Dawnsinger

More notable election commentary

A few more columns worth reading, regarding the election:

Kerry didn't lose the values battle - James Q. Wilson, Wall Street Journal

We weren't dumb enough to vote for Kerry - Mark Steyn, Opinion Telegraph

Election 2004 epiphanies - George Will, Town Hall

Why Democrats are tagged as the party without values -  Dennis Prager, Creators Syndicate

Sunrise in the West - William J. Stuntz, TCS

Barbra, witches & Jew-bashing

One more note about Barbra Streisand.  The Jefferson quote she posted on her site was lifted from internet chatter posted on left-wing weblogs.   Too bad Barbra's just passing along the quote du jour.  If she'd read Jefferson's letter for herself, she might have reconsidered posting it.

The context was a bitter fight between Federalists and Republicans (of which Jefferson was one) over the direction of the country.  So far, so good.  And it's instructive for those of us who have just seen some of the most vicious political venom of OUR lifetimes to remember that there have been much worse seasons in American politics.   At stake was freedom of speech, in particular, which the federal courts were busy trying to supress.  So the quote itself, in our day of FCC regulation and Patriot Acts, might be relevant . . . although Streisand likely would have been imprisoned in that day for exercising her current freedom of speech.

But Jefferson isn't a buffet, and you can't just take the quotes you like.  Here's what Barbra quoted, in a letter to John Taylor Philadelphia, June 4, 1798:

"A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to it's true principles."

The previous sentence in Jefferson's letter describes the "witches" in the day's stereotype of  Jews:

"They are circumscribed within such narrow limits, & their population so full, that their numbers will ever be the minority, and they are marked, like the Jews, with such a peculiarity of character as to constitute from that circumstance the natural division of our parties."

If I were Babs, I'd avoid this one.

'So much to savor'

Submitted for your approval - Peggy Noonan's wonderful commentary on the Election aftermath

"The biggest loser was the mainstream media . . . every time the big networks and big broadsheet national newspapers tried to pull off a bit of pro-liberal mischief . . . the yeomen of the blogosphere and AM radio and the Internet took them down. It was to me a great historical development in the history of politics in America. It was Agincourt. It was the yeomen of King Harry taking down the French aristocracy with new technology and rough guts. God bless the pajama-clad yeomen of America."

- Peggy Noonan

Healing the Great Divide

Four years ago, a venom-spewing Nancy Pelosi, as newly elected House Minority Leader, set the tone for our political divide. There will be no healing until George W. Bush (who stole the election) is out of office and Democrats are back in power, she vowed. And so it has gone for the past four years.

About the only moment of unity in the past four years came as the dust still settled around the site of the former Word Trade Center, when Congress stood on the steps and sang "God Bless America." Even those who had to choke to get the word "God" past their lips.

And in the Wednesday afternoon wake of John Kerry's concession speech, Pelosi was front and center again, declaring war on George Bush, while telling him that it's up to the Republican leadership to heal the divide. Wrong.

News flash, Nancy . . . the divide is between your extreme left wing of the Democratic Party and the extreme right wing of the Republican Party. A plurality of Americans claim NEITHER party.

(Please continue reading below)

Stern, decency and freedom

BuzzMachine blog evangelist and media pundit Jeff Jarvis has the cover of the new edition of Nation magazine with his article "F*cked by the F*CC" and analysis of the uneven and unequal treatment of the FCC in the assault against Howard Stern and others.

Jarvis has been warning about this turn of events for a long time . . . not just the actions against Stern, but the ramifications for free speech in general. As a longtime columnist for TV Guide and the founder of Entertainment Weekly, he's in a good position to have the big picture.

Read today's roundup, including links to past comments . . .

Read The Nation article online . . .

GI Joes who get what's coming to them

Meet Rene Gonzalez, graduate student in the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, whose description of Pat Tillman - the former NFL star who died to ensure Rene's freedom of speech - summed up in a UMass student newspaper column - was:

"(A) G.I. Joe guy who got what was coming to him."

In Fallujah, they burn and mutilate the bodies of the dead . . . in Amherst, they mutilate the dead in print.

(To be fair, UMass President Jack Wilson has called the comments in The Daily Collegian " a disgusting, arrogant and intellectually immature attack on a human being who died in service to his country.")

Read the AP story | Read President Wilson's official smackdown . . .

