Since the dawn of the Internet, news organizations have accepted the notion that the only way to survive the onslaught of the Web is to publish everything online, at no cost to readers, and let anyone in the world synopsize it, refer to it, and copy and link to it. You can't charge for your work--that's rule No. 1 on the Internet. And you can't block others from copying or linking to it--that's rule No. 2. Those aren't arbitrary rules, if you've been paying attention since about the time Al Gore invented it...
But those rules are starting to look stupid. They're not stupid, but they don't support the same economic model that was in effect in 1960. Teletype machines and typists and typesetters working with hot lead aren't part of the new model, either...
All the media companies that follow them are going broke, so now they're casting about for a new business model. Some are talking about making readers pay subscription fees. Many of the larger names in news tried that, only for the most part to drop the approach. You can charge if you're the only game in town, but nobody was.
But the most radical idea, and the one I find most intriguing, is being advanced by Mark Cuban, a billionaire Internet entrepreneur. Cuban's advice: declare war on the "aggregator" Web sites that get a free ride on content. These aggregators--sites like Drudge Report, Newser, and countless others--don't create much original material. They mostly just synopsize stuff from mainstream newspapers and magazines, and provide a link to the original. That'd include the Burg, naturally. So what he's talking about is a block list so you can connect to your friendly neighborhood New York Times from home but not via Drudge. I'm guessing there would be a slight technology shift if that actually happened, but even more a shift away from the sites doing the blacklisting. They're not the only game in town. Can't link to a story on WaPo? Washington Times probably carries about the same news, and if they don't the Examiner will. You might not get the original story the same day it comes out, but you'll get it the next day, in many cases within four hours.
Think about this for a minute. The aggregators and the old-media guys are competing for the same advertising dollars. But the aggregators compete using content that the old-media guys create and give to them at no cost. This is insane, right? Nope. It's a good business model for the aggregators. Not so much so for the old line rags.
It's like fighting a war and supplying the enemy with guns and bullets. More like deploying in a Maginot Line while everybody else is Blitzkrieging...
But this, we are told, is how the Internet must operate--it's the spirit of the Web, where everything is freely shared. Cuban says that's hogwash. But has he designed something that breaks that mold?
He says the media companies should kill off these parasites by using a little piece of software that blocks incoming links from aggregators. If the aggregators can't link to other people's stories, they die. With a few lines of code, the old-media guys could snuff them out. Never happen. Most of the links on Rantburg come from target area publications: al-Arabiya, Pak Daily Times, and other Middle Eastern sources. Page 6 and to a lesser extent pages 3 and 4 rely on domestic news sources, but even those aren't exclusively domestic. When AP or Reuters or AFP stories appear their original homes as far as we're concerned are Straits Times or Iran Press or what have you.
Sure, it's brutal. But it sounds like it could work, doesn't it? Nope. When you're cutting links you're cutting eyeballs. Without eyeballs news organs wither and die.
Yet for espousing such heresy on his blog last month, Cuban was condemned as either evil, or stupid, or both. MARK CUBAN IS A BIG FAT IDIOT was the headline of a response piece by Michael Wolff, a columnist for Vanity Fair and the founder of Newser, one of the aggregator sites that Cuban suggested was ripe for blocking. Wolff claims Newser and other aggregators are "doing a service to news organizations because a portion of our readers click through to the original story." What the aggregators are doing is expanding the news producers' readership, not eating it. Drudge runs headlines, not the whole story. Newser summarizes stories in a couple paragraphs and provides links to the originals.
Most Internet gurus agree. Not Cuban. He says that (a) very few readers actually click through to the original story; and (b) even when they do, the news companies don't make any money from them. So he's assuming that people who're too lazy to click through will have the energy to go to a half dozen or a dozen news sites to get their content, paying for each? How're things on Arcturus lately?
The problem with Cuban's "blockade" strategy is that it works only if everybody does it. Picked right up on that, didn't he?
If your Web site blocks links but your competitors don't, you're basically committing suicide. You'll be cut off from a big source of traffic, while aggregators will survive by feeding off your rivals. But you just said they don't get any worthwhile traffic from linkers?
