Glamour
This Mother's Day, spare a thought for mother and daughter Haleh Esfandiari and Haleh Bakhash. Late last year, Efandiari, a noted Iranian-American scholar who runs the Middle Eastern program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., traveled to Iran to visit her own 93-year-old mother. But, at the airport for her return flight, she was kidnapped at knifepoint by masked men working for the Iranian government. Since then, she has been subject to house arrest and, since Tuesday, remanded to Iran's Evin prison, cut off entirely from the world she knows.
Why has all this happened?
According to The Washington Post, American observers believe that the Iranian government, incensed by the Bush administration's recent plans to promote democracy in Iran, was trying to find a link between the Wilson Center and antigovernment activists. The Wilson Center, however, is nonpartisan and does not engage in political activity.
In other words, for no good reason at all. Even as this situation has escalated, Esfandiari's husband, Shaul Bakhash, remains hopeful the matter can be resolved through reason, "Whatever they think my wife did seems to be in their imagination. I hope they [the Iranian government] realize that they made this mistake and let her return to her family."
Tensions remain high, but faith remains: this is a family of tough, smart women. If you are interested in lending your support to Ms. Esfandiari, please contact the good people at Amnesty International.
And then call your mom and tell her you love her. Enjoy your weekend.
Mitt Romney: "Gosh, I love America.... America for me is not just our rolling mountains and hills and streams and great cities. It's the American people. And the American people are the greatest people in the world. What makes America the greatest nation in the world is the heart of the American people....It is that optimism about this great people that makes this the greatest nation on earth."
Jessica Coen: "Americans [are] oversexed, overprivileged, materialistic, unintelligent, fake, vain, vapid and vulgar."
(via Gawk)
All right, someone's an Eagles song here: Here's the response of Radar's Jebediah Reed to Jonathan Alter's earlier piece criticizing his reporting on a remark made by Tom Edsall. We'd comment, because it's also about presidential contender Mike Gravel and that would give us another excuse to compare him to Grandpa Simpson, but since Edsall will soon be wending his way to HuffPo as our political director, we'll let you just click through and figure it out for yourselves. Besides, nobody bought us any soup. Hmph.
p.s. We got the "Jeb must be heard!" from a Radar staffer forwarding the link, and it cracked us up. So we used it.
p.p.s. Radar, no more fights. Give 'em the best of your love!
Update: Mickey Kaus has a great solution either way — post the snippet in question online! Then everyone can listen, draw conclusions and maybe &mdah; gasp! — learn from this. Yes! Everyone!
from comedycentral.com
We didn't want to dilute the very important issue of dwindling print book reviews, but Wednesday's Colbert Report also featured this hilarious — and, we'll say it, sensual — segment wherein Jane Fonda seemed rather intent on engaging, well, Stephen Colbert's sensual segment ("Is that a sensual segment in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?" Okay, we'll stop now). Is it hot in here or is it just the woman who played J.Lo's mother-in-law? You tell us. Will it save Georgia Rule? Probably not. Should we maybe not watch it for a fifth time? Okay.
Update: As usual, Salon's Rebecca Traister nails it , giving a little context to Fonda's awesomeness.
Here's something weird — really weird. Consider this statement: "[R]eader interest in books seems to be growing. Industry figures show increases in adult book buying over the last two years, with public library usage also on the rise." Is this statement from:
(a) Mokoto Rich's recent article in the New York Times about how book reviews are being slashed in newspapers across the country; or(b) the recent New York Times press release addressed to managing editors, wire editors, feature, culture and online editors at publications across the country offering NYT premium book review content at a bargain?
Funnily enough, it was from the latter — which uses the Rich article as an example of how reader "appetite for book news and reviews" might be easily satisfied by the glorioius books pages of the Times. Fine, great, good — except that "reader appetite" gets nary a mention in Rich's piece on the Great Book Reveiw Slashfest sweeping the nation. Instead, Rich focuses on how this might be a sign of progress and — gee whiz! — here come the lit bloggers to fill in the gaps!
