First, if you’re wondering what I as a Hillary supporter think about Hillary’s decision to continue running after yesterday, the answer is I don’t know what I think of it as a strategy. Naturally I would like to believe that she could still somehow prevail. I am not sanguine. People are speculating that she is now running for the VP slot. We’ll see.
But — and this matters more to me — I most definitely admire her for her unswerving commitment to see the process through. Despite the pissing and moaning in the media, and whatever the outcome, I predict that the day will certainly arrive when people will look back with awe and amazement at Hillary’s insistence in going the distance against all odds and wish that they had chosen her. She is indomitable. I like that in a Democrat and so should other Democrats. Alas, many of them are so beguiled by the media myths about Hillary that they just can’t see what a force of nature she really is.
Obama could learn a lot from her and he’d be a better (future) president for it. Instead, I imagine we’ll be stuck with him in his current incarnation — all rhetoric, all the time.
Respondents to my “Macrame Journalism” post make some engaging points, while other points need clarification.
The post was not a defense of journalism (I’ll get into that another time), but a definition of it. Readers are correct to say that journalism today suffers from self-inflicted damage. But what divides journalists from macramé journalists is education and training. The traditional journalism industry, both on and offline, would not hire applicants who could not show a baccalaureate level of journalism education. A macramé journalist, meanwhile, can join the field with an ISP connection and a blog account. Much of their work is very good, but at its best, it is commentary, not journalism. At its worst, it is the same as an avalanche of unsigned letters to the editor. Assigning such blather the stature of “citizen journalism” is inappropriate and dangerous.
he word “abridge” in the First Amendment makes clear that the authors understood that the power of the press predated the Constitution. The origins of such a press were with the Zenger decision in 1734 that established truth as justification to publish. The weight was on “truth.” It was not enough for Peter Zenger and his attorney, Andrew Hamilton, simply to say his newspaper, The New York Weekly Journal, had printed the truth about government officials. Truth required documentation and verification. For almost 300 years, that documentation and verification has been the cornerstone of America’s press. Investigative reporters won’t publish information without triple verification, and then only after a phone call offering the opportunity to verify or deny to the story’s subject.
Enforcing the First Amendment has required the enforcing of such standards, both in freedom of the press and in freedom of speech. The press was granted such power that in the courts a body of law was created and started to grow, protecting citizens from press abuses of its power. The standard of truth is the first burden placed on the press by that law. Free speech is held to a similar standard, which has also shown up in courts since 1789. Classic example: Is an individual who yells “Fire!” in a crowded theater, when there is no fire, protected from prosecution by the First Amendment? Not many Americans have turned their backs on the standards of free press and speech. When they do, thank God, it makes news.
Any out-of-work reporter (plenty of those around) could operate independently online, not writing commentaries like this one, but doing real journalism. As I pointed out in the last post, such work would be instantly recognizable as journalism, just as macramé journalism is instantly recognizable.
I won’t tell my 100 college journalism students what one respondent said about “kids these days and their blogs and rock ‘n roll music and long hair.” They will be the online reporters and editors of tomorrow. Traditional journalism, in converged (print and broadcast) form is moving steadily toward the Internet, where doing business is infinitely cheaper than the traditional broadcast model that has been in place for the last 500 years. I call the new model “incast.” No longer will news organizations (and other media) spend millions sending information out to the audience at large. Online, all that content is just files in a computer, accessible at any time to consumers coming in, a ridiculously cheap and efficient (one-to-one marketing!) model.
What are the news organizations going to do with all that money they save? They won’t have to repeat cycles anymore like CNN, as one respondent pointed out. And they will have millions to hire journalists to fill a practically infinite news hole. That’s where my little longhairs come in.
I was born in 1943, just in time to enjoy town squares, in the small rural towns. By the 1950s, and the arrival of better highways and more comfortable cars, residents of those towns had started to drive to larger regional cities to shop, eat, and see a movie. Around the town square, businesses closed, leaving darkened brick shells through which dry goods, sundries, hardware, groceries, movie stars and fountain Cokes had flowed.
In these empty storefront windows in the 1970s started to appear signs of business activity unrelated to the prosperity of the town. The most telling of these signs was this one: “Macrame.” It proclaimed, loudest of all, that the square, once the center of commercial and civic activity for a proud people, was dead, and the old, sad, deserted buildings were now hosting splinter arts and crafts groups learning to knot yarn in a certain way.
