It was a very good year...for buzzwords

"Picking out political buzzwords from 2008 is like shooting moose in a pigpen," say Mark Leibovich and Grant Barrett, authors of The Buzzwords of 2008.

They note, for example, that "the lifespan of Hillary Clinton’s campaign 'meta-narrative' could be charted entirely in buzzwords and catch-phrases — 'inevitability' to 'Clinton fatigue' to 'Obamamania' to 'he can’t win' to 'team of rivals.'

What really makes this New York Times piece work are the illustrations -- the font and graphics created by Jessica Hische. They're fabulous.

My favorites: Greyjing, recessionista, edupunk, Plutoid and TBTF ("Too Big To Fail," replete with cracks). Which ones do you like best?

Tags: nytimes, buzzwords, graphics, typeface, design, slang

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

What he said

I'd heard about this commentary by Keith Olbermann on the passage of Prop. 8, but hadn't seen it until today. It's heartfelt and worth watching.

Hack the debate?

Perhaps you've read Dan Gillmor's account of the comeuppance of "poor Joe Nacchio," a financial guy who happened to be speaking at an executive conference in 2002 when bloggers first flexed their muscles.

As Gillmor tells it in the introduction to his book, We the Media (available online), he and a couple other bloggers were live-blogging the event, commenting on Nacchio's speech. When Gillmor and another blogger started pointing out some discrepancies between what Nacchio was saying and what he had done, they noticed the audience started getting hostile. Turns out that a lot of them were following the blogs while listening to Nacchio's speech, and they didn't like what they were reading.

We could see something similar take place via microblogging during this Friday's presidential debate (or town hall session, if McCain pulls a no-show).

Current TV and Twitter are planning to run real-time twitter messages ("tweets") over Current TV's live broadcast of the debate. So instead of just listening, viewers can comment on what's being said and see what others are saying...in close to real time.


The Current TV website notes that it will broadcast "as many of your debate tweets as possible right over Obama & McCain, in real time, on our live broadcast."

If you want to take part, all you need is a Twitter account and an internet connection. Then just tweet to your heart's content...and add "#current" to your tweets so they'll be queued for broadcast. You can also follow these tweets by searching #current on Twitter search.

Check it out at: http://current.com/topics/88834922_hack_the_debate

Journalists arrested in St. Paul

You've probably heard about journalists being arrested in repressive nations like China. No big surprise, right? But what would you say if I told you it's happening in the United States of America too?

Find that hard to believe? Think things like that don't happen here? Then watch the video. You'll see Amy Goodman, an award-winning journalist, being arrested by St. Paul police as she was covering a protest outside the Republican National Convention on Monday.

Even though she was clearly identified as a journalist, Goodman was charged with "obstruction of a legal process and interference with a 'peace officer.'" Two of her producers were arrested for "suspicion of felony riot." Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now," a daily radio/TV program that airs on more than 700 stations nationwide.

A more honest charge would have been "covering news stories we don't want the public to see."



During the weeklong Republican National Convention, St. Paul police arrested and jailed 19 media workers, in addition to more than 800 protesters. Police used teargas and flash grenades against protesters.

So much for the First Amendment which, in case you need a refresher, reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

You can read Amy Goodman's account of her arrest here.

Keywords: First Amendment, media, journalism, RNC, MSM, Democracy Now, Amy Goodman

Media matters

Yes, the media does matter. And so does the truth.

It was good to see a major media outlet like ABC News fact-checking aspiring VP Sarah Palin's speech to the Republican National Convention last night. As this ABC news article notes, Palin's speech "bent the truth on her record and on the opposition."

Not surprisingly, she left out the part about her remarkable skill at bringing home millions of "earmarked" federal dollars (our tax dollars at work!) to her community, and her support for the $398 million "bridge to nowhere." So much for being a "reformer."

Continuing his record of our-reporting most of the MSM, Jon Stewart of The Daily Show used Karl Rove and Bill O'Reilly's own words about candidate Palin to demonstrate their hypocrisy in defending her. Palin gets to demonstrate a fine veneer of hypocrisy too.



