December 2006

Slate dares make the call…

by J N on December 30, 2006 · 43 comments

in Culture, The Media

It has been interesting this week watching the media swirl around the deaths of both Gerald Ford and James Brown.  The media circus is likely increase in intensity now that Saddam Hussein has been put to death.

I am spent much of the week thinking about the dead: what is appropriate to talk about and what is best left unsaid when someone passes?  At some point, I’ll pass, too and I suppose I’d like to be remembered for whatever good I contributed to this world.  I suppose it is that feeling that drove my annoyance at Matt Drudge’s linkage to a YouTube video this week of James Brown breaking down on the set of a news network show, the poster pointing out that he was high or drunk or both.  Drudge is a jackass, so he has no taste or respect for the passing of people.  In a world driven by karma, Drudge’s passing will be marked by a laundry list of every half-truth, poorly written headline or straight lie that appears on his “news” site.

Ford’s death is a little more complicated.  Ford *was* a great American.  He served our country in World War II, played high school and football football, and has a distinguished career in the Congress.  He is worthy of phrase for a number of reasons, all of which we need to remember as Americans this week.

Of course, Ford’s brief time as Vice President and President of the United States is marked by the realities of Watergate. Ford took the Presidency after Nixon resigned.  Ford watched the legal system work through the Watergate mess investigation by investigation.  Ford faced a tough election bid in 1976 but thanks to clever electoral strategies like “W.I.N.,” he was the president that was never elected.

What concerns me is all of the positive spin now put on his worst decision: pardoning Nixon.  Chatter claiming that Ford is credited for helping healing the country by pardoning Nixon seems to make a historical judgment that isn’t quite right, even if we are honoring Ford’s life.

Slate Magazine steps forward and takes the minority view that the pardon was flatly wrong.  The article is worth a read from start to finish but generally speaking it traces the precedent it set in later administrations.

I have taught American History and modern textbooks for high school students barely cover the issue.  I think it is perhaps too soon to pronounce that Ford’s actions were justified or not.  I do wish I could read more about his time in the House and his tough position as a presidential candidate in ’76, rather than his “brave” actions pardoning one of the most crooked figures in our country’s history.  I think I would even rather hear from Chevy Chase about Ford.

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Pot? Kettle? Black.

by J N on December 28, 2006 · 1 comment

in Blogs, The Media

The concept of blogs has been on my mind lately and I do think a lot of the purpose and the impact of blogs.  I don’t think it is a stretch to say that bloggers (and maybe the blogs, too) did help push the razor-thin Tester victory last month.  However, for every solid, well-researched blog post, there are a number of others that amount to little more than incoherent rambling and debate that breaks down to “so and so said what? nuh-huh!”  I am not picking on local blogs here (RightMontana is the exception, you are pleasure to pick on) but the larger blogosphere.

That said, I was blown away by Joseph Rago’s editorial in last week’s Wall Street Journal picking on the blog world because it apparently doesn’t meet the standards of professional journalism.

For me, his argument breaks down here:

Every conceivable belief is on the scene, but the collective prose, by and large, is homogeneous: A tone of careless informality prevails; posts oscillate between the uselessly brief and the uselessly logorrheic; complexity and complication are eschewed; the humor is cringe-making, with irony present only in its conspicuous absence; arguments are solipsistic; writers traffic more in pronouncement than persuasion . . .

I do blog on occasion, so all the big words scare me.  However, Mr. Rago’s argument would be better taken if only it didn’t also apply to the world of modern journalism.  Certainly, major newspapers like the Wall Street Journal probably have discovered the use of spell check or hired those new-fangled “copy editors” but outside large cities, actual journalism is a little more hit-or-miss.  I stopped purchasing newspapers locally long ago, partly because of the availability of news online and partly because I was tired of spotting a dozen spelling and grammar mistakes on the first page (and Pogie can tell you, my own grammar and spelling aren’t Pulitzer-prize quality).  I tire of newspaper reporters that refuse to do more than reword press releases and cannot use modern tools like the Internet to fact check seemingly obvious mistakes or half-truths.

Amazingly, his criticisms seem to suggest that newspaper editorials demonstrate a quality that blogs do not.  Perhaps he hasn’t picked up a copy of a Friday Independent Record for the stunning “thumbs up, thumbs down” editorial, which in a recent edition, went as far as saying “Thumbs down to a Dayton, Ohio, woman for allegedly turning an urban legend into a grim reality. The woman was arrested this week on suspicion of murdering her newborn daughter by microwaving the baby in an oven.”  Thanks for that insight.

As we find our way around this new world of media, the last argument I find persuasive is that I should simply ignore blogs and other means of citizen media because of the relative quality.  I have read more than my share of newspapers to know that the blog world is at least competitive.

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Do You Deserve to Be A Citizen?

by Don Pogreba on December 26, 2006 · 6 comments

in US Politics

The People for the American Way have posted a sample exam, with questions taken from the test administered to immigrants seeking citizenship. I’m not sure what the test proves, though I can’t say that I found it as difficult as the PFTAW seems to think I would.

How do you score?

Montana Weblog Awards-2006

by Don Pogreba on December 25, 2006 · 0 comments

in Montana Politics

I’ve been forgetting to post this for some time, which seems to describe the blog lately. Wulfgar! is hosting the Montana Weblog Awards again this year, and you can cast your ballot for the next day or two over at his place.

Awards link here.

My Father

by Don Pogreba on December 20, 2006 · 2 comments

December 20 will always be one of those uncomfortable anniversaries for me: it’s the anniversary of the day that my father passed away. When that crossed my mind today, as it inevitably does, I realized that today makes it 25 five years since his death.

