Our link-fest offering readers links to blogposts from websites of many different viewpoints. Linked posts do NOT necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its writers.
“PRESIDENT GORE WINS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE” is how the All Spin Zone puts it in an extensive post looking at Gore’s new international status. The post must be read in full, but here’s the final paragraph:
Today, there will be many calls for Al Gore to rethink his decision not to seek the presidency in 2008. Mine won’t be among them, simply because I believe that his leadership needs to continue to be focused on climate change. There is no more important, long term issue facing the world today. As president, he couldn’t have the singular focus that this issue requires.
And, indeed, why would Gore WANT to run now? The next President will have to clean up President George Bush’s Iraq mess, he/she will face a politics more polarized and mean-spirited than ever. Gore can now globe-trot the world and become the face of a cause — and a well-paid and well-fed face at that. He now has the movie, the Oscar, the passion and the prize. So he doesn’t have Sean and Rush and GOP strategists won’t have Al to kick around anymore. But he can kick some serious you-know-what as a Democratic king (or queen) maker in 2008. Some reports suggest he feels Hillary is unstoppable but I’d bet he’s thinking: who needs it?
TOYS ON SALE IN GAZA: Don’t get this one for your kid…
HAMAS ON AMERICAN SCHOOL BOARDS? Pajamas Media reports of a case in Ohio…
DEBATE AND REASON REPLACE BY BILE AND SNARK? The Democratic Daily’s Hart looks at the evolution of William F. Buckley’s National Review from a solid intellectual magazine of conservative thought to a publication very much into the 21st century style of slash-and-burn politics. He provides many examples. This post MUST be READ IN FULL (by conservatives and liberals) and it will spark enormous debate. One key passage:
But Buckley’s magazine had some qualities that today’s incubus version does not: civility, playfulness, a sense of humor, lively debate and intellectual confidence. When you are CONFIDENT about what you believe, you need not make yourself taller exclusively by the tactic of cutting off everyone’s heads around you. You can hold your own in a debate without recourse to the gutter; you can actually debate.
Look: the reason that we’ve come to this pretty pass is that DEBATE CEASED IN 1986, when Rush went on the air. Incapable and incompetent to hold his ground in a fair debate, his radio show and then his emulators and then the entire Republican Party removed themselves from the arena of debate, and only held mock and sham debates, as phony, choreographed and rigged as TeeVee Wrestling.
And, in this psychotic delusion of “debate” they always win, they create straw men and knock them down, thinking themselves “El Cid.”….
Read it all (and clap or hiss). But the advent of talk radio helped conservatives and the Republican Party — but what was gained entailed losing a QUALITY of discussion and tolerance for those who disagreed. Buckley & Co didn’t demonize as much as intellectually challenge and aggressively try to deconstruct. The 21st century style is to seek, discredit and destroy (and who cares if it’s a 12-year-old). And if it’s this way at the beginning of this century, what will it be like by mid-century?
SPEAKING OF THE MEDIA, THE NEW YORK TIMES SUBSCRIPTION PAYWALL FLOPPED and Oxblog’s writers look at what the debacle means for the Times and for the news media in the future.
MAKING A MOVE IS EMOTIONALLY DIFFICULT and Mark Daniels is undergoing it as he moves to take on responsibilities at a new church. We’ve linked often to the always eloquent, thoughtful and moving Daniels. So read what he has to say HERE and HERE.
AMERICAN TEARS AND FEARS: Americans find themselves on the dreaded “watch list.”
TURKEY WARNS DEMOCRATS that it’s ready to pay the price if it invades Iraq. DETAILS HERE.
IS HILLARY REALLY JUST BUSH WITH LEGALIZED ABORTION? Some think so.
NORWAY’S GOVERNMENT HAS WARNED SOME COMPANIES to appoint more women to top positions or be dissolved.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.