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June 30, 2007

The Weekend Desk Report

It may be a short week for you, but the Weekend Desk never knocks off early for a holiday.

Guantana-Maybe
In what is largely seen as a blow to current Bush administration policy, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal of several Guantanamo Bay inmates challenging the legality of their confinement. Naturally, we have responded by opening the Beachwood Reporter Weekend Desk betting window, but wagering has been surprisingly flat. Here are the latest odds that the Justices will:

Find in favor of the administration: 5/4
Wrap their anti-civil rights decision in the language of noble struggle: 5/4
Insult your intelligence: 5/4

Maine Squeeze
Apparently worn down by months of hurt feelings and hurtful behavior, President Bush has agreed to take Vladimir Putin home to meet his parents. Enjoy the lobster dinners while you can, Dima. Someday Gordon won't be too busy to take George's calls and then you'll be right back at Crawford again.

Law and Horder
Lawyers for accused long-haul confrontationist Lisa Nowak have found a novel defense for their client. Rather than being a freak who tore ass across the country wearing a diaper, they contend she is a freak who tore ass across the country in a car that hadn't been cleaned in 18 months while apparently soiling herself. We can't wait to hear their explanation for the pepper spray, wig, BB gun and folding knife.

Unsteady Rests the Jaw...
In other news, duh.

Northern Exposed
Canada took another small, inexorable step toward becoming America this week. But don't worry. They won't notice.

Barrels of Laughs
Finally this week, we don't know for sure, but we're willing to bet when the city decides to make these mandatory, they'll be overpriced and blue.

Posted by Natasha at 07:29 AM | Permalink

June 29, 2007

The [Friday] Papers

They just raised your prices and re-segregated your schools.

Moore Score
Tribune health reporter Julie Deardorff conducts a pretty interesting interview with filmmaker Michael Moore about his physical condition.

Roger Ebert gives Sicko three-and-a-half stars.

Kirk Quirk
Watching Chicago Tonight last night, it dawned on me as state Sen. Kirk Dillard was describing taking a bus tour or something with state Sen. (and Rev. and Democrat) James Meeks what was behind his participation in a Barack Obama TV ad: He's running for governor.

Tool Shed
The panel was Dillard, Jennifer Hunter, and Paul Green.

Mystery Debate Theater
Find out what Paul Bunyan and Bruce Wayne had to do with last night's Democratic debate, in our continuing Mystery Debate Theater coverage.

Olympic Accounting
They say it, the Sun-Times prints it - no matter how absurd.

Olympic Evasion
"Olympic officials did not make [new Chicago 2016 chief operating officer David] Bolger available for comment, and Bolger did not return calls. [Chicago 2016 chairman Pat] Ryan called Bolger 'the guy who runs the inside,' who would have limited public exposure."

Just like the budget.

Porch Poop
An engineering report done by the city four years ago on the Lincoln Park porch that collapsed in 2003, killing 13 people, has just come to light.

Obamafied
"Michelle Obama addressed the experience issue yesterday - a day after Barack Obama himself addressed it," says First Read (third item). "'For people who say that Barack Obama is not experienced ... I can't wrap my head around that,' Michelle Obama told hundreds of people crowded into the offices of the nonprofit Our Children's Foundation in Harlem."

I can't wrap my head around electing a president virtually straight out of the Illinois legislature either.

Impeachment Grounds
If lying a nation into war and wiretapping our phones and torturing our 'prisoners' isn't grave enough, then what is? I'd just like to know what standard we have to meet.

Straw Poll
"Meanwhile, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe is engaging in a bit of media baiting in mounting a straw man argument in a direct e-mail appeal to supporters, designed to spur donors to give in time to run up second quarter numbers," Lynn Sweet writes.

"'Media pundits and Washington insiders are already speculating about our end of quarter fundraising totals,' Plouffe wrote. 'They claim the money we raise by this Saturday, June 30th, will determine the success or failure of our campaign,' Plouffe wrote."

How meta. Prove the pundits wrong by beating them at their own game!

Sox Pox
Somebody told us so.

This Week in the Beachwood
* "Even the children of Lake Forest, it seems, are not good enough for Lake Forest."

* "The importance of power calculations in the making of a political news story was further evidenced by how the Washington Post constructed the attempt of Representative John Conyers (D-MI) to publicize the implications of the memo by holding a House informational hearing. That hearing was held in the political context of Republican dominance of the House, and the continuing muddle among Democrats about making an election issue out of being deceived on the war.

"Given this context, the hearing was unlikely to result either in a shift in Democratic position or in any direct political repercussions for the Bush administration. The degree to which these power considerations by the press trumped (indeed defined) the implications of the document is shown in a telling story by Washington Post reporter-analyst Dana Milbank which began with the headline 'Democrats Play House to Rally against the War."

"The lead sentence was even more revealing about the power calculus underlying news construction: 'In the Capitol basement yesterday, long suffering House Democrats took a trip to the land of make-believe.'"

* "We like to call this the Cub Chill Factor. It's the difference between the real temperature of this team and what it 'feels like' to Cubs fans.

"For example, when the Cubs go, say, .500 over a period of 10 games, it 'feels like' they've won seven of 10. When the Cubs win one of six but a couple of losses are close, it 'feels like' they've gone 3-3. When the Cubs win two in a row - or sweep the White Sox - it 'feels like' they are a contender. And when the Cubs are closer to last place than first but are within a half-dozen games of .500, it 'feels like' they are making a run for it."

* "The post-Real World life has obviously been good to Trishelle. Not so sure about the others. Former go-go dancer Brynn Smith, who had a threesome with Trishelle and hunkmate and condom-refuser Steven three days after they met for the original series, is married with two kids, who, um, she has brought along for the reunion show. Buzzkill, dude. Her marriage actually seems solid, though she is purportedly jealous of the wild, single life Trishelle still lives while Trishelle pretends to be jealous of Brynn's married life."

* "Jimmy Swaggart Ministries claims it has sold 13 million gospel music albums worldwide, and although that assertion is impossible to verify because JIM Records, as a private label, isn't audited by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), there's no doubt Swaggart's popularity as a musician is immense and has changed the face of gospel music forever."

Who knew?

The Beachwood Tip Line: Pending appeal.

Posted by Lou at 10:15 AM | Permalink

Mystery Debate Theater 2007

Once again the Beachwood's crack team of analysts gathered at HQ to size up the candidates for leader of the free world - this time the Democrats meeting at Howard University in a forum focused on race. Andrew Kingsford, Tim Willette, and Steve Rhodes provide the commentary.

*

Andrew: Look, there's a white guy in the audience!

Steve: This is like bizarro debate.

*

Host Tavis Smiley begins speaking.

Steve: I'd like to say that as we speak, all whites are being rounded up . . .

Andrew: And put in cabs to Arizona.

*

Crowd shot of Cornel West.

Tim: Ever hear his record?

Andrew: He has a record?

Steve: It's post-structuralist rap.

*

An African-American youth group of some sort wearing blue blazers and khakis is introduced.

Steve: Awww, don't wear the white man's tan pants!

*

Lost among the paralyzing effects of my delivery Chinese BBQ shrimp is who was speaking, but the person started to talk about the influence of Paul . . . Robeson.

Andrew: I thought he was gonna say Paul Bunyan.

Steve: I thought he was gonna say Paul Westerberg.

[Pause]

Steve: Paul Bunyan?

Andrew: I'm sorry.

*

. . . change the direction of the nation . . .

Andrew: From 90 degress to 91.5 degrees. North.

*

Is race still the most intractable issue in America?

Steve: Obama will say no, it's cynicism.

*

Hillary: For anyone to assert that race is not a problem in America, the march is not over.

Steve: She just called out Neil Steinberg!

*

Bill Richardson makes his first appearance.

Andrew: Look at his tan!

Steve: He's trying to pass.

Richardson: [blah blah blah]

Steve: He's such a buzzkill.

Andrew: Will his tan go away in Iowa? Is it a spray-on?

Andrew: It's like a minstrel show going on up there.

Edwards: [blah blah blah]

Tim: Race plays an enormous role in the problems faced by African Americans.

