Dan Lyons : The Internet Splits in Two

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski speaks to media on net neutrality December 1, 2010 at FCC headquarters in Washington, DC. Photo by Alex Wong / Getty Images.
Compromise on net neutrality:
The Internet splits in two

By Dan Lyons / The Daily Beast / December 22, 2010

Tuesday’s FCC ruling on net neutrality shifts billions in profits and boils down to one fact: There will soon be a fast Internet for the rich and a slow Internet for the poor.

The Federal Communications Commission approved a set of net neutrality rules Tuesday, and nobody is happy. While liberals claim the FCC has caved to pressure from carriers, right-wingers are calling the new rules a government takeover of the Internet. In their tea-addled brains, the new rules represent yet another example of creeping socialism taking over every aspect of our lives. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is "Julius Seizure." Cue the black helicopters.

No matter what you think about the new rules, however, they signal an important turning point in the development of the Internet. We are going from Phase One, where everything is free and open and untamed, into Phase Two, which is all about centralization, consolidation, control -- and money.

Because don’t kid yourself. Money is driving all of this. As in: Hey, we’ve created this marvelous new platform for communicating with each other. We’ve demonstrated that very large sums of money can be generated by sending stuff over these wires. Now let’s figure out who gets what.

Tuesday’s new FCC rules grant two big concessions to carriers. First, the rules will apply to wired broadband connections, but they will pretty much leave wireless alone. Second, carriers remain free to create “fast lanes” on the Internet. They can charge Internet companies to ride on the faster pipes, and perhaps also charge consumers more money to get access to those speedy services.

That is a huge deal. It means we are entering an age in which we will have two Internets -- the fast one, with great content, that costs more (maybe a lot more) to use, and then the MuggleNet, which is free but slow and crappy. Cable TV vs. rabbit ears.

On wireless -- which eventually will be the more important platform -- that disparity will be even more evident. The rich will get great stuff. The poor will get, well, what the poor usually get, which is not much.

Oddly enough this bifurcation resonates beyond just the speed of our Internet connection. It also is happening to information itself. We could be heading into a world where the rich get better information, from a wider choice of sources, while the poor get less.

That’s already happening, to some extent. If you’re a trader on Wall Street and can afford a Bloomberg terminal, you get better information sooner than the poor schlumps who are home trying to play at being day traders.

It will happen even more as news organizations, like Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and The New York Times, start putting content behind pay walls.

And so the digital divide widens into an information divide, which of course has huge implications for politics, economics, and even democracy itself.

Consider that in the 2008 election both sides were struggling to reach so-called low information voters. What happens when access to information becomes even more restricted? Where your ability to become informed is based upon your ability to pay? That’s the world we’re heading into. The first 15 years of the Internet, where it was all about peace and love and freedom, are drawing to a close.

The ultimate irony is that we are creating an information age where some of us -- many of us -- will get less information instead of more.

In his terrific new book, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, Columbia University professor Tim Wu describes the way every new communication platform starts out with a phase where there is openness and innovation, and where lots of amateurs (now we call many of them “hackers”) try out different things and spout lots of utopian rhetoric about making the world a better place.

Then, about 15 years in, things start to close down and become more centralized. The new platform becomes dominated by a small number of companies in the hands of powerful visionaries with an urge for empire-building. This also happened in telegraph, movies, radio, telephone -- and now it’s happening to the Internet.

Steve Jobs is building an empire around selling music, movies, and news to people who own iPhones and iPads. Mark Zuckerberg is building an empire around the gathering and selling of the personal data of a half a billion people.

Now the carriers get their slice of the action. A lot of people hate the carriers, but try, for a moment, to see the world through their eyes. For 15 years they have sat around watching hundreds of billions of dollars of market value get created on the end of their wires (Google, eBay, Apple, Netflix, Amazon, Facebook) while all they get is a puny monthly subscriber fee.

The carriers won’t say this publicly, but I’m sure they resent being denied a share of the wealth being created on the platform that they’ve been so kind to build and maintain for the rest of us. What they also won’t say publicly, or at least not in this blunt a fashion, is: If you want us to keep building out more bandwidth, then start sharing the loot. Otherwise you can go build your own high-speed network.

Obnoxious? Certainly. But also persuasive. The FCC’s compromise probably represents the best deal anyone could get.

What this means for society remains to be seen. But I’m pretty sure those of us who have been around for Phase One of the Internet are going to look back on these last 15 years as the good old days.

[Dan Lyons is technology editor at Newsweek and the creator of Fake Steve Jobs, the persona behind the notorious tech blog, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. Before joining Newsweek, Lyons spent 10 years at Forbes. This article was originally published by the The Daily Beast and was distributed by Free Press.]

Obama caves on net neutrality



Interview with Timothy Karr, director of Free Press, by the Young Turks

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Jonah Raskin : Tina Brown is Blushing Bride

Blushing bride. Image from Weddingstar.
READ THIS SKIP THAT:
The Daily Beast weds Newsweek

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / November 16, 2010

Mergers of media giants usually attract attention in the media, and for the moment the merger of Newsweek and The Daily Beast is big news. Tina Brown is back -- perhaps bigger than ever before. The former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, and the founder and the editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast, Brown described the merger as a “marriage,” and added that some marriages take longer than others to happen.

