Sadly, No!

Above: Probably receiving one of those awards that rich kids
get for showing up

---

We don’t know whether you’ve been following Little Horseshoes, Girl Reporter, as she explains, and clarifies, and over-explains, and backfills as to why journalism ought not to cover issues of national consequence, and ought instead to be shallow and sensational, so as properly to flatter and entertain an ignorant consumer class.

But hey, here she goes again:

Media’s sacred trust is sadly not a sacred trust fund

Don’t I have obligations as a journalist beyond crass money grasping? Haven’t I been invested with a sacred trust that shouldn’t be held hostage to profit? Indeed I have: to report stories that are factually correct and more importantly, to the best of my knowledge and ability, fundamentally true. But I don’t think that I have a duty to lose vast sums of money doing so–I already took quite a hefty paycut when I devoted my MBA to journalism. I gave, as they say, at the office.

The Atlantic Unbound,
Keened a querulous sound,
As a wave broke over the railin’.

So did everyone else who took their college degree into journalism, from editors on down. Nor do newspaper owners exactly mint money.

And everyone knew,
As McArdle did too,
That the best she could do, it was failin’.

But this is actually sort of besides the point that I was trying to make when I said that newspapers can’t print stories readers don’t want to read. Both my conservative and my liberal commenters have gotten bogged down in an argument about whether it is possible to make a profit selling stories of the kind Glenn Greenwald desires. I doubt it is on mass scale, but it sort of doesn’t matter.

Does anyone know,
Where the love of God goes,
When the prose turns the minutes to hours?

[…]

Media outlets have a very good idea of what people read, and if there were vast unmet demand for [serious] stories, editors would have met it.

Permalink :: Comments (82) :: TrackBacks (0) ::

The searchers all say,
If she’d stayed an MBA,
Then ruin might never have found her…

…How to be… A millionaire! Give us the ABC’s on that, Mr. David “Martin Fry” Frum:

Republicans took a beating on the Social Security issue in 2005. But the issue is not going away. And Barack Obama’s solution — taxing more income for Social Security — is neither workable nor popular. Personal accounts offer hope for personal wealth to a generation that is increasingly anxious about its economic future. With a relatively small subsidy — $300 per year for workers earning less than $40,000 — a revived Republican personal account plan could guarantee that every American worker would retire a millionaire, even if they never earn more in their lives than minimum wage.

Yeah, baby! Voodoo economics is back! Also, if we completely dismantle Medicare, every American gets 10 free heart transplants. Woo-hoo!

H/t: Roy.

Michael Medved hops, skips and jumps to a conclusion:

Now that we’ve broken barriers with history’s first viable female and African-American candidates, opponents of organized religion hope for a new campaign in which a brave politician makes a credible run for the highest office even while proclaiming his non-belief.

Aiyee! What was the high-pitched noise that just pierced my eardrum, yet remained on the periphery of frequencies I can consciously perceive? Whatever it was, I’ve suddenly developed a sneaking suspicion of dark-skinned presidential candidates who don’t believe in God and wear skirts.

Just as the Queen plays a formal role as head of the Church of England, the President functions as head of the “Church of America” – that informal, tolerant but profoundly important civic religion that dominates all our national holidays and historic milestones.

Uh, please explain?

For instance, try to imagine an atheist president issuing the annual Thanksgiving proclamation. To whom would he extend thanks in the name of his grateful nation –-the Indians in Massachusetts?

Ha ha, good point. Like, what did they ever do to deserve thanks?

Then there’s the significant matter of the Pledge of Allegiance. Would President Atheist pronounce the controversial words “under God”? If he did, he’d stand accused (rightly) of rank hypocrisy.

Indeed, it’s quite plausible that President Atheist would spontaneously combust if he lolled the word “God” around his filthy mouth and let the syllable drop from his blister-scarred lips. This sort of thing happens to Hitchens all the time during television appearances.

And if he didn’t, he’d pointedly excuse himself from a daily ritual that overwhelming majorities of his fellow citizens consider meaningful.

Damned if he does, damned if he — Wait a second. Do presidents — including our current president, a fellow who’d certainly hold no objections to reciting every word to the Pledge of Allegiance, even those somewhat more recent addenda — actually take part in this ritual every day? Does anyone actually do this, besides elementary school children? Heck, do they even do this anymore, as a general rule?

The United States remains a profoundly, uniquely religious society: “a nation with the soul of a church” in Tocqueville’s durable phrase. A president need not embrace one of the nation’s leading faiths … A president with a mandate doesn’t have to be a regular church-goer, or even a convinced believer; but he can’t openly reject the religious sensibility of nearly all his predecessors and nearly all his fellow citizens.

