Contrasts: WikiLeaks and the New York Times
The editor of the New York Times, Bill Keller, published
a summary today of the paper's WikiLeak's dealings in 2010, with a larger text to follow at the end of the month in the Times' weekly magazine. While defending the decisions of his paper and his own leadership, his personal opinion of Julian Assange and his enterprise is quite low. Assange, Keller tells us with petulant candor, is simultaneously thin-skinned, arrogant, "naive," "a man who clearly had his own agenda," an office geek," and he reportedly "smelled as if he hadn't bathed in days" in a meeting with Times reporters-- all info designed to discredit the man and his nontraditional methods.
Conversations with Assange, according to Keller, seemed to have involved a lot of smirking and "glib antipathy" towards the United States. The editor calls WikiLeaks "a secretive cadre of antisecrecy vigilantes." He makes the bold implication that WikiLeaks began hacking NY Times online accounts when the relationship between the two organizations took a sour turn months ago, yet it seems the supposed hackers could just as easily be affiliated with the U.S. government-- after all, it was Senator Joe Lieberman, the chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, who threatened with legal action news organizations that released WikiLeaks documents. Per usual, Keller is most acutely sensitive to attacks on his newspaper from the right.
Keller takes a rather mocking attitude towards Assange's suspicions of a violent "Jack Ruby style" reprisal against him by the U.S. government, implying that he is "lacking a sense of the absurd." Yet Assange's fears seem rather grounded in logic if we consider only the blood-thirsty comments of a few elected officials, such as Peter King of New York, or the Justice Department's recent affinity for torture and for holding prisoners without trial, the presentation of evidence, or due process of law. Perhaps Assange's "cloak-and-dagger" routine has some basis considering that he's been branded a terrorist by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and the current president has a penchant for
ordering assassinations against other unpopular individuals that have not been actually charged with a crime.
The Keller posting is a shockingly honest account of the editor's attempts to contact Ambassador Richard Holbrooke before publishing the cables, then the White House, and of his concern in general with how the U.S. government and the Obama administration assesses his work. In dealing with the publication of such embarrassing information and accounts of illegal government activity, Keller describes the Obama White House as "more sober and professional" than the Bush White House that preceded it, though it's worth noting that the Obamas' more moderate reaction is in particular response to the Times publishing information that would be published by other news organizations regardless. Interestingly, Keller's reports have both presidential administrations incorporating the tactic of claiming (falsely) the heightening danger to the lives of U.S. citizens and our allies if the particular information were to be published.
Led by Judith Miller's reporting, the New York Times acted as cheerleader in the rush to war on Iraq, an action of gruesome government cover-up that actually did endanger thousands of lives. Keller himself was the architect of the Times' new policy, after 9/11, on
redefining "torture" when it's engaged in by the United States government. In the newly published document, he admits, and not for the first time, that he goes to the government with each of the WikiLeaks documents before publishing them (even though he admittedly sometimes fails to heed their advice). He expresses concern over the ability of his sources to "shape or censor (his) journalism," but apparently not the government's.
It is
not the responsibility of journalists to protect state secrets, yet this idea of systemic servitude towards the powered class is seemingly always floating through Keller's brain, and by the way,
Keller would "hesitate to describe what WikiLeaks does as journalism." Just so you know. This is an almost laughable paternalism by someone unlicensed to provide it. It's a common misconception that First Amendment protections in the U.S. apply only to the news media. We're
all protected by the First Amendment. Many inside-the-beltway journalists like Keller, who value their "access" to the powerful above all else, despise WikiLeaks because it poses an actual challenge to entrenched power and its corrupt state. The fate of WikiLeaks as well as citizen bloggers is not tied to "access," which is why Assange's idea of a new "scientific journalism" is so revolutionary. Indeed, such outdated, harmful ideas of news reporting like those of Keller are the precise reason that WikiLeaks is necessary.
Excellence in cinematic achievement
Three cheers each for a pair of favorite actors nominated by their peers in the Motion Picture Academy early this morning-- Melissa Leo and John Hawkes. Leo got a nod as Best Supporting Actress for portraying Mark Wahlberg's mother in "The Fighter," and Hawkes received his for a supporting role in "Winter's Bone."