On a related front, the organization Media Matters for America has 'deconstructed' and charted the Republican smear campaign against Obama, calling it "Swiftboating 2.0" both for its resemblance to the 2004 smear campaign against John Kerry and for their use of web 2.0 techniques to spread the smears.

Media Matters notes:

Just as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth unleashed on the public a dossier of lies about John Kerry in 2004, this new campaign is on a mission to spread misinformation about a presidential candidate.

We call it "Swiftboating 2.0" not only because it is the latest model of a political smear campaign, but also because it shares features of "Web 2.0" sites like Facebook and MySpace: significant portions of the content are generated by ordinary people and are spread from peer to peer. Swiftboating 2.0 combines these new information pathways with traditional media -- books from conservative publishers, right-wing radio, and conservative pundits and strategists on television -- to spread the smears as widely as possible and force them into the mainstream media.

If you don't want to see America get suckered again, don't help spread the lies...instead, spread the word.

Obama!

Obama's speech left me with tears in my eyes and hope in my heart. Maybe we can win America back. Just maybe we can redeem the American dream and America's promise, so damaged over the last several years.

My colleague, Dona, and I almost didn't make it in time for the speech. We were on the way to Lake Tahoe, listening to the convention speeches on NPR, the sound crackling at times among the mountains.

We heard Al Gore's stellar call to action. As we got closer, we wondered if we'd get there in time to see Obama's speech, not just hear it.

When we pulled in the drive, we left everything in the vehicle, ran inside and turned on the TV. The introductory video was just starting. Yes!

Obama's speech filled me with the hope. Maybe we can fulfill America's potential. Maybe we can get back on track. Maybe we can deal with our nation's problems now, instead of foisting them off on future generations.

As the TV cameras panned over the people in the audience, I was struck by how much they looked like California. All ages, all races. Black and white and Asian and Hispanic and more -- all cheering together. All looking ahead. I hope the rest of America sees the promise of that.

And now I'm listening to conservative Patrick Buchanan on MSNBC say, "This is the greatest convention speech. ...This wasn't a liberal speech at all...it was beautiful."

Hell, if Obama can appeal to Buchanan, he can certainly reach Independents...and maybe even some disenchanted Republicans.

Yes, something in America is stirring. Yes, it is.

Old Neocons never die...

They just get appointed to the Hoover Institute, a conservative think tank at Stanford University. That appears to be the only possible explanation for the appointment of Donald Rumsfeld, the totally discredited former Secretary of Defense, as a visiting fellow there. According to this article in the SF Chronicle, Rumsfeld will "participate in a task force examining national security and world peace in the post-Sept. 11 era."

So long, it's been good to know you (not!)

Here's the chorus from an old ditty to commemorate the impending resignation of Karl Rove.

A-rovin', a-rovin', since rovin's been my ru-i-in
I'll go no more a-rovin' with you fair maid.

See related article: "We'll go no more a-Rove-ing" on Salon.com

Statistics, lies and damn lies

Think things are looking up in Iraq because of the surge? Think again. As Juan Cole reports in "A Surge of Phony Spin on Iraq" in Salon.com today:

...the reporters and editors who gave U.S. headlines such as "U.S. Death Toll in Iraq in July Expected to Be Lowest in '07" (New York Times) were being assiduously spun....

The dip in casualties is always substantial in July, since guerrillas usually prefer not to operate with heavy explosives when it is 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade.

And as a tally noted on Foreign Policy magazine's blog, the number of U.S. troop deaths in July, compared with previous years of the war, is anything but a turn for the better:

July 2003: 48
July 2004: 54
July 2005: 54
July 2006: 43
July 2007: 80

Meanwhile, the statistics for the hapless Iraqis themselves are no less discouraging. According to icasualties.org, the Iraqi civilian and military death toll from political violence in July 2007 was 1,690, a 25 percent increase from the July 2006 number, 1,280.

How the News Works?

Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow's take on How the News Works is a little too close to the truth for comfort.

Who's a loser?

Sit through about 30 nausea-inducing seconds of Lindsay "I support the surge" Graham and...wait for it, wait for it...here comes Barbara Boxer!



