feelings. I explained to her that even if she were to win her suit the court would in all likelihood award no more than nominal damages (traditionally, one dollar) as a token of her vindication. She thought about this and decided not to proceed. Much though I would have liked to earn the fee, I was glad she did the right thing; but if she had decided to proceed I would have taken the case and not because I needed the work. Part of the problem with the so-called law and economics school of jurisprudence is that life is not a business.
One last reality, also mostly anecdotal, but I think relevant here: a memory from law school. We were discussing rental contracts, that is, leases in class one day and the almost universal inclusion in such contracts of clauses giving landlords putative rights that we had already learned were unenforceable. If you went in those days to an office supply store (these days probably somewhere online) and found boilerplate, fill-in-the-blank leases, you would find they almost all included such unenforceable provisions. Now, the ethics of a practicing attorney including such provisions in the drafting of a lease for a client are dubious at best, but that happens, too, and not because the lawyer doesn't know the clauses are unenforceable. Indeed, what she does know is that the average tenant will assume that such provisions are enforceable and is unlikely to challenge them. As often as not, perhaps, the law is as much a game of poker as it is of chess.
Here's an old joke: The only lawyer in a small town was starving to death until another lawyer moved in and then they both got rich. Here's the reality, at least in many situations: The threat of litigation is a double-edged sword at least once competent attorneys are representing both sides in the dispute. Sanity short of expensive litigation usually prevails.
Here's another reality, albeit of an anecdotal nature: Being once a "starving" young lawyer, myself, I was approached by a would-be client who wished to sue someone for slander. We discussed the facts and, as it turned out, she had a reasonably good case as far as meeting the technical elements of the tort of slander was concerned but her only real damages were her wounded feelings. I explained to her that even if she were to win her suit the court would in all likelihood award no more than nominal damages (traditionally, one dollar) as a token of her vindication. She thought about this and decided not to proceed. Much though I would have liked to earn the fee, I was glad she did the right thing; but if she had decided to proceed I would have taken the case and not because I needed the work. Part of the problem with the so-called law and economics school of jurisprudence is that life is not a business.
One last reality, also mostly anecdotal, but I think relevant here: a memory from law school. We were discussing rental contracts, that is, leases in class one day and the almost universal inclusion in such contracts of clauses giving landlords putative rights that we had already learned were unenforceable. If you went in those days to an office supply store (these days probably somewhere online) and found boilerplate, fill-in-the-blank leases, you would find they almost all included such unenforceable provisions. Now, the ethics of a practicing attorney including such provisions in the drafting of a lease for a client are dubious at best, but that happens, too, and not because the lawyer doesn't know the clauses are unenforceable. Indeed, what she does know is that the average tenant will assume that such provisions are enforceable and is unlikely to challenge them. As often as not, perhaps, the law is as much a game of poker as it is of chess.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
The Internet v. The Immediate Jewel of Their Souls
Clearly, the biggest little story sweeping through the blogosphere today is that of the dispute between blogger Katherine Coble and JL Kirk Associates (the latter being represented by the law firm of King & Ballow) over apparently less than mutually satisfactory business dealings between the parties and statements subsequently posted by Ms Coble and readers on her blog. Ms Coble has now received a letter from legal counsel for JL Kirk Associates demanding that she remove allegedly defamatory statements from her blog site and cease publishing any further such statements.
Predictably, the blogosphere is closing ranks in favor of Ms Coble. (Bill Hobbs offers what appears to be a good roundup tracking the story, as does Nashville is Talking.)
I may be one of the few libertarians, not to mention libertarian bloggers, who continues to believe that the law of defamation, properly understood and applied, is a good thing; that is, that one’s reputation is properly the subject of legal protection under some circumstances. But that’s for another day. I care to weigh in only on a point or two that so far seems not to have been addressed by my fellow bloggers.
First, however, the inevitable disclaimer. I am not a member of the Tennessee State Bar, nor do I have sufficient factual information nor have I conducted sufficient legal research to hold or offer an opinion as to the legal merits of the dispute one way or the other. I’m not taking sides and I'm sure as hell not offering legal advice to anyone. I’m not quite that big an idiot.