But the embattled news organizations must take some kind of drastic measure. My guess is that most of them will go under, and not for economic reasons.
Marc Andreessen, another Internet billionaire, thinks most of the old-guard publishers will start forcing readers to pay subscription fees. But if the old companies do start charging fees, they will drive away readers. Interesting, the way that works, isn't it?
Advertisers will go where the audience is--which means they'll spend more of their advertising dollars on the upstart sites. The new guys will start making serious money, and will be able to hire reporters and editors away from the old-guard companies to create their own original material. "That's the thesis," Andreessen says. It's partly why Andreessen has recently invested in two Internet news publications--Business Insider and Talking Points Memo. When I was a tad, a newspaper cost a nickel, 20 cents or a quarter on Sundays. Most of the revenue actually came from advertising. Sunday papers were enormous, chock full of ads and coupons and such. There's a reason ad revenues have dropped as a percentage of overall revenues. What could it possibly be?
So will today's low-rent parasites become tomorrow's highbrow news organizations? Something will take the place of the paleopapers. It will likely be Drudge and agencies and maybe Rantburg and certainly bloggers and teevee site tie-ins...
That's not such an unusual evolution. HBO started out as a mere distributor of movies made by others, but as revenues grew, it began producing its own shows. Miramax started out schlepping indie flicks to art-house cinemas, then made enough money to start producing its own artsy films. So maybe, one day, the Huffington Post will become the equivalent of The New York Times--perhaps operated by the same writers and editors and sales reps who used to work for the Times. That's what I just said, though I wasn't actually thinking about the Huffington Post. But he's making the assumption the new media will be as liberal as the old media. But it's my opinion that the old media is hastening its demise by taking sides against at least half its potential readership, to whit, by disparaging and demeaning conservatives and libertarians. I think Washington Post isn't tanking as dramatically as the New York Times because it's not as overtly biased. And the Washington Times is still around because it's a quality alternative to the Post. The Examiner, with a nationwide business model that looks to my uneducated eye better than USA Today's, may outlast them both, because if it tanks in Baltimore it might thrive in Washington -- or Duluth.
Maybe all of us old-media guys will just end up walking across the street and doing the same job, but for a new, print-less publication. I have my doubts. Why should new media hire the guys who lost the old media race?
Or maybe the old-media guys will take Cuban's advice and declare war by blocking links from aggregators, figuring it's their last chance to kill the parasites before they kill the host. I'm not sure it would work, but I'd love to see someone try, just to see what happens. Oddly enough, Cuban doesn't think news organizations will take his advice because it's too risky. "For the same reason that in the 1970s and 1980s no one ever got fired for buying IBM, no one ever got fired for following conventional wisdom," he says. He's probably right. And that's a shame. Lyons is NEWSWEEK's Technology Editor.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/05/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
how's that that genius Cuban/Rather news network going?
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/05/2009 0:26 Comments ||
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#2
About as well as the Gore one ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/05/2009 0:32 Comments ||
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#3
The net considers any sort of censorship or restriction as damage - and simply routes around it.
The world is flooded with news media. It was once a business which was capital intensive, but which yielded incredible margin. They still could but for the glut of media. Only this time it really takes a miniscule investment to make a news website that can actually compete.
The Internet only changed the economics and made the possible media glut even greater. The glut is still there and is finally showing signs of affecting news organizations.
I can surf to any number of government/institution websites and get the very information the AP sells to member newspapers/local media outlets and with a phone call or two have an original story ready. Now government websites are featuring video presentations which I can embed in a news site if I so choose.
All without stepping on the AP's tender tootsies.
The fact is writer doesn't quite get it, and neither does Mark Cuban. It's the glut that is killing Old Media. It only takes a tiny investment to build a media empire on the Internet. Drudge is only the tip of the iceberg.
#5
Most of the revenue actually came from advertising.
Still does. Or did. Display ads, classifieds and obits are the money makers. Except that classifieds have gone to the Interwebs - Craig's List, eBay, on-line, etc. - and to the local 'alternative' papers. And display ad rates fall in lockstep with declining subscriber numbers. Thank goodness people are still dying!