Obama: [blah blah blah]

Dice-K: . . . universal pre-kindergarten . . .

Tim: For all ages.

Dice-K: . . . constitutional amendment guaranteeing an equal education . . .

Steve: Kucinich is doing policy!

Dice-K: . . . move war resources to college education . . .

*

Gravel lambastes the war on drugs.

Andrew: It's the craziest thing Crazy Guy has said!

*

Chris Dodd is speaking.

Steve: The Silver Fox. Hey, what's Pate Philip doing up there?

Dodd: . . . something you have forever . . .

Andrew: And that is herpes.

Tim: What if you had shock treatment?

Andrew: For herpes?

Tim: For education. There are ways to remove education, like with a drill.

Andrew: Two words: Chinese jails.

*

The question is: "The unemployment rate for black high school graduates is higher than for white high school droputs. To what do you attribute this?" Virtually every candidate misses the point and calls for more education.

Tim: Education my ass. It's about power.

Biden: We do not start school early enough.

Andrew: It should start at 7, not 9.

[blah blah blah]

Steve: They are missing the point. The black kids have graduated and they're still not getting hired.

Richardson: . . . a minimum wage for teachers . . . [blah blah blah]

Steve: Oh is he awful.

Andrew: His tan is fucking out of hand.

Edwards: This issue of poverty in America is the cause of my life . . .

Steve: The question has nothing to do with poverty, teacher wages or achievement gaps; it's about employment.

Andrew: The man's hair does look good, though.

Obama: It starts from birth.

Tim: That's really early childhood education!

Tim: We're saying we should have a teacher in the delivery room.

Andrew: In the womb.

Tim: We should have teachers deliver the child.

Andrew: They should be delivered at school.

Obama: The reason for underperfromance . . . too many think it's acceptable . . .

Steve: They have achieved! They've graduated high school! It's the white kids who haven't and they're still getting the jobs!

Dice-K: Dr. King said . . . when there is war, two people suffer . . . the link between war, fear, poverty . . . shift paradigm away from war . . . resources for education.

Steve: Then maybe white kids will graduate too.

Crazy Guy: You've heard these nostrums before. You heard then 10 years ago, 20 years ago . . . the Democratic Party is not appreciably better than the Republicans . . . this will not be solved by your leaders.

Steve: Okay, that's where he fell off the table.

Crazy Guy: . . . squandered in Iraq. The people on this stage are all guilty.

Silver Fox: I've been dedicated to this issue in the Senate. The key to the door is education.

Hillary: The American village has failed.

Tim: It takes a village of millions to hold us back.

Hillary: . . . discrimination in the workplace.

Steve: Yes! She answered the question.

*

The question is about AIDs prevention.

Richardson: [blah blah blah]

Andrew: Skin cancer is something that, er, oh, I'm sorry . . .

Edwards: [blah blah blah]

Andrew: God, he's good looking. He's like Dan Quayle is he was in Mensa.

Obama: [blah blah blah]

Dice-K: [blah blah blah]

Steve: Borrrrrrring.

Dice-K: We have to end for-profit medicine.

Steve: Oh, I like that.

Dice-K: Michael Moore is right about this, by theway.

Crazy Guy: Scourge is war on drugs.

Steve: The craziest people tell the most truth. The "pragmatists" lie. The realists are the most unreal.

Hillary: If HIV/AIDS were the leading cause of death among white women there would be an outrage in this country.

*

The question is about taxes and the rich.

Edwards: The family you are born into has a lot to do with your life.

Andrew: If your name is Bruce Wayne.

Obama: People aren't looking for charity.

Tim: I wouldn't mind a little.

Andrew: Yeah.

Tim: Can I borrow a dollar?

*

Obama: Katrina.

Kucinich: End war as an instrument of policy.

Gravel: Wipe out the income tax. It is corrupt. It is corrupting our society . . . retail sales tax. Everybody knows what everybody else is paying.

Andrew: That's why we call him the Crazy Guy. He says something crazy every now and then.

Dodd: . . . get back to the Clinton days . . .

Steve: So vote for Hillary.

Hillary: . . . it's the payroll tax plus the income tax, and when you cut of contributions at $99,000 . . .

Richardson: [blah blah blah]

Tavis Smiley tries to cut him off.

Richarson: I'm almost finished.

Tim: You're almost finished? Put it on your blog.

*

The question is about the black arrest rate.

Obama: The crimnal justice system is not color-blind. It does not work for all people . . . I've got track record on the state level - racial profiling legislation . . . against wrongful convictions . . . requires political courage, you'll be accused of being soft on crime.

Steve: By Kirk Dillard!

Kucinich: End mandatory miniumums . . . rehab for drugs, not into incarceration . . . end the federal death penalty . . .

Gravel: Is it a surprise to anyone in this room that if you don't have any money you don't get any justice?

Dodd: End mandatory minimums . . . eliminate distinction between crack and coke . . . a justice department that is not politicized.

Hillary: End racial profiling . . . mandatory minimums may be appropriate for certain violent crimes; diversions . . . drug courts . . . non-violent offenders . . .end distinction between crack and powder cocaine . . .

Richardson: [blah blah blah]

Steve:Oh please! Snooze!

Richardson: We need a strategy to deal with poverty.

SR: He doesn't know where to go with this.

Tim: It's not just poverty, it's racism. There are more poor white people than black people.

Andrew: He's got sunstroke.

*

The question is about a federal right of return to New Orleans.

Huh?

*

Hillary: I have proposed a 10-point Gulf Coast Recovery Program. Get the hospitals up, law enforcement, fire departments . . . almost criminal indifference to rebuilding . . . even if you give people a right to return, there's nothing to return to . . .

Biden: The U.S. Constitution should be sufficient.

Steve: Oh Joe Biden, I'm so over you.

Richardson: Put FEMA under the president.

Andrew: Yeah, that would've made a difference.

*

The question is about outsourcing.

Tim: Batter up!

Gravel: Outsourcing is not the problem. What is the problem are the trade agreements we have . . .

Hillary: End tax breaks for outsourcing; enforce labor and environmental standards in our trade agreements; help Americans compete . . . find new sources of jobs - clean energy would generate millions more.

Edwards: Eliminating tax breaks is not gonna keep jos here in America. You have to make it more attractive to have jobs here . . . get rid of employer health care.

Richardson: I will establish 250 science and math academies . . .

Steve: Who are you, Mayor Daley?

Edwards: My father worked in a mill . . .

Obama: . . .working with churches . . .

Kucinich: Cancel NAFTA.

*

The question is about Darfur/

Dodd: As a result of Iraq, we have lost our moral authority. We should be able to take unilateral action.

Hillary: Three things: Move peacekeeprs into Sudan . . . [I missed the second[ and establish a no-fly zone over Sudan.

Biden: I've been talking for three years.

Richardson: No fly-zone . . . sanctions . . . blah blah blah.

Edwards: . . .. the bigger question is about America as a force for good in the world . . . primary education for everyone . . .

Obama: No-fly zone . . . protective force . . .

Kucinich: Stop looking at Africa as a place where our corporations can exploit the people. If Darfur had a large source of oil, we'd be occupying it today.

Steve: He says what Obama won't.

Gravel: The president has to have moral judgement. Most people on this stage with me do not have that, and they've proven it.

Steve: He's right.

*

Analysis: Hillary won. She has a command of the issues, policy proscriptions for each, she thinks on her feet and answers the questions. Edwards placed second with his strong emotional appeals. Obama was just kind of there, always wanting to re-frame the questions away from policy to philosophical discussions about the way we frame the questions. Biden was a bit unhinged. Dodd must be running for vice-president. His candidacy makes no sense. Richardson is shockingly bad for a guy with the best resume for the job. Kucinich and Gravel will get nowhere speaking truths no one else dares to speak.

-

Previously in the series

- The Democrats: Episode 1.

- The Republicans: Episode 1.

- The Republicans: Episode 2.

- The Democrats: Episode 2.

- The Republicans: Episode 3.

Posted by Lou at 08:15 AM | Permalink

The Periodical Table

A weekly roundup of the magazines laying around Beachwood HQ.