(Besides, I’m more of a contracts guy than a torts guy, anyway. And some would say even that is stretching my dubious credentials to their limit. I would be fascinated to know, however, what my old sparring partner at the (unfortunately now defunct) blog Left2Right, Don Herzog – not, to his credit, a lawyer, but an expert on tort law at the University of Michigan’s Law School – thinks about the law of defamation as it applies or should apply in general to the internet. Don, any thoughts?)
I was intrigued, in any case, by a paragraph in the demand letter as reprinted at Ms Coble’s website ** because it struck me that it could be interpreted to be claiming that the applicable law of defamation in Tennessee was substantially different from the general law of defamation as I understand it. The relevant paragraph is as follows:
[** - Lest either Ms Coble or Mr. Korpady, the attorney who apparently signed the demand letter, accuse me of libel per quod (see below), I have no idea whether the word "company" was misspelled by either or both of them nor do I imply nor should the reader infer any carelessness on either's part. I merely cut and pasted the excerpt from Ms Coble's blog site and noted the misspelling without correction. Indeed, I have only Ms Coble's blog as evidence for any of this affair, as far as that goes. There, now that that little bit of CYA is done...]
As a general rule of law, the truth of the defendant’s published statements being alleged to be defamatory is a sufficient defense against a charge of libel. So the question occurs when it might be, under the law of Tennessee, that truth is not a sufficient defense.
Unsurprisingly, because the cited case is not all that recent it could not be found online except through subscription legal research services to which I do not have current access. I did, however, find at the Tennessee Supreme Court website several subsequent cases citing Nichols, including one that briefly summarized its relevant facts, as follows:
Hunt v. Tangel, C.A. No. 01A01-9705-CV-00199, __ S.W.2d __ (Tenn. Ct. App. 1997)
Ah, now that makes sense. It appears the court was grappling with the common law distinction between libel per se and libel per quod, a question of whether the published statements were defamatory on their face or required knowledge of extrinsic facts to make out the defamatory meaning which, in turn, affected the plaintiff’s burden of proof regarding damages. In its modern manifestation, however, one might say informally that a ‘falsehood’ is still required to prove a charge of libel when the published statements are themselves true in that the reader must be reasonably likely to draw a false and defamatory conclusion from those otherwise true statements as published.
Let me repeat that I neither know nor care to speculate on what statements were true or false or what sort of extrinsic facts there might be that could result in whatever truthful statements Ms Coble published being deemed defamatory or where, as lawyers are wont to say, "the equities" lie in this matter. It does not, in any case, appear that the law of defamation in Tennessee is especially different from that of other jurisdictions at least on the point herein considered.
One other observation, though. The phrase “intending to injure the character” from the demand letter also struck my eye. I don’t know whether that is the phrasing of Mr. Korpady, himself, or a phrasing merely taken from one or more defamation cases. Probably the latter. Courts, themselves, can be notoriously casual in their phrasing, causing much legal mischief as a result. Even so, as my long-ago torts teacher once observed upon hearing a student (not me!) use the often heard phrase “defamation of character,” defamation is about reputation, not character. False assertions can injure another person’s reputation; the quality of his character is up to him.
Predictably, the blogosphere is closing ranks in favor of Ms Coble. (Bill Hobbs offers what appears to be a good roundup tracking the story, as does Nashville is Talking.)
I may be one of the few libertarians, not to mention libertarian bloggers, who continues to believe that the law of defamation, properly understood and applied, is a good thing; that is, that one’s reputation is properly the subject of legal protection under some circumstances. But that’s for another day. I care to weigh in only on a point or two that so far seems not to have been addressed by my fellow bloggers.
First, however, the inevitable disclaimer. I am not a member of the Tennessee State Bar, nor do I have sufficient factual information nor have I conducted sufficient legal research to hold or offer an opinion as to the legal merits of the dispute one way or the other. I’m not taking sides and I'm sure as hell not offering legal advice to anyone. I’m not quite that big an idiot.
