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#161
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She said the theme of this party's the Industrial Age, and you came in dressed like a train wreck. |
#162
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#163
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#164
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![]() Indeed they should. I was wrong, twice. I don't think that's insignificant. In fact, I rebuke myself pretty heavily for that, and have just added it to a post it on the side of my laptop with words, phrases I've recently bungled. So thanks for pointing it out.
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#165
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#166
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Last edited by look; 08-02-2010 at 12:32 AM.. |
#167
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1. the point about specificity in writing, which is, admittedly, a standard that I myself fall short of, but that I still think is the goal, and one that professional writers--as opposed to others--should be chastised for failing to meet when it occurs. 2. the point about Ackerman's more specific point about how to handle the group he refers to as 'the right' (even if he means a more narrow group). His recommendation, to call one of them racists, EVEN IF we take him as meaning one of the more narrow group, I STILL find repugnant on journalistic grounds discussed elsewhere. However, putting these two points together, I am saying that IF a person takes Ackerman's words LITERALLY, as opposed to interpreting them more narrowly as you or I have done, then he DID imply a broader group for potential accusation. Last edited by PreppyMcPrepperson; 08-02-2010 at 12:46 AM.. Reason: faulty capitalization |
#168
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What I was talking about was cable news. And yes, it was a wall to wall frenzy for several weeks. I don't remember the exact timeline, but it was basically all that was discussed from the time the Wright tapes were released until a few weeks later. Then there was a brief pause of one or two weeks, and then something happened and it started all over again -- several more weeks of morning-to-evening coverage on all of the cable news networks (CNN, Fox News, MSNBC). I suspect that because of your age**, you don't remember the cable news coverage during the Clinton presidency. For a period of YEARS it was a non-stop, Clinton bashing frenzy. Every night you could turn into any one of the 3 cable news networks and listen to people screaming their heads off about how Clinton was a criminal and a traitor. Quote:
* Thanks to Preppy for having answered with 2 or 3 names of objective reporters who were members of the list the last time this came up. ** Somehow I got the impression you're in your 20s. Apologies if this isn't the case. |
#169
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BTW: I'm going to bed soon, so I may not respond until tomorrow or later in the week. |
#170
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#171
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#172
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![]() Same hear...'night.
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#173
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![]() It would be more a function of temperament than age. I have a general impression that your exceedingly high expectations are rarely the standard met by journalists in general or people your age particularly.
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#174
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I also think that not many people on Journolist share PMP's commitment to her particular and rigid journalistic code of conduct. It strikes me that most of the journolisters are not objective reporters or even journalists. They are more like political activists. Many of the people on the list have devoted their lives -- or a significant part of their lives -- to advocating for a particular point of view. Their political activism is much more central to their concept of self than any notion of hewing to some idealized concept of objective journalism. These are people, for the most part, who explicitly want to advance a liberal agenda, something they could not do very well if they had to conduct themselves the way Preppy has decided that she must conduct herself. I just googled for a list of known journolisters, and came up with this. 1. Ezra Klein 2. Dave Weigel 3. Matthew Yglesias 4. David Dayen 5. Spencer Ackerman 6. Jeffrey Toobin 7. Eric Alterman 8. Paul Krugman 9. John Judis 10. Eve Fairbanks 11. Mike Allen 12. Ben Smith 13. Lisa Lerer 14. Joe Klein 15. Brad DeLong 16. Chris Hayes 17. Matt Duss 18. Jonathan Chait 19. Jesse Singal 20. Michael Cohen 21. Isaac Chotiner 22. Katha Pollitt 23. Alyssa Rosenberg 24. Rick Perlstein 25. Alex Rossmiller 26. Ed Kilgore 27. Walter Shapiro 28. Noam Scheiber 29. Michael Tomasky 30. Rich Yesels 31. Tim Fernholz 32. Dana Goldstein 33. Jonathan Cohn 34. Scott Winship 35. David Roberts 36. Luke Mitchell 37. John Blevins 38. Moira Whelan 39. Henry Farrell 40. Josh Bearman 41. Alec McGillis 42. Greg Anrig 43. Adele Stan 44. Steven Teles 45. Harold Pollack 46. Adam Serwer 47. Ryan Donmoyer 48. Seth Michaels 49. Kate Steadman 50. Matt Duss 51. Laura Rozen 52. Jesse Taylor 53. Michael Hirsh 54. Daniel Davies 55. Jonathan Zasloff 56. Richard Kim 57. Thomas Schaller 58. Jared Bernstein 59. Holly Yeager 60. Joe Conason 61. David Greenberg 62. Todd Gitlin 63. Mark Schmitt 64. Kevin Drum 65. Sarah Spitz How many objective reporters are there on that list? I don't recognize many of the names, so I can't really say what the exact count is, but the vast majority of names are bloggers and other liberal activist types. Two of the names of actual reporters are Mike Allen and Ben Smith, both of The Politico. Anyone familiar with these men or their writing knows they were not and would not be part of any liberal conspiracy to report news favorable to the Democrats. I don't even know how Mike Allen got on the list; he's a conservative, and therefore doesn't fit the list's "left to center" membership requirement. |
#175
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Brendan |
#177
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Thanks. |
#179
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And OK, I do actually have a serious point to make. Let's take your interpretation of Spencer's comments for a minute. Far as I can tell, you're saying that it wasn't random, he wanted to specifically pick someone pushing the Reverend Wright story (Fred Barnes and Karl Rove I think?) and then call them racist. But the problem for me is, the logic of this statement seems to imply that Fred Barnes and Karl Rove were racists specifically for pushing the Reverend Wright story. And I don't come within 10 city blocks of buying that logic. I guess you could argue Spencer thought they were racists independent of this story, and wanted to call them racists anyways, but then why mention in conjunction with the Wright story?