Still Depressed
With the incredibly sad demise of Punk Planet, the arrival of the new No Depression came at just the right time. At least there's still one good music magazine going. (And at least we have the work of Don Jacobson here at the Beachwood to enjoy; if only we could clone him about a dozen times . . . ) While No Depression's constant self-examination of what it is and who it covers gets tiresome, Peter Blackstock gets it right in his "Hello Stranger" column this issue when he writes "The difference between ND and most mainstream music publications is, of course, that while we both might cover the Shins or Miranda Lambert or Mandy Moore, the mass-media magazines are unlikely to give significant space to, say, a sideman such as Fast Kaplin (p.8), or a roots-music event such as Merlefest (p. 16), or a family bluegrass act such as Cherryholmes (p. 42). And they darned sure aren't gonna put a 79-year-old performer of traditional country music on their cover."

Damn straight. The 79-year-old is Porter Wagoner. The story is "Hillbilly Deluxe." The closing line is "That's music for grown-ups, what people used to call country music."

No Depression
John Updike, in the latest New Yorker takes up the Amity Shlaes book on the Great Depression mentioned in a recent Reviewing the Reviews (see Sun-Times Review of Note) and concludes, as any thinking person would, that she's full of it.

Consumption Culture
Is there a magazine out there more sensuous than Print? It's at once a tactile, visual, brainy read that makes you want to share.

The July/August issue is all about consumption - "How Design Drives Spending, Saving, and Desire" - and is chock full of goodies.

For example, the Ladies Home Journal said this in 1918: "There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl."

And did you know that blue is "a primary color, but the rarest in nature, [and] was considered a form of black until about 5,000 B.C. In many languages, there is no word for blue; a term referring to both blue and green often suffices for either color."

Pink & Blue II
An observation on gender - who brought the pink bats? - from a friendly T-Ball league.

Presumption Culture
Herbert Okun of New York writes to The Economist this week: "May I suggest 'What Blair's Not Learned', courtesy of Machiavelli's The Prince. First, 'no matter how powerful one's armies, in order to enter a country one needs the goodwill of the inhabitants.' Second, 'there is nothing more difficult to handle, more doubtful of success, and more dangerous to carry through than initiating changes in a state's constitution.' And finally, 'A prince should never join in an aggressive alliance with someone more powerful than himself.'"

Pillorying Hillary
The Economist's Lexington columnist writes: "The anti-Hillary jibes of left and right cannot all be true. For all her talents, Mrs. Clinton cannot be a warmonger and a peacenik, or a radical feminist and a shill for the patriarchy. Perhaps if extremists of both left and right detest her, she must in fact be a nice, reasonable moderate . . .

"She has a prodigious memory, a bottomless capacity for hard work and a quarter-century of experience of national politics. In debates, her grasp of policy makes her Democratic rivals look callow or shallow."

Press Freedom
Ten countries where it has deteriorated.

One Magnificent Mockery
The Farwell Building. In The Voice: The Quarterly Journal of Preservation Chicago.

Posted by Lou at 06:49 AM | Permalink

Genesis Limousine Purchased

The following press release announcing Eilat Limousine's acquisition of Genesis Limousine and the personal luxury services this limousine company can provide, may be of interest to your audience. Any editorial comment or mention that you may give this press release would be greatly appreciated.

- - -

EILAT LIMOUSINE OF NEW YORK ANNOUNCES PURCHASE OF GENESIS LIMOUSINE INTERNATIONAL NETWORK, INC.

Dateline: June 28, 2007 . . . Brooklyn, NY
Contact: Doron Guez
Phone: (718) 253-1500
E-Mail: dorong@eilatlimousine.com
Web Address: www.eilatlimousine.com/

BROOKLYN, NY - June 28, 2007 - A well-known limousine service in New York called Eilat Limousine International announced today that it has acquired Genesis Limousine International Network, Inc. The acquisition was effective June 1 and will combine two very popular personalized luxury services into one.

Genesis Limousine International Network, Inc. is led by Janet Ben Naim as one of the leading grounds transportation services in New York. Eilat Limousine International is owned by Doron Guez, the company's president. The two companies combined will be able to offer clients continued comfort and personal luxury while traveling through New York City, and Eilat Limousine International will now be able to reach a greater span of customers needing ground transportation services.

Eilat Limousine International offers personal limousine and jet services, which are performed by highly-trained personnel to ensure top quality service for its customers. With this new acquisition, the company will now be able to capitalize on the growing market for corporate ground transportation. Clients can enjoy luxury, comfort, safety, and tranquility as they meet with business associates, friends, or loved ones in the New York area.

A great customer service rating is one thing that attracted Eilat Limousine International to Genesis Limousine International Network, Inc. The company's number of corporate clients are growing at a remarkable rate, and more than 99.5 % of Genesis Limousine International Network's customers have recommended the service to others.

"Whether a consumer wants last minute immediate service, around-the-clock service anywhere in New York or around the globe, or needs the simplicity of ordering online, Eilat Limousine International continues to provide an affordable, simple and more professional ground transportation experience in New York City and beyond," states Doron Guez, President of Eilat Limousine International.

Guez feels that this new venture will expand Eilat Limousine International's capabilities to better serve clients in the New York area and those traveling through the area. The company's clients will be able to build an image of distinction while using an affordable world-class service.

*

Other news that may be of interest to our readers:
* Awesome Amplitude Range.
* Left Lane Drivers Unite!
* Excessive Teen Showering Solved.
* Perpetual Motion Breakthrough!
* One Giant Step for Fishkind.
* Spoonmantics.
* College Kid Proves Creation.
* Foolin' Fish Spray.

Posted by Lou at 02:26 AM | Permalink

T-Ball Journal: Pink & Blue

The superficial ways girl T-Ball players are different than boys become apparent at practice. For one thing, it appears the boys have more of an aptitude for careers in archeology.

"I don't know what it is with you guys and the dirt," said an exasperated assistant coach at my almost-six-year-old daughter Alana's most recent training session. He made the statement in lieu of what would have been at least his fifth admonition to "get up out of the dust already." Fortunately the wind wasn't up and therefore the boys' little excavations weren't resulting in decreased air quality. There have been seriously breezy days as the season has progressed but still nothing like the Great Opening Day Dust Storm of 2007.

Alana and the two other girls on her team - who all occasionally kick up a little dirt but don't dive in like the fellas - don't necessarily pay better attention than the boys . . . Then again I suppose it is most accurate to say the more attentive boys zone out about as frequently as their female teammates. But the girls definitely don't share many of the boys' commitment to building the best darn dirt pile anyone in these parts has ever seen.

A few of my eight-year-old son Noah's younger teammates on our junior division (T-Ball/coach-pitch) Dodgers are still occasionally captivated by what's under their feet. But having had a chance to watch several games at the next level (the Minors) this summer, it appears the fascination fades away completely as double digits approach. Or maybe 10-year-olds are just better at controlling the urge to get in touch with the earth.

One final thought: when she was a toddler, Alana, who still isn't averse to marching around in a nice-and-grubby uniform an hour after the game, was a big fan of a nearby sandbox. But that faded away after a couple years. So maybe it is just a matter of the girls being a little bit ahead of the boys. Not exactly a shocker.

*

Another surface difference is obviously appearance. There isn't a rule that girls who play baseball at our park keep their hair long, but it seems like they all (including Alana and her teammates) have seriously cute ponytails sticking out the back of their hats. And you can probably guess which gender brought the pink bat the first time the Red Sox got together.

We have seen a couple girls on other teams with pink mitts and even a pink helmet or two. But Alana, after using the pink bat in her first few games, decided to go with a less flashy model. And at one point one of the moms of one of the boys on the team said quietly that you could tell who the girls were by the way they ran. She then quickly added "except yours of course."

I suppose the most surprising thing is that fundamentally there really aren't many differences between the girls and the boys, except of course the difference in numbers (no team has more than a few girls on its roster). Alana's practice revealed, as had others before it, that some of the girls are fast and some of the boys are slow. Some of the girls have good arms and some of the boys don't. Some do a good job scooping up ground balls and they all struggle on pop flies. And I know at any given time Alana cares considerably more than many of the guys what the score is.

