Posted 5/8/2004 09:56:59 PM by Edward Driscoll
COMPARE AND CONTRAST: Newt Gingrich, in the The Wall Street Journal looks at Abu Ghraib and business as usual in the Middle East:

Not surprisingly, the anti-American left in our own country and in Europe--with its selective memory, remembering forever any American mistake while forgetting every anti-American and antihuman atrocity by others--is already on radio and television exploiting this as an opportunity to condemn America. The pan-Arab media, with their selective outrage, honor and give prominence to terrorists and barbaric mobs. The smallest American error is given banner headlines, but is, in contrast, excoriated. It is suicidal to reinforce this double standard. One needs to point out that the pan-Arab media said nothing when the Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad destroyed Hama and killed more than 10,000 of his own innocent people, or when Saddam Hussein used poison gas on Iraqis and created 300,000 anonymous graves. Nothing negative was said by the pan-Arab media when Americans were burned, mutilated and dragged through the streets of Fallujah, or when two Palestinian gunmen ambushed a pregnant woman last Sunday in her station-wagon and at point-blank range methodically killed her four children ages two to 11, and then killed her. It is worth remembering that Eason Jordan, a CNN executive, wrote an article admitting that his network had deliberately covered up and ignored Saddam's atrocities to retain access to Baghdad--a policy of caution that, of course, is not reflected in the network's current coverage of charges against America. One American newspaper, with a half-page dedicated to the allegations of brutality in Iraq, referred to the Sunday killings of a mother and her five children as "violence marred the Sunday Likud election." No outrage, no shock, no horror, just another day of viciousness and brutality by our enemies.

As Orrin Judd writes:

On the one hand we're asked to believe that torture is something truly awful, but on the other that the prospect of being tortured will be a recruiting tool? If the worst thing these guys can imagine is being led around on a leash by G.I. Jane then why would they risk going to war with us? Meanwhile, there's the argument--offered here--that the Arab world believes this is how we act all the time, but this confirms it. If they believe it already then so what?

Apropos of nothing, it's also worth considering the double standard of the press--the Abu Ghraib photos being shown endlessly, versus the almost immediate blackout of the images of 9/11.

Posted 5/8/2004 08:31:53 PM by Edward Driscoll
DID YOU EVER WONDER who has sex more often--BMW or Porsche drivers? Me neither, but Professor Bainbridge has the answer!

Posted 5/8/2004 04:34:12 PM by Edward Driscoll
GEE, AND I REMEMBER WHEN STARVATION was a major global problem. If Sam Kinison were still alive, he'd have lots of fun skewering this topic.

Posted 5/8/2004 01:51:49 PM by Edward Driscoll
BARNEY KESSEL DIED: The great jazz guitarist was 80.

Posted 5/7/2004 05:23:14 PM by Edward Driscoll
IN A NEW YORK MINUTE, you can read Roger Ebert's gloriously snarky review of the Olsen twins' new movie, and save yourself having to sit through 91 minutes of geographically-challenged drek:

Mary-Kate Olsen plays Roxy Ryan, the sloppy girl who skips school and dreams of getting her demo tape backstage at a "punk rock" video shoot. Ashley Olsen plays Jane Ryan, a goody two-shoes who will win a four-year scholarship to Oxford University if she gives the winning speech in a competition at Columbia. Perhaps in England she will discover that the university is in the town of Oxford, and so can correct friends who plan to visit her in London. (I am sure the screenwriters knew the university was in Oxford, but were concerned that audience members might confuse "going to" Oxford and "being in" Oxford, and played it safe, since London is the only city in England many members of the audience will have heard of, if indeed they have.)

Oh, and this is great:

Because the movie all takes place during one day and Roxy is being chased by a truant officer, it compares itself to "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." It might as reasonably compare itself to "The Third Man" because they wade through sewers.

There--wasn't that much more fun than actually seeing the film? (Via "Hit & Run".)

