The Blog

Danny Groner: Just Days Apart, New York Times Mourns Two John J. O'Connors

2009-11-22T22:48:40Z

Chalk it up to a coincidence, but within the span of a week the New York Times ran obituaries for two people named John J. O'Connor.

The first announced the death of the husband of former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who retired from the Supreme Court to care for him. That O'Connor, more widely known as John Jay O'Connor, died of complications of Alzheimer's disease on Wednesday, November 11. He was 79.

Then, just two days later, former NYT television critic John J. O'Connor died of lung cancer. He was 76. The Times ran an obituary for their O'Connor a few days afterward.

These aren't the only John J. O'Connors to be memorialized in the Times pages. The international food marketer died in 1996 at age 65 of complications from heart surgery. Back in 1904, the Times marked the death of a bishop with the name (cause of death unspecified).

There does seem to be a strong history of the Irish-named John J. O'Connors to make names for themselves as members of the Church. The Spokane Daily Chronicle reported the death of a priest with the name in 1966, victim of a heart attack.

But not all John J. O'Connors are spiritual advisers, civic leaders or prolific reviewers. There's always a fallback profession for those with the strikingly common name: funeral attendant.

Murray Fromson: Letter From London

2009-11-22T21:56:22Z

It is amazing how a presidential junket and the meanderings of a silly little woman with pretensions to the White House can bump a war off the front pages or as the lead stories of broadcast news. President Obama, for instance, was attempting to show the better side of our country to Japan, Indonesia and China. But in Tokyo, he also observed the traditional protocol of bowing to the Emperor of Japan. That prompted the rightwing nuts in America's cable land to go ga-ga as if it was the important news of the day. Then suddenly, the fate of our heroic Marines in Afghanistan vanished from the news as Sarah Palin mouthed off to Oprah Winfrey and a bundle of other cable TV shows. Even the conventional network newscasts could not resist the temptation of giving her free air time to answer patsy questions. Palin's publisher offered America more than a million copies of a ghost-written memoir that was bound to end up on the remainder shelves within days. Indeed it was, for $4.95 each after one week of sales.

C'mon America. Can we not get real? Can "we," I mean Republicans as well as Democrats, conservatives as well as liberals, seriously entertain the notion of Sarah Palin as the GOP's presidential nominee or, heaven forbid, even the occupant of the White House? Is there truly a segment of society so ideologically warped to believe it? Hopefully, we are passed that.

But several weeks ago, returning to the Mother Country after an absence of many years, it was re-assuring to be back in Britain, confronted by a fresh dose of reality. The question in every London newspaper the past several weeks was whether President Obama will or should intensify the war in Afghanistan by providing 40 thousand more American troops on the ground, as their general in charge has insisted was a necessity.

It reminded me of the extent to which wars have plagued Britain throughout history. In the 19th Century, they failed to conquer Afghanistan. In the first ten days of this November in London, the atmosphere was bathed in red as countless men and women wore paper poppies on their lapels or blouses to mark Armistice Day and remember those who served in World War I. Newspapers and television newscasts conveyed scenes of countless cemeteries or of scenes depicting the great retreat from Dunkirk in 1940. Loved ones or surviving veterans paid their last respects to those who gave their lives in both World Wars I and II as well as Korea. On the first day of the visit with my wife, we were confronted by a half page spread in the Guardian, depicting veterans of Britain's Second Battalion of The Rifles. The three most prominent soldiers in the color photograph, dressed in their combat uniforms and wearing black berets, sitting in wheelchairs, were amputees. Two of them had lost both legs and the third soldier, one limb. Behind them was a crowd, smiling and obviously proud to welcome home the warriors. It was a chilling reminder of the fact that not only American fighting men were enduring the cost of serving in Afghanistan.

At the New London Theater, we were among other theatergoers who sat transfixed by a unique play entitled War Horse. Its staging recaptured memories of the First World War through the imaginative use of puppets. The storyline was based on a children's novel, but it was the staging that provided such a remarkable interpretation. Unquestionably, it will be a major attraction when it reaches Broadway next year. War Horse has played to two sold-out runs at the National Theater before moving to the New London. Its focus was on the story of a young boy who went to Europe in search of his horse that had been confiscated by the British Army for the war on the continent in Europe. Only readers of Barbara Tuchman's historic rendition of the so-called Great War, The Guns of August, can truly appreciate the scope of the conflict that was re-enacted on the stage. It was fought with artillery, tanks and poison gas that claimed the lives of millions of soldiers and, in effect, tore the hearts out of three generations of men from Britain, France and Germany.

At the Frontline Club one evening, a journalists' gathering place in central London, a large audience met to discuss Afghanistan. It lasted for some two hours. A panel included a BBC foreign correspondent, a veteran Afghan television producer with a long list of credits in British television, a professor at London University and an Oxford-educated woman who had recently completed two years in Afghanistan for Human Rights Watch. At best, their overall perception was one of skepticism about the future.

