Newscat

How Should I Manage My Personal Twitter Identity?

2011-10-25T10:27:00.002-05:00

I’ve been on Twitter since 2008. And I started with one account: @NewsCat_in_DC. It remains my “flagship” account in a way; the oldest and also the most followed. But it’s also starting to suffer from brand confusion. It’s a little like software that is out-of-date but I’m trying to decide if its worth the loss of data to upgrade it. (This is a metaphor, let me explain.)

In my profile I talk about what the @NewsCat_in_DC account typically covers: Media & journalism, reproductive rights, and news about my community, which is Arlington, Virginia. This is probably too wide a swath, but I came to it because I’ve worked in Journalism, worked in reproductive rights and over time I realized how awesome Twitter was at connecting me with my wider community. So finding out what I wanted to Tweet about under my own name took some time to discover.

Of course this being Twitter, I don’t solely cover those topics, on any given day I might tweet about DC-area Food Trucks or what’s on television. I’m not going to lie; this hurts my brand. Different followers are following me for different reasons, and if I’m tweeting too much about something they’re not interested in, they’ll drop me.

As I mentioned, @NewsCat_in_DC is not the only twitter account I run, I also have a personal hobby blog @StuffUDontNeed, a work account @NameItChangeIt (circa 2012 in any case), and a specialized account dedicated solely to abortion and reproductive rights which is semi-anonymous.

One issue I noticed by having a specialized account dedicated to ONLY one topic is that I typical gain followers (real followers, not just spambots and advertisers) even when I’m not tweeting often. They’re finding me and not dropping me because I’m sticking to the one topic my profile promises them. No extraneous tweeting about what I ate for lunch.

But at the end of the day everyone has to decide what they want their Twitter account for and how personal do you want your Twitter identity to be. Sometime ago when I realized tweeting about TV was losing me followers I had to decide if I wanted to give it up. And I decided not to be cause tweeting about whatever I wanted makes me happy. I’m not doing Twitter solely for some communications-strategy (anymore than I started this blog just for personal gain). I do it for personal satisfaction – something I think everyone should remember when managing their Twitter accounts, we’re not all doing it for purely strategic reasons. We do it because we enjoy it. The question is: how to not lose the joys of Twitter while also being strategic?

If I was rebuilding my Twitter brand from scratch, or if you are building yours, it makes sense to segment off each area to a separate account: which in my case would be a personal (or community) profile, a reproductive rights profile, and a media & journalism-targeted profile. And then maybe even a private-private-private profile for just tweeting amongst friends (call it the Facebook extension version).

This way my “community” profile could tweet about my community, food trucks, TV or what I ate for lunch, without annoying followers who might only be interested when I tweet about media & journalism or reproductive rights.

So why don’t do I this? Drop the lunch tweeting or create yet another account just for community?

Because right now @Newscat_in_DC has almost 1,000 followers (circa October 2011), the most of any of my accounts. My abortion-related twitter account is growing; with very little work I’ve gotten it up to 500 followers. But the Venn diagram of followers of both accounts isn’t 100 percent.

Since @NewsCat_in_DC is my oldest brand it’s tough to restrict it to a Community Profile or create (build from scratch) another journalism-only profile. For example, the famous @Jayrosen_NYU follows @NewsCat_in_DC. He’s a pretty influential follow to lose if I turn @NewsCat into a profile where I only tweet about DC food trucks. But if I start an Arlington-specific account I’ll lose all my wonderful Arlington followers who do sometimes tell me when traffic is bad because of the Metro.

So this is the tension. I’m curious what more experienced Twitter users would advise?

UPDATE: Of course right after I posted this, I found a great article that points out it's not the sheer number of followers you have, it's WHO follows you. If you're followed by someone with thousands or a million followers, and they retweet you, that's better than another 1,000 followers who each have less than 200 followers.

Ten Rules of A Perfect Hipster T-Shirt

2010-08-24T11:03:00.006-05:00

1. Hipster T-Shirts do not reference mainstream TV. Your Dunder-Mifflin T-Shirt does not make you look cool. It makes you look like a fan. Fans are not cool. Plus if it’s really mainstream it’s not cool. Yes you people wearing Stewart/Colbert ‘12 shirts, this means you too.

Your obscure sci-fi TV show reference shirt is also not Hipster. If you have to have watched an obscure show that was on for two seasons to “get” the reference you aren’t cool. You are a geek. (You also lose points if the shirts are used ironically by other TV shows to show how lame it is to get the joke).

Star Trek, Star Wars and Lord of The Rings T-Shirts aren’t hipster. They just aren’t dude.

Hipster T-Shirt are rare or at least less mass produced than other items. If every jackanape can go into Wal-Mart and buy the same shirt it’s automatically disqualified as “hipster” even if it meets every other qualification. But hipster T-Shirts have to be sold somewhere for hipsters to buy them. So under this scale the less available the t-shirt the more hip it is. A simple rule of thumb: the hipster T-Shirt purchased at Urban Outfitters < tiny boutique < etsy/Threadless/cafepress < Small-club Bands < thrift-store find.
Hipster t-shirts do not have many words. It’s a shirt not a stand-up routine. If you can’t read the entire shirt in 15 seconds it’s got too many words to be hipster.

Hipster shirts are not “cute.” Be wary of the shirt with cutesy-poo cartoon animals or robots. Smiley faced anything, even when used ironically, is not hipster. That Dinosaur in Space shirt concept seems cool, but real hipsters don’t wear cutesy cartoons on them.

A real hipster t-shirt is unisex and apolitical. If a woman/man can’t wear the exact same shirt without looking ridiculous or seem like they are trying to make a statement then it’s not hipster. Obama, Tea Party, Anti-Tea Party, shirts aren’t hipster either.

Hipster T-Shirts can only be worn by those between the ages of 16-35. There’s some wiggle room, a 15-year-old *may* be able to pull off a Hipster T-Shirt despite not being able to drive. Likewise the upper range is more based on the person. But unless you are a bonafide rock star it’s pretty tough to pull off a hipster T-Shirt past 35.

Hipster t-shirts do not reference in any direct way: sex, barfing, farts, shit or piss. Yes that includes the unicorn shitting a rainbow or crapping cupcakes. As for the bodily function stuff, what are you, 15 years old? And if you have to advertise how cool you think sex is you’re probably not getting any.

Some t-shirts are hipster only when originals, not long-after-the-fact reproductions. If you picked up an original Nirvana shirt in the 90s and you are under 35, it can be hipster. If you bought a reproduction online (or Wal-Mart) it isn’t. How would anyone know? Oh hipsters know.

I know it seems like this excludes a lot of t-shirts, but that’s why it really takes work to be that fucking cool.

Review of Mike Daisey's The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs

2010-07-20T09:25:00.006-05:00

Last night Mike Daisey premiered his new play “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” at Woolly Mammoth. It may have actually been the best play I’ve seen in years. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but after watching eight Fringe festival plays (including one that was a monologue), I’m convinced there aren’t too many others out there can keep you entertained for three hours merely by talking. But not just entertained. By the end of you will look at your beloved Apple products differently.

The format follows a familiar path that Daisey uses in his monologues, he tells two stories in sections: one a historical tale, the other a personal narrative of travel, both of which will eventually intersect. “The Agony and the Ecstasy” continues themes Daisey was exploring in his last outing “The Last of the Cargo Cults” about the “stuffness” of our material goods – items that Daisey shares the audience’s enthusiasm for. But in “Agony and Ecstasy” Daisey is on much more familiar ground: the coolness of Apple products, and their ultimate costs. In a really funny narrative, Daisey tells the history of Steve Jobs and Apple. Maybe you’ve heard the familiar story before? The charisma of Steve, the geekiness but technical genius of Wozniak? Someone behind me was quietly tracking the key points in the history like “Sculley” and “NeXT.”

But Daisey addresses the issue of who’s geek cock is bigger. It may be yours, he concedes -- although he does brag that used to fieldstrip and clean his MacBook Pro for fun the way other generations cleaned their glocks. But he tells the unknown geek in the audience that when you get over your social problems you can get on stage and narrate your own history. For now this is Daisey’s tale.

It’s a pretty interesting tale too, one that almost makes me wonder if plays can be their own form of journalism. Coming on the heels of the Jobs press conference where he finally admitted there were some technical problems with the iPhone’s design the play feels so relevant its steams with freshness. (The press conference wasn’t mentioned, but Daisey’s monologues do change over time. He may add a bit about it later). Daisey, an Apple fanatic, spends hours on the Mac rumor boards and eventually learns of an iPhone user who found that his phone came with photos stored inside. They were test pictures at the factory, which lead Daisey to wonder where this factory was? Who were these people who built the cool shit we all rely on?

This eventually leads him to the Chinese city of Shenzhen, a city so large that almost no one in the West had even heard of it. Shenzhen is where everything we play on, call from, or type on is made. The Apple products and the Dell products are made on assembly lines next to each other.

But it is the workers in the factory who interest Daisey. He tells the story of a manager who lost one of 13 iPhone prototypes and instead of getting his house raided, ala Gizmodo, he is beaten by his employer for 12 hours and then told he will be turned over to the police the next day. He chooses to commit suicide. But before he does he posts messages on the internet which is how the story begins to leak out about the treatment of the factory employees who make our stuff.

Daisey, against advice from journalist friends who work in China and Hong Kong, travels to Shenzhen with a fixer. He’s there when the news of the 12 factory suicides at the “iPad factory” becomes international news. So he stands outside the factory and talks to whomever will talk to him. And they do talk. He finds a 12-year-old, 13-year-old, and a 14-year-old girl who work there. He hears what happens to a worker after a 32-hour shift on the floor. He sees the sleeping conditions of beds stacked like cordwood in a 10 x 10 foot room.

While a three hour play without an intermission might seem long, any discomfort ones feels sitting that long immediately goes away when you hear what happens to the human body after sitting down and making the same repetitive motions for 12 hours straight.

When the New York Times publishes its story about the suicides, he says he can “pull it apart like taffy” and recognizes each and every press release every quoted person’s statement comes from. There was no real reporting done, he was the only “media” there and he was just pretending to be a journalist.

Daisey’s message is not that his audience should have known these stories. He’s opinionated but his message does not come off like a polemic. He didn’t know these facts and he stood in line for an iPad on the first day like everyone else. The question is now that you know, what are you going to do about it?

At the end of the night, Daisey said that he will be taking his show on tour, which includes a five-city tour of India. I have to wonder what Indian workers will think of their Chinese counterparts and what stories might get added to the show when it returns to DC in Spring 2011.

I would also pay a lot of money to see what audiences in San Francisco make of Daisey's tales.

This Blog Isn't Closed, It's Just Going To Sleep Mode

2009-12-23T08:54:00.003-05:00

I used to say that "dead blogs make baby Jesus cry." Well I'm going to try to keep our non-lord from crying.

So I've mentioned that most of my writing can now be found via my twitter account. I am here to announce that I can also be read at RhRealityCheck, where I also have accepted a consulting contract.

Writing (and commenting) is still important to me and I can't say that I won't post the odd piece here or there, but for the most part you will find me writing on reproductive rights (my favorite topic) at RhRealityCheck. I hope you will follow me there.

Anonymous Source Watch: Washington Post (Wednesday, September 23)

2009-09-23T07:08:00.000-05:00

Less Peril for Civilians, but More for Troops (A1)
By Ann Scott Tyson

Anonymous Quote #1
"We heard they held back artillery. We also heard that as far as they were concerned, there were women and children feeding them [insurgents] ammunition," said a relative of one of the Marines killed. The family is "going to be asking a lot of questions" about the incident, said the relative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of slowing efforts to find out more from the military about the circumstances of the death.

Obama to Set Higher Bar For Keeping State Secrets (A1)
By Carrie Johnson

Anonymous Quote #1
"What we're trying to do is . . . improve public confidence that this privilege is invoked very rarely and only when it's well supported," said a senior department official involved in the review, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the policy had not yet been unveiled. "By holding ourselves to this higher standard, we're in some way sending a message to the courts. We're not following a 'just trust us' approach."

Tensions Rise in Honduras Over Coup (A12)
By Mary Beth Sheridan

Anonymous Quote #1
"The fact is, Zelaya is there. . . . We have to now try to take advantage of the facts as we find them," said one U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. He said that the United States and other governments were urging talks between Zelaya and Micheletti and that there were "initial feelers" between the two sides.

Obama Presses Mideast Leaders to Broaden Talks (A17)
By Michael D. Shear and Glenn Kessler

Anonymous Quote #1
"This phase really needs to come to an end," said one senior White House official who is deeply involved in the Middle East discussions. "It's important that we get on to the permanent status talks. You can't spend all your time trying to create that context."

Anonymous Source Watch: Washington Post (Tuesday, September 22)

2009-09-22T06:54:00.002-05:00

I'm currently behind by four days on posting Anonymous Source counts. I will be "backfilling" the missing four days over the next few days.

State Races Capture The White House’s Eye (A1)

By Anne E. Kornblut and Rosalind S. Helderman
Anonymous Quote #1

A senior Democratic Party official close to Paterson said that while the White House pressure on Paterson amounted to a serious blow, the governor is likely to continue weighing his options until he can determine whether he still has support among Harlem's black political elite. Paterson was a longtime state senator representing Harlem.

The Democratic official, who speaks regularly with Paterson, said he thought the story about the White House effort to nudge the governor out was deliberately leaked to increase pressure on him to stand aside in favor of attorney general Andrew M. Cuomo. But he said Paterson is not likely to bow out -- and Cuomo will not risk a racially delicate challenge to Paterson -- unless the top black Democrats in the city ask Paterson to make way for Cuomo.

General’s Review Creates Rupture (A1)
By Karen DeYoung

Anonymous Quote #1
One observer, characterizing the president's dilemma at its most extreme, said: "He can send more troops and it will be a disaster and he will destroy the Democratic Party. Or he can send no more troops and it will be a disaster and the Republicans will say he lost the war."

Anonymous Quote #2
But senior military officials have expressed growing frustration, while warning that delay could be costly. "Time does matter," said one military official. "The longer the situation deteriorates, the tougher to reclaim" the initiative against Taliban forces. Military and civilian officials agreed to discuss White House decision-making and McChrystal's report on the condition of anonymity.

This military official and others cautioned that any strategy revision that resulted in a pullback by U.S. and NATO forces would leave Taliban forces in uncontested control of territory and could lead to a return of civil war in Afghanistan, opening the door to reestablishment of al-Qaeda sanctuaries there.

U.S. Commanders Told to Shift Focus to More Populated Areas (A1)
By Greg Jaffe

Anonymous Quote #1
"I don't think anyone in the U.S. military wanted to be up there," said a senior military official who oversees troops fighting in the village.

U.S. Resident Held Without Bail in Terrorism Case (A6)
By Carrie Johnson and Spencer S. Hsu

Anonymous Quote #1
But the charge, lying to investigators in a terrorism probe, is a placeholders likely to be supplemented in the days or weeks ahead, the law enforcement sources said on the condition of anonymity because the inquiry continues.

Anonymous Quote #2
A U.S. counterterrorism official said, "We're obviously concerned about Westerners -- and those with Western appearance -- training with terrorists along the Afghan-Pakistan border," although the number of Europeans and Americans believed to have traveled there to do so "isn't thought to be high."

Anonymous Source Watch: Washington Post (Thursday, September 17)

2009-09-17T08:23:00.002-05:00

From Finance Chief, a Bill That My Weather the Blows (A1)
By Ceci Connolly

Anonymous Quote #1
"There will be a lot of horse-trading, and it will not be pretty," said one White House aide who is not authorized to discuss the administration's strategy. "This is all about steps that move us forward."

Biden Pushes Iraqi Leaders on Vote Law, Oil-Bid Perks (A16)
By Scott Wilson

Anonymous Quote #1
A senior administration official said Biden also made his interests known on a variety of issues, such as the need for the Iraqi parliament to adopt laws to better protect foreign investment and leaving unchanged the terms of the timetable for the withdrawal of the 130,000 U.S. troops now in the country.

Anonymous Quote #2
But Biden is reluctant to be seen as meddling in a domestic Iraqi issue, and a senior administration official said the vice president operated largely in "listening mode."

Anonymous Quote #3
Biden reiterated the terms of the withdrawal timeline. The senior administration official said the two men's statements mean "that we have a mutual interest in moving forward" under the conditions set out in the agreement.

Anonymous Quote #4
Biden also appealed to Iraqi leaders to offer more financial incentives for foreign investors to bid on Iraqi oil concessions; only one bid of the eight put out this year was accepted. The administration official estimated that one additional deal would translate into $50 billion to $60 billion in foreign investment in Iraq, generate $600 million in annual revenue and create tens of thousands of jobs in the country.

The official said Biden would deliver the same message to Kurdish leaders in meetings scheduled for Thursday. Kurds' interest in ensuring what they see as a fair share of proceeds from the rich oil fields of Iraq's north has presented an obstacle to a revenue-sharing agreement. Reaching a deal is crucial to Iraq's oil-dependent economy, but the goal has been politically elusive for years.

"In an election season in any country, it's difficult to make definitive progress on any issue, and these are difficult issues," the official said, adding that Biden's hope is for the next Iraqi government to be "in good position" to move on the oil legislation and other matters soon after the election.

Anonymous Quote #5
In all his meetings, Biden asked Iraqi officials to assess their progress on an election law, concerned that without one in place soon the January vote will not be able to proceed. The official said he particularly pressed Ayad al-Samarraie, speaker of the Iraqi parliament, because the law is a legislative matter.

Anonymous Quote #6
But the administration source said Biden told Iraqi leaders that regulatory and other financial protections need to be enacted to make foreign investors more comfortable doing business here.

Some of the proposed protections are before parliament, the official said, and their passage would allow, among other things, for the Overseas Private Investment Corp. to extend loan guarantees to companies wishing to do business in Iraq.

Obama Says He Won’t Rush Troop Decision (A16)
By Karen DeYoung

Anonymous Quote #1
But senior administration officials who discussed the ongoing Afghanistan strategy deliberations on the condition of anonymity said they expected internal discussions of the issue to continue for some time.

Anonymous Quote #2
"Nobody is more impatient for progress in Afghanistan than the president," one official said of the internal talks. "It is a mistake to suggest that ensuring that we have the strategy right and ensuring that we have the right policy in place to protect the American people is inconsistent with urgently addressing the challenge we face in that country."

Anonymous Quote #3
An administration official provided a similar briefing to reporters on the condition of anonymity, and echoed Obama's statement about the timing of any troop decision. The president, he said, was "taking a very deliberate, rational approach, starting at the top of the logic chain," which begins with setting goals and then assessing progress toward meeting them. That process is ongoing, he said, and no determination of whether additional resources are needed will be made until it is completed.

The metrics list, the official said, will allow the administration to assess progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- and on the overall counterterrorism goal of defeating al-Qaeda -- on a quarterly basis, with the first assessment due in December.

Anonymous Quote #4
For its part, a senior administration official said, the White House is reluctant to put McChrystal in the lead to explain its policy, fearing a comparison with the Bush administration's approach.

First Full Afghan Tally Gives Karzai 54% of Vote (A16)
By Pamela Constable

Anonymous Quote #1
Galbraith had pushed for an exhaustive probe. Sources who are familiar with the dispute but are not authorized to speak on the record said Eide argued that the international community should not press too hard because it could undermine national stability.

Galbraith had been convinced that Karzai could not win without fraud and had tried to reduce the number of polling stations in some areas in the south, the incumbent's ethnic stronghold, said one diplomatic source. Eide and others, the source said, were convinced that Karzai would win in any case and that any irregularities could be smoothed over, as they were in the 2004 presidential election that Karzai won by a safe margin.

FDIC Packages Loans From Failed Banks (A18)
By Binyamin Appelbaum

Anonymous Quote #1
An FDIC official said a second deal would soon follow, and that he expected others before the end of the year.

The official said that the agency continued to believe that the program could help banks and that the agency in part was moving ahead so that it would be ready if the industry took a turn for the worse.

"We'd be ready to apply this process either on failed bank assets or on open banks," said the official, who conducted a briefing for the media on the condition of anonymity.

Anonymous Quote #2
An executive with a group that placed an unsuccessful bid said that the FDIC had offered a particularly attractive portfolio in this first auction.

Cuomo Subpoenas Bank of America Directors (A19)
By Tomoeh Murakami Tse

Anonymous Quote #1
New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo subpoenaed five Bank of America directors Wednesday as investigators prepare to file charges against the bank's senior executives in connection with its acquisition of Merrill Lynch, according to a source familiar with the investigation.

Anonymous Quote #2
Cuomo plans to subpoena most, if not all, of the directors over the next several weeks, said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. Bank of America chief executive Kenneth D. Lewis has already testified.

Board members will be asked about whether the bank withheld material information from shareholders, including the $15 billion in additional losses at Merrill that were disclosed weeks after the merger, as well as the $3.6 billion in bonuses it paid to employees shortly before the deal closed. The directors will also be asked about their role in determining what information to disclose and the pressure the bank may have received from government officials in the weeks leading up to the merger, the source said.

Anonymous Quote #3
A source close to the investigation said earlier this week that Cuomo's office is in the final stages of drawing up charges against senior Bank of America executives.

Anonymous Source Watch: Washington Post (Wednesday, September 16)

2009-09-16T07:00:00.002-05:00

Mullen: More Troops ‘Probably’Needed (A1)
By Ann Scott Tyson

Anonymous Quote #1
“There's a very big opportunity here to reduce violence by reaching out to some of the lower-level guys, to give them an opportunity to see a life that's better than fighting for the Taliban," said a senior official at the NATO command in Kabul who discussed the program on the condition of anonymity. "What's really important is to get a feel for where the Afghans are" on reintegration, the official said.

