Posted 5/17/2003 11:56:30 PM by Edward Driscoll
FRANCE HAS COOTIES: Scott Ott has the err, details.

Posted 5/17/2003 11:55:30 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE TILTH AND THE FURY: Rich Galen goes organic! Well, sort of.

Posted 5/17/2003 11:54:30 PM by Edward Driscoll
"STANDARDS ARE OUT OF FASHION", writes Eric Burns of FOXNews.com:

[Jayson] Blair started betraying trust more than three-and-a-half years ago. His job performance was a low point almost since the first day he held the job. Why was he not punished earlier? Why did it take until now to accuse him of violating the standards which the New York Times so ardently professes? The reason is simple. It is also appalling. Standards do not matter. Standards are out of fashion. Standards are high-button shoes and whalebone corsets and horse-drawn carriages or possibly even dinosaur eggs. Ours is a society which does not believe in standards, a society that cringes at the prospect of imposing standards because, if it does, it will hurt the feelings of those who cannot meet them. That is why our schools give A's to B students and B's to C students and passing marks to boys and girls who have not only failed to master their subjects, but who don't even know the numbers of the rooms in which they are taught.

Sadly, he's right, of course.

Posted 5/17/2003 09:46:51 PM by Edward Driscoll
LIFE IMITATES MONTY PYTHON, writes Steven Den Beste, as the German government, facing an enormous financial shortfall, taxes "thingy". Thingy? You know, thingy....Thingy! Messrs. Dimsdale and Gumby could not be reached for comment, however.

Posted 5/17/2003 11:35:03 AM by Edward Driscoll
"THE WORST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS", writes Andrew Sullivan keeps on the current state of the The Times, adding, "The current leadership is the problem; everyone knows it; but no one will budge." Read his whole post.

Posted 5/17/2003 10:54:40 AM by Edward Driscoll
IS BUSH BEHAVING LIKE FDR? Scroll down for an interesting post on the Brothers Judd Blog.

Posted 5/17/2003 10:33:21 AM by Edward Driscoll
THX-1138 RELOADED: My wife and a couple of friends and I saw the Matrix Reloaded yesterday, and I think I've figured out what the film is all about. Its plot makes far less sense than the first Matrix. Long scenes go on that could easily have been edited--or even cut--for pacing, and no one would have noticed. The dialogue is circular and often incomprehensible. Its best scene is a long, bitchin' car and motorcycle chase. It's about people trying to escape from a hermetically sealed world in which millions have no control over their lives after centuries of devastating war. In short, The Matrix Reloaded is George Lucas's seminal dystopian quasi-classic THX-1138 remade on a gazillion dollar budget, for the same studio that released THX (Warner Brothers). It's the only reason that makes sense as to how such an otherwise self-indulgent, poorly scripted and edited film would be allowed to be released. There are two action scenes that work: the afore mentioned car chase, and the Mission Impossible-style break-in to a nuclear power plant and hi-rise office building. The "wire-fu" stuff was fun in the first movie, and endlessly overdone in this one. And as a few critics have already noticed, Neo can fly in this movie, a power he acquired at the very end of the last film. So when 250 Agent Smiths open up a can of whoop-ass on him, why doesn't he just skedaddle, instead of sticking around and trying to fight them, particularly when they try to clone Neo into another Agent Smith? (Why, because everyone liked the wire-fu scenes in the first film, and this being a sequel, you're going to get them rammed down your throat, over and over again.) The last scene in the film though, sets up the last film of the trilogy quite nicely, which should be very interesting though. Hopefully they've done a better writing job on that film, however, and are currently doing a better editing job, based on the comments that this film is generating. Speaking of editing: please, please--no more Cornel West in the next film, huh? So should you see it? If the box office take is any indication, you probably already have. But if you haven't, as Jami Bernard wrote in the New York Daily News, go see it for the action scenes. (Monica Bellucci and Carrie-Ann Moss are pretty snazzy as well.) Don't bother looking for a plot, though. That corner of the Matrix's program seems to have been corrupted after the first movie. We'll see if they can rewrite the code in November.