Journalism is on that same path today. Since the Zenger decision in 1734 established its purpose and power in America, journalism has served a proud people continuously for almost 300 years. Now it is being gutted, its professionals bought out or laid off, its buildings closing, its customers and its business fleeing on a new superspeed highway to a new region that no one yet understands.
Where journalism was, in the pre-Internet world, Americans now find macramé journalism, a hobby practiced by a huge number of Americans on the Internet and in the blogosphere. This new, fun way of knotting information has done what the founding Americans hoped could never be done. Macrame journalism has a loop around the feet of the First Amendment, which is struggling, as calves do against the ropes, but will soon go over on its side.
Journalism is not Cowboys and Indians in the back yard. The term “citizen journalist” is an oxymoron. Many citizens now publishing on the Internet write very well, and argue convincingly, but without working knowledge of journalism definitions, values, and principles, and commitment to those principles, they are not journalists. Do you realize that the rate of media illiteracy in America is 90 percent? Not their fault; all media, including journalism, is based on a set of definitions and values that are not taught to American schoolchildren. They should be, just like algebra, but they are not.
The First Amendment, as it applies to journalism: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press.” Do you realize what an amazing statement that is? It tells us that the framers of the Constitution in 1787 knew that freedom of the press already existed, like one of the self-evident truths, or an unalienable right. That kind of power, practically absolute, created by the recognition of truth as a right to publish, deserved great respect in its handling. It is scary now, witnessing hordes of amateurs calling themselves citizen journalists, and taking their work seriously, and even scarier that traditional publishers go along with it. Scary not because of an abuse of press power, that the First Amendment has managed to protect for more than 200 years, but of a draining of it. Without that power, democracy starts to die, too.
This is not a defense of journalism; it is a definition of it. Journalism still exists, on and offline, and it is as instantly recognizable as macrame journalism. You macramé journalists, go ahead and keep writing. It is your First Amendment guarantee of free speech, and some of the commentary is very good. But to a journalist today, cruising the town square of journalism, it looks dead, and feels sad. It feels like the First Amendment is being looted.
It’s been kind of a geeky day for me so I thought it appropriate that I close it out with this one…
You really can design serious games for positive social change. And there’s a non-profit that’s all about helping folks do that. It’s Games for Change.
Games for Change, the non-profit devoted to promoting, well, games for change, will hold their fifth annual festival in New York City from June 2-4. Keynote speakers are Henry Jenkins and Jim Gee and the closing keynote is the Honorable Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
The first day of the festival will be a free, one-day workshop. The recipient of a MacArthur grant, the workshop is a soup-to-nuts tutorial for non-profits, covering everything from why you’d make a game for change, to design, and through funding and press strategies. While the workshop is free, seating is limited and those who wish to attend must fill out a simple online application. [link]
Wolcott’s got a When Democrats go Post-al look at the lefty blogosphere up at Vanity Fair that’s getting lots of attention and is generally none-too-flattering.
As a long suffering Internet Explorer user, I rejoiced at the introduction of Mozilla’s Firefox web browser in 2004 and it felt awfully good to give Microsoft the raspberry. Firefox has grown steadily in popularity and is now the browser of choice for nearly one in five web surfers.
But familiarity can breed contempt, and while open-sourced Firefox was initially a delight to use compared to IE, it has developed an annoying habit of locking up when multiple windows are open. That habit has now become beyond aggravating and Mozilla’s unwillingness or inability to deal with it may yet drive me away.
This is not a personal thing. The lock-ups occur on both of the laptops I use and on the powerful computers at my university job. Uninstalling and reinstalling Firefox doesn’t help, while Mozilla seems to acknowledge the problem in a backhanded way by including a feature on a newer version that allows the user to restore previous open tabs after a lock-up and crash. Meanwhile, just the other day a bigtime blogger appealed to his readers for help in dealing with the problem, which also is making him bonkers.
A two-fold plea: Does anyone know how to deal with this? And better still, does anyone know somebody associated with Godzilla . . . er, Mozilla whose cage they can rattle on behalf of myself and fellow sufferers?
As the craze for Obama spreads across the French countryside, the concern of Democrats Abroad is growing, as fear that Hillary could be doing irreparable harm to the Party’s likely standard-bearer in November starts to take hold.
