April 30, 2004:

(chuckle) That silly Liberal media... The Washington Post reports that VP Dick Cheney really likes to get his news from Fox:

"It's easy to complain about the press -- I've been doing it for a good part of my career," Cheney said. "It's part of what goes with a free society. What I do is try to focus upon those elements of the press that I think do an effective job and try to be accurate in their portrayal of events. For example, I end up spending a lot of time watching Fox News, because they're more accurate in my experience, in those events that I'm personally involved in, than many of the other outlets."

Now, here's where that shamelessly liberal media weasels its slant in... Nowhere in the article do they add the context of a recent study which showed how woefully under-informed Fox viewers are. A recent study (PDF) concluded:

A new study based on a series of seven nationwide polls conducted from January through September of this year reveals that before and after the Iraq war, a majority of Americans have had significant misperceptions and these are highly related to support for the war with Iraq.

The polling, conducted by the Program on International Policy (PIPA) at the University of Maryland and Knowledge Networks, also reveals that the frequency of these misperceptions varies significantly according to individuals' primary source of news.

Those who primarily watch Fox News are significantly more likely to have misperceptions, while those who primarily listen to NPR or watch PBS are significantly less likely.

So apparently the VP, who continues to need to be corrected by the CIA, is caught in an unbreakable feedback loop. He feeds FOX, FOX feeds him, and he takes FOX as corroboration. (Thanks to John McCrory for the first link on this.)
Link 1:44 PM

There are a LOT of things wrong with Sinclair Broadcast Group's decision to not have its ABC stations show tonight's Nightline (on which all the names of US soldiers killed in Iraq will be read, with their faces shown). Their statement reads, in part, that "Despite the denials by a spokeswoman for the show, the action appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq." It ends with this:

We understand that our decision in this matter may be questioned by some. Before you judge our decision, however, we would ask that you first question Mr. Koppel as to why he chose to read the names of 523 troops killed in combat in Iraq, rather than the names of the thousands of private citizens killed in terrorist attacks since and including the events of September 11, 2001. In his answer, we believe you will find the real motivation behind his action scheduled for this Friday. Unfortunately, we may never know for sure because Mr. Koppel has refused repeated requests from Sinclair's News Central news organization to comment on this Friday's program.

(Others, not Sinclair, have suggested that the program is a ratings ploy: "we might be left thinking that Friday's broadcast, which ABC will simulcast on its Jumbotron in New York's Times Square, is a cheap, content-free stunt designed to tug at our heartstrings and bag a big number on the second night of the May ratings race.")

So what's wrong with Sinclair's decision?

• First, it's presumptuous. They hold all their station licenses as a public trust, on loan from the people of the United States. They are making a decision for their viewers regarding what is appropriate in ABC programming, while remaining an ABC affiliate. Aren't their viewers able to make that decision for themselves? Why does their holding the license entitle them to usurp the role of individuals in what they choose to see?

  And, as if the presumptuousness on the individual weren't enough, there is also presumptuousness at the corporate level. Sinclair is a media conglomerate based in Baltimore, making these decisions not only for the individual viewers but also for the individual station managers who might have a better fix on the responsibilities of being a broadcaster. (The level of centralization which Sinclair employs can be seen in an idea it has of how to treat local news: produce it in Baltimore and pipe it out to the local markets! Some public trust...)

• Second, failure to read names of the 9/11 victims is an irrelevant comparison. While none of us have forgotten 9/11, I think we can recognize that it was two years ago, and their have been numerous memorials to them already. Their names have been read on the anniversary of September 11 twice already, and they will be incorporated into a memorial at the WTC site. (UPDATE: I meant to also write here that the New York Times printed a short obituary for every single victim, "Portraits of Grief." These are still available on line.) So far no one has engaged in the kind of tribute which Nightline is doing tonight; some programs read the names of the recently fallen, but that is not the same thing.
• Third, let's assume Sinclair thinks it's acceptable to read a list of the 9/11 fallen. Is it only because of Nightline hasn't read such a list that reading the names of the fallen soldiers is unacceptable? Or is reading such a list unacceptable in and of itself? Would Sinclair really have felt differently had Nightline read a 9/11 list two and a half years ago? (I suspect not, but of course we can never know.) UPDATE: Actually, we can; ABC claims they did read the names of the 9/11 dead on the first anniversary.
• Fourth, Sinclair Broadcast Group should have issued some kind of disclaimer regarding their political preferences. Opensecrets.org shows that in the 2004 election cycle, 98% of Sinclair's political donations went to Republicans (practically all from individual employees). The top three executives (David, Frederick, and J. Duncan Smith) have already given $2,000 (the max) to Bush. And Frederick is listed as having donated $50,000 to the Republican National Committee since last October. They are certainly free to donate as they wish, but they shouldn't let their politics cloud the way they handle the public trust. (Related to this issue, John McCrory has posted that Sinclair seems to be modeling itself after Fox.)