Posted 5/16/2003 11:58:07 AM by Edward Driscoll
TWO, TWO, TWO ARTICLES IN ONE: One issue of Smart TV & Sound that is, where I have two articles in the current issue (available everywhere). Buy a case or two--they make lovely birthday, Father's Day and Bar Mitzvah gifts!

Posted 5/16/2003 11:55:18 AM by Edward Driscoll
ALL THE BILLS THAT ARE FIT TO PAY: Andrew Sullivan (with an assist from The Smoking Gun), examines Jason Blair's very large credit card bills, and their sudden payoff.

Posted 5/15/2003 08:08:58 PM by Edward Driscoll
MINUTEMAN UPDATE: Joanne Jacobs, at the coincidentally labeled Joanne Jacobs.com says that U-Mass will retain their symbol. "Now there are plans to redesign the mascot to boost sales of hats and sweat shirts. It would help if the team would win more games, too", she writes.

Posted 5/15/2003 05:32:02 PM by Edward Driscoll
JUNE CARTER CASH DIED TODAY, at age 73.

Posted 5/15/2003 04:46:30 PM by Edward Driscoll
NOW IT NEEDS TO BE PERMANENT: AP reports that "The Senate voted Thursday to suspend taxes on stock dividends for three years, restoring the centerpiece of President Bush's economic plan in a package of tax cuts that is still half the size he wanted." Good start guys--now let's make it permanent. UPDATE: Maybe it's not a good start. Virginia Postrel and The Volokh Conspiracy aren't too thrilled about its temporary nature.

Posted 5/15/2003 04:35:34 PM by Edward Driscoll
HOOVERED: What did J. Edgar Hoover think of The Untouchables TV series? He wasn't too thrilled with it, according to Forbes.com:

Hoover was furious that credit for federal crime fighting was going to a rival agency, the U.S. Treasury Department. The real-life Ness was a Prohibition agent who later became Cleveland's top cop. He died in 1957, and his memoirs formed the basis for the TV series. But most of the plots were largely fictional, drawn loosely from past headlines and often including the names of then-deceased but real-life hoodlums like Al Capone, Dutch Schultz and Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll. "We must find some way to prevent FBI cases from being used," Hoover wrote on one document. On another: "If the bureau [is] not depicted on this case and credit given Treasury Department, program will be historically inaccurate." It seemingly never dawned on Hoover that the show, pitting Stack's good-guy government agent persona against big-time Mob boss Frank Nitti, bolstered the image of law enforcement. So Hoover sent aides to pressure Desi Arnaz, whose Desilu Productions made the series, in what apparently were only partly successful efforts to change the plots. The bureau started an unsuccessful investigation into published stories that ex-FBI agents were writing scripts for the show. * * * All the while, at a significant cost to taxpayers, Hoover had special agents compose scores of plot summaries--written, amusingly enough, in the same breathless style of the show's narrator, Walter Winchell. Example: "The sex angle is played to the hilt, and Heller obviously had become the mistress of both the attorney and Felcher and continually 'makes a play' for Ness with extremely suggestive dialogue."

Nice to know then, as now, that taxpayers really get their "investment" money truly well spent.

Posted 5/15/2003 04:11:21 PM by Edward Driscoll
BUSH. GEORGE BUSH. Very funny Photoshopped James Bond poster at Conservative Commentary. Makes a good double feature with Paybax. UPDATE: And this film as well.

Posted 5/15/2003 03:31:57 PM by Edward Driscoll
DR. LICKS: Just had a great conversation with Allan Slutstky, aka "Dr. Licks", aka the man who wrote Standing in the Shadows of Motown, and who sweated blood to turn it into a movie. Watch for an interview on Blogcritics in the not too distant future.

Posted 5/15/2003 12:35:57 PM by Edward Driscoll
UNTOUCHABLE: The great Robert Stack died yesterday at age 84, of heart failure, according to the Internet Movie Database. I saw him just a few years ago on O'Reilly--he looked fantastic. He also "came out of the closet", to admit that he was one of the few Republicans (at least willing to admit it) in Hollywood. Sorry to hear of his passing away--he'll be missed.

