Does Peggy Noodnik Have A Point?

Posted on March 25, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

I know all you splendid readers think the hardworking staff is a noodnik for following Peggy Noonan’s Wall Street Journal Declarations, but here’s a question from her current column about “the decision to become involved militarily in the Libyan civil war” that’s actually worth considering:

I cannot for the life of me see how an American president can launch a serious military action without a full and formal national address in which he explains to the American people why he is doing what he is doing, why it is right, and why it is very much in the national interest. He referred to his aims in parts of speeches and appearances when he was in South America, but now he’s home. More is needed, more is warranted, and more is deserved. He has to sit at that big desk and explain his thinking, put forward the facts as he sees them, and try to garner public support. He has to make a case for his own actions. It’s what presidents do! And this is particularly important now, because there are reasons to fear the current involvement will either escalate and produce a lengthy conflict or collapse and produce humiliation.

Isn’t that a reasonable expectation? And if not, why not?

Your answer goes here.

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Steve Inskeep Nails Jell-O To The Wall

Posted on March 25, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

In the wake of On the Media‘s Sisyphean effort to debunk the charge that NPR’s news coverage has a liberal bias, Morning Edition co-host Steve Inskeep ventured into the lion’s den – the Wall Street Journal op-ed page – to attempt the same.

Inskeep’s summary of NPR’s current image problem:

A video editor created a faux organization, set up a meeting, and secretly recorded the bone-headed remarks of an NPR executive. The editor, activist James O’Keefe, spliced together clips to suggest that NPR was prepared to take money from an Islamist group allegedly founded by members of the “Muslim Brotherhood in America.”

Emails show that NPR refused the money, and the conservative website The Blaze discovered that the executive’s remarks were repeatedly lifted out of context. Nevertheless, the executive and his CEO were dismissed.

Inskeep’s rebuttal:

[L]et’s consider the fundamental question: the accusation of “liberal bias” at NPR, which drives many critics calling to eliminate its federal funding. It’s not my job as a reporter to address the funding question. But I can point out that the recent tempests over “perceived bias” have nothing to do with what NPR puts on the air.

The facts show that NPR attracts a politically diverse audience of 33.7 million weekly listeners to its member stations on-air. In surveys by GfK MRI, most listeners consistently identify themselves as “middle of the road” or “conservative.” Millions of conservatives choose NPR, even with powerful conservative alternatives on the radio.

Beyond that, Inskeep says, he’s met a bunch of people – American soldiers in Iraq, Republican lawmakers, regular folk in America’s heartland, even (yikes) Sarah Palindrones – who listen to NPR.

So what’s the problem?

Well, for starters, does having conservative listeners mean by definition NPR’s content is not liberal?

Don’t some liberals watch Bill O’Reilly just to make sure they still hate him?

Something tells me NPR’s critics are not yet convinced by NPR’s defense.

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Mitt Romney/Scott Brown Bakeoff (Margery Eagan Edition)

Posted on March 24, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Boston Herald columnist Margery Eagan weighs in on the Romney/Brown rumble for bragging rights and media coverage.

Lede:

Scott Brown has barely been our senator a year. Yet he’s already out-coiffed, out-sculpted, out-politicked and yes, outsmarted our previous matinee idol, Mitt Romney.

Mitt’s second presidential run? Already it’s “Flip Flop, the Sequel,” as he painfully tries to squirm away from Romneycare.

Meanwhile, Brown maintains perfect political pitch. This week he pleased liberals by defending Planned Parenthood. He pleased conservatives with an impassioned argument against closing Guantanamo (see Wednesday’s Herald op-ed) .

What else? Best jokes and most hands shook at Sunday’s St. Patrick’s Day breakfast, better work ethic, better media stroking, better how-I-met-my-wife-tale, and etc.

(Oh, yeah – and those “chiseled” whatevers, yes Margery?)

Paging all Romneyites: Rebuttal?

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Mitt Romney/Scott Brown Bakeoff (pat. pending)

Posted on March 24, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

From ABC’s The Note:

WALKING THE ROMNEY-BROWN TIGHTROPE. The Boston Globe’s Glen Johnson takes a behind-the-scenes look at the trio of advisers pitching in with likely presidential candidate Mitt Romney as well as Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown: “[Eric] Fehrnstrom and business partners Peter Flaherty and Beth Myers not only served Romney as governor of Massachusetts; they were top staffers for his unsuccessful campaign for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. They then branched out on their own, formed the Massachusetts-based Shawmut Group, and directed Brown’s upset win in the 2010 Massachusetts US Senate special election. Now, the trio is assisting Romney as he plots a second presidential campaign and Brown as he seeks re-election to his first full Senate term. The men’s political fates could be decided the same day, Nov. 6, 2012, but the candidates and their advisers will face a challenge until then working in such close proximity to each other. … And should Romney run, Fehrnstrom, Myers, and Flaherty are not expected to be paid staff members again but consultants. Fehrnstrom, for example, doesn’t plan to be on Romney’s plane again as traveling press secretary; rather, he intends to work from the home office and focus on message development and television commercials.” http://bo.st/dQCOVi

Bottom line: Eric Fehrnstrom is the Official GOP Wishbone®.