Some other comments which have been made about Sinclair that may help put its decision in context... (These are not meant as ad hominem attacks, really, as much as to help understand the civic mindedness of the broadcast group. I think the bulleted information above properly focuses on the issue itself.)

• It's been noted that Sinclair is making a conscious effort to supply more "good news" coming out of Iraq.
• Sinclair has lent its resources to further other political causes, providing a gubernatorial candidate with under-priced helicopter rides to events (at rates well below half what they cost the broadcaster).
• Professional journalists have objected to the off-the-cuff, under-researched and under-deliberated daily "The Point" which Sinclair feeds to its affiliates, led by corporate exec Mark Hyman, whose primary responsibility is corporate relations. Wrote one critic, "There's such a thing as righteous anger, but what Hyman offers every night doesn't look much like it. Righteous anger doesn't hide from the best arguments of its victims; it doesn't take refuge in cliché or the crowd; and it doesn't borrow reasoning from the group-think of think tanks and political parties."
• For what it's worth, Sinclair is interested not only in owning more local television stations, but is against regulations requiring local ownership. In comments filed with the FCC, Sinclair counsel wrote (PDF) that "there is no justification for any local television ownership rule. Moreover, the Commission's current rules are completely irrational, and their retention is certainly not necessary in the public interest." Their argument — "The absurdity of the current rules..." — is largely based on the more favorable ceiling for a corporation in more than one medium, not on the merits of the idea itself. Greater concentration, of course, would allow Sinclair to pull the plug on even more Nightline viewers.

So, the next time someone starts to complain to you about the liberal media, send 'em this link. UPDATE: This has been edited; two bullet points were originally misplaced.
Link 11:37 AM

Some praise for InstaPundit, but not for post-war planning. Bloggers all indulge in their biases, which is fine, so long as readers remember that. And I generally read InstaPundit to add variety to my reading, in spite of how few positive things he has to say about Kerry and how little negative he says about Bush etc. But in a post yesterday, he struck a note which is notably critical of the post-war progress in Iraq. Not in its extremity, but in its being there at all, against a backdrop where he usually questions the lack of good news we get out of US media.

In a post praising a blog-initiated effort to get video cameras into the hands of people besides Al Jazeera, he writes, "It's enough to outfit eight independent Iraqi television stations. Bravo to the blogosphere!" But then he follows up with this offset point:

But the real question is why this is being addressed via private donations a year after Saddam fell?

If I understand him correctly — and perhaps this is an issue of the mirror reflecting what you want to see — he is not complaining about the vitality of Al Jazeera (which is not funded by Saddam Hussein) so much as complaining that the blogosphere needed to fill a gap which might have been foreseen by coalition planners. I think this interpretation is justified because he added in a comment from a reader pleading that central planning always leaves something out.

The lack of post war planning, though, can be seen in far more than just a weak front regarding media. Al Franken has repeatedly said on his show that if you read Bob Woodward's book you see extensive sections on planning for the war itself, yet little or no thought being given to the post-war re-development.

I am only a hundred pages into the book (in terms of timeline, March 2002: the invasion was a year away) and I have seen repeated sections where Bush et al have discussed the implications of starting in one month versus another, truncating one tranch's schedule to the detriment of another, compromising this effort against another, and so on; the need for the involvement of specific countries and the implications of the failures to get their involvement; the desires to make sure that sufficient forces are deployed so as to minimize risk, and so on. What is clear so far — only a hundred pages in, of course — is that the perspective of what constitutes risk to our soldiers is limited to the war period. Post-war implications of troop strength are not being discussed as part of the war planning.

So naturally, there is no discussion (yet) regarding how long are the troops going to be there, what will we be doing to rotate forces, what happens if the coalition we build starts to collapse (this last one is probably premature), and so on. Much of the discussion seems to be based on designing a force which is minimally strong enough to make us confident about the war. I have the feeling, from what Franken has been saying, that I am not going to run into discussions about post-war force necessity. I'll have to wait and see... But my point, I guess, is that we're seeing the limits of the post-war planning in far more than video cameras: we're seeing it in troops who are under-supported, under-armored, and dying too frequently. Yesterday's losses were more fuel to the fire. I think we need to stay in Iraq and get the job done, but I think we need to be more careful in praising a "war plan" that didn't think about the post-war well enough.
Link 8:50 AM

The gang that couldn't shoot straight: the Associated Press is reporting that the US has more people tracking Cuban embargo violations than Osama Bin Laden's various money trails.

