BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
the press, politics, culture, technology, and more. To sign up for
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For bio, published work, and links to other blogs, visit
www.dankennedy.net.
For information on Dan Kennedy's book, Little People: Learning to
See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
click
here.
Friday, November 22, 2002
Romenesko verson 2.1. The
folks at Poynter heard the cries of pain. The redesign of
Jim
Romenesko's MediaNews.org,
unveiled last Friday, has been rejiggered. Most important, those
short, cryptic plugs on the left-hand side of the page, much beloved
by Romenesko fans, have returned after a brief time in purgatory. The
typeface has also been made smaller to reduce scrolling.
Last week I referred to the
redesign as "creeping
Poynterization," but,
overall, thought there was as much good as bad in the new look --
especially the addition for permanent links for each item, although
they seem to have been implemented in a way that is unnecessarily
confusing and labor-intensive.
Others took far greater exception,
especially to the perception (an accurate perception) that the new
page was too much Poynter, not enough Romenesko. The angriest missive
came from NarcoNews.com's
Al Giordano, who wrote: "Fellow and sister journalists and readers of
Media News, our nation is under attack. It's like Pearl Harbor all
over again. Poynter's warplanes have just airbombed an island
previously inhabited by human journalism." (Giordano's entire letter
is worth reading; click
here.)
Bill Mitchell, the editor of
Poynter Online, confesses all in a memo posted here.
Based on a first glance, it looks
to me like the re-redesign not only improves on the redesign, but on
the original, bare-bones look as well.
posted at 12:48 PM |
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Quotes of the day
"He is a friend of mine. He is not a
moron at all." -- Canadian prime minister Jean
Chrétien, on George W.
Bush
"The Democrats have shown they can
roll over but it's becoming harder to find one that can speak." --
Humorist Barry Crimmins; not posted yet, but check
out his website)
posted at 9:45 AM |
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Thursday, November 21, 2002
Jeff Jacoby's Canadian-style
mistake. Boston Globe columnist Jeff
Jacoby's main quarry today is
Senator John Kerry, whose essay
in last week's Phoenix
Jacoby mocks as "a masterpiece of meretriciousness -- one gaudy
bromide after another, paragraph upon paragraph promising everything
while saying virtually nothing." (My only complaint about Kerry's
piece is this sentence: "We must begin by demanding a different,
better, fairer economic policy that grows [sic] jobs
and creates wealth for all Americans." Oof! The decline of the
language continues apace.)
But Jacoby also takes a swipe at Al
Gore's recent endorsement of a Canadian single-payer health plan --
and manages to make the sort of whopping mistake that distorts the
debate over what to do about 40 million uninsured Americans.
He writes:
A Canada-style single-payer
scheme would mean a major decline in US health care -- just ask a
Canadian who has had to wait weeks for the results of an AIDS
test, or months for cancer radiation therapy, or more than a year
for a hip replacement -- and I doubt that Americans are any keener
on the idea now than they were when Hillary Clinton was
peddling it eight years ago [emphasis mine].
This is very interesting. The actual
merits of Canadian-style universal health care aside, the truth is
that the plan devised by Hillary Rodman Clinton and Ira Magaziner
was, in fact, its exact opposite. The principal feature of the
Canadian system -- its crowning attribute, according to proponents --
is that it does away with private insurance companies. The
Clinton-Magaziner plan, by contrast, was designed specifically to
achieve universal health care while preserving a prime role for
private insurers.
James Fallows explained this clearly
in a January 1995 post-mortem on the defeat of the Clinton-Magaziner
plan that was published in the Atlantic Monthly:
A Canadian-style
single-payer system has two big virtues. It is simple to
administer, since doctors, hospitals, and patients no longer have
to worry about dozens of insurance companies with scores of
different payment plans. The single-payer approach also guarantees
that everyone in the country has medical coverage. But
[Bill] Clinton was dead set against a single-payer plan,
arguing that it would require sweeping new taxes and would, in
effect, abolish the entire medical-insurance industry.
Fallows doesn't say it, but there
were also reports at the time that President Clinton was hoping that,
by spurning a Canadian-style bill, he could enlist the political
support of the insurance industry. It didn't happen, of course, as
the insurers savaged the bill with those misleading "Harry and
Louise" ads. And the proposal that Hillary Clinton and Magaziner
crafted was much more complicated than would have been necessary if
the administration had simply embraced the Canadian system. (By the
way, Fallows's piece was titled "A Triumph of Misinformation." The
triumphant march on. It's still worth reading, and is freely
available online through public-library databases.)
