Saturday, December 06, 2014
This Venerable Institution
Like BooMan says...exactly when was The New Republic some sort of venerable institution? Not in my lifetime.
To the extent that good people are losing their jobs (though everyone seems to ignore the fact that other than Foer and Wieseltier, they quit) well, I'm sorry about that, and if they fail to find new career possibilities then bummer for them. Though, again, they did quit. Maybe with good reason, but still!
But otherwise we're just left with this idea that we must lament the fact that TNR went from having one truly odious boss that everyone pretended wasn't odious to having a new boss that for whatever reasons (maybe good ones!) many of the current staff don't want to work for. Life sucks sometimes. But, venerable institution? I guess if you just ignore all the bad stuff over the last 40 years.
To the extent that good people are losing their jobs (though everyone seems to ignore the fact that other than Foer and Wieseltier, they quit) well, I'm sorry about that, and if they fail to find new career possibilities then bummer for them. Though, again, they did quit. Maybe with good reason, but still!
But otherwise we're just left with this idea that we must lament the fact that TNR went from having one truly odious boss that everyone pretended wasn't odious to having a new boss that for whatever reasons (maybe good ones!) many of the current staff don't want to work for. Life sucks sometimes. But, venerable institution? I guess if you just ignore all the bad stuff over the last 40 years.
Friday, December 05, 2014
LEAAAVE THE NEW REPUBLIC ALOOOOONE
Yes people are telling me that it's wrong to be mean to a magazine when a bunch of journalists (some of whom are good!) are resigning due to a management change.
When they didn't resign.
When they didn't resign.
First Assume Standards
I watched with "amusement" the evolving new "journalistic standards" for covering sexual assault accusations. Quite often there are pieces that inspire a bunch of people working in media to pretend that there are some standards which must be applied that have never actually been applied before, at least not in any consistent form.
It isn't the same, obviously, but back in the good old days journalists would try to impose random "standards" (or "ethics") on bloggers that didn't apply anywhere else in the journalist universe. Also, too, not really a journalist. One reporter insisted that bloggers must fully disclose all of their financial information, just in case there was some conflict of interest. I was like, do you read your own opinion pages? Do you get all of the tax returns of your contributors?
It isn't the same, obviously, but back in the good old days journalists would try to impose random "standards" (or "ethics") on bloggers that didn't apply anywhere else in the journalist universe. Also, too, not really a journalist. One reporter insisted that bloggers must fully disclose all of their financial information, just in case there was some conflict of interest. I was like, do you read your own opinion pages? Do you get all of the tax returns of your contributors?
A Wank of Writers
A bunch of TNR writers and editors (I think everyone has the title of 'editor' these days) who happily worked under the ownership of Marty Peretz for years are all resigning in a huff - good for them if that's what they want! - and the collective journalist community (not all journalists) is talking about this in apocalyptic terms. There has been a death in the family.
TNR was a force for bad for as long as I was aware of it. Peretz, a horrible person, owned it since 1974, before finally selling it to the rich facebook guy.. How far back does one have to go for the supposed good old days when it was some sort of wonderful thing?
TNR was a force for bad for as long as I was aware of it. Peretz, a horrible person, owned it since 1974, before finally selling it to the rich facebook guy.. How far back does one have to go for the supposed good old days when it was some sort of wonderful thing?
Grifters Gonna Grift
Especially when the laws empower them to do so.
EMPLOYEES AT Olney Charter School are questioning the payment of thousands of dollars to a contractor hired to paint the school because they say they do not recollect that a contractor ever did work at Olney.
According to invoices from the school, ASPIRA Inc. of Pennsylvania, the North Philadelphia charter-school operator that manages Olney, paid $163,365 to Lyon Contracting Inc. to paint the school in 2011. But employees who recently learned of the payments say school janitors and building maintenance workers performed the work.
Thursday, December 04, 2014
So Long, And Thanks For All The Shit
Apparently TNR is getting rid of its current editor, Foer, and moving the operation to New York. This has caused various journalist twitterati to huff and puff their outrage, because nobody is supposed to ever lose their job in that world. Or Something.
Anyway, I've never understood the lingering affection that people who should know better have for TNR. Yes it does publish people I like these days, but there is this weird worship of it as An Institution, as An Important Part Of The Discourse. Yah, thanks for Marty Peretz, Andrew Sullivan, The Bell Curve, Betsy McCaughey, Mickey Kaus, the Iraq War, etc...etc...
It isn't going out of business, but people are acting like it is because the newish owner is daring to make changes (no idea if they'll be good or bad).