Shorter Medved: All we ask, as people of faith, is that you go through the motions — for our sake, if not yours.

A leader who touts his non-belief will, even with the best of intentions, give the impression that he looks down on the people who elected him.

And isn’t that what religion is for, is improving self esteem? (“The LORD preserves the faithful, but the proud he pays back in full.” Psalms 23:13) Or not, perhaps.

Uh-oh! Time for another jeremiad!

The remaining half of this column bogs down somewhat predictably in technical jargon about psychic warfare (“…the ongoing war on terror represents a furious battle of ideas and we face devastating handicaps if we attempt to beat something with nothing”) and speculative foreign policy (“President Atheist says he believes in nothing, so it’s easy to assume that he leads a war against belief itself”), before finally returning to more practical concerns:

[E]ven if an atheist president agrees that the well-being of the nation benefits from the spread of vigorous, non-fanatical religious faith, his own status as an openly proclaimed non-believer presents formidable handicaps for the encouragement of those values and institutions. For instance, Dr. Billy Graham has brought tens of millions to Christian commitment, but how could an unabashed atheist honor this achievement?

Hell, I dunno. Send the vice president?

Nancy Morgan is back, and this time she’s mad.

Debating Liberals

…That is, she’s mad-as-in-angry, not as in nutrageously, hairball-coughingly, koo-koo-ka-joo-Mrs.-Robinsonly bonkadoodle — which, well, there appear to be no new ships on that particular blue horizon, if you know what we’re saying.

Apparently she posted her column “White Racism” at Daily Kos, and the people there weren’t all like, “Say, that’s a fresh and much-needed perspective.” A key passage:

Consider: Just as terrorists consider appeasement a sign of weakness and thus feel emboldened to further acts of terror, so do racial hucksters become emboldened and validated every time a white is forced to sing mea-culpa for even mentioning race.

And now she’s telling on the Kos Kids for being such big liberal meanies.

If you suspect that Ms. Morgan doesn’t actually, really want to debate, but only wants to engage in the echt-conservative ritual — the primordial I-am of the descendants of Goldwater — of expressing before unwilling others the seething core of resentment that lies at the heart of conservatism (i.e., only wants to be affirmed despite herself), you probably know what she’s going to say in this new column.

Common talk-radio conservatives, who number in the tens of millions, don’t want to debate, per se, and don’t even want to win the debates they find themselves compulsively starting. They don’t want their grievances eased or hurts salved. What they want, really, is for their great, historic argument between a noble ‘us’ and a villainous ‘them’ to keep roiling, for the pique of the heated moment never to go away leaving them empty and lonely. What they want is for the argument never to end.

How does one debate with a liberal? Sorry, under current rules, debate is not allowed.

Oh, okay then. Doop-de-doop, turnin’ on the TV.

Just as our new national conversation on race is limited exclusively to authentic blacks, so is any…

See, there she goes already. No consistency.

But hold on a second. Already we have the complaint that white people aren’t allowed to talk about race, while Ms. Morgan keeps talking about race. What she really means is that white conservatives can say any ding-dang thing they want, all the doo-dah day, but if they talk about race — which they so often do — people disagree with them and call them idiots.

And okay, hold on another second. Let’s try this again. What’s this about ‘authentic blacks’ when the conversation on race has presented us, for weeks on end, with a ceaseless pageant of white conservatives braying woundedly, joyously about every tiny last inconvenience that each has suffered in order to avoid being labeled a bigot, just because black people are so incredibly sensitive and can’t take a joke and are inferior and murderous and lazy, and so forth? — thus and therefore forcing them, these conservatives, with tears dampening their sleeves, to reassess Brown v Board of Education, if not the Civil Rights Act of 1875, not to mention identifying specific black people who, in everyone’s best interest and free-at-last, free-at-last, ought to be called by the n-word? Hooray, a conversation on race!

Because okay, clarification: Does ‘authentic blacks’ mean that Thomas Sowell, Star Parker, Shelby Steele, and the rest of the Republican Quisling set have been inadequately represented in the conversation, apart from all the columns and the being-on-TV and other such trifles, just because most black people despise everything they stand for, or does it suggest the entry into the conversation of actual lawn jockeys, molded and enameled to resemble small, fanciful Negroes of antebellum-Southern aspect?

But we’re getting a bit far ahead of things. Morgan is still approaching the point:

…so is any semblance of debate with those on the left limited to those who accept the rules of debate, as defined by liberals. Just as Boy Clinton redefined the meaning of sex, so have liberals redefined the meaning of debate. If your view doesn’t accord with the progressive, politically correct elites, the debate is relabeled an ‘argument’, your opinion is redefined as a ‘judgment’ and both are promptly dismissed.

