From the category archives:

Politics

Doubleplusgood

August 15, 2006

Never more true. Orwell should be required reading for anyone who works with, consumes, or tries to be one of the media—in short, everyone. This essay is an excellent place to start, and bonus points for having read Animal Farm and 1984 within the last 10 years (i.e., sometime after it was required for a class). Going back to look at my copies now, since I do not score the bonus points.

Addition:

Must be something in the air—found this just a little bit later in my Bloglines feed (from Believer Magazine):

BLVR: What is the hardest thing about filmmaking?

SS: I will say, and coming from someone who’s made some of the movies and TV I’ve made, it may seem disingenuous—but the hardest thing in the world is to be good and clear when creating anything. It’s the hardest thing in the world. It’s really easy to be obscure and elliptical and so fucking hard to be good and clear. It breaks people. Because you don’t often get encouragement to do that, to be good and clear.

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Just when i think the slide toward theocracy can’t get worse: the Left Behind video game. Now you have the choice to play a 13-year-old prayer warrior blowing away anyone who resists your attempts to convert them, or you can play a minion of the AntiChrist. It may have been naive of me, but I really didn’t think that the violence of modern-day video games was something the Religious Right wanted to co-opt—they’ve been telling me for years that Grand Theft Auto will rot my brain, but apparently if virtual bloodshed’s done in the service of the Lord it’s good clean fun and great training for the future. I would be speechless if it didn’t frighten me so much.

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Calling Bullshit on the FCC

March 29, 2006

Read this first. Then marvel at a governmental body who has the chutzpah to decide for the entire country that “bullshit” must be bleeped. Amaze yourself further that words far more offensive to the general populace are apparently OK, and then do a doubletake again at the thought that the FCC feels the need to [...]

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Journos in the Age of Shrub

February 25, 2004

A great article on the transition political journalism has undergone in the last twenty or so years. It touches on many points, among them herd mind, the myth of media objectivity, and best of all, ideas for how to make it better again from those within the field. PressThink, where it’s from, looks like a [...]

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Caught on Film

March 3, 2003

About time. While I know no politician is ever able to keep all of his or her campaign promises, El Presidente Bush is racking up a pretty solid record of saying one thing and doing another. Something to remember for next year’s election and also as we’re being asked to trust in his administration’s imminent [...]

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Let Loose the Dogs of War

December 24, 2002

And what ugly dogs they be. In my daily commute up to San Francisco, I’ve had the opportunity to start listening to NPR in the daytime again, a ritual that used to be a large part of my workday back in the Electro-Pub days. It was something we started doing during the what will probably [...]

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Straight from the artist’s mouth…

July 2, 2002

In case anyone is still wondering if MP3 downloading is destroying the record industry and costing artists money, here’s an article by Janis Ian that shows once again that the RIAA’s usual argument is only half right. You can guess which half…and as much as I enjoyed Courtney Love’s diatribe against the labels last year, [...]

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He oughta know…

February 6, 2002

There are few, if any, folks out in the land of pundits and analysts who understand the mechanics of a White House coverup more than John Dean. That makes his take on GAO vs. Cheney that much more alarming, especially in regard to his comments at the end about the Supreme Court. It seems we [...]

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When Two Tribes Go to War…

January 4, 2001

U.S. Politics as a Conflict of Tribal Coalitions: Or, how the Democrats and Republicans switched sides. This makes more sense to me than any other piece of political commentary I’ve read this year, and does a lot to explain the distribution of colors on maps like these.

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{sigh}

December 13, 2000

Obligatory groan and commentary on the anointing of Dubya. I cannot believe this dimwit has managed to make to to the top office in the country. And as far as the Supreme Court’s concerned, I can only agree with Maureen Dowd: The Bloom Is Off the Robe.

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