Their impressions, reinforced by London newspaper after London newspaper, raised the question of whether the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan was winnable or should even be pursued. Clearly, that debate has been just as intense across the Atlantic as it has been in America. But it also was clear that only when President Obama renders a final decision on whether to increase the U.S. troop level on the battlefield will the story assume a new dimension and how Afghanistan is perceived or conveniently forgotten.

Arianna Huffington: Sunday Roundup

2009-11-22T08:55:28Z

Misrepresenting what I said during an appearance on Countdown this week, NewsBusters claims that I'm trying to deny Glenn Beck his "constitutionally protected free speech." Wrong. What I said is that words have tremendous power -- they can inspire and they can incite. There's a reason you can't shout "fire" in a crowded theater. But even though Glenn Beck is shouting "fire" in a crowded, anxious country, I specifically said that the right response to his steady stream of lies, hate, and race-baiting -- all served up with a not-very-subtle undercurrent of violence -- is to put unrelenting pressure on his advertisers and his bosses. Pressure works. CNN dropped Lou Dobbs. I'm actually of two minds when it comes to Beck. Part of me resents spending even a second of my life thinking about him. But part of me recognizes that he's too dangerous to ignore.

David Vines: If It Were Me, I'd Be Embarrassed

2009-11-21T18:50:00Z

It's nice to see that even after the election, conservatives are still playing the "liberal gotcha media" card every time they expose themselves as being shamefully ignorant regarding the issues they care about most.

Last Wednesday, a media firestorm erupted after a seventeen-year-old girl named Jackie was interviewed by MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell while standing in line during Sarah Palin's Michigan book signing. Jackie, wearing a shirt that read, "The US government handed out $700 billion in Wall Street bailouts and all I got was this lousy t-shirt," was caught off-guard when O'Donnell informed her that Sarah Palin was on record as supporting the bailout.

You can see the exchange below:

It didn't take long for Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck to feature this clip on their respective shows and praise Jackie while condemning O'Donnell for her pesky questions backed up by fact-based research. Then, Jackie was given a platform to tell her side of the story by the blog, Red White & Conservative.

To summarize:

This all started as me, a young 17 year old American going to see a woman I admire and turned into this crazy event hah I'll start at the very beginning.

She had me read my shirt and then proceeded to ask me "Did you know Sarah Palin supported the bailout" to be 100% honest I was like, are you kidding me? She is trying to use my shirt against me. I was so shocked by the craftiness she had that I was truly stumped. I asked her where she got her fact and she read her little note. Then she asked me what I liked about Sarah, and I talked about the Constitution.

In one day I met a role model, and met the liberal media and their crafty schemes. I fell prey to liberal bias, but I'd like to think I did an okay job.

As a fellow high school senior, I feel a strong urge to respond.

This notion that a reporter is being "crafty" and "biased" when they correct factually inaccurate statements is ridiculous. Sure, Jackie might have a point if O'Donnell ran up to her at random and stuck a microphone in her face as she was walking down the street, but that was not the case. This girl was at the book signing of a prominent politician, wore a t-shirt indicating that she had strong political views, agreed to be interviewed, and failed to answer a very simple and straightforward question.

The job of a good reporter is not to ask softball questions or cast everybody they speak to in a positive light. A reporter's job is to collect facts and seek the truth. So, while some may object to O'Donnell's speaking to a seventeen-year-old girl, nobody can accuse her of reporting anything but the facts.

Which brings me to my final point: Jackie is seventeen-years-old, she's not seven.

In her piece for Red White & Conservative, she feels the need to drive home the fact that she's only seventeen four separate times, as if that were some sort of defense.

Now, I understand that much of the electorate is made up of low information voters who don't closely follow politics. That's fine -- it's not ideal, but it's perfectly understandable.

But according to her school profile, Jackie is very politically involved. She is an intern with the Michigan Republican Party and is clearly excited and passionate about what her political "role model," Former-Governor Palin, represents. And yet, when she cannot correctly identify one of Palin's most basic political positions, she plays the victim and blames everybody but herself.

Then, conservative members of the media take the bait and praise her as some sort of Republican hero. They are more than happy to glorify this culture of ignorance and hide behind the veil of "elitism" and "media bias" when anyone approaches them with facts.

All I can say is that if Glenn Beck had heard me express my political views and then assumed that I was a thirteen-year-old, I would not lift the paper bag off my head for quite some time.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson: The Beck Bash Has Worked Wonders -- for Beck

2009-11-21T05:24:18Z

Glenn Beck loves every minute of the Beck bash. In recent days he's gotten a rock star mob welcome in South Carolina and Washington. He'd get the same fan mob turnout in dozens of other cities that he chose to travel to. His ratings have soared through the roof. He's even made the reigning King of TV right side chatter O'Reilly nervous. Beck is simply the hottest ticket item on the national scene now, and for that he can thank progressives, liberal Democrats, and through the backdoor, President Obama.

None of them learned a thing from attacking Limbaugh and the Fox Network. The thing was that the more you bash, savage, pick at and ridicule a media outlet or a gimmicky talk show host you do what ad people, P.R. flacks, agencies, and sponsors drool over, and sink a mini- king's ransom into. That is to inflate, hype, and pump up a product. In this case the product is Beck.

