Thoughts on culture, politics, music and stuff by Eric Olsen, Marty Thau and Mike Crooker, who are among other things, producers.

 
Aloha From San Bernardino County
Here we are, holed up in the Ontario Airport Holiday Inn. I almost missed Saturday completely. After recording for seven hours at the radio station yesterday, I came back and did a little wind-down blogging: can't go into to vacation mode withut squeezing some blog juice out of the old brain.

Well, all of a sudden, it's was near midnight, and it was 2am before we got to sleep after finishing up the packing, repacking and rerepacking (Dawn did everything but the toiletries, which are my specialty - gotta have all the right pills and potions and whatnot). Then we had to get up well before 7 to be out of the house - five people including two teenagers and a 2 year-old - by 8 to park the car, take the shuttle to the airport and get out of Dodge by 10:15.

We were on Delta so we had to visit their hub in Cincy before the four hour flight across the amber waves of grain, mountains, deserts, and back to my hometown for the first time in four years. I've made maybe eight trips to LA since I moved (back) to Cleveland in '90, but most of those came in the first five years, so my connections are ever more tenuous. But once I'm here, it seems like I never left. Things change: this time we headed east on the "new" Airport Freeway, which has been there for about ten years now, but new freeways in LA is nothing jolting. When I was DJing in the '80s, I was still discovering "new" freeways as I roamed the Southland up until the time I moved back to Cleveland.

Traffic seems worse than ever, but that is nothing new either. Why Ontario, you may ask? Cheaper flight to Hawaii from Ontario - which is about 40 miles or so east of LAX - so here we are where the smog meets the mountains for the evening. We are all bone tired, but Dawn and kids are out at the pool beginning our vacation in earnest - it's not a summer vacation until you are wet outdoors - and I am in here struggling with the laptop.

The beginning of a trip, getting there, always seems like work; but we are decompressing nonetheless - Hawaii tomorrow!

Lily - the 2 year-old - didn't get enough sleep either and was fairly cranky at various points in the journey. At the Cincy airport she decided it was time to see her mommy when Dawn and the older two were off getting something to eat. Lily yelled at the top of her impressive lungs, "I WANT MY MOMMY," at least ten times in a row without breathing. We were right by the bank of pay phones: those people were not amused. When she calmed down, I asked her why she did that. She said, rather cheerfully, "Because me do that."

"Yes Lil, I know you did that. But WHY did you do that? What was the REASON?"

She paused dramatically - she is very good at that - and said........."Because me do that."

Even better than the parent-flustering "Because me do that," though," is a neologism she came up with today. When we finally got to the Holiday Inn here in brown Ontario and started to unwind, she suddenly blurted out, "Me go on an airplane yestertime"

"What Lil?"

"Me and Mommy and Daddy and Dis and Bo (she calls Chris "Dis," and Kristen "Bo" - it's a long story) went on an airplane yestertime." She knows what yesterday means - this meant something different. It means the indeterminate past. She knew it was earlier today, not yesterday. "Yestertime" - I like that.

We'll talk to you from Hawaii tomorrow.
posted by Eric at 11:59 PM

 
Lucky Am I
Gotta get back to (okay, start) packing and a bunch of other crap, but allow me to state once again that I am the luckiest guy in the world, and if every aspect of my life was as good as my relationship with Dawn, I would have it made indeed.
posted by Eric at 9:41 PM

 
Love/Hate With NPR
Few things are more satisfying than wailing on an NPR pledge drive. Matt Moore does it well here:

I love all the things that NPR uses to fill in the cracks. Neato little stories about guys that make fake street signs and call it art, biologists that play Barry White to sharks to get them in the mood, and Havrilesky on juicers and burritos. But I hate pledge drives (I do not, however, hate them as much as Eric Olsen). I especially hate last-minute surprise fund drives. Colorado Public Radio was evidently about to WorldBom so the last few days have seen an unprecedented wave of longform on-air begging. The tone of desperation was even more squealingly righteous than usual, making me think that some of the announcers thought they might lose their jobs.

Please stop berating me about my integrity, and stop whining about how I can't get this quality programming elsewhere on the dial. I know all that. I've given you money already this year, and I have the CD of reach-around interviews between Ira Glass and Terry Gross to prove it.

Matt admits he loves NPR, which is why he hates them - just like me!

More importantly, Matt had his ear to the ground and his nose to the grindstone and reported on NPR's change in linking policy, apparently handed down yesterday:

NPR encourages and permits links to content on NPR Web sites. However, NPR is an organization committed to the highest journalistic ethics and standards and to independent, noncommercial journalism, both in fact and appearance. Therefore, the linking should not (a) suggest that NPR promotes or endorses any third party’s causes, ideas, Web sites, products or services, or (b) use NPR content for inappropriate commercial purposes. We reserve the right to withdraw permission for any link.

Good job, Matty!
posted by Eric at 9:35 PM

 
Colon? No, Enema
Back to the Indians. Re the Colon trade, Plain Dealer beat writer Paul Hoynes is blunt:

The Indians have turned out the lights. They might not turn them back on until 2005.

General Manager Mark Shapiro last night forfeited the rest of the season by trading No. 1 starter Bartolo Colon to Montreal for three prospects and veteran outfielder/first baseman Lee Stevens.


The Indians included a player to be named in the deal. It's believed that player is former No. 1 pick Tim Drew, but he's not expected to join the Expos until after the season.

Stevens' inclusion in the deal may mean Jim Thome is the next to leave. Thome, before last night's game against Boston was rained out, said the Indians have not yet asked him to waive his no-trade clause.

Thome can veto any deal. He is a free agent at the end of the year.

Shortstop Brandon Phillips, 20, left-hander Cliff Lee, 23, and outfielder Grady Sizemore, 19, are the three prospects they received from the Expos. Lee was with Class AA Harrisburg against Class AA Akron last night.

The Indians figure they are history for the next 2 1/2 years:

The Indians' goal is to resurface as a contender by 2005.

Shapiro said the only way to do that is to acquire a group of young position players who will be ready to excel at the big-league level over the next three years. He expects Phillips and Sizemore to be a part of that revival.

The Indians decided in early May that they may have to break this club up and start over.

At least Shapiro is realistic:

Shapiro went into this season trying to rebuild and contend at the same time. He failed.

Now he's on Plan B. Blow it up and start over again.

What prompted the move?

"As a group we saw no reason that the pieces we had in place this year, or that the pieces we had coming, were enough to win this year or next year," said Shapiro.

The Indians are coming off a 4-7 trip. They haven't played .500 ball since June 2 and haven't been above .500 since April 29. After an 11-1 start, they've gone 25-40 and are seven games out of first in the AL Central.

"Understandably there will be a fallout from our fans," said Shapiro. "We realize that. We realize that our fan base will take a hit. But next year when we put the skeletal framework of our new team on the field, and we start identifying and developing our new players, maybe some of those fans will come back."

Columnist Bud Shaw is much less optimistic:

The trade of Bartolo Colon raises concerns on so many fronts. Where do you start?

The team that would build around pitching really only meant it would build around young (cheap) pitching ap parently. The team that never could buy a No. 1 starter or groom one finally did just in time to turn him into foreign currency in last night's deal with Montreal.

The Indians are suddenly talking about all the "potential" they have in farm system pitching. Well, Colon was part of that potential and it took him years to start realizing it.

Colon's departure is most troublesome because of the financial flags it hoists high. The full rebuilding mode it signifies isn't the worst thing the Indians can do. But Dolan will have trouble convincing people that the decision is borne of baseball common sense and isn't being made out of acute financial duress.

Bud foresees many an empty seat for the next few years - just like the old days.

I had no idea Douglas Dever (nice cigar, dude) of Society For the Preservation of Clue lives in Cleveland! He is among a small but elite cabal. We will have to associate upon our return from the Land of Hulas! Maybe an Indians game - oh, wait...

Anyway, the Cluemaster has these thoughts on our diminished Tribe:

The only pitcher we have that is worth a damn... it's a shame. We will end up trading away all of our talent for rookies in the hopes that our farm system pulls in 2010 what it did in 92. More likely, 30 years of empty seats. (Although, working in the Caxton Building next door to the Jake, it'll be nice to be able to grab seats by only planning 30 minutes in advance.)

Yep - just like the old days.
posted by Eric at 9:15 PM

 
Blogs and Books
Kevin Holtsberry has an interesting interview with Ken Layne about the relationship between authoring and blogging on his Addicted to Books blog:

Were/are you interested in blogging as a way to promote your book/other writing?

I started writing for the Web many years before I had a novel published. As for my journalism, it was more a convenience for me to assemble my clips online. Now most editors understand the Internet and accept clips by e-mail or by links to a journalist's Web site.

A month or two back, I decided to sell some leftover copies of the Australian version of my 2001 novel. It's a lot of work -- taking orders, signing books, packing them up, standing in line at the Post Office for a few hours a week -- but it's good to get that book to American readers and fellow bloggers.

posted by Eric at 8:49 PM

 
More Padilla
David Hogberg is back with further thoughts on the Jose Padilla case in response to my last post on the matter.

David's main thrust would appear to be that the administration can continue to push for rights restrictions on Padilla and similar "unlawful combatants" because there is a roadblock dead ahead that will stop them anyway:

First, look at the response of pundits to the actions toward Padilla. Even some conservative pundits are opposed to these actions, let alone the liberal ones. Further actions will only bring more denouncements from the punidtocracy. Second, the civil liberties lobby—most notably the ACLU—would kick into high gear, filing lawsuits and mounting vigorous PR and lobbying campaigns. It wouldn’t take long before the outcry would reach such proportions that the Courts and, most importantly, Congress would have to take some action to circumscribe the Bush Administration. In short, if the Bush Administration is looking down the “road to tyranny,” it probably sees a massive roadblock only a short distance away.

Indeed, I think the Bush Administration does see such a roadblock. This is reflected in their efforts to limit the violations of liberty to a few select cases. It is also reflected in how many hairs they have split trying to defend such violations: citizens vs. prisoners of war vs. enemy combatants vs. unlawful combatants. The Bush Administration, I think, realizes it can’t go much further down this path.

I am not sure we can stake out civil liberties on such optimistic thinking.
posted by Eric at 8:42 PM

 
Blog Gab
Quick! Catch new blogger Combustible Boy before he combusts. He attended the "Inside the Blogosphere" panel discussion at the National Press Club today, and reports back, beginning with what is perhaps the understatement of the week:

Though diminished, perhaps, by the absence of InstantMan, James Lileks, and even local boy Josh Marshall

Yeah, they only lost about 60,000 readers a day with that trio elsewhere, yet

the discussion included:
John Hiler of Microcontent News

Dennis Loy Johnson of Mobylives.com, a site about books and literature

Doug McLennan of Artsjournal.com

James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web

In addition, The Idler's Laurence Jarvik and Alice Goldfarb Marquis took part.

Combutible also took photos. Despite the relative lack of bloggy starpower, C.B.'s report is quite compelling, and the event sounds like it was a success:

Hiler began the discussion by describing the pushbutton-publishing blog as the first format in which it is so easy to write -- and so addictive, with the instant gratification of seeing the written word published for all to read. Blogging is addictive for both the reader and the writer, Hiler said -- "I think that addiction is really important." From the reader's perspective, the tense wait for new posts to appear on a favorite blog, hitting the refresh button again and again until something new appears, only adds to the addiction; Hiler's research into pharmacological addiction taught him that addiction becomes even stronger when there is a pause between taking the drug and the onset of the high, and this is simulated by the wait for new posts to appear. All media is addictive to its audience, and blogs can hold their own on this count, Hiler opined.

Fascinating.
posted by Eric at 8:18 PM

 
Who? No!
Hey, I'm back. Six hours is a long damn time to be in a radio studio, but we are covered for the next three weeks. They won't have to run any cheesy repeat shows, thank God. Since I've literally been in a cave, I've missed a lot of action. I still can't believe the Indians traded Colon, but I'll have more on that later.

As you have probably seen below, I was saddened and surprised by the death of John Entwistle, but I assumed that this would finally end the ritualistic abuse of the Who name that has gone on for 20 years now. Imagine my horror and amazement when I arrived at the office to find this:

THE WHO AT CSU CONVOCATION CENTER FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 27, 2002

ON SALE RESCHEDULED FOR FRIDAY JULY 5TH @ 10AM

Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey of The WHO have today confirmed that their US tour is to go ahead despite the death of fellow band member, bassist John Entwistle. The Las Vegas show on 6/28 and the Irvine CA. 6/29 show will be re-scheduled for later in the tour. Details will follow shortly.

Both Daltrey and Townshend view the tour as a “tribute to John Entwistle”, and to the loss of an irreplaceable friend. The Entwistle family is in full support of the decision to continue and feel this is what John would have wanted. His son Christopher said today “ He lived for music and will always live within The WHO’s music. This is what he would have wished and our love goes out to the remaining band members and the entourage that makes up THE WHO family.”

Bill Curbishley
WHO Manager

Reserved Seats, $85.00, $60.00 and a limited number of gold circle seats, GO ON SALE FRIDAY JULY 5TH AT 10:00 AM at the CSU ticket office, all Ticketmaster locations

Everything I wrote last night about the Who not being the Who without Keith Moon: double it now without Entwistle. As I said before, the drums and bass were often the lead instruments of the band. The band will now be as big a joke as the "Allman Brothers Band."

I had hoped otherwise, but I guess greed really is the motivating factor here. At least have the courtesy to call the configuration the "Townshend-Daltrey Band," a la Page and Plant. Now I'm really sad. Are we going to see Jagger and Richards as "The Rolling Stones" after Charlie and Ronnie (barely a real Stone even now) leave or die? Perhaps Paul and Ringo should tour as "The Beatles." Why not?

As was correctly affirmed earlier by Glenn regarding Creedence, in a great group - even a group dominated by one member like Creedence - the sum is greater than the parts: that is EXACTLY THE DEFINITION of a great group.

Sometimes - basically by chance - a collection of individuals band together and something clicks: they create a unit that is indivisible. It isn't 1+1+1+1=4; it's 1+1+1+1=5. And that extra number is the magic that goes away when a member is subtracted. It was bad enough trying to make 1+1+1=5 after Keith self-destructed, but now you're going to try to make 1+1=5?? You don't have to be a mathematician to say that's impossible.

I understand that for touring, for sales, purposes, "The Who" is the magical name. A "Townshend-Daltrey Band" wouldn't be getting $60 and $85 a head, or playing in a large arena. But at some point - and that point has been long passed - you have to concede that the original unit meant something, and honor the reality by retiring the name. Please.
posted by Eric at 7:41 PM

 
Final Day of Preparation Pre-Hawaii
Not one, not two, but three radio shows to tape today in preparation for the Hawaii - a festive marathon. Back later. Sorry about the travel probs Glenn. Perhaps it wasn't meant to be.
posted by Eric at 10:25 AM

 
Two Words...

Lee Fucking Stevens?!?!?!?!

OK, that's three words... Hats off to Jim Thome, we've found your replacement.

UPDATE
Colon is gone, one more round, Colon is gone. "White Flag" indeed.
posted by tofu at 11:29 PM

 
Who's Left?
I'm pretty stunned to hear about John Entwistle dying. He was 57 and had been a rock star, an unassuming and businesslike rock star, for almost 40 years. Maybe that's why I'm stunned: when the normal guys - the business-like troupers with rational lifestyles - start dropping, you know we've turned another corner.

I love the Who, but as with the Stones, I have long since wished they'd shut up and go away. I stopped really loving the Who after Keith Moon died, soon after the recording of Who Are You in '78, and they just kept getting back together and touring over and over again. In fact I didn't even like Who Are You all that much. The Who By Numbers in '75 was the last great Who album, and here we are 27 years later. Damn.