When my dad got sick, he left our home in Shelby to get treatment at the VA Hospital in Helena. He came back in November, just in time for the first bumps of chicken pox to appear on my arms. That week he was home, he was my caretaker, putting lotion on my skin, telling me stories, and tying an old pair of boxing gloves on my hands when I wouldn’t stop scratching. The whole time he was dying, being consumed by a cancer that put him in unimaginable pain. His last night home we watched football together–just the guys–and he read to me as a I fell asleep. My last memory of him is waking to see him crying quietly in his chair, either from the pain, or from knowing that he wouldn’t be coming back.

The next morning he was gone, back to the hospital, and six weeks later, he was gone forever.

My dad wasn’t a perfect man. He drank too much, and sometimes his ego was more than a match for his ambition, but I always felt that my sister and I were the center of his life. His heart might have been bigger than his head on occasion, but even his mistakes were made out of love. He taught me how to fish, to read, to score a baseball game, and defend what I believe–everything I’ve needed to survive. More than anything, he taught me about loving with your whole heart, fiercely. For my dad, it wasn’t worth it to love any other way.

Everything I’ve become and everything I will do is because of my father.  

Thanks, Dad.

Thomas Friedman: All Arabs/Muslims/Middle Easterners Are Alike

by Don Pogreba on December 20, 2006 · 15 comments

in The Media

Soon,Thomas Friedman is going to have to take a spot along with Michelle Malkin and Conrad Burns on my personal list of people who are such absurd caricatures that I can’t bear to write about them any longer. As bad as Friedman’s previous work on the Iraq conflict has been, today’s column engages in a series of stereotypes, broad generalizations, and vapid observations that would make Tony Snow blush. Apparently, solving Iraq and the rest of the problems in the Middle East is easy: all we need to do is believe absurd generalizations about everyone who lives in the region. 

Given this framework, what advice does Tom have for President Bush?

People in the Middle East Are Liars

What people tell you in private in the Middle East is irrelevant. All that matters is what they will defend in public in their own language. Anything said to you in English, in private, doesn’t count. In Washington, officials lie in public and tell the truth off the record. In the Mideast, officials say what they really believe in public and tell you what you want to hear in private.

And Idiots:

If you can’t explain something to Middle Easterners with a conspiracy theory, then don’t try to explain it at all

And savages, who fight uncivilized civil wars, unlike Americans:

Civil wars in the Arab world are rarely about ideas — like liberalism vs. communism. They are about which tribe gets to rule. So, yes, Iraq is having a civil war as we once did. But there is no Abe Lincoln in this war. It’s the South vs. the South.

And Irrational, Driven by Ego, Not Logic

The most underestimated emotion in Arab politics is humiliation. The Israeli-Arab conflict, for instance, is not just about borders. Israel’s mere existence is a daily humiliation to Muslims, who can’t understand how, if they have the superior religion, Israel can be so powerful. Al Jazeera’s editor, Ahmed Sheikh, said it best when he recently told the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche: “It gnaws at the people in the Middle East that such a small country as Israel, with only about seven million inhabitants, can defeat the Arab nation with its 350 million. That hurts our collective ego. The Palestinian problem is in the genes of every Arab. The West’s problem is that it does not understand this.”

I do find it interesting that Mr. Friedman, a columnist for what was once the most influential newspaper in the United States, can’t rise above sweeping generalizations to advance his argument about Iraq, but it’s even more fascinating that these little cultural tidbits weren’t available to him before the war he so whole-heartedly supported. Maybe this ”rule” for President Bush in the Middle East would have been handy before the war: 

Our first priority is democracy, but the Arabs’ first priority is “justice.” The oft-warring Arab tribes are all wounded souls, who really have been hurt by colonial powers, by Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, by Arab kings and dictators, and, most of all, by each other in endless tribal wars.

Give it up, Tom. You were tragically and pathetically wrong about the war. The more you write about it, the more foolish you look.

You’re So Vain: I Bet You Think This Blog is About You

18 December 2006

George Will thinks bloggers are all narcissists. I wish George Will would just write about baseball. Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend on Facebook Buzz it up share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tweet about it Subscribe to the comments on this post Print for later Tell a friend

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Wonders Never Cease: I Agree With Roy Brown. Sort Of

18 December 2006

A piece by Matt Gouras in the IR today raises the issue of constituency accounts for Montana elected officials raises two troubling issues: the use of largely unregulated “constituency funds” by Montana’s elected officials, and the fact that I might agree with Roy Brown about something. While the story about constituency funds is hardly new, [...]

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Your Republican House in Action: Rick Jore Speaks

15 December 2006

Rick Jore responds to critics in the Helena IR today. I certainly hope someone else is teaching his children about government and writing. Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend on Facebook Buzz it up share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tweet about it Subscribe to the comments on this post Print for later Tell [...]

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Who’s To Blame for the Mess in Iraq? Jimmy Carter, Of Course

11 December 2006

I’ll admit it: I sort of admire the mental gymnastics that conservatives are able to pull off in an effort to excuse the current administration for its failed policy in the Middle East. If it seems obvious that the current disaster in Iraq is the result of a poorly-planned, insufficiently justified, and terribly run strategy, [...]

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The Worst Idea Ever?

11 December 2006

No, but close. Rick Jore is going to be our committee chair for the education committee. We all know his views on education; his website insists that he “is not of the persuasion that schools need more money” and that the federal government has no constitutional authority to fund education, and thus he will “oppose [...]

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The Arrogance of Power: Your Congress in Action

9 December 2006

It’s hard to evaluate who of these two departing members of the Congress is more clueless, the Representative decrying the shameful abuse of retiring members of the Congress, or the disgraced former Senator talking about himself. Democratic Representative Major Owens: Building superintendents and logistics administrators with no appreciation for the vision and purpose of an [...]

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