Leo is beloved in this space for her ongoing role as New Orleans attorney "Toni Bernette" in HBO's "Treme," and Hawkes, of course, was "Sol Star" in the HBO series "Deadwood" from 2004 to 2006. I've seen neither of the nominated films, and I'm sure they're both great, but it's impossible that either of the performances are more soulful, captivating, or indelible than the ones they've each given on their television series.
At least a decade ago, series television surpassed film as the most penetrating artistic media in the culture of the West. These characters that are mined for their subtlety, motivation, and humanity, and that are allowed to mature (or fail to mature) over, say, 50 to 60 hours of television narrative are capable of having a much greater impact on the morals, ambiance, sociocultural direction, and mood of the culture than do characters on the theater screen that experience their life and death in our active mind in often under 100 minutes, and before we're even able to gauge the feedback opinions from our viewing companions. "The Social Network" would be a well-respected bio-flick if it premiered on HBO, but "Lost," and the cultural imprint that resulted from that series, could never exist in theaters.
The quality gap in comedy is even greater than the one in drama because of the evolved effectiveness of the collaborative "writers' room" that is really inherent to television only. TV is rich with devilish jokesters in front of and behind the camera. In the film world,
Judd Apatow is considered funny.
Someday winning an Emmy will carry with it an equal or greater cache and prestige than winning an Oscar, as it should be already, by and large. To say that the gap has narrowed already since the 1950s and '60s would be a tremendous understatement. The disadvantage in recognition that the great performances on television have is that television is also the dominant medium for industry promotion. Where Annette Bening's performance in "The Kids Are Alright" can be loved by all five networks and cable, Tina Fey's display of genius every Thursday night works against every channel on your cable/satellite guide other than NBC.
The end of life as we know it
The supervolcano that lies beneath Yellowstone National Park contains enough magma that the volume of the caldera could fill three Lake Michigans. It has erupted three times in the last 2.1 million years, the last time approximately 640,000 years ago at the size of a thousand times that of the Mt. St. Helens eruption in 1980. The pillar of ash into the atmosphere would create a "volcanic winter" to threaten the entire human population of the planet.
It's referred to as a "supervolcano" because its ejection of pumice and ash in one event could exceed a space of 1,000 cubic kilometers, more than 50 times the size of the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia that may have killed more than 120,000 people, darkening the sky for years and causing red sunsets across the globe, and providing the possible inspiration for Edvard Munch's famous painting
"The Scream" half the world away in Norway.
The Yellowstone supervolcano was
in the news this week, and in the most general of terms, you don't want your supervolcanoes to be in the news. The swelling of the reservoir, thought to be generating from about 10 kilometers beneath the surface, has caused the ground in the park to rise as much as 10 inches in places.
Experts at the U.S. Geological Survey are calling this phenomenon alternately a "burp" by the supervolcano, or "a deep breath," and you can pick your metaphor, but they're optimistic that the recent swelling does not foretell an immediate threat to all of humanity because it's coming from that 10 kilometers below the surface, rather than just two or three. In any case, no evidence suggests that the supervolcano should be a reason for the Cardinals to hold off on offering Albert Pujols the 10 year contract the player's agent is reportedly seeking for his client this off-season.
"Thin line 'tween heaven and here"-- Bubbles
Do you like your art to resonate in the culture?
Baltimore's police commissioner Frederick Bealefeld tore into the HBO series "The Wire" at a recent civic event in that city, calling it "a smear on the city that will take decades to overcome." The AV Club has the 2:44 YouTube clip
here, which is a must-view not only for the man's comments in greater, Bizarro World-detail, but to hear the ridiculous, pained applause that follows in the auditorium. The AV Club adds a link to the written response from the show's creator, David Simon, and since yesterday, the comment thread at the site has become a tremendous repository for favorite "Wire" quotes.
My favorite quotes in descending order of brilliance, and entirely void of narrative context:
4. McNulty: "The fuck did I do?"
3. Burrell: "It's Baltimore, gentleman, the gods will not save you."
2. Lester: "There's an election? Who's running?"
1. Omar: "Money ain't got no owners... only spenders."
Championship Sunday
If you're not excited about professional football this week, I don't know how and when you ever could be. As regional and divisional rivals, the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears were both founded in 1919 and have played each other head-to-head 180 times, yet they'll go against each other in the playoffs for only the second time on Sunday, in the first instance since
1941, and for the conference title outright. In 1941, there was still a
football team called the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Cubs have played in the World Series since the last Packers/Bears playoff game.