“She’s playing the Bush card and the politics of fear. It’s because of her that we have the shameful racial bias that has been introduced into the country! It makes me crazy!”
“This election concerns the entire planet … it’s important to us … we are attentive to the emergence of this candidate bearing hope and who is open to the world.” Read the rest of this entry »
April 22nd, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Senator Hillary Clinton got the Pennsylvania Democratic primary victory she needed so she could press the case that she should continue in the race because rival candidate Senator Barack Obama could not close the deal after vastly outspending her.
But her victory margin (a 10 percent margin, at this writing) most certainly means that the increasingly ugly battle for the Democratic party nomination will go well into June…and perhaps all the way to the convention.
Clinton ran a campaign of negativity unprecedented for a modern political primary. And the increasingly raw fissures in the Democratic party show no sign of receding: if anything, her victory means they will likely accentuate. Meanwhile, it is a fact: Obama has not been able to win over voting blocs that seemingly remain his stumbling blocks.
And what next? Obama is favored to win North Carolina. If so, will the Clinton camp argue that a win there doesn’t matter? And what about Indiana? It’s likely to become a prime battleground — perhaps one of the most important primaries of this looooooooong primary season. How did the Pennsylvania voting shape up? CBS News:
The Pennsylvania Democratic primary shared many of the same vote characteristics of other primary states this season - with Clinton winning her core base of union members, less educated and lower income voters and rural voters, and Obama winning voters with more education and income, and black voters.
What made Pennsylvania different, however, is the consistency of these traditional gaps as well as the appearance of some new divides. With intense media coverage of Obama’s recent statements regarding small town voters, and a consistent characterization of him as an elitist both by the media and by the campaigns of Clinton and John McCain, these pre-existing social divides grew larger in this first contest since the story broke.
In the primary Clinton received 71 percent of the vote from white members of labor union households, leading Obama by a striking 43 points. In contrast, Clinton won a smaller proportion of the white non-union vote, still besting Obama by 57 percent to 43 percent. This union vote is in stark contrast to the union vote in Ohio, one of the most recent and similar contests. In Ohio Clinton received 67 percent of the white union vote, and 62 percent of white non-union vote. This demonstrates a more polarized electorate by union status in Pennsylvania than Ohio.
This pattern of division repeats itself among other groups that have been important in past contests. White Democratic voters making less than $50,000 a year supported Clinton with 66 percent, compared to 58 percent support from those making over $50,000 a year. Obama received 24 percent and 42 percent respectively.
There was a 19 point preference gap between the less educated and the more educated in Pennsylvania primary voting. Clinton won 75 percent of the vote from white Democrats with a high school diploma or less - three times Obama’s vote among these voters - compared to 56 percent of those with more education.
Meanwhile, each candidate gave their own (predictable) spin on the election results. Clinton said the tide was turning and America deserved a President who wasn’t a quitter (TRANSLATION: She ain’t getting out until she runs out of money or feels it’s fruitless to stay in.) Obama noted that his campaign started way behind (TRANSLATION: He didn’t do as badly as it seemed he would do but it was not a good night for him). But the voting results really mean this:
“Hillary Clinton appears to have done what she needed to do in order to keep her campaign going on into Indiana and North Carolina and possibly well beyond that,” said CBSNews.com senior political editor Vaughn Ververs. “For Obama, this loss stems some of the sense of inevitability of his campaign and increases the pressure on him to regain the momentum.”
April 22nd, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Prophets of (Hillary Clinton’s) doom have again been proven wrong. The prophets’ strident claim that this Pa. primary elections would sound the death knell of Clinton’s ambition to get the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, has yet again fallen flat on its face.
To those living abroad, the American media/blogs might have contributed in a substantial manner in accentuating a virtual “civil war” within the Democratic Party. There is a visible air of “aggression” within and outside the US. Whether it is the US administration’s foreign policies, or the attitude of the supporters of Democratic presidential candidates, or the media/blogs, few seem to take recourse to a meaningful debate and discussion.
April 22nd, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
We earlier ran THIS POST that has an audio clip of a radio show in which former President Bill Clinton again thrust himself into the news — this time by charging that Senator Barack Obama’s campaign played the race card against him and that memos prove it.
Bill Clinton denied Tuesday he had accused the Obama campaign of ‘playing the race card’ during a Monday interview. A recording of the former president making the comment during that interview has been circulating online.
Go the link in the first paragraph here and re-listen to what he said on the radio.
