Aaron Swartz came across an extremely interesting talk at MIT by John Hockenberry about his experience at NBC in the buildup to the invasion of Iraq. Here’s some of what Hockenberry said:
I was very happily employed at NBC. I wasn’t like, running around, trying to stuff toilet paper into the plumbing and sabotage the place. […] But I was interested, because we had a lot of meetings at NBC about, you know, if you’re doing a story and the person you’re doing the story about offers to buy you a drink, you’ve gotta say no. If you’re doing a story and they send you, after they see the story, some napkin rings — silver napkin rings that are monogrammed “Thank you, Jon, for the story,” you’ve got not only to return those, you’ve got to report those to the standards people at NBC because there’s a whole ethics and conflict-of-interest thing.
So at one of these ethics meetings — I called them the return-the-napkin-ring kinds of meetings — I raised my hand and said “You know, isn’t it a problem that the contract that GE has with the Coalition Provisional Authority […] to rebuild the power generation system in Iraq [is] about the size of the entire budget of NBC? Is that kind of like the napkin rings thing?” And the standards people said “Huh. That’s interesting. No one’s brought that up before.”…[T]he fact that it drew a complete blank among the NBC standards people was interesting to me.
“USA Today’s got a poll: ‘Do you think something’s wrong about the firing of eight US attorneys?’ 72% said yes. 72% of the American people, a bunch of blithering idiots who have no idea what they’re talking about, but yet they voted, so these polls matter.”
Mike Gerber and I have put together a parody of the A&E show Intervention. The person undergoing the intervention is a 60 year-old man named George. You’ll have to watch to find out exactly what he’s addicted to.
Y’know, if I were George Bush and I had just had my ass handed to me in the elections last November, I would revert into “preserve my legacy” mode. Bush needs a signature achievement to hang his Presidency on besides a shaky economy, divided public, and Middle Eastern country transformed into Hell on Earth. He should figure out a way to declare victory and bring the troops home, work with Democrats to pass (and claim credit for) some major piece of legislation, throw the divisive members of his Administration to the wolves (Rove/Cheney), and try to reinvent himself as a moderate in an attempt to make everyone forget why they hate him. Turn back into the “guy you’d want to have a beer with” and get something done.
But that would require a level of self-awareness that George Bush has never exhibited. With the cocky demeanor that the President has adopted, he still seems to think his post-9/11 attitude will fly with a post-Iraq, post-Katrina American public. If the Bush Administration looks like a chaotic mess, it’s because George Bush has no idea that people can’t stand him. At this rate, things will only get worse for Bush and co.
Give it up, dude. You aren’t getting any more tax cuts. You aren’t going to “reform” social security. You aren’t going to overhaul the tax code. You’re losing ground on abortion, stem cells, gay marriage, and every other issue that you ran on. Your presidency is over. You can either accept that fact and try to turn lemons into lemonade or you can just sit around the Oval Office and act like a petulant little boy.
First it was Newsweek, and now Time Magazine is getting into the dumbed-down cover for the American edition game. On the left is the cover here in the U.S., on the right is the cover of the Europe, Asia, and South Pacific editions. (Larger versions here and here) :
Replacing the more-newsworthy story about a Taliban resurgence with a human interest story that you’d expect to find in Reader’s Digest is pretty egregious, but the stories at the top are even more revealing. Last week’s Keane-inspired Reagan cover story that’s finding its way into the international editions is nicely balanced out by a Rudy Giuliani puff piece. But that’s not as bad as the juxtaposition on the opposite corner. While the rest of the world is presented an interview about “Africa’s Moment of Need”, Americans are patronized with a Desperate Housewives reference. It’s as if the editors of Time magazine think we Americans are too stupid and shallow to care about “real news”. Ugghh..
Will post more from the West Indies when I have more time and better connectivity.
Nothing here ever happens the way you expect. Nothing. This morning I was late for a flight because the island was getting its first traffic circles, so the construction slows down traffic to an L.A.-style crawl. My cabbie decided to take a back road through the mountains and promptly got lost. Which was fine, actually. The hills were beautiful, and LIAT (formerly Leeward Islands Air Transport) is always late anyway. It’s the only airline I’ve ever been on whose schedule should really just be considered a series of optimistic suggestions. No worries.
Except this morning. Naturally, this flight was on time.
The lady at the counter said that I would have to book a new ticket entirely, with a large out-of-pocket charge, and that all flights were full because of the Cricket World Cup (about which more over in puduland; it’s literally a life and death competition, with one murder and several riots so far), so I was stuck for at least twelve hours and possibly longer. But we chatted for a few minutes anyway, since that’s how things are here, and pretty soon, she smiled and said she had an idea about how to re-route me, taking two steps backward to take one forward, but I would have to buy her breakfast.
So, long story short, I got re-routed for the low price of one ham-and-egg sandwich and a juice box.
LIAT may be late, but you can’t beat that kind of customer relations.