No decisions have been made on what the incentives would be, although the official said they could include cash and jobs.

The major challenge is to develop a program the Afghan government accepts and implements from the start -- in contrast to Iraq, where the United States paid former fighters and then struggled to persuade the Iraqi government to integrate them into its security forces and other jobs, the senior official said. "It has to be owned and driven by them."

As Right Jabs Continue, White House Debates a Counterpunching Strategy (A1)
By Anne E. Kornblut

Anonymous Quote #1
"In a world with Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and the Drudge Report and everything else that makes up the right-wing noise machine, nothing is clean and nothing is simple," a senior administration official said. "You don't stomp a story out. You ride the wave and try to steer it to safe water."

Anonymous Quote #2
"There's a broader argument that is the underlying argument to all of these attacks, which is a very fundamental struggle about trying to tear this president down and delegitimize his presidency," said one senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "That is really the war. And all of these are skirmishes -- some of them flare up into battles -- but the broader war is about the fate of this presidency and the other side's attempts to delegitimize him and to make him into a failure."

White House Seeks Renewal of Surveillance Laws (A3)
By Carrie Johnson and Ellen Nakashima

Anonymous Quote #1
Durbin and Feingold want to tighten standards for obtaining national security letters so that the government must show some "nexus to terrorism," according to a Senate Democratic aide, heightening the current standard of showing "relevance" to a counterterrorism investigation.

Anonymous Quote #2
The bill would also ensure that new powers granted under last year's law would not be used as a pretext to target the communications of Americans in the United States without a warrant, another Senate Democratic aide said.

Diplomat in Kabul Leaves in Dispute (A14)
By Pamela Constable and Karen DeYoung

Anonymous Quote #1
A senior U.N. official here said Galbraith "will be back."

Anonymous Quote #2
In the post-election dispute, sources close to the United Nations said Galbraith represented the view that the fraud probe must be fully carried out, along with a partial recount that the complaints panel ordered, even if this leads to a delayed runoff.

Anonymous Quote #3
Diplomatic sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said U.S. officials here had been frustrated in their efforts to press Karzai to acknowledge the widespread fraud and to accept the possibility of a runoff, or to make a deal in which he would remain as a titular president but be held more accountable for his actions and allow himself to be surrounded by foreign, technocratic advisers.
The sources said Karzai has been privately trying to win over European diplomats, including Eide, suggesting that they not be overly concerned about the fraud problem and give him full support on the grounds that he has won a decisive mandate.

Anonymous Source Watch: Definitions

2009-09-16T06:58:00.000-05:00

I should define what I call an anonymous quote. Anytime the speaker or source for the information isn’t named, I call that anonymous. Excluded from that are unnamed “official spokesperson” where it is clear their words are sanctioned by the agency. Also generally excluded are times when a reporter spoke to many people to come up with background information (“multiple sources have confirmed”) but the specifics of source-given information cannot be ascertained.

I also separate the number of quotes by paragraphs, even if the source is the same. My theory is that the number of times the article cuts to anonymous sources is what I’m counting (even if is the same source, quoted two or three times in the same article). However if one anonymous source is quoted through successive paragraphs, that counts as one quote (they got their bite at the apple)

Anonymous Source Watch: Washington Post (Tuesday, September 15)

2009-09-15T07:14:00.002-05:00

Threat of Trade War With China Sparks Worries in a Debtor U.S. (A1)
By Steven Mufson and Peter Whoriskey

Anonymous Quote #1
The Obama administration also said it was not worried. "We do not expect that it will have an impact on the broader relationship," said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. He said that there had been a "robust effort" by the administration to negotiate with China for a settlement on tires before imposing import tariffs. He asserted that U.S. imports of Chinese tires, which more than tripled since 2004, clearly met the test for tariffs aimed at reducing "surges" in imports.

But when asked about whether the United States would simply import from other nations, he conceded that "it is hard to predict the impact with specificity."

U.S. Says Raid in Somalia Killed Terrorist With Links to Al-Qaeda (A9)
By Karen DeYoung

Anonymous Quote #1
At least four helicopters participated in the raid, launched from a nearby U.S. naval vessel, a senior military official said. At least one of them landed, and troops retrieved the bodies. "You want to go in there, do this fast, and get out before you're detected," the official said.

Anonymous Quote #2
A U.S. counterterrorism official described Nabhan as a senior official in the Shabab who maintained close ties to the Pakistan-based al-Qaeda leadership and provided a link between the two groups.

Judge Says SEC Failed Investors (A12)
By Zachary A. Goldfarb

Anonymous Quote #1
A person familiar with the Cuomo's investigation said Monday that his office is in the final stages of drawing up charges against senior Bank of America executives.

Anonymous Source Watch: Washington Post (Monday, September 14)

2009-09-15T07:01:00.000-05:00

In Kandahar, a Taliban on the Rise (A1)
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Anonymous Quote #1
“Kandahar is at the top of the list," one senior U.S. military official in Afghanistan said. "We simply do not have enough resources to address the challenges there."

Anonymous Quote #2
We could wind up with the exact opposite effect than we're seeking to achieve," one official said.

But, the official noted: "Unless we get more troops, we don't really have a choice. We can't go into the city with the forces we have now."

50 Taliban Fighters Reported Killed (A8)
Associated Press
By Rahim Faiez

Anonymous Quote #1
The ISAF official said the operation was launched because there were signs that the Taliban kidnappers planned to move the two men and hand them over to higher-level insurgents.

British troops came under heavy fire as soon as their helicopters landed, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details of the operation that had not been made public.

Anonymous Quote #2
The British troops killed about a dozen militants during the operation, the official said.

"People need to understand that it's not like we walked in and tried to save this one guy and leave the other behind," the official said. "It was really heavy fire, and the risk wouldn't have been justified to recover a person they knew was already dead."

Anonymous Source Watch: Washington Post (Sunday, September 13)

2009-09-13T12:32:00.002-05:00

U.S. Gives New Rights to Afghan Prisoners (A1)
By Karen DeYoung and Peter Finn

Anonymous Quote #1
"This process is about doing the right thing -- only holding those we have to," said the administration official, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly about policy.”

Anonymous Quote #2
U.S. courts in general have shown no inclination to interfere with operations in Afghanistan. "Habeas is inappropriate for the battlefield," the administration official said.

In Shift, Wall Street Goes to Washington (A1)
By David Cho, Steven Mufson and Tomoeh Murakami Tse

Anonymous Quote #1
The relationship "has changed in the sense that it's clear that every one of the firms, including Goldman Sachs, recognizes that they would not exist today had the government not stepped in when it did," one former senior bank executive said.

Unease Grows Over Afghan Election (A20)
By Pamela Constable

Anonymous Quote #1
"Everyone realizes now that Karzai has won, but the fraud was so unpalatable that Abdullah will never accept the results," said a U.N. official here. "The only hope is to abandon the process and return to the backroom deal, but there is too much enmity between them for that. There is just no good option in sight."

Anonymous Source Watch: Washington Post (Saturday, September 12)

2009-09-13T12:17:00.001-05:00

I apologize for being a day late posting this.

U.S., NATO to Revamp Afghan Training Mission (A3)
By Ann Scott Tyson and Walter Pincus

Anonymous Quote #1
“We are building our side of this bridge. The Afghan bridge is not building," said one senior U.S. official, who like others discussed the matter on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record. "Having U.S. troops enforcing martial law where they don't understand the people or speak the language -- this is a recipe for disaster."

Anonymous Quote #2
"The coalition did a poor job of coordinating with the Afghans our vision for how we were going to employ the Marines," the official said. Dozens of Marines have died fighting in Helmand since July.

5 Taliban Leaders Held in Swat Raid (A8)
By Pamela Constable and Haq Nawaz Khan

Anonymous Quote #1
A Pakistani intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the fugitive extremists had been arrested Wednesday. They were thought to be dead until the authorities suddenly announced their arrests Friday, the eighth anniversary of the terrorist attacks in the United States. "I think it was a good move to make on the day which falls on 9/11," the official said.

Anonymous Source Watch: Washington Post (Friday, September 11)

2009-09-11T06:46:00.000-05:00

Iran Urges Disposal Of All Nuclear Arms (A18)
By Thomas Erdbrink

Anonymous Quote #1
A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the administration had determined it would not reject the package out of hand but would see whether there were elements that could form the basis for substantive talks. The written offer notably did not include criticism of the United States.

Anonymous Source Watch: Washington Post (Thursday, September 10)

2009-09-10T07:20:00.001-05:00

After Rescue, Recriminations (A11)
By Pamela Constable

Anonymous Quote #1
"He was such a nice person. I am so sad and confused about what to feel," said a longtime colleague of Munadi's at the gathering, who was very distraught and asked not to be named. "I blame everyone -- the government for being weak, the Taliban for using journalists for political aims, the foreign forces for the operation," he said. "We take so many risks and work under fire, but it seems like no one cares about us and our lives

Senate May Narrow Proposed Regulatory Role for Fed (A19)
By Brady Dennis

Anonymous Quote #1
"We really do take what the administration did as advisory. We have our own ideas," said one Democratic staff member familiar with the legislation who was not authorized to speak on the record. "We've been thinking about this a long time.”

Anonymous Source Watch: Washington Post (Wednesday, September 9)

2009-09-09T06:46:00.001-05:00

Dodd Said to Decline Kennedy Post (A6)
By Paul Kane

Anonymous Quote #1
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) is next in line after Dodd to assume the chairmanship of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and multiple sources in the Harkin orbit, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations are internal, said Harkin would be certain to take over the post.

Wrong Man For Top Job At UNESCO? (A8)
By Edward Cody

Anonymous Quote #1
A senior administration official in Washington, speaking on the condition of anonymity, was more direct. "There's no way we can support this guy," he said. "We did everything we could to get the Egyptians to support another candidate."

Four Killed in Deadliest Day for U.S. Troops in Iraq in Weeks (A12)
By Nada Bakri

Anonymous Quote #1
In the first incident, military officials said a soldier was killed when a roadside bomb struck his convoy in southern Baghdad. The U.S. Army did not provide details, but an official from the Iraqi Interior Ministry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said the patrol was on its way back to its base when it was hit somewhere between Baghdad and Mahmudiyah, a town south of the capital in a region that was once so dangerous that its inhabitants nicknamed it the Triangle of Death.

Anonymous Source Watch: Washington Post (Monday, September 7)

2009-09-08T06:45:00.002-05:00

For Obama, A Pivotal Moment in Afghanistan (A1)
By Karen DeYoung

Anonymous Quote #1
Asked whether the administration would consider reversing its strategy in the direction of withdrawal, a senior official said: “The president’s view is that there are a lot of good ideas out there and we should hear them all. When you come down to the question of governance, we’ve seen what happens when one viewpoint is not particularly debated or challenged or reviewed or measured.”

“I don’t anticipate that the briefing books for the principals on these debates over the next weeks and months will be filled with submissions from opinion columnists,” the senior official said. “I do anticipate they will be filled with vigorous discussions … of how successful we’ve been to date.”

Anonymous Quote #2
But this official and others, who agreed to speak about the upcoming national security discussions on the condition of anonymity, gave no indication that withdrawal would be seriously considered. “There’s not a lot of rethinking that the strategy we have pretty much worked on to go forward with needs some drastic or dramatic revision,” a second official said.

“We can’t deny that they’ve had their successes,” the second official said of the Taliban. But McChrstal’s recommendations are “all in the scope of how do you refine your tactics, not your strategy.”

Anonymous Quote #3
Although that discussion is ongoing in some military and administration circles, a senior defense official said, there is widespread recognition that falling back to pure counterterrorism “just can’t be done” because of the stakes involved and the investment already made.

U.S. Tried to Soften Treaty on Detainees (A3)
By R. Jeffrey Smith

Anonymous Quote #1
A senior Bush administration policymaker confirmed in an interview last week, however, that the existence of the CIA prisons and the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the Defense Department has held hundreds of suspected terrorists without initially disclosing their names, was "a complicating factor" in U.S. deliberations on the treaty.

"Our negotiators were certainly aware that there was this program where people were being held, and were not in touch with people, and they had to be careful to ensure that there was room" for that program to continue, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the deliberations. He added that the treaty's proposed definition of "enforced disappearances" was only one of several problems Washington had with the draft.

"As with a number of previous human rights treaties, the language was just so broad that . . . we were not going to be able to sign," he said.

Anonymous Quote #2
The senior Bush administration official noted, however, that Washington's ability to gain concessions from others was undermined by public revelation of the CIA prisons in 2005. "I doubt that other countries would have been pushing quite so hard on this particular convention at this time were they not trying to cause problems for the administration," he said.

The context, he said, enabled "both the Europeans and the Latins" to "join forces" in arguing against the U.S. proposals.

Afghan Reaction to Strike Muted (A4)
By Pamela Constable

Anonymous Quote #1
"There has been a marked difference in the way the U.S. military dealt with this incident. Instead of arguing about the number of casualties, as has happened often in the past, they recognized the Afghan perception and addressed it," said a senior U.N. official here. "This is very heartening, and it bodes well for the coming months as this conflict inevitably continues."

Anonymous Quote #2
"One day you are building a bridge and the next day you call in an airstrike that kills civilians. What kind of message does that send?" said the U.N. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "It may turn out there is a lot more work to be done to make sure NATO follows its own rules."

Iranian Invites Six Powers to Tehran (A6)
By Thomas Erdbrink

Anonymous Quote #1
A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because no official communication has been received, said U.S. officials were "struck at how little new there was in the comments earlier today, particularly in light of the desires of so many Iranians for a new relationship with the rest of the world."

Anonymous Source Watch: Washington Post (Sunday, September 6)

2009-09-07T13:53:00.002-05:00

I had originally intended to launch this project on Sunday, but I got a late start on the day and thought tweeting about the “morning” paper in the evening didn’t make sense. However since I still have the Sunday paper lying around here are the anonymous source citations for the Sunday paper.

The Change Agenda At A Crossroads (A1)
By Scott Wilson

Anonymous Quote #1
A senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly, said that “there were so many things we had to do, and those are the things that feed into the skepticism that government is taking over everything or can’t get it right. These were things we had no interest in doing,” the official said. “That’s the irony.”

Anonymous Quote #2
“From a timing point of view, we just don’t know if it’s possible,” another senior administration official said on the condition of anonymity in order to describe an internal assessment.

Sole Informant Guided Decision On Afghan Strike (A1)
By Rajiv Chandradsekaran

Anonymous Quote #1
“I don’t agree with the rumor that there were a lot of civilian causalities,” said one key local official who said he did not want to be named because he fears Taliban retribution. “Who goes out at 2 in he morning for fuel? These were bad people, and this was a good operation.”

Administration Seeks to Keep Terror Watch-List Data Secret (A4)
By Ellen Nakashima

Anonymous Quote #1
One intelligence official said the information’s disclosure creates a host of difficulties.

“Here’s the problem,” the official said, discussing the matter on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record. “If you’ve got somebody, including a suspected terrorist, who can FOIA that information, you’re making intelligence-gathering methods vulnerable. You’re possibly making intelligence agents and law enforcement personnel vulnerable. Suspects could alter their behavior and circumvent the surveillance.”

Anonymous Source Watch: Washington Post (Monday, September 7)

2009-09-07T09:33:00.002-05:00

Obama Readies Reform Specifics (A1)
By Ceci Connolly

Anonymous Quote #1
“Let’s see what the Finance Committee does,” said one administration aide who is involved in health policy but is not permitted to speak to the media. “Then we’d have five bills to pull from.”

Anonymous Quote #2
“The announcement was evidence that the mere mention of an Obama speech “is already having an effect,” said a senior White House official who requested declined (sic) to discuss internal deliberations publicly.

In Adviser’s Resignation, Vetting Bites Obama Again (A2)
By Scott Wilson and Juliet Eilperin

Anonymous Quote #1
A White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter, said Sunday that Jones’s past was not studied as intensively as that of other advisors because of his relatively low rank.

Anonymous Quote #2
“He was not as thoroughly vetted as other administration officials,” the official said. “It’s fair to say there were unknowns.”

Anonymous Sources Watch: Washington Post

2009-09-07T09:18:00.007-05:00

The recent baffling story in the Washington Post where an article penned by Peter Finn, Joby Warrick, Julie Tate and Walter Pincus reported (entirely from anonymous sources) that torture worked and prevented attacks, has led me to launch a new project. The Anonymous Sources Watch: Washington Post edition. All this week I will be tweeting the stories, quotes, and descriptions of the anonymous sources printed in the Washington Post’s newspaper (Virginia edition). You can follow me on Twitter hashtag (#anonymousWP ). I’m offering no judgment about whether these were “good” or “bad” uses of anonymous sources, you can follow the project and judge yourself. If any occur in strictly online stories or quotes are changed let me know.

UPDATE:
Via Twitter Jay Rosen suggests "Rate each use by whether it obeys the Post guidelines."

(Good suggestion, except I can't. Their internal guidelines aren't made "public.")

As recently as August 16 the WP ombudsman Andrew Alexander wrote a column about these guidelines.

The Post has strict rules on the use of anonymous sources. They're spelled out in detail -- more than 3,000 words -- in its internal stylebook.

Post policies say that editors have an "obligation" to know the identity of a reporter's unnamed sources so they can "jointly assess" whether they should be used. "The source of anything that appears in the paper will be known to at least one editor," the stylebook says.

I've just emailed the Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander for the sections of their internal stylebook that deal with use of anonymous sources. I will post them online if I get them. Back in November 2005 the former ombudsman, Deborah Howell, offered to send them to anyone who requested them.

UPDATE II: Washington Post Ombudsman responds:

Thanks for writing. Although I have quoted from The Post's policies on sourcing, I also have noted that those policies are not available to the public. I think they should be, and have made the case in a column. The policies are in the process of being updated, and I've quoted Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli as saying they will be made public once the updating is completed (I suspect that may take several months). But for now, they are not.

As you may know, I operate independent of The Post's newsroom and management. Notwithstanding the offer from Deborah, I think you should probably direct your request to someone in Post management (like Mr. Brauchli).

Good luck with your project.
Andy Alexander
Washington Post Ombudsman

Newspapers, Now Straight from the Reporter to You!

2009-07-11T12:15:00.005-05:00

If anyone reads this blog I'm sure they'll find not only typos but also sentences that just don't make any sense. That's because I'm a terrible first-draft writer. I write fast but dirty, with my fingers often not quite getting the right signals from my brain. The freedom of the blog is that I never have to submit to any copy editor. It goes straight from my cerebral cortex to the internet.

And you all can read the results.

When I worked as a reporter my stuff didn't go directly from my brain to the printed version. Before everything was committed to paper there was someone looking over my poorly drafted copy. Well soon that'll be a thing of the past. (The paper he's talking about is the Wilmington News Journal.)

Twitter is My New Blog

2009-04-09T11:04:00.001-05:00

First off if you noticed I haven’t been blogging all that much in the last few months its not because I’m not active. It’s because Twitter is pretty much my new blog. (You can follow my tweets here. I twitter under the name NewsCat_in_DC).

It’s funny that Twitter has managed to make me blog the way I was told I should be blogging. Short, sharp observations and a link.

A long time ago when I started blogging in earnest I would frequently NOT write something because I either a) didn’t have anything new to add to most topics or b) didn’t feel like what I would write would have any added value for anyone. I basically held my fire until I saw a topic that wasn’t being addressed or could add something that hadn’t been discussed before.

I had a mentor who said I “overthought” my blog posts and I should be writing shorter, zippier little posts. Kind of like Eschaton. Now Twitter has turned us all into Atrios.

How Feminist Organizations Should Talk To Feminist Bloggers

2009-02-08T13:42:00.003-05:00

Coming out the Feminism 2.0 conference I had a bit of an epiphany. The bloggers/activists panel attended by Tedra Osell of Bitch Ph.d , Liza Sabater of Culture Kitchen, and Kim Gandy, former president of NOW, was probably one of the most useful conference panels I’ve attended since I’ve been attending conferences.

Feminist organizations, cannot treat the major feminist bloggers (or the major women bloggers) as if they are volunteers. You cannot send the major bloggers the same press release or action alert that you have just sent out to your 5,000 email subscribers and expect them to response with marching orders. “Sending press releases to bloggers” is not a real strategy of blogger outreach. And it’s probably not enough to just sit on panels with them at conference every few months either. While it’s useful to have the personal contact that builds the relationship with bloggers that is only the start of the relationship.

Feminist organizations should treat certain well-trafficked women bloggers the same way they would treat Amy Goodman or Rachel Maddow. As high-flying media personality you want to co-opt and a relationship that requires constant personal attention directly from the executive director or president.

I’m going to talk about NOW because Kim Gandy was on the Feminism 2.0 panel on bloggers and activist. Kim started to talk about the difficulty in discussing what was happening with the economic stimulus package and the process where the family planning provision was dropped. It’s a complicated political issue and it’s not as simple as saying “Obama screwed the women’s interests for political expediency.”

