"Patriotism is rooted in humility. Nationalism is rooted in arrogance."— Donald R. Koelper (@Donald_from_HI) October 5, 2020
- Dan Rather, "What Unites Us" (2020) https://t.co/tILhFUtYj4
This has been the news, from Samuel Beckett. https://t.co/RWyz5vcrGI— Eric Rauchway (@rauchway) February 23, 2019
On Tuesday, a dining hall at New York University advertised a special meal in honor of Black History Month. On the menu? Barbecue ribs, corn bread, collard greens, and two beverages with racist connotations: Kool-Aid and watermelon-flavored water.The university president blamed Aramark, the company that provides the university's food service. Aramark blamed 2 of its workers. Supposedly, they deviated from the company's "longstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion." So those 2 guys got fired, which can't be what Nia Harris wanted, can it?
Nia Harris, a sophomore in N.Y.U.’s College of Arts & Science, sought an explanation from Weinstein Passport Dining Hall’s head cook. The cook dismissed her objections, Ms. Harris said in an email to university officials, telling her that the Kool-Aid was actually fruit punch (it was not, she said) and that the dining hall served fruit-flavored water “all the time” (it does, she said, but not watermelon).
The head cook also told Ms. Harris that the employees who planned the menu were black.
Ms. Harris, 19, posted a screen shot of her email on Facebook, along with a post that began, “This is what it’s like to be a black student at New York University.” It spread quickly....
In a phone interview Wednesday evening, Ms. Harris said she chose to believe that the Aramark employees had acted out of ignorance of their menu’s implications, not out of malice. But she added that, while she was glad they had been fired, it should not have been her responsibility to point out the problem — one that she said went far beyond a single incident.To fire the 2 low-level workers is to say this is not a systemic problem but an inconsequential deviation from the norm by 2 inconsequential people. They're out and now we can return to our proud tradition of diversity and inclusion. [AND: The article is cagy about revealing the facts, but if I'm reading this correctly, the 2 men who lost their job are black.]
As for their food, that too is very strange. You will attract attention, and cause disbelief, if you request another cube of sugar for the cup of coffee or tea that you drink in America. Sugar is reserved for pickles and salads, while salt, my good sir, is saved for apples and watermelons.How nice we were to him!
On your plate you will find combined a piece of salted meat, some boiled corn, some boiled peas, and some sweet jam. And on top of all this is what Americans call gravy, which is composed sometimes of fat, vinegar, flour, broth, apples, salt and pepper, and sugar, and water.
We were at the table in one of the cafeterias of the University, when I saw some Americans putting salt on their watermelon. And I was prepared to see these strange fads and also to play jokes on them from time to time. And I said, faking innocence, "I see you sprinkling salt on the watermelon." One of them said," Yes! Don't you do the same in Egypt?" I said, "No! We sprinkle pepper!" A surprised and curious giri said," How would that taste?" I said, "You can try for yourself!" She tasted it and said approvingly," It's tasty!" and so did all the others.
On another day in which watermelon was served, and most of the same people were at the table, I said "Some of us in Egypt use sugar at times instead of pepper." One of them tried it and said, "How tasty!" and so did all the others.
Dinner time at my house. What do you think Schumer is spoon-feeding Stabenow tonight? pic.twitter.com/gomKgqBV2l— Kid Rock (@KidRock) July 21, 2017
In August 2016, Pabst partnered with a brewery in Detroit's Corktown neighborhood called Brew Detroit to begin brewing batches of Stroh's Bohemian-Style Pilsner, a beer derived from an original 1850's Stroh's recipe. The first batch was shipped to area bars, restaurants, and liquor stores on August 22, with special events all across metropolitan Detroit on the 26th.Here's more about Corktown. It's named after County Cork in Ireland, from which many immigrants came during the great potato famine in the 1840s. I didn't know the name Corktown, but I have been there, because it's where Tiger Stadium
She wants humiliation. What is that about?Oh, Gloria. Grandiosity goes before the fall. Your imperious arrogance looks so stupid now. As for the "fake news" tag. It didn't belong and was removed.
