BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
the press, politics, culture, technology, and more. To sign up for
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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, August 15, 2003
Darkness, followed by light.
The lights are pretty much back on, according to this
story on CNN.com. Talk
about more alleged news. Don't get me wrong -- it was obviously a big
story. But, honestly, once terrorism was ruled out (and it was,
pretty quickly), how much do you need to know?
I did tune in long enough to watch
what may be the best question anyone has ever asked Senator Hillary
Clinton. On Larry King Live, Wolf Blitzer asked: Senator,
everybody's been getting likkered up for hours. Aren't they going to
run wild tonight?
Okay, I exaggerate, but not by
much. Blitzer:
Senator, the people of New
York have responded well so far, but I have some concerns standing
here on the streets of New York. It's dark, obviously, very dark
right now. A lot of people are mulling around. I have seen a lot
of crowds mulling around. Clearly for some -- for some misguided
New Yorkers, there almost seems to be a festive atmosphere. A lot
of people drink[ing] beer and other spirits up if you
will.
Have New York law-enforcement
authorities done everything necessary to make sure it doesn't get
ugly in parts of New York City tonight?
Clinton was on by phone; I wish
she'd been on camera so I could have watched her scrunch her lips.
Anyway, she eluded the question and was boring to boot, so I won't
quote her response. But at least Blitzer provided a moment of cheap
entertainment during the Live Story from Hell. ("The lights are still
out ...")
Ventura highway to oblivion.
I suppose MSNBC, the number-zero cable news channel, deserves a
little bit of credit for indefinitely postponing Jesse
Ventura's prime-time debut.
To my knowledge, this is the first time that the channel has ever
cleaned up one of its train wrecks before it's aired for a few
painful months.
Still, Nobody's News Channel will
let Ventura hold forth on weekends, as it did earlier with right-wing
hatemonger Michael Savage. Obviously Ventura is considerably more
savvy -- and less offensive -- than the gay-bashing, garbage-mouthed
Savage. But an on-air train wreck remains a distinct
possibility.
This, from the aforelinked Jim
Rutenberg and (ooh, sorry; with) Charlie LeDuff's account in
the New York Times, offers a scary insight into how MSNBC
president Erik Sorenson and his drones think:
One concept that the
network tried this summer, according to someone present at the
taping, had Mr. Ventura eliciting commentary from his guests while
an attractive woman served up different topics.
Sounds like the bimbos who flaunted
themselves at ringside back in The Body's days with the
WWF.
That hissing sound you hear is a
sigh of relief from Brian Williams, who escaped from MSNBC last
summer and who now holds forth on the unwatched, but unembarrassing,
CNBC.
posted at 8:58 AM |
comment or permalink
Thursday, August 14, 2003
The Globe's confusing new
website. Is it too soon to say that the redesign of
the
Globe's website is
seriously flawed? After all, these things do take time. So far,
though, not so good.
Aside from the look -- pinched and
cluttered, with teeny type -- I'm having a hard time figuring out
what the mission is. Ideally, you'd like to see the entire paper put
online in a well-organized manner, with perhaps a few extras. But
given that people at the Globe, like everyone else, are
presumably questioning the practice of giving away their content
online while watching their paid circulation fall, maybe they're
trying to move away from that. Still, what they're moving
toward is anything but clear.
Two observations this
morning:
1. As a paid subscriber who
receives the North Pole edition somewhere around 5:30 a.m., I often
don't get late results when the Red Sox are on the West Coast. So I
went to the online sports section a few moments ago and saw this
hype: "A's
5, Red Sox 3: Red Sox stuck in
reverse." But that wasn't
last night's game; it was Tuesday night's game.
I backed up and clicked on
"All
of today's Sports stories,"
only to find the tertiary stuff that no one reads anyway. Finally, I
backed up again, clicked on "Latest
sports news," and found
an
AP story reporting that
Derek Lowe and the Sox beat the A's, 7-3, last night.
Okay, that's better than nothing,
but still not good enough. Presumably the late edition of the
Globe has staff coverage of the game. But even though I'm a
paying customer, I can't read that coverage online.