If you follow the money, you realize you, the subscriber, are not the consumer but the product being delivered to the advertisers. News, sports, weather and opinion were the bait pile to lure you in. But news is expensive to produce, so papers and wire services turned to opinion.
But you can get opinion, in your favorite flavor, on the web. Same with weather data, which comes from the government. The wire services are still putting out news - when it isn't outright propaganda - but what you read in the paper happened yesterday. Might as well turn on the cable and find out what happened today and get video besides!
Others have made the point that hard news reporting is something the web can't do. But that takes people, hopefully experienced ones (see Michael Yon, for example). But experience is expensive and they are the first to go when they layoffs come. Gotta save money somewhere as revenue spirals downward. And news is less of a draw now that the papers have pissed away their credibility with awesome feats like Dan Rather's embarrassingly phony documents and the constant striving to promote The Narrative. Part of the newspaper problem is the rise of alternative technologies, but rest is their own damn fault.
#6
The other thing is, Rantburg is not merely parasitic on traditional new organizations around the world. We produce our own news and analyses. Not all the in-lines and comments are snark; some are serious analysis and background pieces from a variety posters expert on the subject. Likewise, posters have reported what they see and hear on location, not much different than what the professional journalists do -- remember when Little Green Footballs nailed the Texas Air National Guard lie? Or when Rantburg's own Bankok Billy reported here on the excitements about the previous Thai prime minister? Or Verlaine and others about how things were going in Iraq?
In the future aggregators are going to collect as much from the hobby journalists as from the professionals.
#7
Badanov's point about low barriers to entry is spot on. (As are the others here.) And the barriers are so low you don't need the old media for anything. Look at how most of the information about the town halls has been produced and distributed. And Van Jones. This is really a variation of the press release that big organizations have long put out. But all the costly intermediaries have been removed. So if I want a trustworthy set of eyes on the ground (a modern journalist), I'll pay Roggio, or Yon or Johannes. Otherwise, I'll let the aggregator sort through the input on You Tube to bring me what's happening in the narrow field in which the aggregator specializes.
The only news print will soon be free to the reader, supported exclusively by local advertisors. At least until someone figures out a way to target local advertising on the net. Home delivery may cost extra.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the New York Times: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the Washington Post: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on NBC Nightly News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on ABC World News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on CBS Evening News: 0.
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/05/2009 8:10 Comments ||
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#9
figuring it's their last chance to kill the parasites before they kill the host.
errr...MSM is a parasite that has amply demonstrated has no interest in sustaining the host it has lived in.
But news is expensive to produce, so papers and wire services turned to opinion.
Used to be. If the major media enterprises disappeared tomorrow, the market would be met by alternative sources that weren't tied by legacy restrictions and constrictions. Citizen reporting would bloom and with any evolutionary process, some will transform into the 'new reporting' while other will fall away much like the initial period of personal computer manufacturers. You'd probably see major players like Google, Yahoo, and MS get into the play to exploit their technological position. What will likely emerge will be more fractured than consolidated news. With that fracturing goes the loss of power which is what they bemoan the most. Like the old news stand or cable tv the consumer will have real choices of what will have their attention. You'll have people who are 'experts' or really knowledgeable on their individual subjects who report rather than reporters who know little about what they write about. That expertise will adjudged by the net community as a whole to determine their 'value' rather than investors, or journalism school grads, or the local politico.
Produce (as in Manufacture) yes. Report, not so much.
What I would see is a return to the origins of news reporting - citizen reporters - much like Michael Yon. Back in the days where 'reporters' reported on the news and didn't try to twist each story to their own agenda.
How hard is it to report the news? Why does it take a degree in Journalism?
#11
Newspapers are just journalist agregators, just like these sites are.
If I was running a newspaper I'd like the extra traffic, so I'd make journalists publish MORE, and make them do a aggregator link (i.e. 2 hook paragraphs) for the site to link to.
#12
"Display ads, classifieds and obits are the money makers"
Don't forget Legal Notices. Papers love legal notices and even small local papers try their damndest to get approved to publish legal notices.
For those who don't care know, they're those boxed ads in the classifieds in little teeny tiny letters telling you something required by law - you know, those things you think nobody must read. (And mostly they don't, unless they're like me and looking for something specific to be noticed.)