In the letter from OFAC to Senators Charles Grassley and Max Baucus of the Senate Finance Committee it was revealed that just four full-time employees were assigned to investigating Osama bin Laden's and Saddam Hussein's wealth while nearly two dozen were working on Cuban embargo violations.

Now, maybe there's an issue of efficiency here — that the Cuban embargo violations are more widespread and need that many agents for adequate coverage. But which of these is more dangerous? Hmmm? What makes me think it might have something to do with the large anti-Castro population of Florida and an upcoming presidential election?
Link 10:29 PM

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Before it's too late, I wish John Kerry would start to pay more attention to approachability. I'm not suggesting that he start telling traveling-salesman jokes in his speeches, because that's completely out of place, but to introduce a topic which every American can relate to: love of this country.

At this point, I doubt there are any future voters who don't already know about his Vietnam service, and there's no real need to dwell more on that. I also think he's done well in terms of communicating stances on the issues — visit his web site and you'll quickly see the diversity of issues he's got a position on.

But issues will only go so far come this November; most people, even those who feel Gore was superior to Bush on the issues, would acknowledge that Bush was the more approachable candidate. And personal affability still has a lot to do with positive Bush opinions, because things are going really badly in Iraq, there still haven't been any WMDs found, and the economy hasn't turned around yet. This superiority of Bush's cannot be ignored. (I also suspect that many Americans have a limited appetite for reading and understanding issues and solutions.)

I think he needs to start working on this dimension sooner rather than later, given the length of time it takes to effect attitude change. And the reason I think love of America is a great place to start is because all Americans should be able to relate to it. It's not like throwing a football at all, which, while it may make him seem more average than skiing in Utah does, is not nearly so universal as patriotic fervor expressed in the present tense, not Vietnam.

It wouldn't have to be much, but the theme needs to be developed — what makes the country special, the opportunities it represents, the special ideas in the Constitution, the traditions handed down through Lincoln, to FDR, the high moral values of various leaders and ideas, the way we rebuilt Europe after WWII (you can hear America the Beautiful at this point, sorry if it's getting thick) — and to say it without pointing anything at Bush or proceeding to say anything negative. An unmitigated, unadulterated "why I love this country." For lots of Americans this is an important shibboleth, designating a politician they can relate to. What's not to like?
Link 1:45 PM

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What you don't know about the Beatles, at this point, probably lines up with what you don't know about Brian Epstein. There's a very good documentary which has been seen by Europeans on BBC, but it hasn't really shown up for Americans. I'm assuming few will get to see it tonight in Manhattan, but Salon has a very good article on it. Certainly worth watching an ad in order to read it, and maybe you should even consider subscribing to Salon while you're at it.
Link 12:36 PM

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I haven't complained about InstaPundit in a while, so let's not break a trend. Let's just use him as a springboard for discussion. You may or may not know that the news show Nightline is planning to devote a program to reading a list of the US soldiers who have died in Iraq. The date they've chosen falls during the May "sweeps," a period when television viewing is measured with extra precision in order to best set advertising rates; frequently, programmers put special content on the air in order to draw additional viewers (defeating the purpose of sweeps, of course — is it time to abandon the sweeps process?). Anyway, some people think that an especially large number of viewers will tune in to hear the list (?? How many really sit through the lists of the dead at WTC memorial observations??), and accuse ABC of trampling on the dead. ABC has said, rather, that they wanted to do it outside of Memorial Day observations, away from the clutter, so as to have greater impact; balderdash, say critics, Memorial Day is just outside the sweeps period, is all. In my view, your reaction to this depends on whether or not you think someone will really tune in just to hear content like this, when the names of the recent dead can be heard every night on CNN, and whether you think ABC really planned it this way. That being said, here's how InstaPundit summarized it:

So Nightline is staffed by either clueless idiots unfit to work in TV, or by shameless liars who think we'll fall for anything. Which is it?

Who cares?

Now, I'm not criticizing InstaPundit, because I have no idea whether or not the show's staff was oblivious to that issue. It's also quite possible that they've never paid much attention to sweeps (Nightline has been walking a plank for quite some time, and different people respond to death threats differently).