Posted 5/14/2003 11:21:02 PM by Edward Driscoll
TOO HOT FOR DISNEY: In a remarkable moment of sanity all too rare for Hollywood, Disney has reportedly somehow come to their senses, and has dropped Fahrenheit 911, Michael Moore's anti-Bush project. (Link via Little Green Footballs.)

Posted 5/14/2003 10:50:12 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SID: Andrew Sullivan reviews Sid Blumenthal's new book:

This new Son of Man must be connected to the Old Testament. How to do so? By placing a scene at the start of the book in which the ghost of F.D.R. blesses the man from Hot Springs. So we start in Hyde Park. Sid goes ahead of a Presidential visit to pay his respects to his ancestors. The President follows, and places a red rose on F.D.R.’s and Eleanor’s white marble tomb. You’ll just have to take my word for it that I’m not making this following bit up: "An aide gently but insistently reminded [Clinton] that his time was limited. The turbulent world was tugging at him, starting with a boisterous crowd waiting at the local high school. ‘It’s so peaceful,’ Clinton whispered as he stared at the tomb. His mind was filled with great plans: universal healthcare, reducing the federal deficit, investments in education and the environment, cutting crime, remaking the welfare system, ending discrimination, to begin with." To begin with? What on earth would be next? A space colony on Mars?

Read the whole thing (Sullivan's review, not necessarily Blumenthal's 800-page doorstop), as they say.

Posted 5/14/2003 06:01:40 PM by Edward Driscoll
FREE AT LAST DEPARTMENT: "SF lawyer says he's dropping suit against Oreo cookies" Once again, SF stands for science fiction: this suit should never have been launched in the first place, proving yet again, just how right Malcolm Muggeridge was.

Posted 5/14/2003 04:40:58 PM by Edward Driscoll
PROBE OF TIMES' PLAGIARISM SCANDAL WIDENS: CNSNews.com has details, along with this tasty tidbit:

With its famed, perceived integrity at stake, the Times held a Wednesday afternoon meeting open only to staff at a Manhattan theater to discuss the Blair matter.

Oh to be a fly on the wall during that meeting! Meanwhile, Jonah Goldberg weighs in on the scandal, and has a publishing announcement of his own to make. And in other journalistic news, Mark Steyn was fired by Canada's National Post, shortly after another great journalist, David Frum, left the paper. Besides being fantastic writers, I wonder what these two journalists have in common...? Don't email--I'll figure it out eventually.

Posted 5/14/2003 11:07:25 AM by Edward Driscoll
LIFE IMITATES RAY BRADBURY: Fahrenheit 451 turns 50. John J. Miller writes:

Jules Verne is famous among science-fiction writers for predicting 20th-century technologies, such as submarines and rocket ships. Mr. Bradbury rivals him in "Fahrenheit 451." He envisioned the popularity of headset radios, plus interactive TV and live news broadcasts. In one scene, Mr. Bradbury's protagonist--a renegade fireman who commits the crime of reading--tries to evade his pursuers by running down a street. He looks through the windows of the houses he passes and sees the chase being shown on television, as if he were O.J. watching himself in a white Bronco. * * * Mr. Bradbury insists that the purpose of "Fahrenheit 451" was not to prophesy. "I wasn't trying to predict the future," he says. "I was trying to prevent it." In one immediate sense, he failed. In 1979, he discovered that "some cubby-hole editors" had bowdlerized his book in 98 places. One line--"Feel like I've a hangover. God, I'm hungry"--became "Feel like I've a headache. I'm hungry." The changes first appeared in a 1967 edition for high-school students, but it wasn't until Mr. Bradbury learned of the problem a dozen years later and complained that his publisher saw the irony of censoring a powerful anticensorship novel. "I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book," he wrote of the incident. * * * Today, Mr. Bradbury is more concerned with another problem that he thinks he didn't prevent. "There's no reason to burn books if you don't read them," he says. "The education system in this country is just terrible, and we're not doing anything about it." One of the often-overlooked details of "Fahrenheit 451" is that the censorship Mr. Bradbury describes was not imposed from the top by a ruthless government. Rather, it seeped up from the indifferent masses. As a villain explains: "School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. . . . No wonder books stopped selling." (Emphasis mine.)