Now, I've got my own doubts about a
Canadian-style system. As the father of a child who's at some risk of
running into high-cost medical problems that would have to be dealt
with immediately rather than on a health bureaucracy's leisurely
schedule, my personal inclination is to find a way of helping
uninsured Americans without taking any flexibility away from us,
thank you very much.
But the debate is corrupted if we
can't agree as to what's on the table and what isn't. Eight years
after its defeat, the Clinton-Magaziner plan remains toxic. Senator
Clinton herself disavows it. Jacoby, by describing it as something
that it wasn't, makes it more difficult to talk about the
still-vexing problem of health care in a rational and honest
way.
posted at 10:18 AM |
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Wednesday, November 20, 2002
Bickering over Birmingham.
Massachusetts Senate president Tom Birmingham's press secretary,
Alison Franklin, writes: "Regarding today's
Media Log, I wanted to let
you know that contrary to Michael Jonas's assertions in his article,
Tom Birmingham did try to talk to Michael on at least four occasions.
I know this because I placed the calls and left the messages. Michael
was frustrated that he and Tom kept missing each other. That is
understandable but it should not have resulted in a
mischaracterization of Tom's availability."
Jonas responds: "Senator Birmingham's
office did indeed call on several occasions, hoping to put him on the
line with me at that moment. However, despite multiple requests over
the course of more than five weeks, including at least one full week
following the September 17 primary, his office would not agree to
schedule a time for him to be interviewed, even for 10 or 15 minutes
by telephone, to discuss his Senate presidency."
posted at 5:41 PM |
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What's wrong with the legislature?
The tyranny of deadlines has not been kind to Michael Jonas's
fine overview of what's wrong with the Massachusetts legislature,
published in the current issue of CommonWealth magazine. (The
piece, "Beacon
Ill," is online, but free
registration is required.) Not only had the race for governor not
been decided, but Jonas had to turn in his piece even before we knew
that state senator Bob Travaglini would be the next Senate president.
But this is good stuff, and the lack of timeliness should not stop
you from reading it.
One eye-opener: Senate president Tom
Birmingham refused Jonas's attempts to interview him. Now, it's fair
to point out that Jonas was doing his reporting in the midst of
Birmingham's hard-fought campaign for the Democratic gubernatorial
nomination. But the notion that one of the state's two top
legislative leaders couldn't spare an hour to talk about substance is
repellant. Farewell, Mr. President. Don't let the door hit you on the
way out.
There's not an awful lot new here for
political junkies, but those who follow State House antics with
less-than-breathless enthusiasm will appreciate Jonas's efforts to
lay out recent legislative history -- and especially how it came to
pass that virtually all power was concentrated in the hands of
Birmingham and House Speaker Tom Finneran. Let's not kid ourselves:
rank-and-file legislators have never had much influence on Beacon
Hill. But during the 1970s and '80s, committee chairs held great
sway. It wasn't exactly democracy, but neither was it a
dictatorship.
These days even the chairs count for
nothing. The symbol of legislative gridlock in recent years is that
photo of Finneran and Birmingham, negotiating the budget at a glacial
pace on a State House patio. "Now there's no one to talk to,"
Citizens for Limited Taxation executive director Barbara Anderson
told Jonas. "There's no playing field at all. They're just following
the leadership."
Jonas also makes two key points.
Writing before the gubernatorial election, he asserted that there
might actually be more hope for change if Democrat Shannon O'Brien
won rather than Republican Mitt Romney. "After all," Jonas wrote, "in
the absence of true two-party competition, schisms in the state's
dominant party, played out through shifting coalitions and alliances,
may be the next best thing for the democratic debate." But with
Romney heading up a party so tiny that Republican legislators can't
even override his vetoes, state politics is likely to devolve into
the Romney, Trav, and Finneran Show. Actually, make that the
Finneran, Trav, and Romney Show.
Jonas's other point is simply to
remind us of how accustomed we've become to the shameful inertia that
now exists:
What is most remarkable
about the dysfunction that has set in on Beacon Hill is just how
unremarkable it has become. There is little expectation that
budgets will be completed on time or that lawmakers will have
significant roles in writing them. Members meekly approve major
policy changes through outside sections tacked onto the budget,
despite misgivings over their implications. Committee chairs stand
idly by as the flow and content of legislation is controlled from
above.