You go girl!

Okay, now that I've got that out of my system...what an interesting use of a video news clip to frame a point of view, promote a candidate, and raise funds.

More on censorship

For another view of the Pentagon's recent decision to limit web access for troops stationed in Iraq (see my previous post), here's is a panel from Don Asmussen's (a.k.a. "Bad Reporter") latest strip.

The targets of these new Pentagon restrictions? Subversive social media sites like MySpace and YouTube. No, I'm not kidding!


For the rest of Asmussen's strip, found in the SF Chronicle, click here.

Censoring Iraq

If it starts to seem as though things aren't going quite so badly in Iraq, for a change, maybe it's because of Bush's surge...

...or maybe it's because Iraq's interior ministry "has decided to bar news photographers and camera operators from the scenes of bomb attacks," as noted in this ABC News Online article.

...or maybe it's because the Pentagon is now limiting web access for troops stationed in Iraq, as noted in this AP news story by reporter Lolita A. Blador. (If our enlisted men and women can get to an internet cafe, they're okay, but they can no longer use the Defense Department's computer network to access sites like MySpace and YouTube.)

If you want to get a more accurate picture of the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, one good place to start is the news releases link at the Department of Defense web site.

Here's what I found today:

Here's a link to the news release at the top of the list -- it announces the death of "Spc. Rhys W. Klasno, 20, of Riverside, Calif., [who] died May 13 in Haditha, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle."

And, as you can see, there's lots more where that one came from.

Put your money where your mouth is

On a day when SJSU students are staging a protest over ever-increasing tuition and fees, let me quote a few paragraphs from "Stepping on the Dream," a recent NYT Select column by Bob Herbert (published March 22, 2007).

Tamara Draut, in her book, “Strapped: Why America’s 20- and 30-Somethings Can’t Get Ahead,” tells us:

“Back in the 1970s, before college became essential to securing a middle-class lifestyle, our government did a great job of helping students pay for school. Students from modest economic backgrounds received almost free tuition through Pell grants, and middle-class households could still afford to pay for their kids’ college.”

Since then, tuition at public and private universities has soared while government support for higher education, other than student loan programs, has diminished.

This is a wonderful example of extreme stupidity. America will pony up a trillion or two for a president who goes to war on a whim, but can’t find the money to adequately educate its young. History has shown that these kinds of destructive trade-offs are early clues to a society in decline.

At the state level, per-pupil spending for higher education is at a 25-year low, even as government officials and corporate leaders keep pounding out the message that a college degree is the key to a successful future.

...In a nation as rich as ours, it should be easy to pay for college. For some reason, we find it easier to pay for wars.

Amen!

I went to college in the '70s, and I remember those days. I was one of those "students from modest economic backgrounds" and I never would have made it through college without tuition grants, work-study programs, and being able to commute from home.

I didn't get funded my senior year and had to drop out and work full-time for a while. Eventually, with the help of work-study and a small loan, I was able to go back, finish up my classes, and graduate.

When I graduated in 1977, I owed a grand total of $700 in student loans (don't laugh...that was a lot of money to me back then. Honestly, I wouldn't have been able to make it though the last month of my final semester if my Mom hadn't given me an extra $50...I was that close to the edge.) At the time, the job market for newly minted reporters was piss-poor. I got a few freelance assignments (a good way to starve), then got a job and worked (very briefly, because I sucked at it) as an advertising copywriter for a local radio station.

Then I got desperate and started taking anything...the graveyard shift at an emergency call center...a factory job building prefab houses (my hammering arm gave out after about four hours of straight pounding nails through cheap masonite siding). Hell, that's how I ended up taking a job as a small-town reporter in the middle of nowhere in Kansas...if you're willing to go someplace sight unseen, on a Greyhound bus with just two bags of luggage to your name, you know you're desperate for a job.

Yes, I remember those days...maybe that's why I support today's student protest.

It's also why I was happy to chair the JMC Scholarship Committee again this year. The awards reception is tomorrow evening. Although there's never as much money as you'd like, it always feels good to give checks to some deserving students.