What's interesting is they're required by law to be placed a specified number of times (sometimes just one, sometimes more) in a newspaper of "general circulation" in the area that will be affected by what's being noticed.
What's going to happen as newspapers go out of business? The legal notices will still be required by law. Should be interesting. And, having worked for the state legislature for a few years, I can pretty much assure you that there's not a legislature anywhere, state or federal, that has considered this and even started to talk about modifying the requirement to allow posting on the internet.
I'm not mentioning this to support or defend the newspapers - I don't give a good rat's ass about them as they skip merrily down the primrose path to sure destruction, courtesy of their own ignorant, in-denial hands. Just wondering what the modified requirement might be as paper "newspapers of general circulation" go out of business. And contemplating how entertaining it will be when the legislatures get caught with their collective pants down as usual.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/05/2009 18:11 Comments ||
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#13
What's interesting is they're required by law to be placed a specified number of times (sometimes just one, sometimes more) in a newspaper of "general circulation" in the area that will be affected by what's being noticed.
Who knew the little old local Penny Saver would become such a valuable instrument of law? :)
Last time I was looking for a notice to be published, I had to check all the papers in the area, including the local style-type rag. It was surprising to me that even small local papers limited to village areas outside the local big city's area were (or were getting qualified to be) approved by the local court to publish legal notices. (The papers will be glad to tell you which county/city areas they can publish notices regarding.) It was a royal pain in the ass to get some of the papers every week, too.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/05/2009 20:25 Comments ||
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On Friday, I had the rare honor of appearing in the pages of The New York Times, apropos President Obama's plans to beam himself into every schoolhouse in the land in the peculiar belief that Generation iPod will find this an enthralling technical novelty. As Times reporters James C McKinley Jr. and Sam Dillon wrote:
"Mark Steyn, a Canadian author and political commentator, speaking on the Rush Limbaugh show on Wednesday, accused Mr. Obama of trying to create a cult of personality, comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader." Uh OH -- Times taking on The Steyn?
Oh, dear! "A Canadian author": Talk about damning with faint credentialization. I don't know what's crueler, the "Canadian" or the indefinite article. As to the rest of it, well, that's one way of putting it. Here's what I said on Wednesday re dear old Saddam and Kim:
"Obviously we're not talking about the cult of personality on the Saddam Hussein/Kim Jong-Il scale."
Close enough for Times work. Nailed 'em with that "indefinite article," Smarter than they? Yes, he is
But, if the Times wants to play this game, bring it on. The Omnipresent Leader has traditionally been a characteristic feature of Third World basket-case dumps: the conflation of the man and the state is explicit, and ubiquitous.
In 2003, motoring around western Iraq a few weeks after the regime's fall, when the schoolhouses were hastily taking down the huge portraits of Saddam that had hung on every classroom wall, I visited an elementary-school principal with a huge stack of suddenly empty picture frames piled up on his desk, and nothing to put in them. The education system's standard first-grade reader featured a couple of kids called Hassan and Amal a kind of Iraqi Dick and Jane proudly holding up their portraits of the great man and explaining the benefits of an Iraqi education:
"O come, Hassan," says Amal. "Let us chant for the homeland and use our pens to write, 'Our beloved Saddam.'"
"I come, Amal," says Hassan. "I come in a hurry to chant, 'O, Saddam, our courageous president, we are all soldiers defending the borders for you, carrying weapons and marching to success.'"
Pathetic, right? Putting thoughts into Obama's head, are we Mark?
On Friday, Aug. 28, the principal of Eagle Bay Elementary School in Farmington, Utah in the name of "education" showed her young charges the "Obama Pledge" video released at the time of the inauguration, in which Ashton Kutcher and various other big-time celebrities, two or three of whom you might even recognize, "pledge to be a servant to our president and to all mankind because together we can, together we are, and together we will be the change that we seek."
Altogether now! Let us chant for mankind and use our pens to write, "O beloved Obama, our courageous president, we are all servants defending the hope for you and marching to change."