Imagine still touring almost THIRTY YEARS after your last really good record. Was there a point beyond money? Ego? Boredom?Kenny Jones is a functional drummer, but he isn't Keith Moon (of course even Keith Moon wasn't Keith Moon by the end, but that's another story). What made the Who so special - besides Pete Townshend's songwriting for the ten years between '65 and '75 - was what made them such a bizarre ensemble: drums, guitar, bass, and singer, but the guitar was OFTEN THE ENTIRE RHYTHM SECTION.

Moon played the drums like a lead instrument: all syncopated energy, thrashing about with magically controlled fury, filling holes you didn't even know were there; while Entwistle - tall, reserved and stoic - stood there like a pillar moving nothing but his fingers, which flew over the frets faster than the eye could follow.

All of this frenetic motion from the ostensible rhythm instruments required Pete, on guitar, to hold down the rhythmic fort: percussively riffing, bashing out his windmill power chords, and keeping the songs moving forward while the others did their own things. Add to this the iconic ROCK STAR voice, looks, and swagger of Roger Daltrey, and you had one of the most magical live bands of all time. Listen to the holy metallic noise of Live At Leeds and come away converted.

I saw the same tour that Glenn Reynolds mentions here in '89, and I had seen them twice earlier in the '80s and they were all very nice shows: hearing the great old songs, the band still spunky, Roger still belting, Pete still with some hair, but Kenny Jones is no more Keith Moon than Warren Haynes is Duane Allman - some parts just can't be replaced.

Just to quantify this a bit: there is a terrific new 2-CD collection of the Who's best, The Ultimate Collection, that came out recently. All of the great songs are there: "I Can't Explain," "My Generation," "Substitute," "I Can See For Miles," "Magic Bus," on through classics from Tommy, Leeds, Who's Next, Quadrophenia, Who By Numbers, Who Are You, Keith's last. There are 35 songs in the collection. They really are THE BEST OF THE WHO. Only the final two songs - "You Better You Bet" and "Eminence Front" - were recorded after Keith Moon died.

Yet the band has been touring for 24 years now without Keith. I had just seen ads on TV the other night for the upcoming Who summer tour. Guess that will be called off. As much as I loved John, I'm glad the band is finally over. For good. Please stay down now - don't get up again. There hasn't been a real Who in almost 25 years, now let's finally allow the name to rest in peace along with the beloved Keith and John.

UPDATE
Ed Driscoll has a fine reminiscence of the band and the Ox. Brink Lindsey met Entwistle on a hazy night in Tokyo.
posted by Eric at 10:36 PM

 
Umm, What's Today's Date?
We've been running around like such loons getting ready for the trip to Hawaii (and LA on the way back) that Dawn and I both forgot our 4th wedding anniversary until 9pm tonight - guess we'll celebrate tomorrow. Happy Anniversary, though. Love, EO
posted by Eric at 9:26 PM

 
Say What?
It is clear that our self-directed culture is causing us difficulty in one critical area: the CIA and NSA are desperate for linguists:

James Bamford, an author and specialist on the highly secretive National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on communications worldwide, said lack of expert linguists was the NSA's greatest problem.

He wrote in the Washington Post that last September the number of linguists fluent in the main Afghan languages -- Pashto and Dari --could be counted on one hand "with fingers left over."

Loch Johnson, a University of Georgia professor and author of books on intelligence work, said the shift in resources and manpower after the Cold War went mainly to countering threats from weapons of mass destruction, and monitoring North Korea, Iraq and the Balkans.

....Johnson said he had been told there were probably only five or six Farsi [Iranian language] speakers at the CIA, and few if any had the ability to follow rapid conversations between native speakers.

"We are scrambling," said Johnson.

The intelligence agencies say they are trying to reverse the trend toward reliance on technical methods, like satellite images and monitoring the Internet, and preparing to send more operatives abroad with specialized language skills.

Experts note language skills are still essential for understanding and analyzing the mounds of gathered data.

This would be funny if it weren't so ridiculously tragic:

For example, U.S. intelligence services intercepted two messages the day before the Sept. 11 attacks that indicated an event was being planned the following day.

But the National Security Agency did not translate the messages saying in Arabic "Tomorrow is zero hour" and "The match begins tomorrow" until Sept. 12.

They say things are getting better:

The FBI and CIA said they have been steadily addressing the language problem by hiring qualified linguists and retraining officers and operatives.

CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said the number of people with Arabic language skills at the agency has tripled since 1998.

"Are we looking for more? You bet," he said. "We've made very significant strides in this area and we have every intent of continuing that."

Our futures would seem to depend upon it.

UPDATE
Claire Berlinski was kind enough to let us know about an article she wrote for The Weekly Standard on the subject late last year. The problem has been ongoing:

A RUMOR HAS BEEN CIRCULATING in intelligence circles that communications intercepted prior to September 11 referred in Arabic to a "Christmas gift" for the United States. What no one listening to these messages realized was that the same expression can mean "an unpleasant exploding surprise."

This anecdote may or may not be true. But the lack of trained linguists in our intelligence services is no rumor. Directly after the September 11 attack, FBI Director Robert Mueller issued an urgent appeal for Arabic and Farsi translators, posting a toll-free number for applicants on the FBI's website. But this is too little, too late: A critical shortage of linguists with security clearances has crippled American intelligence efforts for decades, and will take decades to remedy fully.

One intelligence failure after another has been linked to the lack of translators and interpreters in the U.S. intelligence community. Following the 1990 murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane in Manhattan, the FBI confiscated handwritten materials in Arabic from the assassin's apartment. No one translated them. The FBI also seized Arabic videotapes and bomb-making manuals from Ahmad Ajaj, a Palestinian serving time in federal prison for passport fraud. No one translated them. Prison officials made tapes of Ajaj as he described bomb-making techniques over the phone. No one translated them. After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, all of these materials were at last reviewed. They pointed clearly to the impending attack.

posted by Eric at 3:50 PM

 
Breaking News!
This just in: the Pledge of Allegiance has just ruled the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit is unconstitutional.

Politicians are cheering while legal scholars caution that the Court can appeal to the Declaration of Independence, or even take it all the way to the Magna Carta. One displaced judge was even heard to mumble "Hammurabi's Code" before flipping off a group of second graders reciting the Pledge.

UPDATE
Maarten Schenk, Live From Brussels, fears the dollar may be next down the unconstitutional toilet.
posted by Eric at 3:04 PM

 
Sweetness
You may not believe this, but I have a fairly delicate stomach, and I definitely ate something that has not fostered gastrointestinal happines all day long. BUT now Dawn has made my millennium with a tribute I don't deserve but certainly do appreciate. Thanks Love! Many other bloggers are celebrated as well - I think she's glad to have the anon buttplug identified and swept aside - as are we all!! Ding Dong anon is dead!!
posted by Eric at 2:25 PM

 
Unintended Consequences?
Ross at Bloviator, who is a health law professor, has a remarkable and troubling account on the threat to public health which may be an unintended side effect of the Homeland Security Act:

Part of Bush's Homeland Security proposal would transfer the responsibilities of several programs and departments of HHS and the CDC to the Homeland Security Office, including the Office for Public Health Emergency Preparedness, the Strategic National Stockpile, and programs housed at the CDC to help bolster local public health preparedness.

....it is clear that this proposal would likely help improve "public health preparedness" in cases of bioterrorism.

However, one of the problems with this act is that there is no definition within the act of either "public health emergency" or "biological event." Consequently, basic public health surveillance and treatment for things such as STD treatment, cancer incidence, flu outbreaks, the West Nile Virus, response to water contamination problems arising out of floods or other natural disasters, and the like, could theoretically come under the auspices of the Homeland Security office. This vagueness also complicates the means through which local public health agencies receive funding and oversight.

....Furthermore, there is the additional reality that the money coming into local public health departments is earmarked not only to bolster the public health system's ability to respond to a terrorist act, but also to help repair a crumbling U.S. public health infrastructure, by allowing for such things as upgrades of communication and surveillance equipment. These are known as "dual-purpose programs."

....Part of the problem of this act is the difference between Foxes and Hedgehogs. Bush is a classic hedgehog, and his administration is acting very hedgehog-like in its efforts to get the Big Picture things done, and paying scant attention to some important pieces that might not find an easy fit in the puzzle. Unfortunately, the end result of failing to pick up all the pieces could have long term detrimental effects on the nation's health and safety, no smallpox attacks necessary.

Ross has done an excellent job here. There is much more detail and analysis on his site - you owe it to yourself to read it all.
posted by Eric at 1:50 PM

 
Now This Is a Pleasant Surprise
I just received this note from the PD at my radio station. It would appear that Cool Tunes will remain on the Internet. I am very pleased. Next question: can we archive the show on our site?

Through a provision in our Corporation For Public Broadcasting grant, we have discovered an exemption for WAPS-FM to the US Copyright mandate of June 20th that had APPEARED to make it too costly for us to continue streaming our WAPS 91.3 The Summit's audio through our website, www.913thesummit.com. Though we initially cut our streaming audio at 5:00pm on Monday June 24th, we are happy to announce that the live Summit Internet Audio has returned at of 1:00pm on Wednesday, June 26th.

Thanks for hanging in there with us during this bumpy ride through the current upheavals in the world of internet audio; enjoy our live streaming Summit audio once again at www.913thesummit.com.

posted by Eric at 10:53 AM

 
Freedom Fatigue
Like Eric McErlain, who found this story, I have always liked and admired Martina Navratilova for her incredible skill, mental toughness, honesty, and the fact that she consciously made a point of "feminizing" herself while in the process of coming out about her sexuality.

While her game and resolve have always been tough as nails, she has also displayed an appealing softness in her personality. If all barrier-breakers displayed her grace and general lack of stridency, barrier-breaking might be an easier thing to do - maybe.

But now she has made a fool of herself by claiming

in an article for Die Zeit weekly that she believed free speech was being suppressed in the United States.

"The most absurd part of my escape from the unjust system is that I have exchanged one system that suppresses free opinion for another," said Navratilova, 45, who fled Czechoslovakia at the age of 18 to go to the United States.

..."The Republicans in the United States manipulate public opinion and sweep any controversial issues under the table," Navratilova said.

"It's depressing. Decisions in America are based solely on the question of 'how much money will come out of it' and not on the questions of how much health, morals or the environment suffer as a result."

I am prone to tread lightly upon, if not excuse Navratilova's statements because I think she suffers from an affliction common to many who flee repression for the good life in the U.S. of A.: freedom fatigue.

Upon exposure to the embarrassment of freedoms available here, it seems that the memories of truly horrifying repression recede and soften in the minds of some, and over time the inevitable results of the sheer exuberance of America's culture of freedom - consumerism, materialism, cacophonous speech - grate on those raised in a system devoid of such exuberance and turn otherwise intelligent, even brilliant people into babbling idiots.

I think an element of homesickness plays into this and the general human tendency toward nostalgia, but perhaps more importantly, what must first appear to be an open-ended romp through endless fields of freedoms and riches inevitably has consequences, ramifications, and limitations which become the trees through which some lose track of the forest.

We should particularly admire those who continuously renew their enthusiasm for the particularities of our system:

It has been quite a journey for the man who became an American citizen on July 4, 1986, when he was sworn in (by Chief Justice Warren Burger) at the Statue of Liberty. The immigrant who, in 1977, landed in this country with his parents and less than $100 in his pocket has grown to become a command performer at the White House, a respected comedic voice, cultural observer, and family man. As Yakov says, “What A Country”!

even if they are somewhat corny about it. I am pleased that our tolerance for corn has increased markedly since 9/11, and that many of us have renewed our admiration for, and commitment to core American values. Perhaps 9/11 has had the affect of shaking American culture in general out of its own version of "freedom fatigue."

UPDATE
Marty thinks I am naive:

EO,
Martina is absolutely correct in her statement about repression in the USA. Further, the USA's values are centered completely around money. Just take a look at how the biggest corps in the USA react to it. Money rules today. The stock market is a sham, the president constantly makes a fool of himself and the media is controlled by the right wing. Take a closer look my friend. Yesterday's surplus is today's deficit. Whatever happened to a prescription drug plan? Where are the results of the tax cut? Don't you think our civil rights have been tampered with? Bush is a born again cowboy. Everyone in the world knows this -- everyone but the dumb Americans who buy into all the shit that is fed to them.
MT

posted by Eric at 9:44 AM

 
He IS a Bad Dude - In a Good Way
As you may know, I take some pride in my ability to insult assplowing shit-for-brains cum-bubbles (no links, let your imagination wander), but this is the work of a man among men, a man of finely honed contempt, a man not afraid - nay some would say eager - to take a rather unpopular opinion. I take my hat off to Brian Linse and look forward to meeting him soon.
posted by Eric at 9:27 AM

 
Drive=Show Some Skin
James Morrow has found an interesting story and has some apposite commentary on same:

I'm more than a little concerned about a case out of Florida which involves a Muslim woman who claims that the state's refusal to give her a driver's license showing what she's got hidden under her veil (namely, her face) is a violation of her rights.

Now I'm pretty sure the woman, Sultaana Freeman, is not a member of an al-Qaeda terrorist cell. Considering the group's feelings about women, I doubt she would even be allowed to serve tea at the group's annual board meeting. But the woman's claim, that lifting her niqab, which covers everything but her eyes, is a violation of her rights to religious freedom is a stretch to say the least. Not only is there a clear and present need for people to be immediately identifiable by their driver's license photos (her lawyers claim that some sort of DNA or fingerprint identifier could be used, which would hardly be practical at a roadside traffic stop), but there are plenty of aspects of American life (legal alcohol, Britney Spears, etc) that a serious Muslim might hate, but they have to live with. License photos, sorry guys, are another one. Until Osama establishes a Caliphate in America, which will be sometime after hell freezes over, a Muslim living in America has to abide by the rules of America and American culture.

Good job, James. A happy and long life to the woman, but we don't take kindly to such quaint practices as "female circumcision" either. Show some skin or ride a camel.

UPDATE
James has an update including a picture of the woman: that isn't a veil, it's a toxic waste suit. How could she possible see well enough to drive in that shroud?
posted by Eric at 9:17 AM

 
Baseball Apocalypse
Although at the moment the Indians are leading Pedro Martinez and the Red Sox 4-0 on three home runs (I knew that shit couldn't last - now the Indians are behind 6-4, a simulacrum of their season), and even beat the Sox last night when Bob Wickman struck out Manny Ramirez to end the game, the Indians are still a pathetic, anemic, shriveling team that is going nowhere fast. So I haven't had much to say about baseball this year. Had I started this blog any other time in the last nine years, you'd be sick of hearing about the Tribe by now.

However, I just got through reading a state-of-the-game story that both renewed my base affections for the only game I have ever really been good at, and gave a painful blow by blow account of its problems. The title of Charles Pierce's literate, orotund opus is "The Decline (and Fall) of Baseball" and the subtitle, "The national pastime's obsession with economic woes is a coverup. Its real problem is irrelevance." Pierce really believes neither assertion, but spends most of the article trying to convince himself:

Even more securely than it attached itself to America, baseball enveloped itself in the mystique of the dawning American century. It caught the exact moment in which the United States of America became a singular descriptive, and it brought everything that had come before into that moment, when bucolic agrarian republic bled into industrial democracy, and the old money danced warily with immigrant labor.

Baseball was drunk on that moment, and look at it now, with the American Century a pile of dead-weight books on the coffee table. This is what baseball now says about itself: that it lost nearly a quarter-billion dollars in 2001; that anywhere from a quarter to a third of its franchises are complete wastes of time; and that it has adapted itself to new technologies as easily as a frog learns to play the clarinet. Look at me, says baseball, sickly and feeble. It wanders around in its pajamas and a three-day-old stubble, superannuated and panhandling quarters. The culture has left it behind, and it stands there, baseball does, befuddled, heedless of traffic swirling around it, unable to cross the road. Its time has passed. It can't keep up. It hates itself as it wanders, lost, bellowing at spectral enemies.