Said Donald Trump, invited to comment on the stupid Onion-like front page of yesterday's Boston Globe, which was all fake news about the horrors of an imagined Trump presidency.That's me, using the term before the use of the term became a thing. And it's in the context of anti-Trump fake news. I'd forgotten about that Boston Globe front page story:
Is that ground-zero of the "fake news" subject? Maybe all the later effort to point to pro-Trump things as fake was generated to cover up the embarrassing Boston Globe screwup.
"In a way, the sewer of Twitter and Facebook is the left attempting to corral everyone into their playground, their way of thinking, and create a new legacy media to replace what the big three networks had back in 1988. You populate Twitter and Facebook with enough political activists disguised as citizens in their underwear in their basements just tapping out comments and posting left-wing news stories from AP, Reuters, Washington Post, New York Times, and that's how you reconstitute your monopoly. You don't constitute a network media monopoly, but you constitute a mode-of-thinking monopoly by transferring your polluted, perverted way of thinking to social media to infect as many minds as possible who are incapable of critical thinking anymore, because it isn't taught."So Rush was complaining about fake news more than a year before the election, and it was in the context of liberal media trying to control everything. The flip today is that you have people like Hillary Clinton contending that social media needs to be regulated to control "fake news" that hurts liberals.
The expression "fake but accurate" is really all we need to understand the problem, and it's pathetic that journalists at the WaPo level haven't fully internalized the lessons of these old scandals. Tweeting one day and cogitating over the general problem the next — it's so sloppy, so lazy, so stupid.July 10, 2014: "It's hard to fathom why a movie about Rathergate — with Robert Redford as Dan Rather — is being made."
Years ago, Redford played the role of another newsman, Bob Woodward, in "All the President's Men," the story of 2 dogged journalists who were wildly successful. They brought down a President and sparked an American love affair with "investigative journalism." What's become of that today? Maybe this new movie will seriously address what has happened to the profession that Bob Woodward (and his partner Carl Bernstein) made us see as heroic and centered on truth-seeking. In Rathergate, a once-illustrious network, centered on ruining a presidential candidate, faked a document.
The movie will be called "Truth." Ironically? I doubt it....
If the liars behind this failed attempt to get Kerry elected had just used an old typewriter it would have worked and the press may have been able to steal an election. Just think about that. Now there's going to be a movie based on this book?Well, now... think about it. Mapes is going to be played by a great actress, Cate Blanchette. Conceivably, the Shakespearean complexities of the role will emerge. I'm picturing a grand, slow, torturous descent. Tragedy!
See what I mean.Wow! I haven't seen such a convincing animation since Rathergate.
I was going to make her head bob and then I thought, no, you must consider the children. And then I thought, if I would make the head bob then I might learn where it is that Photobucket is drawing the line about taking down my stuff. Since they never tell me.
That's a dude, Chip, not a woman.
Update: Please READ THE POST before launching into your attacks. Hint: the headline is name checking a famous quote, not suggesting that this was a valid idea. Had you read the post before beginning your cringe-inducing denunciations of my "hypocrisy", you would have, um, known that.The life of a blogger is tough. It's not easy, as some people seem to think. You work hard crafting snark, and nobody understands it! You write updates beating readers over the head with your point, and other bloggers needle you for being pissy and obvious....
"[H]e couldn't sell watermelons to" who? A state trooper? He couldn't sell watermelons on a highway? Yeah, the rest of it is "if a state trooper is flagging down the traffic on a highway, Obama couldn't sell watermelons," and Chris Matthews says, "Well, whoa! (muttering) I didn't think you meant that." I'll tell you (laughing) from Massa describing Rahm Emanuel walking in a House shower with no curtains stark naked poking him in the chest and yelling at him about health care, to Dan Rather saying Obama "couldn't sell watermelons on a highway with a state trooper flagging down traffic," (laughing) I'm telling you, folks, they are falling apart. (interruption) No, it's no longer Black History Month. If this had happened Black History Month, Oh. Well, I don't know the menu was still up there or not, but this is hilarious. Dan Rather! (laughing) "He couldn't sell watermelons..." (laughing)...