I'd argue the last sentence, at least for the moment (Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and Borders all seem to be doing just fine, thankyouverymuch), but as usual, Mr. Bradbury is spot-on. Fahrenheit 451 is one of the great dystopian novels of the 20th century, and can easily be read alongside the greatest, 1984, as a warning of the evils of socialism, taken to their logical extreme. As Ayn Rand (who could write a mean dystopian novel or two herself) once wrote:

There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt.

She must have read the mind of the bureaucrats in New Jersey. And Mayor Bloomberg. And the DEA. And MADD. (And those are just from links I pulled off my blog from the past two days.)

Posted 5/14/2003 09:59:43 AM by Edward Driscoll
"FOR WHOM THE BONG CHONGS": I can't say I was ever that big a fan of Tommy Chong and his on-stage partner in tokes, Cheech Marin, even at their high point (hehe) in the 1970s. Sophmoric druggie humor just doesn't do much for me, especially when I can pop in a DVD of the Marx Brothers, Monty Python, or an early Woody Allen movie. But why is the DEA raiding head shops and busting people like Chong for "illegal drug paraphernalia"?

Posted 5/14/2003 01:34:48 AM by Edward Driscoll
BACK TO THE FUTURE: There's a possible replacement for the Space Shuttle, Jeffrey D. Goldader writes in Tech Central Station. And it's been proven--from the Earth to the Moon. And back.

Posted 5/14/2003 01:26:56 AM by Edward Driscoll
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE SOLUTION OUTLIVES THE PROBLEM? Steven Den Beste has several examples--in several different areas--of what happens when a solution takes on a life of its own. Here's another one.

Posted 5/14/2003 12:47:17 AM by Edward Driscoll
CUE THE THEME FROM JAWS, Andrew Sullivan writes: Sheeeee's baaa-ack! "And so far, she's been playing her hand very very smoothly."

Posted 5/13/2003 09:34:08 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE MINUTEMEN: Joanne Jacobs and Eugene Volokh come to their defense. Sad to see "Blue State" America returning to its pre-9/11 ways so quickly, isn't it?

Posted 5/13/2003 09:01:53 PM by Edward Driscoll
WAY TO GO CAVUTO: Neil Cavuto has just torn Paul Krugman a new Clymer.

Posted 5/13/2003 08:47:30 PM by Edward Driscoll
COULD A FILM VERSION OF ATLAS SHRUGGED FINALLY BE COMING TO THE BIG SCREEN? A production company has bought the rights to the book, and hired veteran screenwriter James V. Hart (who's written the screenplays to Contact, Hook, Bram Stocker's Dracula and Tuck Everlasting. The press release (linked to above) gives a bit of the background behind the numerous attempts to bring the novel to the screen. It will be interesting to see if this one finally makes it...but I'm not holding my breath waiting for it. (Besides, I can't hold my breath for three minutes, let alone three years!) (Found via Stephen Green, who's probably already wrangling for the director's chair.)

Posted 5/13/2003 05:55:30 PM by Edward Driscoll
DRIVE TO WORK drinking coffee, listening to the radio, or having a bite to eat behind the wheel? You could soon be punished "by stiff fines and possible jail time if New Jersey politicians have their way", according to CNSNews.com. Pathetic is the word that comes to mind (at least in polite society) to describe this.

Posted 5/13/2003 05:32:11 PM by Edward Driscoll
GEE, MAYBE THIS TIME IT'LL WORK! Speaking of Michael Bloomberg, a consortium of ultra-high-powered New Yorkers write in the Wall Street Journal that Bloomberg is attempting to do something that's already failed twice: tax the city out of hard times. The Laffer Curve: you can run, you can hide, but you can't beat it.