(Besides, I’m more of a contracts guy than a torts guy, anyway. And some would say even that is stretching my dubious credentials to their limit. I would be fascinated to know, however, what my old sparring partner at the (unfortunately now defunct) blog Left2Right, Don Herzog – not, to his credit, a lawyer, but an expert on tort law at the University of Michigan’s Law School – thinks about the law of defamation as it applies or should apply in general to the internet. Don, any thoughts?)
I was intrigued, in any case, by a paragraph in the demand letter as reprinted at Ms Coble’s website ** because it struck me that it could be interpreted to be claiming that the applicable law of defamation in Tennessee was substantially different from the general law of defamation as I understand it. The relevant paragraph is as follows:
Under Tennessee law, any malicious publication expressed in writing intending to injure the character or diminish the reputation of a business is libel. Moreover, even if statements are literally true, the publisher of those statements is subject to monetary damages where “the meaning reasonably conveyed by the published words is defamatory.” Memphis Publishing Comany [sic] v. Nichols, 569 S.W. 2d 412 (Tenn. 1978)
[** - Lest either Ms Coble or Mr. Korpady, the attorney who apparently signed the demand letter, accuse me of libel per quod (see below), I have no idea whether the word "company" was misspelled by either or both of them nor do I imply nor should the reader infer any carelessness on either's part. I merely cut and pasted the excerpt from Ms Coble's blog site and noted the misspelling without correction. Indeed, I have only Ms Coble's blog as evidence for any of this affair, as far as that goes. There, now that that little bit of CYA is done...]
As a general rule of law, the truth of the defendant’s published statements being alleged to be defamatory is a sufficient defense against a charge of libel. So the question occurs when it might be, under the law of Tennessee, that truth is not a sufficient defense.
Unsurprisingly, because the cited case is not all that recent it could not be found online except through subscription legal research services to which I do not have current access. I did, however, find at the Tennessee Supreme Court website several subsequent cases citing Nichols, including one that briefly summarized its relevant facts, as follows:
... Plaintiff cites Prosser for the proposition that “[t]he form of the language used is not controlling, and there may be defamation by means of a question, an indirect insinuation, an expression of belief or opinion, or sarcasm or irony.” William A. Prosser, The Law of Torts § 111 at 746 (4th ed. 1971) (footnotes omitted). Our review of Prosser and the cases cited therein, leads us to the conclusion that Prosser was referring to situations where actionable defamation may occur through sarcasm, insinuation, and the like, when the truth is twisted by either omitting relevant facts and circumstances, or alluding to “facts” and circumstances that do not exist. The classic Tennessee case on point is Memphis Publishing Co. v. Nichols, 569 S.W. 2d 412 (Tenn. 1978). In Nichols, the Memphis Press-Scimitar published an article stating that Mrs. Nichols had been shot “after the suspect arrived at the Nichols home and found her husband there with Mrs. Nichols.” Although true, the Tennessee Supreme Court held that this statement could be defamatory because the story failed to mention that several others, including Mr. Nichols, were present at the time. Without this important fact, the article implied that Mrs. Nichols was having an adulterous affair with the suspect’s husband. The Court held that: “Truth is available as an absolute defense [to a charge of defamation] only when the defamatory meaning conveyed by the words is true.” Nichols, 569 S.W.2d at 420.
Hunt v. Tangel, C.A. No. 01A01-9705-CV-00199, __ S.W.2d __ (Tenn. Ct. App. 1997)
Ah, now that makes sense. It appears the court was grappling with the common law distinction between libel per se and libel per quod, a question of whether the published statements were defamatory on their face or required knowledge of extrinsic facts to make out the defamatory meaning which, in turn, affected the plaintiff’s burden of proof regarding damages. In its modern manifestation, however, one might say informally that a ‘falsehood’ is still required to prove a charge of libel when the published statements are themselves true in that the reader must be reasonably likely to draw a false and defamatory conclusion from those otherwise true statements as published.
Let me repeat that I neither know nor care to speculate on what statements were true or false or what sort of extrinsic facts there might be that could result in whatever truthful statements Ms Coble published being deemed defamatory or where, as lawyers are wont to say, "the equities" lie in this matter. It does not, in any case, appear that the law of defamation in Tennessee is especially different from that of other jurisdictions at least on the point herein considered.