Brown brings a certain amount of sex appeal with her to her new job at Newsweek, as well as considerable experience in print media. But her sex appeal and her experience hardy seem enough to rescue the 75-year-old news magazine and rival of Time that is owned by Sidney Harman -- now 92-years-old; it will take more than Brown to prevent the sinking of that hoary old beast, Newsweek.

It’s estimated that Newsweek will lose $20 million this year; The Daily Beast -- that’s owned by Barry Diller’s Inter Active Corp (IAC) -- is only expected to lose $10 million this year. IAC also owns Evite and Excite and more. Newsweek thinks that online journalism and information is the shot in the arm that it needs; The Daily Beast thinks that Newsweek will add credibility. If it's a marriage, as Brown says it is, than It's more like a shot-gun marriage than a marriage of true love.

In either case, no one under the age of 25 is reading either Newsweek or The Daily Beast, which is a good reason advertisers are not flocking to either of them. The marriage ---or merge -- between the two of them seems like an act of desperation more than anything else.

The bigger story that the merger hides is the crisis of old-fashioned print media that print media doesn’t want to face, and doesn’t want to write about. It’s one of the biggest news stories of our time, and it’s not going to go away. It’s bigger than TV or the movies or radio, and one of these days we’re going to read a news story that says “Newsweek Closes Shop.”

Jonah Raskin is a professor of communication studies at Sonoma State University.]

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Jonah Raskin : Class of '09 Speaks Out on New Media

For four months, from 6 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. every Wednesday, freedom of speech seemed to be alive and well in an old fashioned classroom where students asked questions, talked in small groups and wrote with pens and pencils on lined-paper.

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / May 31, 2009

Ben is a newly minted college graduate in California. He’s in his early twenties, energetic and hopeful, and he has recently created and published his own flashy magazine. In many ways, though he belongs to the current generation that supposedly thrives on Facebook and Twitter, he is still very much caught up in old print media.

Readers can actually touch and hold his magazine. They can turn its pages. “The latest technology has freed us from the four walls of our bedrooms,” Ben says. “But it has also restricted us. Social network sites supposedly allow us to ‘express ourselves.’ And yet they also limit our ability to express ourselves. Moreover, the proper way to write and communicate has been lost in the transition to new media.”

Kent belongs to the same generation as Ben; he, too, is a recent college graduate. During his senior year he worked as an intern at one of the radio stations in the Pacifica network of non-commercial stations. Like Ben, Kent has apprehensions about the brave new technological world he and his contemporaries have entered. He also wants very much to be a part of it. “The convergence of media is a fearful thing,” he said. “It can be used for all the wrong reasons. Big Brother can use it to watch us and control us. But I want to be a part of the revolution that is taking place and that is changing the ways that people receive news and information.”

Ben and Kent were students in a class that I taught in the spring 2009 semester. They and 63 other college seniors sat in a large lecture hall where I taught communication law. For four months -- from January through May -- all of us thought long and hard about the ways that new media is changing old laws about privacy, libel, copyright and the First Amendment. We talked, argued, debated, discussed the use of the “F” word,’ the “N” word, the “C” word and more. The only rule in the class was this -- “it is forbidden to forbid.” No fights broke out, and no one personally attacked any one else. For four months, from 6 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. every Wednesday, freedom of speech seemed to be alive and well in an old fashioned classroom where students asked questions, talked in small groups and wrote with pens and pencils on lined-paper.

Karen was another senior in the class, and while she was happy to finish four years of college she was also apprehensive about entering the job market knowing full well that a job would be difficult to find given the high levels of unemployment. “Now that I’m graduating it all seems so surreal,” she said. Like Ben and Kent, Karen was aware of the speed with which changes are happening in the media. “It’s not the same as it used to be 50 years ago, or even 50 minutes ago,” she said. “Media is constantly changing and to be involved with it as I hope to be, I know I must change in order to stay current.”

Most of the students in the class feel ambivalent about the changes that are taking place. They don’t see any way to stop them, or even slow them down. And, though they have grown up their entire lives with computers, and have always used them, they also look back with a sense of nostalgia to a world before computers, the Internet, and the Web took hold. Some of the students, especially those from other countries, came of age in worlds without modern technology. Maria was born and raised in Brazil, in a town in which no one had a telephone at home. Everyone who wanted to make a call had to go to a phone in the street.

“The moment I put my feet down in the United States in 2001, I literally thought that I had stepped into a spaceship,” she said. “I felt I was reborn. Now that I’ve been in this new environment for the past eight years, and now that everything seems to be available literally in the palm of my hand, I notice that I am no longer satisfied with what I have. I am continually reaching for the next new thing, the next new Apple phone. I want the first flying car, and I want to be able to go to the moon in a few hours.”

