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If I Only Could, I'd Make A Deal With God

It's been a slow, painful return to writing after taking the time off to do community theater. Just how slow and how painful wasn't immediately apparent to me... but then the multiple missed days started to pile up again... and there I was, stalled and silent.

As usual, this summer, a lot of the silence comes from struggling to find something fresh to say. A lot of politics doesn't excite me, I'm sort of frustrated by how dismal things are, and I tend to think a lot of things (the economy, the left/right divide, healthcare developments) are in holding patterns that cannot last... which is basically waiting for something cataclysmic, which is hardly the best approach.

And the thing is... I haven't exactly been standing still. I've been working, a lot, and trying to catch up on some home projects - never enough to please my matriarchal roommate - and spending some time with friends. I also did some diving into the life that's packed away in my moving boxes stored in the basement and retrieved some books and DVDs that were languishing, an admittance that this time at home isn't as temporary as I once thought.

In the past few weeks, I've plowed through Seasons 1 and 2 of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, neither of which I had ever watched in any complete way. I'm now about halfway through Season 3, still marveling at how smart and how complete the universe of Buffy is: I never realized that James Marsters had pretty much established Spike in Season 1, or how the dramatic arc of Season 2 may well have been the show's most complete and best executed (indeed, in many ways, Season 7 is simply a reprise of the major themes from 2, adding a few elements from 3).

(And I should add, all of the enjoyment of that Buffy box is thanks to my sister, who gave me just about the best Christmas present ever when she gave it to me.)

See? It's not that I have nothing to write about, or little to say, or no experiences from which to draw... it's something else... call it life, perhaps, or the call of something beyond the web and the lonely business of banging out words to try and create meaning. To write about experiences... you do have to have them, after all. Maybe it's just been the heat - in the past few, cool days, almost everything seems easier, less fraught, less wearing. It's too late in this game, along this long road of blogging to ask for patience or forebearance. I fyou're at all interested, I figure you'll check back. I'm still here, and at some point I'm hoping to be running up that hill, instead of trudging, and taking frequent breaks.

The Problem Isn't Race, It's Journalism

In these hazy days of summer, it's always possible for controversy to bloom out of almost nothing, but the 24 hour disaster of Shirley Sherrod may be one of the fastest unravelings we've seen yet.

Lots of people started focusing on various racial aspects of remarks Sherrod made at an NAACP speech, but the larger lesson seems simpler: Andrew Breitbart, yet again, is not a journalist, and what he does should not be mistaken for reporting. When it is, and when his blog posts are presented as fact, trouble ensues.

In the six months since I wrote about Brietbart and James O'Keefe, the video making gadfly Breitbart continues to support, Brietbart has struggled to stay relevant. O'Keefe attempted to "infiltrate" the Census as a worker, to little avail, but little else on Breitbart's sites really broke through, and he's been sidelined as other web controversies (probably most pointedly, the whole JournoList blowup that was orchestrated by Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller) caught the blogosphere's imagination.

Given all that, it's probably unsurprising that Breitbart reached for an obvious  gotcha: incendiary remarks about prejudice from a black woman!  Discriminating against whites on her job!  The thing practically writes itself, once you carefully select the piece of tape you want to present.

What's remarkable, really, is not the overreaction of the usual suspects at Fox News, or the spasm within senior levels of government that forced Sherrod to resign within hours... it's that, it didn't take much longer for the people who actually practice good reporting skills to discover that there was much more to this than met the eye. They quickly made clear that Sherrod, in her full remarks, had used a moment of prejudice to show that everyone, black or white needs to move beyond them, and that the actual couple in question had become friends with Sherrod, and thanks to her work, had kept their family farm.

Of course, there's plenty of elements here to turn into this or that musing on the ugly state of race issues in our culture, again... but much of that seems shrill and beside the point. Breitbart will face greater scrutiny about his own racial issues (having ridden the demolishing of a primarily black led organization like ACORN, and now having chased Sherrod from her job, clearly... he's got some), but I think it's a mistake to overuse Sherrod's speech or the fallout from the misrepresentation of her remarks to overstate the obvious. This story, really, is about the cooler heads, on all sides, who let reason, and evidence, prevail.