More than anything else, Jonas's
piece underscores the harm that has been caused by the state's
devolution into a one-party system. Think of how many times voters --
even liberals -- have cast their lots with Republican governors
simply to keep the entire system from falling into the hands of the
Democrats: John Volpe, Frank Sargent, Frank Hatch (well, okay, he
lost, but he won most of the liberal vote), Bill Weld, Paul Cellucci.
Romney is quite a bit more conservative than those Republicans, which
is the only reason his margin of victory was even close. It's not
surprising that his campaign only caught fire when he started
targeting the "Gang of Three" -- Finneran, Travaglini, and O'Brien --
and raised the specter of Democratic insiders running
amock.
The single most important thing
Romney can do during the next four years is to rebuild the Republican
Party into a moderate, reform-minded force that competes in elections
and wins enough to make a difference.
posted at 9:19 AM |
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Tuesday, November 19, 2002
The last refuge of scoundrels.
Yesterday the Wall Street Journal editorial page claimed
it simply
wasn't true that Saxby
Chambliss, the Republican victor in Georgia's US Senate race, had
impugned the patriotism of Democratic incumbent Max Cleland, a
decorated war hero who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam. "We
thought we'd set the record straight, before the tale becomes one
more liberal political legend," the editorial stated. "Mr. Chambliss
won by exposing Senator Cleland's voting record on the issues that
mattered most to Georgians, such as taxes, missile defense and
especially homeland security."
Today the Boston Globe's Joan
Vennochi repeats
the charge that the
Journal attempted to refute, beginning her piece: "Senator Max
Cleland of Georgia lost both legs and his right arm in a grenade
explosion in Vietnam in 1968. That did not stop C. Saxby Chambliss, a
Republican with no military service, from questioning his patriotism
in 2002." Was Chambliss rough but fair, as the Journal argues?
Or did Chambliss cross the line and stoop to questioning the
patriotism of a man who's long been a national symbol of
sacrifice?
They say the winners get to write the
history books, and the Journal's conservative editorial page
is clearly on the side of the winners in the midterm elections. The
Journal has every reason to defend Chambliss, who'll enter the
Senate under a cloud for viciously attacking Cleland. Chambliss
himself got out of serving in Vietnam because of a bad knee. Poor
thing!
Nailing this down is important,
because the aftermath of the toxic Chambliss-Cleland contest will
help set the tone for the next two years. Senate Democrats are said
to be furious at Chambliss and, by extension, at George W. Bush, who
lent him crucial support down the stretch. The evidence suggests that
Chambliss played it cute. You won't find any statements from
Chambliss or even from his campaign stating, "Max Cleland is an
unpatriotic American." Nevertheless, Chambliss's statements and his
strategy point to a slimy assault on Cleland's patriotism, with just
enough of an out so that Chambliss could deny it whenever reporters
came calling.
Chambliss started warming up months
before the election. Consider, for example, a "Notebook" item from
the New Republic of June 10, originally reported by the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In 1997, Cleland had voted
against a motion to expand the Chemical Weapons Treaty that would
have barred inspectors from any nation that had sponsored terrorism
or had violated nonproliferation agreements. (TNR noted that
the United States already had the power to ban such inspectors.)
Congressman Chambliss, in an opening salvo to the Senate campaign,
dredged up that five-year-old vote and charged that Cleland had
"directly contradict[ed]" his oath "to protect and defend"
the nation. TNR accurately called Chambliss's remarks an
"attack on Cleland's patriotism," adding that it was "repulsive"
given Cleland's service to his country. I don't think any reasonable
person could disagree with that assessment.
But the main event was the
homeland-security bill. Cleland supported a Democratic version, but
refused to go along with Bush's, which would remove union
protections. That earned him, as Vennochi notes, a Chambliss TV
commercial featuring the faces of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
Chambliss's tactics were sleazy and out of bounds. Essentially he
sounded themes of antipatriotism while denying that was ever his
intent. In the November 4 issue of AdWeek, columnist Barbara
Lippert wrote:
In the most egregious
example of Husseinicide, Republican Senate candidate Rep. Saxby
Chambliss of Georgia ran an ad against Democratic incumbent Sen.
Max Cleland that began with shots of the Mideastern rat pack
[i.e., bin Laden and Saddam] and went on to claim
that Cleland is "weak and misleading" on homeland security,
questioning his "courage to lead."