The Limbaugh fiasco was the first big tip that when the right side talk gabbers are twisted into a public punching bag the predictable happens. Obama played into Limbaugh's once pudgy hands in January when he tried to shoo GOP House reps away from him and then watched as Limbaugh's ratings soared to the sky. Radio affiliates that carry Limbaugh's syndicated show were in ecstasy at his ratings sky rocket. Limbaugh quickly saw the goldmine in the backdoor endorsement from Obama and mined it for all it was worth. His ratings haven't dipped a digit since then.

Worse, the attack made Limbaugh a near mythic figure to millions, put terror and a stiffened spine into GOP self-doubters and conciliators to oppose any and everything that Obama proposes. It even swelled the number and stiffened the spine of Red Dog Democrats to do pretty much the same. It gave the legion of Obama baiters and loathers a massive and fresh stockpile ammunition to blast him on the airwaves, in chat rooms, websites, and even more despicably in race baiting cartoons, emails, Facebook and Twitter posts.

Beck is Limbaugh and Sarah Palin all over again. His mug is plastered over major magazine covers and he's the topic of incessant chatter in news columns and features. The goofball satire and inane pummeling of him by Jon Stewart and the bevy of comics has inflated his image and worth even higher. The Palin attack analogy is just as fitting. The more hammer blow political shots, SNL and late night comic running jokes, and Party (both) regulars slough her off, the higher her star has risen.

There's now a Palin sighting everywhere. The haplessly inept former Alaska governor and VP candidate is a media hot ticket item; a multi-millionaire; and a rallying point for millions of Christian fundamentalist, rightside zanies and disgruntled GOP conservatives who detest Obama's policies. Even more incredible, she's the populist front runner for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination.

Beck, like Limbaugh, Palin and Fox, is grinning from ear to ear at his new found ratings bonanza, swelling bank account, and media and fan adulation. And why wouldn't he? The Beck bash has worked wonders for him.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book, How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press) will be released in January 2010.

Rachel Sklar: New Moon Mania! Twilight Saga Characters And Their Media Matches

2009-11-20T21:22:28Z

Twilight is upon us! From the frenzy surrounding the release of the second movie in the smalltown-teen-vampire-romance series, you'd think someone had opened a vein.

The books in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series — Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn — have sold over 85 million copies — a rare home run these days for the publishing industry. The first film, grossed over $385 million domestically, making Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson household names (or, at least households with teenage girls in them), and making the smallish Summit Entertainment a sudden Hollywood powerhouse. The saga's second installment, New Moon is set to break all kinds of records (if the media's slavish drooling is any indication...or last night's $23.6 million box office!). All signs point to this movie being an uber-super-gigatic-mega-hit. Really, it already is.

Like it or not — like any wildly popular series, Twilight has many haters — but the saga is part of our literary zeitgeist (swap "Volturi" for "Muggles" in the must-know nomenclature, and you're on your way!). Just like Harry Potter or Mad Men, I and my colleagues at Mediaite couldn't help internally casting our favorite media figures as characters in the saga. (After all, if there's any mythic creature that media characters resemble, we think "soulless vampires" and "werewolves" come pretty close.)

Jessica Gold Haralson, who is a crack expert in all things vampire and werewolf, broke it down and assembled a cast o' characters including Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Ann Curry, Shep Smith, Anderson Cooper, Erin Andrews, Keith Olbermann and Meghan McCain (and wrote most of this introduction, too). Here's her take on our immortal, blood-sucking media, Forks style. Warning to the faint of heart: R-Patz ahead.

Charlie Swan: Geraldo Rivera

He's protective. He's obsessed with crime. He just looks Dad-like. He's got a moustache. Bella Swan's overbearing pop, or Geraldo Rivera? Totes interchangable.

Renee Swan: Kathie Lee Gifford

Stephenie Meyer never explicitly states it in the series, but Bella's mama is a hot mess. Described as "erratic and scatterbrained," she acts first and thinks later. We picture her as the kind of woman who would flirt inapropriately with Bella's high school friends after one too many gin and tonics. She has the best intentions, though — but still, Bella is grown-up in that relationship. She's loud, excitable, and somewhat incomprehensible at times. Sound like a certain 4th hour host to you? (Or at least the SNL version.)

Bella Swan: Ana Marie Cox

In the Twilight saga, almost everyone (except for some meanie vampires) loves Bella Swan. Young, lovely, but with attitude — sounds a lot like Ana Marie Cox, who spread the sunlight of blogging onto the Forks-style darkness of MSM political media. Okay maybe that's reaching. But she's maintained her outsider cred even while becoming one of them (oh look, there she is reviewing Palin's book in the Washington Post!). Ana has way more spine than Twilight's titular character (and swears more), but they certainly share the ability to collect fans: Cox is one of the top media folks on Twitter with 1.3 million followers and counting (ahead of Newt Gingrich, yo). And that little WaPo icon with Tucker Carlson almost looks like a Twilight poster.