The weirdness isn't that Rich writes about lit bloggers — though that's about the most predictable way to address this story (see "an inevitable transition toward a new, more democratic literary landscape where anyone can comment on books" and replace "literary" with "political" and "books" with "politics" and then go on to sub in words like "media" "movies" "music" and "restaurant reviewing" to recognize the meme). What's weird is that Rich's entire story is about the pros and cons of lit blogging and whether or not it's better or worse than newspaper reviewing, but fails to address any of the issues raised by slashing book reviews. There are no industry statistics, no data on what percentage of books-pages readers get their information online, no breakdown of comparative numbers between book reviews in print and online, no information about adult book buying and library use — which was obviously pretty available. (And, irritatingly, the "This Is Not Chick Lit" example fails to acknowledge that (a) the book was covered by tons of major papers (USA Today, Village Voice), (b) most of the authors featured, like Egan and Sittenfeld, saw their stars rise via old-fashioned print exposure, not online chatter, and (c) an entire other book, the responsive "This Is Chick Lit," fed the online chatter and made the story bigger than what an average book might garner.) But more to the point, it's sort of odd that, in a story about slashing coverage of an entire industry, the only thing examined would be the tired (so tired!) blogger vs. MSM debate. And it's even odder that the NYT would then use that article to push its own content in that selfsame area. It just sorta seems a little close to home.
By the way, the piece was hooked on the elimination of the book editor position from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which has galvanized the lit and lit-crit community; the National Book Critics Circle has started a petition with approximately 6,000 signatories including Norman Mailer, Salman Rushdie, Yann Martel, Jonathan Safran Foer, Fay Weldon, Gary Shteyngart, and Anthony Swofford; earlier this week Rushdie went on The Colbert Report to plead the case ("No one in this country bitches more about literary critics than writers — we've discovered we can't do without them") (fun fact: "William Faulkner would have disappeared were it not for the critic Malcolm Cowley") (see Rushdie's full appearance after the jump) (now we're just seeing how many parentheticals we can get away with) (okay, we're done now).
Upshot: The NYT's story was weak, it's weird that they're pimping their content using it as a hook, Salman Rushdie will blurb you for certain "considerations."
Are Book Reviewers Out Of Print? [NYT]
Related:
NBCC Campaign To Save Book Reviews [NBCC]
Last Exit To BookLand [Salon]
Radar
You know, when the Reverend Al Sharpton disparaged the Mormon religion by saying of Mitt Romney's electoral chances: "As for the one Mormon running for office, those that really believe in God will defeat him anyway, so don't worry about that," the conventional wisdom was that Sharpton revealed a nasty streak of bigotry. Certainly, the backlash was what led to Sharpton's "apology", which we loosely translate as:
"I'm sorry that none of you understood that the words that came out of my mouth were not intended to convey the literal meaning of those words, but rather, were intended to convey an entirely different meaning, one that would normally be formed by the use of entirely different words. See, I'm like the instructions you get from Ikea--if you actually try to follow them, you'll never get your curio cabinet built. You have to allow for some discrepancy in translation. You all have assembled something from Ikea, right? You know what I'm talking about! Were any of you using Allen wrenches to listen to me the other day? No? Well, there you go."
Interestingly, none of this has seemed to adversely affect Romney. In fact, his campaign seems to have picked up a little steam. Today in the New York Times, Romney made specific mention of this, saying, "There are times when you have updrafts, and there are times when there are downdrafts. This is an updraft for me."
That's when it hit us: Hey, maybe, Sharpton's remarks, which he readily admits were meant to convey something antithetical to their seeming intent, were actually meant to signal an endorsement for the Mormon candidate! Surely Sharpton knows that once he's voiced his displeasure for Romney, Republican voters are likely to flock to him in droves. The Times bore witness to one such devoted Romneyite:
"If nobody better comes along, I'm going to vote for him. But I'm hoping somebody better comes along."
That sounds like a horse that's been led to water by Al Sharpton to us! Also: remember that time when Sharpton said he thought some lacrosse players were guilty because he knew "this DA is probably not one that is crazy. He would not have proceeded if he did not feel that he could convict," and then it turned out that the DA was, like, TOTALLY BONKERS and the lax players were ALL THE WAY innocent and NONE OF THEM got convicted of anything? This totally reminds us of that!
Getty images via nymag.com
The dogged, tireless Greg Sargent over at TPM's The Horses' Mouth has uncovered a pretty embarrassing story from the Anamosa Journal-Eureka in Jones County, Iowa (thank you, Google Alert!): Turns out someone on the Rudy Giuliani team invited an Iowa farming couple, Deb and Jerry VonSprecken of Olin, Iowa, to host a campaign event — and then reneged afer they learned the couple weren't millionaires. Why? Giuliani will be campaigning on the Estate/Death Tax, and, well, who wants to be seen with a non-millionaire? Trouble is, these are chatty non-millionaires, and they had already started organizing an event for 75-100 people, and efforts to assuage them with a Rudy photo-op did not make it all better. And they're only too happy to talk to the media about it.