Posted 5/13/2003 05:20:18 PM by Edward Driscoll
ROBERT BARTLEY WRITES, 'Michael Bloomberg seems to think he's mayor of Ben Tre. That's the Vietnamese city etched into history by the quote "It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it.'"

Posted 5/13/2003 03:34:09 PM by Edward Driscoll
DOES WARREN BUFFETT HATE YOUR GUTS? The evidence that Andy Kessler presents is pretty damning.

Posted 5/13/2003 10:54:20 AM by Edward Driscoll
DIANE SAWYER INSISTS that the Jayson Blair fiasco couldn't happen in TV journalism. The Media Research Center says it already has--at least twice. Meanwhile, the Cornerites note the astonishing timing of Jay and Katie swapping seats, just as the Blair story reaches critical mass.

Posted 5/12/2003 11:15:51 PM by Edward Driscoll
HOME MUSIC RECORDING, AND THE ALBUM THAT LAUNCHED IT: Long, slightly rambiling post of mine on Pete Townshend and home recording then and now, on Blogcritics.

Posted 5/12/2003 06:20:47 PM by Edward Driscoll
IS GOOGLE ABOUT TO WHACK BLOGS? Sure sounds that way, doesn't it?

Posted 5/12/2003 06:17:22 PM by Edward Driscoll
JIMI HENDRIX'S ORIGINAL BASSIST DEAD: Noel Redding was age 57.

Posted 5/12/2003 05:09:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
FORGET THE MATRIX: This film could be the summer blockbuster. It's that staggering in its scope, its ideas, its visuals. Lucas, Spielberg and Coppola will be humbled by its power. (Link via Dave Barry.)

Posted 5/12/2003 04:02:50 PM by Edward Driscoll
NICE SYNCHRONICITY: What does Jesse Jackson think about the whole Jayson Blair affair? I don't know, but I did find this quote amusing:

"They choose culture and legacy over excellence, and it's insulting." --Rev. Jesse Jackson, who said he will protest the selection of Mike Shula as Alabama football coach over Sylvester Croom. Both are Alabama grads. Shula is white, Croom black.

Geez, Jesse, Howell Raines just said there are things that are more important than excellence! How can you argue with the editor of the New York Times?

Posted 5/12/2003 03:25:46 PM by Edward Driscoll
ACROSS THE ATLANTIC HAS A NEW SLOGAN:

"Politics, culture, and war, as seen from opposite sides of the Atlantic, but not in that knit-your-own-yoghurt, lefty kind of way."

Clearly, it's a granola-free zone.

Posted 5/12/2003 03:14:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
WAY TO GO MILPITAS! Milpitas is a small, sleepy suburb of San Jose. It's got a huge shopping mall (built out of the former Ford assembly plant that built Falcons and Mustangs), and lots of office space for Roxio, the manufacturer of CD-burning software. But the city made headlines last week when its city council on Tuesday "unanimously approved a resolution that recognizes the former Republic of Vietnam flag and sanctions its display at City Hall during ceremonies", as this the San Jose Mercury News article explains:

Pham Huu Son, president of the San Jose-based Vietnamese-American Community of Northern California, said the South Vietnamese flag has been officially displayed in such cities as Santa Ana, Garden Grove and Westminster in Southern California. San Jose has a proclamation that recognizes the flag, according to community leaders. ``We're petitioning to have the flag displayed wherever there are Vietnamese,'' he said. ``This is to recognize the Vietnamese flag which existed before the communists, as the authentic flag of Vietnam. We're victims of communism and we can't salute that flag.'' Although the South Vietnamese flag has been flown during flag-raising ceremonies at Milpitas' Higuera Adobe Park, Tuesday's action officially sanctions the flying of the flag on such occasions at the park and at the flagpole in the plaza behind City Hall. The council resolution also expresses support for a pending state Assembly bill that urges the state to formally recognize the South Vietnamese flag as the official symbol of the Vietnamese-American community and permit the flag to be ceremonially displayed on state property.