>>>NEXT: Which media members represent the Cullen family? And who gets to be Taylor Lautner with his shirt off?

This post is has been slightly modified from the original posted at Mediaite.com, and continues there.

Robert David Jaffee: The Insanity of the Insanity Defense

2009-11-20T21:05:18Z

At the end of the Charles Bronson film, 10 to Midnight, a serial killer, who has just been apprehended, reverts to a variation of the same plea uttered by Andy Robinson's psychopath in Dirty Harry and Leo Gorcey's punk in Dead End: "society made me do it."

Like Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry, Bronson, in his post-Death Wish vigilante mode, then shoots the killer dead.

No one expects such rough justice to be administered to mass murderers or serial criminals in real life. Yet they still plead insanity as their defense, even though most of us are unlikely to believe them. Surprisingly, some of these criminals have even begun apologizing, though their apologies tend to reek of opportunism and hopes of reduced sentences.

Phillip Garrido, who allegedly abducted Jaycee Dugard in 1991, when she was 11 years old, and fathered two children with her, wrote in a handwritten letter to CNN affiliate KCRA, "First off I want to apologize to every human being for what has taken place." He added, "People all over the world are hearing testimony that through the spirit of Christ a mental process took place ending a sexual problem believed to be impossible."

In invoking a "mental process," Garrido, who held Dugard captive for 18 years, was setting the stage for an insanity defense.

Similarly, attorneys for Brian David Mitchell, who in 2002 allegedly kidnapped and repeatedly raped Elizabeth Smart, then a 14 year old, argued before a state court that their client was mentally incompetent to stand trial. They won their case.

A federal court in Salt Lake City may not be so likely to accept such a defense.

Mitchell's wife, Wanda Barzee, who reportedly spent years in mental hospitals and on psychotropic drugs, has admitted to her part in the abduction and has agreed to cooperate with the federal authorities, who have reduced her sentence from life to 15 years.

Like Garrido, Barzee has apologized to the victim.

Whether or not Barzee is truly remorseful for what she and her husband did to Elizabeth Smart, one can only hope that in her testimony she will dispel her husband's claims of mental incompetence and insanity. According to the L.A. Times, a forensic psychiatrist will cast doubt on Mitchell's claims of insanity.

Not only will such testimony help to salve the wounds of Smart, who was rescued in the Salt Lake City area in 2003, nine months after her kidnapping, it will also spare the mentally ill of the bad publicity to which we have all grown accustomed.

I have written on numerous occasions that the severely mentally ill, with no substance abuse problems, commit only 3 to 4% of violent crime. Furthermore, I have pointed to studies showing that when the mentally ill take their medication they are no more of a threat to anyone than those who are not mentally ill.

For all of the debate about political correctness regarding Islam, there was not much of an effort to shield the mentally ill in the aftermath of the Fort Hood massacre, which took the lives of 12 soldiers and one civilian. Many wantonly referred to Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged killer, as "deranged" or "psychotic," something which could not have been more untrue.

Hasan knew exactly what he was doing, giving away his belongings and telling neighbors that he would not see them again. Such premeditation is not a feature of psychosis.

Despite Hasan's obvious premeditation, there has been considerable speculation that Hasan's attorneys will argue that he was insane in perpetrating the rampage. What other defense can Hasan possibly have? After all, a room full of witnesses saw him during his shooting spree.

Fortunately, no one is going to buy the insanity defense.

A lesson for all came on CNN's AC360 the week following the tragedy when Anderson Cooper, interviewing Vincent Bugliosi, prosecutor of Charles Manson, commented that Manson, the mastermind behind the Tate/LaBianca murders, was "deranged."

Bugliosi immediately corrected Cooper, stating that Manson wasn't deranged, crazy or mentally ill at all. Bugliosi called Manson "evil" and "a con man." Con artistry is characteristic of many serial criminals like Brian Nichols, who claimed to be leading a slave rebellion during a shooting spree in an Atlanta courtroom, and Leeland Eisenberg, who claimed to be holding Hillary Clinton's campaign workers hostage in order to raise awareness about mental illness.

Both men, as I have written before, are charlatans, just like Manson and, in all likelihood, Brian David Mitchell and Phillip Garrido.

I am not arguing in favor of political correctness per se; I am arguing in favor of accuracy. If we keep referring to mass murderers and rapists as mentally ill, psychotic or any proxy for those words, we are not only harming a group of people who rarely commit violent crime; we are also making an egregious error since most violent criminals are not mentally ill or psychotic at all. They are evil and should be held responsible for their actions.

Glynnis MacNicol: A Palin/Beck Ticket In 2012? The Mind Reels

2009-11-20T19:49:08Z

Obviously, unless sometime between now and 2012 there occurs a rip in the space-time continuum and the country slips into an alternate reality, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck will not be running on a joint ticket for the presidency. But let's speculate anyway.