But wait! I just went to
Boston.com,
the übersite that's separate (but not really) from the
Globe's, and the lead story was a staff-written (by
Bob
Hohler) piece on last
night's Sox win. So why couldn't I find it in the Globe's own
online sports section? Pre-emptive defense: if it's there and I just
missed it, well, believe me, I looked. This is supposed to be easy,
right?
2. If you click on "All
of today's Editorials and Op-Ed
columns," you will get
exactly what you're promised. There's also an improvement over the
old site: an editorial cartoon by Dan Wasserman. But it's
yesterday's. Again, the Globe is under no obligation to give
away its content, but the concept of publishing the day's paper on
the Web is being lost.
Am I being too harsh? Hah! On
Monday, Jason
Feifer (scroll down) wrote
to Jim Romenesko's MediaNews.org that "the paper's website has
morphed from a user-friendly digital facsimile of a newspaper into
something resembling the love child of Google news and a content-free
blog."
Then again, Feifer also doesn't
like the print edition's new pastel teaser boxes on page one, an
innovation that has given Media Log a reason to get up in the
morning. So maybe he's being unfair.
But the Globe Web folks,
having set out to fix what wasn't necessarily broken, need to do some
quick thinking. They could start by explaining exactly what it is
they're trying to accomplish.
New in this week's
Phoenix. I consider the career of Massachusetts House
Speaker Tom
Finneran, who's not looking
quite as powerful these days thanks to the rise of Governor Mitt
Romney and a small but growing rebellion in his own
chamber.
Plus, an update of Tuesday's
Media Log item on the
suspension of John
"Ozone" Osterlind, the
morning-drive-time host on WRKO Radio (AM 680) accused of wanting to
"eradicate" the Palestinians.
posted at 9:12 AM |
comment or permalink
Wednesday, August 13, 2003
Bullying language and a
publisher's prerogative. Bad as the Vatican's recent statement on
homosexuality may be, it does go out of its way to assert that
lesbians and gay men must be treated with dignity (see
"Rome
Casts Its Ballot," News and
Features, August 8).
Quoting from earlier Church doctrine,
the
statement says that "men
and women with homosexual tendencies 'must be accepted with respect,
compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in
their regard should be avoided.'" This may amount to little more than
hypocrisy -- and as
the saying goes, "Hypocrisy
is the homage vice pays to virtue" -- but at least it's better than
the bishops' sitting around telling homo jokes over a few
brewskis.
Unfortunately, they didn't get the
message over at the Pilot, the official weekly newspaper of
the Archdiocese of Boston. An editorial
this week on the Vatican statement (second item), headlined
"Courageous Document," begins with this sneering lead: "The GLBTQ (Gay, Lesbian,
Bisexual, Transgender, Queer) agenda is advancing quickly these
days."
Like the N-word among
African-Americans, the Q-word is sometimes used in a joking manner
among gays and lesbians themselves. But for an official publication
of the Church to invoke it is insulting, degrading, and utterly
lacking in "respect, compassion and sensitivity."
As archbishop, Seán O'Malley
is publisher of the Pilot. He should call editor Antonio
Enrique in for a chat about appropriate language at the first
opportunity.
The definition of a conflict of
interest. A freelance reporter for the Globe's Globe West
section wrote "about 300 articles" about the Newton Public Schools
while serving on the state-mandated advisory board of her children's
elementary school, according to this
story by Sarah Andrews, in
the Newton Tab.
Writes Andrews: "Newton
conservatives say they have been complaining for three years that
writer Gail Spector's work for the Globe's West Weekly section
has been biased." It looks like they had a legitimate
beef.
Ellen Clegg, the Globe
editor who runs the regional news sections, called Spector's dual
role "a violation of Globe policy," and said Spector would no
longer cover Newton.
Newton conservative Tom Mountain
gloats here.
posted at 12:00 PM |
comment or permalink
Tuesday, August 12, 2003
WRKO suspends "Ozone" for two
weeks. John Osterlind, the loud, raspy-voiced "Ozone" half of the
Blute & Ozone team on WRKO Radio (AM 680), has been
suspended for two weeks after telling listeners this morning that the
Palestinians should be "eradicated," according to Michael Elder, the
station's director of operations and programming.
