First Fox News Channel anchor Chris Wallace asked Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-I Meant John Wayne Gacy) if she’s a flake.
Then Wallace apologized.
Then Bachmann didn’t accept Wallace’s apology.
Then she did.
And . . .
There is American politics in 2011: Ridiculous, overblown, meaningless . . . your adjective goes here.
The hardworking staff weighed in early on the New York Times revamp of its Week in Review section (Memo To NYT Sunday Review: You A Mess, Honey), but of course others are having their say as well.
From Politico‘s Keach Hagey:
In defense of the NYT’s Sunday Review
Erik Wemple’s media blog launched on The Washington Post website today. I can’t think of a better way to welcome him to the media blogosphere than to disagree with one of his posts – in this case, one mourning the passing of The New York Times’s Week in Review section . . .
The typically opinionated Wemple thinks it was mainly fixing what wasn’t broken, and complains the labeling of “News Analysis” and “Opinion” is “fussy and insulting to readers intelligence” while the “font size for those little writer bios isn’t appropriate for the demographic that pays for newspapers.” (This is, perhaps, a long-winded way of saying: “Frio!”)
But in my experience, the new section more than hit its mark.
And blah blah blah . . .
Truth is, despite all the chin-stroking, the corn is off the cob. The Times might do a little tinkering around the edges (NYT Public Editor: “Readers: your take on Sunday Review, please“), but the Week in Review is in the rearview mirror.
Ave atque vale.
Count Boston Herald contributor Michele McPhee as the latest skeptic regarding the FBI’s ad campaign that supposedly led to his capture.
FBI’s tip tale stinks as much as agency’s past
Iceland? Seriously? We are expected to believe that a woman from Iceland watching TV spotted Whitey Bulger and his girlfriend in Santa Monica where he lived in the same apartment for 15 years just four miles from an FBI office?
All the more convenient for tipping him off, no? McPhee additionally notes the the rent-controlled status of the apartment and its proximity to a Boston-themed barroom and concludes, “I smell an FBI safe house.”
Well, that moves the yard-markers, doesn’t it.
SPECIAL HERALD BONUS: Columnist Joe Fitzgerald becomes a charter member of the Billy Club with a spirited defense of the “good” Bulger brother. William Bulger, Fitz writes, “has certainly not condoned the things his brother Whitey is alleged to have done. Nor has he denied that Whitey deserves to be where he is right now . . .”
The hardworking staff must have missed that press conference.
Regardless:
Billy still sees him as a brother, barbaric or not.
In that regard, he once confided he would not be a part of any effort to apprehend him . . .
Confided? Didn’t he say that to a Congressional hearing?
Fitzgerald points out that Unabrother David Kaczynski took a different approach (“most would call it the high road”), but still defends Billy (“he”ll find no condemnation here”).
Never expected he would.
Sunday’s Boston Globe trumpeted Mayor Tom Menino’s triumphant return to the Twitterverse:
Mayor reconnects with his public, breaks out in tweets on Twitter
After nearly a year of silence, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino is back on Twitter, connecting with his people in crisp, 140 character dispatches.
In June 2010, @mayortommenino went silent. There were no retweets, no Twitpics, no clever hashtags.
But earlier this month, Menino — or most likely staff— returned to his keyboard with a vengeance. He sent three Tweets on June 15, two of which were about the Bruins. The next day the mayor was a Twitter machine, blasting eight updates to his 6,693 followers.
(Hardworking Editor’s Note: Make that 6,751 followers. Globe power!)
Sample TomTweets:
mayortommenino Mayor Tom MeninoSpeaking at Metro Credit Union’s first branch opening in Boston, near South Bay Plaza.summerboston Summer Bostonby mayortommeninoKick off the official start of summer w/ @mayortommenino 6/25 @BCYFcenters, Flaherty Pool #Roslindale. Food, swim more!http://ow.ly/5p0bnMassGeneralNews MassGeneral Newsby mayortommeninomayortommenino Mayor Tom MeninoSpeaking at @MassGeneralNews for grand opening of the new Lunder building at 11:00
Downright Menino-izing.
So why the sudden Twitsurgence, the Globe asks:
Did Menino find the password to his Twitter account after it had been lost for a year? Is there a new crop of interns helping him out?
Here’s a better question: Why don’t we have an @FakeTomMenino in this town? (Oh, wait – here’s @MayorMenino (Not the Mayor), who has yet to post – perfect for Boston: The City That Doesn’t Period.)
Out in Chicago, even before Rahm Emanuel was elected mayor, there was the delightfully profane @MayorEmanuel running riot over the Twitterscape.