Outside a Pittsburgh campaign event, a reporter asked Clinton what he had meant “when you said the Obama campaign was playing the race card on you?”
Clinton responded: “When did I say that and to whom did I say that?”
The reporter replied that the former president had made the remarks during his interview with WHYY Monday night.
“No, no, no, that’s not what I said,” said Clinton. “You always follow me around and play these little games. And I am not going to play your games today. This is a day about Election Day, go back and see what the question was and what my answer was.
“You have mischaracterized it to get another cheap story to divert the American people from the real urgent issues before us, and I choose not to play your games today. …
“I said what I said you can go back and look at the interview, and if you will be real honest you will also report what the question was and what the answer was. But I’m not helping you,” said Clinton.
April 22nd, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
It is said that American youth voters would play a crucial role in this US presidential election. But have we ever wondered that most of the wisdom pouring out in the media/blogs on Iraq and Afghanistan “wars”, and other issues, is the monopoly of people who have possibly left their youth far behind? And these “wise” people may have basically lost what is called a zest for life.
I remember in the 1960s when I was in school how emotional/angry we felt at issues/events/developments taking place in different parts of the world at what we perceived as “unjust” and “unfair”. American youth then was at the forefront of youth protest. Or was our generation just silly/sentimental?
Today, I was pleasently surprised to read an 18-year-old junior’s views who studies at St. Andrew’s School in Middletown, Del.
Excerpts:
“I have begun to understand that we deal with this war in abstractions. We see Iraq as a distant problem, and it’s difficult to summon outrage because we have not been asked to sacrifice anything. Is it possible to summon deep-rooted anger for a war for which we were never asked to sacrifice anything? I continue to hope that it is.
“It occurred to me last month, on my 18th birthday, that the soldiers dying in Iraq are my age. They are college-aged, anxiety-filled kids. Kids — members of my generation — are dying in Iraq…. I finally realize. War is a children’s crusade.”
April 19th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
One can understand when a staunch Republican declares that he/she “hates” a presidential candidate from another party. But it stumps me when even the so-called Democrat-supporters are quoted in the media saying they “hate” Hillary Clinton. I can understand Democrats “opposing”, “disagreeing”, “dis-approving”, “disliking”, etc., etc., their own party candidate, but why “hate”…
It has been pointed out that many in the mainstream media and blogs have not been able to conceal their “hatred” towards Hillary Clinton. As I always support the underdogs, I empathize with those unhappy with the present trend and are sulking, after being driven to a corner. (In day-to-day use, “hatred is a violent feeling that impels the subject to wish another person ill and to take pleasure in bad things that happen to that person.”More here…)
The trait that “you can either love a person, or hate a person”…and nothing in-between, is self-destructive. I can understand if a majority of the media and the blogs love/admire Barrack Obama. I do not even question Obama admirers’ complete faith in him and that he has full credentials to be the next leader to occupy the White House.
But the hysteria being built up in the media/blogs trying to virtually push Obama into the Democratic presidential nominee seat has not been taken kindly by many. This has been criticised as it tends to stifle any meaningful debate/discussion on the real/crucial issues that face the US and the world, especially in view of the legacy/burden of the Bush era. (I know some may say that all this was started by the Clinton camp…a classic case of whether the egg came first or the hen!!!)
“Hatred” is a negative emotion. Bush and Co., and possibly many Americans, “hated” the “evil” unknown/invisible hands behind 9/11. Instead of evolving a sensible/effective strategy (through quite deliberations/diplomacy/consensus) to thwart the forces behind terrorism/militancy, a mind-less hysteria was built up. “Rage” (another negative emotion) followed “Hate”. The result: A sledge-hammer approach…virtually bringing down a house trying to kill a rat!!!
And where are we now after all these wasted years? Hysteria is a major impediment to creating informed public opinion. It thrills but kills…And is as dangerous as terrorism itself. Just see…the Media/blogs have now forgotten Osama-bin-Laden/Afghanistan/Saddam Hussein/Iraq. Media can’t do anything about Bush (because he can still retaliate or trash them further.) Some have begun to ask: Has Hillary Clinton become a soft “hate” target?
April 18th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Iraq. The economy. Terrorism. Foreclosures. Taxes. Education. These among the issues facing the U.S. but a new firestorm has started sweeping the blogosphere via a You Tube embed: Did Democratic Senator Barack Obama give Democratic Presidential nomination rival Hillary Clinton the finger?