One other observation, though. The phrase “intending to injure the character” from the demand letter also struck my eye. I don’t know whether that is the phrasing of Mr. Korpady, himself, or a phrasing merely taken from one or more defamation cases. Probably the latter. Courts, themselves, can be notoriously casual in their phrasing, causing much legal mischief as a result. Even so, as my long-ago torts teacher once observed upon hearing a student (not me!) use the often heard phrase “defamation of character,” defamation is about reputation, not character. False assertions can injure another person’s reputation; the quality of his character is up to him.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Adorable Kitty Prostitutes?
This blogging business continues to intrigue. I say business, of course, not in the sense of profitable enterprise, at least not in my case, but in the sense of cultural phenomenon. This site, for example, in existence less than a month so far (twelve days, in fact), has already attracted visitors from domains as far away as Ireland, Australia and Thailand, though I honestly can’t imagine why. Unless, that is, titles with words and phrases like “prostitute” and "rape fantasies" popped up in those viewers’ searches. Not to be too cynical, but that seems more likely than being led here by a Google search for “reductionism.”
Installation of a hit counter has helped assuage my curiosity to some extent about such matters, and I’m pleased to announce that readership is rapidly approaching triple digits. (How about them apples, Huffington Post and Michelle Malkin!) A few days ago, Memeorandum had begun to link an occasional post here again, as it had been linking a fair number of my posts previously at Inactivist; but then that seemed suddenly to stop, perhaps because I got boring, perhaps because I jokingly told former co-blogger Mona in a comment that it saddened me that she’d noticed a post here only via Memeorandum? Who knows. C’est la vie. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, no man but a fool ever wrote except to be read; but I really haven’t a clue how web traffic works or why, and there is only so much pandering to the masses I can bring myself to do. I am, however, shamelessly planning on a special Shoes! article in the near future to lure former reader Susan W-G back to the fold.
Constant Viewer, my modest homage to Dorothy Parker’s far wittier reviews of yesteryear, has been disappointingly idle of late, there being damned little on the big screen worth seeing. In fact, my last such venture to the cinema house was to accompany my twelve year old son to watch TMNT, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" for the over-thirty crowd, but I’m afraid a review of same would have to focus on the quality of the popcorn. (Not enough salt.) Perhaps the current drought will lead me to an occasional review of older films -- I hear that Citizen Kane flick is pretty good.
My intent was and remains to blog about the passing scene from a less than rabidly ideological libertarian perspective -- no, I don’t think children under twelve should be permitted to own nuclear weapons -- at least as opposed to what I call the “My Adorable Kitties” web-log alternatives. However, I think it’s already fairly obvious that my interests are as eclectic as my knowledge of many such matters is, or so I’m told, highly doubtful. One reader, not even here but over at Jim Henley’s shop, thought not only that my opinions regarding digital audio files were “absolutely full of sh*t” but that I, personally, was, as well. I quote: “You’re saying things that sound like they might be sensible, but are in fact completely crazy.” Sadly, he is not the first person to arrive at such a conclusion, nor will he likely be the last. What the hell, he may even be right.
And so it goes. Purely political blogs bore me almost as much as adorable kitties. I have lived most of my life inside or at least right next to Washington’s culture of political obsessives, and I have grown weary of self-important people espousing their self-important opinions, more often than not for mostly self-serving reasons. Yeah, I’m one of those people, but that doesn’t mean I have to like the fact or can’t occasionally resist my own self-important and self-serving inclinations, however briefly.
So this is the result so far. A little bit of this, a little bit of that, maybe a dog’s breakfast at the end of the day, but at least it’s fun in the making. Sure, blogging is largely an exercise in ego gratification. Who the hell am I, anyway? But when it comes down to it, what isn’t? And more to the point, will that guy from Thailand be back?