I suspect, given Mr. Gonzalez' bent, that the nearly 59,000 of my generation listed on The Wall were "GI Joes who got what was coming to them."

But that's a down note, and instead I'd like to introduce you to one who didn't end up on The Wall, although he very nearly did so . . . multiple times. A man of quite different ilk than Mr. Gonzalez. A REAL man.

Meet Master Sgt. Roy Benavidez of Cuero, Texas. A half-Yaqui, half-Mexican orphan. The lowest of the low in the South Texas caste system. Middle-school dropout who became a Green Beret.

Sgt. Benavidez was a bull of a man when I met him in the 80s. He was in his mid-50s, then, not too many years after President Reagan placed the Medal of Honor around his neck. It was an honor long overdue . . . 15 years late . . . for a hero who got lost in the system.

Please read on . . .

'Sagging' crackdown & bad karaoke thongs

Massacre in the streets . . . endemic corruption . . . economic woes . . . disappearing wetlands . . . plagues of termites & West Nile. Welcome to the sordid underbelly of Greater New Orleans. So what does rookie state Rep. Derrick Shepherd (D-Marrero) do but make the home page of every major news site on the web with his crusade against thongs and saggers. Oh yeah, baby, we know how to set priorities.

Read the Times-Picayune story | Read the paper's editorial smackdown

But giggle as you will, I've gotta admit that sometimes I wish the law were in effect. Britney's sparkly thong strings are one thing. But the fashion police . . . heck, the fashion Swat Team would have been welcome Saturday night at Cats Meow.

Read the full column in "The Bourbon Street Journal"

'The Press' doesn't represent us

Well-known media critic and NYU Professor Jay Rosen has stirred a huge can of worms with a look at the changing treatment, role and perceptions of The Press:

"In our system, the press has the role of..." Generations of journalists spoke confident sentences like that. The press is a vital check on power. It's quasi-Constitutional. Bush, head of government, rejects this idea. That theory has gone down, he says. And you guys don't have that kind of muscle anymore.

- From Jay Rosen's PressThink

New media executive & "citizen media" evangelist Jeff Jarvis, goes a step further in his reaction to Rosen's piece.

There are many who claim to represent us, The Public. Winning presidents and political parties do. The press does. But they don't. Bush didn't win the majority of votes; he doesn't represent us. The same could be said of every President, since so many of us don't vote. Nobody elected the press; they elected themselves. And they certainly don't represent everyone since there are so many who don't pay attention to them.

- From Jeff Jarvis's BuzzMachine

The grand thinkers have had their say, and there's little to add on that level. But the topic is personal to me, so I'd like to share a bit of the historical view from the trenches of modern journalism.

Blood on Bourbon Street

From today's Bourbon Street Journal

We thought the surreal evening was over, Cory and I, as we dragged our tired selves off the stoop of the liquor store across from the Gold Mine and into the taxi. Silly rabbits.

French Quarter Fest Saturday night, the end of a long weekend shift on Bourbocam Live. This is NOLA’s regular webcam show, in which I point a camera at Cory as she snags increasingly lubricated celebrants from the human river that is Bourbon Street, and brings the nightly party to our wide internet audience.

The taxi's creaky doors slam shut, immediately knocking the cab’s meter offline. The cabbie takes off down Dauphine from St. Peter, somehow steering around staggering pedestrians with one hand, while slapping the meter with the other.

Weird night already . . . and headed for the grand finale.

Heading into the first weekend of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival - Jazzfest.

Read the full Bourbon Street Journal column . . .

Outsourcing our woes

Buzzmachine's Jeff Jarvis picked up on this interesting post from Om Malik, on "The Dark Side of Outsourcing," a look at the descent of outsourced phone-bank workers on the outskirts of Delhi who are descending into drugs, sex & rock 'n' roll as they toil on the 24-hour treadmill exported from America.

Amid their sometimes drunken but polite arguments, you hear the cry for help. The constant pressure of trying to be someone else, faking accents and trying to deal with the abusive behavior of their customers, you find many are crumbling. The late nights, cooped up in cool but antiseptic halls, the call center workers are turning to drink, drugs and sex to find some meaning to their lives.

Hello Delhi . . . welcome to the Dark Side of the American Dream.

Read Om's essay, and follow-up comments . . .