Okay, reality check here: In all likelihood, Giuliani had never heard of these people until this story broke — some tone-deaf staffer clearly screwed up. Even so, it's a gaffe, and a major one — Sargent points out that Deb VonSprecken has fibromyalgia, a condition marked by chronic pain, which adds even more pathos to statements like this: "We worked so hard...Why would Rudy Giuliani not come speak to the average Americans that live in eastern Iowa, instead of qualifying you as a millionaire before he will show up to your place?"
Okay, so: Where does a story like this go? Sargent wonders sardonically if "the haircut-obsessed political media" will pick it up (paging Adam Nagourney!); a quickie Google search reveals that only Wonkette and the National Journal's Hotline have picked up the item (and, now, us). Here's an indicator though: A link to the original item kicks up an error message: "The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit." So clearly someone is paying attention. We'll see what the pickup is over the next few days, but in the meantime, two notes: First, this is a good example of how the Google Alert is levelling the coverage playing field, i.e. a story from the Anamosa Journal-Eureka is just as clickable from your inbox as a headline from the NYT; and second, that said, it still may not be enough for the MSM to take it, well, mainstream. Guess if Rudy had sexy hair things might be different.
Speaking of the hapless Rudy — hapless because, unlike, say, marrying his cousin, he probably didn't know about this beforehand — how Rudy handles it from this point will be telling — a guy who bills himself as the ultimate crisis manager should probably be able to deal with this. Unless, of course, he listens to his staffers.
Rudy Campaign Reportedly Snubs Farmer For Not Being Rich; Will Media Cover It? [TPM]
Related:
Giuliani Hates American Farmers Who Love Him [Wonkette]
Poor Advance Work [National Journal]
Adam Nagourney: I Totally Started That Whole Breck Girl Thing [NYT]
Michelle Pilecki
It's been more than a year since I first asked Will Ann Coulter Be Prosecuted for Voter Fraud, and at last we have the answer expected: No. Jose Lambiet, who broke the original story in February 2006, reports in today's Palm Beach Post:
Conservative pundit Ann Coulter has been cleared of allegations that she falsified her Palm Beach County voter's registration and voted illegally -- this, after a high-level FBI agent made unsolicited...
Pasadena Now
The news that the website PasadenaNow has made it a policy to outsource its local coverage overseas has started to reverberate around the web today. Curiously, no one's really talking about how all this makes Pasadena look: clearly it's not the most culturally complicated community. It's certainly not a Fresno, with its seamy karaoke circuit and middle aged pranksters pulling stunts worthy of Improv Everywhere.
Naturally, media types are mostly concerned for what this means to media types, and while no one's sounding the panic, yet (still too terrified of Rupes, natch), the PasadenaNow story has given way to some dark musings. Over at The Atlantic, our buddy Matthew Yglesias sums it up:
I have this longstanding, but also fairly obvious, joke about how someday soon all of us working in this here game are going to be replaced by low-wage Bangladeshi pundits. Now, at last, that day seems to be inching closer as the Pasadena Now web site apparently posted an ad saying "We seek a newspaper journalist based in India to report on the city government and political scene of Pasadena, California, USA."This does strike me as somewhat weird since local news reporting would seem to be less outsourceable than many other forms of journalism. For punditry and so forth, it does help to be here in The Nation's Capital, but it's really not all that helpful. Most of any pundit's information comes from reading the newspaper and the newspapers are all online and readable from India or wherever.
Now, we don't think Ygglz is any real danger. He's a thoughtful soul, and, anyway, I'd like to see a Calcutta wage-slave break down the goings-on of the National Basketball Association with the same level of gravitas. But, in our opinion, sending most punditry overseas would only be the tip of the iceberg as far as potential slash-and-burn cost cutting measures go. When's the last time, after all, you read one of the Punditosphere's A-List and truly been surprised by what you've read? Most opinion pieces are some variation on the following:
You know if [recent breaking news event] teaches us anything, it's that we need to [fund / kill / enact / canoodle with] [thing I've been harping on from here to eternity], but, as usual, the [name of political party] continue to prove themselves to be [out of touch / terror-loving fromagiers / treasonous hellhounds of the end times]. When [that thing] happened [that time], it only underscored a need for [the thing I never shut up about]. Also, [9-11 / Katrina / Virginia Tech / Sanjaya]. But [other people] continue to foolishly maintain that [other thing] is more important! It makes me want to [marry / boff / kill] [that guy who [did / supported] [that thing (remember?)]]! Yeeearrggblargle!