There are victims of Communism? That must be news to the Times! (Now if only we could that flag restored in its homeland...)

Posted 5/12/2003 02:44:42 PM by Edward Driscoll
"THE PETER FACTOR": Another former ABC reporter accuses Peter Jennings of left-wing bias.

Posted 5/12/2003 02:30:27 PM by Edward Driscoll
FLOODING THE ZONE, 24/7: Plenty of material about the Jayson Blair scandal at TimesWatch.

Posted 5/12/2003 01:00:09 PM by Edward Driscoll
TAKING RESPONSIBILITY: Andrew Sullivan writes, "wouldn't it be truly odd if what the NYT itself describes as its worst moment in 152 years didn't result in someone in authority taking real responsibility? No it wouldn't. Ever since Janet Reno and Waco, "taking responsibility" has come to mean that when presented with mountains of damning evidence, that you admit to doing wrong...and that that admission is expected to be punishment enough. Resigning, accepting punishment, shame: these things are just so dated in the brave new world of Soft America.

Posted 5/12/2003 11:58:10 AM by Edward Driscoll
BLAST FROM THE PAST: "JFK Had Affair With Intern, Author Says". Right. Next thing you'll do is tell me that Nixon wasn't the first president to tape his meetings! (Link via Reason's Hit & Run blog.)

Posted 5/12/2003 11:27:15 AM by Edward Driscoll
"BUSH URGES AMERICANS TO CALL FOR TAX CUTS": That's exactly what President Reagan did in the early 1980s to get his tax cuts passed, only he did it during a speech on prime time TV. It worked--Congress was flooded with calls, the tax cut passed, and the American economy was reborn. I've often wondered why no other president since has done that. At least Bush is telling people during his in-person speeches to do so, and the message was picked up by the Washington Post... ...and by this Blog!

Posted 5/12/2003 10:25:10 AM by Edward Driscoll
FLASHBACK: Quite a few years ago--long before Messrs. Blair and Blumenthal, the Times had another rather inventive reporter.

Posted 5/12/2003 09:42:02 AM by Edward Driscoll
BASHING THE PIÑATA: Jonah Goldberg weighs in on the Times' scandal, describing it as "a pinata. You can bash it from any angle and bear some reward". And David Frum writes:

Blair’s biggest scoop in his career at the Times was a front-page story that accused the Bush White House of wrecking the sniper investigation for its own political purposes. Blair reported that the Bush administration had pressured the U.S. Attorney’s office in Maryland to force local investigators to end their questioning of John Muhammad at the very moment when Muhammad was about to confess. The story purported to rest on interviews with five unnamed law-enforcement sources. The truth, as the Times now acknowledges, was that while federal and state law-enforcement officers were indeed feuding over custody of Mohammad, the discussions that the federal officials cut short concerned only minor housekeeping matters. The five unnamed sources who supposedly said otherwise had all been invented by Blair. The story was a front-page lie. Let's take this in for a moment. The most powerful newspaper in the country - a newspaper that employs an op-ed columnist who excoriates the Bush administration for lying in almost every article - publishes a front-page attack on the Bush White House for damaging political interference in the biggest crime story of the year ... all on the say-so of five anonymous sources produced by a reporter whose career at the paper has been one giant pile-up of untruth, deceit, and fraud! Is there any other newspaper in the country that would do this? Would the Times itself have permitted such an attack on an administration its top executives hated less? The conversation about the Blair case needs, in other words, to expand to one more issue: not just affirmative action and editorial arrogance but also the paper’s new and relentless front-page partisanship.

Meanwhile, Editor and Publisher.com has 14 unanswered questions for the Times.

Posted 5/12/2003 09:36:00 AM by Edward Driscoll
NEW PURITANS UPDATE: In the past, my eyes would have popped out like a Tex Avery cartoon over a headline that reads:

Lawsuit seeks to ban sale of Oreos to children in California These days, I'm not at all surprised.