Posted 5/7/2004 04:36:03 PM by Edward Driscoll
PETE STARK LOSES IT AGAIN, after voting against a House resolution condemning the prisoner abuse in Iraq while commending soldiers serving with honor. One of the constituents of the Democratic congressman from California, a member of the California Army National Guard, life member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and a member of the American Legion sent Stark a fax questioning his judgment:

Staff Sergeant Dowd wrote politely and respectfully, "There are many soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen and Coast Guardsmen from your 13th congressional district who are serving with pride and distinction." He called Fortney's vote "a disgrace...way out of touch with the people of this district." The fax drove Fortney to call this soldier up and leave this obscenity-laced torrent of insults on his answering machine:

"Dan, this is Congressman 'Pete' Stark, and I just got your fax and you don't know what you're talking about. So if you care about enlisted people you wouldn't have voted for that thing, either. But probably somebody put you up to this, and I'm not sure who it was, but I doubt if you could spell half the words in the letter. Somebody wrote it for you so I don't pay much attention to it, but I'll call you back later and let you tell me more about why you think you're such a great G--damn hero and why you think that this general and the defense department who forced these poor enlisted (bitter laughter) guys to do what they should shouldn't be held to account. That's the issue. So if you want to stick it to a bunch of enlisted guys have your way, but if you want to get to the bottom of people who forced this awful program in...Iraq, then you should understand more about it than you obviously do. Thanks."

The last time we noted Stark blowing a gasket was last July, when he referred to a fellow congressman as a "fruitcake" and a "****sucker".

Posted 5/7/2004 02:55:47 PM by Edward Driscoll
CONVOY! The Boston Globe reports that while the typical truck driver hasn’t ditched his CB radio, more and more, he’s going out of his way to look for 802.11-equipped truck stops for wireless Internet access. But what would C.W. McCall have to say about this development? (Via Wi-Fi Networking News.)

Posted 5/7/2004 02:44:17 PM by Edward Driscoll
GOTTA LOVE THIS HEADLINE: CNS News reports "Million Mom March Hoping to Draw 5,000 to Washington".

Posted 5/7/2004 02:01:03 PM by Edward Driscoll
KERRY IN THE DOLE-DRUMS: Back in early March, Bob Dole gave an interview to Juan Williams of NPR, discussing how difficult it was for him to gain any traction in 1996 during the period between winning the primaries, and actually getting the nomination. Flashforward eight years--pollster Robert Moran says that John Kerry is living the Dole nightmare.

Posted 5/7/2004 11:00:10 AM by Edward Driscoll
MORE TROUBLE FOR AIR AMERICA? This AP article seems to confirm Drudge's initial take.

Posted 5/7/2004 10:56:34 AM by Edward Driscoll
LIFE IN THE POST-BIAS WORLD: Insight magazine looks at "The Crumbling of the Fourth Estate". (Found via I Love Jet Noise.)

Posted 5/7/2004 10:42:22 AM by Edward Driscoll
SPEAKING OF PHONES, I have a nifty history of the Bell Atlantic Picturephone in this month's issue of Nuts & Volts, complete with shots from 2001: A Space Odyssey. (Bush baby not included.)

Posted 5/7/2004 10:39:43 AM by Edward Driscoll
RING RING RING! Bananaphone! Via Jonah Goldberg. His posting that link on "The Corner" put this stupid melody in my head, so now I'm sharing it with you. Don't everybody thank me at once...

Posted 5/7/2004 10:22:29 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE FLAG OF FREEDOM: Vietnamese-Americans in California fight to fly their own flag, not that of the communist regime they fled, according to this Wall Street Journal article. By the way, we first wrote about this trend a year ago. UPDATE: Professor Bainbridge writes:

This will present campus lefties with a dilemma of their own making. On the one hand, since American universities are one of the last bastions of Marxist and socialist thought, how can they trun their back on one of the last Communist states? On the other hand, a core tenet of the modern multicultural left is avoiding offense to any underrepresented ethnic group.

Bainbridge's post is titled, "Hoisting the Academic Left on its Own Petard".

Posted 5/7/2004 01:38:46 AM by Edward Driscoll
FOOLS FOR COMMUNISM: Devastating piece by Glenn Garvin in Reason. It's actually a book review, but it holds up extremely well as an article in and of itself:

The speed with which the Soviet empire imploded and the economic ruin and popular revulsion that were revealed have made it clear that baby boomer intellectuals and journalists, viewing the world through the distorted lens of Vietnam, overwhelmingly got it wrong. Peasants ate less and were slaughtered more on the other side of the Iron Curtain; the jails were fuller; the KGB’s list was a lot longer and a lot deadlier than Joe McCarthy’s. A team of French historians calculated the worldwide death toll of communism during the 20th century at more than 93 million. When Hoover Institution historian Robert Conquest used newly available data from the Soviet Union to update The Great Terror, his account of Stalin’s murderous purges of the 1930s, his publishers asked for a new title. "How about I Told You So, You F***ing Fools?" Conquest suggested.

Needless to say, RTWT.

