Build all GOPS a palace on Doughnut Avenue. They are afraid of dying from constipation?

They need fez hats. Dressing up with fezzes would distinguish them. Cowpoke hats? err.

Wear red tap shoes. A fez hat. And give everybody a Pulitzer with a fried doughboy dumpling.

Who feels estranged?

Who pushing a Snicker?

People need a Milky Way.

Glenn is tugging at underwear?

A lawyers pulls up his pants britches.

Next Peggy will scream at GG's cleavage?

When readers see Greenpant's rear crack?

I pledge to quit reading blogs for a year!

But not evolved beyond stupid, archaic stereotypes, obviously.

Unless you have some poll data to show that 'lynching is considered a favorite pasttime' here.

No poll data. Merely the fact my wife (who is black and looks vaguely Latina), son (who is mixed and looks more Latino) and I (indisputably Irish-German) have been physically threatened in the past by residents of certain states of the South. Perhaps I'm unfairly extrapolating the stereotype.

How about we stick to the point and not go out of our way to offend a bunch of people who might otherwise agree with you, shall we?

Fair enough, although my comment was directed more at the Jersey ex-patriate/non-patriot; I should have been clearer.

I agree that it's hard to give cred and authority to someone who didn't finish college, but I disagree about the importance of a college education to good journalism. Go back two generations of reporters, especially in print, and you'll find most of the shining examples of good reporting done by reporters with high school educations. Intelligence, attitude and persistence (as well as a willingness to take instruction from your editors, and also to outsmart them when necessary) had a lot more to do with it than credit hours. Skepticism, a willingness to confront, and dogged efforts to get at the truth of something (often imperfectly) accomplished what we would want 'critical thinking' to accomplish now.

The Committee for Concerned Journalists put out a book a few years ago that points in the opposite direction. As the profession has matured, more journos have advanced degrees, sometimes several of them. With the advanced education comes higher expectations about salaries, attainment, standard of living. They tend to get farther out into the suburbs and away from what they are supposed to be covering. They're less likely to take a late meeting with a disgruntled potential source, for example. Because they have mortgages, private school tuition fees, higher consumption, they also have more to lose if conflictual reporting causes their sources to dry up on them.

Expectations also exert a subtle influence on your thinking about your own social role. You're more likely to think of yourself as, say, a public intellectual, or at least as someone important. You want to talk to other important people and get more satisfaction from doing so. You're less likely to take the 'kids and whores' approach, and its equivalent in the beltway bureaucracy, and when you do you're less likely to have what you need to establish the necessary rapport with them. (There are counter-examples to this. Think Sy Hersh)

A further speculation: I've got a lot of education myself, but it came later in life (and kept on comin'). I have always valued it, and it certainly opened up a whole new world for me. But it's also more likely to give you a gift for abstraction, and to encourage you to view other people as abstractions. It can be hard work to correct for that and stay on top of it. That is more damaging in some professions ... say, journalism ... than others.

From Sam Stein at HuffPo:

Then and Now

29 Apr 2008 11:35 am

It seems that back in 2005 John McCain understood how dumb John McCain's current position on Iraq is:

Host Chris Matthews pressed McCain on the issue. "You've heard the ideological argument to keep U.S. forces in the Middle East. I've heard it from the hawks. They say, keep United States military presence in the Middle East, like we have with the 7th Fleet in Asia. We have the German...the South Korean component. Do you think we could get along without it?"

McCain held fast, rejecting the very policy he urges today. "I not only think we could get along without it, but I think one of our big problems has been the fact that many Iraqis resent American military presence," he responded. "And I don't pretend to know exactly Iraqi public opinion. But as soon as we can reduce our visibility as much as possible, the better I think it is going to be."

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/04/then_and_now_1.php

Kudos to Sam Stein for writing this up. Checking the record by using Nexis doesn't count as "reporting" under the fairly arbitrary rules governing "real journalism" but it sure can be valuable.

"Perhaps I'm unfairly extrapolating the stereotype."

Oh Lord, you gave them eyes but they do not see. Did you learn nothing about extrapolating stereotypes from the story about Barack Obama's grandmother?

Do the man a favor Iokkan and keeping your dribbly mouth shut.

No.

exemplifies American post-literacy. Snide, made-up observations, heavily larded with both prejudice and inanity, strung together in incomplete sentences and eight-grade vocabulary.

Had I written such a thing in high school I would have been rightly ridiculed and received an F.

Are you ever pushing my buttons! This is exactly how I evaluate 90% of what I read and see, and not just in the MSM. Snark triumphs over substance, a pseudo-point with no substantiation takes the place of thoughtful attention, entertainment substitutes for analysis. It's fun at first. Then it's not.

I walk around going 'WTF?' so often, people think I have Tourette's.

I know Noonan's column isn't the main subject of Mr. Greenwald's post but I was so struck by this passage GG quoted:

But has he ever gotten misty-eyed over . . . the Wright Brothers and what kind of country allowed them to go off on their own and change everything? How about D-Day, or George Washington, or Henry Ford, or the losers and brigands who flocked to Sutter's Mill, who pushed their way west because there was gold in them thar hills? There's gold in that history.

My Republican leaning Irish Catholic Boston born father, a tribe of people not known for being particularly overfond of African Americans observed to me after watching one of these insipid news reports about Flag Pins and Reverend Wright that he didn't get it? He asked if these news people had any idea that the experiences of Obama and Wright and their perspectives were very different from say- white people? That maybe Reverend Wright- an educated man lived at time when black people were called "boy" even if they were middle aged men and made to drink out of separate fountains and that these experiences produced different outlooks? Obama and Wright are men for whom Lynching was something not in the distant past but that happened to their fathers . . .

Now- if my "Gate 14" Irish Catholic Boston father could see that how is possible that Pulitzer Candidate Peggy Noonan is unable to? Get misty eyed over D-Day? Peggy? Blacks were in truck driving units mostly on that day because they were black. Do you realize that Peggy? They didn't hit the beach first or even second not because they didn't want to- but because they were thought to be inferior. The army was segregated then Peggy. The Gold Rush? Henry Ford? Huh? What in the world? Noonan seems entirely oblivious to the fact that black people in this country, and others- may not have the same emotional "markers" in history that she does. They may get misty eyed over things like ohhhh- emancipation. Or they may get misty eyed over things like - Civil Rights marches. Or Joe Lewis. George Washington? Peggy- Blacks were kept as illiterate peons - as serfs- as slaves by white George Washington. They didn't figure in his world. And they are supposed to get misty eyed of him? Over his image? Huh?

When did we take a giant step backwards in this country? It is frightening that Noonan is what passes for urbane political commentary.