Posted 4/3/2004 04:06:43 PM by Edward Driscoll
CROSSED OUT CROSSES: James Panero notes that Columbia University has subtly morphed the three crosses in their crown-shaped school crest into denuded vaguely diamond-shaped blobs. Michael Newdow should be happy, at least. Panero describes Columbia's supremely PC gesture as being "in the spirit of radical creep", a subject he's written about before.

Posted 4/3/2004 11:15:06 AM by Edward Driscoll
THIS'LL SELL: CNSNews.com is reporting that "Environmental activists are warning church-goers that Palm Sunday services are not compatible with 'environmental sustainability'." Gaia was OK, but her disciples are a bit thick and ordinary...

Posted 4/2/2004 08:40:04 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE GOOD ARE HARD TO FIND, EVEN HARDER TO LOSE: Ron Rosenbaum has some thoughts on why he misses Mike Kelly.

Posted 4/2/2004 04:32:48 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE SEATTLE TIMES thinks it's neutral. Stefan Sharkansky disagrees:

"Neutral" journalism would give equal time to those who argue that slaves were happier than free blacks, that homosexuals should be executed or that Communism works well in practice. Fortunately, that's probably not what the Times has in mind. Meanwhile, newspapers that pretend in earnest to be "neutral" have given rise to the varieties of journalism that inspired us to launch this blog in the first place. The Times would have more credibility if instead of flogging the conceit of "neutral reporting" it simply acknowledged its reporters biases and also extended its "commitment to diversity" to broaden the diversity of opinions in its newsroom.

As John Poderhertz wrote last year in the New York Post:

I've worked for two newspapers - this one and the Washington Times. One of the primary qualities that has distinguished these two papers from most others in the country is that they do not pretend to be something they're not. They are run by conservatives. Readers know it, and are given the opportunity to read them and judge for themselves whether the information in them is improperly colored by the ideological views of the owners and managers. In the world of professional journalists, this lack of pretense is considered a black mark against these institutions. They are criticized and held in lesser regard precisely because they have the integrity to be honest with their readers about what they are.

And as Bob Goldfarb wrote in December:

I think history will show the faith in unbiased journalistic "truth" to have been a temporary aberration. The national papers of Great Britain, like the American press of the 19th century, are popular precisely because of their well-known ideological positions, not from any pretense of neutrality. They report the news by their own lights, recognizing that readers prefer the news to be filtered through values and beliefs similar to their own. So does The New York Times. The Times has become America's only truly national, general-interest newspaper because it has the best reporting, writing, and editing in the country...and because its worldview matches that of its target consumers. It doesn't need to purport to be unbiased. Okrent believes that his, and presumably the paper's, "only concern" is to be "dispassionate." It will be enough if he and The Times continue to serve its readers' interests rather than their own.

Somewhat surprisingly, a number of journalists have recently been coming forward to admit their biases. Maybe eventually the Seattle (and New York) Times will join them.

Posted 4/2/2004 02:38:56 PM by Edward Driscoll
IF 9/11 DIDN'T CHANGE EVERYTHING IN AMERICA, it changed a lot of things. For proof, check out this Instapundit post. Had it been posted prior to 9/11, I would have taken it as a delayed April fool's joke; it would have been that impossible to be believed.

Posted 4/2/2004 01:14:26 PM by Edward Driscoll
HEY, THIS SOUNDS FAMILIAR! Back on Wednesday, February 25, I wrote:

THE PASSION: It opens today; the last film to generate this kind of controversy was probably Oliver Stone's JFK (I was going to say The Last Temptation of Christ, until I remembered the angry debates on shows like Nightline that Stone's film generated at the time of its release about its historical accuracy.)