Posted 5/6/2004 06:14:29 PM by Edward Driscoll
AMERICAN LAWYER ARRESTED IN MADRID BOMBINGS: Power Line has what few details are currently available. UPDATE (5/7/04): Charles Johnson has more.

Posted 5/6/2004 06:05:39 PM by Edward Driscoll
WHAT DID THE BLOGOSPHERE THINK of my Bernard Goldberg piece? Technorati has a pretty good sampling of opinion.

Posted 5/6/2004 04:43:46 PM by Edward Driscoll
SEAN HANNITY JUST HAD TED RALL ON: I caught a couple of minutes of it in the car just now. While I admire Rall's chutzpah to go on (and Hannity's for the dressing down he gave Rall over his despicable Pat Tillman cartoon), Rall's "it's all about oooooillllll", claims of civilian atrocities, and telling Hannity "you guys have pushed this country so far to the right" did not serve him well. At one point, Hannity asked him if he'd apologize to the Tillman family. His response? "Not going to happen." As James Lileks wrote the other day:

I have no idea if Mr. Rall is personally happy, although the one time I met him he didn’t strike me as a jolly old soul. But it has to be hard to be happy when one carries around so much bile and rage. It’s tiring. Anger wears you down, especially when your anger doesn’t seem to accomplish anything. Ted Rall’s cartoons could have run in every paper every day since 9/11 and there will still be kids who saw Tillman’s choice as a remarkable act. (Tillman’s Choice: there’s a phrase that sums up quite a lot, doesn’t it?) People like Rall are sitting on the curb, feet in the gutter, watching the parade go past, smirking at the guy with the baton, sneering at the cheerleaders. Everyone else watching the parade thinks I wonder if there will be elephants! And when they do appear, he rolls his eyes. Elephants. How obvious. You want to live like that? I don’t want to live like that. Because when you see red all the time you miss things. My favorite panel of the cartoon had Tillman signing up and asking “Do I get to go kill Arabs.” Of course Rall knows that it’s not literally true, but it’s true in some metaphysical sense, which makes it truer than reality itself. And it’s a bitter joke, don’t you know, because that’s the unspoken subtext, isn’t it? The notion that there are men literally signing up with the literal desire to literally kill Americans – not even on his radar, apparently. Ah well. Every era has its Bill Mauldin. Every era has its Nast. And every era has its Rall. We just don’t remember them like we remember the Mauldins and Nasts. You know, the guys who were right. And could draw. Again: hate takes too much work.

Rall sounded like he was working hard on the phone today.

Posted 5/6/2004 02:35:47 PM by Edward Driscoll
INTERESTING SLANT ON THE IRAQI PRISONERS STORY by James Taranto:

No doubt many people enter the military and successfully overcome troubled lives. But it also occurs to us that increasing the quality of military recruits would probably help avoid future Abu Ghraibs. One constructive step toward that end would be for elite universities to drop antimilitary policies, so that the military would have an easier time signing up the best and brightest young Americans. Many academic institutions have barred ROTC or military recruiters from campus for left-wing political reasons--first as a protest against the Vietnam War, and later over the Clinton-era "don't ask, don't tell" law. Whatever the merits of these positions, it's time the academic left showed some patriotic responsibility and acknowledged that the defense of the country--which includes the defense of their own academic freedom--is more important than the issue du jour.

Steven Den Beste recently wrote:

For instance, The Truth Is... that "liberals" who suddenly have started talking about reintroducing the draft are not in the slightest concerned with military readiness, and do not believe that filling out the army with draftees is an essential step in winning the war. What's actually going on is that they know that one of the biggest reasons that the people of America ultimately turned against the Viet Nam war was because it was being fought primarily by draftees. And one of the biggest reasons why America's college campuses were particular focal points for anti-war activism was because it was men that age who were being drafted. Said liberals, usually graying Boomers like me, are amazed at the degree to which college-age Americans support this war. They feel somehow cheated; colleges are supposed to be anti-war, aren't they? Of course, there are many critical differences between Viet Nam and the WOT, but regarding the "Millenials" (previously known as "Gen Y") they view the draft as one of the biggest reasons. If they can somehow reinstitute the draft, then said liberals hope they could ignite massive opposition to the war, and would once again see America's college campuses become centers of anti-war activism.

It seems that before Democrats like Congressman Charlie Rangel call for a new draft, they should call for colleges to allow recruiting on campus again, or risk losing Federal funding. As Stanley Kurtz suggests, "return the ROTC to America's most-prestigious college campuses". ...But that's the problem is isn't it? Republicans would agree with him, and it would actually happen! UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan isn't impressed with Taranto's suggestion.

