A Grand Illusion

You can find a couple more, all variations on the same theme, here.

Remember when Republicans used to be able to answer every question with words or phrases they’ve turned into meaningless platitudes like freedom, appeasement, sharing the wealth, or 9/11?  Well, Rick Sanchez’s over the top incredulity is putting a check on that.

At least as far as Sen. Jim DeMint is concerned:

CNN’S RICK SANCHEZ: [Specter] seems to be saying that Republicans are making it very difficult for other Republicans to win because, and he said this on several times, you tell me what you think of it: You’re shrinking the electorate to an extreme to a point where a regular Republican can’t win. What do you make of that argument?

SENATOR JIM DEMINT (R-SC): That’s quite the opposite. We’re seeing across the country right now that the biggest tent of all is the tent of freedom. And what we need to do as Republicans is convince Americans that freedom can work in all areas of their life for every American, whether it’s education or health care, or creating jobs…

SANCHEZ: What, what the hell does that mean, freedom? The biggest tent is freedom? Freedom?! I mean you gotta do better than that.

Via AMERICAblog.

From The Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene II:

PORTIA: Upon the rack, Bassanio! then confess
What treason there is mingled with your love.
BASSANIO: None but that ugly treason of mistrust,
Which makes me fear the enjoying of my love:
There may as well be amity and life
‘Tween snow and fire, as treason and my love.
PORTIA: Ay, but I fear you speak upon the rack,
Where men enforced do speak anything.
BASSANIO: Promise me life, and I’ll confess the truth.
PORTIA: Well then, confess and live. [emphasis mine]

Other writers have commented on the torture issue, like the Miami Herald’s own Jackie Bueno Sousa. She seems to think water boarding is not really torture, but torture lite, she calls it. Yeah, Jackie, in terms of harm, water boarding is to torture what soy milk is to milk. I would counsel Jackie to at least put herself through a little methodical and synthetic water boarding, and see how she feels about it. Learn a little something from Chris Hitchens, see below, who had the journalistic integrity to put himself through the experience before he ran his mouth off about it.

She might find the only thing lite is the unbearable stupidity with which she writes about it.

Oh yeah, Sen. Arlen Specter is now a democrat. About freaking time.

McClatchy, its parent company, reported a quarterly loss of $37.5 million loss and a 25 percent decline in revenue:

McClatchy said Thursday its loss amounted to 45 cents per share. That’s much larger than its loss of $849,000, or 1 cent per share, a year ago.

The Sacramento, California-based company publishes The Miami Herald, The Sacramento Bee and other newspapers.

Excluding one-time charges, McClatchy says it lost $22.9 million, or 28 cents a share. Analysts had projected a loss of 11 cents a share on that basis.

It says revenue fell 25 percent to $365.6 million, also below expectations.

Egh. Question is, when will we see another round of layoffs?

Prison Economy Spirals As Price Of Pack Of Cigarettes Exceeds Two Hand Jobs

From an 1,800-word newspaper announcement of his candidacy for the state legislature:

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.  How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition, is yet to be developed.  I am young and unknown to many of you.  I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or popular relations to recommend. My case is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of this country, and if elected they will have conferred a favor upon me, for which I shall be unremitting in my labors to compensate.  But if the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined. (emphasis mine)

Ronald C. White, A. Lincoln.

Otherwise known as 18 U.S.C. § 1651:

Piracy under law of nations

Whoever, on the high seas, commits the crime of piracy as defined by the law of nations, and is afterwards brought into or found in the United States, shall be imprisoned for life.

That’s the frightening brevity with which laws were written in the 19th century, 1819 to be precise. No mitigating factors, or exceptions.

Scary.

And yet, this guy appears to be loving it.

Make sure to read Stanley Fish’s interpretive take on headline writing, specifically, the New York Post’s headline art:

Things get more complicated and more literary in a story about Brown University’s politically correct decision to change the name of Columbus Day weekend to Fall weekend in an act of solidarity with those who believe that Columbus and his men treated “indigenous peoples” badly. The headline is “Goodbye, Columbus at Brown U.”