In today's review of JFK on The Digital Bits DVD site, Adam Jahnke writes:

Every so often, a film comes along that draws an ideological line in the sand, making it virtually impossible to simply discuss its merits as a motion picture. You cannot address its strengths and weaknesses as a movie without getting into a debate about its subject matter. Currently, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is the agent provocateur du jour. I don't imagine Gibson and Oliver Stone would have too much common ground in a political discussion but I can't help but wonder if Gibson solicited Stone's advice on how to deal with the media in the wake of a firestorm of controversy.

Apropos of nothing, I'm not sure how well Jahnke's analysis holds up. While critical opinion of the film was often on ideological lines, I'm not sure if viewership was. Somewhere I read that a fair number of its audience were African-Americans and Hispanics--and I'll bet that a fair chunk of both groups don't subscribe to National Review. And Roger Ebert, who last year gave an interview to The Progressive on his leftist views, gave The Passion four stars. Meanwhile William F. Buckley, of whom, rumor has it, gets comped his subscription to the conservative NR, had seriously mixed emotions about the film. The ideological complexity holds true for JFK as well. I'd say I'm just ever so slightly to the right of Oliver Stone. But I saw JFK, bought the laser disc and later the DVD, and loved the film. Mind you, I think that other than Kennedy's death and LBJ replacing him in the oval office, it's entirely a work of fiction, but it's tense, dramatic and exciting stuff, just as The Manchurian Candidate, another leftwing paranoid fantasy was. (Incidentally, I passed by the late Clay Shaw's house in New Orleans last week. It's a handsome walled mansion located back and to the left, back and to the left, of Bourbon Street. The conspiracy of men who assassinated JFK--Ed Asner, Jack Lemmon, Gary Oldham, Joe Pesci and Tommy Lee Jones--were nowhere to be found.) UPDATE: I hope I'm not sounding like I'm trashing Jahnke's review of Warner's new JFK DVD. He's very good reviewer, and both his article--and apparently the new disc--are actually quite good. However, I'm also not sure if I agree with this comment of Jahnke:

The Kennedy assassination was a turning point for this country and continues to be a lightning rod for controversy to this day. Witness the recent brouhaha over a cable documentary that explicitly tied presidential successor Lyndon Johnson to the assassination (even Stone didn't go quite that far).

He didn't? Watching JFK certainly left me with the impression that Stone implicated Johnson in Kennedy's assassination.

Posted 4/2/2004 12:50:05 PM by Edward Driscoll
DEATH IN FALLUJAH: Yesterday we looked at how television was covering it. Today, Glenn Reynolds looks at how some on the left side of the Blogosphere are reacting to it. Be sure and read Roger L. Simon's thoughts on the topic as well.

Posted 4/2/2004 11:09:38 AM by Edward Driscoll
RHETORICAL SPAM QUESTION: I have a reasonably solid Spam filter attached to Outlook, but I still check the emails that get sent to the junk mail directory before deleting them, just in case. So why is an email titled, "taiwan dishes" about refinancing?? I know Spammers try seemingly random combinations of words that they hope will get past filters, but with a title like that, I was expecting something a little--heck a lot--racier, if you know what I mean.

Posted 4/2/2004 10:54:10 AM by Edward Driscoll
50-50 OR 60-40? The last presidential election revealed a bitterly divided nation, and many experts believe November could be just as close. Others however, believe that the nation may have moved further to the right as a result of 9/11. If either prediction is true, why on Earth is Hollywood alienating at least half its audience? As the Professor writes, "And they wonder why viewership is down". In the old days, television sponsors and network broadcast standards departments kept a close eye on scripts, as well as finished shows before they aired, so as not to offend audiences. They understood that, as the late Steve Allen once put it, "When on television you were the guest of the family in the family's home". And that meant families of both major political parties. Hollywood deliberately chose to forget that idea in the last twenty years--and most modern sponsors don't care as long as profits are up, and the board can rub shoulders with the stars at the next board meeting or trade show. UPDATE: Captain Ed (no relation) also has some thoughts.