What a terrible season to be a Minnesota Vikings fan. First, their team implodes in spectacular and embarrassing fashion a season after inelegantly pursuing Packers legend Brett Favre to be their quarterback. (Really, that was bad form. We can all see that clearly now, right?) Favre trainwrecks his legacy in a variety of ways of which we've all been made well-aware, and now they all have to watch the Vikings' two biggest rivals compete for a trip to the Super Bowl. For all involved, this is high drama indeed, and the Packers' once-maligned general manager, Ted Thompson, smells like a rose for having shed Favre in 2008 in favor of the quarterback's very assured and capable three-year understudy, Aaron Rodgers.
Over in the American Conference, the New York Jets advanced Sunday behind one of the greatest upsets in league history. The Jets had been whipped by the Patriots of New England,
their biggest division rivals, 45-3, as recently as December 6th. Then, the day
this fantabulous New York Post cover appeared on newsstands, the Jets ran their mouths like machine guns and proceeded to put a beat-down on Bill Belichek's hated Pats (who
resorted to cheating to beat the St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl 36). On Sunday, the Jets do battle with the formidable Pittsburgh Steelers, perennial title contenders, and winners of the 2005 and 2008 Super Bowls.
Conference championship weekend is always the most enjoyable of the football season. The Super Bowl in two weeks will be played, as usual, at a neutral site, and for the amusement of the corporate sponsors, but the games this weekend will be played in the bitter cold of Chicago and Pittsburgh, two great football towns, in front of the faithful. I'm jacked for both games myself. These aren't my teams, and football's not really my game, but I plan to be right there in front of my television Sunday from the moment of the first pitch.
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NFL statistics of the day (courtesy: St. Louis sportswriter Bernie Miklasz):
Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, in the postseason before "Spygate" (details linked above) was exposed: 12 wins, 2 losses; 3 Super Bowl championships, 61% completions, 20 touchdowns, 9 interceptions, passer rating of 86.2%, sacked 20 times in 16 games.
Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, in the postseason after "Spygate" was exposed: 2 wins, 3 losses; no Super Bowl championships, 66% completions, 10 touchdowns, 7 interceptions, passer rating of 84.4%, sacked 16 times in 5 games.
Dr. King's warning and challenge
If you wish to know more about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., secure yourself a copy of a 2007 book entitled
"Going Down Jericho Road" and read the thing cover to cover. By Michael K. Honey, the story recalls the final public campaign of Dr. King's life, one in support of striking sanitation workers in Memphis. If you have any questions about where King would stand on virtually any political issue of our new millennium, this book should reveal to you the greatest truths.
In the ongoing struggle for social justice, it's as if his murder took place only yesterday, yet in a relatively short amount of time, some of the
distortions of his life and his beliefs have become monstrous. As Honey points out, most people today, even perhaps a majority of African-Americans, only know about King's "I Have a Dream" speech on the Mall in Washington in 1963, and so probably believe the tireless human rights advocate spent a majority of his time sleeping. He didn't. He worked himself literally to his death in an effort to have America's economic system radically restructured, a goal to which we are arguably as greatly distanced now as we have ever been.
Dr. King's warning: "History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people."
And his challenge: "So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?"
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This performance is a work of true musical genius, but I hate it when the stagecraft becomes so elaborate that the artist has to lip sync.
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Having Ricky Gervais host
the Oscars would be the only thing
better.
Moeller TV Listings 1/14/11
"SportsDome," a television product of
The Onion website premiered this week on Comedy Central, and will air each Tuesday night at 9:30 Central time. During its premiere, the sports news program
broke the story that Cardinals great Albert Pujols had been awarded the key to the city of St. Louis.
A vote for humanity
The shooting rampage by Jared Loughner in Arizona that has left six dead and 14 more wounded is many things: a senseless, terrifying tragedy, a call for sober reflection, another failure of an irreparably-broken health care system, a violent assault by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution upon the First. As usual, the "Republican vs. Democrat" public debate drowns out any meaningful dialogue, but both parties stand guilty of lighting the fuse. Republican Party political rhetoric has indeed often been frighteningly unhinged and inflammatory. A Democratic White House not only endorses public assassinations, it
orders them. Both groups have played their part in what the shooting deaths should represent to us above all: another spasm of hateful and reprehensible violence in a nation that has made dehumanization one of its global missions. This dehumanization is rearing its ugly head whether it's through physical violence, hate-filled speech, or just social neglect and indifference.