The (sort of inevitable, considering their popularity) topic of a Palin/Beck 2012 was first broached in a Newsmax interview with Palin on Tuesday:

"I can envision a couple of different combinations, if ever I were to be in a position to really even seriously consider running for anything in the future, and I'm not there yet," Palin tells Newsmax. "But Glenn Beck I have great respect for. He's a hoot. He gets his message across in such a clever way. And he's so bold -- I have to respect that. He calls it like he sees it, and he's very, very, very effective."

For his part, Beck was a early Palin adopter, interviewing her on his HLN show in early 2008 long before she was on the national (or John McCain's) radar. The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder actually thinks this is an interesting idea that could double the Palin phenomena of 2008.

Palin/Beck could unite the conservative anti-Obama movement and basically form a Tea Party ticket that would vent the anti-stimulus, anti-Democratic health care reform, anti-cap-and-trade, sentiment that's been brewing with a firestorm of angry, populist rallies.

Depending on which side of the political spectrum you fall, you might think this ticket, were it come to pass, was either actual proof that the Mayans were right and 2012 is the year of the apocalypse, or that you were somehow witnessing the political version of Super Friends. Either way, (and purely from the perspective of having to provide content, it would be sort of a dream) it is an utterly unlikely scenario.

Sarah Palin may be an enormously popular figure across the country, but with the publication of Going Rogue she has managed to alienate just about everyone in D.C. with the ability to run an effective campaign. Moreover, as a Newsweek article pointed out this week, populist candidates can make lots of waves, but they don't make it to the White House. That's not to say Palin is not a 2012 contender -- it's entirely possible she will run for political office again, but more likely as the running mate to someone whose experience might reasonably warrant the country's votes.

As for Beck, not only has he never expressed any interest in political office, it's very hard to imagine him leaving the comfort (and power) of his studio (and chalkboard) where he gets to make all the agitating assertions he wants with nary a dissenting voice to be heard. At some point as a politician you actually have to say what you are going to do, not just what everyone else but the Founding Fathers is doing wrong. Also, 2012 is still a ways a way.

David Sirota: How the Media's Proud Know-Nothingism Helped Create the American Idiocracy

2009-11-20T17:49:53Z

The term "idiocracy" means a nation run by idiots - and the term idiot is defined as "an utterly foolish or senseless person" and/or a "person of the lowest order in a former classification of mental retardation, having a mental age of less than three years old." There are many reasons to conclude that America has become a full-fledged Idiocracy - bad decisions after bad decisions after bad decisions really have suggested that the last decade has seen the ascension of utterly foolish, senseless people of the lowest order in a former classification of mental retardation.

And yet, as I show in my newspaper column out today, if there was still any shred of doubt that we had avoided becoming an Idiocracy, it was only fully snuffed out in the last week by David Broder and Jackson Diehl - two of the alleged "deans" of the Washington media intelligentsia.

Here is Broder attacking President Obama for taking the time to carefully consider whether to send an additional 40,000 American troops into an increasingly Vietnam-like Afghanistan quagmire:

The more President Obama examines our options in Afghanistan, the less he likes the choices he sees...The urgent necessity is to make a decision -- whether or not it is right.

That was followed by Diehl who made much the same argument in a subsequent column.

Let's set aside the nauseating spectacle of two crotchety old men, comfortably protected in their plush Washington offices demanding a president send 40,000 troops potentially to their deaths without regard for whether that's the right decision. Let's just put that grotesque immorality in the corner, and pretend it's not important - and let's go to the deeper message of aggressive pro-idiocy.

Broder and Diehl are paid to think carefully about issues and then offer their opinions on those issues. That's not part of what they're supposed to do - it's what they do. It's the way they make a living, it's what they're supposed to derive their credibility from - indeed, it's their entire raison d'etre.

And yet, these supposed leading lights of the intelligentsia, these professional thinkers, are overtly preaching anti-intelligence. They are quite clearly insisting that the proper course of action for a president is to avoid applying intelligence and avoid thinking at all. And both of them aren't even being subtle about it.

Read my column here for my take on exactly what all this means - and why it is so deeply disturbing.

The column relies on grassroots support -- and because of that support, it is getting wider and wider circulation (a big thank you to all who have helped with that). So if you'd like to see my column regularly in your local paper, use this directory to find the contact info for your local editorial page editors. Get get in touch with them and point them to my Creators Syndicate site. Thanks, as always, for your ongoing readership and help contacting local editors. This column couldn't be what it is without your help.

April Daniels Hussar: What I Like (And Hate) About Sarah Palin

2009-11-20T17:32:14Z

Like many people outside of Alaska, the first I heard of Sarah Palin was back in August 2008, when John McCain announced her as his running mate. My first reaction: Smooth move, John. We wanted a woman in the Oval Office, now you might be giving us one. My second reaction: How sexist and condescending can you get. We can't have Hillary, so any old female will do? And my third: Dear Lord, please don't let this woman end up in the White House.

So here's my confession: I was -- and still am -- an ardent Obama supporter. Politically speaking I'd say Sarah Palin and I are just about polar opposites. (You say, "Drill baby;" I say, "No blood for oil.") I shudder to imagine her holding a national political office. But, the thing is, well ... see, it's like this ... I kind of like her too.

