Extra! Extra! Seamus Sweepstakes™ Goes National!

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

That zany Gail Collins is at it again, dogging Mitt Romney (R-Gail Force Winds) over his vocabulary and his vacational history.

Mitt’s Zest for Zings

Mitt Romney arrived in New York City on Wednesday, newly endorsed by Christine O’Donnell, who we have not seen since her not-a-witch race for the U.S. Senate. She praised Romney for having “been consistent since he changed his mind.” I so miss Christine O’Donnell.

Romney was in town to raise money. Iowa and New Hampshire get the love; we get the traffic jams. ’Twas ever thus. We’re not bitter, really.

However, he did sit down with The Times’s Jeff Zeleny and Ashley Parker to compare himself to Newt Gingrich. (The above-the-fray Mitt is so November.) “Zany is not what we need in a president,” he said.

I would say this is an extremely safe position for Romney to take because the odds are very good that no one has ever called Mitt zany in his entire life. Unless it was when he drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the station wagon. (“Hey, Mister, you got an Irish setter on top of your car. What are you, zany or something?”)

But here’s the zaniest thing: The hardworking staff thought this was a splendid opportunity to alert the Times readership to the excellent Seamus Sweepstakes™, so we submitted a comment, and here it is:

Zowee.

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Open Softwar Over Anti-Piracy Legislation On Capitol Hill

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Wednesday’s New York Times and Wall Street Journal featured this full-page ad opposing the PROTECT IP Act and Stop Online Piracy Act currently being considered by Congress.

And it’s not just those Internet bigwigs who are protesting the proposed legislation. Here are two other examples (via techPresident).

The Hill:

Google chairman says online piracy bill would ‘criminalize’ the Internet

An online piracy bill in the House would “criminalize linking and the fundamental structure of the Internet itself,” according to Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt.

Schmidt said the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) would punish Web firms, including search engines, that link to foreign websites dedicated to online piracy. He said implementing the bill as written would effectively break the Internet.

Reddit:

Reddit, one of the top 50 web sites in the United States where people go to share and discuss news and start projects, on Wednesday asked its daily- one-million-strong visitor base to petition their members of Congress to block movement of a piece of legislation that would use web filtering, among other things, in an attempt thwart piracy and counterfeiting online.

The site has placed a petition box with counter ticking off the time until the House Judiciary Committee meets on Thursday to vote to move the legislation out of committee.

It then links to a petition tool built by Mobile Commons* that enables people to enter their addresses into the form. The tool then calls the petitioner, gives them talking points and hooks them up with the office of their member of Congress.

This one will be fought hammer-and-tongue to the end.

Stay tuned.

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Boston Globe (Bleeps) The Freep

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

So, chronologically:

Act One:

On Monday the Daily Free Press, an independent student newspaper at Boston University, broke this story:

COM prof. abandons class to promote book, officials, students say

Pulitzer Prize winner and renowned author Isabel Wilkerson has not fulfilled her requirements as a College of Communication professor and a member of the Boston University faculty-in-residence program despite her relatively high professor’s salary and other benefits, BU students and faculty said.

The issues this semester regarding Wilkerson began when she started canceling classes to promote “The Warmth of Other Suns,” an acclaimed book about the Great Migration of African Americans in the 20th century, students said. Wilkerson began to cancel classes two weeks into the semester to attend these engagements.

In an Oct. 13 email sent to her newswriting students, Wilkerson said she would not be teaching her class for several weeks “due to a scheduling conflict.” Wilkerson never returned.

Much to the dismay of not only the sandbagged students, but sandbagged journalism chair Bill McKeen and sandbagged COM dean Tom Fiedler.

(Full disclosure: I’m a mass communication professor at BU, not affiliated with the journalism department.)

Act Two:

On Tuesday, the Boston Globe Names column ran this item:

Isabel Wilkerson book tour is a blow to BU

The enormous success of “The Warmth of Other Suns’’ has been very good for its author, Isabel Wilkerson, but not so great for her students at Boston University. Because she’s so busy promoting the critically acclaimed book, Wilkerson has managed to miss most of the semester – she began canceling classes two weeks into the semester – and is now on unpaid leave through 2012. “This transcends your normal book, yes,’’ Bill McKeen, chairman of the journalism department at BU, told us yesterday. “But if this was going to be a problem, why didn’t I find out in July when [Wilkerson] was assigned to teach the class. This came as a surprise to the students and to me.’’