Posted 5/6/2004 07:32:56 AM by Edward Driscoll
MILKEN AND TOFFLER: Arnold Kling of Tech Central Station looks at the role of the "the Innovationist".

Posted 5/6/2004 01:12:19 AM by Edward Driscoll
SEEING THINGS THROUGH: Jonah Goldberg has some thoughts on staying the course in Iraq.

Posted 5/6/2004 01:01:47 AM by Edward Driscoll
LIFE IN THE POST-BIAS WORLD: Overall daily newspaper circulation is down according to The American Thinker, which notes:

Only two major papers, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post--both commonly identified as conservative in their editorial policies--reported robust circulation growth.

And they admit to their biases, unlike many of the newspapers whose circulations are down. As John Podhoretz noted about The New York Post and another conservative publication, The Washington Times he's worked for:

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. Howell Raines, back when he was Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, refused to acknowledge that the Washington Times was even a newspaper. He called it a "journalistic entity" - which, I have to say, is far more than he is right now.

The American Thinker noted that even in the post-Raines-era, "The New York Times reported a mere 0.27% circulation growth, to 1,133,763, virtually a rounding error".

Posted 5/5/2004 11:35:01 PM by Edward Driscoll
THOSE PHOTOS AND THE TIMELINE: One of the effects of seeing new photos of the torture at Camp Bucca and Abu Ghraib on The Drudge Report is the subliminal feeling that this is going on right now. It isn't--but the timeline is more than a little confusing, especially if you're coming into this scandal cold (or get all of your news from Drudge). Fortunately, Mudville Gazette has a timeline of the events--all of which took place last year. By December or January, these incidents were reported, not by the media, but by a courageous US soldier--and stopped. That doesn't excuse them. And as Charles Johnson notes, what our soldiers did, while abusive--and un-American, pales in comparison with Saddam's unspeakable methods--most of which, as Robert Cox wrote, were literally unspeakable by most of the US media--they went unreported by CNN and the rest of the media. Mudville's timetable was found via James Lileks, who writes:

The minute I heard Biden refer to Rumsfeld with the magic words - "what did he know, and when did he know it?" - I knew that the Iraqi POW story had jumped the shark. Or rather jumped a pyramid of blindfolded, homoerotic sharks. It's not the question, it's the words: use of the Vietnam and Watergate era terms are like an incarnation that will topple the current administration. I almost expect someone to ask whether there is a cancer on the presidency, a chancre, or a weeping mole. Stop it! STOP LIVING IN THE PAST! What really bastes my brisket (did I just write that? I need a beer.) is the constant desire to return us to the nadir of the post-war era. They want us to think: quagmire. They want us to think: Nixonian scandal. How inspirational. How Churchillian. I have nothing to offer the American people but blood, sweat and Billy Beer.

Speaking of the bad old '70s, as Jonah Goldberg, and this mock commercial note, what we did also pales in comparison with what Navy Reservist John Kerry claimed to the Senate about what he and his fellow soldiers did in Vietnam.

Posted 5/5/2004 05:36:25 PM by Edward Driscoll
JERRY DELA FEMINA, CALL YOUR OFFICE: "There's a Snickers commercial in this story somewhere. 'Poor aim--another unfortunate side effect of hunger!'"

Posted 5/5/2004 03:15:47 PM by Edward Driscoll
ADVANTAGE ED! Yesterday, we wondered why The Times' article on Michael Moore "omits previous reports that Disney wouldn't touch the film. Did Moore's agent try to end-run Disney itself by using its Miramax subsidiary?" Today, Marc Cooper links to an Andrew Gumbel article that will appear in Thursday's London-based Independent. Gumbel writes:

Disney officials appeared to be caught off guard by this onslaught and denied that the company’s decision was motivated by political interests in Florida. They also pointed out they had made it clear a year ago that they wanted no involvement with Fahrenheit 911, which was picked up by Miramax against the wishes of its corporate parent. [Cooper's emphasis.] Both the New York Times and Variety, the entertainment industry trade paper of record, suggested the flap over Mr Moore’s film could drive a further wedge between Michael Eisner, the Disney chairman, and the Weinstein brothers who run Miramax. The Weinsteins and Mr Eisner have been at loggerheads for some time, and speculation is rife in Hollywood that Miramax may prefer to find a new corporate sponsor when its contract with Disney comes up for renewal later this year. In other quarters, the fortuitous timing of the controversy caused some people to wonder whether Mr Moore is really the victim of an attempted corporate muzzling, or whether he is deliberately creating a controversy where little or none exists to generate publicity and trigger a bidding war for the US distribution rights to the film, which have yet to be settled. “This seems almost too good to be true. I smell a rat,” said one well-placed Hollywood source with strong connections to both Disney and Miramax.