Jenny was born in the United States -- in the green, rolling hills of Kentucky before moving to California -- and like Maria she also grew up without much technology. “My parents were young, carefree hippies,” she said. “I never had a Barbie, a boob tube, a video game, or a computer, though I do remember my mother listening to National Public Radio.” Jenny doesn’t feel deprived by her hippie parents, and she hopes to raise children as she was raised -- without a TV or a computer. She’ll probably have a harder time with her children than her parents had with her.

Patrick had a different story to tell, perhaps because his father was a graphic designer who wanted the latest technology. Born in 1986, and raised in what he called a “conservative” family, Patrick remembered the day in 1992 when his dad came home with a “mysterious object in a large cardboard box with the icon of an apple on the outside.” He added, “My dad fed this machine a plastic disk and it seemed to come to life, blipping and clicking, whirling and ticking.”

From then on Patrick felt at home with computers. They seemed almost human to him. In college he quickly created a space for himself at MySpace, and made a home for himself on the campus radio station where he learned -- as he put it -- “to say and do anything I wanted.” It was a new experience for him. At home he had been “censored” by his parents. He feels that he will never again have the freedom to express himself that he has had on the college radio station, but now that he has had a taste of that freedom it will be difficult to give up. “I understand that in order to find a job I might have to clean up a bit my MySpace and Facebook pages,” he said. “But I also don’t want to compromise who I am.”

Tom echoes that idea. A car lover, and an outdoorsman, as well as a videographer, he has strong feelings about media freedom. “I believe that the Internet ought to be the one place that needs to be unregulated and where we can transfer information freely across the globe,” he said. “If you think Obama is a communist you ought to be able to say it.”

His classmate Ralph comes from a small town in rural California. He plans to become a schoolteacher and a football coach at a high school. “I love my generation,” he says. “I think we’re great. But we also ought to realize that the media pushes a lot of crap on us and we hungrily eat it up, even when we know its crap.”

The students in the class were all proud of themselves and their peers, and proud of their generation, too. But they were also critical of their generation. In fact, no one is more critical of this generation than the members of the generation themselves. They all feel that in the rush to embrace new media much that is valuable had been lost, and much of it might be irretrievable.

“Text messaging has taken away the mystery of the first date, the mystery of a conversation,” Janet said. Like many others in the class she had clear expectations of what she hoped for after she graduated from college and went to work. “I want to dress like I want (no uniforms),” she said. “I don’t want to be censored by any company I work for. I want to know the truth about everything, and I want to know what is happening at the company, too. There will be no holding me back, and not any of us, either I suspect. We’ve known freedoms through the new media and no one will be able to take them from us – at least not without a fight.”

Karen – who noted that the world seem to be changing every 50 minutes -- had drawn up a list of rules for herself -- and for anyone else who was looking for rules for themselves. Her list sounded new and fresh, and yet it might have been written fifty years ago, as well: “be kind and gracious; work hard and don’t half-ass things; be honest -- lying only hurts you, especially within the media; and stay true to yourself in a world of fakes and liars.”

[Jonah Raskin is a prominent author, poet, educator and political activist. His most recent book is The Radical Jack London: Writings on War and Revolution. He contributes regularly to The Rag Blog.]

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BOOKS / Eric Boehlert's 'Bloggers on the Bus'

It's a very fast, entertaining read, and since it focuses (almost) exclusively on the liberal blogosphere it mostly avoids the sense of triumphalism you might get in a more partisan book.

By Kevin Drum

If you're interested in the political blogosphere and the netroots in general, Eric Boehlert's Bloggers on the Bus is a great read. It's built around potted sketches of some of the best known liberal bloggers (Atrios, Digby, Jane Hamsher, John Amato, Arianna Huffington, Glenn Greenwald, and others) and some of the blogosphere's greatest campaign hits during 2008 (the Obama MySpace debacle, the John Hagee meltdown, the Sarah Palin eruption, the great sexism debate), and Boehlert really does a terrific job of diving in and explaining how everything unfolded. I followed almost all of this stuff pretty obsessively in real time, but I still learned lots of details I'd never heard of before.

It's a very fast, entertaining read, and since it focuses (almost) exclusively on the liberal blogosphere it mostly avoids the sense of triumphalism you might get in a more partisan book. Which is a good thing since it ends with this:

The bad news for liberal bloggers was that as the Obama campaign unfolded, as his new commuhity-based coalition was being built and celebrated, it became obvious that bloggers were never really invited to the party. Liberal bloggers simply never became active partners with Obama in the way they had been with the Dean insurgency four years earlier, and the way they had been with scores of Democratic politicians in skirmishes throughout the Bush years. Why? Mostly because Obama didn't seem to want the bloggers around.

That's true, isn't it? For all the hype, the liberal blogosphere in 2008 had its biggest impact in state and local races, just as it did in 2004. It's true that it was much more successful in pushing stories into the mainstream media than it was four years ago, but in terms of being active in the Obama campaign itself, it wasn't. And that was primarily a choice made by Obama himself, who apparently felt that the raw partisanship of the blogosphere was something he wanted to keep at arm's length.

