Our occasional linkfest. This is being posted today due to problems posting from here in New Mexico. Some quick posts to read from varying viewpoints and perspectives:
HOW TV NEWS GOT A VOICE: Jeff Jarvis looks at this issue in a must-read. A small part:
FoxNews is 10 years old this week. This year, Al Jazeera turns 10. So did The Daily Show. All that the three have in common, besides birthdays, is that they brought new voices to TV news: no longer the allegedly objective, cold, institutional tone that journalism took on when it became a monopoly, once-size-fits-all business in this country, thanks to the impact of broadcast on the media marketplace. These fraternal triplets each brought perspective to news, a distinct and clearly apparent worldview, and a passion about serving a public that each believed was underserved.
What enabled this to happen? Simple: Choice. Bandwidth. The ability to broadcast off the broadcast tower and its strait-jacket frequencies. Cable made it possible, and satellite. That’s the frequency, Kenneth (which, by the way, was said to Dan Rather a decade before, when the remote control started revolutionizing American media). And now, a decade after the cable age we are in the thick of the internet age, which allows us to not only hear new voices but also to speak with our own.
Jarvis notes how the ability to conduct a conversation while covering and dealing with news has now been added to an expanded choice menu. Read it in full.
A CHORUS LINE RE-OPENS ON BROADWAY and aTypical Joe has an original blog interview with a friend of his who was there at the original opening (it’s on a You Tube video so click away).
PRESIDENT BUSH ISSUED ANOTHER SIGNING STATEMENT and political scientist Dr. Steven Taylor has a blunt analysis of the issue. A tiny taste 4 :
However, it has been clear for some time that, in the guise of being a “war president� that President Bush has clearly been using these signing statements in an attempt to make himself an interpreter of the constitutionality of laws and to thereby expand executive power as he sees fit. I am going to say something that I am very, very reluctant to say, but there is no other way to put it: when a President of the United States seeks to ignore Congress’ will and to usurp powers that belong to the federal courts, because he simply thinks it is the right thing to do, there is no other word for that than authoritarian.
To be clear: I am labeling this type of action as an authoritarian action because it is a raw assertion of power.
….I will further say this: if the Democrats do obtain control of one or both houses of Congress in the elections and next year turns into hearing-o-rama on the Bush administration’s practices, then the administration will have no one to blame but itself.
FOOTNOTE: PoliBlog has generally given the administration the benefit of the doubt on many issues. This political scientist’s analysis — which needs to be read in its entirety — can’t be dismissed as coming from a liberal Democratic partisan. It should be seen as a warning sign (which on several issues it appears this administration and the GOP elite don’t generally heed).
THE FOLEY SCANDAL isn’t only raising troubling issues about whether it underscores the obsession with preserving partisan advantage (by apparently keeping it under wraps) — but is also now raising real questions about whether some bloggers have scruples or a any human decency. Has a cyberassault now happened in TWO WAYS?
AND THE GOP COULD BE WADING INTO DANGEROUS WATERS IN ITS DEFENSIVE ACTION ON THE FOLEY SCANDAL, according to Polimom who warns “the parasite is killing the host.”
THE “BATTLE OVER POOPER POWER” and no we’re not talking about the U.S. mid-term elections. We’re talking about THIS.
IS THE GOP ABOUT TO FACE A REBELLION FROM THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT? Bullmoose (who used to work for them) thinks so.
WHAT DO THE TERRORISTS REALLY WANT? Does Osama bin Laden want Bush and the GOP to lose or to keep them in power? Oxblog’s Taylor Owen looks at the issue.
UPDATE LINK:
SHOULD DENNY HASTERT RESIGN? Riehl World view makes the case that he should not.
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.