Installation of a hit counter has helped assuage my curiosity to some extent about such matters, and I’m pleased to announce that readership is rapidly approaching triple digits. (How about them apples, Huffington Post and Michelle Malkin!) A few days ago, Memeorandum had begun to link an occasional post here again, as it had been linking a fair number of my posts previously at Inactivist; but then that seemed suddenly to stop, perhaps because I got boring, perhaps because I jokingly told former co-blogger Mona in a comment that it saddened me that she’d noticed a post here only via Memeorandum? Who knows. C’est la vie. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, no man but a fool ever wrote except to be read; but I really haven’t a clue how web traffic works or why, and there is only so much pandering to the masses I can bring myself to do. I am, however, shamelessly planning on a special Shoes! article in the near future to lure former reader Susan W-G back to the fold.
Constant Viewer, my modest homage to Dorothy Parker’s far wittier reviews of yesteryear, has been disappointingly idle of late, there being damned little on the big screen worth seeing. In fact, my last such venture to the cinema house was to accompany my twelve year old son to watch TMNT, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" for the over-thirty crowd, but I’m afraid a review of same would have to focus on the quality of the popcorn. (Not enough salt.) Perhaps the current drought will lead me to an occasional review of older films -- I hear that Citizen Kane flick is pretty good.
My intent was and remains to blog about the passing scene from a less than rabidly ideological libertarian perspective -- no, I don’t think children under twelve should be permitted to own nuclear weapons -- at least as opposed to what I call the “My Adorable Kitties” web-log alternatives. However, I think it’s already fairly obvious that my interests are as eclectic as my knowledge of many such matters is, or so I’m told, highly doubtful. One reader, not even here but over at Jim Henley’s shop, thought not only that my opinions regarding digital audio files were “absolutely full of sh*t” but that I, personally, was, as well. I quote: “You’re saying things that sound like they might be sensible, but are in fact completely crazy.” Sadly, he is not the first person to arrive at such a conclusion, nor will he likely be the last. What the hell, he may even be right.
And so it goes. Purely political blogs bore me almost as much as adorable kitties. I have lived most of my life inside or at least right next to Washington’s culture of political obsessives, and I have grown weary of self-important people espousing their self-important opinions, more often than not for mostly self-serving reasons. Yeah, I’m one of those people, but that doesn’t mean I have to like the fact or can’t occasionally resist my own self-important and self-serving inclinations, however briefly.
So this is the result so far. A little bit of this, a little bit of that, maybe a dog’s breakfast at the end of the day, but at least it’s fun in the making. Sure, blogging is largely an exercise in ego gratification. Who the hell am I, anyway? But when it comes down to it, what isn’t? And more to the point, will that guy from Thailand be back?
Friday, April 6, 2007
"Will Opine For Food"
And what is so rare as a day in June? Well, with apologies to James Russell Lowell, I’d say this blog praising something from The Nation. Still, there it is, as large as life, a column by Eric Alterman with which I almost entirely agree. Pity the poor pundit, once holder of the best gig in professional journalism. Yeah, right.
Pity, for that matter, the poor reporter, whose copy not so long ago was scrutinized only by his editors and the occasional disgruntled reader. The latter had, at best, an irate Letter to the Editor as his sole opportunity for rejoinder. But now? Why, now anyone with a computer and internet access (take, well, me for example) to have his say literally moments after the professional reporter’s story is published. Hardly seems fair, does it?
Then, too, there’s that whole supply and demand thingie. While we mere amateurs may be ‘inferior goods,’ we’re still flooding the market, driving down prices, or at least demand for opinion and analysis from the boys and girls at the MSM. All you need to play are strong opinions and the sort of cocktail party education anyone with a liberal arts degree is likely to have.
The truth is, being a professional pundit or syndicated columnist of any sort is still a pretty damned good gig. A 700 word column once or twice a week and it’s back to the hot tub. The major players even have assistants to perform such drudgery as fact-checking for them. Sweet, huh? Of course, the pay varies considerably, depending on where you are published and how many other periodicals run your pieces and how popular you are on the talking heads circuit and lecture tour, but we’re still not talking about any heavy lifting, are we? So not only will I reserve the pity for the time being; I'd even be willing (grudgingly, you understand!) to take on a job like that myself.