Posted 4/2/2004 10:41:12 AM by Edward Driscoll
NEVILLE AGAIN: Thanks to Mark Steyn, a meme is born. And as Stefan Beck writes, Spain has discovered that, "a jihadist's promise isn't worth the cassette it's recorded on. On the bright side (if this can be said to have one), this wake-up call did not cost any lives. Let's hope they heed it."

Posted 4/2/2004 10:23:49 AM by Edward Driscoll
DEMOCRAT OR CATHOLIC: It sounds like the church is going to make John Kerry choose one or the other. Tom Daschle and former California Governor Gray Davis each ran into a similar wall last year. Guess which choice both men made?

Posted 4/2/2004 10:17:52 AM by Edward Driscoll
WE'VE ALREADY SAID GOODBYE: Victor Davis Hanson says it's time we "go now" from Europe. To a great extent, I agree. And it would be amusing to watch the governments try to spend on both a welfare state and a meaningful defence. Sooner or later, one or the other would have to give.

Posted 4/1/2004 09:41:57 PM by Edward Driscoll
I'M WATCHING SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE right now, and really feeling alienated by it. I'm not entirely sure why. Nicholson and Keaton have great chemistry together, and certainly make a handsome couple. But there's something really offputting about the film. I think it's the notion of watching 50 to 60-somethings act like 22 year olds. On the other hand, having read Hollywood, Interrupted this past weekend, it's pretty obvious that lots of 50 to 60 somethings act like 22 year olds there. Comedies are either typically very broad farces, or they're about real people in wacky circumstances. Woody Allen's best films (Annie Hall, Manhattan, Play It Again Sam, (all of which starred Keaton, of course)) felt like they were about believable people. Neither of these characters felt much like real middle age people to me. And then there's the usual Hollywood anti-smoking stuff--and the French music (and ultimately, a trip to Paris itself), in a film that was probably being shot while we fighting the Iraqs and being screwed by their French allies. And Keanu Reeves as a doctor? "Whoa--stat!" James Bowman was also turned off by the film, but for rather different reasons: he finds it disturbing watching wrinkled people make love. I don't mind that at all--I'd actually like to see a film about mature grown-ups having adult relationships. But mature, adult, and grown-up are sadly what's missing from this film. And from most films these days. UPDATE: OK, film's over. My wife and I talked about it, and came to the conclusion that it's not the PC of the film, it's the crappy writing. We found plot holes you cold drive Nicholson's Mercedes roadster through, and couldn't remember one funny line after the film was over. Whereas the Woody films I listed above all have great catch phrases, snappy dialogue, and (other than Bogie appearing in Woody's bedroom in Play It Again Sam) reasonably believable plots and characters. How do producers get a budget big enough to afford Nicholson and Keaton, and not have a decent script? I suppose that perhaps the filmmakers and studios (Yes, that's plural--Columbia and Warner Brothers both backed this film) believed that once the cast is assembled everything's in the bag. (And the film is pretty well cast, right down to the supporting players: while I don't buy Keanu as a doctor, this is the most human I think I've ever seen him--and while I'm sure he was reasonably well paid, it takes guts for any headliner to accept a supporting role). Something I've written about several times here--since the mid-90s, Hollywood films have repeatedly felt to me like they've been gone into production with a script that should have been rewritten once or twice. This one could have used a lot of polishing before being greenlighted. UPDATE: One of the stranger aspects of Something's Gotta Give are the unbelievably airbrushed photos in its marketing campaign (click on the IMDB link above to see the DVD cover). The whole point of the film is that Keaton looks like a typical 55 year old, wrinkles, jowls, and all (nicely preserved body though, in the ultra-quick flash cuts of her). But the massively Photoshopped DVD box makes her--and Nicholson--each look about 30!

Posted 4/1/2004 09:02:12 PM by Edward Driscoll
HEH:

Posted 4/1/2004 08:51:25 PM by Edward Driscoll
SADDAM HUSSEIN, TERRORIST: Interesting polling data on the Power Line blog.