It was difficult enough for NOW to explain the issue to their members, let alone for the feminist public to digest. This is where bloggers can come in. It would have been useful for Gandy or someone from her senior staff to call (and I do mean call) some of the highest profile bloggers and explain the situation the same way Gandy did at that conference. Then the bloggers can write a post that starts with “I just got off the phone with Kim Gandy…the situation is this…” Or alternatively “A high-profile source at NOW is telling me the reason the family planning was dropped was XYZ…they have heard from Henry Waxman…”

Feminist organizations should treat major bloggers the same way Senators treat newspaper columnists. Let’s face it, a lot of the issues that non-profits want to explain are complicated. But if Jessica Valenti of Feministing or other highly-trafficked bloggers write a post their readers will trust their “vouching” on the issue. It is an effective strategy when the issue is complicated to target several “opinion leaders” and for a lot of feminist organizations that is the feminist bloggers.

This is not unlike the relationship between conservative newspaper columnists and republican politicians. George Will doesn’t work for the Senate Republicans. But his ideology and theirs are often similar. George Will can be co-opted, and wants to be co-opted, but he needs to be feted.

This was something Liza Sabater was getting at on the panel. The reason Daily Kos is the number one blogging site isn’t because of the writing, she says. It’s because the Howard Dean campaign feted Markos Moulitsas for almost two years. And the end of the Dean campaign, Markos was seen as a player and subsequentially has made a lot of money because of that reputation. That’s what Sabater wants and so do most of the biggest bloggers, to be seen as a player and insider. In exchange feminist organizations, like NOW, get access to the bloggers’ readership. For NOW, with its aging membership, being tight with feminist bloggers is a way to get a lot of potential new blood in their organization.

Sabater was essentially asking to be feted by those groups that want her to write about them. Feed her tips, give her access and in exchange you get her good will and access to her readers. And there is another aspect to treating influential bloggers with access. She, meaning bloggers, can also play “the bad cop” and say things that organizations can’t. There are going to be points in the Obama term that is going to put the major feminist organizations in the delicate balance of not wanting to push their friends in the Senate, House and White House too hard but being unhappy with the message they are getting. This is where feeding the feminist bloggers can put the message out even when you can’t get any louder on your end without pissing off your political friends.

The thing about treating blogger outreach as a high-profile as talking to any media personality is that it costs very little but it requires a realignment of thinking.

cross-posted at Feminist Underground

Dear Prudence's Bad Advice

2008-12-30T20:50:00.002-05:00

A while back Slate's advice columnist, Dear Prudence, gave some advice to a woman who was concerned about her baby niece living next to a pit bull. Prudie agreed that the situation sounded pretty unsafe to her, but then had to throw in a little gratitious slut-shaming.

SHe's just written a year-end column about the letters that got the most response...not that she was owning up to changing her mind about anything just that "isn't it interesting" that some of her columns riled people up.

Naturally I wasn't the only one who got upset about her response to the pit bull letter. She actually quoted my email to her, at least part of it.

Everyone got mad at me for my answer to Uneasy. She was writing because her 20-year-old sister—a single mother with a toddler—just moved in with a roommate who had a nervous pit bull. I said both baby and dog must be intensely supervised when together and otherwise separated to avert a tragedy. Pit-bull lovers said my answer maligned their loyal, loving breed. Pit-bull haters said I exonerated these malevolent dogs and sent me articles from around the country on pit-bull maulings. Single mothers and others were outraged by what they felt was a gratuitous slap when I said that since the mother of the toddler had her while still a teenager, that indicated she lacked an ability to understand the consequences of her actions. "The fact that she is 20 and a new mother and single is why she's not able to clearly see the danger. But you lost me the minute you basically called her a slut," one reader bristled. "Two years ago, the woman had sex. God forbid! If you ever have pre-marital sex, you could end up with an unexpected pregnancy. So what?" asked another.

No, I did not call her a "slut," and, yes, I agree she is too young to be a mother. The "So what?" is that it's a tragedy that so many young women with no education, prospects, or partner are raising children alone.

Prudie then and in her response to me at the time kept talking about "the consequences of [young women's] behavior" but never really spells out which is the behavior that needs watching. Is it having sex out of wedlock that is the sticky wicket or just getting pregnant? Here's the full part of the email I sent to Prudie.

It sounds to me the fact that she *is* 20 and a new mother and single is why she's not able to clearly see the danger. Maybe she's happy in the living situation and doesn't want to face up to the fact that she'd have to move because of the dog. There's a lot of "maybe's" and it's easy to see why a young, new mother might justify the dog saying "I don't see it as a problem." Especially if up until this point, it hasn't been. (I'm with you however, on the issue that she needs to move her child away from the dog. Other dogs can bite but pit bulls' bites are known as especially dangerous.)

But you lost me the minute you basically called her a slut in not-so-many-veiled words. Tsk, tsk, you young woman for having sex.

Red Is the New Blue (Bike)

2008-12-28T19:10:00.005-05:00

So six days after my bike was stolen I've bought a new Trek. This time a FX 7.3. As you might be able to guess from the picture, it's a men's bike. I went up a class, partially because there were some differences in the handlebar I didn't like in the 7.2. But the frame of the men's compared to the women's wasn't all that different. Here is the Trek 7.2 FX WSD I was considering.

As you can see, the frame isn't really all that much more angled, although I probably will have to wear bike shorts under my skirts on the days I forgo pants.

I could have gone with the women's FX 7.3 but ultimately, it came down to color. I just preferred the red. Lately everything I buy is red.

However I did figure out one other issue; how my bike was stolen. I was using a Kryptonite U-lock circa 2003. I didn't realize until today that in 2004, there were videos posted how to break the locks using a ballpoint pen and they've been considered pretty unreliable ever since. Until I was in the bike shop looking at locks I had completely forgotten that I bought mine five years ago, right before I moved to DC.

In a way, this comes as a relief. It means that there is an easy solution to my problem and that the issue isn't that I had a good lock that was broken, but a bad lock that was unreliable in the first place.

I probably rushed into the buying faster than I should have, maybe I should have tried out some more bikes. But even walking to the bike shop I realized how much I've relied on my bike to get me to and from the metro quickly. Walking just seems so interminably slow.

Someone Stole My Bike

2008-12-23T18:38:00.002-05:00

Goddamn it I want to cry! I loved my bike probably more than any other material possession I own. I bought it almost exactly 11 months ago. I locked it up at the Metro this morning like I've done almost every morning for a year and when I came out it was gone. I even used a u-lock. It was just gone. Even the u-lock.

And I'm wondering "did I not secure the lock?" "did I actually miss the loop somehow?" Or did someone who knows how to break a u-lock finally come along and snatch it.

And yeah, bikes can be replaced. But it was pretty! The new Trek 7.2 FX colors are ugly!

Friday Cat Blogging: Election Al

2008-10-31T07:54:00.003-05:00

It's been a long time since I posted a Friday Cat Blogging pic and being both Halloween and close to Election Day I should have been more inspired. I tried taking a certifiable "Cats For Obama" picture but Al wasn't helping. (Neither was my flash). I think Al might be undecided or maybe unregistered. Lena is harder to poll.

Dear Prudie Goes For Slut-Shaming

2008-10-30T10:59:00.006-05:00

I guess I can't act too surprised if your advice column is named "Dear Prudence." A recent column had a letter-writer concerned about her niece and a pit bull.

Dear Prudence,

My sister is 20 years old, has an 18-month-old daughter, and is a great mother. She doesn't have much money, so she recently moved in with a new roommate. The roommate has a pet pit bull. I met the dog a couple of days ago, and while she is very sweet, she also seems to be pretty nervous. I know I was a new person to this dog, but overall what I saw was potentially a very dangerous situation for my niece. I told my sister that, and she told me that she trusts the dog and thinks she's well-mannered. She said that the dog and her daughter get along well, the dog doesn't mind if the child pokes her, and that the dog lets the child sleep in her dog bed sometimes! Is this one of those situations where I can't tell her what to do, so I should leave it alone? Or should I call child protective services?

So what followed could have been a pretty standard answer. Or should have been.

Dear Uneasy,
No wonder the dog is nervous. Suddenly a small human is sticking fingers in her eyes and sleeping in her bed. You're probably sweet and well-mannered yourself, but surely you would lash out at someone who invaded your home and poked your orifices all day. That a pit bull is involved adds to the potential damage if the dog strikes back, but even a placid basset hound could be provoked to take a hunk out of a toddler's face under these circumstances. When a dog uncharacteristically attacks a child, often the aggressor was the child who simply didn't understand that you can't pull on a real dog's tail the way you can your favorite stuffed animal. Your sister is a 20-year-old single mother; that alone indicates she still lacks the ability to understand how acting on her impulses can lead to life-changing events.

Why is being 20 and having a kid shows you lack impulse-control? Oh it's because clearly you are a slut who can't keep her legs crossed. There is no other way in interpret that sentence. Prudie (which, again, what did I expect when prudence is so close "prude.") is tsk, tsking her for being 20 and having S-E-X.

Did she stop and think that maybe the condom broke. Maybe her birth control just failed. Heck in some parts of this country they would think that baring and raising the child is proof that she's not impulsive. Does Prudie really feel like she needed to get into the circumstances of the child's existence to offer advice?

UPDATE: Prudie responded to my email. She writes:

I didn't call her a s--t, I said she clearly lacks judgment, which she clearly does. I think our out-of-wedlock birthrate is a tragedy and I wish more people spoke out about it to make young women consider the consequences of their behavior.

Which I responded what is this "their behavior" you are speaking of? Having sex out of wedlock? Or getting pregnant?

Thought For the Day: Job Applications

2008-10-22T11:25:00.004-05:00

My organization just advertised for a part-time, contract postion (meaning no benefits). It's $13/hr, although we did say "hours are flexible" we're looking for someone who can work 2-3 days a week. In my head the kind of person who would want this job would be a college student or a grad student.

I put up one ad, in one spot, on Craiglist. For this job, which didn't have a whole lot of description about us, I got 40 applicants in the first day. There's another 20 that came in today. By three days I bet I have at least 75 applicants. By the end of the week I'll probably get another 25 applicants.

Something to think about when applying for even "crappy" jobs on CL.

UPDATE: It's Friday and the response rate slowed down tremendously. But so far I have about 84 applicants. However of that 84, only about 5-6 are really top candidates. Some over-qualified, many under-qualified, many are applying for everything on craiglist. Some clearly are searching for a full-time permenant job and I'm not sure how this job would work for them. But the biggest hurdle is that people who have no experience in this type of work. It's possible they could do the work and even be great at it. But you can understand why its easier to look for candidates with experience doing a similar type of work. A few I'm putting aside for another position we might hire for.

Another thing I realized, interviewing people is harder than it looks.

The Right Way to Write a Sarah Palin Op-Ed

2008-10-19T10:52:00.004-05:00

Sometimes I just want to point out the correct way to write an op-ed. Ever since she got nominated, my office has been flooded by authors who want to write about Sarah Palin. Some were okay, but many were way too strident. No one reading the op-ed was going to be convinced of anything other than that the author really didn’t like Palin’s policies or how they thought she would govern.

I’ve written before about how op-ed writers need to make themselves be an “expert” on the subject they are writing about. Just because you have an opinion about Sarah Palin doesn’t mean anyone should listen to you -- unless you can tie yourself into the subject. You have to find the logic that give you the “in” to subject matter.

This Washington Post column by Catherine Iino is nearly perfect example in tying a non-national name to a national subject.

I serve on the Board of Selectmen of Killingworth, Conn., a town that has about the same population as Wasilla, Alaska, and I share Sarah Palin's affection for small-town life.

Notice there isn’t much of a preamble. She goes right into who she is and what she’s going to talk about. Then she uses her background in serving on the board of a small town to explain why that experience is relevant to talking about Sarah Palin.

It's been widely reported that Sarah Palin hired her friends for high offices and turned to her family for advice. You do that in a small town. The talent pool is limited. You know who is sensible, who gets things done, who is willing to donate time and energy. In my town, few positions -- appointed or elected -- are paid. Even the opportunities for graft and corruption are small potatoes. (Killingworth hasn't received any earmarks.) You call your friends and cajole them into serving on one more board or committee.

There’s nothing horribly partisan or accusatory. Sarah Palin did hire her friends for office and turned to her husband for advice. The author isn’t saying that’s wrong. But she manages to turn the fact to the point she wants to make.

This is not the way you want the federal government to be administered. Everyone knows everyone in Wasilla and Killingworth, but obviously, you can't know everyone in the United States. We need the people heading federal departments and agencies to have knowledge, competence and track records that inspire public confidence. And we need a chief executive who knows how to seek advice from independent experts, not just her friends and family.

And that’s the key. Catherine Iino is just a a boardmember in the small-town of Killingworth, Connecticut. Why is her opinion important? Because she can illuminate why running a small-town (even as “executive experience”) is entirely different than running a country.

Her ending is a bullseye.

Of course, small towns have distinctive vices as well as virtues. Because we don't have many professional administrators, we reinvent a lot of wheels. Decades-long feuds often color political debates. Sometimes we cut the wrong people too much slack. We muddle through, and I wouldn't want to see Killingworth tie itself in red tape trying to prevent these problems. But you couldn't run Safeway Inc., much less the federal government, the way you run a farm stand.

There is an aspect of small-town life that we should do our best to send to the national level: the attitude toward our neighbors. We need to believe that we are a community, that we all must contribute to the common good. Small-town executive experience, however, would be a risky thing to send to Washington.

Could Iino have tacked on more about Palin’s experience as governor? Sure, but the op-ed didn’t need it. Palin and the McCain campaign have made a virtue out of “small-townness.” Iino’s op-ed, without being harshly partisan or strident, simply points out the errors in the line of logic.

It’s a great op-ed written by an outside voice who knows what she's talking about.

--crossposted at Feminist Underground

LA Times Opinion Editor Is Fooled

2008-10-03T11:03:00.003-05:00

Since I spend a lot of time talking to people who want to write op-ed columns, one of the first things I tell them is they have to figure out how they have a connection to the subject they want to write about. Basically, why should anyone want to read what you write? What makes you an “expert” on the subject?

Now when I say “expert” I don’t necessarily mean that you work at a think tank and write policy papers all day on the subject (although that would be great). But if you are writing about immigration, the economy, the presidential election, whatever, you have to somehow find a way to tie yourself to the subject matter. For example, in this piece, a New York woman is writing that like Sarah Palin, she’s also a “hockey mom.” She writes that she shares a lot of the same background as Gov. Palin. But she splits with her on position on reproductive rights. Her “expertise” is that she is also a hockey mom commenting on another hockey mom.

But Salon pointed to a great example of the Los Angeles Times picking up an op-ed by David Blankenhorn whose only buy-in is that the author is a “liberal” against gay marriage. Except that, as Salon points out. He’s probably not really a liberal.

The vehicle Blankenhorn uses for espousing his opinions on marriage and family values is a think tank he calls the Institute for American Values, of which he is president. In accordance with its status as an untaxed entity, IAV must file a Form 990 financial report annually with the IRS. These filings are available to the public, and you can learn a lot from them. Here is what public records tell us about IAV:
During the 15 years preceding 2006, IAV received nearly $4.5 million in funding from a coterie of ultra-conservative Republican foundations, including the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Scaife Family Foundation, and the Randolph Foundation. These foundations supply funds for a network of right-wing Republican think tanks that promote a variety of causes such as the elimination of gay marriage, abortion rights and embryonic stem-cell research; prayer in public schools; creationism and deregulatory free-market economics.

The thing about political leanings is it’s a lot like faith. You can’t prove someone isn’t a “Christian” if they claim they are, even if you point out all the unchristian things they do.

It makes perfect sense that the opinion editor of the LA Times took Blankenhorn at face-value when he sends in an op-ed saying “I’m a liberal.” But in a case like this, and read the op-ed yourself, it doesn’t make much of a point if it’s not backed by someone who has a solid-background in proven liberal beliefs. The argument doesn’t exist really if its not presented as coming from someone who normally agrees with liberal positions.

I think this is a case of “fool me once.” I’d like to think the LA Times isn’t going to get fooled again just by someone who claims to be an outlier. But I suspect they are more susceptible to this type of ruse because they want to think of themselves as “not liberal media.”

You're Getting How Much To Organize at UW??

2008-09-24T13:59:00.004-05:00

I wish campus conservatives would realize that just because they are outnumbered that doesn't mean that liberals have a "stranglehold" on campus. It means your ideas are unpopular and only appeal to a minority of people. Being unpopular isn't the same thing as has having your ideas suppressed.

I have friends who work at the University of Washington, my alma mater, and I hope they will be on the look out for this dude. He's a field representative from the Leadership Institute—basically a training guide for conservatives by crazy, rich guy Morton Blackwell. They train people how to be assholes against democracy like Karl Rove.

(Strangely coincidental, the headquarters for the Leadership Institute, is located in my neck of the woods, Arlington, Virginia.)

But honestly what shocked me most about this article was how much money they have to thrown away on their field organizers.

He plans to accomplish that task by manning an information booth at university functions and contacting students via Facebook. For his 11-week stint in Seattle, he will be paid about $15,000. In 2006, the Leadership Institute reported revenues of just over $16 million.

Seriously?! $1,363 a week? There are field-organizers for Democrats and for causes like the environment or reproductive rights but they pay like shit.

More Women Staffers Doesn't Make You Feminist

2008-09-17T13:19:00.002-05:00

I’ve always thought that when the demographics of those in power become less male and less white, there has to be some subtle benefits to everyone from the resulting minor shifts in attitudes or priorities. Even if the shifting demographics include conservative women and non-white males, I just assumed there could still be some progressive changes when the dudes in charge aren’t all cut from the same background. Basically if you have more women in charge, won’t the sheer numbers make sure that women’s issues aren’t shorted?

Well, I’m starting to doubt that. Rachael Larimore on Slate’s XX Factor blog dug a little deeper the idea that John McCain pays his women staffers more than his male staffers.

He doesn’t, but he does have more women as senior staffers than Obama.

Only one of Obama's five best-paid Senate staffers is a woman. Of McCain's five best-paid Senate staffers, three are women.

Of Obama's top 20 salaried Senate staffers, seven are women. Of McCain's top 20 salaried Senate staffers, 13 are women.

Here’s the interesting part. Despite the fact that John McCain had a majority of women senior staffers, he still voted against pay equity for women. So either the three most senior women staffers couldn’t convince McCain to change his mind, didn’t try to change his mind, or also were against the pay equity bill.

At least when Elizabeth Dole voted against the bill she sounded sorry about it. John McCain tried to imply they didn’t need to ensure equal pay for equal work at all, women just need to get more education.

So yeah, John McCain hires more women but other than those three individual women it doesn’t help women-at-large.

Why It’s Better To Fight Lies With Different Lies

2008-09-16T15:18:00.006-05:00

I’m being a bit flip, but the point is that research continues to show me that if you can’t fight lies with “the truth” than its better start telling new lies. Or at least change the subject.

Shankar Vedantam’s Human Behavior column points to another fascinating study about what people think when they are told something isn’t true. Most of the time it doesn’t matter, the effect has already happened.

In experiments conducted by political scientist John Bullock at Yale University, volunteers were given various items of political misinformation from real life. One group of volunteers was shown a transcript of an ad created by NARAL Pro-Choice America that accused John G. Roberts Jr., President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court at the time, of "supporting violent fringe groups and a convicted clinic bomber."

Bullock then showed volunteers a refutation of the ad by abortion-rights supporters. He also told the volunteers that the advocacy group had withdrawn the ad. Although 56 percent of Democrats had originally disapproved of Roberts before hearing the misinformation, 80 percent of Democrats disapproved of the Supreme Court nominee afterward. Upon hearing the refutation, Democratic disapproval of Roberts dropped only to 72 percent.

Basically if you already were primed to dislike John Roberts, the information had the most effect on you, even after you were told it wasn’t true. If you weren’t primed to dislike him, it had less effect. Vedantam doesn’t mention what about the people who weren’t primed either way, but I would bet it still had some effect, perhaps even a lot, but less than on those who already disliked him.

I can’t find the original study but I can speculate a few reasons why it would work that way. If I'm already in an anti-John Roberts frame of mind, I think hearing “John Roberts supported a convicted clinic bomber” has the effect of reminding me why I don't like him (His extreme positions about women’s rights), even when I find out later that this specific fact isn't true. I remain in a slightly elavated state of John Roberts-hating despite the fact the new cause of the hate is wrong. (Just to be clear, I'm using pretty broad terms to discuss what are really more subtle emotions and thoughts. But being in a "John Roberts-slightly-elevated state of increased dislike" just doesn't roll off the tongue.)

Another aspect of the study I would like to know more about is how the corrections were presented to the test subjects. The article says the subjects were shown an "ad by abortion-rights supporters." I’m not sure I would trust pro-life group to tell me the sky is blue. It's possible that in this particular study the source of the refutation is the problem, and hence why hearing it didn't change the democrats' feelings about Roberts. However if it was presented as coming from a more neutral source, say from factcheck.org or the Washington Post, they might have found it more trustworthy and had a bigger impact. However the Republicans might not have had the same reaction from the source.

Which leads to the second study Vedantam quotes.

Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler provided two groups of volunteers with the Bush administration's prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. One group was given a refutation -- the comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that concluded that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003. Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush administration's claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The refutation, in other words, made them misinformation worse.

In a paper approaching publication, Nyhan, a PhD student at Duke University, and Reifler, at Georgia State University, suggest that Republicans might be especially prone to the backfire effect because conservatives may have more rigid views than liberals: Upon hearing a refutation, conservatives might "argue back" against the refutation in their minds, thereby strengthening their belief in the misinformation. Nyhan and Reifler did not see the same "backfire effect" when liberals were given misinformation and a refutation about the Bush administration's stance on stem cell research.