As the old joke used to go, freedom of the press was freedom only for those who owned the presses. No more. I don’t know that I agree entirely with Alterman’s claim that professional pundits are “in thrall to the specious arguments of the powerful people they are supposed to critique.” (He’s writing at The Nation, after all, so he’d pretty much have to say something like that, wouldn’t he?) Still, how often does one read a New York Times column criticizing how the Ochs-Sulzberger family runs the paper? Far less often than once per F.U. and vastly less often than the Blogosphere takes its shots at the Times, I can tell you that.
The advent of the Internet--particularly the blogosphere--has changed all that. Now, not only are the things pundits say and write preserved for posterity; there are legions of folks who track pundit pronouncements, fact-check their statements and compare them with previous utterances on the same and similar topics. They also demand a degree of transparency about methods of inquiry and the reasoning behind conclusions drawn. While proving pundits wrong--over and over and over--has not yet cost anyone a job, it has contributed to a precipitous decline in pundit prestige. The reaction to this decline varies from pundit to pundit, to be sure, but more often than not, it bespeaks a kind of panic.
Pity, for that matter, the poor reporter, whose copy not so long ago was scrutinized only by his editors and the occasional disgruntled reader. The latter had, at best, an irate Letter to the Editor as his sole opportunity for rejoinder. But now? Why, now anyone with a computer and internet access (take, well, me for example) to have his say literally moments after the professional reporter’s story is published. Hardly seems fair, does it?
Then, too, there’s that whole supply and demand thingie. While we mere amateurs may be ‘inferior goods,’ we’re still flooding the market, driving down prices, or at least demand for opinion and analysis from the boys and girls at the MSM. All you need to play are strong opinions and the sort of cocktail party education anyone with a liberal arts degree is likely to have.
The truth is, being a professional pundit or syndicated columnist of any sort is still a pretty damned good gig. A 700 word column once or twice a week and it’s back to the hot tub. The major players even have assistants to perform such drudgery as fact-checking for them. Sweet, huh? Of course, the pay varies considerably, depending on where you are published and how many other periodicals run your pieces and how popular you are on the talking heads circuit and lecture tour, but we’re still not talking about any heavy lifting, are we? So not only will I reserve the pity for the time being; I'd even be willing (grudgingly, you understand!) to take on a job like that myself.
As the old joke used to go, freedom of the press was freedom only for those who owned the presses. No more. I don’t know that I agree entirely with Alterman’s claim that professional pundits are “in thrall to the specious arguments of the powerful people they are supposed to critique.” (He’s writing at The Nation, after all, so he’d pretty much have to say something like that, wouldn’t he?) Still, how often does one read a New York Times column criticizing how the Ochs-Sulzberger family runs the paper? Far less often than once per F.U. and vastly less often than the Blogosphere takes its shots at the Times, I can tell you that.
Monday, April 2, 2007
“... because the stakes are so small.”
The beginning of that quip is, of course, “The reason academic politics are so vicious” But the observation is probably just as true of any number of realms of discourse, including (Ohmygawd!) the Blogosphere. From Scott Lemieux over at Lawyers, Guns & Money, via Memeorandum, I finally got around to reading up a bit on the internecine crisis of blogroll purging. Seems that, especially in the Leftosphere, so-called A-list blogs have been purging their blogrolls of many of the so-called B-list blogs, much to the consternation, gnashing of teeth and general whining of the latter. Or something like that.
By A-list and B-list it is presumably meant how popular the blog in question is and that, in turn, is measured by how many hits the blog gets, how many other sites link to it, list it on their blogrolls, etc. The metaphor that springs immediately to my mind, especially this time of year, is the various rankings of NCAA teams, and not only how the “majors” have unexcitingly dominated this year’s basketball tournament but especially, also, the Division I-A football schools versus, well, everyone else.