*

While we're on the subject of practices, I do wonder what activity the person who first said "practice makes perfect" could possibly have been watching. Clearly it wasn't youth baseball. I would be overjoyed if someone could officially confirm that a practice I coached "made slightly improved." And while I am of course familiar with the revised edition of the conventional wisdom, i.e. "practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes . . . etc. etc., it is all obviously of a piece. Practice well enough and you will play well.

It has been my experience that sometimes that is the case and sometimes not. Fortunately I've always been confident that the squad of seven- and eight-year-olds that I coach is not alone . . . that none of the teams in our league have yet even approached training perfection.

But that was before Sunday, when an opposing team, which I happened to know was without its best player, made all the plays in the field and hit a ton for six straight innings. Noah's and my team lost by 20 (if not 21 or 22) and it probably could have been worse. At the end of the weekend our record stood at 5-6-1. We have two more regular season games and then the playoffs start.

*

Noah had a solid game at the plate, blasting a legitimate triple (as opposed to the ground balls followed by two throwing errors that kids so endearingly translate into three-baggers) and beating out a couple coach-pitch infield hits. But on this day all the Dodgers struggled defensively - probably was the defensive chart.

There was one highlight in the field in the fifth inning. My shortstop managed to fill his entire glove with dirt, then hurriedly dumped it out and got the glove back on his hand in time to scoop up a ground ball and make a throw. With the ability to pull off that sort of slight of hand, he'll eventually have to consider a career in entertainment.

-

Jim Coffman's daughter is in her first season of T-Ball. Her older brother is in his last year in the Junior Division. Coffman is chronicling his travails as coach of his son's team and observer of his daughter's initial foray into this slice of Americana.

Posted by Lou at 12:24 AM | Permalink

June 28, 2007

The [Thursday] Papers

1. Mary Mitchell says it so I don't have to.

2. Expecting insight about race from Neil Steinberg is like expecting insight about the Constitution from Dick Cheney.

3. Even Jonah Goldberg has bailed.

4. "Friday Classes Limit Student Drinking on Thursday," USA Today reports. Actually, if you read the story, it's the other way around: Thursday drinking limits Friday classes. And that's the way it should be.

5. At least young people have an excuse. They're still in school - and only four days a week. What's the adults' excuse?

6. Obedience must be absolute.

7. When Sun-Times editor-in-chief Michael Cooke says in a memo that went out on Wednesday that editorial page editor Steve Huntley "has brought honor to our newspaper,' does he mean the time he went along with the endorsement of Todd Stroger because publisher John Cruickshank made a business decision to try to win back black readers (and promised without any authority that the paper would assign extra reporters to cover Stroger), or did he mean the recurring times he got the facts wrong in the Valerie Plame affair even though his own columnist, Robert Novak, was centrally involved?

The memo announced that Huntley is leaving the job to become a senior columnist. I don't know if he was pushed aside. Perhaps it was a business decision.

Books editor Cheryl Reed, who has only been in that job for a year, will replace Huntley, who will stay on the editorial board.

8. Is Ald. Brendan Reilly moving toward a plan to save the Lake Shore Athletic Club and push for its re-use rather than destruction? That's the latest word on the street. And here's what Reilly tells architecture writer Lynn Becker:

"I think there has to be a very compelling case made to tear down historically significant buildings to replace them with new structures. I would say that Chicago has precious few historic buildings still standing today, and it's in the community's best interest to have a good mix of old and new. That's one reason why the Lake Shore Athletic Club issue in my ward is weighing very heavily in my mind and I've spent the last month meeting with local residents, and explore all potential options for that property. I'll be making an announcement by the end of this week . . . . I have asked Northwestern University to voluntarily extend the deadline for their request for a demolition permit for that property, and I'm waiting to hear back from them. (Reilly said he's looking to extend the demolition moratorium by some 60 days to fully vent this plan.')"

9. A question from The Huffington Post for the Democratic presidential candidates tonight: Why are you against a single-payer health care system?

"The first pillar of the system - private insurance - is an inherently flawed means of providing health care. First, the incentive of a private insurance company is to find ways to deny needed care - the less care provided for the same premiums, the higher the profits and the bigger the salaries and bonuses of their top executives. So private health insurance companies pay huge staffs to review claims and deny coverage. Michael Moore's Sicko shows horrifying examples of people who actually have health insurance coverage but suffer from lack of care because insurance companies wrongly denied their claim, and presents eloquent testimony from former insurance company employees about how they were promoted and award bonuses for finding ways to reject coverage.

"Second, private health insurance involves a colossal waste of money. Nearly 1/3 of private health insurance premiums go to administrative costs of underwriting (i.e. turning down insurance applications from consumers who might actually need to use their insurance), claims processing (i.e. denying as many claims as possible), marketing and advertising, plus shareholder profits and multi-million dollar executive salaries and bonuses. By contrast, Medicare's administrative run approximately 2-3% of costs. At the same time, to deal with numerous different insurance companies and their varying claims procedures, doctors and hospitals have to employ large staffs, not to provide care, but just to process insurance claims. Approximately 20% of doctor's income goes to the overhead of processing insurance. It has been estimated that approximately $350 billion a year of health care dollars goes to administrative costs. Saving most of these costs alone could pay to insure the tens of millions of uninsured Americans in a Medicare-For-All system.

"Moreover, the second pillar of the system - employer-provided health insurance - is collapsing. No less a businessman than the chairman of Ford Motor Company stated that employee health costs are 'the biggest issue on our plate that we can't solve. Health care is out of control. It's a system that's broke.'"

I don't know if single-payer is the way to go, but it seems to me conservative business interests and liberal policy wonks should agree that employer-based health care ought to be jettisoned - it's bringing everyone down. A private-based for-profit system is only workable if competition actually breeds better service and lower costs. And a government-based (or at least mandated) system is the only one that can guarantee universal coverage. At least that's what it seems like to me.

10. "If Cook County were a business, the board would be taking steps to remove [Todd] Stroger from office," Bob Reed writes. "In reality, we know that's not going to happen. In fact, there's real doubts that a legal mechanism even exists within Cook County government bylaws to impeach or remove a board president.

11. "Oprah to Open Store."

* Self-Esteem: $49.95 (one week's supply).
* Nostrums: $5.95 each.
* Old-time religion: $20 per visit.
* Snake oil tall/grande: $12.99/$14.99.

The Beachwood Tip Line: Now at a discount.

Posted by Lou at 08:40 AM | Permalink

What I Watched Last Night

The most well-known recent season of MTV's seminal reality show, The Real World, was the season in Las Vegas that made the off-Strip Palms Casino & Resort famous. It was the season the series officially and unapologetically became sponsor to in-your-face spoiled whiny youth indulgence of booze and sex by a cast of boneheads with the exact lack of maturity to gracefully handle the magic but perilous gifts of vice that we have been endowed with by our Creator. Pity.

That was the season, too, that some might say The Real World jumped the shark, though rode the shark might be a more apt phrase. How unlikely, though, that the cast member to emerge with a semblance of celebrity career ahead of her was Trishelle Cannatella, the loose (and that's not a pejorative) airhead on-call to all horny boys camera range.

Er, how very likely in retrospect, I should say (though she wasn't the only cast member who went on to pose for Playboy), now that we know just how ready the church-schooled girl from Cut-Off, La., really was to break out.

That season was so memorable - so much more than, say, last season, which was, where, in Anchorage or something? - that MTV brought the cast back to the Palms for an encore and is now running Reunited: The Real World Las Vegas. And wouldn't'cha know, last night the housemates gathered to see Trishelle in her new film, Ninja Cheerleaders. Trishelle told her pals she didn't really know what the movie's plot was, but from the looks of the clips, she weren't bad!

The post-Real World life has obviously been good to Trishelle. Not so sure about the others. Former go-go dancer Brynn Smith, who had a threesome with Trishelle and hunkmate and condom-refuser Steven three days after they met for the original series, is married with two kids, who, um, she has brought along for the reunion show. Buzzkill, dude. Her marriage actually seems solid, though she is purportedly jealous of the wild, single life Trishelle still lives while Trishelle pretends to be jealous of Brynn's married life.