Pierce makes baseball sound like Islamic culture: born into a sense of exceptionalism, an exceptionalism codified by the Supreme Court antitrust exemption of 1922, always behind the times as a result of this sense of exceptionalism and entitlement, which in the face of losing its status as the clear-cut national pastime has now turned to self-loathing:

Baseball is never prepared. That's the one ineluctable fact of its history. Its status, nurtured in a simpler age before mass communications and labor unions, insulated it from the changes in the culture around it. Baseball, smug and oblivious, never saw anything coming, no matter how large and noisy it was. The huge evolutionary changes in the country and its culture left baseball behind, and it often seemed as though the ballpark was the last place anyone noticed.

Of course, baseball did not develop this exalted sense of its own importance by itself. It wasn't even developed completely by the heavily filigreed bunkum of its various chroniclers. (Wallop captures a particularly garish specimen when he quotes one newspaperman's febrile 1909 account of a line-drive out to the third baseman. It takes three paragraphs.) In 1922, the Supreme Court exempted professional baseball from the nation's antitrust laws on the grounds that baseball was a sport, not a trade. Writing for the court was Oliver Wendell Holmes, who once played amateur baseball and who had had better days on the Supreme Court, truth be told.

The antitrust exemption gave explicit sanction to the way baseball conducted its business. It created within baseball a penumbral exceptionalism that enfolded everything that baseball did, and within which, baseball grew fat and smug.

Moreover, it gave implicit sanction to baseball's position as the national sport, inculcating a sense of entitlement that blinded the sport to the necessity - and, thus, the inevitability - of any kind of change. It created within baseball a perilous tendency toward short-term thinking. Whatever its merits as law and as economics, and it has been upheld twice since it was handed down, the ruling worked within the game's history as a dangerous opiate. It has caused baseball to veer wildly between lordly entitlement and sudden existential panic.

Baseball was behind football and basketball in desegregation, behind in labor relations which kept players as indentured servants to a single team until the "reserve clause" was abolished by an arbitrator in 1974, behind in technology:

As late as 1932, all three New York baseball teams banned local radio coverage of their games, fearing that the broadcasts would cut into the live gate. By 1960, 87 percent of American households owned a television set. Baseball approached television as leisurely as it did anything else, its sense of entitlement preceding it, and a man named Pete Rozelle stole the country away simply because he could look farther into the future than baseball ever did.

Rozelle saw how perfectly television suited his National Football League, and he conjured up limitless vistas of profit if he could fit the economics of his game to the medium as well as the game itself did. As football commissioner, he knew he had to sell his sport in an increasingly competitive entertainment culture. He took nothing for granted. So Rozelle knuckled his owners into sharing almost all of their television revenues with one another, perhaps the most successful socialist enterprise in history. In devising this policy, Rozelle anticipated not only the rise in broadcast revenues but also the appearance of new revenue streams, most of which also would be shared.

Beyond economics, however, the primary venue for spectator sports was moving from the stadium grandstands to the living-room sofa, and Rozelle followed it there, adapting and tailoring his game to the demands of television, letting it be shaped as the nation changed. Football on the Lord's Day? Of course. Football on Monday night, in prime time? Why not? Over the next 40 years, the NFL replaced baseball as the national pastime, and it did so primarily on television, which changed the nation itself. The NFL allowed itself to become a television series.

Pierce blames the owners for the economic woes of the game: the greed of the reserve clause, their refusal to share broadcast revenues, their dishonesty as exemplified by the collusion of the mid-80s, all of which causes Pierce to say that baseball has "a management side exposed as (at best) duplicitous and a labor side with no earthly reason ever to trust it again."

A battle over 21st-century finance breaks out on a rhetorical battlefield left over from about 1959. Nothing's left for the management side except to try to bust a union that's had every reason to build up an impenetrable carapace of mistrust.

``They've gotten themselves in a kind of perpetual situation of surviving the next day,'' says Andrew Zimbalist, an author, Smith College economist, and a longtime student of the business of baseball. ``In terms of economics, they have anomalies. In terms of history and politics, baseball has a deeper problem. It's a crisis of governance, not a crisis of cash flow.''

It's also a crisis of perspective. So all the rhetoric is apocalyptic again, as if baseball's economic anomalies threaten the very existence of the sport, and as if the existence of the sport is somehow tied into the survival of the nation, and asif shouting from the housetops about its problems is the only way that baseball can recapture the eminence to which it long felt itself entitled.

``Baseball,'' former owner Bill Veeck warned nearly 40 years ago, ``has sold itself as a civic monument for so long that it has come to believe its own propaganda.''

Pierce believes commissioner Bud Selig is a liar and a dolt, and who doesn't?

The purported crisis is now ``competitive imbalance.'' Largely because of a disparity in local broadcast revenues, team payrolls ran from $28 million to $116 million last year. Of course, this was the situation that Pete Rozelle and the NFL avoided while baseball was too busy hanging on to its doomed reserve system to notice. Consequently, the issue of revenue sharing - the percentage of their local broadcast revenue that the owners will share with one another - is so inextricably bound up with nearly 40 years of retrograde fiscal strategy that the negotiation of a simple percentage figure seems beyond the capabilities of everyone involved. It's always been easier to cry economic havoc than to face the problem that the nation may simply have outgrown your sport.

But that is where the game itself comes to the rescue. Sure, as a percentage, the popularlity of baseball vis-a-vis other sports and other entertainments has dropped over the last 50 years, but much of that drop is simply due to the profusion of other sports and entertainments; just as say, network TV has dropped with the proliferation of cable, home video, computers, etc, etc.

But even as both baseball and network TV have had their near-monopolies chipped away by faster, hipper, more startling entertainments, we have also come to appreciate the value of each, not in spite of, but because of their differences from the upstart competition.

Pierce feels management should be emphasizing the importance of the 162-game regular season as a thing of beauty in and of itself, rather than emphasizing the importance of the playoffs and the fact that relatively few teams have much of a chance to win it all.

By making post-season success the sine qua non of his bargaining position, Selig implicitly acknowledges that baseball's primary aesthetic charm is obsolete. It's an admission that the short-term scrambles of the NBA and NHL playoffs, and the national holiday that is Super Bowl Sunday, speak more directly to the culture than does the long and languorous baseball season, no matter who makes what money and for how long. He demonstrates a gnawing unease that the problem is not that baseball necessarily is economically unsound, but that it's culturally anachronistic. More easily than anyone would have expected, he gives away the summertime.

It's a tough old bird, though, tougher than a lot of folks who profess to love it are willing to admit. There are signs of optimism, if you know where to look, signs that baseball can compete and survive in a hyperaccelerated mouse-click age.

And of course it will, despite the best efforts of the system currently in place - management and players - which seems intent on committing economic fratricide rather than promoting the virtues of the game itself, which is still the greatest game ever invented by man.

After all, back when it was a national pastime, baseball had owners who talked about going broke and had the good grace actually to do it. For example, there was Chris von der Ahe, the manic German saloonkeeper who ran the St. Louis Browns at the end of the 19th century. (One of his stars was a gifted outfielder named Tip O'Neill, who became the idol of a certain corner boy in Cambridge.) Von der Ahe failed so spectacularly that his stadium was burned to the ground and his creditors kidnapped him, spiriting him away to a hoosegow in Pennsylvania.

Through it all, though, through actual fiscal disaster, von der Ahe never doubted the place of his team in the world. When the Browns came into a city, he would hire a brass band and lead it through the streets. He took out ads in the local newspapers, announcing: ``THE BROWNS ARE HERE! THE COMING CHAMPIONS.'' Maybe that's what baseball really is searching for. Not an accountant or a human relations specialist. But someone, anyone - even a bankrupt, lunatic someone - who thinks baseball is still worth a parade.

posted by Eric at 8:57 PM

 
Just Words
It's amazing enough that leaders at a Muslim conference (per the J-Post) admitted they "risk being marginalized if they fail to close social and economic gaps between themselves and the developed world," but that doesn't mean they have the slightest idea how to go about accomplishing this:

Gathered in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, foreign ministers and top officials from 57 Muslim nations heard Sudan's president say there was no choice but to narrow the "historic gap" between them and the developed world to ensure a place on the world map.

"If we fail to do so, we will become even more neglected and marginalized than we are at present, and our future prospects will be shrouded in uncertainty," said Omar el-Bashir, who heads Sudan's Islamic government since coming to power in a 1989 military coup.

I am of the opinion that their future prospects are a little worse than "shrouded in uncertainty."

Abdelouahed Belkziz, the OIC's secretary-general, took the podium after el-Bashir and told delegates how Islam became "synonymous with terrorism in the West" following the Sept. 11 attacks. He urged Muslims to counter what he called Western campaigns to defame the Islamic faith.

Belkziz, a Moroccan, also said Muslims needed to be more in tune with today's world.

"We must listen to the voice of the contemporary world and adjust to whatever it has to offer that's beneficial and be in tune with the march of humanity," he said. "But we shouldn't, as we try to adjust, abandon our faith and Islamic civilization."

A couple of thoughts: What about the Islamic campaign to defame the Jewish faith? And attempts at cherry-picking from the fruits of Western civilization have failed miserably every time they have been tried. The fruits of Western civilization are part and parcel with a worldview even these "forward-lookers" reject out of hand. The grand "success" of the sphere, Turkey, has succeeded to the degree that it has by suppressing the "Islamic civilization" that Belkziz holds as sacrosanct.

The words are soothing, but the reality is that the Islamic world can never "be more in tune with today's world" unless it throws off the yoke of "Islamic civilization" that has assured its backwardness vis-a-vis the West for the last 600 years or so. Otherwise, it's all just words.

The final plaintive words of the article actually leave room for a sliver of hope:

Belkziz complained that OIC members have been ignoring his calls to establish a Common Islamic Market, preferring instead to pursue "unilateral" trade policies, and that member nations were running behind payments of annual dues.

"Pleeease pay your dues, and we aren't kidding. We won't be able to rent a hall for our next meeting." The small ray of sunshine comes from the fact that these countries obviously do not represent a monolithic bloc: they pursue their own individual trade policies and can't even get it together to pay their dues. Perhaps there is hope for additional Turkeys breaking off from the doomed pack.
posted by Eric at 5:08 PM

 
Deja Vu All Over Again
I once spent an evening doing exactly this:

I went home, shot some hoops and proceeded to the grocery store for some beer and dinner. It was one of those hot nights when no food really seemed appealing so I ended up sitting in my apt. drinking a few Sierra Nevadas (it's not my favorite beer.. i swear.. It is just the beer I like the most that you can get almost anywhere) and eating an entire pint of blueberrys. I cranked up the Velvet Underground Fully Loaded (CD2) and finished reading The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

What are the odds against this?? Of course I had this evening 20 years ago, and I played the record not the CD.
posted by Eric at 4:36 PM

 
Making Friends Wherever I Go
To the best of my sometimes spotty recollection, I was last in St. Paul in the early-'80s. So I don't believe this is an old girlfriend or anything, but use of the terms "sonofabitch" and "sperm count" in the same post leads me to wonder. Hmmm.
posted by Eric at 4:24 PM

 
Grift By Any Other Name
I had to drop out of a summer course in accounting back in the collegiate days because it gave me a skull-crushing headache. Now, accounting issues - especially accounting fraud - are in the news almost every day. Brother Arne sent on this little guide to the mess:

I was talking recently with a smart CFO who knows his way around one of the industries that has been hot with fraud lately. He explained that no matter how complicated the grift, deceptive transactions can accomplish only three things: moving earnings, usually from the future to the present; avoiding tax; or hiding debt. That's it. Look at all the book cooking in telecom, electricity, cable TV, and other industries, and it all comes down to those three things. See it like that, and the recent fraud fest looks almost orderly.

For example, consider objective No. 1, the most popular by far: moving earnings. Unrelated bamboozlings in a range of industries become just variations on a theme. In telecom, various companies sold one another those indefeasible whatevers, which convey the right to use a piece of the company's fiber-optic network for a certain period. The company that receives the money books it all at once as revenue, but the company that pays that very same money capitalizes the expense, spreading it over several years.

....A completely different version of exactly the same maneuver apparently happened at Adelphia Communications [assholes], the now nearly worthless cable TV company. In a remarkable form 8-K that reads more like an indictment than an SEC filing, the company confesses to many sins, including a scheme to jack up earnings. It agreed to pay its (unnamed) two main suppliers of digital set-top boxes an extra $26 per box. They agreed to pay Adelphia $26 per box for marketing support. Adelphia now admits it provided nothing you could actually call marketing support. The only point was to book the incoming $26 all at once and to capitalize the outgoing $26 over a number of years. Again, profits from thin air.

Writer Colvin sums it up in terms I can understand:

That's the thing about accounting fraud: The means change, but the ends don't. When executives get desperate enough for wealth, power, or respect, they'll try the same few tricks, just as they have for centuries. They're still getting away with it because they're more motivated than the good guys.

There's a theory that the only real deterrent is orange jumpsuits. When managers see their peers in prison couture, they get religion. There's even a theory that it happens in a 15-year cycle; after that much time, a new management generation finds its own way to the same old places. And it's true that the last time lots of high-profile business people became government guests was about 15 years ago, in the late '80s. Anyway, it's probably time for the jumpsuits to be taken off their hangers.

It isn't really very complicated.

posted by Eric at 3:57 PM

 
Dawn Spawn
She has only been blogging a couple of months, but Dawn has already spawned a new generation of bloggers, most recent of whom are the spunky Sulizano (check out the poem), and the worldly Shell (this one is about lubrication). Visit Dawn and her virtual spawn or they will come and pee on your lawn.
posted by Eric at 3:46 PM

 
Best Wishes
Joe Katzman has a very thoughtful post on Dawn's current travails:

You can be trusted, Dawn. You can deal with the truth, and the bedrock you've made for yourself will help you. There is no guarantee of success in this, and that's a truth spoken from experience. Success may come to you, but faithfulness to success is not the test here. The test is faithfulness to love, as I learned too late. Learn early, and whatever happens - pass.

posted by Eric at 3:19 PM

 
Nukes For Everyone? More On Anarchism
Leonard Dickens continues his valuable series on the precepts of anarchism here:

Now, I am a libertarian from the point of view of most people. I support the libertarian (and Libertarian) agenda pretty much without caveat. I also happen to think that anarchy will have a very libertarian politics supervening over it. But, I could be wrong about that. If push comes to shove (and it will, at least in tiny ways), I will take anarchy. As, for example, the RKBA example: a rights absolutist will have to admit that a thermonuclear weapon is not really different from an assault rifle, from the point of view of being "arms". Both are useful for the militia to deter the state. Now most people, even libertarians, would be uncomfortable with the idea of just anyone with a nuclear device. That's an ideological problem. To an anarchist, it's not, because "rights" as such, while convenient ways to think of what the system will produce, are not reified in the system. The protection companies (if that's what evolves) can easily decide to allow their clients to have guns, but not nukes. They are businesses and they don't have to be ideological.

How can a person espouse a system without knowing exactly what it will produce? Well, it's easy to me. I see that most people are generally good, at least publicly, and will fight at least a bit for justice. Give them freedom, and I think it is enough; over time they will create a system, whatever it may be, that will work pretty well. If they keep the simple axioms of liberty in mind, it will be a great system. If they don't, it will have problems, but it will still probably be OK. In this, I point to the current systems that have evolved around us. Sure, they are statist and ultimately unacceptable. They violate rights all over the place, are inconsistent and even dangerous occasionally. Nonetheless, they more-or-less work most of the time. That's not too bad for systems designed and/or evolved without a modern understanding of economics and human evolution. Knowing so much more, we can do even better. And we will.