Ugh. And here's the exact line from
the ad, reported by the Chicago Tribune's Jill Zuckman (a
former Globe staffer) on October 27. The narrator intoned:
"Since July, Max Cleland has voted against the president's vital
homeland-security efforts 11 times. Max Cleland says he has the
courage to lead, but the record proves that's just misleading."
(Speaking of courage, Saxby, how's the knee?) Take away the photos of
Saddam and bin Laden (which Chambliss did after he was ripped for
it), and it's nasty but basically fair. With the photos, I don't
think it's unreasonable to say that the ad actually did call
Cleland's patriotism into question.
Cleland, understandably, cried foul,
which led George Republican Party chairman Ralph Reed to tell
Zuckman: "Max needs to understand that when somebody is telling the
truth about his voting record, just because he gets upset about it
doesn't mean they're questioning his patriotism." Added Chambliss:
"He [Cleland] got $600,000 from the labor unions. I'm
suggesting the union bosses are telling him he better vote against
it."
There's also this intriguing tidbit,
from the Economist of November 2: "Senator Cleland, a Vietnam
veteran who goes down well with local military people,
'unpatriotically' voted against the creation of the Department of
Homeland Security." Why is "unpatriotically" in quotation marks?
Clearly the Economist believed that the Chambliss campaign had
questioned Cleland's patriotism, and the quotation marks are either
meant to express the magazine's skepticism or to ascribe a direct
quote. But a direct quote from whom? The magazine doesn't say. (Bad,
Economist! Bad!)
There's no smoking gun -- Chambliss
was careful enough to make sure of that -- but there's plenty of
smoke. Chambliss managed to impugn Cleland's patriotism without ever
saying it directly. The ideologues at the Wall Street Journal
can believe what they want, but Chambliss ran a miserable campaign
against a man with far more courage than he. Max Cleland has been a
national symbol since Jimmy Carter made him head of the Veterans
Administration in the 1970s. Now a new generation of Democrats can go
about the business of turning Saxby Chambliss into a national symbol
of a very different kind.
posted at 11:13 AM |
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Sunday, November 17, 2002
Feds probe alt-weekly double
suicide. The Los Angeles Times' Tim
Rutten reports that the US
Department of Justice is investigating the alt-weekly collusion that
led to the recent shutdown of New Times LA and the
Cleveland Free Times. The details of this sleazy deal cry out
for an antitrust probe. New Times Media, headquartered in Phoenix,
agreed to shut down its LA paper -- and thus stop competing with
Voice Media's LA Weekly -- if Village Voice Media, the parent
company of the Village Voice, would shut down its Cleveland
paper, which had been competing with New Times' Cleveland
Scene. Millions of dollars changed hands as well. (I found this
story through Glenn Reynolds's InstaPundit.)
Rutten writes that the nature of the
investigation suggests that Justice officials may seek criminal
charges, which carry with them the possibility of individual fines of
$300,000 and company fines of $10 million.
There is considerable irony, he
notes, in the spectacle of media companies that trace their roots to
"the insurgent journalism of the 1960s counterculture, being treated
like a 19th century cartel." (Although Rutten could use a history
lesson. The Village Voice was founded by Norman
Mailer and his friends in the 1950s,
whereas the Phoenix New Times began publication in
1970.)
And recently, Village Voice
media columnist Cynthia
Cotts wrote a doleful piece
on where it might all be headed: to an eventual sellout to a
mainstream daily-newspaper chain. It's not like it hasn't happened
before, either. In 1999, Times Mirror (now the Tribune Company)
purchased
the Advocate weeklies.
Among its holdings: the Hartford Advocate, whose mission was
to cast a skeptical eye at Times Mirror's daily Hartford
Courant.
The mainstream media doesn't have to
kill the alternative press if it is intent on committing
suicide.
posted at 10:12 AM |
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Hitchens versus Hitchens.
Formerly left-wing Christopher opposes Islamism because it's not
secular. Still-right-wing Peter opposes it because it's not
Christian. Having oversimplified their views nearly beyond
recognition, I urge you to take a look at this
year-old-but-still-relevant piece on the Hitchens
brothers, on the British
website Spiked Online.
posted at 10:11 AM |
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The price of free speech:
mediocrity! Patrick
Healy's "Campus Insider"
column in today's Globe has the link to that
controversial cartoon in the
Harbus, the Harvard Business School student newspaper, that
led to yelping from school officials and the subsequent resignation
of editor Nick Will. Unfortunately, it
sucks.
posted at 10:11 AM |
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MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