Again, I’m wondering if the source of the refutation matters? Republicans are more likely to distrust the so-called mainstream media outlets, your Washington Post, New York Times, NBC, CBS, ABC, 60 Minutes, Newsweek, Time, etc, etc, etc. But I’m wondering if they heard that The National Journal refuted Bush administration's prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction would that change the results? Possibly not:

A similar "backfire effect" also influenced conservatives told about Bush administration assertions that tax cuts increase federal revenue. One group was offered a refutation by prominent economists that included current and former Bush administration officials. About 35 percent of conservatives told about the Bush claim believed it; 67 percent of those provided with both assertion and refutation believed that tax cuts increase revenue.

This is why whenever I read about people hearing that Sarah Palin is telling lies I know it won't faze Republican voters. They think it’s the media who are the liars.

But the other part of charge-countercharge that these studies can’t duplicate is that even when we hear a refutation, we can often find a contradictory opinion. Especially if it supports a belief we already want to believe. Don’t like factcheck.org, don’t worry. Someone on Newsmax already explained why “the media” is just spinning lies.

I would rather live in a world where untruths can be countered by facts. But that doesn’t seem to be the world we live in. So rather than fighting fire with sand its probably better to fight with fire. Cause it doesn’t matter how much sand you put on some lies, it never puts them out.

Cross-posted at Feminist Underground

The Value of Virginity

2008-09-12T15:06:00.002-05:00

Apparently is determined by the highest bidder. *face plant*

What gets me about this story is the quotes from the woman who appearently has been taught all the feminist phrases but not why they should mean something to her.

"We live in a capitalist society ... why shouldn't I be allowed to capitalise on my virginity?" Ms Dylan was quoted as saying in the New York Daily News.

"I understand some people will condemn me ... but I think this is empowering. I'm using what I have to better myself.

I thinks she's going to find its the opposite of empowering. Talk to any sex worker, or even a stripper, and you will find that men feel even more willing to treat women they pay like they are subhuman.

The thing is, I'm not necessarily against the idea of decriminalizing prostitution -- but I've yet to see a version that doesn't end up hurting the women. Amsterdam is not actually a safe place for women or tourists. (Neither is Mexico which may have one of the worst track records of safety even though it is legalized in some parts.) Meanwhile Sweden has perhaps the best system for the women, but even there interviews with women make it clear this is not work that can be done by human beings with healthy psychologies. Its damaging.

The Woman-Getting-Abortion Blog

2008-09-10T09:25:00.004-05:00

I'm surprised that I hadn't seen a blog like this before but one anonymous woman has started a blog titled What to Expect When You're Aborting. Its pretty much her first-person experience. Some people are a tad skeptical it's real, but I've communicated with the author and, more than that, I find her writing to be incredibly riveting and personal. It just feels like a real person.

In the meantime Joan Lamunyon Sanford has an column on why just because Bristol Palin has a loving family that will support her choice doesn't mean that every pregnant 17-year-old can expect the same. Which is why teenagers, like adult women, need to have choices because not everyone's life is full of peaches'n'cream families with the financial means or desire to help.

Cross-posted at The Feminist Underground

Friday Cat Blogging: Baby Kittie Pictures

2008-08-22T09:22:00.000-05:00

Al and Lena had one previous owner (they are slightly-used cats, but they only had light wear and tear.) Keeper of the Cats finally got a hold of some of their "baby" pictures.

For me it kind of strange to see miniature versions of the cats I know and love.

More On That Pew Media Survey And Media's Failures

2008-08-19T10:45:00.005-05:00

Following on this post about the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press released its biannually media consumption survey, I've posted the answers to their questions gauging whether you had a high knowledge score of political information in the comments. A word about such a gauge. The truth is that such gauges are imperfect measures. Pew likes to use these three particular questions because they can be used consistently across time periods, so you can compare the ratios across the years and track the differences. And they are useful questions but also somewhat limited in what they are really measuring.

The point I want to raise is that it would be wrong to read that 18% percent of correctly answered questions as meaning that 72% of U.S. population is too stupid to vote.

People retain knowledge that is useful to them or that they find interesting. Part of the reason why Pew conducts a media consumption survey is really to gauge the media (not only the citizens). One of the many, many flaws in the U.S. news media system is that news is more often presented as a series of news trivia. This happened, then this happened, then this happened.

Jay Rosen over at Press Think has actually been pondering the breakaway success entirely different model of news of This American Life call "The Giant Pool of Money." It explained the subprime housing market scandal.

If you don’t know “The Giant Pool of Money” you really should (here: download the podcast) because it’s probably the best work of explanatory journalism I have ever heard. I listened to it on a long car trip when everyone else was sleeping. Going in to the program, I didn’t understand the mortgage mess one bit: subprime loans were ruining Wall Street firms? And I care because they are old, respected firms?

That’s what I knew. Coming out of the program, I understood the complete scam: what happened, why it happened, and why I should care. I had a good sense of the motivations and situations of players all down the line. Civic mastery was mine over a complex story, dense with technical terms, unfolding on many fronts and different levels, with no heroes. And the villains were mostly abstractions! Typical of the program’s virtues is the title. It’s called The Giant Pool of Money because that is where the producers want your understanding to start. They insist.

One of the points that Rosen notices is that sometimes stories are so complex that without understanding why this applies to him, he tuned out the new information. Here is he is talking about subprime mortgages but you can see it applying to almost any story with complexity, Georgia, Iraq, Wall Street, candidates' health insurance plans, etc.

Wrong! For there are some stories—and the mortgage crisis is a great example—where until I grasp the whole I am unable to make sense of any part. Not only am I not a customer for news reports prior to that moment, but the very frequency of the updates alienates me from the providers of those updates because the news stream is adding daily to my feeling of being ill-informed, overwhelmed, out of the loop. I respond with indifference, even though I’ve picked up a blinking red light from the news system’s repeated placement of "subprime" items in front of me.

I think Rosen is on to something here and a commenter who emailed him explains why This American Life is even more unique than 99% of media productions -- that they have earned their audience's faith.

Let me add one point. This American Life could execute that episode only because week after week, they keep listeners engaged with excellent storytelling. You know that reaction everyone had to "subprime mortgage" stories, where they'd flip the channel or turn the radio dial whenever they came on? Well the listeners of This American Life didn't do that when they found out that week's episode would delve into the topic. The reaction wasn't, "Oh no, another one of these stories," as it would've been if they encountered the story elsewhere. It was "thank God, This American Life is going to explain this to me."

It would be impossible to turn every news outlet into This American Life, but I do think that surveys like Pew show that media consumption is not always synonymous with knowledge. But the reaction to such a survey shouldn't be "well people are just dumbasses." More often I think the issue is that its the media that is dumb.

One data point I noticed is that the media audience with the highest score for those three questions was The New Yorker/Atlantic Monthly. And still Pew found that only half its audience (48%) could correctly answer all three. Shouldn't that be more like 90% since the magazines tend to correlate with people who are very interested in currently events? That seems to me to be a huge disconnect.

One other point, last year Pew released a survey that gauged political knowledge much more deeply. They asked 26 questions, some of which were probably more timely back in April 2007, but even taking an "educated guess" if you are highly politically aware you can answer all of them correctly. You can take the test yourself and then compare how you did to everyone else in your age group, gender, education.

Colbert Report Viewers Are Slightly More Politically Knowledgeable Than Daily Show's

2008-08-18T13:38:00.006-05:00

There are so many headlines I could have given this post, but from past experience if you put “The Daily Show” into a your blog you will get hits. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press released its biannually media consumption survey. There’s a lot of interesting nuggets of data in it. (I promise I will get to the part about The Daily Show in a minute).

First off, ask yourself, without using google, can you:

Can you tell me the name of the current U.S. Secretary of State?

Say who is the current prime minister of Great Britain?
a. Gordon Brown
b. Rupert Murdoch
c. Robert Gates
d. John Howard

Happen to know which political party has a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives?

If you can answer all three correctly, then you are identified by Pew as having a high knowledge score of political information. Frankly on number two I’m surprised they didn’t throw in Tony Blair as a choice.

So want to know how well the public answered those questions? Only 18% could correctly answer all three. That was the national average. Pew then breaks it down by viewers of certain shows.

You can see the full chart here but (to justify using the title on this post):

The Colbert Report and The Daily Show are notable for having relatively well-informed audiences that are younger than the national average: 34% of regular Colbert viewers answered the three political knowledge questions correctly, as did 30% of regular Daily Show viewers. Less than a quarter of either audience is older than 50 (22% Colbert, 23% Daily Show), compared with 41% of the general public.

I’ve often thought The Colbert Report is a tad more cerebral than The Daily Show. (Oh and the other late-night comics Leno/Letterman, only 20% of their audience could answer all three correctly.)

But in any case there’s a lot of other interesting data. I’m very surprised about the breakdown of audiences by gender. (Plus I’m always curious if Nielsen gets the same ratios of male verses female viewership).

There is exactly even split between men and women in reading daily newspapers, watching CNN, news magazines (like Time and Newsweek) and even the Sunday News Talk shows. Surprisingly slightly more women than men watch Fox News. (Also MSNBC, and CNBC???)

But there are a number of shows and types of shows that are majority male. Rush Limbaugh, the ratio wasn’t even close, 72% of his audience is male. Ladies favor Colbert over Stewart by four percentage points. The Daily Show audience is 66% male and The Colbert Report is 62%.

I don’t have an answer why The Daily Show skews so heavily male but perhaps their lack of female correspondents could be an answer. Also Jon can sometimes get a little frat-boyish when talking about women politicians like Pelosi and Hillary Clinton. I have also heard, through a grapevine that his writing room is way more machismo than Colbert’s. It’s not quite Saturday Night Live, but that’s kind of flavor (meaning if you’re not a white dude who fits in, you don’t fit in.) Stephen Colbert seems to run a slightly different type of room and has more women writers.

Truth, Honesty, And Online Personals (And Fuck You Dan Savage)

2008-08-17T17:15:00.003-05:00

I read this Savage Love last week and I meant to write about it but I just didn’t. But upon realizing no one else seems to have commented I feel the need to point out, yet again, Dan Savage’s hates fat people.

So FATSO writes to Dan:

I put a profile on an online dating site some time ago when my job moved me to Florida and I didn't know anybody down here, but I soon forgot about it. Recently, a girl contacted me via that old personal ad, we exchanged pictures, and she told me she was overweight. In the pictures she didn't look that big and I chalked her comments up to female insecurity. Less than an hour ago we met for the first time and she was huge. I told her as politely as possible that I felt her pictures were misleading, that she was bigger than I expected, and that I didn't think it would work. I felt (and still feel) like total shit.

Dan, help me. Am I a bad person for this? I want to go slam my head in a car door!

Yes, FATSO, you are a total shit. Now why is that? Is it because you didn’t want to date this person. No. It’s because you acted like an ASSHOLE.

And Dan, naturally, sides with him! Because to Dan, fat people don’t deserve to exist. If you are fat, you deserve whatever treatment you get.

So long as you were polite and direct—and I'm taking your word for that, FATSO—you're not a bad person even if her feelings were hurt. There are men out there who are open to big women or into big women—the bigger the better—and she can avoid hurt feelings in the future by e-mailing accurate photos and attracting the attention of men who actually find her attractive.

So every time I meet up with someone who is uglier than their photo would have me believe, I get to tell him IN THE MOST DESVESTATINGLY RUDE WAY POSSIBLE, that they “lied” to me by showing me attractive pictures of themselves and that I don’t date ugly people. In fact I shouldn’t even bother with the meeting. I should just walk to the table and say “sorry you are uglier than advertised.” Gee wasn't there an episode of The Office where Michael pretty much did just that?

Look let’s get something straight. FATSO’s date actually said she was overweight. And FATSO doesn’t say the pictures are out of date, just that they made her look more attractive to him than the real person did. Maybe they were just headshots...that is not “misleading” him. You shouldn’t be putting up unattractive pictures on your online personal ad. A photo should make you look presentable. There is no rule of online dating that says you have to put up an unflattering picture so as not to “mislead” people as to how attractive you really are. You would think he now knows why women get so many insecurities about their weight! Especially when guys feel its totally acceptable to tell women they are too fat. Thanks ugly guy! You suck too!

And even if your picture leads someone to meet up with you, it does not give them carte blanche to be an asshole. There is no “polite” and “kind” way to tell someone they are too ugly for you. Meeting someone on a blind date isn’t permission to cruel. It’s not like FATSO’s date cheated him out of anything. But he totally hurt her for no good reason.

Washington Post Takes Another Bite At the Feminist Bookstore

2008-08-17T11:58:00.008-05:00

I was settling down to read my Sunday dose of aggravation, also known as the Washington Post’s Outlook section. I was actually quite pleased with the selection of essays this week. There is a very poignant and frankly heart-rendering story of former Guantanamo prisoner number #261, Jumah al Dossari, who details in an understated manner, his 5 ½ years of detention and torture. It’s a Russian novel in 1,600 words. Everyone should know Jumah al Dossari’s story. Just like we should know Maher Arar’s. Or Dilawar who was 22 years old and killed by the U.S. by torture. We should know these names the same way we remember Emmett Till, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, all killed for being the wrong people in the wrong place.

But just as I’m about to figuratively pat the Outlook editor John Pomfret on the back for a good line up this week I find this column by Leonard Sax called “'Twilight' Sinks Its Teeth Into Feminism.” Oh great, here we go again. Yet another Sunday Outlook author who is selected to tell us feminism doesn’t work -- this time its because women’s genetic code tells us we love baking cookies.

Leonard Sax is interested in discussing the Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series, which despite being incredibly popular, I know nothing about it. So I can’t evaluate his summarization of the series and it passive female heroine. But I don’t need to be an expert on teen fiction to get to the burning straw woman of Sax’s argument. Which is “hey you feminists, despite all your indoctrination, girls still want to read about passive victims and boys still want to watch porn and play video games. So take that!”

Here’s the key passages:

Yet on some level, it seems that children may know human nature better than grown-ups do.

We really should just make children tenured faculty until they grow up and their education ruins their unspoiled nature.

Consider: The fascination that romance holds for many girls is not a mere social construct; it derives from something deeper.

Boys however do not ever care about romance. That’s why they never understand why all those video games and Star Wars have “rescue the princess” as plot points. Or why Harry Potter had a girlfriend. And feminists truly believe that little girls shouldn’t even know what a romantic fairytale is until they’ve gone through an intensive Womyn’s Studies program in college.

In my research on youth and gender issues, I have found that despite all the indoctrination they've received to the contrary, most of the hundreds of teenage girls I have interviewed in the United States, Australia and New Zealand nevertheless believe that human nature is gendered to the core.

Because, as we’ve shown, if kids believe something, then it is demonstrable fact. Also did you know that candy makes a good lunch?

They are hungry for books that reflect that sensibility. Three decades of adults pretending that gender doesn't matter haven't created a generation of feminists who don't need men;

Feminists, when we say “we want equality” what we really mean is “you are no different from men, in fact you don’t even need men. In fact, we actually hate men.”

they have instead created a horde of girls who adore the traditional male and female roles and relationships in the "Twilight" saga.

Because no other vampire series has ever been popular, ever. And no other book is also popular amongst teens.

Likewise, ignoring gender differences hasn't created a generation of boys who muse about their feelings while they work on their scrapbooks.

Damn it! That means the feminist movement has failed! I mean if little boys aren’t playing with dolls then what else could feminists ever possibly want to achieve?

Instead, a growing number of boys in this country spend much of their free time absorbed in the masculine mayhem of video games such as Grand Theft Auto and Halo or surfing the Internet for pornography.

Yeah, I wondered why at the NOW national conference the panel on "How to Separate Men From Their Video Games and Porn" was so poorly attended. I guess every video game out there (and porno) is just more proof that our national goal of emasculation isn’t working. Why! Why must we always fight these losing battles against HUMAN NATURE instead of trying to achieve tangible successes like getting equal pay for equal work and getting access to contraception? I’m sure glad we never tried to go after sexual harassment in the workplace either, because god knows it’s just in men’s nature to be assholes and you can’t change that either.

For more than three decades, political correctness has required that educators and parents pretend that gender doesn't really matter. The results of that policy are upon us: a growing cohort of young men who spend many hours each week playing video games and looking at pornography online, while their sisters and friends dream of gentle werewolves who are content to cuddle with them and dazzling vampires who will protect them from danger. In other words, ignoring gender differences is contributing to a growing gender divide.

So starting back in 1978, little girls who were told “you can’t be anything you want to be,” really should have been told “but really all you want is to be the princess rescued by the cuddly teddy bear.” I can see now why that section I was taught in primary school called “WHY IT DOESN’T MATTER IF YOU ARE A BOY OR A GIRL” was invented. To beat out of me any inherent genetic ideas I had about loving teddy bears and unicorns, and Princess Leia in an iron bikini. Little girls who want to be the hero of their own fiction? Sorry, it’s just in your HUMAN NATURE to have limited fantasies. Oh and stop bothering the boys for a turn on the Nintendo Wii, you know video games are only for boys.

--crossposted at Feminist Underground

Friday Cat Blogging: Cats 'n' Laptops

2008-08-15T08:58:00.005-05:00

Yes that is Al lounging near (on) my new Dell XPS m1330. In the background you can see the product (red) screen. This post is the first one composed on my new laptop and while lounging at the delightful Baked & Wired cafe. The DC cupcakery with the best damn strawberry cupcakes ever!

Here is alternative shot of both Al & my laptop. I think it might make a good NewsCat logo.

It's Official: There Is No Post-Abortion Syndrome

2008-08-13T13:12:00.002-05:00

I've been waiting for the results of this study for a while, but the American Psychological Association has just released its results which demonstrate "abortion does not in and of itself pose a threat to women's mental health."

Specifically: "The most methodologically sound research indicates that among women who have a single, legal, first-trimester abortion of an unplanned pregnancy for nontherapeutic reasons, the relative risks of mental health problems are no greater than the risks among women who deliver an unplanned pregnancy." .... And: The prevalence of mental health problems observed among those women "was consistent with normative rates of comparable mental health problems in the general population of women in the United States."

Of course I don't think just because there's a pretty conclusive study (supported by research and data) is going to dissuade people from believing whatever their gut tells them must be true.

Friday Cat Blogging: Two In a Row

2008-08-08T06:55:00.004-05:00

It really is "Two in a row" day for this Friday's entry. First off, clearly I haven't written anything since last Friday Cat Blogging. Hey my new laptop is shipping. Soon instead of watching TV, I will be blogging.

Secondly, you may have seen these kitties before. Its a return appearence for both Rex and Oscar, previously featured Portland cats (now currently back in Olympia, Wa with their giant family of cats and humans).

But since it's Two In A Row Friday, I thought I would feature a bonus Friday Cat Blogging picture. Little Rex and Oscar as kittens. Enjoy!

Friday Cat Blogging: Al Loves Macs

2008-08-01T07:27:00.002-05:00

It's been a while since I posted a Friday Cat Blogging picture. That's Keeper of the Cats behind Al. Now I guess I could have submitted this to Cats Love Macs, but really, I think Al will likely love my Dell XPS M1330 (Product red) just as much. *sigh* Still another two weeks to go.

Oh...That Explains Why Bush Disappears In August

2008-07-25T12:20:00.003-05:00

He's got to put on his cap and cowl.

The stupid, it burns!

(Bonus: so this is what passes for pop culture analysis in the Wall Street Journal? I know high school bloggers who come up with more sophisticated analysis than "Our president is a superhero! He's like a *Dark Knight*.)

Hat tip Sadly, No!

All Birth Control Is Now An “Abortion?”

2008-07-25T09:27:00.003-05:00

I’ll admit that in the beginning even I was a bit skeptical about the idea that the anti-abortion was going to have any chance of success in taking away woman’s birth control. Sure they’d make some noise and make a lot of people nervous, but it wouldn’t really *happen.*

But the evidence is starting to pile up that they might have some success in, if not completely outlawing contraception, they can make it a lot more difficult to get.

The New York Times has a story about a leaked proposal that Health and Human Services (HHS) was circulating that would redefine all hormonal contraception as an “abortion.” Cristina Page writes about it here and here.

Now the reason why HHS would take this route is that by redefining contraception as “abortion” it gets around the Weldon and Church amendments, two laws that prohibit any agency receiving federal money from being required to offer abortion services. So if birth control becomes the same as abortion, there are a lot of ways this will have an effect on women’s ability to get contraception.

One of the main effects is that in 27 states there are laws requiring any employer that cover s prescription drugs to also cover contraception (because it’s not an “elective,” its not a cosmetic. It’s a regular part of health care for women and hence, if you cover diabetes medication employers should also be forced to cover birth control.) HHS’s proposed redefinition would then wipe out the state laws.

It would also immediate overcome any state rules about requiring pharmacists to dispense emergency contraception, or requiring hospitals to offer it to rape victims.

Now here’s the thing about the so-called “right” for pharmacists to refuse to dispense medication, Susan Paynter in the Seattle PI has a lot of good examples of what happens when you allow pharmacists to suddenly make snap judgments about their customers.

And, at a pharmacy in Seattle, a woman's prescription for a cervix-dilating medication was refused by a pharmacist who suspected she was on her way to have an abortion. Not that it ought to matter, but the woman's physician prescribed the drug because she was about to have surgery for uterine fibroids.

And, in Yakima, a pharmacist refused to dispense syringes to a diabetic, assuming he was an IV drug user. And there are more infuriating scenarios, says Nancy Sapiro of the Northwest Women's Law Center.