And here:

Now, I think that anarchy will do even better than that. I have written before about the function of our current prison system as rapist factories. More generally, our current prisons are fantastic places to learn to be a criminal and not very good for anything else. So, reducing their throughput drastically would cut crime disproportionately. Another advantage of anarchy is that prisoners will work to earn their keep and to pay restitution to their victims. This would be a huge gain in financial efficiency, since currently incarceration costs an average of $20000/prisoner/year. Finally, I suspect that given a highly competitive market, protection agencies will not just "cut out fat" and get leaner, but they will invent whole new ways to police that we won't try today. As I said yesterday, liberty is like that - unpredictable. So the price may well come down even further. I can certainly imagine "free" policing that really poor people provide by themselves, for themselves, as a sort of militia system.

In short, currently the State spends surprisingly little on protection, especially given how much they steal in taxes. In anarchy, total spending will be less. It's affordable.

I'm not an anarchist yet, but at least I understand the theory better than I did before.
posted by Eric at 3:02 PM

 
National Palestinian Radio?
I am now receiving the "Not All Things Considered" newsletter on a regular basis. The writer - Seth Corey, MD Scientific Director, Pediatric Program in Stem Cell Biology and Therapeutics Co-Director, Program in Hematologic Malignancies, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute - explains his campaign thusly:

I first became concerned about NPR's reporting with the first intifada (1988). Since that time, NPR listened has doubled to 20 million (which is 9 times the circulation of the New York Times).

Since that time, NPR has not only refused to address charges of anti-Israel bias, documented over and over again by CAMERA, it has complied with pro-Palestinian groups in the US by blacklisting Steven Emerson. The leading authority on domestic Islamic terror, Steven Emerson has been on NPR for all of two ten-second sound bites in four years! Even after 9/11. Who was the Vice President of News at NPR when Emerson was blacklisted? None other than Jeffrey Dvorkin!

One other culprit is the man who serves as NPR's Foreign News Editor - Loren Jenkins. Jenkins has compared Israel to Nazis in a 1983 Rolling Stone article (June 9, page 37) and was reported to say that Sharon was responsible for this "F------- mess" (about Sabra/Shatilla) (Robert Fisk, The Independent, 2/6/2001). Can one expect objectivity from such a Palestinian partisan? Not unexpectedly, NPR's bias against Israel has only gotten worse during Jenkins' reign as Foreign News Editor.

Because NPR is tax supported, because NPR audience is growing worldwide, because NPR provides 24/7/365 broadcasting, with more and more political talk, because NPR is supported largely by Jews, I have begun an NPR newsletter - "Not All Things Considered." To receive it, send a request to endnprbias@yahoo.com

Here is the most recent newsletter:

NOT ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, 6/25/02
1. ENOUGH SAID.
Prof of Literature EDWARD SAID, Member of the PNC Congress (when they had a Congress) got an 8 MINUTES 15 SECOND soapbox on NPR Sunday. NPR hosts Lynn Neary asked such probing questions as " Professor, you wrote an article which appeared in the Arab newspaper al-Ahram. It paints a very bleak picture for the Palestinian people. I want to quote from that article. Among other things you wrote, 'We have never faced a worse or, at the same time, a more seminal moment. The Arab order is in total disarray. The US administration is effectively controlled by the Christian right and the Israel lobby, and our society has been nearly wrecked by poor leadership and the insanity of thinking that suicide bombing will lead directly to an Islamic Palestinian state.' But you also write there's hope for the future and that you have to be able to look for it in the right place. Where is that place that the Palestinians can look for the future?"

Did NPR ask Said, who used to teach "Heart of Darkness" to Columbia students, ask what he thought of PA teaching children to blow themselves up?

When was the last time an unabashed Zionist got 8 minutes of NPR airtime? (For the entire TRANSCRIPT, send requests to endnprbias@yahoo.com)

2. BALANCE, NPR STYLE WBUR produces On Point and The Connection, which are carried by many NPR stations. Having lost $1 million in donations due to their Israel bashing, WBUR would have been more considerate of balance (something CNN has learned). We present two examples of balance.

Letters may be addressed to Jane Christo station manager: jchristo@wbur.org Of course, we have not received any responses from her...

a. Fear and Fury: Personal Perspectives on the Middle East (THE CONNECTION 6/24). Two guests: Peace Now activist Alice Shalvi and Palestinian activist Rema Hammami. At least the two were in sync when both condemned PM Sharon...

b. ON POINT. Following President's speech, NPR put together this show with the following guests. The score was 5:1 against Israel:
1. Bill Quandt, Fellow at the left-wing Brookings Institution, and author of "Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict since 1967." Husband of Helena Cobban, a long-time critic of Israel. Quandt has pontificated multiple times on NPR, giving a pro-Palestinian view. Quandt called on the show Segev a moderate, which the host agrees with.
2. Fawaz Gerges, Professor of International Affairs and Middle Eastern Studies at Sarah Lawrence College in. An Arab who has pontificated multiple times on NPR, giving the Palestinian view.
3. David E. Sanger, White House Correspondent for The New York Times. New York Times has been subjected to boycott because of its anti-Israel views.
Not on your website were:
4. Tom Segev, a far-left wing Ha'aretz columnist and part of the revisionist post-Zionists, He has been on NPR multiple times giving his anti-Israel government diatribes.
5. Lewis Gordon, Professor of Africana studies, Brown. He agreed with Tom Segev, and criticized Bush and Israel. Gordon is not qualified to discuss the Middle East since he is Director of Afro-American Studies and Professor of Afro-American Studies and
Religious Studies, with courtesy appointments in Modern Culture and Media and Latin-American Studies, and Faculty and Board membership in the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America. He is a specialist in Africana Philosophy and Religion, Philosophy of Human Sciences, Phenomenology, Philosophy of Existence, Social and Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Education, Philosophy in Literature and in Film, and Semiotics.
6. Daniel Pipes. The one person who espoused a line not sympathetic to Palestinians but the moderator multiple interrupted him.

3. NPR REACHES OUT TO THE MUSLIM COMMUNITY (again)...
From the CAIR website:
Media requests: NPR seeks to Muslim Interviewees
National Public Radio is doing a long radio story on the concerns of Muslims about their civil liberties since 9/11. In particular, I would
like to focus on a few people (maybe a family) who are concerned that they will be questioned (or arrested or detained) because they are Muslim; concerned that the FBI might try to "infiltrate" their mosques and schools (particularly with the new Guidelines for FBI agents, which allows agents to go into public places without having probable cause of a crime); people who are concerned for their children.

If you would be willing to talk with me, please send me an email at: bbradley@npr.org

Barbara Bradley
Washington correspondent
National Public Radio


THIS IS WHAT CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) suggested:

MUSLIMS IN AMERICA POST 9-11
A major international news organization has requested suggestions for Muslim interviewees for an upcoming program on life for Muslims in America after the Sept. 11 attacks. Their wish list for ideal interviews would be:
Muslims who live in "small town" America and don't feel as though they fit in, for whatever reason.
A Muslim who's serving in the American forces + another example of somebody who feels very integrated into US society - e.g. a successful Muslim entrepreneur.
A Muslim activist at a university - somebody with radical political views.
A lively mosque with plenty of sound in an interesting location. If you are interested in participating and fit one of the above criteria,
please send an email to hhassan@cair-net.org

When was the last time NPR did a "LONG" REPORT on Jewish victims of torture? If privately-held CNN can respond to criticism, why can't tax supported NPR?

4. CAMERA ACTION ALERT ON NPR
On June 21, National Public Radio's Morning Edition once again employed distorting terminology in a report on a Palestinian terrorist attack. Forty-year-old Rachel Shabo of Itamar and three of her sons were slain when a terrorist burst into their home, shooting the family members. NPR introduced the story this way:
"Israeli officials say Palestinian commandos stormed a house in a Jewish settlement on the West Bank last night killing five people."

In fact, commandos are elite troops whose mission is characteristically to save lives -- not to slaughter defenseless civilians in their homes. In addition, of course, neither the Foreign Ministry nor Israel Defense Forces websites use any terminology but "terrorist" attacks to characterize the killing of the mother and her children. If NPR cannot produce actual "Israeli officials" who used the "commando" terminology, the network should retract its misleading language and desist from any further use of it.

The Random House Dictionary definition of "commando" is:
"1. (In World War II) a. any of the specially trained Allied military units used for surprise, hit-and-run raids against Axis forces. ...2. any military unit organized for operations similar to those of the commandos of World War II. 3. A member of a military assault unit or team trained to operate quickly and aggressively in especially urgent, threatening situations, as against terrorists holding hostages."

A mother and her children are obviously civilian targets, not military "forces." And the terrorists were not rescuing the mother and her children from other terrorists.

To its credit, NPR seems to feel it has nothing to hide. It has made transcripts available free of charge of its Middle East coverage dating back (as of now) to May 8, 2002.

In review: no one element of NPR's programming listed here is particularly egregious, but taken together the case for bias continues to be convincing. If you feature this then if you wish to be anything close to balanced, you should also feature that; and for whatever reason, NPR sorely lacks much of that. We must keep pointing this out.
posted by Eric at 1:51 PM

 
Cornfields and Civil Rights
Here's how much I like David Hogberg: the main focus of his blog is IOWA politics and media and if I cared less about either my head would implode, but I still read him almost every day. He is headed off today for a visit to San Fran and will be checking out the Giants at Pac Bell Park. He would like to see Jacobs Field here in Cleveland someday. CONSIDER THIS AN INVITATION. He also laments the fact that the Giants are only 10 games over .500 so far this year. My response: weep, look at the freaking Indians.

On to more substantive matters, I am extremely torn about the conditions of Jose Padilla's detention. These things are both true: Jose Padilla is: (1) In league with the al Qaeda terrorist network. (2) A citizen of the United States. Hence my deep conflict.

David argues well and persuasively for the continued denial of Padilla's civil liberties as a U.S. citizen due to his status as an "unlawful combatant":

"an unlawful combatant is a fighter who does not play by the accepted rules of war, and therefore does not qualify for the Convention's protections," the accepted rules being the ones laid down by the 1949 Geneva Convention. The Geneva Convention sets out the guidelines for "Prisoner of War" (see article 4). Needless to say, Padilla doesn’t fit the definition.

....it is also well established under American law that unlawful combatants do not have to be treated like ordinary citizens. As Julian Epstein, a former Democratic chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, argued in the Washington Post last week:

Pursuant to the Geneva conventions and ample precedent in U.S. law, the Bush administration is well within its rights to detain those properly determined to be lawful or unlawful combatants until the conclusion of the armed conflict, and only then to try them in a properly constituted military tribunal, a military court or in civilian courts. The apparent supervision of Padilla by a federal judge since his detention as a material witness and the availability of federal habeas petitions, should help check against arbitrary or pretextual determinations about his combatant status.

Hogberg also goes after those who would use the race card:

Nice try, but race has nothing to do with it. Lindh was allowed to be tried in a civilian court because the government determined that he had no valuable information about al Qaeda. If he did, he no doubt would have been treated as an unlawful combatant. Padilla, on the other hand, appears to be part of a terrorist plot. He may have information about that could prevent another 9/11. Thus, he must be treated exactly as an enemy captured during a war, because he is.

All well and good, but of course the real question here is whether the Padilla case

"amounts to 'alarming violations of fundamental rights,' and if we stay on this path 'we are on the road to militarizing the entire justice system.'"

Hogberg then argues, using Jonah Goldberg and others, that the Padilla case is singular and those who say otherwise are making a mountain out of a molehill. Yet even Goldberg concedes:

I can totally understand how people can disagree with me. What I'm at a loss to understand is their granite-like conviction that if we deprive Jose Padilla of his right to trial by jury, we'll become a totalitarian regime. Sure, I can see how it might bring us a teensy-weensy bit closer to a less free society.

So we finally come to the crux of the matter: is it appropriate to make ours "a teensy-weensy bit closer to a less free society" to detain Padilla indefinitely without charges, under military custody, in order to interrogate him as thoroughly as possible regarding the workings of al Qaeda, and/or future attacks? That is the nut I am having such a hard time cracking.

As the Star Telegram says:

the constitutional protections guaranteed for U.S. citizens are, in the case of Padilla, being ignored by the Bush administration.

The 31-year-old Padilla, who grew up in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago, is thought to be held in a Navy brig in South Carolina as an unlawful combatant. He has not been charged with a crime, although Justice Department officials say they have connected him to a planned "dirty bomb" attack on U.S. soil.

Prosecutors have yet to present to a judge the evidence they have against Padilla, and there is no plan for such an action to occur. President Bush approved Padilla's classification as an "enemy combatant" only after the feds failed to construct a case convincing enough to take to court.

The editorial writers concede:

Without question, the balance between due process and public safety is a delicate one during a time of threats to national security. But this country has a judicial system to handle citizens accused of a crime. That is rightfully where the case of John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban," will be heard.

The writers then make the traditional ACLU argument about the importance of defending the rights of the least deserving among us.

Robert Levy compares the cases of Padilla, Hamdi, Moussaoui and Reid in NRO:

Padilla, a.k.a. Abdullah al-Muhajir, supposedly plotted to build and detonate a radiological "dirty bomb." He is a U.S. citizen. Yet he's being detained by the military — indefinitely, without seeing an attorney, even though he hasn't been charged with any crime. Yaser Esam Hamdi is also a U.S. citizen. He, too, is being detained by the military — indefinitely, without seeing an attorney, even though he hasn't been charged with any crime. Meanwhile, Zacarias Moussaoui, purportedly the 20th hijacker, is not a U.S. citizen. Neither is Richard Reid, the alleged shoe bomber. Both have attorneys. Both have been charged before federal civilian courts.

What gives? Four men: two citizens and two non-citizens. Is it possible that constitutional rights — like habeas corpus, which requires the government to justify continued detentions, and the Sixth Amendment, which assures a speedy and public jury trial with assistance of counsel — can be denied to citizens yet extended to non-citizens? That's what the Bush administration would have us believe. Citizen Padilla's treatment is perfectly legitimate, insists Attorney General John Ashcroft, because Padilla is an "enemy combatant" and there is "clear Supreme Court precedent" to handle those persons differently, even if they are citizens.

He has grave doubts about the legality of Padilla's status:

When unlawful combatants are captured, they can be tried by a military tribunal. That's what happened to the Nazi saboteurs in Quirin. But Padilla has not been charged much less tried. Indeed, the president's executive order of November 2001 excludes U.S. citizens from the purview of military tribunals. If the president were to modify his order, the Quirin decision might provide legal authority for the military to try Padilla. But the decision provides no legal authority for detaining a citizen without an attorney solely for purposes of aggressive interrogation.

Even Hogberg concedes this is the purpose of Padilla's status.

Moreover, the Constitution does not distinguish between the protections extended to ordinary citizens on one hand and unlawful-combatant citizens on the other. Nor does the Constitution distinguish between the crimes covered by the Fifth and Sixth Amendments and the terrorist acts Padilla is suspected of planning. Still, the Quirin Court justified those distinctions — noting that Congress had formally declared war and thereby invoked articles of war that expressly authorized the trial of unlawful combatants by military tribunal. Today, the situation is very different. We've had virtually no input from Congress: no declaration of war, no authorization of tribunals, and no suspension of habeas corpus.

This is all troubling. Levy concludes:

In a nutshell, we cannot permit the executive branch to declare unilaterally that a U.S. citizen may be characterized as an enemy combatant, whisked away, detained indefinitely without charges, denied legal counsel, and prevented from arguing to a judge that he is wholly innocent.

That does not mean the Justice Department must set people free to unleash weapons of mass destruction. But it does mean, at a minimum, that Congress must get involved, exercising its responsibility to enact a new legal regimen for citizen-detainees in time of national emergency. That regimen must respect citizens' rights under the Constitution, including the right to judicial review of executive branch decisions. Constitutional rights are not absolute. But they do establish a strong presumption of liberty, which can be overridden only if government demonstrates, first, that its restrictions are essential and, second, that the goals it seeks to accomplish cannot be accomplished in a less invasive manner. When the executive, legislative, and judicial branches agree on the framework, the potential for abuse is significantly diminished. When only the executive has acted, the foundation of a free society can too easily erode.

