Scripting News

The mea culpas didn't come

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:55:45 GMT

At best the MSM got the Wright story wrong, at best it was a mistake.

But if it were a mistake, there would have been some mea culpas today, after seeing the Wright interview, someone would have said they got it wrong, maybe even apologized for contributing to the vilification of Rev Wright.

But the mea culpas didn't come. They rationalize it, generally, by saying it wasn't a real interview. At least they didn't completely ignore it, but they came close.

I was reminded of the aftermath of the Karla Faye Tucker execution in Texas. Because she was a woman, and religious, repentent and reformed, she didn't seem to be a threat to society. She went on Larry King to plead for her life. Tucker made the perfect spokesmodel for advocates of the death penalty. She admitted to a horrible murder, but she was such an attractive murderer. It was a way to show support for the cause even when the subject was a compelling person, someone you might like to know. There was a huge national debate about it.

On February 3, 1998, she was executed. I wondered why it was so quiet. Why weren't the advocates of the death penalty who said they needed her death to feel closure weren't saying "See I told you so, I feel closure now, don't you?"

They didn't say that because they didn't feel it. Murder isn't an equation that can be balanced. You can't balance the taking of a life by taking a life. It doesn't work that way.

I'll never understand why we enjoy a circus like the shaming of Rev Wright, a man who should be proud of his life, not ashamed. I feel empathy for the person in the middle of a threatening circle, don't you? I feel empathy for a murderer being put to death. I feel rage for the innocent people who are put to death by the state, in my name, in the name of justice.

I think there was silence about the death of Karla Faye because there was so much shame about it. The justice system needed her to shut up. Maybe that's the same reason the press has nothing to say now that Wright has spoken and shows they got the story horribly wrong. Maybe, to preserve their sense of integrity, they need him to shut up. And he's talking. That's a problem for them.

Since the press isn't going to cover this, it's up to the people to cover the press. Obama won't talk about it either (makes me wonder about Obama). I think the problem is bigger than getting Obama elected, we need to reform how ideas and information flows in our country.

Update: Cross-posted at Huff.

Twitter spewage among my contacts

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 17:24:27 GMT

On a lighter note...

Everyone loves lists that rank people based on popularity and how much UGC the U generates. And of course everyone loves Twitter. So here's the perfect meaningless distraction for a Sunday afternoon with nothing better going on, a ranking of my contacts on Twitter in order of the amount of spew they create! Toxic spew, or green spew, it doesn't matter -- it's quantity over quality, the triumph of Web 1.95.

http://twitter.scripting.com/spewage.html

Of course Scoble tops the list. I'll let you figure out what that means. I chuckled when I saw Guy Kawasaki coming in at #4. I guess his semi-spam pays off (if this means anything, which it doesn't -- see the disclaimer).

If you have any questions or comments post them here.

My Amazon wishlist

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 19:37:37 GMT

From time to time people have asked me to start an Amazon wishlist. I don't know why I never did it, but last week I was undecided whether I should or shouldn't buy an EyeFi card for my new camera, and thought -- this is exactly the kind of thing that should be on a wishlist. If I get one, I'll review it, but it's not one of those things I'm so sure I'll use that I want to plunk down the money for it.

So that was the moment. I started a wishlist. It's linked to in the right margin of Scripting News. If you ever feel like giving me a gift, now you know how to do it. I'll try to keep it stocked with relatively inexpensive things I'd like to try out, or things I need that (again) don't cost too much. Maybe from time to time I'll put a whopper in there, but I don't want to be greedy. Let's see how it works.

Hope is what we have, Hillary

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 04:14:25 GMT

She did it again today, made fun of the idea of hope. She says that she and John McCain know how Washington works, and if hope had anything to do with it, they would have figured it out a long time ago.

She's got to be smart, an astute politician, but on the subject of hope, she's naive and tone deaf.

Even so, I'm sure she's right, there's no hope in Washington. We've been actively killing our empire, at least since Bush took office, maybe longer. The world no longer has to come to us to buy the products we used to make. We're a service economy and we make durable goods. We have lots of natural resources, but not the one we need most, oil. Inflation is becoming a very serious concern, and soon if things go as they look like they're going, it could get really bad. Meanwhile it looks like Bush is going to start another war with Iran before he leaves office, and as with the last war, guess who's helping stoke the fires? Yeah, Clinton is.

Even if somehow we could revive our economy, re-educate our workforce, take care of our health, get out of Iraq, avoid war with Iran, we have to look forward to a devastated environment, one that quite possibly won't sustain human life much longer. Certainly not with the quality of life we had in the 20th century.