__________________
She said the theme of this party's the Industrial Age, and you came in dressed like a train wreck. |
#181
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__________________
Brendan |
#182
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#183
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Example: The very same day that Clinton's mother died -- January 6, 1994, less than 2 years into Clinton's first term -- a day when you would think that Republicans would pause in their deranged attacks, Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich appeared together to make a public statement calling for a Special Prosecutor to investigate what they implied was White House involvement in the death of Vince Foster. Foster had died about six months prior, and many conservatives took for granted that he was murdered by the Clintons. Drudge and Limbaugh went so far as to suggest that Hillary did the deed herself. It had only been talked about for six solid months by this time, so it was still plenty fresh for conservatives to endlessly flog in the media, and the media was more than willing to play along, week after week, month after month. Quote:
As to your final question -- why mention their racism in conjunction with the Wright story -- Ackerman answered that question. He said his side would fall into the right's trap if they defended OR attacked Wright, so instead the left should accuse one of them of racism. He gave two reasons for this: (1) To change the subject and break out of the dilemma presented by having to defend Wright, and (2) to show the right that it will pay a price for going after the left. Last edited by TwinSwords; 08-02-2010 at 02:16 AM.. |
#184
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Next step is to cross reference those names against the published record and see what contributions they may have made to the discussions occurring on journolist. I realize you would not, but if I was a political reporter committed to objectivity, I would still be willing to join journolist -- not to privately express my liberal POV, but to pick up leads and to keep my finger on the pulse of a group of semi-influential liberal activists. I know you have said that an objective reporter should get no where near a list like that*, but I can well imagine that some objective reporter somewhere might have been happy for the chance to be on the list just so he or she could keep tabs on what was being discussed. By the way, I've been meaning to ask. You've had a lot of criticism of the members of journolist for their role in this affair. What about The Daily Caller? What do you think of their ethics and how they have covered this story? Do you see any issues there? * Or, at least, that's what I recall you saying. My apologies if I've mis-read or mis-remembered what you said. |
#185
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On the role of the DC: My take is that if a leak contains information that you believe to be of material value to your readers, you publish. If it contains life-threatening information, you hold that back. [I'm angry about Wikileaks' not redacting the Afghan names, for example.] So the DC did no wrong by breaking the story, as news, and quoting the source (the leaked emails) directly. I just re-read the initial story and it reads like a standard news piece, more magazine than newspaper, but news. That said, they DID do wrong by not, at least in the initial Weigelgate stories, posting the context of many of the inflammatory comments. The DC's coverage from the last ten days, on the other hand, has been more thorough, posting long exchanges, and then adding the conservative analysis/spin, which is also fine, so long as it's presented as opinion. This second wave of coverage has been presented in the form of analytical columns and commentaries. While I disdain the opinion style some of these writers use, from a strict journo-ethics perspective, I can't say it's wrong to write commentaries. The people I DO have ethical issues with are the other conservative sites--Drudge, Breitbart et al--who don't make a news/opinion distinction, and who included the opinions (ie calls for Weigel to resign) IN the initial news stories (ie reporting the leak). That's not okay. |
#186
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I think another part of it, though, and another reason I think the JournoList idea ended up being a bad one, is that there was some degree of confusion about what was going on on that list. Was it a bunch of activists or friends, as Ackerman may have thought in the moment? Or was it a professional discussion among journalists of a particular range of political views? My understanding is the latter, but given the personal relationships between them, I can understand feeling at times that it was the former, especially in the heat of the moment. It's not an admirable thing in either context, but there's a big difference between venting or ranting to friends and making the statement on a professional listserv or one devoted to a journalistic discussion. That both were going on creates, at least, a potential appearance of impropriety for those concerned about journalistic ethics and professionalism. And for that matter, I think it's not fair to the journalists (including opinion journalists) on the list to suggest that Preppy's concerns wrt to ethics aren't ones they would share. Chait, for example, writes opinion pieces and for a liberal (ish) magazine, yet I bet he'd be offended by the idea that he's closer to an activist and not a real journalist, and I expect he'd say he cares deeply about ethical considerations. I think the majority of the people are either mainstream journalists or people like Chait, although there clearly are some others. (And like I said in an earlier post, I really think the JournoList thing has been blown out of proportion, but I'm getting concerned that some of the defenses are dismissing genuine concerns that I don't think the participants, for the most part, would want to dismiss.) For what it's worth, I think Ackerman's language was ambiguous, but the best reading is that he's holding "the right" as a whole responsible for the Wright stuff and not distinguishing between individual members of the right in his blanket suggestion (which I think is more of a vent than a serious proposal). That seems a much better reading to me than claiming that he's redefining a common term "the right" to have a new meaning without specifically doing that. That said, I doubt he meant it all that seriously (and his sloppy language was a symptom of that), but it does reflect badly on him and puts the other members of the list in something of an awkward position (although I don't think worse of any of them). |
#187
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![]() What level on this scale will assign to Christopher Hitchens?