No hysteria here, just troubling questions.

Gary Solis, a retired Marine who teaches the law of war at Georgetown University Law Center, is troubled with the designation of Padilla as an "unlawful combatant":

Until now, as used by the attorney general, the term "enemy combatant" appeared nowhere in U.S. criminal law, international law or in the law of war. The term appears to have been appropriated from ex parte Quirin, the 1942 Nazi saboteurs case, in which the Supreme Court wrote that "an enemy combatant who without uniform comes secretly through the lines for the purpose of waging war by destruction of life or property [would exemplify] belligerents who are generally deemed not to be entitled to the status of prisoner of war, but to be offenders against the law of war subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals."

But that description hardly fits Padilla; he didn't come to the United States secretly, he passed through no lines, and as a U.S. citizen he is not within a military tribunal's jurisdiction. The term "enemy combatant" is simply lifted from a Supreme Court opinion and applied to Padilla and Hamdi because it makes them sound like they ought to be held incommunicado, without charges and without representation. It is a term without prior legal meaning, manufactured from commonly used military words, "enemy" and "combatant." In the Padilla and Hamdi cases, the term seriously misleads.

....The Justice Department makes no secret of why it has not charged Padilla or Hamdi, nor why they are kept from their lawyers. The Justice Department wants to wring from them every whisper of information that may bear on the war, a reasonable enough goal. To charge them would require in-court arraignment, which would publicly cement their legal rights -- not something conducive to productive interrogation. To grant them a lawyer would lead to a similar informational dead end. Yet charges within a reasonable period and legal representation are what the Constitution guarantees every American citizen, bad, good or bomber. The Justice Department cannot credibly fight terrorism at the cost of basic constitutional rights. If Padilla and Hamdi may be held in isolation in the name of terrorism, with no opportunity to defend themselves, who else might be subject to similar treatment? If "enemy combatant" is an undefined criminal category invoked by government officials free of judicial scrutiny, who else might be so nominated?

Eugene Volokh responds to the same article:

My guess is that ultimately the best (though imperfect) solution is to require the government to prove to a standard civilian court that a detainee is indeed an enemy combatant, and once that's proven, to allow the government to detain him just as it could detain any enemy combatant seized on a battlefield (even if the person was a U.S. citizen seized within the U.S.). Alternatively (or perhaps supplementally), we might conclude that (1) certain rights (for instance, the right to a prompt trial, and to the aid of a lawyer at trial and before trial) should be broadly retained, even in cases where the defendant is accused of being an enemy combatant, but (2) other rights -- the right not to be interrogated after the subject says "no" or "I want a lawyer," or the right not to be interrogated at all post-arraignment when a lawyer is present -- should have an exception carved out for people who are credibly accused of being enemy combatants. The balance that the court have struck in, say, Miranda or their interpretations of the Sixth Amendment might make sense in normal crime-fighting, but not necessarily in trying to stop an armed enemy from deploying weapons of mass destruction.

But I may well be mistaken on all this; and much depends on just how such proposals would be implemented -- for instance, whether secret evidence would be admissible, how thoroughly the government would have to prove that the person is an enemy combatant (beyond a reasonable doubt? by a preponderance of the evidence? by clear and convincing evidence?), and so on.

I am comforted by the fact that even Eugene Volokh has unresolved questions about this case.

I want the government to wring every drop of possibly helpful information out of Jose Padilla, and I have no concern for him personally: a career criminal who has apparently turned against his own country in the worst possible way. The fact that he did not successfully carry out his mission is certainly not cause for any kind of leniency.

But, I also am concerned about the slippery slope question: in this case the appearance of impropriety or disregard of the Constitution is worse than whatever misfortune befalls the individual miscreant Padilla. Therefore, the Constitution must be heeded out of respect for the system rather than respect for the suspect, and the "technicalities" Volokh proposes should be followed to reassure the populace as to the government's good will toward the law of the land, even when dealing with the scummiest of "bad" men.

Oh, and David Hogberg have a good trip.

UPDATE
Via Glenn Reynolds, Jim Henley says "hell no" to the "preemptive" worldview:

Obviously, Unqualified Offerings picks the free society. Let's assume that keeping such liberties as we have and maybe, perish the thought, expanding them, treating the threat of stateless terrorism as a police and intelligence matter and state terrorism as a matter for deterrence and retribution, not "preemption," makes America somewhat less secure. Let's even say that the price of, oh, habeas corpus, a prohibition on torture and something akin to privacy is a major attack on an American city sometime in the next ten years. A tactical nuke or an epidemic that will kill people in the high five figures or low six. (These are realistic "worst case" numbers, as I've argued before.)

Would it be worth it? Hell yes.

Whoa. Glenn, while not dismissing all concern, rather neatly refutes the supposition upon which this argument is based:

If you buy the whole unstoppable-slippery-slope-to-tyranny worldview then, sure, you've got a problem. But if that worldview were true, the Alien and Sedition Acts would never have been repealed, slavery never would have ended -- and for that matter, neither would Prohibition, or the draft.

That doesn't mean that Henley's worries are entirely misplaced, only that I don't see things as being quite that grim. My nightmare scenario, in fact, is one in which the "war on terror" starts looking like the "war on drugs." Which is why I'm in favor of invading Iraq, giving the al-Sauds the boot, and in general fighting a genuine war rather than settling into long-term chronic-illness mode.

UPDATE REDUX
Ginger Stampley doesn't buy Glenn's perspective:

Mind you, I'm glad we got rid of the Taliban. I'm glad there's a new government in Afghanistan. We did the right thing. But defining what we did as a success against al-Qaeda and suggesting that repeating the experience will protect our civil liberties is like defining a buggy beta product as production-ready. If your job depends on calling it a success, you can call it that, but that doesn't make it one.

...No matter how you slice it, though, war on Iraq and Saudi Arabia isn't a palliative that will get the hawk-monkey busy and off our backs at home. And it won't guarantee that we won't see a suitcase nuke detonated in American city, either.

I don't want the administration to be able to label somebody an "enemy combatant" and throw him in the military brig in defiance of Constitutional principles. I don't want tens of thousands of Americans dead from a dirty bomb attack either. But I'm pretty sure I can help stop, or at least do something about, the former. How, realistically, do the hawks think a war will stop the latter?

posted by Eric at 11:45 AM

 
The Slugs Are Back, It Would Appear
The WaPo says

Government analysts have determined it is "highly probable" that Osama bin Laden's spokesman recorded an audiotape broadcast Sunday that threatened future terrorist attacks against the United States and said the al Qaeda leader and his top deputy are still alive, a senior administration official said yesterday.

The tape, broadcast over the Qatar-based al-Jazeera network, was said to have been made recently by Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, bin Laden's chief spokesman.

The government has tested the tape for the last two days and is "fairly certain" that it is legit. The troops are getting restless:

Analysts who have reviewed Ghaith's remarks view them as another effort to "boost morale of bin Laden's network" and "instill continued fear in the U.S." with his statement that al Qaeda plans to strike again, the official said.

Given the military setbacks in Afghanistan and a recent series of arrests of al Qaeda personnel in Pakistan, North Africa, the Middle East and Europe, U.S. analysts believe "morale among [bin Laden's] dispersed network has gone relatively low," the official said. "They are antsy."

All the more so, these threats make it imperative that we continue to take the fight to the enemy: the best defense in this case is a good offense.

The failure of either bin Laden or Zawahiri to appear publicly or on audiotape, as Ghaith apparently has now done, will keep rumors going that they are either ill or dead. But U.S. intelligence analysts also believe that they are saving their next appearance to coincide with some major future attack, one senior analysts said.

"They work on their own timetable," a senior official said.

Ghaith said that "al Qaeda is not a fragile organization as some might think" and threatened an attack on America will be "in a time we choose and the place we choose and the method we choose."

The more pressure we keep on these vicious slugs, the more we take choices out of their hands.
posted by Eric at 11:16 AM

 
Val Thinks He's a Perv
You know, like Amy Langfield said today:

Tony Pierce, who writes a great blog, announced a couple weeks ago that he's going to stop writing it. His loyal readers have been up in arms, and there's been different contests to see if Tony's fans can persuade him to keep up the good work.

But maybe Tony should stop. He's an incredibly smart and creative guy with loads of writing talent. If Tony stops the blog, it won't be long before he comes up with something completely new and provoking.

So I can see the opportunities available through such a revolution. If I want stability I can turn to the Middle East.

But if Tony stops doing things like this, I will be wicked pissed.
posted by Eric at 8:57 PM

 
Minding From Within
Once more to the referrer logs. I was scanning to see who has been sending visitors our way (still getting quite a few from what I assume was intended to be an attack - this is the sweetest of ironies) and saw a new name: OmbudsGod. What a great idea: keeping track of the activites of the ombudspeople with our nation's media.

For those who don't know, a news ombudsman

receives and investigates complaints from newspaper readers or listeners or viewers of radio and television stations about accuracy, fairness, balance and good taste in news coverage. He or she recommends appropriate remedies or responses to correct or clarify news reports.

Why should a newspaper or broadcaster have an ombudsman?

To improve the quality of news reporting by monitoring accuracy, fairness and balance.
To help his or her news provider to become more accessible and accountable to readers or audience members and, thus, to become more credible.
To increase the awareness of its news professionals about the public's concerns.
To save time for publishers and senior editors, or broadcasters and news directors, by channeling complaints and other inquiries to one responsible individual.
To resolve some complaints that might otherwise be sent to attorneys and become costly lawsuits.

And the OmbudsGod keeps an eye on them. He/she has intriguing posts on the NY Times, Boston Globe, The Times of London, a rondo on the word "gringo," and where I come in, NPR. Fascinating stuff if you have any interest in the workings of the media.
posted by Eric at 8:30 PM

 
6th Column
Bill Quick - he of the keen eye, strong spirit, and nose for news - has spotted the recurrence of an apparent form letter being generated from points unknown advising against war with Iraq. He provides damning examples.

One of the endless articles about blogging in the mainstream press said something like: "Yeah, well blogs are neat and all, but what about investigative reporting?" This is real investigative reporting - Bill Quick is invaluable.

UPDATE
A reader of Bill's has tracked down the source of the form letter, an organization called MoveOn. See the comments section too for some indignation from a pro-MoveOn blogger who calls the effort "old fashioned American free speech," which, indeed it is; and another who says

"Exposing" this view would entail using some type of facts that show this view to be false, rather than resorting to using loaded words to cast the whole thing in shadow

A few thoughts: Bill was "exposing" the fact that these seemingly independent letters came from the same source, which DOES cast them in a different light. Copying and slightly modifying a form letter is an ontologically different kind of action than composing something of one's own mind: copying vs. creating, and THAT is Bill's story here. Bill is legitimately "exposing" the fact that this assortment of nearly identical pieces come from a single source, and are part of an organized campaign. There are different levels of "grassroots" and should the thoughts expressed in these letters have arisen independently in the minds of individual Americans more or less simultaneously, THAT would represent an expression of the zeitgeist.

The fact that these letters came from the same source, were copied and disseminated for the express purpose of influencing public opinion, and were NOT the expressions of single minds in reaction to the world, is news in and of itself. The content of those letters is secondary and not the subject of Bill's report. We have now seen two levels of disingenuousness from this camp and its supporters.
posted by Eric at 8:03 PM

 
Behind the Scenes
Please allow me to tell you how proud I am of Dawn: her parents have been going through a messy divorce over the last several months, and her mother, well, has basically lost it. Dawn hasn't felt sorry for herself, she hasn't let it get her down, certainly you would never know from her blog - until now. She is a special person.
posted by Eric at 6:54 PM

 
The Bite of the Cells
Andy - currently in the process of Ranting Worldwide - has noted a trend that colleges and universities are feeling the loss of revenue as students have taken to using cell phones:

UNIVERSITIES ARE FEELING THE PAIN OF CELL PHONES as students stop using university phone services and switch to mobile phone plans that are cheaper and, well, mobile. This decline in revenues is driving some colleges to indicate that a tuition price hike might be in the future.

He concludes:

They could always sneak the costs in the way that the University of Alabama did - by forcing students to enroll in the dining program to the tune of at least $550/year, whether they wanted it or not. Can required phone cards be far behind?

When I was in school, the entire student body shared a single phone that you had to crank, wait for a call back from the operator, then hike back to your dorm in the snow, uphill, barefoot. And we liked it. We thought a "phone card" was what you gave your sweetie on Phone Day - from Hallmark. Spoiled kids.
posted by Eric at 5:27 PM

 
Boob Tube
Justin Sodano gives a fascinating account of his participation in Adbuster's Zen TV Experiment, and, very interestingly, comes away with a GREATER appreciation of TV than before:

1. Television remains the predominant medium for cultural literacy and news in our country. It presents the information in the friendliest format, requiring the least effort on the viewer. While the Internet is gaining ground, people still primarily turn to television for information and entertainment (especially humor).

2. Television affords people the ability to witness events that they could never physically attend or observe otherwise. TV viewers were able to watch a man land on the moon. See horrible images from the Vietnam War. Watch a World Cup match in South Korea. Switch between three college basketball games being played simultaneously around the country. Observe the eating habits of killer sharks. The list of unique phenomena that have been broadcast on television is endless.

3. Television is a vehicle for introducing new ideas and viewpoints. Yes, laugh if you must, but you can learn much about world history and science by watching A&E, the History Channel, Discovery, and a host of related networks. This doesn’t begin to cover all the political analysis and news shows.

4. Television can effectively serve as a companion to lonely people, if temporarily. Adbusters bemoans television aiding people in this manner, but I disagree. What’s so bad about a television as a surrogate friend? At least you can turn your back on a TV. People work through difficult times in strange and novel ways, and so long as their ultimate goal is to rejoin the world of humanity as quickly as possible; there is absolutely nothing wrong with seeking the things you don’t have in your real life (the idea of a loving family, friendship, varied experiences) through television.

5. There are many highly involved, intelligently written, thought-provoking shows on television, if you know where to look. A small list for starters: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sesame Street, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, The Simpsons, and The West Wing. (And that’s just shows currently on the air- don’t forget to include Homicide, The Joy of Painting, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, The Wonder Years, and many more. And I haven’t even touched historical programs, science shows, cable miniseries and made-for-TV movies.)

6. Culturally speaking, television is just a baby. It’s barely 60 years old. It’s in a nascent phase of development. To consider it “evil” and write it off completely as a societal tool is hopelessly ignorant.

I am very interested in the personal and social affects of TV: as with many of the things I bitch about here, I am concerned with TV as a substitute for real life. That said, like most things, TV in moderation can be diverting, entertaining, educational, even edifying. The key is moderation and selectivity.

Trying to achieve some of the same goals as the Zen Experiment is the annual TV Turnoff Week, an activity I strongly endorse. I did an editorial for NPR on the subject, which I adapted into this post here. The more painful it is to imagine turning off your TV for one week, the more important it is that you do it.

Bryan Preston has some interesting thoughts on the matter as well, noting that the technical/story dichotomy doesn't much exist for we techno-savvy PoMo multitaskers.
posted by Eric at 4:52 PM

 
White Bread
Primo sports-blogger Eric McErlain spots an '80s music discussion at Slate centered around yet another collection from Rhino. As Eric so rightfully notices, so far the talk is all 1-hit wonder new wavers with hardly a mention of the hip-hop and funk that put the motor in the decade's booty:

How in the world can you mention the Beastie Boys and forget serious discussion of Public Enemy, Run DMC, LL Cool J and NWA?

Mama said knock you out, I'm gonna knock you out! And you won't wake up until it's Xmas in Hollis with the fear of a Black Planet!

UPDATE: Heels tall, bikinis small, she says she likes the ocean. . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Just another example of "THE MAN" keeping us down. Word to power my brothers! Who'd have ever thought I'd be playing the role of Branford Marsalis in this discussion?