... [Y]eah, some of you have written me notes. "Don't you understand that Rather is saying this is what Republicans would say?" Of course he said Republicans are going to say this. It doesn't matter. Republicans have not said it. Dan Rather did.Now, you know darned well that if the racial slur conventionally perceived in "watermelons" had flashed through Dan Rather's still-flickering brain, he wouldn't have indulged in that particular Southernism. Rather has been dribbling Southernisms for decades and his enablers have petted him affectionately for being so darned sweet and cute and down-home. I'm sure this one was just a way of expressing the notion of incompetence — quite apart from race. It's meant to conjure up an image of someone unable to sell something that people really love even under really favorable selling conditions. The state troopers are there because you're supposed to picture the roadside stand, where the popular product alone is normally enough to lure drivers to stop. The troopers are providing even more help. They're flagging people down. That's all Rather meant. People are going to say Obama can't get anything done. That's it. If he'd have thought about race, he'd have censored "watermelons."
By his own rendering, Mr. Rather was little more than a narrator of the disputed broadcast, which was shown on Sept. 8, 2004, on the midweek edition of “60 Minutes” and which purported to offer new evidence of preferential treatment given to Mr. Bush when he was a lieutenant in the Air National Guard.So, his own actions, as he describes them, warrant the diminishment of his reputation. In which case, in asserting the basis for his lawsuit, he's diminishing his own reputation. Why then is he filing the lawsuit? You may say: for $70 million. But he has to win the lawsuit to get the money. And he has to pay his lawyers out of that recovery. Very expensive lawyers, too. Sullivan & Cromwell. (I used to work there.) And he's already dumped a lot of his own money into investigating the matter.
Instead of directly vetting the script he would read for the Guard segment, Mr. Rather says, he acceded to pressure from Mr. Heyward to focus instead on his reporting from Florida on Hurricane Frances, and on Bill Clinton’s heart surgery.
Mr. Rather says in the filing that he allowed himself to be reduced to little more than a patsy in the furor that followed, after CBS concluded that the report had been based on documents that could not be authenticated.
“I’d like to know what really happened,” he said, his eyes red and watering. “Let’s get under oath. Let’s get e-mails. Let’s get who said what to whom, when and for what purpose.”Who, what, when, and why... I get it. It's like reporting. Except you use the judicial process to force people to talk to you and produce documents.
.... I'm sorry, but that's so badly wrong as a matter of law that every one of the Sonnenschien lawyers whose name appears on this complaint ought to be sanctioned for making it...Also:
[I]fCBS has the guts to fight it — and that is an open question — CBS will win it. You can bet the ranch on it.
THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned from a military source close to the investigation that Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp--author of the much-disputed "Shock Troops" article in the New Republic's July 23 issue as well as two previous "Baghdad Diarist" columns--signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods--fabrications containing only "a smidgen of truth," in the words of our source.Amazing, but not really amazing. It's easy to see how things like this happen. Beauchamp is a gifted writer, with a point of view and raw material. If the Weekly Standard's report is true, it means that Beauchamp -- who could have published a novel, perhaps an excellent one -- is also a man who subverted his own work by calling it true and making it a lie -- not fiction, but a lie. The motivations are not hard to fathom. He gained access to The New Republic -- which gave him stature and an instant readership.
Separately, we received this statement from Major Steven F. Lamb, the deputy Public Affairs Officer for Multi National Division-Baghdad:
An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by PVT Beauchamp were found to be false. His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims.According to the military source, Beauchamp's recantation was volunteered on the first day of the military's investigation. So as Beauchamp was in Iraq signing an affidavit denying the truth of his stories, the New Republic was publishing a statement from him on its website on July 26, in which Beauchamp said, "I'm willing to stand by the entirety of my articles for the New Republic using my real name."
“My life was one very long process of lying and lying again, to figure out how to cover those other lies,” says Glass....Read that whole article: Glass went to some trouble to beat the fact checkers. Here's some analysis in The Columbia Journalism Review about how TNR fell for Glass:
Glass' main job was at The New Republic, a distinguished magazine with a 90-year history of publishing political and social commentary. It also has a reputation for discovering young, talented writers like Glass.
He was editor of his college newspaper at the University of Pennsylvania and joined The New Republic as an editorial assistant in 1995. Not long afterward he was assigned to write a story on an arcane piece of Washington legislation. He thought it needed sprucing up and a serial liar was born.