I don’t understand why moralists who think that requiring pharmacists to dispense birth control – even if they don’t like their customers – is any different than refusing to sell condoms (or disposable syringes) to “certain people” because, well you just don’t like them. Pharmacists are regulated by their own boards (and many state and federal laws) that say you don’t get to pass judgment on your customers.

Meaning you are not allowed to discriminate against people because of their gender, skin color or religion. What if some atheist pharmacist refused to dispense heart medication to the local pastor because he/she didn’t like their sermons and wanted him to get sick and die. Isn't that part of the atheist's religious freedom? Can’t the local pastor just go SOMEWHERE ELSE to get his necessary medication? Wouldn’t that be infringing on the atheist pharmacist right to not sell to only people whose lives he approves of? Oh wait that's a ridiculous example you say? But is it?

Deborah Kotz has more.

FYI -- I'm thrilled habladora has asked me to contribute to Feminist Underground.

--cross-posted at Feminist Underground.

Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain

2008-06-30T09:52:00.005-05:00

I was going to write about the deeply depressing ancedotes that the Washington Post has been finding about people who tell lies about Barack Obama.

And I was wondering why isn't there any similar group that tries to smear John McCain in a similar way.

Then I found out there was.

I don't actually agree with such campaigns. I know where anger it is born from, its the same place that people wanted to say John Kerry didn't deserve his Purple Hearts. It's the idea that someone's entire reputation is built on a (believed) foundation of lies, and only YOU know the truth. And if this was John McCain's first run for Senate I would say maybe its something to examine. But the man is 72 years old. Whatever his qualifications for president are, they aren't hinged on what he did for the Navy. Anymore than John Kerry's qualifications for president started and stopped with the idea that he saved Jim Rassmann's life.

I had a professor in U.S. History one time bring in a guest lecturer who for an hour tried to make the case that Newt Gingrich cheated his way to his ph.d. And the lecturer even had a pretty good theory. But in the end I said "So what? He'd not be the first person who didn't deserve his Ph.D." It's not like if you prove he didn't deserve his doctoral degree, you could change history and Gingrich doesn't become Speaker of the House.

Friday Cat Blogging: Al & Lena Cuddling

2008-06-27T07:09:00.003-05:00

I realized it's been a while since I posted a joint picture of both Al and Lena together. Unfortunately the Glowing Cat Eye of Evil somewhat ruins the effect of what was a very sweet moment of watching the two of them together.

Mike Erickson: Hypocrite For Congress

2008-06-25T10:59:00.003-05:00

So imagine you are a Republican candidate for Congress in Oregon, and you decide to run on a strict “morals” platform -- you know the deal, anti-abortion, abstinence-only education, anti-gay marriage. Then an ex-girlfriend turns up and says, you know what, that dude saying he’s against abortion and is god’s gift to babies, well when he and I dated and I got pregnant, he specifically told me he didn’t want to be a parent, so he gave me $300 and drove me to the abortion clinic, but then wouldn’t even go inside to comfort me.

What do you do if the woman can provide medical records and witnesses to back up her account? Do you deny what she said? Claim that you used to be pro-choice but after having an ex-girlfriend go through an abortion you changed your mind?

Or do you baldly lie about the situation, and say things like “I knew her pretty well but not like -- it wasn't my girlfriend -- but it was somebody that I had a relationship with” and “She asked for some money to go have a doctor's appointment -- not knowing what that was -- and whatever happened, happened, I guess. I didn't even know she had an abortion.”

It’s weird watching someone lie as badly as Mike Erickson is attempting to do.

Hat tip to apieceofwork on Feministing’s new community-based blog

Richard Cohen: McCain is Better Because He Was Tortured

2008-06-24T07:12:00.001-05:00

I guess because I spend a lot of time reading op-eds I always look for the clincher. What is the ultimate point, the real “take-away” from the column the writer wants you to know.

Richard Cohen’s point is that no matter that John McCain has reversed himself on too many issues to count, because he was once tortured it proves he’s got some backbone. (Likewise since Obama hasn’t been tortured, well we just don’t know about the guy...)

But here is the difference between McCain and Obama -- and Obama had better pay attention. McCain is a known commodity. It's not just that he's been around a long time and staked out positions antithetical to those of his Republican base. It's also -- and more important -- that we know his bottom line. As his North Vietnamese captors found out, there is only so far he will go, and then his pride or his sense of honor takes over. This -- not just his candor and nonstop verbosity on the Straight Talk Express -- is what commends him to so many journalists.

I guess Cohen never read the McCain “the man who once was tortured” also voted to allow the CIA to engage in torture. Then he backed the White House when the White House was pushing the line that waterboarding-wasn’t-torture. He might have said it was “unfortunate” but the fact remains by standing with the White House, he showed where his line in the sand is. Getting elected.

Washington Post Once Again Tries to Divide Women

2008-06-21T09:33:00.003-05:00

I really wish I could understand the minds of the editorial page editors of the Washington Post when they picked up this column by Mary C. Curtis of the Charlotte Observer. Ms. Curtis wants to know why aren't feminists defending the sexist treatment of Michelle Obama, and why aren't they over Hillary Clinton.

As a journalist, I have stayed neutral about political candidates. But as an American, I would have been excited about the historic first had Hillary Clinton emerged victorious from the Democratic primary battle. Yet when an African American made a different kind of history, it seems that feminists can't share in the triumph.

They don't have to vote for the husband to defend the wife.

Okay, I get it: Your candidate lost. You're angry.

But frankly, I'm getting a little peeved myself.

You could only write this kind of column if you willfully dismiss all evidence opposing your conclusion.

But really Ms. Curtis is just a prop for the Washington Post to once again try to start a fight between women. After all, why not elevate a writer who doesn't know what she's talking about as a way to lambast "feminists." So what exact was their thinking?

NCMR Photos & Minneapolis

2008-06-20T10:15:00.001-05:00

I've been promising for a while to post some photos I took during my trip to Minneapolis for the National Conference for Media Reform. The only conference-specific photo I had is one of the infamous polar bear suit. He was a symbol of the conference, but I'm not quite sure why.

However I did managed to snap some picture of a photographer taking a cover shot for a magazine to be released during the Republican convention. I'm not quite sure what the set up they were going for, but here's how it looked.

The photographer was trying out some poses. Here was on of him taking a photo of another guy taking a photo (while I'm behind him taking a photo.)

Finally I can't resist posting "Big Dog, Little Dog." There is a park next to the convention center and they were having a Bar-B-Que/Blues fest which attracted crowds. I got this one of a chihuahua owner trying to introduce his dog to a sweet-faced Great Dane.

Friday Cat Blogging: Olive Oil And Fur

2008-06-20T07:08:00.004-05:00

It's been a while since I've posted a Friday Cat Blogging post, and this week's picture isn't much to look at. The reason is that Al managed to sit on a little dish of olive oil this morning. Here's a closeup of the effected area.
I'm not sure Al even yet knows he's due for a shampoo although I've heard that olive oil is good for making hair really shiney.

Barack Obama's skin is the color of AMERICAN SOIL

2008-06-19T09:37:00.004-05:00

Maybe you've heard of a new website that has sprung up to combat the really horrible lies about Barack Obama? But sadly the best way to fight smears isn't to correct them (which involves repeating them) but actually to simply make up a whole bunch of new "facts" to push the smears out of your brain.

Some of you have read Christopher Beam's brilliant Slate piece to that effect. But my friend John Pinsonneault decided it needed to be much more patriotic. He encourages everyone to send this around and continue bumping up the bald eagle quotient. I'm sure Stephen Colbert would agree.

******************************

There are many things RED-BLOODED AMERICANS do not know about BARACK OBAMA. It is every American's SACRED duty to read this message and pass it along to all of their FELLOW PATRIOTS and CHURCH GOERS.

Barack Obama wears a FLAG PIN at all times. Even WHILE SERVING FIVE TOURS OF DUTY IN IRAQ SIMULTANEOUSLY.

Barack Obama says the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE every time he THINKS ABOUT an American flag WHICH IS ALWAYS. He also ends every sentence by saying, "WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL." Click here for video of Obama quietly mouthing the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE while READING THE CONSTITUTION.

A JERRY BRUCKHEIMER FILM exists of Michelle Obama saying the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE at a conference on PATRIOTISM.

Every DAY, Barack and Michelle take the daughters OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION HUNTING FOR TERRORISTS.

Barack Obama is a PATRIOTIC AMERICAN. He has one HAND over his TWENTY PURPLE HEARTS at all times. He occasionally switches when one NUCLEAR arm gets tired, which is almost never because he is AS STRONG AS AMERICAN STEEL.

Barack Obama has the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE tattooed on his SIX-PACK ABS. It's upside-down, so he can read it while DOING KEG-STANDS.

There's only one COUNTRY MUSIC artist on Barack Obama's iPod: FRANCIS SCOTT KEY.

Barack Obama is a DEVOUT CHRISTIAN. His favorite book is the BIBLE, which he has PLAYING ON A BOOM BOX NEXT TO HIM AT ALL TIMES. His name means HE WHO LOVES JESUS in the ancient language of THE FREEMASONS. He is PROUD that Jesus was a FOUNDING FATHER.

Barack Obama goes to WALL MART every morning. He goes to WALL MART every afternoon. He goes to WALL MART every evening. He is IN WALL MART RIGHT NOW.

Barack Obama's new AMERICAN BUILT F-15 TOMCAT includes a NASCAR TRACK, a MCDONALDS, and a MEGACHURCH.

Barack Obama's BLOOD is the color of AN AMERICAN FLAG. HE BLEEDS RED, WHITE AND BLUE.

Barack Obama buys AMERICAN STUFF. He owns a FORD FACTORY WHERE HE EMPLOYS OVER 50 MILLION AMERICANS, THE MLB, and ALL OF SILICON VALLEY. He travels mostly by BALD EAGLE.

Barack Obama says that Americans SPREAD GUNS and RELIGION THROUGHOUT THE WORLD because they were INVENTED BY GEORGE WASHINGTON.

Friend's Blogs

2008-06-17T10:07:00.002-05:00

Occassionally I try to turn the attention of my dozens of readers to friends' blogs and other worthwhile causes.

Today I wanted to point everyone to my friend Dave William's blog Autumn Rain. Dave is the author of the fabulous sci-fi novel Mirrored Heavens, a novel about space-based terrorism. Check it out ya'll.

American Is What We Say It Is, Damn it!

2008-06-16T13:35:00.002-05:00

Dan Froomkin's column has just some gems of Bush speak. He's been in Europe the whole week and therefore subjected to journalists questions. And not softball ones either.

Reading Bush always angries up the blood, but this week's column is chokful of Bush's-Theories-of-Americanism.

My (least) favorite snippet. Judge American not by what we do, but what we do.

"My only point to you is, is that yes, I mean, we certainly wish Abu Ghraib hadn't happened, but that should not reflect America. This was the actions of some soldiers. That doesn't show the heart and soul of America. What shows the heart and soul of America is the sacrifice of our troops willing to defend our country and liberate 50 million people, or the generosity of America when it comes to providing money for HIV/AIDS in Africa, or the fact that America feeds more of the hungry in the world than any other country. That's the true America."

America: Our good outweighs those torture pictures, really!

I think if I had the time I could demostrate that every single one of those statments is actually demostrably false in a way. "Liberate 50 million people." From their homes and sense of security maybe. Money for HIV/AIDS, as long as you don't include anything about family planning.

But Bush still won't own up to the fact that Abu Ghraib was actually "gov't" policy. The only part that wasn't was the picture taking.

The Not-For-Women Drugstores

2008-06-16T09:07:00.003-05:00

The Washington Post has an article about a new type of pharmacies that refuse to stock any kind of contraception, from condoms, to birth control to emergency contraception. The Post doesn't have any kind of numbers as to how many pharmacies of this type they found, there's clearly one in Chantilly, VA, Gray, LA, and Grand Rapids, Mich, mentioned in the article.

It's all about the wah-wah, poor pharmacists who might have to provide health services to women they disapprove of. (Which have we not been warning people that the disapproval doesn't not stop at abortion...it's your birth control they are after). It's not a religious freedom issue. No one is telling them they have to stock alcohol and skin mags. But to become a pharmacists you undergo more training than to become a sales clerk. You don't get to decide who you want to treat. Individuals (and their religious leaders) do not get to decide what professional standards they should follow. That's why they are licensed.

I'm really concerned about creating this exemption for religious doctors (and medical personnel) who decide they don't want to provide full care for women. Not to mention that the STORES ARE NOT LABELED! The pharmacist the Post interviews clearly say they don't refer anyone to the normal "for everyone" drugstores. So anyone in Chantilly want to track down this place and survey how they handle requests for birth control, verses requests for condoms?

NCMR Day 2: Greenwald and Fox News

2008-06-08T08:43:00.003-05:00

I'll have a fuller update later, but remember how I mentioned that Fox News was around filming for what will likely be a less-than-admirable segment on the conference (on monday, here's a teaser from Bill O'Reilly). Filmmaker Robert Greenwald called them out to the audience!

The panels I attended are swimming in my head. The one I actually want to go back and watch the video of is the FCC panel because I thought it had some of the most concrete information about the upcoming fights in Congress over spectrum. Watch HR 2802 and hope it passes.

The constant praise of "family owned newspapers" like the Seattle Times is grating to me. In 2000 Frank Blethen overode his own editorial board to endorse George W. Bush for president. Why? Because the abolishment of the estate tax is VERY IMPORTANT to the Blethen family. In 2001 I recall a five-day front page series on the Estate Tax which was all about how bad it was for small business owners (like millionaire publishers). The Seattle Times also behaved very differently during the 2001 newspaper strike than did the "corporately owned" Seattle Post-Intelligencer. (I promise to find links to these assertions later...)

For other takes on the day's panels Local MN Blog has a pretty good rundown.

National Conference for Media Reform: Day 1

2008-06-06T23:10:00.003-05:00

So I’m writing this from my hotel lobby in Minneapolis where I’m in town for Free Press’s annual conference for Media Reform. This is my first time at the conference (and actually my first non-DC conference) and I’m amazed at the size!

The first panel I attended, Media and Elections: Covering 2008, was in a room large enough to have an entire conference in. One thing that I noticed right off the bat, everyone from participants to panelists are constantly referring to “the media” as if it’s a singular entity that has a brain. As in “the media does this.” During the panel Dave Sirota started to say that we talk about the media in a paternalistic way, which for a moment I thought he was about to talk about the fact that “the media” is not one big clockwork, but closer to saying “the blogosphere” than people might think. I wish Jay Rosen was at the conference so he could explain this in person.

It just concerns me because how can you reform something if you misunderstand the flaws?

At another panel I attended Eric Deggans said “making allegations without backing them up is not good (media) criticism” a point I would love to stress. Complain all you want but gather real facts to back up complaints. I found it interesting that last week Project for Excellence in Journalism released a study of the media that demonstrated that, collectively, they did not treat Hillary Clinton harsher than either McCain or Obama (although coverage between media outlets might differ) but there still persists the sense that “the media” treated Hillary Clinton *worse* than Obama.

Other notes: I saw Fox News filming at the Media Critics panel. Meant to stop and ask them if they were a Fox local or Fox national. Bitch Ph.D apparently figured out they are here to show the conference as full of crazy conspiracy nuts.

Had a wonderful time at the Media Consortium’s mixer (excellent beer and I’m not even a beer drinker). Photos will have to wait until I get home, I left my camera cord at home. (Drat!)

I Spent the Weekend Urging Women Not to Write Like This

2008-05-19T10:27:00.001-05:00

So right after I spent a weekend teaching women that the most effective op-eds rarely need the phrase “I think” in them and should have point, suddenly in the Washington Post’s Outlook section is the silliest, most pointless ode to Sex in the City. (Sunday’s Post was an ode to overly-long, overly-pointless odes to movies. There was also this “what does Indiana Jones mean” article, but at least it was in the style section).

I cannot for the life of me figure out what is the point to Ashley Sayeau’s article. It’s basically about how she relates to Sex in the City because once she wrote an academic paper about it. Which, fine, I know some things about writing academic papers about TV shows, but to be relevant to other readers it might have been useful not to use the phrase “I thought” or “I think” or “I believe” close to 30 times! It ends up being not about her research but just that she’s an academic who is a fan who squeals with delight seeing the movie premier. Great.

She’s not even a local writer. She’s a freelancer in London. Why does she get front page of the Sunday Outlook section to write what amounts to an overlong, fan-specific, blog post?

Combine this with the infamous Charlotte Allen “Women are dumb” op-ed you have to wonder what John Pomfret, Sunday Outlook editor wants his section to say to women. I don’t believe he’s not getting great, substantial Outlook submissions. I think he’s making his section reflect certain type of believe that women are shallow and dumb.

What’s Great About My Job

2008-05-18T19:01:00.002-05:00

I know I haven’t posted in three weeks. (Has it really been that long? God I’m bad at this). Part of the reason is that work got busy. But I’m not complaining, in fact I actually wanted to rave about my job.

Twice a year my organization puts on these media trainings for women. We teach them how to get their message out in the media, but more specifically, how to write an op-ed, how to speak to the media, and how to present yourself on television and radio. And it’s a pretty intense two-day training. We’re helping people perfect the op-eds they write during the training, and putting them on camera and showing them how to speak. I really do think that without all these organizations specifically trying to get women’s voices into the pundit class, we wouldn’t even have the (bad enough) representation we do have. I’m not just talking about talking heads on TV. I look at the op-ed pages every day in the LA Times, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Women are barely 25% of the daily op-ed pages. And all-male opinion page isn’t rare but an all women page is practically a once-a-year affair. (And only if the news is about prostitution.)

And the thing we don’t really talk about all that much is we put on the training pretty much for free. We even help cover the cost of airfare and housing in DC because we want to train women outside the beltway to be able to become advocates for the causes going on in their states.

I met just an awesome collection of women this weekend. It was a total range of ages -- we had women from high school to the “when I was in high school women weren’t allowed to wear pants” ages. And there was a really diverse mix of jobs, interests and projects.

I was just so proud of not only how well it all came together but how happy every one was. These women will go back to their communities and hopefully in some small way we’ve given them tools to accomplish their goals.

It’s funny because as got home and jumped on my computer to catch up on my email I got a notice from Mediabistro. They are offering a $500 online course on how to write an op-ed. And I don’t want to entirely dump on Mediabristro because, whatever, its just a class. But people shouldn’t think that op-ed writing is only for “professionals” (who take expensive classes).

The opinion pages are not supposed to be a gated community. It’s not enough that there’s also a “Letters” page that just happens to be open to the public if they want to submit a point in 300 words or less. And most editors would tell you they want to get guest column submissions. I’ve talked to women, truly opinionated women, who think that op-ed columns are something that only someone like a Maureen Dowd can write. (Which by the way...can we vote her off pundit island and replace her with woman who isn’t all wit and no intellect.) Half the time if someone writes and op-ed the only thing that keeps it from getting it published is they didn’t have a friend tell them at 1,000 words it’s way too long (or at 350 words it’s way too short).

But I think some people think that only “professionals” get to be opinion-leaders in their newspapers. And that’s just not true. People who have something to advocate for should write, not just for their blogs, but yes for the “mainstream media.” It’s not as closed off as everyone thinks.

A Future Imagined by Conservatives

2008-04-27T20:01:00.004-05:00

Washington Post Magazine has an imaginative article written by Marc Fisher about what life would be like in Washington, DC in 2025. Why 17 years and not a nice round 20? I guess because 2025 just sounded cooler than 2028.

Now I normally like this kind of imagine-how-we’ll-all-be-driving-flying-cars-and-have-robot-servants kind of thinking, but as I started reading between the lines I noticed there were an awful lot of straight up conservative ideology being passed off as “the inevitable future.”

Let’s start with Marc Fisher’s causal assumption in both future scenarios he envisions, which follow two families (both nuclear), one which is supposed to be have and the other a have-not, that the U.S. is besieged by waves of terrorist attacks. It’s the world of 24-OMG-terrorists. I suppose fear is important element to keep alive if you want people to give up all of their rights and liberties.

In scenario one Heath Shuler is president so we can see how all the democratic ideals to keep sprawl down will fail in every way possible.

Shuler's lure was the great open spaces that were now finally fully linked to AmeriWeb, the wireless information network that extended into every community in the land, the result of the most massive public works project since the construction of the interstate highway system.

The Second Age of Discovery, as Shuler called it, was designed to spread out the nation's population from the traffic-choked suburbs and therefore ease the road, rail and air gridlock that was strangling the economy.

Because Democrats are concerned about global warming, gridlock and making sure people have internet access.

What could be changed was the idea that the only way to keep housing affordable was for workers to live far from their jobs. The new acceptance of a more diffused population didn't do much to preserve open spaces, but Shuler and other politicians sold the idea by dangling before employers and workers alike the carrot of jobs and homes in close proximity. The idea was to engineer a significant drop in driving, which, coupled with striking increases in energy efficiency, would yield sharp declines in consumption of fossil fuels.

But what fools they were!

Alas, as the Ververs would learn, reality did not live up to political rhetoric. Finding a job near home turned out to be harder than the president's pronouncements made it out to be.

Journalism falls apart – left to a “ragtag crew of volunteers working out of their cars and bedrooms” ... shouting “Wolverines!” no doubt. Meanwhile Victor Verver’s job is monitoring blogs for government contractors in case “any opinion wildfire might be threatening the policymakers in his assigned sector.” Would that be Oceania or Eurasia?