...oh God, I forgot Chuck Lane, who often manages to make Richard Cohen look good...
Anyway, I've never understood the lingering affection that people who should know better have for TNR. Yes it does publish people I like these days, but there is this weird worship of it as An Institution, as An Important Part Of The Discourse. Yah, thanks for Marty Peretz, Andrew Sullivan, The Bell Curve, Betsy McCaughey, Mickey Kaus, the Iraq War, etc...etc...
It isn't going out of business, but people are acting like it is because the newish owner is daring to make changes (no idea if they'll be good or bad).
...oh God, I forgot Chuck Lane, who often manages to make Richard Cohen look good...
Give People The Tools
I admit I get a bit confused when people call for more net-nannying from sites like Twitter and Facebook. I get it more with Facebook, as they've long been making sure that what you post fits whatever "standards" they think it should be applying. Once they go down that road, it's reasonable to ask why if X violates their TOS, that Y doesn't.
But twitter is more a pure communications system. I get that people (cough women cough) face genuine harassment and threats there and I am not discounting the problem. Still it just seems like with a bit of intelligence you can give users control over what they see and don't see. Muting and blocking are good features (I do so miss when I could hellban people on the blog). Adding the ability to block all "new" accounts would probably solve a lot of problems. I'm sure there are other good ideas floating around.
But twitter is more a pure communications system. I get that people (cough women cough) face genuine harassment and threats there and I am not discounting the problem. Still it just seems like with a bit of intelligence you can give users control over what they see and don't see. Muting and blocking are good features (I do so miss when I could hellban people on the blog). Adding the ability to block all "new" accounts would probably solve a lot of problems. I'm sure there are other good ideas floating around.
Decline
The suburbs aren't one thing, and this type of pattern is going to vary quite a bit from place to place, depending in part on when the inner ring suburbs were built. Still there is the basic issue that older suburbs are having to deal with legacy maintenance costs, changing demographics, and local resistance to land use/zoning changes that are potentially self-defeating.
I see a lot of boarded up strip malls and houses in places where that would have seemed very unlikely a couple of decades ago.
I see a lot of boarded up strip malls and houses in places where that would have seemed very unlikely a couple of decades ago.
Butterfly Wings
This kind of thing is long how I've seen blogging/internet potential. Anyone without a normal massive platform can, occasionally, set something in motion.
Wednesday, December 03, 2014
Evening Thread
One thing I increasingly don't understand is the cliche that people get more conservative as they age. I don't even know if it's true, but it's the kind of thing people say. The longer I live the more aware I am of how fucked up and bullshit things are, especially for the poor and members of minority communities.
Shit Is Fucked Up And Bullshit
So it's effectively legal for cops to kill black men in this country.
I'm not going to pretend police abuses are a new thing, but I honestly seem to remember a time when it was an issue when a cop killed someone. That is, it was thought to be a situation in which something went wrong. That didn't mean the cop was prosecuted, or even lost their job, but that if a civilian was killed by a cop it meant that we all agreed that it shouldn't have happened that way. Not really anymore.
I'm not going to pretend police abuses are a new thing, but I honestly seem to remember a time when it was an issue when a cop killed someone. That is, it was thought to be a situation in which something went wrong. That didn't mean the cop was prosecuted, or even lost their job, but that if a civilian was killed by a cop it meant that we all agreed that it shouldn't have happened that way. Not really anymore.
Wednesday Crass Commercialism
I'm sure someone you know would love all the Harry Potter films on Blue Ray for just 55 bucks.
Holiday purchases from amazon provide me with my Xmas bonus from Jeff Bezos. Best way to support this site, as it costs you nothing. Just click one of the links...
Holiday purchases from amazon provide me with my Xmas bonus from Jeff Bezos. Best way to support this site, as it costs you nothing. Just click one of the links...
Knowns and Unknowns
As an addition to the post below, we can endlessly debate what the administration could have pushed Congress to pass, whether we're talking about the stimulus bill or a better ACA or mortgage cramdown in bankruptcy etc... etc... I'm not really hostile to the notion that they mostly got what they wanted on all of these things, so the "but Congress" defense is weak (pre-2011, anyway). Still there were things they did have direct control over and funding to deal with that they didn't, and that isn't debatable.
Message: I Care
I certainly don't think the Obama team did everything right on the economy, and I also don't think they did everything they could. Discussion of the size of the stimulus is always central, but they had a lot of power to deal with the foreclosure crisis properly (even a giant fund they didn't use) and they just let the banksters get away with stealing homes. I'd guess fixing that would have improved the recovery a bit.