Posted 5/11/2003 05:08:26 PM by Edward Driscoll
SPEAKING OF MLK: Interesting connection found between Doctors King and Bennett, and their vices.

Posted 5/11/2003 05:04:08 PM by Edward Driscoll
PAGING DR. ORWELL: Are the words of JFK and Martin Luther King exclusive property of the left?

Posted 5/11/2003 05:00:47 PM by Edward Driscoll
WELL, WHAT DO YOU KNOW: Apparently, Jayson Blair wasn't the only person at the Times who cooked the books.

Posted 5/11/2003 12:16:27 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE TIMES AND SOFT AMERICA: As I've written before, I'm always a sucker for big picture organizing theories about how America and the world works. I loved Toffler's The Third Wave, Postrel's The Future and its Enemies, and Steven Den Beste's post last year about Transnational Progressivism. Yesterday, Glenn Reynolds linked to a U.S. News article by Michael Barone titled, "A tale of two Americas". Just as Postrel used the Stasists and Dynamists two illustrate two groups shaping our nation, rather than the traditional Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and leftists, etc., Barone is really onto something here, which may very well go beyond political affiliations:

One of the peculiar features of our country is that we produce incompetent 18-year-olds and remarkably competent 30-year-olds. Americans at 18 typically score lower on standardized tests than 18-year-olds from other advanced countries. Watch them on their first few days working at McDonald's or behind the counter in chain drugstores, and it's obvious that they don't really know how to make change or keep the line moving. But by the time Americans are 30, they are the most competent people in the world. They produce a stronger and more vibrant private-sector economy; they produce scientific and technical advances that lead the world; they provide the world's best medical care; they create the strongest and most agile military the world has ever seen. And it's not just a few meritocrats at the top: American talent runs wide and deep. Why? Because from the age of 6 to 18, our kids live mostly in what I call Soft America--the part of our society where there is little competition and accountability. In contrast, most Americans in the 12 years between ages 18 and 30 live mostly in Hard America--the part of American life subject to competition and accountability; the military trains under live fire. Soft America seeks to instill self-esteem. Hard America plays for keeps.

It's a nice bit of syncronicity that Barone's essay appears the same day that Matt Drudge linked to the New York Times' plagiarism scandal, which Andrew Sullivan has been covering for at least most of the previous week. Newspapers used to be part of Hard America--witness all those cliches in the movies that date back to the Front Page and His Girl Friday, as well as Ed Asner's hard-bitten Lou Grant character from the 1970s. So how did the Times end-up joining Soft America, which editor Howell Raines tacitly admits to doing when he says that the Times' affirmative action push "has made our staff better and, more importantly, more diverse"? When did diversity become better than quality for the world's most influential newspaper, in the world's most important and competitive city? In Redneck Nation, Michael Graham wrote that during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the left castigated the South for its obsession with race, and then, rather than moving towards a color-blind society as Martin Luther King had rightly demanded, became race-obsessed itself. When does the pendulum swing back? In Hard America, people succeed and fail based on the quality of their work: through skills and brainpower, rather than through skin color or gender. Will the Times to learn anything from their scandal? One of Andrew Sullivan's readers writes, "real soul-searching...needs to go on at the Times. From Raines' initial comments, it's not happening." UPDATE: Patrick Ruffini has a pretty good suggestion for the how the Times could take a good first step towards rejoining Hard America. ANOTHER UPDATE: Scott Ott has more (or less) on Raines' next move. ANOTHER 'NOTHER UPDATE: Well, I hadn't seen this one coming, but it does have a certain logic to it! (Via Instapundit.)

Posted 5/11/2003 12:14:00 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE COUNTERCULTURE MEETS CENTCOM: H.D. Miller links to photographs of Steven Stills (of Crosby, Stills, Nash and occasionally Young fame) visiting Central Command Headquarters at McDill AFB in Tampa. CentCom has had other musical celebrities visit as well, but as Miller writes, "sorry, folks, no sign of the Dixie Chicks."