However in the future (both scenarios) we don’t have to worry about those pesky Spanish-speaking brown people. Any brown people with a $1 million dollars – which really shouldn’t be all that much in 2025 – are allowed in and all the brown people from Central America leave.

Besides, Prince William's schools were imploding, losing an entire school's worth of Hispanic students each year as recent immigrants steadily left the county, an exodus fueled by both pressure -- tough enforcement programs aimed at illegal immigrants -- and the lure of the good money back home in Central America, where the service, hospitality and health industries were hungry for workers around the huge retirement colonies filled with septuagenarian boomers from El Norte.

Yes, somehow in the future FTAA has fixed the economies of poorer countries...I mean why else are people still sneaking in America. Didn’t NAFTA totally fix Mexico’s economy so no one wanted to immigrate anymore? But just in case it didn’t, we really totally cracked down on illegals this time!

Anyway there’s definitely one odd contradiction in this future. Somehow we fight a Total War for Energy Independence (because after all, how did our oil get under their land) but yes a mere four years later the “middle east” is now more welcoming and secular.

(To the great surprise of many, while energy prices soared steadily for almost two decades after the 9/11 attacks, in the past few years the cost of fossil fuels had stabilized. Depending on your political ideology, this was the result of either the Total War for Energy Independence that President Jeb Bush launched in 2021, or of Iran's velvet revolution and the new openness toward the West that the secular-friendly Young Islam movement was exporting across the Middle East.)

You can’t read it in the online version, but the magazine has several cutaway quotes that explain the thinking of the article’s consulted experts. So this passage:

Victor had suggested that she might be able to teach at one of the new, private Asian Academies that wealthy Indian, Pakistani, Chinese and Korean Americans had opened to train the children of new immigrants for jobs in the tech, health and communications sectors.

Is highlighted with a cutaway quote:

Our panelists are almost unanimous in declaring that the District’s public school system will have to be dissolved, sold off or otherwise disposed of. Not one of our panelists sees much hope for success in the reform efforts of the early 21st century. Gary Marx, president of the Center for Public Outreach in Vienna, foresees a decision to shut down industrial-age schools and reinvent education with a heavy emphasis on expanding the ranks of creative workers and diminishing differences across national borders.

Really, the roughly 223-year-old experiment in public schools is going to collapse in a mere 17 years?

It this part that made me wonder who all these “panelists” were and if they were shared in an libertarian/conservative ideology of privatization in everything? Because the ideas are certainly interspaced throughout the article. Businesses provide everything from housing to busing to workers who can’t afford to work for them otherwise. And this isn’t presented as a dystopian future...merely the byproduct of, well sprawl.

And that’s just scenario one (which I’ll spare you all the boring isolation-of-the-electronic-age bullshit. How people can’t even make real friends now that the internet exists).

In Scenario Two there’s still that Total War for Energy Independence and terrorism, a “beloved top general” was just assassinated (in battle? Cause wouldn’t that just be a causality of war then?) Oh yeah and there just happens to be a GIANT NUCLEAR HOLE IN MANHATTAN. Yet somehow the family of have-nots (this time called the Pinerios) lives are shaped more by air-conditioning than terrorism. DC has been turned into a Baghdad with a Green Zone. The poor Pinerios can’t afford the security clearance implants so commuting takes hours to cross checkpoints.

Once again, public schools barely exist. (Funny how that’s true in both scenarios).

Petra, being 15, was loath to leave her hard-won place at the District's Wilson High School, which was operated by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees government workers union. She didn't want to give up her post as president of the school's Anti-PED Campaign, which agitated for a return to the days before officially sanctioned performance-enhancing drugs had changed the face of scholastic athletics. But over time, Paula convinced her daughter that a new school would have a far superior academic program and more kids like herself. It's not that Petra had anything against the Chinese and Iranian immigrants who dominated Wilson's population; she just sometimes felt excluded from their social circles.

I take it to mean little Petra Pinerio is white. Damn those immigrants’ kids.

Still there are parts to scenario two that remind me a hell of a lot of the dystopian novel Jennifer Government who’s daughter bemoaned the fact she went the McDonald's schools cause they were so darned cheap. Everyone knew the Pepsi schools were the best.

In Konterra, Petra wouldn't be a minority -- no one is. Fed High, like all of Prince George's County, had no dominant racial or ethnic group. And with the entire county school system now operated by Google PeopleShaping, Fed High was free of all No Child Left Behind regulations, free to offer a full range of courses in subjects that the city's schools hadn't taught in decades, such as music and drama.

And once again we find that any fears about civil liberties were proven to be totally wrong.

Then there were the national ID cards that, once the controversy died down, really had helped to control the borders, redefine labor markets and reduce health costs.

Real ID cards also fixed the national debt, put a chicken in every pot and helped me find my car keys!

Anyway somehow despite all the superbrillant Chinese immigrants there still isn’t enough, ahem, “homegrown” workers to fill the need for workers. (Why, oh, why did we keep out all those talented brown people?)

But in the future women now get college grants if they pledge to give birth.

By enrolling in a Google-sponsored school, Petra would automatically qualify for one of the new Brin college grants for young women who pledged their intent to bear children -- a policy aimed at relieving the persistent shortage of well-educated, homegrown workers.

Plus DC residents will desperately cross the Maryland border for the ”fried food speakeasies.” People will just do anything for their oil fix, man!

So, in short, the future is racist, fearful, undersurveillance, privatized, and people eat Soylent Green.

Friday Cat Blogging: Digusted By The News

2008-04-25T07:11:00.006-05:00

Time for another Friday guest cat pic, this time from my long-time poster Jon. His own title for the pic, "Oliver disgusted after reading the news."

I'm also pretty digusted by the news this week. Senate Republicans managed to block any voting on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act that would restore the right to sue for pay discrimination (without getting technical, the Supreme Court has set up a standard that is impossible to reach. So no woman who is actually discriminated against can get relief).

Six Republicans joined the Democrats but I can't wrap my head around the others' thinking on this. Do Republicans really just not care? Do they think "well sure some women get screwed over but if we allowed them to sue for discrimination the U.S. economy would be hurt. Therefore some women just have to take one for the team." ("the team" being U.S. profits).

There were some objections to the bill based on some provisions...okay, but in the two years since the Supreme Court case its not like the Republicans have sponsored even a competing bill. So again, they agree its a problem, but object to how this bill is written and then not once made fixing the problem their issue. The Republican position is "we agree pay discrimination against women is a problem...we simply don't care if it fixed." Oh yeah, and McCain finally came out against it. Women need more training, not protection from assholes who think it's okay to pay them less because they are women.

Another Thought of the Day

2008-04-17T15:10:00.003-05:00

10 percent of registered voters think Barrack Obama is a muslim. Even among those who say they have heard a lot about the controversy about Obama's affiliation with the United Church of Christ and its controversial minister, the Rev. Wright, 9% still identify Obama as Muslim. I guess Rev. Wright's robe looked really Muslim-y despite the fact he's called a REVEREND.

Should I be happy or sad that 9 percent of independent voters think he's a Muslim?

Book Review: World Made By Hand

2008-04-13T10:36:00.006-05:00

I haven’t done a book review yet, but World Made By Hand by James Howard Kunstler was something I couldn’t put down when I was in Boston. I knew nothing about the author, who wrote the non-fiction book The Long Emergency, about what happens to the world when oil runs out. Well in World Made By Hand he crafts the answer. The world looks like a cross between the 19th century wild west and a Stephen King’s The Stand (with maybe a little first-season Jericho thrown-in. Actually this was the direction I had hoped Jericho would have followed...)

The protagonist of the book is Robert Earle, a widowed former software executive-turned carpenter living in a Union Grove, New York. The novel takes place about a decade or so after a few nuclear bombs went out, followed by a plague, and suddenly everyone is still readjusting to the new world, which looks a lot like the old one, one with a early-to-bed-early-to-rise workaday existence. (Because the only light is provided by candles and the only labor is done by hand, or maybe by ploughshare pulled by horses, if you are lucky enough to afford a horse.)

Kunstler knows how to paint a vivid portrait of this new world. I loved the descriptions (and explanations) of what is the purpose of a summer kitchen. And reemergence of docks as river trade is one of the only connections to life outside Union Grove. The author is good at making you fully miss the depravations the characters do, like airplanes and sugar. (They get excited about sorghum being planted).

The Stephen King side of the story is that a new religious cult moves into the town’s old high school. Very late in the novel there is a Neo-meets-The-Oracle scene which opens up a world of possibilities for the future. The only problem with the book is that is lazy in tracing a plot, as the author is much more interested in examining every detailed corner of this new world. But because those details are so interesting one doesn’t mind the long parts that read like Laura Ingalls Wilder (there’s even a barn dance).

In the end a World Made By Hand is the kind of place where I love to visit vicariously through fiction, but, despite what I can see as a certain appeal, I don’t want to live there. However I would love to spend more time in Kunstler’s world and I’m hoping he’ll write a sequel.

Friday Cat Blogging: Lena's Basket

2008-04-11T06:59:00.002-05:00

It's been a while since I used a Lena photo for Friday Cat Blogging. Unlike Al, Lena has a sleeping basket. Oddly enough its one of the few places Al doesn't attempt to push Lena aside. It's like he understands that the basket is her personal space.

Thought of the Day

2008-04-10T05:55:00.004-05:00

Sweden has taken in 40,000 Iraqi refugees while America has only taken in 6,000 (which were mostly people who worked as translators and fixers for the U.S.).

Friday Cat Blogging: How You Doing?

2008-04-04T07:30:00.003-05:00

After several weeks of guest cats, we're back to our feature star, Al the deaf cat. The lighting didn't work out quite as well as I hoped in this shot, but I wish you all could see the look Al is giving. It's very Joey "so how you doing?"

Wam 2008 Wrap Up

2008-03-31T10:23:00.006-05:00

Well I’m back from my weekend adventures in Boston (which went swimmingly until I left my bag on the shuttle to long-term parking in Baltimore resulting in an hour and 45-minute roundtrip drive to retrieve it. Ah well.) I've learned that if I want to blog and travel I'm probably going to have to buy a laptop sometime this year...

First off let me say the Center for New Words, and Jaclyn Friedman rocks. This was my first time attending the Women, Action & the Media Conference (official name of WAM! 2008) and apparently it’s doubled in sized since 2007. Roughly 600 attendees came this year and yet somehow Jaclyn made putting on a conference look easy. I have no idea how she did it, but I was impressed how smoothly everything ran. Plus they fed us at every turn and you can’t help but appreciate it.

Going to a conference like this can be totally energizing, and also really helpful to see the good that my organization, American Forum and the National Women’s Editorial Forum, does. (Here you can see women talking to my coworker Sui Lang after our panel discussion "You in the Commentary Continuum: Crafting an Op-Ed." Great smile Sui Lang!)

I ran into so many women who have written for us and I talked to a lot of great women who are also eager to write op-eds. I encouraged a lot of people to consider applying for our May media training session in Washington, DC. (Anyone interested in learning how to get their messages out in the media, print/TV/radio, should think about applying. We’re looking for candidates from across the country and there are scholarships available to offset travel costs.)

I also grabbed some neat “conference swag” from Planned Parenthood. This is an array of flavored lubes including mint, watermelon, strawberry-kiwi, bubble gum (?!) and pina colada. Ahh, I love freebies like these.

As for the panels, one of the best ones I attended was “Breaking the Frame: Revitalizing and Redefining Reproductive Rights Media Coverage” with Emily Douglas from RH Reality Check, Aimee Thorn-Thomsen, executive director of Pro-Choice Public Education Project, Cristina Page, author (and columnist who’s written for American Forum) and Amada Marcotte, host of RealityCast and blogger on Pandagon.

One thing I noticed as a bit of theme for the weekend was how frequently progressive media is not entirely supportive of women. It’s a trend I’ve noticed from backdoor stories about how some liberal organizations still seem to think that women’s issues are secondary, or “fluffy” or that having one woman author amongst a sea of white men is somehow progressive. Its sad to think we have to continue these discussions with what should be already supportive partners. It's hard to continue these conversations with both mainstream publications and alternative voices.

In any case, I prefence that to bring up the fact that during the panel Cristina Page mentioned that Jon Stewart’s booker told her “Jon’s never going to do an episode on abortion, it’s just not funny.” Which Page rightly pointed out that what is naturally “funny” about Iraq? Moreover, if the issue is just to “avoid” talking about controversial topics, Stewart had no problem bringing on Ramesh Ponnuru to talk about his book “Party of Death” which is about the Democratic Party’s commitment to keeping abortion legal. So it’s apparently not controversial to bring on anti-abortion authors, but pro-choice...phweett! “Not funny.”

Amanda Marcotte brought up what I thought was an interesting point that talking about abortion also means talking about sex. I think Americans, if we’re not prudish exactly, are happily judgmental about other people’s sex lives. I mentioned to the panel an op-ed column in the Washington Post a couple years ago by a well-to-do 42-year-old woman who found out it was hard to get emergency contraception and then ended up getting an abortion because she became pregnant. A lot of the commentary and the live chat that followed her column chastised for not living her life perfectly (and for having the abortion) proof that the public can always figure out how someone else could have run their lives.

It’s sad because I sometimes thing we need to talk more about personal abortion stories. Ms Magazine had the “We Had Abortions” issue but it was just a list of names, not stories. As Cristina Page pointed out on the panel “We have statistics, and [anti-choicers] have heart-breaking stories.” It’s not that I think we should engage in tit-for-tat narratives -- because part of being pro-CHOICE means that I don’t have to endorse your choice -- I just have to allow you the agency to make that choice yourself about whether to become a parent. (Frankly sometimes I think a lot of people shouldn’t have become parents...)

But, because it's extremely difficult to talk about later-term abortions (where the anti-choicers have shifted all the rhetoric) and the reasons why they may be performed, I think our side does need to present some personal stories to help explain why abortion is a personal story for every woman.

Friday Cat Blogging: Feminist Cats

2008-03-28T00:25:00.000-05:00

This week we have yet another of my Portland friend's cats. This one is Humphrey (as in Bogart), posing with a Portland Mercury.

I'll let Melissa explain:

Humphrey is the biggest of the three brothers from the litter, and has the most unique eyes. Many folks comment on how beautiful he is, but he does seem to be aware - as he's the most aloof. Notice the one white cheek, which makes him the most asymmetric of the bunch - hence the name Humphrey Bogart. His sister Ingrid Bergman has been the ONLY adopted kitty from the litter of six, living here in Portland with my friend Emily and her son Jade.

In any case I am off to Boston for the weekend of feminism activism at WAM!2008. I'm hoping to post some pictures and reports of what I see, but lacking a laptop, we'll see what kind of updates I can manage.

R.I.P. Television Without Pity

2008-03-24T13:58:00.005-05:00

I'm coming to this funeral way late, but the founders of Television Without Pity, Wing Chung, Sars and Glark, earlier this month announced they were leaving the site almost exactly a year after Bravo acquired it.

There were rumors that Miss Alli (a long-term recapper) was potentially going to take over day-to-day management but on March 17 she announced (via Survivor recap) that she was also leaving the site. For those who are interested, Bravo apparently thought that many of the long-term recappers would be happy to keep working for the same rates that Wing, Sars, and Glark paid them, despite the fact the nature of the work now had entirely changed. This is how corporations think, that talent is interchangeable.

I've been reading Twop since it was Mighty Big Television back in 2000 (and have a yellow messenger bag with old Indian Chief Test Pattern logo, that I carry around everyday to prove it). In all honestly I believe reading the recaps actually taught me something about critical analysis. Some of the best recaps I've ever read were about horrible shows or horrible episodes. For example, M. Giant's recap of this episode of 24 from its fourth season, was a perfect valve for my rage at the sheer fascist worldview of its showrunner.

And Jacob's recap of The Apprentice finale from season four (also known as the Randal and Rebecca season) I felt brought the universe back into the proper order where we can acknowledge that Donald Trump is a giant asshole even though he's got a TV show where people grovel at him.

I started reading Twop just after college and in a way it was the first bit of analysis that taught me pop culture, and its messages matter. That even shallow shows reflect a point-of-view and that often reality TV is hiding a lot from its viewers (especially shows starring Jeff Probst).

I don't think I can really even say, without sounding sappy, how much perspective Twop ultimately gave me and how I feel like I watch TV smarter than I used to.

But I suspected when the founders agreed to let Bravo buy them, it was pretty much the beginning of the end, but, they were small business owners. Who was I to tell them "no, I forbid you to ever make money off your backbreaking creative endeavour." If someone offered me a lot of money to buy my blog, I doubt I'd be able to say no.

In a way, I feel like it was inevitable. People usually get burnt out running organizations. Things that start small on the internet blow up and burst (or mature and change). The body of Twop will likely live on for quite a while, but the spirit is going to die. Without the founders the spirit of the site is gone.

Television Without Pity is Gone. Long Live Twop! ---catrina (my Twop name)

Update on "Pushing Out Legals"

2008-03-24T07:25:00.002-05:00

Last week the Washington Post wrote a story about Nelson Lopez, a legal Virginia resident who was possibly going to be denied the right to in-state college tutuion fees because his parents are illegal immigrants.

Well shortly after the Post's story appeared suddenly the University of Virginia decided to grant him one of the special circumstances waivers, so the kid gets to pay the same rate as every other legal Virginia resident.

Apparently the state attorney general's office responded to a request for clarification as to when such waivers could be granted.

"I think in circumstances where an applicant has spent his or her life in Virginia, has been educated in Virginia schools, has gotten his or her driver's license in Virginia -- even though financially dependent on their parents -- that individual has done all that he or she could do at that age to establish a domicile independent of their parents. I think the memo was helpful to us in pointing the way," [said Andrea Leeds Armstrong of U-Va.'s committee on Virginia status.]

I get the idea that they would like to look and see how much of a resident the student is, getting a drivers' licence, etc. But why should becoming financially independent of their parents and establishing a separate home be part of those requirements?

The only explaination I could even think of is that the state wants the legal (adult) children of illegal immigrants to make sure that they aren't tainted by their parents somehow. Seriously, why else require they not be like every other 18-22 year old who gets help for college from their parents, including sometimes living at home to save money.

By the way, I'm not sure exactly what Lopez's circumstances are, but this is the description of his family from the original story.

He says his family, five people squeezed into a two-bedroom apartment, could never afford out-of-state rates.

Why is SNL Dissing The Daily Show?

2008-03-19T16:58:00.005-05:00

Twice in one week now I've read a quote from someone at SNL taking a potshot at The Daily Show.

First in Entertainment Weekly Seth Meyers is quoted:

''We're the only people that dramatize the news,'' says head writer Meyers. ''We can go to a place where The Daily Show can't.''

And then my friend just pointed me to a interview with Tina Fey in Reader's Digest.

RD: What pleases you more, applause or laughter?
Fey: Laughter. You can prompt applause with a sign. My friend, SNL writer Seth Meyers, coined the term clapter, which is when you do a political joke and people go, "Woo-hoo." It means they sort of approve but didn't really like it that much. You hear a lot of that on [whispers] The Daily Show.

Is SNL suddenly insecure about its place in the political commentary spectrum? I don't understand why when for the first time in years people are actually talking about its political skits.

I'm sorry SNL, The Daily Show does it four times a week, 46 weeks a year. In the same EW article Lorne Michaels is quoted saying he's going to tough it out by putting on four shows IN A ROW. The first time its been done since 1976. Whoo-hoo.

Sometimes one show gets more credit simply by creating more product for fans to digest.

But really, Meyers/Fey...you don't have to be jealous of Stewart/Colbert. It's not like SNL is 30 Rock and The Daily Show is Studio 60 on The Sunset Strip. You can both be good shows with good political commentary. I just think The Daily Show is better.

Does The LA Times Op-Ed Editor Hate Women?

2008-03-19T11:34:00.004-05:00

Sometimes editorial judgments can’t be called into question until you notice a pattern. Publish one widely-criticized questionable woman-hating op-ed, and maybe you can just say it’s a goof.

But I’ve been reading the Los Angeles Times op-ed pages for a month now as part of my job’s Women’s Monitor project (wherein we encourage people from across the country to monitor their newspapers op-ed pages and count how many women are published on any given day. Hint: The answer is always few if any) and the LA Times editorial pages really are making me questions if they know how much their editorial choices reflect how much they hate women?

Is any one particular op-ed? Like the one on February 24 by Heather MacDonald that says basically “rape crisis? There’s no rape crisis…its just women having one-night stands and regretting it.” Which wasn’t all that different from (the unfortunately widely reprinted) Meghan Daum’s column which should have been titled “Sluts, I see sluts everywhere! Damn you feminism!”

Or its staff columnist Rosa Brooks who decided to get angry at Hillary Clinton over Elliot Spitzer’s behavior? (But not McCain or Obama…just Hillary).

Or Patty Kelly who seems to think that the model for decriminalizing prostitution is Mexico?! And absolutely not Sweden (which actually might have the best solution for balancing women’s rights and safety). Everything she wrote makes me wonder if actually spoke Spanish to the women she interviewed. Sample bit of cluelessness:

Of the 140 women who worked at the Galactic Zone, as the brothel was called, only five had a pimp (and in each of those cases, they insisted the man was their boyfriend).

I guess she doesn’t know its pretty common for women to think of their pimp as their boyfriend.