“I remember thinking, ‘If I just had the exact quote that I wanted to make it work, it would be perfect.’ And I wrote something on my computer, and then I looked at it, and I let it stand. And then it ran in the magazine and I saw it. And I said to myself what I said every time these stories ran, ‘You must stop. You must stop.’ But I didn't.”
“I loved the electricity of people liking my stories. I loved going to story conference meetings and telling people what my story was going to be, and seeing the room excited. I wanted every story to be a home run.”...
“Everything around him turned out to be incredibly vivid or zany or in some other way memorable,” says [TNR literary editor Leon] Wieselteir. “And at the meetings, we used to wait for Steve's turn, so that he could report on his next caper. We got really suckered.”...
“I would tell a story, and there would be fact A, which maybe was true. And then there would be fact B, which was sort of partially true and partially fabricated. And there would be fact C which was more fabricated and almost not true,” says Glass.
“And there would be fact D, which was a complete whopper. And totally not true. And so people would be with me on these stories through fact A and through fact B. And so they would believe me to C. And then at D they were still believing me through the story.”
[T]he truth is Glass gamed the system, and brilliantly. He'd often submit stories late to the checkers so they were pressed for time. When they questioned his material, [TNR editor Charles] Lane says, Glass would provide forged faxes on fake letterheads of phony organizations, as well as fictitious notes, even voice mail or actual calls from people pretending to be sources....Asking questions... and then blowing it, all over again. You'd think, after Glass, TNR would be exceedingly careful when confronted with vivid writing with great quotes and anecdotes. Yet somehow, it seems to have gotten less careful. There's this notion that war makes the soldiers crazy. Journalists love it. Beauchamp reinforced it. It appears that war makes journalists crazy.
Shouldn't all the unnamed sources, obscure organizations, and wild scenes viewed only by the writer have been another tip-off? "I've searched my soul and asked, "Why didn't my bullshit meter go off?" says Lane. "But it's hilarious. By the time I got there so many wild stories had run and seemingly stood up, I trusted him."
Some journalists see in Glass the dark side of a new magazine journalism that puts a premium on sensationalism and style....
But those who knew Glass insist that his story is more about one rotten apple. After all, many writers are under pressure and don't make stuff up....
If there is any value to the saga of what may be the biggest hoax in modern American journalistic history, it's that it has many journalists asking questions about their checking systems.
Is I recall, Beauchamp was recommended to TNR by his fiancee Elspeth Reeve, a staffer at the magazine. It's not as if the magazine went looking for a soldier to write "Diarist" pieces. I do think that, to a large extent, Beauchamp was given a platform because he was someone the TNR editors saw as "one of us": a guy with a background in creative writing and journalism, as well as a Howard Dean supporter. I think it's also fair to say that the first Diarist piece, while not negative toward American troops in Iraq, showed them as mired in bleak and awful futility: at the end, Beauchamp reflects on his feelings of helplessness at his inability to protect the boy. So in that sense, it certainly fits into the current world-view at TNR. On the other hand, it could also be read as implying that if we withdraw from Iraq, we will leave the population in the hands of people who cut out children's tongues to make a point.Hugh Hewitt calls TNR editor Frank Foer "the Dan Rather of the political magazine world, a laughing stock caught up in trying to publicly maintain an obvious lie as truth." He wants a head to roll.
So as it turns out US troops are not heartless barbarians and that far too many people on the left can't accept that. Well from one of those barbarians who just happens to have more humanitarian and disaster assistance work under his belt than any of the smirking elite sitting around the table at Franklin "Which way is the door?" Foer's editorial meetings, F**k you very much! You finished what Glass started, and may this serve as a lesson to the many other supposed honest media sources, your agenda is pitifully obvious and your tactics so childishly unsophisticated that I almost feel guilty smacking you around. But I will, and I hope it stings.Enough for now. Suffice it to say there's a big fight on.
