CORNEL WEST UPDATE: Cornel West spoke recently at Minnesota, addressing his relationship with Harvard. Steve Gigl wasn’t impressed with what he heard.
Archive for 2002
May 9, 2002
DAN GILLMOR has a very good column on the California electricity crisis, and how the blame reaches well beyond Enron:
Yet everyone is shocked, shocked that the energy wheeler-dealers at Enron took advantage of California’s lame attempt at electricity deregulation. Imagine that: The sharpies manipulated prices after the state all but issued an engraved invitation.
That’s the sorry reality behind what are being called the “smoking gun” memos, written in late 2000 and early 2001. These Enron memoranda, released on Monday, are posted for your reading amazement on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Web site (www.ferc.gov).
YOU WANNA TALK MASSACRES? William Sulik wonders why this one didn’t get any attention, while the bogus massacre claims at Jenin created an international uproar.
GRAY DAVIS is getting loads of bad press over the Oracle scandal in California, but it doesn’t seem to be getting a lot of national attention yet. But California readers keep sending me stuff and asking why it’s not getting noticed elsewhere. Beats me. Lots of other news? A vague sense of caution after overhyping the Enron scandal early on? Whatever, here are some links I’ve gotten, if you’re interested.
This story from the Sacramento Bee says that state officials tried to block the Oracle contract to the last minute but were overruled by higher ups.
This story from the Contra Costa Times says more or less the same thing, but with more details.
This story from the Mercury News says it was “Davis Advisers” who pressured for the deal to go through despite obvious improprieties.
Pretty much the same story in each, but with different emphasis. This seems like pretty serious stuff to me.
May 8, 2002
THE CHRONICLE PULLS A CAIR? John J. Miller reports at The Corner that the San Francisco Chronicle has taken down the poll about Ward Connerly’s Racial Privacy Initiative — apparently because it was doing too well. Online polls are mostly meaningless, of course — but once you put them up, you should play fair.
KAUSFILES SELLS OUT — an InstaPundit exclusive! Mickey Kaus has inked an awe-inspiring and deeply lucrative deal with Slate to take his blog “indoors.” Out of the blogosphere, into the lucrasphere! Mickey responds here to important questions:
Why are you selling out to a giant soulless monopolistic corporation?
I’m not selling. I’m renting! I can leave anytime I want, and take kausfiles with me. And they can cancel me anytime they want. They’re willing to be extremely flexible and play it by ear, which is one of the great virtues of Slate.
If I were a total schmuck, which I hope I’m not, I could even stay on Slate for a few months, get some new readers, and then move the blog somewhere else. You could move the site around like one of those disco events that’s held at a different venue each week.
Readers will never have to worry which site I’m on. If they type in www.kausfiles.com they’ll always be automatically taken to wherever the blog is.
But I think and hope it will find a happy home on Slate. I’ve been writing longer items for them for years, as you know. The Slate people are all friends, and Slate is looking very lively these days, you may have noticed. (No thanks to me) . They don’t tell me what to write, or what not to write, yet they give me ideas I can steal. And they have three frigging million readers!
What about quirkiness?
Quirk-retention is a major corporate objective of both partners in this joint venture. If the quirkiness level falls, it will almost certainly be my fault, not theirs I note that there are now quirky pages on the sites of other big corporations – ABC’s excellent The Note, for example, or MSNBC’s excellent gossipy email dispatches from Jeannette Walls. Maybe “suits” and “bean counters” will eventually stamp out these signs of life. But why? They’re popular — and it costs corporations money to ride herd on things. It may be cheaper just to let ‘em ride (at least as long as they don’t libel somebody or rile up some anti-smut group).
Why’d you do it?
There are only so many glamorous blogger parties you can attend before you ask yourself, ‘Is this all there is?” What about — I’d ask this to myself when I was alone, in the middle of the night – what about making some money and using it to buy consumer goods?
I will get a bit more money from Slate. I’ll also get more readers, if it goes as planned. I couldn’t think of any better way to get either of those things.
I also owed it to Slate. I was spending more and more time writing for the blog – because it was fun, in large part — but I was producing fewer and fewer of the longer pieces to sell to them. These longer pieces had occasionally been collections of shorter items – but now the shorter items all go into the blog, so the longer pieces were getting longer, and less frequent. This solves that problem. Now they get the longer pieces and the blog too. It’s all on Slate.
Blogs are hot right now – a good time to sell out! But will there be any site of yours that’s independent of Slate?
www.mickeykaus.com will soon have archives and links. And all existing kausfiles archives will stay where they are. But that’s about it.
When is this sellout going to happen?
Sometime this week, I hope. Maybe even tomorrow.
In the interest of journalistic ethics [Yeah, like you believe in those — Ed. Stop that! That’s Kaus’s schtick!] I should point out that the Q&A above is not an actual interview by me, but just a bunch of Q&A stuff that Mickey emailed me. (Hey, I wonder if other “journalistic” interviews ever work that way, only without admitting it? Naah, couldn’t be, that would be unethical.) Anyway, I thought people would be interested, though since you don’t have to do anything different, you can just relax and wait for the thrill.