Read Sarah Palin and Oprah: Our View

Yep. As much as I hate to admit it, I can't help but find certain things about Sarah Palin admirable ... and, dare I say? ... almost role model-ish.

I roll my eyes at half the stuff she says; I wanted to strangle her when she kept winking during her debate with Joe Biden. Just the other day, I laughed out loud when she told Oprah it was not lucky but, rather, "providential" she kept all those journals as a kid (Yes, Sarah, God wanted you to write a bestseller)... but at the same time I admire her spirit, and her guts.

I don't agree with her pro-life stance (you say "Pro-life," I say "Anti-choice"), but I honestly commend Sarah Palin for living by her beliefs. She, as they say, doesn't just talk the talk, she walks the walk - in an area of life that is one of the hardest and most personal. And as a woman, and a mother, I take my hat off to her for that. It was brave and estimable of her to admit to wavering over her decision to carry her Down syndrome baby to term. And, while I'm thankful she actually got to MAKE a choice (oh the irony), I think the decision she made was full of courage. It couldn't have been an easy one.

I hate how she takes every opportunity to lambaste the "mainstream liberal media" (Sarah, I think it's called fact checking, not "opposition research."), but damned if I didn't applaud her mama bear approach to ripping into David Letterman for his nasty jokes about her daughter. Yeah, yeah I know David was talking about Bristol, not Bristol's younger sister, but either way I'd have wanted to scratch his eyes out, too. There's no such thing as below the belt when it comes to our babies.

And yes, I truly respect how she is able to accomplish so much and be a mother of five. Frankly, I'm a bit in awe.

Read 10 Things You Never Knew About Sarah Palin

It makes me tear my hair out when I hear Sarah spouting her "death panel" nonsense. But, at the same time, I can't help but admire how she is able to weather the continuous, venomous criticism that is directed her way. I have trepidations about putting my own name on this very article, knowing how rabid both lovers and haters of Sarah Palin get. Meanwhile, she takes hits all day and every day, and still she stays true to herself.

Which brings me, finally, to the thing I (begrudgingly) admire most about her. Sarah Palin believes in herself. To be sure -- I think a lot of the stuff she believes, and espouses, is, what's the word, whack -- but as a model of the power of ambition, self-confidence, and plain old dreams ... well, Sarah Palin sets an example.

Oh Sarah -- if only you weren't a creationist conservative zealot. You'd be my hero.

Would I vote for her?

No way in hell.

Would I like to take my daughter to meet her? You betcha.

This post is cross-posted at BettyConfidential.

Toby Daniels: Announcing ThinkSocial Award Winners and Release of Blueprints in Social Media for the Public Interest

2009-11-20T17:29:36Z

Founded this year, ThinkSocial's goal is to connect people and ideas to advance the use of social media to address society's most pressing challenges.

Today we are very proud to announce the inaugural ThinkSocial Award Winners and also release Blueprints 1.0, a report detailing trends in social media for the public interest.

The first draft of the report is part of a longer effort dedicated to the study and advancement social media in the public interest. It features concept definitions and examples for ten trends that we believe are shaping the use of social media. We have compiled this list through interviews with public and private sector leaders; analysis of initiatives, organizations and government programs; reviews of industry and mainstream news coverage; and submissions from thousands of online participants.

Highlighted trends from the report include:

Active Witness/Active Witnessing: Active witnessing occurs when individuals or groups share information and stories about important and often dramatic events through the use of digital tools. Examples include long-established "active witness" network Witness.org, a non-profit that empowers people to tell stories of human rights abuses through video technology.

Social Production/Mass Collaboration: Social production or mass collaborating occurs when large numbers of people work independently on a single project, often modular in its nature, to create a product of significant value and complexity. Examples include Invisible Children, a non-profit that spreads awareness about child soldiers in Northern Uganda, educational charity DonorsChoose.org, and charity: water, which uses Google Earth to track the progress of its projects.

Social Alignment/Social Aligning: Social aligning occurs when institutions engage with their constituents, consumers or other important stakeholders through social media to identify and take collective action on shared goals--often goals with a public purpose. Examples of social alignment include retail giant Target who recently gave 5% of its profit, or about3 million a week, to charity. For two weeks this past May, Target recruited Facebook users to help the corporation decide which ten charities would receive the "Bullseye Gives" funds and what percentage of the money the selected charities would receive.

Social Transacting/Social Transactions: Social transacting occurs when people spend time or money online engaged in activities that generate financial and social value for causes. Social transacting is demonstrated in Zynga's popular virtual farming game, FarmVille, where players can purchase certain charity-linked items with their virtual currency. Zynga's "Sweet Seeds for Haiti" promotion, where 50% of proceeds benefited Haitian charities FONKOZE.org and FATEM.org, generated487,000 for the charities.

You can view the full list of trends together with a deeper analysis of each of the award recipients here: http://think-social.org/awards/blueprints

Winners of the inaugural 2009 ThinkSocial Awards include:

Kiva.org: a peer-to-peer micro-lending web site, enabling entrepreneurs in developing countries to receive loans from lenders around the world.