Elder was unaware of Osterlind's
alleged remarks when contacted earlier today by the Phoenix,
which had received an anonymous tip that Osterlind had advocated
"extermination" of the Palestinians. After listening to a partial
tape of the show, Elder said, "Your source was pretty close to
accurate," but added: "I did not hear exterminate. Eradicate is what
I heard." (Disclosure: I am paid to discuss the media on WRKO's
Pat Whitley Show every Friday morning.)
Elder said that cohost Peter Blute,
a former Republican congressman, sounded aghast at Osterlind's
outburst. "Peter Blute kept trying to reel him out of it," said
Elder, adding that, at one point, Blute warned Osterlind that he was
advocating "Hitlerian genocide." Blute could not immediately be
reached for comment.
Osterlind, contacted at home,
denied the allegation, saying, "It was dancing around that line, but
never once did the words come out of my mouth that the Palestinians
should be eradicated. But the bad ones, definitely." Several minutes
later, he added, "Arafat, sure, you know, him and his people, no
doubt."
This afternoon on the
WRKO website, under the
heading "Today on Blute & Ozone," is this: "After two more
suicide bombings in Israel the other day, a frustrated Ozone wants to
rid the world of anti-Israeli Pallestines [sic]. Peter
says there is, more violence that occurs on a daily basis, in
Massachusetts than Israel [sic! sic!
sic!]."
In explaining his decision to
suspend Osterlind, Elder said, "I can't let that kind of language
against a whole race of people go on the airways unpunished. Other
people are going to get the idea that it's okay. It's not okay. That
kind of language I'm just not going to let on the radio station." He
added: "Quite frankly, I just don't think that's a good way to run
talk radio."
Osterlind's suspension comes about
a month after Elder suspended syndicated talk-show host Michael
Savage's show for one
day, following Savage's
homophobic outburst on what turned out to be his final appearance on
MSNBC.
Neither Elder nor Osterlind could
say whether the two-week suspension would be paid or unpaid. Elder
said the terms of Osterlind's contract probably require that it be
paid.
Osterlind seemed stunned this
afternoon, describing the events that led to his suspension as a
combination of an aggressive approach on his part and outrageous
calls from some listeners. He said that when callers suggested
eradicating all Palestinians -- and, in one case, the entire "Arab
street" -- he replied, "Are you nuts?"
He described his conversation with
Elder like this: "He said he'd gotten some calls, and that he had to
do something to appease the people who are upset." Asked whether he
believed he himself had made a mistake, Osterlind replied, "Maybe
baiting the listeners into calling and saying something like
that."
He added: "You do a talk show, you
talk about controversial things. I've been doing this a long time,
and it's the first time I've ever been suspended. I just don't think
he [Elder] liked the whole tone of the segment."
A pause, and then this:
"I'm just a peace-lovin' person,
Dan."
posted at 4:39 PM |
comment or permalink
Hey, Rupe! Media Log is Fair and
Balanced (TM), too! And I mean it the way I presume you mean it,
at least when you're talking among yourselves over drinks and cigars:
ironically, with a good laugh at the rubes you've bamboozled into
thinking that it's true.
Anyway, Fox is suing Al Franken for
trademark infringement, charging that the title of his forthcoming
book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look
at the Right, would "blur and tarnish" the image of the Fox News
Channel. (So why aren't they suing Sean Hannity?)
It gets better. According to
this
account in the New York
Times, Fox contends, "Franken is neither a journalist nor a
television news personality. He is not a well-respected voice in
American politics; rather, he appears to be shrill and unstable. His
views lack any serious depth or insight."
Not to appear to take this drivel
seriously, but anyone who has paid any attention whatsoever knows
that Franken's political analysis is as deep and serious as that of
anyone on Fox, with the possible exception of Britt Hume. It's just
that Franken also happens to be a very funny guy.
Here's a Q&A
with Franken on his book --
and on his recent confrontation with Bill O'Reilly, who didn't like
it one bit when Franken exposed O'Reilly's claim to have won a
Peabody Award as something other than the truth.
Berkowitz online. The
Boston Globe's website
redesign is now well along
(Woo, hoo! It looks
like the Herald's!),
and Peter Berkowitz's essay on the raging
moderate known as George W.
Bush can be read here.
