[Member Post]
Because I love to do it
And now, the Inevitable Substack. It seemed a natural step when my column was dragged to back of the barn like Old Yeller. I’ll show them! I’ll start a Substack and I’ll have a million friends and then they’ll be sorry! (Hot tears, runs to tree house, spends a sullen hour shooting caps.)
You know, they could be right. There could be no place, or at least no great demand, for the American humorous essay anymore. You’ll find examples in the New Yorker, but they rarely produce something I think is integral to the “humorous essay,” and that’s “actual laughter.” Not to disparage the authors – although obviously I just did – but I get the sense that they labored on them for a long time, honing and carving and polishing. I understand that S. J. Perelman was like that. I suspect that Fran Lebowitz would go a month without writing anything and then write a paragraph and go back to hanging around cafes and look vaguely disapproving.
Mumbling, incoherent and confused… but enough about our debate experience. Let’s talk about the mess in Atlanta at the earliest Presidential Debate on record. It was President v President and the media was not happy with Joe Biden’s performance.
We cover the other news of the week and touch on a new development in the MMTLP saga.
Mark Steyn Back in Court
— Mark Steyn (@MarkSteynOnline) June 20, 2024
Above is a short video statement from Mark in England.
Giving War Another Chance
Not really – this is just my way of saying I am rereading P.J. O’Rourke’s 1992 book Give War A Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind’s Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice, and Alcohol-Free Beer. I read it shortly after it came out, and found it excellent. Almost a third of a century later, I am pleased to report that it still is. There are, however, quite a few details that have become dated. (It also has entire themes which have disappeared. Lee Iacocca?)
Since O’Rourke made it clear that these pieces were journalism, and since he more than most journalists would admit that such product is perishable, it may be unfair of me to point out how much of his “news” got old. Of course it did. Still, his observations at the end of the Cold War are as good a place as any to begin a review of the world we find ourselves in now. 1992 wasn’t that long ago.
Journalistic Ethics: Part I
Note: This post was prompted by fellow member @bryangstephens, with whom I have had an on-going discussion spread over a vast number of unrelated threads concerning the nature of the press, the First Amendment and their role in American politics.
Between the Civil War and the Great Depression, virtually every decent-sized American city had at least two newspapers. In addition to the popular press, many communities also had papers of ethnic or racial focus. Some of those papers, such as the Pittsburgh Courier, became influential outside of their areas of ownership and became important voices nationally. The Courier’s Wendell Smith was instrumental in helping Branch Rickey break baseball’s color barrier with the elevation of Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Fallout from the Marion, Kansas Newspaper Raid
In August 2023, local police raided the office of the Marion County Record newspaper and the homes of the reporters, supposedly in search of evidence that reporters had illegally accessed a state database looking for DUI records of a local coffee shop owner. @kedavis asked me for an update in a comment, but I decided to do a longer post instead.
The editor/owner of the newspaper, Eric Meyer, grew up in Marion, and his family has run the Record for decades. Before returning home to run the local paper, he had been editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and taught journalism at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, so he has national connections. Thus, the story went viral within hours.
Proximate Cause. A local restaurateur had been driving without a license for years due to DUI convictions, with the acquiescence of the local police department. She applied for a liquor license for her restaurant but was denied because of her DUIs. The newspaper investigated and learned (from her ex-husband) that the police had been letting her drive illegally. She was buddies with the new police chief, so she went to the chief and told him that the newspaper had illegally hacked into the state database to get her DUI records. The newspaper says that the database is public and that they didn’t hack anything. (Yes, it really is that petty.)
Show Links:
Modified Limited Hangout -The phrase was coined in the following exchange:
PRESIDENT NIXON: You think, you think we want to, want to go this route now? And the – let it hang out, so to speak?
DEAN: Well, it’s, it isn’t really that –
HALDEMAN: It’s a limited hang out.
DEAN: It’s a limited hang out.
EHRLICHMAN: It’s a modified limited hang out.
Horror of horrors! NBC News hires and fires a Republican after on-air talent throws a fit. Who’s running the asylum?
Then we talk to Karen England of the Capitol Resource Institute about the battle for parental rights in America’s schools.
MSNBC is a Cult
As one of the 99.9% of Americans who never or rarely ever watch MSNBC, my viewing habits were unaffected by the reports of the hissy fits triggered by the hiring and then firing of a failed RNC chairwoman. The pull of bias at MSNBC has so completely collapsed into itself like a cognitive black hole that there is not even room for a token punching bag RINO on staff.
I used to tune in occasionally. I was interviewed by Chris Matthews regarding a topical issue way back when the network was brand new, back when he was still using a blue-collar, regular-guy Democrat persona based on his former staff work for Tip O’Neill. That version of Chris Matthews disappeared into the bias black hole long ago.
[Member Post]
Sharing Information Versus Changing Perspectives
Any savvy consumer of news media should be keenly aware that, in general, the overarching purpose of the speaker is not merely to impart information. The goal of media is usually much broader than this: whether NPR or the BBC or Pravda, news media organizations seek to frame and spin information to sculpt and customize the way in which the listener sees the world.
This can, of course, be a feature and not merely a bug. It is quite a good thing to be able to see things from the perspective of others — though of course, it is no virtue to have your world view shaped for you, without even noticing what is going on. The goal should be to consciously grow our understanding of how other people think.
