Category: Current Affairs

On a tip from Bookslut, I checked out the website of the Columbia Journalism Review and came across this amazing article by Brett Cunnigham about how the class bias effects journalistic coverage of working class communities and citizens. It is a gorgeously written, subtle, intelligent piece that avoids being shrill or preachy, or succumbing to precisely the slanted perspective it criticizes. I read it three times then marched into the living room and thrust it at Suzan.

“You MUST read this.”

If this is the level of work CJR does, I’m subscribing tomorrow.

Norris McWhirter, the noted British sports journalist who founded the Guinness Book of World Records with his brother Ross, has died from a heart attack. He was 78. Founded in 1954 and sponsored by the Guinness brewery as a promotional item to settle bar disputes, there are over 100 million copies of its various additions in print. McWhirter served as editor until 1986 and advisory editor until 1996 when he retired.

I have a special fondness for the GWR since they were the first books I checked out of my elementary school library when I was in the first grade in 1979. I would spend hours pouring over the feats of human endurance and oddity then go running throughout the house shrieking “Mom, Dad. Did you know that the world record for yawning is 8 straight months?”

In recent years, The Diageo corporation who owns the Guinness brand decided that old fat books needed a facelift. The blurry newspaper photographs were replaced by full-color spread and freak-show era records (like wearing a beard of bees) tossed out in scads. In the Guinness Book of the 21st century, no one eats a bicycle or tries to waterski across the Pacific Ocean. Records now are carefully manufactured for maximum star wattage. Instead of Most Successful Pop Music Artist (the passe’ Elvis Presley), we get Most Top Ten Hits in the 1990’s by an Artist Named Britney. Even the cover is now a swarm of sparkles and holograms, like the front panel of a jukebox.

No one said progress had charm.

On another note, The Virtual Book tour pulls into Zulkey.com. Discussion of the tour continues at Readerville.

I had a long post here about Dinah and I’s day at City Hall, volunteering to help out gay couples getting married. TypePad ate it. Read Dinah’s description. She breaks it down.

Suffice it to say I was a witness to 6 marriages, poured water to 400 people in line, wishes at least that many well and spent the afternoon in a boundless see of love and devotion. One of the deputized commisioners said to me after he performed and I witnessed a particularly moving ceremony, “If the protestors outside could see just one ceremony, they would know that this is not about sex and all about love.” Absolutely. I got home and immediately called my parents to tell them how I had spent the afternoon. Overjoyed,

Seems that this is going to be a hugely divisive issue in the upcoming presidential election. Politically, it’s ingenious for the Republicans to be trotting this one out. Morally, it’s out of the gutter. Never mind the economy which is growing and shedding jobs at the same time, never mind the fiasco of Iraq with 500 American dead and no sign of a resolution, we need to worry our heads over whether gay folks can get married or simply live together like married people. Well, no one ever went broke overestimating the puritanism of the average American.

Jane breaks it down pretty well also. And Derek took some killer photos and and has a great essay about the whole experience.

In case you had any doubts, AlterNet today presented the 10 Worst Corporations of 2003. No Enron? I guess that was the year before.

Have any additions?

So Pixar and Disney will no longer be partners. Pixer may sign with another studio after it completes the remaining two films in its contract or go their own way, which is my prefered track for no good reason. Their product is consistently high quality, family friendly without being insulting, a nearly impossible feat. I’ve now watched the trailer for The Incredibles like ten times. I’m not sure I can wait until November.

So it seems the White House has a policy of ratting out and bullying intelligence analysts whose findings to not jive with their political mission of war at all cost. It shouldn’t surprise me, but this morning over breakfast, I fumed.

Findings like these are emerging with greater regularity. Does this spell trouble for Mr. Bush come November? Depends on whether the Hekyls and Jekyls in the Democratic party can use it to their advantage. Republicans have no problem playing dirty, immoral, slime king politics because it works. While the Dems are busy taking the moral highroad, its leading them right out of power.

Ultimately, I see this coming election as the Democrats to win or lose. It his singleminded quest for a war mantle to call his own, Bush has neglected our domestic infrastructure, squandered both our budget surplus and any amity with had with other nations, let our public schools atrophy and cozied up to convicted corporate criminals like Enron and Haliburton. The ammunition is all there to run him out of Washington on a rail, if the Democrats are smart enough to use it.

That’s why I like Howard Dean’s campaign. For me personally, this election is as much a referendum on the Democratic party as it is on the president. Whatever old way the Democrats had of doing business isn’t working. They’ve lost the White House, Congress and worst of all, the faith of the average American. Dean has reinvigorated politics for millions and illustrate (in hype, granted, more than action) that a Democrat traditionally is a candidate on the side of working families, on the side of women’s and gay rights, on the side of environmentalism that means clean air and drinking water for future generations not well tended mountain bike paths for investment bankers in Marin county. Much as I like John Kerry as a person, his campaign smacks of politics as usual and the last thing the Dems need now is anything “as usual.”

Is there anyone out there who doesn’t believe that this is a thinly-veiled Republican attempt to eat into abortion rights?

I didn’t think so.

I’m looking around for a site that’s keeping track of the Iowa Caucus vote in real time or some close approximation. The best I’ve come up with the Des Moines Register’s site and this Reporter’s Log via the BBC. Both seem less than complete. CNN seems ok too. Any other ideas?

UPDATE: Wow, what a finish!

Where have I been? The police station, the autobody shop, a wedding and sick in bed. No blogging for days. Sorry, dear reader(s). I’m back now