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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Asinistra
Published Letters: 181 Editor's Choice: 3
In an otherwise interesting and nicely-written article, I was struck by this odd phrasing:
"snuffling so dilligently through the detritus"
Did Traister purposely try to portray Roiphe as a hungry pug rummaging around the paper plates after a barbecue?
Every time I hear or read Dodd, I come away impressed...not just on a policy level, but the level way he states his policies and makes the case for himself. I'd say this is one guy who hasn't been ruined by his Senate experience. And I'd seriously take issue with Alan Bennet's take on Dodd's handling of the Leiberman thing. Are we to hold it against Dodd that he honored a 30-year relationsship with Joe to support him in the primary and then honored his relationship with the state's voters to campaign against Joe in the general? Are we looking for petty, back-stabbing, bomb throwing narcissists or are we looking for mature people with some sense of statesmanship?
The dead might not be so if Rove had returned to his family and taken Cheney with him. The witches' brew that is our national politics is all from Rove's nasty little cookbook. But all the blood is on Cheney's hands.
There are probably just a handful of us who know Edward Klein by name as a nonpareil sleaze artist who makes Kitty Kelly seem like a Boswell, but on behalf of all six or seven of us, I'd like to thank you for this brilliant takedown, even if down for Klein measures about two-and-a-half inches above the gutter.
And, yes, if she actually reads your stuff rather than just uses your stuff (and you), she'll do two things as she goes forward. First, she'll drop the Clintons' damned Dick Morris fetish for play-the-rubes policies like school uniforms and flag bunring amendments. Two, she'll again raise that Right to Privacy Amendment she ran up the flagpole a few months ago but immediately pulled down when not enough of the big donor class saluted it.
According to Bob Costas last night, except for one play against the Pats and Vinitieri's missed kick against the Bolts, the Colts would now be playing with homefield advantage in the playoffs and the Pats would be sucking on their fumes.
Yeah, and if Hitler hadn't decided to march to Russia, Costas would be hosting a show called Football Nacht Amerika.
Microsoft has announced it will be pulling back on marketing and distribution next year to cut profits so as not to appear to be running up the score on the compettion.
Good God, are we going to have to put up with this whining right through the Super Bowl?
Go watch golf, babies!
There's this from the estimable Charlie Pierce who's been living and writing Boston sports for--oh, I don't know--all his life:
"Back in 2004, when winning the World Series was neither this easy nor this commonplace, one of the popular fictions in Boston was that the act of doing so would turn out to be so unpleasant and anticlimactic that, deprived of their ability to marinate in their own misery, the great majority of Red Sox fans would find the whole business distasteful and long for the days when karma played first base on busted ankles and slow rollers got past it and rolled into history. I am not kidding about this. Sad people without lives pondered quite seriously the notion of whether or not they would miss the 86 years they spent as the pre-eminent drama queens of American sport. My reply was always that we should let the team win one and then see how we all feel. Now that the Triple A-plus Colorado Rockies and all their personal lords and saviors have been dismissed, I have to admit that it feels awfully good to be stinkin' rich."
http://www.slate.com/id/2176853/nav/navoa/
Every decade they have something else to yip about, don't they? "He can't sing." "He's irrevelant." "He did all of his best stuff in the 60s." "He's soooo boomer." "He's propped up by the critics." ("I don't get it, bwahhhh!")
100 years from now they will still have their spiky little teeth locked onto his pant leg. It is their fate. And not a bad fate as fates go, because Dylan will be timeless.
"The Cuckoo is a pretty bird, she warbles as she flies
I'm preachin' the Word of God
I'm puttin' out your eyes
I asked Fat Nancy for something to eat, she said, 'Take it off the shelf -
As great as you are a man,
You'll never be greater than yourself.'
I told her I didn't really care
High water everywhere"
Joan, there are hints in this thread that we might soon get a feature article from you or one of your writers about the similarity between sports and political coverage. Anyone who regularly reads both sports and political news can see the same media behaviors in action. If the political press decides there is nothing to the Valerie Plame story, its coverage reflects and reinforces that presumption. If the sport press decides that Roger Clemens's rather supernatural career reflects a diligent work ethic, their coverage reflects and reinforces that. They don't ask probing or even obvious questions that might challenge their initial take. I don't think this is out of bias, but out of sheer laziness. No doubt one could find the same traits exhibited elsewhere in the media, be it coverage of business, entertainment or what have you. But it's probably most strking in the area of sports and politics. I think comparing the two would be a far more worthwhile investigative effort than sending a bunch of sports writers to cover ploitics. You'd only end up with--horror of horrors--a gang of Greg Easterbrooks running amok.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