Then add this to the mix:

If you don’t know the name “Eric Fehrnstrom” you probably won’t care about this story. And if you don’t know the name “David Axelrod” you definitely won’t.

But once you know that Fehrnstrom is a top strategist for almost-certain presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and that Axelrod is President Obama’s longtime political guru, the following little Twitter war will provide some insights into what could become a defining issue in 2012.

@EricFehrn:  I wonder if @davidaxelrod will praise Romney’s proposed executive order issuing Obamacare waivers to all 50 states?

@DavidAxelrod: @EricFehrn I’m not going comment either way until he lands on his final position.

@DavidAxelrod: @EricFehrn I still admire what he did in MA on health care, though. In many ways, a model for the nation!

@EricFehrn: @davidaxelrod If you really want to get health insurance to more people, try giving them a job. 14m unemployed is a disgrace.

Still to come: Scott Brown’s two cents.

Well worth the price of admission.

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It’s Good To Live In A Two-Daily Town (When The Paul Levy Breaks Edition)

Posted on March 24, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

As so often happens, the Boston Herald gets the sizzle:

Paul Levy sees big returns from nonprofit

Earns $91G for six-hour workweek 

An under-the-radar western Massachusetts nonprofit that controls the state’s electricity market is lavishing huge salaries on executives and board members, including ousted Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center honcho Paul Levy, who rakes in a $91,000 salary for just six hours of work per week.

And the Boston Globe gets the steak:

Levy bid for ISO raises concern

Reappointment to board queried; grid operator criticized over pay

Former Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center chief executive Paul Levy, who resigned under pressure earlier this year, is now the subject of debate as he seeks reappointment to his $91,000 post as an ISO-New England board member, according to an e-mail obtained by the Globe that circulated among a group of executives who help choose the electric grid operator’s board.

In the e-mail last week, an ISO stakeholder who is a manager at Bangor Hydro Electric Co. in Maine, said, “I wonder if the fact that Mr. Levy has a cloud over his head could become a distraction. If this leads to problems down the road, then we might have one less member with a consumer interest background.’’

One other thing the Herald piece failed to mention:

In a blog posting on the Beth Israel Deaconess website several years ago, Levy said he turned over his ISO pay to the hospital. Beth Israel Deaconess spokeswoman Judy Glasser confirmed this week that Levy had turned over his director’s pay to the Boston hospital each year.

Confirming once again that, ideally, there are two papers to every story.

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Boston Restaurateur Goes To Bat For Exotic Food

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

From Tuesday’s New York Times Frequent Flier feature:

A Restaurant Owner Bites Into Something Foul, Dark and Winged

By Ken Oringer, as told to Joan Raymond

That would be Boston restaurant owner Ken Oringer, whose eateries include Clio, Uni, Toro, KO Prime, and La Verdad. From his first-person account in the Times:

I was a guest chef at a big festival in South Africa and decided I was going to extend my stay so I could see the Seychelles, a place I always wanted to go. The islands were as beautiful as everyone said. I got really excited when I found this little restaurant on one of the islands. The scents were amazing. I asked a staff member about the house special. It was bat.

I had never eaten bat, but I figured that since bats eat fruit, it couldn’t be that bad. I ordered mine grilled. I can honestly say it was the single worst thing I have ever eaten in my entire life. The wings have more bones than any piece of fish on the planet. I’m lucky I didn’t choke.

But choking may have been preferable to spitting out bat stubble, which I had to do since the bat wasn’t cleaned all that well before cooking. The meat, all one-half ounce of it, was nasty. The only way I knew I could get the taste out of my mouth was by drinking some tequila. There wasn’t any. In fact, there was no liquor at all.

Several other restaurant patrons and I took a ferry to get to another island. I got sick, so did most everyone else who ate bat. It was like a horror movie. I’m still trying to get the image out of my head of bat flying out of my mouth.

The things we do for love of food, eh?

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Barry Bonds Is Not A Mensch. But Lance Williams And Mark Fainaru-Wada Are.

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

As alleged serial steroid abuser Barry (Hey, My Head’s Not That Big) Bonds stands in the dock for lying to a grand jury, it’s instructive to remember that none of this would have happened without the dogged (and daunting) efforts of San Francisco Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada – efforts that were, er, chronicled in a 2007 episode of PBS’s America’s Investigative Reports.

From the AIR blog:

“Becoming the Story” premieres online today. Follow veteran sportswriter Mark Fainaru-Wada and longtime investigative journalist Lance Williams as they reveal the link between high-profile athletes and a Bay Area laboratory that distributed performance-enhancing steroids. Personally congratulated by President Bush for what he called “a service” to the public, Williams and Fainaru-Wada faced spending 18 months in prison for refusing to divulge the identity of a confidential source that had provided them with key evidence.