So why didn't the Times check this out?

Posted 5/5/2004 01:50:24 PM by Edward Driscoll
PROPER BLOGGING ETIQUETTE: Dean Esmay has some thoughts on getting your blog noticed. I haven't tried his first tip yet, but it'll certainly get you noticed--if not necessarily permalinked.

Posted 5/5/2004 01:39:56 PM by Edward Driscoll
MY BACK PAGES: Over the years, I've had the chance to interview some very interesting people, a few of them very well known. I just added a partial list of the interviews that are available online to my Articles page.

Posted 5/5/2004 01:23:41 PM by Edward Driscoll
MAN IN SPACE: On this day in 1961, CDR. Alan B. Shepard Jr. became the first American in space. For a look at NASA in its heyday, click here and here. (Via I love Jet Noise.)

Posted 5/5/2004 12:04:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
EXPERT SAYS E-VOTING IS "TERRIBLE", and "highly vulnerable and flawed" in this AP article. As the Professor would say, there is a solution...

Posted 5/5/2004 11:53:06 AM by Edward Driscoll
BROCK'S CONTENT: Wlady Pleszczynski of The American Spectator has some thoughts on Media Matters, which I mentioned in the lead of my Bernard Goldberg piece. (Via Reductio Ad Absurdum, which has lots and lots of great links to follow.)

Posted 5/5/2004 11:40:15 AM by Edward Driscoll
IS COLIN POWELL PLANNING TO LEAVE THE WHITE HOUSE? Stephen Green has some thoughts.

Posted 5/5/2004 11:29:51 AM by Edward Driscoll
CAIR'S WAR ON CONSERVATIVE RADIO: Michelle Malkin looks at how the self-described "largest Islamic civil liberties group" in America fabricates quotes to, as Malkin puts it, manufacture "an anti-Muslim hate epidemic that doesn’t exist", and--with the help of a press that eats it all up--squash any conversation about Islamic extremism. (Via Charles Johnson.)

Posted 5/4/2004 11:36:53 PM by Edward Driscoll
KERRY'S PURPLE HEART DOCTOR speaks out, and offers the medical description of his first wound.

Posted 5/4/2004 09:54:52 PM by Edward Driscoll
WELCOME TO THE POST-BIAS MEDIA: Part One of my interview with Bernie Goldberg, the author of Bias and Arrogance, is online at Tech Central Station.

Posted 5/4/2004 08:26:17 PM by Edward Driscoll
GENTLEMAN, START YOUR FISKINGS! Matt Drudge links to a New York Times article titled, "Disney Forbidding Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush". Of course, it could have better been titled, "Latest Controversial Michael Moore Film Being Slightly Delayed", because even if Disney doesn't distribute Fahrenheit 911, it's a safe bet that somebody will. Because if there's a buck to be made in Hollywood, somebody will rise--or stoop--to the challenge. (Witness: Caligula, the sleazy film version of Bob Woodward's Wired, and Moore's previous propaganda fest, Bowling For Columbine. And those just a handful of examples.) But it's understandable that Disney doesn't want to get near this political hot potato:

A senior Disney executive elaborated that the company has the right to quash Miramax's distribution of films if it deems their distribution to be against the interests of the company. Mr. Moore's film, the executive said, is deemed to be against Disney's interests not because of the company's business dealings with the government but because Disney caters to families of all political stripes and believes Mr. Moore's film could alienate many. "It's not in the interest of any major corporation to be dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle," this executive said.

Despite the increasingly PC-tone of Disney's films, and its partisan news shows at ABC, hopefully Disney recognizes that a fair number of the attendees of its films, its theme parks, and its television viewers, especially for ESPN, are conservative and moderate folks who aren't Michael Moore's chief audience. Curiously, the Times article omits previous reports that Disney wouldn't touch the film. Did Moore's agent try to end-run Disney itself by using its Miramax subsidiary? Naturally, the multi-millionaire Moore is in his high dudgeon populist "man of the people" mode over (temporarily) losing his distribution:

Mr. Moore, who will present the film at the Cannes film festival this month, criticized Disney's decision in an interview on Tuesday, saying, "At some point the question has to be asked, `Should this be happening in a free and open society where the monied interests essentially call the shots regarding the information that the public is allowed to see?' "