The promo for the next episode also hints that Brynn isn't getting much action in her marriage, so the cast arranged for her and her husband to spend a romantic night in the Palms' Playboy Suite, designed specifically for Hugh Hefner and even more obnoxiously decadent than the Real World Suite. Don't these people know that nealry 50 million Americans don't have health insurance and that a dollar a day can save hungry children the world over?

Meanwhile, Frank Roessler continues to be the most annoying amiable dunce reality television has produced, complaining last night about his tendency to sleep with ugly chicks while dating - but apparently not sleeping with - pretty ones.

After the cast acts as his pimping agency and lines him up with three dating options, he complains that "they are so not hot."

I've got news for you, Frank: neither are you. You are soft, clueless, naive, and obviously still secretly and massively in love with Trishelle. But the best you can hope for - and this is shooting for the top of your range - is to be Steven's wingman.

Steven Hill, a pretty boy without a brain, and so a perfect fit for Trishelle, is trying to cover up his hair loss with a close crop up top. I wonder if he regrets now letting Trishelle get away. They seemed made for each other, but he wanted to play the field. Now he's the one whose been played, though his dumb bright smile and dopey dumb-guy charm will get him through life just fine. He'll never really know the difference - about anything.

Meanwhile, Irulan Wilson and Arissa Hill have made up after a falling out. Though she has a new boyfriend, Irulan is still not over castmate Alton Williams, whom she dated for three years after dumping her boyfriend back home. Alton is an uncomfortable and odd duck, but not charmingly so. Irulan and Arissa are case studies in emotionally troubled but not entirely stupid women making bad choices though not the most possible worst choices. Just choices enough to keep the drama going.

Up until Vegas, I had seen every episode of every Real World. While the original season in New York didn't really click for me, Los Angeles and San Francisco were the top of the form, even if the show was never as real as purported.

At first I thought the tipping point was Miami, which was pretty much an over-the-top drunken mess, except for the comic book editor skateboarder Cubs fan Sarah chick, who inspired a secret fan club - of which I was one - who lusted and swooned after her, though she was depicted on the show as the unattractive one. So not. (But even she's taken a bad turn.)

We then trudged through, oh , I don't know, some European settings and at some point Denver, and of course the show rampaged thorugh Chicago and Seattle as ham-handedly as possible. Who could forget Stephen's slap of that crazy curly-haired chick?

(He, too, now has a record.)

The Real World, though, is a classic form of TV that we watch despite breaking the informal rule that characters be likable. From my particular corner of the world - not the most populated one, I know - we watch Real World and loathe these people, trying to discern the psychology behind their behavior, and yet, to watch the soap opera unfold as voyeurs unto lives that are different from ours, but perhaps only because they are on TV. And because they seem to have unlimited wardrobe budgets, horrible taste, and no intellectual interests whatsoever.

The Real World is also a sly take, purposefully or not, on the TV form, be it sitcom, soap opera, or drama, and now, folding back on itself, the reality show. In a post-post, meta-meta world, Reunited ups the stakes again, even as the content draws down dangerously to near-zero.

At some point, the physics of a black hole will kick in and no light will escape. A season following The Real World Crew will ensue, and then a special look back at the Reunited Shows, and then The Real World Crew Reunited, and then the season in which the lives of Real World fans picked to live together in a house to watch the show will be chronicled. And don't even get me started about The Real World/Road Rules Challenge.

*

The What I Watched Last Night library is free for your perusal.

Posted by Lou at 06:07 AM | Permalink

When the Press Fails: Part 3

Today we conclude our three-part excerpt from the opening chapter of When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina, by W. Lance Bennett, Regina G. Lawrence, and Steven Livingston, graciously provided to us by the University of Chicago Press and also available in one fell swoop on their website. Catch up here with Parts 1 and 2.

*

WMDs and the Al Qaeda Connection

Perhaps the central example that illustrates the press's having limited capacity to challenge potentially questionable, but dominant, official accounts involves the allegation of links between the international terrorist organization Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and between Saddam and 9/11. Those claims, like the charges that Saddam possessed WMDs, were asserted repeatedly by high administration officials including President Bush and Vice President Cheney, but little solid evidence was ever presented. To the contrary, there was ample evidence that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had condemned Saddam's government as a secular threat to Islamic fundamentalism, and that Saddam feared an Islamic threat to his rule. Indeed, after Saddam's capture, documents were found in his possession ordering Iraqi resistance fighters to refuse to cooperate with any Islamic fundamentalists who entered Iraq, suggesting that Al Qaeda, while sharing an antagonism toward the United States, was also seen as a threat to stir Islamic revolution in Iraq.

Despite the available challenges to this core rationale for the war promoted by the Bush administration, the durability of the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection in public opinion polls continued years into the conflict. Just the right dose of reinforcements from high administration sources continued to receive publicity from news organizations that were curiously ill equipped to balance the spurious claims. Indeed, the underlying ethos of "we report (what officials say), you decide (if it is true)" results in the odd problem of balancing erroneous claims. It might make sense to worry more about whether such claims should be reported so decorously at all. In any event, a poll conducted in July 2006, more than three years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, found that 64% of Americans still believed that Saddam Hussein's regime had strong ties with Al Qaeda - even though volumes of contrary information circulated just beyond, and sometimes even found its way into, the mainstream press.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: "Poll: More Than 4 in 10 Americans Still Believe Saddam Involved with 9/11," June 25.]

There was similarly little evidence presented to support the alleged existence of WMDs - particularly nuclear weapons capacity - that was offered as the imminent threat to U.S. national security that justified the war. The slim evidence put forward by government officials was overplayed in the news, as indicated in the published apologies of both the Times and the Post. Weaknesses in the accounts and challenges to claimed evidence were either buried deep in the newspapers' inside pages or not examined much at all. Here is how the Times' editorial apology to its readers assessed the paper's reporting on an intelligence finding about the aluminum tubes alleged to be part of Saddam's hidden operation to manufacture nuclear materials:

On Sept. 8, 2002, the lead article of the paper was headlined "U.S. Says Hussein Intensified Quest for A-Bomb Parts." That report concerned the aluminum tubes that the administration advertised insistently as components for the manufacture of nuclear weapons fuel. The claim came not from defectors but from the best American intelligence sources available at the time. Still, it should have been presented more cautiously. There were hints that the usefulness of the tubes in making nuclear fuel was not a sure thing, but the hints were buried deep, 1,700 words into a 3,600-word article. Administration officials were allowed to hold forth at length on why this evidence of Iraq's nuclear intentions demanded that Saddam Hussein be dislodged from power: "The first sign of a 'smoking gun,'" they argue, "may be a mushroom cloud."

Five days later, the Times reporters learned that the tubes were in fact a subject of debate among intelligence agencies. The misgivings appeared deep in an article on Page A13, under a headline that gave no inkling that we were revising our earlier view ("White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons"). The Times gave voice to skeptics of the tubes on Jan. 9, when the key piece of evidence was challenged by the International Atomic Energy Agency. That challenge was reported on Page A10; it might well have belonged on Page A1.

Other evidence being pushed by the Bush administration to support its case for war was similarly disputed within government intelligence circles, but effective management of a compliant press kept the lid on the story. For example, intelligence analysts suspected that the document underlying the administration's charges that Saddam tried to purchase bomb-grade uranium in Africa was a fabrication. In fact, the Central Intelligence Agency asked that the claim be removed from a Bush speech during the fall 2002 campaign to raise support for the war. The CIA again pushed successfully for removing the charge from the U.S. ambassador's speech to the UN Security Council later in December. Yet the uranium charge reappeared at White House insistence in the president's 2003 State of the Union address that signaled the coming war. Months after it was discredited, the charge continued to be spread in news interviews and speeches by other administration officials, who simply attributed the claim to British intelligence reports that also proved to be groundless. The repetition of the dubious charge by nearly every top official in the coming weeks was part of the "strategic coordination" of the administration's message, as described by White House communications director Dan Bartlett.