Watching the eloquent Rev Wright last night, and hearing his story of the religion of recent slaves, what else do they have but hope? If your people live in poverty, most of them with terrible futures in front of them, what can get you through the night, other than hope? Hope is serious business for people with nothing to look forward to. If HRC ever had to live on hope she's long forgotten it. But for most people in America, facing an uncertain economic future, with no faith in the sanity of the government (an understatement for me) hope is what we have, Hillary.

Why so quiet?

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 15:43:00 GMT

I expected a roaring debate in the political blogosphere this morning, and on cable news after the Friday night Bill Moyers interview with Rev Jeremiah Wright. Instead, there's eerie quiet.

The most I could find was this post on Protein Wisdom saying that Moyers didn't play hardball with Wright. It's true, he didn't. Instead he did what I wish more journalists would, he interviewed him in a way that helped us get to know the person. He let him speak his piece, so we could listen.

There's so much to admire about Rev Wright, but first, the shame of the professional media, who hounded not only Wright, but members of his congregation, incluing a woman in a hospice, to try to uncover more dirt about Wright and thereby embarass Barack Obama.

Wright isn't running for office, he points out, it isn't his job to get our vote, it's his job to help his congregation, to help them understand the world they live in, to help them do better in that world, and to prepare them for what they believe comes in the afterlife.

Watching Wright, I wondered if Sean Hannity's preacher could stand up to the kind of objectification this man has withstood. What about Tim Russert's? How about the people who are close to Charlie Gibson and Andrea Mitchell? And how about the CEOs of Time-Warner, GE, the Sulzbergers and the Murdochs? These people have never run for office, they've never been vetted or elected. Could they come out so well after being put through the wringer that Wright has been through.

I think the silence comes from the fact that there still is some humanity in the press and in the blogosphere, and those who watched Moyers and really listened to Wright, realized that he's not a liability to Obama, he's an asset. At least some of the polish, the quiet confidence, self-respect, intelligence and grace we see in Obama must have rubbed off this man.

Watching Wright gave me pride in being an American, and shame at the same time, for coming from a country so willing to objectify and villify this person before checking out whether the characterization was accurate. Even the supposedly courageous and thorough NY Times calls his oratory "racist" in an editorial in today's paper. Based on what? I've watched the sermons that have been excerpted; if these are racist, then every other preacher in the US is racist too.

Wright says the religion of the people on the deck of a slave ship must be different from the religion from the people under the deck. On the deck, god is justifying the practice of slavery, and below -- god gives them hope that someday they will be free. My people, the Jews, understand this very well, it's part of our tradition. We've just celebrated the holiday of Passover, a feast that's all about the pride of an enslaved people. If we're still telling the story, passing it down from generation to generation, after 3000 years, why should we be critical of the African-Americans who are telling the story of their enslavement, which ended only 145 years ago, and whose manifestations are still with us today.

We, the United States, have made mistakes, and those mistakes are as much who we are as our triumphs. The failures leave behind people and their culture, their music, their legends, their religion and their hopes. Sure it seems strange when you hear it for the first time, but that's good! Because the second time it's not so strange, and eventually it becomes part of our melting pot, and enriches all our lives.

If you haven't watched the Wright interview, make the time to do so. You won't be sorry.

Update: Cross-posted at Huffington.

Wright interview in audio

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 02:07:14 GMT

I was able to watch the Wright interview on adamdeyong's Slingbox in Newport News, Virginia.

I recorded it, but now the video is available on the PBS website, and the audio is at the link below.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/rss/media/BMJ-1203.mp3

Thanks for this very excellent program!

Tonight's news

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 22:57:02 GMT

Bill Moyers Journal this evening will have Rev Wright as his guest, and it won't be broadcast in the Bay Area until 10PM Pacific. It will air at 6PM Pacific on WGBH in Boston.

This of course is a major news event, spinning will start on the web in real time, as it airs. This happens when ABC runs a debate, they hold the broadcast as if it were a sitcom, for three hours, when they should give it the same treatment they give a sports event. People on the west coast, such as yours truly, are not able to be part of the online event as it unfolds. Imho these events should be broadcast simultaneously around the world, and repeated if necessary.

We need at least audio access to the interview while it's being aired on the east coast, and ideally an MP3 to distribute via BitTorrent starting roughly at 7PM Pacific.

Would anyone on the east coast like to help out? Please post a comment if so.

Given that it's PBS, the program may be available on the web at the same time it airs on the east coast. If you have any information about that, it would be much appreciated.

TwitterOutliner

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:56:07 GMT

There might be two or three people who can use this tool.

I'm one of them, that's why I developed it.

The crazy baseball fan rule

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 03:09:08 GMT

Every so often a beer-drunk fan will run on the field during a baseball game causing a delay while the cops chase him down. Back in the days of streaking sometimes these fans would run out on the field naked.