Michael--who put up the money for your film? Who's putting up the money to distribute it? At some point, the question should be asked--shouldn't whoever's footing the bill have control over how their money is spent? And as far as the "information", the information itself is fungible--put it out on your Website. Release it as a book. Send the movie straight to DVD. Who's stopping the public from seeing anti-Bush information? Has The Nation's offices been raided? Did a MOAB hit the Village Voice? Have leftwing blogs been shutdown? I guess I missed the article in the Times when John Ashcroft ordered a raid on Moore's 1.9 million dollar Manhattan townhouse. But the issue isn't "the information that the public is allowed to see". The actual issue is whether or not Moore will get his movie distributed to theaters--and how will any profit it makes be distributed, something the Times article does address:

Miramax is free to seek another distributor in North America, although such a deal would force it to share profits and be a blow to Harvey Weinstein, a big donor to Democrats.

But Moore's quote implies some sort of broad conspiracy from on high--from the very people who give Moore the money to make his films! Also from The Times:

Mr. Moore does not disagree that "Fahrenheit 911" is highly charged, but he took issue with the description of it as partisan. "If this is partisan in any way it is partisan on the side of the poor and working people in this country who provide fodder for this war machine," he said.

Naturally, the Times fails to disclose that Moore was a big Nader supporter in 2000. Or that he stumped for Democrat Wesley Clark in 2004. All in all, this is a surprisingly shoddily written article from "The Newspaper of Record". I can understand them being sympathetic towards the far-left Moore. But they could at least present some of the facts about the guy--and in the issue of appearing to provide non-partisan journalism, at least question some of his statements. UPDATE (5/5/04): Michael Eisner seems to agree with my assessment--"That film will get a distributor easily", he told CNBC.

Posted 5/4/2004 03:42:49 PM by Edward Driscoll
ADVANTAGE ED! CNN's Website has an article today called "Gibson hoping to usher in age of digital guitar". I wrote about that topic for Tech Central Station--back in February! EdDriscoll.com: Bringing you tomorrow's innovations first. Except when we don't!

Posted 5/4/2004 02:46:18 PM by Edward Driscoll
ARE THESE GUYS NUTS? Electrolux is introducing a competitor to the Roomba. Except unlike the Roomba, which for many is a fun $200 impulse buy, the Electrolux EL520A Trilobite Robotic Vacuum sells for $1800. Unlike the Roomba, it uses mapping software, so there's less tear-assing into walls and furniture. But still, I think Roomba's set the price point, and it's hard to see Electrolux's competitor catching on until--and unless--the price drops considerably.

Posted 5/4/2004 02:36:05 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE SHRINK THAT WOULDN'T LEAVE: Will Kelsey Grammer's Frasier Crane character be starring in yet another TV series? It wouldn't surprise me--just as the debut of Law & Order: Special Meter Maids Unit wouldn't as well. As Jonah Goldberg wrote in March:

the networks can't let go, because every time they cancel an established show, the viewers, particularly the younger ones, vanish. No one thinks it's worth investing in a new show. The rise in reality shows has been cited by many as a sign of creative exhaustion on the part of Hollywood. * * * I speak to college kids on occasion. And whenever I do, I tend to make references to TV shows and movies because, well, I'm me and that's what I do. At this point you would think that my references would be lost on many of them — and theirs on me. But that doesn't seem to be the case. What's also interesting is that these kids are quoting the same movies that my buddies and I quote, which might be a function of the fact that young men today would rather re-watch, say, Stripes or Roadhouse, than invest time in My Wife and Kids or some other drek. In effect, kids today are living off the entertainment capital of the previous generation.

And it looks like increasingly, so are the networks.

Posted 5/4/2004 02:38:10 AM by Edward Driscoll
SI DISHONOR: Linking to my post last week about Sports Illustrated and Pat Tillman, Nickspace has an open letter to SI journalist Rick Reilly.

Posted 5/4/2004 02:17:21 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE BLOGOSPHERE IS ONE SMALL WORLD: The power in my neighborhood went out at about 6:30 PM Monday night, and was out for about three hours. That same blackout also crashed the server for these folks. Purely a coincidence? Probably. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure I saw a PG&E truck parked near the grassy knoll tonight...

