Fortuna Faveat... may fortune favor us

I cannot overestimate how important it is that all of us, from the young to the old, National Review readers to Bravo watchers, read this article. The reach of its material touches each and every one of us, no matter how engaged in the broader world we think we might (or might not) be. Ostensibly, it is about the investment bank Goldman Sachs. In reality, it highlights the task ahead if we, as human beings, are to overcome the megalithic obstacles placed in front of us. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you will definitely want to punch someone in the face.

As Taibbi says,

It’s not always easy to accept the reality of what we now routinely allow these people to get away with; there’s a kind of collective denial that kicks in when a country goes through what America has gone through lately, when a people lose as much prestige and status as we have in the past few years. You can’t really register the fact that you’re no longer a citizen of a thriving first-world democracy, that you’re no longer above getting robbed in broad daylight, because like an amputee, you can still sort of feel things that are no longer there.Matt Taibit
Rolling Stone

You simply must read this excellent piece of Journalism. Then listen to James Brown. That is all.

You are looking at an original Thriller picture disc (in original packaging), the very first full-length album I ever owned. I had previously purchased Twisted Sister’s 45 of We’re Not Gonna Take It and Van Halen’s Jump/Panama 45 split. This piece of Americana, pressed into vinyl, was given to me by my parents on my fourth birthday. All my pre-school friends were at the house and we put it on my Fisher-Price record player and danced around. What a fantastic memory!

As I type this, I’m listening to Number Ones and Michael’s unwitting presence throughout my life is crystallizing. His influence snuck up on me, from my pre-school dance party to my favorite college bar, where I would play Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough, each and every time I was there, on the best jukebox in Lawrence. I was always a fan, but I was never conscious of how much his work touched my life until today. It wasn’t Michael himself (thankfully) that made an impression on me. It was his pervasive presence in world culture, his undeniably excellent music. Regardless of his misdeeds and extreme creepiness, both of which cannot be ignored, that cultural impact is indelible.

Still, I didn’t give him a second thought after Scream was released. As far as I was concerned he was done as an artist at that point; the freak-flag-flying had won the war. But his legions of fans carried on and many are devastated around the world today. I can’t help but think that those who are so very sad today shouldn’t be.

The Michael Jackson that we all loved and were so influenced by died years ago. The “man” that died yesterday was trapped in a body he clearly despised, existing in a state of pseudo-humanity. He is finally free. In spite of any folly or mischief that may have led to this end, we should be happy for him. He could finally stop; he’d gotten enough.

War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength…Eric Arthur Blair
AKA George Orwell (from 1984)

It is George Orwell’s birthday today and his words have never rung truer. He would have been 106.

Thanks for the reminder, @tmorello!

1) Seriously, Bill Keller, why would you agree to this interview? Did your kids want to see you on the funny news show?
2) Rick Berke: you really never considered that a newspaper contains “aged” news? Your web staff just threw up in their mouths.
3) Kristin Mason: for future reference, the coordination of communications involves the ability to deviate from script.

This was amateur hour with the senior staff of one of the biggest media companies in the world. They got their asses handed to them by the same actor who stole Ted’s fiance on How I Met Your Mother. Perhaps if Keller didn’t spend so much time at the Baghdad bureau, he could turn the news organization he runs into a 21st century operation. Goo.

Disclosure: This was written by someone who occasionally does his own reporting, but usually does get by poking holes in the shoddy work of others.

Sorry for the missing sidebar content. I haven’t had time to dig in and fix this yet. Thankfully, the rest of the site is functional. Please excuse the mess. Fixed via downgrade to 2.7.1. More thoughts after the jump! Read more »

Edit: Good news! As I was adding the final polish to this piece, I saw the news over at BlogKC that the Kansas City Star now claims they will run same-sex announcements. A welcome change in policy, indeed.

The Kansas City Star recently refused to run the wedding announcement of a gay couple from Blue Springs, MO. The couple was married in Iowa, where same-sex marriage was legalized by the Iowa Supreme Court on April 3rd.

This decision by the Star is confusing for multiple reasons. Their rationale is that they are just following Missouri law. Hmmm…Missouri doesn’t have a law banning the announcement of same-sex marriages in other states. That would be a gross violation of the freedom of the press, or what some of us call a first amendment right. No, the Star is referring to the fact that Missouri does not recognize same-sex marriages and therefore neither does the Star (or the Independence Examiner, who also refused the announcement).

Funny, because the Star had no problem discussing, and therefore announcing, the celebrity marriage of Ellen DeGeneres to Portia de Rossi in an article titled “Stargazing: A look back at ‘08″ back on December 30, 2008, or talking about the possibility of DeGeneres and de Rossi marrying at the Bush ranch in a piece called “Talkers: Will Bush say ‘yep’?” on May 25, 2008. Evidently announcing marriages of citizens in other states isn’t an issue, just local same-sex marriages. This bugs me on a 14th amendment level, obviously, but what is really puzzling about this decision has nothing to do with the small-mindedness of the Star’s classified editorial staff. It has to do with the stupid business sense of that same staff.

