Left Behind, pp. 109-114 The manager of the Midpoint Motel is named Mack. I wish I had been there to make the introductions when Buck Williams checked in: Buck, Mack. Mack, Buck. Left Behind offers no account of this initial meeting, nor any explanation of why Buck didn't make arrangements to pay for the room while he was there at the front desk. He takes care of that later — on the telephone. Despite the fact that the two men... Read more
"What do we DO about this?" Katherine asks, cutting to the chase in comments below. Hilzoy answers that question at Obsidian Wings: Here are links to the email addresses of your Senators and Representatives. Write them and let them know that you want things clear. … I wrote to ask my Senators to support S 654, and my Representative to support HR 952. Since none of my elected representatives has signed on as a sponsor of these bills, I asked... Read more
Style matters. Substance does not. Reality is purely a figment of perception and image is everything. That is the only lesson we can take from the apology made yesterday by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. The senator was compelled to apologize following public pressure after he read the following description, from an FBI agent's report from America's prison camp in Guantanamo: On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal... Read more
I'm trying to follow the logic here. It's not nice to call people "Hitler." I get that, really. That much makes sense. Adolf Hitler was a mass-murderer and one of the worst tyrants in human history, so not only is calling someone "Hitler" not nice and not conducive to civil discourse, it's also ridiculously inaccurate. Thus, of course, by equating someone as gravely, devastatingly evil as Hitler with some opponent of yours who is unquestionably less devastatingly evil, you are... Read more
The fortunes of those in the business of providing the news are of course directly related to the size of their audience. More readers, viewers or listeners means more ads sold. Higher circulation, ratings or traffic means higher ad rates. So it would seem like good business for a newspaper, Web site, TV or radio station in the business of providing news to give priority to the concerns of the largest potential constituencies for any given story. But it doesn't... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 105-109 These pages concern — can you guess? That's right, another phone call. This time it's Buck talking to his father who lives in Tucson, Ariz. Jenkins tosses in a bit of father/son conflict, but his heart's not in it. The subject may be fathers and sons, but this isn't the stuff of Arthur Miller: "This is awful, Cam. I wish you were out here with us." "Yeah, I'll bet." "You bein' sarcastic?" "Just expressing the truth,... Read more
I'm the screen, the blinding light I'm the screen, I work at night I see today with a newsprint fray My night is colored headache grey Don't wake me with so much Daysleeper — REM, "Daysleeper" I like my job, really. I like what I do, and I'm good at it. But the hours suck. Fortunately, I have a plan. I work for a morning paper. That means, for most of us, working nights. Deadlines are set as late as... Read more
On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. … On another... Read more
Nice rant from Stephen King at Entertainment Weekly (via Cursor) chastising journalists for skewed priorities, lack of perspective and editorial judgment, and general irresponsibility. The proximate cause of King's column was the obsessive coverage of the Michael Jackson trial, but the deeper cause is his clear frustration over the shallow, incurious nature of most reporting on the war in Iraq: With the enthusiastic collaboration of the American news media, the sideshow has somehow become the main attraction in American culture;... Read more
I suppose this doesn't look any different on your end, but this is the first post on my new, faster, more powerful computer (one of these) and the Web looks a lot more world-wide on this fine machine's wider screen. We'll have to see if any of this translates into a faster, more powerful blog offering broader opinions on a wider array of subjects. In any case, I'm not sure how much time I'll have for blogging today. I've got... Read more
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