Or maybe its having that Elizabeth Wurtzel write about feminism. Here’s a sample:

Feminism, which was meant to be fun, has lately started to seem so sour. Men, particularly married men, often dislike Hillary Clinton, and I suspect that it's because she represents the unsexy wing of the women's movement. She comes across as nearly neutered, as the woman whose husband would cheat on her -- and, in fact, we know he did. But it cannot be the case that we went through all that bra-burning and consciousness-raising to be left choosing between, yet again, the madonna or the whore.

Because feminism today is all about herself and what she can write without doing any research. And, no, having someone write a “Blowback” response column isn’t the right response either. Now it become a pitted debate: “Feminists, do they suck or actually do some good? You decide!”

And sometimes the editorial choices are just stupid. Like the University of Washington professor who felt the need to argue that expecting men to be monogamous is like asking them to be like worms or something. And yes, here’s the rebuttal column they ran several days later.

This seems to be the pattern. Run some terrible outrageous column that discusses some aspect of femaleness or women’s sexuality, and then, as the outraged letters appear, run a response column. Presto! Now you have balance. Something shitty said about women and something said to refute it. Great. I guess as long as you run a response column everything is okay.

It wasn’t until I started counting the day’s columns for the number of women authors (which many days there weren’t any, and many days the only woman printed wrote something derogatory about women’s behavior) that I started to get really angry at the LA Times and what they think their Op-Ed pages are for. What kind of debates and ideas do they want discussed on them and frankly, who qualifies to talk about what subjects.

Sure, Joel Stein writes a really shitty column about women, but if you look at the Op-Ed pages over time you figure out that’s just par for the course at the LA Times. He’s not an outlier, he fits right in.

God Rewards Evildoers

2008-03-19T10:40:00.003-05:00

God, why does anything good happen to Joe Francis?

Joe Francis reached out to Ashley Alexandra Dupre, now 22, with an offer of $1 million to appear in a non-nude spread for his company's new magazine, plus a chance to join the "Girls Gone Wild" tour bus, his company announced Tuesday.

But Francis said someone had a revelation at the Tuesday morning staff meeting: Did anyone think to check the archives?

They did, he said -- and there she was.

"It'll save me a million bucks," Francis said Tuesday. "It's kind of like finding a winning lottery ticket in the cushions of your couch."

Serious, the universe is unjust when evil like his gets rewarded and his smug assholism is once again in the news for exploiting women.

Pushing Out "Legals" Are We?

2008-03-14T11:03:00.005-05:00

So when can you be a resident of a state, a tax-paying citizen and still be denied the right to in-state college tutition? Apparently if your parents are illegal immigrants.

Until I read the story in the Washington Post today that in my home state of Virginia, American citizens ages 18 to 24 are being denied in-state tuition at state colleges and universities if they can't prove that their parents are also legal citizens. (Why 24? Because apparently that's the age everyone thinks you are no longer financially connected to your parents. Yeah, I know a lot of people who have been screwed out of going to college or had a very difficult time because of this rule. Many states demand tax statements from BOTH parents, despite the fact that a lot of people don't have two parents involved in their lives.)

I cannot think of a valid reason for this law to exist. Even if the blah-blah-blah "they're illegal!" reason is the excuse, that shouldn't apply to the 18 to 24 years olds who are in fact, born in this country. This is not even about scholarship funds or any kind of hand-out. It's simply about whether someone who attended school in Virginia, and is a legal resident, should be allowed to pay the same in-state tuition fees that any other legal resident of Virginia is asked to pay.

I keep asking myself if there's a way to be anti-illegal-immigrant without being, at some level, kind of racist. My gut tells me (and also a lot of examples) that scratch just a hare-breathe beneath the "they're illegal" whining you find someone is really just want to keep non-white, non-Christians out of their town/state/country and focusing on the "illegal" part because that is socially-acceptable.

Otherwise please explain to me what is the motivation for blocking LEGAL CITIZENS the right to attend college?

Overpaying for Sex

2008-03-11T14:11:00.003-05:00

One of the most annoying comments about the Elliot Spitzer prostitute scandal so far has come from Slate's XX Factor blog. Liza Mundy said that Spitzer "overpaid" and Rachael Larimore's comment:

The other factor that sets this apart is the same thing that attracted our attention to so many of the rich-guy criminals who Spitzer busted as A.G.: the dollar signs. Spitzer's alleged that $4,300 night with a prostitute is as outlandish to most of us as Dennis Kozlowski's $6,000 shower curtain.

What grates is the notion that sex with a woman shouldn't be worth *that* much. I'm neither advocating for prostitution nor against it, but if the free market will support $4,300 for a night in the hay, then that is what the job is "worth" to Spitzer, and more importantly, that's what having sex with Spitzer was worth to the women who did it.

This is like arguing who is the most overpaid NBA player, but instead now it's about whether that woman's vagina is really worth all that money -- and if you can't see why that's actually insulting to all women, the point is that womens' vaginas don't have a set value anymore than anyone else's skills.

It's true that many, if not most prostitutes and call girls work for far less than that, but that isn't because the inherant value of sex work is somehow set below $100 or $500 or whatever anyone think Spitzer "should" have paid for sex.

Friday Cat Blogging: More Portland Cats

2008-03-07T07:54:00.004-05:00

Another week of cats from my Portland friend Melissa. This is what she adds:

This is Rex Harrison, named after the late philandering silver-haired actor.

I named this litter of six kittens after celebrities, just as they name the polydactyl cats at the Hemingway Home in Key West, FL. (Rex is Oscar's brother.)

Rex is posing on top of a Willamette Week.

So it's been another week without posts. So what's happening NewsCat?

Work, life, the usual. Last Sunday I was going to write about the idoicy of the Washington Post's decision to publish Charlotte Allen's opus "Women are Stupid" in their esteemed Outlook pages. But by the time I got my thoughts together other people had said everything that needed to be said. If there's been any silver lining to the Charlotte Allen piece, it's that I discovered Lauren Rozen's blog, War and Piece, which is a sharp piece of writing.

Maybe next week I'll have more time to write, or the world will be less stupid. One can always have hope either way.

Friday Cat Blogging: The Return!

2008-02-29T07:51:00.004-05:00

Friday Cat Blogging is back baby! And once again we have a guest cat appearance. This is from my Portland friend, Melissa: Oscar Wilde. He does seem to love reading his Portland Mercury.

According to her Oscar Wilde is also known as "AKA Bosco, AKA Piss Factory." He is one of ELEVEN cats that she owns. ( and I might add she's married!) That's enough cats to keep Friday cat blogging in guest cat pics for months. She also wrote that she likes his David Niven 'stash. It took me a while to see it, and then I couldn't see anything but.

Anyway aside from my regular day job of trying to keep the teens from becoming pregnant, I've been attending panels about abstinence-only education (which were gate-crashed by abstinence-only teachers) and reading the book about adoption "The Girls Who Went Away." I feel like there's some kind of blog coming up about all that.

In the meantime, Virginia's Senate voted to cut off funds to Planned Parenthood this week (the House had been really eager to do it months ago. And this is DESPITE the fact that Democrats are in power in both bodies).

The Main culprit: Democrat Sen. Charles J. Colgan from Prince William County. He switched his votes which allowed the vote to go to a tie so that the Lieutenant Governor would break it to side with the Republicans.

We're talking about $250,000 to $500,000 that has normally been budgeted for Planned Parenthood. Funds that NEVER apply for abortion services. I'm talking about providing pap smears, ob-gyn examinations and low-cost birth control. Clearly services you don't want your communities to have. (I've love it if Sen. Colgan can now explain to his Prince William County residents where they will get their low-cost birth control?) I mean, there are plenty of low-income health clinic around that we can afford to shut some down right?

Lack of Posts

2008-02-28T20:22:00.003-05:00

For my readers, all five of you, I guess I wanted to say that there will be Friday Cat Blogging tommorrow. (I really want to shout "I'VE ABANDONED MY BLOG! I'VE ABANDONED MY CHILD!") If you haven't noticed, I tend to get annoyed with myself when I have a week with no posts other than Cat Blogging. So, in order to avoid the embarrassment I've gotten into the habit of "skipping" a Friday Cat Blogging post if I haven't posted anything in a week. Not a particularly honest reason to skip posting, but there ya go.

My job has gotten incredibly busy lately, what with trying to teach kids not to be abstinent and everything. (As Jon Stewart says, thank god for knocked up teens).

Anyway, once again, there will be posting again soon. But for now, enjoy pictures of my roommate's cats.

Friday Cat Blogging: Dangling Paw

2008-02-15T22:23:00.003-05:00

Quite a late Friday Cat Blogging tonight but I just took this adorable picture.

Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days, And Abortion Politics

2008-02-13T10:54:00.003-05:00

Ever since I’d heard of the subject matter of “Four Months, Three Weeks & Two Days,” I’ve been calling it “the Romanian abortion movie.” It’s essentially about two women and the lengths they must go to obtain an abortion in Romania in 1987. It is not a pleasant movie to sit through. I think the scene with the kittens is about the only “nice” thing to look at in the movie.

Because of the nature of my career I felt I had to see movie. I spend a lot of time working for reproductive rights but I think what escaped me about the movie, until I listened to an NPR interview with the director, was during that time period not only was abortion outlawed, but so was birth control. You can imagine for yourself what that would do the country’s population and what kind of position that would often put the women in. The director himself was part of the generation boom that Ceauşescu tried to achieve. (He’s of the age that the protagonists are in 1987. So in many ways it’s a period piece of some of what he experienced as a young adult. FYI, the name Ceauşescu is never uttered in the movie.)

We end up knowing almost nothing about the circumstances of the pregnancy or even any explicit reasons why the woman is desperate to get one. Partially I think the director didn’t explain or didn’t want to, was precisely because this isn’t an American “political” film about abortion. From the same NPR interview, its clear he’s pro-choice, but the movie feels like it’s more interested in preserving a part of Romanian history in people’s minds and talking about oppression. It’s about choices made by people living under oppression not just “Choice.”

As much as horrible things happen to the protagonists in this movie, apparently some of the real stories in Romania are worse. Its estimated that likely half of the women seeking an abortion in Romania died from it. One story the director mentioned in the interview, was a woman went to a man (not even a doctor) and the guy showed her two barrels. One was full of water, and the other was empty. The guy told her, if everything goes well, you’ll use the water to wash up. But if something goes wrong, I’m going to put you in the barrel and get rid of your body. Apparently she still agreed to have do the procedure and everything turned out okay. Not everyone was so lucky.

Still I came away from that movie feeling like because the desperation of the women wasn’t fully explored (we know what they are willing to go through with, without exactly knowing why) that an anti-choice person watching the movie might come away with different emotions. The director is showing the horror of abortion in places where it is outlawed. (They not only jailed doctors, but the women seeking abortions.) If you are supportive of keeping abortion legal to prevent such horrific scenes from happening in the U.S. then the movie can provide a motivation and greater understanding of what “choice” really means and why it is such an essential right.

But I think if you are anti-choice the movie could look like a morality play justifying the inherent “evilness” of abortion.

However, that’s just my opinion. My roommate who saw the movie with me, thought differently.
The problem is that most strongly anti-choice people wouldn’t see this movie anyway. So I’ll probably never know what it made them think.

It Took Me Over An Hour To Vote

2008-02-12T11:14:00.000-05:00

In order to vote for Barrack Obama in the Virginia primary today I had to stand outside, in 20 degree weather, for over an hour. The problem seemed to be they had a) only two books to check people in and b) only three machines (which were touch-screen only, with no paper trail).

God I hate democracy. I feel like I'll never get the feeling back in my toes.

Friday Cat Blogging: Al Checks My Messages

2008-02-08T08:28:00.001-05:00

Another week of using Keeper of the Cats' photos. For this one she told me that Al was fascinated by the blinking red light on my answering machine. ("Mom, I swear I'll call you back soon!") However since he's deaf it's doubtful he could take down the messages for me.

Background on Obama’s Present Votes on Abortion

2008-02-06T17:12:00.000-05:00

I am thoroughly grateful to Lynn Harris article on Salon about Barack Obama's handful of "present" votes on abortion measures in the Illinois Senate. The story’s been getting out there like a whisper campaign (only not whispering) but the message the story is supposed to convey goes something like this: “These present votes show Obama isn’t going to defend reproductive rights as vigorously as you might think. He’s only going to do it when it’s convenient or easy but he’s not going to stick his political neck out defending abortion rights.”

Harris’ reporting provides a lot of context about the votes but what it seems to break down to is there was a bit of schism between Illinois NOW and NARAL of Illinois and Planned Parenthood. The later two wanted the bills to fail, and in order to get that, they needed to coax some friendly Republicans to side with them by voting “present” – and Obama was kind of used as ‘cover by numbers’ to coax this into happening. In other words, Obama could have voted “no” but if he had voted “no” it’s possible the pro-choice side might have lost some “present” votes from Republicans who would have switched to “yes.” (At least so goes the theory…)

This makes the schism a lot more understandable to me. It’s basically between an organization that had a stronger group of political purists and one that was more practical or realistic. (Basically like the differences between Green party voters and progressive democratic party voters). I’m more of a realist, if LBJ-canniness will get the job done, then so be it. And it’s also good to ask, do you want to be right or do you want to succeed? And can you achieve your goals without being so shrill as to turn off your allies.

State NOW organizations tend to be a little more of the purist strand than your statewide Planned Parenthood will be. And if Planned Parenthood of Illinois either thought up, or signed off on Obama’s strategy of voting present, then the explanation makes sense.

Anyway major love to Lynn Harris for ending the article as she does.

Anyway. That's the story. Make of it what you will: Mountain? Molehill? Obama's "present" votes, cannily pragmatic or lame? If "cannily pragmatic," then is he not the Man Who'll Change Politics that he says he is? Should we, while we're at it, worry about his law-nerdily understated support for Roe as worded? Or the fact that -- if
you ask me -- neither Dem seems to get that even parental consent with judicial bypass is unacceptable, too? Or should we quit splitting hairs, given that anyone's better on, well, everything than John "'Moderate' My Ass" McCain?

Damn straight! Which candidate is actually going to push for eliminating parental consent laws and not just try to knock them down. I’m not convinced that either one will actually put any kind of political capital working to expand access to abortion nationwide -- only try to keep it from shrinking to “only legal in blue states.”

Friday Cat Blogging: Lena Hiding

2008-02-01T08:29:00.001-05:00

Lena in a moment of cuteness. And I'm the one who constantly puts her down for being uncute.

Deborah Howell And The Role Of Ombudsman

2008-01-31T16:57:00.000-05:00

A couple of nights ago I attended a panel discussion with NPR’s new ombudsman Lisa Shepard and the Washington Post’s ombudsman Deborah Howell. The panel was a discussion “what good are ombudsman” but I would ask “what good are ombudsmans at the Post if Deborah Howell’s the best you can find.”

I’m tentatively more optimistic about Lisa Shepard (disclosure, I’ve met her once before, going to her house before for a function). One of the problems with Deborah Howell’s tenure at the Post is that she is so entrenched in typical journalism habits that she’s unable to see when part of the problem is a failure to adapt to changing times. Shepard, however, is going to be a radio ombudsman and has no experience in radio. I actually think that’s a positive. Someone who doesn’t self-reflectively identify with both the reporters and their most common practices, can oftentimes be a better judge of certain situations.

The panel turned into a lot of punching bag questions from DC activists who were upset about various issues of local coverage (why some kids names were misspelled on a photo, why the DC paper isn’t covering this, that, or the other thing, why isn’t *my* protest/candidacy/cause getting any coverage), but I thought the central premise: is what good are an ombudsmans, is a good question to ask. The answer the panel came up with was basically “to be a pressure valve” (or punching bag) so the public thinks someone hears its complaints. But the only real clout they have is the clout of influence. They have no ability to change the practices of the newsroom, let alone long-established columnists, except by convincing editors/reporters/publishers that their analysis of a situation is correct.

As Deborah stated, all she can do is write her column “which they can’t touch.” But they don’t have to listen to it either.

I have heard people in the media express outright distain for their own ombudsman. And if the ombudsman’s opinion isn’t respected within a media outlet, then what good is it?

I’ve never heard a lot of respect for her outside of it. Some of that has to do with the fact that she’s never expressed a solid understanding of the new nature of online news and how might that change the role of a ombudsman at a newspaper as prestigious as the Washington Post. (At the panel she mentions she often deals with issues like someone failing to get their paper on time. It’s not that I doubt she gets those problems but should answering those kind of circulation problems actually be something the ombudsman spends her time on? Quite frankly it’s several levels below her pay grade.)

One remark that just alarmed me was Howell mentioned that someone told her she should have links in her stories and it suddenly opened up her eyes to the fact that her online readers had more information than those that read her column in the print edition. I’m glad she’s adapting but should the Washington Post have hired someone who had to learn such a fact on the job? It’s not like links were invented last year. And we already know that Howell doesn’t seem to grasp the difference between a comment on a message board and an email sent to server (other than both use seem to have an alarming amount of obscenity hurled at her).

But she is so unsavvy about the use of information online that I suspect when she gets a mass of complaints that are driving by Media Matters, or blogs picking up Media Matters alerts, she thinks of them as all part of a dues-paying membership. As if Media Matters is like a union that sends it members out to do the bidding of the leadership instead of a collection of like-minded individuals who are acting in concert out of conviction.

This led me to ask my only question of the panel. Because Lisa Shepard mentioned that she appreciates when people cite numbers to her when they make complaints of frequency, I asked her if, in her new tenure at NPR how she planned on handling complaints from organizations like Accuracy in Media, Media Matters? Because the one thing I think Media Matters is good at is demonstrating evidence of their complaints. You can disagree with their interpretation, but they do usually provide evidence to back up their assertions.

So I was hearted to hear that Shepard said she listens to such groups. “In fact just the other day Media Matters pointed out a mistake that Scott Simon made,” she said.

She said she views them as another set of “eyes and ears” listening to the station and measuring them.

At this point Deborah Howell jumped in, and added “but they are a partisan eyes and ears, and you have to account for that.” By “account” I took to mean discount, based on the way she stressed the word, “partisan.”

There were a few things I learned at the panel. One being that only 40 newspapers have ombudsman and NPR is the only broadcast station with one. (I didn’t realize CBS dropped its Public Eye only recently). NPR is also expanding foreign bureaus, and when was the last time you heard of a media outlet doing that? (Thank you Ray Croc! You might have poisoned us all with your fast food but in exchange we get more NPR. I guess this is one of those “every cloud has a silver lining” kind of things…)

Other bits:

Lisa Shepard has “one and a half” assistants to help her answer mail. So actually they act as a defacto filter in a way. Deborah Howell said she gets between 200-300 emails a day, goes through them all herself, but has an obscenity filter. So I guess if you SHOUT DIRTY WORDS IN ALL CAPS too much, she won’t even know you sent her anything.

Oh yeah, and Deborah Howell only has a year left on her contract. Thank god. Maybe in 2009 when the Post hires a replacement they will look for someone who understands that more people read the paper online than in paper. And why being spammed is not the same thing as getting a bunch of angry emails from people who have read an item from Media Matters.

But likely they won’t. Deborah Howell is 67 years old “I’ve been in the newsroom for 50 years.” (Yes that’s a direct quote). She also said “They like senior people [to be ombudsman] at the Post. I think they like having someone who has been around the block.”

Yeah, been around the block with Guttenberg maybe.

Jeff Probst Really Wants To Watch Shows About Gladiators

2008-01-31T08:30:00.000-05:00

I was a pretty die-hard fan of Survivor at one point, but, starting sometime around season five, the producers allowed Jeff Probst off-his-leash and suddenly he became as much a player and an asshole as the contestants. (And sometimes much more than them).

I stopped watching two seasons ago, but I’m probably going to watch the new Fan Vs. Favorites season, if only because some of the favorites come from seasons I actually watched. (Plus, there really isn’t much else on).

But Jeff Probst’s sexism always tended to grate on my nerves and part of what drove me away. That’s why Miss Alli’s post on Television Without Pity is kind of a revelation. It’s not that Probst isn’t a sexist asshole, it’s just that he’s a fan. Of shows. About gladiators. And since the women on Survivor tend not to be as physically buff as the guys (and many aren’t even buff for women) they just don’t merit Probst’s admiration.

He's so torn, because he wants to just make it a game of men, a game where big guys wrestle each other and fight to the death and tear at buffalo hides with their teeth. This is where his heart is. He isn't much interested in strategy at all. He doesn't like diplomatic maneuvering; it doesn't move him. He considers the entire Fiji season a failure -- he says so in so many words -- despite the fact that it had an enormously likable winner (if not a physically overpowering one) and contains perhaps the greatest and most satisfying episode in the game's history, in terms of pure strategy. He shrugs that it was the show's decision not to have excellent strategist Yul in the cast -- Yul being the most popular winner in recent years, and possibly the most popular winner ever, in one of the show's most popular seasons. His only mention of most of the women cast as "favorites" comes from discussing the fact that Parvati (whom he still calls "Poverty" in what's beginning to feel like a passive-aggressive slight) might or may not ever go beyond "flirting," and Ami probably will go for another -- his words here -- "girls' alliance." Getting by on your wits instead of your muscles simply isn't interesting to him, and he can't fake it.

Miss Alli explains that Probst is basically one of those guys who just gets doe-eyed when talking about a football player he really admires and can’t like, also admire a chess player. So its not that he doesn’t disrespect women, it’s just that they can’t play sports as well as men – especially in direct competition to them. So, he just can’t admire them. (The few times in Survivor when a woman outperforms a guy in a physical challenge is about the point that Probst does start respecting her). It’s an interesting take on his attitude.