Right on E!
posted by Eric at 4:20 PM

 
All Things Are Not Equal - The Benefits of Marriage
I am married - yeay me - but I also think living together is the only sensible thing to do for people who are considering marriage - unless they are, like, virgins or something.

I did not live with my first wife before we were married: we were both just out of school and the option wasn't really there. We were together often at school, but sleeping together a fair amount of the time isn't the same thing as setting up housekeeping, which requires compromises, a blending of life styles, and at least the envisioning of a life together. As a result, the shock of blending our lives and lifestyles, in addition to all of the other changes incumbent upon young adults (23 and 22), doomed our marriage from the beginning. We never really got comfortable with living together.

Dawn and I lived together for about a year before we got married, and that time gave us a chance to decide, yes, we really did want to be together; to work out the practical details of blending our lives; to get on each other's nerves and then to get over it. I sincerely believe one of the reasons the divorce rate has come down since it's peak of about 50% is that more people have been living together in advance of marriage, and either working out the kinks in advance or realizing it wasn't meant to be.

That said, I found a fascinating study, "Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-One Conclusions from the Social Sciences," by Norval D. Glenn, Steven Nock, Linda J. Waite, et al., in the American Experiment Quarterly (circuitously via Joanne Jacobs) that enumerates a litany of benefits engendered to society by marriage (it's a PDF, advance to page 34). Among their conclusions:

Marriage is an important social good, associated with an impressively broad array of positive outcomes for children and adults alike.

Marriage increases the likelihood that fathers have good relationships with their children.

Cohabitation is not the functional equivalent of marriage.

Growing up outside an intact marriage increases the likelihood that children will themselves divorce or become unwed parents.

Marriage is a virtually universal human institution.

Divorce and unmarried childbearing increase poverty for both children and mothers.

Married couples seem to build more wealth on average than singles or cohabiting couples.

Married men earn more money than do single men with similar education and job histories.

Parental divorce (or failure to marry) appears to increase children’s risk of school failure.

Parental divorce reduces the likelihood that children will graduate from college and achieve high-status jobs.

Children who live with their own two married parents enjoy better physical health, on average, than do children in other family forms.

Parental marriage is associated with a sharply lower risk of infant mortality.

And the hits just keep on coming. All modes of living are not created equal, especially when children are involved - another nail in the coffin of "do your thing." I still say live together for a time - say a year or less - to sort out the direction of the toilet paper roll and other such practicalities, but there is nothing like marriage to (statistically anyway) make life better for all concerned.

UPDATE
Alex Whitlock has an amazing and convincing rebuttal to my suggestion that couples planning marriage live together first:

This all sounds exceedingly hypothetical and, to be fair, can apply to any aspect of a relationship whether they live together or not. However, what begins to set in is the serialization of the mechanics of marriage. Except for a piece of paper and an oath to god and/or country, what is the procedural difference between cohabitation and marriage (until kids enter the picture)? There isn't terribly much. Marriage is largely symbolic, but the mechanics of it are the socks on the floor and the invasion of cosmetics on the bathroom sink. Many of the large attraction points that make a cohabitational (married or not) so much more poignant than a non-cohabitational one: waking up in the morning with your beloved by your side, opening a can of chicken soup when they are sick, knowing that they will be there when you get home from work or anticipating you being there when they do. It's not all roses of courses, but those are some of the magic moments that keep a relationship together while they adjust to the toilet seat that is up and the clothes that aren't where he's always kept them. As the joys become routinized, so does the nature of the relationship. As they become serialized, it becomes easier to start looking elsewhere.

I understand his incrementalism argument and can see it as a concern, but I STILL think living together FOR THOSE WHO FEEL INCLINED TOWARD MARRIAGE is a good idea to work out the kinks.
posted by Eric at 3:10 PM

 
Profile AND Associates?
Alex Whitlock wrestles with the thorny issue of profiling, which I have discussed here and here.

My contention is that the single most important determinant of a person's likelihood of involvement with terrorism is not that person's ethnicity, but their associates. Alex brings up the excellent point that this is not an either/or situation: that law enforcement should actively keep track of those who move in radical Islamic circles, but that we should also be profiling for youngish male Arabs who are still most likely to engage in terrorism.

I care not a whit for the political aspects of the issue, just the practicality. If we can lessen the likelihood of terrorism by ethnic profiling without being distracted from the critical work of keeping track of those who move in Islamist circles, then I'm all for it; but I am not sure our benighted security apparatus can chew this gum and walk this walk at the same time. That is my concern.
posted by Eric at 2:33 PM

 
Icon
Jeff Goldstein has succumbed to pressure and put up the famous (some say infamous) Andy Warhol portrait of himself, completed by the pop art icon in the final moments of his attenuated life. Insiders say the final wan syllables to cross the artist's pale lips were "creatical" - then he expired.

UPDATE
Jeff says, "It isn't Warhol, it's Harwol who did the portrait. People mess that up all of the time. Don't be a dumbass."
posted by Eric at 2:13 PM

 
Infanticide
As many of you know, I do a weekly radio show. To my disgust and dismay, our station - a real, normal broadcasting station in Akron, Ohio - is being forced to TERMINATE its music wecasting as a result of the ruling handed down last Thursday by the US Copyright Tribunal:

We are very sorry to report that our WAPS 91.3 The Summit internet audio stream has been silenced due to costly new fees imposed on all internet broadcasters by the United States Copyright Tribunal. This radio station, and, many others, are now forced to silence our internet music streams because we simply can not afford to pay these costly new fees imposed on June 20, 2002.

Non-music programs are NOT affected by this mandate, so, Akron Aeros baseball broadcasts will continue to be streamed on-line here at www.913thesummit.com.

Should this ruling be overturned or suitably modified, our Summit internet audio could return in the future.

No more Cool Tunes via Internet on Saturday nights. That also kills our plans to archive the show on this site so that you could have access to it at any time. I understand the RIAA's, etc., desire to shut down the indie webcasters that they have no control over, but this action also - obviously - takes "real" broadcasters off the Internet as well leaving only those with the deepest pockets to webcast: the circle of those with access to the "airwaves" shrinks further still, suppressing variety, individuality, freedom of expression. This is a tragedy, but one that will come back to kick the "star-making machinery" with even greater vengeance than to which it was already destined.

Let's look at the figures. Per Doc, who is all over this, here are the rates that webcasters will have to pay: Let's pretend that I want to archive Cool Tunes for use on Tres Producers. We've been averaging around 1000 readers per day lately. A station with 1000 listeners playing 18 songs in an hour, at 0.07¢ ($0.0007) per song per listener per hour, would pay $302.40 per day, or $110,451.60 per year.

Since we have made about $50 total in the first four+ months of operation, the $110K figure to play a little music on the site seems a bit steep. Now this figure is based upon 1000 listeners per HOUR and we get 1000 readers per DAY right now, but we don't have music on the site either, the availability of which would presumably draw more traffic. Also, our traffic curve has risen steadily since April 1, so I am also assuming that trend would continue since we fucking rule - especially if we had music. Even at CURRENT traffic rates, $4,602 a year seems a bit steep to slap a little music on the site.

Ongoing news and commentary on this subject is available on the invaluable RAIN (Radio and Internet Newsletter) site, run by Kurt Hanson. Today there is a bit of a smoking gun:

The voluntary royalty deal between Yahoo! and the RIAA that the Librarian of Congress announced as his template for the entire industry last week was a deal crafted by Yahoo! to shut out small webcasters and decrease competition, Broadcast.com founder and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban revealed to RAIN on Friday.

Although he had left the company by the time the deal was signed, Cuban explained in a "RAIN Reader Feedback" e-mail, printed in its entirety below, that the deal conceded a high royalty price to avoid a "percentage-of-revenue" royalty rate.

By doing this, Cuban explains, he hoped that low-revenue webcasters would be unable to compete against the well-funded Yahoo!

Cuban also explains that he wanted a per-stream deal because he intended to use "multicasting" technology to serve multiple listeners with a single stream and report only the initial streams to the RIAA!

The final deal between Yahoo! and the RIAA was the lone "marketplace deal" upon which the webcast royalty rate was based, both in the CARP recommendation last February and the Librarian of Congress's final decision last Thursday.

Cuban sold his network of streaming broadcasters, Broadcast.com, to Yahoo! in August 1999, for a reported $5.7 billion.

The thinking behind the deal structure, Cuban explains below, was that smaller webcasters, who would be unable to afford to webcast on their own under such terms (because of the fixed rates), would be compelled to use the services of well-funded aggregators like the Yahoo! Broadcast service.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The villian in this story is not Yahoo! (They were simply being savvy businesspeople!) The villian is the CARP process by which this anti-broadcaster, anti-small-webcaster deal became the template for the industry!

Here is further analysis from Hanson:

In the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 (excerpted here; see section 114), Congress instructed the Librarian of Congress, in the absence of a successful negotiation between record labels and webcasters, to set a rate as follows:

"The copyright arbitration royalty panel shall establish rates and terms that most clearly represent the rates and terms that would have been negotiated in the marketplace between a willing buyer and a willing seller. In determining such rates and terms, the copyright arbitration royalty panel shall base its decision on economic, competitive and programming information presented by the parties, including —

"(i) whether use of the service may substitute for or may promote the sales of phonorecords or otherwise may interfere with or may enhance the sound recording copyright owner's other streams of revenue from its sound recordings; and

"(ii) the relative roles of the copyright owner and the transmitting entity in the copyrighted work and the service made available to the public with respect to relative creative contribution, technological contribution, capital investment, cost, and risk.

"In establishing such rates and terms, the copyright arbitration royalty panel may" — emphasis ours — "consider the rates and terms for comparable types of digital audio transmission services and comparable circumstances under voluntary license agreements..."

The CARP, and subsequently the Librarian of Congress, ignored virtually all of Congress's instructions.

Instead, the arbitrators decided that if any agreement had actually been negotiated in the relevant marketplace, that would reflect the willing buyer/willing seller price.

In other words, instead of looking at what a willing buyer and willing seller WOULD have agreed on, in a world where willing sellers existed, the CARP chose to simply look at what one grudging seller (the RIAA negotiating as a collective) and one extremely-atypical buyer DID agree on!

(This approach ignores the possibility that the RIAA labels, as a group, were essentially an unwilling seller, licensing their material only because they were required to do so under the DMCA.)

As for all the other criteria that Congress instructed the CARP to consider, the arbitrators glibly wrote in their report, "We would expect these considerations to be fully reflected in any agreements actually negotiated between webcasters and copyright owners in the relevant marketplace."

In reality, however, the considerations Congress asked to be considered were trivial compared to the actual motives of the parties in this deal. (The RIAA was constructing a case for the upcoming CARP, and Yahoo! wanted to squeeze out less-well-funded competitors.)

If I were a Congressman, I'd be FURIOUS right now:

In setting a statutory license designed to encourage the growth and diversity of a new industry, the arbitrators and the Librarian ignored Congress's instructions and used the terms of a deal that was specifically constructed to have the opposite effect!

In addition to my own radio station ceasing music streaming, here are a few web-only streamers shutting down: SomaFM.com, NetRockRadio.com, Tag's Trance Trip, BlueMars, GRRL Radio, MonkeyRadio, MoreMusicRadio.net. Here is classical station WCPE's planned course of action:

WCPE was disappointed to learn that the Librarian of Congress did not alter fees for non-commerical stations like WCPE. The fee [.02 cents per song per listener] remains over 100 times what WCPE pays for its FM broadcast.

WCPE General Manager Deborah Proctor commented, "It is our position is that this decision would essentially mean death to our internet broadasting services simply because WCPE is listened to by so many people. However, it is totally contrary to our mission to take these internet broadcasts away from the people who enjoy them. Therefore our only option is to vigorously pursue every legal recourse available to us.

"We make the promise to our listeners that if you stand behind WCPE and lend your voice to the cause, WCPE will always be available to you as a voice of Great Classical Music." Ms. Proctor is currently refining the station's battle plan and will provide more information to our listeners on WCPE's course of action next week.

It does seem inevitable that the constitutionality of the DMCA will be challenged. The CARP process itself has been recently scrutinized at a House Judiciary Subcommittee Meeting. So WCPE still needs your help... if there is a chance to have these fees brought in line with already established rights & royalty fees for non-profit broadcasters like WCPE, we need you to contact your Congressional representatives and tell them they need to revisit the DMCA and it's impact on webcasters through the CARP process. Even if you've already contacted your legislators, we're asking you to follow up and make your concern known again.

Contact Congress!
Contact your Congressional representatives and tell them that you are concerned that the Librarian of Congress' final determination requires copyright royalty payments that are out of line with other royalty fees. (WCPE should not have to pay more to the RIAA than it already does to BMI, ASCAP and SESAC for the exact same performances!)

It is imperative that you contact your Congressmen if you wish to continue hearing WCPE's Great Classical Music over the Internet!

Tech blogger Jonathan Peterson has some very interesting thoughts as well:

First P2P music and now internet radio. With the two infant killer apps of broadband smothered in their crib by the entertainment industry, exactly why would new consumers sign up for broadband? Especially now that the FCC's new deregulation is guaranteed to raise prices. That game is over too, even though the telcos are still twitching. They've lost $2 Trillion in market value, and some analysts predict that 24 of the nation's top 29 telecommunications companies that have not yet filed for bankruptcy may do so in coming months. Allowing them to gouge a few more bucks out of existing broadband customers is only going to delay the inevitable.

Internet radio will continue to exist outside U.S. border (their usage costs have a percentage of revenues model that allows viable low-end webcasting) but the game is over for U.S.-based legitimate, independent webcasting. The major music labels will lock-up all their content in RealAudio and Microsoft Media formats and anyone who wants something besides Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys pablum will be pushed into low-bandwith overseas channels.

But all is not lost. Low-capacity P2P broadcast mirroring (let's call it Peercasting) could replace all independent internet radio streams in the US in a matter of weeks if Shoutcast were to add an easy to use stream mirroring/hopping capability. I have enough bandwidth for a half-dozen upstream users on my DSL pipe and 10 times that many on way.nu without much impact on my throughput.

Independent DJs and even news/talk shows may well prosper in a Peercasting world:

Content bandwidth and availability will be driven by channel popularity among the brandwidth-rich crowd
Production costs will be low (without a legitimate way to pay, all the music will either be independent or pirate)
As the owner of some channel space, I might join a "broadcast clan" to help promote music, artists or ideas that I support
Smart record promoters will quickly find the best clans and use them as a grassroots channel, providing event tickets, special versions of songs, access to artist and all kinds of other schwag including good old payola

Anyone with bandwidth would be able to spin live and a distributed reputation system will allow the most popular DJs or talk show hosts access to the broadest audiences. It's a brand-new world; and the record industry is about to reap the whirlwind.

Peterson's readers are very skeptical, however, and assure him that the RIAA will quickly shut down "Peercasting" as well.

On Sunday Doc came up with another conceptual framework for the whole mess:

The DMCA, the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP) and now the Librarian of Congress (LOC) all want to tax the playing of records on Internet radio. And they want to make those taxes so high, and so punishing, that nobody currently occupying the territory can survive there.

When you look at it carefully, there really isn't any other way to make sense of a new regulatory and fee structure that is not only unsupportable by any existing business model or technology, but also without precedent or analogue in licensed broadcasting over AM and FM airwaves.

These new taxes are imposed on business processes that (I'm not kidding here, they actually say this) "would have been negotiated in the marketplace between a willing buyer and a willing seller." ...would have been...??? What the fuck kind of rationalization is that? Here's a translation:

Since DMCA, the CARP and the Librarian of Congress choose to characterize pieces of music transmitted over the Internet as a "performances" (which they are not) rather than as broadcasts (which they are), they characterize the Internet as a venue rather than as a medium (much less a commons) and pay-for-play as the only possible business model (between a "willing buyer and a willing seller," remember) in that venue. Then they set about imposing a regulatory and tax burden on that business. Never mind that the pay-for-play business model right now can't exist, because the Internet as it is currently built can't support it.