Did he try to signal it to the crowd? Wasn’t that a knowing look? And, it stands to follow, since he did this (an assumption some are already making — so each viewer is urged to watch the video) doesn’t it therefore mean he lacks class and should immediately apologize? And — not said yet — shouldn’t this disqualify him from the Presidency if he refuses to admit it? And, if he won’t come clean and admit it, shouldn’t he resign his Senate seat?
See the video below. To my mind, this is totally in the eye of the beholder. Republicans and Democrats who are vehemently anti-Obama are looking for things now to discredit him — just as Obama’s supporters and looking at things to discredit Clinton and McCain supporters are looking for things to discredit Obama and Clinton. Welcome to 21s century seek-and-destroy politics.
Once again, American politics boils down to seemingly discussing anything but actual issues that impact the country and the peoples’ pocketbook. But you judge for YOURSELF:
So American politics has now moved to a stage where LITERALLY every gesture is analyzed and given the worst interpretation on it — as if unconfirmed suspicion equals reality.
Here’s something the Clinton, Obama and McCain campaign consultants, advisers, strategists, directors or whatever they call themselves should read, from Idaho State University:
Noting the growing popularity of blogs as an information medium, [assistant professor in the James E. Rogers Department of Mass Communication at Idaho State University, Daekyung] Kim focused on blogging’s political impact. Blogs are online diaries or commentaries that readers can respond to and easily pass on to friends.
Kim’s study surveyed online political users to explore why users access political blogs after he wondered, “What motivates bloggers?”
“I found that many Internet users are attracted to political blogs, where they can freely express their opinions and communicate with like-minded people,” Kim said. “This seems to show the potential of blogs as an interactive forum with few controls. This study may offer useful insights into the roles of blogs during presidential elections and in politics in general.”
Note the “freely express their opinions and communicate with like-minded people.” That doesn’t bode too well for sites like RedBlueAmerica or Wide Open for that matter, unless people are using such sites as merely tools for information gathering. But for interacting? Maybe not so much or at least not crossing over to discuss with those who aren’t of a like-mind.
I’ve emailed Professor Kim in hopes of seeing the report.
April 18th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
The Big Debate is over and as the Pennsylvania primary approaches parts of the blogosphere are denouncing unfair and slanted assertions and questions, negative statements, and a piling on of negativity — and that’s just when they write about ABC’s debate moderators. Polarization in the blogosphere reflects the polity. And here’s our famous linkfest that takes you to blogs of various opinions.
WE THOUGHT WE HAD PROBLEMS IN COMMENTS AT TMV: ABC News debate co-moderator George Stephanopoulos is getting an eye-full of anger in comments on his blog. Read skippy.
THE STEPHANOPOULOS DEBATE OVER THE DEBATE CONTINUES.GS defends himself, saying they were asking tough news questions that needed to be asked. The problem: almost 50 minutes of the first part of the debate was seemingly aimed at Senator Barack Obama — leaving GS and ABC News open to the charge that it was not a balanced debate but lopsidedly slated against Obama.
Ed Kilgore looks at the arguments about talking about electability and writes:
The more you look at it, the “electability” defense for endlessly superficial debates–and media “coverage” of campaigns in general–doesn’t make much sense. If George just came right out and said his network needed “fireworks” to boost ratings, it would sound more plausible.
April 17th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Why is the media, and the blogs, overlooking the “real” issues? The recent Clinton/Obama debate once again brought under spotlight a serious lack of professionalism among journalists and their growing penchant to trivialize serious issues. To give another example, few seem interested at the looming food crisis that is likely to have worldwide political and economic ramifications.
Would the media wake up only when the wolf reaches their doors or the dinner table (when it is too late)? Even if the media is looking for “sensational” news there is plenty to be found in the “real” issues. How about this….?