Posted 5/4/2004 02:02:28 AM by Edward Driscoll
WE ARE THE '80s! A couple of years ago, when DirecTV added VH1 Classic to the line-up, it was a real treat to watch--the early days of MTV (roughly 1982 to about 1987) were tremendous fun, back before MTV blew it by cutting back on showing videos, and replacing them with longer shows, "socially relevant programming", "Rock The Vote" (Tabitha Soren in a must see interview with candidate Bill Clinton! "Boxers or briefs, Governor?!"), and other pedantic shows. Eventually, MTV lost the zeitgeist so badly, that even Bart Simpson didn't want his MTV. For those who don't get VH1 Classic on their local cable system, or want a permanent archive of those hazy, crazy days of the mid-1980s, Universal has created a new DVD series of video compilations that parallels their popular "20th Century Masters" collection of CDs--and Matt Rowe reviews some of their offerings.

Posted 5/3/2004 04:12:28 PM by Edward Driscoll
WHINE COUNTRY: James Glassman, (by way of Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider) looks at America's love of whine:

There is a new culture of complaint in America, and it has surfaced with a vengeance in the recent clamor over outsourcing. Outsourcing—the purchase of services abroad by U.S. companies—is simply another form of trade. And trade, as economists since Adam Smith have pointed, is beneficial to both sides of the transaction. Yes, trade can plunge previously insulated workers into competition with foreigners. That can cause pain and lost jobs. What’s troubling is the reaction here to that competition. Understand that outsourcing is a pebble in the ocean of macro-economic effects, compared to the boost to the economy from tax cuts and low interest rates and the drag from the terrorist attacks. But the recent reaction to outsourcing makes it seem like a tidal wave. The reaction: whining, whining, complaining. Indians and Chinese are stealing our jobs. They work for cheap. “We can compete with anybody…if we have a fair and balanced playing field,” said Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD) in an interview with CNN’s Lou Dobbs. “It’s not fair today and we know that.” Not fair! Was life “fair” to the forebears of today’s complainers when they came to America without a job or grasp of the English language, without education, without welfare? Was life fair to the Americans who made their way to, say, the plains of South Dakota, fighting vicious weather and difficult farming conditions? And it’s not just outsourcing that brings out the crybabies. Encouraged by trial lawyers, Americans now seek redress for practically every grievance, including the fact that they are fat, or that banks lend them money when they’re not credit- worthy. “Cable TV made a West Bend man addicted to TV, caused his wife to be overweight and his kids to be lazy, he says. And he’s threatening to sue the cable company,” reported a Wisconsin newspaper recently. The truth is that life in America has improved so much in the past century that we have forgotten what it is to struggle. We hear whines that schools are overcrowded today. Actually, the ratio of students to teachers has gone from 30:1 in 1955 to 19:1 now. We hear whining about pay. Yet total compensation, adjusted for inflation, has tripled since 1947, and the cost of necessities has plummeted. Food in 1950 represented about one third of a family’s total expenditures; today, it’s one seventh. Our advantage over the Indians and the Chinese—and the Italians, for that matter—is that we have the world’s best system of college education, its most vigorous entrepreneurs, its most abundant capital. Is it fair for Americans, with our rich infrastructure, our clean water, our incredible financial markets, to compete against poor Indians who have to climb over sleeping beggars on their way to work? Who should be complaining here?

I have nothing to add to this, except to paraphrase P.J. O'Rourke--I don't think we'd even be talking about Easy Rider today, if its filmmakers hadn't realized what a dog it was going to be at the box office, and substituted that ridiculously contrived happy ending to the film.

Posted 5/3/2004 02:03:11 PM by Edward Driscoll
VIVA PALESTINE? Clifford D. May looks at the mindset required to wear the label of "Pro-Palestinian". Read the whole thing--I'd end up quoting the entire piece, otherwise. David Horowitz's January 2002 piece on Israel makes a nice double-feature with May's article.

Posted 5/3/2004 01:49:27 PM by Edward Driscoll
"WELL, IT WAS A GOOD IDEA IN '46": Larry Miller wrings all of the idiocy possible out of a single sentence by Kofi Annan--and as you can imagine, that's quite a bit.

Posted 5/3/2004 01:46:31 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE "ARAB STREET" REACTS: Much truth in this Cox & Fortnum cartoon. UPDATE: Here, as well.

Posted 5/3/2004 01:23:29 PM by Edward Driscoll
GIVE IT A GOLD WATCH AND SEND IT ON ITS WAY: The Brothers Judd look at the Bay Area's chief PBS station, KQED, which recently turned 50 sclerotic years old.