When Joseph Wilson, a well-respected retired U.S. diplomat, was moved by the administration's inaccuracy to explain publicly in an editorial that the nuclear weapons charge had been discredited, the White House retaliated by leaking the identity of his wife, the now well-known Valerie Plame, who was working undercover for the CIA. This bit of hardball led to a special prosecutor investigation of the White House's breach of national security law, and ironically dragged journalists into the awkward position of protecting the very sources who had tried to use them to dissemble public information. As discussed further below, the close news-making ties between key administration figures and prominent reporters like Judith Miller, formerly of the New York Times, who wittingly or unwittingly helped the administration to damage Wilson and manage the news, are the all-important backstory that explains much of the front-page coverage of the lead-up to the war. We explore the Wilson-Plame incident as one of many examples of the administration's bare-knuckle news management tactics in chapter 5.

The Intelligence Fiasco

The press's now familiar inability to create better balance independently in its news stories occurred again after the invasion of Iraq, when reporting turned to the particulars of the intelligence that was presented as cause for the war. Once again, the issue is not whether another side to the Bush administration's story ever appeared in the news; it did. But once again, it came and went without leaving much of a trace on public opinion or gaining the prominence needed to provide a safe and inviting public context for other government opponents to speak out.

Perhaps the Iraq story that had the greatest potential effects on public comprehension and government debate was the issue of the faulty intelligence that led to the war. Was the intelligence failure a product of poorly organized and ill-qualified intelligence agencies, as the administration and many in Congress offered as their version of the story? Or was it more the case, as a lesser told version of the story had it, that the desire for war at the highest levels of the administration essentially forced intelligence agencies to certify and promote internally contested and knowingly weak intelligence? It is ironic that this important alternative version of the intelligence story - one with the potential to unravel many other claims by the administration - had such trouble gaining traction in the news despite a stream of former officials who came and went in the front pages, echoing similar versions of these stark challenges to the administration's preferred story.

Impressive as those sources were, they simply operated with a news deficit given their status as past officials who no longer had the mechanisms of office and power to advance their stories. Yet their stories were enormously important, and largely consistent with one another in corroborating firsthand knowledge that high-level administration officials may have pressured intelligence agencies for information to support a preordained war. These charges were lodged in various forms by former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, former security adviser Richard Clarke, and first-term secretary of state Colin Powell's then chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, among others, who simply could not compete with the administration's news-making capacity to beat them back.

Consider, for example, the news moment surrounding O'Neill, who claimed that discussions about overthrowing Saddam Hussein were held from the earliest cabinet meetings of the Bush administration, long before the attacks of 9/11. In the book The Price of Loyalty, O'Neill charged that 9/11 merely provided the pretext for a war that was already on the agendas of Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and the president, among others. According to O'Neill, who had been a trusted Bush political ally, the administration's belief was that regime change in Iraq would provide a model for democracy that would transform the rest of the region. The main question, he claimed, was how to justify going to war, and the president set a tone of "Fine. Go find me a way to do this." Both Bush and Rumsfeld issued strong denials after the book came out, and the White House retaliated by calling for an investigation of whether O'Neill had broken governmental secrecy laws in providing the author with official documents to back up his claims.

Such reports came and went in the news, with the stories taking on a "he said/they said" quality. In such stories, the advantage quickly tilted to administration officials with better news access and the inclination to challenge ferociously the patriotism and credibility of anyone who might question their preferred script. And so the charges that the administration had pressed for intelligence to support the war also came and went as sporadic news backdrop - sustained mainly as long as the sources were able to promote their books on cable and late-night television shows. Even Colin Powell's former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson received little news traction for his charge that the war was pushed through the administration by a "cabal" of Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

The parade of former Washington insiders - former government officials and lower-level officials such as agency technicians and bureaucrats - pointing out the spurious origins of the war in Iraq came and went, with most of them quickly dropping from the news. Even though, as long-time government insiders, they enjoyed considerable credibility among journalists, as mere former officials they lacked the daily story-advancing mechanisms attached to their former offices and institutional processes to keep their side of the story in the news through the daily update mechanisms of press briefings, hearings, official trips, investigations, court cases, legislative debates, and other government news levers. As we explain further in chapter 5, some of these critics had somewhat greater success in sustaining media attention than others, depending in large part on their own public relations resources and their personal vulnerability to intimidation by the administration.

What about those potential storytellers who did have access to the institutional mechanisms that drive stories - members of Congress in particular? They were effectively held hostage to their earlier acceptance of the administration spin that filled the public sphere. Since the climate of press debate about the grounds for war was so stifling that most Democrats ended up voting for the U.S. invasion of Iraq and publicly accepting the dubious intelligence as grounds for military action (which, of course, further stifled news coverage), there was little room for them to stake out a subsequent antiwar position when the early rationale proved unfounded. Cries of deception were quickly deflected by administration officials who said that the Democrats had seen the same intelligence reports that the administration saw, and that everyone then believed that Iraq presented an imminent security threat. Latter-day critics, the administration charged, were exercising convenient hindsight.

All of this may seem strange to an outsider who, when presented with the facts, might simply reason that since intelligence may have been cooked to pave the way for an unwarranted war, the opposition would have reason to cry foul, and to use this as a key issue in upcoming election campaigns. Yet the capacity of the Bush administration to promote its news story of intelligence failure and reform over considerable evidence to the contrary made it difficult for the Democrats to formulate and publicize possible objections, particularly when confronted with equally blaring news featuring the administration's charges of waffling and lack of patriotism among the opposition. Once again, the absence of an institutional power platform from which to press their case left the Democrats in a defensive position of denying the administration's smear charges, at least as the press chose to construct the story.

So ingrained is this press calibration of the relative power and status of the available sources when constructing balance, plot, and viewpoint in news stories that even the revelation of "smoking gun" type evidence about the administration's intelligence fixing was similarly marginalized. On April 30, 2005, the Times of London published minutes of a secret meeting between Tony Blair, the British prime minister, and top British military and intelligence officials. The minutes showed that a core topic was constructing a legal cover for going to war in light of documents from a high British intelligence official who had attended prewar meetings in Washington, at which time it was made clear that 9/11 was being used as a pretext for removing Saddam Hussein from power. As his report put it, the "facts were being fixed around the policy."

Yet when the so-called Downing Street Memo was disclosed soon thereafter in the United States, it was largely treated either as old news or as a British politics story (an election problem for Blair). Even the huge surge of blogging activity aimed at getting the mainstream media to take up the story was largely ineffective. One of our sources interviewed revealed that the pesky bloggers squeezed only one grudging front-page story out of the Washington Post.

The importance of power calculations in the making of a political news story was further evidenced by how the Washington Post constructed the attempt of Representative John Conyers (D-MI) to publicize the implications of the memo by holding a House informational hearing. That hearing was held in the political context of Republican dominance of the House, and the continuing muddle among Democrats about making an election issue out of being deceived on the war. Given this context, the hearing was unlikely to result either in a shift in Democratic position or in any direct political repercussions for the Bush administration. The degree to which these power considerations by the press trumped (indeed defined) the implications of the document is shown in a telling story by Washington Post reporter-analyst Dana Milbank which began with the headline "Democrats Play House to Rally against the War." The lead sentence was even more revealing about the power calculus underlying news construction: "In the Capitol basement yesterday, long suffering House Democrats took a trip to the land of make-believe."

For some news organizations, the lack of coverage became a larger story than the story itself, suggesting that many journalists knew they were looking at something important, but simply could not imagine how to fashion a big sustainable story out of it. And so they blinked. In an NPR commentary, Daniel Schorr called it the biggest "under-covered story of the year."

*

Copyright notice: Excerpt from pages 13-28 of When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina by W. Lance Bennett, Regina G. Lawrence, and Steven Livingston, published by the University of Chicago Press. ©2007 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that this entire notice, including copyright information, is carried and provided that the University of Chicago Press is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the University of Chicago Press. (Footnotes and other references included in the book may have been removed from this online version of the text.)

Posted by Lou at 05:31 AM | Permalink

June 27, 2007

The [Wednesday] Papers

"Young Americans are more likely than the general public to favor a government-run universal health care insurance system, an open-door policy on immigration and the legalization of gay marriage, according to a New York Times/CBS News/MTV poll," the Times reports this morning. "The poll also found that they are more likely to say the war in Iraq is heading to a successful conclusion."