Posted 4/1/2004 01:40:51 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE FRANK BURNS/JOHN KERRY CONNECTION, as discovered by Hugh Hewitt. I can certainly see it--Kerry's "I don't fall down, the son of a b*itch knocked me over" line does sounds very Burns-like, doesn't it? On the other hand, Hewitt writes, "We lack the information to make any comparisons between Theresa and Major Margaret "Hotlips" Houlihan, but both at least share a tendency toward outspokenness". Hot Lips, whatever her faults, was a career Army nurse and patriot. Can't see her ever doing this to Harry Truman or Ike. While we're on the subject of M*A*S*H, not too long ago, I thought Dean bore some similarities to the worst aspects of "Hawkeye" Pierce. But at least Hawkeye was cool in M*A*S*H's early days as a TV series, and as portrayed by Donald Sutherland in the original film. With his snowboarding shtick and trying to sound hip by defending rap music, Kerry's trying way too hard, to come across as cool.

Posted 4/1/2004 11:24:54 AM by Edward Driscoll
QUITE A DOUBLE STANDARD AT ABC: Here's Nightline Executive Producer Leroy Sievers on Fallujah:

"War is a horrible thing. It is about killing," ABC News "Nightline" Executive Producer Leroy Sievers said in an unusual message to the program's e-mail subscribers discussing the issues posed by Wednesday's killings. "If we try to avoid showing pictures of bodies, if we make it too clean, then maybe we make it too easy to go to war again."

And here's ABC News chief David Westin on 9/11:

"The question is, are we informing or titillating and causing unnecessary grief?" ABC News chief David Westin told the New York Times just days after the Sept. 11 attack. Explaining why his network decided not to show any pictures of people leaping to their deaths at the World Trade Center, he said, "Our responsibility is to inform the American public of what's going on, and, in going the next step, is it necessary to show people plunging to their death?"

As I wrote last year:

What would [the media] think about showing the gore from the attack on the World Trade Center on television more? Shots of people jumping out of the windows of the WTC to their certain deaths rather than be burned in the fire or smashed by collapsing rubble? I doubt they'd be in favor it. And certainly the media has downplayed--practically eliminated--those images from its library of stock footage because, as ABC News chief David Westin told the New York Times, it was "disturbing".

Curious, that when it serves their interests and their biases, the media certainly doesn't mind disturbing its viewers. Instapundit also has some thoughts on Sievers' quote:

terrorism is, in a very real sense, a creature of the mass media. But what strikes me is that after 9/11 they didn't want to show graphic images of dead Americans for fear that it would make Americans want to go to war. Now they are proud of showing graphic images of dead Americans in the hopes that it will discourage Americans from going to war. Now that they've admitted that they're not neutral on this stuff, you have to wonder what side they're on.

UPDATE: Westin of course, was the fellow who couldn't initially decide if it was wrong for Al Qaida to have attacked the Pentagon on 9/11:

The Pentagon as a legitimate target? I actually don’t have an opinion on that and it’s important I not have an opinion on that as I sit here in my capacity right now. The way I conceive my job running a news organization, and the way I would like all the journalists at ABC News to perceive it, is there is a big difference between a normative position and a positive position. Our job is to determine what is, not what ought to be and when we get into the job of what ought to be I think we’re not doing a service to the American people. I can say the Pentagon got hit, I can say this is what their position is, this is what our position is, but for me to take a position this was right or wrong, I mean, that’s perhaps for me in my private life, perhaps it’s for me dealing with my loved ones, perhaps it’s for my minister at church. But as a journalist I feel strongly that’s something that I should not be taking a position on. I’m supposed to figure out what is and what is not, not what ought to be.