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#188
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#189
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#190
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![]() I disagree with your assesment of the most obvious reading of Ackerman's words. I think Twin nailed it as being a much more targeted group that he was talking about (Barnes, Rove etc.) and I think Twin's rabbit analogy illustrated that logic nicely.
But another thing worth mentioning is the possibility that Ackerman is known as a blowhard who tends towards hyperbole amongst friends. And I'm not saying that as a negative. I'm very much the same way with alot of my more intimate conversations. I tend to say drastic things for comedic effect or just to be provocative. And taken out of context it can be very easy to get the wrong impression of what I actually meant, if someone parsed through my e-mails etc. The very fact that Ackerman's suggested tactic didn't get much enthusiasm from others on Journolist suggest that they may have treated it more as Spencer-being-Spencer or even that he was using a bit of sarcasm. Obviously this gets into crystal-ball territory on our part, but I just thought it worth mentioning because everyone seems to be going on a 100% literal reading of Ackerman's words, and given the nature of the friendships of the people on the list I can see more than small possibility that hyperbole and humor may have often played a part in the discussions. I still have trouble getting upset abot any of this in that I imagine journalists sharing drinks and in moments of heated campaigns hearing all kinds of slimy ideas when they are venting. Oh to be a fly on the wall when the Tucker Carlson's and Andrew Breitbart's discuss Obama, Pelosi etc. At the end of the day, nobody acted on Ackerman's suggested tactic. It was shot down by his peers and never amounted to anything. At least not based on any of the released e-mails. |
#191
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![]() Interesting policy, but I don't really think you should enforce it.
For example. Get past the notion that it is inherrent to human beings who are angry to always be civil. I'd pay to see Ann Coulter on BH.TV. I don't know who she should debate, someone both sympathetic but also antagonistic to her views. A 'new-partier' like Ross Douthat or David Frum? Or a libertarian? BH.TV Premium? |
#192
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![]() Christopher Hitchens. I doubt she'd let him get away with the 'smarter than thou' routine...and vice versa.
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#193
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![]() I remember her on Buckley's "Firing Line" once, in the mid-to-late nineties. Buckley's patience with her approach seemed to me to have lasted about fifteen minutes. He was characteristically gracious, but it was clear (to me at any rate) that he had very little he wanted to hear from her by show's end.
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#194
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![]() Bob doesn't seem to see much wrong with supporting Hamas, a virulently anti-semitic terrorist organization.
By that same logic, it wouldn't be bad to support the Klan. Now, not everyone who has ever supported the Klan has been racist (though the vast majority have), but everyone who has supported the Klan has at least demonstrated a tolerance of, if not an outright acceptance of, racism and terrorism, because they would not otherwise support the organization. In the same way, not everyone who voices support of Hamas is an antisemite, but the vast majority are, and the rest tolerate if not accept bigotry and terrorism. Time for Bob and others on the left to take a more sane position on Hamas. |
#195
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Bob is just using the apology thing as an excuse. He simply detests her. See if you can find the Hitchens review of Coulter's book 'Godless,' I think it was. Nicely done. |
#196
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![]() Exactly right, especially this part:
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I know, I know. PMP never said a harsh or hyperbolic thing in her life, or so she will claim at tiresome length, and probably Stephanie will say the same about herself, too. Spare me.
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Brendan |
#197
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Brendan |
#198
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"Nothing is always absolutely so." -- Theodore Sturgeon Last edited by listener; 08-04-2010 at 03:25 AM.. |
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#200
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![]() If so, that is what is known as "sinking to her level," which as I wrote, only weakens his argument and undermines whatever points he had to make IMO.
__________________
"Nothing is always absolutely so." -- Theodore Sturgeon |
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