Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Apparent MSNBC Email Promotes “Male Enhancement”

MSNBC’s First Read is a must read for politically obsessive news consumers everywhere. But this morning readers of First Read got a little extra surprise when they opened their email. A notice under the subject heading “Nothing makes a man manlier than a few extra inches in his pants” appears to have inadvertently gone out to MSNBC’s First Read distribution list. In addition to promoting MSNBC political director Chuck Todd’s expert analysis, the email also advises readers that “every extra inch of meat in your pants equals every positive feature of your character.”

Obama Administration Fighting to Block Access to Names of White House Visitors

Athenae has the angle: “I look forward to howls of Republican outrage over this. You know, all along during arguments with wingnuts they kept assuming this was all Bush Derangement Syndrome, that the only reason anybody wanted to know anything was to mess with Bush. Well, now it’s turned back around….”

ABC/White House Merge

… Well, according to Drudge anyway, and the facts he lays out in his story are distressing, if not terribly surprising ...

A Line is Finally Drawn in the Media’s Ongoing Palin-Bash

It may be of little consolation to the supporters of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin but we can now say there is an uncrossable line in the media’s ongoing Palin-bash: Jokes about her daughters getting “knocked up” at baseball games go too far. Some of us would have drawn the line months ago and for less offensive “jokes,” but at least the media now have a metric against which to judge their skits, sketches, and news segments.

The Philosophical Significance of Twitter: Consciousness Outfolding

As with any new phenomenon, a wave of curiosity, criticism, mockery, and adulation follows. The Twitter meta wave is cresting. Now, attention is focused on Twitter’s practical applications in the disputed Iranian election and its unique capacity to harness real-time events. In the larger picture, the most intriguing thing about Twitter is not how it is different from other online communication mechanisms, but how it is the same: one more technological innovation enabling the outfolding of consciousness – the collective turning-outward of human thought…

Monday, June 15, 2009

Consider This News

A few weeks ago I got a call from Patrick Hynes, my counterpart on this site, asking if I’d be willing to work with him on a new project. Patrick and I have been rivals for years, beginning with the 2004 presidential election when I handled John Kerry’s netroots outreach and he ran a prominent anti-Kerry blog. His site was a thorn in my side and problematic enough that at one point I resorted to doing oppo on him after he got hold of – and published - sensitive emails harmful to the campaign. Again, heading into the 2008 election, we found ourselves on opposite sides of a presidential race: he consulted for John McCain and I was an adviser to Hillary Clinton. Despite our ideological differences, a number of joint appearances at conferences resulted in an unexpected friendship…

Why No Biden Stimulus Apology on Morning Joe?

So the sitting Vice President says “everyone guessed wrong” about the administration’s increasingly unpopular signature policy on the most important one hour of public affairs television in the country and that network’s cable news arm says … nothing the next morning?

Scarborough Suggests Iranians in the Streets Inspired by Obama’s Cairo Speech

Joe Scarborough this morning repeated a stream of thought he initiated on Sunday’s Meet the Press: That the Iranians hitting the streets in reaction to the probably-fraudulent presidential election there were inspired by President Barack Obama’s Cairo speech on June 4th. Joe even went so far as to suggest the ruling clerics “were going to allow the moderate to win,” until they saw how powerfully Obama’s words played in Lebanon ...

Sunday, June 14, 2009

CNN Pressured Into Greater Iran Coverage

From the NYT: “Cable news normally serves as the front line for breaking news, but the channels largely took the weekend off as Tehran exploded in protests after Iran’s presidential election. The performance of the American cable news, especially CNN, spawned an online protest by thousands on Saturday and Sunday, showing that viewers can try to pressure news organizations about their coverage in real time via the Internet.”

Ya See, Conservatives are Funny

There’s nothing funny about Barack Obama, we’re told. But conservatives? That’s another story. Just ask David Letterman.  Or Anderson Cooper. Cooper has discovered a nifty workaround for that pesky “objective journalist” thing—photo caption contests.

Photo caption contests that belittle Republicans, of course.