And, unlike Saddam's Iraq, we don't have the mitigating condition of being a one-man psycho state invented by the British Colonial Office after lunch on a wet afternoon in 1922. Hey, wondered if the Times authors even grasp the brilliance of this paragraph, Steyn's grasp of history of Iraq, woven into 30 words. Word of advice to Time's writers, don't get into a battle of words with The Steyn
Any self-respecting schoolkid, enjoined by his principal to be a "servant" to the head of state, would reply, "Get lost, creep." And, if they still taught history in American schools, he'd add, "Oh, and by the way, that question was settled in 1776." With kids today declaring Columbus guilty of war-crimes, one does have to wonder if they have even heard of the Year 1776?
To accompany President Obama's classroom speech this week, the White House and America's "educators" drafted some accompanying study materials. Children would be invited to write letters to themselves saying what they could do to "help the president."
My suggestion: "Not tell people what I really think about his lousy health care plan."
Well, after the unwelcome media attention, that exercise was hastily dropped. But not forgotten. WTimes on 3/19/09 As he empathized with recession-weary Americans, President Obama arranged in the days just before he took office to secure a $500,000 advance for a children's book project, a disclosure report shows.
For the rest of us, the president does not yet require a written test from grown-ups after his speeches, but it's surely only a matter of time.
The New York Times managed to miss my point: Far from "accusing" the president of "trying to create a cult of personality," I spent much of my airtime on Rush's show last week "accusing" the president of doing an amazing job of finishing off his own cult of personality in record time. Of course they missed Mark's point -- his vocabulary is far above the average writers of newspapers, whose readability level is usually written on the 5th grade level
Obama's given 111 speeches, interviews and press conferences in which he's talked about health care, and the more he opens his mouth the more the American people recoil from his "reforms." Now he's giving a 112th to a joint session of Congress and this one, we're assured, will finally do the trick. That brand new Chevy may be rusting and up on bricks by the time he seals the deal but America's Auto Salesman-in-Chief will get you to sign in the end. From a commenter at Lucianne.com "Only a 45% approval rated president would give a speech to a Congress with a 20% approval rating and think something good will come of that. Will all those commissar czars be invited?"
The president has made the mistake of believing his own publicity or, at any rate, his own mainstream media coverage, which is pretty much the same thing. They told him he was the greatest orator since Socrates, but, alas, even Socrates would have difficulty playing six sets a night every Open Mike Night at the Soaring Rhetoric Lounge out on Route 127. Even Ashton Kutcher's charms would wane by the 112th speech.
"Mr Obama," wrote Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal, "has grown boring." Amazing, but true. He's a crashing bore, and he's become one in nothing flat. His approval ratings have slumped not just among Republicans, not just among independents, not just among seniors, who are after all first in line for the death panels.
But they've fallen among young people the starry-eyed members of the Hopeychangey Generation who stared into the mesmerizing giant "O" of his logo and saw the new Otopia. According to the latest Zogby poll, Obama's hold on the young is a wash: 41 per cent approve, 41 per cent disapprove. Zogby defines "young" as under 30, so maybe the kindergartners corralled into his audience this week will still be on his side, but I wouldn't bet on it. "While the older generation could still waver, the younger generation has pledged itself to us and is ours, body and soul." Adolf Schicklgruber -- Nuremberg Rally, 1934
The President's strategy on Jan. 20 was to hurl all the vast transformative spaghetti at the wall stimulus, auto nationalization, cap'n'trade, health care and make it stick through the sheer charisma of his personality. The Rev Wright didn't preach "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
Unfortunately, the American people aren't finding it quite so charismatic, and they're beginning to spot the yawning gulf between the post-partisan hopeychangey rhetoric and the budget-busting, prosperity-throttling, future-beggaring big government policies. Please read that paragraph again!
No wonder the poor chap's running out of material. At the time of writing, one of his exercises for America's schoolchildren is to suggest what you'd like him to do in his next speech. Here's mine: Call in sick, sir. You'll be doing your presidency a favor.
The president is not our ruler but our representative, a citizen-executive drawn from the people. It is unbecoming to a self-governing republic to require schoolchildren to (to cite another test question) select the three most important words in the president's speech.
But, if we have to trudge down this grim road, go on, kid, I dare you: "That's all, folks!"