We've talked to military personnel directly involved in the events that Scott Thomas Beauchamp described, and they corroborated his account as detailed in our statement. When we called Army spokesman Major Steven F. Lamb and asked about an anonymously sourced allegation that Beauchamp had recanted his articles in a sworn statement, he told us, "I have no knowledge of that." He added, "If someone is speaking anonymously [to The Weekly Standard], they are on their own." When we pressed Lamb for details on the Army investigation, he told us, "We don't go into the details of how we conduct our investigations."Goldfarb responds to that:
(1) They neglected to report that the Army has concluded its investigation and found Beauchamp's stories to be false. As Major Lamb, the very officer they quote, has said in an authorized statement: "An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by PVT Beauchamp were found to be false. His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims."
(2) Does the failure of the New Republic to report the Army's conclusions mean that the editors believe the Army investigators are wrong about Beauchamp?
(3) We have full confidence in our reporting that Pvt Beauchamp recanted under oath in the course of the investigation. Is the New Republic claiming that Pvt Beauchamp made no such admission to Army investigators? Is Beauchamp?
I want to make clear that I have nothing against Katie Couric at all. She’s a very nice person and I have a lot of friends at CBS News. However, it was clear at the time and I think it has become even clearer that the mistake was to try to bring the ‘Today’ ethos to the evening news and to dumb it down, tart it up, in hopes of attracting a younger audience. And I just don't think that people at 6:30, or seven o’clock at night or even 5:30 in the central time zone , six o’clock when it’s seen, that that is what they want.... [T]he belief runs strong in the corporate towers of almost every news organization, print or over the airwaves these days, that if you go to celebrities, uh, it increases your audience.I don't like the dumbing down of the news, but I see two important feminist issues:
DePaul University marketing professor Bruce Newman, who has written several books on political marketing, sees the teasing as a strategy for Obama, through his wife, to appeal to professional women who might otherwise vote for one of his chief rivals for the nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.So is this a good way to use the candidate's spouse? I think it depends on how good the delivery is. It could be tiresome and phony. We need some video:
By joking about his domestic foibles, Michelle Obama is showing herself as a woman who doesn't kowtow to her husband, he said.
''It's a clever strategy. I think it's very wise,'' Newman said.
It might even earn him some points with men, said Harvard University's Thomas Patterson, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.
''Men in a strange sort of way understand leaving butter out and socks laying around. It humanizes the guy,'' Patterson said.
I think the unstated premise behind such playfulness, that is to say the implicit contrast it provides to the Clinton's something other than intimate and endearing relationship, allows it to work better than normal. A strong comparison is being drawn. I can't help but think in the back of her mind such a contrast is the conscious goal of what would otherwise be insignficant filler. If so, fairly subtle and thoughtful rhetoric, and perhaps part of the reason as to why the delivery was pretty good. These aren't throw-away comments by Mrs. Obama. Rather a great use of innuendo--i.e. the Clinton's are bad, not like us in this room. Laura Bush has also been very successful with this kind of humor directed at "George". John Kerry and Theresa Heinz Kerry being the latest and last foil. Anyway, Barack doesn't screw around, he's at home with me, but I still haven't gotten him to put away his socks.Another take, from BJK:
I see the strategy: vote for the nagging spouseFrom Susan:
-or-
vote for the candidate with the nagging spouse: Obama '08!
Very subtle...
I liked her body language. Very open. And when she put her hands on her hips, which can be an aggressive, dominant stance, it came across to me as just confident. I had never seen her speak before and I don't think I could ever vote for someone as liberal as Obama, but I was impressed with the way she came across.Yes, she has a nice, natural, youthful manner. Quite unusual for a political wife, and I do think that modern women who believe in egalitarian relationships will get a much better vibe from the Obamas than from the Clintons. And I love the dress. [CORRECTION: It's not a dress, but a pants outfit. Looks like a dress when you don't see the full view.]
We ignore the trolls. We prefer not to respond to nasty comments about us or our blog, as long as they don't veer into abuse or libel.When does a vigorous, challenging writer become a "troll"? When is something "nasty," so that we should keep silent (and expect you to understand the meaning of our silence), and when is it "abuse" or "libel" (so that we should respond)? If you say something mean about me and I don't respond -- and I profess to follow The Code -- does that mean I judge you to be a troll and I concede that you have neither abused nor libeled me? Or why don't we have a big discussion about the infinite subtlety of the weasel word "prefer"? Here's another attempt at a blogging code. Here's a big write-up on the codification efforts in the NYT:
A subtext of both sets of rules is that bloggers are responsible for everything that appears on their own pages, including comments left by visitors.This is a terribly damaging idea that would stultify debate. But I do think bloggers need to respond and delete when they are notified about certain things, like threats of violence, clear libel, and the fraudulent appropriation of a person's name.