A few days later, after being excoriated, Westin backpedaled:

Like all Americans, I was horrified at the loss of life at the Pentagon, as well as in New York and Pennsylvania on September 11. When asked at an interview session at the Columbia Journalism School whether I believed that the Pentagon was a legitimate target for terrorists I responded that, as a journalist, I did not have an opinion. I was wrong. I gave an answer to journalism students to illustrate the broad, academic principle that all journalists should draw a firm line between what they know and what their personal opinion might be. Upon reflection, I realized that my answer did not address the specifics of September 11. Under any interpretation, the attack on the Pentagon was criminal and entirely without justification. I apologize for any harm that my misstatement may have caused.

As Bernard Goldberg asked in Arrogance, why wasn't that Westin's initial take? ANOTHER UPDATE: H.D. Miller and Kevin of The Smallest Minority also have some thoughts.

Posted 4/1/2004 10:55:57 AM by Edward Driscoll
JUST BEAT IT: Wow, more surprising announcements: House Republican leader Christopher Cox and Michael Jackson "reached a ground-breaking agreement on a new bill to curb indecency on the public airwaves".

Posted 4/1/2004 10:42:56 AM by Edward Driscoll
AND SOME INTERESTING QUOTES FROM THE MEDIA, rounded up today by the Media Research Center.

Posted 4/1/2004 10:22:42 AM by Edward Driscoll
SOME INTERESTING PRODUCT ANNOUNCEMENTS TODAY: Google debuts Gmail, and gets surprisingly positive press from the New York Times. In the music world, Fender debuts the long overdue Keith Partridge Stratocaster. Bitchin'! It includes "a custom tolex case in the same color scheme as the famous Partridge Family bus"! UPDATE: Google is hiring, looking to fill out their swank new office campus. Bit of a commute for must of us, though.

Posted 4/1/2004 09:51:55 AM by Edward Driscoll
SADLY, THIS DOESN'T SURPRISE ME: Jay Nordlinger includes the following anecdote in his latest column:

A friend of mine from Arkansas writes the following: "Thought you'd appreciate this little anecdote. A co-worker of mine has a daughter in public elementary school, here in Pine Bluff. They're still doing Black History Month stuff, apparently, because the kids were told to come to class dressed as a famous (and presumably accomplished) African-American. My co-worker's kid was told to come as Tina Turner. My co-worker informed the teacher that her child would come as Condoleezza Rice instead. The teacher refused to allow it, on grounds that Rice 'is for white people.' Nice, huh?" Disgusting--and, again, very American. Sadly so.

(Is the reverse true? The inference the Arkansas teacher makes is that Tina Turner is only for black people. We have at least one of her CDs. Should we return it?) Along with Colin Powell, President Bush has appointed two of the highest ranking blacks in office ever, and has kept on Colin's son, Clinton appointee Michael Powell, as head of the FCC. And still, cracks like this occur. Will a black Republican ever be respected? I'm sure if the teacher was fired, Nordlinger's friend would have mentioned it in his email. This is a rhetorical question of course, but why aren't more teachers let go for such blatantly racist statements?

Posted 3/31/2004 08:02:40 PM by Edward Driscoll
LEAVING THE LIBERAL COCOON: Paul Beston, a former NPR producer, describes how he accidentally joined the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy:

My main responsibility was to distill guests' books into a few single-spaced pages and write interview questions for [longtime public-radio host and producer Larry Josephson] that he could accept or reject while adding his own. As part of my job, I read omnivorously in the conservative literature--books, periodicals and the Web sites that were coming online. Larry had print subscriptions to just about everything, from Reason to Crisis. The piles of conservative magazines lay around my workspace like a stack of Hustler in Saudi Arabia, daring me to look inside. Opening the pages of National Review or Commentary for the first time gave a certain thrill of heresy. It quickly became clear that my understanding of conservatism was a cartoon. The writers took perfectly reasonable positions and argued them with eloquence. Always, there was the sense of limits to what one could hope for--and the warning that taking action could make things worse instead of better. After my years in the fervent environs of the left, the sober skepticism of the conservatives was very appealing. I couldn't help but think that many of my fellow liberals had, like me, assiduously avoided coming in contact with their arguments. That was easy to do in New York City.