The effect is to outlaw the internet as a broadcast medium, and to turn the creative commons into a place where all pre-recorded "performances" must be commercial ones (pay for play) in which the only means by which performers get paid is via a tax, with revenues to be distributed by the RIAA.

I truly hope this is not over, that Congress will intervene in this case of industry infanticide. In the meantime, we will follow this story closely.

UPDATE

Doc just keeps on smoking:

We've reached the point where, for the first time, the right to free expression on the Net is not ony being abridged, but punished, severely — simply because recent trends in copyright law, which favor the interests of politically influential entertainment industry interests, have reached a psychotic extreme. If the Librarian of Congress' ruling comes to full effect, nearly every U.S. - based webcaster will not only be forced off the Web, but in many cases will owe lump payments of up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Of course the pioneers — the ones that have done the best job for the longest time, have attracted the most listeners and kept the best records — will be punished financially to the greatest extreme.

posted by Eric at 10:40 AM

 
Four More Days
The whole family (around 15 people) is heading off to Hawaii on Saturday for a little reunion and to celebrate my daughter's graduation from high school. I probably don't have to tell you how much we are looking forward to getting away, recreating island-style and recharging the batteries.

Some family members are heading there sooner, some are staying later, but Dawn and I will be gone for two weeks. We will be blogging from Hawaii, but it will be vacation blogging: probably not much political or topical stuff, but lots of pics of the trip, travel talk and navel gazing. It will be a blast and we hope you enjoy it too. I need a break - been a little impatient with the assholes lately.
posted by Eric at 10:01 AM

 
Into the "Unknown"
John Hawkins does a good job shining his spotlight on lesser-known political bloggers with his new "The 10 Best 'Unknown' Political Bloggers." I know most of them, and was surprised some were called "Unknown" (based upon the Bear Ecosystem) but it is always good to be reminded, and Hawkins scares up a few I had never even heard of. Worth a look.
posted by Eric at 9:53 AM

 
Raymond on Islam
Via Sir Steve of the Distilled Spuds, Eric Raymond continues his march through Islamic history and ideology. He doesn't much like them:

I have described Islam as a warlike and bloody religion subject to periodic fits of violent fundamentalist revival. I have analyzed the roots of Islamic terror in the Koranic duty of jihad, and elucidated Osama bin Laden's goal as nothing less than the destruction of the West and the establishment of a global Islamic theocracy.

I have further explained why it is difficult for anyone living within the Islamic worldview to reject or argue against these goals. Jihadism -- the belief that Muslims have not merely the right but the duty to smite the infidel and propagate the Faith by force -- proceeds direct from the Koran and is accepted as a core religious duty by almost all Muslims.

These are simple truths, readily discernable from reading the words of the Koran, the study of even an outline of Islamic history, and the propaganda of Osama bin Laden himself. Yet they are truths that almost no one in the West is speaking in public, in plain language.

I would contest this final point rather strongly: more bloggers than not have been warning against the fundamentally theocratic, expansionist, and exceptionalist nature of Islam since 9/11, and Daniel Pipes and Bernard Lewis are hardly strangers to the reading public.

Raymond goes on to explain that the reason for the administration's soft pedal on Islam proper - the "religion of peace" - is primarily domestic policy considerations:

U.S. policymakers in the know may well fear that if they described the relationship between terrorism and Islamic doctrine accurately, the current broad consensus on war policy might collapse under a hailstorm of accusations of bigotry, prejudice, and intolerance by the bien pensants who run the national media and academe. In a political climate where directing extra scrutiny at young male Middle Eastern air travellers is attacked as unacceptable `racial profiling', this fear would be well-grounded.

His assessment of the failure of Arabist academics to confront the true nature of Islam is succinct and stinging:

In effect, the Marxist/multiculturalist/postmodernist preoccupations of the Islamic-studies establishment rendered it incapable of seeing, thinking, or passing judgment. Confronted by the smoking hole where the World Trade Center used to be and Osama bin-Laden's gloating videos, the academics had no way of connecting their theoretical abstractions to the brutal facts and nothing to say.

He dismisses multiculturalism and postmodernism as dangerous indulgences we can no longer afford, and declares that al Qaeda has made it easy to return to a vision of radical evil let loose on the world by their behavior, most pointedly 9/11. He sees Islam itself as inherently incapable of recognizing "Western concepts of peace, tolerance, and pluralism," resulting in Raymond's core argument:

Islam is a religion of war and conversion by the sword, not peace.

The primary threat of terrorism comes from Arabs and middle-easterners between the ages of fifteen and forty, and we must summon the will to profile accordingly.

We are dealing with religious fanaticism rather than rational grievances against America or the West.

Our enemies cannot be reasoned with or appeased anywhere short of surrender and submission to shari'a law.

Apologists for mainstream Islam are systematically lying to us about Islamic doctrine in order to shield terrorists who they know are acting in strict accordance with that doctrine.

I wholeheartedly endorse all tenets except that of profiling. Richard Reid and Jose Padilla were not Arabs or Middle Easterners, and would not have been caught in any kind of profiling scheme that didn't take into account associations: it isn't who you are but who you know that is the best indication of terrorist potential.

Then Raymond takes the final step:

We need to face the fact that we are confronting not just a barbaric and evil group of men, but a barbaric and evil religion. To protect ourselves, we must either force the complete reform of Islam (purging it of jihadism and its tendency towards periodic fundamentalist outbreaks) or destroy its hold over its followers.

I am unwilling to go this far. I am unwilling to call Islam an "evil religion" and leave it at that. I am willing to say that there are teachings fundamental to Islam that have been interpreted in such a way that they have led to assumptions of exceptionalism, universalism and theocracy.

But I see the problem with the dominant interpretations, not necessarily with the religion itself. There is also the standard question of Islam's place in its evolutionary development, and the cliche that it hasn't gone through its version of the Reformation yet. It certainly would not have been unreasonable to call Christianity an "evil and violent religion" prior to this radical shift toward religious tolerance and Raymond's dreaded relativism (ironic, isn't it?).

Only Raymond doesn't think Christianity really has reformed: he thinks Christianity harbors a "violent intolerance of other religions and the impulse to conversion by the sword wired into its doctrinal DNA." I believe I see the outlines of a broader agenda coming into view.

Although I have no objection to saying fundamentalism per se "tends" to be inherently dangerous, I firmly object to the notion that all fundamentalisms are equally dangerous, or even that they are all dangerous. And if fundamentalism is the very essence of the problem, how can this be so? I'll take a strict Baptist over a jihadi any day of the week. I live in Northeast Ohio, yet have never spent a moment fearing the wrath of the Amish.

The series will continue. Raymond is doing a fine job of assimilating and processing much of the wisdom gained since 9/11 regarding the dangers of fundamentalist Islam, but I am eager to hear him address some of these other concerns.

UPDATE
Lynn of Poet and Peasant (formerly Lynn Unleashed) adds her thoughts on the matter:

I'm often guilty of using the word "fundamentalist" to refer to religious extremists. I realize that it is inaccurate and unfair to paint all fundamentalists with the same brush. The Amish could certainly be described as "fundamentalist" but they are content to live the kind of life they prefer without trying to impose that lifestyle on others. When I talk about "fundamentalism" I think what I'm really talking about is "evangelism" or something related. Islamists use terrorism in an attempt to accomplish their goals. Christian extremists proselytize to gain converts and lobby congress to make their beliefs law. Convert the non-believers or murder the non-believers, the mindset is the same - there must ultimately be no non-believers.

posted by Eric at 4:43 PM

 
Crime Up
The FBI says major crime is up 2%.

The number of murders in the United States rose by 3.1 percent last year as police departments nationwide reported an overall increase in major crimes for the first time in a decade, a law enforcement official said.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity about contents of an annual report being released Monday by the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program, said the document will reflect more robberies, burglaries and car thefts.

Overall, major crimes were up in 2001 by 2 percent from 2000, the official said Saturday.

Mass murder committed by flying airliners into buildings was way up too. This is a disturbing trend.
posted by Eric at 3:33 PM

 
Rambling
David O'Quill is a travel snob. I am too, but I don't travel all that much. David dislikes the newbies or those who act like them:

The rookies drive me nuts. I think there is a business opportunity here. Start a consulting business to teach people how to act in public, how to travel, the ins and outs, the short cuts and the correct way to behave around others. I swear every time I travel there is one group that stops right in the middle of the terminal completely oblivious to traffic following them. There they are with their 5 non-rolling luggage bags, several large shopping bags (invariably one contains a large 40-cup percolator - Hello?), backpacks and other general dorky items all set down in the middle of the concourse runway while they gawk at their boarding passes apparently wondering in what complex sequence the airport authority have assembled the gates. Do they leave anything at home? Mouths half open they ask each other which way they should go. I say go home, go back where you came from and let those of us on a mission of some meaning get on our way. Don't even ask me about the behavior once we get in the plane. People - start learning how to pack, how to observe those around you, and how to count (yes the gates are in numerical sequence..1 then 2 then 3 or the more complex sequence of C17, then C18, then C19 etc. get it?). Am I a big snob here?

Well, yeah, but that's okay. This particular trip took him to Las Vegas - he digs it. Check it out.
posted by Eric at 2:59 PM

 
Cool Tunes Feature - Chuck Prophet
SoCal-born, NoCal-based Chuck Prophet may be the best rock-oriented singer/songwriter/guitarist you've never heard of. His new CD, No Other Love, on the appropriately named New West Records, is an audacious blend of classic and cutting edge styles: hip-hop beats, samples and scratches mingle with Roy Orbison/Chris Isaak neo-rockabilly, nocturnal surf music, '60s psychedelic organ, mysterioso swamp rock, and hints of artists as diverse as Bob Dylan, Sly Stone, Bobbie Gentry, and Beck. What's most amazing is that all of these sounds get along so well with one another inside of Prophet's self-produced mix.

Prophet's worn, slightly nasal baritone is sometimes up front in the mix, sometimes processed and distorted, sometimes dead earnest, sometimes heavily ironic on his vignettes of disconnected love, pain, resurrection and justice delayed, which seem to be geographically located in a mythic Southwest somewhere between Hollywood, Bakersfield, Sonoma and the moon.

Prophet is both funny and dead serious on the beat-heavy vamp "What Can You Tell Me": "They say the heart is a wheel, she made my heart a meal" is pretty telling.

Beautiful "After the Rain" tiptoes in on electronic strings and surf guitar, Prophet's unadorned voice is complemented poignantly by Stephanie Finch. The story is the antithesis of Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl," where the green grass behind the stadium is wet and heavy and uninviting in the wake of precipitation.

"I Bow Down and Pray to Every Woman I See" opens with a nod to Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billy Joe," and slinks on a sinister syncopated groove through Prophet's litany of failed romances:

"Darby was my sister's friend,
a fashion paranoid,
She wore a winter coat all summer long
and made a lot of noise
About conservites and demigods
and how we should be scared
We dropped LSD at Disneyland
She left me standing there"

Just a great song, a sardonic update on "88 Lines About 44 Women."

"Run Primo Run" evokes mid '60s newly-electricized Dylan. The title track is a lovely but stark ballad in waltz time. "Elouise" rocks on chunky Latin rhythms and a sturdy Farfisa. Gorgeous "Summertime Thing" forsakes irony for a wistful look at the lazy glories of summer through a series of lovingly drawn pointillist scenes. There's more - it's all mighty good. Maybe sheer force of talent will finally ram Prophet through the ice. Don't hold your breath, but there is always hope.

Chuck Prophet was born in Whittier, moved to San Francisco and joined the great psychedelic/roots rock band Green On Red as guitarist in the early-'80s; he began his solo career in '90 with a recording that cost $800 to make. No Other Love is his 6th album and second work of magic in a row following The Hurting Business, which is also highly recommended. Prophet has backed up Kelly Willis, the Flatlanders, Smash Mouth, Cake, and many others as session guitarist.
posted by Eric at 2:39 PM

 
I Love This Guy
Okay, so this guy "N.Z. Bear" shows up and starts kicking ass from day one. He has a quote from me on the top of his site that throws traffic my way every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

He has created a blog Ecosphere system (scroll down on left) that puts more emphasis on links - to whom do the blogs send their readers? - than on raw traffic. My number this week is 106, and I am 15th overall. I am, again, a Mortal Human. I'm not sure if this is radical or awesome, but it is one or the other, and/or both.

Dawn's number is 83; she is 24th overall and a Large Mammal. But again, TOGETHER we are 189, which if there were such a ranking, would put us in 4th place overall. Not too butt-slapping shabby.
posted by Eric at 11:56 AM

 
More Anarchy
If you are going to be an anarchist, I guess you go all the way and PRIVATIZE EVERYTHING GOVERNMENT DOES. Leonard Dickens continued his series on the precepts of modern anarchism over the weekend:

In fact, looking at the many things the government does it is hard to avoid the notion that the State has a sort of reverse Midas touch. Whatever it does turns to shit. There are good reasons for this, to be found in economics: competition; the problem of agency and control; etc. But we don't necessarily need the reasons to notice the problems with government services. Now, generally efficiency is a good thing. Efficient provision of goods and services means we are not wasting money, meaning we are richer. We have more money to spend on other things. Efficiency is a good thing, and the government is inefficient. It is reasonable, then to start wondering: how much of this stuff can we privatize?

A libertarian would say, we should privatize everything but the core functions of government: judicial, legislative, and executive. These things, of course, must be public.

Anarchists say, of course? Nope - let's privatize all of it.

We'd better get Armed Liberal on the case. Dickens continues his learned assault on the state today:

First Principles: Another way to get at anarchy, is to imagine Locke's state of nature then see what evolves. In the state of nature, everyone is perfectly free to do what he wishes, but nonetheless people have their instinctive sense of property, and of justice. Most people will therefore refrain from obviously hurting each other, or taking each other's obvious property. But some people won't - natural "criminals" if you will. People can punish each other if they will; though most normal people will only punish if they feel wronged. But again, there will be a minority who may claim that they are wronged by others and proceed to punish them, even though there is no wrong.

Now, there are several fairly obvious and large problems with the state of nature as thus far described. One is, it seems that the strong can terrorize the weak. A second is that, justice is haphazard even among equally strong peers. A third is that feuds are possible. I am sure you can imagine others. Locke jumped pretty much directly from this point to a social compact to create the state. That's fine as far as it goes, which is exactly to the next generation, or until someone wants to withdraw. At which point you either assert "sovereignty" and tell the non-member to join or die, or you have a state of nature again (at least for that one person; and the problem will grow as others join him).

Can these problems be solved without a state? Fairly easily, yes. People can band together to form mutual aid groups, or protection societies. If one member is attacked or harmed, the others pledge to help, and viceversa. Division of labor always works in capitalism, so these agencies will likely specialize into "cops" and customers, for most day-to-day functions. Adjudication is still a problem, but that can be solved too. People with a good reputation for justice and fairness will be able to sell their services as judges. Again, firms will arise to do judging. So the executive and judicial functions are fairly easy to see arising.

I vote "no," but this is an excellent primer on the subject nonetheless.
posted by Eric at 11:26 AM

 
Cool Tunes Playlist
Cool Tunes is a radio show in a magazine format Saturday nights at 10pm (Eastern) on WAPS, "The Summit," in Akron, Ohio. I play new music, reissues, and preview shows coming to town each week. Musically it is among the widest-ranging 2 hours in the country: modern rock, punk, electronica, jazz, reggae and ska, roots rock, Americana, blues, world, funk, hip hop, avant garde, etc. - if it's cool I play it. Cool Tunes has been proudly serving humanity since 1990.