[The codifiers] say that bloggers should also have the right to delete such comments if they find them profane or abusive.Should? Obviously, we do have this right! I think the point must be that other people don't have the right to criticize a blogger who deletes something if it's whatever The Code ends up saying is deletable. But that is absurd. If there is a code defining deletability, people will argue about whether the standard of deletability is met and also -- not everyone will subscribe to The Code -- about how deleting is repressive. And, of course, there will be assertions of selective deletion -- that is, people will accuse the blogger of only deleting the profane/abusive comments that go against the blogger's ideology. And these accusations will probably be correct. But we'll have to argue about whether they are correct. Won't that be fascinating? ADDED: As you can see from Memeorandum (and as you would predict), a lot of bloggers are writing about the NYT article. Here's Captain Ed:
This is one of those well-intentioned but doomed reform efforts that sound reasonable but will have no chance of changing anything. Before the reform leaves the dock, it has already split into several "standards", which will cause confusion on which logo means what rules and under which circumstances. Bloggers and commenters will have to look for logos, and then will endlessly argue over each individual post or comment as to whether it meets the guidelines.... Most of us came into the blogosphere to get away from editorial restrictions imposed by others. We allow our own judgments and values to guide our publications. That may result in some bruised feelings from time to time, but our readers make the decision as to whether we have met their editorial guidelines, and that should be good enough in a free market.Ntodd -- who is always saying mean things about me! -- says:
Why do we need any "recommendations" from the leading lights of Web2.0? The whole point of blogging is to bring personal styles and thoughts to bear, not to follow some guidelines that wicked smart people who earn money doing consulting think up. Oh yeah, sure, they're soliciting comments, like this will be some big Come To Blogger Jesus thing and we'll all talk about our feelings, sing Kumbaya, tearfully hug each other at the end of camp and promise to write each other. Then as soon as Mom and Dad pick up us, we'll promptly go back to our old lives and friends and forget about Tim and Jimmy and the cute girl--you know, whatsername--in Tent #4 and the camp mascot dog, Sadie.Virgil Libertas calls the NYT "Miss Blog-o-Manners" and tells it to "go piss up a rope."
It is nice to see the Times has its eyes firmly on the important issues of our day, rather than unpleasant shit like Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Darfur....Now that I think about it, the NYT really has an interest in siding with the blog-o-niceness movement. Bloggers are a threat to the Times in part because we can do so many things that a mainstream newspaper can't. So wouldn't it be great if we were stuck with their standards? Stop being vicious and wild! Write like the NYT, and maybe people will just read the NYT. Here's Dan Drezner:
I hereby predict it will go nowhere... The one fascinating thing about [NYT writer Brad] Stone's story is what's not in it. Despite endless complaints about rising partisanship in the blogosphere, no example was given of declining civility in the poliitical [sic] blogosphere. That doesn't mean it's not happening, of course, but it's still surpring [sic] that Stone failed to offer up such an example.I hope people wake up and notice how the Kathy Sierra story is being leveraged (something I talked about here). A woman received real threats of violence. Those threats are criminal, and Sierra's case is being handled by the police, as well it should be. Nasty, cruel, ugly, unfair, mocking, abusive speech is a completely different matter. Anyone who blends the two subjects is selling out free speech and should be called on it right away. This repressive movement is gaining momentum. Be alarmed now, before it digs in any further. Anyone who wants to write a nice, well-mannered blog with a kindly, benevolent comments section is welcome to do it. But if they also want to stigmatize cutting, mocking, aggressive speech, I'm going to aggressively cut and mock them. Of course, they have the freedom to try to stigmatize the bloggers like me who don't want to be nice, but all they can really do is be nice, nice, nice themselves. And readers will decide for themselves who they want to read. IN THE COMMENTS: Mike reminds me: "I thought we had already agreed to have Eric Alterman police the blogosphere." Oh, yeah. How did I forget that! I recently wrote two -- one, two -- blog posts about it and a NYT column!
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