There were a couple of things missing from the book that struck me. The first is specific: the Jeremiah Wright firestorm, which begged to be included in any book about the 2008 campaign, but which Boehlert inexplicably never mentions. The second is more general: Boehlert does a good job of showing how the blogosphere managed to gain attention for stories that might otherwise have gone unnoticed, but at times his account feels too blinkered. The mainstream media played a pretty big role in all this too, and even in a book about the blogosphere this deserves a little more attention. At the very least, there should have been a chapter devoted to the relationship between blogs and the MSM.

But these are nits. If you're looking for a blog's eye view of Campaign '08, Bloggers on the Bus is a terrifically readable and carefully reported book. Highly recommended.

Source / Mother Jones / Posted May 5, 2009

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A Rush from the Past : The Hammering of 'Jabber the Nut'

Graphic by Larry Ray / The Rag Blog (with apologies to Jabba and friends).
Rush Limbaugh: The Hammering of 'Jabber the Nut'

By Larry Ray / The Rag Blog / March 15, 2009

See Video from Rush Limbaugh's 1990 TV talk show, Below.

Rush Limbaugh, during his brief and disastrous run as a TV talk show host in 1990, was hammered by his audience on one show to a point that he was forced to halt taping. Less than a minute after he started, his audience became so outraged at his mean spirited attacks on women that he literally couldn't get a word in edgewise. Audience members repeatedly got in his face, refusing to be be intimidated by his bluster. Taping was stopped after the shouting, jeering audience ultimately reduced Rush to a red-faced mumbling wimp. Show producers finally were forced to clear the studio in order for Rush to be able to finish the segment.

With Rush challenging President Obama to debate him, the video clip below of a much younger Rush Limbaugh, shows how he actually holds up when he is not totally alone, unopposed, shouting into a microphone in his radio studio.

After the corpulent, "Jabber the Nut" shook like a ton of jelly speaking before the Conservative Political Action Committee a couple of weeks ago, it is delightful to see him hooted off his own stage before a real audience.

From the video archives, the "Hammering of Jabber the Nut" is presented below for your viewing pleasure . . . he makes it almost exactly one minute before the attack begins.



[Retired journalist Larry Ray is a Texas native and former Austin television news anchor. He also posts at The iHandbill.]

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Latest on the McCain Hoax : Campaign Role in Sensationalized News

Graphic by Talking Points Memo.
McCain Communications Director Gave Reporters Incendiary Version Of "Carved B" Story Before Facts Were Known
By Greg Sargent / October 24, 2008

See 'Rick Sanchez Calls Out Media That Fell For "Mutilation" Hoax' by Sam Stein -- and two Videos -- below.

John McCain's Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established -- and even told reporters outright that the "B" carved into the victim's cheek stood for "Barack," according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain's Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson."

Verrilli also told TPM that the McCain spokesperson had claimed that the "B" stood for Barack. According to Verrilli, the spokesperson also told KDKA that Sarah Palin had called the victim of the alleged attack, who has since admitted the story was a hoax.

The KDKA reporter had called McCain's campaign office for details after seeing the story -- sans details -- teased on Drudge.

The McCain spokesperson's claims -- which came in the midst of extraordinary and heated conversations late yesterday between the McCain campaign, local TV stations, and the Obama camp, as the early version of the story rocketed around the political world -- is significant because it reveals a McCain official pushing a version of the story that was far more explosive than the available or confirmed facts permitted at the time.

The claims to KDKA from the McCain campaign were included in an early story that ran late yesterday on KDKA's Web site. The paragraphs containing these assertions were quickly removed from the story after the Obama campaign privately complained that KDKA was letting the McCain campaign spin a racially-charged version of the story before the facts had been established, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.

The story with the removed grafs is still right here. We preserved the three missing grafs from yesterday:


A source familiar with what happened yesterday confirmed that the unnamed spokesperson was communications director Peter Feldman. Feldman was also quoted yesterday making virtually identical assertions on the Web site of another local TV station, WPXI. But those quotes, which we also preserved here, are also no longer available on WPXI's site, for reasons that are unclear.

This is problematic because the McCain campaign doesn't want to have been perceived as pushing an incendiary story that not only turned out to be a hoax but which police officials said today risked blowing up into a "national incident" and has local police preparing to file charges against the hoaxster.

There's no evidence that anyone from McCain national headquarters put out a version of events like this.

After the story appeared on KDKA's site and this and other pieces in the local press started flying around the political world, an Obama spokesperson in the state angrily insisted to KDKA that it was irresponsible for the station to air the McCain spokesperson's incendiary version of events before the facts were fully known, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.

After that, KDKA went back to McCain's Pennsylvania spokesperson, Feldman, and asked if he stood by the story as he'd earlier told it, but he started backing off the story, a source familiar with the talks says. That prompted KDKA to remove the grafs.

Feldman couldn't immediately be reached, and a McCain HQ spokesperson declined to comment.

