Our linkfest taking you to sites of varying viewpoints. Links do not necessarily reflect the views of TMV or its writers.
George Bush Disappoints Some Allies (and perhaps the Media) by not pardoning Scooter Libby.
Why Wasn’t The Gay Bishop On HBO’s inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial? Was the problem HBO? Some flatly call it censorship. But The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder reports that the Obama team calls it a glitch and has apologized and indicated it will be aired:
It’s our bad. Barack Obama’s inaugural committee is taking for the blame for a scheduling miscue that left gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson’s prayer out of HBO’s live broadcast of yesterday’s inaugural megaconcert.
Robinson, the first openly gay Anglican church bishop, called Obama’s selection of conservative Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation a “slap in the face.”
So observers noticed immediately when Robinson’s prayer wasn’t broadcast by HBO.
Conspiracy theories abound.
An inaugural committee aide calls it a “simple mistake.”
“We’d always intended him to be in the televised portion of the program — but there was an obvious miscommunication between the planners and executers on this one.” HBO went live at 2:30 pm ET; Robinson invoked at around 2:25.
Live TV being what it is, it’s not a mistake that is easily or quickly fixed.
Tomorrow, before an audience of 2 million people on the Mall, the inaugural committee will broadcast an edited version of the program on Jumboscreens that includes his prayer.
Read it all..
Will There Be Lots Of Foreign Policy Continuity Under Obama? Will he be George Obama?
Well, Then, Is Obama King Or Lincoln? A conservative, Republican African-American commentator says: “NOT!”
Tomorrow Is Such A New Era Arianna Huffington says we’re all being inaugurated and has a video.
Some Students Have Made The Journey from Selma to Washington D.C. to see the historical event…
Was Bush A “Class Act To The End?” Dave Price says yes…
“No Regrets” that Bush beat Al Gore and John Kerry…so says Christopher Hitchens in Slate.
The GOP’s Ed Gellespie Says Bush Suffered From Vicious Attacks By Democrats and The Left but is urging GOPers to be nice to Obama. (This is why they call this a “honeymoon…”)
More Political Foot In Mouth Disease: This time from Joe Biden’s wife, Jill…
Good News For Rush Limbaugh And Sean Hannity: William Ayers (the former Obama associate who had a radical past so this therefore meant Obama was not qualified to be President — an argument voters didn’t buy) is back in the news. He tried to get into Canada and they told him to take a hike…back south. Now Ayer’s name can be used for another month on your show (can you see it coming? “If Canada turned him away then why doesn’t President Obama denouce and repudiate him?”). USA Today’s blog has the details including this quote:
“I don’t know why I was turned back,” Ayers said in an interview this morning with The Star. “I got off the plane like everyone else and I was asked to come over to the other side. The border guards reviewed some stuff and said I wasn’t going to be allowed into Canada. To me it seems quite bureaucratic and not at all interesting … If it were me I would have let me in. I couldn’t possibly be a threat to Canada.”
Another Country In Peril: Mexico is in danger of becoming a “failed state.”
(Do the Canadians listen to Rush and Sean?)
A Double Standard? Is the media looking the other way as Obama holds the most costly inauguration in American history? One view via Town Hall.
There’s A Whole In The Dike In The Economic Crisis that experts seem to be ignoring. The ever thoughtful Dave Schuler is a MUST READ (as usual).
How Can Newspapers Survive? Some ideas from Larry Kramer at The Daily Beast. A small taste 4 U:
Newspaper companies need to turn the tide and turn it fast if they want to stay in business at all. It’s time to go on the offensive and renovate their businesses around the changing needs and demands of their customers. The difficulty lies in that much of their future may not involve paper, and the industry is having a hard time changing its name.
If they don’t, they will become what the railroad industry became. The railroads could have survived as major players in the business of transporting people, had they believed they were in the transportation business, not the train business. They would have invested in cars, buses and airplanes. But they didn’t, and while there remains a railroad industry today, it’s much smaller and less significant than it was.
That’s what will happen to the newspaper business unless the remaining players decide they are not in the newspaper business at all, but rather the news business. And if they want to stay in the news business, they need to get much more aggressive about giving people news the ways they want to get it. I say “ways” because the future of news will not be about one form of delivery. Studies now show us that consumers no longer get their news from one or two sources, but from many sources in many ways: from computers to BlackBerries and iPhones, to television and radio, to screens in elevators and at coffee shops throughout the day.
Indeed. Ask some newspaper types “Do you have a BlackBerry?” and they’ll answer, “No, but in the car I have a banana…..”
Here’s Some News That Will Stick To The Roof Of Your Mouth about the peanut butter recall (we’ve sandwiched it into this roundup..)
What The GOP May Need Is A Magic Internet Button but does one exist?
And You Think You Have Email Problems Dept. If so, they’re nothing compared to the Obama team’s problems…
Who Will Replace Hillary Clinton As Senator for New York? The speculation continues and a decision is expected by the weekend.
Obama Is Already Causing Lots Of Change — in advertising slogans…
Meanwhile….The Rest Of The World Goes On — and a doctor suffers heartbreak in Gaza.
The Debate Over Generation X vs. Generation Y vs Boomers: Is it a bunch of BS?
Saying Good Bye To George Bush: Ann Althouse and her readers do it HERE.
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.