Those wacky kids. They had me going there for a second.

Gov. Baloneyvich
"So in the latest effort to attempt to work with Democratic House members, the Governor's office was behind an anonymous flier that was distributed to attendees at yesterday's Pride Parade," state Rep. John Fritchey (D-Chicago) writes on his blog (via Illinoize).

"But it does so in such a clumsy way that it is almost laughable. Almost. . . .

"The frosting on the cake is that the Governor's office, directly and through another legislator, denied having any knowledge of the flier. Without wanting to put anybody in a bind, let me just say this. They're lying."

Pride Paucity
A reader writes: "You were right to call out the metros on downplaying the news of Rod Beck's death. I was hoping you'd do the same about their abysmal coverage of the Pride parade. A crowd estimated at 450,000 (by the city, not the organizers) gathers in the heart of town and it gets one story on Page 8 in the Sun-Times and B3 in the Trib.

"Meanwhile, the Trib goes main on A1 with a soccer game that drew a fraction of the Pride crowd? And they couldn't even squeeze the parade on their Metro front?

"Then there's the Sun-Times, which devotes two pages a day to that sports notes package whose main reason for being is to run pictures of scantily clad women (all the while their columnists rail on pro athletes like the Bears' Greg Olsen, who recorded a misogynistic rap a few years ago; but that's a topic for another rant). The S-T is obviously a lot more interested in catering to horndog straight guys than the city's large gay community. That doesn't surprise me, but the limited Pride coverage does disappoint me. I guess that's why there's such a thriving gay press here - because the mainstream media pretty much ignores the community."

Beltway Brains
As those of us living in Illinois know, this is just pure ignorance.

Emergency Broadcast
"Radio listeners across Illinois got some unexpected - and unexplained - interruptions Tuesday morning. The Federal Communications Commission was investigating the series of glitches that broadcast stations said included periodic interruptions of programming by the Emergency Alert System's tone, sometimes lasting three or four minutes at a time," the AP reports.

"Others said their signals were scrambled and that other stations were being broadcast on their frequencies."

As a service to our readers, here's a summary of what you missed.

WXRT: A Talking Heads song.
WLUP: An AC/DC double-shot (Two for Tuesday).
WLS: Rush Limbaugh smearing Mexicans.
WBBM: Someone reading newspaper headlines on the air.
WSCR: Mike North smearing Mexicans.
WVON: Al Sharpton smearing Mormons.
WBEZ: The most boring report on immigration ever.
WNUR: They don't know, they're really hungover.
WLIT: Norah Jones still doesn't know why she didn't come.
WDRV: Joe Cocker is still feelin' alright.
WGN: Kathy & Judy sharing girl talk.
WMVP - Mike and Mike apologizing for Barry Bonds.

Comcastic
Comcast SportsNet says it made a mistake when it didn't cut away (second item) the other night as Brent Kowalkoski of Elmwood Park jumped onto the field at Wrigley and charged pitcher Bob Howry. To the contrary. The policy of not showing idiots who run onto the field is what's wrong. It's news, we deserve to see it, the evidence for copycats is weak to nonexistent, and if that was the standard we wouldn't have TV at all.

Now what we're waiting for is an interview with this guy and/or his friends to find out just what he was thinking.

Fighting for Democracy
"The young combat veteran stared at the letter in disbelief when it arrived in his mailbox a few months ago."

Freedom to Leverage Information
"Wilton Partners and the tollway have been in extended discussions over how to deal with the firm's lack of payments to the tollway, construction disputes and angry oases tenants who say Wilton charges them too much for their leases," the Tribune reported on Sunday.

"Despite its hard line with tenants, Wilton has not made its monthly rental payment to the tollway agency since June 1, 2006. But the tollway got some of the money it was owed after the Tribune asked the agency about rental payments in February.

"Joelle McGinnis, spokeswoman for the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, said the newspaper's Freedom of Information Act request was used as leverage to push Wilton into converting $400,000 of its construction security deposit to cover back rent so the firm would 'look better' to the public. . . .

"Wilton officials did nto return calls seeking comment. The oases raise questions about the viability of what the state has billed an 'innovative public-private partnership.'"

Chief Beef
The mayor lays the groundwork (third item).

Sam's Club
"The Cubs were to eat $6.6 million of the final $7.2 million on [Jacque] Jones' contract. But the Sun-Sentinel reported that with the deal all done, prospective Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell nixed it because of the money the Cubs would lose," Greg Couch notes.

vs.

"But Hendry said, 'What happened today really had nothing to do with his remaining contract."

Save Internet Radio
Our very own Don Jacobson tells you how and why.

Image Enablers
"The fascinating aspect of such recurrent reporting patterns is that the news itself is the completing link in the image creation process. Reporting stories according to a calculus of government power and dramatic production values often makes the news reality emanating from Washington an insular, circular, and self-fulfilling operation. News and politics loop quickly back on each other because of the press's preoccupation with how well powerful officials manage their desired images in the news."

- From today's excerpt of When the Press Fails

Silver Tide
Every time I see an article or advertisement for the new Silver Surfer movie I think of this dialogue from Crimson Tide:

Lt. Commander Ron Hunter: Rivetti, what's up?

Petty Officer First Class Danny Rivetti: I'm sorry, Sir. It's just a difference of opinion that got out of hand.

Hunter: What about?

Rivetti: It's really too silly to talk about, Sir. I'd really just forget about . . .

Hunter: I don't give a damn about what you'd rather forget about. Why were you two fighting?

Rivetti: I said, the Kirby Silver Surfer was the only real Silver Surfer. And that the Moebius Silver Surfer was shit. And Bennefield's a big Moebius fan. And it got of hand. I pushed him. He pushed me. I lost my head, Sir. I'm Sorry.

Hunter: Rivetti, you're a supervisor. You can get a commission like that. [Snaps finger]

Rivetti: I know, Sir. You're 100 percent right. It will never happen again.

Hunter: It better not happen again. If I see this kind of nonsense again, I'm going to write you up. You understand?

Rivetti: [No answer]

Hunter: Do you understand?

Rivetti: Yes, Sir.

Hunter: You have to set an example even in the face of stupidity. Everybody who reads comic books knows that the Kirby Silver Surfer is the only true Silver Surfer. Now am I right or wrong?

Rivetti: You're right, Sir.

Hunter: Now get out of here.

Rivetti: Yes, Sir.

The Beachwood Tip Line: Foxtrot Hotel Yankee.

Posted by Lou at 06:54 AM | Permalink

When the Press Fails: Part 2

This week we are providing a three-part excerpt from the opening chapter of When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina, by W. Lance Bennett, Regina G. Lawrence, and Steven Livingston, graciously provided to us by the University of Chicago Press and also available in full on their website. Part 1 of our series is here. Part 2 follows.

*

Mission Accomplished

Consider for a moment that day in May of 2003, when President Bush, wearing a Top Gun flight suit, gave his "Mission Accomplished" speech on an aircraft carrier staged as a big-screen movie set. Nearly every major U. S. news organization reported the story just as it had been scripted. The result was the sort of public relations coup that occurs only when the news can be managed on such a scale. (We believe that the idea originated with a public relations consultant, and was then staged with the considerable resources of the White House communication office and the U.S. military.)

Beyond the irony of a president with a dubious military service record playing Top Gun, the message channeled through the news turned out to be disastrously wrong. But such details were no match for the Hollywood moments that the administration regularly rolled out with the help of Hollywood set directors and Washington PR firms. The news had become something of a reality TV program, replete with dramatic stories from top organizations such as the Washington Post, which published the following:

When the Viking carrying Bush made its tailhook landing on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off California yesterday, the scene brought presidential imagery to a whole new level. Bush emerged from the cockpit in a full olive flight suit and combat boots, his helmet tucked jauntily under his left arm. As he exchanged salutes with the sailors, his ejection harness, hugging him tightly between the legs, gave him the bowlegged swagger of a top gun.