That's why perhaps the warmest story of the week is one out of Illinois. The House and Senate chambers there
have both approved a legislative measure in the past week that would abolish the death penalty in the country's 5th most-populous state. This brave step taken by these lawmakers, in the wake of this remarkable act of violence that has resonated nationwide, acts not to limit unpopular speech or individual freedoms of expression, but to affirm our collective humanity, and
that will be our only long-term political salvation in the face of attacks to our collective health and ideals.
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The Iowa State University men's basketball team will unveil a statue of former head coach Johnny Orr tonight at Hilton Coliseum in Ames. I've severed my once-deep connection with my alma mater's b-ball squad since they fired one of their most successful coaches, Larry Eustachy, in 2003 for being an alcoholic, but
whooo-ee, man, it was a hell of a lot of fun back in those Johnny days of the 1980s and early '90s, what with the Stevenses, Grayers, Hornaceks, Alexanders, Hoibergs, and Michaliks. Johnny was an amusing guy, and there was no greater electrical jolt to be experienced in the state of Iowa at that time than taking in a Cyclone game at Hilton. A handful of times, the noise level reached such a pitch that it felt like the ground might give way beneath us in the arena. Congratulations, Johnny.
Beltway hacks
Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi has
a profile of John Boehner up on the magazine's website this month. It's more than just a profile really. It's an incision, a detailed examination of Boehner's ongoing battles with the political left, the Tea Party, and objective reality.
Suffice it to say, Taibbi's is not the same journalistic approach that was employed by Lesley Stahl of "60 Minutes" in her broadcast interview with the incoming House Speaker last month. That television piece included an affectionate trip down memory lane with Boehner's family and a visit to their family restaurant in his small home town in Ohio. During her 13 minute valentine, the only thing Stahl neglected to do was introduce us to the politico's adorable pet dog. Boehner evidently felt so eviscerated after the story aired that he
posted the entire segment on YouTube.
This contrast in news-gathering styles is instructive in coming to understand our government's attempts at censoring WikiLeaks and other information operations that attempt to hold our leaders truly accountable. The television networks and the major American newspapers never question-- let alone threaten-- the
institutional structure of power in Washington. They're benefiting equally from the corrupt system that's currently in place. Journalists there, in their shared disgust for WikiLeaks, seem to even despise the government transparency they should be championing. In return, it's no more necessary for government officials to censor these traditional news organizations than it is to censor their own staffs of paid spokespersons.
How shaming it should be for these news and information outlets that one of America's two or three top political journalists toils for a predominantly-music-oriented magazine?
Bear with us
The blogging might be hit and miss for a few days. I got a wild hair to pursue getting a few of the past entries bound into a collection of some sort, and I've been doing a little organizing of the materials. It's too much to get into at length for now, but suffice to say, the new venture involves Random House publishing, a large advance, and possibly a blog-inspired video game.
Enjoy this clip of Belle Plaine, Iowa's
George Preston on Carson from 3/21/90, finally on YouTube.
By Order of the Author
Samuel Clemens' second century in the ground is off to only a so-so start. Initial sales of his final book-- his autobiography-- are booming, but word comes today that an Atlanta publisher is preparing to re-release Mark Twain's 1884 masterwork "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" sans the words "nigger" and "injun." It's a sad day indeed.
Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams gave us
a less-than-full-throated defense of Twain and "Huck Finn" in an article today, which makes one weep for a time long lost to history when liberals weren't afraid of their own shadows, an age before they saw value in neutering meaningful art, keeping tally of racial epithets (there are 219 "nigger"s in Twain's classic, according to Williams), and insulting the intelligence of children. "Is ('Huck Finn') a classic work of young adult literature, or a racist tract?" It's neither, Mary. It's a classic work of
American literature, "the best work we've had," according to Hemingway, and the source of "all modern American literature."
Twain, the satirist, would indeed see "the irony" over the objection to his work, but he wouldn't be amused by it. He'd be pissed. In an early "scrap" of his autobiography, an acquaintance, "Mr. X," has the audacity to edit an introduction Twain wrote, upon request, for inclusion in the man's book. In fury, Twain resolves to have the entire "edited" manuscript later included in his autobiography, as it now appears more than a century later, complete with every crossed-out word and correction, "that is, suggestion" from this "skull full of axle-grease," "Mr. X," along with extensive annotations defending the pre-edited product. Translation of anecdote: Hands off the man's work.