Posted 5/3/2004 01:16:22 PM by Edward Driscoll
19 of 23 OFFICERS WHO SERVED WITH KERRY IN VIETNAM, along with hundreds of military colleagues say he's "unfit to be Commander-in-Chief" in a damning statement. Kerry constantly mentions 'Nam to deflect attention to what he did when he returned to the States from his four month-long swift boat command--but was still in the Navy Reserves. It will be interesting to see if this statement by the men who served with him gains traction.

Posted 5/3/2004 11:51:55 AM by Edward Driscoll
NIGHTLINE BLOWBACK: In his breathless, all-caps style, Matt Drudge writes:

'NIGHTLINE' RATINGS DOWN IN MAJOR CITIES WITH DEATH LIST; LOSES AUDIENCE FROM PREVIOUS FRIDAY WITH READING OF IRAQ WAR CASUALTIES... DEVELOPING... ABCNEWS SPECIAL HITS 9 SHARE IN NYC [FLAT FROM PREVIOUS WEEK]; 14 SHARE IN L.A.; 11 SHARE CHICAGO [DOWN FROM 15 SHARE PREVIOUS FRIDAY ]; 8 SHARE IN PHILLY [OFF FROM 11 SHARE]...

Michael Graham adds, "No doubt the Nightline spinners will say "See, this proves were weren't doing this during sweeps for the ratings!" I think the more honest answer is, thanks to the publicity, it didn't work". UPDATE (5/4/04): Or...maybe it did. Graham posts today that Nightline's ratings on Friday were 22 percent higher than the week before. No wonder Drudge took the report down fairly quickly. ANOTHER UPDATE: Welcome Moderate Voice and Dean Esmay readers!

Posted 5/2/2004 10:26:19 PM by Edward Driscoll
WE'RE GONNA PARTY LIKE IT'S 1999: The perfect storm of leftwing cliches in one article--in The New York Times, to boot. As Andrew Sullivan writes:

There's something really quite beautiful about a New York Times article about a self-described liar, David Brock, setting up a, er, blog, to combat, er, media bias. Brock's argument is that the mainstream media, including the New York Times, is skewed to the right. So why, one wonders, did the New York Times barely mention the emergence of hundreds of similar websites over the last few years that popped up to counter what they believed was liberal bias in the mainstream media? Could it be that the early blogosphere - which didn't require $2 million grants to get in business - was too conservative to be acknowledged in the Times? Even when those blogs played a small but important role in the exposure of the distortions and lies once run as news by Howell Raines' New York Times? No liberal media bias, is there?

The Times, David Brock, and that silly conservative media bias meme, which Al Gore floated after the 2002 elections--all in one article. As somebody recently said, Bill Clinton is forever. UPDATE: The Times quotes Brock as hoping that "his new project could be as influential as the Media Research Center, a conservative media monitoring group run by L. Brent Bozell III that frequently calls attention to what it calls examples of liberal bias in the news media". But James Taranto writes:

See the problem here? Brock's new shop is devoted to faulting conservative opinion journalists for expressing conservative opinions. What the Media Research Center does is entirely different; it analyzes liberal bias in the news media, which are supposed to be objective. If liberals are willing to spend $2 million funding a Web site that does nothing more than expose conservative commentators for engaging in conservative commentary, can we really afford to trust them with our tax dollars?

Posted 5/2/2004 04:40:57 PM by Edward Driscoll
QUOTE OF THE DAY: "if it finds the mainstream press lacking, the public will simply find its own sources of information--as declining readership and network news ratings suggest is already happening." --The late Robert L. Bartley, as quoted in Coloring the News, by William McGowan. Bartley was referring to the public turning away from the mainstream press towards venues such as talk radio and Fox News, but the quote works pretty well for blogs, as well.

Posted 5/2/2004 12:55:43 PM by Edward Driscoll
CORVAIR SUMMER: "Contrary to the conventional wisdom of winter", the Washington Post writes, Ralph Nader "may be poised for a hot summer". Orrin Judd has some thoughts on what that means to not only Kerry, but to other Democratic politicians running in November.

Posted 5/2/2004 12:27:09 PM by Edward Driscoll
TESTING IS MURDER according to the Orwellian logic contained in a Washington Post and Newsday column by Margaret McKenna, president of Lesley University. McKenna believes that President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act will lead directly to another Columbine. Fortunately, Joanne Jacobs is on the case.

Posted 5/2/2004 12:19:03 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE MANY COSTUMES OF JOHN KERRY: H.D. Miller writes that "He's not just a presidental candidate, he's a one man Village People!"

Posted 5/2/2004 12:21:37 AM by Edward Driscoll
HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE--and the babies they bring onto airplanes, writes J. Daniel Janzen of Flak Magazine.