Not to disparage Mr. Steyn, but a cabbage is smarter than they are,
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/05/2009 20:06 Comments ||
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#3
In the United States, the oath of office for the President of the United States is specified in the U.S. Constitution (Article II, Section 1):
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
The oath may be sworn or affirmed (in which case it is called an affirmation instead of oath). Although not present in the text of the Constitution, it is customary for modern presidents to say "so help me God" after the end of the oath. For officers other than the President, the expression "So help me God" is explicitly prescribed, but the Judiciary Act of 1789 also explains when it can be omitted: (specifically for oaths taken by court clerks), "Which words, so help me God, shall be omitted in all cases where an affirmation is admitted instead of an oath."[21]
The Constitution specifies in Article VI, clause 3:
"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."
For other officials, including members of Congress, it specifies they "shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation to support this constitution." At the start of each new U.S. Congress, in January of every odd-numbered year, those newly elected or re-elected Congressmen - the entire House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate - must recite an oath:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.[22]
This oath is also taken by the Vice President, members of the Cabinet, and all other civil and military officers and federal employees other than the President. While the oath-taking dates back to the First Congress in 1789, the current oath is a product of the 1860s, drafted by Civil War-era members of Congress intent on ensnaring traitors.
In 1789, the 1st United States Congress created a fourteen-word oath to fulfill the constitutional requirement: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support the Constitution of the United States." It also passed the Judiciary Act of 1789, which established an additional oath taken by federal judges:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm), that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent on me, according to the best of my abilities and understanding, agreeably to the Constitution, and laws of the United States. So help me God.
The outbreak of the Civil War quickly transformed the routine act of oath-taking into one of enormous significance. In April 1861, a time of uncertain and shifting loyalties, President Abraham Lincoln ordered all federal civilian employees within the executive branch to take an expanded oath. When Congress convened for a brief emergency session in July, members echoed the president's action by enacting legislation requiring employees to take the expanded oath in support of the Union. This oath is the earliest direct predecessor of the modern version of the oath.
When Congress returned for its regular session in December 1861, members who believed that the Union had as much to fear from northern traitors as southern soldiers again revised the oath, adding a new first section known as the "Ironclad Test Oath." The war-inspired Test Oath, signed into law on July 2, 1862, required "every person elected or appointed to any office ... under the Government of the United States ... excepting the President of the United States" to swear or affirm that they had never previously engaged in criminal or disloyal conduct. Those government employees who failed to take the 1862 Test Oath would not receive a salary; those who swore falsely would be prosecuted for perjury and forever denied federal employment.
The 1862 oath's second section incorporated a different rendering of the hastily drafted 1861 oath. Although Congress did not extend coverage of the Ironclad Test Oath to its own members, many took it voluntarily. Angered by those who refused this symbolic act during a wartime crisis, and determined to prevent the eventual return of prewar southern leaders to positions of power in the national government, congressional hard-liners eventually succeeded by 1864 in making the Test Oath mandatory for all members.
The Senate then revised its rules to require that members not only take the Test Oath orally, but also that they "subscribe" to it by signing a printed copy. This condition reflected a wartime practice in which military and civilian authorities required anyone wishing to do business with the federal government to sign a copy of the Test Oath. The current practice of newly sworn senators signing individual pages in an oath book dates from this period.
As tensions cooled during the decade following the Civil War, Congress enacted private legislation permitting particular former Confederates to take only the second section of the 1862 oath. An 1868 public law prescribed this alternative oath for "any person who has participated in the late rebellion, and from whom all legal disabilities arising therefrom have been removed by act of Congress." Northerners immediately pointed to the new law's unfair double standard that required loyal Unionists to take the Test Oath's harsh first section while permitting ex-Confederates to ignore it. In 1884, a new generation of lawmakers quietly repealed the first section of the Test Oath, leaving intact the current affirmation of constitutional allegiance.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the New York Times: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the Washington Post: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on NBC Nightly News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on ABC World News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on CBS Evening News: 0.
If you were to receive all your news from any one of these outlets, or even all of them together, and you heard about some sort of controversy involving President Obama's Special Adviser for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, your response would be, "Huh?" If you heard that that adviser, Van Jones, had apologized for a number of remarks and positions in the recent past, your response would be, "What?" And if you were in the Obama White House monitoring the Jones situation, you would be hoping that the news organizations listed above continue to hold the line -- otherwise, Jones, who is quite well thought of in Obama circles, would be history.