I think Breitbart's overreach may be a crucial moment for web-based journalism, a clarifying moment to separate the real from the surreal, the factual from the fictional. The failure to do even basic reporting on the content of Sherrod's remarks strikes me as close to libel or slander, and it would make an interesting test case about applying libel law to the web, where boundaries, clearly, would be a help. And all of this is a good reminder that bad journalism has horrendous consequences - in this case, most painfully for Ms. Sherrod, forced out of a job and a career working on something she appears to care about deeply.

It's easy to let the heat, and emotions, drive the response to this story, and let anger and finger pointing and name calling rule the day. That's what make race, and stories driven by racial issues such an easy way to derail the discourse. But it strikes me that it's just this reliance on emotion over fact, not remembering to ask basic questions or check primary sources that give mess-ups like Breitbart all the room they need. We can do better. We should surely try.

Remember That Girl Who Sat Next To You In Third Period English And Told You All About Some Popular Girl You Didn't Know And Some Boy On A Sports Team Who Was A BMOC?

... well apparently she, like, grew up and became, like totally, what we call a "journalist":

By contrast, Barber says Levi handled the news that he had gotten together with Bristol rather well. “It really surprised me. When Levi did find out, he was very mature about the situation. He was more happy that it was me with Tripp and Bristol than someone he didn’t like. I still wanted to be friends, but Bristol wouldn’t let me do that.” Barber admits that he then dropped Levi as a buddy. “I feel pretty low as a friend for doing that,” he says, adding he doubts he’ll be asked back as a groomsman this time around. 

Well, it sure beats "school board meets to discuss budget cuts that may affect students arts programs", doncha think?

Come on... she uses quotation marks and everything.

It's not that I'm opposed to gossip or that I don't think the ins and outs of the Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston saga aren't (mildly) interesting; but this is beyond "life is like high school." This is high school, literally; all the kids from Wasilla High, playing Gossip Girl on the national stage, with Shushanna Walshe happily transcribing every petty detail.

All we need to know now, Shushanna, is who you plan to take to Prom. Because I hear that boy on the soccer team can be such a dick.

WaPo, Weigel... and Whaddya Want From Me?

It's been a while since I managed to get out in front of a developing story, but apparently, Twitter is my friend: my post on Dave Weigel beat out a lot of Washington journo types, even if it didn't break far and wide. My own desire to see other reactions, though, was frustratingly delayed, and it's only in the last few hours that I got a good survey in as well as some examination of more of Weigel's work.

I think there's a couple of lingering lessons to Weigel's departure from the Washington Post, though it's anyone's guess if there can be a sustained discussion on them - indeed, given that one place where that conversation was probably essential, the JournoList itself, is no more.

There's been a lot of handwringing and soul searching about the List and about what did or didn't happen on it. I think it's clear, however one wants to play this, that David Frum's hyperbolic take on the JournoList as a dangerous subversive force is decidedly overblown (Frum, in his usually bright way of having it all ways at once, even smartly posts his own corrective, but doesn't retract anything in his own piece).

Is/Was the JournoList, or the idea of it harmless? Is it just, as defenders suggest, a nifty way to get a conversation going and lively debate, or is it, as others suggest, a more dangerous invitation to groupthink and exclusion? Pardon me if I think the answer is both; I have no doubt it served a purpose and probably a useful one for a number of people (just as I suspect that Ezra is right that, in some form, it will sneak back, probably smaller, and more closed). I think a lot of people bandy the word "groupthink" around, but don't entirely understand how it works or why, ultimately, it's problematic. And while I'm sure there was lively debate and dissent among a collection of writers and thinkers, the substantive problem is exclusion and secretiveness. What Ezra has never entirely explained, or revealed, is who was on the List, and why; or who wasn't and why not. Vaguely, he's written that the Listserv was left leaning/liberal and designed to avoid the kind of "food fight" dimensions of left/right debate as it currently plays out. That's fine... but you can't talk about a "lively debate" where all sides get aired... and leave out a side. And just as pointedly, you can't make obvious points about self selection, exclusivity and elitism... and argue how open the litserv or its ideas were. A closed loop is defined by being... well, closed.

I don't think this kind classist, elitist, exclusionary debate is going to just go away; and in many ways, and on many levels, the divisions within elite circles - as well as the large numbers excluded from them - is central to our politics, our culture and our blogosphere, just now. As much as I think JournoList was benign and not all that crucial to the political discourse... I think the sense of "in or out", of whether you were in on it or out of it, was  what brought JournoList into prominence, what made it problematic (as many outsiders are now pointing out), and in its way, made the Weigel incidents all too likely to occur. As I concluded in snarky, but serious, manner the last time: the promise of the web, really, lies in the possibilities of broadening our conversations and exposing more people to more ideas and information. Yes, there are problems, but in general, I tend to favor what the web has wrought: more transparency, less ability to hide, and less ability for message controlling elements to entirely succeed.