Bernard Goldberg made exactly that last point in Arrogance--he suggested dispersing the news divisions of the big three networks to small town middle America (aka "flyover country") as a way to allow them to at least come in contact with more of their viewers, rather than spending all of their time safely inside of what Mickey Kaus once dubbed the liberal cocoon. And as another Goldberg--Jonah--once noted, isn't it curious that far more people make the journey from the left to the right, than go the opposite direction? Indeed, the phrase "neoconservative" originally began as--and frequently remains--an epithet used by the left to describe apostates who've since changed sides. (Although post-9/11, its been used so frequently by those who have no clue what it means, that it's been rendered almost nonsensical.) (Via The Blog from the Core.) UPDATE: Orrin Judd writes, "One is struck by how often recent converts to conservatism and those who've simply come out of the closet--like Dennis Miller--mention that Rudy Giuliani, and the success of his conservative crime-fighting programs, played the key role in their journey".

Posted 3/31/2004 01:41:55 PM by Edward Driscoll
JAMES TARANTO IS LOADED FOR BEAR TODAY: Read the whole thing.

Posted 3/31/2004 01:29:43 PM by Edward Driscoll
KARMIC JUSTICE PART II: Pro-Bush blogger Matt Margolis was beaten up at an anti-Bush rally last week. Today, billionaire leftist George Soros (described last fall as "a perfect storm of Angry Leftism and anti-Semitism" by James Taranto) had white glue and water tossed onto the lapels of his navy blue double breasted Saville Row suit while speaking in Kiev.

Posted 3/31/2004 01:03:56 PM by Edward Driscoll
KERRY'S AGAINST ANWR: That comes as no surprise. But maybe the Senator should tour America's "vast pestilential wasteland" before describing the place as an "Alaska wildlife refuge". In 2002, a U.S. Geological Survey stated that, as The Washington Post described it, "the most likely drilling scenarios under consideration should have no impact on caribou". I guess Kerry never got the memo. It's also further proof that in the last decade or two, that ironically, it's really become the left that's internalized National Review's old motto, "Standing Athwart History, Yelling Stop". No wonder Radley Balko recently dubbed them, with tongue only slightly in cheek, "the conservative left".

Posted 3/31/2004 12:27:52 PM by Edward Driscoll
CONDI'S MOMENT: Mark Goldblatt writes that liberals feel "They stuck it to Bush" by getting National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify under oath. But Goldblatt writes that the fun is just beginning. Michael Novak has some similar thoughts.

Posted 3/31/2004 11:56:04 AM by Edward Driscoll
SPEAKING OF KANE, is Kerry's daisy his Rosebud? The secret to his whole life's path? Or maybe it's the snowboard, a 21st century updating of Kane's sled. (And does this mean that Teresa is Kerry's Susan Alexander? Or should I quit this analogy while I'm ahead?) As Glenn writes, "Message to the Kerry Campaign: Release the Daisy Records! America wants to know."

Posted 3/31/2004 11:38:08 AM by Edward Driscoll
CITIZEN KUBRICK: A reader sent me this great story from The Guardian on visiting Stanley Kubrick's estate a few years after he died. It really does feel like touring Xanadu shortly after Charles Foster Kane's death, which is rather ironic, considering that Kubrick went out of his way to be as far removed from Orson Welles as possible, both in terms of lifestyle and career path. In the end, it's fascinating how Kubrick's obsessive collecting and archiving paralleled that of Welles' greatest protagonist.

Posted 3/31/2004 01:45:16 AM by Edward Driscoll
NADER ADVISES KERRY TO LOOSEN UP: Betsy Newmark writes, "It's pretty bad when Ralph Nader is giving advice to loosen up. Because you know what a wild and crazy, get down and party type guy Ralph is." Besides the general idea of Ralph Nader suggesting somebody else get down and get funky, there's something awfully peculiar about this article. Last time I checked, Ralph was earnestly running for the presidency himself. Since when does a competitor offer his opponent advice? Will The Guardian be soliciting President Bush for his thoughts on what Kerry should do to win??