True: the width of the Pacific Ocean would definitely be a boon to most of our news producers, as it would put a sizable distance between them and the loofah-wielding psychopaths in their employ. But considering the endlessly-repeated pundit formula replicated above, you could do a LOT cheaper than sending the labor overseas (just ask Katie Couric!). Heck, get a thesaurus and a wad of chewed up Bubble Yum, and you're pretty much there.
Glynnis MacNicol
When Mayor Michael Bloomberg takes on a cause, he really takes it on. Smokers and restaurateurs can, er, breathe easy — this time, Bloomberg is focused on something a lot bigger, and a lot harder to wrangle than even a city of cranky New Yorkers: Gun control. On Wednesday morning, Bloomberg sat down for a small breakfast with Ladies' Home Journal to discuss gun control as a tie-in to "The Battle Over Legal Guns," which runs in its June issue in the name of his Mayors Against Guns Coalition. The first thing we noticed about the breakfast, held at Picholine on the Upper West Side, was how intimate the setting was (about 20 people or so). We felt that it not only spoke well of how seriously the Mayor takes the issue of gun control (far more seriously it seems than a number of other politicians on either side of the aisle), but also how seriously he takes LHJ's large and widespread audience, especially since it is not a title one necessarily associates with NYC. (That said, the press were invited, and in attendance; but still, this is clearly an issue that is high on the mayoral agenda.)
The LHJ piece is a disturbing examination of the country's extremely defective gun laws, illustrated by the fatal shooting of North Carolina Sheriff's investigator Mark Tucker, who was shot and killed by an eighteen-year old felon who got around gun laws by bribing a drunk to buy him a twelve-gauge shotgun from a pawnshop in exchange for a bottle of booze (read the stark and awful details here). His widow, Patricia Tucker, now Executive Director and President of the North Carolina Chapter of Concerns of Police Survivors, was also in attendance and spoke movingly about her loss and her fight for tighter gun control laws. While the timing of a number of recent magazine covers has been raising some eyebrows, the LHJ piece, could not have been more timely, and according to LHJ editor-in-chief Diane Salvatore, the story was in the works well before the Virginia Tech massacre.
Joining forces to fight it at the breakfast were LHJ's Salvatore, Patricia Tucker, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, Law & Order: SUV star Christopher Meloni, and Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence president Paul Helmke (the ten or so media invitees were given spectator seats against the wall). It was the second time in twelve hours that we had shared space with Bloomberg and Kelly, thanks to the Time 100 gala the night before, where Bloomberg was an honoree; they were there when we arrived, significantly undercutting what we were sure would be a slam-dunk excuse. (Later, we asked Bloomberg's press secretary Jason Post, wasn't the mayor tired from the Time 100 gala? "He's tireless," said Post. Someone is very good at their job!).
Actually, being good at one's job was a major topic of conversation at the breakfast; that is to say, the ability of a police chief to do his job — currently stymied by the wildly under-publicized Tiahrt Amendment: the amendment attached as a rider to annual U.S. Department of Justice appropriations bills for the last four years which limits how law enforcement authorities can access and use Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives gun trace data. The amendment, named for Republican Kansas Congressman Todd Tiahrt, has been the subject of a commercial campaign by the Mayors Coalition pushing for its repeal, which recently got some unexpected press when two Kansas TV stations refused to air the ads. Note that the Tiahrt Amendments are attached to the appropriations bills each year without a floor vote or full debate. That makes no sense. If you don't believe us, ask Ray Kelly — according to him, approximately 60% of NYC crime guns come from 1% of gun dealers.
More scary statistics after the jump — plus whether Bloomberg is going to run for president.
thesuperficial.com
She can do no right: The 2.0 factor of the upcoming election may be working against Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: "Her biggest opposition may not come from primary rivals or Republican challengers, but rather from the leftist blog community that often views her as a political punching bag." John Edwards' hair may fall into that category, too. [Politico]