You'll never see one of these scenes on TV because there's a rule that the broadcasters are not allowed to follow the drunk baseball fan onto the field. If they were to broadcast the drunk fan, the theory goes, that would just encourage more people to do it, meaning more delayed games, annoyed players, offended fans and busted streakers.

It seems to me this very simple rule should be adopted by news networks when it comes to the most hideous attack ads.

Example. The North Carolina Republican Party has yet to spend a dime running a racist attack ad against Obama, one that McCain and the national party swear they don't want them to run. But millions of TV viewers have seen the ad, repeatedly, run for free on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, etc. This seems grossly unfair, and how does it not count as a campaign contribution?

We've seen this before, Bush swore that the swiftboat ads that questioned John Kerry's honor and patriotism were unfair and he didn't want them run, but they helped him anyway, and somehow I doubt his sincerity as I doubt McCain's. But you can't really blame them, in this age many candidates believe they must do whatever they have to do, no matter how immoral or unethical, to get elected. In the analogy, they'll always run onto the field, naked if they have to, to get past the competition.

But why should we tolerate the news organizations giving free air time to the campaigns? Aren't they making an illegal campaign contribution when they run a Republican attack ad without giving equal time to Democratic attack ads?

Maybe they could invoke their integrity (as they so often do when it suits them) for the good of the electoral process and force the attackers to pay for the air time? And maybe if they weren't granted so much free air time, seemingly in proportion to their ugliness, perhaps fewer of them would even be produced.

Update: Cross-posted at Huffington.

What to do about Rev Wright

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:55:04 GMT

Rev Wright was interviewed by Bill Moyers, an interview that will air tomorrow and will certainly restart the pundit-mania over all things Wright and what it supposedly means.

I've watched some of the sermons that are excerpted, in their entirety, and in every case the soundbites do not express his meaning. In every case I found the Wright sermons not only fair and American but compelling. As much as any Christian sermon I've heard, more so than most.

I also understand that black churches are different from white churches. I don't go to either, never have, doubt I ever will. Churches are a totally foreign experience to me. If you made me choose candidates based on the sermons their preachers give I couldn't, and I find it insulting that some people think I should. I think they have lost their way, they have lost their American-ness. At least as I understand it.

This country was founded without a national religion. You aren't entitled to impose your religious values on anyone else. It's right there up front in the beginning of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

If the pundits make a difference, then we have to do something about this. I think the only remedy that's going to work is to take this out of the realm of partisanship and outside the realm of punditry. Ask a couple of widely respected Americans, one from each party, to view all the tapes of the Wright sermons, and to talk privately with members of his church and the reverend himself. Listen to both sides. Take testimony from people who object. Get a lawyer to represent the p.o.v that Wright disqualifies Obama to be President and hear him or her out. Depose witnesses. Get someone to take the other side, whatever that is. Let's have a trial. Let's get this out of the realm of sensationalism. We have to create our own venue because the existing ones aren't fair.

My guess is that it won't take ten minutes to see that this is all about race. That the supposed strangeness of the black church is the only issue. I believe this because at first I found the Wright soundbites very offensive, but over time, as they became familiar, I couldn't remember what the fuss was about. I think the whole thing loses its power as it becomes less strange. And the best remedy is to make a huge deal about it, but outside the realm of the idiots on cable news. Dignify the whole thing and the issue evaporates.

The press likes to position itself as the referees, which implies a standard of fairness and impartiality and adherence to well-understood rules. They are only referees in a world gone mad. Let's now create a venue for public discourse that is fair.

Fred Wilson: "At least Barack is not running away from who he is. Hillary is pretending to be a Republican man."

Obama leading McCain in Minnesota

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:25:25 GMT

Rasmussen Minnesota poll: Obama 52%, McCain 38%.

San Francisco from Indian Rock

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:53:45 GMT

Hillary explains what superdelegates do

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:50:46 GMT

HRC: "Voters are an important part of the process."

http://sundaygang.com/clinton/2008/04/24/hrcOnVoters.mp3

For the full context see Jon Stewart on the Daily Show.

John McCain a Martian? You decide.

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:35:57 GMT

John McCain, spawn of the devil? You decide.

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:53:53 GMT

More fun, less stuff

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:47:25 GMT

Bush 1.0

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 19:18:29 GMT

Nancy & Newt siting on a couch

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:57:30 GMT

Spooky white plant

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 02:01:29 GMT

Dusty Miller is "grown primarily for its attractive silver-gray foliage..."

IRC for Pennsylvania Primary

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:40:40 GMT

I started a chatroom for tonight's primay.

irc://irc.freenode.net/#PennsylvaniaPrimary

CNN, MSNBC say it's too early to call but HRC is leading.