Posted 3/30/2004 04:43:00 PM by Edward Driscoll
MEMO TO KARL ROVE: Sign the guy up who made this home-made ad for President Bush, at once. Or just buy the rights, copy it on 2-inch videotape, and book the airtime for it on TV. You'd have the perfect update to President Reagan's "Morning In America" ad from 1984. UPDATE: The Blogosphere appears to be in broad agreement--this is a great ad.

Posted 3/30/2004 04:27:31 PM by Edward Driscoll
KARMIC JUSTICE: CNN, which announced last year that it had been in bed with Saddam Hussein throughout the '90s, and then ran an article that hid the size of its grassroots competition in the Blogosphere, has lost more than half its audience in the last year.

Posted 3/30/2004 01:51:50 PM by Edward Driscoll
A BOUNTY OF BUSINESSWOMEN BLOGS: Linking to my recent Tech Central Station piece on the size of the Blogosphere, Kirsten of Re:invention Blog has a nice list of businesswomen with Weblogs. I'd also add Capitalist Chicks, and of course, Virginia Postrel.

Posted 3/30/2004 12:04:28 PM by Edward Driscoll
PICTURE PERFECT: I couldn't find Leonard Nimoy, so I'm going solo in my latest newsletter for Electronic House, "In Search of the Ultimate Picture". And for those who missed it, my pieces from two weeks ago on Dolby EX and the Home Office are back online as well, after a server SNAFU left them stranded in digital limbo. Duty now for the future! You'll want the best sound and picture when synthetic MTV stars start getting jiggy with it. (Just in case you missed my TCS article from yesterday.)

Posted 3/30/2004 10:46:13 AM by Edward Driscoll
DEAD MEN TELL MANY TALES: In two long posts on "The Corner", Jonah Goldberg looks at:

the generalized ignorance or silence of mainstream liberals about their own intellectual history. Obviously this is a sweeping -- and therefore unfair -- generalization. But I read a lot of liberal stuff and have attended more than a few college confabs with liberal speakers speaking on the subject of liberalism itself. And it seems to me that liberals are intellectually deracinated. Read conservative publications or attend conservative conferences and there will almost always be at least some mention of our intellectual forefathers and often a spirited debate about them. The same goes for Libertarians, at least that branch which can be called a part or partner of the conservative movement. Just look at the conservative blogosphere. There's all sorts of stuff about Burke, Hayek, von Mises, Oakeshott, Kirk, Buckley, Strauss, Meyer, the Southern Agrarians, et al. I can't think of a single editor or contributing editor of National Review who can't speak intelligently about the intellectual titans of conservatism going back generations. I'm not saying everybody's an expert, but I think everybody's made at least the minimal effort to understand their intellectual lineage and I think that's reflected in conservative writing, for good and for ill. I would guess that the same hold true about the gang over at Reason. I just don't get the sense that's true of most liberal journalists. When was the last time you saw more than a passing reference to Herbert Croly? When was the last time you read an article or blog posting where a liberal asked "What would Charles Beard think of this?"

Posted 3/30/2004 10:29:30 AM by Edward Driscoll
BLIX FOR KERRY! James Taranto writes, "Hans Blix stopped short of a full-fledged endorsement, but when asked by the New York Times magazine what he thinks of John Kerry, the erstwhile weapons inspector said, 'I welcome his attitude toward multilateral cooperation. I think he is trying to get back to the traditional U.S. attitudes.'" Setting aside the obvious insult about unilateralism in Blix's statement, is it worth it for Senator Kerry to accept an endorsement from a man who believed that chasing phantom global warming was more important than liberating Iraq from a tyrant? Of course, it makes a nice addition to the other world leaders and opinion makers who have pledged to support Kerry.