This is that post hoc ergo propter hoc thing that people are always talking about. Nancy runs into a room, hair knotted and nails chewed, eyes hollow and burning like abyssal coals, and goes, “Aiee! Zarg! Fleen!” waving a poo-smeared garden rake. Later she types a plaint about how liberals will run out the door yelling for the police unless you have a manicure.

By controlling language, the left controls and defines the issues. Hillary didn’t lie about being under fire in Bosnia, she merely misspoke. The rules stipulate that only conservatives lie. If you’re on the left, you’re either factually incorrect, mistaken or just plain human. Liberals call this a win-win situation, which is one of the few times they are factually correct.

If the member of the vast right wing conspiracy (conservative) persists in trying to debate the original issue, liberals then revert to personal attacks.

Above: Nice wig, Mike Myers

Attacking the messenger as mean-spirited usually does the trick.

If only.

The indignant liberal then has carte blanche to personally vilify the messenger while touting his own moral vitas. Very effective.

But oho. There’s also the correcting-your-usage trick, in which liberals point out that a ‘vitas’ is a brief autobiographical statement, and not a synonym of ‘bona fides’ or ‘virtues.’ Oooh, liberals.

To Ms. Grace’s credit, though, she made it through ‘carte blanche,’ ‘vilify,’ and ‘touting’ — indispensable accessories in the conservative opinion columnist’s socket set. If a liberal isn’t ‘touting’ some dumb thing, he or she is ‘vilifying’ some perfectly good thing. And then they go back to ‘touting’ something else!

It’s like they have carte blanche; we are shocked and appalled. We are in fact shocked, appalled, and dismayed.
Read the rest of this entry »

Ace discusses the Negro problem

---

Oh, sweet Mother of God on a grilled cheese sandwich, but Time Magazine, which a few years ago canonized the Three Stooges of Powerline as Bloggers of the Year has put up its first annual Blog Index. And who should appear on it but the Ace of Spades, who achieves this mention as a result of this “sample” post:

So long as Obama’s having that “open, candid” discussion about race we’ve all so long wanted to have, perhaps we can finally begin to address the virulent anti-Semitism infecting large segments of the black population while we’re at it, huh? Or wait—are we not having that “open, candid” a discussion?

That is, of course, an important matter for candid discussion because there are whole legions of Jews who work in menial jobs and get refused service at Cracker Barrel¹ because of oppression by their African-American overlords. Not to mention that Ace gets his familiarity with the opinions of “large segments of the black population” not by actually spending any time with any non-imaginary black people but instead by sitting home during the day watching Fox News while large segments of the black population are working at actual jobs.

Worse, Ace has the highest score of all the blogs in the Index based on readers’ votes. So you know what to do, Sadlynauts. Spit on your hands and go do the pirate thing (figuratively, of course) by voting for Indexed, currently in second place.²

[Thanks, josephdietrich, for the alert]

¹ Gavin adds: There’s a joke somewhere in here about other ‘Barrel’ restaurants with cuisine inspired by American ethnic groups besides the rural-Caucasian. Prototype: “Michelle Malkin was refused service at Cholo Barrel.” Needs work, please give suggestions.
² Gavin also adds, as per suggestion: Or, more to the occasion, to vote Ace’s numbers down.

ABOVE: (left to right) Ernie, Rubber Duckie,
Roger Kimball

---

You’d think that a New York Times article that planted a big sloppy wet French kiss on John McCain would be welcomed over at Pajamas Media. But that would just prove that you were unfamiliar with PJ Media’s resident fashion plate, Roger Kimball, and his latest piece of nonsense, which he thoughtfully titled “Why I Do Not Like The New York Times, Section 10, Chapter 687,” for those who might not otherwise get the point. Roger managed to see the article, which praised the military service of McCain’s son, as further proof that the Times staff spends every waking hour plotting the best way to provide Al Qaeda with detailed instructions on how to build a suitcase nuke.

Roger starts his riff on the Times article with a little bit of fractured syntax that would make Pastor Swank blush with envy:

The latest contribution to malicious journalistic non-entity dilated on the fact Mr. McCain says very little publicly about his son’s service in the United States Marines.

If he’d just said the “malicious journalistic non-entity global splash dilated on the fact,” then the homage to Swank would have been complete.

As Jodi Kantor . . . noted in the course of her story, Mr. McCain has refrained from mentioning his son’s service with the Marines 1) because he did not want to be seen to be using it for political gain and 2) he wished “to protect him from becoming a prize target.”

You might think that even the Times would applaud number 1, but Jodi manages to cast a miasma of suspicion over even that aspect of Mr. McCain’s behavior, writing that he “has largely maintained a code of silence about his son.” What she means is that he hasn’t said much about it. But only dodgy people—you know, mafiosi, army generals, and Republican politicians—maintain “codes of silence.”