Please bear with me as I impart some of the wisdom I gathered in journalism school upon the Star staff. Someone wants to fill the classified pages of the Kansas City Star with something, anything, and you say no? Your paper is going the way of the dodo and you act in a way to avoid the extra handfuls of sales that the friends and family of these men would provide? You should be begging for sales, begging for anything that would help make one more payment on your giant glass monument to the days of yore. You are dinosaurs and you forget your place.

It remains unclear exactly why the Star wouldn’t run the announcement, since their stated reason is obvious malarkey. KMBC-TV was not afraid of this story and they deserve credit for that, even if they can’t figure out how to format video correctly for the web or let pithy bloggers like me embed said video. Watch the story, you’ll see what I mean on all counts.

Full disclosure: I was once an in utero member of the Kansas City Star classified staff.

“On the question of whether or not Iraq was involved in 9-11, there was never any evidence to prove that…”

You read that headline correctly. Dick Cheney actually admitted Monday (on Fox News) that the United States never had any evidence of Iraqi involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Back in 2003, it was a far different story seeping from the lips of Dick Cheney. He didn’t actually come out and say Saddaam pulled the trigger, but he certainly left that impression in the capable hands of the mainstream media for their saber-rattling pleasure. It looked something like this on September 16, 2003, even in the dubious Boston Globe:

But Cheney left that possibility wide open in a nationally televised interview two days ago, claiming that the administration is learning “more and more” about connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq before the Sept. 11 attacks. The statement surprised some analysts and officials who have reviewed intelligence reports from Iraq.Anne E. Kornblut and Bryan Bender
Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent

As Raw Story puts it, this comes just a bit late for the 4,308 U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq. That says nothing of the 100,000-ish Iraqi civilians that have died as a result of our unnecessary invasion. I guess we just add this to the ever-expanding Bush/Cheney dossier at The Hague.

In a speech that beggars reason, former constitutional law professor Barrack Obama proposed a new system of “Indefinite Preventative Detention” through which anyone believed likely to commit a crime at some point in the future, U.S. citizen or otherwise, can be locked up forever without charge, trial, jury or appeal. Anyone read Phillip K. Dick’s The Minority Report? Maybe you saw the movie? Remember how well those experiments in “pre-crime” turned out?

This honestly makes me so angry I can hardly type these words. When Bush suspended Habeus Corpus, it was an indefinite suspension. As Obama said in his newspeak-riddled speech, his goal is to codify a new system altogether, one that legalizes indefinite detention. Why? Because he isn’t above the law. Holy shit! I cannot believe I am forced to qualify Bush’s Sherman-like slash-and-burn of our civil liberties as a lesser evil! Damn you, Obama, for making me do that!

I love the fact that we have opened up stem-cell research and no longer fund ostrich-only education, but this is unforgivable. Throw the bastard out!

Vent with me and listen to the wisdom of The Tossers…

I sat down to write about this post over at Wired’s Threat Level and an entire diatribe on the human condition started pouring out. Not only was that not my point, but worse, it wasn’t a good diatribe. So I’ve boiled it and completely dehydrated it down into the following delicious bouillon cube of humanity:

Human beings are strange creatures. We are inevitably confronted by evil that wells from within us all and that evil is fomented by our waning society. We create false constructs to deal with that evil and place them between ourselves and the other human beings. We do this because many of us don’t recognize the only cure is the antiseptic of understanding and accepting each other. This is the human dilemma.

To my original point, Rep. Linda Sanchez’ (D-Los Angeles) bill (H.R. 1966) is moronic and seems to be striving to make all of us less human through censorship. By her reasoning, this post, designed to “coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person,” warrants my incarceration for up to two years. Please don’t let her stupidity spread beyond the 14 17 (eek! It’s spreading!) co-sponsors of this legislation, conveniently listed for your derision after the jump.

Do us all a favor and hug a human being today. Read more »

Take a moment and watch this great (and brief) entry from the GOOD series Transparency entitled “Jailbirds”. The production values alone make it worth watching. By no means is this an in-depth (and therefore, more damning) look at our penal system, but even these prima facie points compel change.

Given the devastating losses in public education funding (1, 2, 3) we are seeing across the nation, don’t you think it is time we reconsider our draconian penal system? That says nothing of the embarrassment that we, the land of the free, jail more people than China and Russia combined.

This needs to change. Leadership needs to occur at the state level, a pulpit much more easily managed by the populace. A few key decisions by a Governor can turn these horrible statistics around. Let’s get started!