What comes as a surprise to the hardworking staff is the Globe’s abject failure to credit the Daily Free Press as the source for its pick-up.

Hey, Namesniks: The freeping Freep broke this story. Credit where credit’s due, yeah?

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WhAmazon

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Tuesday’s New York Times featured an op-ed piece by novelist/screenwriter Richard Russo about Amazon’s latest drive-by on traditional bookstores:

I FIRST heard of Amazon’s new “promotion” from my bookseller daughter, Emily, in an e-mail with the subject line “Can You Hear Me Screaming in Brooklyn?” According to a link Emily supplied, Amazon was encouraging customers to go into brick-and-mortar bookstores on Saturday, and use its price-check app (which allows shoppers in physical stores to see, by scanning a bar code, if they can get a better price online) to earn a 5 percent credit on Amazon purchases (up to $5 per item, and up to three items).

Equally alarmed, Russo polled his literary friends from Dennis Lehane (“scorched-earth capitalism”) to Scott Turow (“it’s worth wondering whether it’s lawful for Amazon to encourage people to enter a store for the purpose of gathering pricing information for Amazon”) to author and Nashville bookstore owner Ann Patchett (“There is no point in fighting them or explaining to them that we should be able to coexist civilly in the marketplace. I don’t think they care.”).

Coincidentally, Tuesday’s Times also featured a piece headlined “E-Books, Shmee-Books: Readers Return to the Stores.”

Lede:

Facing economic gloom and competition from cheap e-readers, brick-and-mortar booksellers entered this holiday season with the humblest of expectations.

But the initial weeks of Christmas shopping, a boom time for the book business, have yielded surprisingly strong sales for many bookstores, which report that they have been lifted by an unusually vibrant selection; customers who seem undeterred by pricier titles; and new business from people who used to shop at Borders, the chain that went out of business this year.

(Barnes & Noble: up 10.9%. Independent booksellers: up 16%.)

Not coincidentally, Brookline Booksmith sent this out in its latest BMail:

Before we get started, a word about tax fairness and empty promises, from the head of the American Booksellers Association. And if you’ll stay with me for one more moment, you can read Richard Russo’s response to Amazon.com’s recent controversial 5% off deal. Here’s the passage that struck me most:
‘A few miles down the road from where I live on the coast of Maine, a talented young bookseller named Lacy Simons recently opened a small bookshop called Hello Hello, and in her blog she wrote eloquently about her relationship to “everyone who comes in my store. If you let me, I’ll get to know you through your reading life and strive to find books that resonate with you. Amazon asks you to take advantage of my knowledge & my education (which I’m still paying for) and treat the space I rent, the heat & light I pay for, the insurance policies I need to be here, the sales tax I gather for the state, the gathering place I offer, the books and book culture I believe in so much that I’ve wagered everything on it” as if it were “a showroom for goods you can just get more cheaply through them.”’

Richard Russo thinks the Amazon effort is “bizarrely clumsy and wrong-footed.” Let’s hope he’s right.

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Rick Perry & Thrust (‘Politically Correct’ Ad-ition)

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

What does it tell you that the best thing Rick Perry (R-Pocket Change) has done lately is something he didn’t do: take Mitt Romney’s bet during the last debate. (Or was that de bait?)

Now Perry has issued a new TV spot that positions him as the Washington outsider who can fix the place with some straight shooting.

Via Politico’s Morning Score:

 

Annotated transcript:

Washington is the capital of political correctness, where double speak reigns and the truth is frowned upon. [Like the voting age is 18? Don’t want that getting around.] You can’t say that Congressmen becoming lobbyists is a form of legal corruption. Or that we give aid money to countries who oppose America. [Like, oh, Solyndra?] Or that Washington insiders are bankrupting Social Security. You and I know it’s true….but not politically correct. I’m Rick Perry, an outsider who will overhaul Washington and tell you the truth. [As soon as I can figure out what it is.]

The New York Times The Caucus blog adds this:

[W]hat remains to be seen is whether Mr. Perry, the Texas chief executive for more than a decade, can convince voters that he is truly the anti-lobbyist, anti-insider candidate. In Texas, the critique of Mr. Perry from many quarters has actually been the opposite, that he has long been a reliable ally of corporations and lobbyists who have given him large campaign donations.

Bet you a dollar Perry is frowning on that particular truth.

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The Things WordPress Says To Us (III)

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

The hardworking staff is always reluctant to look a gift host in the mouth (see previous reluctance here and here), but we feel it’s incumbent upon us to note that WordPress no longer says Rad! or Cowabanga! or some such after each of our posts.