“Food riots have erupted in countries all along the equator. In Haiti, protesters chanting ‘We’re hungry’ forced the prime minister to resign; 24 people were killed in riots in Cameroon; Egypt’s president ordered the army to start baking bread; the Philippines made hoarding rice punishable by life imprisonment. ‘It’s an explosive situation and threatens political stability,’ worries Jean-Louis Billon, president of Côte d’Ivoire’s chamber of commerce,” reports The Economist. Read the rest of this entry »
April 14th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Today Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert kicks off his Pennsylvania coverage with a guest: MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. But is this symbolic for Campaign 2008 and journalism’s future? What’s the most effective way to deliver news to people on the Internet and to appeal to younger American voters? Video and web producer Joe Windish. offers this compelling original interview on the decline of traditional news an across-the-generations political information delivery system and the ascent of vehicles such as Comedy Central’s news-based comedy shows:
Stephen Colbert: A Media Maestro Plays Philly
by Joe Windish
The New York Times Sunday Magazine cover story this weekend was The Aria of Chris Matthews. Released to the web last Tuesday, bloggers had been baffled by it all week. Even Mark Leibovich, who wrote the story, noted that “three network officials asked me why I was writing about Matthews and not [Keith] Olbermann.”
The gist of the piece was that Matthews is an anachronism likely to be downsized when his $5 million a year contract is up next year. MSNBC’s now betting on Olbermann and David Gregory. Why the paper of record deemed it necessary to devote 8,000 words to that observation, I’ll never know.
Meanwhile, the whole way these guys are playing the cable news game seems a little passé to me. The big questions today are: how are we going to profitably port news over to the Internet, and how are we going to make it appealing to a younger demographic? Indications are that by either of these measures the leader in the cable news game right now is in not to be found at NBC, CNN, or FOX.
The hands-down champ is Comedy Central, whose Daily Show and Colbert Report have been playing by the fast and loose rules of comedy to beat journalism at the news game as far back as Indecision 2000. Since then Jon Stewart’s won two Peabody Awards for his election coverage, and he was joined just last week by Stephen Colbert when The Colbert Report won a Peabody of its own.
Today Stephen Colbert and his 80 staffers kick off a week of Colbert Report coverage of the Pennsylvania Primary from the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on the University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia. As it happens, Chris Matthews, a Philadelphia native, is slated to be Stephen’s first guest.
JW: You’ve referred to comedy as The Fifth Estate. Can you explain?
BT: I started calling comedy the 5th Estate to keep the 4th Estate of journalism in check several years ago… I think this whole notion of comedy as the Fifth Estate really, in many ways, is more important in these new shows that are actually doing parodies of news shows because it’s the idea that the Fourth Estate is keeping those first three in check. The idea of what’s going on in Colbert and The Daily Show and even some of what Saturday Night Live and shows like that, is that it’s not only dealing with the political issues but it is dealing with the way in which the mainstream news operations are covering the issues.
Let’s take, for example, the classic example of what Jon Stewart did in the lead up to the war, when he was really examining that issue in a way that a lot of reporters were not for fear of being called unpatriotic and all the rest of it. The whole Dixie Chicks phenomenon. I think there Jon Stewart was a lone voice crying in the wilderness that this was the stuff that ought to be covered. And he was really making fun of – with evidence, showed the clip and that kind of thing – of how this was being inadequately covered by the traditional journalist operation. So there, I think, what Jon Stewart was doing was a really important message about the lead up to the war, but about the way it was being inadequately covered.
JW: What’s your take on Colbert’s Peabody?
BT: Certainly the Peabody is another feather in the cap of respectability that Comedy Central’s hour-long block in late night television has been garnering. That Peabody just goes on the mantelpiece right next to the invitation to speak at the Washington Correspondents Association Dinner, and all kinds of other things that have just been being heaped upon these shows. So, the Peabody is another example of how these late night comedy shows that Comedy Central are doing are really being taken very seriously by a whole range of people… Now we should remember that it also says something about the Peabody Awards. The Peabody Awards are one of my favorite of the awards given because they really don’t operate on the traditional criteria of what we think would be good. Let’s remember that Colbert got a Peabody I believe at the same time that Project Runway got a Peabody. Project Runway is not the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, or eighth estate! However, it’s a really good show and I think it deserved its Peabody as did Colbert, but for different reasons. When you think of when Comedy Central first started, and when you think of a lot of the other shows that are on Comedy Central, and you think of how Colbert does that whole act when he dances across the stage when he’s about to interview someone, it’s really pleasing to think that this is now the Peabody Award winning Stephen Colbert!