Source / TPM

Ashley's Perp Walk:

Rick Sanchez Calls Out Media That Fell For "Mutilation" Hoax
By Sam Stein / October 24, 2008

The big political story of the day revolves around what turned out to be a non-story. Several media outlets (the vast majority conservative) were left with egg on their faces after they trumpeted up the tale of a McCain volunteer who claimed to have been assaulted by a large black man because of a McCain bumper sticker on her car. On her face was carved a backwards 'B' (meant to represent Obama's name). The Drudge Report called it "mutilation."

It was a hoax. And now, some in the fourth estate are left to explain why they pushed this apparent political ploy. Those in the business who showed some prudence are calling out their competitors for taking the bait.

On CNN today, anchor Rick Sanchez did just that, naming the outlets that not only reported but actively pushed the story of Ashley Todd. In addition to explaining why his station didn't report the story, Sanchez dug the knife in a bit deeper when it came to Hugh Hewitt, the conservative radio talk show host who appeared on CNN Thursday and blamed "that side" (i.e. the Democrats) for engaging in "extraordinarily" disturbing acts.

"Part of the story is the fact that it was reported by the media," said Sanchez. "We would not be telling the story now had it not been carried by so many outlets. As I mentioned before, it was mentioned on, as a matter of fact I have a list and not to mention names, but the initials of the news organizations are Fox News, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Newsday. And also radio talk show hosts went on their radio stations and talked ad infinitum about the story yesterday, one of them even seemingly being a braggadocio about it when he was on the air with our own Wolf Blitzer yesterday."

Separately, the College Republicans -- a group of which Todd is a member -- sought to distance themselves from the whole affair, telling the Huffington Post: "When Ms. Todd initially contacted us claiming to have been attacked, our first reaction was obviously to be concerned for her safety ... We are as upset as anyone to learn of her deceit. Ashley must take full responsibility for her actions."



Source / The Huffington Post

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Houston : Media Restricted From Covering Hurricane Ike’s Devastation

Devastation caused by hurricane Ike: media coverage was restricted. Photo from Getty Images.
Television reporter Wayne Dolcefino presses Gov. Rick Perry: 'That is unprecedented and quite honestly not appropriate'
By Amanda / September 15, 2008

Yesterday in a local report on KTRK-TV in Houston, reporter Wayne Dolcefino revealed that media have been blocked from covering Hurricane Ike’s devastation. In a press conference, Dolcefino pressed Gov. Rick Perry on why media aren’t even allowed to fly over parts of Galveston Island, noting that media access was far better in Mississippi and Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. Perry tried to brush off Dolcefino’s concerns, but eventually passed blame to federal officials:

DOLCEFINO: because it’s our job to inform people. Why can’t we go to Bolivar and West End?

PERRY: I think when the local officials decide it was appropriate, whether it’s the media or first responders or what have you. The fact of the matter, that is actually a local decision, Wayne, that is made by the local county judge and by the mayor of those —

DOLCEFINO: They don’t control that area.

PERRY: Last time, the state of Texas doesn’t even.

DOLCEFINO: So it’s the federal government?

PERRY: I don’t know.

Watch it:

Officials Restricting Hurricane Coverage


Transcript:

REPORTER: Wayne, we know you are covering that press conference that took place in Galveston with Gov. Rick Perry. Could you give us some perspective as to what was going on in that press conference?

DOLCEFINO: Actually, we covered the press conference in Galveston. I was in Ellington field when the Governor stopped there.

Ispecifically drove down from Houston after coming back from Galveston earlier this morning to sort of ask the Governor the question and put him on the spot. We’ve been trying ever since the storm to get somebody to take some responsibility for who is in charge, who has decided that the public does not have the right to see the devastation essentially in our hometown. The folks in Bolivar worried about friends and family and their businesses have a right to see it. […]

[PRESS CONFERENCE]

DOLCEFINO: The lack of media access and information from Bolivar and the West End is unprecedented. We’ve covered many storms. We were in Mississippi and Louisiana the very next day. What is the situation in bolivar how many fatalities are there and why has the media — hasn’t been allowed because it’s our job, be in to show what people is going on with their homes?

GOV. RICK PERRY: Well, Wayne, I don’t know where you’ve been. We just got back from Galveston and there was huge room of media there. Looked to me like –

DOLCEFINO: I’ve been down there three days. I’m talking about the Bolivar Peninsula and West End, where we’ve been denied access and denied permission to be in helicopters. That is unprecedented and quite honestly not appropriate because it’s our job to inform people. Why can’t we go to Bolivar and West End?

PERRY: I think when the local officials decide it was appropriate, whether it’s the media or first responders or what have you. The fact of the matter, that is actually a local decision, Wayne, that is made by the local county judge and by the mayor of those —

DOLCEFINO: They don’t control that area.

PERRY: Last time, the state of Texas doesn’t even.

DOLCEFINO: So it’s the federal government?

PERRY: I don’t know. You are delving into issues — I don’t control federal airspace.