SJSU Student Protest: 11:30-1:30 today at Plaza de Cesar Chavez on campus; wear red to show your support.
JMC Academic Achievement Awards Reception: 5-7 p.m., Thursday, April 26, University Room, Student Union, SJSU.

The real reason Gonzales won't step down

You have to read to the very last sentence of the NYT story to find the answer, but it's there -- the real reason why U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales won't step down, despite the growing scandal. Here it is:

...If Mr. Gonzales were to step down, officials argued, it would wrongly lead the public to conclude that he had done something wrong.

Essentially, it's same reason why the president will never agree to set a pull-out date for Iraq. To do so would be to admit he'd made a mistake, that he was wrong...and that is clearly one thing this president cannot abide. Much better to close his eyes and repeat ad nauseam,

"This is an honest, honorable man, in whom I have confidence.”

If that is the case, his standards are incredibly low. But, of course, we've heard this all before...Bush said the same thing about Brownie, Harriet and Rummy...just before they went down the tubes.

We can only wish for Gonzales a similar fate.

Threats 'n fightin' words

I don't know if you've read about the death threats made against blogger Kathy Sierra and the blogosphere's response, including discussions about the need to foster a culture of web civility.

If not, you can catch up with this post and link from Sierra's blog, this joint statement by Sierra and Chris Locke (some of the threatening comments and images were posted on Locke's meankids.org blog, in addition to on Sierra's blog), and this NYT article, "A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs," that discusses the issue and offers links to some suggested codes of conduct.

This morning, I read "Bloggers, Don Imus and free speech," a column in today's Salon.com by Joan Walsh, who earlier wrote this thoughtful piece about the Sierra threats, "Men who hate women on the web." It got me thinking about it all again.

I don't know how I'd react to such threats online. However, I do clearly remember getting a nasty, anonymous note in response to a "letter to the editor" I'd written (criticizing some Bush administration policy) that was published in the Mercury News a few years ago. It was unsettling to think that some warped individual was angry enough and motivated enough to look up my home address and send me an obscene, threatening note. It made me feel like I should be looking over my shoulder; it made me wonder if this nutcase was motivated enough to show up on my doorstep someday. It was kind of scary.

Clearly, that note was meant to intimidate me...to shut me up. Unfortunately, I have to say it did...at least for a while. It made me think twice about submitting any more letters to the editor. It didn't totally stop me, but it did give me pause...and if I'm completely honest, it probably deterred me from writing a few times...before I got over it.

And that was just one threatening letter. I really don't know how I'd deal with an onslaught of nastiness and threatening comments on one of my blogs.

None of that has stopped me from blogging. And if you've read my blog, you know I don't shy away from criticizing the Bush administration. But, hey, my blog isn't exactly well-known or popular, so it's not exactly an issue at this point.

What I do know is that I'd have no qualms about deleting blog comments that are offensive, or blocking comments from mean, nasty or threatening individuals...on this blog or any of my class blogs. Maybe it's the teacher in me; maybe it's because they're my blogs.

I've never had to remove a student post, although I have talked to a student about a post that I felt was inappropriate. I explained why, and I asked the student to modify the post. That took care of it.

I hope that's the most I ever have to do.

Oh, if you have a moment, please check out Kathy Sierra's blog, Creating Passionate Users. Right now she's put up a "best of" series of posts that's simply fascinating. She's an original thinker, and it would be a loss to the rest of us if we let nasty web trolls knock people like her off the web.

(A version of this post is cross-posted on one of my class blogs.)

Wear your flak jacket in Indiana

After visiting a marketplace in Iraq, Rep. Mike Pence, R-Indiana, described it as a safe, busy place..."like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime."

According to a NYT article, Pence and other members of the congressional delegation who visited the market wore bulletproof vests and were escorted by more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees. In addition, U.S. sharpshooters were posted on nearby roofs and attack helicopters circled overhead.

Who knew Indiana had gotten so dangerous?

For more thoughts on marketplaces in Indiana, courtesy of my friend Jan, click here.

Commemorating four years in Irag

If you want to see how far we haven't gotten in Iraq, read today's post by Jonathan Schwarz on the This Modern World blog.