Just as tantalizing, though, I think, is that Weigel's dismissal from WaPo underscores the question of what is journalism just now, and what constitutes "doing it well". It's telling, I think, that so many posts about Weigel, admiring his brilliance, offer no real examples or links to his work. Having scanned through a good bit of writing, I don't think what Weigel's been doing is all that remarkable, passing along observations and some insights into the conservative side of the political spectrum just now, usually for more left-ish outlets. Much is made, and has been of Weigel's personal politics... but this is one case where the personal and the political are beside the point: finding out what's driving "tea party anger" and energy on the right isn't hard; discovering that the appeal of Sarah Palin is real and speaks to a disaffected audience is hardly a stretch. But the reality is... many liberals/ progressives don't want to know and can't be bothered to find out. Weigel's work, then, becomes easy shorthand for doing the actual work: here's what they're saying, here's why they say it... and usually, here's why they're wrong.

Is it any wonder, then, that many conservatives were getting progressively more steamed at suggestions that Weigel was some sort of brilliant "reporter" of the right wing?

I'll go further: I don't think this is journalism. And in a week where Michael Hastings reminded us, brutally and brilliantly, what real journalism is and what it can do, it's perhaps instructive and related that both Weigel and McChrystal were forced to resign, and in many ways, over the same thing: supposedly "private "comments, aired in public, that reflected badly on their professional responsibilities.

As much as anyone, I share the sense that newspapers and newsgathering organizations are floundering in this new web driven age for a couple of reasons: advertising revenue has been decimated by the web, especially in turning classified ads into Craigslist. And also because from a content standpoint, new organizations are still struggling to integrate what's useful about blogs into their overall structure without losing sight of the need for "old fashioned" skills like reporting and fact checking and editing. As I've said, I like Ezra Klein, and in no small way, he's been a personally important guiding light for me in figuring out how I could, in fact, blog for myself. But I have no idea, none, what his blog contributes to the Washington Post that isn't better served by actual reporters and more fully developed news stories. Because the thing is, Ezra's not that great at many things, and doesn't necessarily know all that much... like many of us. What made his blog so intriguing that what he did know was well presented, and that the conversations he generated were, in themselves, productive and revealing. I suspect that was as true in his Journo List. But that's not journalism, either.

And none of this is to single out Ezra; I could say, and have said, similar things about Matt Yglesias, Spencer Ackerman (though Ackerman, oddly, has I think become a solid military and national security reporter) or a bunch of others, including most of the "obvious names" of the "Progressive Blogosphere." The value of blogs, I'm convinced, and live out, lies in the sharing of information and ideas... but it's not reporting, and it's not, usually, what journalism is or should be. That's not good, bad, better or worse... it's just different. And I think, as Americans, we're at once amazingly innovative and creative... and at the same time... we struggle with different. A lot.

Finally, just an observation: the real lesson of Weigel - and of McChrystal - is that many of the notions which define "public" and "private" are social conventions and illusions. It's one reason why, most liberally... I don't necessarily believe in an expansive notion of "privacy" per se. I do believe in the right to be left alone, but I think arguments, especially legal ones, built on notions that we have some "privacy zone" are shaky, at best (One day, I'll share my long argument that Roe v. Wade actually works because it says a woman has a right to consult her doctor and make decisions about her own medical condition, not because she has a right to privacy). And brings us back around: the trouble with a "JournoList" is that, ultimately, it equates exclusion with privacy. One's wrong, and the other is illusory... and our web instincts fly in the face of both: do it in the open, and invite everyone in.

Inside, Outside, All Around The Town

Since I got my BlackBerry (and learned the whole meaning of "CrackBerry" compulsions to read it, constantly), I've found myself more connected to, of all things, Twitter. When I had to go to work in the midst of the McChrystal meltdown, it was via BlackBerry that I was able to get the key deets of the resignation, the choice of Petraeus, and pretty much the full gist of Obama's Rose Garden speech (much of which can be ascribed to a single man: CBS Radio's Mark Knoller, who tweets the President's every move, brilliantly).

Today, as I was doing other things, I learned that Dave Weigel resigned from the Washington Post.

