The gray region between sexism and misogyny is a gloaming filled with turned around street signs and delusions. I ought to know because I’ve been wallowing in it. I wrote in this space that Senator Hillary Clinton was marching like the Energizer Bunny off a cliff. I faulted her for playing the race card. I called her Pillory Clinton for coarsening the level of discourse in her campaign against Barack Obama by talking about his problem with white male voters. (more…)

Sometimes I think the all news all day formula is traumatizing society. The news—if you can call that weird concoction of anchor bonhomie and drivel news—is surpassingly negative, and in the interest of ratings the media rarely lose an opportunity to exaggerate the negative side of the news. News or what passes for it is about bad behavior, disaster, crime, nasty mouths, lies, spin, malfeasance—and a little upbeat story here and there as condiment. (more…)

(This is the transcript of Hot Copy No. 43, one of my regular pod casts for The Student Operated Press)

There’s a crucial difference between balanced reporting and insightful reporting. You can listen to this difference by tuning into the Yes Network and listening to color commentator David Cone, the famously versatile former pitcher who once considered a career in journalism.

You can describe the game and gin up excitement with personal mannerisms the way television anchors increasingly do, or you can quietly shed light on the science of the game the way Cone (inset) does. He represents the difference between reporting as theater and reporting as insight.

When Cone tells you wrist and elbow action is as important as finger location in throwing strikes, you know a lot more than when another reporter tells you that you’ve just seen a changeup, which the camera has probably already told you. (more…)

Sexism, racism, agism, smoothies, bumblers, swift-boaters, dreamers—all  flavors in the great American apple pie. As we learn to avoid trans fats so we learn, ever so slowly, to wean ourselves from misogyny, racism, agism and all those other nasties.

The late Democratic primary had plenty of misogyny and racism to go around. It arose among the pundits, the voters and the candidates. But there were triumphs. As Senator Hillary Clinton said in graciously conceding the fight to Senator Barack Obama, there are now eighteen million cracks in the glass ceiling, and none of us will forget it. Bless you, Senator. (more…)

(This is the transcript of Hot Copy No. 42, my regular pod cast for The Student Operated Press).

Scott McClellan, the former White House spokesman, has written a book confirming some of the public’s worst suspicions about the presidency of George W. Bush. McClellan (inset) says, among other things, the White House lied us into the Iraq war and covered up its role in destroying the career of a CIA undercover agent simply because she was married to a critic of President Bush’s war policies.

Self-righteous critics on the left and the right of the political spectrum immediately accused the once adamant Bush loyalist of being a day late and a dollar short. Why didn’t his conscience bother him when he foisted these lies on the public, his critics ask? Well, conscience isn’t always as hair-triggered as John Wayne in the movies. Sometimes it takes a lot of introspection to accept that you have been part of wrongdoing, that you are part of the problem when you have been posing as part of the solution. (more…)

It’s interesting how eager both the left and the right wings are to pull the trigger on Scott McClellan, the former White House spokesman, who has written a book confirming many of our worst suspicions about the Bush Administration.

If he knew his bosses were lying about Iraq and Valerie Plame, the CIA undercover agent whom they treacherously outed, why didn’t he speak up, save thousands of lives, dollars and damages? That’s what many of his critics of the left and right are yowling. (more…)

We talk from time to time in our society about racial profiling, but where is Frank Gorshin now that we need him so much? Impersonators tell us more about our leaders and wannabes than all the pundits and reporters together.

Watch John McCain walking arthritically with his fists held rigidly in front of him like bumpers. Consider Hillary Clinton pointing angrily from the stump at Saudi Arabia. Notice Barack Obama tapping someone on the arm as he passes. (more…)

Greg Palast, the outré investigative reporter, claims the Iraq war and the subsequent surge are a global swindle— read about it here— a conspiracy of government and industry to pick our pockets and to hell with the future.

How much truth there is in this, if any, remains to be seen. But considering the sheer amount of inconsequential BS fed to us by the media—Barack Obama’s elitism, Hillary Clinton’s abrasiveness, etc—isn’t it a wee bit strange that nobody in the mainstream media even pretends to examine Palast’s contention? Reminds you of how they sat on their hands while the White House lied us into a catastrophic war, doesn’t it?

After all, media gasbags are perfectly willing to waste their time and ours entertaining stupid notions like the McCain-Clinton gas tax holiday or some ditzy celeb’s boringly bad behavior, so what’s their problem giving Palast’s theory a toss? Oh, that would be irresponsible journalism, right? Like yakking about John Edwards’ hair?

And why hasn’t Congress asked him to testify. After all, he was once a congressional investigator.

I don’t always know what to make of Palast. His hopped-up language worries his most serious reports. But we know Enron manipulated California’s power supply, so why is Palast’s notion so unworthy of inquiry? Is it unimaginable that Big Oil would con us? Or is it because the Big Media yakkers, while telling us what a great job they are doing, are doing a job on us? —DM

Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing.

—Henry David Thoreau

One of the many blessings of growing old is a certain integrity of smile. There is an instant of delay between cause and effect in which we’re invited to wonder if an elderly person is going to smile at all. I admire this inordinately. The sheer amount of electrical energy required of the young to smile all too often and laugh all too loudly is appalling.

I suppose it’s rooted in desire to please, a disease which handles the elderly more gently than it does the rest of us. (more…)

If you’d like to look at the changing face of news, consider your own Google home page. Savor its interactivity. You can organize your news, weather maps, solar systems, art exegesis, you name it, and the list of “gadgets” grows almost daily. You can design your own newspaper.

But it’s no longer a paper, it’s news from the ether, and it’s being updated and reedited around the clock. More than all the words about the demise of the newspaper, your home page can tell the story. You can do with your cursor what it costs a paper-and-ink newsroom big bucks to do. (more…)