Ah, yes, there it is: the famous liberal tactic of smear by miasma. And the reporter was probably whistling the theme from The Godfather when she wrote the sentence in order to transmit telepathically to her readers the image of John McCain dressed up as Don Corleone and talking like he’d swallowed a box of cotton balls.

But now for the real wingnut magic — watch Kimball transform a piece that speaks favorably about the military service of McCain’s son into, well, a threat to his life:

I wonder how Ms. Kantor and her editors feel about the second reason Mr. McCain gave for not talking publicly about his son’s service? Ms. Kantor notes that “The McCains declined to be interviewed for this article, which the campaign requested not be published.” But she published it anyway. What if, God forbid, some harm comes to the junior McCain?

Clearly saying that Corporal McCain is a Marine and has served a tour of duty gives the Iraqi insurgents all the information they need to take him out — which, is why, of course Roger would never name a Marine in print.

Would she feel badly about that? Would she think, “Gee, perhaps I should not have published details about the military service of a son of a prominent politician?” I doubt it.

One of the requirements for becoming a Pajamas Media blogger is the ability to read the mind of reporters at the New York Times. Here at Sadly, No! our powers are somewhat more limited, so we have to settle for ridiculing Roger’s preposterous bow ties and his uncanny resemblance to a puppet from a kiddie show. Besides would anyone really want to read Roger Kimball’s mind?

Above: Burgermeister Meisterburger hates toys

---

Question: When will the wingers come up with fresh and original attacks on Democratic politicians? A case in point is today’s New York Times column by William the Bloody:

Then there’s the fact that we’re at war. As a Congressional staffer put it, “Here’s something to consider: Although Hillary will be out in May, she may determine the outcome in November. McCain’s secret weapon — among Clinton supporters — may be Hillary’s 3 a.m. national security ad.”

And an experienced Democratic operative e-mailed: “Finally, I think [McCain’s] going to win. Obama isn’t growing in stature. Once I thought he could be Jimmy Carter, but now he reminds me more of Michael Dukakis with the flag lapel thing and defending Wright. Plus he doesn’t have a clue how to talk to the middle class. He’s in the Stevenson reform mold out of Illinois, with a dash of Harvard disease thrown in.”

In a close race, that “dash of Harvard disease” could be the difference.

Blah, blah, blah. We know. Obama is an elitist who doesn’t like cheesesteak and who probably windsurfs. Real salt-of-the-Earth, red-blooded Americans like Bill Kristol find his disdain for the typical American reprehensible, and will thus be forced to vote for another crazy gasbag who will get us into more imperial wars.

Can’t these guys come up with something more original? Or is the American public really so stupid that they’ll only vote for someone who eats artery-clogging shit? Do I really want to know the answer to that question?

Obama vs. McCain Bumper Stickers

• Watch me use Barack Obama’s bumper stickers to prove that he’s really just another divisive race-baiter like Al Sharpton who… aw shit, McCain’s doing the same thing. Disregard!

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.

As an aside, do you think there will ever come a point where any of these guys will become too embarrassed to ever blog again? Do I dare to dream?

Will Racial Politics Ever End?

Above: If you talk too long to the hand, the hand talks also to you¹

• The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. lived and died so that black people could quit complaining and look on the bright side — yet once again they are weakening America’s spirit with their special-interest pleadings.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.

¹ Cf.

Inequality and excess

• Sure, having vast inequalities between the super-rich and everyone else might not seem like an ideal way to run a society, but things will be much worse if the government tries to oppress Bill Gates by making him pay taxes.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.

And just so you know, I discovered this piece via the Ole Perfesser, who seems to have a nose for finding the most insultingly illogical bits of foolishness on the Internets.

Check out this tasty excerpt:

Can you name the members of the County Council in Montgomery County, Maryland? I can’t name very many of them, and I live there. Still, getting elected to the County Council in Montogmery County, which is pretty far down the ladder in terms of political power in the United States, enables you to control more annual spending than the wealth of Donald Trump or Steven Jobs.

At the Federal level, the Budget is $3 trillion. If you divide that by 535 (the number of of Senators and Congressmen), then on average each legislator controls over $5 billion in spending per year. That is more than even the world’s richest person could spend annually.

At this point, you may be thinking that this is not a valid comparison. It is misleading to compare legislative budgets with the wealth of Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, because legislators are spending money on all of us. They are not spending money on themselves.

Well yes, that is something of a key difference, isn’t it? In fact, it’s such a key difference that it sortakinda makes your entire comparison between Donald Trump and the Montgomery County Counselors stupid and meaningless.

Even so, it’s nice to see that some of these guys are actually refuting their own arguments. Saves me the work.