Weigel, a longtime blogger - who as far as I can tell, was never that compelling a read - was recently hired to be the "right side" blogger for the WaPo, a post the, er, Post can't seem to successfully for any sustained amount of time (it's the same one that they gave to Ben Domenech, only to see Domenech's career destroyed as he turned out to have a fabulist past). Weigel was knocked, and has been under constant fire since his hire, for not actually being that conservative; he's among the well connected young DC blogger set, less connected to the actual right wing he was hired to cover.

That was bound to cause problems, though I'm not sure anyone could have foretold what unraveled in the past couple of days (stay with me): based on some gossipy reporting about Weigel (and his girlfriend, whop was named in a piece in the Examiner, though she wasn't there) at Atlantic blogger Megan McArdle's wedding, Weigel sent some incendiary comments out over JournoList, a listserv run by (I said stay with me) Ezra Klein, which were made public on a couple of other blogs.

Looking them over, I'd say the most problematic was his wish to see Matt Drudge set himself on fire, though even that comment, which suggested Drudge was a deeply negative person, didn't strike me as especially remarkable.

In any case, though Weigel issued an apology post at his blog, he has subsequently resigned.

I thought I'd written something about JournoList about a year ago, March 2009 specifically, when there was a Politico article about it and Ezra had to explain it himself. I didn't... probably because it wasn't all that interesting. But I thought then, and still do, that a listserv like JournoList is actually kind of problematic, and probably would lead to controversy.

Weigel's drama wasn't necessarily predictable, but there's something to all the thin-skinned responses, his included, to being subjected to the same journalistic impulses as anyone else: be careful what you say, especially when thinking a comment is "private" (to an e-mail list of prominent journalists? Seriously?), and also that blogging is a different thing when done professionally, as a job. And also should be treated accordingly.

As for Journo List, it's of a piece with my general thinking about ideas like the "Progressive Blogosphere" and the DC Bloggerboiz (who, naturally, are appalled by the WaPo making Weigel step down): this whole world of hip DC bloggers (oxymoronic all unto itself) is just too insular, too caught up in familiar DC tropes about being on "the inside" and part of the in crowd, and because of it, giving lie to the very notions of "openness" and "transparency" they claim to favor. Everything should be transparent... except an insider listserv of interconnected bloggers, academics and others. On the inside... it's a whole other story.

From the outside it does, yes, seem all very high school and silly. Except for the part where, like high school, the people from the in clique seem to think that being in it makes some sort of difference. That Weigel got canned for being, in essence, unprofessional is a good reminder that there are at least a few rules even the cool kids have to follow as well.

That, and I'm still waiting for this wonderful world of open, transparent blogging which I was promised. :)

Anybody Here Seen My Old Friend David?

Yesterday was one of those wonderful, terrible days for a news junkie like me. Events unfolding minute by minute, things moving fast and unpredictable... great... but what can you write about it?

As you may have noticed (heh), I'm not a minute by minute blogger. I think one sentence, single link posts are insulting, just generally, and I dislike opinion mongering on the fly (which, by extension, is why I find Ezra so frustrating - it's the dreadful combination of taking in too many stories, forming too many opinions on the fly, and being able to epound on them both quickly and at length. Dangerous combo, that).

I was all set to write a little something about the upcoming day's events... but pretty much as I reached for the pooter, McChrystal was pulling up to the White House, and I thought... "okay, wait and see." And then I went to work... and wait and see was watch and learn. So, in the end, I'm kind of glad I waited.

In retrospect, I think the President had no choice but to fire McChrystal ("accept his resignation' if you prefer); I didn't think that at the top of the week when the first few quotes surfaced, but by yesterday, when I spent the morning reading the Rolling Stone piece, it was clear: no one can, or should, survive this. Disrespectful on so many levels, insulting not just to people he works with on a daily basis, but also his boss, and, probably more troubling, to our allies (the thing about meeting the French minister as "fucking gay" probably really did him in)... an apology won't do, and "don't do that again" will not suffice.

Still, people who actually read the Rolling Stone piece - proof, by the way, that magazine journalism is still crucial, and good reporting trumps just about everything else - will realize that relieving McChrystal of command is no answer to the real problems the story raises: that the counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan isn't working, and most likely can't work, both because it takes longer and needs more soldiers than we have... but also because the Army may, in essence, be fundamentally wrong about the whole thing to begin with.