6/22/02
artist, song, album title, label
Fidel "Talkin" single Fidel;
Podstar "Hop a Ride" Lovely32 Noisome;
Bangs "Southern Girls" Sweet Revenge Kill Rock Stars;
Cheap Trick "Surrender" Authorized Greatest Hits Legacy/Epic;
Tom Petty "I Need to Know" Greatest Hits MCA;
Dwight Twilley "Sincerely" Sincerely Shelter;
Chuck Prophet "Elouise" No Other Love New West;
The Mooney Suzuki "Oh Sweet Susanna" Electric Sweat Gammon;
Color Wall "Seratonin" Blue EP Lazy Suzan;
Twineman "Spinner" Twinemen Hi-N-Dry;
Sonic Youth "The Empty Page" Murray Street DGC;
Jason Anderson "Astronaut, Astronaut" Somethng/Everything! K;
Rollins Band "Your Number is One" The Only Way to Know For Sanctuary;
Filter "Where Do We Go From Here?" single Reprise;
Kidney Thieves "Spank" Zero Space Exstasy;
KMFDM "Money" Money Wax Trax;
KMFDM "Superhero" Attak Metropolis;
Scapegoat Wax "Bloodsweet" Swax Hollywood;
Brian Setzer "Hollywood Nocturne" The Dirty Boogie Interscope;
The Lively Ones "Surf Rider" Surf Monsters Del-Fi;
The Equators "Rescue Me" Hot Ace Boon Tune;
Mutabaruka "War a Gwaan Dung Deh" Life Squared Heartbeat;
Jorma Kaukonen "Tom Cat Blues" Blue Country Heart Columbia;
Shirley Johnson "Saved" Killer Diller Delmark;
Steely Dan "Haitian Divorce" Showbiz Kids MCA;
Jenna Mammina "Dirty Work" Meant to Be Mamma Grace;
Buckwheat Zydeco "Ya Ya" Buckwheat's Zydeco Party Rounder;
The Flaming Lips "In the Morning..." Do You Realize? EP Warner Brothers;
Oakenfold "Southern Sun" Bunkka Maverick;
Junior Mance "Cubano Chant" That Lovin' Feelin' Milestone;
Jan Garbarek "Red Wind" Rarum 1-8 ECM;
posted by Eric at 10:55 AM

 
Tony Pierce
Tony Pierce, Tony Pierce, Tony Pierce, Tony Pierce, Tony Pierce, Tony Pierce, Tony Pierce, Tony Pierce, Tony Pierce, Tony Pierce, Tony Pierce, Tony Pierce, Tony Pierce, Tony Pierce, Tony Pierce, Tony Pierce, Tony Pierce, Tony Pierce, Tony Pierce, Tony Pierce, Tony Pierce, Tony Pierce, Tony Pierce.

UPDATE
"Google me softly with his song, Google me softly - with his song, Google me softly - - with his song"
posted by Eric at 10:36 AM

 
Thanks
All traffic is good traffic, Cappy.
posted by Eric at 10:26 AM

 
Can't Buy a Eulogy
Gregory Hlatky has a cautionary tale.
posted by Eric at 9:24 AM

 
Love Everybody
Bo Cowgill - who is exactly my size, by the way, though he is younger and better looking - has a dialogue with Glenn Reynolds regarding the offensively dull InstapunditWatch site. He also notes that it is surprising no one has taken to watching Andrew Sullivan, and even finds a rather unflattering quote from me. However, I have turned over a new leaf and now love everybody.
posted by Eric at 9:12 AM

 
"Dustbury Has a Tradition of Existence"
Congrats to Charles G. Hill of Dustbury on his 150,000th customer! To commemorate he has this, some of which rings a bell:

At some point this afternoon, visitor number 150,000 will arrive and, I think it's safe to predict, will immediately go back to Googling.

This is, as previously mentioned, the second anniversary of the dustbury.com blog. One does not get through two years of blogging without persistence, determination, and yes, perhaps even prayer. What would I like to see for Year Three?

More couples with their own separate blogs. The ones I've read have been eye-opening, and not in the most obvious manner either; having myself failed in most matters romantic, I'm naturally curious to see the thought processes of those who have succeeded.

Fewer pissing contests. The modus operandi of blogdom is "We can fact-check your ass," not "We will do anything to make you look bad."

Hmm. The rest is good, too.
posted by Eric at 8:51 AM

 
Harper's Goes to Jupiter to Get More Stupider
The Swede is back with another Smarter Harper's Index, this one for July:

Military budget of Israel in 1967 expressed as a percentage of the budgets of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Syria combined: 58
Israeli military budget today expressed in these terms: 187

First of all, I feel compelled to note that nobody on the staff here at Smarter Harper’s is Jewish, although the staff (me) often enjoys a bagel with a schmeer of cream cheese. I say this because for the third month in a row, I’ve felt it necessary to clarify an entry in the Index that seems to knock Israel in some way. Two months ago, the Index noted that Israel has 100 nuclear bombs while its Arab neighbors (maybe) have none. This month, Harper’s offers up a little reminder about who is the Little Big Man in the Middle East.

I’m not suggesting that Harper’s is anti-Israel. However, throw in Edward Said’s incredibly bitter ad hominem attack on Bernard Lewis in the book reviews along with Stanley Fish’s unreadable main essay and one might see a pattern in the cumulative muddle. It was exactly this kind of incrementally-biased coverage that led to a boycott of the New York Times by some Jewish groups in New York. Maybe it’s just me – make your own decision. It would be equitable to see something like: “Number of Israelis who enjoyed “Blue’s Clues” and apple juice killed by Palestinian suicide bombers.”

Good point, Swede. I had kind of assumed that the Swede is not Jewish, by the way, since there are NO Jews in Sweden. It would appear the anti-Israeli bias extends past NPR, NY Times, LA Times, and every single European and Islamic-country publication on the face of the earth to include Harper's. The Swede is too kind to Harper's, but beyond that he kicks ass and has a cute kid.
posted by Eric at 8:39 AM

 
"What's a 'Radio,' Sonny?"
The Census Bureau released information from the 1930 census back in April. The bulk of the information is not available online, only via microfilm at 14 regional offices. Of almost equal interest, though, are the 32 questions asked of the populace 72 years ago, including four that were new. A sampling:

Street, avenue, road, etc.
House number
Number of dwelling house in order of visitation
Number of family in order of visitation
Name
Relationship of this person to the head of the family
Home owned or rented
Value of home, if owned, or monthly rental, if rented*
Radio set*
Does this family own a farm?
Sex
Color or race
Age at last birthday
Marital condition
(new questions marked with asterisk)

posted by Eric at 8:22 AM

 
Old Dog, No New Tricks
The Clintons' diametrically opposed approach to authoring:

Eighteen months after leaving the White House, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has made such progress on her memoirs that her publisher Simon & Schuster has tentatively scheduled it for publication in the late spring or early fall of next year, executives there said last week. But former President Bill Clinton — the spouse no longer in public office — has barely begun, according to people at his publisher, Knopf.

Both publishers initially said they planned to publish the former First Couple's books in 2003, raising the specter of a race to market. But her businesslike efficiency and his more free-wheeling style have quietly settled that question.

Now the issue is the continued interest of readers in Clinton-era reminiscences about health-care reform or even Monica S. Lewinsky in the new decade shaped by the events of Sept. 11. After paying a record $12 million advance for the right to publish Mr. Clinton's book, and $8 million for the right to publish the senator's, both publishers are eager to release the books as soon as they can, without putting undo pressure on their two star authors.

He has the money and has about zero incentive to focus on revelations that will inevitably be received as self-serving and disappointing. It will take "undo pressure" to get anything out of Bill any time soon.
posted by Eric at 7:59 AM

 
Adelphia Filing For Bankruptcy
Please, just don't screw up my cable modem:

It was inevitable. After more than a month of trying to stave off filing for bankruptcy protection, Adelphia Communications is expected to succumb today to its fate.

The seemingly never-ending accusations of improprieties on the part of the Rigas family, Adelphia's controlling shareholders, proved to be too much for potential saviors. The risks of investing in Adelphia's future became too high.

Now, Adelphia must reorganize under a fractured board while also facing other issues, including the need to sell assets to raise money and the likelihood of lawsuits from disgruntled shareholders and bondholders.

In a related matter, Pew has found that

People who use high-speed services to connect to the Internet from home have a much more active relationship with the online world than those who dial up to it over a regular phone line, according to a study to be released today sponsored by the Pew Research Center.

Broadband users spend almost four hours more online a week than people who dial up, performing twice as many kinds of tasks, including trading music files and telecommuting, according to the study, issued by the center's Internet in American Life Project.

Probably because high-speed causes fewer incidents of people throwing their computers down the stairs in disgust and frustration. We are going to Hawaii for two weeks beginning this Saturday: I look forward desperately to everything about the trip other than dealing with the Internet via dial-up. I hope there are no stairs.
posted by Eric at 7:49 AM

 
Bunny Says Cooling
I still believe in global warming and am convinced that "human activity" is playing a healthy role, but Bigwig presents some pretty convincing points that suggest we may be headed the other way. Plus he hates PETA, which can only be good.
posted by Eric at 7:45 AM

 
P.C.-Free Zone
posted by Eric at 11:12 PM

 
Beer You Can Eat
Society for the Preservation of Clue informs us that after a brief 69-year period of brain damage,

The [Ohio] House and Senate have passed a bill that would set the upper limit of alcohol in beer at 12 percent by volume, removing a law adopted by the state at the end of Prohibition in 1933 that set the maximum alcohol limit in beer at 6 percent by weight or 7.5 percent by volume.

I hope this will bury forever the memory and lingering taste of "low beer" (3.2 percent alcohol) from my college days.
posted by Eric at 7:47 PM

 
Priorities
Blogging is blogging - life is life. Life is infinitely more important. Therefore, I very happily congratulate Andrew Sullivan for not only surviving nine years with HIV, but for thriving.

What was once an unappealable death sentence, can now be survived and even surmounted:

I remember thinking way back then that I'd probably start to get really sick by the millennium, and that I'd be on disability by now. Instead, here I am, in a beautiful place with a great beagle and boyfriend, running a website, writing furiously, feeling great. My bloodwork just came back again from the doc and showed that my CD4 cell count (the rough measure of the health of my immune system) is actually higher than it was nine years ago. And I've been off medications for a whole year! It seems as if my own immune system is managing to keep the virus at bay on its own. It probably won't last for ever, but it's a huge blessing not to be on those debilitating, disfiguring drugs.

We cannot forget those who died before current therapies came to be. The first person I knew who died of AIDS was the director of the record pool I belonged to in Hollywood. He had the misfortune of contracting the disease in 1983: he didn't stand a chance.

Timing is so important in this world and something we usually have little or no control over - it never seems like we "deserve" either the good or bad timing that so often seems to direct our lives. This applies to everything from sports to life itself: like Dave Burba said when he was pitching for the Indians and winning games 10-7 and 11-6, "it doesn't matter so much how you pitch as when you pitch."

Who "deserved" to be in the small percentage of people who worked on the floors above where the planes hit the WTC buildings and survived? Who "deserved" to be among the small percentage who worked below where they struck and didn't survive? None of the above.

Andrew feels sad for those who came before him and didn't survive HIV (and for those in the world now who don't have access to the kind of treatment he has received), and perhaps somewhat guilty for having had the fortune of good timing. I am sad for those people as well, but I am very happy for Andrew.
posted by Eric at 7:01 PM

 
Later
The older of my two younger brothers is moving back to SoCal pretty soon due to the impending collapse of TRW here in Cleveland. We will miss him very much. Today is his final performance with a local chorus - bittersweet - so I am off to catch the show. Back later. Have a great Sunday.

Dawn has some very interesting things to say to those who take what she does on her site too seriously, and/or literally: it's entertainment, baby.
posted by Eric at 2:59 PM

 
Work and Play
I have been thinking about live DJing a fair amount lately, and while it doesn't fit my lifestyle anymore, there are things I miss about it. I love to perform before a live crowd. I also see blogging as a performance, although it is not "live" in the same sense: I can't sneeze on you from here.

Performers "play" when they work. "Where are you playing tonight?" "What song are you playing next?" Use of the word "play" to describe certain kinds of work is indicative of how we think of that work. Ball players play baseball. A musician plays trombone. A DJ plays the turntables.

Actors "play to the crowd" when they "play" in a play. Actors "play" in a movie. However, for many actors, nothing is more important than the "work." Dancers "appear" in a ballet; this is either due to the dignity required of their art, the amount of effort required to perform it, or the fact that they are not allowed to smile. Or could it be that ballet isn't "fun"? "Play" is associated with jobs that generate fun as a consequence of doing them well. The stakes are high; there is no middle ground. A player either plays well and has fun or he plays poorly and "dies." Nothing is more fun than hitting a game winning home run, but if you strike out with the bases loaded, you have "choked." For the performer, "fun" is a job well done.

It is unfortunate that these rules do not apply to people who "work for a living." In fact, on most jobs, fun is regarded as subversive. "What do you think this is? A playground? We're not here to have fun. We're here to work." Having fun is viewed as a symptom of a lack of seriousness. When I tried my hand at corporate life, my manager told me that I "laugh too much." Not that he minded, of course. The manager just didn't want "other people to get the wrong impression." Most jobs require that you be taken seriously. The only "playboy" taken seriously is Hugh Hefner.

Artists fall on the "work" side of the play/work dichotomy. "How are you coming with your latest work?" "What is the impact of Van Gogh's work?" As soon as a "musician" becomes an "artist," he transmogrifies from player into worker. Creativity is a muy serioso affair. No "artist" wants to be considered a mere "entertainer." Even within professions there are substrata. A comic "plays." A comedian "plays," but may also have a "body of work." A humorist probably doesn't "play" much, but he's happy to be working.

A DJ works very hard: humping equipment to remote party locations (split-level back yards, third floor walk-ups, horse pastures, labrythine hotels, and boats: boats are a whole new level of hell), dealing with unreasonable customers, equipment problems, unruly crowds, unstable floors (try playing a record or CD on a wooden floor with 100 people jumping up and down), musical programming, mixing well, etc. But a DJ also plays. He plays songs. He plays to the crowd. He plays requests. He has fun. The highest compliment that a DJ can receive is that he appeared to have "more fun than anyone else." If a DJ has fun he will do a "good job." A good job comes from "playing well."

Another connotation of "play" is that of manipulation: to play something is to manipulate it. A baseball player manipulates a bat, a ball, a glove. A musician manipulates his instrument. A DJ manipulates his records. A comedian manipulates his mouth and the crowd. An actor does the same. We speak of an audience "being moved" by a performance. This is considered a good thing. But we don't want a salesman to manipulate us. We don't want to be played by him.

A certain effortlessness is also expected of those who play for a living. We don't want to see the effort. If an actor overacts or a baseball pitcher struggles with his control, they are said to "labor." Those workers who we want to have manipulate us get to "play." If we can see the workings of their manipulation, then the "player" slips down the food chain and becomes a "worker." "Workman like" is
not a compliment for a ballplayer, a musician or a DJ, although a "work ethic" is a good thing to exhibit in any field.

I think this work/play dichotomy is at the very heart of what direction blogging will go. Is it work or play? Money is a factor here: if people were forced to pay money to read your blog, it would undoubtedly become work; if they voluntarily give money as a "tip," then it remains play. The only problem with this appraoch is that very few people are in the habit of tipping blogs as of yet, at least in my experience.

My father accused me of "playing" at this when we were arguing about something a few weeks ago. That hit me hard because I certainly think of blogging as work, although it is also a lot of fun. But then he's an old corporate guy: 99% of the money he has ever made came in the form of a paycheck. Other than radio - which I have never viewed as a "job" - I haven't received a corporate "paycheck" in 20 years: money from corporations, sure, but not in the form of a paycheck. I haven't been an employee.

Many want the spirit of blogging to remain that of play. That's fine, but I see it as playing in the form of performance, and I love to be paid to perform. I see no contradiction there: those who "play" for a living are often the best paid of all.
posted by Eric at 2:45 PM