9/5/09 UPDATE: The New York Times, ABC and NBC hold the line
After the Jones controversy reached a boiling point on Friday, the Washington Post published a story, "White House Says Little on Embattled Jones," on page A-3 of its Saturday edition. But the New York Times remained silent on the story.
Likewise, on Friday night the "CBS Evening News" reported the Jones matter, but ABC's "World News" and "NBC Nightly News" again failed to report the story.
#2
I certainly do NOT support his removal. He's quite an impressive spokesperson for the administration and one Republicans can ill afford to lose. If he must go however, let me suggest a lifetime appointment as US Ambassador to.....Rongelap Island in the Pacific.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/05/2009 10:13 ||
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Can't resist nasty equivalences, can he? At least he recognized that Stalin was a bloody villain.
It was a war begun by the "have-nots" Japan, Italy and Germany but won by the least deserving of the "haves" the Soviet Union, which had begun on the wrong side in 1939, and the United States, which entered the war more than two years later.
Posted by: James ||
09/05/2009 10:55 Comments ||
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Because he longs for the days when the sun never set on the British Empire, 3dc? (Of course, it's not politically correct to say that. Besides, America bashing never goes out of style in the Guardian....)
#5
...because we're the low life product of those thrown out or those who left the 'promised land'. Those same low lifes who had to clean up the mess the Euros of the social and intellectual superiority created twice in the 20th Century. All at the price of placing the US into a MAD strategic scenario, burden its economy to provide hundreds of billions in military welfare, and fundamentally distort the stability of our constitutional structure to give the Executive Branch the means to do so, in order to avoid a third such fratricide of the civilization.
#7
Ferguson can bash America with all the fervor and righteousness of a true Y'urp-peon.
However, get past that and it's an interesting thesis. We are indeed taught that Hitler started the war, and most of us remember the Hitler and Stalin canoodled to divide Poland and eastern Europe between them. We're also taught about the fecklessness of the Brits and French.
But few are taught about what Japan did to China, and how early that started. Few remember Mussolini's attempts to grab new colonies. Fewer still know that imperialist Japan saw China they same way they thought we Americans saw the American west. And few, especially in Europe, see the sweep of history that made Europe the top dog for three centuries.
So the article has some good points, and that's why I posted it. He's wrong in thinking that Germany, Italy and Japan were "have-nots", however -- all three had considerable power in their regions. The problem was simply that they all wanted more, much more, as did Stalin. Combine that with the crash of ideologies, the thuggery that occurred in many parts of the world, and the yo-yo world economy, and you have a recipe for world war.
It could happen again.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/05/2009 13:19 Comments ||
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#8
To amplify what Steve White wrote:
The war on the Chinese mainland lasted more than twice as long as the other land war during WWII, and yet, very little information is available about that part of WWII.
I don't wanna take away anything from the sacrifices our American fathers and mothers made in this war, but I don't think the sacrifices Chinese people made to tie down 2.5 million Japanese troops in battle for 14 years should be given such little recognition, either.
#9
The article is a bit like the parsons egg, good in parts.At least he did mention Nomonhan, which probably was the most decisive battle of WWII, even though it finished the day before Hitler invaded Poland. Had Zhukov not won that battle, Germany would have defeated the USSR, Japan would not have attacked Pearl Harbor, the British and French Empires would probably still be in existance.
#11
And while Hitler is reviled for his racial policies, he was doing what had been the accepted wisdom as the solution to the endless European wars for at least 200 years, ethnically homogenous states.
The rational being, once all the people of one ethnic group were in one state, there would be no reason to invade a neighbouring state because it would only add a bunch of foreigners to your population. And no reason for your neighbour to invade you.
We can see the validity of this arguement in the Balkans over the last 10 years.
The Council of Europe in Strasbourg is that continent's approximation to a representative house. At the time in question, its 400-odd delegates watched with various degrees of curiosity as a stooped, aging woman with a face deeply scarred with tragic lines mounted the podium. She was prime minister Golda Meir, and she was there at the invitation of the European Council to state the case for Israel.