Which, in the end is why the Petraeus choice is both politically brilliant, and probably the worst news yet in the war.

Let's give the President some credit: he rose to the occasion. At a moment when I think he needed a big political event to go his way, he delivered. Keeping his hand close, he kept his decision out of sight until it was a done deal, and then gave what, probably, was one of his best set of remarks yet - and I don't say that lightly or to cheerlead - showing that, applied properly, staying classy and focused on the matters at hand can be his best strength. He went out of his way to praise McChrystal, and respect his service. And, in strong terms, he reaffirmed civilian control of the military, and made it clear that some actions are firing offenses... and liking or not liking him is not one of them.

Selecting Petraeus is, on many levels, also brilliant: it will surely silence the right, all but the angriest and most shrill. Petraeus is their hero and unassailable. No serious conservative can fault Obama for picking him, even as they whine about the overall war plans. Which makes the whining, well... whiny.

On the left, given the day's events, many will take the optics over the deeper issues; so many people so badly want to cling to their unvarnished hero worship of Obama that any and every move must be portrayed as genius. And the genuinely succesful aspects of yesterday's actions will give them a lot to hang that hero worship on for weeks to come.

But Petraeus? Seriously?

The genius of the move, of course, is that failure - if that's where we're headed - will now be surely spread around. If General Petraeus can't make the counterinsurgency strategy work, no one can, and the decision to withdraw, if it happens on schedule, will look less like one side's refusla to stay and fight. But having Petraeus in charge makes another scenario all too possible: that, come 2011, if things are rough but leaving looks bad... it will be hard to withdraw on the set schedule.

The McChrystal mess presented the President, most, with an opportunity to restate and rethink the commitment in Afghanistan; it's been clear, in recent weeks, that almost every analysis of the war points to more failure than success, with few real options for fixing what isn't working. I've learned more, in the last few days, about "rules of engagement" in armed conflict than I ever wanted to know, and even I'm concinced that, unless something changes, our soldiers are stuck with bad rules that make it hard for them to do what they need to do to get it done. At the same time, a conflict like Afghanistan is horrible precisely because the rules are so gray: the lines between "civilians" and "soldiers" are extremely unclear, and war itself perverts the distinctions.

What General McChrystal expressed to Rolling Stone, along with his team, was a palpable frustration with a lack of the elements needed to win; that didn't change with firing him, or replacing him with a similarly gung-ho advocate of further fighting. From the beginning, the President's plan seemed like a hash of halfway measures, and still does. And halfway measures, really, never work. As heartening as it was to see the President rise to an internal challenge from his own team, the problems remain, and we're too loikely, I think, to see a return to the left-side cheerleading that makes it hard to get the necessary critical mass to turn back a disastrous strategy for a failed, and failing, war. Expecting David Petraeus to save us... seriously, what is that?

The Myth Of The Progressive Blogosphere, And How It Grew

The big news that rippled through the, er, blogosphere (I hate that word) late last week was, in its way, pretty seismic: The New York Times didn't just hire Nate Silver to do what he's been doing, so well, at 538.com - they went and bought the whole thing, installing it within the Times. By any measure, that certainly counts as hitting the Big Time, even now.

In general, I think the move says more about The Times and how they might, yet, survive the digital revolution and cross the (very real) digital divide. I think older publishers - the Washington Post and their dismal web moves are a prime example (along with, these days, trying to unload NewsweeK) - have shown a real knack for getting the digital age wrong, trying to create, in house, what really has to be accepted as organic; you can't just, suddenly, make your own blogs and expect instant success (or, really, any success), just based on size or traffic, or pandering to obvious demographics. And, I think, the model of importing already successful bloggers has yielded dubious blogs (Megan McArdle and Ezra Klein strike me as two examples) which certainly get eyes, but perhaps, not quite so much respect.

Buying Silver, and his website strikes me as something more: it's gaining not just content, but the credibility of understanding why the web is different, and why getting people who already know what to do with it, and do it well, is the real recipe for folding new approaches to content into existing frames.

Still, Silver's move is also an example of good, old fashioned selling out, cashing in when the moment's right, and more than a few bloggers took note of the change  suggesting that the move was a sign that blogging on one's own - though Silver, surely, hasn't been that kind of lonely operation in years - is being "left behind" in favor of a "professionalized" blogger/journalist class of already established names.

Pardon me if I take that a little personally.