Source / ThinkProgress

Thanks to Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog

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SPORT : An Elegy for Skip Carey

Atlanta Braves annuncer Skip Carey kissing a baby. Photo by jeffamandalayla.
'There will be no more Skip Caray to bring me laughs and great baseball announcing in the summers'
By Gerry Storm / The Rag Blog / August 14, 2008

Back in the late '70's I was out every night on the music scene. When I would return home I would customarily turn on the TV to wind down for awhile before retiring. Not much on TV in the wee small hours so I started watching re-runs of Atlanta Braves games.

The team wasn't much good but I really enjoyed the sharp wit of one of the Braves announcers, Skip Caray. So, night after night I would tune in the game and Skip and have some laughs. This became a habit. He was really good, irreverent and salty but quite knowledgeable. Definitely not your average sports announcer.

Ted Turner's TV empire eventually grew to the point that it no longer needed to show all the Braves games twice to fill in air time, but it did show them nightly. I got a job which took me to the deep south for 5 years and took up temporary residence near Atlanta. I continued to listen to or watch the team and be entertained by Skip, even attended a few live games at the old stadium. Then the team got to be good, even won a World Series, with Skip and his sidekick Pete "The Professor" Van Weiren calling the shots, no longer from the cellar but from the top of the league. It was a grand time for Turnerville. The networks became first class, the team built a new stadium, winners every year, won their division 14 years in a row. I even wore a Braves cap for a few summers.

I wound up in deep New Mexico, still a Braves fan, but without a TV. Then the internet came along and sure enough, I could listen to the broadcasts through a stream broadcast. What a break! Skip and Pete were still at it and the Braves were a good team and these broadcasts became a regular part of my summer routine. Couple of years ago Skip got sick and missed several weeks. This was a void in my life. At the beginning of this season it was announced that he would no longer accompany the team out of town and no longer appear on TV, just radio for the home games. Last week he died, couple of years younger than me, salty and sharp to the end.

Now I definitely feel that the changes wrought by the passage of time are taking away my favorite people. There will be no more Skip Caray to bring me laughs and great baseball announcing in the summers. I will surely miss him, and suspect that this will be the last year I follow baseball, one of the joys of my life since age 8 or 9. So long, Skip, and thanks for 30 years of your wit and companionship

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Limbaugh : 'Edwards Might be Attracted to a Woman Whose Mouth Did Something Other Than Talk'

Limbaugh blowing smoke about Elizabeth Edwards: 'Could it be that she doesn't shut up?'
By J.M. / August 12, 2008

On the August 12 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh said of former Sen. John Edwards' recent disclosure of an extramarital affair:

"I've got a theory about the motivations. Well, I don't know that I could -- I don't know that I can put this one on the air." Discussing his "theory," Limbaugh said, "We know -- we've been told that Elizabeth Edwards is smarter than John Edwards. That's part of the puff pieces on them that we've seen. Ergo, if Elizabeth Edwards is smarter than John Edwards, is it likely that she thinks she knows better than he does what his speeches ought to contain and what kind of things he ought to be doing strategy-wise in the campaign? If she is smarter than he is, could it have been her decision to keep going with the campaign? In other words, could it be that she doesn't shut up? Now, that's as far as I'm going to go."

Limbaugh later added, "It just seems to me that Edwards might be attracted to a woman whose mouth did something other than talk." Limbaugh went on to say in a subsequent segment: "my theory that I just explained to you about why -- you know, what could have John Edwards' motivations been to have the affair with Rielle Hunter, given his wife is smarter than he is and probably nagging him a lot about doing this, and he found somebody that did something with her mouth other than talk."

Limbaugh also highlighted his comments on his website, RushLimbaugh.com (subscription required).

From the August 12 broadcast of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show:

LIMBAUGH: Back to the phones. Winston-Salem, North Carolina, this is James. Nice to have you here, sir. Hello. Is he gone? James, you there? Aw, darn. He wanted to talk about Edwards and who knew and what were the motivations. And I've got a theory about the motivations. Well, I don't know that I could -- I don't know that I can put this one on the air.

JAMES GOLDEN (contributor known on-air as "Bo Snerdley"): Why not?

LIMBAUGH: Well, it's -- I mean, at some point, at some point, you gotta exhibit maturity and restraint. You know, and I do that constantly. But -- well, I don't -- look, let me see if I can run you through this and get you to think what I'm thinking without my actually saying it. That might be a pretty big talent if I could do that -- make you think what I'm going to say without my having to say it, therefore if anybody gets in trouble for saying it, you say it.

We know -- we've been told that Elizabeth Edwards is smarter than John Edwards. That's part of the puff pieces on them that we've seen. Ergo, if Elizabeth Edwards is smarter than John Edwards, is it likely that she thinks she knows better than he does what his speeches ought to contain and what kind of things he ought to be doing strategy-wise in the campaign? If she is smarter than he is, could it have been her decision to keep going with the campaign? In other words, could it be that she doesn't shut up? Now, that's as far as I'm going to go.

Well, you're -- Snerdley says he's missing something. If you're missing it, you're going to have to provide it. What are you missing? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

I can't close the loop on it. I can't close the loop on it. I'm on -- you know, I'm in a little quicksand already today talking about how the chicks are giving us boring pictures of the female athletes from the Olympics. Because I know -- you -- the diversity crowd's going to be upset. They're going to -- "Ooh, do you mean the Olympics are just so you guys can ogle wom--" Yes, because we do not care to watch 'em compete. But back to Elizabeth and the Breck Girl.