Generally speaking, Golda Meir preferred to speak extemporaneously, but since this was a formal occasion, protocol required she deliver a pre-prepared address. I, her in-house speechwriter, drafted one. In its preparation I had torn up a dozen or more versions, leaving tooth marks on my pen as I wrote and rewrote page after page, scribbling deranged doodles while mentally struggling for concise, rhythmic, salvationary nouns and alliterative descriptions in my effort to give her words a defining oratory.
Finally, a coherent theme emerged and a speech surfaced. It thanked the council and individual European parliaments for raising their voices in support of Soviet Jewry's right to freely emigrate to Israel (this was at the height of the worldwide "Let My People Go" campaign), delved into the intricacies of the Middle East conflict, pleaded for "the European Council's help to enable the Middle East to emulate the model of peaceful coexistence that the council itself had established," and perorated with a quote from the great European statesman Jean Monnet, that "peace depends not only on treaties and promises. It depends essentially upon the creation of conditions which, if they do not change the nature of men, at least guide their behavior towards each other in a peaceful direction."
To my consternation Golda never enunciated a single one of these words. Instead, she scanned the assembly from end to end, jaw jutting, her expression defiant, and after combing back her hair with the fingers of both hands, brandished the written speech, and in a caustic tone said, "I have here my prepared address, a copy of which I believe you have before you. But I have decided at the last minute not to place between you and me the paper on which my speech is written. Instead, you will forgive me if I break with protocol and speak in an impromptu fashion. I say this in light of what has occurred in Austria during the last few days."
CLEARLY, THE woman had decided it was idiotic to read her formal address after the devastating news which had reached her just before leaving Israel for Strasbourg: A train carrying Jews from communist Russia en route to Israel via Vienna was hijacked by two Arab terrorists at a railway crossing on the Austrian frontier. Seven Jews were taken hostage, among them a 73-year-old man, an ailing woman and a three-year-old child. The terrorists issued an ultimatum that unless the Austrian government instantly closed down Schoenau, the Jewish Agency's layover near Vienna where the émigrés were processed before being flown on to Israel, not only would the hostages be killed, but Austria itself would become the target of violent retaliation.
Why would anyone want to deprive impressionable school-aged children from hearing the inspiring wisdom of the president? Barack Obama is determined to impart his knowledge upon our pliable offspring via webcast across the country next week and we should not stand in his way.
This is, as they say, a teachable moment. There is nothing to fear. Naturally, teachers and parents, incapable of handling the sheer concentrated intellectual force of such a historic event, have been forwarded a detailed lesson plan by the Department of Education (sic) so that no child will be inadvertently blinded by the dazzling light of hope.
I read it and read it again. It was better each time.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
09/05/2009 09:07 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
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#1
Our President appears to have an unlimited craving for public exposure. It is already working against him. I suspect it will get much worse for him. Most of us don't want our President in our face as much as he wants/needs to be.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
09/05/2009 11:15 Comments ||
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#2
If my son is exposed to this at school, I will have him take detailed notes of the lecture, and then we will dissect them later and compare with what he is doing. He will then examine the discrepancies between what O says and what he does.
I see this as a teachable moment on how to identify demagogues, propaganda, fluff, and BS. Good life skills.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/05/2009 11:24 Comments ||
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#3
it is empirically evident that the more one hears his homilies, the less inclined one is to trust him.
An important lesson for the kiddies!
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
09/05/2009 11:30 Comments ||
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#4
Excellent point, AP! Perhaps you and your son could write up a syllabus?
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/05/2009 13:20 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Since the dawn of the Internet, news organizations have accepted the notion that the only way to survive the onslaught of the Web is to publish everything online, at no cost to readers, and let anyone in the world synopsize it, refer to it, and copy and link to it. You can't charge for your work--that's rule No. 1 on the Internet. And you can't block others from copying or linking to it--that's rule No. 2.
From a Nexis search a few moments ago:
Why would anyone want to deprive impressionable school-aged children from hearing the inspiring wisdom of the president? Barack Obama is determined to impart his knowledge upon our pliable offspring via webcast across the country next week and we should not stand in his way.