So are we going to be the Second City to the Second City (which actually makes Boston the Third City, but why get technical about it)?
C’mon, Boston – Twitter up.
Last Sunday New York Times executive whatever Bill Keller penned a preview of the paper’s Week in Review reincarnation as Sunday Review:
This latest change is about proportion and display. The Sunday Review will devote somewhat greater space to columnists and outside writers, while preserving the flights of analytical writing and back story by news journalists. The opinion writers will be liberated from the back pages. So you may find Maureen Dowd on the cover again — this time in her capacity as Op-Ed columnist.
Or, as Keller wrote in a letter inserted in home-delivery editions of the Times last week:
Why, you ask, change something that is part of our history? We, too, are attached to the Week in Review. But we were frustrated by the simple geographic division between the news analysis pieces in the front and the opinion pieces in the back. We thought readers would find it more useful to have the stories, photographs and charts offered in an integrated way.
Except they’re offered in a totally jumbled way that has no apparent rhyme or reason (not to mention the smallest bylines in Christendom).
See for yourself in the dead-tree issue (best) or in the online version here (still called Week in Review, BTW, on the website).
Having been involved in multiple start-ups, the hardworking staff will suspend judgment for a decent interval, but this is not an auspicious debut for the revamp.
The hardworking staff has always believed that the bridge connecting San Francisco with Oakland was the perfect visual representation of the two cities: The graceful suspension bridge on the Frisco side, the clunky, utilitarian span leading into Oakland.
But Sunday’s New York Times previewed the new Bay Bridge, designed to replace the 1989-earthquake-damaged Oakland section:
Bridge Comes to San Francisco With a Made-in-China Label
SHANGHAI — Talk about outsourcing.
At a sprawling manufacturing complex here, hundreds of Chinese laborers are now completing work on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
Next month, the last four of more than two dozen giant steel modules — each with a roadbed segment about half the size of a football field — will be loaded onto a huge ship and transported 6,500 miles to Oakland. There, they will be assembled to fit into the eastern span of the new Bay Bridge.
Which, while utilitarian, pretty much destroys the delicate balance of the old bridge.
Judge for yourself:
A California official called it “pretty impressive.” We just call it sad.
British brew Newcastle Brown Ale has launched a U.S. ad campaign that features some offbeat TV spots.
Representative sample:
The campaign also includes outdoor advertising, with billboards such as this one (a poster version is running in Boston):
Clever, yes? Except for its unfortunate echo of the classic definition of an alcoholic:
First the man takes a drink. Then the drink takes a drink. Then the drink takes the man.
Not saying the Newcastle folks were aware of that. Just saying they should have been.
It was one thing that for two full days, Boston’s feisty little tabloid had nothing but Whitey Bulger stories in its entire newshole.
The Herald has stretched this story like taffy, from movie reviews to fashion critiques to musical interludes.
But today’s front page ventures into an entirely new dimension.
Good lord – SAGE ADVICE HE NEEDS TO HEAR (which turns out to be a routine Howie Carr drive-by hit)? INSIDE THE RAT’S FIRST DAY LIVING IN HIS CAGE?
The Herald’s currently a cross between The Onion and a high school newspaper, just sophomorically over-the-top.
I know you rely on newsstand sales for your living, guys, but mix in a little decaf, eh?
The hardsearching staff is, sorry to say, unable to locate the Wall Street Journal’s graphic “The End of Whitey’s Run: The online buzz about the FBI’s capture of James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, the alleged crime boss and police informant.”
But here are the relevant numbers:
JOKES 39%
“Whitey Bulger is captured, Osama bin Laden is dead, where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?”
SHOCK/EXCITEMENT 28%
“Bin Laden & Whitey all in one year . . . and the Bruins win the Stanley Cup!!! Does it get any better than this???”
CRITICISM OF FBI 20%
“Whitey Bulger got caught at 81 years old. What’s the point?”
ANTI-BULGER 13%
“I can’t believe people are actually upset that Whitey was finally caught. The man butchered people.”
13%? Really?
It sure seems like some events don’t exist in reality any more – they only exist in the media.
Which is to say in the abstract.
That’s not just sad. It’s scary.
Nearly everyone’s seen the kissing couple in the midst of the riots after the Vancouver Cannots loss in the Stanley Cup Final:
But have you seen the video of the runup to the kiss? Via AlterNet, Mediaite, the New York Times and etc.
Moral of the storied image:
Not every picture tells the story.
Click to subscribe to RSS
Campaign Outsider 