>> Read Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada’s original reporting in the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, including the reporters’ first story to cite verbatim leaked grand jury testimony obtained from a confidential source to their most recent story on former BALCO prosecutor Kevin Ryan. Check out THE CHRONICLE’s special page on the BALCO investigation for the paper’s complete coverage of the doping scandal and the reporters’ plight.

The AIR video is no longer online, but the trailer is available via YouTube:

Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada never did go to jail.

But Barry Bonds just might.

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Rafael Nadal Is A Mensch

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

As longtime fans of Rafael Nadal, the hardworking staff was curious about how the Splendid Spaniard would react to Novak Djokovic’s sandblasting of him in Sunday’s final at Indian Wells.

Well, he said this:

When someone suggested the match might have been different if Nadal had won a key, second-set point, the Spaniard scoffed.

“‘If’ does not exist,” he said. “You make or you don’t make.

“That’s always the way — the better player wins and he was better today.” (via the (California) Press-Enterprise)

Classy. That’s always the way with Rafa.

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The Sneak in Review (Ethics Code Edition)

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Via Sneak ADtack:

Dispatches from the stealth marketing front:

U.S. Senate Goes Public on Privacy

Well, one U.S. Senator, anyway.

From Adweek:

Senate’s Privacy Hearing Draws Many Spectators, Few Lawmakers

Session turns into one-man show led by Sen. John Kerry

There was a packed house for the hearing that the Senate Commerce Committee held about online privacy Wednesday. At least, it was packed with spectators. Most senators, on the other hand, appeared not to care. Though 25 senators are members of the committee, only three showed, and by the end, only Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was left. Yet, make no mistake, it will be the Senate that leads online privacy legislation.

Maybe. Then again, it might be not legislation, but litigation that increases online privacy.

Flash: Cookies Under Siege in Court

The Cookies ‘n’ Milk Data crowd are up in legal arms over lawsuits claiming that they violate consumers’ privacy with all their Web tracking devices.

From MediaPost:

The ad network Specific Media says that a lawsuit accusing it of using Flash cookies to circumvent consumers’ privacy settings is nothing more than an attempt by “opportunistic plaintiffs’ lawyers to shake down a law-abiding company.”

“The court should not countenance such a lawsuit and should dismiss the complaint,” the company says in a motion asking the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California to dismiss a potential class-action privacy lawsuit brought last year by a group of consumers.

Specific Media says it doesn’t use Flash cookies, and even if it did, “the lawsuit should be dismissed because the consumers did not assert in the complaint that they were harmed economically by the alleged privacy violation.”

Google and Facebook, also the targets of privacy-violation lawsuits, are essentially using the same no harm-no foul defense. But the MediaPost piece says the plaintiffs in the Specific Media suit have countered that the information it gathered is intrinsically valuable, and “point to relatively new businesses — like personal.com and the UK site i-allow.com — that say they offer ways for users to receive compensation for their data.”

More legal wrangling to come, no doubt.

Can Ethics and Stealth Marketing Just Get Along?

The Institute for Advertising Ethics (yeah – who knew?) has released a set of guidelines for marketing disclosure. From Ad Age:

The advertising industry has a new ethics code, as the Institute for Advertising Ethics today released a set of eight principles on issues ranging from the blurry line between advertising, editorial and entertainment content to behavioral targeting and disclosure of compensation for social-media endorsements.

Why ethics all of a sudden? Maybe because of this:

Among the new guidelines (“these are not set in stone,” an Institute exec says) are:

  • Advertisers should clearly distinguish advertising, public relations and corporate communications from news and editorial content and entertainment, both online and offline.
  • Advertisers should clearly disclose all material conditions, such as payment or receipt of a free product, affecting endorsements in social and traditional channels, as well as the identity of endorsers, all in the interest of full disclosure and transparency.

Yeah, wake me when they enforce the kinds of restrictions the Brits have on product placement. That’s a set of principles with teeth.

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Novak Djokovic Is A Monster

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

And the hardworking staff means that in the most positive sense.

Pride of Serbia Novak Djokovic put a serious beatdown on Rafael Nadal at the BNP Paribas Open Sunday afternoon. Via ESPN.com:

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — Rafael Nadal‘s serve deserted him in the second set, and so did his chances of beating a streaking Novak Djokovic.

Djokovic defeated the world’s top-ranked player 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 to win the BNP Paribas Open title on Sunday, keeping the Serbian perfect this year.

Djokovic improved to 18-0, including victories at the Australian Open and in Dubai last month.

“It definitely says good things. I am playing with a lot of confidence. I’m feeling the ball well on the court,” he said. “I’m very dedicated. I have a big will to win each match. I want to keep on going and keep on playing good tennis.”

Good tennis? That’s like Eric Clapton saying he plays good guitar.

Djokovic dictated the pace of the match, relentlessly attacked his opponent, and turned defense into offense on virtually every point.

In other words, he Nadaled Nadal.

This should be a very interesting year in professional tennis.

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