Posted 3/30/2004 10:15:24 AM by Edward Driscoll
RECONSTRUCTION: In a distant nation, only until recently led by a totalitarian madman who may or may not have had weapons of mass destruction, bent on killing millions of his own people as well as his enemies, savaged by war against a relentless coalition of Allies, reconstruction and efforts to bring a democracy seem grim. In other words, George Orwell looks at Germany in 1945, as World War II was ending. UPDATE: See also these magazine articles from the same period.

Posted 3/30/2004 09:47:55 AM by Edward Driscoll
TWO DAYS, TWO GREAT LOST VOICES: Sir Alistair Cooke died today, after only just recently putting down his BBC microphone. Sir Peter Ustinov died yesterday.

Posted 3/30/2004 09:44:39 AM by Edward Driscoll
MISTAKEN SIGNINGS: Rob Hurtt of The Sporting News asks, what were these NFL teams thinking when they signed their recent acquisitions?

Posted 3/30/2004 09:33:06 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE MORNING BRIEFING: Because I was blissfully away from Clarke, Kerry, Condi, Cheney, et al last week, I'm happy to send you to the Mudville Gazette's 30 Mar 2004 Morning Briefing to bring things up to speed. "Why? So if you run into General Myers in the elevator you'll have something to talk about".

Posted 3/30/2004 09:28:14 AM by Edward Driscoll
GOOD AND DECENT C-SPAN: Jonah Goldberg looks at how C-Span is Big Media’s gift to democracy in America:

Callers will vent about how America is being taken over by corporations, how Rupert Murdoch is poisoning the airwaves with the sound of Sean Hannity's voice, and how tobacco companies want to get puppies addicted to nicotine-rich chew toys, but they almost always preface their comments by saying something to the effect of, 'God bless C-SPAN!' What I've always found so amusing is that the people who are convinced that America's corporate powerhouses are enemies of democracy and goodness see no irony in the fact that C-SPAN is paid for entirely out of the goodness of the hearts of America's greedy Big Media companies.

By simply turning their cameras on, and leaving them on, C-Span has "broken" many a news story, such as when Trent Lott, as Goldberg writes, "bizarrely declared he wished Strom Thurmond had won the presidency on his segregationist platform", something that Big Media completely missed, but the Blogosphere ran with. And Brain Lamb's Booknotes series of author interviews has introduced many a viewer to books he would have otherwise never heard of.

Posted 3/30/2004 09:16:49 AM by Edward Driscoll
SPIM: No, that's not a typo. Lionel of Across the Atlantic writes, "Spim is like spam, but delivered by instant message".

Posted 3/29/2004 04:22:13 PM by Edward Driscoll
BACK FROM THE BIG EASY: I'm back--my wife and our friends and I had a great time in New Orleans. This was my first trip to the South since a few days in Atlanta four or five years ago. The pluses in New Orleans? Good music, friendly people, great food, great seafood, drive-through daiquiri bars (why yes, you did read that correctly). The D-Day Museum that Stephen Ambrose helped to spearhead is a moving experience, one I'll try to write about in more detail later. The minuses? Bourbon Street on a Friday night is like being in the middle of Animal House, except that it's an entire street full of drunken louts instead of one small frat house. Seeing flashes of naked boobage is a very big deal for many drunken young American men. Being able to buy black t-shirts with white text that uses the F-word multiple times is apparently a bold and daring move for many Americans of both sexes, as there were numerous stores selling such products. ("F*** you, you f***ing f***" is a particularly hot selling slogan, it seems--sans asterisks, of course. Remember this next someone complains about censorship by the Bush administration.) While Howard Dean said he wanted to be the president for Confederate flag-waving southern good ol' boys, there are surprisingly few such flags in Louisiana. I counted exactly two: one attached to a flagpole on a house in the middle of nowhere, and the other, a small rolled up flag being carried into the hotel last night by a 40-ish blonde staying at our hotel. Regular blogging to follow shortly. In the meantime, check out my newest article at Tech Central Station!