This one has several levels. First it is a reference to Philip Roth’s short story “Goodbye, Columbus.” But it will also remind some readers of what the title of the story refers to — a ceremony honoring graduating athletes at Ohio State University. At schools like Ohio State, students don’t waste time rewriting history to fit current ideologies (that’s called “presentism”); they do good all-American things, and if they look silly it will be on the football field or basketball court and not in the pages of the New York Post. The article itself says nothing derogatory about Brown; the headline does it and does it economically.

Fish starts out with the more obvious allusions, and ends with rather obscure ones, which he almost elevates, in their allusive complexity, to the level of 20th century poetry. And all in the span of a few words.

The whole thing brought back memories from my past life as a headline writer–though I never wrote anything quite that brilliant. (My reference to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on a story about Stan Van Gundy may have been as literary as I got.) Plus, we weren’t allowed to get too creative, ’cause I worked for a “serious newspaper.” Though who are they kidding?

Overall a great read, and far lighter than Fish’s usual epistemology. Do check it out.

I know I’ve been neglecting the blog–though I somehow still have time for the occassional Bueno Sousa bashing. Graduating from law school is a lot more work than I had anticipated.

But I feel really bad about neglecting the blog, so, in lieu of a real post, let’s go over a couple of stories that caught my eye today.

Well, probably just one story, ’cause I have to go back to researching LLM programs.

Every newspaper company should read the New Yorker’s James Surowiecki’s Financial Page column this week. (I just spent 20 minutes looking for the column on Lexis only to realize it was on the New Yorker website–oh, media dinosaur me.) Surowiecki looks at a couple of studies on corporate spending during recessions. Economic recessions can represent tremendous opportunity to companies who are willing to take a risk, and instead of cut spend, continue to invest in R&D and advertising.

In the late nineteen-twenties, two companies—Kellogg and Post—dominated the market for packaged cereal. It was still a relatively new market: ready-to-eat cereal had been around for decades, but Americans didn’t see it as a real alternative to oatmeal or cream of wheat until the twenties. So, when the Depression hit, no one knew what would happen to consumer demand. Post did the predictable thing: it reined in expenses and cut back on advertising. But Kellogg doubled its ad budget, moved aggressively into radio advertising, and heavily pushed its new cereal, Rice Krispies. (Snap, Crackle, and Pop first appeared in the thirties.) By 1933, even as the economy cratered, Kellogg’s profits had risen almost thirty per cent and it had become what it remains today: the industry’s dominant player.

Newspapers have followed the Post model, and been too afraid to actually invest during the tough times. Newspapers are a little bit different than cereal because a substantial percentage of their business is dying. But even though newspapers are spending more money on new media, they’re still not spending nearly enough.

Newspapers need to fight the urge to cut costs, at least cuts that affect the growing sectors of their business. If they don’t, they may find themselves aiding in their own demise.

So the latest column coming from Crash Dav–er, Jackie Bueno Sousa takes on the worthy enterprise of debunking the myth that the Cuban community is a political monolith. And then, surprise, she fails.

According to Sousa, Cubans who came over after 1980 “lacked a hatred for Fidel Castro” and left the island for economic reasons. The people who endured the Castros’ oppression the longest obviously would lack a hatred for the gruesome twosome, right Jackie? And, we can only conclude, those who came before were moneyed elites in search of sweet, sweet freedom and democracy. Apparently, Cuba before Fidel Castro was a model of those two things. Nah, it had nothing to do with Fidel Castro confiscating private property or anything like that. And even if it did, that’s not an economic reason, right? Right.

She follows up that flawless logic with an attempt at nuance, or something:

They were followed by ”those who escape,” mostly professionals pushed out by the communists in the early ’60s; ”those who search” (1965-1973), small merchants and farmers who fled after their businesses were taken over; ”those who hope” (1980s), often poorer and more racially diverse, who came in search of a better future; and ”those who despair” (1990s and more recently), who arrived as the Cuban government encouraged the discontented to leave the island.

She forgot to mention those who write shitty columns.

Get these motherfucking snakes off my motherfucking plane!

We’ve been down for the past day or so for reasons that are beyond my technical understanding. But now we’re back, with a word from Rudy.

It seems that the case against Alaska senator Ted Stevens has been dropped. With such a smooth talking defendant it’s not really such a surprise. Check out this link for some audio of this impressive wordsmith.