The fact that all of this was known to have been staged just for this effect did not detract from the amount and prominence of news coverage the media lavished on the event. To the contrary, the orchestration of the event fit perfectly with the unwritten rules of mainstream journalism in the United States, and thus helped make the coverage what it was: dramatic, unchallenged, triumphant, and resonant throughout the media. Beyond this staging, the implicit journalistic preoccupation with political power in Washington shaped the plotline of Mr. Bush's Top Gun episode. As a result, most of the coverage of the "mission accomplished" moment was not about whether the war was really over (it wasn't), or even if there was reason to think that things in Iraq were going particularly well (they weren't). The story was about power in Washington, and in particular, Mr. Bush's mastery of the imagery of success - which, at that moment, seemed to make him the odds-on favorite in the 2004 election.

The fascinating aspect of such recurrent reporting patterns is that the news itself is the completing link in the image creation process. Reporting stories according to a calculus of government power and dramatic production values often makes the news reality emanating from Washington an insular, circular, and self-fulfilling operation. News and politics loop quickly back on each other because of the press's preoccupation with how well powerful officials manage their desired images in the news. Thus, in early Iraq coverage, potentially important contextual details such as the dubious reasons and evidence given in support of the war became incidental to the fascination with whether the Bush administration had the image-shaping capacity and the political clout to pull it off.

The Selling of the Iraq War

Consider, along these lines, another important aspect of the lead-up to the Iraq invasion. Much as the Hollywood staging of the carrier landing made for a great news event, the campaign to sell the war was designed to help the press make the administration's story far sharper and more dramatic than the evidence on which it was based. More than a year after a seemingly manufactured case for war had been presented to the public, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) attempted to redefine the political debate by making a speech with this bold claim: "The administration capitalized on the fear created by 9/11 and put a spin on the intelligence and a spin on the truth to justify a war that could well be one of the worst blunders in more than two centuries of American foreign policy."

He charged that the war was marketed like a "political product" to help elect Republicans, and that "if Congress and the American People knew the whole truth, America would never have gone to war." Kennedy was quickly dismissed by the Republican rapid-response network as a traitorous liberal throwback. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) said that "[Kennedy's] hateful attack against the commander in chief would be disgusting if it were not so sad," adding that Kennedy had "insulted the president's patriotism." The story was immediately reduced to the Washington news formula of "he said/he said," and the larger issue about selling the war based on false advertising was lost in a story about partisan sniping.

Even without the vociferous Republican counterattack, Kennedy was not likely to be a decisive player in mobilizing congressional opposition to the war, and thus did not constitute a news source with enough power to sustain another side to the story.

Equally important, Senator Kennedy's assertion that the Bush administration had marketed the war as a partisan political product came as no news to journalists and other political insiders. A good piece of investigative reporting (characteristically not followed up by the Post or other news organizations) had already been produced six months before, establishing independent evidence for Kennedy's charges. Two journalists for the Washington Post described a systematic media campaign that had begun in August 2002 with the formation of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), aimed at rolling out a communication strategy for the coming war. WHIG's "strategic communications" task force planned publicity and news events for a campaign that would start in September, after most Americans (and Congress) had returned from their summer vacations. The Post story quoted White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, from an interview that had appeared in The New York Times nearly a year earlier, on why the campaign had been launched in September: "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." This strong signal that the war was being promoted via a concerted communication campaign was in the news fully one and a half years before Kennedy's assertion.

The important question is, why didn't this journalistic "common knowledge" about the selling of the war become big news at the time it was first reported, when there was still time to debate the U.S. invasion of Iraq in public? To the contrary, when it was launched in September 2002, the administration's sales campaign was quickly translated into the news code of the mainstream press and told as a story about how power works in Washington. The fact that the administration was selling the war as a political campaign was noted for the record and then, like much of the its image management operation, passed on to the American public according to plan: prominently featured throughout the news, and unimpeded by serious journalistic investigation of either the sales operation or its veracity. As independent journalist Michael Massing later observed, "Most investigative energy was directed at stories that supported, rather than challenged, the administration's case." The result is that the public was saturated with the sales pitch, which was delivered loud and clear throughout the news media.

The nation's talk shows on the weekend after Labor Day 2002 were filled with Bush administration officials staying on message and reading from a script that pumped fear through the media echo chamber. On NBC's Meet the Press, Vice President Cheney raised the specter that Saddam's arsenal of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons presented an immediate danger to the United States. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged on CNN's Late Edition that solid evidence was scarce, but that waiting only increased the risk. Her punch line: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." And Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned on CBS's Face the Nation: "Imagine a September 11 with weapons of mass destruction. It's not 3,000, it's tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children."

In short, a war being promoted through a sales campaign was not the story the news highlighted. The focus of the story was on power - the effectiveness of the campaign in pressuring Congress (and the United Nations) to support the war initiative - not the truth or the propriety of the effort. Here is The New York Times' account of the opening weekend of the campaign:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 - Led by Vice President Dick Cheney, who warned grimly that "time is not on our side," President Bush's top national security officials said nearly in unison today that Saddam Hussein's efforts to build an arsenal of immensely destructive weapons left the United States little choice but to act against Iraq.

"There shouldn't be any doubt in anybody's mind that this president is absolutely bound and determined to deal with this threat, and to do whatever is necessary to make certain that we do so," Mr. Cheney said. He said that Iraq was sparing no effort to revive its nuclear weapon program and that in light of the terror attacks of last Sept. 11, its history with nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs directly threatened the United States.

In almost identical language that signaled a carefully coordinated campaign to move Congress and the United Nations in their direction, Mr. Bush's other top national security officials said on television news programs today that the president would seek support from Congress and the United Nations for action, including a possible military strike. . . .

It was Mr. Cheney, in a nearly hour-long interview on Meet the Press, who outlined the darkest picture of Iraq's potential threat, not only of Mr. Hussein's efforts to acquire nuclear weapons but of his possible connections to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Mr. Cheney cited what he called a credible but unconfirmed intelligence report that Mohamed Atta, one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, had met at least once in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attacks.

Of Mr. Hussein's efforts to develop nuclear weapons, Mr. Cheney said, "All of the experience we have points in the direction that, in the past, we've underestimated the extent of his program." He added that he hoped more intelligence about such efforts could soon be made public, without compromising sources, to help persuade allies, Congress and the public of the need for action.

"One of the real concerns about Saddam Hussein, as well," he said, "is his biological weapons capability, the fact that he may at some point try to use smallpox, anthrax, plague, some other kind of biological agent against other nations, possibly including even the United States. So this is not just a one-dimensional threat."

These allegations were sufficiently vague and unsupported to warrant serious questioning, yet they passed through their talk-show conduits into mainstream news reports largely as scripted. Why? For starters, the story was being told by the vice president of the United States himself - the kind of source to which journalists typically show deference in matters of national security. It also helped that this was the most dramatic story of the new millennium. More important, as noted above, the implicit journalistic logic of following the trail of government power drove the media's own storytelling: the Bush administration was on a course to war, and the issue in the news was not whether the grounds for war were reasonable or honestly presented, but whether they would be opposed and thus derailed by Congress. The eventual failure to win support from the UN was insufficient to introduce serious challenges into the story, because the UN did not have, or was not perceived to have, the power to stop the administration from attacking Iraq.

As it turned out, there was no decisive domestic political opposition sufficient to block the path to war. There was, of course, significant opposition among European publics, but, like the UN resistance, those opponents lacked the perceived power to derail the administration's war plans. The underreporting of numerous possible challenges to the war campaign effort boiled down to the simple fact that the administration's claims were largely unopposed by the kinds of powerful officials or decisive institutional actors (the opposition party or key administration defectors) who might have rated another side in the news as it is constructed in the United States.

Journalists, of course, may point to a scattering of investigative reports as evidence that they entered independent concerns into the public record. While this may be strictly true, it does not address the larger issue of why the stories that attempt to hold officials accountable for gaps and outright deceptions often get such small play compared to the stories containing the gaps and deceptions. Unless the press reports sustained challenges to inadequate or deceptive government actions, several important democratic dynamics are unlikely to occur: (1) public opinion will not become meaningfully engaged in deliberation about important competing political considerations; (2) knowledgeable insiders may be reluctant to be whistleblowers a