Really, though, I don't; I think some of the moves towards professionalization amongst bloggers - clearly, some bloggers at a certain level, and in it for a longer time, have found success at making the whole thing pay off - are very real and even positive. It's just that, I think - and here it may seem personal, though again it's not - that some of this mythology around the "blogging class" is a waste of time and energy, an attempt to rewrite (heh heh) history in favor of the winners, or at least the winners as they appear right now.

More dangerously, I think the perpetuation of notions of a mythical "progressive blogosphere" - a chimerical creation of a set of lefty bloggers that largely self defines and reinforces - damages not only the work of many bloggers but is dangerous to our politics, narrowly defining the notion of what it is to be "on the left" and writing about politics, and creating false notions of our political life, just now and into the future, that in the long run do nothing to help real, progressive political ideas get the kind of traction they need to succeed.

Morning Morsels: Time To Clean The Metaphorical Fridge...

I keep a lot of tabs and windows open on Firefox; too many, really, which makes things often unstable and prone to crash. Many of them are pieces which I think, abstractly, woud make a good basis for a blog post... but never quite get done. So, since Firefox just crashed - again - this morning, let me try and clear the backlog out a bit:

• I've been interested in the developing narrative around the President, trying to sort out who he is, what makes him tick, and who he has around him. I'm not entirely persuaded that anyone's figured him out fully yet (fans or foes), but I think people are finding pieces of thngs that contribute to the picture. For instance, I think this John Judis piece in The New Republic from a while back, gets at the thing a number of us said all along: there's a class difference between Obama and working class voters that explains a lot. 
• Meanwhile, this, now old, Steve Clemons piece at HuffPo on the problems with Obama's core team of Chicago cronies as his key advisors tends to reflect my feeling about what's really wrong with the White House - too insular and too few people in the inner circle who all think alike. I don't, though, think this explanation really does enough to fully explain all the mistakes the White House has made thus far.
• Via Lambert at Corrente, I was brought to this Yves Smith piece that looks at the internal tensions in the Obama White House from a different angle, namely Lambert's view, shared by many, that the Obama folks are trying to marginalize progressives. It's not a view I share, but the Smith piece is interesting, if a bit baroque in its attmepts to tie all the storylines into one game of 11 dimensional chess.
• I've been fascinated by the still-simmering Ayn Rand revival that bubbles on the edges of our national discourse. While I was living in Boston and spending too much time at the nearby Barnes and Noble, I bought copies of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged... but didn't read them. I still mean to. This article by Jon Chait at TNR is an interesting examination of Rand, and Rand-ian politics on the right. I never figured out what piece I meant to write about it.
• In the last week or so, I've been a little interested - but only a little - in the unfolding discussion of the sales pitches for gold investing that mark a number of prominent advertisers on right wing TV and radio. Like many, I think the ads are kind of decpetive and for suckers... but then, that's advertising in a nutshell, if you ask me. Stephen Spruiell over at National Review tries to make excuses for the attacks being all about politics... but as this followup post at The Corner shows... even rightwing financial advisors tend to look askance at the gold sales.
• I tend to not read - and not write about - Megan McArdle over at The Atlantic; she's not very good, as a writer or an analyst, I find, and her points are usually kind of dopey. Still, knowing the residual anger that simmers over healthcare "reform" as passed by Congress and arguments about whether it will be ruled unconstitutional do generate some interesting discussions. McArdle's piece isn't one of them, but for a minute, I thought about wading in with a theory of my own - which is, mainly that I think the mandate is probably constitutional, but even if it isn't in the form they passed, it wilill be in some other form or fashion. But I can make that a sentence... not a full piece.
• This may be a little old, but I liked the points in this "10 things you don't know (or were misinformed) about the Goldman Sachs case." I knew most of them, and reached pretty much the same conclusion as the author. I also tend to think that Goldman will pay a fine and settle the case without admitting guilt... which will pave the way for further action.
• Jonah Goldberg, in his hacktastic way, makes a fair point from the right about critics of Obama being labeled "racist." I kept hoping for other, better examples to contrast him with... but never really found any worth pursuing, and the piece I would write, really, wouldn't say much more than "I wish we used 'racist' less, and 'predjudiced' more"... and there, I've said it.

Well, that should keep you busy for a while. Kept me busy for weeks. :)

Um... What Were We Talking About Again?