SocialVibe: an organization aids charities via brand activities that generate micro-donations.

The March 18th Movement: founded by Hamid Tehrani and Mideast Youth, seeks to expand the world's understanding of bloggers as de facto journalists, and extend the protections normally accorded to journalists to all those who share information and stories of repression and corruption online.

A special commendation award was also being presented to:

Amanda Rose: the founder of Twestival Global and Local, which is a concurrent series of offline events for charity, organized by volunteers in cities around the world via Twitter.

Amy Siskind: Why the Palin "Hate Affair" Will Backfire

2009-11-20T16:14:02Z

I've been watching with great interest as of late the amount of hate stories written about Governor Palin. Oh yes, we are a country that loves our drama. And we are certainly a country that can, at times, be accused of going to extremes. But one thing is certain about our Palin Hate Affair -- the biggest winner will be: Sarah Palin.

With Palin's public re-emergence today on Oprah, the media's Palin Hate Affair got fully underway. Sarah is, amongst other things, a cancer of the GOP, dumb, and heck, even fodder for a musical. Newsweek sees nothing wrong with using a picture from Runners World for their cover story. MSNBC is well, being MSNBC, and showing their inner-misogynist so familiar to us from 2008.

And somehow the extremism of the Palin Hate Affair reminds me of another recent political extreme: the media's love affair with candidate and then President Obama. The problem for Obama, as I recently wrote at The Daily Beast, is that all great love affairs come to an end. And quite inadvertently, our media set up Obama for an epic fall from grace. How could Obama possibly live up to the branding image that our media was so willing to propagate? Simply impossible.

There is another side to the Palin Hate Affair that also feels quite familiar -- it's called misogyny. This should also be familiar territory after the way Secretary Clinton was treated in 2008. As Katie Couric noted just after Hillary dropped out: "Senator Clinton received some of the most unfair, hostile coverage I've ever seen" and undoubtedly this hurt her chances at becoming the Democratic nominee. Sound familiar?

And just like with Hillary, the Palin Hate Affair would not be complete without a gang up by a group of women who consider themselves to be "feminists" (whatever that term connotes these days). These "feminists" are contributors to an "antidote" to Going Rogue called Going Rouge-Sarah Palin, An American Nightmare. If you read the list of women experts contributing here's what you'll find: most of them hated Hillary too. Check the list and Google their writings for 2007 and 2008 and you'll find every excuse possible as to why supporting the DNC's first viable woman candidate for President was not the right thing to do. Who's crying now?

Here's the thing about extremes -- what they lack in longevity they make up for with excitement. Sure our media is having one heck of a time turning Sarah Palin into a modern day Sarah Good; but at some point there will be period of examination and discovery. A mea culpa of having stepped over lines whose consequence will be a judgment of keystrokes. As as Sarah Good's final words to her accuser would predict his demise, so to, will this extreme come to an end. And the unwitting winner of the sympathy vote will be: Sarah Palin.

Eric Tipler: The Wall Street Journal on Education: Lies, Myths, and Yellow Journalism

2009-11-20T15:45:09Z

Earlier this month the Ford Foundation made an exciting announcement: they're giving away $100 million to improve secondary education in urban schools.

This is fantastic news to anyone who cares about education, the American Dream, and the future of America's economy. Which is why I was so shocked by an editorial in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal. In the misleading, erroneous, and inaccurate "The Edsel of Education Reform," the Journal's editors lambaste the Ford Foundation for giving money away to a "failed liberal establishment" institution: teachers' unions. Specifically, the Journal 1) strongly implies that Ford is giving $100 million to teachers' unions and 2) accuses Ford of ignoring the best paths to reform.

In fact, both claims are false. So why are the editors of our nation's most prestigious financial journal misleading their readers?

First, let's look at what's really going on. Ford's press release (cited by the Journal) clearly explains that the $100 million is going to multiple grantees, including six "Early Grant" recipients, one of which is an innovation fund at a teacher's union. None of the other grant recipients are mentioned in the editorial; instead, the Journal implies that unions are getting all the money (read it yourself and you'll see exactly what I mean).

As if this wasn't bad enough, the rest of the piece is filled with misinformation. The Journal criticizes Ford for not supporting Teach for America or KIPP, but leaves out the fact that some of its grantees apply TFA and KIPP strategies like better teacher recruitment and training and longer school days to schools that KIPP and TFA don't yet reach. It compares Ford unfavorably to the Gates Foundation, but ignores the fact that Gates supports many of the same initiatives as Ford--including, oddly enough, the very teacher's union fund the Journal criticizes! Even more bizarre, the editors take Ford to task for not supporting some specific initiatives--more accountability, charter schools--that its grantees actually support. At the very least, some fact-checking is in order here.