Friday Cat Blogging: Ahhhh Relax, It's The Weekend

2008-01-25T08:45:00.000-05:00

This week I'm trying something a little different and I'm stealing an image from Keeper of The Cats' Catbook pics.

I'm starting to feel like I'm beginning to exhaust the number of positions and places I can show Al and Lena in my apartment. So if any readers of NewsCat want me to host pictures of their cats for Cat Blogging Friday (and I'll include a link to your blog if you have one) feel free to send me some pics. One cavat, guest cat images must include some newspapers or at least some motif of "the news." Send pics to catrina_dirk (at) hotmail dot com.

Yet Another Awesome Blog

2008-01-24T15:45:00.001-05:00

Until your friends start blogging sometimes you don't know how awesome they can write.

Anyway here is Airing of the Grievances, by my friends Dennis and Jonathan.

Heh, now that I've blogwhored you guys how about some link love..hmmmm?

What William Saletan Never Gets

2008-01-24T11:20:00.000-05:00

Jan. 22 is the anniversary of Roe Vs. Wade and it’s typically a day for pieces about abortion. So of course Slate’s William Saletan felt the need to weigh in another moralizing piece about why don’t pro-choicers just don’t say abortion is bad (while trying to defend it). Many people have said what exactly is wrong with this strategy, better than I can. I think part of what bothers me/us-Saletan-haters the most about him, is that he thinks he’s pro-choice. But he’s not. He’s pro-choice with a side of “I want you ladies to feel really guilty about what you are doing.” He doesn’t view his own ideologically allies as the Right to Life association but I wish he would just own up to the fact that he’s not a pro-choice WRITER. I think it’s the bait’n’switch that bothers me more than anything about his pieces. It’s like listening to Joe Lieberman lecture the Democratic party about the right way to be a Democrat (to vote like a Republican).

So Saletan’s pieces are always coaching pro-choicers that the right way to be pro-choice is really to adopt the morals and language of the anti-choice crowd.

But the part of where he talks about teen sex really got to me because for the last two weeks I’ve been enveloped in the world of abstinence-only education programs. Yesterday, as a matter of fact, I was searching the internet for the most perfect example of how crap these programs really are. Something better than a program in Texas that tells sixth graders that “men sexually are like microwaves and women sexually are like crockpots….” Or the East Texas abstinence lecturer who uses (a quite common tactic) of tearing up two pieces of tape and as the tape collects dirt it shows how having sex with multiple people gives up your “stickiness” and you can no longer bond with another piece of tape. (Also a person who has lots of sex is full of dirt).

Here are some examples of abstinence lesson plans…can you spot what is wrong with them?

Worth The Wait

The curriculum explains that a mayor of a small town had a beautiful statue placed in a park, and told the townspeople that the lustrous golden metal would turn “a putrid shade of green if handled too much.” A year after the statue was erected, the mayor held a celebration in honor of the statue, only to find that the golden statue had turned green, because everyone had thought that “one touch would not hurt.” The story ends with the statement, “what each person thought was a harmless touch turned into the total destruction of a beautiful statue.” (Worth the Wait, Section 2-27) The curriculum makes a quick analogy to sexual activity: “sex is special. When someone is able to save this gift for his/her wedding night, it is a gift that is irreplaceable. However, if a person has had numerous partners and numerous sexual encounters, sexual activity loses its special quality.” (Worth the Wait, Section 2-27) Like much of the curriculum, the story portrays sexual activity as a destructive and harmful force and implies that those who have had sex outside of marriage are tainted—they have gone from lustrous and beautiful to a “putrid shade of green.”

Why kNOw?

The same lesson plan instructs teachers to construct an eighteen-foot long Speedy the Sperm © out of what essentially amounts to a pillow and a piece of rope. Speedy is designed to be exactly 450 times the size of a penny, because “the HIV virus is 450 times smaller than a human sperm.” (Why kNOw?, 8 th grade and high school, p. 96) The teacher is told to stretch Speedy © out to his full length, then hold up a penny and ask the students: “If the condom has a failure rate of 14% in preventing Speedy © from getting through to create a new life, what happens if this guy (the penny) gets through? You have a death: your own.” (Why kNOw?, 8 th grade and high school, p. 96) While the curriculum does not actually state that condoms may have holes large enough for the HIV virus to travel through, this is clearly the implication behind this activity.

Heritage Keeper

A similar message of shame regarding STDs is presented in the “Pink Water Game.” The teacher prepares one clear plastic cup that is 1/3 full with ammonia. Each student is given a cup that is 1/3 full of water. Students are told to “swap fluids” with one another and the teacher by pouring their liquid into someone else's cup and swirling it around. Each student is told to swap fluids with three other people. One student, however, is taken aside by the teacher and told to abstain from the activity. After all students have swapped, the teacher is instructed to reveal that one cup was “infected” and that students “will find out who has been ‘contaminated.'” (Heritage Keeper, Teacher Manual, p. 51) This is revealed when the teacher puts a drop of the chemical phenolphthalein in each cup. Those that have some ammonia will turn pink. The teacher then discloses the name of the student who was abstinent, notes that his cup is not “contaminated,” and points out that while other students probably felt nervous about getting tested, the abstinent students had no questions about the results of his test. Once again, the curriculum is setting up a dichotomy in which students who are abstinent are good and those who have been sexually active are, in this case, contaminated.

And this is just some activities; it’s not even the crap that the abstinence speakers spew to the kids. Don’t think these are just the “bad” examples. They’re all like that. They all use a fear-based curriculum that says sex is bad, you can’t possibly be responsible enough to avoid all the diseases we’re going to tell you about, and there’s no way you can do any kind of sexual activity that doesn’t involve penetration. (I swear the narrow view of what constitute “actual” sex, bothers me the most of all. The fact that some men never get the idea that sex can involve a penis *not* entering a vagina/mouth/anus and STILL BE SATISFYING SEX, bugs the hell out of me.)

I honestly think that the truth that dare not speak its name is that most parents really don’t want their children to be virgins on their wedding night. Setting aside even the issue of virginity, what if you heard of a couple that was getting married that had slept with each other yet? Most people would not think that was a wise thing to do, get into a marriage without exploring that part of a relationship first to find out if you are even compatible.

But it’s like we’re in some kind of Peter Pan world where we all just clap our hands and pretend that the norm is not to have pre-marital sex (or not to have sex in high school). But we all have to hang on to this pretense because otherwise Tinkerbelle will die.

I strongly want to ask William Saletan when he lost his virginity and if it was before the age of 20, does he think his teenage sexual antics ruined his life? Because I think what a lot of people haven’t gotten over is the fact that teen sex may not be an inherently bad thing. The key word is “inherently.” Sex for 13 year olds is not a good idea. Some 17 year olds probably shouldn’t have sex. But in between there is a lot of healthy sexual exploration between high school and college that is actually positive and can be a maturing experience for understanding as much about yourself as growing up does.

But what Saletan doesn’t ever get, is that his ideological allies in abortion and teen sex, do not view the world the way he does. They have a rather unhealthy view of human sexuality, which is that it is inherently sinful except in marriage (and even then…unless you’re doing it to make babies…its still bad). Saletan lives in a dream world where there is a perfect compromise. He never gets that he doesn’t live in a perfect world and just because he thinks he’s being reasonable that if one side lays down their arms the other side won’t rush to fill it with a theocracy. Saletan might think that all teen sex is bad but early 20something sex is probably okay, if not healthy. But his allies don't. He doesn't get that.

Heh, as I was composing this post, I found this.

One More Time: PAS Doesn't Exist

2008-01-18T16:18:00.000-05:00

As a follow-up to this LA Times article about men and abortion, Sarah Blustain has an article in The Nation about the tactic and why, as ridiculous as it sounds, you'll likely be seeing more of it and why we can't just laugh it off.

But in light of something I have been challenged about, the validity of the so-called Post-Abortion Syndrome, I wanted to highlight this passage.

The data to prove the existence of PAS come from a combination of deeply flawed original research--featuring tiny samples and lack of controls--and the manipulation of large samples into correlations from which pseudo-researchers claim causation. Among the most prominent forms of "data" circulating in the American political system are a few thousand PAS testimonies collected with the express purpose of being used in court to help overturn Roe v. Wade--hardly a scientific sample.

This is not to say that some people don't experience mixed emotions after abortion. Indeed, experts suggest that complex feelings after abortion are common and compare these to similar dynamics around marriage, childbearing and other major life decisions.

But PAS advocates aren't talking about everyday ambivalence or even sadness: they're talking about devastating, life-changing pathology, which mainstream research simply does not support. Post-Abortion Syndrome does not exist in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the widely used guide to accepted disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Meanwhile, the American Psychological Association convened a task force that is completing a major review of all the postabortion research; this year it is expected to offer a serious critique of those studies and the methodologies used to compose them. Indeed, studies tend to show that the biggest predictor of postabortion troubles is preabortion troubles. Of the link between abortion and postabortion psychological problems, Nada Stotland, president-elect of the APA, says "it's a dead horse."

PAS doesn't exist. It Does NOT EXIST. Having an abortion does not cause or correlate to long-term unhappiness or unhealthiness. Do people who have abortions sometimes have long-term unhappiness or unhealthiness, yes. Did abortion CAUSE THOSE OUTCOMES? The sciencetific community that has evidence and studies for every other pschological diagnoses says no. Other factors prior to the abortion are the likely cause.

Now does having an abortion (or seeing the woman you had sex with have an abortion) cause emotions? Sure. So does getting a divorce. Doesn't mean we outlaw divorce. It just means if it effects you, maybe you should get counseling. Not recommend that maybe the law should have stopped you and everyone else from getting a divorce.

I am *so* looking forward to APA's task force's findings on postabortion research. I know it won't put the "syndrome" to bed but for a lot of the media if the APA definitively says "it doesn't exist" then they'll at least use the phrase "so-called post-abortion syndrome."

If Its Ok To Torture Then Why Aren't You Recording It?

2008-01-18T14:20:00.000-05:00

Marty Lederman over at Balkinization makes an eye-opening point about the scandal of the destroyed CIA torture tapes. Not just that the destruction of them was criminal but the decision to stop recording prisoner interrogations also was likely criminal because the CIA knew that what was going on was legally shady.

It’s a good point, and makes me wonder if even the right wing nutjobs who say things like CIA covert-operations chief Jose Rodriguez is a hero, would agree that all CIA interrogations should be taped. Or do people who track that far to the right feel like Col. Jessup in A Few Good Men? Namely that there are somethings the American public really doesn’t need to know about what is done in their name…and that might include being above the law.

That’s the whole point of not wanting interrogations recorded, after all. If everything is legal and above board then what the tapes would show shouldn’t shock the conscious and, perhaps even more importantly, the recordings are useful for evaluating the evidence and as a tool for future interrogations. But if what is going on can not ever see the light of day, because it is too shameful, then those who ordered the recordings stopped knew, or likely guessed, they were breaking the law.

If they want to argue that the “law doesn’t matter” or that some CIA personnel should be above the law, then I want to see that argument made in public. Because if you say the interrogations shouldn’t be taped (because they’d be too shocking for the public/our enemies to know about) it’s the same thing as saying that some people should have a license to break the law.

And if you want to redefine torture to not mean torture, then showing what is “no longer torture” shouldn’t be a problem then. For example if waterboarding or 24 hours of standing upright or making someone sit in freezing temperatures no longer is legal torture, then it should be A-OK to tape our gov’t doing it. If someone wants to argue against such mandatory recordings then how is it not an advocacy of the gov’t being allowed to break laws?

Spencer Ackerman also is on to this issue.

UPDATE: After I wrote this I found this article on The Stranger about Seattle police cars and video tapes. There's a case where there's a controversial arrest and the tape could implicate, exonerate or fail to ameliorate the situation. But the Seattle Police refuse to turn over the tapes. Again, if what the police are doing is legal, then presumably taping them should have no drawbacks.

I understand there's a big difference between CIA and local police, but, as far as I know, the what the CIA does, in all cases, is supposed to follow the law.

Friday Cat Blogging: The New Baby

2008-01-18T08:28:00.001-05:00

Al is sniffing at the new rival for my heart, my beautiful Trek FX 7.2 bicycle. It truly is my brand-new baby. Unfortunately its hard to bike in the snow today.

So Why Don't You Read The Paper?

2008-01-16T11:02:00.000-05:00

A certain paper of a certain area is apparently asking around town what they can do to attract more readers below the age of 35. I'm curious how many of the people who visit this blog read the paper version of their daily newspaper? I'm both under 35 and a reader of the daily newspaper, but that was a conscious decision I made a little over a year ago that I was going to become a "newspaper reader." (I think I always got the Sunday paper, mostly for the ads).

There was also a benefit that reading the daily paper directly helped me with my job at the time. (I needed to watch trends, find little underreported stories, etc.) Reading the paper version, as opposed to the online, helped me find stories that I missed when I merely browsed the online version.

But part of the reason that I decided that I needed to make myself read the paper, was also an identity issue. I'm a former reporter. I also grew up in a household where breakfast (mostly with my father) was shared over the morning paper and TV news. In my early 20s I dropped the habit of getting the daily paper delivered because I wasn't reading them.

But I suspect that, except in cases where reading a newspaper is a valid career-helping exercise, people either have newspaper habits or they don't. Meaning if you never read your daily newspaper, its not something you are likely to just automatically take up reading, no matter what the content is.

I will say this, when I visit my parents in Ohio and I read the Akron Beacon Journal I thank my lucky stars I at least live in a town with a real paper. Because despite the problem I have with the Washington Post, they are niggling compared to what is wrong with the Akron Beacon Journal.

I don't think people who choose not to read their daily newspaper need to defend themselves. I suspect that if the only reason you are told you need to stay informed is "civic duty" then that's a lousy reason to hang onto a product. Either you are reading the paper because its something you enjoy, or you read it because it provides you with information you can't obtain in other (simpler) means. I would imagine if someone listens to the radio and watches TV news they probably do not feel they are "missing" any major information out there that they need to know about. It's not like they wouldn't know who won the New Hampshire primary or whether the schools were closed. So what exactly are non-readers missing if they don't get a daily paper. I think newspapers need to explain that to the non-readers. Its no longer self-evident.

Fear Of Mongol Hordes

2008-01-15T09:57:00.000-05:00

Anyone who thinks that small town USA is somehow kinder and “more American” than large cities should read this story about Taneytown, Maryland. It’s a town of 6,700 and, despite the fact that it’s foreign-born population is likely about 24 individuals, two members of the city council decided it was a good idea to pass a resolution which basic point was “Brown people are not welcome.”

The focus of the fast-sharpening dispute has been a City Council resolution, which was narrowly defeated Monday night, that declared: "The City of Taneytown is not a sanctuary city for illegal aliens." It warned that the town "does not welcome individuals who are in the United States illegally," suggesting they would harm the quality of life. It would have directed local officials to assist residents in supporting the enforcement of federal immigration laws.
Paul Chamberlain, the council member sponsoring the resolution, acknowledges that Taneytown has no problem with illegal immigrants. But he sees an apocalypse coming: the gangs, the trash, the crowding that communities in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia have attributed to an influx of impoverished, often undocumented Mexicans and Central Americans. And he hopes that putting up a virtual keep-out sign will steer them away from the corner of Carroll County.
"This is a preventive measure. Other places are passing laws against illegals, so where will they go? To the places that welcome them," said Chamberlain, a dapper man who sells recreational vehicles. "I am not trying to spew hatred against anyone, but I will not cower just because someone calls me a bigot. We have got to send a clear message that people who break the law are not welcome here."

I will point out that the town’s mayor did not want the resolution passed, and so it failed, three to two.

But the real meat of the story (and why I’m so glad the Washington Post sent a reporter to the town) is in the quote reporter Pamela Constable got.

Away from the heat and glare, residents expressed more complicated, often contradictory opinions. Many said they were worried about reports of foreigners flooding larger towns in the region: the Hispanic laborers who came to pick apples in Pennsylvania and stayed, the Muslim group that is trying to buy a farm in nearby Walkersville and turn it into a retreat. Yet no one reported having any negative encounters with immigrants, and a handful of employers praised them as hardworking.

The Walkersville Muslim group, by the way, which is a Silver Spring Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, are not in any way illegal immigrants. So this isn’t about whether anyone is “breaking the law” but about keeping the Mongol hordes away from their white sanctuaries.

Kevin Few, 42, a construction worker, said Hispanic migrants are driving down wages in Maryland and making it hard for people like him to find work. "Personally, 99 percent of them seem nice, clean and hardworking," he said. "But they come here, do our work for nothing, cram into apartments and buy new cars, while the rest of us are struggling to make ends meet. It's not fair."

They are coming here, working hard and BUYING NEW CARS! Oh my god, the horror! The horror! You might even call them an uppity people.

This one, however, takes the cake.

At the local McDonald's, retirees meeting for coffee said they were not aware of Chamberlain's resolution but were nervous that illegal immigrants would come to the area. One woman, who said she was afraid to be identified, explained, lowering her voice: "If I tell you my name, the illegals might look up my address and come after me. They've already broken the laws, so what do they care?"

Yes, the Mongol hordes are after you ma’am. Who knows what they will do to you if they only know where you live.

The real story is that Taneytown is dying. And if anyone is going to rescue it, it will be the new blood of immigrants coming in. Who do pay taxes and start new businesses. Maybe the white people would rather the population dwindle to nothing but remain pure?

Friday Cat Blogging: Wait For Caturday

2008-01-11T08:36:00.000-05:00

I'm going to postpone Friday Cat Blogging today so that I can bring you a picture of my new baby on Caturday!

Clinton And The Feminists

2008-01-09T11:01:00.000-05:00

There's a lot of talk going on in the feminist blogosphere about Gloria Steinem's op-ed for Hillary. I don't have a whole lot to add because I think Ann Friedman covered it. I do think that "feminist" debate is actually masking is debate over centrist verses leftist politics. (Although I am getting rather sick of older feminist icons telling younger women they don't know how to be feminist enough...and are they not voting for Hillary because they resent their moms or something like that.)

Its funny because, aside from the issure of Iraq, what makes Hillary centrist is actually her economic policies (well and her militarily hawkish position...which can be a whole 'nother issue). It's a debate you don't hear about from voters trying to decide between Edwards and Obama. (Around early 2007, quite a few veteran progressive campaign workers were having an internal debate about whether to join Edwards' or Obama's camp, I rarely heard of a anyone trying to decide between Hillary and either of the other two.).

I'm not sure if it's good for Democrats that the debate about "centrist verses leftist" politics is masked by "feminist verses anti-feminist" terminology. It could be though, because it prevents Obama from having to run as the liberal candidate (which I'm hoping is how he would govern).

But I basically have to agree with Atrios about Hillary verses anti-Hillary. I make not like her politics as much as I prefer Obama's or Edwards' but her enemies are not my friends.

I don't know if reaction to the media treatment of Clinton had anything to do with voter choices yesterday, but I certainly know people in real life who a) don't want Clinton to win and b) are tempted to vote for her every time they're exposed to the way she's treated by the deeply broken monsters in our mainstream media.

Really? Really? REALLY???

2008-01-07T16:23:00.000-05:00

Oh god please tell me the new anti-abortion movement propaganda is not going to be based on men's tears?

"It's a rule of thumb that if you want to get a law passed, you have to tell anecdotes that grab people," said Dr. Nada Stotland, president-elect of the American Psychiatric Assn. Antiabortion activists have done that well, she said. "They've succeeded in convincing a lot of the American public" that abortion leaves women wounded.

Now, those activists see an opportunity to dramatically expand the message.

The Justice Foundation recently began soliciting affidavits from men; one online link promises, "Your story will help legal efforts to end abortion." Silent No More encourages men to testify at rallies.

Therapist Vincent M. Rue, who helped develop the concept of post-abortion trauma, runs an online study that asks men to check off symptoms (such as irritability, insomnia and impotence) that they feel they have suffered as a result of an abortion. When men are widely recognized as victims, Rue said, "that will change society."

Abortion rights supporters watch this latest mobilization warily: If anecdotes from grieving women can move the Supreme Court, what will testimony about men's pain accomplish?

"They can potentially shift the entire debate," said Marjorie Signer of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, an interfaith group that supports abortion rights.

...

But the activists leading the men's movement make clear they're not relying on statistics to make their case. They're counting on the power of men's tears.

What's so fucking sad is even the few ancedotes the article uses are from men who didn't give two shits about their former girlfriends abortions when they were in their 20s...and it certainly didn't effect them at all, right up until the point they found religion and hit their midlife crisis.

And despite the fact that pregnancy is what happens to women and they haven't talked to these ex-girlfriends in decades still somehow, this dude knows just how she feels because, god, doesn't he just feel bad. Not that he ever thought about what the pregnancy situation might have felt from her perspective before.

But would his long-ago girlfriends agree? Or might they also consider the abortions a choice that set them on a better path?

Aubert looks startled. "I never really thought about it for the woman," he says slowly.

"On one level, yes, maybe she got an education, married a great guy, has six kids and everything's wonderful now," he said. But he can't believe it could really be that uncomplicated. "It might bother her once every 20 years or once every five years, or every day, but there's a scar."

He has not talked with either of the ex-girlfriends, but he says he can imagine what they feel because he knows how the abortions affected him. He never had the nightmares that other men describe, or the crying jags, the drug abuse, the self-loathing. Yet he knows he has been tarnished.

Tarnished, yes. Clearly. I would say your capacity for self-awareness has been deeply tarnished.