In the wake of Tuesday's primary results, and a slew of political developments in the past few days (I do, as well, plan to talk about, um, ...Rand Paul? Is that his name?... in a separate post), I've been struck by the resumption of a familiar aspect of the recent deep partisan divides: that there are multiple conversations happening, each largely ignoring the others.

As a lefty, I notice it especially in the right's determined silence, and fleeing from, most discussions of Rand Paul, and more specifically, refusing to touch the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I mean - Christ - even Jeff Sessions (that's Jefferson Beauregard Sessions) came out to say the Civil Rights Act was basically a good thing and Paul was wrong about the regulation of private business. And that's more than most people on the right did.

The relative silence on Paul and his fairly pure approach to libertarian ideals (I even slogged my way through multiple pages of the usually nutty Redstate bloggers to be sure), seems to be a tacit admission that initial cheering for Paul's solidifying Tea Party power was premature. Cooler heads that long predicted Paul was a disaster waiting to happen turned out - sooner than I think anyone expected - to be more than a little accurate.

Internet Killed The Newsweekly Star

As bad as I feel about losing Newsweek, I think the writing for this one is on the wall: the era of the weekly news magazine is beyond over.

I say that as someone who devoured Newsweek, as a kid (I know... what...a... geeek). I had to, much of the time: as a member of the "Quiz Bowl" team in Junior High (and I was good at it, especially the arts and entertainment questions... again... what... a... gay... geeeek), we had to know the newsmagazine content up and down. And Newsweek, for me, was the best, most enjoyable read.

Newsweek introduced me to Meg Greenfield, surely one of the great editorial and opinion writers ever. It even introduced me to George Will, who remains a graceful skilled writer I really can't sgree with, ever (even, on baseball). Newsweek got me to appreciate the short summary film review (though I still wanted, as I still want, to be Pauline Kael) and the work of David Ansen.

At the time, in 8th grade, I figured just that it was required prep work, made easier by being reasonably entertaining and informative. In retrospect, it occurs to me that Newsweek made me want to write well, in ways that both inform and hold the reader's interest.

So really, it strikes me surprisingly deeply in my heart to think of a world without Newsweek - at least as I fondly remember it.

But time passes and we grow up and the world moves. There's no need for a Newsweek, and hasn't been for years. That's also true of Time and US News and World Report, the former running, I suspect, as a loss leader for the Time Warner enterprise (it's the company's entire name, for goodness sake), and the latter limping along so that Mort Zuckerman can style himself a publishing magnate.

Newsweek, for a long time, was a similar enterprise for the Grahams at the WaPo - prrof that they had a magazine empire, something to put them on par with the big publishers in the mag biz, and I'm sure, for a while, it served as something of a cash cow (though, as I recall, it generally ran behind Time in subscriptions and newsstand sales).  And for a long time, there was a need to be served - a crash-course way to summarize the news of the week, make sense of recent developments and fill in the big picture details that gave the daily news more context.

I don't think I need to explain why that died, but let's go there, anyway: the 24 hour news cycle has eliminated the "catch-up function. The internet has eliminated the "big picture" role. And the segmentation and overall decimation of advertising sales in magazine and newspaper publishing has killed the general interest magazine as a revenue generating prospect.

Officially, Newsweek is being sold. Almost everyone admits that the sale is tantamount to closing the magazine; we'll see if someone is creative enough to chart a fresh course. I tend to doubt it. Newsweek has run on fumes for years, racking up debts, slowly losing its centrality to the national discourse, its relevance as a key information source (I'm sure the gloppy combo that was the original premise of MSNBC - combining WaPo and NBC elements with Microsoft's need for content - didn't help establish Newsweek as a standalone internet brand).

To the extent that Newsweek has had cachet lately it's been in individuals, mostly Jon Meacham, its EIC, more famous for his TV appearances and book efforts than necessarily driving the magazine to new kinds of success. I don't think failure is Meacham's fault... but on the other hand, I think Meacham is a good example of the difference between what a magazine looks like in its heyday and what it looks like in decline: he'll survive, even if the book doesn't. And, you know... that's a good thing, right?

This isn't a lament for the good old days - I'm not sitting here, wishing Newsweek would survive and thrive is this new world. If anything, I think this is about recognizing the new world, and living, fully, in it. But at a moment where I am, ately, feeling my age, and older than I've ever felt... losing Newsweek is just another one of those "well, back when I was your age" moment - so many young people, not knowing what that era was like. I met your children... what did you tell them?