I'm sorry, my friends, I just -- I can't. It just seems to me that Edwards might be attracted to a woman whose mouth did something other than talk.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: OK, we're back. Ladies and gentleman, my theory that I just explained to you about why -- you know, what could have John Edwards' motivations been to have the affair with Rielle Hunter, given his wife is smarter than he is and probably nagging him a lot about doing this, and he found somebody that did something with her mouth other than talk. I think I can back this up from her.

We have a sound bite. This is February 2007. She was on the tabloid show Extra. And this is what she said. Listen very carefully.

HUNTER [audio clip]: The whole experience was life-altering for me. One of the great things about John Edwards is that he's so open and willing to try new things and do things in new ways.

LIMBAUGH: "Open to new things." Folks, it is what it is. You get mad at me for bringing the truth to you, but it is what it is.

Source / Media Matters

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Fox News Suffers Another Debate Snub; Bloggers Take a Bow

'Fox News has been busy airing doctored, cartoonish images of New York Times journalists, dubbing Obama hand gestures as "terrorist fist jabs"...'
by Eric Boehlert / August 12, 2008

Coveted assignments for presidential debate moderators were handed out last week, and guess who was left off the list ... again.

After suffering the bitter, and unprecedented, blow during the Democratic primary season of having candidates refuse -- twice -- to appear in Fox News-sponsored forums when bloggers raised hell about the news organization's lack of legitimacy, Rupert Murdoch's news channel was again left off the list of news anchors tapped to moderate the must-see TV events in the fall.

Instead, the questions during the three presidential forums and one vice presidential debate will be posed by PBS' Jim Lehrer and Gwen Ifill, as well as NBC's Tom Brokaw and CBS' Bob Schieffer.

Unlike the primaries, Fox News this time won't be locked out entirely; all the networks will be able to broadcast the debates. But the snub means that once again Fox News will be denied the chance to leave its imprint on the all-important debates. It won't be able to build its brand on the back of Democrats who have injected extraordinary passion and interest into the White House run.

That passion and interest has helped boost ratings for Fox News' cable competitors, while Fox's numbers have remained stagnant. Meaning, the unfolding presidential campaign has been a ratings dud so far for Fox News and its unofficial year of woe.

Just as the 9-11 terrorist attacks catapulted Fox News' ratings into the patriotic stratosphere, the 2008 campaign season may be viewed as the news event that marked the news channel's fall from ratings dominance.

In turn, Fox News' ratings woes have opened the door to a much more frank and honest discussion about the news outlet. Like when New York Times media columnist David Carr recently called out Fox News flacks as thugs. And the way MSNBC chief Phil Griffin declared that when it comes to Fox News, "you can't trust a word they say." Sure, Griffin's a competitor. But before this year, that kind of blunt talk was not heard in polite Beltway media circles, and it certainly was not heard on the record.

Fox News has been taken down several notches, and the demotions can be traced back to the blogger-led debate boycott from 2007 and the repercussions it set off.

The point of that media pushback was to begin chipping away, in a serious, consistent method, at Fox News' reputation. The goal was to portray Fox News as illegitimate, to spell out that Fox News was nothing more than a Republican mouthpiece and that Democrats need not engage with the News Corp. giant, let alone be afraid of it.

In other words, bloggers wanted to badly dent the Fox News brand.

I have no definitive proof that the blue-ribbon Commission on Presidential Debates, which organizes the televised forums, bypassed Fox News in terms of moderators because of the formal boycott that the netroots launched last year or the noisy questions it raised about Fox News' professionalism. But if there is one thing the staid debate commission seems to detest, it's controversy.

The commission has made it clear that it wants the forums to be all about the candidates and not about the moderators or, by extension, about the media. The last thing the commission would want this year by tapping a Fox News moderator is to spark a large, and raucous, debate over the nature of Fox News and whether it was appropriate to have one of Rupert Murdoch's personalities host a presidential debate.

And trust me, formal petitions and online protests would be flying around the Internet right now if the commission had tapped a Fox News anchor to pose the presidential hopeful questions in September or October. You can bet Robert Greenwald at Foxnewsattacks.com and the whole MoveOn.org crew, along with bloggers like Matt Stoller, would be raising holy hell at the prospect of Sen. Barack Obama having to be on stage for 90 minutes and answer questions posed by a Fox News anchor.

It's true that neither CNN nor MSNBC are represented this cycle in terms of moderators. But since 1988, CNN twice has had one of its anchor moderate a general-election presidential debate. No Fox News anchor has ever been tapped for that honor. For the Fox News family, which desperately wants to be seen as a legitimate news operation, that ongoing slight has got to hurt. (For years, MSNBC's ratings were so insignificant that it had no chance of being considered for the debates.)