But Krugman's correct that people playing the "should have focused on the economy not health care" game never say what exactly that means.
But Krugman's correct that people playing the "should have focused on the economy not health care" game never say what exactly that means.
Frisky
The only things stop-n-frisk is ever going to "uncover" are drugs or illegal guns. Arresting people for drug possession is stupid, and in much of the country there's essentially no such thing as an illegal gun. So...what's the point again?
Ammosexuality
A good friend and roommate in college became a gun nut. He was a VW van driving pot smoking hippie at some point, became a bit of a Limbaugh listener, and then (I think) he was mugged once and has carried a gun ever since (from what I can tell).
He lives in a place not exactly known for its high violent crime rates. The urban hellhole, it ain't. I really never worry about crime. At all.
He lives in a place not exactly known for its high violent crime rates. The urban hellhole, it ain't. I really never worry about crime. At all.
Tuesday, December 02, 2014
Sins of the Father
I don't have kids. Plenty of other people do. And this is America, where the children are the future, so we love them so very much. I just don't understand how when a kid gets gunned down by police, a newspaper staff thinks "let's dumpster dive into the lives of the parents!!!"
assholes
assholes
Sunk
Starting to think that our neighbors who reside below the Earth's crust are beginning to get a bit adventurous.
Monday, December 01, 2014
If Only There Was Something We Could Do To Help The Syrian People
I guess we could bomb them?
SIXTY-FOUR MILLION DOLLAR SHORTFALL. We could've built 10 Steve Austins for that. In 1973.
BEIRUT — A funding crisis has forced the World Food Program to suspend assistance to 1.7 million Syrian refugees, the U.N. agency announced Monday, warning that “many families will go hungry” without the aid.
The program, which provides electronic vouchers for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt to buy food at local stores, faces a $64 million shortfall, the agency said, attributing the problem to “unfulfilled” donor commitments.
SIXTY-FOUR MILLION DOLLAR SHORTFALL. We could've built 10 Steve Austins for that. In 1973.
Read Any Newspaper Comments Section
One doesn't have to go home again to realize just how pervasive racism is in this country. And, yes, I think it has gotten worse in the past few years or so. Why is a total mystery.
I don't mean that racism has gotten worse, just that people feel more free to express it. Thug's a good word, after all. MSNBC hosts like it.
I don't mean that racism has gotten worse, just that people feel more free to express it. Thug's a good word, after all. MSNBC hosts like it.
Bold
The truly awesome thing is that Joe Scarborough thinks he's being a brave truthteller and standing up to the PC masses by calling an unarmed black teen who has been riddled with bullets by a cop a "thug" because we haven't heard that before.
I'm sure Joe's the kind of guy who hires 7 lawyers every time he gets a parking ticket, because tyranny, but summary execution of an unarmed black teen is awesome because "thug."
Maybe I can get paid obscene amounts of money by MSNBC to host a show if I decide to be that brave.
I'm sure Joe's the kind of guy who hires 7 lawyers every time he gets a parking ticket, because tyranny, but summary execution of an unarmed black teen is awesome because "thug."
Maybe I can get paid obscene amounts of money by MSNBC to host a show if I decide to be that brave.
I Guess We All Have Our Causes
Don't shoot unarmed people. Really not a complicated concept.
Go ahead and boycott.
A Missouri police union has condemned players from the St Louis Rams football team for making “hands-up” gestures on the field in solidarity with Michael Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old shot dead in Ferguson, and has threatened to boycott NFL advertisers in response.
Go ahead and boycott.
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Balls
I wonder if Labour will ever figure out that running to the right of the Tories might not be the cunning plan they think it is...
And Then What
I just can't picture what happens when a major metro area loses its water supply.
RIO DE JANEIRO (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - São Paulo, Brazil’s drought-hit megacity of 20 million, has about two months of guaranteed water supply remaining as it taps into the second of three emergency reserves, officials say.
Atlantic City Tried The Communism And That Didn't Work
I guess "private sector" just means whatever we want it to mean these days.
As Atlantic City continues to suffer an economic free fall, state officials are contemplating turning to the private sector to jump-start development there.
One proposal being reviewed by Gov. Christie and legislative leaders is the creation of a nonprofit development corporation that would help decide what projects to build. That could involve demolishing the shuttered Trump Plaza to create walkable retail and restaurant space and open sight lines, officials said.
...
In some cases, Atlantic City's group would work with the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA), a state entity that uses casino gaming revenue for development.
In such cases, the public authority could use eminent-domain power to acquire property and then hand it over to the private development group.
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