On the other hand, I was going to
link to James Carroll's excellent Globe column today on
anti-Semitism within the Catholic Church (yes, he's got something new
to say) -- but today's editorials
and op-ed columns were not
online. Perhaps they will be later this morning.
posted at 9:01 AM |
comment or permalink
Monday, August 11, 2003
Q: Is Bush a moderate or an
extremist? A: Both! Peter
Berkowitz, writing in the
Globe's Ideas section yesterday, wants you to believe that
George W. Bush isn't really a right-wing crazy. His evidence: the
president has been generally moderate on cultural issues such as
religion, abortion, gay and lesbian rights, affirmative action, even
his court appointments. Plus, he's got black people in his Cabinet!
(No link. The Globe's website is in the midst of redesign
hell, but Berkowitz's piece might pop up here
later today.)
Sorry, but this is argument by
straw man. I'm prepared to accept all or most of the above, although
I have some quibbles. Certainly a few of Bush's judicial picks have
been dangerously right-wing, for instance. And the president's views
on homosexuality, although arguably within the mainstream of moderate
conservatism, are ugly nevertheless: no marriage, no civil unions,
not even domestic-partner benefits.
But, still, what Berkowitz does is
raise a whole host of matters on which Bush is moderate in order to
frame the two really important issues -- his budget-busting tax cuts
and his hyperaggressive foreign policy -- in a less threatening
way.
On taxes, Bush really is a
right-wing crazy. For some non-fuzzy math, check out this
chart (PDF format)
put together by Citizens
for Tax Justice. Okay, I
know you're not really going to take a look, so here's the
lead:
As a result of the three
major tax cuts enacted at President Bush's instigation in 2001,
2002 and 2003, taxes on the best-off one percent of Americans will
fall by 17 percent by the end of this decade. For the remaining 99
percent of taxpayers, the average tax reduction will be 5
percent.
The share of total federal taxes
paid by the best-off one percent will fall from 23.7 percent to
21.3 percent in 2010 compared to prior law -- a drop of 2.4
percentage points. The top one percent is the only income group
with a substantial reduction in its share of the total federal tax
burden.
Berkowitz seems to think that
Bush's runaway spending shows that he's not really a conservative
when it comes to budgetary matters. He's right! In fact, it
demonstrates that Bush is a radical who wants to match or even exceed
the borrow-and-spend policies of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, running
up hundreds of billions of dollars in debt, a situation that benefits
wealthy bond-holders, but certainly no one else.
As for foreign policy, what needs
to be said? Here's Berkowitz on the run-up to the war in
Iraq:
Today, Bush's critics,
usually upholders of international law, rarely acknowledge the
manifestly inaccurate and incomplete accounting of WMD that Saddam
submitted to the UN Security Council in December 2002. This put
him in clear material breach of Resolution 1441, which was
unanimously passed by the Security Council one month before. On
the Bush administration's reasonable reading, Saddam's defiance of
1441's terms authorized the use of force to disarm him and
suggested he had WMD to hide.
Who are these critics who refuse to
acknowledge the lies contained in Saddam's December 2002 report?
Berkowitz doesn't say. This is, in fact, another straw man. It was,
after all, UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix who took the lead in
denouncing Saddam's refusal to come clean about the weapons of mass
destruction that he had been known to possess in the past.
But in the absense of the imminent
threat that Bush and Tony Blair talked about so many times, Blix and
most of the rest of the world called for a stepped-up inspections
regime, not war. The Bush administration kept pushing for war,
building
a disingenuous case on not
just those 16 words, but on phony claims about aluminum tubes,
doctored intelligence, and allegations of ties between Saddam and al
Qaeda.
Berkowitz concludes of
Bush:
[A]s his
administration makes its mistakes, rolls with the punches, and
adapts to changing circumstances, the president reveals himself to
be a pragmatic conservative who knows in his gut that it is a
liberal welfare state that he wishes to reform, and to conserve.
This will continue to discomfit purists on both sides. And it may
prove attractive to a majority in 2004, not only in the Electoral
College but in the popular vote as well.
Berkowitz's argument, essentially,
is that Bush is not uniformly extreme in his conservative views.
Rather, he's moderate in some areas and extreme in others -- mainly
the ones that really matter. Berkowitz intends all this as an
endorsement. Seen in a different light, it looks a lot more like an
indictment instead.
posted at 8:20 AM |
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MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