Is this the future of blogging? Maybe in a small way. Would I do this? Probably not — er, unless the money was really good and they let me keep doing what I’m doing now. But unlike Mickey, I don’t have to support myself this way, either!
DADDY WARBLOGS has a report from his own middle eastern correspondent.
HERE ARE a bunch of links on animal rights terrorism, from Brian Carnell.
HERE’S A science blog you may find interesting.
A WORD OF ADVICE: Buy the “emergency water/gas shutoff wrench” from Harbor Freight or some other discount tool place for $3.99 and keep it handy for when you need it. I did, and it’s a good thing. More later.
ANIMAL RIGHTS VIOLENCE: Fredrik Norman has some useful information on advocacy of violence among the animal-rights crowd.
EUGENE VOLOKH has a lot of useful Second Amendment information.
NAT HENTOFF is savaging the black law professors who boycotted Clarence Thomas’s appearance at the University of North Carolina law school.
NPR UPDATE: Boy have I gotten a lot of mail on NPR. But as my slowed posting rate may illustrate, I’ve been kind of busy. But here are some comments from reader Thomas Castle:
I’m an NPR listener and fan, and also a Republican (not party-line, though). Although I believe mainstream media are for the most part biased, I have to say that NPR is usually balanced and fair.
However, I grant you that NPR can be, occasionally, astonishingly biased. Maybe 5% of the time. (Don’t even get me started on Daniel Schorr, the Anthony Lewis of radio.)
So, on balance, I’d say NPR is unbiased 95% of the time, and ridiculously biased 5% of the time. That probably beats CBS, NBC, and ABC.
Tom
PS: Actually, NPR does seem to have a more pronounced bias against Israel, now that I think about it…
But even if NPR were very biased, I’d still listen to it during my commutes, because what else is there on the radio? In my town, nothing but fart jokes and obsessive sports shows. Not my bag. In the land of fart jokes, NPR is king.
“In the land of fart jokes, NPR is king.” I’m sure they’ll post that one in the newsroom. . . .
Reader Mark Manela writes:
On O’Reilly’s decorum:
Your facts “I could barely get a word in edgewise” don’t square with your apology: “He’s not rude — he just can’t keep quiet”
The Oxford English Dictionary (page 866) defines Rude: … 4. Unmannerly, uncivil, impolite; offensively or deliberately discourteous: a. of speech or actions.
If Rehm had “barely [let you] get a word in edgewise” could you have been so forgiving?
No one escapes bias.
Well, yeah, it’s rude to talk over people, I guess, but it’s not like calling them names. It’s inconsiderate, not abusive. And if someone treats all guests that way, it’s not bias.
HERE’S A LINK TO Cardinal Law’s deposition. He seems to think the First Amendment’s going to help him here, but I kind of doubt it.
MICHAEL CRICHTON LOVES BJORN LOMBORG: At least, Andrew Millard is reporting that there’s a 5-star review of Lomborg’s book from Crichton on Amazon. The review’s still there, so I assume it must be genuine — one would expect a phony one would have been removed after more than a week.
Of course, I suppose it could be the auto-parts Michael Crichton, rather than the famous-author Michael Crichton. But one would expect the famous-author Crichton to call this to someone’s attention. Anybody know if this is him?
MORE THAN YOU WANTED TO KNOW about the EU Flag. Several readers have emailed me that it’s just a “concept” and isn’t actually meant to be adopted, though nobody’s linked any stories on that. Fine with me, though.
MARTIN WALKER writes that Europe’s Left is committing suicide. Looked more like homicide to me the other day, but . . . .
THERE ARE TWO REASONS WHY I’VE FOCUSED LESS ON THE MIDEAST LATELY: One is that, quite frankly, it was getting too damned depressing. People ask me how I write so much day after day, but the really draining part is reading all that bad news. The other is that James Taranto’s Best of the Web is doing such a superlative job that whenever I find something interesting it’s either something he’s covered, or something he will cover later in the day. Go there. It certainly sounds like my Arafat hunch (see below) is playing out.
MEMO FROM THE EVIL CHORTLING DEPARTMENT: “Our campaign to utterly discredit any opposition to the war is succeeding brilliantly, thanks to our tireless mole in Cambridge. Buwhahaha!”
IS IT JUST ME or does this letter from Luke Helder make him sound a bit like the guy who shot Pim Fortuyn?
UPDATE: Howard Owens answers.
NPR CORRECTION: Several readers wrote to point out that NPR is not, in fact, listener-supported, as this page admits: “NPR’s annual revenues come primarily from member station dues and programming fees, contributions from private foundations, and corporate underwriting. A long-standing board policy prohibits NPR from soliciting listeners directly: on-air fund raising, direct mail, and telephone solicitations remain a prerogative of member stations.” Looks like their biggest fans are corporations.
LAWMEME has some interesting things to say about Jamie Kellner’s comments on what constitutes “stealing.”
IT’S JUST A HUNCH, but I think this last suicide bombing may have been it for Arafat.