Them that’s got tries to keep it, of course. I’ll strive valiantly (if unsuccessfully) to avoid noting that redistribution of wealth of any sort is one of the more annoying perennial obsessions of the Left, but the notion that there is any merit to the practice of endlessly listing the blogs one has visited once or twice, or of one’s friends, or especially of sites one is angling to have list you back strikes me as both self-defeating and childish. I can speak, of course, only for myself (hence the title of this blog), but I almost never click on a blog from a blogroll in the first place, and the already slim chances of my doing so are inversely proportional to the length of the blogroll in question. If everyone is interesting, no one is. “All are winners and all must have prizes” is a philosophy best left to nursery schools, failed socialist states and, of course, Wonderland.
My own minor efforts to bring order out of chaos being in operation all of three days now, I’d guess that makes this blog a strong contender for Z-list status. (Unless, that is, the pecking order descends below the alphabet, in which case I’m sure I’d descend right along with it.) The fact is, though, life is too short to fret over such matters just as it is far too short to read blog after blog after blog, ignoring in the process what still passes for real news and, oh yes, the real world, as well. Yeah, I’ve got a few sites listed on my blogroll, and the list will probably grow (and occasionally be trimmed). But they’re sites I actually visit frequently in my own net cruising. Indeed, a few may not even qualify as blogs. So what?
My policy (and, hence, my advice) is to link to a site in a blog entry when doing so assists the reader in understand what I’m writing about or I believe the reader will enjoy or profit from reading that site or site entry. Beyond that, I link only to acknowledge - the proverbial “hat tip” - how and where I came to start thinking about the topic in the first place, as in the first paragraph above.
In blogistry, as in life itself, if you’re doing something simply for recognition or influence (let alone for money), chances are you won’t enjoy it, won’t do it all that well and won’t get either. If you do what you like and therefore do it as well as you can, chances are those other things will take care of themselves. Some of them that’s got, got it ‘cause they got there first; but none of them kept it for that reason alone, let alone because they joined the Million Man Mutual Admiration Society.
By A-list and B-list it is presumably meant how popular the blog in question is and that, in turn, is measured by how many hits the blog gets, how many other sites link to it, list it on their blogrolls, etc. The metaphor that springs immediately to my mind, especially this time of year, is the various rankings of NCAA teams, and not only how the “majors” have unexcitingly dominated this year’s basketball tournament but especially, also, the Division I-A football schools versus, well, everyone else.
Them that’s got tries to keep it, of course. I’ll strive valiantly (if unsuccessfully) to avoid noting that redistribution of wealth of any sort is one of the more annoying perennial obsessions of the Left, but the notion that there is any merit to the practice of endlessly listing the blogs one has visited once or twice, or of one’s friends, or especially of sites one is angling to have list you back strikes me as both self-defeating and childish. I can speak, of course, only for myself (hence the title of this blog), but I almost never click on a blog from a blogroll in the first place, and the already slim chances of my doing so are inversely proportional to the length of the blogroll in question. If everyone is interesting, no one is. “All are winners and all must have prizes” is a philosophy best left to nursery schools, failed socialist states and, of course, Wonderland.
My own minor efforts to bring order out of chaos being in operation all of three days now, I’d guess that makes this blog a strong contender for Z-list status. (Unless, that is, the pecking order descends below the alphabet, in which case I’m sure I’d descend right along with it.) The fact is, though, life is too short to fret over such matters just as it is far too short to read blog after blog after blog, ignoring in the process what still passes for real news and, oh yes, the real world, as well. Yeah, I’ve got a few sites listed on my blogroll, and the list will probably grow (and occasionally be trimmed). But they’re sites I actually visit frequently in my own net cruising. Indeed, a few may not even qualify as blogs. So what?
My policy (and, hence, my advice) is to link to a site in a blog entry when doing so assists the reader in understand what I’m writing about or I believe the reader will enjoy or profit from reading that site or site entry. Beyond that, I link only to acknowledge - the proverbial “hat tip” - how and where I came to start thinking about the topic in the first place, as in the first paragraph above.
In blogistry, as in life itself, if you’re doing something simply for recognition or influence (let alone for money), chances are you won’t enjoy it, won’t do it all that well and won’t get either. If you do what you like and therefore do it as well as you can, chances are those other things will take care of themselves. Some of them that’s got, got it ‘cause they got there first; but none of them kept it for that reason alone, let alone because they joined the Million Man Mutual Admiration Society.
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