Instead, it says this:

Or this:

Better?

Not really sure.

But at least it gives us some quotes to crib.

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Why The Wall Street Journal Is Still A Great Newspaper (Buddy Holly’s Glasses Edition)

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Rupert Murdoch, Rupert Shmurdoch.

Despite all the handwringing when the Prints of Darkness added the Wall Street Journal to his newspaper empire four years ago, the paper has not gone to hell in a handbasket.

Some even say it’s better.

Whichever, the Journal’s A-Heds still set the standard for offbeat newsgathering, as Monday’s edition demonstrates for the umpteenth time:

Framing a Young Rocker: The Man Who Picked Glasses for Buddy Holly

Lubbock Optometrist, Inspired by Style of Sgt. Bilko, Bought the First Pair in Mexico

Nut graf:

[Buddy] Holly’s songs shaped rock ‘n’ roll, influencing many of the major groups of the 1960s. But his black-framed glasses created a nerd-gone-cool image that ultimately became almost as influential as his music.

Pop-culture experts often point to those black frames as rock’s first great fashion statement, one that set the stage for countless others. Without Buddy Holly’s glasses, they say, the world would likely never have seen John Lennon in his granny-style glasses nor Elton John in his oversize frames. For that matter, it might never have seen Madonna in her cone-shaped bra or Lady Gaga in her meat dress . . .

A reach, you say?

Maybe, baby.

Even so, a smart read.

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Let The $4 Billion Rumpus Begin! (Solyndra Edition)

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

That’s Solyndra the company, not the country.

GOP gunsel Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS hit squad has launched its latest attack on Barack Obama with a $500,000 ad buy on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC.

Via Politico’s Morning Score:

The Crossroads GPS ad will target the administration’s loan guarantee to [solar-panel production company] Solyndra, which critics say cost taxpayers a half-billion dollars after the company filed for bankruptcy protection this fall,” the AP scooped.

 

Got that?

Typical Washington (blah blah blah) line up for handouts (blah blah blah) Solyndra (blah blah blah) bankrupt (blah blah blah) FBI investigates (blah blah blah) more red ink

Blah blah blah.

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NBC Chases ‘Greedwashing’ Bucks

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Raise your hand if you watched the American Giving Awards Saturday night.

Didn’t think so.

The program ran on NBC except it wasn’t a program so much as a promo for JPMorgan Chase, which financed and sponsored it. All they needed was a network to present it as legitimate content, which NBC was more than willing to do.

According to the New York Times, when asked if the American Giving Awards was an advertisement, an NBC spokeswoman said, “No. It’s a show about charitable giving.”

But not, apparently, one the network is particularly proud of, since plugging “American Giving Awards” into the NBC.com search box returns this:

The president of the JPMorgan Chase Foundation, which says it doles out $150 million a year, was proud though, calling it a celebration of “ordinary people doing extraordinary things in communities” . . . with the money they got from Chase, of course, which the show mentioned numerous times in addition to the eight 30-second commercials and the multiple “presented by Chase” in-show mentions.

That’s not an advertisement only in MagritteWorld.

Actually, Lisa Graves of PR Watch told the Times, it’s even worse: “[It’s a] ‘greedwashing’ campaign to score P.R. points.” Graves added that the $2 million in donations that were featured on Saturday night “are a drop in the bucket compared to the ultra-lush benefits for bankers who profited richly from the swaps that undermined our nation’s financial security.”

That sweeping enough for everyone?

Then again, the “feel-good holiday season special” didn’t do so good. According to tvbythenumbers.com:

The American Giving Awards drew a microscopic 0.3 adults 18-49 rating and just 1.5 million viewers.

Just? That’s 1.5 million more than it deserved.

Originally posted on the Newer! Improveder! Sneak ADtack!

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Other Bets Mitt Romney Should Make

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

With Mitt Romney (R-Bellagio) in a gambling mood, maybe he should consider these wagers as well:

• $10,000 in Hanukkah gelt with Newt Gingrigh over who’s Bibi-er than thou with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

• 1000 Krugerrands with Ron Paul over who despises Gingrich more.

• A case of Purina with Rick Santorum over who has a tougher man-on-dog record (winnings go to Seamus either way)

• A Vidal Sassoon gift certificate with Michele Bachmann over who uses more hair product.

• A six-pack of root beer with Jon Huntsman over who had a wilder rumspringa.

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