Mediasphere
Are market forces emerging for pundits?
I presented my paper on public intellectuals and the blogosphere earlier today, and received some very useful feedback. One particularly interesting point in response to my paper is that while my paper focused on bloggers as public intellectuals, it might be the case that bloggers serve an even greater good by engaging in quality control [...]
Glenn Greenwald’s rage against the machine
Remember when I said earlier this week that, “Glenn Greenwald might be a good blogger/collumnist, but he’s not that great at social science”? I apologize — I was clearly in error. Replace “good” with “simplistic and Jacobin” and replace “not that great at social science” with “not aware of the concept of social science.” Then [...]
You can’t blame the media for everything
Glenn Greenwald is getting a lot of play with this post, in which he says the following: In the past two weeks, the following events transpired. A Department of Justice memo, authored by John Yoo, was released which authorized torture and presidential lawbreaking. It was revealed that the Bush administration declared the Fourth Amendment of [...]
Note to self: do not bring short-shorts to Paris
Elaine Sciolino bids a fond farewell to one of the best sinecures in journalism — the Paris desk of the New York Times. Sciolino is a fine reporter/observer, and is not afraid to reveal the following embarrassing anecdote: Don
The New York Times op-ed page mimics the blogosphere
As a blogger, I’ve been bemused by the exchanges between Paul Krugman, David Brooks, and Bob Herbert on the meaning of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign kickoff in Philadelphia, Mississippi. They’re exactly like a typical blog exchange, in that the debate quickly devolves from Big Questions to minutiae. Unlike a typical blog exchange, none of the [...]
And the Joe Bob Briggs award goes to…
Fifteen years ago Joe Bob Briggs wrote a scathing essay on the phenomenon of Sunday morning talk shows — which, mysteriously, does not appear to be online anywhere (the one line I will never forget: “[Robert] Novak is the only human being in history who, on his IRS 1080 form, fills out, “Occupation: Obnoxious”). Since [...]
Lou Dobbs is a big fat liar
New York Times economics columnist David Leonhardt does a public service and fact-checks Lou Dobbs. The results are not pretty (a fact that will not surprise longtime readers of danieldrezner.com). His conclusion: The most common complaint about him, at least from other journalists, is that his program combines factual reporting with editorializing. But I think [...]
The Jonathan Rauch interview
Let me join Andrew Sullivan and Virginia Postrel in linking to this Reason interview with National Jounal columnist Jonathan Rauch. Uneknownst to him, Rauch is partly responsible for the creation of this blog. Two parts of the interview that stand out. The first reflects Rauch’s spot-on take on government: [R]ight-sizing government, if you mean imposing [...]
Most bizarre man in the street interview ever?
Is it just me, or does this C.W. Nevius story in the San Francisco Chronicle — about the public reaction to Mayor Gavin Newsom’s admission of cuckolding one of his principal staff people — contain the wierdest man-in-the-street reaction ever to appear in a major newspaper? Although almost everyone we spoke to admitted to some [...]
Mickey Kaus’ dream article
Ken Auletta’s New Yorker story on CNN and Lou Dobbs has a Mickey Kaus two-fer — potshots at CNN president Jonathan Klein and a discussion of how a hard line on illegal immigration has boosted Lou Dobb’s ratings!! Here are the parts of the article I enjoyed the most: In many ways, Dobbs and Bill [...]