Schwarz lets two quotes from President Bush tell the story -- one from the start of the war four years ago, and one from today. That says it better than I ever could.

by Tom Tomorrow is one of my favorite political strips. You can read the latest one on Salon.com.

Flashback to a war protest

I'd just scanned an article about the Iraq War protests, and moved on to an article about a student free-speech case, when I ran smack-dab into a flashback.

What set it off? It was this paragraph in the NYT article, Free-Speech Case Divides Bush and Religious Right:

Mr. Fredericks’s ensuing lawsuit...pits official authority against student dissent. It is the first Supreme Court case to do so directly since the court upheld the right of students to wear black arm bands to school to protest the war in Vietnam, declaring in Tinker v. Des Moines School District that “it can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

I remember that. I remember wearing a black arm band at school, and I remember Mr. Day, the conservative civics teacher, angrily challenging me and another student in the hallway. "Do you know what you're doing?" he asked, sure that we were just following the crowd, thoughtlessly aping the college crowd whose protests were then making headlines.

I may not have know exactly what I was doing, but I knew this: the Vietnam War was still raging, the draft was still in place, and a couple of my good friends had just drawn low numbers in the draft lottery...which meant that if they weren't accepted into a college, they'd have to decide whether to enlist, wait to be drafted...or make a run for Canada.

Tough choices, especially for young men who hadn't even finished high school yet. Beyond the mounting death toll and our growing awareness of the utter futility of the war, that one thing was enough to warrant black arm bands...a visible sign of mourning for all the lives already lost, and for the next crop of young men about to be thrown into the war's relentless maw.

Today marks four years and counting for the Iraq War. Is the situation really any different now (except for the draft, of course)?

Maybe it's time to start wearing those black armbands again.

Can bloggers be journalists? PR pros think so.

Remember the recent dust-up over the bloggers hired by the John Edwards campaign? In Salon.com, blogger Lindsay Beyerstein explains "Why I refused to blog for Edwards."

The upshot? Her gut feeling was that any liberal blogger who joined the Edwards campaign would face a full-bore attack by right-wing bloggers and conservative groups...and she didn't want to become that kind of target.

And that's exactly what came to pass after Amanda Marcotte, a well-known feminist blogger, joined the Edwards campaign. Right-wing bloggers combed through her Pandagon blog and attacked some of her more provocative posts. Others joined in, and soon it was pig-pile time. Marcotte eventually resigned.

A better model for political blogging, Beyerstein said, is the 2006 Jim Webb Senate campaign, which put two bloggers on its payroll. These bloggers, Josh Chernila and Lowell Feld from Raising Kaine, are the guys who captured the "macaca" moment...and knew what to do with it. Beyerstein explains:

When Webb's videographer captured George Allen's "'macaca' moment"...all the campaign had to do was upload the video to YouTube and send out some well-targeted e-mails to bloggers and other supporters and wait.

Supporters forwarded the clip to their friends. Bloggers started posting the video on their sites. The "macaca" clip got more than 600,000 views on YouTube alone and exploded into the mainstream media.

The lesson for progressives, Beyerstein says, "is how effective bloggers can be when they're outside the campaign." She concludes:

"I think the candidates who benefit the most from the netroots are the ones who can inspire bloggers to do their work for free.... Every campaign needs a blog, but the most important part of a candidate's netroots operation is the disciplined political operatives who can quietly build relationships with bloggers outside the campaign. And the bomb-throwing surrogates need to be outside, where they can make full use of their gifts without saddling a campaign with their personal political baggage."

What I find interesting is that while academics and journalists waste time debating whether or not bloggers ever can be "real" journalists, PR professionals have decided. They are dealing with influential bloggers the same way they deal with influential reporters...by sending them information and trying to build relationships.

"Campaigns 'work' bloggers more or less the same way they work the mainstream press," Beyerstein says. "They send out e-mails and press releases. They make phone calls. They make their candidate available for interviews. They invite bloggers to campaign events. They network in person at Drinking Liberally or the YearlyKos convention."

Sounds like dealing with the media to me.