Because this editorial is based on deception (or, more charitably, bad journalism), it's not surprising that harmful myths about education reform are also woven in. The myth that spending more money on poor and minority kids is a waste ("some of the worst school districts in the country spend the most money on students"), the myth that vouchers help kids from low-income communities (they haven't worked, which is why they're off the table), the myth that strict accountability will close the achievement gap (it won't, although accountability with clear standards, and with more capacity to meet those standards will), and the myth that teachers' unions are the enemy (they have problems, but reformers need to work with, not against them).

After all, even if Ford was giving away $100 million to a union innovation fund, would that be the end of the world? Especially when the fund in question supports innovations like charters. It's certainly not how I would spend $100 million, but the Ford Foundation is a charitable institution, not a government agency. In this country, they can do with their money what they please.

I'm usually a fan of the Journal. When they're good, they're good, cf. a recent piece on health care reform by the dean of Harvard Medical School. But this editorial misleads its readers on points of fact, and trades in bigoted and inaccurate myths that hamper reform efforts.

Shame on you, editors of the Wall Street Journal. Shame on you for taking cheap shots at teachers' unions and charitable foundations supporting much-needed reform. What is the nation's financial paper of record scared of? Do they hate the Ford Foundation's "liberal" priorities (which have included, among other things, ending apartheid in South Africa) so much that they're willing to mislead their readers and misrepresent facts to oppose them? Hasn't this decade seen enough dissembling on issues of national substance? Shouldn't kids come before agendas?

Shelly Palmer: Oprah Will End the Oprah Winfrey Show in 2011: MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer November 20, 2009

2009-11-20T14:03:07Z

It's official: Oprah Winfrey will end her famous talk show in 2011. The much speculated rumor was made official yesterday and will come at the end of next year as Oprah readies the new OWN channel for launch. While The Oprah Winfrey Show will know longer air on hundreds of stations via syndication, it will not begin a new on the OWN channel. Instead, Winfrey is set to produce new programs for OWN.

Twitter is set to make premium accounts available by the end of 2009. According to Biz Stone, Twitter will sell businesses "features that allows them to become better at Twitter, show them some of the analytics." Premium users will most likely get a premium analytics service, along with other customized features it hopes will help other business take advantage of its network without spoiling it.

New Flip video cameras will reportedly come with built-in Wi-Fi capabilities. The new feature will allow Flip video cameras to wirelessly upload videos straight to streaming video sites like YouTube. Social network connectivity and the ability to wirelessly upload footage is already popular with users, exemplified by the popular iPhone 3GS, which can also send videos directly to YouTube.

Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer a daily show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV. Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net For information about Get Digital Classes, visit www.shellypalmer.com/seminars

Cenk Uygur: Gross Failure of the Media

2009-11-20T08:07:38Z

A new poll by Public Policy Polling shows that 52% of Republicans believe that Obama did not really win the 2008 election. You think that's absurd, get a load of why -- ACORN stole it for him. Yes, a majority of Republicans in the country believe ACORN flat out stole the election for Obama. Only 27% of Republicans believe Obama won the election legitimately. 27%.

Those are stunning numbers. There is not one shred of evidence that ACORN "stole" one vote for Obama in the 2008 election. Do you know how many it would have needed to "steal" to swing the election from Obama to McCain? 9.5 million.

But it's not just Republicans. 26% of Americans believe that ACORN stole the 2008 election. Only 62% of the country believes Obama was legitimately elected. That's mental.

How can over a quarter of the country believe something so patently untrue and utterly ridiculous? Especially given that there isn't one iota of proof. I'm not even aware of a single credible charge of fraud in the election. Yet, this huge percentage of the country believes the greatest electoral fraud in American history happened a year ago and that 9.5 million votes were stolen without anyone noticing (or any Republican official complaining).

This is very similar to when 69% of the country in September, 2003 believed that Saddam Hussein was personally responsible for 9/11. No evidence of that whatsoever, but people believed it. Why?

It's because conservative media puts these messages out there non-stop without any effective challenge. They poison the conversation with absolute falsehoods and no one fights back. Who's fighting for ACORN now? Who is telling people that ACORN did not steal any votes in 2008? There is a continual battering ram of lies from one side and no response from the other.

But this is not just the fault of Democrats or progressives in not fighting back well enough. It is the job of the press to inform the American public. And obviously they're doing a terrible job. They constantly call everything 50-50. They're scared to death of saying that one side is simply lying. They cower behind the mantle of neutrality instead of challenging all sides to tell the truth. You're not supposed to be neutral in reporting lies and facts. You're supposed to be on the side of truth.

This is not to say that Democrats always tell the truth or that the press has to always say liberals are right. That's absurd. No one believes that. And if Democrats lie, then the press should of course call them out just as forcefully. But right now, there is one side of the conversation that is purposely filling the country with misinformation. If the press does not challenge them on it and does not correct the record, then they are just as culpable for misleading the American people as the people who spread the lies in the first place.

What's worse, the guy who cheats or the ref who lets him? The job of the press is not to be neutral to the facts. It is their job to make sure the American people are not grossly misinformed as they were before and after the Iraq War and as they are now. Every member of the working press should be embarrassed about the results of this poll. The next question should be - what are they going to do about it?

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