This 21st century "edit" goes to the very heart of the legendary book. The dialects of its characters stand at the forefront of the narrative. They are mid-country, America-in-its-adolescence, "improper" manners of speech captured with such precision for the first time in literature. Now the word "nigger," employed with great regularity around Huck's racist home and community, will appear in publications as "slave" instead, leading to such headache-inducing phrases in the story as "free
slave." (To paraphrase one clever (anonymous) commenter online, should Huck and Jim now be given life jackets as well?)
Last month, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour attempted his part in scrubbing America's racist DNA whiter than Aunt Polly's fence, misrepresenting the history of the reprehensible, racist "White Citizens Councils" of the mid-century South. Now the scrubbing is being done by the mushy left, and the peculiar thing is that it isn't even fashionable at this point,
I thought, for the PC cops to be going after the word "nigger." My media sources might be different, but I thought that the leaders of the African-American creative culture had effectively claimed the word for themselves in triumph, just as gay men and women have empowered for themselves the word "queer," and even before that, lest we forget, "gay."
Call me a cynic, but I can't help but see a motive in this publishing venture that others aren't talking about-- the potential, cynical profit for NewSouth Publishing in pimping a version of the nation's most important book that can be ordered in bulk by an amalgamation of our nation's perpetually-skittish school boards.
Give Twain back his words. He needs 'em all.
Aunt Sally's trying to adopt him and sivilize him. The author once said that the difference between the perfect word and the almost-perfect word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. Hell, the "Notice" on the very first page of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" reads directly: "The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech." Our children need to be set free to see the world beyond the walls of their parents' house, just as Huck did.
The gold medalists in the underground luge
Let me be the first to wish you all a very happy new year, and the turning of the calendar can mean only one thing: yes, time to turn in your sheets for the
celebrity death pool.
A quick Google search reveals a deathlist.net, thedeadpool.com, celebritydeathpool.org, and #1 from your world-renown Google search engine: www.stiffs.com-- the official home of the Lee Atwater Invitational Death Pool. The gang at the Howard Stern Show keep a death pool going, and there was a film in 1988 called "the Dead Pool" starring Clint Eastwood, and some then-unknowns (all still living, incidentally) by the names of Liam Neeson, Jim Carrey, and Patricia Clarkson. Oh yes, the film was practically
"It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World", but I'm digressing.
A group of co-workers I once had-- I won't name names. They have families-- participated in an office death pool. A
celebrity death pool, that is. They weren't wagering on which people
from the office would die, I should make that clear-- although there were always plenty of alcoholics, seniors, and alcoholic seniors milling about as candidates. I never participated in such a contest myself as I had a healthy upbringing that helped me to mark such ventures as crass and inelegant, but I do remember having a chance, on occasion, to see some of the entry sheets. Bob Hope and Ronald Reagan were perennial candidates to kick off during that time in history, and ironically, some of the names I remember seeing those eight and nine years ago are still being listed in articles like the one linked above for the
current year. In fact, let's raise a glass to Muhammad Ali, Courtney Love, Fidel Castro, and Kirk Douglas: perhaps the grim reaper doesn't have MapQuest. Celebrity young'ins like Lindsay Lohan and Amy Winehouse weren't on the list in those days. They weren't even celebrities yet. (Jeez, who would think that something like a death pool could make a guy feel old?)
Anyway, I always thought that I could clean up in such a pool by focusing just a little bit of research on some of the lesser-known heroes of baseball's yesteryear. I still feel like that could be my special area of expertise, but we're just talkin' here. It's crass.
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Speaking of crass,
the Advertisement/Headline of the Day: "Def Leppard Tribute Band Seeks One-Armed Drummer"---
Oh so timeless: A Johnny Carson joke from 1988 (you'll have to imagine it told with Johnny's on-stage tics and mannerisms):
"The circus is in town this week. Did you know that I once went with a circus performer? Yes. I did. It was very strange. Lydia the Tattooed Lady. And she had the entire California freeway system tattooed on her body.. And just my luck: After I sprung for a big dinner, I found out the Baja off-ramp was closed for the night."