I only bring all this up because of InstaPundit's question of no impact ("who cares"). Change the nouns in it and you come close to a point which a variety of liberal pundits (Eric Alterman most prominently) have made: either Bush lied to us, or he was lied to; no matter which, you can't trust what he says. You don't have to run around saying "Bush Lied!" in order to discount what he says.
Link 10:08 AM

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Duke Ellington's Birthday! Ellington is one of the greatest American composers, beyond category, highly acclaimed not just by jazz enthusiasts but by 20th-century "serious" composers such as Benjamin Britten and Leonard Bernstein. WKCR is doing their annual birthday marathon, which you can stream through the web here.
Link 8:19 AM

April 28, 2004:

You go, Gore. He's donating $6 million to Democrat campaigns.
Link 1:47 PM

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I refuse to overburden your browser with a lot of large, high-resolution photos of what the Cherry Esplanade looks like right now inside the Brooklyn Botanic Garden; for 99% of you, your monitors won't do them justice and it's a waste of your bandwidth. But I will share this one small pic, of just two trees, and presume that if I spec the height and width properly it won't stop the rest of the page from loading and you can move on to whatever you might care more about. (For instance, you don't want to miss this.) But trust me on the beauty of the esplanade right now: if you're anywhere nearby, do get to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. This shot was taken from the esplanade, where there are four very long rows of 19 trees (two paired rows on opposite sides of a long green), and I have not changed the color through PhotoShop, I've only done some cropping. The grass is really that green, and the trees are really that pink.

If you're not anywhere nearby, maybe you want to move here?
Link 1:20 PM

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This can't wait 'till the weekend. This weekend the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is having its annual Cherry Blossom Festival, but according to this map the esplanade is already at its peak. I should go now, with camera in hand. Buh bye!
Link 10:50 AM

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Rumsfeld made a fair point, shown last night on CNN's Newsnight With Aaron Brown:

MCINTYRE (voice-over): The use of a place of worship to conduct military operations violates the Geneva Conventions and prompted Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to offer some advice and criticism to headline writers.

DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Terrorists attack coalition forces from mosques. That would be one way to present the information. Another might be to say mosques targeted in Fallujah. That was the "Los Angeles Times" headline this morning.

Fair enough point, Mr. Secretary.
UPDATE: For what it's worth, the LA Times article still has that headline on the web; it should also be noted that the mosque's role as a source of gunfire is noted in the 2nd paragraph, which reads, in its entirety, "During the two-hour midday fight, in which at least eight U.S. troops were wounded, a Marine tank demolished the 150-foot-tall minaret of a mosque, from which machine-gun fire had been raining onto Marines 200 yards away." Hopefully the people in LA read more than headlines? Anyone who gets their news solely from headlines is a fool.
Link 9:23 AM

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This is too good to cut and paste into this space. Yesterday, White House press secretary Scott McClellan was asked why the White House refused to permit anything like a stenographer when Bush testifies before the 9/11 Commission. Oh, it's just amazing: McClellan applauds the 'extraordinariness' of Bush's testifying, but when a reporter asks why no steno for something so unusual, McClellan replies he doesn't think this "is unusual at all." (Extraordinary, but not unusual... Is that kind of like, "could happen at any time, but not imminent"?) The entire exchange works out to being like "you're just going to have to be satisfied with the bones you've been thrown." Here it is. And more here.
Link 9:09 AM

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Even if I'm late, this is worth reading:

Everyone agrees that President George Bush's lobotomy has been a tremendous success.

Dick Cheney, the vice-president, declared that he was fully satisfied with it from his point of view.

"Without the lobotomy," Mr Cheney told the American Academy of Neurology, "it might have proved difficult to persuade the president to start wars all around the world without any good pretext. But the removal of those parts of the brain associated with understanding the outcome of one's actions has enabled the president to function fully and without hesitation. Even when it is clear that disaster is around the corner, as it is currently in Iraq, the chief executive is able to go on TV and announce that everything is on course and that he has no intention of changing tactics that have already proved disastrous.

There's more, of course, and if you need further encouragement to click through, it's by the madcap Terry Jones.
Link 8:51 AM

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We are all New Yorkers now. Well, maybe not all, but today's New York Times reports that various aggressive — yet benign — tactics used by the NYPD for the last ten years are being adopted by many municipalities. Tactics such as shifting detectives hours to higher crime periods, more frequent updating of crime databases, and so on.

"What I saw here, it reminded me so much of how New York was in the 80's, when crack really started to hit the streets," said Chief Anthony J. Romano, a former New Yorker who went to Baltimore on the coattails of Kevin Clark, who rose to the position of deputy chief in New York before leaving to become commissioner of the Baltimore Police Department last year. Baltimore ranks in crime statistics as one of the nation's most dangerous cities.

Not just Baltimore, but other localities such as Sarasota (FL), Raleigh (NC), LA, Miami. Start spreading the news...
Link 8:08 AM

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