And based on the ongoing pushback that bloggers have unleashed on Murdoch and Co. -- based on the questions the bloggers have raised about the brand of journalism being practiced there -- I doubt Fox News will ever be seen as fair or professional enough to have one of its big-name hosts help talk Americans through a presidential campaign in the high-profile role of moderator.

Obviously, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity aren't ever going to be allowed with 500 yards of any commission debate's moderating table. But what about Brit Hume, Fox News' high-profile evening anchor who's been a Beltway news staple, and well-liked within elite circles, for several decades? If he worked for any other network, he would almost certainly be viewed by the commission as a viable choice.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the commission's 11-member executive board, which selects the moderators, employs an "informal" agreement not to use any of the nightly news anchors for moderators. (I assume that's to avoid any implication that it's playing favorites with the network or trying to boost the ratings of one of the nightly newscasts.) So that might explain why Hume hasn't been asked to host a debate.

Additionally, the Journal reported that the commission uses three criteria for the moderators:

* Knowledge of the candidates and relevant issues.

* Experience in live broadcasting.

* Understanding that a moderator's role is to facilitate conversation between the candidates, not to participate in it.

Doesn't Chris Wallace, the host of Fox News Sunday and perhaps its least partisan personality, pretty much meet those criteria? But again, my guess is that as long as Wallace is cashing a Fox News paycheck, he will never moderate a presidential debate, which is seen as a pinnacle achievement in the broadcast news business.

Why? Because bloggers and the entire netroots movement have damaged the Fox News brand and sent a clear signal to Beltway institutions such as the Commission on Presidential Debates that any attempt to bring Fox News into the mainstream, to bestow it with unearned legitimacy, will be met with active protests. (Wallace's chances for a moderator slot were probably not helped by the fact that Fox News has been busy airing doctored, cartoonish images of New York Times journalists, dubbing Obama hand gestures as "terrorist fist jab[s]," and reportedly leaking gossip about reporters to industry blogs.)

Bloggers deserve the credit because the pushback they initiated was something that members of the Democratic Party had, for years, refused to do. Instead, they adopted a go-along/get-along strategy with Fox News, hoping that if they were nice (and cooperative) with Fox News, then Fox News would be nice (and cooperative) in response.

Indeed, without the online campaign, do you think the head of the Democratic National Committee would have appeared on Fox News and publicly denounced its coverage as being "shockingly biased" the way Howard Dean did in May? I doubt it, since for years Democrats, and particularly the inside-the-Beltway party leaders, acquiesced.

Hell, in 2007 leaders of the Nevada Democratic Party wanted to partner with Fox News to sponsor a debate among the party's presidential hopefuls.

For online activists, the idea of the Democratic Party itself anointing Fox News as some sort of standard-bearer for election coverage was too much.

The debate itself was actually rather meaningless. Bloggers didn't really care about the actual forum and certainly were not scared about what kinds of questions the Fox News moderators would pose to the Democrats during the primary. Activists were more concerned about the other 364 days of the year and how Fox News would benefit from the legitimacy attached to moderating a presidential debate and the unspoken seal of approval it implies.

"The lies of FOX News and Roger Ailes have no place in public discourse, journalism, or the Democratic Party presidential debates," blogger Matt Stoller wrote in 2007, further stressing it was important "to not ratify Fox News as a legitimate news source."

One year later, the initiative is still paying dividends for Fox's foes. Not just in terms of watching the news channel being snubbed by the debate commission, but also in watching Fox News' continued slide in the campaign ratings race.

It's true that after losing the first quarter prime-time ratings battle this year to CNN (marking CNN's first quarterly win in nearly seven years), Fox News rebounded and came out on top, barely, for the second quarter. But that doesn't mean its troubles are over because now the cable news ratings battle has been transformed into a month-to-month dogfight. Fox News no longer posts wins with ease the way it did for nearly a decade.

The simple explanation for the viewership lull is that the current campaign has produced enormous interest among Democratic news consumers, and Democrats don't watch Fox News. It's just that simple. Time and again on the nights of primary returns this winter and spring, Fox News floundered.

And by getting shut out of the Democratic debates, the Fox News team was denied the ratings gold the prime-time events generated. The snub also effectively turned Fox News into a bystander in the race.

Fact: Through mid-June this year, CNN added 170,000 viewers a night, on average, when compared the first five-and-a-half months of 2004, or the last time the cablers covered a presidential run. During that same period through June this year, Fox News lost about 90,000 viewers each night vs. 2004, according to The New York Times.

Back when the bloggers rolled out their successful debate boycott strategy in Nevada, Fox News executives reacted with pure venom, denouncing the netroots as "radical fringe out-of-state interest groups." At the time, the response struck me as being wildly out of proportion. But it seems the Fox News team could see the looming trouble. They could see that a Democratic-friendly election year was going to mean ratings woes for them, and that by refusing to debate on Fox News, the Democratic candidates would be sending a damaging (irreparable?) message about the news organization's lack of legitimacy.

One year later, the ratings surge for Fox News' competitors remains in full view, while the selection of the presidential debate moderators confirms that Fox News' quest for respect has suffered another setback.

Bloggers, take a bow.

Source / Media Matters

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