JW: Colbert is a really tough interview. There’s not a lot of fluff on his show. He brings on hugely complex topics and seems to help his interviewees make their point. And the arc of the show through a season is almost like a college course, he is educating his audience. I come away blown away sometimes. It seems like to me a very high-brow news show. Bring me back to earth Bob. Read the rest of this entry »
April 10th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
And now….the Internet mystery of the day. Is that REALLY a naked woman reflected in Vice President Dick Cheney’s sunglasses? No hunting, shooting, fly fishing — or Viagra — jokes puh-leaze.
Perhaps it’s more of a reflection on the Internet and how many Americans (new media, old media and consumers of the media) want to vet anything. Here’s the photo that has launched thousands of Google searches:
Since Wednesday, the blogosphere has been atwitter over a photograph on the White House Web site of Cheney with a caption that said he was fly-fishing on the Snake River in Idaho.
The photo is a tight shot of Cheney’s face sporting dark sunglasses and his trademark grin.
What’s stirring all the buzz is the reflection in the vice president’s dark glasses. Some thought that the reflection looked like a naked woman and, this being Cheney and this being the Internet Age, they immediately shared that thought with the world.
In a Google search for the words “Dick Cheney” and “sunglasses,” 79,300 hits came back at mid-afternoon on Thursday. By 7 p.m., the count was 130,000.
On DemocraticUnderground.com, the discussion starts with this question: “Notice anything … interesting … reflected in his sunglasses? Something that has little to do with conventional ‘fly-fishing’?”
But it didn’t stop there, the newspaper chain reports:
It wasn’t just the blogosphere. On a Web site called sportsshooter.com, dedicated to sports photography, professionals also did a double take and debated the shot on their message board.
…AOL’s Political Machine online column gave readers a chance to vote on what was reflected in the vice presidential shades. The four choices were:
* Hot babe sunbathing.
* Alien overlord.
* That’s not Dick Cheney.
* The image was Photoshopped.
Add your OWN interpretation in comments….
And how did the Veep’s office react? You can predict this one, can’t you: without humor.
Clearly the picture shows a hand casting a rod,” grumbled spokeswoman Meagan Mitchell.
As journalists, however, the word of an official spokeswoman isn’t good enough.
So McClatchy/Tribune Information Services photo editor George Bridges used the latest digital technology to enlarge the picture, took a close look at Cheney’s sunglasses and concluded that Mitchell was telling the truth.
The image is of the vice president’s hand on his fly rod.
Fly rod? Uh oh…
But wait, that isn’t what you (with the dirty mind) think:
“In one lens of his sunglasses you can clearly tell it is a sleeved arm of Cheney or a fishing companion. The other lens has an extreme distortion that, without looking at it closely, could be misconstrued,” said investigative photo editor Bridges.
April 10th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
The war in Iraq has begun to take center stage with the big hearings in Congress. The Democrats’ tooth and nail battle continues in Pennsylvania. And the blogosphere continues to boil with political posts galore. Here’s our linkfest taking you to some of them on weblogs of differing opinions. Links do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Moderate Voice or its writers.
BARACK OBAMA FACES A PUBLIC FINANCING QUANDARY – or does he?
WHAT’S THE BIGGEST THREAT TO POLITICAL CANDIDATES? Can it be a hand-held lie detector? Bob McCarty writes:
Imagine the practical benefit to voters if presidential candidates — Democrat and Republican alike — are monitored by hand-held lie detectors each time they speak in public. Americans would no longer have to struggle to determine whether or not a candidate is being truthful.
While experts warn that this device is not 100 percent accurate, I’m willing to risk a few “false positives” — or “false negatives,” depending upon how you look at it — when it comes to scrutinizing the endless stream of pledges and campaign promises made by presidential candidates.
McCarty believes this should be troubling news for Democratic Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. But we could expand this list and say it could ALSO mean sleepless nights for Senator John McCain as well and also Ralph Nader, President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, anyone involved in White House or governmental agency spin operations, members of both houses of Congress of both parties, fire-breathing talk show hosts of the left and right — and actor William Shatner if he’s asked about whether it’s his real hair.
SHOULD JOHN McCAIN PICK SECRETARY OF STATE RICE AS HIS VEEP? The Glittering Eye thinks it would a huge mistake and here’s why.
AND WHAT SOURCING WAS BEHIND THE RICE AS POSSIBLE VEEP STORY, ANYWAY? Pundit Guy has an interesting theory.
You really can design serious games for positive social change. And there’s a non-profit that’s all about helping folks do that. It’s 
![[The Telegraph, U.K.]](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00322/Cartoon_322830a.jpg)
